Eideard

 
Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy hit back at Fox News during a UK press conference following the London Premiere of their new film. Fox had publically criticized the film for supposedly pushing a ‘dangerous liberal agenda’ at kids.

Har!

America’s conservatives lead the world in paranoia. They may not get what they think they need; but, they surely sound like they get what they deserve.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

If Fox News viewers want to be informed about current events, they might as well turn off the TV.

A poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University on Monday found that people who get their news from Fox News know significantly less about news both in the U.S. and the world than people who watch no news at all.

In a survey of 612 New Jersey natives, Fox News fans flunked questions about Egypt and Syria when compared with people who don’t watch the news. Fox viewers were 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians toppled their government and 6 points less likely to be aware that Syrians have not yet overthrown theirs.

“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson professor who served as an analyst for the poll, said in the report. “Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all…”

The most informative outlets were found to be the Sunday morning news shows as well as outlets like the New York Times, USA today and NPR.

Har.

Some of the PHONY TWEETS at Fox News Twitter account

Fox News’ political Twitter account was hacked according to reports on FoxNews.com.

Tweets coming from the @FoxNewsPolitics account early Monday have been reporting the death of President Barack Obama. A series of six tweets say that Obama was assassinated in Iowa and the shooter is unknown.

Fox’s political Twitter account has more than 34,000 followers.

According to FoxNews.com, the hacking is being investigated. The website also posted an apology for “any distress the false tweets may have created.”

The hackers could have picked any number of sites. Between Christian right-wingers, nutball racists, the whole range of hate-mongers, bigots and corporate flunkeys funneled through the Republican Party like so much shit through the gut of a demented goose – there is no shortage of liars hoping to host news of the assassination of our president.

Fox News wasn’t a surprising choice.

News Corp’s 2 largest shareholders, Rupert Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

In an awkward moment on Fox News this week, a pundit suggested that a member of the Saudi royal family who has supported the bridge-building work of the imam behind a planned Muslim community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan “funds radical madrasas all over the world.” The awkwardness came from the fact — unmentioned by anyone on the Fox set — that the same Saudi, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, also happens to be the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company of the Fox News Channel.

During his appearance on Fox News on Monday, Dan Senor, a former Bush administration official, hinted darkly that Feisal Abdul Rauf — an imam who was first recruited to promote religious tolerance in the Middle East on behalf of the United States government by the Bush administration — had, in the past, received financial support from a Saudi foundation established by a man with supposed radical ties. Mr. Senor did not mention the prince’s name but said:

“The Kingdom Foundation, so you know, is this Saudi organization, headed up by the guy who tried to give Rudy Giuliani $10 million after 9/11 that was sent back, funds radical madrasas all over the world…”

Through his Kingdom Holding Co., Alwaleed owns about 7 percent of News Corp., or about $3 billion of the media giant…

But taking the Fox pundits at their word, Jon Stewart suggested on The Daily Show this week that the best way to keep the Saudi prince from making money and then possibly using it to back the mosque project, is to boycott Fox News:

“This is the proposed ‘terror mosque.’ We know that it’s a ‘terror mosque’ because the money may be coming from a bad guy, who definitely owns part of Fox News. Now, we know that he’s a bad guy because we just heard it on Fox News…

My point is this: If we want to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque,’ we must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.”

Har!

New Orleans “Finest” turning themselves in for murder charges

Admitting a cover-up of shocking breadth, a former New Orleans police supervisor pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge on Wednesday, confessing that he participated in a conspiracy to justify the shooting of six unarmed people after Hurricane Katrina that was hatched not long after police stopped firing their weapons.

The guilty plea of Lt. Michael Lohman, who retired from the department earlier this month, contains explosive details of the alleged cover-up and ramps up the legal pressure on police officers involved in the shooting and subsequent investigation. It’s unclear when Lohman’s cooperation with federal authorities began, but he presumably is prepared to testify against the officers he says helped him lie about the circumstances of a shooting he immediately deemed a “bad shoot.”

