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I caught this segment on Friday and thought it was awful enough just for the pure race-baiting involved, but after reading this post over at Media Matters, I discovered that it was even worse than it appeared at first blush. Not only were Neil Cavuto and his guest Crystal Wright doing their best to falsely demonize the Obama administration as wanting to promote a welfare state of lazy moocher "illegal immigrants," the program was started under their hero, George W. Bush.

Fox Accuses Obama Of Creating Dependency With Bush-Era Program:

Fox News accused President Obama of promoting dependency and illegal immigration with a food stamp program that started under the Bush administration.

On the April 26 edition of Your World, Cavuto attacked a partnership that educates Spanish-speaking populations about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility. Wright claimed that "the Obama administration wants to encourage government dependency and, it looks like, illegal immigration" with the program. Cavuto agreed with Wright and added "it looks like we are doing a beeline to help folks who should not be here in the first place."

But the partnership was created under President George W. Bush in 2004. Salon reported that it "doesn't actually provide food stamps to immigrants," only information on benefits that are already available to those who had been in the country legally for five years: [...]

Fox News continues to falsely claim that Obama is creating a "culture of dependency" for anti-poverty programs put in place before his presidency and exacerbated by the recession. In reality many SNAP recipients work and only stay on the program a short time.

Cavuto continually qualified his statements during this interview with him saying he really didn't want to see anyone out there starving... but... hey... we can't have someone asking for his taxes to be going up to feed all of those lazy brown people just dying to live off of the public dole because they don't want to work for a living... or not.

And it was so nice to hear his guest, Crystal Wright say that she doesn't want the "neediest of the poor" to have to go without being helped. Just what the hell does that mean? Nothing like Fox deciding to have someone on who will define what the rest of us consider poverty down a notch, as if the standard definition isn't quite low enough.

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With Fox in full blown Muslim-bashing mode following the Boston Marathon bombing attacks, we all had to know this was coming. Heaven forbid they might ever pass up another opportunity to attack Rep. Keith Ellison.

Fox's Bolling: Rep. Ellison Is "The Muslim Apologist In Congress" And "Very Dangerous":

While calling for profiling of American Muslims, Fox News host Eric Bolling attacked Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), calling him the "Muslim apologist in Congress" and describing him as "very dangerous."

On Fox News' The Five, Bolling called for profiling of Muslims following the attacks of the Boston Marathon. During the segment, Bolling criticized Ellison, asserting that he's "very dangerous" and has been "the Muslim apologist in Congress for a long time." After calling him dangerous, Bolling noted that Ellison "raised his right hand and took the oath of office on the Quran":

Bolling's attack is part of a long line of smears directed at Ellison. Fox host Sean Hannity attempted to link Ellison to Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam. Hannity also compared Ellison's use of the Quran for his swearing-in ceremony to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible."

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This Wednesday evening's The Daily Show was recorded before the first presidential debate and rather than focus on what was depressing a lot of us with the sheer volume of lies Mitt Romney was allowed to get away with that night, they were still talking about the previous day's drummed up non-controversy over at Fox.

Jon Stewart and his "great American black panel" did a really good job of making a mockery of Hannity, Carlson and Drudge for their over the top, naked race-baiting and the treating five year old footage of President Obama like it's "breaking news."

As Stewart noted, President Obama was just echoing the same sentiments of the "notorious black liberation theologist George W. Bush" when it came to his remarks on the response to the hurricane in New Orleans they were freaking out about.

I'll just add one last note and that is thank you to The Daily Show and your panel for calling Hannity and Carlson out in no uncertain terms for being exactly what they are:

STEWART: Watching that Hannity piece, watching that Hannity, it's almost unbelievable to see such naked race-baiting on television. Black people talk wierd. What is that?

CENAC: It's some bulls**t.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, f**k Hannity. Your October surprise is that the President is black?

WILMORE: They are some desperate mother f**kers.

Desperate about sums it up with that clown show.

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As I already mentioned in my post on Mary Matalin defending race-baiting Glenn Beck on Blitzer's show this week, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Andre Carson, recently made some remarks that have had these so-called "tea partiers" up in arms. And naturally, the talking heads over at Fox have been making hay of the Congressman's remarks as well.

While I agree with Donna Brazile who said that using that level of inflammatory rhetoric is not necessarily useful to the debate over whether we've seen a horrendous level of racism and just out and out disrespect towards our first bi-racial president and race-baiting whether it be towards African Americans, Hispanics, members of the Muslim community or a number of other groups from this so-called "tea party" and those who want to attach themselves to that label in the Congress, anyone at Fox or the likes of Allen West have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to criticizing anyone else for overheated rhetoric or flame throwing.

