Fox News has upped the ante on its distract-and-scapegoat tactic to keep viewers from thinking President Obama won the presidential debate this week. This morning, on Fox & Friends, Tucker Carlson teamed up with Steve Doocy to call out the pitchforks for Candy Crowley's employment.
In my post on Crooks and Liars about the subject, I wrote that if Crowley had interrupted the debate to fact-check President Obama, she probably would have been the hero of the night. I wrote:
In that case, she might have been offered a job at Fox News on the spot. Then she could have joined birther Heather Childers, still playing an objective news host on Fox, even after she sent a tweet asking for “thoughts” as to whether or not the Obama campaign threatened to kill Chelsea Clinton in order to keep Bill and Hillary Clinton from spilling the beans about then-candidate Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Or birther and bigot Lou Dobbs, now at Fox Business but a regular on the News Channel.
Read the rest of my post here.
Jennifer was the new gal on the block and I was totally put off by her demeanor. She arrived in a huge grey cloud of vitriol, accusations and insults. After sitting in on her conversation with Kevin, I’m delighted to say that I’ve changed my mind about her being just another shouting boor.
My thanks to both of you.
“first of all i was not talking to you at all i was talking to kevin. second you do not have permission to call me jenny you donât know me and that rubs me the wrong way period. donât be rude. and no need to be a jerk towards someone who made a mistake.”
First, my apologies for unauthorized use of a diminutive.
Second, you may have been talking to Kevin, but this blog has publicly viewable comments, which anyone reading is free to respond to — if you wish to communicate privately with Kevin, do so via email.
Third, in your zeal to wag your finger at me, you didn’t answer my question . . .
So yes when the white house say an act of terror im not 100% sure they are calling it a terrorist act anymore and apparently there is a big difference.
Um, WHAT difference? Again — were the victims any LESS dead or injured because the President used the words “act of terror” rather than “terrorist attack?” Were the families of the victims any less affected?
If not, what in hell difference does it make?
President Obama roundly condemned the acts.
He promised those responsible would be brought to justice.
He gave comfort to the families of the victims.
All that would have been the case, whether it was an “act of terror” or a “terrorist act” . . .
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I now understand what you were thinking about the Darrell Issa hearing. And yes, it was on C-SPAN and there are both Dems and GOP on the Oversight Committee. My feeling about the hearing is that Issa rushed the timing of holding it – not because he’s trying to get to the bottom of what happened as that’s already being dealt with, but because he wanted to repeat what he had done over the past 18 months about the “Fast & Furious” ATF program. My problem with Issa’s approach is that it usually has him promoting himself and grandstanding rather than actually dealing with what can be fairly complex issues. And Issa’s past political history in California does not suggest that his motives are purely investigatory.
You are correct that the Administration’s public statements about what happened in Libya were fairly confused for about two weeks. And I can see that you do understand the horrific mess in the region that happened as a result of that video. From what I can tell from what we’ve learned, the video did not cause the specific attack at the consulate, but it did cause rioting across Libya that the terrorists were only too happy to piggyback. I think there was likely confusion as to whether there was a spontaneous demonstration happening that the bad guys crashed, or whether it was solely an attack, as it now seems. Given what had just happened in Cairo, with the embassy being overrun and the flag pulled down, I can understand the confusion. I also believe that our people have been tracking the people who planned and carried out the attack, and that they’re playing their cards very close to the vest so as not to let on too much before apprehending the killers. That isn’t a partisan thing – it’s a criminal investigation thing. Whether a Democrat or Republican is President, that kind of attack is going to get a careful investigation, which may not get discussed very accurately in public.
Regarding the security briefings, I’ve heard different accounts of it and don’t know enough about the subject to be an expert by any means. I did hear criticism being levelled by John Sununu that Obama wasn’t doing the briefings in person but was instead getting text briefings. Then I heard that getting mutated into the notion that he wasn’t doing the briefings, which simply didn’t pass the smell test. And Sununu has made a whole series of unfortunate comments about the President, including calling him lazy and unintelligent. So I’m tending to think the idea is a non-issue and a red herring.
