Recently on Fox Business (8/30/11; cite by Think Progress, 8/31/11), host Eric Bolling tried to discredit the Center for American Progress’s excellent new report on Islamophobia with this colossal falsehood:
I need to point this out–I’m reading directly from this report: “The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars.”
You would have to be an idiot to read those words and not realize that they weren’t CAP’s. In fact, Bolling was quoting from a column on the far-right American Thinker website, attacking CAP and its report.
But the damage was done: The rest of the segment–Bolling’s questions and his guests’ answers–all swirled around the subject of CAP’s anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorizing. “For the Center of American Progress to say there is a grand conspiracy undermines their credibility and is laughable,” said lobbyist David Rehr, comparing CAP to “the left John Birch Society” (not to be confused with the original JBS, which was prominently featured on Glenn Beck’s now defunct Fox News show).
stating the obvious here, there’s nothing that would have made this a story worth covering on a business channel.
it’s simply faux’s less watched propaganda channel….
This kind of “news” reporting on Fox is straight out of Orwell’s 1984. Instead of addressing the issues raised by the CAP’s report Eric Bolling or whoever controls him decided to have a debate on fictional conspiracies. No wonder the American public is so confused.
No surprises here. FAUX news, business or otherwise has been lying to the American public for as long as they’ve been on the air. The fanantical right wing network has no decency and their brainwashed listeners are oblivious to the truth.
I actually read the introductory summary of the report last weekend. How disgusting that a major media outlet would completely distort a 130 page report outlining the major players: ideologically, their financial supporters, the far right fundamentalist religious leaders, the politicos and the major media figures many of whom are from FOX News who promote Islamaphobia. But that’s “fair and balanced” reporting for you.
update: think progress is reporting that they got bolling to issue a correction on the faux website followed by an on-air correction. discussing the response he posted on the website, they note:
“Bolling’s correction reveals that he relies on a hateful, right-wing blog for his information. Bolling was citing a particular blogger, Ed Lasky, who has made a name for himself by characterizing Obama as Muslim and anti-Semitic. The specific blog post that Bolling referenced on Fox was debunked by ThinkProgress’ Ali Gharib, who explained how Lasky was distorting information to claim that Islamophobia doesn’t exist.
If there is one key takeaway from this incident, it’s that observers have witnessed how the Islamophobia network generally operates: 1) Produce a blog post with false anti-Muslim information, 2) promote that blog post through Fox News, 3) have so-called â┚¬Ã…“expertsâ┚¬Ã‚ tout the information as if it’s credible, and then 4) stand by your mischaracterizations even when they are shown to be lies.
In this case, we successfully fought back against this misinformation network. That’s what it’s going to take to end Islamophobia.”
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/09/02/310807/fox%e2%80%99s-eric-bolling-finally-comments-on-his-defamatory-remark-%e2%80%98sorry-for-the-confusion%e2%80%99/
Those damn FOX people.Next they will try to tell us that the 911 hijackers were all muslims.Look you only have to know more about who wrote the report, to know what is in the report.Lets just say it is a very left leaning group who’s motives are suspect.
HAHAHA did any of you actually read the report??? So he made a mistake as to which he was actually reporting, but that had little to do with the actual subject matter. The quote was relevant and accurate.
Yeah, we don’t need to read any stinking report when we can just blame the messengers.
Whatchya expect? Fox is only a smidgeon more off-the-wall than CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR, AP, etc., not to mention the sickening print media. They all are in the propaganda business. None can be trusted, from smarmy Brian Williams, to smug O’Reilly (sp? tough), and especially the yuppies-and-proud-of-it at PBS/NPR.
It was no better in the 60s, particularly pompous Walter “Frankly Unctuous” Cronkite whom the pseudolefties have put on an undeserved pedestal. Apparently they’ve got poor memories, and maybe they didn’t watch his real propaganda programs, like Twentieth Century. No, folks, the nooze has always been a brainwashing game, from the Noo Yawk Times cheerleading the Mexican War, to promotion of the genocidal notion of manifest destiny, to Hearst’s lies about the Spanish-American War, to most of them cheerleading for the first world war … and the second. And on and on it continues, to the present (and future). It’s always been the same. Propaganda.
Quit reading them. Quit listening to them. Quit watching them. They’re bad for ya. If you cut ’em off, you’ll still know plenty, and, you know what else, you’ll start feeling better, start thinking for yourself again, and not be tempted by the latest legal drug they’re peddling to “cure” you of reacting normally to a crappy situation.
