NBC is liberal-biased media

[Froderik]

http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2007/cyb20070216.asp

[Anne Bonney]

The Most Biased Name in News
Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067

[Froderik]

Yeah, so they are both biased.

Pot and kettle, all the way.

[Anne Bonney]

Yeah, so they are both biased.

Pot and kettle, all the way.

Yeah, they're both biased.....but I disagree that it's equally so.  Murdoch and Newscorp is all over the place.  And for as much Muslim bitching as they do, especially recently about the friggin' Mosque, they sure do keep some strange bedfellows.

Entire article for those that want to read it below, summarized for Frod (tl;dr)    in the bolded paragraph.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20 ... ue-planner

The opponents of the proposed Cordoba Initiative Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan are fond of suggesting, by way of lengthy and often confusing chains of causation and association, that its principal planner, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is connected to terrorism. "The imam has been tied to some shady characters," Fox Business Channel's Eric Bolling recently said, "so should we worry that terror dollars could be funding the project?" Blogger Pamela Geller, who has become a regular talking head on cable-news channels to denounce the mosque, has noted Rauf's involvement with a Malaysian peace group that funded the group that organized the Gaza flotilla under the headline, "Ground Zero Imam Rauf's 'Charity' Funded Genocide Mission."

On last night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart skewered these antics as a "dangerous game of guilt by association you can play with almost anybody," and proceeded to tie Fox News to al-Qaida by connecting Fox News parent News Corp's second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to the Carlyle Group, which has done business with the bin Laden family, "one of whose sons — obviously I'm not going to say which one — may be anti-American." But Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection: Al-Waleed has directly funded Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000. If Fox newscasters can darkly suggest "terror dollars" are sluicing into the Islamic center's coffers via "shady characters," then are Al-Waleed, and News Corp. leader Rupert Murdoch, by the same logic, also terror stooges? (The "Daily Show" video appears after the jump.)

Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported last May, the Kingdom Foundation, al-Waleed's personal charity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a leadership and networking project sponsored jointly by two of Rauf's organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. Al-Waleed owns a 7 percent, $2.3 billion stake in News Corporation. Likewise, News Corporation owns a 9 percent, $70 million stake — purchased in February — in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate. Put another way: Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in business, to the tune of billions of dollars, with one of the "Terror Mosque Imam's" principal patrons.

As Geller helpfully notes on her blog, Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group — in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents  as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.

Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.

Geller has worried in the past on her blog about Al-Waleed's ownership of News Corporation shares, but never on anything like the scale of outrage she's mustered in opposing the mosque. We asked her why Rauf's tenuous connections to radical Islam disturb her so, while Rupert Murdoch's direct ties to a man who funds what Geller regards as terrorism have spurred no such outcry: "I'm not aware that News Corp. has any such close connection with anyone connected with CAIR, and despite the involvement of Al-Waleed bin Talal in News Corp., I don't believe that the two connections are analogous. ... Fox ... has been much more honest and objective about Islamic supremacist initiatives, including this Ground Zero mega-mosque, than have the other networks. Consequently, I would say that while Al-Waleed's stake in News Corp. should indeed be a matter of concern for free Americans, at the same time a matter of much greater concern should be the funding of the other networks, and the possible influence that funding has had upon their unrelenting Leftist and pro-Islamic supremacist bias."

Fox News had no comment. An email to Al-Waleed's Kingdom Holdings was not returned.

[Anne Bonney]

Holy shit!!!  At least our political attack ads aren't as bad as......Canada's???


http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/ ... _ever.html


 :roflmao:  :roflmao:

[Froderik]

tHat's disturbing; ftr, i do not espouse faux news any more than i do any bogus news source. Just trying to keep it real, as i notice a tendency in people lately to accept a 'lesser than two evils,'  rather than making the more appropriate response to what can only be considered a steady stream of bullshit -- NONE OF THE ABOVE!!!

[Anne Bonney]

tHat's disturbing; ftr, i do not espouse faux news any more than i do any bogus news source. Just trying to keep it real, as i notice a tendency in people lately to accept a 'lesser than two evils,'  rather than making the more appropriate response to what can only be considered a steady stream of bullshit -- NONE OF THE ABOVE!!!

I hear ya.....I don't trust any of them and if I'm interested in a particular story, I usually try to track down as many of the original sources as I can.

Watch the Canadian ad though.  It'll at least bring a smile to your face.  A wtf smile, but a smile nonetheless.  :seg2:

[Whooter]

tHat's disturbing; ftr, i do not espouse faux news any more than i do any bogus news source. Just trying to keep it real, as i notice a tendency in people lately to accept a 'lesser than two evils,'  rather than making the more appropriate response to what can only be considered a steady stream of bullshit -- NONE OF THE ABOVE!!!

