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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GOP Primary Show: Non-Stop News And Noise In The Age Of Twitter

Huff Post- Posted: 2/7/12  |  Updated: 2/7/12

Michael Calderone

Last week, Jon Ralston, a veteran Las Vegas Sun columnist, dared reporters to ignore Donald Trump’s unveiling of his presidential endorsement — with low expectations about how that might play out.

“I suggest media boycott of @RealDonaldTrump event in Vegas,” Ralston tweeted. “Anyone with me? That’s what I thought.”

Ralston knew, of course, that the nation’s political reporters — the same tribe who breathlessly covered Trump’s half-hearted flirtation last year with a presidential run, his “birther” sideshow and his thwarted plans to host and moderate a GOP debate — wouldn’t ignore the real estate huckster’s “major announcement.”

And, indeed, they didn’t, thereby sparking the latest mini-drama in the reality show otherwise known as the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

While any campaign reporter you meet will say it’s ridiculous to give any more oxygen to Trump in this election cycle (and some of them will even go so far as to mock the primaries’ circus-like atmosphere on Twitter) many of them still raced to cover the Trump endorsement.

In their haste, several major news organizations — including the Associated Press, The New York Times, Politico and CBS News — erroneously reported that Trump planned to endorse former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Countless others, including The Huffington Post, repeated those reports. All had to backtrack when it became clear former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would get the Trumpster’s nod. Come showtime, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all had Romney live, standing at a podium featuring a Trump plaque, in a Trump hotel, accepting a Trump endorsement.

Reporters swarmed the Trump event for the same reason they have pursued and then coughed up almost every other bit of minutiae, no matter how irrelevant or meaningless, around the primaries. In a media landscape replete with Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs and myriad other digital, broadcast and print sources, nothing is too inconsequential to be made consequential.

Political junkies, political operatives and political reporters consume most of this dross, and in this accelerated, 24/7 news cycle, a day feels like a week, with the afternoon’s agreed-upon media narrative getting turned on its head by the evening’s debate. Candidates rise, fall, and rise again, all choreographed to the rat-a-tat background noise of endless minutia.

MORE HERE

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Obama Invokes His Christian Faith In His Call To Raise Taxes On The Very Wealthy (VIDEO)

Addicting Info- February 3, 2012

By Michael Hayne

A day after Mitt “Moneybags” Romney stated his lack of concern for the economically disadvantaged (an old school Republican touchstone), President Obama shot back by finally using the right-wing’s bullets against them.  Despite constantly being smeared as a secret Muslim, Barack Obama in fact subscribes to Christianity.  Today’s perverse version of Christianity typically refers to super rich, white proselytizers who flagrantly manipulate the pure teachings of Jesus and spew bilious hatred towards gays, women, single moms, blacks, and the poor and middle-class. It also tends to refer to making a bunch of bombs to kill a bunch of Middle Easterners so that some  defense contactor can continue to eat caviar.  So it’s only natural for thinking people to stay within 100 yards of it. But, much like everything else under the sun, the Republicans love co-opting it blatantly injecting it into politics in order to claim higher ground.

Former president Bush, a simple-minded lummox with virtually nothing to offer other than his ability to relate to even dumber people, understood that invoking Jesus’ name would guarantee universal support of his hawkish foreign policy no matter how severely flawed and unreasonable it may have been.  For that reason, I have been constantly saying that President Obama should put on his best decider face, hold a press conference on the white house lawn, and state that his good homeboy JC told him that he should return taxes on the highest earners to the levels during the Clinton era. But that’s not the style of the guy of the president who sings Al Green.

During the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. that took place yesterday, the president revealed that his Christian (or Christ-like) faith heavily influenced his economic policies– including calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes and overhauling the healthcare system. He explained to the attendees that the nation’s challenges require smart policies coupled with a strong values system, and not of the philandering on your dying wife, or subscribing to anti-gay policies and making anti-gay rhetoric only to have secret gay sex variety.

