Rupert Murdoch Rips Crybaby Donald Trump’s Crackpot Polling Conspiracy

Posted by Mark NC on February 18, 2016 at 7:55 pm. 3 Comments :

Proving once again how thin-skinned and paranoid Donald Trump is, he flipped out after learning that a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed him trailing Ted Cruz nationally by two points. His bloated ego wouldn’t allow him to accept the possibility that his horrendous behavior at the last Republican debate might have caused his numbers to slip.

So rather than face reality and get back to work, Trump attacked the Wall Street Journal and Fox News (for some unexplained reason he let NBC slide). Trump was interviewed by Breitbart News where he asserted that the poll was fixed and that “It was a Rupert Murdoch hit.” He further claimed that “The worst treatment I get is from Fox,” despite the fact that he gets far more airtime than any other candidate. Trump was also interviewed for a full hour on MSNBC (a disgraceful affair, but that’s another story), and told the sycophantic plant life known as Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, that…

“I think somebody at the Wall Street Journal doesn’t like me, but I never do well with the Wall Street Journal poll. So I don’t know.”

Clearly he doesn’t know. Or more likely he’s lying (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). Because a quick look at the facts show that the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has been reliably favorable to Trump. Prior to this new poll they had him leading in all but one poll since he announced his candidacy. It is typical of Trump, however, to swing wildly when wounded. Therefore, this record of his polling, wherein he topped five of six polls, is regarded by him as “never doing well.”

But Trump wasn’t finished. He continued his Twitter tirade to blast Fox News saying that “@FoxNews is so biased it is disgusting. They do not want Trump to win. All negative!” and that “.@FoxNews is changing their theme from ‘fair and balanced’ to ‘unfair and unbalanced.'” These would be reasonable complaints about Fox News except for the fact that Trump is utterly delusional. He has been the foremost beneficiary of the biases practiced at Fox.

After hearing Trump’s butt-hurt ranting, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of the media empire that includes both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, had a bit of advice for the hyperventilating Trump. Murdoch tweeted…

“Trump blames me for WSJ poll, fights FoxNews. Time to calm down. If I running anti-Trump conspiracy then doing lousy job!”

It’s hard to disagree with Murdoch on this one. It’s obvious that his media properties have not been plotting anti-Trump campaigns. However, what Murdoch left out is that his outlets are responsible for creating Trumpenstein in the first place. Fox was not only not anti-Trump, they were so pro-Trump it was nauseating to watch. Now that Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and company, have reanimated the beast, they are begging it to “calm down.” Good luck with that, Rupe. You’ve made your cult, now you have to “lie” with it.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Donald Trump: Fox News Owner Rupert Murdoch Is My Bitch

Posted by Mark NC on October 19, 2015 at 2:32 pm. 5 Comments :

The ongoing feud between Donald Trump and Fox News has been a spasmodic adventure of alternating animosity and affection – mostly animosity. A few weeks ago News Corpse wrote that Donald Trump had effectively made Fox CEO Roger Ailes his“bitch” by forcing him to concede to his demands and then rubbing it in.

Well, The Donald has continued his conquest of Fox by putting its corporate master, Rupert Murdoch, in the same bitch boat. Despite recent assurances that all had been forgiven, Trump’s assault on the network and its personnel is unyielding. He is still hammering away at anchor Megyn Kelly, most recently with a tweet calling for a boycott saying “Best thing my supporters can do if you don’t like the way @megynkelly and her puppets unfairly treat ‘us’ is don’t watch her show!”

Now Trump is expanding the battlefield to include Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. This offensive began with a question asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that referenced an article in the Journal that was critical of Trump. He responded by disparaging the paper’s market value saying…

“The Wall Street Journal was bought for $5 billion. It’s now worth $500 million, OK. They don’t have to tell me what to do. The Wall Street Journal has been wrong so many different times about so many different things.”

He’s actually right that the value of the paper declined, although he doesn’t say how he came up with the lower figure. All that News Corp has stated is that they took a $2.8 billion write-down following the acquisition. That would still leave the value of the paper above $2 billion. And Trump doesn’t seem to be aware that the entire print news business has collapsed since the Internet became a viable alternative. In any case, the net worth of a news enterprise has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of its reporting, so Trump really used that as a way to avoid the criticism.

