Alerts

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

FOX continues to deny, despite all available evidence, that it did anything to promote the Tea Party movement. Still, FOX's latest pundit, Sarah Palin, delivered the main speech on Saturday night (an appearance for which she was paid $100,000) one that revealed Palin as not only a liar and misinformer but also reinforced the hypocrisy in her criticism of President Obama.

Palin, in a speech delivered from prepared remarks, complained about the president's handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, occasionally known as the underwear bomber, claiming that he "lawyered up" and would not provide further information. Reports from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair suggested quite the contrary. According to them, Abdulmutallab has and continues to provide valuable intelligence, even after the US granted him the same constitutional rights Palin worried would protect him too well.

Another invalid concern of Palin's had to do with what she perceived as President Obama's inability or unwillingness to use the term "war." Hardly an original accusation, Palin's sentiments echoed those of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Neither apparently did the research to recognize President's use of the terms more than half a dozen times throughout his State of the Union speech, an especially troubling lack of attention paid by someone FOX bothered to bring in to analyze the speech before and after its delivery.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Sarah Palin Telepalmer Tea Party

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Jon Stewart has, time and again, shown the ineptitude of the bias and selective amnesia characteristic of FOX News. After years of FOX serving as a punching bag for Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly, FOX's main ratings leader, had to bring Stewart to defend himself and his network against the host so often exposing their errors.

One accepts that Jon Stewart works in the name of comedy more than in the news world, hence the Comedy Central icon on-screen during his shows. In fact, he admits as much many times on his own, claiming no vestige of journalism. Nonetheless, O'Reilly took such great offense at Stewart's portrayals of FOX that he attacked Stewart's credibility and that of his audience. Early in the interview, O'Reilly asked Stewart the very broad question of how he felt President Obama had done thus far. Stewart offered a humorous, cogent, and detailed answer, and O'Reilly responded by saying, "You know, that's a pretty smart analysis. You know, a lot of people don't think you're smart. Did your writers come up with that?" Stewart responded by quipping, "No, they're in my pocket.

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BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

After President Obama so soundly defended his intellectual and policy credentials before the GOP, FOX had to approach denigrating President Obama from a different angle. Sean Hannity decided a great way to begin, and to further his goals with Republicans, included making a discussion introducing doubts and unfounded assertions about President Obama's theological leanings.

Searching the archives for an ABC interview with President Obama from July of 2009, Hannity aired footage to his guests for his "Great American Panel" of President Obama mentioning that he begins his days with a daily devotional from Josh DuBois, head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Hannity's problem arose from President Obama mentioning that the devotional includes "a passage -- Scripture, in some cases quotes from other faiths -- to reflect on." Immediately, Hannity complained about the devotionals, sent directly to President Obama's Blackberry, because "if he ever says ‘GD America’ or ‘America’s chickens have come home to roost,’ we won’t know about it." If Hannity had done any homework on DuBois, he may have found him hardly a radical, having helped President Obama meet with evangelical leaders on the campaign trail, but Hannity preferred to simply suggest otherwise to see who would pick up on the meme.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Sean Hannity Richard Maniter President Obama Faith Josh DuBois Islam

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Gen. Colin Powell Adds his Powerful Voice in Support of Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

WASHINGTON – Today, the effort to repeal the discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law received a monumental boost of support from General Colin Powell.  The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1990’s, who supported the laws passage back in 1993, changed his position in a statement sent out today saying, “attitudes and circumstances have changed”.  In voicing his support for the law’s repeal, Gen. Powell threw his full support behind the, “the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen.”
 
 “General Powell has made clear that his position is about effectiveness in the military,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “His powerful voice for ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a tipping point in favor of the brave men and women who are serving our nation in silence.  The support of respected present and former military leaders brings us closer to repeal, signaling that we’re moving forward and will get there soon.  Opposing repeal now means second-guessing some of our nation’s top military leaders, including the Joint Chiefs chairman who opposed open service in the 1990’s when Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell became law.”

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BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News FOX & Friends Alisyn Camerota Art Laffer Budget Stimulus

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

President Obama, fresh off of taking on the GOP during their retreat, has a message from the man dubbed Fear-Monger-in-Chief, Glenn Beck. Now that President Obama has shown he can handle confrontation from the right, Beck claims the president should worry about the truly dangerous people  -- not Beck's own listeners, but the left.

