Rupert Murdoch of News Corp / Fox News Admits Manipulating the News for
Agenda - Admits he supported the Bush Agenda in Iraq - He is part of the
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in the 2008 Presidential Election
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Showing posts with label Fox News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fox News. Show all posts
Monday, December 9, 2013
10 Biggest Doozies From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week
10 Biggest Doozies From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week
Friday, December 6, 2013
Foreign Press Says What America’s Won’t: Sarah Palin is a Traitor
Foreign Press Says What America’s Won’t: Sarah Palin is a Traitor
“By attacking the democratically elected President of the United States of America at a sensitive time in her country’s history, she shows the tact of a boorish drunkard bawling obscenities at a funeral….Bancroft-Hinchey has been proven correct by the way MSNBC handled Martin Bashir. Palin was engaging in more treasonous talk when she compared the national debt to slavery. Her comments were more of Palin reminding everyone that the president is black, and in her view that is a very bad thing.
And now she turns not only against the fibre and backbone of her country, but against its democratically elected President, accusing him of being incompetent for not stopping Wikileaks. Where was she and where was her GOP before and during the 9/11 attacks? She accuses President Obama of not taking “steps” to assure the leaks were not published. What “steps”?……
If anything is a threat to the national security of the United States of America, it is this screaming, unrefined oaf with as much class as a searing release of flatulence followed by hysterical giggling at a state banquet. Is this what the people of the USA deserve?
To attack the President of the country at a time when the USA needs to close ranks and stand together to consolidate the enormous strides his (President Obama’s) intelligent and respectful approach has achieved in building bridges, when her party’s period in government bombed them, Spankin’ Sarah Palin comes across as a pitifully inadequate anachronism from the times of the Far West.”
Bashir saw through her latest barrage of hate speech gibberish, and called her out in the most graphic way possible. The media responded by bowing to the imaginary power, and very real privilege of Sarah Palin.
The American Press won’t say what the International Press will for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that there are many agendas at play here, causing truth to take a back-seat to dollars. As a noted US media critic once said, “everything to sell and nothing to tell.” And what a shame, because this isn’t about partisanship or even elitism; it’s about patriotism and who better to cover this issue than our domestic press?
Ms Palin cloaks her myth in her flag, but one has to question just what that symbol represents to Ms Palin, given that she won’t stop attacking this country’s sitting President during each crisis that presents itself. The word patriotism derives from the Greek patriōtēs meaning “fellow countryman”; that would include all of us, even President Obama. I’m afraid Ms Palin and her followers conflate their false community of nationalism with patriotism, and under the guise of said nationalism, justify harming America’s standing in the world along with the very unity of our nation. One can’t help but question Ms Palin’s true motives, along with her jingoistic, tabloid-driven patriotism, since she beats this drum of division in each public appearance she makes.
One wonders, can Sarah Palin can see what the Russians see: a shrill, desperate demagogue more interested in making money and getting famous than in the best interests of her country; a woman so jealous of a sitting President that she takes every blow her country faces and exploits it, turning it into an even more negative, frightening moment while distracting from the real work – never once stepping into the debate to lead, to soothe, to unite.
Never once has Ms Palin shown her love for this great country by standing by it and her President in a time of need. Instead, she views each crisis as a cynical opportunity to sow the seeds of division among fellow countrymen. During the oil spill crisis, she took to Fox News to spew nonsense about the Dutch not getting their phone calls received, claiming she knew how to fix the leak if only the President had called on her. Of course, since she was on Fox News, no one bothered to ask her why, then, she did nothing to stop the oil spills that took place during her brief tenure as Governor of Alaska.
When she went to Hong Kong for a speaking engagement, Ms. Palin attacked her President on foreign soil during a time of war. On her first book tour, Palin and her entourage of hit men (aka, her father, et al) attacked the Commander in Chief on military bases. In times of major decisions regarding the war in Afghanistan, Palin has mocked the President when he followed the course of action recommended by his Generals. On 9/11, Palin bashed the President. In her speeches, Ms Palin is sure to remind her followers that Obama’s foreign policy is weakening America while she accuses the President of not loving his country. During the WikiLeaks crisis, Palin blamed the President instead of calling for a united front for our country.
Ms Palin and her followers justify this unpatriotic behavior by claiming the President is “un-American”. We all know what that’s about but if we’re left with any doubt, we have only to listen to Ms Palin assure her listeners that they have every right to ask for the President’s birth certificate:
And here she is just weeks ago suggesting that the failure to vet the President and his associations has harmed our democracy. Talk about projection.
Ms Palin’s heavily moderated Facebook page was just months ago full of comments calling for the death of our President, sedition, and the overthrowing of the Obama administration as being God’s will. Those comments were left standing while comments questioning Ms Palin in any way were scrubbed. Ms Palin stands for a level of vitriolic, simmering revulsion so steeped in delusions of self-righteousness, it’s tough to swim to sanity once you’ve been washed in the blood of her particular lamb.
We are at war, facing a global economic crisis, still reeling from a devastating oil spill and now facing the challenges brought on by the WikiLeaks dump. Yet, on every issue of importance, Palin has inserted herself with jarring accusations against the President, offering nothing but malicious hate fueled by a failure to understand what she doesn’t understand.
Ms Palin’s particular brand of tabloid patriotism leaves out anyone who disagrees with her, beats her in a contest, dares to question her, or has the temerity to actually read and debate important issues. She’s become an international embarrassment:
“If Sarah Palin is not some kind of a massive political joke in the USA, wheeled out to liven up the political scene from time to time with nonsensical and pastiche (one hopes) displays of sheer and utter ignorance, then it is worrying.”