I hear ya.....I don't trust any of them and if I'm interested in a particular story, I usually try to track down as many of the original sources as I can.

Watch the Canadian ad though.  It'll at least bring a smile to your face.  A wtf smile, but a smile nonetheless.  :seg2:

I agree with you.  I try as many sources as I can.  For world and middle east perspective I read BBC and Aljazerra.  Relying on just the filtered bull we get in this country will leave you with little reliable information.

I like the Canada Ad!



...

[Froderik]

The Tea Party has the right idea -- no party affiliations, just individual candidates.  :nods:

They're pissing off the brainwashed dems and staunch repubs alike...so they must be doing something right!!!  :tup:

Don't believe the hype about them!  :twofinger:

[Anne Bonney]

Don't believe the hype

Ya got that part right!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oc ... h-brothers

Tea Party movement: Billionaire Koch brothers who helped it grow

Industrialists who own private company with annual revenues of £62bn have channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes

It likes to present itself as a grassroots insurgency made up of hundreds of local groups intent on toppling the Washington elite.

But the Tea Party movement, which is threatening to cause an upset in next month's midterm elections, would not be where it is today without the backing of that most traditional of US political supporters – Big Oil.

The billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, a private company with 70,000 employees and annual revenues of $100bn (£62bn), used to joke that they controlled the biggest company nobody had ever heard of.

Not any more. After decades during which their fortune grew exponentially and they channelled millions of dollars to rightwing causes, Charles and David Koch are finally getting noticed for their part in the extraordinary growth of the Tea Party movement.

The two, 74-year-old Charles and David, 70, have invested widely in the outcome of the 2 November elections.

One Koch subsidiary has pumped $1m into the campaign to repeal California's global warming law, according to state records.

The brothers, their wives and employees have also given directly to Republican candidates for Congress and are the sixth-largest donors to the Senate campaign of Tea Party favourite Marco Rubio.

They have also given heavily to the Republican Jim DeMint in South Carolina, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics.

But organisations tracking money in politics say the Kochs' biggest impact in the midterm elections will be from funding and providing logistical support to such groups as Americans for Prosperity (AFP), one of the biggest Tea Party groups.

AFP, in turn, has spun off other organisations such as November is Coming, Hands Off My Healthcare, and the Institute of Liberty, which are buying up television ads and holding rallies across the country in an attempt to defeat Democrats.

US campaign laws make it easy for political interest groups and their corporate backers to hide their spending in elections. "This is a world of shadows," said Taki Oldham, an Australian documentary maker who spent months following Tea Party activists. "In my mind, without a doubt nobody has had more influence on the anti-Obama campaign than the Koch-funded groups."

For the Kochs, who inherited their politics as well as their business from their father, Fred, this has been a long and carefully cultivated project.

But after years in which their support for anti-regulation thinktanks and groups went largely undetected, the sudden visibility of the Kochs' power seems to have taken even the brothers by surprise.

"Five years ago, my brothers Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity," David Koch told AFP's annual Defending the Dream gathering in 2009. "It is beyond my wildest dreams that AFP has grown into this enormous organisation. The American dream of free enterprise and capitalism is alive and well."

Until last summer, most Americans had no idea who the Koch brothers were, and it is very likely that even AFP members did not know they were bankrolled by one of the richest men in corporate America.

But a spate of attention – sparked by a Greenpeace investigation and a profile in the New Yorker – has given the Kochs a degree of notoriety they are finding it difficult to live with.

There was no sign of David Koch at this year's Defending the Dream summit. When the Guardian stopped into the offices of the Charles G Koch charitable foundation, in the suburbs of Washington DC, the receptionist sent the head of the legal department out to talk.

After declaring all conversations off the record, lawyer Brian Menkes said it was normal for the Koch legal team to be involved in routine press inquiries.

"Go to any company in the world and the legal department is involved in media inquiries," he said. "It is standard operating procedure."

For his part, David Koch now seeks to distance himself from the Tea Party. In a rare interview in New York magazine, he said: "I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me."

The extreme sensitivity carries across to the company website, where recent additions tout the brothers' commitment to environmental protections and offer a selection of "Koch facts", an antidote to the unflattering personal and political portraits of the two that have appeared recently.

"This is the outing of the Koch brothers. They didn't want this story told, especially in an election year," said Kert Davies, the research director for Greenpeace who has spent a decade gathering data on the family. "They have never been face forward."

But they do have deep pockets. Koch Industries has expanded from oil refinery to paper towels and Lycra.

The two brothers each own 42% of the company and occupy top-10 positions in the Forbes annual ranking of wealthy Americans, with personal fortunes of $21bn each.

Over the last 20 years, Koch Industries has donated at least $5.9m to political candidates, some 83% of which was set aside for Republican candidates, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics.

