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Juan Williams

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It looks like Bill O'Reilly still isn't finished spreading the same lies he was telling when he had his meltdown on air with Alan Colmes last week, because he decided to devote his Talking Points Memo and the opening segment of his show this Monday to defending and repeating those same lies -- and as Media Matters noted, despite getting his facts wrong again, O'Reilly claimed his "righteous anger" elevated the conversation about the debt.

The only thing we see Bill-O "elevating" in this segment is his ego. We've already been through the litany of B.S. O'Reilly was shoveling in the previous post here, so I'm not going to rehash that, but my fellow contributor here at C&L, Ellen at NewsHounds took the time to break down the segment above and I'll share just a bit of that here: O’Reilly Justifes His Meltdown With Alan Colmes: I’m Looking Out For You:

You don’t need to be a psychologist or a body expert to figure out that Bill O’Reilly’s justifications tonight for his bullying attack on Alan Colmes last week are a lot of hooey. In fact, there was so much hooey, I’m not sure I can catch it all in one post. But for starters, there was the hooey that O’Reilly likened Colmes’ “lie” about federal spending cuts to the danger posed by Al Qaeda (which included the hooey that Colmes had his facts wrong in the first place), plus the hooey that O’Reilly attacked Colmes out of a public-spirited desire to draw attention to this big danger, plus O’Reilly’s "admission" that he shouldn’t have called Colmes a liar – even though he immediately afterward described Colmes as lying. And my favorite hooey: O’Reilly said he’s not in his job for money or fame, but to look out for us.

Sure he is. How could anyone ever get the idea that O'Reilly was just all about the money or fame? Go read the rest for more of Bill-O's hackery and the back and forth during the panel segment, and as she noted, Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams did nothing but suck up to O'Reilly and reassure his poor bruised ego that he's really just a nice guy, no matter how badly he treated Colmes the previous week. I don't know about anyone else, but watching those two during this segment reminded me of a couple of battered wives telling their abusive husband that they still love him.



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Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham -- who once accused opponents of the Iraq invasion of trying to "subvert America" -- is now blasting the The Wall Street Journal for beating the "war drums" because the editorial board expressed support for President Barack Obama's use of drones.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Ingraham what she thought of the split within the Republican Party after Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) criticized Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan over speculation that President Barack Obama might target citizens inside U.S. borders with drone strikes.

"John McCain, Lindsey Graham and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, extremely dismissive of Rand Paul," Ingraham pointed out. "Wall Street Journal said, 'Calm down;' said, 'You don't have to do more than fire up impressionable libertarians in their college dorms.'"

"I thought to myself, when is the last time a Republican managed to capture the imagination of young people, some people on the left, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio?" she added. "There was a wide range of Republicans and people on the left who said, 'You know something? I think the attorney general should be able to answer a simple question [about the use of drones] with an unequivocal yes or no.' He couldn't do that, and Rand Paul served an enormously important function during that filibuster. He wasn't waving his hands and ranting and raving, contrary to what the Journal condescendingly said."

Liberal contributor Juan Williams argued that the targeted killing policy needed to have transparency and judicial review, but Paul was "grand standing" with his filibuster.

"But the fact is that no U.S. citizen has ever been targeted or killed by a drone on U.S. soil," Williams explained. "And secondly, the Constitution gives the president authority to go after a U.S. citizen if that U.S. citizen is somehow involved in colluding with an enemy of the United States."

"I just want to say that I love the fact that we have the hawk, Juan Williams, and the dove, Laura Ingraham," Wallace snarked.

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Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday congratulated Republicans for successfully using a filibuster to temporarily block a president's nominee for secretary of defense -- former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) -- for the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday said Republicans should feel "shame" for the unprecedented obstruction, but Hannity called the outcome a "major win for the GOP."

"Republicans say it is premature to close the debate over the nominee and say that before that any confirmation vote will take place, they want answers from Hagel and the White House about what exactly President Obama was doing the night of the Benghazi terror attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans," Hannity noted on Thursday.

"It's the first time a filibuster of a cabinet nominee has been used," he added. "And needless to say, this marks a major win for the GOP, and pretty embarrassing defeat for the president."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams pointed out that Hannity "must have missed the news" that "Republicans have basically said that in a week they will vote to end the cloture, end the filibuster and approve Chuck Hagel."

"So, nobody in this town thinks there's any chance that Chuck Hagel, one, is either going to resign or, two, is going to be denied the office of secretary of defense," Williams explained. "What we're really seeing here is a political game."



