Sunday is the Day the Corporate Media Help Conservatives Spread Anti-American Propaganda

Sunday is the Day the Corporate Media Help Conservatives Spread Anti-American Propaganda

Conservative White Men Dominate The Broadcast Network Sunday Shows. Making up nearly one of every three guests on This Week, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday, conservative white men represent a larger portion of guests than any other group.

Conservative White Men Dominate Solo Interviews On The Broadcast Network Sunday Shows. Conservative white men make up 37 percent of all one-on-one interviews on the broadcast shows, much more than any other group. In fact, the proportion of solo interviews conducted with conservative white men is a full 13 percentage points higher than white women and all other non-white groups combined.

Broadcast Networks Continue To Host A Majority Of Republicans And Conservatives Overall. Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday, each hosted more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives, continuing the trend from the first quarter. In contrast, This Week increased its proportion of Democrats and progressives, surpassing its proportion of Republicans and conservatives for the second quarter.

Panel Balance Still More Likely To Tilt Right Than Left. Despite improvement from all four broadcast networks, Republicans and conservatives are still more likely to outnumber Democrats and progressives when they sit in the same panel discussion segment. Fox News Sunday's notable shift toward a majority of balanced panels is worth pointing out; however, when panels do tilt on that program, they tilt right every single time.

Republican Elected And Administration Officials Again Outnumber Democrats Overall. Fox News Sunday hosted two Republicans for every one Democrat in the second quarter, which is the same as the show's numbers in the first quarter. Both Face the Nation and Meet the Press hosted more Republicans than Democrats, with Face the Nation seeing a 10 point increase in Republicans and an 8 point decrease in Democrats. This Week hosted significantly more Democrats than Republicans, a flip from last quarter.

Except For This Week, Republicans Receive More Time During Solo Interviews Than Democrats Overall. Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and Fox News Sunday all gave Republicans much more time during their one-on-one interviews than Democrats, with Face the Nation having flipped from the previous quarter. By contrast, This Week shifted to provide Democrats with significantly more time than Republicans in the second quarter.

Ideological Journalists Again More Likely To Be Conserative Than Progressive. Like this year's first quarter, journalists who self-identify ideologically tend to be conservative when hosted by the broadcast Sunday shows. Fox News Sunday is again the worst offender in this category, with nearly half of its hosted journalists being conservative.

Former White House press secretary for George W. Bush, Scott McClellan wrote in his tell-all book that the Bush administration used propaganda to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people. Conservatives, as standard operating procedure, use propaganda constantly. This is why you can have some fun debating a conservative, but ultimately they are fully entrenched in their cognitive dissonance from a fact based world. And of course arguments based on the common good and morality usually fail with conservatives because they are dogmatists, like the Taliban, they're not going to let real morality and the consequences of their radical anti-American views get in the way of their agenda. So it goes with the ever so high minded Sunday talk shows. They're just another opportunity for conservatives and the corporate media to sell America on conservative zealotry.

Why Doesn't Anti-American Fox News Report That IRS Did Not Target Conservatives

Why Doesn't Anti-American Fox News Report That IRS Did Not Target Conservatives

For weeks, Fox News has promoted selective clips of interview transcripts leaked by House Republicans to promote their baseless claim that the White House engineered the Internal Revenue Service's improper screening of conservative groups seeking non-profit status.

Such claims were always speculative. The IRS' inspector general has said that while employees used "improper criteria" to scrutinize conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, that behavior was "not politically biased" and was not driven by the White House. Subsequent testimony leaked by House Republicans has suggested that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were at first unaware of the improper behavior and stopped it when they learned of it. 

The House Oversight Committee's Democrats have now released the full transcript of an interview with another IRS witness which further undermines claims that the White House was at the center of the process. According to the interview subject, a self-described conservative Republican who worked in the IRS' Cincinnati office, an agent he supervised flagged the first Tea Party application that came under scrutiny, asking for guidance on the case.The interview subject denied having had contact with senior IRS officials or the White House about the targeting. According to The Washington Post's Greg Sargent:

    In the testimony, the screening manager says that he first became aware of the initial Tea Party application when an "agent who worked for me" asked for "guidance concerning a case for him." The manager testified that in this case he agreed with the agent that "there was not enough information" to figure out whether to grant the group tax exempt status.