Regarding the polling, I’d still recommend 538 as Nate Silver has been fairly accurate over the past few years. He isn’t perfect at this, but he offers what feels like the most impartial aggregate of multiple polls – weighting for Democrat bias or GOP bias, and weighting for various other factors including the current economic conditions, etc.
Regarding all the debate issues, we’ll see on Monday night what happens with the last one. My hope is that both men follow the rules and just discuss the issues without it turning into what we saw in the prior ones. I think you’re correct that the moderator shouldn’t be jumping into the middle of things – but if there’s a complete whopper being given and the proceedings are stopped by it, I don’t have a problem with her trying to move the guys past the issue. She didn’t do this on everything. Romney got away with a cheap shot about accusing the President of having gone on “an apology tour” and trying to “lead from behind” – both of which are debunked right wing talking points usually just heard on Rush Limbaugh and Fox. My belief is that Romney will try to repeat those on Monday and that Obama will take the time then to once again debunk them.
All of that said, we have less than three weeks before Election Day, and I believe that most voters’ minds have been made up for months now. The early voting already going on will not be affected by any of the debates. And the real poll will be taken on the 6th. We’ll see how it turns out.
Kevin: âApparently you needed to hear President Obama say âTHIS. WAS. A. TERRORIST. ATTACK.â Itâs not good enough for you that he referred to âActs of Terrorâ. Not sure what anyone could say that would convince you of the semantics there but trying to say that he didnât say those words doesnât somehow mean that he didnât say them.â
Jennifer: to answer this question better the short answer is yes he needed to say that. you are correct he does say acts of terror but acts of terror does not imply it was a terrorist attack you are simply inferring it to mean that.
Nice word parsing, Jenny.
Let me ask a question, the same one asked after the Ft. Hood shootings: were the victims ANY LESS DEAD/INJURED because the President said “act of terror” instead of “terrorist attack?”
Un-effing-believable . . .
I think I know where this comes from: ever since President Obama stood in the East Room of the White House and announced the military mission to capture and/or kill Usama bin Laden had been accomplished (some seven years after his predecessor said he “didn’t think much about him”), there has been a concerted effort on the part of the rightwingnuttocracy to portray the President as “weak on terror;” it just sticks in their craw that Obama did what Dumbya was unable/unwilling to do.
And part of that portrayal is to paint President Obama as “caught by surprise” by every incident that occurs, and to classify such incidents as a “terrorist attack,” whether it actually is an act of terror [Libya], tangentially an act of terror [Ft. Hood shooting], or a criminal act [Tuscon and Aurora shootings] . . .
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Id say it was a tie but its hard to say what with candy jumping in the entire debate was contaminated for me that why the moderator isnt suppose to jump in because the debates arent for already decided parties its mostly for the undecided voters so it really doesnt matter what you people think. and polls have hardly ever been right its like asking a fortune teller who will win the presidential race
The above paragraph neatly sums up rightwingnut response to the debate, exactly as others predicted:
1. the debate(s) are either a tie or a Romney win — never an Obama win
2. polls don’t matter (unless they favor Romney)
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As for the rest, there are many reasons why people don’t through the word “Terror” around at every opportunity. The GW Bush Administration was quite free with it, and I don’t know that this helped them much. The Obama Administration has been more cautious about it in public, although their drone program has clearly been a lot more aggressive.
When you say there was a “trial on c span”, you’re being disingenuous. A trial in this case means that people were in a courtroom being charged and prosecuted for a crime. It is not the same thing as someone like Darrell Issa or GOP members in Congress holding a hearing so they can yell at whoever they like. There’s a big difference between the two ideas. So I repeat my question to you – where and when on C-SPAN did you see a trial where the perpetrators of this attack were prosecuted for their crimes? And I’ll give you the answer – you did not, because no such event took place. I wasn’t being sarcastic in pointing out the facts – I was trying to correct your statement so that people would not think a non-existent prosecution had taken place.
