OBL-killing Navy SEAL, outed by Fox, now targeted by Al Qaeda

It's not an overstatement to say that Fox News has endangered the life of a Navy SEAL and his family, an American hero who led the successful raid to kill Osama bin Laden.

It's now a real problem, with serious life-or-death consequences.  From NBC News:

Users on several militant Islamic websites affiliated with al-Qaida have posted the name and photo of a former Navy SEAL identified as the author of an upcoming book on the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The posts called for his "destruction" in revenge for the al-Qaida founder’s killing.

"We pray to Allah for his destruction sooner rather than later," said one of the posts.

"Oh Allah, make an example of him for the whole world and give him dark days ahead," read another.

Among the website publishing the death threats was the "Al-Fidaa" web forum, which al-Qaida uses to distribute its media and public communications, said Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News consultant and a terrorism analyst at Flashpoint Partners, a global security firm.

And we have Fox News to thank for endangering this American heroes life:

Fox News on Thursday identified the author of the book, which is titled "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden," as a 36-year-old former SEAL from Wrangell, Alaska. The Associated Press later said it had confirmed the author’s identity. (NBC News is not identifying the former SEAL.)

Note from John: As Chris noted yesterday, Fox, which is a GOP propaganda outfit, could have been motivated by a desire to help Mitt Romney (ya think?).

Romney decided recently to use the killing of bin Laden as a "negative" for President Obama. This is a typical GOP election ploy - going after their opponent's strengths. An example was when Republicans mocked John Kerry, for having received a purple heart for being injured while saving a number of US service members in Vietnam, by putting fake little bandages on their faces during prime time at the GOP convention - and no one in the GOP stopped them, in fact they apparently facilitated it.

This time, Romney and the GOP are mocking the killing of Osama bin Laden and how President Obama handled it (apparently, killing OBL, a few years into office, when GWB couldn't pull it off (and basically gave up shortly after 9/11 - Bush actually called off the hunt for bin Laden only six months after September 11) is a "bad" thing).

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney, following in George Bush's footsteps, said he would have never ordered the successful raid against bin Laden in Pakistan.

The only problem? This Navy SEAL, who led the raid on bin Laden, was writing a book about the raid that most likely would have shown the world exactly how President Obama handled the raid (excellently, per the admiral who oversaw the operation).  So the Navy SEAL, this American hero, had to be stopped at all costs, lest he undercut Mitt Romney's apparently embarrassment over the US - over President Obama - having killed bin Laden when Romney said he would have let bin Laden go.

So what happens next?  Fox "magically" gets the name of the SEAL and leaks it, knowing full well that Al Qaeda would threaten to kill this man and his family.  And voila, only 24 hours later, Al Qaeda has now threatened him.

Mitt Romney made this happen.  It was Romney's initial decision to let bin Laden go, and it was Romney's decision to mock the commander in chief, President Obama, for having caught bin Laden.  And as a result, the GOP noise machine went into full gear to take down anyone who stood in the way of Romney's smear on the commander in chief and our troops.

So now an American hero and his family are in danger because Mitt Romney didn't have the guts to order the raid on bin Laden.

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News outs Navy SEAL who led bin Laden raid, endangering him and his family

So Fox News has decided to name the anonymous Navy SEAL who authored an upcoming book about the rain on OBL.  Up until now the names have been kept secret out of fear for the lives of those SEALs.  They and their families would make perfect Al Qaeda targets now and in the future.  And now they are, thanks to Fox.

This of course is not long after Fox News - the same journalist who outed the SEAL, in fact - blasted President Obama for discussing the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden - Fox claimed at the time that leaking details of the raid like, oh I don't know, maybe the names of the guys who did the raid, might endanger their lives (Obama did not release their names).

Fox News is like the Republican Party (like?) who will say anything on any day as long as it's the opposite of what a Democrat said.  And this situation is very much like the Valerie Plame situation in which the Bush White House outed an undercover CIA agent, ruining her career and harming national security, in order to seek political retribution against anyone not buttressing GOP talking points, like the Navy SEAL whose story could undercut GOP talking points that America shouldn't not be proud of having killed Osama bin Laden.  So they outed him, broadcast his name to the world, including Al Qaeda, in order to silence him, permanently in the case of how Al Qaeda handles such things.