Sarah Palin is the figurehead for an unpatriotic movement here in the United States of America. A movement so bereft of love for this country that they would go to any means to see it fail, in order to elevate themselves into power. A movement which just yesterday met with the democratically elected President of this fine country and then immediately stabbed him in the back in their post-game press conference.
And nestled into this web of traitors is one particularly odious senator, Senator John McCain, upon whose shoulders the blame for this national embarrassment rests. Ms Palin is the front-runner of this group for Presidential candidate in 2012 according to polls. This makes sense, given the Republican Party’s current gamesmanship of our political system, wherein their only goal is to destroy the President – not to lead, not to govern – but to destroy. At any cost necessary.
When the Russians are calling you out for failing to support your country in a time of need, for attempting to bring her to her knees with petty attacks on the President, you have seriously jumped the patriotism shark. Sarah Palin is the traitorous figurehead of the GOP, whose only purpose seems to be to assist them in their goal to bring down President Barack Obama.
So while a scant few of them (Rove, Scarborough, and a few of the “elites” who are not elected officials; the elected officials are quivering in the corner rather than standing up to the myth of Palin lest they alienate what little remains of the Republican Party base) make the rounds distancing themselves from her now, do not forget how they set her into motion in 2008 to do exactly what she’s doing now. And do not forget that even as they take a slight step away from the noxious whiff of disgust that follows in Ms Palin’s wake, they’re not silencing her; they’re not calling her out for her attacks on the President. No, the most they can muster from their cowardly bunkers of fear from which they wage their war on America is mild outrage that she would insult the Bushes or Reagan.
Nary a word about her outrageously destructive actions toward our current President. And why is that? Because Ms Palin is doing the dirty work for the Republican weaklings; sowing seeds of division, suspicion, hatred, and rage against a sitting President.
And those, my friends, are not the actions of a patriot. True Glasnost has arrived when the International Press says what the American Press will not. Sarah Palin is no patriot.
(Note: The original version of this story was first published on December 1, 2010. It has been updated to reflect recent events.)
Foreign Press Says What America’s Won’t: Sarah Palin is a Traitor was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Fri, Dec 6th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved
How the Christian Right Plays Victim While Imposing Its Ideology on America
How the Christian Right Plays Victim While Imposing Its Ideology on America
December 5, 2013
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So why then are we hearing all these people who live their lives attacking religious freedom complaining all the time that “religious freedom” is under attack from liberals? Why does every religious-right publication and event echo the claim that right-wing Christians are somehow being stripped of the very right to religious freedom the right has worked tirelessly to take from everyone else for decades?
The simple answer is they’re lying. Claiming the mantle of victimhood is so politically potent that religious-right leaders are going to do it, no matter how untrue it is, because, to be blunt, they’re not held back by any moral interest in honesty. Getting Grandma to think she's going to lose her church is a great way to get her to sign her Social Security check over to your organization.
The longer answer is that the religious right has concocted a new strategy to squelch religious freedom: By redefining “religious freedom” to mean its opposite. The hope is that by repeatedly using the term “religious freedom” when they mean “giving the Christian right power to impose their faith on others,” they can eventually drain the phrase of all its meaning and finally, after decades of fighting secularism, make it easier for the religious right to strip away individual protections for religion. In other words, they hope by saying that up is down long enough, the public and the courts will finally believe it.
This attitude—that their “religious freedom” can only be protected if they get to foist their faith on everyone else—is nakedly obvious every year when the whining about the mythical “war on Christmas” begins. Needless to say, there is no war on Christmas. There is no effort whatsoever to prevent anyone from celebrating Christmas, buying Christmas presents, going to mass on Christmas, or playing that Manheim Steamroller record until you want to claw your ears out. Without fail, every example the right comes up with to prove there’s a war on Christmas is, in fact, something else: An attempt to recognize that not everyone is a Christian and respect that there are multiple holidays people may be celebrating in lieu of, or in addition to, Christmas.
This belief that Christians, particularly right-wing Christians, are entitled to be acknowledged at the exclusion of everyone else and entitled to have their holidays held out as more important than everyone else’s cropped up immediately after Thankgiving, right on schedule this year. The National Republican Congressional Committeetweeted out a picture of a T-shirt they’re selling that says, “’Happy Holidays’ is what liberals say,” in Comic Sans font, of course. On the back it reads, “Merry Christmas.” The “joke” doesn’t make sense unless the viewer agrees with the premise that conservative Christians are better than everyone else, and in order to honor how much more important they are, all other holidays and faith traditions need to be hidden away, as if they’re shameful.
Now the belief that
“religious freedom” actually means the religious right gets to impose
its beliefs on you is going to be tested by the Supreme Court. While
many think the case of Hobby Lobby suing to avoid having to offer
insurance benefits that cover contraception is primarily about
reproductive rights, the real question at the center of the case is how
much is your boss allowed to impose his religion on you, just because
you work for him?
The employee/employer relationship should be
simple: You work for a company, and they pay you with a combination of
cash and benefits in compensation. Since you earned it, your cash and
benefits belong to you to use as you see fit. But Hobby Lobby—and many
other companies run by Christian conservatives—isn’t happy with that way
of doing things. They want to claim that your compensation package
still belongs to them after you’ve earned it and should be tailored to
fit their religious beliefs, even if you, the rightful owner of the
compensation package, do not share their beliefs. In their lawsuit, they
claim that they should be able to determine how you use your insurance
plan, and that they should be exempt from the federal government’s
mandatory minimums in how they compensate you because they claim to have
religious objections.If Hobby Lobby wins its case, the precedent will create a massive incentive for corporations to sue to have all sorts of rights to use the fact that you work there as an excuse to force their religious beliefs on you. If your boss can force you to use your earned benefits according to his religious dictates, why not the rest of your compensation? Since he signs your paycheck, will he be able to sue and say that you shouldn’t be able to spend it in ways he believes violate his religion? Being able to claim that their “religious freedom” exempts them from all sorts of labor laws will be a massive boon to the religious right, and they will certainly start looking for ways to expand the ways they can force you to live by their religious rules, beyond how you use your insurance.
