Media

Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, is at it again. In reference to this article, Hoft posts this:

Hoft then goes on to quote the article:

A member of the Occupy New Haven movement was raped in a tent at the Occupy camp late on Monday night or early Tuesday morning, police said.

Police said a woman went to find the victim on Tuesday afternoon because she had not seen her.

She went to the woman’s tent and called for her, but there was no answer, so she looked inside the tent and found the woman, police said.

The victim wasn’t able to respond, police said, so the witness yelled out to other Occupiers to call police and emergency medical services.

At some point, the victim told the witness she had been raped in a tent at the camp, police said.

Police responded to the camp at 3:25 p.m. The victim was brought to Yale-New Haven Hospital and police charged England Gamble, 53, of New Haven, with first-degree sexual assault and first-degree unlawful restraint.

If you notice in Hoft's caption he refers to Gamble as a #occupier. Now either Hoft can't read more than a few paragraphs or he just loves lying to his readers because further down the article we find out:

Members of the Occupy movement said neither Gamble nor the victim are members of the movement. They said both are homeless and set up a tent nearby.

That's wingnut journalistic standards right there; totally ignore facts or just omit them altogether. Talk about sad....

Rush Limbaugh looks to no longer be immune from his misogynistic name calling that has polluted our public airwaves for 20 years:

Premiere Networks, which distributes Limbaugh as well as a host of other right-wing talkers, sent an email out to its affiliates early Friday listing 98 large corporations that have requested their ads appear only on “programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity).”

This is big. According to the radio-industry website Radio-Info.com, which first posted excerpts of the Premiere memo, among the 98 companies that have decided to no longer sponsor these programs are “carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm), and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway).” Together, these talk-radio advertising staples represent millions of dollars in revenue.

While they aren't singling out Limbaugh, he is in the hit list along with pretty much the rest of right-wing talk radio.

But what Limbaugh did was attack one of his most important demographics:

But this latest controversy comes at a particularly difficult time for right-wing talk radio. They are playing to a (sometimes literally) dying demographic. Rush & Co. rate best among old, white males. They have been steadily losing women and young listeners, who are alienated by the angry, negative, obsessive approach to political conservations. Add to that the fact that women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, and you have a perfect storm emerging after Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke comments.

Considering the big money these talkers are paid and the need for advertisers, this could very well be right-wing talk radio heading towards its death bed. Not only that, but the social media age has helped hasten their trip:

Rush Limbaugh may have really stepped in it this time. On his show yesterday he called Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown student and contraceptive advocate, a "slut". He also said that any woman who advocates for contraceptives should post their online sex videos:

Yesterday Sandra Flake responded to Rush on the Ed Schultz show:

I guess my reaction is the reaction a lot of women have when they’ve been called these names. Initially you’re stunned but then, very quickly, you’re outraged because this is, historically, the kind of language that is used to silence women, especially women who stand up and say that these are their reproductive health care needs and this is what they need. And what’s been amazing to me today is the outpouring of support. Everyone from members of Congress to Georgetown faculty to so many women who’ve contacted me, and I think it’s clear from what they’ve said that they’re not going to be silenced by this.

This fat, sexist pig that the Republican Party has anointed their messiah has really opened up can here. It's bad enough that the GOP is fighting back against their image of being a sexist party, but when you got their hero making these kind of derogatory remarks towards women, it just undoes everything they have been trying to repair. Now we have some Republicans responding:

Carly Fiorina, National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice-Chairman, on Friday condemned Rush Limbaugh for calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut.”

PoitiFact PolitiFarce is at it again:

In a promotional spot for his MSNBC program, Lawrence O’Donnell speaks proudly of his father attending college on the post-World War II benefits package that transformed the nation.

O’Donnell further says of the original GI Bill: "It’s the most successful educational program that we’ve ever had in this country -- and the critics called it welfare."

They did? Austin lawyer Terral Smith, a former Republican member of the Texas House, urged us to check this after seeing the ad in January.