Mike….I read the report.It is bunk.Don’t waste your time giving it any thought
Whatsa matter, michael e? Afraid someone might discover that Christofascism, with its message of hate spread by nutcase evangelicals, is the real problem? Get a life.
Um HR
Christofascism is a great word. But Im trying to plug it into reality .Lets you and i play a simple minded game.Lets track today the next twenty bombs that go off in this beautiful world in among civilians who are outside any war zone just moving about their day.You tack up on your little board under “Christofascism” the ones you can attribute to that.I will have my little board marked Islamic terrorists.You like that game?
I heard today six rabbi’s entered mosques and detonated suicide vests.Ok i made that up.
If you are saying people who evangelize for christ are in some way evil- just say it.I think its a lot of bunk.
I certainly will say that islamic extremists are evil.
Its a funny world.Get a comic making fun of catholics and jews and everybody(including the Jews and catholics)roars in laughter.Move onto the subject of muslims and …..Can you feel that?Silence.little nervous titters.Everybody’s ass puckers up as they look about.If you cant see, or feel that your a better man than me.
And thank you for your wish(get a life)I strive everyday to do just that.
michael e, you wouldn’t know reality if it came up and bit you on the ass. You use a lot of words to say nothing.
Lot of words that say nothing huh?Well that is very different from our president who says NOTHING when Jimmy Hoffa threatens the tea party as he is introducing the cowering commander in chief. .
Reality?I will give you a dose of reality.The unemployment level today was calculated at a real level of 16%.Take a look at Obamas polls today.If the election were today he would lose” states the major news services.”Actually he would be slaughtered.Reality?HR the reality is we are sick of your bleating and your parties socialistic ideals and we mean to send you home.Reality is a cold November in your future and plenty of moving trucks at the white house.
The only way Jimmy Hoffa threatened the teabaggers was at the polling place
Yesterday Hoffa said, “Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back, and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”
fauxnews edited out the “Everybody here’s got to vote.” when they first showed the video
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/hoffa-on-tea-party-lets-take-these-sons-of-bitches-out/
I have seen it edited and unedited.It made no difference.His wording was unwise.I wonder if the guys that were ordered to take his father out -got their directions wrong.Maybe what they meant is VOTE him out.The white house should acknowledge this mistake now and move on.Two weeks ago the tea party were terrorists.Then the black congressional caucasus(a racist org)said they want to lynch black people.Now this.Lets not forget the tea bagger moniker.It is constant “bullying” from the party that has all these focus groups against such things.As always a bunch of hypocrites.Remember Sarah drawing a bullseye on Liberals?
Im sure if the klan released a statement like”Everybody has to vote.Lets take Michelle Obama that daughter of a whore out ….and give America back to an America where we belong”It really screams for an apology doesn’t it?For a long time dems could say anything and slip their slippery as an eel bodies along.Those days are gone.
As far as threatening us at polling places(interesting choice of words)maybe you better look at todays polls.Look in my life I never considered that the 80% of the public(who has no pension)would pay me at up to 80 my wage to NOT WORK.It is a strange concept to me.Also not having a right to work state is a strange land for me.unions existed in a great big ponzi scheme.Tomorrow would pay for today.Well that is over now.Soon so too shall be Obama,and we can work to sponge his works from our landscape.
michael e, you are truly beyond hope. A perfect example of how people have lost the capacity to think for themselves. Thing is, it wouldn’t be so bad if you willfully ignorant types only had negative effects on yourselves, but you drag the rest of us down with you. And, you know what? We’re fed up with your lunacy, your gun-toting-in-public insecurity. There’s gonna be a reckoning, coming sooner than you idiots think, and you and your kind are gonna be on the losing side of things, including your wealthy benefactors, who see you only as the useful idiots you truly are.. The rest of us are fed up with the lunacy. We like living wages, pensions, and benefits … which are nothing more than deferred or alternative compensation, if you even know what that means. You can take your right to slave labor laws and stow them where the sun don’t shine, sideways. Where are you from? The south?
HReading
Actually Hr my direct-direct family contained one of the leaders of a certain national union(that shall remain nameless)I know unions, inside, outside, and backwards.From the time I was old enough to understand.From the bottom up and the top down.So don’t lecture me.I have no problem with any union the does not interfere with right to work, and that funds itself.DONT ASK THE PUBLIC FOR A DIME!!!!Deferred alternative compensation indeed.Union pensions are crushing burdens that we cant afford.If you and your union can, God bless you.But not a flippin dime from the 80% of non union people who dont have this.Fair?
