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I mused a few days ago about Sarah's Media silence, her refusal of interview offers and how it would be broken before Thanksgiving and how she would certainly make sure her first appearance was on FOX. Well folks, she didn't even make it a week.
Sarah and Greta BFF. What the heck is with the hood-head hair?
FOX News' Greta Van Susteren is in Alaska to get Gov. Sarah Palin's reflections on the presidential election.Wow, not even a week. Are those kids back in school yet? How are things at the office? Find all those missing clothes yet? Seems like Sarah should have plenty to focus on.
After a whirlwind campaign alongside Sen. John McCain, Sarah Palin is defending herself against criticism stemming from the tens of thousands of dollars spent on her wardrobe as well as several reported foreign affairs missteps.
Watch FOX News' "On The Record With Greta Van Susteren" Monday night at 10 p.m. ET to see Palin's interview.
Stuart and Colbert on the cover of Rolling Stone, Oct. 2006
Nation, in spite of stupid people like Rahm Emanuel not getting it, The Colbert Bump has been confirmed-- esp. in the realm of fundraising.
Democratic politicians enjoy a major spike in political contributions after appearing on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” according to a new study. Political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego found that Democrats receive a 40 percent increase in contributions in the month after appearing on the fake-news show. But Republicans, Fowler concludes, “essentially gain nothing,” according to a release. --Bob Cusack from The HillGood news and hopefully the word will get out and our Dems will choose the wonderful folks at Comedy Central over the Faux News Sleestaks. There's more...
Tell me again why major democrats continue to appear on FOX?
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Fox News viewers say they are likely to vote for John McCain, while those who watch CNN and MSNBC plan to support Barack Obama in November by more than two to one.So Fox-fair-and-balanced has continued to spread so much bs and misinformation that 87% ot it's viewers are now out of step with everyone else. There's more...
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of CNN voters plan to vote for the Democratic candidate versus 26% who intend to go for the Republican. Similarly, MSNBC watchers plan to vote for Obama over McCain 63% to 30%. Rasmussen
“Um...Excusemeplease?”
“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-annnd...they're off!”
No, not horses, or the two—(actually, one-and-a-half) Presidential candidates, but rather, the folks with the syphilitic, nerve-ganglia-ed remnant brains over at Fox News—right on cue as the general election season kicks into high gear with the end of the Democratic primary season.
We've already seen Bill O'Reilly's championing of a lynching party against the so-not-White Michelle Obama because she's...“angry” about things. As soon as it became clear that Senator Barack Obama was going to wind up a serious contender for the Dem nod, the folks at Fox fairly licked their hate-dripping chops at the prospect of tearing at a prominent Black woman of prominence. And just as soon as the primaries ended—mere hours in fact—we were treated to the in-need-of-a-helmet-at-all-times E.D. (As is “Special E.D.”) Hill blurting out crazed drivel about the Obamas victory-night “Dap Heard 'Round The World” being some sort of coded “terrorist fist jab”. (!?) Hill would later have to back off from that super-flammable, Hi-Test stupid when even her fellow wingnuts (along with most sane folk) said in perfect Borat-ese of her dimwitted body-language analysis, “Eh...not so much.”
But now, as the creeping dread over the soppy, bed-shit of a failure-ific McCain run can be seen in stark relief, the pointy-hooded hamsters who spin the Fox News engines have gone into panicky overdrive. With the dangerously flawed warmonger of a senator's damaging 1.5 gaffes-a-day diminishing GOP hopes by the second, the mattreses have been gone to over at Cro-Mag Central. Having nothing else—no guile, “snark, or even a touch of subtlety, they're reaching into their bag of tricks and pulling out...only their own hands stained with burnt-cross soot. Ass-nekkid racism, folks. The awful gift that just like herpes, just keeps on—“Yecch!”—giving.