But Trump wasn’t done. He took his WSJ attacks to his Twitter page where he took several wild swings that succeeded only in salving his ego. The tirade culminated in this pathetic post:

“It’s amazing that some of the dumbest people on television work for the Wall Street Journal, in particular a real dope named Charles Lane!”

The “real dope” in this case does not work for the Wall Street Journal. Charles Lane is an editorial writer for The Washington Post. So, technically, Trump is the real dope, a position with which he must be familiar. But his broad-based blast at every WSJ asset on Fox hits several programs and regular contributors. It is a bunker-buster dropped on both Fox News and the Journal, Murdoch’s pet properties. And yet, Murdoch has not responded to defend his companies or his people. In fact, Murdoch has not tweeted in nearly two weeks, since his racist “real black president” tweet. Have his handlers suspended Twitter privileges.

Trump is a typical bully. He has a big mouth and likes to throw his weight around. But he doesn’t have any real power and would crumble if his victims would just stand up to him. Like most bullies, he’s a coward. He recently bragged that he is an armed mofo and that if “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked.” But now he is seeking Secret Service protection for fear of alleged death threats. What ever happened to his awesome ability to shock any would-be attacker?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

With his silence in the wake of Trump’s insults, Murdoch is just providing more proof that he has joined Ailes in the bitches corner. And they aren’t alone. CNBC’s capitulation to Trump’s debate demands, and NBC’s invitation to Trump to host Saturday Night Live, put them both in the same dark place. [Note: sign the petition here urging NBC to rescind the SNL offer] When will the media get some courage and start showing some integrity and principle? They are cowering to the potential ratings bonanza they assume they will get by caving in to Trump. But that isn’t journalism. It’s an embarrassing display of unprofessionalism that should yield a tsunami of shame – if they had the capacity to feel it.

Clinton Cash: The Untold Story Of How Bill And Hillary Help Make Rupert Murdoch Rich

Posted by Mark NC on May 6, 2015 at 11:19 am. NO Comments :

Tuesday saw the official release of Peter Schweizer’s latest foray into sloppy and dishonest pseudo-journalism, Clinton Cash. Even before the book hit the shelves it was widely debunked by more reputable analysts who found numerous errors, unsupported speculations, and outright inventions. Even Schweizer himself was forced to acknowledge that some of his allegations were untrue and that none of them could be proven.

The clear purpose of the book is to smear likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Despite Schweizer’s feeble attempts to characterize his book as an impartial examination of Clinton’s finances, he has been a long-time Republican operative including stints as a speechwriter for George W. Bush and advisor to Sarah Palin. In addition, he is closely affiliated with ultra-conservatives like the Koch brothers and Breitbart News. However, there is another highly motivated player in this well-coordinated attack campaign that is getting less attention.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp and 21st Century Fox, commands a vast empire of media businesses that share a determined leaning toward activist, far-right politics. So it is not surprising that a committed conservative like Schweizer would integrate himself into the Murdoch machine. As a result, the opportunities for propaganda and profit become plentiful.

Schweizer’s book was published by HarperCollins, which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. So making the book a bestseller puts cash directly into Murdoch’s wallet. To that end, Murdoch has exploited his own Fox News which has gone into overdrive promoting the book. Schweizer has become an almost daily fixture on the network, and when he isn’t there himself, the network hands those promotional duties to their anchors and guests. All told, Fox News has donated the equivalent of more than $107 million to the marketing of the book, according to an analysis by Media Matters.

And speaking Fox News, the network produced and aired its own hour-long special (The Tangled Clinton Web) that served as an unabashed infomercial for the book. And rather than assigning a political personality like Sean Hannity to the brazenly partisan project, it was hosted by Fox’s chief news anchor, Bret Baier. The program was repeated several times. So while running PR for the book, Fox News is also chasing ratings and advertising dollars from the book’s rollout.