Living wage?What is that exactly?To be paid what you demand no matter what the market dictates.Tell you a funny story.Was in a rush and my lady called a plumber.He came in replaced a washer, and hit me for ninety five bucks.Year later he is in the waiting room with a chest X ray.Looked at it(he was fine) and on his way out i tell the receptionist that the fee in 95 bucks.What says he…I thought it was 45.No says i its ninety five.Figure your life and my experience is worth at least as much as my rubber washer and your experience.Lets say he was very pissed.
Benefits are the real tough one.To the teachers in Neshaminy school district in PA who bristle at paying anything into their healthcare- I say who do you think will pay it?We obviously need a re do on this whole situation to put it on a paying basis.Obamas lets just take it from the rich is simple class warfare socialistic nonsense and the numbers don’t come close to sussing out.
Want unions to do better than create jobs.You have a party in power that most of their top people have never held one.They don’t have a clue.Make you a bet 6 months after the Rs take back the white house i think the economy and the market will be roaring back.It will be a better time to have this argument than at a time when Obama is destroying every sector of the economy he can as fast as he can.
As far as my bio …I was born in Florida,grew up hunting and fishing in the North east.And I do have a right to carry permit.
See HR i worked for Clinton and Nader once upon a time.Grew up in a political family.It may be easy to just say Im ignorant ,or a racist, or an idiot ,or a gun toting lunatic ,or elitist or uncaring.That is the lefts template.Maybe just maybe Im none of those things.Maybe Im a very well educated ,experienced person who simply disagrees with you.
I stand by my statements, all of them.
Funny how your type always picks on plumbers as you repeat from memory Chamber of Commerce anectdotes. Anyone with half a lick of sense gets an estimate before having the plumber come out. And, plumbers generally have a one-hour minimum charge for service calls, which can vary depending on how far they have to travel. Sounds like you got off easy.
If you had pulled that stunt of jacking up the price for the x-ray, I would have had your sorry ass in court so fast it would have made your head swim, and I would have won, plus damages.
You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are no more than a traitor to the Working Class.
First i didn’t say i ended UP charging him so save your lawsuits.I said i told him it would be the same price.Of course i let him pay the accepted fee(and i have never told this tale at any chamber of commerce whatever the hell that means…though I did once repeat it on the radio).Anyway i hoped the point made it through his plumbing to his brain.And your excuse for a 95 dollar rubber washer( that took ten minutes and his business is 1 mile away) sounds like you are agreeing with his pricing ….and disagreeing with mine.Anyone with a lick of sense(my wife) would never of believed such a charge existed in this old world.She does not understand unions as well as i do.So i am a traitor to the working class huh?And what the flip am i?I work 14 hour days often.Six days a week.On call round the clock.Went to schools and broke my ass day and night working every job in the book to do so -till I was 30.But Im not a WORKING MAN?I just don’t think THIS working man should pay dime one to pay for the pension of a man who is finishing working at the ripe old age of 50 and wants 80% of his wage to do nothing but fish when after all my sacrifice i have just got going at 50 and will probably work till i am no longer able to ….to pay for everybody ‘s healthcare and their fishing trips.
Listen genius….How about union members pay into a pension fund for all those down the ladder mcDonald’s workers who cant afford one- because they are not RICH like you.At 80% their wage when they hit -oh how about 35?Sound insane?Join “MY TYPES” club.
Poor little michael e. He whines and blames everyone but his own willfully ignorant self for all the bad things that have happened to him. He hates unions. Hates it that others can retire early. He loves right to slave labor laws, the very laws that prevent the union organizing that could have improved his situation. He is a total mass of contradictions, and was described very well, by Joe Bageant, except in my opinion, Joe let these willfully ignorant people, the ones who identified with the needs of their bosses over their own self-interest, the ones who adopted a Chamber of Commerce mentality, the one who believed, memorized and repeated every lie told them by their bosses, the ones who resent the benefits that accrued to those who saw the value of unions, off the hook far too easily.
Look here, man, union people do pay into a retirement fund for other people. It’s called Social Security. And, they pay into Medicare, too. You and the millions of other willfully ignorant people could have had a union, too, but instead of organizing, you directed your energy into resentment for those who did and reaped the benefits, and into licking the boots of your masters. And now, you halfwits want to drag down to your pathetic level those who did see the value in solidarity with their fellow workers, and who acted on it.
You apparently have no concept of what is rich. When I retired, at 52 — and if you don’t like that, go screw yourself, and at about one-third of my working income (where do you idiots come up with figures like 80 percent … pull it out of that smelly place where the sun don’t shine, I suspect) — I was making about the same in wages and benefits as a union assembly line worker for the Big 3 auto makers with the same seniority. That aint rich, michael e. It aint even yuppie wages.