We saw this last week when the …“news network” trotted out their prodigal daughter of dipshitttiness Michelle Malkin, ostensibly as a correspondent on “Women's Issues”. Now, we know that Malkin's bona-fides on issues important to women rank up there with those of Alan Keyes' on average Black folks concerns, but there she sat, in all of her grumble-faced, flop-sweaty glory before the cameras during a segment dealing with attacks on Ms. Obama and whether people should lay off her. Of course Malkin, shiv-jabbing little viper that she is defended the attacks on Sen. Obama's wife, referring to her as... “Obama's Bitter Half”.
?
Yes, Michelle Malkin referred to another woman as someone's “Bitter Half”.
Call “CSI” folks. Irony's as dead as a busted cinderblock and Malkin's got the dusty sledgehammer in her hands.
But it gets better. You see, the graphic that appeared under the once-banished-from-Fox Malkin (for a combination of not being able to cut it after repeated opportunities at the net, and a sanctimoniousness that put even them off) in a chyron was the ass-kicker.
It read, “OUTRAGED LIBERALS: STOP PICKING ON OBAMA'S BABY MAMA”.
Um. Baby Mama? Baby-what-the-fucking-fuck? Really?
Really.
It would be so easy to just go off on this at the most superficial of levels, but you know what, oh Klan-tastic folks at Fox? I'm gonna break this shit down James Brown-on-the-bandstand style, to the bare essence and build it back up from there. First—a hard finger-point back to the band to lay out—'cept for the drums and bass...
“Band!”
Okay. Malkin continued above that lovely graphic, with her usual “Nellie Olesen” huffy bullshit spew supporting the savaging Ms. Obama, because you see folks, that's her fucking job. Malkin is that special wingnut attack droid—used specifically for those nasty jobs that the big guns don't wanna catch direct hell for. Her special forté? Attacking women, children, college students and others on the lower end of the power ladder that it might look unseemly for the big boys to chomp on.
And she relishes her job because of a particularly nifty bit of psychotic transference going on with her. She's a loser, in spite of the right's bigwigs best efforts to cram her into the media mainstream. Allegedly “cute” just ain't enough to cut it, unfortunately. She's dim. She's an awful liar. And she's bereft of any vestiges of what one could remotely call “style” or “pizazz”. She couldn't connect with viewers if you coated her with Krazy Glue and fired her into an audience full of them. The poor thing is wooden to the point of petrification, and when on-camera, is about as on her toes as Cindy-Fucking-Brady on a game show to boot. Throw in the sad fact that she also has all of the charm of a roiling bucket of lye. Michelle Obama is everything Michelle Malkin is not. Stylish, damn smart, a success in her own right and the posessor of the charm and people-connectability that her alternate universe opposite has none of.
So yeah...there is some serious hateration and holleration goin' on up in Malkin's chintzy, Strawberry's™-outfitted danceree. They trotted her out there and she as usual cipher-ized the report with what she typically brings to the table—which is nothing. But then...(cues the band with another finger-point)
“Band!” (Guitars in now)
...because the network too has nothin', they weakly opted to shore up their “report” with that patently offensive graphic. Now I know the internal excuse is that some fucknut who just got their communications degree thought it would be all funny and cool and shit to rhyme something catchy with the Obama name (“Baby Mama”), and that they were just trying to be “hip”. But the real deal is evident to everyone with eyes and ears and any sense of the campaign season's present trajectory.
Fox “News” is in desperation mode in their trying to spin for the GOP this election year. The Republican brand is so damaged by the eight years of Bush and a pliant GOP-run congress that they'd be better off trying to spin a three-ton granite block half-buried in a tar pit, than winning talking points for Republicans. The ham-fistedness of this incident along with the lame “terra-dap” episode is clear evidence of that. They've. Got. Nothin'. And in having nothin', all that's left is the hewn-from-crazy-wood buckets they're carrying that flimsy-ass nothin' around in. It's gotten so bad that they're reduced to choppin' those up and burnin' em for fuel, wearin' em as clothes and making dinner out of 'em. Mmmmmmm-mmmmmmm, not very good. But here's where we're gonna signal the whole band to come back in for the last chorus—the big finish if you will. (Clenched fist-pump)
“Band!” (Horns and keyboards come in now, filling out the sound)
What they are doing, or rather trying to do to Michelle Obama here and for the forseeable future is to reduce her to the lowest common denominator “Black Chick” that they possibly can. The woman is Princeton and Harvard educated, a law school graduate, a former Dean at the University of Chicago, and a VP at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She's a doting mother of two daughters and has long been politically active. But what Fox News wants to do is bring her back to a place where their viewers and otherwise confused (by her status in spite of her color for them) Republican voters can deal with her on the party's terms.