Since 1989, Koch Industries has spent more than any other oil and gas company on finding favour in Congress, paying $50m to lobbying firms.

But it is the Kochs' links to a welter of mass mobilisation campaigns opposing Barack Obama that is making the biggest impact. Political monitoring organisations say the Koch-connected Claude R Lambe Charitable Foundation has given $3.1m to Americans for Prosperity.

The Kochs' involvement in anti-government causes goes back to their father, who was a founding member of the virulently anti-communist John Birch Society.

He made his fortune by developing a more efficient refining method and built plants around the world, including 15 in the Soviet Union at the height of Stalin's purges in the early 1930s. He came to despise Stalin and, David Koch told the New Yorker, was "paranoid about communism, let's put it that way".

He worked hard to instil the same beliefs in his four sons. Two of those sons later became estranged from the family, and were eventually bought out of Koch Industries, but for Charles and David, the rightwing free market ideology was their lodestar.

As the CEO of Koch Industries, Charles Koch began supporting free-market thinkers while honing his own ideas in a book called the Science of Liberty.

The brothers did try direct action. In 1980, David Koch ran as a vice-presidential candidate on the libertarian ticket, winning just 1% of the vote.

The episode, Charles Koch has written, persuaded the brothers to refocus their energies. In the 1980s, they founded Citzens for a Sound Economy.

Over the next 20 years, they funnelled around $13m to Citizens for a Sound Economy. In 2004, the organisation split into Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which is closely tied to the former Republican Congressman Dick Armey and has received no more funding from the Koch family.

Obama's election, and the prospect that the new president would reverse nearly two decades of reduced government oversight of industry, put the Kochs and their footsoldiers in Americans for Prosperity on high alert.

"They were very afraid of the Obama administration and a return to a pro-regulatory environment after the Bush years, and probably ramped it up a bit to make sure nothing new was going to inhibit their business," Davies said.

A day after CNBC's Rick Santelli launched his on-air howl against Obama's mortgage bailout plan, AFP and Freedom Works put up Facebook pages and began organising events around the country. The Tea Party was under way.

[Froderik]

Maybe now is the time to fund "right-wing" causes!

Vote republican in the house to balance out the prevailing tide of bullshit!

I'm really for abolishing all government, but voting 'against' right now is the best a person can do....
(that is, unless you are happy with the Fed bankers / Obama administration...if that's the case, you may want to skip this)

[Anne Bonney]

The "right wing" says they want less government, but that only applies to big businesses.   They're fully in support of regulating social issues such as religion, abortion, gays, stem cell research, abstinence only sex-ed, teaching 'creationism' in schools, end of life choices (the Schiavo debacle) etc.  If the Republicans actually stuck to what they're supposed to be, I'd probably be voting Republican.  But they're not, not by a long shot and haven't been for a long time.

Not that the Dems are any better.....buncha spineless pussies.  I've found myself writing in a lot of candidates lately.


This is part of what scares me about the Tea Party.  Their darlings, Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin, are complete nutters!  I think most people agree how utterly clueless and vapid Palin is, but O'Donnell may just have her beat.  


http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... quotes.php

TPM's Top Ten Quotes From Christine O'Donnell, The Woman Who's Against Everything

In 2004, Christine O'Donnell explained to a reporter for the News Journal  in Delaware that, "I'm a conservative woman, but many conservative men really are chauvinistic." That's something many women -- especially Sarah Palin's Mama Grizzlies -- might understand. But a closer look at O'Donnell's public record on everything from psychics to freak dancing to Britney to Tolkein's Middle Earth might be enough to make many potential voters run for the hills -- and not just because she's a woman.

[TPM SLIDESHOW: Christine O'Donnell: Anti-Masturbation Crusader. Witchcraft Dabbler. Republican Senate Nominee.]

The full parade of her out-there views is below.

1. O'Donnell on AIDS.

In 1997, O'Donnell took to C-SPAN to complain that the government was spending too much money combating AIDS. She voiced concerns that a drag queen ball "celebrates the type of lifestyle which leads to the disease." She also objected to calling those with AIDS "victims" and said the disease was a consequence of a certain "lifestyle."

Source: Christine O'Donnell: AIDS Gets Too Much Gov't Money, Condoms Wouldn't Stop It (VIDEO).

2. O'Donnell on Britney Spears and Madonna.

"I think people like Britney Spears have been irresponsible," O'Donnell said on Fox News shortly after the pop star and Madonna exchanged a kiss during a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. "Well, I feel sorry for both of them. Madonna is a middle- aged woman who is trying to hold on to her youth. And Britney is super star who is trying to hold on to her popularity. That's why they're playing games and doing gimmicks," O'Donnell said.