Unsurprisingly, Hobby Lobby’s owner is a big fan of ignoring the First Amendment and demanding that the government endorse religion, as well. Not just any religion, but specifically the conservative interpretation of Christianity. The owner of Hobby Lobby has spent a fortune trying to get Bible study into public classrooms. He thinks by making it an “elective” course, that creates enough cover, but the Constitution is clear that the government cannot endorse any religion. Having a Bible study course is a clear endorsement of religion, something conservatives would immediately grasp if a school tried to start a Koran study course. But part of the religious right’s new definition of “religious freedom” is the belief that conservative Christianity is special and that its followers are entitled to foist their religion on people in ways no other religious believers get to do.
That’s what the religious right means by religious freedom: The removal of your right to have your own beliefs, free from interference by people who have power over you. The right dearly wants religious freedom to mean the right of conservative Christians and only conservative Christians to foist their beliefs on you through your job and through the government and squelch any cultural attempts to be inclusive of all the diverse belief systems in America. The only way to fight back is for liberals to reclaim the term “religious freedom” for what it really means: The right to choose for yourself what you believe without having the law or your boss trying to tip the scales.
Rumored closeted celebrity: Bill O'Reilly
Rumored closeted celebrity: Bill O'Reilly
December 2, 2012
This column will count down the top five celebrities rumored to
be in the closet. We will start out with Fox News Anchor and Tea Party
favorite, Bill O'Reilly.
Bill O'Reilly has compared
gay people to Al Qaida and has spoken out against gay rights several
times on his show. But there are people who think Bill, himself, has
danced with Dorothy. For one thing, Mr. O'Reilly wasn't married until
his late forties. His marriage, however, is anything but typical.In 2004, Bill O'Reilly settled
with a co-worker after tapes allegedly revealed that he uses a dildo
and vibrator on himself. Not that we are judging, but do straight men
really use vibrators and dildos on themselves? Besides, Bill O'Reilly
fits the perfect stereotype of a closeted gay man—he is angry,
conservative, and hates homosexuals. We can easily picture Bill O'Reilly
hanging out at a gay club looking for a trick
Thursday, December 5, 2013
10 Things From Fox News Channel That Are Way Worse Than Martin Bashir’s Poop Remark
10 Things From Fox News Channel That Are Way Worse Than Martin Bashir’s Poop Remark
Today on Fox & Friends, Sarah Palin praised MSNBC for accepting Martin Bashir’s resignation after the anchor delivered a monologue in which he suggested pooping in Palin’s mouth. While in poor taste, the line was a reference to the treatment of slaves in the old South in an attempt to debunk Palin’s remarks about the national debt being like slavery.
Try not to snarf your beverage when you read this but today Palin said to talking monkeys Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, “It was refreshing to see, though, that many in the media did come out and say, ‘Look, our standards have to be higher than this.’”
And guess what? She’s right. Cable news standards should be higher. So perhaps Palin should begin with her own house: Fox News Channel. It’s well documented and a huge understatement that Fox News wallows in its own egregiously awful standards — far worse by a factor of a thousand than any other cable news outfit. The very existence of integrity-free Fox & Friends alone would make Paddy Chayefsky and Edward R. Murrow spin in their graves, say nothing of the existence of the standard-less network on which it airs.
So while Palin and others dance on Bashir’s career grave, while simultaneously demanding higher standards in cable news, here now are ten things from Fox News Channel that are way worse than what Martin Bashir said. And it’s worth noting that no one was fired or forced to resign as a consequence of these things:
1. Brian Kilmeade: “all terrorists are Muslims.”
Yes, he’s an easy target, what with the brain damage and all, but this was particularly heinous considering, you know, the long list of non-Muslim terrorists such as the IRA, Timothy McVeigh or the Unibomber, not to mention scores of so-called “pro-life” terrorists who bomb abortion clinics and murder doctors.
2. Anchor Heather Nauert: YMCA swim class for Muslim girls proves Sharia Law is “everywhere.”
While we’re on the Islamophobia topic, we might as well include this doozy. On Monday, Nauert was reporting on a nothing story about how a YMCA in Minnesota carved out a brief window of time for a swim class exclusively for Somali-American girls. Nauert, reading from a prompter, said, “Well, the minority becoming the majority at one community pool. Sharia law is now changing everything.” Yes, everything. That is if a 30 minute block of time at a YMCA pool in St. Paul is “everything.”
3. ‘The Five’ host: breast cancer awareness = the feminization of the NFL.
While chatting with proto-hominid Greg Gutfeld, Random-Anonymous-Female-Panelist-X on “The Five” went on rant about how the NFL has become feminized because some players are wearing pink cleats in recognition of breast cancer awareness. Yes, this is definitely an area that’s ripe for flippant news commentary with a not-so-vague homophobic twist. Breast cancer awareness. Comedy gold. Next week, “The Five” will dig into childhood leukemia and sudden infant death syndrome. It’ll be hilarious.
