How Much Does Rupert Murdoch Own? Too Much
Here’s a handy graphic published by Reuters, which provides a quick reference for all things Murdoch. After looking it over, all I can say is, “Hulu? Who knew?”
Tag: Conservative Values
Halperin’s “Dick” Comment About Obama Gets Him Suspended
Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.
— MSNBC, in an official statement
I completely agree with everything in MSNBC’s statement about my remark. I believe that the step they are taking in response is totally appropriate. Again, I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the President, to my MSNBC colleagues, and to the viewers. My remark was unacceptable, and I deeply regret it.
— Mark Halperin, pundit and regular contributor to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
I thought he was a dick yesterday.
— Mark Halperin, in the original, on-air comment about Pres. Obama that got him suspended from “Morning Joe.” Halperin’s comment was made after full preparation, according to a transcript and video of the show, and was not in any way a slip of the tongue.
Huckabee Is the One Distorting the Facts of Single Motherhood
Fundamentalist Republican candidate for president Mike Huckabee said, “Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and would not get health care.”
Facts:
- 79.5% of custodial single mothers are employed
- 27% of custodial single mothers and their children live in poverty; the other 73% do not
- 22% receive Medicaid; 78% do not
- 23.5% receive food stamps; 76.5% do not
- 12% receive some form of public housing or rent subsidy; 88% do not
The Reagan Legacy: Can We Talk?
While folks born from the late ’70s on reflect fondly on the 100th birthday of Pres. Ronald Reagan, I wanted to inject a little reality on the subject of the Gipper.
As someone who was already around when he was in office, I have a different view of the golden age conservatives now see as the greatest in our country’s history, except of course, for the halcyon days of 3/5ths personhood and what-not at our country’s founding. Reagan gave us:
- Voodoo economics, aka trickle-down economics, aka supply-side economics, aka tax breaks for the rich
- Tripling the national debt within two years (see “voodoo economics”)
- Just Say No
- Creating a new demographic of Americans: The Homeless
- A 4,370-piece set of dishes (19 pieces per setting), costing $209,508
- Bombing Libya and killing 60 people, including Leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s 15-month-old daughter
- Ketchup as a vegetable in public school lunches
- Lt. Col. Oliver North
- Selling arms to Iran and using the money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua
- Using astrology to plan presidential trips, functions, speeches, etc.
Banned Video Explains What Love Without Limits Really Means
The video rejected in The Ruth Institute’s “Reel Love Challenge.” The contest asked for college students or young adults age 18 to 30 to answer the question, “What makes lifelong love possible?” Apparently it has to be man-lady lifelong love only.
This video was first accepted, but after someone at the “Institute” actually watched it, it was thrown out. The Ruth So-Called Institute is a project of the National Institute for Marriage Education Fund, which is just another Focus on the Family spin-off that claims these bizarre “core values:”
- Respect for the contributions of men to the family Marriage as a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman
- Lifelong spousal cooperation as a solution to women’s aspirations for career and family
Breaking: Hey Right Wing, You Can Have Jared Loughner Back
Someone’s finally sorting out the mess that is Jared Loughner’s mind and discovering what most of us have suspected all along. Loughner has much more in common with rightwing extremists than with the political left. Justine Sharrock at Mother Jones explains what Loughner’s obsession with grammar means to people in the “sovereign citizen” movement, which among many other things, maps out strategies to avoid paying taxes.
Glenn Beck would no doubt be envious of the hairpin logic used by the “sovereign citizens”
Many of his seemingly random statements—on “grammar,” “the ratifications,” “the new currency,” and more—echo the teachings of the “sovereign citizen” movement, a right-wing school of thought alleging that Americans have been surreptitiously stripped of their God-given rights.
These are not random parallels, as I discovered in reviewing Loughner’s YouTube videos. In multiple instances, he uses the precise talking points sovereign-citizen theorists teach via a thriving cottage industry of books, websites, bogus legal companies, and seminars; one popular theorist, David Wynn Miller, told the New York Times that Loughner has “probably been on my website.”
Rude Pundit: Hey Right Wing, How’s That Ginning Up the Masses Thing Working for Ya Now?
For those of us following the coverage of the mass shooting aimed at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who are sick of the false equivalency arguments (“But what about Daily Kos?”), the bending over backward denials (“They were surveyors marks, not gun scope sights”), and pleas by the right not to rush to judgment (like they do with every ginned up news cycle concerning the NPRs and Van Joneses of the world), The Rude Pundit offers some relief. He is calling out the same folks as the sheriff of Pima County did — those who earn a living inflaming the American people.
Rude Pundit: ‘Gosh, it’s just wrong to lump you all together, to stereotype you all as criminals in waiting. Like, you know, you have done with Muslims since September 11, 2001’
He goes one further, though, by including the viewers and listeners and readers who indulge those leaders, who drive up their ratings, and who ultimately pay their salaries. And if you are among them, The Rude Pundit leaves you nowhere to hide.
Following are excerpts from what could have been called, “Dear Right-Wingers: We Reject Your Every Attempt to Evade Blame” but which is, instead, the much better titled, “Dear Right-Wingers: You Are All Muslims Now.”
How you must have heaved in relief when you saw that it would be quite easy to portray Jared Lee Loughner as a raving psychopath, an effort that’s helped a great deal by the apparent truth, which is that Jared Lee Loughner is a raving psychopath…
Now, ah, yes, now, lovely right-wingers, you could defend yourself. You could work yourselves into a huff about how unjustly you were accused of driving this obviously disturbed individual into an act of calculated, cold-blooded violence. But that’s because you’re sitting there in your shit-filled underpants, thinking, “I don’t believe in violence. I don’t approve this. I hope the government doesn’t try to crack down on us.”
So, welcome, assholes, because you are Muslim now.
Why Palin Shouldn’t Run, as Told by a Conservative
Like many of you, we have been a bit dispirited since the midterm elections. But one thing cheers us, and that’s the thought of, as my Facebook friend put it, conservatives eating their own kind.
At the right-wing blog, TownHall, columnist Mona Charen lays out her reasons why Sarah Palin should not run for president, and by extension, why no one should vote for her.
The Republican nominee should be someone with vast and impressive experience in government and the private sector — and a proven record.
Charen: ‘Palin compares herself to Reagan. But Reagan didn’t mud wrestle with the press.’After the 2008 campaign revealed her weaknesses on substance, Palin was advised by those who admire her natural gifts to bone up on policy and devote herself to governing Alaska successfully. Instead, she quit her job as governor after two and a half years, published a book (another is due next week), and seemed to chase money and empty celebrity. Now, rather than being able to highlight the accomplishments of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, we get “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” another cheesy entrant in the reality show genre. She’d so much rather be out dog sledding than in some “dull political office,” she tells the audience. File that.
Most Americans Blame Churches for Gay Suicide
2 in 3
The number of Americans who believe that churches are partly responsible for gay teen suicides. About four in ten also believe that, “the message coming out of churches about gay people is negative.”
Republican Senators Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Don’t Answer the Phone for Lady Ga Ga
Ga Ga: “I am here to be a voice for my generation, not the generation of the senators who are voting, but for the youth of this country, the generation that is affected by this law, and whose children will be affected. We are not asking you to agree with, or approve of the moral implications of homosexuality.”
There is so much wrong with these assumptions that it’s hard to know where to start (many Guard members are in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s, and why NOT ask the senators to stop declaring homosexuality is immoral?) but as the aunt of a 12-year-old, I know that Ga Ga is correct that she speaks for youth, and her heart is definitely in the right place on this one.
