Quote of the Day – Fox news Poll: Do Republicans have a jobs plan?

 

Even Fox News in a recent poll doesn’t think Romney can create jobs. The totals? 27 percent of Americans think Romney has a plan to revive the American economy… 41 percent of registered voters think Obama the better plan. That is a 14-point gap.

A revealing question in this poll was “Who do you think will do a better job looking out for you and your family during tough economic times?” 47 percent said Obama and 36 percent Mitt Romney.

As a Fox News commentator said:

“What is true in poker is true in politics. You can’t beat something with nothing. 

And right now, voters are coming to the conclusion that when it comes to credible plans to fix the economy, Republicans have nothing.”

– Juan Williams, Fox News analyst

Are you surprised?

Related articles

• Opinion: Republicans jab Obama on jobs, but have no plan of their own (thehill.com)
• Poll: Public says Obama tax plan more fair, helps economy (thehill.com)

 

Favorite Quote of the Day…

Jon Stewart responding to Bill O’Reilly after the Fox News host said he was going to hell:

“Here’s what you and your minions don’t understand, O’Reilly. Your hell doesn’t scare me. I make my living watching Fox News eight hours a day. I’m already in hell.”

🙂

(thanks to All Hat, No Cattle)

 

Related articles

• Bill O’Reilly Responds To The Simpsons’ ‘Cheap Shot’ At Fox News (mediaite.com)
• Robert Reich (Why Anyone Should Care that Bill O’Reilly Calls Me A Communist) (jdeanicite.typepad.com)
• Jon Stewart vs. Fox News Pundits On ‘The Daily Show’ (huffingtonpost.com)

Fox News “adjusts” Obama quote… who would have thought?

Obama speaking last Wednesday:

“Somebody gave me an education. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance — just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.”

Essentially, this was the same statement he made in 2009… well before he had any rich Republicans running against him (like Romney.)

Steve Doocy

The quote didn’t mean quite the right thing for Steve Doocy of Fox News, so he added three little words to it… words not found in the video of the speech or in the transcript:

“Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

See… doesn’t that couch it a little better in the context of an election? Isn’t Fox News great for doing us a favor of focusing on the true meaning of something the President says? Not!

Unfortunately, Doocy’s little addition turned up in a Washington Post article, a New York Post editorial and a number of conservative blogs. This leads me to propose that Obama no longer make speeches at all… just let Steve Doocy and his Foxy friends create his words for him.

(Thanks to TPM for pointing this one out).

Related articles

• Fox News quotes Obama (incorrectly of course) (brobrubel.wordpress.com)
• Fox News MADE UP An Obama Quote To Make It Seem Like He Was Dissing Romney (businessinsider.com)
• Romney responds to Obama’s ‘silver spoon’ jab (abcnews.go.com)
• White House: Obama ‘Silver Spoon’ Comment Not Directed At Romney (washington.cbslocal.com)

Pathetic Quote for the Afternoon

So whose fault is it that Newt isn’t on top of the Republican pack? Fox News?

“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point said, ‘I want Romney,’ and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney.’ And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox.”

– Newt Gingrich

Newt’s assumption, of course, is that Fox controls the Republican campaign.

A Fox News representative said Newt was just saying this because he is angling for a post-primary broadcast position at CNN. (Gingrich has already stated that he’ll be attending the White House Correspondent‘s Dinner at the CNN table… how about that?)

Murdoch gives more to Democrats than Republicans?

Harry Shearer

Why is this man smiling?

Harry Shearer dropped an interesting stat on Le Show this weekend: last month Rupert Murdoch’s organization gave significantly more in campaign donations to Democrats than it did to Republicans. Of approximately $50,000 in contributions, $32,000 went to Democrats… and primarily those associated with committees relating to the judiciary… as if Rupert had predicted in June the problems he’d be in in July.

However, it also appears that in the last couple of years Murdoch’s empire has given somewhat more to Democrats than to Republicans across the board. As Shearer pointed out, if the Fox News fans realized this, wouldn’t they protest?

Hmmmm.

Related articles

• News Corp. Reports Political Donations (huffingtonpost.com)

Quote of the Day – Some truth from one who knows.

