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Sandy Rios is a Fox Talker and Vice President of Family PAC Federal, a PAC supporting ultra-conservative candidates like Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn. Evidently her gifts are limited to her abilities to repeat right wing talking points with alacrity and little more.

Her "discussion" with Fox contributor Jehmu Greene about the Susan G Komen Foundation's announcement to reverse themselves on some level with regard to Planned Parenthood paints a pretty vivid image of the differences between right and left when it comes to women's health.

Rios views the backlash by men and women across the country over the Komen Foundation's decision to withdraw funding for breast cancer screening from Planned Parenthood centers across the country as a mere "shakedown" while arguing that the foundation is a private enterprise which can do what it wants.

Not so fast, there, Ms. Rios. As long as donations to the foundation are tax-deductible, it is not a private enterprise. It is a taxpayer-subsidized enterprise with a stated mission to raise money for and fund breast cancer research and health initiatives to prevent and treat breast cancer. It is not a corporation created with private dollars to pursue private objectives. Not at all.

Rios' protests might actually be interesting if the statement released this morning by the Komen Foundation weren't so full of holes and hedges that you could play croquet on it. On first blush, it appeared to be a concession to the backlash, but upon closer inspection, it appears to be mostly a public relations move to keep a terrible situation from being even more terrible.

Since President and CEO Nancy Brinker has offered two separate and contradictory reasons for the original decision, there's no reason to expect they won't withhold grants from Planned Parenthood because they decide to add requirements, like on-site mammography, which Planned Parenthood contracts with third party providers for.

And as John Aravosis points out, they could show some contrition by approving the grant application from Planned Parenthood they've turned down once already.

But let's not allow facts to distract this wild-eyed woman on Fox from just going on and on about how Senators intimidated Brinker. Here's a question for Sandy Rios: Since abortions represent 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's overall health services delivered to women, then what she is saying is that 97 percent of health services delivered to women is worthless. Did she really mean that?

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You'll be pleased to know that the "fair and balanced" news channel is hot on the trail of voter fraud trials. Well, at least, a voter fraud trial that involves Democrats. Megyn Kelly is anxious for everyone to be informed about a trial taking place in Troy, NY involving absentee ballots and Democratic officials. It's an ugly case, and several officials have pled guilty already.

But here's what Fox News fails to mention: It was caught. Caught, without voter ID laws in place. That's an inconvenient fact that is worth pointing out.

This report from Megyn Kelly also failed to emphasize another fact: There are some serious cases of Republican election/voter fraud taking place now. Therefore, I've decided to balance Ms. Kelly's seriously tilted report. Here is a small list:

• Indiana's Secretary of State and chief voting officer, Bill White, was removed from office after it was determined he was not eligible to be on the ballot. Further, he is charged with three counts of voter fraud.
• Voter suppression in Maryland in 2010, where Republicans paid for 100,000 robocalls to Democratic households telling them to sit back and relax and not vote, because the election was sewn up. A Republican operative was convicted in that case.
• Clay County, KY, where GOP officials were convicted of massive voter fraud and sentenced to 156 years in prison as a result.
• James O'Keefe's little sting operation in New Hampshire, where he sent operatives into New Hampshire precincts for the express purpose of committing voter fraud in order to prove fraud could be committed, after a mystery benefactor ponied up $50,000 for him to do it.

Yet, crickets from Ms. Megyn on these incidents. Fair and balanced? Only if balance means tilting reporting to try and demonstrate Roger Ailes' theory that Democrats do things Republicans have done for years and years and years.

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Fox News has been in full-blown Mitt Romney rehabilitation mode Tuesday. Beginning with Gretchen Carlson through every hour up to this segment on Megyn Kelly's show, they've worked very hard to convince viewers that Mitt Romney's gaffe, "I like to fire people," was taken out of context and unfairly depicts what he said.

We could simply say that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. It's fair game, right? After all, he said those words in that order. Yes, he did, and even in context, he could have said "I like to choose service providers," or something similar. Instead he chose to employ CEO-speak; that is, authoritarian, emperious words that no one likes to think about, much less experience. Being fired sucks. As one who spent a long time in a career as a service provider, I'll vouch for that. Whether it's a client leaving or a boss firing, it's a rotten thing. Still, I believe it's fair to put his remarks in context, and even inside that context, he's wrong. Very wrong, very cynical, and it's actually worse when placed into the context he intended it.

Before I continue, let's stipulate that the very best way to handle health care costs would be single payer. I agree with all of you who say that. But this post is not about that. It is about what we have or are about to have and what Mitt Romney thinks we should have. And firing people.