In addition, Murdoch’s print news operations joined in the Clinton Cashing in fest. The Wall Street Journal ran a feature editorial parroting the unsubstantiated claims in the Schweizer book and labeling the work of the Clinton’s foundation as “dishonest graft.” The New York Post devoted its cover to hawking the book and mocking the Clintons as money-hungry opportunists. A charge that reeks of irony coming from the realm of Rupert Murdoch.

Since when did free-enterprise loving right-wingers become so hostile to people achieving success through hard work and entrepreneurial ability? This ideological flip-flop was so pronounced that veteran Clinton-basher, Christopher Ruddy, CEO of the uber-rightist Newsmax, wrote an editorial denouncing Schweizer’s book and Fox’s role in selling it. The article was titled “In Defense of the Clinton Foundation,” and went to great lengths to criticize both the shoddy reporting in the book and the blatant exploitation of Murdoch’s own tangled web.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

There is no doubt that Schweizer’s book is intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s White House aspirations. It was planned and executed by people with long-standing animosity for both the Clintons and Democratic politics. But the evidence that it is also a profit-making vehicle for Rupert Murdoch is unavoidable. And that is the true meaning of the title. Murdoch is orchestrating this whole fraudulent scheme because he wants to be rolling in Clinton Cash.

Judith Miller Cops A Plea: I Took America To War In Iraq

Posted by Mark NC on April 5, 2015 at 9:52 am. 2 Comments :

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, a country that was falsely accused by the administration of George W. Bush of harboring weapons of mass destruction, the media was nearly lock-step in agreement with the charges and the conclusion that war was an appropriate response. But after the stories began to fall apart and the reality that Bush and his cabal of neocons had deliberately misled the American people, some of the pundits and politicians who had been cheerleaders for the toppling of Saddam Hussein tried to backtrack and worse, to rewrite history.

No one in the press was more responsible for peddling the lies of the Bush warhawks than Judith Miller of the New York Times. She had published numerous articles condemning Saddam and taking it on faith that he was guilty of everything that the administration had alleged. Her sources were insiders who had vested interests in planting their propaganda in the media. She eagerly participated in the deception and was used later by her sources as evidence of their claims. In short, they anonymously gave her false information which she published in the Times, and then they went on Meet the Press and cited her articles as proof that they were right.

Miller’s role in advocating for war and serving as a vessel for the administration’s lies eventually led to her dismissal from the Times and disgrace as as a reporter whose credibility and ethics were fatally flawed. So naturally, she was hired by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.

Now it’s Miller’s turn to rewrite history. This week she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal (also owned by Murdoch) that, on the surface, appears to be a mea culpa. It begins with her saying that “I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.” Unfortunately, the article is a mix of facetiousness and a pleading to a lesser crime. As an example of the former, the first full paragraph reads…

“OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.”

That would be a stunningly candid statement of the truth and a remarkable admission of responsibility, except for the fact that she didn’t mean a word of it. The very next paragraph casts it aside as a “false narrative” as she writes “None of these assertions happens to be true.” And throughout the remainder of the article Miller dismisses her role in selling the war to a skeptical American public.

Miller insists that the “pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war,” was wrong. However, she offers no support for that assertion. She exonerates the Bush administration by claiming that they were merely mistaken, not lying. It’s a defense that attempts to confess to the crime of stupidity in order to avoid being convicted of dishonesty. And Miller is making the same sort of plea bargain for herself in confessing to having been misled by the administration, rather than to conspiring with them.

The problem for Miller is that there is already too much evidence of her complicity to deny her role. Her articles were nearly verbatim transcriptions of administration talking points. She claims to not have been “spoon-fed” lines about WMDs by senior officials. Does she regard Scooter Libby, the chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney as a senior official? She doesn’t say. In fact, she famously refused to identify any of her sources so that people could decide for themselves if they were credible.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Miller spent some time in jail for contempt of court when she declined to reveal her sources. Her defenders regard that as a noble sacrifice, but there is a difference between protecting your sources and protecting your accomplices. Miller knew very well that her sources were relying on the information they fed her when they cited it in subsequent interviews, but she never seemed the least bit disturbed at having been used for that purpose. That’s because she wasn’t being used, she was participating. And nothing in her self-serving defense in the Wall Street Journal leads to any other conclusion.

So why would she bring up this stain on her reputation after all these years? The answer appears in italics at the bottom of the article: “Ms. Miller’s new book, ‘The Story: A Reporter’s Journey,’ will be published on April 7.”

So How Nuts Are The Anti-Immigration Tea Party Republicans?

Posted by Mark NC on December 5, 2014 at 1:29 pm. 3 Comments :

One month ago a distinct minority of the nation’s voters trudged to the polls to elect just enough Tea Party Republicans to gain control of the Senate and join their GOP colleagues in the House in a ritual of Obama bashing and avoiding doing any actual work. Since then the party of “NO” has already demonstrated their determination to hogtie this president and throw a monkey wrench into the administration of government.

To illustrate just how absurd the right-wing has become, take a look at these actual proposals, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, for responding to Obama’s executive action to reform immigration policy:

Shut down the government.

Block ambassador nominations.

Block executive branch nominees — just about all of them.

Ground the president.

Start the immigration fight earlier.

File a lawsuit.

Cancel the State of the Union.

Hate of the Union

These inane, retaliatory responses to a serious problem facing the nation reveal the deliberately injurious motives of the GOP. They obviously couldn’t care less about advancing the interests of the American people. The only thing on their agenda is beating on the current resident of the White House whom they never believed was legitimate.

And it makes it all the more ludicrous considering they have a quick and simple way to do away with the executive order they profess to oppose. As reported here before, all they have to do is pass a law. They don’t even have to write one. It already exists and was passed by a bipartisan majority in the Senate. If John Boehner would allow it to be voted on in the House it would pass tomorrow, be signed by the President and – poof – no executive action.

Instead these cretins maneuver to lock Obama out of the Capital and take away his keys to Air Force One. Next thing you know they will be passing legislation to make him sit in the corner for the remainder of his term. And they want people to take them seriously?

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WSJ: Tea Party Leader Admits Political Activities, Proving The IRS Was Right

Posted by Mark NC on August 29, 2013 at 9:38 am. 9 Comments :

In a fluff piece on the head of the Tea Party Patriots, Jenny Beth Martin, the Wall Street Journal contends that the recent IRS pseudo-scandal has reinvigorated the Tea-publican movement. Never mind that their own poll shows that only 37% – of Republicans – support the Tea Party. The gist of the article’s analysis rests on the improved fundraising they have enjoyed since the GOP has fanned the phony scandal.

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Indeed, the Tea Party Patriots raised more than $20 million last year, which makes their complaint about the IRS scrutiny ring rather hollow. Martin complains that not having tax-exempt status was “a disincentive to some potential donors.” Perhaps a bigger disincentive might be that they spend 85 cents of every dollar raised on additional fundraising. Or maybe donors weren’t impressed with the fact that their candidates (e.g. Akin, Mourdock, Angle, O’Donnell, Paladino, etc.), are mostly losers.

Martin told the WSJ that “the big donors…wouldn’t give to us without our nonprofit status.” She either doesn’t know, or is deliberately lying about, the fact that the IRS permits organizations with pending applications to solicit tax-exempt donations. She also made a remarkable admission that pretty much destroys her entire argument that her operation deserves tax-exempt status at all.

Martin: “It was harassment, pure and simple, to weaken us going into the 2012 election,”

Really? If your concern is that you will be hampered going into an election year, then your activities are unambiguously political and the IRS should immediately deny your application. Martin’s confession that election outcomes are what is driving the alleged harassment is the best argument that the IRS was right to apply stricter scrutiny to her group and others like it.

Not that this would be the first indication that the Tea Party is an overtly political operation and, in fact, nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party. GOP candidate for President, Newt Gingrich called the Tea Party “the militant wing of the Republican Party.” The corrupt Tea Party Express co-hosted a GOP primary debate on CNN. It’s hard to get more political than that.

