In their desperation to ensure that taxes are not raised on their corporate sponsors, Republicans have been successful in convincing their followers, as well as their poodles in the corporate media, that only the rich — not the poor and middle class — pay taxes.
That is not just a lie — it is a big lie. Via Andrew Sullivan:
More evidence, as if any were needed, that what Fox and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing NewsCorp media empire does is not “news,” it’s propaganda:
Fox News stayed mainly silent on the News of the World scandal during prime time Thursday, largely filling its roster of shows with discussions about topics such as the Casey Anthony sentencing and the federal budget. A Fox News spokeswoman did not elaborate on the network’s approach but pointed to coverage as a business story on several news programs.
Earlier this week, Murdoch abruptly euthanized News of the World, a 168-year-old British media institution he purchased in 1969, because its top editors had been accused of approving the hacking of voicemail accounts of terror victims, war veterans and even a 13-year-old murder victim. Hundreds of journalists and other staffers suddenly found themselves unemployed as a result.
On Friday, Andy Coulson, one of those former editors, was arrested “in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking,” according to police. Coulson left NotW in 2007 to take a position as chief spin doctor for British Prime Minister David Cameron, a right-wing politician with ties to the Murdoch empire. Coulson resigned from government in January because of his association with the phone hacking scandal. Prime Minister Cameron held a news conference on Friday to deny he was aware of Coulson’s involvement in the scandal, despite alleged evidence to the contrary.
But Fox News apparently finds none of that to be sufficiently newsworthy to report about it online. On Saturday morning, the FoxNews.com homepage, which is chockablock with dozens of headlines to stories on a range of topics from gossip and politics to finance and entertainment, presented no stories about the scandal.
Meanwhile:
the CCR asks that Ailes distinguish between First Amendment rights, of which they are “vigorous defenders” and an “intentional repetition of provocative, incendiary, emotional misinformation and falsehoods [that place that person] in actual physical danger of a violent response.”
Beginning in September of 2010, Glenn Beck started branding Piven, a distinguished professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, as an “enemy of the Constitution.” Piven, well known for advocating for the organizational rights of the poor and encouraging voter registration, has since received threatening phone calls and letters, and has become the subject of many death threats left open to the public on Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze.”
Plans by a tiny Gainesville, Fla. church to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 were condemned by a guy who knows how to act toward Islam. Gen. David Petraeus is pleading with the Christian extremists to tone it down or put American troops at risk.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. Petraeus said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”
Hundreds of Afghans attended a demonstration in Kabul on Monday to protest the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who has said he will burn the Quran on Sept. 11…
Military officials fear the protests are likely to spread beyond Kabul to other Afghan cities. In interviews with various media outlets, Mr. Jones has denied his protest will put troops in danger. Mr. Jones has been denied a permit for the demonstration but has said he plans to go forward with his protest anyway.
Meanwhile, people in Gainesville — home of the flagship University of Florida and its law school, and one of the few places in that part of the state that still elects Democrats — struggled to both condemn the 50-member church and to defend it.
This faux commercial for the event sums up the absurdity in Pastor Jones’ position.
Disgraced HCA Columbia Healthcare CEO Rick Scott (who was forced to resign rather than face criminal charges in the nation’s largest Medicaid fraud case, resulting in a $1.7 billion fine) sums up all the Republican lies about the Islamic Center in New York in one TV spot, going FOX News one better by tying construction of the facility to health care reform. Why Scott, who is running for governor of Florida — a state which will have little if any say in the issue — would chose this as a campaign platform is unclear.
For Christmas, it’s a blanket pardon for Hunter,
And that’s torn the whole political world asunder.
Everybody’s mad at Joe Biden
For doing some lyin’,
But that’s just one for old Joe and 30,573 for the Trumpster.
