NOTE TO ROMNEY: The Federal Government Does Fund Teachers, Firefighters, And Police

Think Progress

By Josh Israel  on Jun 12, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Mitt Romney dismissed criticisms that he does not want to hire more teachers, firefighters, and police officers as “absurd” on Tuesday morning, telling Fox News Channel that if elected president, he would not have the ability to control the hiring decisions of local governments:

ROMNEY: Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So obviously that’s completely absurd.

But Romney’s comment demonstrates a disturbing lack of understanding of both federal funding and his own published plans. While it is true that teachers, firefighters, and police are hired at the local level, a significant portion of their funding, recruiting, and training comes from the federal government.

Here are just some of the ways the federal government funds:

Teachers

• Improving Teacher Quality State Grants: about $2.5 billion given in 2012 to increasing the number of highly qualified teachers and administrators in schools
• Transition to Teaching: about $26 million in 2012 to recruit and retain highly qualified midcareer professionals for high-need schools
• TEACH Grants: an estimated $118 million in 2012 to fund college students who agree to become highly-qualified teachers in schools serving students from low-income families for at least four years
• Stafford Loan Forgiveness for Teachers: an estimated $130 million in 2012 to forgive federal student loan debt for those who agree to become highly-qualified teachers in schools serving students from low-income families for at least four years

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Fox News Lies; An Elderly Woman Dies

Crooks and Liars

By karoli

March 20, 2012 09:00 AM

When I first saw this image on Facebook, I wasn’t sure how on earth Fox News could have killed someone’s mother. And then I read the message that went with the photo. Tracy Knauss posted it on his Facebook page along with a message which said in part:

I know this personally. FOX News killed my precious mother, Hallie. She watched FOX religiously. And when she fell ten days before she died, she refused to go to the doctor because, “I don’t want Obamacare to get all of my information! she declared, recalling the warnings from FOX News “anchors.” She was emphatic. She was not going to consort with the muslim enemy. As she made out her will she told her lawyer, “I don’t want any of my money going to the Muslim Brotherhood!” And her last protestation dealt with “Obama’s death panels.” Mother died just days later. I hold FOX News responsible for my mother’s death.

Hallie Jean Mayes Knauss Culpepper passed away on February 16, 2012. Ten days earlier, she had fallen, but as Knauss says, refused to see a doctor. Her obituary notes that she was a “lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool Republican” who at one time had also been a business owner (TECO Products, now Griffin Products).

And it seems, she got her news from Fox. It’s not hard to understand where she got the idea that “Obamacare” had death panels. Just three days before Mrs. Culpepper’s death, they were still calling them death panels. Republicans have been working hard (with the cooperation of some turncoat Democrats) to repeal that board, which is really the last best hope we have for keeping Medicare out of the crosshairs of budget hawks.

The death panel lie has been around since the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act in 2009, when Liberty Council first started circulating emails to seniors and Sarah Palin amplified it. Then we had the Fox News Parade of Idiots saying it over and over again, along with the usual complement of birthers. Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that a lifelong Republican who entered the age of television with the Fairness Doctrine where fair coverage and truth telling was part of the mix, would believe what Fox told her?

Don’t write this woman off as some ignorant back-country hick. She clearly wasn’t. She owned a companyat one time. She paid attention to events and politics in the news, or at least, in the news as she understood it. She, like most of her neighbors, voted Republican. But until Fox News came along, Republicans weren’t stupid. They had different philosophies about government and its role, but they weren’t blatantly invested in advancing a lie-based ideology until Fox News came along.

It isn’t hyperbole to say Fox News killed her. She fell and feared the doctor would kill her. That fear can be laid at the feet of Roger Ailes and his obsession with advancing lies to promote his agenda. When are they going to be held accountable for this?