Bluntly...she must be “re-n*ggerfied”.
Which is why she's spun as Hattie McDaniel “mouthy” and “sassy”. It's why she's being cast by them as the off-putting, “off-the-corner”, 'round-the-way, loudmouthed ghetto-gal with loose ways—evidenced by the “Baby Mama” misnomer. That phrase is generally applied to an urban woman of color who has children by an absent or otherwise unknown father. What reason could be given for the bandying about of that very distinct moniker other than to cast her in a negative light? Fuck the rhyming and word games—there are scatologically obvious plays one could make on Bush's name, but Fox wouldn't dare do that, right? Right?
So yeah, spare me. Please.
Oh yes, there lies a secondary element of racial dissery here with this bit of classic Fox-ism.
It is the age-old switcheroo American society has long pulled on its Black female population.
From the days of slavery, one of the main ways to break the spirit of Black women was to forcibly convert them into sex objects and play-toys for the majority population. “Bed Wenches” or “Bed Warmers” they were called, and basically that meant that they were just random pieces of ass to be grabbed whenever lust struck ol' “Massa”. Black women could be taken, used, discarded and disregarded as little more than sex toys—never mind free will or attachments to someone else. As such, those hyper-sexualized chains of the the “Black-Woman-As-On-Demand-Superfreak” go well beyond someone who might unfortunately have been forced to sexually submit, but is also extended to effectively restrain the aspirations of women of color who would dare to live beyond stereotypes. “Focus on dat body.” “Oooooooh those lips!” “You know how they like their sex!” et.al. It's the ultimate diminishment of a person down to a single, furtive, physical act.
Hitch it to its cross-gender counterpart and you have brilliantly evil construct of subjugation:
Black men are scary and violent! The women? Sex-crazed banshees!
And then, in the ultimate mind-fuck, when the Black man's potential for physical threat becomes too difficult to handle in pop culture, along with the intoxicating allure of many Black women (both in spite of what other things they may bring to the table) the script is casually flipped—de-nuding them of all vestiges of physicality or soul to speak of to create one-dimensional, safe “Negroes” for the masses in pop culture, alá MIssion Impossible's “Barney Collier” (as played by the late Greg Morris) and yes, Josie and The Pussycats' “Val”. It's these pre-fab “Negroes” whose imagery and temperament are deemed acceptable, while the inverted and equally pre-fabbed image of the n*gger to fear / n*gger to fuck is deemed unacceptable. However, both images are force-marketed to the majority population. There's no room for complexity at fearful racists' table. You are either a hyper-emotional, carnal beast or or a soul-less dusky automaton. Whichever fits the necessary negative needed at the moment.
Right about now, for Fox, it's about Michelle Obama, dat ol' wanton wild-woman. An' lawty-lawd—she done had herse'f a whole mess a kids, too! An' dat au-tomatically makes dem babies questionable!
Thus, “Baby Mama”.
Now of course, just like the terrorist fist-jab thang, this was so over-the-top that the Foxies had to back off it as well—albeit in their typical half-ass apology / screw you style, leaving the poor, rage-o-holic Malkin out there all by her lonesome to defend the deed. And she didn't disappoint, simultaneously pooh-poohing the flap while also trying to absolve herself of any blame ('I don't write the captions, so there!'). And you know you've struck a nerve with her when she's forced to fall back on her old doomsday play, “But I'm the victim here!”—as she paraded out the usual few rough e-mails she got from people who chewed her narrow ass off for her part in Fox's shitty little segment. “Waaaaaaaaaah! Look at how badly I'm being treated!” cries the wretch who in the offending piece crowed about Ms. Obama's somehow being “fair game”.