So what did they rule?

We found no evidence of critics referring to the GI Bill as welfare. Yet some fretted that the law’s unemployment compensation element would encourage laziness. We see a touch of truth to O’Donnell’s claim, which we rate Mostly False.

Well OK, they didn't call it "welfare" verbatim, but they did say this:

Comments from Rep. Rankin about fearing a "tremendous inducement to certain elements to try to get employment compensation. It is going to be very easy… to induce these people to get on federal relief." Another Rankin comment, suggesting the proposal would reward those who delayed seeking work: "The bane of the British Empire has been the dole system." He also aired a racist comment, saying: "If every white serviceman in Mississippi… could read this so-called GI Bill, I don’t believe there would be one in 20 who would approve of it... We have 50,000 Negroes in the service from our state and in, in my opinion, if the bill should pass in its present form, a vast majority of them would remain unemployed for at least another year, and a great many white men would do the same."

(emphasis added)

Really - this is the coming right wing outrage of the day:

President and Mrs. Obama spent Valentine’s Day with the One Percent Tuesday, shelling out up to $300 for dinner for two at the high-end Vermilion restaurant outside of Washington.

Michelle just recently completed a three-day tour of the nation promoting her “Let’s Move” health and fitness initiative, during which she was depicted in a widely circulated photograph passing around a bowl of salad at an inexpensive Olive Garden restaurant.

But the press was not even permitted to take a peek at the Obamas last night as they feasted at one of the Washington area’s trendiest upscale joints.

What’s more, the Obamas warmed the earth a bit as their multi-car, fossil-fuel-burning motorcade roared out of Washington for a 25 minute trip to the Alexandria, Va. restaurant.

These people really need to grow the fuck up.

PolitiFact is back at it again, showing that they don't even know the meaning of fact. Tuesday night they gave President Obama a half true for this statement in the SOTU:

in the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005

PolitiFact originally called that only half true but now have changed it to mostly true, with this editor's note:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our original Half True rating was based on an interpretation that Obama was crediting his policies for the jobs increase. But we've concluded that he was not making that linkage as strongly as we initially believed and have decided to change the ruling to Mostly True. The original article is archived here.

Here's what they originally nailed Obama on:

As for whether 2011 was the best job-producing year since 2005, he’s right if you’re counting private-sector jobs, and slightly off if you’re counting all jobs.

But the President specifically said business, meaning private sector. He didn't at all mention government jobs. This is back to the definition of what "is" is.

So what is PolitiFact dinging him on now? Here we go back to the updated article:

Finally, there's another dimension. In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs "before our policies were in full effect." Then he describe the subsequent job increases. This suggests that he’s taking a degree of credit for the job growth, which runs counter to the reality that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the blame or all the credit for changes in employment.

CAIR complained to wordpress.com about an Islam bashing website hosted on their service and Wordpress removed the site:

he Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that an anti-Muslim Internet hate site that contained a number of threats of violence targeting mosques, including the comment "I want [Muslim] blood on my hands," has been taken down by its hosting company.

CAIR said visitors to "Bare Naked Islam," hosted by WordPress.com, now see the message: "barenakedislam.wordpress.com is no longer available. This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service."
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[NOTE: "Bare Naked Islam" was one of the major promoters of the campaign to pressure Lowe's to drops its ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim."]

Last month, CAIR called on the FBI to investigate the threats of violence targeting mosques posted on the blog and urged WordPress.com to remove it for violating the hosting company's terms of service (TOS), which prohibit blogs that "contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities." Articles and comments posted on "Bare Naked Islam" urged attacks on and desecration of American and European mosques.

And the outrage from right wing bloggers has spread like wildfire, as you can see on this Memeorandum thread.

We see this a lot from the right. A couple of years ago Michelle Malkin got her account suspended on YouTube and countless right wing blogs went into the "boycott Google products" rampage. What I found most interesting is that a lot of those blogs were Blogger blogs, which is a free blogging service offered by.....you guessed it GOOGLE!