Fox News Caught Manufacturing "News"

Fox News producer Heidi Noonan, encouraging the crowd to hoot and holler behind "reporter" Griff Jenkins while he talks live from the scene with Glenn Beck in the studio. Cheerleading the crowd during Glenn Beck's show =not fair and balanced:



What it looked like on air with Glenn Beck:



Clips © Media Matters

The Fascist Threat From the Radical Right

Click on the images below to read the distortions purposely spread virus-like by the uber Right wing nutjobs, aided and abetted by Fox News, Limbaugh, Ann Coulter (right) et al.

These are the same folks who promoted the anti-American Tea Parties last week.



The above e-mail was circulating last week from the Conservative Book Club folks. It's actually a promotion for Human Events magazine, but check out the narrative.

It actually almost perfectly encapsulates the emerging narrative for mainstream conservatives, like a handy set of talking points all put together in one place.

The relationship between this kind of rhetoric and the even crazier talk coming from the radical right is inescapable. Because unlike the armchair right-wing pundits who indulge this stuff because it's a useful way to bestir the troops but couldn't act to save their asses, some of these other people, the radicals who hear this talk and then pump the irrationality even farther, to its illogical extreme. Thees people, and Crapaud doesn't say Thees People often, will fan the flames of radical right wingery and the full weight of responsibility for the next right wing terrorist attacks on America will be theirs.

And to listen to them talk, they are primed for action -- the irresponsible wingnuttery of the mainstream right can come to no good for our beloved country.

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Want to know what the teabaggers should really be crying about?

By John Amato @ Crooks & Liars

The idiot brigade is lining up to get on FOX News to call President Obama a fascist while the CEO's that have destroyed their companies still rake in the cash. Stop watching Beck and Hannity and read the news, people!

Your Daily Digby:

Want to know what your CEO made last year? The Executive Paywatch site offers three user-friendly ways to find out. And if you want to have a little fun at the CEO’s expense, play the “Boot The CEO” game and kick the money out of the greedy CEO’s hands.

Their arrogance knows no bounds:

In 2008, despite the worst economic meltdown in over 75 years, U.S. chief executives continued to take home over 300 times more pay than their workers. That’s a gap ten times wider than the gap between top execs and workers that existed just a generation ago.

Corporate boards of directors seem determined to keep this massive gap intact. Most corporations are refusing to make even symbolic gestures toward more common-sense executive compensation.

Remember last fall’s firestorm over executive jets? In 2008, over half America’s big corporations — 104 of the 200 the Wall Street Journal tracked — continued to foot the bill for the personal air travel of their top executives, only three fewer than the year before.

CEOs have to report the personal air travel subsidies they get, along with whatever other perks they receive, as taxable income. Over a third of America’s biggest corporations last year actually gave their executives extra money to pay the taxes on all this perk income.

The dollars devoted to this tax reimbursing — or “grossing up,” as power suits refer to the process — averaged $16,400 last year. That sum might not sound like much, given the millions CEOs take home overall, but, in 2008, average American workers had to labor five months to make $16,400.

The Wall Street Journal doesn’t include perks like free air travel and tax gross-ups in its $7.6 million figure for 2008 CEO “direct compensation.” The New York Times $8.4 million total does.

Neither paper’s pay totals for 2008 include the gains CEOs registered last year cashing out the stock options they collected in previous years. These cashouts generated some staggering personal paydays.

Occidental Petroleum’s Ray Irani, for instance, took home $49.9 million in “total direct compensation,” according to the Wall Street Journal figures. But he gained another $215.9 million in 2008 from options and other long-term “incentives” that Occidental had stuffed in his personal portfolio before last year.

Corporate boards have essentially created what amounts to a perpetual motion pay machine that year in and year out gins up millions in executive compensation, no matter what may be happening economically in the real world.

In “good” times, with revenues and profits up, boards hand executives stock awards and cash bonuses as rewards for their fine “performance.” In hard times, boards keep the stock awards coming — as an incentive to stick around and perform better in the future.

And thus continues the delusion that the wealthy are the most productive members of society which requires that they be allowed to dictate the terms by which the burden of their failure and mismanagement is borne by others.
The corporate aristocrats are working hard to keep the rubes focused on the big, bad gummint because if they ever realize just how thoroughly they've been scammed by these Masters of the Universe, who knows what might happen?

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///////////Even Faux News\\\\\\\\\\ \\\Gives Obama Some Decent Marks///

Even Fox News SOMETIMES shows
a Fair and Balanced Approach
Or Was Roger Ailes napping last week when this ran?

"Obama clearly has made the transition to governing.

"It's as if Superman stepped out of a phone booth and became Clark Kent," said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University professor emeritus of politics. "He's beginning to put aside the rhetoric in favor of listing the policies and doing the checklist. He's not going out of his way to show a lot of flash. It's much more lets-get-down-to-work."

That said, there's a limit to what he can do right away, Greenstein said, and "the really big things can't be done on Day One, particularly if they are going to be done well."

In a mix of symbolism and substance, Obama used a host of executive tools to put his stamp on the White House without having to go through Congress, making statements from the bully pulpit and signing White House directives.

He pledged to take bold steps to reverse the recession while meeting with his economic team, and told top military officials summoned to the White House to do whatever planning necessary to "execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq." He issued new ethics rules for his administration and pledged to preside over a transparent government.

He ordered the Guantanamo detention center shut within a year, required the closure of any remaining secret CIA "black site" prisons abroad and barred CIA interrogators from using harsh techniques already banned for military questioners. He also assigned veteran troubleshooters to the Middle East, and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Throughout it all, Obama demonstrated noticeable stylistic differences with his predecessor.

The high-tech Obama chose to keep his cherished BlackBerry, becoming the first sitting president to use e-mail. He made an impromptu visit to the White House's cramped media quarters just "to say hello" and took a tour of the two floors. He also was spotted at one point ducking into the White House press office to consult with an aide. Bush avoided both areas at all costs.

In one Oval Office ceremony, Obama went through each executive order as he signed them, reading parts of each and methodically explaining them. He even halted a few times to ask for clarifying details from his White House counsel. That sort of deferral to someone else in a public setting and admission of a less-than-perfect command of the facts was never Bush's style."

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