    "I told him at that point in time I agreed with his thinking," the manager testified, adding that he informed the agent that he would "elevate that issue to my area manager."

    "This was the first case that came in that was brought to my attention," the manager continued.

    The manager further testified that the Tea Party groups were deliberately grouped together so that they would receive consistent treatment. "There was a lot of concerns about making sure that any cases that had, you know, similar-type activities or items included, that they would be worked by the same agent or same group," the manager testified.

    In the testimony, the screening manager also flatly stated he had no reason to believe there was White House involvement.

    [...]

    The screening manager also testifies that he never had any conversation with Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Division, or former IRS commissioner Douglas Schulmanm about the "screening of Tea Party cases."

It remains to be seen how Fox News will react to statements that so strongly undermine their conclusion. But we have some precedent - on June 9, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, released excerpts from this interview, and said that it showed that "the case is solved" and that the White House had not been involved in the improper behavior. Fox responded by airing his conclusion that "the case is solved" and hosting conservatives to criticize that claim, without laying out Cummings' evidence.

Fox News and their sheeple viewers need not worry, conservatives love playing victim so much they will invent or exaggerate another faux-scandal so they can whine themselves to sleep at night. Fox News seems to lack the fundamentals of American values like truth and fairness. Thus they are contributing to the degradation of American society as conservatism has done throughout history.

New York Post Columnist and Conservative Arthur Herman Hates Women and American Values

NY Post Columnist Calls Increase In Military Sexual Assaults A "Bogus Epidemic"

New York Post columnist Arthur Herman called the reported increase in military sexual assaults a "bogus epidemic" because the survey on sexual assaults included all "unwanted sexual contact." But experts have found that any sexual harassment can degrade military readiness and the survey results are consistent with widely used survey methodology.

The Department of Defense released its "Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military" which determined that up to 26,000 service members may have been the victim of some form of sexual assault. In a March 31 column published by The New York Post, columnist Herman claimed the report highlighted a "bogus epidemic." After acknowledging that sexual assault and rape are serious crimes, Herman attacked the parameters of the report, saying "no real solution to any problem can be built around flawed data":

    Yet that's precisely what's really going on here -- starting with that report. First off, it's far from comprehensive or authoritative. It's based entirely on a voluntary survey -- and it's wildly anti-scientific to extrapolate from a self-selected group. And only 22,792 service members opted to respond -- roughly 2.2 percent of a military that's 1 million strong.

    Even more amazing, the survey never actually asked about sexual assault. Its questions centered on "unwanted sexual contact" -- which can include any number of behaviors, including trying to slap someone on the buttocks, which may be vulgar or inappropriate but hardly rape.

But the survey didn't measure rape, it measured sexual assault, a term that is given a broad definition by the military. For example, the Army Sexual Assault Prevention & Response Program answers the question "What is sexual assault" by including, among other things, "unwanted and inappropriate sexual conduct or fondling":

    Sexual Assault is a crime. Sexual assault is defined as intentional sexual contact, characterized by use of force, physical threat or abuse of authority, or when the victim does not or cannot consent. Consent should not be deemed or construed to mean the failure by the victim to offer physical resistance. Additionally, consent is not given when a person uses force, threat of force, coercion or when the victim is asleep, incapacitated, or unconscious.

    Sexual assault includes rape, nonconsensual sodomy (oral or anal sex), indecent assault (e.g., unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact or fondling), or attempts to commits these acts. Sexual assault can occur without regard to gender, spousal relationship, or age of victim.

This kind of sexual assault is having a significant effect not only on the victims, but on the military as a whole. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called the assaults "a despicable crime" that is "a threat to the safety and the welfare of our people." General Martin Dempsey added that sexual assaults constitute a "crisis" in the military.  In a speech to U.S. Naval Academy graduates President Obama addressed the assaults, commenting that the "misconduct of some can have effects that ripple far and wide:

    "Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong," Obama said. "That's why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they've got no place in the greatest military on Earth."

Herman also criticized the survey methodology, claiming that having 22,792 service members respond was inadequate. However, the survey noted that the findings are consistent with a study prepared for the Air Force by Gallup, which had a significantly higher response rate. In fact, the report's research supervisor, Dr. David Lisak, worked with Gallup and the Air Force on the earlier study.

NOTE: Thomas Bishop is a current military officer who has served as an Equal Opportunity Leader in the Army Reserves.

