Fox News

From Brave New Films comes a round up of Fox News lies and attacks of Barack Obama...put into the context of Bill O'Reilly's assault and battery of an Obama staffer:

Bill O'Reilly is a violent, irrational sleaze and Fox News is nothing but a Republican propoganda machine that is MORE than willing to lie at will.

I originally posted this on the Daily Gotham earlier in the week.

Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies and statistics and his adage applies to unemployment measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six unemployment metrics monthly, each referred to in ascending order of inclusiveness of the unemployed as U-1, U-2, etc.

The measure reported by the media as the unemployment rate that severely undercounts the unemployed is referred to as U-3. The U-3 rate is obtained by dividing the narrowest definition of the unemployed by the work force.
The U-3 definition does not include whom the BLS calls discouraged and marginal workers, those who want a job but have given up the search because market conditions and personal experience indicate the process is futile.

U-6 Unemployment counts the marginal and discouraged plus those seeking full time employment but can only find part time work. The Federal Reserve tracks what it defines as the Augmented Unemployment rate, which I’ve read is equivalent to U-6 less part time workers. I couldn’t find any Augmented Unemployment releases on the Fed site and despite major data inclusion differences, some bloggers have used U-6 and the Fed’s stat interchangeably.

Naive supply side economics fans and the heartless and often evil advocates of cutting the wealthy’s taxes as a means to kill the beast of New Deal and Great Society programs love to brag that the historically low recent unemployment numbers (April’s seasonally adjusted U-3 was 4.5 percent) are evidence that their tax policy scam truly does trickle down to those who are not tax cut direct material beneficiaries. Despite those wishing to give handouts to Gates and Buffett’s (who personally don’t even want the cuts) spin, the economy just isn’t that robust. The seasonably adjusted April U-6 numbers, which are a much more accurate economic suffering barometer than what the media regularly announces, increased to 8.2 percent.

Barack Obama was the first to, quietly, refuse to deal with Fox News because of their bias and their racist, anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism stands. Rumors, unconfirmed as far as I am aware, circulated that he turned down all interview requests from Fox.

Then came the foolish idea by the Nevada Democrats to team up with right wing extremist Fox News and hold a forum with the Democratic Presidential candidates. Huge pressure came from the liberal blogsphere (with a few dissenting voices who don't seem to get that Fox News is no longer anything but extremist, pro-violence propoganda we should distance ourselves from) for Nevada Dems to drop the idea. Fox bloviated. John Edwards was the first to refuse to participate in the forum if Fox was involved and ultimately the Nevada Democratic Party saw the error of its ways and dropped Fox News like the vile, decayed corpse of journalism that it is. Personally I thanked the Nevada Dems with a donation and urge you to do the same.

Now, Fox hits another roadblock in its rather suspicious eagerness to hold a forum for the Democratic candidates. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) decided to form an alliance with Fox News to hold a Presidential forum, making people wonder if they had slept through the Nevada brouhaha. Once again blogs came into play asking the CBC what they were doing given the racist attacks they have made in the past and their blatant lies about Barack Obama, a member of the CBC. But now the forum is moot. First John Edwards said he would refuse to have anything to do with the forum if Fox is in the deal. Then Barack Obama (again, a member of the CBC!) and, a little later, Hillary Clinton, both followed Edwards' lead. That would make any such forum kind of useless, if the three front runners refuse to attend.

It looks like the Congressional Black Caucus is making the mistake that the Nevada Democratic Party decided not to make: teaming up with Fox News.

When we discussed the Nevada situation, I focused on Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly's advocacy of terrorism, anti-Smitism and hate speech. Well, let me remind you that there are more reasons the Democrats should just say, "HELL NO" to Fox. From Color of Change.org:

# Commenting on Hannity & Colmes about the speakers at Coretta Scott King's funeral, featured guest Mary Matalin said, "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists" who are keeping "their African-American brothers enslaved."

# Jesse Lee Peterson, a regular guest who is Black said: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan, Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas... if a white man started a white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down America."

# Erik Rush, another Black guest, labeled Sen. Obama's church as cultish and separatist for espousing values of black unity and black empowerment (Fox regularly selects Black guests it knows will undermine Black causes). Rush said he replaced the word "black" with "white" in the church's mission statement and "Suddenly, I was looking at this really scary doctrine. You know, it was something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren church… I would go beyond saying they're Afrocentric. They're African centric. They refer to themselves as an African people and that somewhat disturbs me from the viewpoint of well, do they consider themselves Americans? Do they consider themselves Christians?"

There are likely going to be at least a dozen, probably more, debates between the Democratic Presidential contenders. One organization considering hosting such a debate is the Congressional Black Caucus, considered by many, including myself, to be the moral conscience of the United States Congress.

The CBC, however, is considering a partnership with Fox "News" to televise that debate, which is in turn raising hackles among activists.

Markos writes:

Now with the Nevada Democratic Party ditching propaganda outlet Fox News as a co-sponsor of its debate, attention is turning to the Congressional Black Caucus, which is choosing between CNN and Fox for its own debate. African American activists are putting pressure on the CBC to choose CNN.

Afro-netizen concurs:

In September of 2003 the Congressional Black Caucus co-sponsored a Democratic presidential candidate debate with Fox News at Baltimore HBCU, Morgan State University. Progressive-minded Blackfolk should have acted then, and we simply have no excuse not to act today towards keeping it (and any of its affiliated organizations) accountable.

How bad is the conservative cable channel, Fox, in describing Black Americans? Consider this video:

Robert Greenwald continues the saga started with his groundbreaking Outfoxed. From the website : Fox is not a credible news outlet and needs to be stopped. Foxattacks.com will give you the information and tools you need to hit fox where it hurts.