So pot, meet kettle with Bill O'Reilly's interview of Allen West on this Thursday's O'Reilly Factor. News Hounds summed up the hypocrisy pretty well in their post here -- O’Reilly Trots Out Allen West To Attack Congressional Black Caucus’ Rhetoric:

Continue reading »

Well here's a feel good story for once with all the hatred and craziness going on being pushed by the right wing with their race-baiting and hatred towards Muslims. Jacob Isom is my hero for the day for doing this. It's nice to hear people are standing up against this kind of hatred.

From Think Progress: Texas Skateboarder Stops Christian Extremist From Burning The Qur’an:

As news that Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove Outreach Center planned to publicly burn a Qur’an — an operation which appears to have been called off, for now — raced around the world, many in the Muslim world reacted with angry protests, feeling that Jones’ actions were indicative of an America that was indifferent to the sensitivities of the Islamic faith.

Yet on Saturday, the day that Jones had dubbed “International Burn a Qur’an Day,” one American stepped forward to fight back against the rising tide of Islamophobia among the far-right.

And from Amarillo Globe-News linked to the Think Progress post here's more: Protester steals Quran, thwarts burning:

A planned Quran burning Saturday in Amarillo was thwarted by a 23-year-old carrying a skateboard and wearing a T-shirt with "I'm in Repent Amarillo No Joke" scrawled by hand on the back.

Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham's Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book.

"You're just trying to start Holy Wars," Isom said of Grisham after he gave the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo.

Grisham, director of Repent Amarillo, which aims to deter promiscuity, homosexuality and non-Christian worship practices through confrontation and prayer, said he was just trying to exercise his right to free speech.

He announced Friday evening the plan to burn copies of the Quran to show support for the Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Fla., who planned, publicized, then canceled his own Quran burning event after a national uproar.

Jones told NBC Saturday "we feel that God is telling us to stop" the Quran burning, which had stirred outrage among millions of Muslims and others worldwide. Read on...

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This is the McCain Media's idea of "breaking news". John McCain is outraged... outraged I tell ya' that Harry Reid would call out Republicans for their race baiting.

Actually this looked more like some feigned outrage to me. We all know what McCain looks like when he's really mad and this ain't it.

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Rachel Maddow explains the difference between ad hominem and ad populum attacks, both of which have now been done by Bill O'Reilly who is not only saying he's correct because he has more viewers than she does but calling her names as well in his recent column Only far-left loons scared of Fox News:

But let’s get back to Letterman. Speaking with far-left MSNBC News commentator Rachel Maddow on his program, Dave listened as she put forth the preposterous theory that Fox News wants to frighten white Americans by reporting negatively about black Americans.

“Scaring white people is good politics on the conservative side of the spectrum, and it always has been. The idea is that you sort of rile up the white base to be afraid of an other, to be afraid of scary immigrants or scary black people.”

In the past, paranoid, dishonest rants like that would have been dismissed as fringe speak. But not anymore. Without a shred of evidence, a guest on Letterman’s “Late Show” (which by the way gets trounced in the ratings by Fox News Channel every night) defines an entire news organization as a racist enterprise. And Letterman goes along with the program, adding: “These people are continuing to fan this flame, and ... that is cancer.”

Please. The only people Fox News is scaring are far-left loons who see their shining city on the hill on fire. For 18 months, the United States has been governed from the left, and things are not going well. I’m sorry if this analysis frightens some folks, but when you spend a half-trillion dollars trying to stimulate the economy and create just 600,000 jobs, well, people are going to notice

Rachel had a bit of video evidence to rebut Mr. O'Reilly with. As she said even though he continually dismisses her she must be getting under his skin since he feels the need to respond. I say good as well. He treats Media Matters that same way but there's no doubt that they drive him insane just by documenting what he does day after day. Al Franken drove him nuts just by recording his radio show and playing back parts where he'd say one thing one day and try to deny it the next and they'd mock him for it. I say the more of us that get under his skin the better. I know we wear it like a badge of honor at Crooks and Liars if someone gets a mention. If he's mad we're going our jobs since he can't seem to stop lying on the air and apparently in print either after reading his column.

When your race-baiting is too far over the top for even nativist serial race-baiter Lou Dobbs, that's pretty bad. Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl are hoping to make a campaign issue out of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens for the mid-term elections.

This might play well for now with their nativist base but I don't see how this ends up being a good strategy for them in the long run given the changing demographics in the United States.

h/t Media Matters

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Fox News' favorite pair of 'Democrats' penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal trashing President Obama and surprise, surprise... Sean Hannity ends up quoting them on his show. Here's more on Cadell and Shoen from Salon's War Room and Media Matters.

Fox Democrats accuse Obama of doing what Fox does--Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen pen a column about how the president is stoking racial tensions:

Official Fox News Democrats-in-residence Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen got together to write one of their op-eds about how the Democrats are Bad and Wrong. As usual, the reasons given for the Badness and Wrongness of Democrats are exactly the same ones named by right-wing talk radio hosts and bloggers and Fox News hosts -- but because the authors of the op-ed are Democrats, it is newsworthy!

[...]

Who are Caddell and Schoen, exactly? And what kind of Democrats are they?

Doug Schoen is pollster grifter Mark Penn's former right-hand man. He wrote a book about how independent Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg should run for president, with Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as his running mate. (His Bloomberg worship is funny, considering that he and Penn proposed doing "market research" for Phillip Morris to help them fight smoking bans in the '90s.) Schoen's 2008 insistence that Hillary could win if she'd just attack Obama a little bit harder makes his bemoaning Obama's supposedly divisive racial politics even more risible.

Pat Caddell is a much more interesting character. He's a brilliant former Democratic strategist for McGovern and Carter who angrily left the party in the late-1980s. He has more or less dedicated his career to trashing Democrats ever since. While he may still actually be a liberal, his intense hatred for the entire Democratic party tends to color his analysis and make him a willing useful idiot for far-right ideologues. (Caddell also used polling to invent the statistical ideal presidential candidate in 1983: "a moderate senator in his early 40's, bold, who breaks with party tradition and wins his generation's vote." While it didn't work with Gary Hart and Joe Biden, maybe he's just mad that he didn't get any credit when it did work.)

But being a professional Democratic Concern Troll makes strange bedfellows. Caddell was one of the minds behind the 1992 Jerry Brown campaign, and he relentlessly trashed Bill Clinton, whom he deeply loathed. Schoen, meanwhile, is only invited to speak about national politics because Hillary Clinton brought in Dick Morris -- who brought in Schoen and Mark Penn -- to advise Clinton in his second term.

Caddell and Schoen: the "Democratic" farce continues:

Y'know the shtick, the two Obama-haters lash out at the president and the Left in the pages of the WSJ but do so under the guise of being "Democrats" so readers are supposed to take their cheap shots to heart because it really, really pains Caddell and Schoen to write these nasty things about Obama. Just like it really, really pains them to go on Fox News and trash Obama.

Today's effort by the duo is particularly rancid: Obama constantly divides America by playing the race card. I'll let TNR's Jonathan Chait and Time's Joe Klein do the honors in terms of dismantling Caddell/Schoen's lazy fearmongering...read on...

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Looks like someone's none too happy about Fox being called out for their race-baiting. Brit Hume does his best to attempt to turn ClusterFox into the victim and claims Shirley Sherrod "got off easy" after they got caught helping Andrew Breitbart push his doctored tapes of her speech at the NAACP.

HUME: As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so, from her forced resignation from the Agriculture Department, she'd been apologized to, offered a new job and later even, as Bret mentioned, got a call from the president himself. All of this a consequence of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.

Consider: Sherrod herself say she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck's FOX program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O'Reilly called for her to step down on Monday but by her account, she had already quit before he spoke. And O'Reilly apologized the next night.

Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on FOX News Channel or on foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out. And no news as opposed to opinion broadcasts on FOX ever accused Sherrod of racism. But she blamed FOX and accused the network of racism. So did numerous others, including the NAACP and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on "FOX News Sunday," though it became clear from Chris Wallace's questioning that Dean had no idea what the facts where.

You might think all these would be the stuff of further apology. But somehow I'm not holding my breath -- Bret.

BAIER: So, Brit, do you think this is the end of this?

HUME: Well, I think it's the end of the Sherrod case, you know, except for whatever she decides to do. She's in pretty good shape right now. As whether it's the end of this kind of hurling about the charge of racism willy-nilly, I have my doubts. For example, last week, we saw in these stories and accounts of the journal list web communications among basically liberal journalists, some of them in the mainstream media. And one of them suggested at one point during the Reverend Wright affair affecting Barack Obama's campaign that they ought to just call some conservatives, Fred Barnes, Karl Rove "Who cares" this journalist wrote, a racist. With that kind of use of the term "racist," willy-nilly is a weapon. I don't think we've seen the end of it.

BAIER: OK, Brit, thanks.

HUME: You bet.