On January 19th I said...
Expect Bill to waggle a finger, squint his eyes and lie earnestly in the "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman" (come to think of it, maybe Clinton DIDN'T lie...maybe he was pointing at Hillary at the time.) Some charge, some slander, some lie from a self-righteously angry Bill is coming.
Here's the headline from todays headline from Reuters:
By Deborah Charles
SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (Reuters) - The resurgence of the old Bill Clinton, flushing with anger and wagging his finger as he fights for his wife's presidential bid, has cast a shadow over her campaign and could mar his new image as a global statesman.
Hillary cackles and cries on cue, Bill waggles his finger and squints his eyes and, meanwhile, no one on the left SAYS anything.
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216 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 216 of 216But, you'd vote for a turd if someone told you it was a Democrat.
Actually, I said that a steaming pile of shit would be better than any republican running. It's called a metaphor. A Democrat would be galactically superior to any Republican running. That's called truth.
Here's an analogy for you to study:
"Representative Ric Keller, a Florida Republican who said he was simply passing along common-sense advice from his constituents, compared the Iraqi government to an ungrateful next-door neighbor.
"'Imagine your next-door neighbor refuses to mow his lawn and the weeds are all the way up to his waist, so you decide you’re going to mow his lawn for him every single week,' Mr. Keller said. 'The neighbor never says thank you, he hates you and sometimes he takes out a gun and shoots you. Under these circumstances, do you keep mowing his lawn for ever?'"
(Jeff Zeleny, "12 Republicans Break Ranks on Iraq Resolution," The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2007)
And, the simile:
"Republicans are like 50 million Fredo Corleones."
or
"Republicans are like flies; they eat shit and bother people."
FOX goin down:
Fox News is in for a very rough 2008
Fox News
by Eric Boehlert | January 30, 2008 - 10:44am
article tools: email | print | read more Eric Boehlert
My guess is that Fox News guru Roger Ailes has been reaching for the Tums more often than usual early in the New Year, and there are lots of reasons for the hovering angst.
Let's take an extended multiple choice quiz. Right now, which of the following topics is likely causing the discomfort inside Ailes' Fox News empire?
A) CNN's resurgence as the go-to cable destination for election coverage.
B) The incredible shrinking candidacy of Fox News' favored son, Rudy Giuliani.
C) The still-standing candidacy of Fox News nemesis and well-funded, anti-war GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
D) The Democratic candidates' blanket refusal to debate on Fox News during the primary season.
E) Host Bill O'Reilly being so desperate for an interview from a Democratic contender that he had to schlep all the way to New Hampshire, where he shoved an aide to Sen. Barack Obama and then had to be calmed down by Secret Service agents.
F) Former Fox News architect and Ailes confidante Dan Cooper posting chapters from his a wildly unflattering tell-all book about his old boss. ("The best thing that ever happened to Roger Ailes was 9/11.")
G) The fledgling Fox Business Network, whose anemic ratings are in danger of being surpassed by some large city public access channels.
H) Host John Gibson's recent heartless attacks on actor Heath Ledger, just hours after the young actor was found dead.
I) Fox News reporter Major Garrett botching his "exclusive" that Paul Begala and James Carville were going to join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, and then refusing to correct the record.
I'd say it's A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. (I doubt Gibson's grave-dancing or Garrett's whopper caused Ailes a moment's concern.)
Bottom line is that Fox News is in for a very rough 2008. And the umbrella reason for that is quite simple: Eight years ago the all-news cable channel went all-in on the presidency of George Bush and became a broadcast partner with the White House. Proof of that was on display Sunday night, January 27, during Fox News' prime-time, "Fighting to the Finish," an "historic documentary" on the final year of Bush's presidency. Filmed in HD and featuring "unprecedented access," according to the Fox News press release, the show was pure propaganda. (I must have missed Fox News' "Fighting to the Finish" special back in 2000, chronicling the conclusion of President Bill Clinton's second term and his "extraordinarily consequential tenure.")
The point is that Fox News years ago made an obvious decision to appeal almost exclusively to Republican viewers. The good news then for Fox News was that it succeeded. The bad news now for Fox News is that it succeeded.
Meaning, when the GOP catches a cold, everybody at Fox News gets sick. As blogger Logan Murphy put it at Crooks and Liars, "Watching FOXNews getting their comeuppance has been fun to watch. They made their bed, now they're having to lie in it and it's not too comfortable."