"And you can tell that Britney Spears is struggling with who she is. I think she has a team of agents and managers who are saying, yes, push the envelope, kiss Madonna, take off all your clothes. And she's doing that because she doesn't want to sacrifice this enormous platform that she's built. But at the same time, she is sacrificing herself and you can see that in her eyes when she talks."

Source: Transcript of Fox News' Big Story Weekend Edition on Nov. 15, 2003.

3. O'Donnell on masturbation.

"If he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, than why am I in the picture?"

Source: Christine O'Donnell's 1996 Anti-Masturbation Campaign On MTV's 'Sex In The 90s' (VIDEO).

4. O'Donnell on feminism.

Asked if she considered herself a feminist, O'Donnell said: "Absolutely, but let me qualify that -- I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity."

Source: Christine O'Donnell Running For Senate In Delaware At AFP's RightOnline Conference

5. O'Donnell on psychics.

"Psychics exploit the human beings natural desire that longs for something higher," O'Donnell said on Bill Maher's program in October 2001. "The same way a pimp exploits the natural desire to be with the opposite sex...psychics put people in spiritual harm, the same way pimps put people in physical harm."

Source: YouTube: Politically Incorrect, October 2001 with Bob Saget.

6. O'Donnell on nude sunbathing.

"I mean, it is very difficult, I'm sure, for a man to sit there and stare at his girlfriend naked and not want to go a little bit further."

Source: Transcript of Aug. 23, 2000 Fox News segment "Should Sunbathing in Buff be Banned Altogether?"

7. O'Donnell on freak dancing.

"This is a matter of culpability. What freak dancing is isn't just like the safety of mosh pitting," O'Donnell said. "This is sexually explicit activity for minors. We do limit the expression of minors. There are drinking laws. There are -- you know, you have to be 18 to smoke. You can't go to school in a bikini. On one hand, you have people saying this is squelching their freedom, and then you scratch your head and say look over here, date rape is such an epidemic. There's a connection, and, if people realize that there's a connection, then they'll realize that these limitations and restrictions exist for a very valid reason."

Source: transcript of May 15, 2003 "Back of the Book Interview" on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor.

8. O'Donnell on Obama.

"He's soooo liberal. He's anti-American," said O'Donnell. "He's beating the 'change' drum. But let's look at the change. He did not vote for English as the official language. What does that say?"

Source: O'Donnell In 2008: Obama Is 'Anti-American' (VIDEO).

9. O'Donnell on the Gay Pride Parade.

"Well, I know that the one here in Los Angeles, there was S&M going on. There was mocking sodomy, mocking, you know, all kinds of crude sexual acts," O'Donnell said. "Because -- because authorities were too afraid to be called, quote, unquote, 'homophobic' because these homosexual special rights groups do get away with [anything]."

Source: Fox News June 26, 2000 segment "Was Gay Pride Parade in New York City Over the Top?"

10. O'Donnell on Middle Earth.

"You see Tolkien's wisdom applied to just about everything: Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and industrialization," O'Donnell said, speaking of the authors "Lord of the Rings" series in December 2003. "In researching this topic I even found a book on Tolkien and sexual fetishes."

O'Donnell said it was "surprising, then, especially in today's very hyper-sensitive, post-Gloria Steinem world, that there's such a lack of commentary on Tolkien and women. ... Is it that people assume that women don't have an interest in Tolkien?" she asked.

The now-GOP candidate dismissed the request that Tolkien should have written more about the females in the book, saying that the books "were written from a hobbit's perspective" and that if the film changed what was in the books it would "severely take away from the film's legitimacy."

[Anne Bonney]

Saw this on the Opinion page of the Times today.  Thought it summed up quite nicely what a lot of us are feeling.


Look past the two parties

When it comes to politics, the American people are suffering from amnesia and ignorance. It's always a bunch of finger-pointing about how the Republicans caused all the problems or how the Democrats caused all the problems. Rather than educate themselves about the issues and the Constitution, people are more prone to being led around by the mainstream media and sold down the river by two political parties who adhere to the exact same corporate special interests.

Barack Obama is controlled by Wall Street just like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him. When I talk about education in the political arena I am specifically thinking of policies that both parties support such as NAFTA, WTO, the Patriot Act, NSA illegal surveillance, banker bailouts and endless wars overseas.

In 2012 you will likely be given a choice of Obama versus some special interest puppet like Mitt Romney. Are you going to be played for a fool again and vote for one of these two frauds? People need to take a serious look at all candidates and forget about the fact the mainstream media refuses to offer coverage to anyone but special interest candidates.

Jacob Morgan, Tampa

[Froderik]

Good post..  :bump:

[Anne Bonney]

Good post..  :bump:

It definitely captured how I'm feeling about it.

I'm done, I gotta get outta here for a while.  G'night everyone!  Peace to us all.

 :peace: