Month: August 2010

O’Reilly on Defense: Denies Race-Baiting on Fox – Maddow Rolls Tape, Proves He’s Wrong

Jon Ponder

If it’s true that, according to the Rove-Breitbart playbook, when your side is on defense you are losing, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly is losing the debate with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about his network’s use of racism to inflame and agitate its predominantly elderly white Republican viewers.

According to Bill O’Reilly, highly rated shows can’t possibly be racist.

Maddow apparently got under O’Reilly’s skin last week when she did a story about race baiting on Fox that documented the network’s on-air personalities’ lies about Van Jones, ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, the New Black Panthers Party, illegal immigration and other racially charged stories.

The next night O’Reilly took to the airways in defense of his network. He rebutted the video evidence of his colleagues’ racially inflammatory comments with a succinct, “Nuh-UHH” — Fox can’t be racist, he suggested, because his ratings were higher than MSNBC’s, and everybody knows that highly rated shows can’t possibly feature racism.

This defense was the subject of much well-deserved derision the next day, which prompted O’Reilly to return to the air and resort to name-calling — Maddow is a “far left loon,” he said. He then repeated the much-derided defense that his network’s high ratings are irrefutably prima facie evidence that Fox is free of racism.

Maddow responded last night by noting that sharks must be more even less racist than Fox because “Shark Week” beat Fox in the ratings last week.

She followed up with a video retrospective of O’Reilly’s own on-air racist comments — which she offered as irrefutable proof that race baiting is what Fox does.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s a rough transcript of Maddow’s report — this was provided by MSNBC:

[…]

Politely But Firmly Boies Calls Anti-Gay Psycho Tony Perkins a Liar on Face the Nation

Jon Ponder

At around minute 2:50:

DAVID BOIES: It’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions that appeal to people’s fear and prejudice — cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law, you’ve got to come and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up, under oath and under cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to [marry] to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature — or in debate where they can’t be cross-examined, But when they come into court, and they have to defend those opinions under oath and under cross-examination, those opinions just melt away.

And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies — there weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. And it’s easy to say that on television, but a witness stand is a lonely place to lie and when you come into court, you can’t do that.

And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.

Protest Tea Party Racism – Sept. 12 Is Burn a Confederate Flag Day

Jon Ponder

logo-burn-a-confederate-flag-dayFrom the Burn The Confederate Flag Day website:

Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right’s exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain. We urge you to burn the Confederate flag, a long-time symbol of racial hatred, on Sept 12, the date when the racially-divisive Tea Party holds its annual hate fest.

Ways to get involved:

Host a flag-burning party on Sept. 12.

  • Tell us where and when you’re holding it, and we’ll publish a list of events.
  • Send us photos of the event. We’ll post them here.
  • Upload a video of the event onto YouTube. We’ll embed it or link to it.

Let them know we’re watching. Dress up like a clown and take a partially burned flag to a local tea party event (Don’t burn a flag at the event unless local laws allow it.)

Spread the word via Facebook (here’s our Facebook group), Twitter, and other social media.

Submit your own ideas, below in the comments. We’ll use them to update this list.

McCain on 2000 Campaign: ‘It Could Come Down to Lying Or Losing – I Chose Lying’

Jon Ponder

Watching this ad, you can’t help wondering how different our politics would be today if the Obama campaign had run this clip against John McCain in 2008. The Obama team had to have had this clip of McCain admitting he lied in 2000. They must have felt it was too inflammatory to run, and that’s a shame, because if the McCain campaign had had something similar to run against Obama, you can bet they would have run it.

Verbatim

Trish

While former half-term governor Palin is certainly an expert in not being vetted, we put our trust in the judgment of the American people who rejected not only the broken policies she and Republicans continue to call for, but also this very kind of childish politics she continues to engage in.

DNC Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, commenting on Sarah Palin’s statement that Pres. Obama is not up to the task of being president, despite 18 months of proof to the contrary. Even as Pres. Obama has pulled the country back from the brink of Republican-induced economic collapse, succeeded where the last eight presidents failed at starting genuine health care reform, reversed Bush policies on torture, murder, mutilation, and humiliation of individuals in the custody of officers or agents of the federal government, and signed a strategic arms treaty with Russia that reduces both of our nuclear arsenals by one-third (without even being able to see the Russian shore), Palin said, “Some of this though is a result of he not having much experience and then a complicit media and maybe some voters who chose to not to allow him to be vetted very closely.”

Adultery Is the Real Threat to Marriage, So Where Is the Clamor to Deny Civil Rights to Philanderers?

Jon Ponder

Gingrich with third wife Calista, the former staffer he was sleeping with during the Clinton impeachment
Gingrich with third wife Calista, the former staffer he was sleeping with during the Clinton impeachment
Reacting to the overturning of Proposition 8 by a federal judge in California yesterday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — a serial adulterer who led the impeachment of Pres. Clinton over a sex lie about an extramarital affair with a staffer while he himself was engaged in an affair with a staffer — said this:

Judge Walker’s ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they’ve affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy. Today’s notorious decision also underscores the importance of the Senate vote tomorrow on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court because judges who oppose the American people are a growing threat to our society.

They won’t admit it outright, but what Republican politicians like Gingrich and anti-gay activist groups like the National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council, American Family Association and the rest are really advocating is restricting the right of gays to marry based solely on their status as sinners.

But no matter how you slice it — whether from a societal, moral, or religious point of view — it is adultery, not gay marriage, that is real threat to marriage and society.

[…]

Breaking: Federal Judge Overturns Proposition 8 – Anti-Gay Forces Seek Immediate Stay to Prevent New Marriages in California

Jon Ponder

The Advocate:

In a highly anticipated decision with potentially far-reaching implications in the national battle over gay marriage, a federal judge has struck down California’s Proposition 8.

U.S. district judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down the ballot measure in a 136-page opinion without a hearing in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, nearly seven months after an unprecedented trial over gay marriage began in his San Francisco courtroom. It’s not yet clear whether Walker’s decision will immediately nullify the ballot measure — and therefore restore the right of same-sex couples to marry in California.

But:

[…]

Verbatim

Trish

For reasons some of you know, I don’t want people to just see my hair.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), joking at a press conference. As the vertically challenged Boxer climbed a stool to reach the microphone, she recalled once seeing the Queen of England give a speech with only her hat visible to reporters. Boxer’s Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, refuses to walk back her comment that Boxer’s hair is “So yesterday.” A July-end poll showed Boxer ahead by nine points in popularity, and a more than 10-to-1 lead in fundraising.