Audience member SCOLDS Trump for interrupting her question, he instantly...

Architects and Engineers On 9/11! Excellent Must See!

Brit Hume Attacks Obama's Criticism Of Fox While Continuing Their Poor-Shaming

You've got to hand it to these talking heads over on Faux "news." They're able to lie with a straight face to their audience about what that same audience likely watches day after day, and week after week on their network when it comes to their race baiting and shaming of anyone in the United States who is unfortunate enough to be living in poverty, while simultaneously making excuses for their poor-shaming and attacking the President of the United States for calling them out for it.

That's exactly what the audience was treated to on this Sunday's Media Buzz on Fox, where host Howard Kurtz and his guest Brit Hume continued the network's week-long whine-fest over President Obama's remarks about how Fox constantly berates those living in poverty as lazy, just wanting to live off of the government dole and proud of it.

KURTZ: That brings me to that odd phraseology where President Obama says he wants a different kind of reporting so he can change the minds of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. What does that say to you?

HUME: Well, first of all, a big part of the job of a president is to find a way to work with people who disagree with him and try to get something done. He's especially bad at this.
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French TV Show Laughs At The Credibility Of "The Fox News Clowns"

Earlier this week Fox News hosted Steven Emerson, an alleged terrorism expert, who claimed that the entire city of Birmingham, England was occupied by radical Muslims and was inaccessible to anyone else. His remarks were widely ridiculed, including by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, who called Emerson an "idiot." Emerson later recanted and apologized for his "terrible error." But Fox wasn't done embarrassing itself with false tales of horror.

Over at Fox & Friends, Elisabeth Hasselbeck interviewed a former Air Force pilot who claimed to have personal knowledge of the deterioration of French society. Nolan Peterson said that there were "741 no-go zones throughout France." Peterson described his adventures in the wilds of Paris saying that...

"It was pretty scary. I've been to Afghanistan and Iraq and Kashmir, India, and at times it felt like that - those places in these no-go zones. [...and that...] You see young men wearing Osama Bin Laden t-shirts in a hookah shop."

Really? This veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq was scared of Paris? The segment was seen by Yann Barthès, the host of the French television program "Le Petit Journal." His response was to mercilessly flog Fox and Peterson while exposing the glaring errors in their analysis. For instance, Fox made reference to a poll that said that 16% of the French people had a favorable view of ISIS. However, that poll was debunked by the Washington Post, a point that Barthès noted.
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Fact-Checkers Stymied as Romney and Ryan Recall Their Seafaring Days

Now that a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations have cited candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for repeatedly lying about Obama’s record, Messrs. Romney and Ryan have begun telling whoppers that have nothing to do with their quest to hold the most powerful offices in the world.

Both candidates have stated that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare; that Obama closed a GM factory in Janesville, WI, when it was actually closed before he took office; and that his Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

Fresh out of political falsehoods, but seemingly pathological fabulists, Romney and Ryan spun unverifiable yarns about their exploits at sea.

“Ahoy me fine reporters,” Ryan began the press conference. “If ye be lookin’ for gripping adventure on the high seas, Mitt Romney be the man for ye,” he said, gesturing to the Republican presidential hopeful.

Romney chortled and said, “Of course, Paul is only kidding. But he hoisted me mizzenmast and shivered me timbers, yar!”

At that, the two men laughed hysterically. When Ryan pulled himself together, he added, “No, no, really. As crewmembers aboard the Farley Mowat, we spent months hunting down the Japanese whaling fleet near Antarctica. Isn’t that right, Mitt?” READ MORE

ALSO SEE THE TIMES NOT

Romney's Campaign Strategy: Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More -- Can Democracy Survive with 0% Media Accountability?

The Romney camp is boldly lying because they are making a calculation that it will work! We better hope it doesn't.

