OK, so The Fox Effect is a new book out by Media Matter's David Brock. And in it, David shows that Fox News president Roger Ailes is awful. I mean just terrible. Without further ado, here are the quotes:
Ailes used homophobic slurs to describe George H.W. Bush's clothing: "'You can't wear a short-sleeve shirt—you'll look like a fucking faggot." [The Fox Effect, p. 32]
Ailes explaining race before the Federal Election Commission: "When Republicans see Willie Horton they see a criminal, and when Democrats see Willie Horton they see a black." [The Fox Effect, p. 34]
As Richard Nixon campaign consultant, Ailes advised that a racist should be given a question at a town hall: "As long as we've got this extra spot open. A good, mean, Wallaceite cab driver. Wouldn't that be great? Some guy to sit there and say, 'Alwright mac, what about these niggers?'" [The Fox Effect, p.24]
Roger Ailes explaining his concerns about social justice to rabbis: "Of course social justice means different things to different audiences, however it has been used in situations leading to fascism, socialism, and communism as well." [The Fox Effect, p. 147]
Ailes to The Washington Post in 1972: "If you come out and say that a guy's a commie, fag bastard, the public turns you off, not him." [The Fox Effect, p. 144]
To recap — one of Santorum's spokespersons "accidentally" referred to President Obama's "radical islamic policies." Franklin Graham, also a Santorum supporter, says he "can't categorically say" that President Obama is not an avowed Muslim. And now Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips is forwarding emails accusing the president of lying about his faith and destroying the nation on behalf of a "false ideology," which is obviously code-speak for Islam.
Today Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips emailed members an article from fellow activist Marcia Wood on the Arab Spring. Wood writes that "Obama has blatantly without remorse lied to Americans time and time again" in order to bolster the Muslim Brotherhood, and she claims to have figured out how the President can justify his supposed lying: "Without vetting it becomes quite apparent who he is, where he came from and what his business is in our United States. Remember that the Muslim Radicals believe it's good to lie for a 'greater cause.'" She concludes that Obama is "aggressively destroying our Nation cutting back on our Military power and nuclear capabilities as he pursues a false 'ideology.'"
Isn't it a little early to be going full-on radical-secret-Muslim-deceiver? It's only February. Aren't you suppose to save this kind of rhetoric for October in a last ditch effort to drum up wingnut enthusiasm?
Have we now moved beyond the issue of birth control and arrived at the president's secret-Muslimyness? What's next?
I don't know what's next in their bag of asshattary, but I can tell you what isn't next — the economy. Taxes. Healthcare. National security. Things that matter. Things that they cannot win on. Things they cannot easily demagogue and fundraise off of.
What? You thought wingnuts could not get more ridiculous than they already have been? If so, you were wrong. So very, very wrong.
A Fort Wayne lawmaker's rant against the Girl Scouts went viral Monday after he called them a "radicalized organization" that supports abortion and promotes "homosexual lifestyles."
Rep. Bob Morris, R-Fort Wayne, sent a letter to Indiana House Republicans on Saturday explaining why he was the only member in the chamber not to sign onto a resolution last week celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts.
The resolution applauded the group "for the strong positive influence it has had on the American woman."
Morris said he did some Web-based research and found allegations that the Girl Scouts are a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood, that they allow transgender females to join, "just like any real girl," and encourage sex.
Morris also said the fact that first lady Michelle Obama is honorary president "should give each of us reason to pause before our individual and collective endorsement of the organization."
"I challenge each of you to examine these matters more closely before you extend your name and your reputation to endorse a group that has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values," he said in the letter.
See? This is what years of watching Fox, tuning in to Limbaugh and paying the least bit of attention to assholes like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson does to a person. It turns them into delusional dumbasses who see bogeymen around every corner. It has them painting horns and tail on a black president and his family and it has them claiming that the Girl Guides are an organization of perverted, abortion-seeking, sex-addicted, transgendered, cookie-selling, commie, lesbian sluts.
Basically, it turns these pathetic creatures into right-wing nutjobs of the type represented by Rep. Rob Morris.
The GOP has gone from being a political party of ideas into having become a cult and gathering place for bigots, hate-mongers, religious zealots and the deranged. When your party is represented by individuals like Rob Morris, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and these people have gone from being the exception to having become the norm, you have a serious problem on your hands.
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Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has been formally placed under arrest by French police investigating an alleged prostitution ring. The 62-year-old socialist politician turned himself in at 8.55am on Tuesday in the northern French city of Lille and is being held for questioning over allegations that he aided the procurement of prostitutes and benefited from fraud. Detectives want to ascertain whether Strauss-Kahn, a former French presidential hopeful, knew that the women he had sex with at orgies in Paris and Washington were prostitutes and if he was aware how they were paid. It is alleged the money came from the corporate funds of a major French construction company.
It's hard to believe that only a few months back, DSK was the leading candidate and expected to route Sarkozy in the spring presidential elections. Not that these latest charges are shocking in any way, but it's still quite a fall from grace. Read the rest of this post...
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As the War on Women marches inexorably onward, Democrats are starting to fight back— cheekily.
In Virginia, state Senator Janet Howell attached a "rectal probe" amendment to the Virginia State-Sanctioned Rape bill. The amendment would have required men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. (It failed to pass.)
In Oklahoma, Constance Johnson attached an "every sperm is sacred" amendment to the GOP's Personhood bill. The amendment would have construed any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina as an action against an unborn child. (Democrats voted to table the amendment in order to demonstrate that it was introduced in jest.)