4. Fox News contributor Erik Rush: Obama should be overthrown by “any means necessary.”
Even though I wrote about this eliminationist nutball the other day, he still qualifies for the list. Fox News is infamous for hosting people like Rush who fantasize about armed revolts or even assassinating the president. Contributor Liz Trotta once said on Fox News: “…and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama — Obama — well, both if we could.” Har-har. Even Glenn Beck hinted that we need firearms to protect ourselves from the president. He also joked about poisoning Nancy Pelosi.
5. John Stossel: Hanged Barney Frank in effigy.
A New York Magazine reporter asked Stossel, “What’s hanging above your sofa?” Stossel, always the classy one, replied, “Barney Frank in effigy.”
6. Fox News outed the identity of SEAL Team Six soldier.
As a result, websites belonging to al-Qaida affiliates, including Al-Fidaa, posted the SEAL’s photo and name. In response, Fox News’ executive vice president John Moody said the soldier should have “no expectation of privacy.”
7. Fox News contributor Liz Trotta: if you serve in the military, expect to be raped.
Speaking of the troops the network claims to support, if you’re a woman and in the military get ready to be raped one of these days because you clearly asked for it. By the way, it’s Trotta again — clearly not fired after joking about killing Barack Obama four years earlier. Here’s the exact quote: “And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact.”
Should I go on? Hell, I haven’t even gotten to Eric Bolling yet. Here are four big ones.
8. Eric Bolling: forced vasectomies for welfare recipients.
Yes, the government should round up poor people and force them to undergo a medical procedure in which their scrotums are opened and their vas deferenses are cut in order to make sure they don’t have any more children. So much for small government conservatism.
9. Eric Bolling: President Obama is “chugging 40s.”
Now if Bolling had said “chugging poop” he totally would’ve been fired, right? Higher standards, etc. No?
10. Eric Bolling: Obama hosted “hoodlum in the hizzouse.”
Fox News hosts have really, really tried to stereotype the president as someone he’s not. But don’t you dare accuse Bolling of being racist…
11. Eric Bolling: Obama is lying about his birth certificate.
…because he’s totally not. Unless by racist you mean someone who, on numerous occasions, underscored the president’s race and ethnicity within the context of a widely debunked conspiracy theory that was invented solely as a race-baiting dog-whistle.
Okay, so that was eleven — not ten. And there are, of course, many, many more. Regardless of what Bashir said or the context in which he said it, nothing that’s been said on MSNBC comes close to joking about assassinating the president or hanging a congressman in effigy or poisoning the House minority leader. So if we’re going to address cable news standards, let’s start by addressing the Fox News assassination fantasies and go from there. Maybe at some point way down the list of resignation-worthy trespasses we’ll land on, you know, poop remarks.
War On Common Sense
War On Common Sense (via Lipstick & Politics)
Originally published on December 12, 2011. Can we please end this “War on Christmas” nonsense already? It would be awesome if news organizations could get back to reporting actual news instead of fanning the flames of a phony controversy. I know…
Glenn Beck: Liberal Catholics brainwashed my daughter into thinking I was anti-LGBT
Glenn Beck: Liberal Catholics brainwashed my daughter into thinking I was anti-LGBT (via Raw Story )
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck revealed this week that his own daughter accused him of being “intolerant” about same sex marriage after she left home and attended a Catholic university. In an interview on Wednesday, Pastor Mark Driscoll explained…
Bill O'Reilly Tries to Sell His Roots as Working Class - Again
He actually had guests on to debate that issue.
It's crazy, I know, but that's the state of Fox News. Another fallacy Bill O. brought to the table was that his parents were poor indeed when he was growing up. Over the years Bill O'Reilly has always tried to characterize his upbringing as that of a typical-poor working-class stiff, but nothing could be farther from the truth. While debating the stupid question of 'would Jesus support a nanny state,' he attacked poor people who needed government assistance like food stamps while saying his parents were poor too, but always managed to put food on the table.
O'Reilly: Some of the people who don't have enough to eat, it's their fault particularly with their children and this is where it really becomes dicey. If you’re an addict or a drug addict and you can’t hold a job, and you can’t support your children, […] then it's your fault you’re bringing the havoc. You’re asking people who may be struggling themselves to put food on the table to give their tax money to you, […] and then you’re going to buy booze and drugs with it...because there's no government regulation with it and that's my problem.Back in the fifties and sixties, his father was an accountant who commuted to NYC everyday from Long Island and made up to 35,000.00 dollars a year as per Bill. If we adjust that to modern dollars, you'll see his father was making a roughly very good living indeed.
Duboise : most of the food goes to working families....
O'Reilly: My parents didn't make a lot of money and they were able to put food on the table and I'm just seeing a system that's creating dependence.
$35,000 in 1965 would be $255,100 in 2013.BIll O'Reilly moved to Long Island in 1951 so if his father was making 20,000 dollars in 1965 then it would calculate out to 148K dollars of buying power in 2013.
Any person who needs to lie about his background is pretty sick to begin with. Sprinkle in a egomaniacal personality, and you have Bill.
Now let's define what 'working class" really means. Here's one definition.
The socioeconomic class consisting of people who work for wages, especially low wages, including unskilled and semiskilled laborers and their families.The working class typifies people that do manual labor to survive. Working as an accountant is not considered manual labor, but a highly skilled job. Why the lie, BillO?
Is Bill O'Reilly dependent on making believe his family was poor?
Megyn Kelly Loses It Over Huge New Obamacare Problem: ‘That’s Your Money!’
Megyn Kelly Loses It Over Huge New Obamacare Problem: ‘That’s Your Money!’
She STILL doesn't get it's PRIVATE INSURANCE!!!
