Fox News squirm

Fox News squirm

by digby

Can't you just feel the anchors at Fox clenching their teeth to prevent themselves from screaming "shut up, shut up you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!!!"

After the Paris mayor threatened to sue Fox News on Tuesday over the network's recent bogus reports on Muslim "no-go zones" in the city, the network responded that the mayor's comments were "misplaced."

"We empathize with the citizens of France as they go through a healing process and return to everyday life. However, we find the Mayor’s comments regarding a lawsuit misplaced," Fox News Executive Vice President Michael Clemente said in a Tuesday statement, according to Mediaite.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo slammed Fox's "prejudiced" coverage of the city in an appearance on CNN.

"When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue," Hidalgo said. "I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed."

Following the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, terror expert Steven Emerson claimed on Fox News that there are Muslim "no-go zones" in Europe "where non-Muslims just simply don't go in."

On Saturday, Fox News issued several on-air corrections for statements made by Emerson on the network and apologized for his comments.

I find it amazing that Fox apologized for those comments and I have to assume this was done at the behest of the management for reasons that have little to do with journalistic integrity. After all, if they cared about that all they would ever do is apologize. Somebody thought it was a very important mistake.

But whatever it is, it's clearly making them very uncomfortable.

But if there's one thing we've learned over the past couple of weeks it's that the Free Speech requires that we defend to the death the right of the cheese eaters to tweak Fox News:

Mockery is a national weapon in France, so when an American cable news channel raised false alarms about rampant lawlessness in some Paris neighborhoods — proclaiming them “no-go zones” for non-Muslims, avoided even by the police — a popular French television show rebutted the claims the way it best knew how: with satire, spoofs and a campaign of exaggeration and sarcasm.

The show, “Le Petit Journal,” is a French version of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” — irreverent and reliant on mock correspondents who showcase the foibles of the high and mighty.

Usually “Le Petit Journal” reserves its venom for French politicians and the local news media. But in the days after the terrorist attacks in Paris that left 17 dead, including 12 people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, it set its sights on a trans-Atlantic target, America’s Fox News, after the channel claimed that swaths of England and France were ruled according to Shariah.

A Twitter user poked fun at Fox News, posting that the checkered cloth coverings of jam jars showed that even homemade preserves “have to wear hijab.”  

“They did this on a weekend when all France and Paris was in a state of shock,” said Yann Barthès, 40, who has hosted the show since it began in 2004. “I cried.” But, he said, it was also “irritating, so we chose humor to campaign against Fox News.”

“It’s important for the French audience to know about this. They don’t really know Fox News, and they think it’s an enormous channel, very American, with announcers with big voices and blonde women who look like Barbies.”

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We are all mass murderers now

We are all mass murderers now

by digby

.... as long as this exists in our name:

During his 14 years as governor, [Rick] Perry presided over the executions of a record 279 inmates, according to figures compiled by the state’s Department of Criminal Justice. Perry, who handed over the reins of power to fellow Republican Greg Abbott today, has touted his support for the death penalty as evidence of his toughness on crime, but his execution record also tells a far less flattering story.

Opponents of the death penalty have zeroed in on two key factors in campaigning for its abolition: the growing number of death row inmates who have later been proven innocent, and deeply embedded racial biases in the meting out of death sentences. Texas is an illustrative case.

Take the question of innocence. Since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 150 death row inmates have been exonerated and, with one exception, subsequently released from prison. (One inmate died of cancer before he was cleared.) Since Perry became governor in December 2000, five of those exonerations have occurred in his state.

Let's drop the pretense that the US is "exceptionally" civilized, ok? This is horrifying. Any nation that would take a chance that it might execute innocent people for crimes they didn't commit, particularly in this ritualized fashion, is not particularly civilized. Yes, we're better than Saudi Arabia. Bully for us.


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Smokin' 'em outta their caves

Smokin' 'em outta their caves

by digby

It looks as though the Democrats are getting clever. The ads make themselves:

Senate Democrats are pressing amendments to legislation that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing their proposals would "actually make it an American jobs bill."

"We have some suggestions on how to make the bill better and actually make it an American jobs bill. If Republicans oppose us they will be making it crystal clear to Americans that they are on the side of narrow special interests rather than on the side of America's middle class," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

"If Republicans vote against these amendments none of them can say it's an American jobs bill," Schumer added.

Schumer along with Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.) and Al Franken (Minn.) urged Republicans to vote for the amendments that will be considered on Tuesday afternoon.

Markey's measure would ban the export of all oil shipped through the Canada-to-Texas pipeline, while Franken's would require that American steel be used to build the pipeline.

The Republicans voted against both of them.

Yes, it was a stunt. But that's the kind of stunt a smart minority does. As I said, the ads make themselves.


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The Jeb and Mitt club

The Jeb and Mitt club

by digby

If the donor class has its way and nominates one of their two fair haired boys, Mitt or Jeb, it's going to be a free-for-all for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is far from above reproach and may be filthy rich from books and speeches these days, but the GOP establishment's greedy private sector graft that directly hurts average people is populist gold by comparison:

After attending his second meeting as a board member for InnoVida, a Miami-based company that marketed prefabricated housing materials for use in disaster zones and other places in need, Jeb Bush had some follow-up questions.

“Fine board meeting,” Bush wrote in an e-mail to the chief financial officer before requesting details about the company’s liability insurance and politely nudging him that cash-flow data “would be appreciated.”

Bush wouldn’t get his answers until a week after his September 2009 e-mail, and then only in part — the CFO provided him with an “unaudited” financial spreadsheet and said no insurance details were immediately available.

If Bush was troubled by the response, it didn’t prompt him to pull away from InnoVida. He remained on the board for an additional year, leaving after a fellow board member started to unravel the widespread fraud that eventually led to the firm’s demise and the criminal convictions of two top executives.

Previously unreported court documents suggest that Bush was more involved with the company than has been publicly known — and that he deepened his role even as others associated with Inno­Vida grew concerned about its financial practices.

Documents show that the company listed Bush in internal records as a “key manager” who had been given options to buy 250,000 shares of stock and later stood to make more money looking for partners to build factories overseas.

Bush aides say he broke from InnoVida and voluntarily repaid consulting fees as soon as questions arose, and there is no evidence that he knew of the fraud that led to the criminal conviction of the company’s chief executive, Claudio Osorio, in 2013.

Nevertheless, Bush’s involvement with InnoVida, which he joined as a $15,000-a-month consultant in 2007 after completing two terms as governor of Florida, provides insight into his approach as a businessman and illustrates how his corporate ties could affect his presidential aspirations.

That's probably the tip of the iceberg. And we already know about Mitt's 100 million dollar "401K" and that he refused to show his tax returns in every election he's run. Those questions aren't going away either. I guess they can dredge up Clinton's cattle futures trades from 1979, but the amount of money involved was a joke.

Clinton has long been a friend to Wall Street having been part of the Democratic Party of the DLC years when the shift to the Big Money Boyz was embraced as an important "new direction." (And with the tsunami of 1% money flooding the political system these days I'll guess that all the Democrats would take a similar approach, unfortunately. Obama certainly did.)But for all her Wall Street friendliness, she hasn't been mucking around with the stuff Mitt and Jeb have been mucking around with and I think it's going to be fun to watch the fireworks when they try to go after each other.



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QOTD: Enlightenment edition

QOTD: Enlightenment edition

by digby


By Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian:

We may have to retrieve the Enlightenment, as much as religion, from its fundamentalists. If Enlightenment is “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”, then this “task”, and “obligation” as Kant defined it, is never fulfilled; it has to be continually renewed by every generation in ever-changing social and political conditions. The advocacy of more violence and wars in the face of recurrent failure meets the definition of fanaticism rather than reason. The task for those who cherish freedom is to reimagine it – through an ethos of criticism combined with compassion and ceaseless self-awareness – in our own irreversibly mixed and highly unequal societies and the larger interdependent world. Only then can we capably defend freedom from its true enemies.

This is the best piece I've read in the wake of Charlie Hebdo. I despair of the fact that instead of emerging for our self-imposed immaturity we are diving back in and wallowing in it. Read the whole thing.

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"She hears the voices no one else hears" by @Gaius_Publius

"She hears the voices no one else hears"

by Gaius Publius

I wanted to point out this nice Mike Lux piece, at Huffington Post and elsewhere, because it makes an important point. It's also an obvious point, but the obvious often goes unnoticed. The buzz and eager interest in an Elizabeth Warren presidency is not about Warren herself. It's about what she offers at this historical moment.

Lux (my emphasis):

It seems like just about everyone these days is talking about Elizabeth Warren. I saw Jay Leno- not a very political guy or especially progressive- the other day on Bill Maher's show, talking about how shocked he was that Elizabeth Warren was only 18 months younger than Hillary because of how vital and energetic she seemed.

A focus group of swing voters, who traditionally don't follow politics very closely, in Colorado a couple of weeks back were disdainful of the politicians they had heard of like Jeb Bush and Hillary who were likely running for president, but loved what they were hearing about Elizabeth Warren.

The Sunday Doonesbury this weekend was a plea to "run, Lizzie, run" because "she hears the voices no one else hears". The Washington Post print addition on Sunday had a front page article whose headline asked "What does Elizabeth Warren want?"

Why is a first-term Senator in the minority party, a wonky college professor who had never held elective office before 2013, a woman who insists to everyone who asks that she is not running for president, striking such a chord in American politics right now? ... I think the chord she strikes has at least as much to do with the moment we are in as to who she is. I think most Americans in both parties have come to believe that government is too bought off by big money special interests to care about them anymore.

That is so refreshing to voters and activists alike, and it is turning Elizabeth into an icon that people respond to. ... She calls "Charge!" on a nomination fight for a position that no one has ever heard of, or a legislative fight that they weren't even aware of, and people answer the call because they trust her- they know in their hearts that she is fighting for them.

That "nomination fight" was over Wall Street insider Antonio Weiss for under-secretary of Treasury, and was covered in a number of venues, including here.

Lux goes on to detail the history of the Warren phenomenon, and lists her implied economic agenda. It's a good read and well worth your time. But I want to return to the headline quote from Doonesbury:

"She hears the voices no one else hears."

No one but us voters, that is, red-striped or blue; the many; the ignored. What does this tell us? That we need to be finding more Elizabeth Warrens, not just the one; and we need to be doing it now — just in case the first is not available.

GP


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TP-ing the SOTU by @BloggersRUs

TP-ing the SOTU

by Tom Sullivan

The T-party will again provide its own response to President Obama's State of the Union address tonight, Rachel Maddow reports. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa will give the official Republican response. She may be about the only member of the Senate to the right of Sen. Ted Cruz, Maddow observed. Just not right enough.

The T-party response will come from the same smirking freshman congressman, Rep. Curt Clawson of Florida, who, in a subcommittee hearing last July, mistook two senior American officials from the State Department and from Commerce for Indian nationals. Guess why:

"I'm familiar with your country; I love your country," the freshman congressman said. "Anything I can do to make the relationship with India better, I'm willing and enthusiastic about doing so."

"Just as your capital is welcome here to produce good-paying jobs in the U.S., I'd like our capital to be welcome there," he added. "I ask cooperation and commitment and priority from your government in so doing. Can I have that?"

"I think your question is to the Indian government," Nisha Biswal said. "We certainly share your sentiment, and we certainly will advocate that on behalf of the U.S." Working for the State Department, Biswal is a diplomat. Can you tell?

Clawson won his seat in a special election to replace Rep. Trey Radel, who resigned after a conviction for cocaine possession.

If we're in luck, Clawson will display the same smug, false confidence again. As Maddow said, tonight's SOTU should be fun.

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