Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Media Matters Daily Summary 09-17-10
Right-wing media attack Michelle Obama for fighting childhood obesity
Conservative media figures are attacking Michelle Obama over her efforts to encourage healthy eating and reduce childhood obesity, baselessly claiming that Americans "will be reported" or be "jail[ed]" for eating french fries. Read More
Fox bullying GOP to "get over it" and support O'Donnell
Following Christine O'Donnell's surprise victory in the Delaware Republican Senate primary, Fox media figures have coalesced around O'Donnell and have taken to bullying other Republicans into supporting her. Read More
Foster conspiracy theorist media now promoting Foster conspiracy theorist candidate
The same right-wing media figures who promoted conspiracy theories surrounding Vince Foster's suicide are now promoting GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, who in 1996 called Foster's death a "murder" and suggested that President Bill Clinton may have been "involved in wrongdoing" in Foster's death.
Read More
Right-wing media falsely claim LA spent "a couple million" in stimulus "per job" created
Right-wing media have seized on a recent Los Angeles audit of some stimulus funds the city has received to falsely claim that each stimulus-funded job in LA cost the taxpayer an average of $2 million per job. In fact, the controller's office noted that not all of the funds have been spent yet, additional jobs are expected, and moreover, such cost-per-job estimates are "highly misleading," as they do not capture the full impact of the stimulus. Read More
Thursday, September 16, 2010
BREAKING: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to Host Opposing Rallies in Washington D.C.
On October 30, 2010, Jon and The Daily Show will lead the first-ever Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall in Washington D.C. — a movement of "people who have been too busy to go to rallies" — to beg America to stop shouting, throwing and drawing Hitler mustaches on people other than Hitler (or Charlie Chaplin).
Not to be outdone, The Colbert Nation is calling on all freedom-loving patriots to challenge The Daily Show's dark, optimistic forces by marching on the Mall at the same time to help Keep Fear Alive.
Which side are you on? Visit the rally pages and declare your allegiance!
Media Matters Daily Summary 09-16-10
Fox & Friends' class war marches on
Fox & Friends worked overtime on its September 16 broadcast to "spin" the proposed extension of the middle class tax cuts into "a tax hike" for the wealthiest Americans, by making a series of false and baseless claims. Read More
Memo to Forbes: D'Souza's "facts" are indeed in contention
In a September 9 Forbes cover story that has been praised by Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck, Dinesh D'Souza asserts that President Obama's policies should be understood as a manifestation of his African father's "hatred of the colonial system." Forbes has said it "stands by the story" and that "no facts are in contention," but D'Souza's article contains numerous falsehoods and distortions. Read More
Big Government takes a big swing and a miss at Norton
Andrew Breitbart's Big Government is pushing what it calls "Shock Audio" of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) soliciting a campaign donation from a lobbyist. In fact, there is nothing unusual about soliciting a donation from a lobbyist. Read More
O'Donnell In '07: Scientists Have Created Mice With Human Brains!
TPM
Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell has previously sounded the alarm against cloning and stem-cell research -- and what she's described as the current terror of human-mouse hybrids.
We previously noted that O'Donnell had attacked her primary opponent, Congressman Mike Castle, based on his support for stem-cell research. But it turns out that her interest in the subject goes back much further. As Little Green Footballs has spotted, O'Donnell appeared in 2007 on The O'Reilly Factor, to speak out against such research in response to the cloning of some monkeys. Then came her warning on human-mouse hybrids.
"They are -- they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they're already into this experiment."
It's possible that O'Donnell was misremembering this 2005 report on scientists who successfully grew human brain cells within mice -- which is not the same as an actual functioning human brain, but a demonstration that human brain cells can be made from stem cells.
However, there is also some other stunning video evidence proving O'Donnell's dire warnings, and the potential terrible consequences for not only America, but indeed the whole world.....................................GOP fiscal plan would raise debt $4 trillion: report
The tax plan put forward this week by Republican leaders in Congress would add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt and would be offset only by a $300 billion spending freeze, a Washington Post analysis states.
While the cost of the Tax Hike Prevention Act of 2010 hasn't been calculated yet, the Post reports that a similar but "slightly more expensive" plan analyzed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found it would cost $3.9 trillion over 10 years, making it roughly four times as expensive as the Democrats' health reforms, which will cost less than $1 trillion over the same period.
The Republican tax bill, introduced this week by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), aims to prevent the Democratic-controlled Congress from letting the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire. The tax reductions will expire at the end of the year if they are not extended.
The Post notes that an accompanying spending freeze proposed by McConnell would save $300 billion, which the newspaper describes as a "drop in the bucket" compared to the cost of the tax cut extension.
The plan's hefty price tag, coming at a time when many in the Republican grassroots are growing alarmed about skyrocketing budget deficits, has provided the Democrats with fuel for the mid-term elections, as they seek to paint the GOP as dishonest or hypocritical when claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility...............