Another day, another racist headline from somewhere in the wingnutosphere ....

This ran recently at the Daily Caller. Where, evidently, no stereotype is too dessicated to trot out once again, and the phrase "illegals" is still considered just A-OK. (It has been taken down since.)

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Only on Fox News would unemployment insurance be presented as some kind of “cruelty” to the poor that “deters” them from getting hired at low-paying jobs. That’s right, with a straight face, Fox guest John Tamny said that we should scrap federal unemployment benefits in order to make “existing jobs” more attractive and “help” the unemployed by “luring” them back into the workforce. Naturally, host Tucker Carlson was all ears.

It started with a suggestion by Carlson that unemployment insurance benefits are unnecessary and wasteful. He cited a statistic that, during the past recession, the federal government paid “almost $80 million in jobless benefits to households that made more than $1 million a year.” He added, “Is this proof that the system is broken or should top earners be entitled to federal assistance if they lose their jobs?”

His guest, John Tamny took the concept a few steps further. He thought it would be even worse if millionaires were “forced” to pay into a system “that only non-millionaires could collect from.” But he went on to advocate for getting rid of unemployment insurance altogether - couched in the kind of rhetoric George Orwell would surely have loved - by calling one of our most important social safety nets “anti-poor” because it doesn’t encourage them to work for lower wages.

(The system) makes it that much more expensive for (businesses) to lure workers back from the sidelines. It actually raises their labor cost. If you didn’t have the federal government essentially paying people not to work, their labor demands would naturally fall to the level at which the markets would hire them again and they would get back to work more quickly. I think it’s anti-poor to say only you get a program that’s going to make you unemployed for a longer time.

…If you’re being paid money not to work, it’s going to make it that more expensive for businesses to hire you back into the labor force. So if you wanted to rid that, you’d get rid of unemployment benefits and people would then have to accept the existing jobs that are available. Many of them maybe don’t look attractive now. …Unemployment benefits are a deterrent to getting back into the labor force so I think it would be particularly cruel to say if you’re poor, you get paid to stay on the sidelines.

Predictably, Tamny’s solution is to privatize. He wants “401K-style programs" that both employers and employees would pay into "so that if the unthinkable happens, you have a little cushion that you own for during the time that you’re looking for new job.” What nobody mentioned is that this would do exactly what Carlson was supposedly against in the first place - subsidize higher-paid workers' unemployment longer and better.

But if you're new at a job before getting laid off or working at a low-paying job that would only provide a very small “cushion” or if the stock market should tank again – well, I guess the rest of us could count our “lucky” stars as we flip burgers at McDonald’s.

It didn't take long for Carlson's rag, the Daily Caller, to be discredited over its Sen. Menendez scandal story. Howard Kurtz explains it and then wonders when an apology will be forthcoming:

I think it is fair to say that the unsubstantiated story by "The Daily Caller" accusing Senator Robert Menendez of patronizing prostitutes in the Dominican Republic has now been discredited, but the conservative website still hasn't retracted the claim.

When the "Washington Post" reported that one prostitute admitted taking money to lie about the senator, the "Daily Caller" scuffed that the paper had the wrong hooker. Now Dominican police say three women have acknowledged being paid to lie about having sex for money with Menendez whose office now says again, this was a smear job.

Let's leave aside the charge by a top Dominican law enforcement official also reported by "The Post" that a local lawyer said someone claiming to be from "The Daily Caller" offered him $5,000 to find women willing to lie about Menendez.

"The Caller" says that is absolutely not true and I find it hard to imagine, but as for the prostitutes, the website founded by Tucker Carlson says it is, quote, "not independently verified the identities of the women involved in the Dominican probe" and quoting again, "remains unclear" whether one of the prostitutes now retracting her claim was interviewed by a "Caller" reporter.

At this point, if the "Daily Caller" cannot prove the story was true, it owes the senator and its readers an apology.

As C&L has documented many times, most conservatives don't care about accuracy--only about smearing Democrats and spreading hate towards liberals. if the lies help that agenda then all is good.

