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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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Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume on Sunday suggested that an effort to rehabilitate President George W. Bush's image had worked and that the country "may now indeed be ready" for his brother, Jeb, to be the next president of the United States.

Before the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum last week, former First Lady Barbara Bush said that she opposed the idea of Jeb Bush making a bid for the White House in 2016.

"There are other people out there that are very qualified and we’ve had enough Bushes," Barbara Bush explained to NBC's Matt Lauer. "He’s by the far the best qualified man, but no."

Hume told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday that "this is absolutely what I would have expected from Barbara Bush."

"She suffered terribly when the slings and arrows were being aimed, first at her husband, then at her son and then -- to whatever extent it was -- at her other son," Hume insisted. "And I think she's fed up, and long had enough of her men being on the firing line."

"But I think in terms of the public's estimation, that cycles are accelerated these days and the country may now indeed be ready for another Bush," he added. "And if you think about Jeb Bush, he doesn't particularly look like either his father or his brother, he's a different breed of cat. Outwardly at least, he has some of the same qualities: traditional views, gentlemanliness and so on."

"I think if he decides he wants to run, he will be a formidable candidate."

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After a number of the talking heads over at Fox "news" slammed Congressional Republicans for not going after Hillary Clinton hard enough during the Benghazi hearings this week and showing the exchange between Clinton and Sen. Ron Johnson during the Senate hearing, Colbert accused Johnson of allowing Clinton to "step all over Ron's Johnson" and"spank him."

Colbert showed Johnson ending the exchange by saying "thank you Madame Secretary" and wondered why the Senator would do so unless "thank you Madame Secretary" was his "safe word."

After showing Johnson and a bunch of the talking heads on the right claiming that Clinton's anger during the hearings was just an act and made up, Colbert followed with this:

COLBERT: Don't get me wrong. These guys know something about faking emotions. They do it every day and I respect them for it. But in this case I'm not buying it. First, it just makes the Republicans look weaker. Now they lost to something that wasn't even real.

And second, second... if you're saying Hillary could fake that kind of anger, that's saying that every woman I've ever enraged might have been faking it. I don't think so fellas. I mean I've infuriated my share of the ladies over the years and let me tell you, I get them there, okay? They always seem pretty worked up. You know, you can tell when it's real. I mean, they're screaming the whole time. I've even had my neighbors complain. [...]

Anyway, these hearings were a debacle that left unanswered the one question they were really about. Is there anything we can do to stop Hillary in 2016?

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On the Sunday before the 2012 presidential election, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume is saying that it's "puzzling" that national polls indicate GOP hopeful Mitt Romney is tied with President Barack Obama race is a tie while swing state polls suggest that Democrats are going to win enough electoral votes for to keep the White House.

"I think the conventional wisdom is trending now towards a Obama win, something along the lines of what Karl Rove and his team pulled off for President Bush in 2004, but I'm by no means certain," Hume told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "And there's this striking discrepancy between national polls -- which tend to be done, by and large, by older, more-seasoned polling firms -- and state polls -- a number of which are done by less-established firms. The national polls have this a tie. The state polls, as you just suggested -- the battleground state polls suggest and indicate that President Obama is ahead in all of them."

"It seems striking that there would be this difference," he added. "And it is sobering, if you're a Romney supporter, to think that he is trailing or just tied in so many of those states."

"I think it's unlikely -- it's hard to imagine as a political journalist that all these many polls are off. But the discrepancy is unmistakable and puzzling."

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Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume on Sunday lashed out at mainstream media organizations for not spending as much time as Fox News trying to determine what mistakes the Obama administration made before and after the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

"One of the problems we're having here is that it has fallen to this news organization, Fox News, and a couple of others to do all the heaving lifting on this story," Hume complained to Fox News host Chris Wallace. "And the mainstream organizations that would be on this story like hounds if there were a Republican president have been remarkably reticent."

"There's been some good reporting but nothing on the scale and to the degree of specificity that you would expect by now," he continued. "Normally, the big news organizations would have this thing out there and we would know a lot more than we do about what the president did, what he knew, when he knew it, when he made what order he made and on what basis. We still don't know that and to some extent, a lot of the media who are a combined potent force have not done their job."

But on Friday, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera encouraged his colleagues at the network to stop the “politicizing” and “preposterous allegations” about President Barack Obama’s response to the attacks that killed four Americans in Libya.

“People, stop," Rivera urged the hosts of Fox & Friends. "I think we have to stop this politicizing. ... [T]hese preposterous allegations –- reckless allegations that paint a picture of some fat bureaucrat watching TV –- I think that’s really beyond the pale."

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Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume on Sunday praised Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for using the death of the top U.S. diplomat in Libya for political gain by claiming President Barack Obama was "sympathizing" with America's enemies.

"I think what he said was correct, but it was clumsy," Hume told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "And it opened him up to charges that he made a terrible mistake. We had an almost ludicrous overreaction in a lot of the media about it, in which what he did became the big story rather than what was happening over there, which was not a great moment for our national media, I'm sad to say."

"My sense is that he was on the mark," Hume added. "He might have timed it better or said it better."

On Tuesday, U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and at least three members of his staff had been killed during protests over a film that mocked that the Prophet Muhammad and was promoted by Terry Jones, a U.S. pastor who had previously sparked deadly riots threatening to burn Qurans.

Romney on Wednesday had used the death of Stevens to score political points by accusing Obama of “sympathizing” with the enemy after the U.S. embassy in Cairo released a statement condemning the anti-Muslim film.

“It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” Romney said.

That initial statement from the former Massachusetts governor and his press conference later in the day were both panned as “irresponsible” and “craven.”

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This Friday evening on a special edition of The Daily Show, wrapping up their own convention coverage, Jon Stewart found a great new slogan for Fox "News" after their "fair and balanced" coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions over the last couple of weeks -- "shut up and watch."

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I'm not sure what speech the talking heads over at Fox were watching, but leave it to them to try to turn Michelle Obama's wonderful speech tonight at the 2012 Democratic National Convention into some sort of Socialist manifesto which is all about pushing for our reliance on government.

Heaven forbid anyone says something supportive about those teachers, firefighters and those in the military. The horror!

Here's the full speech these clowns were talking about in case anyone did not get a chance to watch it live.

Full transcript of her speech below the fold.

Continue reading »

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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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Lawrence O'Donnell hit Ayn Rand fan-boy and now Mitt Romney presidential running mate Rep. Paul Ryan for his romance with Rand that he's been trying to run away from for some time now. As O'Donnell noted, there are two reasons for Ryan trying to distance himself from his hero. One is the Catholic Church going after him for supporting her philosophy and the other was the fact that he was being considered as a running mate for Romney.

O'Donnell went after Ryan for trying to play dumb during his interview with Brit Hume on Fox News this Tuesday evening on Baier's show. During his time with Hume lobbing softballs at him, Ryan pretended he was a fan of Rand's, until he realized what her philosophy was. As we've shown here in post after post and as O'Donnell pointed out, that change had to have happened very recently because as late as 2009 he was still singing her praises: Paul Ryan Tries Keeping Up With Etch-a-Sketch Mitt By Pretending His Ayn Rand Fandom Is an 'Urban Legend'.