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Bill O'Reilly was kvetching earlier this week about how the rest of the mainstream media -- besides Fox News, of course -- was biased against the Tea Party movement because "they like to look down on the folks." Unlike the Real Americans at Fox.

He even went so far as to claim his crack staff of researchers had sifted through "thousands" of news stories and managed to find only two that were rated as "positive." Of course, judging by the news standards at Fox, "positive" coverage is indistinguishable from "promotional propaganda" at any other news outlet. Moreover, most journalists consider it their job to be neutral in reporting these matters, not "positive." Unless, of course, they work for Fox.

So let's just say that we're guessing the methodology of O'Reilly's researchers is questionable.

But the most revealing an interesting moment came in the following segment, when O'Reilly brought in fellow Fox sage Brit Hume to ruminate on his thesis. Hume made the following observation:

HUME: Well, I think also, Bill, it's fair to make a comparison between the kind of coverage let's say the big anti-war demonstrations that went on during the last part of the — last parts of the Bush administration, the kind of coverage they got. They there would be a parade of extremists up on the platform saying the most remarkable things and the coverage in a lot of mainstream media outlets would be focused on the nice couples and the little families that are down in the crowd and their kind of civic.

O'REILLY: That's a great analogy. It's a great..

Yeah, that's a very interesting analogy indeed. Especially considering the way Fox covered those same anti-war protesters, especially in contrast to its glowing coverage of the Tea Parties:

Media Matters' review of Fox News' coverage of prior demonstrations finds that the network offered no such promotional coverage of 2003 and 2005 protests opposing the Iraq war, the 2006 immigrants' rights protests, or other demonstrations in support of progressive positions. Instead, the network's hosts, contributors, and guests often attacked participants in those protests.

Leading the pitchfork parade against the anti-war protesters, of course, was Bill O'Reilly. Some examples:

O'REILLY: I called some of the anti-war demonstrators anti-American when they start saying that a -- the United States is a terrorist nation and, you know, giving us this revisionist history that -- this one and that one, we did this and that, and, you know, there's a line. We respect dissent here, by the way. If you're against the war, and -- that's fine, and we respect that. But, once you start attacking your country as fundamentally an evil place, which some of these anti-war people have done, then you're anti-American, in my opinion.

O'REILLY: All right. I believe there's a heavy strain. I don't think everybody -- And I know everybody -- I think there are some sincere peace demonstrators. I just think they haven't thought it through.

I always say to people who are doing this, remember Vietnam and remember Cambodia. What happened there, OK?

Because for every cause there's an effect, all right?

So you don't want Saddam Hussein removed for whatever your reason may be, but you can't guarantee anybody that this guy, a proven killer, will not turn around and do something very heinous. And then what happens? Are you responsible for that?

And then there were Foxheads like Fred Barnes:

BARNES: You know, I was struck by how uninformed and morally empty these demonstrations were.

[...]

BARNES: These demonstrators are both morally vacuous, they're stupid, they're disingenuous.

[...]

BARNES: They just don't want a war and they hate the U.S., Mort's right about that.

Or Sean Hannity:

HANNITY: Had we listened to the appeasement movement, the pacifist movement, the same protesters back then as the ones today, the world wouldn't be a safer place. Why do they even have any credibility based on their failure after failure, historically speaking?

[...]

HANNITY: Steven, by the way, these are Marxist groups. They do organize this thing with very anti-American ideas. I don't believe every anti-war protester is anti-American. I'm not suggesting that.

Ah, but that's not "looking down on the folks." That's "looking down on the liberals." Who, by the Fox definition, are not people.

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February 11, 2010 FOX News

Perino: Shoebomber And Undiebomber Are 'Apples And Oranges':

In an appearance on Fox today, Dana Perino continued the attack on the Obama Administration's handling of the attempted Christmas bombing, dismissing comparisons to the Richard Reid shoe-bombing case as "apples and oranges."

Despite the similarities between the two cases, and despite the fact that President Bush had OKed the use of military tribunals in November 2001, a month before the shoe bombing attempt, Perino argued that the context in which the two cases unfolded were significantly different. Read on...

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This isn't the first time Tea Party organizers have announced their intentions regarding the Republican Party. And it probably won't be the last.