The WSJ noted the hard times that the Tea Party endured after their brief brush with fame:

By the 2012 election, the tea-party movement was in decline. Its members failed to show up to the polls in sufficient numbers, and many Senate challengers with tea-party backing were defeated. Rep. Michele Bachmann, chairwoman of the House Tea Party Caucus, barely retained her seat.

When Mrs. Martin toured chapters in California earlier this year, they told her they wanted to drop “tea party” from their names because its brand was tarnished. Mrs. Martin was presiding over a national office full of empty desks and dwindling volunteers and donations—a period she refers to as “frightening” and “disheartening.”.

Read excerpts and reviews at Amazon
Fox Nation vs. Reality

This is further evidence that their tax-exempt status had nothing to do with their misfortune, because there was no difference in their status in 2012 than in 2010. The dust up over the IRS was itself a purely political tactic, engineered by Rep. Darrell Issa and his GOP cronies in the House of Representatives. And, of course, hyped by their PR division, Fox News. The success of that tactic was heralded by Martin who told the WSJ that “From that moment, the tea party has roared back to life.”

Today the Tea Party is still an unpopular scam devised to advance the interests of the Republican Party and to enrich its principals. It enjoys an outsized measure of influence because GOP leaders in congress are too cowardly to challenge it. But anyone who thinks the Tea Party is a legitimate grassroots operation is being willfully ignorant of the facts – which kind of explains why they still support the Tea Party.

Stephen Colbert Takes On The Totalitarian Bicyclista Conspiracy (Video)

Posted by Mark NC on June 14, 2013 at 3:38 pm. NO Comments :

When a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board speaks out about the imminent threat to America’s freedom posed by subversive bike riders, you sure hope that somebody is listening and is prepared to act. Thank God for Stephen Colbert.

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The Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz took to the airwaves to warn America about the these vile bicyclistas and the government stooges who enable them. While she declined to speculate on what is in “the mind of the totalitarians running this government,” she pointed out that…

“We now look at a city whose best neighborhoods are absolutely…“begrimed” is the word…by these blazing blue Citibank bikes.”

Exactly! It’s an abomination that must not be tolerated by freedom-loving patriots. Colbert quickly recognized the wisdom in Rabinowitz’s criticism and leaped to her defense. He astutely noted that nothing begrimes a community more than a row of two-wheeled, people-powered, vehicles that eschew the fossil fuel that is the blood coursing through America’s oily veins. Colbert lamented what would become of our neighborhoods if the bicyclistas get their way:

“Now when you’re ambulating about the historic West Village, a gaudy blue rack of bikes will take away from the simple beauty of the Cherry Boxxx Discount Dildo Shop.”

Well said. That’s the way to stand up to these peddle-pushers who, like their comrades in the drug trade, are determined to make us all slaves to a perverse and anti-American lifestyle “choice.” And it’s only a matter of time before the bi-cycle Mafia slides down that slippery slope and openly advocates gay-cycle decadence that will rip apart the fabric of our culture.

Watch the video and prepare to be outraged.

Wall Street Journal Exposes Fox News Lies About Benghazi and Susan Rice

Posted by Mark NC on December 4, 2012 at 10:22 am. 4 Comments :

For several weeks Fox News has been spearheading a smear campaign against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for comments she made on Sunday news programs about Benghazi. The actual substance of her comments was specifically limited by her qualification that the information was evolving as investigations continued. Nevertheless, Fox falsely portrayed her as having misled the nation. And further, they accused the President of conspiring to alter intelligence reports in order to downplay the involvement of Al Qaeda in the attacks.

Today there is a report in the Wall Street Journal that obliterates the dishonest reporting that has been plastered on the airwaves on Fox for weeks.

“The officials said the first draft of the talking points had a reference to al Qaeda but it was removed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to protect sources and protect investigations, before the talking points were shared with the White House. No evidence has so far emerged that the White House interfered to tone down the public intelligence assessment, despite the attention the charge has received.”