Dec. 3, 2013 11:39pm
The Obama administration is reportedly
preparing to implement a “workaround” that instructs insurers to
“estimate” the cost of health care plans and the government will
determine the actual costs later, Reuters reports. This “workaround” is
needed because the Obamacare payment system isn’t working properly.
“You’re touting this improved
Healthcare.gov,” a befuddled Kelly began. “How does the system work
without a payment mechanism? There is no cash register!”
Reuters has the “bombshell” report on the new “workaround”:
The administration is planning a “workaround” for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans.Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to “true up” payments, he said.“The intent is to make sure plans get paid on time, which is a good thing,” Durham told Reuters.The fix puts an additional “burden” on insurance companies, already taxed by having to double-check faulty enrollment data from the HealthCare.gov system.
Kelly was shocked that the administration would “let the insurance companies estimate what they should get.”
“Then the feds are going to cut them a
big check and figure out later what the real amounts are supposed to be!
That’s your money!” she added. “Think about that for a moment. Think
about that. We’re talking about one-sixth of the U.S. economy and this
is the system that they have now settled on.”
Kelly went on to remind viewers that
President Barack Obama on Tuesday assured the American people that
Obamacare is “working and will continue working in the future.Rush Limbaugh: Obama is ‘having an orgasm’ because the pope is ‘ripping America’
Rush Limbaugh: Obama is ‘having an orgasm’ because the pope is ‘ripping America’ (via Raw Story )
Rush Limbaugh suggested on Wednesday that President Barack Obama was “having an orgasm” after Pope Francis called unfettered capitalism the “new tyranny,” which the radio host said was the same as “ripping America.” After the president mentioned…
Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us
Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us
-
Nov. 30, 2013: Pope Francis arrives in St. Peter's Basilica to lead a Vesper prayer at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Pope Francis is undergoing a popularity surge comparable to the
way Barack Obama was greeted by the world in 2008. And just as President
Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a
disaster for the Catholic Church.My fellow Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in the left-wing media are in love with him.
Much is being made of his ‘compassion’ and ‘humility,’ but kissing babies and hugging the sick is nothing new. Every pope in recent memory has done the same, yet only now are the media paying attention. Benedict XVI and John Paul II refused to kowtow to the liberal agenda, and so such displays of tenderness were under-covered.
Francis is beating a retreat for the Catholic Church, and making sure its controversial doctrines are whispered, not yelled – no wonder the New York Times is in love.
Just like President Obama loved apologizing for America, Pope Francis likes to apologize for the Catholic Church, thinking that the Church is at its best when it is passive and not offending anyone’s sensibilities.
In his interviews with those in the left-wing media he seeks to impress, Francis has said that the Church needs to stop being ‘obsessed’ with abortion and gay marriage, and instead of seeking to convert people, “we need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.”
This softly-softly approach of not making a fuss has been tried before, and failed. The Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s aimed to “open the windows” of the Church to the modern world by doing just this.
The result was the Catholic version of New Coke. Across the West where the effects were felt, seminaries and convents emptied, church attendance plummeted, and adherence to Church doctrine diminished.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI worked hard to turn this trend around, but now Pope Francis wants the bad old days to resume.
Proof of this is Francis’ aforementioned statement of the Church being obsessed with controversial issues and the need to rebalance by talking about it less.
That Francis didn’t see that this would be translated into headlines of “Pope tells Catholics to shut up about things that offend Sandra Fluke” by every left-wing media outlet shows a terrifying naivety.
Nor do his comments reflect reality.
For years, the majority of priests didn't dare cover controversial topics in their homilies in fear of getting angry letters from pick-and-choose Catholics outraged that their pastor dared to say something out of line with the Democratic Party.
Most parishioners therefore haven’t heard the Church’s argument on controversial topics. Consequently, usage of contraception is only slightly lower in Catholics than in the general population, and support of gay marriage is actually higher in Catholics than the general population. Perhaps talking about it even less isn’t the answer?
In trying to please the media and the modern world, Francis mistakes their glee for respect. Just like Obama thought he’d won over Putin by promising a reset, Francis thinks by talking vacuously about the poor, he will be respected. And it is vacuous -- the pontiff recently asked why it’s news that the stock market drops but not when an old person dies. When your leader is asking, “Why isn’t the newspaper a laundry list of obituaries?” you know you elected the wrong guy.
What effect is this having? For all we’re being told about how ‘disenfranchised’ Catholics are being brought back by Francis ‘reaching out,’ a recent Pew Research study showed that in America, the number of people who identify as Catholic has actually decreased
. Lesson: rubbing the egos of Church-hating left-wingers doesn’t make more Catholics, it just makes the Church less respected.Francis not only panders to enemies and professional grievance mongers, but also attacks his allies. Just as Obama snubs Britain and Israel, Pope Francis swipes at practicing Catholics.
So not only has he insulted, and severely damaged the work of, pro-life and pro-marriage groups with his comments, he has also gone on the attack, dismissing Catholics who attend the older rites in Latin as ‘ideologizing’ and being guilty of ‘exploitation.’ Apparently “Who am I to judge?” doesn’t apply here.
On world matters, Francis’ statements are embarrassing. About communism, a destructive ideology that slaughtered millions of Catholics, he said:
“Learning about it through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized…an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church."
Not such kind words for the free market, however. In his recent apostolic exhortation he slammed unfettered capitalism, calling it ‘a new tyranny.’
Apart from the fact that there is no major nation practicing unfettered capitalism (like Obama, Francis loves attacking straw men) there is more real tyranny in socialist cesspools like Francis’ home of Argentina than in places where capitalism is predominant.