But it's nonetheless well worth documenting that Judson Phillips, the organizer of last week's National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, went on Fox News yesterday with Gretchen Carlson and said it quite clearly:

Phillips: And part of it's gonna end up -- where this Tea Party movement goes, is partially gonna be dependent on the Republican Party. If they're going to keep pushing people like Dede Scozzafaza or Mark Kirk on us, the Tea Party movement is not gonna vote for somebody just because they have an R behind their name. We don't like people like John McCain. We want good conservatives in office.

And if the Republican Party is not going to help us do that, then in 2011 there's probably going to be a pretty big push to set up the Tea Party as a separate political party. I don't think that's the best idea in the world, I'd really prefer to see us take over the Republican Party. But there's a lot of pressure from our people right now because we want conservatives in office.

Bet that works out about as well as NY-23 did.

It's interesting watching the Villagers try to figure out what the teabaggers are, both on TV and in print, because they refuse to either admit the truth or are afraid to voice their true feelings.

An interesting online poll is going on right now on the Fox News website. What it shows is quite interesting to me, since Fox News created the Tea Party movement in order to undermine President Obama and his agenda. At this point almost 200K people have voted and the results surprised me because it seems they don't need much psycho-babble talk to figure out what is quite evident to anyone who is not afraid to voice an honest opinion about them.

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."
---
And the survey says:

Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 79% (156,751 votes)

With Tom Tancredo and WND's Joseph Farah, nativist right wingers at their core having major speaking rolls in the Tea Party Convention before Palin took the stage last weekend, it looks like it cemented their opinions. I know it's an online poll, but when these appear on the Fox website they usually are skewered to the hard right. Well, even the conservative audience that Ailes caters to isn't fooled by the punditocracy.

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Glenn Beck has had plenty of apocalypticism on his show since he came to Fox -- we all remember the famous "War Room" episode in which guest Gerald Celente plotted out a future in which drug-running motorcycle gangs ran our cities. That was probably the topper.

But yesterday he came pretty close. His entire hourlong show featured a conversation with two guests: Damon Vickers of Nine Points Investment Capital, and Brian Doherty of Reason magazine. It was all about how the government is driving the nation into a "debt implosion" that will be the End of the World As We Know It. That is, after all, what apocalypses are about, right?

At the end of the hour, Beck asked them to describe what advice they'd give to ordinary people to help prepare for this apocalypse. Doherty was thoughtful and reasonable. Then came Vickers:

Vickers: The other side of a debt implosion, which is what we're in the process of realizing right now, is potentially even anarchy. Anarchy in a society. And so individuals and families have to have the foresight -- that's situational awareness -- to perhaps consider, maybe, maybe having a farm, maybe growing your own food, maybe you need to take up arms if you have any to protect your family. The period that's emerging in front of us could be very, very scary --

Beck: He's spookier than I am!

Unsurprisingly, Vickers has previously helped stoke Beck's paranoia, in fact inspiring him to announce that Obama is taking us straight to a New World Order global government. Vickers inspired the rant by appearing on CNBC speculating that the ultimate solution to the economy would be "global government". Vickers is a longtime nutcase who in fact was coming fresh off the Alex Jones show earlier this week, expounding on this same theory.

If you're worried about Vickers' powers of prognostication, take note: A year ago, Vickers predicted Microsoft was "going nowhere but down." That was when its stock price was at 13. Now it's above 30.

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Dylan Ratigan responds to Glenn Beck's attack on him as a "global warming nut" with a chalkboard of his own. Looks like the food fight between MSNBC and ClusterFox continues. What's that saying? Never argue with a fool, they will lower you to their level and then beat you with experience. Engaging Glenn Beck is a complete waste of time.

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We know that folks on the East Coast -- especially in New York and D.C. -- tend to think the world revolves around them, but this is ridiculous.

The Fox News anchors were having a field day yesterday, promoting their coverage of the East Coast snowstorms, mostly as a way of springboarding into their claim that the storms somehow prove that global warming is not happening -- a fixture in the Fox narrative.

Because, of course, the only part of the world that actually counts is the East Coast. Nevermind that for the planet as a whole, temperatures in 2009 were the second-warmest on record, nor that scientists are anticipating more records in the immediate years ahead.

The theme on Fox: Because it's colder in New York and D.C., it must be colder all around the rest of the world!

Eric Bolling taunted Al Gore, as did Glenn Beck, who then went on to laugh at the reports noting that in fact this is evidence of global-warming theory, claiming that we were now using an upside-down thermometer, then darkly proclaimed that this was all about the "progressive agenda", which has no use for "the truth." And on Hannity's show, he trotted out the "blizzards debunk global warming" line, and Greg Gutfeld proclaimed that this meant the demise of the "global warming industry."