Lohman, who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to obstruct justice, admits he failed to order the collection of evidence or canvassing of witnesses, helped craft police reports riddled with false information, participated in a plan to plant a gun under the bridge and lied to investigators who questioned police actions…

In a news conference after Lohman’s plea, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said police must be held to the law.

“Police officers are there to protect us, and to protect the most vulnerable among us,” he said. “Their jobs are to help individuals and protect us, not to hurt us. Sadly, sadly, we come across in the course of our work here…officers who violate their oaths of office, who occasionally violate their duties, violate their commitment to serve the public. And we take actions against those individuals wherever they violate federal law. We will continue to do that.”

RTFA. A long and detailed narrative of corruption, conspiracy and cronyism.

The New Orleans PD went through enough crap with the exposure of individuals who spent their “rescue” time stealing from businesses overwhelmed by the storm. This sad tale will not ease the task of building honesty into a department that never had an excess of that quality in the first place.

Waitrose, which prides itself more on its “quality food, honestly priced” than staring down rightwing attack dogs, has become the latest firm to pull its ads from Fox News after presenter Glenn Beck’s remarks about the US president….

Beck’s outbursts prompted dozens of companies – among them Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Travelocity – to withdraw their adverts from his show for fear that their businesses might become tainted by association.

Now Waitrose, which advertises on the channel carried by Sky in Britain, has followed suit after customers complained about the Glenn Beck Show.

An angry Waitrose shopper who emailed the chain to express his distaste over its decision “to be associated with this particular form of rightwing cant” received an apology last week.

“We take the placement of our ads in individual programmes very seriously, ensuring the content of these programmes is deemed appropriate for a brand with our values,” said a customer services spokesman. “Since being notified of our presence within the Glenn Beck programme, we have withdrawn all Waitrose advertising from the Fox News channel with immediate effect and for all future TV advertising campaigns.”

It’s called voting with your wallet, folks.

You boycott idiot TV Talking Heads with the press of a button on your remote. Cumulative emails encourage sponsors to do the same.

A Fox News video clip posted on the Internet YouTube site suggesting Canadian soldiers are weak and effeminate has raised ire among Canadians.

The 5-minute clip was from a recent broadcast of the “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld” panel show on the conservative U.S. network, Sun Media reported from Ottawa. It was in response to a Canadian general’s remark that his troops would need a year off after their combat role in the NATO mission in Afghanistan ends in 2011.

Gutfeld reported the plan with a sneer, the video shows.

“The Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white capri pants,” Gutfeld said.

The segment was posted by an unidentified Canadian who titled it “How to Lose Friends and Alienate Countries,” while conservative Ottawa commentator Geoff Norquay called it “insulting and beneath contempt.” the Sun report said.

Monday, the bodies of four Canadians killed in Afghanistan Friday were flown home. Canada has lost 116 soldiers since the NATO mission began in 2002.

American nutballs think all other conservatives don’t come down to their lack of standards.

We are pleased to welcome a new entry into the green blogosphere; TreeHugger hero Rupert Murdoch, fresh off our “CEOs Who Made an Environmental U-Turn” post, has launched How Green? on Fox News. In it’s trademarked Fair and Balanced style…it covers green living, green tech, and since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we cannot help but love their homophonic “plan it green section.”

I don’t think it is a joke at all; I think they are deadly serious.

Every day, there are fewer people listening to them, and fewer places for their audience to share their views where they are not laughed out of the discussion, if their comments are posted at all. John Holdren is advising the president, the Senate and House are irretrievably lost, MSNBC is eating their lunch.

So far, it’s an aggregation website. But, it has to be ripping the heart from climate change sophistry skeptics.

Eitan Gorlin – who posed as Martin Eisenstadt

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes…

There were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

So, uh, where did Fox News get the story about Sarah Palin?