As Poynter highlighted, Carson loves the attention his phony stories create so can we expect more of them in the future?

Carlson, meanwhile, seems happy his business is in the spotlight. In an interview with The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi on Tuesday, Carlson said: “Oh, it’s a very good day. It’s a good day because it’s an interesting day.”

And of his critics, Carlson said: “I’m not seeking their approval. Why should I care if a bunch of losers on Twitter don’t like it?”

Farhi notes this has been part of the Caller’s recipe for success:

The put-up-your-dukes attitude has made the Daily Caller a rising star among the new Washington media, particularly the conservative kind. … One of its first attention-grabbing stories was its reporting in 2010 on Journolist, an e-mail group started by Post blogger Ezra Klein in which reporters privately trashed various politicians, most of them conservative.The outfit again caused a stir when its White House reporter, Neil Munro, interrupted President Obama’s remarks about immigration last year. …But other Caller “scoops” have fizzled.

Carlson went on Fox News last year to hype a 2007 video of Obama praising his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and suggesting that the federal government had shortchanged African American victims of Hurricane Katrina. Despite build-up for the video from the Drudge Report and Fox’s Sean Hannity, it caused barely a ripple. Most of its content had been reported on before — by, among others, Carlson.

I doubt we'll see Fox News ban Tucker from their Political All Star panel any time soon over these erroneous stories because there are no penalties for these liars.

According to the Washington Post, an official in the Dominican Republic is claiming he was paid by The Daily Caller to get three prostitutes on the record claiming they were with Senator Robert Menendez.

The local lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.

The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted last fall on the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”

The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.

Continue reading »

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In case you missed it, the right wing has been feasting over a Daily Caller report that President Obama has a food tester. Besides the fact that this is not news – Hot Air reported on President Obama’s food tester in 2009 - it’s not even new for this presidency. Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher points out that St. Ronnie Reagan had one, too. But leave it to born-into-privilege Tucker Carlson to use his site's “scoop” as an excuse to accuse Obama of behaving like a king and then suggest the security measure is a waste of money.

Wonkette snarked Friday afternoon:

Why the nation’s first black president would feel compelled to employ someone meant to protect his food in this wonderful era of complete racial transcendence and political civility is beyond our comprehension, but it does automatically mean that Obama is an evil aristocratic dictator whose tyranny is only matched by his disdain for the common people.

From Wonkette's print to Carlson's lips, but in all seriousness. Friday night, he sneered on the Hannity show: “A food taster? It is good to be king. …and you’re paying for it.”

For anyone who didn’t get it that Carlson was suggesting we’re spending too much money on President Obama’s vainglorious security, he made that more explicit on Fox & Friends Weekend this morning.

In yet another segment in which the “fair and balanced” network whined about cuts to White House tours (and ignored cuts to programs for the poor), co-host Clayton Morris "asked," “How could you turn down kids yelling outside your gate, ‘Please let us in?’”

Carlson replied, “Because you gotta pay your food taster... your dog walker and all the rest.”

OK, it was a throwaway line and, fortunately, nobody has called for an actual reduction in President Obama’s security operation. At least not yet. But Carlson is deliberately planting the meme that a food tester is a wasteful frill less important than a White House tour. And nobody on Fox is objecting. In fact, Morris chuckled heartily at Carlson’s jab and FoxNews.com did its part with an article called, "Longtime Presidential Secret Revealed? GOP Senator Says Obama Has a Food Taster." Given the disgusting NRA ad suggesting the Obama daughters enjoyed special privileges with their security, it shouldn't surprise any of us if this latest nastiness didn't work its way into the mainstream of right-wing rhetoric.

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Just in time for Jeb Bush’s candidacy to get going – and to help deal with that pesky “Bush baggage” problem, Fox News has found a way to help the cause: recast ex-president George W. Bush as a great painter. Of dogs.

On this morning’s Fox & Friends Weekend, Alisyn Camerota chirped, “For the first time, we’re hearing from George W. Bush’s teacher, Bonnie Flood.” Only on Fox News would the painting teacher of one of the least popular presidents ever be received with such excitement.