Regarding the video, you really need to look into when all these riots began happening across the Middle East, not just in Libya. The riots began when that video went viral, and the situation is quite similar to when the anti-Mohammed cartoon riled people in the area up a few years back. You are apparently assuming that the attack in Libya was an event happening completely in a vacuum. If only the world worked that way. You are also continuing to try and parse the President’s words in the Rose Garden. I’m not sure this strategy is working so well for the GOP – the last time it was tried, it resulted in the GOP candidate twice being humiliated on national television. I strongly doubt he wants to experience that again on Monday night.
As for your repeated use of profanity and vitriol, they do not constitute anything that would convince me that you truly understand the chaos that video caused. Real people were killed as a result of it. Real people were badly injured. Real people had their lives ruined. Trying to ignore to make a cheap political point is truly an unfortunate choice. And you referred to the Ambassador as “chris”. Do you know him personally? If not, why are you referring to him by his first name and not by his title?
As for the right wing meme that the President is not attending his security briefings, that’s a matter of right wing opinion rather than fact. Certainly neither you nor I are national security experts, nor were either of us present during any of the times daily that the President reviews this information. I would strongly recommend that you think a little more carefully before cavalierly referring to the President as a liar and repeating right wing opinions about the way he conducts his office.
Regarding the debate performance, insulting me will not prove your point. You tried the idea that Romney was chastised more than Obama, but I pointed out that this was due to Romney trying to talk over the moderator more than Obama. Misbehave more, and you get more chidings – it’s not that hard to figure out, and that isn’t a matter of bias toward one candidate or another. You say that you’re neutral, and yet you have just spent multiple posts spinning for Mitt Romney and calling the President names. I find it difficult to believe you are truly neutral. It is more likely that you would like us to believe you are neutral, so that the spin won’t be as obvious, but only you know the truth on that count.
As for Candy Crowley, you seem to have missed the part where I noted that she corrected both candidates. Please re-read before assuming things like that, as it diminishes your argument. And she was absolutely right to point out to both candidates at that moment what was the factual record. (And to be clear, nobody is saying that everything that either candidate said was true. Obama was off on several of his statements as well.) The Libya moment was particularly important because Romney was trying to confront the President on a non-factual basis. Romney’s desperate move to do this was practically stopping the debate, and the President was quietly asking him to move on by saying “Proceed, Governor”. When Romney persisted in the attempt to bully the President, Crowley made it clear that Romney was off on one part of what he was saying, and correct on another part. You seem to assume that the moderator should just stand there if one candidate says an outright falsehood. That depends on the moderator, but usually a good reporter isn’t going to just stand there and have a national audience get blatantly lied to.
As for the Lily Ledbetter Act, you are cherry-picking your statistics, which indicates again that you are anything but neutral in this situation. Obama supported the Act both as a Senator and as President, and signed it into law early in his administration. Almost all of the GOP members of Congress voted against the bill that passed in 2009, and it was their opposition that killed the earlier version. So yes, President Obama supported the Act, and he has been proud to note that he signed it into law. Further, the GOP opposed it, and they don’t get to rewrite history about that. These are facts. Please don’t confuse them with GOP talking points about the Act. If you want to take the President to task for not resetting the pay rates at the White House, we can certainly have that discussion separately, but that doesn’t change the fact that he supported and signed this Act into law.
As for Candy Crowley, you seem to think she was “desperate” to keep Romney from making his points. That’s not what neutral, non-right wing people saw. Neutral people saw Romney trying to repeat his points and hammer at the President whenever he could, and multiple times, he got called out for this. When the President called to Crowley, he was asking her to enforce the rules that both men had agreed to follow for the debate, and which Romney seemed to think no longer applied to him. By the end of the debate, it seemed clear that both Crowley and Obama were frustrated with Romney’s behavior and attitude. But the end result speaks to how that worked out for Romney – which wasn’t very well.