The most obvious signs of Fox News' downturn have been the cable ratings for the big primary and caucus votes this year, as well as the high-profile debates. With this election season generating unprecedented voter and viewer interest, Fox News' rating bumps to date have remained underwhelming, to say the least.
For instance, on the night of the big New Hampshire primary, CNN, which habitually trails behind Fox News in the prime-time race, attracted nearly 250,000 more viewers than its top competitor, marking a changing-of-the-guard of sorts.
The turnaround was striking when you consider that in 2004, even with no Republicans running against Bush, Fox News was still able to draw 200,000 more viewers than CNN on the night of the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Yet in 2008, with a very competitive GOP field, CNN was the ratings winner from New Hampshire.
And just look at the ratings for January 19, which featured returns from the Nevada caucus coming in during the late afternoon, and then fresh returns from the South Carolina Republican primary being posted during prime time that night. In the past, Fox News would have absolutely owned that night of coverage, as conservative news junkies flocked to their home team -- Fox News -- to see the results. But no more. CNN grabbed nearly just as many prime-time viewers for the Republican South Carolina returns as did Fox News.
The problem for Fox News is that it's the Democratic race that's creating most of the excitement, yet Fox News has been forced to mostly watch the race from the sidelines. That's because last winter, after Fox News tried to smear Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for purportedly attending a radical Muslim school as a child, liberal bloggers launched an initiative to get Democratic candidates to boycott a debate co-sponsored by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party. (The boycott, powered by Foxattacks.com, was later extended to any and all Fox News debates.)
The point of the online crusade was not to simply embarrass Fox News or rattle Nevada Democrats for being out of touch with the grassroots masses that distrusted and despised Fox News. The point, instead, was to begin chipping away, in a serious, consistent method, at Fox News' reputation. To spell out that Fox News was nothing more than a Republican mouthpiece and that Democrats need not engage with the News Corp. giant.
The lack of Democratic debates for Fox News has meant a huge setback for the news organization from a ratings perspective. Just look at the grand slam CNN hit last week when, on January 21, it broadcast the much-talked-about Democratic debate from South Carolina. The CNN event not only creamed Fox News in the ratings, nearly tripling its audience that night, but the debate set a new cable news mark for the most viewers ever to watch a primary debate.
In fact, of the 10 most-watched debates this election season, Fox has aired just two, compared to CNN's five. Of the 10 most-watched debates, six have featured Democrats; four Republicans.
CNN is virtually guaranteed another monster ratings win this week with a pair of high-profile debates staged in California -- the Republicans on Wednesday night and Democrats on Thursday.
No wonder CNN's so giddy these days. Here's the spin CNN president Jonathan Klein put out following its New Hampshire ratings win: "There's a freshness and exuberance to our coverage that the others just aren't matching. ... Fox almost seems downright despondent in their coverage."
So I'm not the only one who feels like Fox News coverage, especially of the Republican field, often feels like a televised wake. Or maybe that's just been Fox News' collective, subconscious mourning of the Giuliani campaign.
After all, Sean Hannity serves as Fox News' official ambassador to the Giuliani campaign; a campaign that Ailes and Fox News were hoping to ride back into the White House. Yet despite showering Giuliani with all kinds of laudatory coverage, both Hannity and Ailes have been powerless, as they've watched Giuliani's rudderless campaign go nowhere for months.
Even an all-out Fox News marketing blitz to label Giuliani "America's Mayor" never got traction. In fact, it ranked right up there with the launch of New Coke, in terms of branding success. (Watch this clip to see the Fox News absurdity up-close.)
In the meantime, the rise of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and especially Mike Huckabee, with his populist streak, has caused all sorts of consternation at Fox News. Even the conservative Weekly Standard took noticed. The magazine recently wrote that "A lot of conservatives have problems with both Huckabee and McCain. Last night on Fox, for example, Sean Hannity could barely conceal his distaste for both pols."
And don't even mention Ron Paul's name to the folks at Fox News, who have stepped outside their role as journalists to try to kneecap the anti-war GOP candidate. The most blatant slap came right before the New Hampshire primary, when Fox News refused to include Paul in a televised GOP debate, despite the fact that just days earlier Paul grabbed 10 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus, nearly doubling the tally Giuliani posted.