The WSJ story corroborates earlier reports about what Gen. Petraeus told members of congress in closed-door meetings: That the CIA was responsible for the revisions and approved them before they were distributed to the White House. It also exonerates Amb. Rice from the allegations that she did anything inappropriate in her public appearances.

The significance that this report was published in the Wall Street Journal cannot be understated. The Journal is the kingpin of Rupert Murdoch’s news empire. The fact that it is openly contradicting his other news outlet, Fox News, is a powerful condemnation of the cable network.

Now it remains to be seen if Fox News will broadcast a retraction of the lies they have been promulgating about Rice and recant the disparaging coverage of speculation about an appointment to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. It will also be interesting to see whether John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and other Rice bashers will offer their apologies.

Karl Rove Inadvertantly Argues Against His Own Fundraising Machine

Posted by Mark NC on August 2, 2012 at 2:08 pm. NO Comments :

The Wall Street Journal, once a respected financial news publisher before Rupert Murdoch got his hands on it, is now the home of rabidly partisan propagandists who seek only to advance self-serving political agendas. One of those is former Bush flack, Karl Rove.

Karl Rove In an op-ed today, Rove addressed the intricacies of modern campaigning and passed along some of the lessons he has learned from a lifetime of electioneering. But in his haste to demean President Obama as a profligate spender obsessed with winning reelection, Rove ended up making a convincing case for campaign finance reform, including eliminating SuperPACS like his own Crossroads GPS.

The op-ed opened with Rove regurgitating a few well-known, and widely debunked, out-of-context misrepresentations of the President’s remarks. In rapid succession he rattled off what he called Obama’s “problematic statements:”

“You didn’t build that.” Where Obama was actually referring to roads and bridges, not private businesses.
“The private sector is doing fine.” Where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector to the public sector.
“We tried our plan and it worked” Where Obama was referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush’s policies.

The GOP is laying the entire foundation of their campaign on these deliberate lies, and it is not surprising to see Rove commence his editorial by highlighting them. What’s surprising is what comes next. Rove squeezes out some faux sympathy for the President’s exhaustive workload. He goes into some detail enumerating the stressful itinerary of a candidate for the White House.

Rove: Many people don’t fully appreciate how much of a drain it is on a candidate—involving travel, a speech or two, private meetings with particularly energetic (or obnoxious) money bundlers, and always plenty of advice. Most fundraisers also include a long photo line where the candidate grips and grins for dozens, sometimes hundreds, of photographs.

I observed first-hand how difficult it was to wedge 86 fundraisers onto President George W. Bush’s calendar over the 14.5 months from May 16, 2003 (when he filed for re-election) through July 2004.

Indeed. Raising money for a viable presidential campaign is a back-breaking endeavor that diverts the candidate’s attention from other pressing matters, whether they be communicating with voters, developing policies and campaign platforms, or fulfilling any other duties outside of the campaign, like running a country.

Unfortunately, fundraising is a fact of campaign life. No one, including Rove, would suggest that a candidate could neglect this duty and still have a chance of winning. This is more true than ever in the post-Citizens United era where corporations and wealthy individuals have been freed to make unlimited (and sometimes undisclosed) contributions to candidates. The new electioneering environment forces candidates to spend more time and effort on soliciting donations than ever before. These observations are powerful evidence for why reform is such an imperative. Corporate cash and secret bankrolls have no place in democratic elections and they only make the practice of fair elections more difficult. Thanks for pointing that out, Karl.

Ironically, Rove is a prominent advocate of Citizens United. He is also a major beneficiary of it via his network of political action committees. Rove has boasted that he intends to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle. So, in effect, Rove is cashing in on a practice that he admits is detrimental and places undue burdens on office-seekers. He further admits that, despite Obama’s best efforts, he is still trailing Romney and the GOP, largely because of Rove’s own prowess at hauling in boat loads of bucks from billionaires with aspirations to buy election outcomes.

If we were to take Rove’s initial points seriously, the country would rise up against Citizens United and the flash flood of cash that it unleashed on the electoral process. Without meaning to, Rove has made an excellent case for overturning CU and restoring the democratic principle of one-man-one-vote, rather than one-dollar-one-vote. But Rove doesn’t take his own arguments seriously because he is too heavily invested in the windfall he receives both personally and for the benefit of his GOP pals. As usual, he is demonstrating the brazen hypocrisy that is typical of his species of parasite.

