Fox News, the station that argued in court that they have the right to purposely lie, that gives far more airtime to Republicans than to Democrats, and even gives money to the Republican party, is advertising its new special report “Behind The Bias: The Liberal Media Bias”. It will be hypocritically hosted by Sean Hannity. Here’s the ad:
GE reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue. Their total earnings were $3.4 billion, but over half that came from the company’s banking division, whose earnings tripled from just a year ago.
GE has recently faced criticisms because it paid no US taxes last year, and because it designed all six failed nuclear reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Ezra Klein points out that the Republicans are continuing their run as the Party of No. Even policies they used to support, they now unanimously oppose apparently for the simple reason that Obama supports them:
A few years ago, cap-and-trade was, if not a consensus position in the Republican Party, then at least one with substantial support. John McCain had his own plan — a plan he continued to promote through the 2008 election — and he wasn’t, by any means, fighting a lonely battle. In fact, one of his co-sponsors was then-Sen. Barack Obama. In the states, a number of Republican governors were also pursuing cap-and-trade plans, including Tim Pawlenty, who’s now running for president and has denounced his efforts to fight climate change as a terrible mistake.
The same thing happened to the individual mandate in health insurance, which was originally a Republican idea but which they now call an unconstitutional monstrosity.
When Obama went on TV to encourage students to study hard and get good grades, Republicans opposed that. I’m waiting for Obama to say he likes apple pie, just to see what happens.
The Tea Party movement was largely funded and promoted by large corporations like the Koch brothers and Fox News, and one of their main goals is tax cuts. But ironically, the original Boston Tea Party was actually a protest against what was then the world’s largest multinational corporation. The event that triggered it was — believe it or not — a huge corporate tax cut for the East India Company.
Thom Hartmann gives a fascinating account of the original Tea Party, reading from original documents written at the time:
It does seem perfectly straightforward, doesn’t it? If high deficits are really going to ruin our country and its economy, then it seems obvious that every rich person should be for raising their taxes.
“President Obama is slated to appear on one of Oprah’s last shows. He’s hoping it’s the one on which she gives away 14 trillion dollars.” – Conan O’Brien
“Barack and Michelle Obama will appear on Oprah’s show soon. Not to be outdone, Donald Trump’s hair will be making an appearance on Animal Planet.” – Jay Leno
“Critics say it’s illegal for Donald Trump to run for president while hosting a TV show. It’s also illegal to run for president if your hair wasn’t born in this country.” – Conan O’Brien
“Donald Trump says he has never been more serious about running for president and that this is not a publicity stunt — but make sure to watch the announcement on the season finale of ‘Celebrity Apprentice.'” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Another air traffic controller fell asleep on the job, but he had a good excuse. He was watching President Obama’s deficit speech.” – Jay Leno
“A high-ranking official at the FAA had to resign because air traffic controllers are falling asleep. I think FAA stands for ‘fell asleep again.'” – Craig Ferguson
“The air traffic controllers are sleeping, the TSA is groping you, and the pilots are drunk. Who would have thought the most reliable workers at the airport would be the baggage handlers?” – Jay Leno
How do some people get away with blaming the unions and illegal immigrants for our current economic troubles?
What did we ever do before the Innertubes allowed us to instantly figure out when someone was lying to us. Here’s a case in point.
Last week, Donald Trump appeared on Fox News and praised Reagan as one of the presidents he admired most.
HANNITY: Who are our past presidents that you admire most?
TRUMP: Well, I really like and knew a little bit Ronald Reagan, and I really liked him. You know, not only his policies, smart guy and so much smarter, you know, I always sort of have to laugh to myself when people try and criticize that level of intelligence. And I loved his style. I loved what he represented. … I thought he represented something very special for this county.
But in the last year of the Reagan administration, on page 60 of his book “Art of the Deal”, Trump used Reagan as an example of someone who could con people, but couldn’t deliver the goods.
You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on. […] Ronald Reagan is another example. He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — maybe Trump doesn’t actually believe anything he is currently saying, but is merely throwing out red meat to get the base all fired up. Or maybe he just figured out that the base won’t bother to check anything he says. You may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but Trump only needs to fool some of them.
UPDATE: An interesting article about how Trump is playing us for suckers and getting away with it.
