Media Matters Daily Summary 09-15-10

Conservatives attack NRSC for having no plans to fund O'Donnell's race
Following Christine O'Donnell's victory over Republican Rep. Mike Castle in the Delaware Senate Republican primary, right-wing media have taken up O'Donnell's cause, attacking the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for reportedly deciding not to support O'Donnell. Read More

Right-wing media turn on Rove for "trashing" O'Donnell
Right-wing media figures are attacking Fox News' Karl Rove for "trashing" Christine O'Donnell after her victory in the Delaware GOP Senate primary, stating that his comments were "disgraceful" and that Rove "came across as an effete sore loser."
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Fox & Friends is launching pad for GOP general election campaigns
Following their primary victories, Republican candidates have routinely turned to Fox & Friends as their favored venue to mark the launch of their general election campaigns. Through softball interviews, Fox & Friends, in turn, provides them an open platform to promote their campaigns. Read More

"I think you're an ass": Conservative media finally discover their colleagues are frauds
In the run-up to Delaware's Republican Senate primary, conservative media figures noticed that their colleagues are "lazy and unfair" "idiot[s]" and "mouthpieces for the Republican establishment" who engage in "ranting, not serious arguments" and whose commentary consists of "smear tactics," "mischaracterizations," "exaggerated claims," "slander," and "attributing sinister or corrupt motives to those who disagree with them."
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"Mike Castle is over. Christine O'Donnell is now": The making of a Fox News candidate
Media Matters for America presents a timeline of how Fox News hosts and contributors -- with a few exceptions -- came to tout Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell and celebrated her primary victory.
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Media Matters Daily Summary 09-14-10

Media stretch definition of "small business" to claim Obama is raising taxes on 50% of their income
Conservative media have claimed that 50 percent of "small business income" would be taxed at a higher rate if Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts for the top brackets to expire. However, the apparent sources for that claim, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), explained that business income on individual tax returns does not necessarily reflect what most consider small businesses, but includes such enterprises as law partnerships and real estate investments. Read More

Latest attack on Imam Rauf: He "pals around with truthers"
Fox News, Andrew Breitbart, and other conservative media have attacked Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf because one of his "former associates" believes 9-11 was an "inside job." However, Rauf has repeatedly said the 9-11 attacks were perpetrated by extremist Muslims; moreover, Fox News and Breitbart have their own -- much more significant -- "truther" ties. Read More

Gingrich: Obama Wants Whitey’s Money

David Frum

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With the Forbes story and now the Gingrich endorsement, the argument that Obama is an infiltrating alien, a deceiving foreigner – and not just any kind of alien, but specifically a Third World alien – has been absorbed almost to the very core of the Republican platform for November 2010.

Rush Limbaugh has been claiming for almost 2 years that President Obama is bent upon “redistribution” and “reparations.” Following D’Souza, Gingrich has now stepped up to suggest that this redistribution is motivated by anti-white racial revenge. If Obama wants to expand health coverage, tighten bank regulation, and create government make-work projects it’s not because he shares the same general outlook on the world as Walter Mondale or Ted Kennedy or so many other liberals, living and dead, all of them white and northern European. No, Obama wants to do what he does because he thinks like an African, and not just any kind of African but (in D’Souza’s phrase) “a Luo tribesman.”

It is to vindicate this African tribal dream that Obama wishes to raise the taxes of upper-income taxpayers and redistribute money away from these meritorious individuals. D’Souza contends that Obama is acting to vindicate his father’s supposed dream of overthrowing the global order and ending the global domination of the white race over other peoples..............

Media Matters Daily Summary 09-13-10

Anti-Park51 protest featuring right-wing media loaded with anti-Muslim hate
Right-wing blogger Pamela Geller's September 11 protest against the Park51 Islamic cultural center in Manhattan -- which featured fellow right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart and Fox News contributors John Bolton and Mike Gallagher - was loaded with inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, imagery, and smears. Read More

Highbrow birtherism: Conservatives attack Obama as an "African colonial"
Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich recently made news by suggesting that President Obama is engaged in "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior," but he isn't alone in using the African heritage of Obama's father and grandfather as fuel for ridiculous smears. Read More

Hey Breitbart, look to your left
During his speech at FreedomWorks' September 12 rally on the National Mall, Andrew Breitbart berated the media for portraying tea party ralliers as "racist, sexist, homophobe," and "Islamophobe," but the crowd he addressed was full of inflammatory signs. Read More

Newt Gingrich's history of bigoted remarks
Newt Gingrich's history of bigoted and offensive remarks far predates his recent statement that President Obama has pretended to be "normal" but actually seems to be engaged in "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior."
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Andrew Breitbart Gropes Youth At 9/12 Death Picnic

Your Wonkette foolishly agreed to help Liz Glover and her fancy VICE Teevee crew “cover” the 9/12 FreedomWorks picnic. We will file a full report on this monstrosity shortly, but until then: Andrew Breitbart fingerbanged Riley Waggaman, and it was weird and probably illegal. READ MORE »

GOP Senate Candidates Oppose Climate Science And Policy

THINK PROGRESS

A comprehensive Wonk Room survey of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate finds that nearly all dispute the scientific consensus that the United States must act to fight global warming pollution. In May, 2010, the National Academies of Science reported to Congress that “the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change” because global warming is “caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems.”

This finding is shared by scientific bodies around the world. However, in the alternate reality of the fossil-fueled right wing, climate science is confused or a conspiracy, and policies to limit pollution would destroy the economy.

Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, only one — Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware — supports climate action. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line.

Many of the Senate candidates are signatories of the Koch Industries’ Americans For Prosperity No Climate Tax pledge and the FreedomWorks Contract From America. The second plank of the Contract From America is to “Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”..............................

A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists

WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.

The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.

“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats.

That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.....................

Buffett: I See A Huge Recovery Across All Of Our Businesses Happening Right Now

The Business Insider

Warren Buffett has never been too pessimistic on the economy, though he's never been one to see consensus on the way up.

Throughout 2009, as the media saw more and more green shoots, the word out of Berkshire Hathaway was one of skepticism.

This year his tone has mostly been one of caution.

And now that the media is obsessed with the double-dip scenario? Warren's suddenly bullish.

Bloomberg:

“I am a huge bull on this country,” Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive officer, said today in remarks to the Montana Economic Development Summit. “We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.”

...

“I’ve seen sentiment turn sour in the last three months or so, generally in the media,” Buffett said. “I don’t see that in our businesses. I see we’re employing more people than a month ago, two months ago.”

Buffett of course is extremely diversified, from finance, to housing, to rail (we noted last week that he's probably up $14 billion already on his Burlington Norther bet), so there's really no slice of the economy he can't see firsthand.

If he thinks the real economy isn't matching the gloomy rhetoric, that's to be taken seriously........