“We have become a very angry country, part of it very ugly. And that even though we have free speech in this country, constantly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, making the people angry at government … may benefit some party, but I think those people have to consider that they may have some responsibility when incidents like this occur and may occur in the future.”

– Pima County (Arizona) Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik

There are some who think Dupnik has overstepped his bounds (Fox News thinks so, as well as others on the Right), but I don’t.  Someone has got to tell it like it is. This coming from a law officer in the State with the laxest gun laws in America, and with a history of problems with immigrants and racial discrimination (Arizona was the only state to originally oppose the Martin Luther King Holiday and, as a result, the NFL pulled the Super Bowl from being held in Phoenix where it was scheduled.)

Related Articles

• Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: “We Have Become A Very Angry Country” (alan.com)
• Sheriff Dupnik On GMA: “We Have Become A Very Angry Country” (mediaite.com)
• Giffords shooting: the sheriff who turned the focus on rightwing rhetoric (guardian.co.uk)
• “Comments from Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik via the AP:” and related posts (scaredmonkeys.com)
• Megyn Kelly Takes On Sheriff Clarence Dupnik Over His “Political Spin” On Shooting (mediaite.com)
• Clarence Dupnik, Arizona Sheriff, Criticized By Sen. Jon Kyl Over Shooting Comments (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• LIVEBLOG: Press Conference With Sheriff Dupnik and FBI Director Robert Muller (firedoglake.com)
• Democratic Congressman Says It’s Time To “Rethink” Free Speech In Wake Of Arizona Tragedy (businessinsider.com)

Is Fox News blocking support for 9/11 First Responders?

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Fox News Runs Interference For GOP Obstructionism On 9-11 First Responders Bill For his sake, I hope Fox News anchor Dave Briggs still has a job in 2011. The reason I’m not sure Briggs is long for the Fox News world is because during his report this weekend about the fate of the 9-11 first responders bill, which Republicans recently blocked in a naked bout of obstructionism, Briggs committed an unspeakable sin: He told the truth. Specifically, Briggs actually pointed out that filibustering Republicans purposefully stood in the way of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, designed to aid and compensate first responders who have suffered from respiratory disease following their heroic efforts on the morning of the Sept. 11. Here was Briggs on Sunday morning: How maddening has it been watching this — watching the, in particular, the Senate Republicans recently holding up a vote that would give health coverage to thousands of your peers?

Now it looks like the 2 New York Senators are going to try to put this bill through again, somewhat cut down. Will the Republicans hold it up again with a filibuster? Remember that the House already approved this with a 100 vote plurality. Blocking it has been merely a political gambit.

We’ll have to see if it gets through before Christmas. It SHOULD if there are any morals left in Congress.

Related Articles

• Fox legal analyst doesn’t mention Republicans voted against 9/11 health bill (crooksandliars.com)
• Memo To Fox News: Support The 9-11 First Responders (blogs.forbes.com)
• “America Held Hostage: 9/11 first responders bill can pass, but only if corps can offshore jobs” and related posts (reidreport.com)
• Some Republicans to support 9/11 Health Bill? (crooksandliars.com)
• ‘Daily Show’ Does Journalism Again: Shames GOP, Fox ‘News’, Network News Over 9/11 Legislation (bradblog.com)
• Will FOX News give Jon Stewart his own show? (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
• Report: Momentum Building For Lame-Duck Session Passing Of 9/11 First Responders Bill (mediaite.com)
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Momentum Building Toward A Christmas Miracle For Our 9/11 Heroes (huffingtonpost.com)

(Untrue) Quote of the Day

“The biggest advance of the abortion industry in America is the passage of Obamacare.”

– Sarah Palin

…and the biggest advance in idiocy is Sarah Palin’s statement.

Turn Off FOX…

Many of us already know that Fox News is biased — but it’s actually much worse than that. For years they have used lies, distortions, and race-baiting to divide this country. Recently, it’s gotten downright dangerous. Earlier this summer, a heavily armed man got into a gun fight with police after he was pulled over on his way to kill people at the Tides Foundation^[1] — an obscure non-profit that Glenn Beck regularly demonizes on his Fox News TV show.^[2]

Fox News is bad news for America — and it spreads, and is legitimized, partly through TVs in public places.

