The story I wrote about the right dishonestly inflating the size of their large, but rather ordinary protest in Washington D.C. this past Saturday did better than I expected. To me, these kinds of outrageous lies have become the norm from conservatives and so were not entirely surprising, if not for the grand scale of it all.
Inflating crowd estimates is nothing new, regardless of party or ideology, but inflating a crowd size by 28 times is pretty darn low.
Even for Republicans.
I first picked up on this from NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen on Twitter. As has been the case with virtually every teabagger protest since the astroturf gatherings were founded, this march on D.C. was the idea of — and organized directly by — corporate lobbyists at FreedomWorks. The site which is soliciting donations, 912dc.org, is owned and operated by corporate lobbying group FreedomWorks.
FreedomWorks was founded by former Republican House Majority Leader and current corporate lobbyist, Dick Armey, and has significant support from billionaire Republican Steve Forbes. Forbes during his runs for President supported the privatization of social security, as most Republicans did, which would have resulted in the wholesale lose of social security during the recent recession.
Fox’s greed and distaste for the American public has finally caught up with it; the network fell to second place last night airing original – and typically well viewed – reality programming, with NBC taking home the ratings crown by airing a rare Presidential speech addressing a joint session of Congress.
The last time I called Fox unpatriotic — even though it was an ironic gesture to make a point about how absurd it is to say something like this — my story was censored by conservatives that cannot and will not tolerate political dissent in any form.
I don’t blame them, they can’t help but act the way they were taught to act by miscreant parents that were equally as stupid as the children they would come to raise. Who is most responsible for allowing that blatant censorship to stand is another story for another time, however.
I guess this started around the beginning of the Iraq war. A little before, or a little after, it doesn’t really matter. A news anchor from one of the 24/7 cable networks had just finished introducing his guest as a former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations. There were smiles and cordiality, these were stately and accomplished men supposedly interested in the truth, not rogue partisans out to sell snake oil and lies.
We’ve played this game long enough, liberals have gone beyond compromise well into capitulation. Anyone with a brain – which immediately eliminates birthers, deathers, tea party corporate whores and the 47% of Republicans that don’t think America was once a part of Pangea – knew from the outset that the GOP wasn’t going to support any degree of health care reform.
It wouldn’t matter if the reform bill was 50% tax cuts for billionaires and 49% bulk grants directly to the health insurance companies, while also declaring evolution to be a farce, socialists and gays and atheists to be demons, and that kittens are hugely awesome, it still wouldn’t get their support.
My subconscious has been slowly digesting developments in the health care reform non-debate and contemplating a way to crystallize it, and now that I think I’ve got my head wrapped around this, allow me to summarize thusly: dumb people don’t deserve health care reform.
A new Research 2000 poll has found that nearly half of all Republicans don’t accept the scientific fact that North America and Africa were both once a part of the same continent, called Pangea.
Another 29% said they were not sure.
Only 16% of Democrats and 23% of Independents said no. By region, the American south is once again taking a public beating: nearly 2-in-3 Americans living in the south either don’t believe that America and Africa were once a part of Pangea, or aren’t sure.
The story I wrote two days ago (mostly repeating the great commentary by Glenn Greenwald) regarding a deal struck between the corporate parents of MSNBC and Fox News seems to have widened last night with direct confirmation from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.
I hesitate to write about this issue because it has been covered so well thus far by Glenn Greenwald for Salon, and by Talking Points Memo, that anything I would contribute amounts to little more than a rerun. On the other hand, this is so disgusting, so embarrassing, and so explosive that it’s impossible not to do whatever possible to spread the word about what is going on.
This all began with a story written by Brian Stelter in the New York Times on Friday, reporting that the noticeable cease fire between MSNBC and Fox News’s two most visible faces and valuable assets – Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly, respectively – was the direct result of an agreement negotiated by the cable news network’s corporate parents to censor their respective news divisions in order to protect their respective business interests.
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