Of course, we could just as easily proclaim that the record warm temperatures we're getting in Seattle are proof that global warming is real.

But here in Seattle, we understand that what happens to us locally doesn't mean the same thing is happening globally. We're not only more honest about it, we're more reality-based.

And the reality, as the New York Times explained this morning, is that the heavy snowstorms on the East Coast in fact perfectly fit into the model of climate change being predicated by scientists:

Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrate anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture.

“Of course,” he wrote on his blog Wednesday as new snows produced white-out conditions in much of the Eastern half of the country, “both climate-change contrarians and climate-change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns. The Climate Impacts report, from the multiagency United States Global Change Research Program, also projected more intense drought in the Southwest and more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes because of warming.

In other words, if the government scientists are correct, look for more snow.

Fox's Jane Skinner featured a report this morning discussing this Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who laid out in more detail how the heavier snows are likely a product of the heavier amounts of moisture in the atmosphere from global warming.

Want to bet that this bit of reportage goes completely ignored by the "opinion" anchors?

From The Colbert Report Feb. 10, 2010:

Based on the latest data from the Dopplest 9000 radar, Stephen can only assume that the sun has been destroyed.

From The Daily Show Feb. 10, 2010:

Aasif Mandvi freezes in New York, Sam Bee feels the heat in Australia, and Jason Jones reports on the darkness everywhere.

Rachel takes the clowns at ClusterFox to task for pretending they don't know the difference between changes in the weather and climate change. The science guy Bill Nye weighs in and explains why watching these idiots conflate the two disturbs him so much.

Stewart and Colbert both had a field day with Fox for this as well.

MADDOW: All right. There we go. Although the interstitial random Kent outdoor was almost more perfect. Of those full-court shots, the first one was college, the next four were all high school—high school games. Players making full-court shots—just incredible, right? I have to say, it was very cool to spend my snowy day in my office today, searching YouTube for all of those clips.

But no one would say that seeing those clips, seeing those shots, disproves that trying to make a 90-foot shot in basketball is a hard thing to do, right? I mean, even though there‘s evidence that it can be done, shooting from the backcourt is hard, and coaches, therefore, probably shouldn‘t plan on always making that shot in order to plan to win games.

Everybody understands that, right? It‘s the difference between observing a specific thing and understanding whether or not that specific thing is a fair representation of how things are generally in the world.

It‘s simple, right? It‘s kind of like being an adult. Everybody gets that—apparently, unless you are in politics.

In politics right now, full-court shots aren‘t hard. We know that because we‘ve seen YouTube clips of kids making them. In politics, now, whatever we‘re looking at right this instant disproves everything else we know about the world.

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Monica Crowley this morning, appearing on Fox News' Happening Now, followed in Newt's footsteps in her eagerness to deny that shoe bomber Richard Reid's case -- also tried in civilian courts by the Bush administration -- bore any similarity to that of "Underwear Bomber" Umar Abdulmutallab, a fact that undermines their brazen attempts to attack President Obama for his handling of the "war on terror".

That is, she lied:

Crowley: There are some unanswered questions here, Julian. Is Abdulmuttalab answering questions or cooperating because he got a plea bargain?

Also, Richard Reid was matriculated into the civilian justice system because military tribunals did not exist in late 2001, and the only reason we got a conviction in the Moussaoui case is because he plead guilty.

In fact, as Julian Epstein points out, military tribunals have been around in the United States a long time -- in fact, they've existed since the Revolutionary War. Moreover, the Supreme Court long ago set the precedent, in Ex parte Milligan (1866), that military tribunals used to try civilians in any jurisdiction where the civil courts were functioning were unconstitutional.

Crowley cannot even claim that she actually meant that Guantanamo Bay, where terrorism suspects bound for military tribunals have been held since 9/11, was not operating. In fact, terrorism detainees began arriving there on October 7, 2001, more than two months before Reid's arrest on December 22.

But then, facts have never been deterrent for right-wingers intent on bashing President Obama.

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For the second night in a row Chris Matthews expresses just how much Sarah Palin scares him to death, this time with the admission that she's just as much of an empty vessel as George Bush.

MATTHEWS: I wouldn`t be afraid if either of those guys were president. I might not vote for them, but I wouldn`t be afraid of them. I`d be afraid of her because I think she`s an empty vessel, ready to be filled by ideology she doesn`t even understand. That is really scary. We saw that with Dan Quayle. We saw that with W. Nothing is more frightening than an empty vessel in power.

Well Mr. Matthews, if this is what you really believe about George Bush, can we get you to quit fawning over him in his flight suit?

Transcript via Nexis Lexis.

MATTHEWS: Well, Chris Wallace asked her how hard President Obama would be to defeat in 2012. Here`s what the governor said. Let`s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three -- I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be reelected.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: You`re not suggesting he would cynically play the war card.

PALIN: I`m not suggesting that. I`m saying, if he did, things would dramatically change, if he decided to tough it up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: She`s frightening. Mark, that is frightening stuff. Frightening. First of all, presidents do not declare war. Anybody knows that in high school. Congress has to declare war.

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We felt a sense of dread last November when Glenn Beck announced his "100-year plan" for America:

Beck then describes "The Plan," which he says is analogical to "lifeboats" on the Titanic: He says he's assembling a team of "experts" to help him shape a movement that will produce GlennBeckian electoral victories in 2010. (Obviously, that NY-23 experiment didn't turn out so hot.) These experts are being hired to work on policy areas such as the economy, the environment, national security, etc.

Beck: And what I've done, is I've found two really smart people in each category, two really -- oh, they just have all kinds of experience. And then I have coupled them with one rebel -- one radical. I hear that's popular to be a radical now.

But these radicals are not the radicals wearing the Che T-shirts. These radicals are the ones wearing the Jefferson T-shirts!

Beck had already displayed a propensity to traduce history in order to push his thesis that the progressive movement is the Enemy of America, which recently reached full flower in his pseudo-documentary based on Jonah Goldberg's pseudo-history portraying progressives as the font of all the great genocides of the past century.

Will Bunch reports that this fondness for fake history is about to extend to church-state separation issues -- and will tread into territory long hold by far-right extremists.

Bunch reports that Beck has released the first concrete details about Beck's "experts" for "The Plan":

It is an eight hour event. You and I on stage with three different experts. David Barton is going to be the first one and we're going to talk about the meaning of faith in America. All the lies that you have been told, that this isn't a nation of faith, that religion played no role. I'm you will be stunned when you learn and see the real history that is no longer taught.

As Bunch notes:

The real reason that history "is no longer taught" is because...it's bogus.

As Will explains:

Barton is the founder of a Texas-based group called the WallBuilders, a foundation devoted to proving that the roots of the United States and its Constitution are not based on the separation of church of state -- as is widely believed and widely taught -- but as country built upon a bedrock of Christianity. That is also the premise of a widely circulated book that Barton published in the 1990s called "The Myth of Separation" -- a book that was eventually re-written and issued under a different name because it was larded with bad information, some of which nevertheless became gospel on conservative talk radio. As noted in the 2006 Texas Monthly article (via Nexis):

In 1995 the historian Robert Alley attempted to trace the provenance of a quote that Rush Limbaugh had mistakenly attributed to James Madison, in which Madison purportedly called the Ten Commandments the foundation of American civilization. All roads led to David Barton, whose The Myth of Separation attributed the following quote to Madison: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Barton cited two sources for the quote: a 1939 book by Harold K. Lane called Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Frederick Nyneyer's 1958 book First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association. Alley couldn't find the quote anywhere in Nyneyer's book, however, and eventually concluded that Barton had pulled it from an article in a journal with the unlikely title Progressive Calvinism, which, in turn, had attributed it to something called the "1958 calendar of Spiritual Mobilization." In any case, Alley reported, the editors of Madison's papers were unable to find anything in his writings that was even remotely similar. "In addition," they added, "the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, which he expressed time and time again in public and in private."

Barton previously appeared on Fox News' show hosted by Mike Huckabee, to promote the same nonsense. And as we noted then:

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Monica Crowley was eager to change the subject on The O'Reilly Factor last night when Alan Colmes brought up the naked racism of Tom Tancredo's Tea Party Convention speech, so she launched into a defense of the Tea Parties with facts and information seemingly taken straight from her posterior:

Crowley: Look, the Tea Party movement is a massive grass-roots movement. It is based on legitimate concerns about out-of-control spending, high taxes --

O'Reilly: But to address Colmes' point, that the way they presented themselves, in Colmes' opinion, helped President Obama.