Conservative Arthur Herman  must have never heard of statistical sampling. During elections pollsters do not ask every single individual who they are going to vote for, yet they are generally close ( within a few percentage points) of picking winners. So even if the survey is off by a little that still means a substantial number of sexual assaults are occurring. frequently with the perpetrator going unpunished. Herman hates women. Technically that is his right, but he is using a very large media platform to use his hate to persuade public opinion in a way that is harmful to women serving their country and a disgrace to patriotic values.

Remembering Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) Progressive Legacy

How Conservative Republicans Are Giving The USA The Shaft This Week

How Conservative Republicans Are Giving The USA The Shaft This Week

Corporate Cowards Divert Shareholder Funds into “Dark Money”

But don't front groups have to report (at least to election authorities) who's really behind their ads, so voters can make informed decisions? No. Thanks to the Supreme Court's infamous Citizen United edict in 2010, such groups can now pour unlimited sums of corporate cash into elections without ever disclosing the names of their funders. This "dark money" channel has essentially established secret political campaigning in America.

REPORT: Republican Senate Nominee Gabriel Gomez Claimed $281,500 Tax Deduction Under What IRS Called A ‘Tax Scam’

GOP cabinet boycott reaffirms Senate is archaic embarrassment

This Is How the NRA Lies to Gun Owners About Obama's Agenda

The survey, provided to Mother Jones by a reader, claims that "President Obama has supported a national gun registration system allowing federal government officials to keep track of all your firearm purchases." This is an all-too-common NRA talking point. NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre echoed it in January, saying that Obama "wants to put every private, personal transaction under the thumb of the federal government, and he wants to keep all those names in a massive federal registry."

That's not true.

Federal law has long banned a national gun registry. And the recent gun control bill that died in Congress, which was cosponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) and fully supported by Obama, did not create a national gun registry. In fact, the bill expressly prohibited such a registry. Obama emphasized this point repeatedly, and award-winning mainstream media fact-checkers backed him up.

The Demi-God of Conservatism, Foreigner Rupert Murdoch: Journalism's Jack the Ripper

Another conservative lie bites the dust, Fox-Promoted Claim That Benghazi Witness Was Threatened Falls Apart

Real Americans Do Not Disregard Medical Research Budget Cuts To Ridicule Patriotic Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)

Real Americans Do Not Disregard Medical Research Budget Cuts To Ridicule Patriotic Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)

Fox News selectively edited comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to accuse him of exaggerating the effects of automatic budget cuts that began March 1. Fox's excerpt of Reid's call to end the cuts left out his description of specific impacts and ignored widespread media reporting that supports his statements.

Due to the across-the-board spending cuts, the National Institute of Health (NIH) will be forced reduce its budget by $1.5 billion and expects to award 1,000 fewer grants in 2013. Because approximately three-fifths, or $40.8 billion, of all university research funding in 2011 came from the federal government, this loss will be disruptive. Some disruptions have already begun.

On April 25, Fox & Friends aired a short clip from Sen. Reid's April 24 remarks to the Senate that called for an end to the arbitrary budget cuts. Although Reid prefaced the aired comments with a broader description of the impact that the mandatory budget cuts may have on education and the economy, Fox Business host Stuart Varney and Fox News host Steve Doocy chose to focus on just three sentences, accusing Reid of "desperate" exaggeration. Doocy claimed that Reid "essentially is saying Republicans want to kill people."

Fox's short excerpt of Reid's testimony omitted context in which Reid detailed specific examples of how the budget cuts may curb medical research. Here is a larger excerpt of Reid's statement [what Fox aired is bolded]:

    Nationwide these across-the-board cuts will cost 750,000 jobs. They will cost us investments in education that keep America competitive. They will cost millions of seniors, children, veterans and needy families the safety net that keeps them from descending into poverty.

    Most of the headlines are focused on the hours the sequester has cost travelers in airports across the nation. The frustration and the economic effects of those delays should not be minimized. But the sequester could also cost this country - and humankind - a cure for AIDS or Parkinson's disease or cancer.

    These arbitrary cuts have decimated funding for medical researchers seeking cures for diabetes, epilepsy and hundreds of other dangerous and debilitating diseases. The National Institutes of Health has delayed or halted vital scientific projects and reduced the number of grants it awards to research scientists. Thousands of researchers will lose their jobs in the next few months. And projects that can't go on without adequate staffing will be cancelled altogether.