August 13, 2012

The Romney campaign has turned to a strategy of swamping the public with flat-out, blatant lies, one after another, again and again, endlessly and lavishly repeated. They do this because they are making a calculation that it will work! So what is going on? And can democracy survive this assault?
The Growing List Of Lies

This week's lie is the "Obama gutted welfare reform" nonsense. See Bill Scher's must-read response,  Romney's Welfare Lie: A Betrayal Of Conservatism . The reporting conveys the Romney message, like this:  Romney accuses Obama of dismantling welfare reform . The lie is driven home by a massive $$-driven carpet bombing of ads.

The next-most recent lies was  the "Obama is trying to keep military families from voting" lie . This lie, repeated over and over, coordinated with outside groups, reinforces the "Democrats are anti-military" narrative.READ MORE

Obamacare: Separating fact from fiction

"Corporate People" -vs- "People People"

June 29, 2012

Mitt Romney and Republicans are firing off distortions about Obamacare after the Supreme Court confirmed that the health care law is constitutional and that every American deserves access to affordable, quality health coverage. But Romney and his Republican allies are attacking this principle with tired political falsehoods about health care reform—and making the repeal of health reform their first priority.

With all the recycled myths they’re pushing, it’s important to get the facts about a law that is already helping millions of Americans. Here’s a look at what Republicans are saying—and what’s actually true—about health care reform.

#1 Republican distortion: “The President promised he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class by a penny with this health care law. Well, that’s been proven false now.”

The facts: President Obama has cut taxes by $3,600 for the average middle-class family over the last three years, and the Republicans fought him nearly every step of the way. From cutting taxes for every working American through the Making Work Pay and payroll tax cuts to the American Opportunity Tax Credit—a tax credit worth up to $10,000 to help families pay for four years of college—the President has put more money in the pockets of middle-class Americans.

Here’s another fact: Obamacare includes the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history. According to the independent Congressional Budget Office, 19 million people will receive tax credits worth an average of about $4,800 each to help them afford health care. These tax credits will finally put health insurance within reach for millions of American families.

Around 1 percent of people—those who can afford to buy coverage but instead choose to opt out, shifting their costs to the rest of us—will pay a penalty. The Supreme Court acknowledged yesterday that this penalty will be charged through the tax code—but that doesn’t change its purpose of ensuring everyone who can afford insurance buys it, or its effect of lowering costs for everyone.

It’s also the same policy Romney implemented when he signed health reform in Massachusetts. In fact, for many folks in Massachusetts, the penalties under Romney’s reform were even bigger. Here’s a video of him extolling the virtues of his penalty.

#2 Romney distortion:  READ MORE

Pants on Fire Romney

(CC-BY-SA)

Posted on May 29, 2012

By Eugene Robinson

There are those who tell the truth. There are those who distort the truth. And then there’s Mitt Romney.

Every political campaign exaggerates and dissembles. This practice may not be admirable—it’s surely one reason so many Americans are disenchanted with politics—but it’s something we’ve all come to expect. Candidates claim the right to make any boast or accusation as long as there’s a kernel of veracity in there somewhere.

Even by this lax standard, Romney too often fails. Not to put too fine a point on it, he lies. Quite a bit.

“Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history,” Romney claims on his campaign website. This is utterly false. The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

An analysis published last week by MarketWatch, a financial news website owned by Dow Jones & Co., compared the yearly growth of federal spending under presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Citing figures from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, MarketWatch concluded that “there has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.”   READ MORE

 

Why Keystone XL, War With Iran, and "Drill Baby Drill" Will Actually Raise Gas Prices

Photo Credit: SkyTruth

Republican energy policies are deliberately designed to raise gas prices in the short, near, mid, and long term -- and undermine America's economy and security to boot.

March 20, 2012

While Newt Gingrich travels the country extolling the power of a magical plan to lower gasoline prices (perhaps revolving around unicorns towing our cars), a simple fact:

The Republican policy agenda will lead to increased gasoline prices at the pump in the short, near, mid, and long term while undermining the American economy and American security.

While there are a plethora of other elements, let’s narrow down to just four key Republican agenda items:

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Outrageous Lies Monsanto and Friends Are Trying to Pass off to Kids as Science

The claims made in a book from the biotechnology industry are laughable. But these blatant lies are passed off as 'science' for schoolchildren.

March 20, 2012

It's not enough that the biotech industry -- led by multinational corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, BAS, and Dupont -- is poisoning our food and our planet. It's also poisoning young minds.

In a blatant attempt at brainwashing, the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI) has widely circulated what it calls a Biotechnology Basics Activity Book for kids, to be used by "Agriculture and Science Teachers." The book -- called Look Closer at Biotechnology -- looks like a science workbook, but reads more like a fairy tale. Available on the council's Web site, its colorful pages are full of friendly cartoon faces, puzzles, helpful hints for teachers -- and a heavy dose of outright lies about the likely effects of genetic engineering on health, the environment, world hunger and the future of farming.

CBI's lies are designed specifically for children, and intended for use in classrooms.

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White Coats, White Lies: How Honest Is Your Doctor?

February 9, 2012, Time Magazine

Is your doctor telling you the truth? Possibly not, according to a new survey in Health Affairs of nearly 1,900 physicians around the country. The researchers found that 55% of doctors said that in the last year they had been more positive about a patient’s prognosis than his medical history warranted. And 10% said they had told patients something that wasn’t true. About a third of the MDs said they did not completely agree that they should disclose medical errors to patients, and 40% said they didn’t feel the need to disclose financial ties to drug or device companies. Nearly 20% of the doctors admitted that they didn’t disclose a medical error to their patients because they were afraid of being sued for malpractice. Doctors’ fear of malpractice suits may often be misplaced. Studies suggest that in cases where physicians are open about their mistakes, patients are more likely to be understanding and refrain from suing. So how can doctors learn to be more honest with their patients? More training about how to communicate with people about their health is critical — especially when it comes to delivering bad news. Patients also need to be clear and firm about how honest they want their doctors to be. Communication is a two-way street, after all, even in the doctor’s office.

Note: For key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.

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5 Biggest Lies About the Right-Wing Corporate-Backed War on Our Schools

Though National School Choice Week has some liberal support, its primary backers are deeply conservative activists whose goal is to dissolve public education in the US.

January 23, 2012

National School Choice Week, a pet project of big corporations and conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers, kicked off Monday with celebratory forums throughout the country. Billing itself as a social justice movement committed to “ensuring effective education options for every child,” “school choice” has actually become a deeply divisive wedge issue for the right. But the folks at School Choice Week would prefer that you didn’t know that. 


On their website, you can find photographs and videos of shiny happy children of all races and ethnicities. And you’ll see that Bill Cosby is a major supporter. And since he has a doctorate in education and has acted as a philanthropist on behalf of many African-American schools, many will see his endorsement as an important mark of legitimacy.


But there are a few serious problems with the school choice movement. READ MORE

Wall Street Isn't Winning - It's Cheating

Activists demonstrate outside of the New York
Stock Exchange against Wall Street bonuses,
12/15/10. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

26 October 11

I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.

"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO" he said. "I think that's funny."

"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"

"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."

Oh, Christ, I thought. He's saying the protesters are hypocrites because they're using banks. I sighed.

"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"

"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about ... You know ..."

"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."

"Whatever," he said, shrugging.

These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.

Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.

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WikiLeaks cables and the Iraq War

 

By Glenn Greenwald 

 

From a CNN report on why the Iraqi Government rejected the Obama administration’s conditions for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the 2011 deadline:

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top brass have repeatedly said any deal to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the withdrawal deadline would require a guarantee of legal protection for American soldiers.
But the Iraqis refused to agree to that, opening up the prospect of Americans being tried in Iraqi courts and subjected to Iraqi punishment.
The negotiations were strained following WikiLeaks’ release of a diplomatic cable that alleged Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed in a 2006 raid by American troops rather than in an airstrike as the U.S. military initially reported.

That description from CNN of the cable’s contents is, unsurprisingly, diluted to the point of obfuscation. That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.” The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm).
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