SOURCE

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The Republicans: They Are Who We Thought They Were

Addicting Info

December 16, 2011

By Bryian Revoner

After watching this latest Republican Debate on Fox News, one thing becomes clear, and that is the very real split between the insane and the reasonable. For whatever reason, there just does not seem to be any middle-ground in this GOP nomination grouping or the conservative trademark overall. This is why the conservative voters have had such a difficult time trying to find their perfect candidate, which in itself speaks volumes about the rationale of the GOP mindset.One of the worst things about being crazy is being too crazy to realize that you’re crazy, and that is the conservative ideology in a political nutshell. For the GOP voters to ask a candidate to be just crazy enough to satisfy their conservative dreams of going rogue through manifest destiny with 2nd Amendment remedies attached to conservatively friendly, Americanized Christianity, while at the same time being reasonable enough, moderate enough, and politically appealing enough to draw the interests of Independents, Reagan-Democrats, and dissatisfied President Obama supporters,  is definitely beyond the limits of absurdity.

When you peel back all of the rhetoric and all of the political ballyhooing, you are left with one of two choices as a Republican/conservative. One choice is based on what candidates like Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich like to refer to as a consistent conservative, and the other choice is based on the only conservative alternative, which is what pundits like Glenn Beck like to call the progressive Republicans.

MORE HERE

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Fox Panel Accuses ‘Liberal’ Media Of ‘Tearing Down’ GOP Presidential Candidates By Reporting On Their Marital Problems (VIDEO)

Fox Panel Accuses ‘Liberal’ Media of ‘Tearing Down’ GOP Presidential Candidates by Reporting on Their Marital Problems

Crooks and Liars- By Heather
May 14, 2011 03:35 PM

This week on Fox News Watch, Fox’s excuse for a supposed media watchdog show, the host Jon Scott and a couple of the panelists, Jim Pinkerton and Cal Thomas all claimed that that mythical “liberal media” was just hell bent on tearing down potential Republican presidential candidates because they aren’t treating Newt Gingrich as a serious candidate due to his personal baggage. A claim that even Judith Miller found ridiculous.

And what other proof did syndicated columnist Cal Thomas offer here that the media is biased against all of the Republican candidates? The fact that the media has reported on Mitch Daniels’ marital problems as well. That’s some conspiracy theory you’ve got going there Cal. The press tells us the truth about how Gingrich has treated his ex-wives and that Daniels’ wife left him and came back, and all the media coverage on the Republicans is negative now. Wow. That’s quite a stretch there. And the coverage I’ve seen of Daniels on the matter hasn’t exactly been negative. He was portrayed as being a good father and doing the right thing and taking care of his kids in some of the rather glowing segments on Daniels that I’ve seen so far where this was brought up.

Thomas also trotted out the tired old talking point that if President Obama had received more scrutiny from the media about the Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, he would never have been elected and that it took the conservative media to bring those things out. Thomas must not have been paying attention to Sean Hannity flogging these whipped up controversies on his show night after night that did get picked up by the rest of the media as well to the point that Obama felt he finally had to put a stop to it when he gave his speech on race in Philadelphia in March of ’08.

I guess Thomas also wasn’t paying any attention when Sarah Palin was out on the campaign trail accusing then Senator Obama of “paling around with terrorists” week after week.

The claim that President Obama did not receive any scrutiny for his ties to Ayers and Wright and that it would have kept him from being elected is laughable. That’s not going to stop the talking heads over at Fox from continuing to paint the poor downtrodden Republicans as somehow oppressed and never given a fair shake by the press and to pretend that Democrats get more favorable coverage. Just another day in upside down land at Fox.

VIDEO and SOURCE

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Sarah Palin: Dangerously Clueless?

Sarah Palin gets her message across on Fox, all right: She’s dangerously clueless

Crooks and Liars- By David Neiwert

April 30, 2011 08:00 AM

It’s been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, watching Donald Trump wow the Republican world with his dazzling mixture of aggressive ignorance and utter crassness. He’s like Sarah Palin on steroids.

But Palin herself remains a potent spokesperson for the forces of ignorance. And while a lot of her apologists and defenders like to claim that Palin is unfairly victimized by quick sound bites, she really makes a much bigger impression — as someone so utterly clueless they should never be permitted near any public office again — in longer formats, such as her wide-ranging and rambling interview yesterday with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

It produced little exchanges like this one, on increasing the debt ceiling:

PALIN: Hells no. I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American public we’re not serious yet. We’re still gonna incur more debt. No. And we don’t have to increase the debt ceiling here in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that, well, we have to despite the fact that we’re raking in, the federal government, six billion dollars a day.

