Good to see something finally drop one of the habitual liars….maybe. Fox *really* cared when they caught *someone else* in a falsehood. Much like how they treat the GOP, it’s doubtful they’ll care when one of their own is lying his face off.
No, they don’t think it’s wrong to be hypocrites *for them*. For others, it’s a fatal flaw. <— Kinda the nature of this type of beast.
The Bill O’Reilly controversy is growing – six former CBS colleagues all refuted his story, and another called him a liar on the air. It’s a long clip but is definitely must watch:
It’s sad that even top tier “conservative economists” have to lie and obfuscate to fill pages. What’s tough is that pulling apart the b.s. leaves folks often in the “well, you can prove anything” horseshit lazy-thinking lane.
People like to claim they are “data driven” but then when they ignore vast swaths of data, it makes it really hard to take with a straight face.
Our media system does little to help alleviate this issue, as they are paid on who and how many people watch, not on what those watchers learn or how accurate that knowledge may be.
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that “it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Then, about 15 minutes later, the Senate rejected a second resolution that said climate change is real and caused by humans.
The first resolution was approved — and co-sponsored — by one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the Senate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a man who literally wrote a book about how climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated.” The only Senator to vote against the resolution was Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).
Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is. At the last minute, right before a vote was taken, Inhofe took the floor to state that he would be co-sponsoring and approving the amendment on the grounds that yes, climate change is real, but human-caused climate change is not. “Man cannot change climate,” Inhofe said. “The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate.”
“Gaawwwwhd has deeclared he is the OOOOONNNLY ONE who may destroy the Earth,” continued the animated corpse from Oklahoma.
I’m actually not joking…this is why many in this country don’t think it is *possible* for humans to do something as big and powerful and “godlike” as changing our own climate.
As I’ve done before, I’d advise anyone who thinks this way to try this little experiment. Instead of billions of people and hundreds of millions of cars, and thousands of cubic miles of atmosphere, take one person, one car, and one garage. Put the person in the car, put the car in the garage, and start the car and close the garage.
Come back in a day and tell me again how humans can’t use our technology to change our atmosphere (and we already know that changing the atmosphere can change the climate).
The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state’s environmental agency.
By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document. “None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed,” said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre.
“To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility. This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does,” Lester said. “We can’t be censored.” Scientists see Texas as at high risk because of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer’s season of wildfires and drought.
..
That state of denial percolated down to the leadership of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency chief, who was appointed by Perry, is known to doubt the science of climate change. “The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about how human-induced climate change is a hoax,” said Anderson.
But scientists said they still hoped to avoid a clash by simply avoiding direct reference to human causes of climate change and by sticking to materials from peer-reviewed journals. However, that plan began to unravel when officials from the agency made numerous unauthorised changes to Anderson’s chapter, deleting references to climate change, sea-level rise and wetlands destruction.
“It is basically saying that the state of Texas doesn’t accept science results published in Science magazine,” Anderson said. “That’s going pretty far.”
Officials even deleted a reference to the sea level at Galveston Bay rising five times faster than the long-term average – 3mm a year compared to .5mm a year – which Anderson noted was a scientific fact. “They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence – it was edited or eliminated,” said Anderson. “That’s not scientific review that’s just straight forward censorship.”
UPDATE: Even the WSJ is calling b.s. on this…even while doing so in a b.s. way.
GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.
The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.
Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter
Had to cut that off mid-derp, as the WSJ editorial board tends to include utter b.s. even when pointing out the obvious. Obama is not really an “election-year tax cutter”, as this tax cut went into effect last year as part of the successful stimulus. It is, in face, because of this success, Republicans are now working to undercut it.
It should also be noted that, unlike the original Bush Tax Cuts, Republican are now insisting this tax cut (which goes to workers) will reduce government revenue and therefore needs to be paid for. This is a complete 180 from their stance about tax cuts for the wealthy (aka “job creators”), as Republicans claim those pay for themselves. This is probably the most base and obvious lie in the Republican quiver, and they whip different versions of it out every time the subject comes up.
AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom withdrew their application to the FCC to transfer the mobile licenses after the agency announced on Nov. 22 that staff there had found the US$39 billion acquisition to be contrary to the public interest. The FCC on Tuesday granted the request to withdraw the license transfer application, but released the 157-page staff report on the merger despite opposition from AT&T.
AT&T and T-Mobile “have failed to meet their burden of demonstrating that the competitive harms that would result from the proposed transaction are outweighed by the claimed benefits,” the staff report said. “The potential loss [of T-Mobile as a] competitive force in the market is a cause for serious concern.”
The FCC disputed AT&T’s claim that less competition would lead to more “jobs” and “lower rates”. Both of these were flat out lies, as anybody with the barest sense of how mature markets operate would attest.
Expect AT&T’s politicians to come out against the FCC, hardcore, in 3, 2, 1….
AT&T is taking exception that anyone would question their flat out lies, and further exception they don’t get to spin this report, and even further exception that actual citizens of this country can now read it.
AT&T called the release of the report “troubling.” The report is an internal document meant to raise questions before a hearing before an administrative law judge, the company said. The next step for the FCC would have been an administrative hearing if AT&T had continued to pursue the license transfer application.
“This report is not an order of the FCC and has never been voted on,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said in a statement. “The draft report has also not been made available to AT&T prior to today, so we have had no opportunity to address or rebut its claims, which makes its release all the more improper.”
All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.
Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.
This is the essential difference between Obama and Hillary (and McCain). It’s a personality thing. I really do believe him when he says he wants to work for everyone. He’s been doing it his whole life. Now I might be a naive Robot Pirate Ninja, but I’ve seen a few things.
Killed a few liars. Stolen from a number of men, both rich and poor (*coughpiratecough*), so I think I have a pretty good grasp on what an honest man and a really good liar look like.
Obama is one or the other, and his history points to the good side of that paradigm. Whether or not he can stay there is a more difficult question that only Time can tell, but if I could still vote, I’d know where it would go.
Enter “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “Hey, listen, I love you guys but I want to take you to task, if I may, respectfully, for a moment,” Wallace said on the air. “I have been watching the show since six o’clock this morning when I got up, and it seems to me that two hours of Obama bashing on this ‘typical white person’ remark is somewhat excessive, and frankly, I think you’re somewhat distorting what Obama had to say.”
Wow, it’s pretty incredible to call out the hyenas. Nice ethics, maybe Wallace isn’t such a good pirate.
The follow-up
On Monday afternoon — with clips of the confrontation having seemingly ricocheted to every far-flung corner of the Web and with everyone from official Obama bloggers to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews rushing to pat Mr. Wallace on the back — [The Observer] caught up with Mr. Wallace via phone. The longtime newsman said that in retrospect he had mixed feelings about making the remarks.
“I didn’t have any second thoughts about the substance because I still believe what I said was right,” said Mr. Wallace. “But after the fact, you do think to yourself — on a professional level with colleagues I very much like and respect — should I have done that off camera?”
“It’s a close call,” said Mr. Wallace. “I’m not sure I’d do it again.”
All right…as you were. I can almost think sometimes that Wallace wants to be a legit journalist, then he always falls back in line.
Robot Pirate Ninja 