The Wall Street Journal: Standing Up For Poor, Defenseless Billionaires

Posted by Mark NC on May 12, 2012 at 11:18 am. 47 Comments :

When Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal there was anxious speculation about what would become of the respected financial clarion. Many critics (myself included) predicted that the paper would devolve into a partisan tool for the advancement of Murdoch’s uber-conservative agenda. Now we have confirmation of the worst of our reckoning.

A few weeks ago, the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote a column complaining about an Obama campaign web page that identified a few of Mitt Romney’s wealthy donors and described their inherent interests in helping Romney to buy the presidency. Strassel’s take at the time was a departure from rational thought as she dredged up delusions about McCarthyism and enemies lists. She portrayed the introduction of Romney’s contributors as an attempt to intimidate them, as if being branded a Romney supporter was in itself an insult from which they must be shielded.

The truth is that Strassel was acting as a defender of the super-rich who prefer to operate in anonymity in order to achieve their self-serving ends. And while criticizing wealthy Republicans was tantamount to treason, she had no such sympathy for the likes of George Soros or George Clooney who somehow deserved the exposure and criticism they endured. Strassel is nothing but a mouthpiece for her boss, Murdoch, who is rushing to aid his aristocratic comrades. That explains how Strassel’s looney observations traveled so briskly from the Journal to Fox News and other right-wing media.

But apparently her article didn’t do the trick. So yesterday she followed up with another piece that sought to shelter one particular Romney supporter from the slings and arrows of outrageousness due to his vast fortune. Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca, an Amway-ish multi-level marketing enterprise. He has been described as an ultra-conservative and virulently anti-gay activist who generously spreads his wealth in pursuit of his politically narrow and socially constricting goals. [For a revealing look at VanderSloot see Glenn Greenwald’s excellent and in-depth essay in Salon].

The focus of Strassel’s new column is her dismay that VanderSloot is the subject of research by presumably Democratic operatives. Once again, the notion that wealthy power-players should be exempt from scrutiny is the core of her complaint. She even begins her article by saying…

“Here’s what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent.”

First of all, VanderSloot is not what any objective person would describe as just a “private citizen.” He is a prominent, big-money backer of political issues and candidates and he is the national finance co-chair of the Romney campaign. That makes him a very public person whose activities are relevant. Strassel’s position is that he is off-limits for public discourse despite making himself a notoriously vociferous spokesperson for his conservative views. This is a common stance from the right wherein they assert that they can say anything they want about anyone, including slanderous attacks on the President, but if the targets of these attacks dare to respond they are guilty of intimidation and suppression of free speech.

Just as with her previous column, this one also made the journey from print to television. Fox News committed significant airtime to the story. Megyn Kelly interviewed Strassel in one segment of her program, then came back with another segment pitting a couple of political analysts against each other. Later, Neil Cavuto did a report on the subject for one segment, and returned to “interview” a couple of right-wing, Fox legal contributors. That’s a lot of airtime to devote to protecting a billionaire from having to be accountable for his political actions.

Poor Frank VanderSloot. What a burden it must be for him to have people discover what he’s up to with his campaign spending. And what a blow to his dignity that he should have to answer questions from the peasants he is seeking to control through disbursement of his wealth. It’s a good thing he has Rupert Murdoch, and the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News to cover for him because he surely doesn’t have any means of defending himself. He can now join the Koch brothers who were aided by the Murdoch Machine earlier this year when the Journal gave space to their attorney, Ted Olsen, to make largely the same arguments that Strassel is making about McCarthyism, just because they experienced some push-back for their right-wing advocacy.

It’s startling how thin-skinned these billionaires are. With all of their financial resources, media access, and Washington connections, they still cry like babies when confronted. And it’s pathetic what the Wall Street Journal has become as it seems to be destroying it’s reputation for the sake of a few wealthy patrons.

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