Yeah. Okay. Lemme run that Fox screenshot through my own little chyron-generator to fix the obvious-to-all goof...
There. I think we've got it right, now.
Oh, here's a song for your ass, oh, Michelle The Lesser. And hey—try not to fracture a hip spazzin' around to dance to it. Okay?
This Graphic Is NOT Photoshoped...And That Is A Goddamned Shame.
It was around twenty-four years ago when I found I could no longer read “Ebony” magazine. This was not a small change in my African American life as cold-turkeying so ubiquitous a cultural signifier as “Ebony” was not something I did lightly. Every barber shop I patronized, every doctor's office I waited in, and relative's home I found myself sitting before a coffee table at had a small stack of “Black America's 'Life' Magazine” sitting there asking to be read.
What did it for me? It was a half-assed music review published in their “arts and culture” section. The subject? A Duke Ellington compilation wherein the “author” exposed himself as a sad. blithering idiot. The piece in its dealing with Ellington tried to seem oh-so-Jazz-literate with anecdotal mentions of other Jazzmenof note, and the name of the legendary Charles Mingus was tossed into the review. I say tossed in because it was as if it was a funky undergarment tossed from across a room into a hamper-full of soiled clothes. Mingus...was described in the piece...as a giant of the trombone. A giant of the Goddamned trombone? Jazz' inarguable master of the bass gets twisted as a trombone wizard! I thought I was hallucinating. How in the holy hell could America's pre-eminent Black magazine get a fact like that wrong?
Imagine Rolling Stone screwing up and dubbing Led Zepellin's Jimmy Page in an article as Rock's “giant of the accordion”, or The Who's Keith Moon as a “cowbell colossus” (No one needs that much cowbell...). You'd ultimately lose faith in any journal that would make so grievous, and so cyanotically stupid an error. I stopped reading Ebony right after they let the Mingus gaffe get through. If I couldn't trust them on basic history, I damn sure couldn't trust them on anything else—be the something as trifling as the veracity of their “Top 25 Bachelorettes” credentials, or whether Freddie Jackson's 1.1 million dollar rec room had a rear-projection or a plasma screen TV in it—much less anything of historical import. They had jumped the shark—badly—and landed square in Jabberjaw's mouth with that careless piece of “journalism”. I never looked back.
Flash forward to April of 2008, and a major broadcast news network runs a story, a mocking report ridiculing a party's inability to get a hand on historical source material for a story when they themselves—Fox News—goof so badly covering said story that it goes beyond a mere “Bed Shit” and moves to being the dreaded and awe-inspiring “Duplex Shit”, where the poop is so toxically stupid that it eats through the bedding, the boxspring and then the floor to the floor below.
Via Digby and Crooks & Liars:
Turns out the Rhodes Scholars over at “Fox and Friends” think Abraham Lincoln debated Frederick Douglass in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Of course it was Stephen Douglas. Something tells me Frederick would have had a tough time winning a Senate seat back then. Just a thought.
------------------------------------------
“Rather than spending time mocking their intern, Clayton might have recognized that was Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century African abolitionist leader who certainly wasn’t running for any Senate seat.”
Now, in an alternate universe where logic and common sense carry weight, Fox's rank ass-hattery in reporting on a key event in American political history would turn them into a laughingstock for the ages, and drive listeners away out of sheer embarrassment at being identified as viewers. But this isn't that universe, folks, and the network's viewer base—and I don't care who this offends in my saying it—breathes, eats, and sweats stupid 24/7-365. 
From Robert Greenwald on Terri McAuliffe promoting FOX
It is deeply detrimental to the longterm interests of democracy when Democrats praise and support FOX News. This would be true regardless of who that Democrat is, but it's particularly heinous when Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is singing their praises.
“Here I am at...Camp Black Powah...”
What is fall-on-your-ass hilarious about the way the campaign season is shaping up is the full-on desperation of many on the right (and a few who purport to be on “The Left”) in their attempts to take down the presumptive front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama.
It's like watching some totally freaked-out kid on the playground spastically windmilling his open, slapping hands—with eyes closed of course—at a much savvier opponent. He hits nothing, and ends up embarrassing himself with the scattershot attempts.
