fox

We need impeachment hearings NOW!

This morning, Fox & Friends joined the New York Post in attacking President Obama for using a paper clip. Read that again: They attacked Obama for using a paper clip.

The Post's story today on Obama's jobs bill is headlined "O gives jobs 'clip' service; $447B 'tax hike' plan bound by chintzy fastener," and its first two paragraphs attack Obama for his choice of document fasteners:

How dare that anti-American, mooslim, socialist traitor use a paper clip! He should have gone the much more costly route of having the bill professionally bound. I guess that’s what the right considers “cutting government waste”, instead of spending a few cents on a paper clip, you should spend a couple of bucks on binding.

This really serves as a reminder of how hated President Obama is by the right, including their media outlets. It’s like “feet on the desk gate” all over again. Remember that? How dare President Obama put his feet on the desk in the Oval Office, even though every other President had done the same thing before.

Suddenly the right is upset that the dollar has taken a big decline, but Barry Ritholtz states the facts, something the right seems unable to comprehend:

Where were all you concerned dollar bulls earlier in the decade? It strikes me that like the late-to-discover inflation, you folks cannot spot a trend until it bites you in your collective asses.

Barry even includes this handy chart to show the decline:

Sadly the ones making all the noise over the dollar’s decline are the very ones who tried to tell us that we didn’t have any problems in early 2008 – people like FOX  News. Even more sad is the fact that many people will buy into that, without taking the time to look into the data themselves.

Consider this an open thread. For extra fun, how many hundreds will Fox predict the crowd to be at?

Sounds like people were really mad about Hannity not being at the Cincinnati Tea Party tonight:

Several people in the audience shouted “refund!”
[SNIP]
The Tea Party reported about $77,500 in ticket sales. It had budgeted $70,200 in expenses for the event, including security and other costs, officials said. However, there will also likely be extra costs, as the group said in a news release late Thursday that it would honor requests for refunds. It said an e-mail address to request a refund would be set up within 48 hours.

There is a big blame game going on with this also:

Cincinnati Tea Party officials said the idea that they would make money on the event is false.

“The Left drove that story, Fox capitulated to it and left,” said Chris Littleton, a Cincinnati Tea Party spokesman. He criticized Fox for not coming to Tea Party if it had concerns.

Glenn Reynolds is reporting that Hannity’s deal was with the University of Cincinnati:

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Cincinnati Tea Party folks tell me that they had no deal with Hannity — he had a deal with the University of Cincinnati, and they had a deal with the University of Cincinnati, but there was no deal between them.

However a quick look at the UC calendar quickly shows that the event was the Cincinnati Tea Party with Sean Hannity. Also the tickets don’t mention anything about UC sponsoring or arranging the event, just that it was at their arena.

Tea Partiers Get Their News From Fox And Are More Likely To Justify Violence Against The Government

Fox covered news of a deadly shark attack in eastern Florida this week and right after covering the story, Dick Morris declared "you got to be afraid of Obama and sharks”. As Paddy says; “They have gone full circle and are actually a parody of themselves”

Can you guess who one of them isn’t? I’ll give you a hint. Their name starts with FOX and ends with News.

I guess the pre-recorded O’Reilly and Hannity are much more important than the millions of lives torn apart by the earthquake.

We hear the phrase “24 hour news cycle” an awful lot, but in reality we don’t have a 24 hour news cycle. Instead this decade has seen a 24 hour news cycle evolve into a 24 hour opinion cycle.

Take the case of my previous post of Mary Matalin claiming that Bush inherited 9/11 and reduced unemployment his first year in office. Both statements are completely false. When Bush took office unemployment was at 4.2% and had raised to 5.7% after his first year in office. Now a lot of people can defend this in part because of 9/11 and they would be right, but the fact is that Mary Matalin flat out lied and no one in the news world tried to correct her.

Welcome to the 24 hour opinion cycle.

What we are seeing now is more people able to take to their airwaves and spread their opinion, completely unchallenged and void of fact. This is evident on FOX, CNN and MSNBC. Even Keith Olbermann is more of an opinion show than news show.

People talk about how our nation has become so polarized over the past decade. We now see everything is right and left, or blue and red. This is a direct by-product of the 24 hour opinion cycle. Take Matalin’s comments yesterday. In our busy lives a lot of people don’t have the time to fact check people like Matalin. Instead they quickly catch a little talking point and it becomes fact to them. I am sure someone today will sit around the water cooler and say “you know that Bush reduced high unemployment he got from Clinton in his first year. I heard that on CNN yesterday.” Of course they are just echoing the very same lie, but they don’t know any better.