    At Ohio State University, grants for cancer research and infectious disease control have been axed. At the University of Cincinnati - which is at the forefront in research on strokes, a leading cause of death in the United States - scientists are bracing for similar cuts. Vanderbilt University and the University of Kentucky are accepting fewer science graduate students because of funding reductions. At Wright State University, scientists researching pregnancy-related disorders such as preeclampsia will lose their jobs. Boston University has laid off lab scientists, and research laboratories in San Francisco have instituted hiring freezes and delayed the launch of important studies. And grants to some of Harvard University's most successful research scientists were not renewed because of the sequester.

    This kind of research saves lives. These scientists are looking for the next successful treatment for Alzheimer's disease or the next drug to treat high cholesterol. But they might never get the chance to complete their groundbreaking work or make their life-saving discoveries because of these short-sighted cuts.

    We have seen the devastating impacts of these arbitrary budget cuts. Now it's time to stop them.

News reports confirm the cuts to medical research highlighted in Reid's statement.

The Toledo Blade reported that cuts to cancer and infectious disease research have already begun to take effect at Ohio State University. The school expects to lose $27 million by the end of 2014. The Blade also highlighted the $17 million cut expected to hit the University of Cincinnati's groundbreaking research on strokes and how the cuts have jeopardized Wright State University's potentially life-saving research on pregnancy complications:

    In his lab at Wright State University, Thomas Brown is moving closer to understanding why some babies are born premature -- cutting-edge research that has the potential to save the lives of babies and their mothers.

    But Brown, who has a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the underlying factors that cause pre-eclampsia and pregnancy-related disorders, faces uncertainty about the funding that makes his lab work possible.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Vanderbilt University already plans to reduce graduate student admissions for next year, and may have to cut research assistants on some of its 3,500 active research grants and contracts. The Stateline news service from the Pew Charitable Trusts reported that the University of Kentucky's College of Medicine reduced admissions to its Ph.D. program in physiology by a third due to federal budget cuts. Similarly, staffing reductions have begun to take effect among researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, which expects to lose more than $28 million. And Harvard Medical School shut down its primate research center, citing growing uncertainty of federal funding.

It is already well known that Fox Business host Stuart Varney and Fox News host Steve Doocy are rapid anti-American zealots. They have both pushed for America to adopt European style austerity measures. Austerity measures which have kept Europe from recovering from the world wide recession that started in 2007. Varney and Doocy make over a million dollars a year trashing America, advocating UnAmerican conservative economics, deceptively editing video as though they were working for the Spanish fascists of WW II. You would think they would show some appreciation for a country that has been so generous to them, especially considering they have the morals of a cockroach and the brains of a tree stump. 

MSNBC's Scarborough, Known For His UnAmerican Conservative Bias, Ignores The Facts In Front Of Him To Attack Government Spending

MSNBC's Scarborough, Known For His UnAmerican Conservative Bias, Ignores The Facts In Front Of Him To Attack Government Spending

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough blamed "a Keynesian spending spree" for the contraction in GDP at the end of 2012, while holding evidence that the opposite is true in his hands. Scarborough's claims fit into his ongoing effort to deny and marginalize demand-side economic policies which continue to enjoy broad support from trained economists.

During a discussion of the 2012 fourth quarter GDP report on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Scarborough implied that the 0.1 percent drop in output was due to government spending since the recession. From Morning Joe:

Scarborough's claim is contradicted by the Wall Street Journal article he held up during the segment, which states that "government spending, which has been a drag on growth for more than two years, declined for the ninth time in 10 quarters." The article's subhead - "GDP Shrinks 0.1% on Government Cuts, but Consumer, Business Spending Offer Hope" - also splashed across the screen moments before Scarborough made his argument.

The Wall Street Journal's reporting is in line with the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis report. The BEA calculates the component parts of the GDP figure for each quarter. This most recent report is notable not because the government spending component of GDP continues to be negative due to shrinking direct spending into the economy, but because, for the first time in the recovery, the government component of GDP was so negative that it overwhelmed the positivity in other components.

Poor Joe Scarborough lives in the lala-land of conservative myths. The report showed two inconvenient truths, Obama has not gone on a wild spending spree and, gosh darn-it, government spending can stimulate the economy.