Simultaneously, Barack Obama is being slammed as...
...a milquetoast moderate sellout...
...a Reagan-worshipping caution...
...a literal red-diaper baby...
...a bomb-chucking, dirty fucking hippie...
...a naive, callow know-nothing...
... and lastly, a string-yanked marionette at the beck and call of a secret cabal of takeover-minded “Black Geniuses”.
No, the last one I mentioned there is not a spoof. It was actually said on a major news outlet—albeit FOX News, and from the mustache-awningned mouth of one Geraldo Rivera. But yes, it was said in the heat of frustration over how a Black man could thus far evade the political landmines and bear-traps that have wrecked every other presidential run by a person of color. There's an order to things, and this candidacy is running counter to it—thus eliciting the spluttering wonderment—and naked racist condescension that poured from his mouth late last week.
I know you don't wanna hear it, but here it go anyway...
On the Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, Geraldo Rivera was keeping the flames of the Barack Obama “plagiarism” story alive. The Fox News commentator argued that the Illinois Democratic senator had developed a “formula” for taking political power, and he knew where that formula came from.
“When I saw that they were the same words that Deval Patrick, the black guy who won the Massachusetts mayor, the Massachusetts governor had used, I said to myself, it seems so premeditated. It's almost as if they went to a camp where these black geniuses got together and figured out how to beat the political system in a sense that alright, let's reference the civil rights movement, let's talk about change, it's almost formulaic," Geraldo argued. "What seems so spontaneous and original now to me seemed kind of driven by advisors and media consultants and premeditated, and it really left a sour taste.”
Ridiculous? Of course -- this is Geraldo, remember. But it's absurd in a way that's new and refreshing. If Fox viewers are being invited to entertain the notion of a Black Genius Camp where young Afro-brainiacs are busy plotting world domination, something has changed.
Whether Obama wins or loses, his campaign has made it impossible for anyone so inclined to cling to certain racist assumptions -- just as Hillary Clinton has blown some old sexist assumptions to smithereens.
In this day and age, no one can claim to be surprised at encountering an African American man of superior intellect. But whether or not you think Obama would be a good president, his campaign brings the often-overlooked reality of mainstream black America into the nation's living rooms every day -- and into the nation's subconscious.
----------------------------------------------------
He (Geraldo) didn't envision a basketball camp, or a prison camp; he saw a genius camp, presumably for African Americans who had figured out just how white America works and just what buttons to push. How diabolically clever.
Hey, if I'm trying to catch a taxi late at night, I'd rather have the cab driver wondering if I'm secretly plotting world domination than thinking I'm about to mug him.
The Obama campaign hasn't had success just on black America's terms but on white America's terms. For all the impact of Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric, he wouldn't be where he is without a campaign organization that is second to none. He's the one with more money and more offices. He's the one who made the better decisions about where to spend resources. Obama has won overwhelming support from black voters, but there's nothing stereotypically "black" about his campaign. It's as if a black American is beating white America at its own game.
In spite of your troglodytic and hyper-pathological zeal to relegate me and mine to the psychological ghetto-comfort-zone of your bigotry-atrophied mind, I...we—refuse to be imprisoned there. Your socio-political dungeon walls are of mere sand. The bars? But brittle straw. It was Bertrand Russell who said: “Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.” I say, Your irrational fears shall not harness my desires.
Dontcha Just Loooooove The Smell of Jiffy Pop In the Morning?
Here at The Group News Blog, I do freely admit to taking exceptional interest in the Presidential campaign of one Rudolph W. (And the “W” stands for “Would you wear these pearls with this dress?”) Giuliani. As a lifetime New Yorker who lived under the lead thumb of his mayoralty, and saw close-up as many New Yorkers did, just how effortlessly Damien/The Omen-level evil the man could be towards people of color, political opponents, or damn near anyone who dared disagree with him, I have given him and his blitzkrieg campaign a special level of interest.
He is an exceptionally venal being, who when he wasn't surrounding himself with fearful supplicants, filled his comrade gaps with nearly equally shady bottom-feeders, just as power-mad as he, and as willing as he was to subvert any rules that limited that power and access to the perks of power.
