Tag: Media Watch

Fox Legal Expert Suggests Obama Could Be Impeached over the Sequester – Even Though It Was Voted into Law with 202 Republican Votes

Jon Ponder

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napiltano suggested yesterday that Pres. Obama could be impeached over the sequester:

“This is almost an impeachable offense,” Napolitano [said]. “If the president is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us, rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid and for which we have hired him, he is doing the opposite of what he has taken an oath to do.”

“He has taken an oath to uphold the laws. That means make the government work. Don’t make it painful, find a way to make it work on 2 percent less.”

The former judge concluded: “That’s the way the constitution works!”

What this Fox legal expert deliberately pretends to ignore, of course, is that impeachment over the sequester would put holdovers among the 174 Republicans in the House and 28 Republicans in the Senate who voted for the sequester in the 112th Congress in a very awkward position. In particular, it would make a majority of House Republicans complicit in the president’s “crime.”

More on the GOP SOTU Response: Tea Bagger Technology Went Askew Again, the White House Punked Rubio and Rubio Failed At De-Romneyfication for His Party

Jon Ponder

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On her show Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow dissected the Republicans’ response to Pres. Obama’s State of the Union speech and found that it was even worse than it first appeared:

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MSNBC’s Liberal Hosts Question the Obama Administration’s Drone Strike Program

Jon Ponder

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During the presidency of George Bush, Fox News operated as an adjunct to the White House political office (or was it vice versa?). That’s why, if there were Fox hosts who had concerns about the many nefarious activities of the Bush administration — breaking the international anti-torture treaty that Ronald Reagan signed or deliberately betraying the covert identity of a CIA specialist in the WMD black market, for example — they rarely, if ever, voiced their criticisms on air.

I don’t watch Fox 24/7, so I can’t say that it never happened, but if it did, questioning Bush-Cheney policies was never given the high-profile airing that concerns about the Obama administration’s drone strike program have been given by liberal hosts on MSNBC this week. This is notable because it upends the meme in the political media — of which Andrew Sullivan is a prime exemplar — that Fox and MSNBC are just obverse and reverse on the same coin.

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Caught on Tape: Murdoch, Ailes Acted as Recruiters for GOP, Sent Fox News Operative to Invite Petraeus to Run for President

Jon Ponder

The release of a secretly recorded conversation between Gen. David Petraeus and a Fox News operative has erased all plausible deniability about the fact that Fox News is nothing other than a media and communications vehicle for the Republican Party. In the recording, which was apparently made by Petraeus, Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News “security analyst,” is heard asking Petraeus to run for president, an invitation she says she is delivering on behalf Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Newscorp, the parent company of Fox. The recording was made in Afghanistan in the spring of 2011 a few weeks before Pres. Obama appointed Petreaus as head of the CIA — and more than a year before Petreaus resigned from the CIA in disgrace after revealing he was engaged in an ongoing affair with one of his fans.

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Military Expert Says He Warned a Fox Producer That He Believed the Network Was Hyping the Benghazi Attacks Before He Said It Live on the Air

Jon Ponder

A Fox News segment producer is likely out of a job today. This producer greenlighted military affairs expert Tom Ricks appearance on Fox’s air yesterday despite having been warned by Ricks that he was going to disparage Fox’s relentless politicizing of the attacks last September on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador and three presumed CIA operatives — officially described as “security contractors” — were killed.

According to right-leaning Politico.com:

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Even Fox News Calls B.S. on Six ‘Studies’ Cited by Romney-Ryan to Bolster Their $5 Trillion Tax Cut Scheme

Jon Ponder

In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney falsely claimed there were six studies that proved his $5 trillion tax cut that mostly benefits the wealthy would not lead to increased taxes on the middle class and/or blow a bigger hole in the deficit. “I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families,” Romney said. “I will lower taxes on middle-income families. Now, you cite a study. There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it’s completely wrong.” In the vice presidential debate, Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan mentioned the six studies twice.

Talking Points Memo reports that “of the six studies, two are blog posts by the conservative American Enterprise Institute; one is a report by the Republican-friendly Heritage Foundation; one is a paper by Princeton professor and former George W. Bush adviser Harvey Rosen; the fifth and sixth are a Wall Street Journal op-ed and blog post by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, an adviser to the Romney campaign.”

These “studies” are so bogus that even Fox News found that it could no longer carry water for its own party’s candidates. On their Sunday show, host Chris Wallace took down Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove’s embed in the Romney campaign, on the issue:

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Advertisers Continue to Exit Right-Wing Radio

Jon Ponder

This story needs much more exposure:

At the New Media Seminar held last week in Los Angeles, Norm Pattiz, CEO of Courtside Entertainment, had some harsh words for conservative talk radio hosts nationwide: “Those who do not adapt will be swallowed up.”

The cause for such a dire remark? The continuing fleeing of national advertisers from the right-wing radio spectrum. And he said this in front of a large crowd including notable conservative hosts.

What has happened without the major backers having realized it is that the new era of social media has rendered the marketing advantage of these right-wing hosts moot. Now advertisers can no longer sit securely thinking that only the hosts audience would pay attention to what was being said, and to which companies were advertising with them. Now a host says something out of line, the advertisers take a direct hit. And the strength of social media is only growing.