Fox ‘News’ And Bill O’Reilly Get Hammered By High School Students For Their Lack Of Journalistic Ethics

This Is How Republicans Responded To Harry Reid Breaking His Ribs And Face

In a statement Friday, the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said that the Senator broke “a number of ribs and bones in his face” after an accident that occurred while he was exercising at home.” He is expected to make a full recovery, but had to stay overnight at the hospital as a precaution.

The full statement from his office:

On Thursday, Senator Reid received treatment at University Medical Center in Las Vegas for injuries sustained in an accident he suffered while exercising at home in Henderson. A piece of equipment Senator Reid was using to exercise broke, causing him to fall and break a number of ribs and bones in his face. Senator Reid will return to Washington this weekend and be in the office Tuesday as the Senate prepares to reconvene. His doctors expect a full recovery. Senator Reid was first brought to St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson by his security detail. He was then transferred to UMC for further testing, where he was admitted overnight as a precaution.

When a 75-year-old man falls and breaks bones, it’s a rather serious matter. The specifics of the injury aren’t the issue. The issue is that an old man fell and was seriously injured. It doesn’t matter if he’s a powerful Senator. Unfortunately, that’s not how Republicans on Twitter saw it. As you can imagine, they were quite happy with the Leader’s unfortunate accident.

From Fox News’ official Twitter feed (these Republicans REALLY show us how Christian they are):

The Conservative Media Displays Blatant Hypocrisy Over The Murder Of NYPD Officers

Without fail, conservative politicians and conservative media have jumped all over the recent murder of two NYPD officers to further their narrative that those of us who want reform and better training in law enforcement are fomenting anti-cop violence.

Just this morning, Fox News ran a segment asking if America had lost respect for police officers – and you guessed it, they blame President Obama and New York mayor Bill DeBlasio, among others. Rudy Guiliani was on Fox News yesterday pushing the same message that protesters and politicians critical of the corrupt police officers were the problem, not the corrupt police officers and departments themselves.

It is worth pointing out that there’s a little truth to what they’re saying, although it is most certainly unintentional. There are some anti-government types, including members of Cop Block and Open Carry Texas such as Kory Watkins, who are most certainly trying to hijack a legitimate cause for their own political gain. These people have a very vested interest in making sure that distrust and hatred of all branches of the government burns high through slandering good cops so that they can then use the good intentions of protesters to erode government functions in a manner they can take advantage of. In other words, they’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, hoping for others to do their dirty work for them.

Tales of political deceit and subterfuge aside, no protester in their right mind should be celebrating, encouraging or even attempting to legitimize violence against police officers. My friend Chad R. MacDonald explains in this piece for Big Appled:

The actions of a few bad cops do not justify the death of anyone else, especially other police officers. The actions of a few hooligans should not cast aspersions on demonstrators against police brutality. Especially if a madman from out of the city wants to make a name for himself by killing New York cops. This after he shot his ex-girlfriend. 

Blaming protestors for the killings of these officers is shortsighted, as good and moral people are outraged by both of these recent and tragic incidents. You cannot blame the Mayor, or anyone else, for actions they were not involved in, just as you cannot blame all police officers for the death of Eric Garner. To say the protestors are to blame for subsequent violence against the NYPD is illogical. The true protestors are demonstrating against violence, not advocating for violence. To say otherwise is dishonest and/or ignorant. (Source)

Yet, that’s exactly what the conservative narrative is – that the very people who are demonstrating against police brutality are also encouraging lone wolf madmen to assassinate police officers. Legitimizing or trying to encourage violence against members of law enforcement – why does that sound so very familiar? Oh right, remember the Cliven Bundy incident earlier this year? Remember how Sean Hannity and other conservative pundits fawned all over the guy, right up until he made the “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro” remark? Yet despite his statement, Hannity still went on to say that Bundy’s cause was legitimate, racial language or not.

Don’t believe me? Here it is straight from the transcript of the show, from the Fox News website itself.

However, I also want to say this. The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control. Now, to me, this was about a federal agency’s dangerous response to a situation that could have resulted in a catastrophe, and that means people dying and people being shot, kind of comparable to what we saw in Waco, Texas. 