In the document he rejects the free market and calls for governments to overhaul financial systems so they attack inequality. In doing so he shows himself painfully misguided on economics, failing to see that free markets have consistently lifted the poor out of poverty, while socialism merely entrenches them in it, or kills them outright.
Like Obama, Francis is unable to see the problems that are really endangering his people. Like Obama he mistakes the faithful for the enemy, the enemy for his friend, condescension for respect, socialism for justice and capitalism for tyranny.
As a Catholic, I do hope Francis’ papacy is a successful one, but from his first months he seems hell-bent on a path to undo the great work of Benedict XVI and John Paul II, and to repeat critical mistakes of the past.
Adam Shaw is a News Editor for FoxNews.com and has written on Anglo-American issues as well as topics related to the Roman Catholic Church. He lives in New Jersey and can be reached here
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Wednesday, December 4, 2013
What New Obamacare Problem Got Megyn Kelly So Angry?
What New Obamacare Problem Got Megyn Kelly So Angry?
by Josh Feldman | 10:37 pm, December 3rd, 2013
Megyn Kelly kicked off her show Tuesday night utterly bewildered at a report she touted as striking another blow for Obamacare, after two whole months of problem after problem plaguing the health care website. This time, it’s about the payment mechanism for the site, and Kelly was astonished to discover that because no one is able to actually pay for plans on the site yet, the plan is to “estimate” the cost of each plan and for the government to just work out that estimate with insurers.
Yep. A program designed to provide affordable health care to millions of people will be temporarily whittling the payment system down to a crap shoot.
Kelly cited a new report from Reuters on a “short-term” fix for the Obamacare site’s payment system as they get the kinks sorted out.
The administration is planning a “workaround” for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans.First of all, the very fact that the payment system isn’t working was too much for Kelly. She cried, “How does the system work without a payment mechanism?! There’s no cash register!”
Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to “true up” payments, he said.
“The intent is to make sure plans get paid on time, which is a good thing,” Durham told Reuters.
But for the government to just estimate the cost of health care plans… to say Kelly was flabbergasted would be putting it in the mildest possible terms.
Watch the video below, via Fox News:
The 12 craziest and most outlandish comments made by Rush Limbaugh in 2013
The 12 craziest and most outlandish comments made by Rush Limbaugh in 2013
October 22, 2013
One of the leading voices of the Republican party isn't in
Washington or elected on a local level, he's listened to by millions of
conservatives across the country on his radio show and his name is Rush Limbaugh.
After over two decades on the radio, Rush Limbaugh has been a strong voice for the Republican party, often keeping politicians "in check" due to the fear of a backlash from Limbaugh and his listeners. Like many years before, 2013 has been a wild year for politics and Rush Limbaugh and his outrageous comments followed right along. Here is a list of some of the most outlandish and off the mark comments made by the de facto voice of the political right in 2013.
1. January 7, 2013 - Accepting same-sex marriage could lead to normalizing pedophilia
After over two decades on the radio, Rush Limbaugh has been a strong voice for the Republican party, often keeping politicians "in check" due to the fear of a backlash from Limbaugh and his listeners. Like many years before, 2013 has been a wild year for politics and Rush Limbaugh and his outrageous comments followed right along. Here is a list of some of the most outlandish and off the mark comments made by the de facto voice of the political right in 2013.
1. January 7, 2013 - Accepting same-sex marriage could lead to normalizing pedophilia
"There is an effort underway to normalize pedophilia. Yep. And it has two aspects to it. One is that sex with children doesn't hurt them. Kids like it, and so do adults, and there's nothing wrong with it. It is something... I want to take you back. I want you remember the first time, wherever you were, that you heard about gay marriage, and I want you to try to recall your reaction -- your first gut reaction -- when you heard that some activists or somebody was trying to promote the notion of gay marriage. What was your initial reaction?...There is a movement on to normalize pedophilia, and I guarantee you your reaction to that is probably much the same as your reaction when you first heard about gay marriage....The people behind it are serious, and you know the left as well as I do. They glom onto something and they don't let go."2. March 25, 2013 - Global warming a 'hoax,' scientists are pushing 'misinformation
"I mean a global warming advocate is as wrong as anybody could be about anything, folks. It's a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. It has been thoroughly debunked. The fact that it's a hoax has been proven, by them. E-mails that were uncovered at East Anglia University in Great Britain show that they worked together to perpetuate the hoax, that they lied about data, that they eliminate data that contradicted their political belief. So you'd have to assume from that that they are political advocates disguised as scientists who are purposely engaging in misinformation."3. April 22, 2013 - 'Radical leftist professors' radicalized Boston bombers and Obama
"Now, see, this is where I am ripe for getting in trouble. Why is it so strange to believe that young kids could be radicalized in America? You got former bombers as professors in New York and Chicago. You have radical leftist professors who think this country's guilty, teaching kids every day about what's wrong with this country, about how unfair this country's been, how unjust, how immoral this country is since its founding. What in the world do we think elite education is in this country? When you have a study of High School textbooks, nine different textbooks, the longest reference to Abraham Lincoln is one paragraph, but all kinds of references to the horrors of slavery and evil Republican presidents, how great Bill Clinton is."4. April 23, 2013 - Compares Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Trayvon Martin
"You notice also that the news media are doing to Dzhokhar what they did to Trayvon Martin. They're regularly showing a photo of Dzhokhar that was taken when he was about 14...soft, angelic, nice little boy, harmless... cute big lovable eyes. Not at all what he looks like today...The news media seem to be making him look like an innocent little angel who was totally willing to drive over his own beloved brother to try to get away from his killing spree."5. May 6, 2013 - Obama bragging about killing bin Laden led to attack in Benghazi
"The Benghazi thing happened on 9/11. It's not supposed to happen because Obama has told everybody that al-Qaeda's on the run and we'd beaten terrorism, that bin Laden is dead. Therefore, what's happening can't happen...6. May 20th, 2013 - Obama won't be impeached because he's the first black president
Nobody stopped to think that maybe killing bin Laden and running around bragging about it, as Obama did, might stir something up on September 11th somewhere -- and it did. The Benghazi attack wasn't over a video!"