Camerota played a clip of Flood saying:

He picked it up so quick. He just was amazing, actually. His whole heart is in it. 43, I mean, he has such a passion for painting. It’s Amazing. He’s gonna go down in the history books as a great artist.

Which is nice because he surely won’t go down as a great president. Except, probably, on Fox News. Camerota chirped on:

For one month, Flood spent six hours a day teaching the former president the ups and downs of her craft. She reveals he painted around 50 dog portraits and scenes from his Texas ranch.

No word about Bush’s proclivity to paint himself in the shower or bath!

Instead, the three hosts effervesced with words such as, “Incredible!” and “Beautiful!” and “So cool!”

But Clayton Morris gave the ultimate in Fox News blessings: Didn’t Ronald Reagan, wasn’t he a doodler? He has pretty good artwork, too, didn’t he?"

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Take heart, America. While Fox is doing its best to prevent President Obama from implementing preschool for the poor, it’s totally looking out for the little (white) man and woman’s ability to own assault weapons. Case in point: Dan Bongino, a “former Secret Service agent” on Fox & Friends Weekend to explain why he thinks there’s “no such thing as gun control, only people control.” Host Tucker Carlson forgot to mention that Bongino is also a failed Republican senatorial candidate in 2012, now considering running for governor of Maryland in 2014

Bongino wasted no time getting to his larger platform. “Whether it’s the sequester, health care or the gun control issue, what they do is they manipulate an emotional crisis, a national emotional crisis to further an ideological agenda which involves the evaporation, the slow disintegration of your civil rights, your liberties, your ability to live and let live.” But speaking of manipulating emotions, Bongino quickly went on to push people into thinking that gun control is a matter of the wealthy one percent trying to disempower everybody else.

We have this Downton Abbey class of politicians and bureaucrats who – they understand as clear as day that… gun control, with air quotes, has no effect whatsoever on violence or the ability of wolves in our society to impart violence on you. So they feel the need to be protected by weapons and self-defense and the ability to defend themselves with their security details, of which I was one, but they don’t want to impart the same rights upon you, the average American citizen.

Tucker Carlson, who oozes one percent-ness, agreed.

I’ve noticed that. We seem to be developing a two-tier system where privileged people, Mayor Bloomberg, for example, are surrounded by body guards with high-capacity magazines and the rest of us have to make do with double-barrel shotguns. Is that adequate do you think? I mean, is the average person safe with no firearm at home?

BONGINO: No, you’re not.

Later, Bongino said:

We are living in this post-Constitutional society right now where somehow they have sold to you, the American citizens, that it’s moral, ethical, kind or generous to disarm you… while allowing the wolves in our society, the criminals, to impart violence upon you at will – and they know that you won’t be carrying a weapon in these strict gun-control states, one of which I live in, in Maryland.

Carlson gushed, “That is about the most eloquent defense of the right of self-protection I’ve heard in a long time!”

Forget Social Security. Let ‘em eat guns!

Here at Crooks and Liars, we watch the Sunday talking head shows so you don't have to. Each Monday morning, Nicole Belle joins Nicole Sandler on her show at Radio Or Not to recap the best and the worst of what went on.

Here's Nicole Belle's summary of this week's action:

Look at John McCain’s bizarre and frankly bratty attack on David Gregory for asking what exactly Benghazi has to do with holding up the Chuck Hagel nomination, interrupting Gregory and asking whether he cared that four Americans died. Would that John McCain feel even the slightest bit worse over the 4,500 Americans that died needlessly in Iraq.

And John McCain’s BFF Lindsey Graham who petulantly demands that we cut health care benefits for millions of Americans so that the sequester cuts won’t destroy the military. Even though the Pentagon itself said that they could handle some cuts.

Then there are the incorrigibles. Those children so uncontrolled, so horrible, so lacking in basic respect that you wonder about the parents. Those people work for Fox (like Tucker Carlson) and are responsible for such heinous stories as suggesting the President Obama is indoctrinating federal workers against white people. Why? Because the USDA (you know, the agency that fired Shirley Sherrod) had to take a racial sensitivity training program.

