RelentlesslyOptimistic

At least they admit it...

via www.reallyfoxnews.com

Who will win Ohio?

inothernews:

“I don’t know — that poll looks like it oversampled Democrats by ten percent.”

— STEPHEN COLBERT, The Colbert Report

via www.reallyfoxnews.com

Leave Rep. Kevin Yoder Alone, Please

He took his clothes off -- at night -- and went swimming.

Has he ever denoucned skinny dipping? Or advocated persecuting skinny dippers? Was he the sponsor of a bill to ban skinny dipping?

No. 

If it had been a Democrat, we'd be already be denouncing Fox's coverage. Let it go.

via www.pitch.com

Forbes: Obama is the smallest government spender since Eisenhower

"Amidst all the cries of Barack Obama being the most prolific big government spender the nation has ever suffered, Marketwatch is reporting that our president has actually been tighter with a buck than any United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower."

via www.forbes.com

Now Fox News Says Low Gas Prices Are Bad

After weeks of blaming Obama for rising gas prices, Fox News now asks if the lowering prices may be a bad thing by linking a drop in gas prices to a weak economy and, again, blaming Obama.

via reallyfoxnews.tumblr.com

CEO pay increased 27 - 40% in 2010

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

...the top 10 earners took home more than $770m between them in 2010. As stock prices began to recover last year, the increase in CEO pay outstripped the rise in share value...

For S&P 500 CEOs...[pay] increased by a median of 36.47%. Total pay at midcap companies, which are slightly smaller than the top firms, rose 40.2%.   

"Wages for everybody else have either been in decline or stagnated in this period, and that's for those who are in work,"

Image from OpEdNews, where we learn that high CEO pay correlates with lower company performance.

Note that as of now there don't appear to be any US media outlets reporting this story.

From www.guardian.co.uk via jwz.org.

Fox News: Pepper spray is "a food product."

Bill O’Reilly: “First of all, pepper spray -- that just burns your eyes, right?”
Megyn Kelly: “It’s like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”

Slackstory has launched an online petition to have Megyn Kelly "“eat or drink a full dose of pepper spray on national television.”

via thedailywh.at

Gasp! Dwarf porn star suicide by badger story is a fake!

Yeah, we all knew it was too good to be true. When I first encountered the story I sent it to a friend with the subject line: "I want to believe!"

Vince Mancini, the author of the story at FilmDrunk, one of the first outlets to pick up the tale from Sunday Sports, said that: "I noted at the time that the report seemed a little suspicious...[it was from] a tabloid with headlines like 'World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon'"

Mr. Mancini argues, though, that the professional writers at Sunday Sports deserves big props for the story. He notes that they:

• "found a dwarf who looked like Gordon Ramsay, and decided that wasn’t juicy enough, so they cooked up a story about him being a porn star."
• Created a terrific quote: "Dwarf lookalikes are as rare as hen’s teeth and so can command top dollar. I’ve already ordered a new BMW and a diamond encrusted Soda Stream"
• "waited three weeks to kill off their star, and when they did, they did it in style, with badgers and poison gas, with all the intrigue of a possible suicide, brought on by the pressures of the celebrity-look-alike dwarf-porn industry."

He finished with this compliment: "Because anyone can write some crazy story, it takes a professional to weave it into a narrative."

You stay classy, Sunday Sports. Not every newspaper can aspire to reach the heights to which you have soared.

via filmdrunk.uproxx.com

If FOX News had been there throughout history...

 

"Death Ruled Carpentry Accident." Snort.

via afternoonsnoozebutton.com

Fox News Reposts Obama article from Onion without mentioning that it's a joke.

via www.mediaite.com

Because it's a Fox Affiliate?

via thedailywh.at

Unintentional errors no longer acceptable on Fox!

Right after Fox's management emailed a memo about eliminating errors on their news (I know, they were serious!), the chart below was used to explain some poll results.

63% + 60% + 70% = 193%! Don't be too discouraged, though. That's 193% of just Republicans.

Some highlights from the memo:        

• "Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors. Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action..."
• "a key quote from today's meeting: 'It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on.'"

The memo was sent after Fox recently ran stories that used films of larger crowds from past stories as background for reports on a rally and for Sarah Palin's book tour. The memo didn't address whether Fox's usual dishonesty is included in the memo's warnings.

Memo from MediaBistro's FishbowlDC. Chart via Wonkette: All 193% of Republicans... 

Debate issues instead of nonsense!

It is long past time to stop being respectful of extremist distortions about health care.

Barney Frank of Massachusetts answered a woman at a health care forum who compared "the effort to increase health care to the Nazi's" by asking her "on what planet do you spend most of your time?"

Via Mahablog

"In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition"

In an article in today's Washington Post, Rick Perlstein puts the craziness of the health care uproar in a historical perspective. When the Civil Rights Act was being debated in 1964, opponents claimed that it would enslave whites. A plan to increase mental health care during the Kennedy administration sparked claims that a new facility in Alaska was actually a concentration camp for dissidents. Perlstein notes that "Internment camps for conservatives" are "the latest theory of tea party favorite Michael Savage."

The problem, Perlstein notes, is not the existence of the loonier perspectives among the electorate, but the credence given to them by today's media.

"Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds."

Today we have Lou Dobbs and Fox News to stoke the crazy fires and promote extremism and violence.

"Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers, getting inside the heads of editors and reporters, haunting them with the thought that maybe they are out-of-touch cosmopolitans and that their duty as tribunes of the people's voices means they should treat Obama's creation of "death panels" as just another justiciable political claim."

Perlstein closes by saying "Good thing our leaders weren't so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill -- because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites."

Via Mahablog

CNN takes money from insurance companies, not criticism of them.

First CNN wouldn't run an ad critical of their conspiracy-theory-promoter Lou Dobbs. Now CNN won't run an ad critical of the present health care system because it singles out as part of the problem Ed Hanway, the CEO of Cigna, who will soon give up his annual $12 million per year salary for a $73 million golden parachute.

CNN will, on the other hand, happily take (and send a press release about doing so) an undisclosed amount of sponsorship funding from Nigerian insurance company IEI for a 6-part TV show "dedicated to exploring global companies who are making a positive impact on the environment while trying to make a profit."

CNN: The most trusted name in sponsored news.

The (second) ad in question: