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Someone needs to tell Fox regular Charles Krauthammer that the picture he's demanding to see of President Obama on the night of the attack in Benghazi, Libya has been available on the White House Flickr page since at least January:

Via Media Matters: Krauthammer Still Hasn't Seen This Photo Of Obama From Night Of Benghazi Attack:

Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer continued to hype the right-wing myth that President Obama was missing on the night of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

During a May 14 panel discussion on the Benghazi investigation during Fox News' Special Report, Krauthammer requested photographic evidence of President Obama's whereabouts on the night of the Benghazi attack:

KRAUTHAMMER: And where was the president on that night? We've all seen the video and the pictures--well the picture of the situation room--of Obama on the night of the Osama raid. And everybody looks at that, oh yeah he was really involved in that. Show me a picture of where he was on the night of the attack in Libya.

The claim that Obama was absent the night of the Benghazi attack has been repeatedly debunked, both by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey.

Some of Krauthammer's other tales he was telling in the segment have been debunked here and here as well.



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This has to be one of the most pitiful things I've seen in a long time, even by Fox's "standards" -- if they had any. Brit Hume jumped the shark on Bret Baier's show this Monday and tried to conflate their drummed-up Benghazi non-scandal to George W. Bush lying about Saddam Hussein and fearmongering to get us to invade a country that was not a threat to the United States.

HUME: Long experience teaches that highly anticipated Congressional hearings often fail to meet expectations. Witnesses don't quite say in public what they told investigators ahead of time. Congressional interrogators prove inept and unfocused. But if Wednesday's Benghazi hearing lives up to its billing and the truth about what happened that night and the administration's efforts to disguise it, might at last begin to come out.

Yet for this case to become the scandal it surely deserves to be, will require another ingredient – relentless news coverage of the kind the media typically avoid when the subject is someone or some cause they favor. That's why the Gosnell abortion horrors were played down for so long. And that's why the now-discredited Benghazi talking points are treated as just an honest mistake.

Each new advance tidbit from Wednesday's witnesses makes it clear that the State Department, CIA and White House deliberately concocted the Benghazi cover story that was false in nearly every particular. Now, think back to the disputed claim by President George W. Bush that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. It amounted to sixteen words in his 2003 State of the Union Address and it was arguably true.

But it triggered a media firestorm that did much to advance the notion that Mr. Bush had lied to the U.S. into Iraq. Now, suppose that administration had done what this one has on Benghazi.

It's hard to say what's more disgusting and reprehensible: The revisionist history on Bush lying us into invading Iraq, or the fact that he thinks his audience is stupid enough to believe four people being killed in a country that they knew full well was dangerous and in turmoil is in any way akin to the hundreds of thousands of lives that were destroyed and God knows how much money flushed down the toilet due to the actions of the Bush administration.

Every time I think Fox can't sink to a new low, they outdo themselves once again.



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After the outrage we saw from members on both sides of the aisle the evening House Speaker John Boehner cancelled the vote on hurricane Sandy relief and the subsequent displays by Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Peter King, among others, leave it to Bill Kristol who has never seen a dime of military spending he didn't love, to come to the defense of John Boehner.

Sadly, as Media Matters noted, he wasn't alone. And his fellow guest on Bret Baier's Special Report, Charles Krauthammer was right there with him as well. The excuse given by Kristol and Krauthammer here was primarily based on concerns that the bill was larded up with some pork that the House didn't have sufficient time to look at, even though the Senate had passed their bill a week before they were asking for this vote to be taken in the House. If that was a real concern, apparently it doesn't matter much now, since Boehner caved to the political pressure and is going to have the House vote "to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program on Friday and will vote on another $51 billion Sandy spending package on Jan. 15."

Whatever the excuses, it seems they were more than happy to give cover to Boehner and the House Republicans for being incapable of being responsible and caring about doing the job of actually governing this country, rather than continued political brinksmanship we've seen from the House and John Boehner and his cohorts taking their vacation time around the holidays, instead of tending to the needs of those suffering in the aftermath of that storm.

Here's more from the Media Matters post on Kristol:

Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: "I Think The Speaker Was Entirely Right To Pull The Bill." During an appearance on Fox News' Special Report, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said, "I think the Speaker was entirely right to pull the bill." He added: "$60 billion is about one-tenth of this year's federal domestic discretionary nondefense spending. This is not like, gee, a couple hundred million dollars for some really important, urgent thing." [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 1/2/13]

Kristol never seems to have those same concerns about our military industrial complex. That's the only jobs program that Republicans seem to support and I've never heard Kristol express any concern over what the waste there is contributing to our budget deficit. Unlimited funds for the Pentagon. Hurricane victims, well you can wait. And don't dare include any pork in that spending because lord knows we can't have that as long as it's going for people who just had their homes destroyed in a storm and to help their state's infrastructure recover.



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Surprise, surprise! It's all sour grapes over at Fox now that it seems Republicans are finally going to allow a clean vote on this so-called “fiscal cliff” bill that had passed the Senate. Leave it to their resident curmudgeon Charles Krauthammer to use the opportunity to paint President Obama as some evil Socialist who just wants to extract money from those hard-working rich people so that the lazy, good-for-nothing moochers out there can have their “entitlements.”

Never mind that he's completely wrong about President Obama being willing to negotiate with Republicans (far too often with the hostage taking we've witnessed), or that Republicans were the ones who originally voted to have these tax cuts expire. And never mind that we've got record income disparity and if we want to pay for a democratic society with a middle class, we should have a progressive tax code where the rich pay their share.

And of course no segment on Fox would be complete without some revisionist history in the form of St. Reagan worship.

BAIER: I mean, if you look at his deficit and debt commission, the Simpson-Bowles commission and the recommendations that came out of there (sorry Bret, but there were no recommendations from that commission, it failed) and what has not been followed through on, now two years ago, it's pretty remarkable.

KRAUTHAMMER: But he's not interested in that. And he's not interested in leading on spending. He's not interested in cutting spending. I think if you look at this in a large view, it's now becoming very clear who he is and what he wants to do. He's now in his second term. He's liberated.

He can be open about what he wants to do. He once said on '08 that Reagan was a historical President in a way that Clinton or Nixon was not. He meant Reagan changed the nature of the country. He got it hooked on low taxes, less government and an increase in inequality, is the way Obama sees it.

He sees his historical role, Obama, is to undo Reaganism and that means, not to cut spending. It means to raise taxes and he let the cat out of the bag on Monday. In that little rally he had, he said to Republicans, you're not getting any spending today and you know that, any spending cuts, but he said that if you think that you can get spending cuts after this in the rest of our negotiations, the answer is no. If you want a cut in spending, you're going to have to increase taxes on the rich.

Remember, he got an increase in revenues now by raising the rates on the rich. Well, now he's going to return, as he said on Monday and get increased revenue from the rich by eliminating deductions, the other way to do it. So he has no interest in anything other than raising the level of taxation, to sort of pre-Reagan levels, so he can support the entitlement state, which is what his presidency is all about. It's a very long view and I think he's attacking it in exactly the right way, if you were of his ideology.

Yeah, that's the ticket. The Kenyan usurper Socialist Communist just wants to beat up on the poor, oppressed rich people and steal all of their money for those lazy, undeserving seniors who would like their Social Security benefits so they don't starve. Krauthammer's still stuck in the '60's if he thinks this sort of talk is going to move most people when you still have so many people hurting from the recession and unemployed. That said, he knows he's speaking to the Fox viewers here, who are probably stuck right there with him.



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Fox really is not handling President Obama's apparent reelection very well, with Karl Rove leading the way and disputing the math on whether President Obama may have won the state of Ohio or not -- Fox News, Karl Rove Argue With Network About Whether Obama Won Ohio:

Fox News had what can only be described as an insane argument with itself over whether or not President Obama had won Ohio, and the presidency.

The network seemed quite confident in its projections at first, but suddenly, pundit Karl Rove — who, as leader of a huge conservative Super PAC has something of an interest in the outcome of the race — began to pour cold water on the call.

Fox News' Chris Wallace then said that Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign is contesting the network's decision to call President Obama's re-election. [...]

Rove said it was "premature" and "early" to make any real decisions.

"So, maybe not so fast, folks!" Wallace said. There was a pained silence.

"Uh, thank you!" Bret Baier said. "That's awkward," Megyn Kelly added.

Baier then said that he would get someone from the network's election desk to explain why it had made the call. Kelly walked across the office, cameras trailing her, to speak with the number-crunchers.

The number-crunchers calmly repudiated Rove.

"We're actually quite comfortable with the call in Ohio," one of them said. Another said he was "99.9 percent" certain that the president had been re-elected.

"There just aren't enough Republican votes left for Mitt Romney to get there," a fellow decision desk member added.

Here's Kelly running down the hall at the Fox studios, getting her colleagues' opinions on the election, who didn't want to come straight out and say it, but think Rove's a fool.

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O'Reilly: 'The White Establishment is Now the Minority'

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I'm sure we're going to see more of this over at Fox as the evening goes on this election night. Bill O'Reilly was already getting the excuses ready if Romney loses the election -- O'Reilly already blaming a potential Romney loss on Hurricane Sandy:

With results still rolling in, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is already prepping to blame a Mitt Romney loss on Hurricane Sandy, Obama’s visibility in the wake of the storm, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s (R) praise of the President:

O’REILLY: I did pick up two things. On the exit polling, Hurricane Sandy was prominent in the exit polling. And that is really interesting. Because it just impacted a bunch of Northeast states who would vote for Barack Obama but the country was so locked in on this fierce storm. Americans like storms. And they were — and there was Chris Christie and president Obama walking down the beach, you know, with a little ‘Seth in the Moon Glow’ music behind him and it just wiped the Governor’s campaign off the map. For five days. Five days Mitt Romney disappeared from the national debate and from the media headline.

And what would a night on Fox be without Bill-O managing to get in a little race baiting as well -- O’Reilly: Minorities and women voting Obama because they ‘want stuff’:

O’Reilly went on to predict that Romney would lose the election if he lost Ohio.

“How do you think we got to that point?” host Megyn Kelly wondered.

“Because it’s a changing country,” O’Reilly insisted. “The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff, they want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”

“The white establishment is now the minority,” he added. “And the voters — many of them — feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama, overwhelming black vote for President Obama and women will probably break President Obama’s way.”

“People feel that they are entitled to things. And which candidate between the two is going to give them things?”



Stephen Colbert Makes a Mockery of Fox's Benghazi-Gate

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Stephen Colbert took Fox News and one of their hosts, Bret Baier to task for their endless coverage of Benghazi-Gate in a manner which only he can. As Colbert noted in his segment this Wednesday and as Media Matters wrote in their recent post on the subject, Fox has managed to create their own alternative reality on the the attacks.

Who wants to take dibs that once the election is over, Fox and the rest of their allies in the corporate media never mention the word Benghazi again?



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In the day after Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that pregnancy from rape “is something that God intended to happen," the Fox News Channel only covered the scandal for about 2 minutes, even though Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney refused to rescind his endorsement of Mourdock.

“I believe life begins at conception,” Mourdock explained during a debate Tuesday night. “The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

The liberal watch dog group Media Matters reviewed coverage on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel and found that Mourdock's comments were almost completely ignored by the conservative network.

"Fox News mentioned the comment twice, devoting just over two minutes of coverage to it," Media Matters' Todd Gregory wrote. "Meanwhile, CNN gave the topic an hour and 20 minutes of coverage and MSNBC covered the topic for 2 hours and 7 minutes."

On the Fox News marquee "straight-news" program Special Report, anchor Bret Baier briefly mentioned Mourdock in a 37-second segment about the presidential race in general. The Fox Report later devoted one minute and 37 seconds to the subject.

By contrast, Raw Story calculated that Special Report alone spent about 23 minutes on the Obama administration's response to September attacks in Libya.



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From the man who brought us 'Liberal Fascism" and who doesn't seem to have much of a grasp on logic or facts, here's Jonah Goldberg on Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier: Fox's Jonah Goldberg: The Idea That GOP Obstructionism Is Hurting The Economy "Doesn't Track Logically Or Factually".

Goldberg has a pretty short memory if he doesn't recall the record number of filibusters we've had in the Senate, the fact that Mitch McConnell said their main goal was to make sure Barack Obama was a one term president, or that they forced him to water down a good portion of the stimulus with tax cuts they claim create jobs. Or the fact that since taking the House, Republicans have done nothing but pass one anti-abortion bill after another and refused to work with him on anything.

Goldberg also apparently doesn't think that cops and firefighters and teachers spend any money if he thinks that putting some of them back to work isn't going to help the economy. But that's not the way things work in Republican upside down world.

BAIER: Jonah, Brit Hume argued earlier in the program in his commentary that this is really how the President thinks and that another stimulus, another big influx of money for government workers is really what he'd want to do.

GOLDBERG: I think Brit's absolutely right. The second where you cut it, he cleaned up his statement, he didn't clean it up. Nowhere in that statement did he actually sort of rebut the logic or reasoning from his press conference statement. David Axelrod on another network was asked by Candy Crowley, three times, yes or no, is the private sector doing fine. David Axelrod could not answer the question.

Obama's theory is that what we need is this new government controlled stimulus and he has to have that theory about government jobs, because if he concedes that the private sector is doing terribly, then he's basically ceding the fundamental argument to the Romney campaign, that Barack Obama has failed to fix the economy.

So he has to say, hey look, the Republicans stopped me from hiring more cops and firefighters, keeping us from having a robust economy. And it just doesn't track logically or factually.



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Somebody tell me when Bloody Bill Kristol has ever been right about anything? Here's his latest from Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier: Fox's Bill Kristol: Clinton "Is A Grown-Up" Who "Knows" Obama "Is Clueless" About Economy So He'll "Vote For Mitt Romney".

There are a lot of days when I wish Bill Clinton would just stop talking as we've already discussed here, but claiming he's going to secretly vote for Romney is pretty ridiculous.

Here's more from Media Matters with the right's latest dust up on comments by Clinton and Larry Summers: Fact: Bill Clinton And Larry Summers Agree With Obama On Bush Tax Cuts:

In recent interviews, President Clinton and former White House economic adviser Larry Summers agreed with President Obama that Congress should not extend the Bush tax cuts for wealthy households. But Fox News distorted their comments to falsely claim that Clinton and Summers are in favor of extending them for all households, and thus are "at odds" with Obama. Read on ...