On his radio program, Beck claimed that President Obama said things to appease the left because "since I found Van Jones in the White House, and since we knew who he was and saw how dangerous this guy was, I maintain that the president is in more danger, in all of the meanings of that, from the people he surrounds himself with on the uber, uber left than anybody on the right." Beck fails to recall for his audience his problem with facts as they relate to the Van Jones, who happened to champion a boycott against Beck in the first place, but he goes on to accuse the left of adhering to such "dangerous radicals" as Saul Alinsky that will "do whatever it takes to get their agenda.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Glenn Beck President Obama James O'Keefe

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Sunday news programs tend to evaluate the news of the week and also to bring in "respected" members of the media to do a meta-analysis of the news, although all too often in painfully predictable fashion. Hence, bringing in Paul Krugman, Arianna Huffington, and George Will to discuss the news with Barbara Walters on ABC's This Week made sense, but Roger Ailes, president and CEO of FOX News, made an appearance as well and did exactly what one would expect from a FOX representative -- evade the facts and rely on ratings as validation.

Ailes began even-keeled enough, mostly contributing only that he would do the infamous Cosmopolitan spread for far less than Scott Brown did and that he did not believe the Brown election necessarily predicted widespread change as certain outlets portrayed it. He would not last long before Huffington aimed to take Ailes to task for "the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people." Ailes attempted to deflect responsibility by claiming Beck spoke innocuously of Hitler and Stalin, and therefore uttered truths. Huffington noted Ailes's departure from facts, to which Ailes only retorted, "I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words," then going on to decry any attempt to be the "word police." Beck's English, then, along with his wielding of a bat on the air while talking about how "you, too, could be the next victim of the killing spree," must work on a level beyond what Ailes chooses to comprehend.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Roger Ailes ABC This Week Barbara Walters Arianna Huffington Paul Krumgan George Will

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Barney Frank said at the World Economic Forum: "I think the biggest problem in the U.S. is...far too large a percentage of our resources go into the relatively unproductive segment of Defense. If we had not started the war in Iraq, and spent a trillion dollars there...we would have far more freedom now to respond to this short-term crisis."

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BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

As the nation awaited President Obama's first State of the Union speech, few prepared for it as eagerly as the pundits of FOX News. They began denigrating the speech and propping themselves before it began, and once he had finished speaking, their misinformation only continued unabated by reality.

People everywhere expected the factually challenged folks at FOX to step up in their attacks against President Obama, hence the move by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to recommend reporting FOX falsehoods, but few could have anticipated how much of a head start FOX would give Sarah Palin. Before President Obama uttered a word of the speech, FOX brought in Palin to undermine the content by evaluating what she anticipated it to contain.

She discussed things such as an expectation of the president "to mollify, rationalize what is perceived as a more lax-adaisical approach to dealing with the war on terror." Clearly reaching to discuss the unknown, Palin provided little analysis into the the president's eventual speech, but she did make transparent that someone had prepared her statement and littered it with terms intended to make her appear more intelligent, probably at the behest of others at FOX. Given that Palin failed to even write her autobiography and her inability to correctly pronounce all of the terms, the author of her words almost certainly was not her, calling into question what insight she had to offer at all.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Sarah Palin Sean Hannity SOTU

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Hosts Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck teamed up for the Bold & Fresh Tour, and all signs pointed toward the events as a perfect place for the two FOX personalities to say things even more outrageous than they would normally on the air. Few could have guessed that O'Reilly would go so far beyond acceptable discourse so as to recommend kidnapping public officials and compare a part of Chicago to an impoverished nation recently struck by a devastating earthquake, but O'Reilly just exhibits that kind of class.

While on the Tour, O'Reilly discussed a fantasy sequence about what he would do if asked by President Obama to serve as an advisor. He goes on to suggest he would order Leon Panetta to "kidnap [Nancy] Pelosi and [Harry] Reid," then to "take them to an undisclosed location," but to perform "no waterboarding...well, maybe with Nancy." Yes, O'Reilly suggested that the nation would improve if only the Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House were kidnapped with the possibility of waterboarding the latter.

One might try to write off the suggestion of torture for the Speaker of the House as simply a tasteless joke on O'Reilly's behalf if he had not chosen to repeat the sentiment days later. Monica Crowley had just mentioned on O'Reilly's show that what she wanted to hear from President Obama during the State of the Union. Her hope boiled down to President Obama's saying, "President Bush was right." Even O'Reilly recognized the implausibility of her ideas, remarking, "Monica, we asked you to come up with some suggestions, not The Twilight Zone." Still, he posited at least bringing back the use of waterboarding, "and then we’d have a demonstration on how we’re bringing it back," especially if it began with O'Reilly's favorite target for torture as "he [Obama] dunks Nancy Pelosi." O'Reilly clearly has a very serious problem with Speaker Pelosi and has no qualms in voicing as much.

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Bill O'Reilly Glenn Beck Bold & Fresh Tour Nancy Pelosi Harry Reid Waterboarding