That’s why I’ve joined the TurnOffFox campaign — the first part of a larger campaign to diminish the influence of Fox. It’s about educating people about Fox and getting it turned off in stores, restaurants, and other public places.

Will you join me? It takes just a moment to declare your own household “Fox free”, and at the same time appeal to public establishments in your community to stop playing Fox. And you’ll get a FREE Turn Off Fox sticker when you do. Click here:

http://colorofchange.org/turnofffox/?id=2734-1148631

No other news organization that’s considered legitimate consistently wages smear campaigns based on lies and race-baiting. But for years Fox News has done exactly that, and the pattern has only gotten worse since Barack Obama entered national politics.

Here are just a few examples:

— A frequent Fox guest, Jesse Lee Peterson, said that the majority of Black people have poor moral character, and cited “what they did to the dome” after Hurricane Katrina as evidence.^[3] Peterson has also used his platform on Fox to claim that 90% of Black people are racists — against Whites.^[4]

— In a case of naked race-baiting, Fox host Glenn Beck called President Obama a “racist” who had a “deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture.”^[5] Earlier that week, Beck claimed that the President’s health insurance reform proposals were a form of “reparations” designed to “settle old racial scores.”^[6]

— Fox host John Stossel argued that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act — which prevents businesses from discriminating based on race, sex, and other factors — should be repealed.^[7]

— Fox News hosts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity were the first to air deceptively edited and incomplete video of Shirley Sherrod’s remarks to the NAACP.^[8] The video made it seem like Sherrod was confessing to using her position at the USDA to discriminate against White farmers, when she was really talking about the importance of overcoming prejudice. Sherrod lost her job over this misrepresentation, which Fox enthusiastically repeated without seeking the facts. Fox has since tried to pretend it had nothing to do with this smear — but Fox is the number one reason these kinds of distortions and smears have any part in our national dialogue.

The examples above aren’t even a tenth of Fox’s vicious lies and smears, and over the years they’ve just gotten more brazen.

The goal of Turn Off Fox is to reduce the number of public TVs showing Fox News, while spreading the word about Fox’s poison (and how it works) to those who don’t know.

Signing up for the campaign is just the first step. We make it easy for you to tell us about businesses playing Fox. If you’re willing to talk with them, we’ll provide you with straightforward materials that explain why they shouldn’t be a party to what Fox is doing. And if there are businesses you know that want to tell the world they would never play Fox, you can help them declare themselves a “Fox-free zone.”

As businesses Turn off Fox and stand up as Fox Free, and as we encourage our friends and family to do the same, we’ll help make clear, to people across the country, what Fox is about. And we’ll reduce their ability to do harm.

Please join me in signing up for the TurnOffFox campaign:

http://colorofchange.org/turnofffox/?id=2734-1148631

Thanks.

References

1. http://bit.ly/a5F7kW
2. http://mediamatters.org/research/201007290032
3. http://mediamatters.org/research/200510030005
4. http://bit.ly/c060C0
5. http://mediamatters.org/research/200907300019
6. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907230040
7. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200033
8. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007200060

A Quote for the Day – Howard Dean after Appearing on Chris Wallace…

“I don’t believe all or even most of the Republican party voters are racist, but going at least as far back as Lee Atwater, the Willie Horton ads, and the attacks on John McCain in the South Carolina primaries in both 2000 and 2008, the immigration debate in 2006, there is a persistent willingness in the Republican party to use race baiting for electoral advantage. The fact is, this is racist behavior.”

– Gov. Howard Dean, in the Huffington Post

… and the Shirley Sherrod attack by Breitbart and Fox News (which Chris Wallace now claims didn’t really happen… but, hey, we were there!) is only the most recent occurance.

Another Quote Promoting Private Racism…

You thought Rand Paul was the only one going public with this (although in the last two days, Paul has tried to weasel his way out of the remarks), but it turns out that he is supported by one of the great jerks of broadcasting, John Stossel:

“Private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won’t won’t ever go to a place that’s racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.”

Here’s his whole statement (along with the rest of his Fox News pals):

The NY Times on Jon Stewart Vs. Fox News

Or, as Stewart says:
“I have not moved out of the comedian’s box into the news box. The news box is moving toward me.”