I appreciate that you’re saying you’re independent and not attacking anyone’s personal views, but you’ve presented several posts here, full of anger and attack statements aimed solely at Romney. Logically, it follows that you support Romney, which is absolutely your right.
As for whether the debate was a tie, that’s something that most polls did not indicate. I would have thought it a tie had Romney not repeatedly committed unforced errors, culiminating with the public humiliation that wound up happening in triplicate within the last ten minutes of the event.
As for Rasmussen, you should be aware that he is known as a Republican pollster whose reports regularly favor the GOP candidates and positions all the way up to the last minute before an election happens. At that point, he suddenly reins it in and starts showing the accurate numbers, which can be a heck of a seesaw for his fans. By showing the accurate numbers during the last week of a campaign, he can claim to be a very accurate pollster. But that doesn’t obviate his behavior for the prior year in each case. Among his tactics has been to release polls on the same day as a major release by another polling firm – specifically to drag down the average. For example, if an NBC or ABC poll is about to come out and it’s expected to show a large Obama lead, Rasmussen will generate a poll showing either a much smaller Obama lead or even a Romney lead. When RCP averages the numbers, presto, the numbers for Obama appear to be down. I strongly recommend you turn to Nate Silver’s excellent aggregate blog 538, if you’d like a more dispassionate and neutral source of polling information.
Jennifer, I’m not sure where you’re getting your opinions and information but you really do need to look into getting better sources.
You say that you saw a live trial and investigation of the Libya attack on C-SPAN? Really? There’s been a trial? Please tell us when this happened, who prosecuted it and what the verdict was. No such event ever happened.
Apparently you needed to hear President Obama say “THIS. WAS. A. TERRORIST. ATTACK.” It’s not good enough for you that he referred to “Acts of Terror”. Not sure what anyone could say that would convince you of the semantics there but trying to say that he didn’t say those words doesn’t somehow mean that he didn’t say them. You also apparently don’t understand that the entire Middle East was in an uproar over this video at the time, in the same way that an uproar happened over the anti-Mohammed cartoon a few years back. You apparently don’t remember the Cairo Embassy being overrun regarding that video, nor do you remember the people who were killed in the rioting. Please do a bit of internet research on this, if for no other reason than to honor the memory of the people who were killed in senseless violence that you appear to be happy to dismiss.
You seem to want to dismiss Romney’s bad behavior in two debates. You seem to think it’s okay for Romney to repeatedly speak over moderators and break rules that he agreed to follow. You mention that Candy Crowley interrupted Romney more times. You forget that Romney was rampant in his disregard for any rules or decorum in his search for a big “gotcha!” moment with which to pillory the President. You also forget that Obama actually followed the rules, and the nine times that he strayed over the time or was provoked by Romney, Crowley corrected him as quickly as she did the challenger.
You seem to have a problem with Candy Crowley pointing out that Romney was making a completely false statement in the hopes of smearing a sitting President. You also forget that Crowley noted exactly the situation you discuss – that there was confusion in the message being sent to the press and the public after the attack happened. But you simultaneously neglect to mention that the significant rioting across Libya and the Middle East at the time made any assessment difficult until the smoke cleared.
If you want to discuss all the non-truths Paul Ryan has stated, including what he did during the debate he lost to Joe Biden, we can do that, but it’s a separate discussion.
You seem to think that Crowley was in “desperation to keep Romney from scoring points”. That’s not what anyone not from the hard right saw. Everyone else saw that Romney was becoming increasingly frustrated and desperate at the failure of his lines to land with any assurance and that Crowley was becoming increasingly frustrated with Romney’s total disregard for the rules of the debate. When Romney made a showcase moment of challenging the President on a factual matter, and was demonstrably wrong, Crowley had to point out that the statement was off base. She tempered this by noting that the other material around it had some grounding – but she wasn’t going to let that blatant falsehood stand. Granted, this was after she let him get away with complete balderdash several times before, including bringing up the right wing meme that President Obama went on that “apology tour”. It’s clear that at the end of the debate, she had had enough of Romney’s dissembling. One could only wish that she had corrected his earlier statements.
