Be INFORMED

Monday, September 10, 2012

Fox Hires Romney Advisers To Attack Obama – Fails To Disclose They Work For Romney’s Campaign

By Don Hamel   September 9, 2012   from AddictingInfo

The idea that Fox News, News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch exist primarily as a conservative propaganda machine is a cliché, inasmuch as it is ‘the oft-repeated truth. Therein lies the problem: Those of us who are aware of it, have seen so very many instances of it we’re almost numbed. Our capacity for outrage has been overloaded. There’s an all-pervasive marriage to wealth and government influence in News Corp. that even their scandals don’t truly faze us much anymore; like Old Faithful, it’s an amazing spectacle that seems unfathomable when you first see it, but when you watch it happen at 45 minute intervals every day, you take it pretty much for granted.

Media Matters is reporting that Elaine Chao, a ‘Fox News Contributor,’ was recently appointed the national chair of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Romney, a fact that Fox has failed to divulge during her appearances. She is far from the only regular contributor attached to the Romney campaign:

Fox News contributors John Bolton and Walid Phares, and Fox regular Jay Sekulow, have all appeared on the network to criticize Obama without disclosing they’re Romney advisers. Fox News contributor Pete Snyder is the chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia’s 2012 coördinated committee. And Fox News contributor Karl Rove is the co-founder and adviser for the super PAC American Crossroads, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat Democrats.

Fox and the G.O.P. have a relationship so close they finish each others sentences. Hell, they write each others sentences. But with the Romney campaign, News Corp has basically absorbed it. From the outside it’s impossible to say which entity is in charge of hiring the others staff; in truth, they are one and the same.

Because not only is Elaine Chao a Romney staffer and a Fox News contributor, she’s been nominated to join its Board of Directors.

The Wall Street Journal, A News Corp holding, reports:

Ms. Chao, a cabinet member in the second Bush administration, is the wife of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.Prior to her nomination, Ms. Chao appeared on News Corp.’s Fox News channel in various segments as a contributor, News Corp. said

As you can see, they’re similarly coy about mentioning her connection to the Romney campaign. You have to wonder at News Corp feeling such a need for discretion; they don’t mind announcing her marriage to McConnell, a man who has somehow misunderstood his role in government to include the taking down of the executive branch (Perhaps he’s employed by Murdoch,as well. They are of a single purpose in that goal).

But nobody wants to come out and say it: News Corp and the Romney campaign are one entity. There is no division, not on the air, not in the boardroom.

If we can’t somehow extricate this media juggernaut and the political insiders it has embedded in our government, then what we are witnessing is the first chapter of a new history in the United States. These practices go beyond ‘blurring the line’ between two bodies, one of whom was created as the watchdog against the other; this is infiltration of our government, by the corporate oligarchy. This is propaganda, disseminated from a media giant, in bed with political extremists in our body politic.

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Sunday, September 09, 2012

Mitt Romney: 616 Lies In 33 Week Time Period. Breaks Bush’s Record

By Ann Werner   September 8, 2012            Addicting Info

Some may recall the Pants On Fire George W. Bush doll that Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream put out in 2004 to illustrate the lies of the Bush administration. I own one and it still hangs proudly from my bookcase in my home office. However, the torch has been passed, and passed in a big way. I will have to remove the cowboy boots and hat, replace them with wingtips and add a bit of gray at the temples, maybe trade in the duds for a Brooks Brothers suit, and paste a picture of Mitt Romney’s face over the one on my Pants On Fire doll because Mitt has left George in the dust. In fact, Mitt has left every lying candidate this country has ever seen in the dust.

Fred Clark is an evangelical blogger with some heavy-duty religious credentials, and that adds a particular gravitas to his August 29 blog detailing 533 lies told by Mitt Romney in 30 weeks. That’s right, 533 verifiable, checkable lies told by a candidate running for the top job in the country. To be fair, Mr. Clark isn’t the person who compiled the list. That task was accomplished by Steve Benen, and Benen is cited as the source in Clark’s blog. But Mr. Clark took the time to go through each of Mr. Benen’s articles, starting with the first salvo on January 6, 2012 in the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal Blog and wrapping up with the August 17, 2012 piece written for the Maddow Blog.

Here is the list provided in Clark’s article: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse famously proclaimed “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” This has proven to be true. Because even though Romney’s pants are ablaze, he continues to repeat and repeat and repeat the same lies over and over and over again. He and the Republican Party are counting on the until now proven fact that if one repeats a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Even when it’s still a lie. And they just don’t care.

In his blog, Mr. Clark invites scrutiny and then allows that some will pooh-pooh the assertions and wriggle around the lie to stretch it into something that resembles a weak imitation of the truth. However, as he points out, all of the lies cannot be whitewashed and at least half of those listed just can’t be explained away. And yet, because there’s always an and yet, those too will continue to be repeated and defended by people who refuse to see the truth. That refusal is evident when one examines the comments to Mr. Clark’s article.

You might wonder what lies Romney has told since week 30, so I went looking for them. An additional 83 lies brings the grand total as of September 7 to 616 and still counting. Thank you, Mr. Benin, for doing such a great job! XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII

And thank, you Fred Clark, for being an upstanding man who practices what he preaches, namely to keep the Ten Commandments, the ninth of which is Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Now if only Mitt Romney would get the message.