‘It’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,’President Obama said.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’ he added, referencing verse 48 of chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke. “To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute,” added Obama.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

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Newt Gingrich, On Eve Of Likely Florida Loss, Unleashes Wild Attacks On Mitt Romney

Newt Gingrich, On Eve Of Likely Florida Loss, Unleashes Wild Attacks On Mitt Romney

Huff Post- Posted: 1/31/12 12:00 AM ET  |  Updated: 1/31/12 09:13 AM ET

TAMPA, Fla. — Meet Newt Gingrich, the human Roman Candle.

Gingrich and Mitt Romney on Monday staggered to the end of a brutal week of campaigning in Florida, one in which they took increasingly nasty and personal shots at one another. But the day marked a new level of angry and relentless attacks on Romney by Gingrich, the former House speaker from Georgia.

From morning until the last of five events at the end of the day, Gingrich branded Romney a liar and cheat, accusing him of suppressing religious liberty and trying to “buy the election.”

The strain of the nastiness showed on both men. Romney’s voice was hoarse as he spoke at his last of three events, in front of a few thousand people at The Villages, a massive retirement community 90 minutes northeast of Tampa. But in a sign of growing confidence and looseness as a candidate, Romney led the crowd in singing “America the Beautiful,” a tune he has mentioned on the campaign trail all month without breaking into song.

Romney didn’t mention Gingrich by name at his last event, after mocking and dismissing him earlier in the day.

Gingrich, on the other hand, launched himself into the Romney juggernaut with a level of fury and desperation certain to produce uneasiness in the GOP for its poisonous tone. Gingrich has vowed to carry his candidacy all the way to the GOP convention, but his actions Monday bore a wildness that could call his campaign’s longevity into doubt.

Gingrich continued to harp on a charge that Romney, during his time as Massachusetts governor, vetoed funds to expand the provision of kosher food for Bay State retirees. Gingrich said Romney has a “lack of concern for religious liberty.”

“Romney cut off kosher food to elderly Jews on Medicare,” Gingrich said, stretching the truth. And Gingrich also hit Romney for a 2005 decision as governor to require Roman Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception, which many Catholics believe is a form of abortion, to rape victims.

“You want a war on the Catholic church by Obama? Guess what: Romney refused to allow Catholic hospitals to have conscience in their dealing with certain circumstances,” Gingrich said.

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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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Michael Moore On Occupy Wall Street: We’re The Majority, ‘Never Forget That’

MEDIAite

by Alex Alvarez | 9:21 pm, September 28th, 2011
» 181 comments Filmmaker Michael Moore, who continues his vigil at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan, dropped in on The Last Word to let host Lawrence O’Donnell know how things are going.

Moore kicked things off by giving a synopsis of what the protest is not about:

We’re not down here to support Senate bill 2567. We’re beyond that. They had their chance a long time ago to try and fix this. They didn’t fix it because they’re in the pocket of these people down here on Wall Street. So this is not about supporting some piece of legislation or “let’s get behind some politician.”

“It’s not about ‘policy wonkness’ or ‘Beltway bullshit,’” he continued, to the delighted soundless clapping of those around him. He also noted that he cannot believe he lives in a country where people on Wall Street haven’t had to face a single arrest while 100 peaceful protesters are arrested.

“Well, you live in a country where that kind of thing has to be protested and is being protested,” offered O’Donnell. He then turned the conversation over to a question he’d received on Twitter — a question that many have had since the protest’s inception: “I wonder if mmoore could articulate some specific, tangible goals 4 this protest, as I’ve yet 2 hear any & really would like to.” Indeed, @leenie909!

Moore said that this protest is unlike others because “there’s no membership form, there’s no one person who comes in here and says ‘Now this is our agenda and this is the way it ought to be!”