As the clip at the top shows, Romney was talking about health care, and presumably about how he would change Obamacare after he repealed it, as he has promised to do. Here's the full quote:

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For several weeks, Fox News has declared war on the Chevy Volt in the name of belittling all so-called green energy initiatives. The attacks have been relatively trivial, ranging from ridicule by Bill O'Reilly over a recall to general guffaws at the idea of vehicles that don't consume huge amounts of fossil fuel energy. But that all changed today with this segment on Megyn Kelly's show Monday.

Kelly featured James Hohman from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Koch-funded think tank in Michigan. Much of Mackinac's focus is on right-to-work laws and union busting wherever possible, so what better target to focus on than a GM-manufactured green vehicle, right?

According to the Mackinac study, if all government subsidies are added up and divided by the number of vehicles sold, it adds up to $250,000 per vehicle. The included subsidies are everything from research and development credits for battery technology to purchaser credits for buying a green vehicle. Of course, the problem is that this number assumes only 7,000 Chevy Volts will ever be sold anywhere. Forever and ever. As more Volts are sold and as more models become available and are shown to be reliable, more people will buy them. As for traction, I would note that when the Toyota Prius was introduced in this country, it only sold 5,800 units in the first year it was sold in the United States. The Volt sales topped that and as the price comes down, sales will increase.

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I hate to break this to Bill Kristol, but there are Democratic caucuses in Iowa tonight, and Democrats will be there for them. While he may think it's "cheesy" for the Democratic candidate for President to speak to his supporters, his nasty little diatribe speaks more to his own fears that there's not one single candidate running for the GOP nomination that's electable.

You know what's cheesy? Fox News telling viewers there's no caucuses for Democrats tonight. Not that many Democrats would necessarily be watching Fox News, even in Iowa, but still. That's cheesy. Offensive. And extremely political, all adjectives used to describe President Obama in this small segment.

Shameless. But we knew that.

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Lawrence O'Donnell explained what the hell Sarah Palin was talking about the other day on Greta. Apparently she's miffed at Megyn Kelly for telling the truth about where Palin is in the polls. Oh and then there was calling out her colleague on Fox News, Juan Williams for calling Herman Cain the "flavor of the month." It's like junior high only with more tooth whitener and hairspray.

Look, here's the thing: this is all Palin does. She's a petty, myopic mean girl who wants nothing more than to lash out at people she thinks have done her wrong. She's has one trick and this is it.

I compiled a list of Palin's feuds. Here it is. I'm now adding these two. So the list is up to 90 entries and it's only getting funnier.

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It's interesting to see Fox News host Megyn Kelly get riled up over progressive policies like the Family Medical Leave Act. Of course, that might be because she just wrapped up a few months of maternity leave herself.

After calling radio host Mike Gallagher a "pinhead" for comments he made back in May on the air with Chris Wallace, Kelly sets him straight on the value of maternity leave, the fact that it's not a "racket," that men are also eligible for it, and that this country actually has more restrictive laws than other countries.

Despite the somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone in this clip, Kelly really nails him on the idiocy of his statement about the FMLA being a "racket" and not extending to men. She gave a passionate and clear defense of why the policy exists and even why it's weaker than most other countries' maternity leave policies.

How progressive of her! Seriously, it really is. Now if she could only wrap her head around the fact that the Family Medical Leave Act is only part of a larger picture that includes things like Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Social Security, she might understand that social safety nets are something that constitute true family values. Still, it was refreshing and even a little shocking to hear such a passionate defense of progressive values from a Fox News commentator.

I wonder if she knows FMLA was passed by a Democratic Congress with a Democratic President. Maybe she's realizing that the real "family values" voters are Democrats. Hmmmm.

Transcript follows.

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So the New York Times is reporting that the results of a Senate Ethics Committee investigation may leave Ensign liable for charges of obstructing an FEC investigation, violating federal lobbying bans, and making unlawful payments to the husband of the aide with whom he was having an affair. But as Mark Howard at News Corpse points out, it looks like Fox News was also part of the widespread coverup:

However, any investigation of this matter needs to include possible interference on the part of Fox News and Glenn Beck-wannabe, Megyn Kelly. There is evidence that Kelly, who received a letter from Doug Hampton revealing Ensign’s infidelity, warned Ensign that the news was about to come out rather than reporting on it.

As I wrote on June 19, 2009:

“Fox News knew of Ensign’s infidelity five days before Ensign came forward. They got the information from the husband of Ensign’s mistress. That’s a pretty good source, especially when he asserts that he had corroborating evidence.”

First Fox denied having received any letter. Then they admitted that they had received the letter a day before the news broke. Then a FedEx receipt revealed that they had received the letter three days earlier. And Fox broadcast no stories about the Ensign affair during any of that time, or even for several days after.

When Ensign came forward to confess his sins, he told the press that he was doing so because the story was about to come out in the media. So the question is: did he learn that from Megyn Kelly?

The evidence strongly suggests that Kelly tipped Ensign off and set the stage for his announcement. Then she and Fox kept the story quiet in the days that followed. That is not the behavior of a “news” network. It is the behavior of an accomplice.