Paul's Republican supporters became so incensed by the snub that they literally chased Sean Hannity through the New Hampshire night chanting "Fox News sucks!" and captured the scene in a homemade clip that really has to be seen to be believed. (To recap New Hampshire for Fox News: Hannity was pursued by a Republican mob, O'Reilly got into a shoving match with an Obama aide, and CNN grabbed more viewers. Now that's a week to remember!)
Oh, and we can't forget the wildly hyped launch of the Fox Business Network, which, News Corp. execs bragged, would dethrone longtime cable business news champ CNBC. Of course, that might happen one day. But the early ratings for Fox Business Network have been unbelievably weak.
After two months on the air, Fox Business Network, available in 30 million homes, was attracting, on average, just 6,300 viewers on any given weekday, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was good for a nearly invisible .05 rating. (By comparison, CNBC during that period was attracting 265,000 viewers.)
Making matters worse for Ailes was the fact that on January 22, as fears mounted about a possible global financial crisis, CNBC posted its best ratings in seven years, attracting 401,000 viewers that day.
The hurdle for Fox Business Network has always been simple: Why would investors and day traders in search of reliable business information turn from CNBC over to the Fox brand, which is so well-known for passing along one-sided information? News Corp. always assumed Fox News would help launch the business channel. But Fox News is taken seriously by so few people, it may be hurting the business launch.
After all, Fox News continues to embarrass itself with a type of journalism that nobody else in the industry would dare call professional. And for proof of that look no further than Major Garrett, who is supposed to be one of the channel's nonpartisan, serious journalists. He landed a recent scoop about how former advisers to Bill Clinton, Paul Begala and James Carville, were getting set to join Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Carville immediately shot the story down, telling Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent that very same day, "Fox was, is and will continue to be an asinine and ignorant network. I have not spoken to anyone in the Clinton campaign about this. I'm not getting back into domestic political consulting."
Begala did Carville one better and directly emailed Garrett to deny the story -- a story Garrett never bothered trying to check with Begala or Carville before it was broadcast. Garrett's response to Begala's blanket denial? Garrett told the Democratic operative that he would take his denial "under advisement." [Emphasis added.]
Garrett then went back on the air and repeated the same story, and added the fact that Begala had been on a conference call the day before with Clinton advisers, which was also false. And no, despite his earlier email exchange with Begala, Garrett never bothered to try to confirm the conference call story with him before reporting it on Fox News.
On his Fox News blog, Garrett did acknowledge the Begala email and claimed he'd be updating the fast-moving story soon -- which, he told readers, would likely be confirmed the next day when the Clinton campaign made the Begala/Carville announcement. But the next day when the story imploded, Garrett simply ignored the embarrassing gaffe.
Recounting the whole Kafka-esque charade at the Huffington Post, Begala wrote, "I've never had a more surrealistic day. If this is what one of Fox's best and most respected reporters is doing, what are the hacks up to?"
They're watching CNN capture the campaign ratings crown.
UPDATE: Fresh Nielsen numbers show Fox News' ratings woes continued over the weekend. During Saturday night's 8-10 p.m. ET coverage of the Democrats' South Carolina primary results, Fox News not only got trounced by CNN among viewers 25-54, but lost to MSNBC as well.
Defeat without end: 'Why is our economy tanking? The war, the war, the war'
Economic Policy | Iraq | War
by Robert C. Koehler | January 31, 2008 - 10:09am
article tools: email | print | read more Robert C. Koehler
"Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq, because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching . . ."
There it is again, that choking lie, so smoothly administered -- with just enough fear to help America gag down all that righteousness.
President Bush told it again in his final State of the Union address the other night, of course. What choice did he have? The truth, coming from him at this point, would be . . . too weird, too offensive, impossible to comprehend.
But the truth is that we've already failed in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East and Central Asia -- failed with consequences beyond reckoning. God knows someone will have to take a swig of political courage and acknowledge it one of these days, simply to stop the lie -- the lies, a governmental cluster bomb of them -- from doing further harm.
It's common knowledge now that we "went to war on a lie" -- the WMD scam -- but what isn't common knowledge is how the war is sustained on a daily basis by lies and partial truths and desperate, behind-the-scenes financial damage control. The war is all weapons systems and public relations, with the reality of wrecked countries and wrecked lives and a hemorrhaging of the national treasury suspended in media hoodoo and denial.