Here’s a clip, but the whole article is worth reading:

clipped from www.nytimes.com Jon Stewart’s Punching Bag, Fox News George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are long gone. Fox News Channel is Jon Stewart’s new enemy No. 1. Last week that comedian did something that the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” the morning show on Fox News, did not do: he had his staff members call the White House and ask a question. It may have been in pursuit of farce, not fact, but it gave credence to the people who say “The Daily Show” is journalistic, not just satiric. “Fox & Friends” had repeatedly asked whether the crescent-shaped logo of the nuclear security summit was an “Islamic image,” one selected by President Obama in his outreach to the Muslim world. The White House told “The Daily Show” that the logo was actually based on the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom. Mr. Stewart routinely charges that Fox’s news anchors and commentators distort Mr. Obama’s policies and advance a conservative agenda. He reminds some viewers of the left-wing group Media Matters but much funnier.

Quote for the Day – Chomsky has “Never seen anything like this.”

Commenting on the Mood of the Country:

“I don’t bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”

– Noam Chomsky, quoted in Thom Hartmann today.

Are You Nuts?

Fox News presented Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (retired) yesterday, who proposed a solution to future airline bombing attempts: strip search all Muslim males aged 18 to 28. The fact that we even consider such things is outrageous (although it does provide security for 17- and 30- year old terrorists) and it’s time we stopped making ourselves go looney over a bunch of international criminals.

So here he is:

I’m beginning to think retired Generals need a hobby to keep them off the air. Whittling duck decoys, perhaps.

How Rupert Murdoch Manages the World…

You should read this article at Media Matters. Here’s a clip… but you must continue on to get the whole impact:

clipped from mediamatters.org Media Matters: On Afghanistan, Fox News decides, then reports President Obama never had a chance … It didn’t matter what decision he came to regarding troop levels in Afghanistan, or what he said about the ongoing conflict there, because Fox News and the rest of the conservative media had already reached two conclusions. First, he took too long. Second, he was wrong. Since the Bush administration stuck him with the untended-to mess in Afghanistan, Obama had to make a choice — more troops, fewer troops, withdrawal. When Obama signaled that he actually wanted to consider his options before making a decision, the Fox News followed the lead of Dick Cheney — one of the primary authors of the Afghanistan debacle — in accusing the president of “dithering” and “inaction.” Glenn Beck, never one to be subtle or reasonable, accused the president of “letting our troops literally bleed and die” and said Obama would “pay for it” in the hereafter.

Article continues at Media Matters.

Media maters has a lot on the Fox News vs. White House controversy.

Let’s take a look, first, at months of Fox News’ comments on “opinion shows” and “reporting” on “news shows” as it pertains to the Obama Administration:

That done, here is what Eric Burns, CEO of Media Matters, presented this morning on HuffPo (I’m reproducing the whole thing):

Fox News Channel is twisting American politics in an unprecedented way, and too many members of the press still aren’t getting it.

The White House has exposed Fox News for what it is: not a news organization, but a partisan political entity that is waging a war aimed at destroying the Obama administration and its progressive agenda. Fox’s Glenn Beck said so himself last Friday, predicting that he would soon “take the administration down.”

Despite such unambiguous proclamations and the truths about Fox that they reveal, many mainstream reporters and commentators, and even some progressive ones, have spent their time effectively circling the wagons around Fox by focusing their attention not on the network, but on the Administration’s comments about it. The entire matter has largely been treated as a political game — should the White House have so bluntly criticized the press, or will the tactic backfire?

“The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels,” wrote Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post. “The Obama administration really needs to get over itself,” added John Nichols of The Nation. “[T]he motivations of the White House are clear,” wrote Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Mike Allen. “Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance.” That same article quoted Project for Excellence in Journalism director Tom Rosenstiel: “You should beware of politicians playing press critic.”

All of this completely misses the point. The issue is not whether it was a good idea politically for the White House to say that the emperor has no clothes. The issue is that the emperor actually has no clothes. In other words, the administration’s comments about Fox News aren’t the story. Fox News is the story.

