It’s exchanges like this that illustrate the pointlessness of having someone like Dennis Kucinich on Fox News. He doesn’t stand up for himself or for any principle I can perceive. He just folds like a pup tent and does what he’s told.

If you had a real left wing commentator like, say, Amy Goodman, they wouldn’t tolerate that kind of thing for a second. If Karl Rove said something that offensive and then said “Move on!”, you’d hear an answer of “Excuse me? Are you telling the thousands of people who died for your war to move on? Are you telling the families of those people to move on? How dare you dismiss their concerns like this.” And then you let Karl Rove try to talk his way out of that abyss.

Again, this is a useful example of Fox News being a helpful organ for the GOP and not by any means a “fair and balanced” news organization. Chris Wallace is reliable as a GOP litmus on most issues. Sometimes he can be tough on GOP candidates, particularly if they are out of favor with the elite of the party (witness his broadsides on Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum last year when the GOP power structure wanted them to get out of the way of Mitt Romney as fast as possible). But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him do anything but attack Democrat candidates and politicians. Of course, his lowest point came with his attempted gotcha on Bill Clinton and we all saw how badly that went for Wallace. I actually felt some sympathy for Wallace at that moment. It’s true that he deliberately provoked Clinton, but it’s never pleasant to watch someone get humiliated like that on the air, even when it’s Wallace.

So, basically some of the angriest and most hateful personalities on the network are going the AM Radio route. Shouldn’t be a surprise, given that several of them are regularly inflicting this kind of vitriol on the air.

The AM radio take on the matter has been to try to kill the idea of it by throwing in so many poison pills nobody would want it. The typical approach heard on KFI has been to say “Fine. They can stay in the US and pay taxes and pay a fine. But no benefits of any kind for them or their kids EVER.” Which translates to the same thing they’ve been advocating for the past 10 years: Either directly deport 11+ million people or make their lives in the US so miserable that they’ll self-deport. And all of that ignores the fact that too many businesses are happy to have the undocumented laborers here, since they don’t have to pay them much at all. Which means that while one side of the right wing is making a killing off the backs of these people, the other side of the right wing is exploiting xenophobia.

When the history of this time is written, it won’t come out any better than the nightmares of immigrants through the 19th Century. Back then, there were plenty of leaflets, propaganda papers and rags to fan the flames of the hate. Today, in the 21st century, Fox News has taken that idea into the high tech world. In an ironic way, you can take the attitudes out of the 19th Century, but you can’t take the 19th Century out of the attitudes.

Pfeiffer also made the important point about how the email release showed that the GOP had doctored their accounts of what was in them. He got one good shot in when he noted that he hoped that they would be looking into who leaked the doctored emails with the same ferocity that they were chasing people in the Obama Admin.

This is the typical Libertarian argument run wild, and it’s really interesting to hear it from Eric Bolling, who wants people to think of him as a pious Christian.

Basically, what they’re saying is IGMFU, the usual Libertarian approach. They’re thinking that the notion of human rights is only to be able to PURSUE life, liberty and happiness. But that’s not what the line actually says – it says “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Note the difference. The idea from the country’s founders is an honorable one – we have the right to our lives, to our freedom, and to pursue the direction we we wish. We’re not guaranteed happiness by any means – just that we can try to achieve it. But we are given a right to health care in that list. It’s surprising that Bolling doesn’t use that to defend his anti-choice beliefs, but watch out for him to do so at some point – and he’ll be in direct contradiction of his own statements here.

I’m honestly getting very tired of right wing pundits and libertarians telling me that people feel they’re “entitled” to everything. Because, again, that translates to IGMFU. They just don’t want to pay their taxes. And the less well-to-do among the libertarians keep hoping that they’ll hit the jackpot soon and be a rich person paying low taxes. But the idea that people should only be able to receive the health care they can afford is something out of a Charles Dickens Oliver Twist nightmare.

The reality of health care under the Bolling/Hoenig idea is that yes, people will and do die in the streets. And actually, this happens every day in US cities. Homeless people actually do die in the street. Elderly people on very low incomes do die in their apartments and don’t get found for days. People who could have had preventitive care but can’t afford it wind up dying of diseases and issues that richer people avoid. People who can’t afford more than minimal levels wind up in our ERs, trying to use that as regular health care, which means it costs a HECK of a lot more for everyone else.

Universal health care is the way out of that entire problem, as most other civilized countries in the world have already worked out. And we’ll get there too. If there is a serious flaw in the ACA, it’s that President Obama and the Dems caved on even having the public option in it. Granted, they were repeatedly trying to reach out the GOP and give them various things they wanted, but that had assumed that the GOP wanted to help pass anything with them. So they gave up the key part of the legislation for nothing and the GOP still tried to obstruct it regardless. As I see it, we’ll wind up with a single payer system in another decade or so, if not sooner – simply because the costs of our current system will become unsustainable. But the insurance companies and their backers will have to be dragged to that table kicking and screaming. Judging from this article, that kicking and screaming is continuing.

If there is a comic note to Bolling’s offensive discussion here, it’s that it backdropped the latest House vote to repeal the ACA. As usual, the GOP members of the House decided to stage a vote to repeal yet again, knowing this will go absolutely nowhere and only serves as a giant FU to the Obama Admin. I have particularly enjoyed Michelle Bachmann in another segment entertaining her fantasy of the GOP somehow taking over all of Congress and then repealing everything the Obama Admin has ever done. Given that they won’t be doing that, what’s they’re next strategy? Wait out the term til 2016, try to elect a GOP president and Congress and then repeal everything?

The part of all this that really needs to be reinforced is the fact that Fox News and right wing media would not have handled this story the same way had any of these stories happened under the Bush Administration.

Fox News/AM Radio about these “scandals” under President Obama:
-Benghazi is a case of the President somehow deliberately leaving our people exposed and then trying to cover up his horrible mistake.
-The IRS situation is a case of Obama and his people persecuting poor Tea Party groups that just wanted to express their free speech rights.
-The AP situation is a case of Obama deliberately infringing on the free speech rights of reporters

Fox News/AM Radio about these “scandals” under a GOP President:
-Benghazi wouldn’t even be mentioned. It would be ignored as were all the other embassy and consulate attacks that happened. If the Dems tried to bring it up, the Bush people would respond that this was an act of terror by the evildoers that would be avenged.
-The IRS situation would be dismissed as a clerical matter being handled internally. After two officials were fired or forced out, right wing media would declare the matter over.
-The AP situation would be presented as a matter of national security having been breached, and the phone record snare would be seen as a matter of “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists”.

My point in bringing this up is that this very divergence illustrates that right wing media, and Fox News in particular is anything BUT “fair and balanced.” It’s in fact quite biased and designed to cheerlead for right wing politicians and their causes.

Now, contrast that with mainstream media, and particularly with left wing media like Pacifica Radio. Mainstream media follows these things as scandals and hangs around so long as there’s a salacious detail or two to play with. Left wing media consistently holds the same positions about these stories regardless of who the president is.

But with Fox News, you can almost time your watch to the idea that if it’s a GOP president they’re going to whitewash whatever happens, and if it’s a Dem president, they’re going to be the nastiest watchdog ever seen. I have yet to see a right wing pundit who can explain that basic contradiction.

I don’t know that there really are more legitimate questions to ask about this matter. The whole thing was dealt with last fall, when it was relevant. A full report was issued, with a public section and a more classified one that Congress read.

The only reason it got dredged up again was because Fox News and the GOP wanted to embarass HIllary on her way out of office in January. And then when Gregory Hicks and company wanted to make statements to Congress in rebuttal to Hillary, the matter was dredged up yet again.

But all we’re proving with more and more papers on the matter is that there really isn’t anything here. And the more papers that the Obama Admin provides, the more papers will be demanded by the GOP. It’s the same thing as the birth certificate. Hillary’s campaign throws out a nasty below-the-belt shot during a primary and the GOP runs with it. Obama releases the publicly available document, and the birthers and the GOP say “That’s not enough. Give us the ‘Long Form’ version”. After more nonsense about it, including Donald Trump repeatedly lying about it on national television, Obama releases the ‘Long Form’. And the birthers and the GOP say “That’s not enough. Might be a forgery even though that’s ridiculous. Tell you what, give us all of Obama’s school transcripts and writings too.” The nonsense never stops. If he provided those papers, they’d then ask for all of his drafts from the college years. And then they’d ask for his high school essays. And then they’d ask for his middle school essays. It never ends, and feeding the nonsense gets us nowhere.

With Benghazi, these guys just want to keep the story alive, by any means possible. They know there isn’t anything here, but just keeping it alive allows them to continue to throw vicious political smears around while hiding behind the bodies of the ambassador and the other three men who were killed. In the end, the matter will be remembered as a minor footnote, a desperate attempt to rewrite history and only the latest GOP smear campaign against an administration they despise.

I would adjust that slightly:

For Benghazi, the reality is that these guys are trying to argue about the Talking Points Susan Rice had when she went on news shows. I mean, for crying out loud, Talking Points. Meaning they’re arguing about how the Obama people were spinning the attack. If what she did is somehow wrong, then how do they explain about a thousand appearances on news shows as well as speeches where the Bush people flat-out lied? How do they explain not a spin but an outright lie about warfare that hadn’t happened yet? It’s the height of hypocrisy for them to be dwelling on this – or maybe I should say, the depth of hypocrisy. If this situation had happened under Bush, the response by his team would have been to play up the terrorism angle even if it hadn’t been proven, just to use it as a campaign wedge.