So the question today is why does Fox News want to risk endangering the life of a Navy SEAL who risked his life for his country?

Maybe because Rupert Murdoch did not grow up in the US, so he doesn't understand our traditions, or care about the safety of military personal?  We've seen his birth certificate, and it's not red, white and blue.

While most other media outlets chose not to out the author of the new book about the mission against bin Laden, Fox decided to publish his details and put him at risk.

More from ThinkProgress:

Fox News today published the name of a U.S. Navy SEAL who led the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan last year that ended up in the al-Qaeda leader’s death. The SEAL under the pseudonym Mark Owen is the author of a book set to be released on Sept. 11 detailing the events of the raid. The book’s publisher says Owen “was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist leader’s hideout and was present at his death.”

Fox News said that “multiple sources” told the news outlet Owen’s real name but Fox did not provide any details about its decision to publish it. The book seemingly provides some clues as to the SEAL’s real identity as, according to the New York Times, Owen “recalls his childhood in Alaska.”

And here's Fox last year discussing how dastardly it is to put our servicemembers at risk by discussing the raid:

Members of Navy SEAL team 6, the Special Operations unit responsible for killing Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden in Pakistan last Sunday, have expressed concerns about their safety and the safety of their families now that details of the mission have been made public.

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News: "We titillate, you decide."

I've read that 16% of Americans have blonde hair. On Fox the percentage sure seems higher.  And funny, most are women.

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News: Ryan budget will increase taxes on poor, middle class

With friends like these.  From Fox News:

While claims that Ryan is slashing the budget are questionable, there are studies to back up claims that the Republicans' tax plans benefit the wealthy more than others.

A June study from the Joint Economic Committee -- which is chaired by a Democrat -- claims middle-class married couples could pay at least an extra $1,300 under Ryan's plan, while those earning more than $1 million a year could see a nearly $290,000 cut.

According to an Aug. 1 study released by the Tax Policy Center, Romney's tax plan would also include cuts that "predominantly favor upper-income taxpayers."

It projected taxpayers making more than $1 million would see tax cuts averaging $175,000. Those making between $75,000 and $100,000 would see an average tax cut of $1,800. And those making under $30,000 would see an average increase of $130, according to the report.

Read the rest of this post...

For CNN, "bland" isn't a bug - it's an advantage

Interesting analysis from Andrew Tyndall in the Hollywood Reporter about why CNN should strive to be blande:

In that context, global ubiquity is a greater asset than domestic popularity. Unlike Fox News or MSNBC, CNN cannot afford to be perceived as too American, too opinionated, too partisan, too idiosyncratic. Its ambition is to be the background channel that is always on everywhere around the world: in airport terminals, in business hotels, in barrooms and boardrooms. Bland is not a bug; it's an advantage. CNN's target audience is not individual viewers but operators and managers who are alienated by anything that is not wallpaper. They are looking for McDonald's and are fearful of Chick-fil-A.

It is an interesting argument. I've often lamented that CNN just doesn't pack the visual punch that Fox mastered years ago (and it's not just Fox's fetish for blonde chicks - Fox's sets are a wonderfully warm red, white, blue and parlor brown, and their hosts ooze personality, even if it's a personality many of us can't stand).

But it probably is true that CNN is the Canada of news networks (the affable cousin-country that people sometimes forget, but love). And that may very well help CNN maintain, or attain, a lucrative global dominance. Read the rest of this post...

Did Fox cause Olympian Gabrielle Douglas to stumble

We wrote yesterday about Fox News' subtly racist attack on Olympian Gabrielle Douglas.  Other media decided to go after her mother.  And some folks decided to criticize her hair.

Well, she spoke out about all of this, as it was clearly getting to her.  Not something an Olympian needs before a competition.