As for why Obama had more time over the course of the debate, you could look at the rebuttals and you could look at the energy that Obama brought to the debate. You could look at the facts Obama brought to the debate and the personal stories he referenced. You could look at the cheap shots Romney tried to take whenever possible. But this wasn’t a tie. Romney tried to bully Obama and discovered that he was in over his head this time. He then tried for a big finish with the Libya accusation only to be humiliated first by the President over his grandstanding and then by the moderator when he mistakenly jumped on a factual statement and tried to challenge it.
Whether you like it or not, Romney did major damage to himself on Wednesday. We’ve been waiting to see how bad the damage is in national polling. We’ll get a better idea over the weekend and next week.
Sherri Young, your post makes very little sense. Romney was wrong in his assertion and was properly chastised for making it. President Obama has actually achieved a bit more than you’re giving him credit for doing. And while there have been some people making nasty comments about Mitt Romney’s religion, there’s been a much greater number making the same strange statements you’re making about President Obama – that he’s a Muslim, etc. Your post dissolves into a strange morass of misspellings and wild statements. The only point you seem to have made is that you are very angry with President Obama. But it’s hard to make heads or tails out of the rest of your presentation.
Perhaps if Romney would FOLLOW THE RULES THAT HE AGREED TO, then he wouldn’t have needed to have been “interrupted.”
As for the rest of your LIES, go back to Fox(Noise)Nation where they’ll be appreciated. Everything you’ve written has been DEBUNKED by legitimate sources.
And Fox ain’t the only one.
Jason Chaffetz (R-UT):
âit wasnât necessarily your place to try to be fact checker right there. I happen to think that your assessment of that was wrong. ⦠Itâs not the role of the moderator to say, âMr. President, youâre right.ââ
(Even if he is, Congressman? Mr. Chaffetz seems to be confusing the role of the debate moderator with that of the GOP-led Congress.)
Americans for Limited Government: âIf CNN wants to maintain any shred of credibility as a ânewsâ organization, they should fire Crowley immediately for her gross violation of whatever remains of journalistic standards.â
(Hm — stating a fact is now “a gross violation of journalistic standards?” What a strange world we live in . . .)
Rush Limbaugh: âShe committed an act of journalistic terror or malpractice last night. If there were any journalist standards, what she did last night would have been the equivalent of blowing up her career like a suicide bomber. But there arenât any journalist standards anymore. And sheâs going to be praised and celebrated, probably even get a raise, give her another half hour on that show she hosts.â
(“But there aren’t any journalist standards anymore.” Since Limpballs himself is about the furthest from being a journalist, I’m tempted to ask how he would know — but given his brand of brainless entertainment, he probably knows better than anybody . . .)
Quotes from http://www.politicususa.com/republican-whine-fact-checking-sharped-tongued-women.html
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Seriously, has anyone else caught that Thursday is always the day of the week they drop all pretense that their coverage will be anything else?
Personally I donât care what religion or God someone prays to, or even if they donât believe in God. What I do care about are the issues that I believe will most benefit the majority and improve the quality of life for all. How we vote doesnât make you or me more patriotic or wiser, mostly how we vote depends on our own personal life experiences.
If someone disagrees with you or me on our opinion, thatâs fine, if you have a better idea or solution I love to hear it. But donât come with cartoonish statements to form your beliefs, it only makes you look weak.
Romney topped off what had been a damaging debate performance for him with a wild attempt at a “gotcha” that unfortunately turned into his biggest backfire of the night. He could have pointed out the confusion in the public responses about the Libya attack, or he could have asked why it took so long, etc – but those lines would have allowed Obama to do what he did – carefully explain that he would indeed be getting to the bottom of what happened. So he went for the cheap shot, fueled completely by the right wing radio talking point that Obama didn’t call the attack an act of terror. Except that the Rose Garden speech included just that terminology. Candy Crowley was right to set the record straight, just as she was right to also point out that there was two weeks of confusion in the press statements. (And the confusion had to do with untangling what was going on not only in Libya but across the Middle East after that video provoked riots everywhere.)
