Fox News: In a discussion about Fox News’ power, Fox News’ media critic Bernard Goldberg offered up a startling admonition to Fox. “If Fox champions causes, if Fox likes one Candidate or treats them differently than another, then you know what, it’s blowing an opportunity to be the important voice in broadcasting.” Goldberg’s statement came in the middle of a segment in which he and Bill O’Reilly largely agreed, with predictable statements, about the so-called ...
PHOTOS: Bernard Goldberg in pictures
VIDEOS: Bernard Goldberg in videos
Breaking: Keith Olbermann Is Still Not A Fan Of Fox News
Here’s a shocker for you: Keith Olbermann is taking issue with Bill O’Reilly’s proclamation that Fox News “is the Most Powerful media agency in the world.” On Countdown tonight, the MSNBC host took a few minutes to dissect that claim—though his comments didn’t exactly have the effect he intended them to have.
Here’s what Olbermann had to say in response to a clip of O’Reilly’s FOX boast:
“Interestingly, the thing O’Reilly think...
OReilly: Fox News Is The Most Powerful Media Agency In The World
Forget the usual sniping about MSNBC-Bill O’Reilly wants you to know Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow simply don’t rate in one key area: global power domination.
“There is no power at MSNBC to do anything. Here at Fox, we have emerged-and correct me if you think I’m wrong-but I think Fox News is the Most Powerful media agency in the world. Not just the country, but the world.”
That bold claim may not be as surprising as the reaction from Bernie Go...
What Tea Party mandate? Most Americans want to keep the health care law -- and expand it
A majority of Americans want the Congress to keep the new Health Care law or actually expand it, despite Republican claims that they have a mandate from the people to kill it, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. The post-election survey showed that 51 percent of Registered Voters want to keep the law or change it to do more, while 44 percent want to change it to do less or Repeal it altogether. Driving support for the law: Voters by margins of 2-1 or greater want to keep some of its best-k...
Simpsons has Fox News #1 with racists
From David's earlier post at Crooks and Liars, here is the Simpsons' scene that got Bill O'Reilly's knickers in a knot. BillO buys knickers with a knot made in them at the factory. See, he has all the problems in the world already solved so he gets pissy about a cartoon show ribbing Fox News. I wonder how much noise he raised about the Muslim people getting riled over a cartoon in a newspaper? Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean. We're unbalanced. It's unfair! Very funny...
Williams signs new contract with Fox News
Rodeo girl wrangles with Cancer — and wins! Matt Lauer, co-host: Now the fallout over National Public Radio 's decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams over a remark he made on another network. He says he was just speaking his mind. NBC 's Norah O'Donnell is in Washington with the latest. Norah , good morning. NORAH O'DONNELL reporting: Hey, good morning, Matt. NPR is now under fire for dumping Juan Williams after his comments about Muslims on Fox News and the right has declared war o...
Second Amendment News and Video - FOX News Topics - FOXNews.com
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Allen West's Chief of Staff. The e-mail said the writer liked that Kaufman had encouraged people to "excercise our Second Amendment rights" and that "something big" would happen at a government building in Broward County, maybe a school. Martinez
Title:Fla. woman accused in school threats arrested Description Search
Allen West's Chief of Staff. The e-mail said the writer liked that Kaufman had encouraged people to "excercise our second amendment rights" an...
Why earmarks matter
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is famous for his love of Earmarks and so when he announced that he was going to support a Moratorium on them, that became headline news. Shortly after McConnell's announcement, the naysayers came out in full force and dismissed the importance of the actions of Congress. The conventional wisdom is that, since Earmarks only cover 1 percent of the Budget, their impact on fiscal policy will be minimal. What they call "only" one percent, equals $16 billi...
Glenn Beck: MSNBC Will Be Sacrificial Lamb In Exchange For Ending Fox News
Senator Jay Rockefeller confessed recently that he’d prefer a world without Fox News or MSNBC. Naturally, it didn’t take Glenn Beck too long to find an insidious left-wing scheme boiling beneath the surface: the left, Beck told Bill O’Reilly in a special Thanksgiving visit to the Factor, is planning on “sacrificing” MSNBC in a quid-pro-quo negotiation to eliminate FOX News.
The conversation sprung from comments made by former president Jimmy Carter , who once again ...
Liberals to Launch Centrist Political Movement
**Written by Doug Powers
Have you ever noticed that not as many people are concerned with “getting back to the middle” and away from political Partisanship when the country lurches left, but when the country shows signs of lurching to the right, suddenly calls for “centrism” abound?:
An alliance of Centrist Republicans and Democrats is seeking to organize a grass-roots movement targeting the middle of American politics, a political sphere depopulated by the midterm elec...
Rockefeller Censorship
Get a load of this, folks. A sitting United States senator is calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to pull the plug on Cable Networks such as MSNBC and Fox. You heard right, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) lamented recently that programming by Fox and other cable daysides apparently gets in the way of politicians and their ability to obfuscate and deceive the public.
While holding a hearing on the FCC, Rockefeller was reported saying, “It would be a big favor to political...
Eric Alterman: Think Again: Good Journalism Is Not Free, and Somebody's Got to Pay for It
If money is the "mother's milk" of politics then media must be its Baby Food. To some Conservatives the media are just another way to make money. Television was "just another household appliance, a toaster with a picture," as Ronald Reagan's appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, Mark Fowler, famously described it.
More ideologically inclined right-wingers have used media as a means of movement building--one that Liberals have sought to emulate. But Liberals and Progressives ...
Talk Box: Cable-News Prefers Profiling to Pat-Downs in TSA Debate
A new poll showing that most adults in the U.S. support profiling airline passengers based on nationality and looks was all the cable-news pundits needed to keep floating the idea of importing Israeli style "behavioral profiling" to airports as a way to stop all the junk-touching going on between TSA employees and American travelers. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said he thinks efficiency trumps civil liberties, while over at Morning Joe, TMP's Josh Marshall declared that he believes profiling works...
Parker/Spitzer Nowhere Near Competitors In Poor Showing Monday
Cable news Ratings, November 22, 2010:
•Another disturbingly poor performance from CNN’s Parker/Spitzer, which came in fourth among viewers 25-54 on Monday night, less than half the audience of HLN’s Nancy Grace, and barely 15 percent of the audience of Bill O’Reilly on Fox.
•CNN’s Larry King had a good night, besting MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow among viewers 25-54 for more than 22,000 viewers.
Here’s the full scoreboard:
TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +S...
Is The American Political System Broken?
Matt Yglesias and Pete Wehner are debating at The Economist.com. I take the points of both but side with Wehner in the end. The system is not broken, but one of the parties is:
We have in the current GOP a truly disturbing and cynical view of politics: there is nothing but party and ideology and the former is a vehicle solely for power to enact the other. The zero GOP votes for a stimulus package in the middle of the fastest downturn since the 1930s (that was one-third Tax Cuts!) tells you all...
Seizing the Internet
Staffers at the Federal Communications Commission with ties to the commission's chairman, Julius Genachowski , coordinated media and strategy planning with senior Free Press and MoveOn.org officials in the run up to Genachowski's announcement that he would be seeking an FCC vote on imposing so-called "Net Neutrality" rules on Broadband and the Internet, and doing so when Congress is out of session during the Thanksgiving and Christmas recesses.
"Net neutrality" is a policy proposal that would es...
Resentment News (and More Blondes Per Square Foot): Explaining What Fox News Channel Is
Not sure whether I will continue to do these things, but I recorded my second Late Night with PressThink video. It tries to explain “what Fox News actually is, which really means explaining it to myself…” The original is here if you wish to embed. Some of the key concepts: On FOX, the news exists in order to generate Controversy. And controversy exists in order to generate resentment. And the resentment is what generates Ratings. So this is my most concise idea about Fox: ...
FOX News sucks, so support FOX News
Here's an ad submitted by the Palm Center, a Santa Barbara-based research center that produces research and conferences on Don't Ask, Don't Tell:
The ad was rejected by Fox News. Here's Palm Center Director Aaron Belkin:
"I am surprised that Fox News would reject an ad featuring allied Generals, given that host Bill O'Reilly and guest contributor Liz Cheney have both expressed support for open gay service. This is an important time for input from all sides on this issue, and I hope Fox will ...
Fox News refuses to run ad about gay troops
Fox News doesn't want you to know that the result of Lesbian & gay Soldiers serving openly in other countries is... business as usual. That's according to Generals from allied militaries, who say that gay Troops do not undermine combat effectiveness. Here's The Palm Center's 30-second advertisement that Fox News refuses to run.
Voiceover: As the millitary prepares to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", our NATO allies have told us what to expect... Business as usual.
Major General Semianiw: "There i...
Corporate profits break record during US recession
Amid talk of the ongoing Recession and Tax Cuts for the rich, the US Commerce Department reported that American corporations have posted their highest profits in history. “American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 Trillion in the Third Quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms,” according to ...
USS George Washington Heads for South Korea in Wake of North Korean Attack Video 11/24/10
Here is video of the USS George Washington getting under way and heading to waters off South Korea as part of the U.S. response to North Korea’s artillery attack on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island yesterday. The attack killed two South Korean Marines and at least two civilians as well. Dozens more were injured in the unprovoked attack.
President Obama has condemned the attack, and ordered the USS George Washington to head to region where it will join more than 28,000 U.S. Troops st...
Whitman's maid story was pushed by nurses union
Nicandra Diaz Santillan says thenboss Meg Whitman knew she was undocumented. Irish unveil harshest cuts, tax hikes in history 11.24.10 One of the most tantalizing mysteries in California's 2010 gubernatorial election involved the connection between one of the state's poorest women and one of its wealthiest. How did an undocumented, Mexican-born housekeeper, Nicandra Diaz Santillan, end up in the national spotlight, boldly confronting her former boss, Billionaire GOP gubernatorial Candidate Meg ...
Karl Frisch: How Does Congressman Glenn Beck Sound?
In just a few weeks, Republicans will take control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since the 1994-midterm Elections brought them to power after nearly half a century in exile.
The freshly minted majority knew just who to thank for its 1994 victory: nationally syndicated conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. With great fanfare the GOP bestowed upon its cheerleader the unique title of honorary member of Congress.
It was quite an honor given the right-wing talker's long h...
Pentagon Alerts Defense Panels to New WikiLeaks Drop
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon warned the U.S. Senate and House Armed Services Committees that the website Wikileaks.org “intends to release several hundred thousand” classified U.S. State Department cables as soon as Nov. 26. The documents “touch on an enormous range of very sensitive Foreign Policy issues,” Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King wrote yesterday in an e-mail to the defense panels. “We anticipate that the release could negat...
Top Line Admiral Mullens Stand Against Dont Ask, Dont Tell
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:
Supporters of a Repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy have a powerful ally in Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has testified before Congress - and will do so again next week - that the policy banning gays and Lesbians from serving openly is not compatible with the Military’s values.
“I have a very difficult time leading an organization—one of whose pillars is integrity—and
A Favorite Gunloon
I'd almost forgotten about Sebastian Sassi, a favorite gunloon of mine.
Sebby used to post on a blog called "Pro-Gun Progressive." The site is dormant now. Sebby was most assuredly pro-gun--but the progressive part, not so much. After all, he actually campaigned for GOP Candidate and he himself ran for the US Congress on a Libertarian ticket. That didn't turn out so well as he became one of the few candidates in history not to get a single vote--not even his own.
Since giving up the gunloon bl...
Self-Proclaimed King of Birthers to Run for President
Maine Lift Had Problems Other Than Wind
Cop Fatalities up in 2010
Wayne Furniture Store Explodes, Trapping Three Inside
Danes Foil Terrorists
Self-Defense Claimed after Body Discovered in Suitcase
Tracking Terror " Even on Vacation
Tea Party Gets Dunked: Murkowski Good to Go
California: More Death Sentences, Still No Executions
Dmitry Medvedev Bucks Putin, Calls For Press Freedom