Take that money and service our debt first! And pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we’re showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we’re serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.

BAIER: So, what would you say to the Republicans who do vote for it, on the advice of some experts on Wall Street and around the country who believe that not increasing it would really hurt the economy and create a disaster?

PALIN: I would say, before you seriously think about voting to increase the debt limit and incur more unsustainable, immoral, unethical debt that is really going to ruin our country, to continue down this path — prioritize, service the debt first, pay for the very essential services that are constitutionally mandated.

Let the states take care of a whole lot of these services and projects, and if a state wants to do something a little bit special, like some extra roads or some extra museums and monuments and cowboy poetry, let that state figure out how they’re gonna pay for it.

Palin also sort of weighed in on the other presidential candidates, though you’ll notice she actually says nothing at all about any of them, other than that she respects them because they’re good Republicans and by golly she loves to see them running; and then remains firmly noncommittal about her own prospects for running.

Then she wraps it all up by suggesting that President Obama had foreign money flowing into his campaign accounts in the 2008 election — which would, of course, be a crime. Baier asks her:

BAIER: Before I let you go, are you suggesting that the FEC may find that foreign money got into the Obama campaign in 2008?

PALIN: Am I wrong to bring up the fact — and maybe, Bret, at this point you have more information than I do on where a lot of those dollars were that were unaccounted for. Remember that we saw much proof of a lot of the donations to Obama’s campaign — credit-card contributions under fake names, addresses that perhaps weren’t even real addresses in the U.S.

You know, I hope that we don’t just give up on making sure that we have free and fair elections — not just Obama’s! Heck, some on the GOP too! Uh, on the GOP side. Let’s make sure that rules are being followed. We are a land of laws.

Methinks she’s been dipping into Pam “Atlas Wanks” Geller’s beandip again.

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Glenn Beck Leaving Fox: Why It’s Really Happening (CHART)

Glenn Beck Leaving Fox: Why It’s Really Happening (CHART)

The Huffington Post Carol Hartsell  First Posted: 04/ 7/11 01:04 PM ET Updated: 04/ 7/11 02:04 PM ET

When it was announced yesterday that we will no longer be seeing Glenn Beck’s face on Fox News night after night, a lot of people were left asking, “Why?”*

It’s common knowledge that Glenn Beck’s show was facing a major advertiser problem, but as we’ve said many times, there’s never one reason things go awry in this world. That’s why God** invented pie charts. Below we’ve broken down the different reasons Beck was forced to step down, so that you may have a fuller understanding of why your life has been inexorably changed***.

WHY GLENN BECK IS LEAVING FOX NEWS

*No one actually asked this

**Actually, pie charts evolved from graphs

***For the better

SOURCE

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Fox News Managing Editor: I Lied On-Air To Smear Obama

Bill Sammon, left, Jan. 2, 2009.

Fox News managing editor: I lied on-air to smear Obama

by Jed Lewison for Daily Kos

Tue Mar 29, 2011 at 12:15 PM EDT

Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, admitting in a newly uncovered 2009 speech that he publicly smeared Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign with speculation that he did not privately believe:

Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to “socialism” as “mischievous speculation.” Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that “privately” he had believed that the socialism allegation was “rather far-fetched.””Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, ‘spread the wealth around,’ ” said Sammon. “At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.”

Sammon isn’t part of the Fox News “opinion” team. He’s part of the “news” team, and here he is admitting that he used his position to engage in political warfare against a candidate that he didn’t want to win. He lied, and lied repeatedly.

But as blunt as Sammon’s words were, let me be clear about one thing: there’s nothing at all surprising here. We know Fox is a Republican news channel, there’s no question about that.

The only question is why others in the media pretend that this isn’t the case.

Update: Greg Sargent assesses Sammon’s attempt at damage control: “Sammon is conceding that the idea did indeed strike him as far fetched in 2008, even though he and his network aggressively promoted it day in and day out throughout the campaign. And he’s defending this by pointing out that the idea ended up gaining traction, as if this somehow justifies the original act of dishonesty!”

