
For most Americans, Fox News is both the most -- and least -- trusted television news source.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Even George W. Bush's top strategist Karl Rove thinks House Republicans overreached in reneging on the payroll tax cut deal. His advice: having lost the politics, Republicans should wait until (or to see if?) President Obama flies off to Hawaii on vacation, bash him and congressional Democrats for abdicating their duties, and then ... pass the same Senate payroll tax cut compromise they could have passed on Tuesday.
"I think the Wall Street journal editorial today hit it on the nail," Rove said Wednesday on Fox News.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)On Monday night, O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly sat down to discuss what really happened at UC Davis on Friday and whether campus police acted appropriately in showering a group of sitting students with pepper spray. Their conclusion? No big deal.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Get this: Fox News is -- gasp! -- not all that informative, according to Fairleigh Dickinson University's latest PublicMind poll.
The poll -- which asked New Jerseyans where they find news and information about current events -- found that Sunday morning news shows are the most informative, while Fox News actually leads people to be less informed than those who consume no news at all.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Well, this is one way to win the message war.
Fox News is on a roll with their latest round of polling -- the news network has been releasing bits of data over the week, and on Friday they came out with some new gems. Those crazy kids braving the cold in Zuccatti Park certainly are something.....but what exactly? Fox wanted to find out, so they asked the following question: "How concerned are you that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations will eventually turn into street riots?"
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Republicans have made blanket opposition to big federal spending projects a cornerstone of their policy agenda. That means even historically bipartisan programs like infrastructure investment are DOA in Congress, at least for the time being.
So it came as a bit of a surprise to hear a GOP senator who's up for re-election this cycle say on Fox News, "We can go over there and help them build their infrastructure up."
That's Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He wasn't talking about a forlorn corner of the United States, though. He was talking about Libya. And the 'infrastructure' he was talking about didn't really include schools and bridges.
"One of the problems I have from leading from behind is when a day like this comes we don't have the infrastructure in place that we could have," Graham explained. Here he's talking about the metaphorical infrastructure of U.S. forces and appointees on the ground who can help direct events. However, he soon moved on to talking about another type of infrastructure -- the kind that helps with extracting oil.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Conservatives love saying that Occupy Wall Street has no coherent idea of what it wants. But it is pretty clear that though demonstrators may disagree on the details, the protests are driven by a bad economy, growing income inequality and the fact that a lot of people can't get jobs.
So how have Republicans, tea partiers and Fox News hosts responded? By telling demonstrators to stop complaining and get a job...
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Updated: September 5, 2011, 6:30PM
Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday.
Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress "sons of bitches" and said union workers are ready to "go to war" with the tea party next year and "take out" Republicans at the ballot box.
Hoffa said he'd say the exact same words all over again.
"I would because I believe it," he said. "They've declared war on us. We didn't declare war on them, they declared war on us. We're fighting back. The question is, who started the war?"
The speech came shortly before President Obama took the stage in Detroit -- and Hoffa's remarks certainly overshadowed Obama's on Fox. But the Teamsters chief said he was just matching fired-up conservative rhetoric when it comes to organized labor and Obama with some fired-up rhetoric of his own.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Google and Fox News announced on Thursday that they're teaming up to present a Republican presidential debate on Sept. 22.
While the debate itself was already scheduled, Google's partnership adds an interactive element. A YouTube channel launched Thursday offers viewers an opportunity to submit questions to the candidates.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)If you're trying to institute a new paradigm in the field of federal disaster relief, you could use a better ally than former FEMA Director Michael Brown, better known to most of you as "Heckuva Job" Brownie.
He's the former International Arabian Horse Association Commissioner and the guy many blame for bungling the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He's also the first high-profile person in with experience in the field of disaster management to back the new GOP requirement that federal disaster aid be offset with federal spending cuts.
On Fox News Tuesday, Brown gave the policy his seal of approval.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)FOX Nation drew some howls of derision for referring to President Obama's birthday bash as a "Hip Hop BBQ" on its website, complete with a picture of Jay-Z, Chris Rock, and Charles Barkley for emphasis. To commemorate the occasion, TPM started #HipHopBBQActs to suggest some grill-themed performers and Twitter users quickly generated thousands of ideas. Here are some of the best.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Fox News is reeling from an apparent hack of their Twitter account, after messages were posted in the very early a.m. hours purporting to break the (false) news that President Obama had been assassinated.
According to the tweets, Obama had just been shot by an unknown assailant while campaigning at a restaurant in Iowa, and died from the wounds. However, Obama was not in Iowa at all this past weekend, as evidenced by both the White House's public schedule and an absence of any available news reports showing him in the state -- and it would also be odd for him to have been campaigning at an Iowa restaurant after midnight.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is set to throw her hat in the presidential ring in Iowa this morning. In the hours before she does, she's engaged in a tussle with Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace that's riled up her base and made Fox do something it rarely does: apologize.
Perhaps mindful of the buzz the story is giving her campaign, Bachmann refused to accept the apology in her first television interview about the controversy. That puts Fox in a new and different position: battling with one of conservatism's brightest stars.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Glenn Beck said Thursday that he will be visiting the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in a visit to Poland, and he'll broadcast a special from a town outside of the camp because this will help him "figure out," he says, "how did this happen?"
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)If the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. comes clean about the methodology behind its recent report that claims "Obamacare" will significantly undermine worker's health benefits, they'll have plenty of allies -- among conservatives.
A new line is gaining traction among health care reform opponents. They claim that McKinsey is entitled as a private company to keep its survey materials private -- and if they cave, they'll unleash a wave of administration bullying and antagonism against businesses on a White House enemies list.
"In economic terms this is the equivalent of a journalist being told to reveal their source," said Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Fox News Friday. "[I]f congress finds out which companies are indeed going to leave ObamaCare, then they will be subject -- maybe -- to all kind of pressure. Intimidation. Bullying. They may be on an enemy's list. There may be retribution against those companies."
In response to this, the anchor noted, "If you are an American insurance company and you say to McKinsey, 'You know, we are curious how this is going to affect us and how it's going to affect the people that we cover and the companies we're involved in, we would like to hire you privately to do a study to give us information on that. I think most folk would say that's a closed circle. That's a business arrangement. You give us the research and we'll pay you for it."
Watch:
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)MINNEAPOLIS -- Van Jones, the Saturday keynote speaker at the Netroots Nation conference here, has a special relationship with Glenn Beck.
Asked to ponder the end of Beck's Fox News show on June 30, Jones pointed to what regular Beck viewers might see as an unlikely ally: capitalism.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The DC media's jaw-dropping obsession with the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal will peter out when the New York congressman officially resigns this afternoon. But there's no better illustration of how this story came to consume the press than the video below.
Democrats had been prepared to up the pressure on Weiner to resign Thursday, but not before House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi held her weekly press availability in a large studio in the basement of the Capitol Visitors Center.
Her conference began minutes after the news of Weiner's impending resignation leaked, and so reporters and cameras scrambled to what otherwise would have been a fairly routine press event. Indeed, because Dems are in the minority, it's not uncommon for Pelosi events to be under-attended by members the media. Not this time.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Fox News' Chris Wallace stepped up the skepticism of Tim Pawlenty's wildly optimistic economic plan on Sunday, asking the former governor how he would achieve his goals, and whether his proposed deep tax cuts would, "blow a hole in the national deficit."
In a nearly half hour interview, Wallace repeatedly pressed Pawlenty to explain how he would accomplish the unprecedented decade of 5% annual growth he claims his policies would spark. At each turn, Pawlenty remained vague on the details of how exactly he'd do that, instead deferring to broad criticisms of President Obama.
"Well, this is an aspiration," Pawlenty said when asked when in history the economy had ever grown so robustly. "It's a big goal, and it's a stretch goal."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)On Fox News Sunday, Sarah Palin was asked about the version of Paul Revere's ride she offered during her visit to Boston, Mass., last week. Palin rejected claims that she'd flubbed her history, and criticized what she called a "gotcha" question.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Sarah Palin offered an apology - of sorts - to Mitt Romney on Sunday, saying she didn't mean to "step on anybody's toes" when her bus tour rolled through New Hampshire on the same day that Romney formally announced his presidential campaign.
"I apologize if I stepped on any of that PR that Mitt Romney needed or wanted that day," Palin said in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace. "I do sincerely apologize. We didn't mean to step on anybody's toes."
Palin's summer vacation/historical site bus tour swung into the Granite State for a clambake last Thursday, an event that took place just a few miles from the farm where Romney was holding his big campaign rollout. When asked about the timing last week, Palin told CNN it was merely happenstance.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Sarah Palin's getting ready to pound the pavement on an East Coast bus tour, bringing her potential 2012 ambitions back into the spotlight. But Fox News -- where Palin serves as a contributor -- isn't ready to cut ties just yet.
"We are not changing Sarah Palin's status," Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming at Fox News, said in a statement.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Herman Cain appeared Thursday on Fox & Friends, and spoke strongly in favor of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) controversial proposal to privatize Medicare. And Cain quite proudly called the proposal a "voucher" program -- a word that Republicans are trying to avoid.
Fox host Gretchen Carlson asked Cain what he thought of the fact that none of the various budgets in Congress can pass.
"Well what's going on is, they're not being honest with the American people," said Cain. "The fact of the matter is, Ryan's plan represents giving people a choice -- but if you're 55 years of age or older, you're not gonna be affected. Nobody's talking about that.
"Secondly, nobody's talking about the fact that the centerpiece of Ryan's plan is a voucher. Now, a lot of people don't like to use that term because it has a negative connotation. That is what we need."
The GOP talking points on the plan have carefully eschewed the word "voucher" in favor of the friendlier "premium assistance" or "premium support." Cain, on the other hand, is apparently ignoring that particular memo.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), you may have heard, is no fan of government assistance. Just last week, as he kicked off his third run for president, he voiced his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and government aid for victims of natural disasters.
Asked again about the second issue on Fox News Sunday, Paul went a step further. While arguing against the existence of FEMA, the aw-shucks Libertarian erroneously claimed that the agency was in charge of the levees currently being used to try to minimize flood damage along the swollen Mississippi. And he seemed to suggest that federally-run flood control systems themselves are a problem, because now officials have to choose where to send the excess water.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)It's not that they're in prison indefinitely. It's not that they've maybe been waterboarded. It's definitely not that they can't see their families. No, the biggest problem facing Guantanamo Bay detainees, according to Sen. Jim Inhofe, is that they're getting fat.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Donald Trump wants to clarify that he's "the least racist person there is." In fact, he says, he's so not-racist that Randal Pinkett, who is black, "won on The Apprentice a little while ago, a couple years ago, and Randal's been outstanding in every way."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The biggest boon for the five Republican presidential candidates who showed up in South Carolina for the first debate of the GOP 2012 race Thursday night may have been simply allowing viewers to put a name to a face.
The GOP field is still shaking out, and the debate was perhaps less notable for who was in attendance -- Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, and Ron Paul -- than for who wasn't -- Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, and Mike Huckabee.
The ongoing feud between Fox hosts Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee shows no signs of slowing down as Beck slammed the former Arkansas governor as unqualified to run for the President on Friday.
To recap the story so far: Earlier this week, Beck called Huckabee a "progressive" for supporting Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. In response, Huckabee issued a lengthy and hard-hitting condemnation of not only Beck's statement but his entire conspiracy-laden ouevre.
On his radio show this morning, Beck went another round, claiming that Huckabee's reaction to his previous attacks proves he isn't White House material.
"If, sir, you are this thin-skinned about your politics, it might be best for you to stay on the sidelines" and not run, Beck said.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Newt Gingrich has taken plenty of heat for his shifting positions on military action in Libya, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) offered the harshest attack yet from a member of his own party.
To be fair, Paul's comments came at the Congressional Correspondents Dinner, an event where lawmakers typically offer comedic monologues. But even by that standard, there was serious sting to his words, especially given the well-known reputation Paul and his father, Ron Paul, have cultivated as skeptics of Middle East intervention.
"I was happy to see that Newt Gingrich has staked out a position on the war, a position, or two, or maybe three," Paul told the audience, as ThinkProgress reported. "I don't know. I think he has more war positions than he's had wives."
Paul also had some tough words for FOX News.
"There's a big debate over there," he said. "Fox News can't decide, what do they love more, bombing the Middle East or bashing the president? It's like I was over there and there was an anchor going, they were pleading, can't we do both? Can't we bomb the Middle East and bash the president at the same time? How are we going to make this work?"
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)If Herman Cain becomes President, he will only consider appointing Muslims to federal positions if he can be extra-sure that they will uphold the Constitution and not sneak Sharia law into the government.
In an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Monday, Cain sought to clarify remarks he made over the weekend to a Think Progress reporter, when he said that he would not appoint any Muslims to his cabinet or federal judgeships were he President. In defending that statement, Cain said that his concern is not with Muslims per se, but with Sharia law, and that he would need a "commitment" from prospective Muslim appointees that they would remain loyal to the Constitution before he would consider giving them a job.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Donald Trump tripled (quadrupled?) down on his emerging birtherism this morning on Fox & Friends, saying that since he first brought up the issue, "all of a sudden, a lot of facts are emerging and I'm starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The contretemps between Fox News and CNN over their Libya coverage continues to unfold. This time, Fox's veteran national security reporter, who unwittingly touched off the dispute, weighs in to call CNN's conduct "unprofessional," "nonsense," and beneath them. She also joked, "CNN has put a landmine out there so I can stop reporting."
"My reporting was not meant to point fingers; it was to get the facts out there," Jennifer Griffin told Mediabistro. "It was not about attacking anyone personally. I feel, unfortunately, CNN decided to make this personal, by saying what I think are extremely unprofessional things about my colleague Steve Harrigan who is a fabulous reporter and who is a great war correspondent and I think what they said about him was indefensible. They made this personal. I did not."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The hostilities between the Libya correspondents for Fox News and CNN continue to play out in the media. Responding to Monday's fusillade by CNN's foreign correspondent Nic Robertson, Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan questioned his rival's manhood in an interview with Huffington Post.
"He puts on his blue blazer and gets on the government bus, and then pats himself on the back and calls that news?" Harrigan says. "Bullshit."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Fox News now acknowledges they sent a representative on a trip to Muammar Qadaffi's Tripoli compound -- an excursion it claims was organized by the Libyan government to use journalists as human shields.
The full back story is here and here. On Monday, seasoned Fox national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that the Libyan government was using journalists from competitor organizations as human shields, while Fox declined to participate in a propaganda mission.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)CNN correspondent Nic Robertson has a bone or two to pick with Fox News, which reported today that he and other journalists were used by the Libyan Ministry of Information as human shields, in a successful bid to block a coming, second attack on a compound in Tripoli, supposedly controlled by Qaddafi.
"[T]his allegation is outrageous and it's absolutely hypocritical. When you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from a dictatorship here," Robertson told Wolf Blitzer. "You don't expect it from the other journalists."
Fox claims their own correspondent, Steve Harrigan, declined to accept the invitation from the Libyans for fear of being used as a propaganda tool, and perhaps a human shield. But Robertson claims Fox did indeed send an employee on the trip -- not a regular news guy -- and that Harrigan has been asleep on the job since hostilities began.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Former Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) is set to become Fox News' latest contributor, according to The Huffington Post.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)In separate interviews with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren Monday night, several presumed candidates for the Republican presidential nomination said Obama should have taken a tougher stance in responding to the crisis in Libya, with some going so far as to suggest directly arming or otherwise aiding anti-Gaddafi rebel groups.
A number of presidential aspirants, including Newt Gingrich, were in Iowa on Monday to take part in a conservative conference. Gingrich offered the sharpest criticism of the Obama administration -- and the broadest counter-proposal for how he would have handled Libya were he President.
"The idea we are confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 tells you how inept this administration is," Gingrich said.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Let's say you run a major cable network with a partisan bent and the news of the day turns to a large protest in America's most liberal capital.
This wouldn't normally be a problem. You have a ton of resources and a staff that's met the challenge of covering large crowds repeatedly over the last couple years -- including those gathered by one of your own anchors.
But the challenge is different this time. Now we're talking Madison, Wisconsin -- tens of thousands of protesters whose views you abhor and whose goals you want to undermine. Your task this time is to highlight the dark underbelly of protest movements -- the street violence and intimidation that sometimes mark public rebellions against the government.
Unfortunately for you, this particular protest, though enormous, is completely peaceful. What do you do?
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Gov. Scott Walker (R) has another friend in his fight over union rights - Republican governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley.
On Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, the South Carolina governor spoke about her continued fight against the health reform bill, and was then asked by co-host Gretchen Carlson for her thoughts about events talking place in Madison.
In an alternative universe concocted by Fox News, Andrew Breitbart, and TCOT (top conservatives on twitter), the Madison capitol has become the island in Lord of the Flies, except the savages in this case are union "thugs." The mob has taken over, thick with radicals, and Republicans are likely to be attacked as a matter of course.
In reality, the long protest in Madison has been remarkably civil. As a testament to that, conservative media outlets are having a hard time finding examples of on-scene violence in Wisconsin that really bring their alternative narrative home. They've even gone so far as to claim their own reporters are under assault when they are not. Indeed, just as they accuse unions of busing in protesters from out of state, they've bussed in out-of-state footage, to make a case that can't be made by the facts.
Check out this clip from Monday night's episode of the O'Reilly Factor, a lower-quality version of which has gone viral on social media sites.
According to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), America's poverty problem would be greatly reduced if single parents would simply tie the knot.
The potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate made the statements in the course of his appearance on Fox & Friend as part of the promotional tour for his new book, A Simple Government -- Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (And a Trillion We Don't).
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