Consider the number 72,000. This number -- of total U.S. battlefield casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through Jan. 5, 2008 -- is simple enough, but as I ponder the fact that Paul Sullivan and his organization, Veterans for Common Sense, had to wrest it from the Department of Defense with a Freedom of Information Act request, and the fact that the only media outlet to pick up on it so far is the Scottish newspaper The Herald, I begin to grasp the extent of the deception in place sustaining the war on terror.
The reason that the casualty totals reported are far lower, Sullivan explained to me, is that the Defense Department releases the stats on only one category of battlefield casualty to the media, the number of GIs "wounded" in action, that is, harmed by the instrumentation of war: bullet, shrapnel or knife.
A GI who cracks his head on the windshield of his Humvee in a crash, though he may have suffered brain damage and had to be evacuated from the battlefield, is considered "injured," not "wounded," Sullivan explained, and thus doesn't show up in the figure the DoD releases and the media misleadingly report. Likewise, a GI who suffers a heart attack, or, let's say, one of those desert mystery illnesses, or a severe emotional collapse, is "ill," not "wounded," and is also MIA from the official casualty count. And in this way does the war remain a tad more statistically palatable to a distracted public.
"This administration has a concerted plan to conceal the human and financial costs of these two wars to maintain public support," said Sullivan, a Gulf War 1 vet and former Veterans Administration project manager who was blowing the whistle on the shoddy quality of vets' health care long before the Washington Post "broke" the Walter Reed scandal a year ago.
"There are some in the VA -- top political appointees -- who are fundamentally opposed to providing health care to vets," Sullivan went on, talking about the deeper deceptions of the war on terror that keep the political debate focused on vague future "consequences of failure" rather than the present-day consequences of a criminally inept, shoot-from-the-hip foreign policy of aggression.
It is at this level of deception that things get horrific: in the denial of care for physically and, especially, emotionally wounded vets -- men and women suffering from the private hell of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"VA hospitals and clinics have already treated 263,909 unplanned patients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars," according to a Vets for Common Sense press release. "On top of that, VA reported 245,034 unanticipated disability claims from veterans of the two wars."
Note well the words "unplanned" and "unanticipated." This facet of the Bush administration's lack of planning for its invasions has so far escaped significant notice. Apparently the neocon brain trust expected such a cakewalk that the costs and logistics of GI medical care weren't taken into account. Sullivan said he fully expects the VA to face as many as 700,000 patient claims -- including staggering numbers of PTSD claims as our battle-weary troops "deploy for a third or fourth combat tour in an escalating war that surrounds our troops with 360-degree combat 24 hours per day" -- which could run up a tab of $700 billion. The only way to control this monster expense is routine claim denial.
"This administration is so absolutely corrupt, incompetent and malevolent, it pales anything that came before it," Sullivan said. "Why is our economy tanking? The war, the war, the war."
Note particularly that the human and financial costs Sullivan and others are making are not "projections" for an endless war but estimates based on where things stand at the moment. But this is a war we can keep on losing into the indefinite future.
Yeah, Faux News viewers are REAL interested in the SC Democratic Primary results. The Republican Primary was the WEEK BEFORE!
That's sure some indicator of the network's "decline".
*yawn*
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
I sure hope ALL those guys & gals collecting unemployment checks heard that one.
1/30/2008
You Did Not Deserve Rudy (A Requiem):
You bastards. Here we are, well into the 21st century, six or so years into what Patrick Ruffini, on the blog of Hugh Hewitt, a man whose smile rests in some discomfiting netherworld between guy-who-masturbates-under-his-desk and child molester, calls "the transcendent issue of our time," which, one presumes is eternal war, motherfuckers, with the brown people. Hewitt and Ruffini and Fox "news" and Chris Matthews and so, so many other wannabe tough guys and gals swooned over Rudy Giuliani because Rudy, alas, sweet Rudy, he stood tall as the Twin Towers fell.
And somehow, despite the fact that he had no actual experience in actually fighting any enemy more powerful than a capicola-stuffed Mob enforcer and a homeless car window washer, he made all of them believe that because he was too stupid and arrogant to wear a mask at Ground Zero, he would be a great warrior. Goddamn, how cheap our heroes come in these Bush-befouled times.