Crowley: No, absolutely not. I'll tell you why. Um, President Obama doesn't seem to be listening to what the Tea Party -- and it's not just the Tea Party movement.

Remember, a big majority of the Tea Party movement are made up of conservatives. But you have a number of -- and a huge number of mainstream moderate Democrats in this movement, and a huge number of independents --

O'Reilly: Libertarians, OK. So you -- was it a neutral? Was the Tea Party neutral toward President Obama? Did it hurt him? Did it help him?

Crowley: Bill, I think -- no, no, actually, I think it hurts Obama. It hurts Obama because they've got the mainstream message. The majority of Americans now are siding with the Tea Party movement on the issues of spending deficits and debt.

A huge number of Democrats? I haven't seen any polls showing anything more than insignificant number of Democrats joining the Tea Parties -- in no small part because their rallies are endless and vicious rants against Democrats and liberals. It's possible Crowley has data to back up her claim, but count me among the doubters, given my experience at Tea Party events, which are uniformly right-wing affairs.

Crowley's claims about the Tea Parties' supposed popularity doesn't exactly match what voters actually think, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

Days after Sarah Palin headlined the nation's first Tea Party convention, a Rasmussen Reports poll released today shows that a generic "Tea Party candidate" would come in third in a theoretical three-way congressional contest.

The poll found that 36% of voters would support a Democratic candidate on a generic ballot, 25% would back the Republican and 17% would go for the Tea Party pick. Twenty-three percent of respondents are undecided.

In early December, the same poll showed the Tea Party in second place and the GOP in third. Unchanged between the polls, according to Rasmussen, is that 41% of voters have a favorable view of the conservative movement.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken Feb. 7-8, just after the national Tea Party convention in Nashville. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It's possible the public agrees with the Tea Partiers on a couple of issues. But overall the movement is turning them off, because it's not just full of nutcases, it's being led by them.

Chris Matthews talks to former McCain advisor Mark McKinnon and Richard Wolffe about Sister Sarah's flame throwing speech at the National Tea Party Convention this past weekend and her performance there is finally enough to scare the crap out of even Chris Matthews. He blasts her for war mongering on Iran.

MATTHEWS: I don`t know what to make of it. It gets worse, Richard. Let`s look at this. Here she -- asked her about what -- well, should Obama would be -- would it take to defeat Obama in 2012? And here`s what Palin said. This is getting truly scary. This isn`t just not knowing what you`re talking about, or pretending you know what you`re talking about. Here is scary thinking you know what you`re talking about. Let`s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be reelected.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS: You`re not suggesting that he would cynically play the war card?

MATTHEWS: I`m not suggesting that. I`m saying if he did, things would dramatically change, if decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Is she a balloon head? I mean, Richard, listen to this. I`m asking the question. She said it would be popular in this country to go to war, to declare war on yet another country with 77 million people and a pretty darn modern air force to fight with. To declare war on Iran would be popular in this country. What world does she -- and then she puts the oath up, like to Israel. What was that putting the hand up, kind of an oath there, and bringing in Israel into this? What did that have to do with anything that`s reasonable?

WOLFFE: Well, number one, I think she suffers from living in a pre- Iraq war mentality, which is that, you know, you can go out and prove you`re tough by invading another country. Two problems with that. First of all, it ignores the fact...

MATTHEWS: Declaring war on Iran, she`s talking about.

WOLFFE: First of all -- right. First of all, it ignores the experience that we had in Iraq. Secondly, her brand is that she`s an authentic politician, that she is somehow bringing a sense of reality to the Washington dynamic. And here in this question, she`s engaging in some nakedly political scenario, role playing, as if it`s acceptable. It isn`t! It isn`t to regular voters. It`s not acceptable to foreign policy folks. I -- I -- you know, what can you say except she`s ripping off Pat Buchanan`s column, apparently.

MATTHEWS: Mark, I don`t get it, declaring war on Iran. I mean, everyone knows that Iran is a hell of a lot more sophisticated country than Iraq, a hell of a lot more fierce a war to take on. To go into a ground war of any kind, even -- I would think the most far-right hawk in the country would say drop a few bombs on them, knock out their plant, their nuclear plant. But the idea of declaring war and going to all-out war with -- well, I don`t know what to make of why she`s doing it and saying that would be popular in this country. Where?

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