The right wing thinks they have another “Watergate” with the Libya attack, and they don’t seem to be backing off that line even after Bob Woodward himself has told them the idea doesn’t work. This will in the end be another Joe Sestak – much ado about something far less interesting. It’s tragic and horrible that people were killed, both in Libya, and across the Middle East in the rioting – and all of that will be dealt with in an appropriate fashion. But trying to score cheap political points is not the way to go – as Obama correctly chastised Romney for doing.
The fact is that the right wing is desperately clinging to a single Gallup poll when all the other polls do not show the same spread. Why are they doing so? Because they want to trumpet that one poll to make a case that somehow Romney can’t lose. But when you actually look at the other polls, and even look at the internals of the Gallup poll itself, the Gallup numbers simply don’t add up. (And as Nate Silver points out, when this kind of thing has happened with Gallup in the last few elections, they’ve been considerably inaccurate in their polling.) So it’s an outlier. In actuality, the race is pretty close, as it’s been for much of the campaign. It would have been a larger lead for Obama had he shown up for the first debate and corrected Romney on multiple misstatements there. Since he didn’t, Romney was able to recover some ground but not enough to take the lead.
I’ve been waiting to see full polling with the numbers coming from after the 2nd debate, and all I’ve gotten on that front are the updated state polls in Wisconsin and Iowa. The Gallup poll itself is a rolling poll that actually started at the beginning of October and clearly has something amiss in its methodology if it’s that far outside the norm. Now, if we see a whole stack of polls (NBC/WSJ/ABC/Maris/etc) come out over the weekend and on Monday that all say that Romney has suddenly sprouted a ten point lead, then that will be a real indication of Romney actually having the status that Fox News wants to pretend he has now. On the other hand, if the polls say what I believe they’re going to say – that Obama is rising again and Romney is slipping back, particularly in the swing states, then the Gallup poll becomes more of a curiosity to be discussed after the election, to determine how they could have gotten this so wrong.
Itâs imbedded in their souls that they will not under any circumstances give President Obama credit for anything. To do so would be a sin in their religion of hate for the man. All my Republican family and friends refuse to accept the fact that Obama won on Tuesday night. They wonât say Mitt won, but all of them are saying, it was a draw. Nobody won. Which of course means they know the President won but theyâll never admit it. Binders full of women will live in infamy, alongside with youâre no Jack Kennedy.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that she, herself, had been invited to read the transcripts after making the same comment on reluctance to call the Benghazi affair an “act of terror”.
I’m personally convinced that all this fuss is politically motivated and hence totally dispicable, disgraceful, dishonest (Rick Patel’s ailment is contagious!). Right now, there’s an on-going investigation and the location is something like 8,000 miles away from the USA and in another country. On September 11, 2001, the events occurred within the USA and the reaction of the opposition was to close ranks as A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N-S. I find it frustrating to hear republicans say “It’s an election year” with one breath and “We’re not making a political deal out of this” with the very next breath.
These fools are not qualified to moderate a prison fight. They are nothing but teleprompter readers.
Tucky is nothing but a Breitbart wannabee. We don’t blame MSNBC for tossing this boy off the network. He was a waste of payroll.
Goofy Doocy’s only role at Fox “News” is to sit on the couch and read the teleprompter.
No reputable news organization would hire him to empty trash in the offices.
They both should form a comedy team because they are both jokes.
She interrupted mitts more because he wouldn’t shut up when his time was up and thought he was in charge of the debate!
Who cares if the president called it an act of terror??? WHo beside the morons at faux noise?
Theres isnt two bigger morons on the planet than those two meatheads!!!