Click image to see larger version.

So what happened next?  She stumbled and lost what might have been her next medal.  Was it because her country was rooting for him, but rather was criticizing her, incessantly, in her moment of glory?

More on this from Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post:

It took just four days to suck all the energy out of Douglas.First, she awoke after the achievement of a lifetime to a ludicrous, racially loaded conversation about the neatness of her coif, started by a bunch of Twitter critics. To be frank, anyone who eyed Douglas’s ponytail was looking for a reason to criticize. Her performances were so entrancing that you could only notice her hair if you dragged your eye there with a malicious purpose. So instead of reveling in her victory, Douglas found herself addressing her coif.

Fox is worried about black Olympians' patriotism.  Perhaps it should examine its own. Read the rest of this post...

Fox News is concerned that America's (black) Olympians aren't patriotic enough

Because nothing says love of country like meaningless bling.

You have to keep in mind that Fox News is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party. It's the GOP's Pravda.  So you always have to look deeper whenever you see any story on Fox, and look to the motivation - what made them put this story on?  Being "news" is not an option.

In this case, rather than use any of the white American medalists as a poster girl for un-patriotism, Fox chose the black one, Gabby Douglas, who just happens to be the first African-American woman to win an all-around gold medal in the Olympics.  Racism isn't always subtle.

Fox also artfully chose a black Tea Party loyalist to be the one delivering the hate, so as to cover their behind.  Fox does this a lot.  I'd been called numerous times to go on Fox in order to debate someone else gay about some topic blasting gays.  You see, so long as they get someone gay, or black, to deliver the bigotry, it doesn't count as hateful, in their eyes.

Back to the bling.

Fox News is concerned that America's athletes aren't wearing enough American flags, or piercing their noses with copies of the Constitution, or something.  Republicans have a bit of a fetish for patriotic bling, but less so for patriotism itself.  They love the flag, but don't particularly love what the flag stands for (they can't stand our system of government, particularly the judiciary, but really any branch that stands in their way).  They claim to "love" the troops, but then when a service member runs for president they mock him for having received a purple heart (a medal he got for being wounded in battle and saving his fellow service members).

In other words, Republicans are much more into objects of democracy than democracy itself.  It's why they're far more concerned about kids saying prayers in school than they are the same kid getting a school lunch, or keeping the kid away from automatic rifles (lest that interfere with the child's constitutional right to die in a meaningless blaze of gunfire at the movies).

So, to Fox, it doesn't matter that these athletes have given their all, since childhood, for this one chance to represent their country at the Olympics.  That's not patriotism.  What's patriotic is stopping by the local gun shop and buying a $2.00 flag pin along with an uzi, before heading home to beat your wife, and disown your kid for being gay. Read the rest of this post...

Is Fox News now a liability for the GOP?

Since its launch in 1996, Fox News has provided the Republican party with an unrivaled propaganda machine. Fox News was the principal engine of the Republican echo chamber giving endless coverage to GOP smears and wing-nut conspiracy theories which the establishment media would then report as if they were credible. Without Fox News there would have been no Tea Party, no Swiftboat liars and no President George W. Bush.

Fox News is now the dominant force within the GOP. When Murdoch says jump, Republican politicians are forced to ask 'how high'. Practically the entire GOP base relies on Fox as their principal source for news. When David Frum observed that "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox,” he was fired from his position at the AEI two days later.

But even as Fox consolidates its grip on power within the GOP the Fox News echo chamber of old is broken. The establishment media no longer consider a story news because the Murdoch press is giving it saturation coverage. It now takes a Congressional committee investigation and a spurious contempt vote to gain the fleeting attention of the mainstream media.

The Fox News of old served as a conduit for GOP misinformation to the public at large. It is still a conduit for misinformation but now the GOP is on the receiving end. It is not just Romney who is out of touch with the real world, his entire campaign team has spent the past decade in the alternative universe of Fox News.

How else could Team Romney have built their campaign strategy on the assumption that Barack Obama does not know how to respond to smears and derisive insults? Romney has spent over a year and a hundred million dollars fighting against the Obama that only exists in the mind of Fox News viewers: The weak guy who would apologize and offer Romney a hug, not the real Obama who responded with the 'Firms' ad in less than 24 hours.

What people have been explaining as the 'bitch slap' theory of politics has turned out to be no more than intelligent people acting on false information.  They assumed that the smears and lies that work so well on Fox would work in a campaign. If Romney had really been following the bitch-slap theory he would have thought that demanding an apology gives the appearance of weakness. Instead Romney blinked and after months of attack ads that were transparently unfair, demanded an apology for an attack nobody else thought unfair.

There is no question that Fox News was a powerful asset for the GOP for its first ten years, it is hard to see it as any sort of benefit to the party today. Read the rest of this post...

Wild fires, heatwaves, crazy winds: this is what climate change looks like

The Fox News team loves mocking climate change whenever there's a snow storm (duh huh, where's the global warming now?, duh huh) but somehow they're nowhere to be found when the US is roasting under unusually hot conditions. Curious, isn't it?

But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres have burned in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.

"This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

Now that the heatwave is destroying crops for midwestern farmers, will they finally pressure Washington to wake up to this problem? Read the rest of this post...

Video: Jon Stewart on Fox's Roger Ailes

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News creates 4 min. long anti-Obama attack ad for 2012 campaign

Not that there was ever any question as to Fox News' bias, but still.  Even by their standards, this is bad.  First, the video:



To his credit, Howie Kurtz blasted Fox's tepid response to criticism of the ad. I got on Howie's CNN show a decent amount, and it's fair to say that Howie has defended Fox in the past against accusations of bias. And he freely admits so in his story. So I do think it's particularly important that someone like Howie believes Fox has not only crossed a line in airing the attack ad, but that they've crossed an even greater line by refusing to fully repudiate it and take disciplinary action against the employees involved.

Wednesday’s video tarnishes the journalists who work at Fox News. Everyone knows that Fox & Friends is a right-leaning show whose hosts have disparaged Obama. During the 2008 campaign, Wallace accused the program of "distorting" what the candidate had said and declared that "two hours of Obama-bashing may be enough."

The fact that the hosts were happy with this latest video assault on the president is nothing short of revealing.

This is a moment of truth heading into the general election. Roger Ailes should denounce the video and criticize his network’s handling of it. He should make clear that such partisan garbage has no place on Fox News. Otherwise people will assume that Fox’s worst critics are right.

The problem is that this is Fox News. And at Fox, bias isn't a bug, it's a feature. Read the rest of this post...

Fox won't let lesbian host O'Reilly because she's gay

And this was unexpected? Read the rest of this post...

Fox News: "Obama flip flops, declares war on marriage"

I guess when your clichés lose their force, you have to double up. Media Matters has the goods:

In response to President Obama's declaration of support for marriage equality this afternoon, Fox Nation ran the following headline:

OBAMA FLIP FLOPS, DECLARES WAR ON MARRIAGE

Looks like that was too much though, even for Fox. Media Matters again:

Within an hour of posting its original headline, Fox Nation removed the “war on marriage” language from its post[.]

Media Matters also has screen caps and a few more tidbits; do click.

My comments are few — I'll just add that as a verb "flip-flop" is a hyphenated word.

Word.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
  Read the rest of this post...

Gingrich complains about Fox News bias

Priceless.

"I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through," Gingrich said during a meeting with Tea Party leaders in Delaware on Wednesday, according RealClearPolitics.com, which said it was granted access to the private event. "In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we're more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That's just a fact."

The former House Speaker blasted the Roger Ailes-led network, blaming Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of Fox News owner News Corp., for the bias.

"I assume it's because Murdoch at some point [who] said, 'I want Romney,' and so 'fair and balanced' became 'Romney,' " Gingrich said. "And there's no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox."

Read the rest of this post...

Local Fox affiliate in trouble for calls neo-Nazis a "civil rights group"

On the good side, at least they weren't hacking into anyone's phone.  From MediaBistro:

At the top of its 10 p.m. newscast on Saturday, Orlando Fox O&O WOFL reported that a “civil rights group” was starting to make its presence felt in Sanford, FL, where racial tensions have escalated following the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The “civil rights group” at the center of reporter Jennifer Bisram‘s piece: the National Socialist Movement, an apparent neo-Nazi organization.

WOFL’s labeling of the National Socialist Movement–which has a swastika in its official insignia–as a “civil rights group” has drawn the ire of social affairs activists and bloggers, who believe that the station was negligent in its characterization of the organization.

“Civil rights groups attempt to expand freedom to more people,” Judd Legum, who wrote about the WOFL report for ThinkProgress, explained via email. “They are a neo-Nazi group who doesn’t think the constitution applies to anyone who isn’t white.”

Remember, at Fox the mistakes only skew to the right. Read the rest of this post...

Fox News commenters react to Afghan killings: "A dead Muslim is a good Muslim"

First the story about what happened in Afghanistan. BBC:

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead.

Nato said it was investigating the "deeply regrettable incident".

He is reported to have walked off his base at around 03:00 local time (22:30 GMT Saturday) and headed to nearby villages, moving methodically from house to house.

Jesus Christ. I've been worried for a while now about how many young men and women are going to come back from ten years at war supremely messed up.

From LittleGreenFootballs:

I’ve looked at about a dozen right wing sites this morning to see how they’d react to the news from Afghanistan, and the comments at every single one of them were full of people celebrating the killings, praising the soldier who allegedly committed them, and denying there was any crime, while at the same time frantically trying to blame the crime on President Obama.

But the worst site by far is the right wing’s premier news channel, Fox News:

This is nothing! Wait until you see what happens to the n!qqqers here in the US of A when the new civil war starts!
[…]
THATS 15 LESS AFGAN POLICE WHO HAVE BEEN MUR D ER ING OUR TROOPS AND CIVILIANS
[…]
Obama just announced that he is personally going to provide fe la tio to every Afghani male to compensate for their loss.
[…]
The P O S P apoligizes to moooooooooooooslimes and doesnt have any respect for American solders ! Sent the ragehead obummerdeen and his entire family to Kenya where their dirty s c u m b a g b o d i e s belong !
[…]
This guy only did what the NewBIackPanthers promise to do to white babies.

Read the rest of this post...

Andrew Sullivan on Iran: Obama's most dangerous political opponent is now Netanyahu

I'm watching the run-up to war with Iran very closely, since I think we might get one. I also want to know who's behind it.

■ Some background: We started here, by noticing a quiet bombardment in the "press." If you go back to that post, note that Obama's Pentagon chief Panetta is in the parade.

These two posts (here and here) looked at the role of Israel as the potential hand up the press puppet's ... behavior. From the latter post:

Based on my eleven-dimensional reading of this recent Iran article, another major one, this time by Dennis Ross in the New York Times, I believe it's now a two-handed game between Netanyahu and Obama, with Iran being the downer bull they're jointly punishing.

Netanyahu's position — "If you keep kicking Iran, I don't have to pull out this gun and make him really mad." Ross says it this way:

Israel worries that it could lose its military option, and it may be reluctant to wait for diplomacy to bear fruit. That said, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have consistently called for “crippling sanctions,” reflecting a belief that Iran’s behavior could be changed with sufficient pressure. The fact that crippling sanctions have finally been applied means that Israel is more likely to give these sanctions and the related diplomatic offensive a chance to work. And it should.

"Crippling sanctions" means just that; think I was joking with my "punishing the downer bull" metaphor?

Shorter Ross: "Bibi to Barack, don't make me do something stupid; it's all on you if I do."

■ All to prepare you for this blockbuster news and analysis from Andrew Sullivan, no raving lunatic.

He takes my idea of a two-handed game between Netanyahu and Obama, and gives it an eleven-dimensional twist, this time by spotting a controlling Israeli hand. Sullivan says Netanyahu is using the American Right — AIPAC (like Dennis Ross, quoted above) and the pro-Zion Left Behind crowd — to secure his own base and topple Obama from power.