For the IRS, the situation was that the 501 c4 classification has resulted in a pile of new applicants, many of whom don’t qualify because what they’re doing is really just rah-rah for one party or the other. What the Ohio employees were trying to do was separate out the ones that were clearly political from the ones who were focused on various social issues. Note that nothing in this stopped those groups from getting their message out – it just delayed when or whether they got their tax exemption. Had this happened under Bush, the Fox News guys would be saying that the IRS was just doing its job under the law.

For the AP Story, this one is the absolute ultimate in hypocrisy. The right wing is actually taking a principled position here, but it’s for the wrong reason. They see this idea as another way to attack Obama. But the thing is – what DOJ did was legal under the Patriot Act. And the right wing totally supported that Act – when it was being handled under Bush. Now they want to oppose it because it’s being used by Obama. Personally, I find the tracking of the phone records distasteful, but then I opposed the Patriot Act from the beginning. People on the left are appropriately outraged about this for that reason. Fox News pundits don’t get to adopt that outrage when they supported the Act that makes the situation possible and legal.

The right wing has been attacking Eric Holder since President Obama announced his appointment. I’ve simply lost count of the number of times the GOP has announced that Holder’s resignation/impeachment/imprisonment/firing was “just about to happen”. Their pursuit of Holder has been interesting just in terms of their obsessivness about him. The result? Holder continues to be our Attorney General and likely will do so until he, not they, decides he’s done.

I totally missed Denny’s contribution. Shame.

He very quickly took about five uninformed shots and then ran away. I do wish he would have actually provided examples of what he was alleging. As it was, I could only see a reiteration of the usual Fox News talking points.

The primary discussion of the thread stands – it’s truly bizarre to see Donald Rumsfeld being held up as a standard of truth and integrity. His entire tenure in the George W. Bush presidency was marked by his contempt for the press and his arrogance when it came to telling anyone what was going on. Rush Limbaugh used to celebrate Rumsfeld’s obfuscations as some kind of victory. Which would indeed have been a victory over journalism and the principles behind it.

The reality these days is that it’s very difficult for various Bush Administration figures to travel abroad, due to the various war crimes charges that have been levied against them. This doesn’t get spoken about much, and Fox News pretends it doesn’t happen. But there’s a very real possibility that you could see one of these guys getting pulled into court if they slip up and walk into a subpoena overseas.

I agree with part of what Phillip said. I agree that both sides of any issue will tend to use any public case about it to promote their own beliefs. I also believe that it is up to the women involved to make their own choices and decisions about their bodies and their health.

I disagree with the part where somehow Fox News is thought to have a record of “reporting facts, as well as conflicting beliefs and opinions from both different sides.” That’s simply not what Fox News does, and that’s never been its mission. Fox News was created to promote a right wing belief system. This is done, as has been proven on this site countless times, by carefully cherry picking which facts are presented in a case so that they appear to reinforce a right wing opinion. In many cases, outright opinion is stated as fact. This happens both on the “straight news” shows where questions are framed from an ideological perspective and more openly on the pundit shows where the guys really let it fly.

Fox News is also careful not to bring in a left wing perspective if they can help it. Aside from an occasional visit by Tavis Smiley, their “opposing” commentators are moderate liberals who are usually willing to echo the right wing talking points or accept them as worthy of discussion. Occasionally, one of them, like Kirsten Powers, will finally get fed up and raise her voice a little. But usually you just get someone very genial, like Alan Colmes in his notorious situation on Hannity’s show. Or you get Dennis Kucinich, a liberal Dem who swung a little to the left to try to get the Nader Dems back in the fold in 2004 and now is shilling whatever line Fox News hands him. Or you get Juan Williams, who normally begins a response to a completely ridiculous Hannity screed with “Yeah, Sean, I agree with you. But let me add this too…” At which point Williams has conceded the argument. I would love to see a situation where Fox News actually did include left wingers to counter the untruths. I would love to see Amy Goodman explain issues to Bill O’Reilly. I would love to see Dean Baker correct Stuart Varney on economics. I would love to see Doug Henwood debate Lou Dobbs on the air. But we’re never going to get that on Fox News.

The more pragmatic on the hard right know that they will never be able to repeal Roe v Wade. If they ever succeeded in doing so, they’d kill the GOP as an effective political group for decades, given how big that backlash would be. So they just continue to chip away at it, and they try to use things like the Gosnell case to rile up their most ardent followers.

The reality of the Gosnell case is about what happens when poor women either have no options for reproductive choice, or don’t know what those options are. It’s a case about a man who was preying on poor and non-white women, pure and simple. That’s what came out in 2011, when the story really was news and when everyone but Fox News covered it as news. The right wing should be ashamed of itself for trying in 2013 to rewrite the narrative of this case, and “The Five” should be ashamed of trying to misrepresent Gosnell as a typical abortion provider. And Fox News should be further ashamed of their continued association with Lila Rose and her brand of “gotcha” ambushes. Rose can bloviate all she wants about abortion, but it’s deeply offensive for her to be touting videos in which she sends people to clinics to deliberately lie so that she can hopefully get someone saying the wrong soundbite here or there.