He also added that there were a whole variety of Americans participating (even “Ron Paul people”), and that they had strength in numbers:

This is our country. We’re the majority. The majority. We’re the majority. Never forget that, that the people who work for a living in this country, we are the people. Not the people up here who are taking people’s pensions and their bank accounts and ruining it and destroying their lives. They are not running this country anymore. They think they are, but that’s gonna come to an end right now.

Have a look at the video, via MSNBC. And please take note of the “Fox News camera person” behind Moore:

source: MEDIAite

Video credits: thesecretstore

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Occupy Wall Street will not be Televised on M$M

Olbermann calls out media hypocrisy on ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest

RawStory posted 09.21.11

By Eric W. Dolan

Keith Olbermann pointed out Wednesday night on Countdown that the major newspapers had been ignoring the five-day-long “Occupy Wall Street” protests, but would have scrambled to cover a similar-sized tea party protest.

“Why isn’t any major news outlet covering this?” he asked. “If that’s a tea party protest in front of Wall Street about Ben Bernanke putting stimulus funds into it, it’s the lead story on every network news cast. How is that disconnect possible in this country today with so many different outlets and so many different ways of transmitting news?”

His guest, author Will Bunch, suggested the disconnect was caused in part by the news networks being out of touch with the pain of the 25 million Americans who are unemployed.

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Alan Grayson explains… “Why Boener Cries”

This went out in an email to previous supporters of
Alan Grayson this morning. 

Dear Linus,
I know why House Speaker John Boehner walked out of debt ceiling talks with President Obama on Friday.
It’s because Boehner can’t deliver.
It doesn’t matter what terms the President offers. It’s that simple. Boehner can’t deliver the votes.
The President might as well be negotiating with Tiger Woods; Tiger can’t deliver the votes, either. But at least Tiger has a better swing.
On Friday, the President said, “I think that one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is, can they say yes to anything? Can they say yes to anything?”
The answer to your question, Mr. President, is no. The national Republican Party can’t even says yes to yes. And Boehner can’t do anything about that.
In May 1935, Pierre Laval, then the Foreign Minister of France, and also the once and future Prime Minister of France, met with Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator. Laval, a Catholic, urged Stalin to stop persecuting Catholics in the Soviet Union. Stalin asked Laval why it mattered. Laval replied that continued persecution could provoke a quarrel between Stalin and the Pope.
Stalin replied, “The Pope? How many divisions does he have?”
I don’t think that anyone could confuse John Boehner with the Pope, but nevertheless, at this point, President Obama might ask the same question about Boehner. How many divisions does John Boehner have?
Fifty-nine House Republicans abandoned Boehner on the “compromise” appropriations bill. Even though Boehner depicted it to them as a Republican victory on par with, say, the Battle of Stalingrad.
And now, Fox News has reported that between 80 and 120 Republican members of the House will vote against any bill to increase the debt ceiling, no matter what else is in it. You can be sure that Fox News knows what Republicans in Washington are thinking – because Fox News tells them what to think.
So somewhere between a third and a half of all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to vote against increasing the debt ceiling, no matter what Boehner puts in front of them. Boehner is a general with no troops. The coach has no players. The teacher has no students. The chief has no Indians. The bride has no bridesmaids.

That’s why Boehner is always crying.

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Making the US Economy “Scream”

Making the US Economy “Scream”

Friday 10 June 2011

by: Robert Parry, Consortium News   Via:  Truthout

Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.

Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.

To stop this spread of “socialism,” nearly anything goes. Take, for example, Chile in the early 1970s when socialist President Salvador Allende won an election and took steps aimed at improving the conditions of the country’s poor.

Under the direction of President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the CIA was dispatched to engage in psychological warfare against Allende’s government and to make the Chilean economy “scream.”

U.S. intelligence agencies secretly sponsored Chilean news outlets, like the influential newspaper El Mercurio, and supported “populist” uprisings of truckers and housewives. On the economic front, the CIA coordinated efforts to starve the Chilean government of funds and to drive unemployment higher.

MORE HERE

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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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