“In my humble thinking, the people of this country, if it came to this, are simply not going to tolerate the first black president being removed from office, and if that's not gonna happen, the rest of this is academic."7. July 8, 2013 - Being unemployed isn't so bad because people have food and a TV
“Some people have said that I sound like I’m a little cold-hearted about this. I’m not. Unemployment in America. You've got your car. The way to put this. The unemployed are still eating, and so what’s the problem? The unemployed have their cell phones. They have their cars. They've got their flat screens and food. Being unemployed is not what it used to be. When you were out of work, you were in dire circumstances. And your unemployment compensation didn't come close to substituting what you lost when you lost your job. No, I am talking about incentives. What’s the incentive to work? There isn't near enough the necessity, and I am telling you, you take away the notion of careers from the American jobs experience, or universe whatever you want to call it. This is massive, massive change that is not, in this case, good.”8. July 22, 2013 - It's 'preposterous' to blame white people for slavery
“This white guilt, it’s time for all this white guilt to end...If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians. The white race has probably had fewer slaves and for a briefer period of time than any other in the history of the world...Now, sadly, we’re not talking about the rest of the world when the civil rights coalition gets ginned up. They’re talking about America and slavery and that can’t be denied, it happened. But, compared to the kind of slavery that still exists in the rest of the world and has existed, by no means was it anywhere near the worst.”9. July 23, 2013 - The middle class has never helped the economy grow, the rich have
"The president is going to say that prosperity comes from the middle out. 'Prosperity needs to come from the middle out rather than the top down.' Never mind that this has never, not once, worked. It has never succeeded, this formula of the middle class leading the economic rebound. It's not possible. The middle class benefits from it, but an economic recovery is not caused by the middle class. An economic expansion is not caused by the middle class. The middle class, by and large, are consumers."10. September 5, 2013 - The Iraq war was not a mess, Obama just can't stop blaming Bush
"That's the Obama administration in a nutshell: "How do we blame everything on the Republicans?" James Carville was on O'Reilly last night. We got the tape. Blame Bush! You know why this mess exists? Is because Bush went into Iraq, and everybody hated it, and now nobody trusts Obama to do the right thing because of Bush. If Bush hadn't made such a mess of Iraq, then everybody would be totally supporting Obama, but everybody remembers what a mess that was.11. September 9, 2013 - Rush asks women: Are free abortions and birth control worth your horrible jobs?
Hey, James? Let me tell you the truth -- something you know, my friend. Iraq was not a mess. You guys made it a mess in the US media and in the halls of Congress, but it wasn't a mess. You guys made it that. You convinced people it was a mess. This is cowardice, to go back and keep blaming this on Bush."
"Women have decided to invest their chances in economic prosperity in Democratic party politics instead of working in the private sector and being 'A' political. All of these groups "throwing in" with the Democrats are at the lower level of income level and highest level of poverty. Their median income are the lowest, we went through all of these numbers yesterday,12. October 1, 2013 - Democrats are happy about government shutdown, they want the pain
So ladies, I need to ask you a question. I'm serious. Given the story, let me give you this number again. Sixty percent of the increase of employment for women, 2009 to 2012, are jobs that pay less than $10 an hour. So ladies, and I ask this question, I don't mean to sound domineering, cause I'm not....
Has it been worth it? To get all your free birth control? And your free abortions? While you’re waiting tables?"
"If you remember, the Democrats thought the sequester would turn the American people against the Republicans forever because it was shutting down the military and shutting down Medicaid, Medicare, shutting down various important government functions, and it's turned out that the sequester is painless. And so the Democrats want a do-over, and that's what all of this is (the government shutdown). They want the pain, and they want it blamed on Tea Party Republicans."
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Why Americans Are So Ignorant
Why Americans Are So Ignorant -- It's Not Only Fox News, There Are Some Understandable Reasons for it
April 8, 2013
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Shenkman spent 256 pages documenting these claims, using a great number of polls and surveys from very reputable sources. Indeed, in the end it is hard to argue with his data. So, what can we say about this?
One thing that can be said is that this is not an abnormal state of affairs. As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population.
To put it another way, the majority of any population will pay little or no attention to news stories or government actions that do not appear to impact their lives or the lives of close associates. If something non-local happens that is brought to their attention by the media, they will passively accept government explanations and simplistic solutions.
The primary issue is “does it impact my life?” If it does, people will pay attention. If it appears not to, they won’t pay attention. For instance, in Shenkman’s book unfavorable comparisons are sometimes made between Americans and Europeans. Americans often are said to be much more ignorant about world geography than are Europeans.
This might be, but it is, ironically, due to an accident of geography. Americans occupy a large subcontinent isolated by two oceans. Europeans are crowded into small contiguous countries that, until recently, repeatedly invaded each other as well as possessed overseas colonies.
Under these circumstances, a knowledge of geography, as well as paying attention to what is happening on the other side of the border, has more immediate relevance to the lives of those in Toulouse or Amsterdam than is the case for someone in Pittsburgh or Topeka. If conditions were reversed, Europeans would know less geography and Americans more.