Just last Friday his fellow grab-assing Lothario Bernard Kerik was indicted on sixteen counts in Federal Court—including mail fraud, wire fraud, tax fraud and conspiracy. Everything except for shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die...but hey, the investigation continues apace. We took Rudy to task on that here on Monday.
But it was the first post here on Rudy that set the hook in him, and ever since we have not let him shake the barb. That first post, “Take A Number Ya'll—All 54,337 Of You dealt with the numerous people ducked in the bushes with blowguns trained on Rudy and how they could in a slow, methodical way take him down. We've already seen New York's firefighters and Rudy's kids fire warning shots into the air on him, but it was a comment here by the on-the-case Julia over at Sisyphus Shrugged that stands out now—a warning about someone else who could make Giuliani's life difficult. The prediction now sits there, big and bold and as obvious as a a Broom-Hilda zit on a supermodel's face.
You forgot Judith Regan. Judith Regan got kicked to the kerb, and she's Pissed.
julia / Homepage / 07.05.07 - 1:53 pm
julia:
You know...I seriously considered Regan for the list, but part of me said she's such “damaged goods” and straight-up batshit, that it could be a wash.
But your comment got me to thinking again...She's so slimy, so venal, and plugged into so much that is slimy and venal, that she could have at her fingertips/rolodex some really damaging stuff on him. Who knows what crazy shit Bernie could have blurted out while getting...um...you know...
(From Think Progress: [A]ccording to Kerik’s former girlfriend, the book publisher Judith Regan, this friendship could come back to haunt Giuliani’s campaign. She told one of my tnr colleagues that Kerik and Giuliani would frequently discuss “sketchy” activities in her presence “as if I weren’t there.” Regan told my colleague that she would reveal the contents of the conversations in the event that Giuliani’s presidential campaign took off. (Of course, Regan has her own scandal-ridden past. But she also has enough p.r. acumen and notoriety to win an...
I've always suspected that most of the scorpion tail action of karma operates by letting you live smack in the center of the life you've built for yourself.
julia / Homepage / 07.05.07 - 5:15 pm
KEITH OLBERMANN: Judith Regan, the high-profile book publisher and editor, suing Rupert Murdoch's News-Corp, and claiming one of NewsCorp's executives wanted her to lie about her affair with Bernard Kerik, to federal investigators who were vetting Kerik, in order to protect the presidential aspirations of Kerik's benefactor, Rudy Giuliani. An allegation that News-Corp tried to suborn perjury to benefit Giuliani... and that there is evidence to prove that. There are few details... but we'll bring you more of them, and some reaction, in a moment.
-------------------------------------
...Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. where she worked, asked her to lie about her affair with Bernard Kerik while Kerik was being vetted as the nominee to head Homeland Security, in order to protect Rudolph Giuliani's Presidential aspirations—and oh, by the way, her lawyers tells The Times she can prove this.
“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik,” the complaint says. “In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”
One of Ms. Regan’s lawyers, Brian C. Kerr of the firm of Dreier L.L.P., said she had evidence to support her claim that she had been advised to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Mr. Kerik and who might have sought to question her about their romantic involvement. But Mr. Kerr declined to discuss the nature of the evidence.
LIZ CHO (REPORTER): Claims of a cover-up tonight against one of the biggest and most conservative media empires in the world, to protect the Presidential ambitions of Rudy Giuliani. Judith Regan, a celebrity book publisher claims in a 100 million dollar lawsuit that News Corp. encouraged her to lie to Federal investigators about her intimate relationship with Bernard Kerik when he was up for Homeland Security Chief. She claims it was it was an attempt to protect the political aspirations of Giuliani who appointed Kerik Police Commissioner.
“...As you may recall from the unpleasantness surrounding Mr. Kerik's* ladyfriend Judith Regan (the woman with the OJ book), HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch also owns conservative id machine Fox News, activist right wing advocacy organ the New York Post, and now long-time Giuliani supporter the Wall Street Journal.”
