DOWNLOADS: (862)

PLAYS: (3104)

Embed

Now here's an irony: Bill O'Reilly accusing Al Jazeera of being anti-Semitic because it includes guests who clearly fit that description. Meanwhile, the Glenn Beck Anti-Semitic Elephant in the room goes politely ignored.

Of course, what this was really about was, once again, right-wing Fox talkers like O'Reilly and Monica Crowley using unrest abroad as a way to smear liberal Americans as insufficiently patriotic. And so when Alan Colmes called them out for it, his reward was to get the BillO the Bully Full-On Nasty treatment.

It happened last night on O'Reilly's opening "Talking Points Memo" segment:

"Talking Points" could provide hundreds of examples of anti-Semitism and "hate America" rhetoric displayed on Al Jazeera, the network Sam Donaldson admires.

And he's not alone. Here's what Brian Stelter wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday: "As recently as Friday, the conservative Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly branded Al Jazeera as 'anti-America.' … But that view has been largely drowned out by people like [Sam] Donaldson who have hoisted up Al Jazeera English for its protest coverage."

Totally absurd. Any fair-minded person who follows Al Jazeera knows it is anti-American and anti-Semitic. Only on the far left can it find acceptance.

Sure. And it's true that it's there are many examples of anti-Semitic guests on Al Jazeera -- just as it's true that Fox has had on its airwaves a broad assortment of nativists and other far-right extremists over the years as well.

But even more important, one of Fox News' leading anchors -- and a frequent onstage and on-air cohort of O'Reilly's -- is under siege from Jewish rabbis outraged by Beck's anti-Semitic slurs of George Soros and his obscene overuse of Nazi and Holocaust comparisons and metaphors.

Oh well. That -- like any criticism of the network at all -- is NEVER mentioned at Fox.

Because as the segment that followed with Colmes and Crowley amply demonstrated, this was less about bashing Al Jazeera and was really all about bashing liberals -- as Crowley made explicit. And that set off the fireworks:

CROWLEY: Well, I -- I don't want to attribute this directly to Sam Donaldson but I would say to make a broader point that the far left in this country is essentially anti-American.

COLMES: Oh please, now that's disgusting.

CROWLEY: They are -- and so a lot of their -- a lot of their philosophy.

(CROSSTALK)

COLMES: That's disgusting. That's sickening.

CROWLEY: I'm not saying you, Colmes, I'm saying the broader far left has an anti-American agenda that in many ways dovetails…

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1554)

PLAYS: (5167)

Embed

On Sunday's ABC Roundtable, Liz Cheney and Sam Donaldson got into it on the torture investigations.

The only reason she's on is to defend her father once again. This is old and tired. Why does Dick only appear on FOX News to defend his position? We know the answer to that one. Chris Wallace makes with the Love Boat eyes and crawls on his tummy to try and get Dick all excited. They are like two cats in heat. Sam Donaldson wouldn't take Liz's ridiculous arguments. I mean, she actually says that there already were investigations...cough...cough...by the Bush administration and they passed with flying colors. She then continues to lie about the 2004 report and says that nobody was raped...Sure, Liz...

Liz: You do, you say it has already been looked at..

Sam: By who?

Liz: By career prosecutors...

Sam: In the Bush administration justice department.

But Sam, they were less political than Eric Holder, who is a political appointee...

When Sam brought up drilling people in the head and rape, Liz Cheney was outraged. Not at the act, but at the accusation...

Liz: That is totally, that is inexcusable..

Sam: It's in the report...

Liz: Nobody raped anybody...

George: The law said the threats were illegal, It's against the law.

Liz: Wait a second, that's not clear.

{}

Sam: Everyone except one person that I know has commented ....says torture is waterboarding is wrong.

Liz: Waterboarding isn't torture. We can go that path...the lack of seriousness here is important...

When a conservative is losing an argument, one of their weapons is to say that you're not serious. It's a one stop shop argument fixer. Kristol uses the word "serious" a lot to make himself sound intelligent, but nobody buys it except FOX.

Oh and Liz is still trying to sell her best product of all: Waterboarding isn't torture. How many times has she denied it already?

DOWNLOADS: (2543)

PLAYS: (9671)

Heh. Sam Donaldson really smacks down the ever-unctuous (and historically inaccurate) George Will on This Week's roundtable discussion about the teabaggers:

WILL: What this was about, as was the original Boston Tea Party - which was barely about taxes but about Parliament's role in their lives, was a view that we're now in something called the "third wave" of government. You had the expansion of the New Deal, you had the expansion of the Great Society to complete the New Deal, what those people who rallied there were saying this is something different, this third wave is to erase the distinction between the public and private sectors, and that frightens them.

DONALDSON: Oh, they weren't saying that, George. What they were saying is, we don't like Obama. And this is a proxy way to say that. Because it's true, he's going to lower taxes on 95% of the American public, and the rest are going to have higher taxes. You were quite correct, it's not about the level of taxes. Those rallies were mainly, it seems to me, organized to say, "We don't like Obama" across the board.

Peggy Noonan, believe it or not, is the one who more accurately nails the mood as anti-ruling class. Unfortunately, Fox News- and talk-radio voters are invariably under-informed as to the root causes of our economic woes.

Notice that when it comes to conservatives, they always consistently attack the legitimacy of any Democrat who wins the White House. So no Democrat is ever really the President, and should be challenged at every turn! There, wasn't that easy?

George thought he was defending the economy while discussing the recent huge drop in the stock market. Sam Donaldson used Will's own graph to point out the problem with taking money out of Social Security and investing in the stock market.

Download | play -QT

Download | play -WMP

Way to go Sam.