Ideology and Bureaucracy
The localism referenced above is not the only reason for widespread ignorance. The strong adherence to ideology and work within a bureaucratic setting can also greatly narrow one’s worldview and cripple one’s critical abilities.
In effect, a closely adhered to ideology becomes a mental locality with limits and borders just as real as those of geography. In fact, if we consider nationalism a pervasive modern ideology, there is a direct connection between the boundaries induced in the mind and those on the ground.
Furthermore, it does not matter if the ideology is politically left or right, or for that matter, whether it is secular or religious. One’s critical abilities will be suppressed in favor of standardized, formulaic answers provided by the ideology. Just so work done within a bureaucratic setting.
Bureaucracies position the worker within closely supervised departments where success equates with doing a specific job according to specific rules. Within this limited world, one learns not to think outside the box, and so, except as applied to one’s task, critical thinking is discouraged and one’s worldview comes to conform to that of the bureaucracy. That is why bureaucrats are so often referred to as cogs in a machine.
That
American ignorance is explainable does not make it any less
distressing. At the very least it often leads to embarrassment for the
minority who are not ignorant. Take for example the facts that polls show over
half of American adults don’t know which country dropped the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, or that 30 percent don’t know what the Holocaust was.
We
might explain this as the result of faulty education; however, there
are other, just as embarrassing, moments involving the well educated.
Take, for instance, the employees of Fox News. Lou Dobbs (who graduated
from Harvard University) is host of the Fox Business Network talk show Lou Dobbs Tonight. Speaking
on March 23 about gun control, he and Fox political analyst Angela
McGlowan (a graduate of the University of Mississippi) had the following exchange:McGlowan: “What scares the hell out of me is that we have a president . . . that wants to take our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration.”
Dobbs: “We’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared?”
Despite education, ignorance plus ideology leading to stupidity doesn’t come in any starker form than this. Suffice it to say that nothing the President has proposed in the way of gun control takes away the vast majority of weapons owned by Americans, that the President’s actions point to the fact that he does not want to attack Syria or Iran, and that neither country has the capacity to “come and attack us here.”
Finally, while there may be a handful of Americans who sympathize with Al Qaeda, they cannot accurately be described as “agents” of some central organization that dictates their actions.
Did the fact that Dobbs and McGlowan were speaking nonsense make any difference to the majority of those listening to them? Probably not. Their regular listeners may well be too ignorant to know that this surreal episode has no basis in reality. Their ignorance will cause them not to fact-check Dobbs’s and McGlowan’s remarks. They might very well rationalize away countervailing facts if they happen to come across them. And, by doing so, keep everything comfortably simple, which counts for more than the messy, often complicated truth.
Unfortunately, one can multiply this scenario many times. There are millions of Americans, most of whom are quite literate, who believe the United Nations is an evil organization bent on destroying U.S. sovereignty. Indeed, in 2005, George W. Bush actually appointed one of them, John Bolton (a graduate of Yale University), as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Likewise, so paranoid are gun enthusiasts (whose level of education varies widely) that any really effective government supervision of the U.S. gun trade would be seen as a giant step toward dictatorship. Therefore, the National Rifle Association, working its influence on Congress, has for years successfully restricted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from using computers to create a central database of gun transactions.
And, last but certainly not least, there is the unending war against teaching evolution in U.S. schools. This Christian fundamentalist effort often enjoys temporary success in large sections of the country and is ultimately held at bay only by court decisions reflecting (to date) a solid sense of reality on this subject. By the way, evolution is a scientific theory that has as much evidence to back it up as does gravity.
Teaching Critical Thinking?
As troubling as this apparently perennial problem of ignorance is, it is equally frustrating to listen to repeated schemes to teach critical thinking through the public schools. Of course, the habit of asking critical questions can be taught. However, if you do not have a knowledge base from which to consider a situation, it is hard think critically about it.
So ignorance often precludes effective critical thinking even if the technique is acquired. In any case, public school systems have always had two primary purposes and critical thinking is not one of them. The schools are designed to prepare students for the marketplace and to make them loyal citizens.
The marketplace is most often a top-down, authoritarian world and loyalty comes from myth-making and emotional bonds. In both cases, really effective critical thinking might well be incompatible with the desired end.
Recently, a suggestion has been made to forget about the schools as a place to learn critical thinking. According to Dennis Bartels’s article “Critical Thinking Is Best Taught Outside the Classroom” appearing in Scientific Americanonline, schools can’t teach critical thinking because they are too busy teaching to standardized tests.
Of course, there was a time when schools were not so strongly mandated to teach this way and there is no evidence that at that time they taught critical thinking. In any case, Bartels believes that people learn critical thinking in informal settings such as museums and by watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
He concludes that “people must acquire this skill somewhere. Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions.” If that were only true it would make this an easier problem to solve.
It may very well be that (consciously or unconsciously) societies organize themselves to hold critical thinking to a minimum. That means to tolerate it to the point needed to get through day-to-day existence and to tackle those aspects of one’s profession that might require narrowly focused critical thought.
But beyond that, we get into dangerous, de-stabilizing waters. Societies, be they democratic or not, are not going to encourage critical thinking about prevailing ideologies or government policies. And, if it is the case that most people don’t think of anything critically unless it falls into that local arena in which their lives are lived out, all the better.
Under such conditions people can be relied upon to stay passive about events outside their local venue until the government decides it is time to rouse them up in some propagandistic manner.
The truth is that people who are consistently active as critical thinkers are not going to be popular, either with the government or their neighbors. They are called gadflies. You know, people like Socrates, who is probably the best-known critical thinker in Western history. And, at least the well educated among us know what happened to him.
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