And now Georgia Democrats are stepping up.
In Georgia, Republicans seek to pass HB 954, a bill that will tighten "life of the mother" exceptions to abortion by prohibiting abortions on women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant. (Current law prohibits abortions after the second trimester, or about 24 weeks.)
In response, Georgia Democrats led by Yasmin Neal (D-Awesometown) have proposed a bill that would ban Georgia males from seeking vasectomies:
House Democrats have scheduled a 3 p.m. Wednesday hearing at the state Capitol, to propose a bill that would ban Georgia males from seeking vasectomies. From the press release:
"Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies," said Rep. Yasmin Neal, author of the bill. "It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women's ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States."
House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams added, "The Republican attack on women's reproductive rights is unconscionable. What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954's author. If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of this General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men."
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What the price of gas has done over the last 12 months (top green line there):
What FOX News makes out of the green line:
"Man, Mr. Murdoch's third period math class is effin' hard. But just leave out the uninteresting data points AND BLAME PRESIDENT MELANIN MCDARKGUY LOL HOMEWORK'S DONE. I bet I get a B plus for this one."
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Sheldon Adelson says he may buy the ENTIRE presidential contest in 2016 for $1 billion (which would amount to only 4% of his $25 billion casino-built fortune). Thank God for the Supreme Court!
Next time some conservatard starts ranting about welfare recipients "living" off the taxes of workers, say: "name three." Because only 9 percent of federal government benefits go to able-bodied adults who don't work. And even among that nine percent, the benefits are too tiny to do more than barely survive.
Republican candidates have lately been parroting Charles Murray's argument that our "entitlement society" has created a nation of deadbeats who would rather live off government benefits than find a job. In response, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a study earlier this week showing the fraction of government benefits that go to able-bodied workers.Their estimate is about 9 percent. I linked to the CBPP study on Monday, and since their methodology was fairly complex, I added a back-of-the-envelope version that simply added up the benefits of programs that don't serve the elderly, disabled, or working poor. I figured that would make the source of CBPP's number a little more understandable.
The next day I got an email from Arloc Sherman, one of the authors of the study. You can't just add up these programs, he told me, because even a lot of programs that people think of as "welfare" actually serve the elderly, disabled, and working poor too. Medicaid is the biggest example: Most of us think of Medicaid as a program for the poor, but more than half of all Medicaid spending actually goes to the elderly and the disabled.
So what percent of each program goes to the elderly, disabled, or working poor? The bulk of both Medicare and Social Security goes to the elderly and most of the balance goes to the disabled. The Earned Income Tax Credit goes almost entirely to the working poor. But what about the others? I was surprised when I saw the complete breakdown, and you might be too. Here it is:
Eighty-three percent of Medicaid goes to the elderly, disabled, or working poor. Seventy-nine percent of school lunches. Sixty-nine percent of unemployment compensation. Sixty-four percent of SNAP (food stamps). Even TANF, the classic "welfare" program, clocks in at 46 percent-and it's a very small program. The other 54 percent only amounts to about $6 billion, a minuscule fraction of federal benefits, and ever since the 1996 welfare reform bill those benefits have been temporary anyway. It's not really possible to become dependent on TANF any longer.
Overall, only about 9 percent of government benefits go to those who could be thought of as able-bodied workers who either can't or won't find a job. And as the study says:
Moreover, the vast bulk of that 9 percent goes for medical care, unemployment insurance benefits (which individuals must have a significant work history to receive), Social Security survivor benefits for the children and spouses of deceased workers, and Social Security benefits for retirees between ages 62 and 64. Seven out of the 9 percentage points go for one of these four purposes.
Sherman adds this:
Another point: Many of those who decry the growth of entitlement spending seem to forget the most basic of all facts about it: it continues to be driven overwhelmingly by the twin engines of an aging population and the rising cost of medical care. Neither of which has much to do with dependency among the working-age population.
This is especially true for medical care, I think. We spend a fair amount of money on health care services for the poor, but even theoretically that does nothing to make them less likely to work. They still need money for everything else, after all. All it does is provide them with a bare minimum of decent health care. We can afford that, can't we?
Silly Kevin. That's money that could be going to lower Mitt Romney's taxes! Only a liberal would waste it on the poors.
"Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. The prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that's sex. And the whole abortion culture, it's not about life. It's about sexual freedom. That's what it's about. Homosexuality. It's about sexual freedom."
Of course Santorum will position Republicans as the "anti-homosexuality" party if he wins the nomination and has pledged to to annul all same-sex marriages and personally campaign in every state against marriage equality.
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One little bit of Al Green and now everybody expects the president to sing America's blues and soul classics. Well, why not? Thomas Jefferson loved to sing, and so did Richard Nixon. Look at old Mick Jagger hand the microphone to the president, after the R&B legends all insist the president take a verse of "Sweet Home Chicago." READ MORE »
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There are only two things that GOP state politicians in Arizona are allowed to discuss and/or think about: Hunting Mexicans on the one hand, and Another Dude's Genitals, on the other. If Paul Babeu wasn't enough to support this theory, former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce — the crazed wingnut responsible for the state's anti-brown people law who was recently recalled for being too insane even for Arizona — is now devoting his spare time to working out stand-up routines about, yes, testicles. So tell us, Russell Pearce, how do you segue from the setup, "the minister in church was giving a sermon on gratitude" to a joke about an ATV crash that ends with some guy's nutsack being crushed? READ MORE »
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DOW soars 62% since Obama took office: do stocks have a liberal bias?
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