Oh, poor America, how bereft we are this morning, how we have abandoned our Rudy, the man we have been told again and again is mayor to all of us, an appellation shoved down our throats like so many other lies, like WMDs and yellowcake uranium and "Dead or Alive" threats. Rudy, our shiny-domed savior, yes, deigned to lower himself from his six-figure speaking gigs and at least distance himself from the security consulting firm that bears his name in order to run for President, not for Rudy, no, but for you because, obviously, the nation was clamoring for a man who believes so much in marriage he's done it three times, a man who was brave enough to observe homosexuals in their dens of sodomy, a man who understood women because he put on lipstick and gold lame' and let a rich dude rub his fake tits, a man who was so tough on crime and so in touch with the zeitgeist on enhanced interrogation techniques that he could dismiss the wooden stick rape of a prisoner by New York cops, a man who prized loyalty above competence because independent thinking and accountability merely get in the way of one's goals, a man who understood how the economy works by making multi-million dollar lemonade out of the 9/11 lemons, a man who...god, one could go on.
Well, apparently not. Apparently, once people realized that Rudy Giuliani was a creepy, conniving, vindictive, incompetent, profiteering, self-aggrandizing, fearmongering motherfucker, a cocksucker of epic proportions whose gum-curling, face-eating grin made old people have heart attacks and babies cry, a tiny, scared lizard who swelled his cheeks to make himself look bigger than he was, well, they decided that, even though Rudy was walking on the earth, even though Sean Hannity and the rest of the Fox "news" cult were turning tricks for their Rudy pimp, America should not put its tenuous fate in the gnarled claws of the guy whose actual record on preventing terrorist attacks is somewhere between benign neglect and active harm. At least in this instance, God, Allah, Buddha, whoever or no one blessed us. No, no, you did not deserve him. However awful we may have behaved in this America, we did not deserve Rudy as our fate.
Now Rudy can slink back to his cushy life with his codependent wife, get ready to be called to account when Kerik's on trial, and go fuck himself with his World Trade Center models.
Rudy has lost in a hand of Florida Hold 'Em, the all-in bet where he was dealt a pair of aces and the flop, the turn, and the river were all fives, sevens, and jacks. Watching Rudy's stunning swan dive turn into one of the worst belly flops in recent political history has been marvelous. Dancing on his grave? Ask the firefighters, the cops, and the 9/11 families. That shit's fuckin' priceless.
'Why is our economy tanking? The war, the war, the war'
George Bush must be acting on some of Bill Clinton's economic advice and slowing some of the world's economies to save the planet for his grandkids.
returntothedarkages said...
'Why is our economy tanking? The war, the war, the war'
George Bush must be acting on some of Bill Clinton's economic advice and slowing some of the world's economies to save the planet for his grandkids.
Haha! Bush in for...seems like forever....and you guys are blaming Clinton (good luck with that one!) for Bushie screwing up the economy with his stupid war.
Unfortunately for you, Bill Clinton said no such thing, which you'd know if you read the entire quote. But why would you - Matt Drudge digests your news for you in nice bite-sized pieces, so what's the point of actually reading or thinking for yourself. The full quote, since you obviously need people to spoon-feed you the news:
“Everybody knows that global warming is real,” Mr. Clinton said, giving a shout-out to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, “but we cannot solve it alone.”
“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich countries — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.
“But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.
Fox News! Scary!
We live in a world where Democrats fear Brit Hume asking them questions in a debate.
Yeah, they can hack international politics.
Not.
But I knew that already.
Like no Democrat ever quoted a Republican out of context... LOL! If it weren't for misquoting other candidates positions, there'd be no Democratic Campaign.
What a comeback! How very schoolyard of you. "They did it first!"
Jake Tapper (and, by extension, Matt Drudge and, by even further extension, you) are caught, red-handed, in a lie, and the best you can come up with is, "Like no Democrat ever quoted a Republican out of context"? I guess I shouldn't expect any better from someone who think Evan is a legitimate pundit and not, you know, a hate-filled sack of crap without an iota of a clue about how the world works.
LOL! You've been exposed quoting and taking Republicans out of context at every turn all over this blog, and YOU are upset when it FINALLY happens to YOU?
What a maroon.
Grow tf up!
LOL! You've been exposed quoting and taking Republicans out of context at every turn all over this blog, and YOU are upset when it FINALLY happens to YOU?
What a maroon.
Grow tf up!
Haha...this trashy little punk is a genuine Sayetican. What a freak show you've found here.
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