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I expect the talking heads over at Fox to be attacking President Obama during these negotiations on the upcoming "fiscal cliff" or as some have called it, the "fiscal curb," but how bad are things for John Boehner and the House Republicans when even Bill Kristol and Laura Ingraham can't manage to come to your defense? We had an agreement among the panel on Fox News Sunday this week, and they all believe that Republicans refusing to negotiate with President Obama is just going to lead to them getting a worse deal later.

Which is good news as far as a lot progressives are concerned, since Republicans think a good deal is destroying our social safety nets and sadly there are too many Democrats happy to help them chip away at them with this talk of a "grand bargain." It seems a lot of us should be grateful that John Boehner is really bad at his job.

And of course there was no mention of just who is responsible for that debt that has been run up since President Obama has been in office. As we've noted here before on too many occasions to count, most of that deficit was due to Bush's policies.

You're not going to hear anyone say that over at Fox though. Quite the opposite as we saw with how Wallace opened the segment.

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This week on Fox News Sunday, viewers were treated to yet another round of Bill Kristol giving advice to Republicans on how to negotiate on extending tax cuts for the middle class, or at least what he considers middle class.

After previously saying that Republicans are not going to be able to defend tax cuts for the wealthy, that they should not "fall on their sword" to defend millionaires, that a lot of the "tea party" groups won't care if millionaires pay more taxes and that they're going to look like they don't care about the middle class, Kristol was once again trying to get the line drawn at a million dollars in income instead of the $250 thousand threshold the President is insisting on.

Kristol went so far this time as to call raising taxes on everyone with incomes between $250K and a million "extreme" and opined about how hard it might be on those families if they're paying college tuition. These guys never seem to mind throwing additional tax burdens on those who are truly middle class all across America, or going after benefits for people on fixed incomes that rely on programs like Social Security and Medicare, but lord knows we can't burden someone who is making over a quarter of a million dollars a year with a slightly larger tax burden. They also love to give people the impression that those higher taxes would be paid on their entire income. They'd still be benefiting from the lower rates on their income below $250,000.

Transcript below the fold.

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After Sean Hannity spent the opening of his show talking to Tucker Carlson about the right's latest drummed up non-controversy, Hannity brought on Fox regular Juan Williams and "tea partier" and one of Fox's favorite conservative African American "designated black attackers" David Webb, to discuss the old recordings of President Obama they were pretending is breaking news.

And lo and behold Hannity's race baiting was finally even too much for Williams, who called Hannity out for throwing dirt at President Obama to see what will stick and constantly pushing one ridiculous "conspiracy theory" after another to score cheap political points.

Of course Williams barely got to make his points, because if he wasn't being interrupted by Webb talking over him, he was being interrupted by Hannity screaming over him. If Hannity gets much more worked up while attacking President Obama, we're going to see both the seat of his pants and his hair literally light on fire on the set.

I don't know if Hannity and Drudge and Carlson honestly thought this latest stunt was going to help Mitt Romney, or if they just don't care because of their blind hatred of President Obama, but I think this is going to backfire on them, big time. When you can't even get your generally compliant Fox faux-liberal to go along with you and they inadvertently let the audience know how desperate you look , you've got problems.



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Ruh roh! Looks like someone over at Fox wandered off script tonight after Queen Ann gave her speech at the Republican National Convention this Tuesday -- Juan Williams: Ann Romney Looks "Like A Corporate Wife" Hard For Me To Believe She Struggled.

As Andrew Kaczynski at BuzzFeed noted, this is likely to get Williams some comparisons to Hilary Rosen's remarks about Ann Romney coming across as someone who hasn't worked a day in her life.



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Here we go again with the talking heads on Fox, defending Mitt Romney's dishonest "you didn't build that" ad. Context doesn't matter. Lies don't matter. Policy doesn't matter. Reality doesn't matter. You can say anything and all that matters is how the voters "feel" and there is never any penalty with the media for lying every time your lips are moving. Juan Williams tried pushing back at the nonsense from Wallace and the other panel members, but he may as well have been talking to himself.

And on the topic of lying, here's the latest from Steve Benen, who's been tracking the sheer volume of Romney's lies week after week: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXVII:

Paul Krugman, who's been nearly as frustrated by Mitt Romney's habitual dishonesty as I've been, noted this week that political observers should pause to appreciate "this remarkable spectacle." Krugman added, "I really don't think there's been anything like this in American political history: a presidential campaign, with a pretty good chance of winning, that is based entirely on cynical lies about what the sitting president has said."

I agree. Mitt Romney is, at a minimum, unique.

What's especially striking, in addition to the volume and frequency of the falsehoods, is how often the dishonesty is obvious. Jonathan Bernstein has labeled this "lazy mendacity" -- untruths based on "the indifference to any fact-checking," and "the insistence on continuing to use a lie long after it's been definitively debunked."

Add to that the cable yappers saying the lies don't matter, which the clip above is just one example of and it's sadly by no means limited to Fox. All of the networks have run similar segments. Go read the rest of Steve's post for the latest list of Romney's lies. There are twenty six new ones just for this week.

Transcript of the Fox News Sunday segment below the fold.

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From this week's Fox News Sunday, Karl Rove, who ought to be sitting in a jail cell rather than running Super PAC's and yelling at Juan Williams on television, was terribly upset when Williams dared to tell the truth about Mitt Romney's economic plan. Rove can protest all he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that, as Jon Perr has written about here, his plan is just more tax cuts for the wealthy, bigger debt and he does want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and then some.

Jon's written extensively on this already at C&L and his own blog, Perrspectives, and I'll just refer the readers here to a couple of his most recent posts:

Mitt Romney is Running for Bush's Third Term

Mitt Romney's Tax Fraud

And Jon has repeatedly noted, Romney's policies are not just a return to what we saw under George W. Bush, it's his plans on steroids. Rove apparently believes the country has collective amnesia is he thinks no one remembers what he and his former boss did to the country's economy. I hate to break it to Rove, but about two-thirds of the country still blame Bush for the weak U.S. economy. I'm sure a good deal of the one third that don't are Fox viewers or listen to right-wing hate talk.

Transcript of their remarks via Fox:

WALLACE: Juan.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think that all the Romney advisers say he's got to put more meat on the bone. But I thought that this speech this week was a good speech...

WALLACE: You're talking about the president.

WILLIAMS: The president's speech in terms of framing the alternative and saying very clearly -- this picks up on what you said in introducing this, Chris, that if you ask Mitt Romney about what are your ideas for making this economy take off, Mr. Romney? He says, more tax cuts, personal tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, oil drilling and gas exploration, especially XL pipeline which produce about I think 6,000 jobs that is the not going to turn around the American job scene.

So these are his ideas. And then you say, and how are you going to pay for these tax cuts? He doesn't say it. He doesn't lay it out. He doesn't say here's exactly the programs that I would cut, instead he embraces the Paul Ryan plan and that puts in place fears that many people that have that in fact he would disassemble Medicare and Medicaid.

This is dangerous stuff. And I think if the president pursues that aggressively then he has a chance to create and define Mitt Romney early and not make this a referendum on Barack Obama's performance, but make it a contest in which people say, you know what, the alternative is unacceptable.

WALLACE: Karl, I'm worried that you're shaking your head so vigorously it's going to spin right off.

ROVE: Juan needs to make up his mind. Either Romney is not laying out a plan, or he's laid out a plan that's similar to the House Republican budget that does all kinds of bad things. Make up your mind.

Romney has a plan that reduces the deficit. Romney has laid out a framework for tax reform, not tax cuts. He said I want to lower the rates and pay for it by getting rid of deductions and unnecessary preferences in the law.

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Fox News co-host Eric Bolling on Wednesday defended the New York Police Department's spying program that targets Muslims by claiming that "every terrorist on American soil has been a Muslim."

On Fox News' The Five, Bolling dismissed a lawsuit filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal rights group, because "the people that had their constitutional rights violated the most were the 9/11 victims, the 3,000 who were killed by 19 hijackers who happened all to be Muslims."

"It's a strange thing that a lot of groups will do if they feel they're being targeted is turn America's system of civil rights and the Constitution back on the government," co-host Dana Perino agreed. "Now that's one of the things we have to struggle against."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams, who was dismissed from NPR in 2010 for remarks about Muslims, suggested that the group had a valid case.

"The reality is what the lawsuit says is that they are being targeted simply on the basis of their religion," Williams explained. "So, it's as if, you know, in Syria or one of these countries where all Christians are being persecuted, you said, 'I'm going to go into every Christian home of church just on that basis that I suspect that you're a terrorist.' Well, that's not fair to people in the Muslim community, most of whom are not terrorists."

"How is it every terrorist on American soil has been a Muslim?" Bolling wondered.

"Wait a second," Williams shot back. "You mean to say Oklahoma City [bombing] was conducted by a Muslim?"

"In the last 15 years," Bolling added.

"Oh, come on," Williams replied.

In the last 15 years alone, there have a number of high-profile of domestic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that did not involve Muslims.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected Dr. Bruce Ivins of being behind the 2001 anthrax attacks. Jim David Adkisson was accused of killing two people and wounding seven others at a Tennessee church in 2008 because he wanted to kill liberals and Democrats. Anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder was convicted of the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller. White supremacist James W. von Brunn killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2010. And Andrew Joseph Stack flew a plane into a Texas office building in 2010, possibly targeting the Internal Revenue Service.