Video- Bill O'Reilly Slams Coburn For Criticizing Fox News

Heh, Media Matters compiled a pretty long list of people on Fox saying exactly what Billo says they didn't.

Video- Not satisfied with U.S. history, some conservatives are rewriting it

Is American history being changed?

Wow, real journalism. h/t mistermix. Article here.

Frank Rich: The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality

By GottaLaff

Barry Blitt

Frank Rich:

Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary, declared that “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” Rudy Giuliani upped the ante on ABC’s “Good Morning America” in January. “We had no domestic attacks under Bush,” he said. “We’ve had one under Obama.” (He apparently meant the Fort Hood shootings.)

Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. [...]

[S]omeone will have to remind our amnesia-prone nation who really enabled America’s enemies in the run-up to 9/11 and in its aftermath. [...]

Rove and his book are yesterday. Keep America Safe is on the march. Liz Cheney’s crackpot hit squad achieved instant notoriety with its viral video demanding the names of Obama Justice Department officials who had served as pro bono defense lawyers for Guantánamo Bay detainees. [...] As if to underline the McCarthyism implicit in this smear campaign, the Cheney ally Marc Thiessen (one of the two former Bush speechwriters now serving as Washington Post columnists) started spreading these charges on television with a giggly, repressed hysteria uncannily reminiscent of the snide Joe McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn. [...]

When even the relentless pursuer of Monicagate is moved to call a right-wing jihad “out of bounds,” as Starr did in this case, that’s a fairly good indicator that it’s way off in crazyland. [...]

In this spectrum, the Keep America Safe crowd is a fringe. But it still must be challenged. As we’ve learned the hard way, little fictions, whether about “death panels” or “uranium from Africa,” can grow mighty fast in the 24/7 media echo chamber. [...]

What could yet give some traction to the Keep America Safe revisionism is the backdrop against which it is unfolding: an Iraq election with an uncertain and possibly tumultuous outcome; the escalation of the war in Afghanistan; and an increasingly cavalier Iran. If any of these national security theaters goes south, those in the Rove-Cheney cohort will claim vindication in their campaign to pin their own failings on their successors.

Obama may well make — or is already making — his own mistakes. And he will bear responsibility for them. But they must be seen in the context of the larger narrative that the revisionists are now working so hard to obscure. The most devastating terrorist attack on American soil did happen during Bush’s term [...] The ensuing Iraq war allowed those who did attack us on 9/11 to regroup in Afghanistan and beyond — and emboldened Iran, an adversary with an actual nuclear program. [...]

If we are really to keep America safe, it’s essential we remember exactly which American politicians empowered Iran, Al Qaeda and the Taliban from 2001 to 2008, and why. History will be repeated not only if we forget it, but also if we let it be rewritten by those whose ideological zealotry and boneheaded decisions have made America less safe to this day.

Much more here.

VIDEO- David Corn bets Brad Blakeman $1000 that he, Karl Rove lied

By GottaLaff

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Dee-lish! David Corn offered to bet former Bush spokesman Brad Blakeman $1000 that he and Rove were lying about the WMD inspectors being denied access to inspection sites. Right there on the Tee Vee Machine.

March 20, 2003:

Bush urged journalists to leave the country in his television address late Monday. "For their own safety, all foreign nationals — including journalists and inspectors — should leave Iraq immediately," the president said.

Bush ordered the inspectors out. Blakeman owes David Corn $1000.

VIDEO: Neil Cavuto pushes conspiracy theory about Rep. Matheson’s vote

By GottaLaff



BlahblahblahLIESblahblahblahCLUSTERFOXblahblahblah:

Rep. Matheson issued a statement to Fox, stating, “The Weekly Standard’s piece is rubbish.” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today that the right-wing allegation is “very silly.” Still, in a sign of its eminent “fairness,” Fox News is willing to “balance” the truth with a heavy dose of gossip.

Republican Sen. Robert Bennett also disputed the right-wing allegation:

“Sen. Bennett has heard of all kinds of pressure being applied and offers being made to Democrats for votes on health care, but Scott Matheson’s nomination is not one of those because it has been in the works for a long time,” spokeswoman Tara DiJulio said.

The GOP is feeling threatened, because health care reform, such as it is, is about to become a reality. They're reverting to default mode: Smears, fears, and acting like rears.

These people are a twisted, dangerous joke.

More at Think Progress.

VIDEO- Rachel Maddow eviscerates Orrin Hatch: It is a L-I-E.

By GottaLaff

Republicans shouldn't even try to lie any more. Ever. Rachel will call you out loudly and clearly:

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Hyp. O. Crites.

Eviscerated.

Audio- Beck and crew conflate "nuclear option" and reconciliation to accuse Dems of hypocrisy

Textbook example of RW media manipulation, right out of David's book.

As we've documented extensively over the past year, conservatives have waged an ongoing campaign to re-brand the process of reconciliation as the "nuclear option." Feel free to read any of the hundred or so examples from our archives to get the full story, but to put it briefly: this is outrageously dishonest. The "nuclear option" was a term coined by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) in reference to his proposed change to Senate rules that would have banned use of the filibuster for judicial nominations.

Reconciliation, on the other hand, requires no change to Senate rules since it has been used repeatedly over the years to pass major legislation - notably to pass major pieces of health care reform legislation. Republicans themselves weren't quite so uncomfortable with the supposedly "dirty" process when they used it to pass President Bush's tax cuts. Multiple times.

To a cynic, the reason for this re-branding might have appeared to be that conservatives were concerned that Democrats would use reconciliation to pass portions of health care reform. And lo and behold, with reports surfacing in the past few days that Democrats are again considering using reconciliation for health care reform (which, as NPR noted today, is consistent with the long history of the use of reconciliation in health care bills,) conservatives are redoubling their efforts.

Here's how the trick works:

Today, conservative media are furiously promoting a video posted at Breitbart TV, titled:"Obama & Dems in 2005: 51 Vote 'Nuclear Option' Is 'Arrogant' Power Grab Against the Founder's Intent." You can probably guess where this is going.

They're already pimping this on Fox.

CIA historian: “The debate’s over, Torture stained the honor of the United States.”

By GottaLaff

Former BushCo employee Marc Thiessen has been publicly ripping President Obama's national security/terrorism policies, and builds a verbal shrine to those of the Bush crime family.

Watch the video of Thiessen get a royal smackdown by Lawrence O'Donnell here. Then watch it again, because it's that good.

Now read about another evisceration of Thiessen, this time by a Pulitzer Prize-winning CIA historian:

“It was not the most successful intelligence program in the history of the CIA by a long shot,” he emails. Weiner added that by the long view of the CIA’s history, there is no more debate.

“The debate’s over,” he said. “Torture stained the honor of the United States.”

Weiner also strongly contested the notion that Obama’s approach represents a dialing back to a pre-9/11 mentality. “The Obama administration has some pretty robust programs going on, killing suspects all over Afghanistan and Pakistan with armed drones,” he said.

Weiner also contested another Thiessen chesnut: That the Obama administration is killing too many terrorists, rather than subjecting more of them to enhanced interrogation. Weiner dismissed Thiessen’s case as tantamount to arguing that targeting terrorists abroad “more closely resembles treason than counterterrorism.”

Treason indeed.

Of course, Dickless McHeartStent needs to sell his future book, so he'll join Thiessen's irrational, drool-stained love affair with torture, and continue to sputter and stammer about his man crush on waterboarders and how he and his band of thugs saved America. ... after they allowed 9/11 to happen.

Gradually, we will eradicate the toxic Bush stain.

Video- Former Bush Speech Writer Says Obama is Inviting Another Terrorist Attack, Larry O'Donnell fights him on it

I want a dollar for every time they said Lawrence, double it if they sounded condescending. Wussies.

UPDATE- Here's the complete vid with the relatively staid bit after the commercial. Does it bother anyone else that Scarborough seems to mock O'Donnell and the idea that he's "off his meds" a bit too much?

Note- Title changed 'cause FDL came up with a better one.

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Video- Fact Checking the Sunday Shows - January 31, 2010

Won't they go to hell for lying on a Sunday? Via Media Matters.

Video- Misinformer of the Year 2009: Glenn Beck

Hadassah Lieberman under attack over industry ties

And a big f you right back Joe. Asswipe.

Washington (CNN) - Sen. Joe Lieberman – whose opposition to a public insurance option has drawn outrage from liberal groups for months – is used to finding himself in progressive crosshairs.

Now it's his wife's turn.

Activists are setting their sights on Hadassah Lieberman, launching a celebrity-studded petition drive to convince the nation's largest breast cancer non-profit to end the Connecticut senator's wife role as a spokeswoman.

The move to pressure the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation came the same day Lieberman's husband angered Democrats by announcing that he would not support an expansion of Medicare to cover individuals under the age of 55. Organizers did not point to that decision, instead citing Hadassah Lieberman's own ties to the health care industry.

Lieberman has worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer and ALCO.

"We are asking Ellen DeGeneres, Christie Brinkley and other high-profile celebrities who are associated with Komen to demand that no more money raised for cancer treatment be given to Hadassah Lieberman or any other ex-Pharma/Insurance strategists," said Jane Hamsher, founder of the Firedoglake blog.

Organizers say the petition has drawn the support of celebrities including Christie Brinkley, Cynthia Nixon, Ellen DeGeneres, Gloria Gaynor, Jennifer Tilly, Marcia Cross, Mimi Rogers, Neil Patrick Harris, and Trisha Yearwood.

Tony Blair: WMD? Feh.

By GottaLaff

If Boy Georgie and his poodle had come out and said, "We are going to bomb the hell out of Iraq no matter what, to hell with all of you, try and stop us", then the world might have-- Oh wait. They did:

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he would have found a justification for invading Iraq even without the now-discredited evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Good thing they weren't arrogant. Oh wait. They were.

It was a startling admission from the onetime British leader, who was President Bush's staunchest ally in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Blair's comments were immediately denounced by critics who accused him of using false pretenses to drag Britain into an unpopular war that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of allied troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Well, at least the fraudulent invasion of a sovereign country that hadn't attacked us first produced all the positive results that Bush II and Bush III had promised. Oh wait. It hasn't.

Hans Blix, who led the United Nations team of inspectors looking into the claim, said that Blair's remarks gave "the strong impression of a lack of sincerity."

"The war was sold on the weapons of mass destruction [argument], and now you . . . hear that it was only a question of a 'deployment of arguments,' " Blix told the BBC.

"It sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up, and if the fig leaf had not been there, then they would have tried to put another fig leaf there."

What a relief that there will be justice done, and those responsible for this fiasco will be appropriately punished.

Oh wait. They won't.

Video- Quick Fact: Rove falsely suggests Obama is responsible for entire FY09 deficit

What, Karl Rove lie?

Video- Conservative talking point that Obama never said "win" in West Point speech spreads to Fox's "straight news" programming

Debunked here.

ACORN "Reporters" Very Creative, But Report Finds No Illegal Conduct By ACORN

The report is here, but TPM honed in on what I think is the bigger story. Think Fox is going to feature this 24/7 for the next few weeks like they did the lies? Yeah, me neither.

Harshbarger also notes that the videos were sometimes less than perfect representations of the events they depict. He writes:

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

Report- Leaked UK documents reveal early Bush, Blair Iraq War plans

By GottaLaff

Eventually the drip, drip, drip of reports like this will bite BushCo et al. square in the Pet Goat and land them in prison:

A leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war and show plans for the U.S.-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph published details of private statements made by senior military figures claiming plans were in place months before the March 2003 invasion, but were so badly drafted they left troops poorly equipped and ill-prepared for the conflict. [...]

Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, then head of Britain's special forces, was quoted as saying he had been "working the war up since early 2002," according to the newspaper.

As if we didn't know. Oh, some of you didn't? You trusted that the illegal, fraudulent invasion was justified? Then you most likely also believe that Sarah Palin can read.

In July 2002, Blair told lawmakers at a House of Commons committee session that there were no preparations to invade Iraq.

Findings of the new inquiry will not be published before next summer, meaning conclusions won't be known before Britain's next national election, which must be held by June 2010.

Drip, drip, drip....

Video- Fox News' misleading Palin crowd shot

It's a feature, not a bug for Fox News.

The Michele Bachmann File: Pants on Fire!

By GottaLaff

This pretty much goes without saying, but it is fun to see the visuals:

Recent statements involving Michele Bachman:

Page 92 of the House health care bill "says specifically that people can't purchase private health insurance after a date certain."

She should read the other 1,989 pages

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama's key health care advisers, "says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."

Academic musings make easy targets for opponents

ACORN will be a paid partner with the Census Bureau and "they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public."

ACORN not getting money, not collecting data

Says the Constitution only requires her to tell the census "how many people are in our home."

Bachmann's claim wrong, and illegal

ACORN "could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states."

"Access to" and "actually getting" are two very different things

VIDEO- Jonathan Turley recalls what Dick Cheney can't re: CIA leak case

By GottaLaff

Thank you, David Shuster, for tweeting the link to this. I've been looking everywhere for it:

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Dickless McHeartStent: Big fat old, white, lying tattered bag of amnesia.

For more details, read Jason Leopold's excellent piece here.