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Oddly enough, the only mention whatsoever of the New Black Panthers Party on Fox News in the past few days was the above snippet, one of Bill O'Reilly's "Reality Check" tidbits near the end of his show on Tuesday.

Odd, because there was this significant bit of news involving the NBPP case that has been the subject of so much coverage and discussion at Fox for the past year:

The Obama Justice Department did not improperly let politics or the race of the defendants affect the handling of a high-profile civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party, a probe by DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concluded after an extensive investigation.

Justice Department attorneys "did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately, in the exercise of their supervisory duties in connection with the dismissal of the three defendants in the NBPP case," the head of OPR wrote in a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) obtained by TPM.

OPR's investigation began in the summer of 2009. After an extensive investigation which included reviews of the New Black Panther Party file, "thousands of pages of internal Department e-mails, memoranda, and notes" and interviews with 44 current and former Department employees, OPR "found no evidence that the decision to dismiss the case against three of the four defendants was predicated on political considerations," wrote DOJ's Robin Ashton.

This is most odd indeed. Why, we can remember when our Fox morning and afternoon broadcasts were dominated by the breathless coverage of the NBPP scandal, including that nasty catfight on Megyn Kelly's show when Kirtsen Powers tried to point out that there was no there there, and of course video and audio of racially incendiary rants by NBPP leaders. It was always pathetically obvious as race-baiting goes, but then, Fox is nothing if not shameless.

Indeed, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters explains, Fox has been obsessing about the NBPP for the better part of the past couple of years, evidently certain that an Obama-dooming scandal lay therein:

For nearly two years, the right wing has been obsessed with the decision by those senior career attorneys to drop civil charges against three defendants affiliated with the New Black Panther Party who allegedly intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. This fixation became stronger last year, when two DOJ attorneys on the trial team who are linked the Bush administration's politicization of the DOJ claimed in media appearances and in testimony that the DOJ's actions were part of a pattern of racially-charged corruption at the department, in which lawyers there refused to protect white voters from intimidation by minorities.

These allegations received a ready airing on Fox News, but they simply never added up: There was simply no evidence that this was anything more than a disagreement between career attorneys on how to apply a rarely-used provision of the Voting Rights Act; the Obama DOJ did get obtain an injunction against one of the defendants in the case; it also took action in another case to protect white voters from intimidation by black political leaders; and the Bush administration had failed to take action in a similar case in which Latino voters were allegedly intimidated by whites.

And yet, this week, nary a word about these findings could be found on Fox, particularly not on Megyn Kelly's show, where the coverage was high-pitched, heavy-handed and heavily promoted.

Adam Serwer at the Plum Line observes:

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Probably the greatest blunder of the Obama White House over the past two years has been its abject failure to make certain the public understood that it was conservative misgovernance that was at the root of the great economic meltdown of 2008 -- especially because it was that very downturn that propelled him into office.

That failure has functionally given conservatives -- the architects of the disaster -- the ability to cover their tracks by erecting a narrative in which the blame was instead laid at the doorstep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and minority-lending programs. And that narrative is now widely believed by over half the country.

Now the Washington Times is trying to muddy the water even further, running a bizarre and thinly sourced piece claiming that perhaps terrorism -- maybe even Chinese terrorists, colluding with radical Islamists, perhaps? -- were actually behind the meltdown.

Here's the piece.

Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The unclassified 2009 report “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” by financial analyst Kevin D. Freeman, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, states that “a three-phased attack was planned and is in the process against the United States economy.”

But as you can see from reading the piece, Freeman presents no evidence other than the economic catastrophes themselves that these were terrorist attacks. Indeed, it's nothing but unadulterated wild speculation from start to finish.

Nonetheless, Megyn Kelly invited Freeman onto her Fox News yesterday and treated it as if it were potentially the biggest story in the whole wide world. She was duly wowed -- even though, as you can see, Freeman couldn't even tell her whether these were Chinese terrorists or Islamic radicals, or mebbe they were working in collusion! (As if!)

No wonder everyone involved in analyzing the markets is pretty much laughing at Freeman and the reporters who gobbled up this nonsense so gullibly.

Then, of course, Kelly capped it all off with the classic "minority lending programs did it" narrative as the safe story everyone believes:

KELLY: But how could they have done it? Because, you know, I think the conventional wisdom in this country is, uh, you know, you had Fannie and Freddie giving out tons of mortgages that never should have been given out, then you had the Wall Street folks trading these so-called credit default swaps, basically doubling down on the bad investments, and ultimately things just started to implode in a way where, you know, we had to step in, the government bailed out those banks, and we all know the history that happened after there.

That's a pretty remarkably dense thicket of lies that have little or no relationship to reality whatsoever. Let's try to unpack it a little:

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