In Fox's never-ending enthusiasm for the rehabilitation of Allen West from a sore loser of a Congressional candidate who was nearly court martialed for torturing a prisoner while in Iraq into a Person Who Still Matters, Fox & Friends Weekend welcomed him to the show yesterday to share his “insights” into the IRS scandal in which the agency has admitted targeting Tea Party groups for investigation. But even there, West failed in that he laughably linked the IRS inquiries to the long-debunked conspiracy theory that the federal government supposedly discriminated against Republican auto dealers during the auto bailouts. That’s the same conspiracy theory that even Fox News has debunked. But the Fox & Friends hosts developed a West-friendly bout of amnesia about that.
“This is something that is criminal,” West alleged, hinting at a fave Fox News meme of late: impeachment. Later, when asked why the IRS might have been asking Tea Party groups for their donor lists, West said:
One of the things you have to understand with those donor lists — and this is something that was brought up before the Small Business and also the Oversight Committee when I was there in Congress — they are after those lists because they want to put a lot of pressure on individuals.
…There were a lot of automobile dealerships that were closed down because people found out who they were providing funds and support to, when you go back and look at that auto bailout.
Well, not really. As Raw Story noted:
As part of Chrysler’s bailout deal with the U.S. government in 2008, the company agreed to close about a quarter of its 3,200 dealerships. By 2009, conservative media outlets like The Washington Examiner and Fox News were suggesting that the Obama administration had been disproportionately targeting Republican-owned dealers.
But FactCheck.org looked into the claims in September of 2009 and found that the “best evidence shows that dealerships with Republican donors weren’t disproportionately targeted – auto dealers overall tend to lean overwhelmingly Republican.”
And even a Fox News study determined that “the data do not support the charges.”
But instead of correcting the misinformation, Tucker Carlson said agreeably, “Scary.”
Video via Raw Story.
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Why is this a surprise? There’s not a single FoxNoise host who remembers anything more than 4 weeks ago unless their masters have approved it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you were to give all these FoxNoise folks a “pop quiz” on topics from 6 months ago and not a one of them received a passing grade. They have to spend so much time lying and lying to cover the lies and lying to cover the lies used to cover the first lies. Or, as Walter Scott wrote, “Oh! what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive.”
Aria changes the channel on Spongebob
I can actually feel the reality increasing!
(Spongebob lifts a three ton piece of ocean scrap by inflating his arms, and a squirrel hits on him)
Yep, still worlds of realism above Allen West.