So, peddle your bid for pity elsewhere, Mr. From a Politically Connected Family. I aint buying it. You and your kind brought your pain on yourselves with your own poor judgement, by buying into the lies of your bosses, just as you play the useful idiots for outfits like the Koch Brothers who fund your idiotic tea bagger movement. People like me had nothing to do with bringing you down. It’s all on you. And, I aint standing by while jerks like you, who instead of owning up to their own poor judgement, try instead to destroy what unions built up over the decades, often paying for it with the lives of their members. In other words, asshole, screw you. You’re getting just what you asked for, but you’re not taking me down with you. Finally, I’ve wasted all the words and time I’m gonna waste on a pathetic little jerk like you, who would rather whine and bring everyone down to his level rather than do something to elevate himself. Go tell your sad story to the Kochs. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help you out … after all, it might be a good publicity stunt for them.
Hr I have no idea what you are on about.I simply said unions are great.Fantastic….amazing.I just don’t want to pay a dime into them.Anymore than i don’t want you paying into any retirement fund for the medical profession.And i want people to have the right NOT to unionize and to ply their trade without threats.Simple American concepts.
And i love you wishing everyone would unionize.Really?There was an article that stated if every piece that went into a car was derived from a union at union wages(instead of some factory overseas) you would see the car that you paid 22K move up to around 32K.Happy with that genius?How about the clothes your kids and wife bought?How much of that is from unionized workers?What would it cost if it were?If everything was unionized what would happen to your cost of living?Everything you buy and every service you use pop it up.Way up in cost.You never think that you had a good ride and you should just kiss it up to God.Hey Im happy you can retire at the young age of 52 from ever working again.Enjoy.Go fishing.The rest of us gotta keep working to pay for it.i am just saying we have seen how this plays out,I don’t want my kids paying for your kids or yours for mine as far as any pension fund or benefits package goes.Done over finny.Now have a good day HR.I have to go to work like most of Americans.I will be home in oh about 25 years.Long live Karl marx right?
michael e wrote: Tell you a funny story.Was in a rush and my lady called a plumber.He came in replaced a washer, and hit me for ninety five bucks.Year later he is in the waiting room with a chest X ray.Looked at it(he was fine) and on his way out i tell the receptionist that the fee in 95 bucks.What says heâ┚¬Ã‚¦I thought it was 45.No says i its ninety five.Figure your life and my experience is worth at least as much as my rubber washer and your experience.Lets say he was very pissed.
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Wow. That’s a knee-slapper all right. This needs to go in the Petty and Ineffectual Revenge Schemes Hall of Fame, I tells ya. You’re a doctor? Who’s your professional mentor, Dr. Doofenshmirtz?
Just my opinion, but I don’t think this is something you wanna publicize.
Just a moment in a day john that illustrates a point.No need to call the AMA with an emergency compliant.
I heard Obama recount a story recently about a meeting with someone oriented toward the Tea party.Just a moment in his day ya know john.Oh……Barrack’s analyst is named Dr Doofenshmirtz.Thats where you got that.Try Ti chi john.It may keep you off blood pressure meds…..Welll at least until the elections
@michael e: I’m not about to call the AMA. And my blood pressure is fine, doc.
But the point you think this little story illustrates, and the point I take from it are pretty different. I take this to mean that you think it’s OK to jerk around with a plumber who came to your house and who you think overcharged you. Where I’m from, plumbers are small businessman who charge what the market will bear. You usually sing the praises of such a person. I’m struck by how quickly you change your tune when it costs you $95 for a washer. How many patients have you seen in your office– and since house calls are pretty much non-existent anymore, I’m gonna assume you see all patients in the office– for, say, 15 or 20 minutes total, using no significant medical equipment beyond a pair of rubber gloves, and billed out for several hundred dollars? It’s OK for you to do something like that in your office, but the plumber gets the stinkeye for doing something similar, even when he was called to your home at your request, huh?
Secondly, this whole episode brings a lot of questions to mind. Like… Why even bother with this little scheme in the first place? Exactly what were you hoping to accomplish? You expect this plumber to start plying his trade for free or something? Did it make you feel good to capriciously mess around with a guy’s doctor bill? Is it really worth behaving like a child over $95? What kind of doctor can change his consult fee willy-nilly like that? How the hell did you remember it was the same guy from a year later? Why carry a grudge like that? What kind of a person are you?
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious, but Dr. Doofenschmirtz is a character from the children’s show Phineas and Ferb, known for his pointless, ill-conceived, and ultimately-futile schemes.