SOURCE

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Kochtopus: Corporate Oil, Tea Party and Mormon Ideology

Note from Suzie-Q:

This is an older article but relevant to what we are seeing at the gas pumps today and the busting of Unions… And, let’s not forget the Tea Party;  guns, God and gold.

Tea Party movement influenced by corporate oil and Mormon ideology

Examiner- Ron Bynum

January 25th, 2010 11:03 am PT

The Tea Party movement’s supporters think they are a grass roots movement, but their ideology of guns, God and gold reeks of the Mormon (LDS) philosophy, and they receive support from big oil in the form of the Koch brothers, owners of the nation’s largest private energy company.

At the Tea Partier’s rallies, there are many placards and signs citing their trust in guns, God, and gold, a mantra that Glen Beck of Fox News uses, and it appears that Beck, a Mormon (convert in 1999), is proselytizing his faith when he uses that phrase.

The brothers Charles and David Koch, of Koch Industries, are major contributors to the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute, and are a major funding source for lobbying groups that deny climate change, and spent more than $8.5 million to stop “cap and trade” because it will cost them big profits. That is the real motivation behind the Tea Party movement, and healthcare reform is a scare tactic and rallying cry to upset ignorant followers and divide the country.

In Modesto, supporters of the Tea Party movement are clueless about the source of their alleged grass roots movement, and believe their liberties are at risk. Many protestors at rallies in the park proclaimed the government would take their guns, restrict their religious freedoms, and increase their taxes. The local gun club posted signs that “Obama’s going to take all your guns away so get them now and don’t register them.”

Religious fanatics claim liberals want to take God out of government and schools, even though God is not allowed in government or schools. Tea Party supporters fervently believe the lies ultra-conservative fear mongers like Sarah Palin and Fox News’ commentators spread, and neo-cons incite Tea Party protestors who remain ignorant of the origins, money, and real brains driving their movement.

It is sad that ignorant, frightened people believe their freedoms are at risk from the legally elected government of the United States. It is also sad these folks who think they are defenders of liberty are really shills for energy companies who will not share their ill-gotten profits with the Tea Party people.

David Koch proclaimed at one event that they are “fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history.” Koch’s only concern is higher profits earned on the backs of the Tea Party people, and they happily bend over for the shaft as Koch goes to the bank.

In Modesto and around the country, when Tea Party protestors make statements to the media and interviewers, they claim they fight for their liberty, ‘guns, God and gold,’ while they scream NO to affordable health care. They do not know whom the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute or the Koch brothers are, and have no idea the oil industry is pushing their agenda on them in the guise of preserving personal liberty.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Tea Party movement influenced by corporate oil and Mormon ideology – Modesto Political Issues | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/political-issues-in-modesto/tea-party-movement-influenced-by-corporate-oil-and-mormon-ideology#ixzz1GaHYfp3F

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Conservatives Are Turning On Glenn Beck?

Why Are Conservatives ‘Turning’ on Glenn Beck?

Gawker- Feb 9, 2011 3:07 PM

Jim Newell — Ever since the Egyptian protests began two weeks ago, the conservative movement has been struggling to spread a lockstep message through its top spokespeople.

Some top neoconservatives and party elites have encouraged the developments, while radio and television performers like Frank Gaffney, Rush Limbaugh and John Bolton have warned that it could lead to a New World Order—a Muslim caliphate, specifically, under the rule of institutions like the Muslim Brotherhood, AFL-CIO, Bill Ayers, Code Pink, and various other commies or brown people. And the biggest fight has broken out between Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck. Why is Kristol only pointing out that Glenn Beck is an insane monster now?

It started when Kristol took a shot at Beck in an editorial, “Stand for Freedom,” from the latest Weekly Standard:

But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

National Review editor Rich Lowry stood by Kristol, calling this a “well-deserved” shot at Beck. And Beck, of course, has spent his past few radio and television programs attacking the conservative elite as personified by Kristol and Lowry: “All they stand for is power. They’ll do anything to keep their little fiefdom together, and they’ll do anything to keep the Republican power entrenched.”

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Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid

Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid

News Corpse / By Mark Howard

A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources.

December 15, 2010 |

Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.

In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just aint so:

• 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
• 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
• 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
• 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
• 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
• 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
• 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
• 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
• 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

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