And yet, during a recent press conference, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Robert Gibbs how Fox News — “one of our sister organizations,” as he put it — is different from any other network. His question indicates the pervasive unwillingness among members of the media to officially kick Fox News to the curb of the press club. By legitimizing Fox News as a news organization, reporters and commentators are enabling the network to continue conducting a massive conservative political campaign under the guise of journalism. In the process, they are permitting Fox News to dominate the national discussion by spreading smears and lies — smears and lies that become conventional wisdom. They are also defending an organization that has nothing but contempt for journalistic standards — hence undermining their own profession and the public interest at the same time.

Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press. Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it was treated as such by our nation’s media.

The evidence supporting such a reality is overwhelming. To begin with, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has described his station’s confrontation with the Obama administration as “the Alamo.” Fox News senior vice president Bill Shine said Fox was “the voice of opposition.” In other words, the entire operation has an explicit political agenda, not just a few hosts. There is no separation between Fox News’ “opinion” programming and its “news” programs. Bret Baier’s Special Report, the closest show Fox News has to a straight newscast, portrays Obama in a negative light 77 percent of the time, according to a recent study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

But the story goes well beyond the conservative bias Fox News has historically reflected. Like all major political entities, Fox News is now coordinating grassroots (or, more accurately, astroturf) political activities, lobbying for or against legislation, and fundraising for conservative causes. The network called April’s protests “Fox News Tea Parties.” It encouraged people to attend town halls last summer and then broadcast only the statements of those who opposed Democratic health care proposals. The 9/12 rally in Washington was the work of Beck, who claimed that 1.7 million people showed up (it was actually closer to 70,000). A video soon emerged of one of the station’s producers coaching marchers before a live “report” from the scene.

Fox news routinely implores its audience to call Congress and oppose progressive legislation. Fox’s Dick Morris and Mike Huckabee have both used Fox News airtime to encourage donations to conservative political action committees.

Again, these are unambiguous campaign activities, not the work of a news organization. It is no wonder that Fox’s new website, FoxNation.com, has repeatedly cheered legislative developments it favors as a “Fox Nation Victory!”

Fox News relishes its newfound activism. “The conservative media is winning now,” Bill O’Reilly said on September 17. “They’re damaging the president of the United States.” But the damage Fox News causes isn’t just political. Every day, it undermines serious journalism, misleads millions of Americans, and distorts our national discussion on crucial issues. Fox News represents an attack on democracy itself.

Much of the channel’s “reporting” takes the form of obsessive and factually inaccurate efforts to smear progressive organizations and discredit Obama administration officials. To give you a sense of priorities: over a three-year period, shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Beck mentioned ACORN 1,502 times, saying it was a corruption scandal. By contrast, their programs mentioned Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney 109 times combined.

Fox is currently conducting a witch hunt against administration members. After Van Jones resigned, Hannity told a crowd, “We got rid of one, and my job starting tomorrow night is to get rid of every other one.”

Exposing improper conduct is one thing. Inventing it is another. Fox News breathlessly reported claims that an ACORN employee had murdered her husband without confirming the story. It wasn’t true. Similarly, Hannity reported that Department of Education official Kevin Jennings had concealed the “statutory rape” of a high school student. It was soon revealed that the student was 16 at the time (the age of consent), and by his own account had not engaged in sexual activity with his fictitious assailant. Hannity never apologized.

Fake stories like these are what Fox News is built on. Health care reform will create death panels? False. Cass Sunstein believes in mandating that people become organ donors? False. John Holdren advocates for “compulsory abortion and sterilization,” as Hannity put it? False. Fox reported them all as fact — and the list goes on.

Never in American history has a media organization this powerful been so willing to misrepresent reality in order to achieve a political goal. The right-wing press ran a similar campaign targeting Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but for most of that time period, it lacked the national, real-time reach and impact Fox now possessed.

The impact of Fox News’ long campaign of misinformation should concern any citizen. Fox has repeatedly misinformed its viewers on everything from the non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to the contents of health care reform legislation. Such misinformation can have serious consequences, and Fox News should be called out for propagating it.

There is nothing wrong with the White House standing up to its most powerful, unprincipled, and self-declared political opponent, one that clearly started this fight. And beyond politics, there certainly isn’t anything wrong with exposing an organization that unapologetically harms our democracy by poisoning our national discourse with falsehoods on an hourly basis.