I know; sounds ... novelish. Still, this stuff happens. Let's let Sullivan make his case (my emphases and some reparagraphing):

This is disturbing news [source FoxNews, 2/27/12]:

Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

What it amounts to is a formal declaration that, if the US attempts at any point to differ seriously with Israel's far right, the alliance is over.

That's after the most serious sanctions ever imposed on Iran, a covert war, and greater isolation for the Tehran regime both at home and abroad than at any point since 1979. ... Israel would, without warning, put US troops and Western civilians at direct risk of terrorist assaults, would likely tip Pakistan into even more outright hostility to any cooperation with the West, and rally the Iranian opposition to its foul regime. [And lots of etc.]

Note that the first quote comes from Fox (not unreliable in reporting Netanyahu, and a go-to spokes-source for Bibi).

If true, this is "essential[ly] blackmail" as Sullivan says. After which the right-wing Israeli government would use their agents (my word) in "Congress, the entire GOP, its media outlets (like Fox, and the Washington Post), and a key part of the Democratic fundraising machinery" to side with them — against Obama.

I can't see how to disagree with that analysis — again, if the initial Fox report is true.

Then Sullivan gets multi-dimensional:

I don't think you can understand the Republican strategy for this election without factoring in a key GOP player, Benjamin Netanyahu. He already has core members of the US Congress siding openly with him against the US president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. ... Netanyahu's war would ... encourage American evangelical voters to turn out against Obama, the "anti-Christ", while other Greater Israel fanatics, like Sheldon Adelson, keep bankrolling as many Greater Israel GOP nominees as they can.

A global war which polarizes America and the world is exactly what Netanyahu wants. And it is exactly what the GOP needs to cut through Obama's foreign policy advantage in this election.

Be sure to read Sullivan's conclusion.

There's much I disagree with Andrew Sullivan about, but this analysis has me thinking. Would Movement Conservatives be part of this plan? As my old Uncle Straight Talk says: "Son, they'll do anything to win; anything. But you knew that, right?"

GP Read the rest of this post...

Hannity: Obama didn’t really want to catch Osama

Fox is the propaganda arm of the Republican party. And the Republican party learned long ago that it's at its best when it simply lies. Where was Sean Hannity's hero George Bush during the eight years he didn't catch bin Laden? Hannity is a hack and a has-been. He used to get by on his good looks, and his penchant for talking over others, but that'll only get you so far. If all you got going for is your boyish face and some good hair, at some point you end up no longer being a boy and the public moves on. And then, like his buddy Glenn Beck, you have to start saying more and more outrageous things to hold the interest of the unwashed GOP masses. So you end up saying stuff like this. (H/t Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed.)

Read the rest of this post...

Fox News: Gingrich’s multiple marital infidelity mean he’ll be a great president

Seriously. It's pretty sick.

I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Read the rest of this post...

Geography and history according to Fox News

Does Fox make 'mistakes' deliberately or are they just very sloppy? Or perhaps the sloppiness is also deliberate, an attempt to give plausible deniability for their intentional misinformation.



Media matters has this and a long list of similar 'mistakes'.

This sort of thing is the reason I try not to visit Media Matters without protective headgear. There is always the risk that the temptation to hit my head against a wall will prove too strong. The latest Fox News atrocities they document:

• According to Hannity (rhymes with inanity) we got Bin Laden "Thanks to George W. Bush". (As John notes, in part this is true -- the only reason President Obama was able to catch Bin Laden is because Bush didn't catch him earlier.)
  
• The drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6% was shown as remaining constant at 9%.
  
• The War on Christmas has replaced the War on Terror (don't tell the kids Obama has Santa locked up in Gitmo).
  
• The UN climate deal imposes 'reparations' on the US.
  

Funny how the 'mistakes' made by Fox News always tell a certain story.

And just as I thought this post might be finished they do this:

Read the rest of this post...