UPDATE2: From Matt Taibbi’s blog, answering an email that asks:
About how many times a day do you find yourself saying “What the fuck?” to nobody in particular? I’m up to about 23 these days.
Maybe twice or three times a day. Fewer than before, certainly. See, what I’ve done, and you all can try this yourselves, is to simply avoid reading the news as much as possible. I read old books and the only periodicals I even look at lately are NFL draft guides. I’ve read Nolan Nawrocki’s draft booklet like 400 times already. To me he’s the greatest novelist since Waugh. That does wonders for my general sanity, but then I’ll have something happen like last Friday, when I went into 30 Rock to do a hit on Cenk Uygur’s show and saw him talking about a poll that had Donald Trump leading the field of prospective Republican candidates. Donald Trump has 26% of the Republican vote right now? What the fuck? Things like that, honestly, I don’t even want to know, until I have no choice…
If you think the Republican budget proposal written by Paul Ryan was bad — gutting Medicare and giving tax breaks to the rich — consider that it could have been worse. The Republican Study Committee (RSC) wrote an alternative budget that was Ryan on steroids, all but destroying the social contract and giving even larger tax breaks to the wealthy. Of course, if this budget ever actually passed it would be hugely unpopular and would destroy the reelection chances of many Republican Congress-members.
So when the RSC budget came up for a vote in the House, the Democrats did a crafty thing — instead of voting no, they voted “present”. The RSC has 176 members, so the Republicans suddenly had enough votes to pass this suicidal budget. Watch as pandemonium breaks out as the Republicans realize that they have walked into a trap of their own making:
What do the Republicans do when given the choice of sticking up for their declared principals or chickening out? In the end, a bunch of RSC members had to publicly flip-flop and vote against their own proposed budget, and it was narrowly defeated 119 to 136 (with 172 Dems voting “present”).
UPDATE: Paul Ryan is booed at a town hall meeting in his district when he tries to defend tax cuts for the rich.
Having a problem forming a Political Action Committee (PAC)? There is another approach you can try — It’s called a SuperPAC. Learn all about it from Stephen Colbert:
“President Obama wants to raise taxes on the country’s richest people. And you thought Donald Trump hated him before.” – Jay Leno
“Donald Trump said he will not decide about a possible run for the presidency until after the current season of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ wraps up. Say what you want about Trump, at least this guy has his priorities in order. He doesn’t want to let any reality get in the way of his reality show.” – Jay Leno
“Donald Trump has a great campaign slogan: ‘A complex world demands complex hair.'” – David Letterman
“Political experts are saying NBC should take ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ off the air because if Trump runs for president, he could use it as an unfair platform. Because nothing says ‘leader of the free world’ like someone who can’t stop a fight between Meat Loaf and Gary Busey.” – Conan O’Brien
“Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination. He has a slogan to win over the Republicans: ‘Vote for me, I’m not Trump.'” – Craig Ferguson
“A huge Air France Airbus hit a smaller plane on the runway at JFK. The collision was so loud it woke up one of the air traffic controllers.” – David Letterman
“Vice President Joe Biden fell asleep during Obama’s speech. He has now been named an honorary air traffic controller.” – Jay Leno
“Joe Biden apparently fell asleep during President Obama’s speech on reducing national debt yesterday. Now Joe Biden can embarrass the President without even opening his mouth.” – Jay Leno
“President Obama laid out his plan to reduce the $14 trillion national debt. Unfortunately for Sasha and Malia, it involves selling a lot of Girl Scout cookies.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Obama called on Americans to have more grandchildren. Probably so there’s more of them to pay off our debt.” – Jay Leno
“If you stacked 14 trillion dollar bills on top of each other, the stack would almost definitely fall over and kill everyone in the United States.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Oprah says that the president and first lady will appear on her April 2 show. At the end, she’ll be giving them away.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“‘Hustler’ publisher Larry Flynt has written a book about the sex lives of American Presidents. The highlights are the chapter on Jefferson, the chapter on Garfield and the first 125 chapters on Clinton.” – Conan O’Brien
“Canada may postpone an important political debate because it may conflict with a hockey game. An entire nation is willing to put democracy on hold to watch burly guys smash each other in the face. That is awesome.” – Craig Ferguson
“Hosni Mubarak was arrested near the Red Sea. They found him in hiding with his two sons, Hosni W. and Jeb.” – David Letterman
“They were interrogating Mubarak and he had a heart attack. There’s nothing more stressful than being an out-of-work dictator.” – David Letterman
“A meeting between Justin Bieber and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been canceled. No word yet on how this will affect the meeting between Selena Gomez and Hezbollah.” – Conan O’Brien
“It’s the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. A new poll found that 23 percent of Americans sympathize with the Confederacy. They are described as ‘not African-Americans.'” – Conan O’Brien
“Well folks, this just in: a federal jury found Barry Bonds guilty on one count. Barry Bonds guilty on one count and could serve 21 months in prison. So that should be a lesson. If you’re a celebrity and you use drugs, and you want to avoid prison, you better be Charlie Sheen.” – Jay Leno
The GOP scheme to cynically appeal to their older base by preserving Medicare for anyone over the age of 55 — while simultaneously screwing anyone younger than that — seems to have backfired.
“It’s starting to look like Donald Trump may be a serious presidential candidate. If you’re in my line of work, Trump running for president for real is the greatest thing that has ever happened.” – Conan O’Brien
“The White House is saying Donald Trump has ‘zero percent chance’ of being elected. That seems a little high.” – David Letterman
“Donald Trump insists that he is going to run for president. I guess he figures if he can pull off that hairstyle, he can do anything.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“According to a CNN poll, Trump nearly doubled his support from March. Actually, he just combed his March numbers over his current ones.” – Conan O’Brien
“In an exclusive interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network Donald Trump said “I believe in god.” But of course Donald thought he was talking about himself.” – Jay Leno
“Insiders say that Trump is running for president as a publicity stunt. That’s not the Donald Trump I know.” – David Letterman
“Trump said, ‘I am Obama’s worst nightmare.’ Really? Worse than Oprah hiding in the Lincoln Bedroom in a string bikini?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“It looks like Mitt Romney will run for president. He announced that he’s forming an exploratory committee. Doesn’t that sound like something every man should have after 50?” – Jay Leno
“No! Not Captain Buzzkill! Not the guy who looks like everyone who ever fired your dad! He’s gonna suck all the fun right out of this crazy thing. Just look at the online video announcing his run. It looks like it could double as an ad for erectile dysfunction pills. ‘Mitt Romney: for when the moment’s right.'” – Jon Stewart
“Michele Bachmann referred to Planned Parenthood as the LensCrafters of abortion. Then it got worse when she referred to Massachusetts as the Sunglass Hut of gay marriage.” – Conan O’Brien
“President Obama said in an interview over the weekend that he really misses being anonymous. He said, “I miss Saturday mornings rolling out of bed and not shaving, going to the market…” Be careful what you wish for, 2012 is just around the corner!” – Jay Leno
“The Federal Trade Commission says for the 11th year in a row the biggest consumer complaint is identity theft, which led President Obama to say, ‘That’s why you should never show ANYONE your birth certificate.'” – Jay Leno
“Economists say sharp increases in energy and food prices could lead to higher inflation. But prices are falling on a lot of items, like Charlie Sheen tickets.” – Jay Leno
“Because of a holiday, the deadline for taxes is April 18, so you have three extra days to dig through restaurant dumpsters for receipts.” – Jimmy Kimmel
Consider long-time anti-gay activist Louis Marinelli. Last year he was the person behind the Summer for Marriage Tour sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, literally driving the bus for a series of protests against gay marriage. But sometime during the tour, Marinelli actually started talking to some of the gay people he was supposed to hate. And it changed his world:
I really came to understand that gays and lesbians were just real people who wanted to live real lives and be treated equally as opposed to, for example, wanting to destroy American culture. No, they didn’t want to destroy American culture, they wanted to openly particulate in it.
He now supports full civil marriage equality, saying “The constitution calls for nothing less.”
It isn’t the destination that’s important, it’s the journey.
UPDATE: Despite pretending to be nice to Marinelli, behind the scenes the National Organization for Marriage is threatening to sue him unless he removes from his website the articles he wrote about NOM. Ironically, suing Marinelli would probably do more damage to NOM itself than it could do to Marinelli.
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