On the incorrigible side, Karl Rove is defending his campaign to divide and conquer the Republican Party to get rid of ‘stupid candidates’. But it’s Bob Woodward who really thinks Rove’s gone too far subverting democracy. Sad that it’s taken the man who broke the Watergate scandal so long to figure out what we liberals have been saying all along.

And now for some adult conversation. UP with Chris Hayes devoted a whole hour to discussing the ramifications of raising the minimum wage. Unlike every other weekend news show, this discussion had nuance and intelligence. Well, with the exception of token conservative Jennifer Sevilla Korn of the Hispanic Leadership Conference.

Sevilla Korn tried to dominate the conversation with conservative talking points and unlike every other weekend show, the host pushed back with facts. Hear that, David Gregory?

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In case you missed it, Fox has been agog over the release of some “exposé” video of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s sensitivity training. Needless to say, the "fair and balanced" network doesn't bother to go into the history of racism and discrimination at the USDA that led to a major class action civil rights case and settlement. On Fox & Friends Weekend, Tucker Carlson presented the training as left-wing brainwashing that violates the civil rights of white people.

In 2010, the Washington Post reported:

The USDA's relationship with minorities has been fraught for decades. Nearly eight years ago, black farmers took over a regional office in Brownsville, Tenn., to protest the agency's pace in processing their loan applications. Under the Bush administration, the agriculture secretary appointed a civil rights director, a practice that continues in the Obama era.

Plus, there was the whole Shirley Sherrod thing.

But you’d never know any of that from watching Carlson and his guest, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, “the group that exposed this tape.” It’s also the group that seems to believe no excuse is too flimsy to suggest that President Obama should be impeached.

CARLSON: The theme that underlies this whole video is that white men are bad. How is that a federal contractor gets to make a racist case like this and take federal money and no one says anything about it?

…If you swapped out ‘white males’ for any other group in American society and you held a seminar like this at a federal agency, you’d have the Justice Department on you in about 20 minutes, don’t you think?

Naturally, Fitton thought so. But, as head of Judicial Watch, he had a broader mission: to make this about the Obama administration. “This seminar is full of racial hostility,” he said. “It goes on throughout the government. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is one component of one agency in the federal government. …This is standard operating procedure for the diversity cult that is infecting our government, major corporations.”

But Carlson, feigning bewilderment, “just wondered” why the government is doing this (without bothering to lift a finger to find out) before going on to suggest that the whole point is to make race relations worse:

I thought the whole idea of electing President Obama was that America could move past this kind of divisive talk, that we would rise above our history and yet we’re wallowing in the worst parts of it here. Why?

…If you’re a participant in one of these seminars and you spend all day hearing about how white men are bad, wouldn’t at the end you feel a little hostility toward white men? Is there any surprise that our race relations are still bad?

Fitton said, ”They highlight the differences between people as opposed to the things that unite us.”

That’s completely wrong, of course. The obvious point of the training, as seen in the clip aired in this segment, is to get people, including the white majority, to understand other perspectives and broaden their own – which can lead to unity. It speaks volumes that this would be poison to the ears of Carlson and Fitton.

Yet, as is the genius of Fox News, Fitton and Carlson didn't just argue against the training. They used it to play the racial/governmental victims in order to advance their own hostile, divisive agenda: painting the (Obama-headed) federal government as some kind of stealth Affirmative Action juggernaut riding roughshod over white people and their money.

Fitton made that point explicitly at the end: I think these types of programs lead to increased disputes about racial discrimination and hostility that are really baseless. …It’s a major problem in our federal government. …This is a lot of what goes on in Washington, in terms of everyday government and what bureaucrats do each and every day. And we need to talk about it more.

Thanks to Fox News, it's almost certain he'll have plenty of opportunity to do so.

This is sure to be a contender for the Stupidest Right-Wing Tweet of 2013. A tweeter named Copperbird replied aptly,

hey Tucker, fighting for your country is not the same as being beaten by your boyfriend or husband. Sad you don't get that.

Indeed.

(h/t Scarce)