-------------------------------
“Mr. Murdoch is known to be very involved in setting the political direction of news coverage by his properties.
This is increasingly not looking like a good thing for Mr. Giuliani.”
video by FOX Attacks
In my fantasies...
Let me start over.
In my occasional daydreams of how our politics could be fixed, leading off the three Network News broadcasts, their morning News programs, with smaller teased versions of this, and then and airing a simultaneous prime-time special co-anchored by all three networks:
"'Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire': The Bush Administration Lies To American, Lies to the World, Lies to Everyone"
Is right up there with the whole Christina Ricci thing. (Who is too young, anyway, and has a boyfriend.)
They lie.
Like
In honor of the:
U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore.
Play Our Gameshow: THE FOX IS WRONG: GLOBAL WARMING!
Video by FOX Attacks.
Bush's Betray al-Qaeda Network to Fox Within FIVE HOURS
Remember when the Bush Administration were the "Grown-up Party", the party of National Defense?
Yeah, me neither. Although I remember a lot of bullshit about it during the campaign.
You can't trust the Bush Administration with ANYTHING. Not even secret National Security information in their own intelligent best interest to keep secret. If they're breathing, they're lying... count on it.
Last month, just before the Osama Bin Laden video was released, a small security company specializing in monitoring terrorist groups, got a copy of the video ahead of everyone. They provided a copy to two senior officials at the White House on the condition they not release it ahead of the official al-Qaeda release -- because to do otherwise would blow up the security companies' spy network, a network years in the making.
The White House promised to keep the source secret.
Obviously.
Back doors into al-Qadea simply don't come along every day, and here a private company is handing a back door to the enemy, over to the White House. You'd think the White House and the National Security organizations would be enormously careful to protect such a gift.
You'd think.
And then you remember Valarie Plame.
Of course, that was the Vice President's office (and the Vice President) actively trying to destroy an active CIA undercover agent and her entire CIA undercover organization against WMDs in the middle-east, over ten years in the making, in retribution for her husband's political actions against the Administration.
Here... well, we don't know, do we?
Perhaps this is on purpose, more than mere political showing off. Perhaps someone has a grudge against the private company, maybe those three-letter agencies don't like looking incompetent next to private enterprise (although I thought that was the point of the Republican Party. Maybe this private enterprise wasn't on the list?) or maybe the Administration is simply incompetent. ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.")
Regardless, it took all of five hours from promise till Fox News and others had the video and transcript.
Five hours.
Washington PostGot to hand it to the Bush Administration. It took them over a week to betray Valarie Plame.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.
Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.
Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."
Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.
Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.
By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.
Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.
You know what? I'd rather NOT have what he's having...
I, your erstwhile LowerManhattanite was born in Harlem. At Harlem Hospital.
I've lived in Harlem off and on for at least a quarter of my life.
Worked there, grew up there, had a daughter of my own born there.
It's the historic “Capital of Black America”, boasting its crown jewel of Black entertainment—The Apollo Theater, as well as being the home of the great Black arts movement—The Harlem Renaissance— in the 1920's. It is shorthand for “The Black Experience” in the eyes of many Americans, thanks to its dense concentration of population, and location in the bustling world metropolis that is New York.
And in its being shorthand for “The Black Experience”, it leaves itself wide-open for a motormouth racist like Bill O'Reilly to impugn everything about it, and all African Americans in general—just by his self-destructive, condescending, and ultimately impossible attempts to present himself as an open-minded, unprejudiced human being.
Bill's own words kick him dead in the ass. The sordidness, via Kos:
O'REILLY: You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.
And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin.
_________________________________
O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."
(JUAN) WILLIAMS: Please...
O'REILLY: You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.
Why is O'Reilly On The Air?
Lower Manattanite brings it for real with “Waiter..There's A Racist In My Soup!”
I'm the warm-up act for LM's righteous smack-down of O'Reilly's racism.
The Radio FactorWhy is O'Reilly still on anyone's air?
O'REILLY: Now, how do we get to this point? Black people in this country understand that they've had a very, very tough go of it, and some of them can get past that, and some of them cannot. I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say, [unintelligible] "You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful." OK, it depends on the personality.
So it's there. It's there, and I think it's getting better. I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: "Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."
You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.
And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin.
[...]
O'REILLY: No, no, I mean, I like that soul food. I had the meatloaf special. I had coconut shrimp. I had the iced tea. It was great.
WILLIAMS: Well, let me just tell you, the one thing I would say is this. And we're talking about the kids who still like this gangsta rap, this vile poison that I think is absolutely, you know, literally a corruption of culture. I think that what you've got to take into account that it's still a majority white audience -- young, white people who think they're into rebelling against their parents who buy this stuff and think it's just a kick. You know, it's just a way of expressing their anti-authoritarianism.
O'REILLY: But it's a different -- it's a different dynamic, though.
WILLIAMS: Exactly right --
O'REILLY: Because the young, white kids don't have to struggle out of the ghetto.
WILLIAMS: Right, and also, I think they can have that as one phase of their lives.
O'REILLY: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: I think too many of the black kids take it as, "Oh, that's what it means to be authentically black. That's how you make money. That's how you become rich and famous and get on TV and get music videos." And you either get the boys or the girls. The girls think they have to, you know, be half-naked and spinning around like they're on meth in order to get any attention. It really corrupts people, and I think it adds, Bill, to some serious sociological problems, like the high out-of-wedlock birth rate because of this hypersexual imagery that then the kids adapt to some kind of reality. I mean, it's inauthentic. It's not in keeping with great black traditions of struggle and excellence, from Willie Mays to Aretha Franklin, but even in terms of academics, you know, going back to people like Charles Drew or Ben Carson here, the neurosurgeon at [Johns] Hopkins [University]. That stuff, all of a sudden, is pushed aside. That's treated as, "You're a nerd, you're acting white," if you try to be excellent and black.
O'REILLY: You know, and I went to the concert by Anita Baker at Radio City Music Hall, and the crowd was 50/50, black/white, and the blacks were well-dressed. And she came out -- Anita Baker came out on the stage and said, "Look, this is a show for the family. We're not gonna have any profanity here. We're not gonna do any rapping here." The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.
WILLIAMS: Oh, and it's just so awful. It's just so awful because, I mean, it's literally the sewer come to the surface, and now people take it that the sewer is the whole story --
O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."
WILLIAMS: Please --
O'REILLY: You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.
Gotta love suck-ups. Kissing presidential ass.
Looks like Fox News has got us in a little bit of Spin Trouble. Good thing we've got us some - - “Surge Seasoning”. Oh yeah baby --- mmmm mmmm --- that is tasty.
Scrappy Bloggers v. "America's Finest News Source"
The actual news admittedly as told by, ahem, experts SUPER HEROES, whee... bloggers such as ourselves v. satire told by those losers over at The Onion.
Can you tell the difference? We didn't think so.
No... this isn't just an excuse to re-run some great stories and pass it off as current stuff. Yes, it is a slow news day, what's your point? Oh yeah? Well so's your mamma. Oh your mamma's so fat when she sits around the house, she really sits around the house. Yeah! Now don't you go talking about my sister. Shut up. No, you shut up. I'll bite your leg right off.
Shh. The movie's starting.
GNB Video coverage of Fox News:
What's Bill O'Reilly Really “Looking Out” For, Folks?
v. The Onion's coverage of, well... everyone. (We mean you Fox & CNN and how you change the coverage from the crimes of the Bush administration and any REAL news, with "breaking news" showing us blonde, missing girls.)
You know, this is just a thought, but if Fox ever really wanted to mess with liberals, they could put up one of these missing girl stories, and have it be about an average looking black girl from the deep south, say Missouri. Us lib types would be so freaked we'd spend the next week blogging our theories of what Fox was really up to while the Bushes could sneak an entire troop withdrawal by without us even noticing. Come on Fox, you know you want to try and mess with our heads. Give it your best shot. *smiles sweetly*
The Onion:
Missing Girl Probably Raped
"Live from the GNB Sports Desk" Tour de France coverage
v. The Onion:
