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Let's begin with this: David Corn's new book Showdown devotes maybe a paragraph to Fox News, but to listen to the cries and howls from Bret Baier and the rest of the Fox team, you'd think the entire book was about it. Here's the teeny little excerpt they're all upset about:

“…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in…The Republicans have been at this for 40 years. They have new resources, but the strategy is old,” Corn recounted Obama as saying.

Bret Baier is simply outraged that the president could say something so utterly unfair, so outrageously false about Fox News, and Howie Kurtz rides to the rescue to back him up, taking the quote and expanding it so that it now isn't just "Fox News", but specifically "Fox News hosts."

Of course Fox News hosts don't say it outright. They just let their guests say it and fail to correct them. This is how it's done, and Corn pushed back hard on Baier with example after example after example of how wrong he was. Here is just one paragraph citing a few:

There's more (as Media Matters has documented). Donald Trump, appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show in March 2011, speculated that Obama was hiding his birth certificate because it declared he was born a Muslim. On April 26, 2011, controversial pastor Robert Jeffress onFox & Friends said, "why do 20 percent of Americans think the president is a Muslim? We'll, as my kids would say, duh." Last year, conservative radio talk show host, Lars Larson, echoing a familiar right-wing trope, said on Fox that the president shows "a whole lot of deference to Muslims and seems to forget Christians." Fox folks, of course, have gone wild over Obama's bowing before the Saudi king, and the network in 2008 pushed the false story that Obama attended an Islamic school in Indonesia.

If Howie Kurtz had an ounce of intellectual honesty, he would have given Corn an opportunity to respond to the critics who are willing to carry Fox News' water whenever so ordered. And even more than that, he wouldn't have allowed Baier's qualifying word "host" to have gone by without noting the dishonesty of shifting a quote from Fox News, the organization, to Fox News hosts.

Also? If Kurtz had even an iota of intellectual honesty, he wouldn't bring a commentator from Glenn Beck TV on the show to defend Fox. Glenn Beck and his TV channel are irrelevant, but leave it to Howie and his bookers to try to make them relevant, too. And Howie, this just makes me want to send you rotten tomatoes:

KURTZ: Now, I didn't find any example of a Fox host saying that President Obama is Muslim, so what Bret Baier said is accurate.

Guess what? I didn't find any example of David Corn or President Obama saying that either. I also had a ton of trouble finding any Fox News host who contradicted their guests' claims, but I guess that was something Howie didn't see fit to state for the record.

As we all know by now, Kurtz doesn't really function as a media critic as much as he does a media rehabilitator. It wouldn't do for Fox to be identified as the primary source for so many of the false fearmongering tales that seem to grab their viewers' attention without backing them up and giving them the old rehabilitation pitch. Never mind that senior citizens get so gripped in their fear of Obama the Muslim that they die, rather than go to the hospital. None of that matters so long as Howie can make sure Fox is immune to its critics.

It's really pathetic.

Full transcript follows, via CNN.

Continue reading »

Haley Barbour, marionette master:

A reporter followed up to ask Barbour for his opinion as to why so many Americans (wrongly) think Obama is a Muslim.

"I don't know why people think what they think," Barbour said. He paused and then added, "This is a president that we know less about than any other president in history."

There's a couple of possibilities here. Either Haley Barbour does not know how to read and therefore missed the two books written by Barack Obama about his life, his family and his outlook, or he's just being a divisive jerk. Or both.

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Watching the whole Ground zero racist uprising is just an extension of the tea party mentality. The nativist outlook has been with America for a long time, but FOX News expanded their makeup ten fold.

The Times report, however, descends into a kind of "liberal" media known-nothingism when it comes to how this became a controversy, suggesting that " a combination of arguable naïveté, public-relations missteps and a national political climate in which perhaps no preparation could have headed off controversy." This is a remarkable formula that manages to place the blame everywhere except where it belongs -- on a right-wing smear machine that went into overdrive in an effort to portray Rauf and Khan as terrorist sympathizers, an experience no one outside of contemporary partisan politics could have possibly been prepared for. The conservative media lied about the location of the project, they lied about Rauf's background, they lied about the project's funding, they lied about when the project would be built, and they lied about Rauf's political beliefs. And it would have been one thing if it had just been a small group of people lying, but they had an entire cable news station to lie for them, and politicians who were willing to amplify their smears. This controversy isn't about the "political climate." It's the fruit of a conscious, deliberate, and sustained effort.

is it too much to expect that a NY Times writer would actually investigate all the lies being told by the far right?

I don't know why, but I'm still shocked at how outwardly they show their racist beliefs though, but hey---with a media that is vastly underfunded and afraid to make waves and catering to this xenophobic hate group, it's going to happen more and more.

I'm sure that the intensity of emotion shared by some of the projects' opponents are sincere. But where they hold Muslims collectively responsible for the actions of a few extremists, they are mistaken, and where their feelings are the result of falsehoods spread by the conservative media, they are misguided, and where they believe the First Amendment does not extend to American Muslims, they are simply wrong.

The reason this became a national controversy is because Republicans see a political advantage in harnessing anti-Muslim sentiment, particularly if that forces Democrats to defend an unpopular minority group. Rauf and Khan are merely collateral damage in a larger political battle in which the rights of Muslims are forfeit as long as Republicans see some political interest in curtailing them or forcing their opponents to defend them. But just as no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, no Republican ever went broke underestimating the political cowardice of the Democratic Party.

So what we're left with is a largely uncontested notion that any observant Muslim is a potential national-security threat, a view that was once confined to the conspiratorial right-wing fringe but is now, thanks to Republican demagoguery, Democratic cowardice, and mainstream media know-nothingism, an entirely respectable, mainstream view. This isn't just a setback for religious tolerance and individual freedom; it's a setback for the fight against terrorism, which demands that the United States marginalize violent extremists, not embrace their narrative and worldview.

Until Republicans gain control of the White House once again, they will act our like racist pigs over and over again and will be helped along by the right wing smear machine and FOX News. Violence is on the way, people.

We've outlined a lot of this in our book "Over The Cliff," so grab a copy if you haven't so far.

Digby writes:

Normally I would think we could ride out this latest wave of nativism and racism, but there are two factors that make it more dangerous than usual. The first, of course, is the economy which looks like it's not going to recover smartly thus giving this impulse more oxygen than it might otherwise have. The second is that the right wing demagogues have an entire industry now devoted to creating and nurturing these wedge issues for political and financial gain. The culture warriors have just shifted their strategy away from "family values" to their other stand-by, "stop the boogeyman." It's all part of the same throwback tapestry, but different times require difference emphasis. We're officially in the "the foreigners and blacks are ruining everything" portion of the show.

The foreigners and Blacks are ruining everything portion of the show started the day Obama took office. It's been a long and drawn out ugly play. Hatred of the non-whites will only rise in the polls. Yes, America is digressing at a fast rate. Hey, it's making money for the Glenn Beck's and bagging huge ratings for FOX.

recovering liberal
Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

THE US is losing the war of ideas in the Islamic world, failing to elucidate its policies to Muslims wary of American intentions and "self-serving hypocrisy", a Pentagon advisory panel has found.

The Defence Science Board, in a report made available today, urged the creation of a "strategic communication" apparatus within the White House and an overhaul of public diplomacy, public affairs and information dissemination efforts by the Pentagon and State Department.

"If we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole and the Arabic-speaking world in particular move more toward our understanding of 'moderation' and 'tolerance,' we must reassure Muslims that this does not mean that they must submit to the American way," the report stated.

The toughly worded report said that while America's efforts to explain its policies have failed, improved public relations efforts cannot sell faulty policies.

"Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies," the panel stated.

(h/t nr for the graphic)

OK, let's have some fun. There's a new Harris poll that was just released and the results are pretty hysterical. It's not scientific, but based on who decided to take it online during the height of the health care debate, so take it for what it is:

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist."

To anyone who thinks the end of the health-care vote means a return to civility, wake up.

Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here's new data to prove it:

67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist. The belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” is widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come.

57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president" 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did" Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist." These numbers all come from a brand-new Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

• Michelle Goldberg: What the Polls Really Show The poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

The poll was based on John Avlon's new book: Wingnuts. If nothing else it speaks to the people that are clicking through and then taking the poll. Clearly there is a derangement syndrome going on in America today. We know this by the behavior we see everyday and the actions...oh...like...cutting someone's gas line. Things like that.

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[H/t Heather]

Nutbag wingnuts never ever go away even when they lose their tiny radio shows. They just come back again and again and again. Big money republicans always keep their wingnuts around in one form or another.

Anyway, Conservatives are crying a little more than usual lately because their racism has been so prominently displayed in their teabagger meetings and protests. And what do you know, my old pal Mark Williams is leading a teabagger party and his racism gets exposed by Anderson Cooper last night quite easily. He lies with the best of them and got caught by Anderson. Check it out.

COOPER: But I mean, Mark, what you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you're saying. But then I read on your blog, you say -- you call the president an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

COOPER: Is that the kind of...

WILLIAMS: That's the way he's behaving.

COOPER: But I mean...

WILLIAMS: I mean, if he cares to be...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Do you believe he's Indonesian? Do you believe he's a Muslim? Do you really believe he's a welfare thug?

WILLIAMS: He's certainly acting like it.

GERGEN: You think he's a racist in chief? Racist in chief? Is that what you called him? That's unbelievable. It's unbelievable,

WILLIAMS: Until he embraces the whole country -- what else can I conclude? He and guys like James are totally, totally isolating the rest of this country; if you're a working-class American, then you know, that's it.

CARVILLE: I tell you, if you're an American, and you like what you're hearing from this guy, if you like celebrating a man's death, go over there with these people.

Mark Williams found his new calling by joining up with the teabaggers which seems like a good fit to me since there was no where for him to go after he lost his radio show in Sacramento. In the segment he tries to downplay the psychos that make up a large part of the teabaggers and says there is no racism and then is exposed as a racist. You can't make this up.

Here's some context on this guy. His behavior was so outlandish that I've posted several clips of him over the years and he doesn't like me so much. I remember when I called Williams "Puke" in a post for his obnoxious comments he made on Hardball about Cindy Sheehan's son during Cindy's stand at Crawford ranch back in August of 2005.

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O'Donnell: "Mark, if you don't mind, you're making the case that Cindy Sheehan is hurting the morale of our troops?"

Williams: "She is aiding and abetting the enemies of this country and the people who killed her son. And right now Casey Sheehan is spinning in his grave!"

And the best response he could make to me was that I was trying to have his dog assassinated.

After Katrina hit, he acted like the lowest of the low when he attacked Katrina victims by saying they were too dumb and lazy to get out of NOLA.

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Williams: ..they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going..

Morris:...that's just sickening---that is atrocious what you are saying...

He calls Kanye West a racist while he spews racism.

Williams: The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government--trapped there, I'm using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help..

This is a man who is leading the teabagger brigade and is lapping up the attention. I hope the media sees these clips so they know who they are dealing with.

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