The channel knows what it’s up against. “If they repeat this long enough,” said Fox News’ Bernie Goldberg on Monday, “and often enough — that Fox News is not a real news organization, it’s an arm of the national Republican Party, it’s not to be taken seriously — if they say that long enough, it might become part of bloodstream of the American culture.”

Fox News’ own media analyst got the story right, while so many others in the media are still getting it wrong. For once, the channel was actually breaking news, even if it is merely the simple truth.

Now that you have looked at Burns’ commentary, and seen the montage of Fox News’ slants on the Obama Administration, you can form your own opinion. I tend to agree with Media Matters, but I think the folks in the Obama Administration have to modify their approach a little. Just trying to cut Fox out of the game will actually encourage Fox News to treat itself… and the other networks to treat them… as the main news story when there are so many other things to cover.

Quote of the Day – and from an unlikely source…

“By leaving Bill Clinton in office, preoccupying him with a sex scandal and diverting attention away from the growing threat of bin Laden, Al Qaeda and terrorism in general, the Republican leadership laid the foundation for a serious cancer to grow — one that ultimately metastasized into September 11, 2001.”

– Larry Klayman, right-wing founder of Judicial Watch and author of “Whores: Why And How I Came To Fight The Establishment.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

HuffPo has a great article on Klayman, one of the prime attackers of Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, who also attacks the Bush Administration and Fox News.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/larry-klayman-conservativ_n_321080.html

Raw Story Picked This Up On The Sunday talkers (I missed this one)

It appears that the Fox News network is an “arm of the Republican Party.” Gee, who knew?

Here’s the clip:

clipped from rawstory.com The White House’s communications director says that Fox News is little more than a wing of the Republican Party. “The reality of it is that Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” Anita Dunn told CNN’s Howard Kurtz on Sunday. “And it’s not ideological. I mean, obviously there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist, and everybody understands that. What I think is fair to say about Fox is — and certainly the way we view it — is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican Party.” Dunn was responding to Kurtz’s question about her appearance in a Time magazine article, published Thursday, in which she described Fox News as “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” “They are boosting their audience,” Time quoted her as saying. “But that doesn’t mean we are going to sit back.” Time described Dunn as “the general” in the White House’s war against Fox News:

Quote of the Day

In aiding Fox News in their outrageous attempt to smear President Obama for advocating (and going to Copenhagen to support) Chicago as the site for the 2018 Olympics, we got the following the other night:

“Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics.”

– Glenn Beck, special Conservative asshole

The reality, of course, is that the Vancouver Olympics doesn’t happen until 2010.

An Extra Cartoon for the Week

If I had seen this one yesterday it would have at least tied for Cartoon of the Week. I give it to you now.

From Pat Oliphant, Universal Press Syndicate:

Remember when there was a REAL News Media?

“The time for bickering is over…” but The War is on!

Obama addressed an overflow crowd in Minneapolis’ Target Center today, once again outlining his Health Care plan, explaining how we will pay for it, and getting the voters primed for action… Here is about ten minutes of it from CNN… the whole speech is up over at C-Span as well.

Meanwhile, in Washington DC, thousands of reactionaries were trucked in by Fox News, Glenn Beck’s organizers, and the right-wingnuts who have been convinced by these jerks to work against their own best interests:

Watching these guys interviewed on television was a revelation. Somehow we have all of the Birthers and all of the anti-Acorn righties and Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, which has been subsidized by the Insurance companies in one place today and they seem more interested in equating Obama with Hitler and The Joker and carrying rather tasteless signs that say “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy.”

The Right will undoubtedly get more outrageous and the Insurance Company/Fox News factions will pour as much as they can in… especially since Obama makes sense and has 70% to 80% of the voting population behind him.

More to come.

Sunday Quote

“Fox News is like an infection. Unfortunately, there are people that get their news there, and they vote… They only book people who are easy to mock and marginalise. I kind of thought, ‘Someone’s got to do it.’ But talking to those assholes is a drag. It’s a drag meeting the same assholes from high school when you’re 40.”

– Janeane Garofalo