It was about hundreds of armed federal agents and snipers and sharp shooters surrounding a family, and not because that family posed a threat to anyone else, but because their cattle happened to be grazing on the wrong patch of grass, and they were eating government grass. 

In other words, when I believe government officials, when they overstep their line, I think it’s my job to call them on it. And make no mistake about it, I’ll continue to do just that. (Source)

So we’ve learned that when a white, conservative rancher’s family and supporters in Nevada resist arrest and threaten government agents over land they haven’t paid grazing fees for in decades, it’s the government allegedly overstepping their boundaries. When right-wing, anti-government types kill innocent police officers, they’re completely ignored by conservative media as Media Matters pointed out.

Yet when a black man passively resists arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes in New York City, and dies as a consequence of being placed in a chokehold, the ridiculous argument from the folks over on the right is that he shouldn’t have resisted. According to them, it’s also the fault of us peaceful protesters and of course, President Obama when a lone madman guns down two cops and expresses anti-police rhetoric on the internet. Does anyone else see this as ridiculous and even racist, or just par for the course from the usual hypocrites over in the world of conservative media?

Fox News Upset Obama Quoted Bible Accurately

In President Obama’s address to the nation regarding his immigration actions, he ended his message with a passage from the Bible. Fox News was quick to be enraged, because as we all know, only conservatives are allowed to use the Bible in political messaging.

Citing Exodus 23:9, President Obama said:

“Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.”

According to Elisabeth Hasselbeck of “Fox and Friends,” Obama using a Bible verse to justify his immigration actions was “the audacity of nope.”

Tucker Carlson was enraged that Obama was supposedly “lecturing us on the Christian faith” and said:

“This is the Christian Left at work, and it’s repugnant.”

Carlson also mentioned that quoting scripture is “totally out of bounds.” (Yes, he said that. Let the hypocrisy sink in.)

To watch the bewilderment coming from the “Fox News” panel, see below:

Fox News priest: How can we baptize kids in same-sex families if parents are sinners?

Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris on Sunday suggested that baptizing the children of same-sex couple would be difficult because the parents would be raising them in sin.

Last week, bishops rejected a proposal backed by Pope Francis that called on the church to officially “accept and value” homosexuals. But the bishops did agree to include language that said discrimination against LGBT people was “to be avoided.”

“The midterm report made is sound like, by welcoming, we’re changing doctrine,” Morris explained in a Sunday appearance on Fox & Friends. “And what does that mean to welcome? Should we welcome? Of course, we should welcome everyone.”

“I always look at my church when there’s a baby crying, and people are looking back, ‘Oh, get your baby in order.’ The baby is the only innocent voice in this whole church,” the father continued. “We are all sinners. Of course, we should find creative ways to welcome, and not change the Bible. You know, we actually believe in the Bible.”

Morris noted that Pope Francis had even called on the church to go out and find people in “irregular difficult situations,” and welcome them to the church.

Fox News host Anna Kooiman wondered if the pope went “even further to say let’s try to pray the gay away?”

“It is difficult, and I think they’re going to have to make decisions next year of what that means,” Morris replied. “Real practical situations. A gay couple comes in with their child for example to baptize the child. Should the child be baptized? Of course.”

“But every couple, gay straight, when they say we’re baptizing our child, they’re saying, ‘We’re going to raise him in the Catholic faith,’” he pointed out. “And so as a priest, as a minister, how do you deal with that? What does that exactly mean?”

Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Oct. 19, 2014.

Fox ‘News’ Ignoramus Brit Hume: Obama Engineered ISIS Strategy ‘to Fail Slowly’

On the Monday edition of Fox News‘ Special Report with Bret Baier, Brit Hume suggested that President Obama does not have any intention of winning against ISIS and that he has engineered his strategy “to fail slowly.”

Hume admitted that “there is a case to be made” for limiting U.S. involvement in the struggle to stop and dismantle ISIS but insisted that the only way to stop them and U.S. ground troops might be the only force in the world that could carry out that task.

He went on to say that the argument against involvement of U.S. ground troops holds that we cannot be assured of a better outcome due to our involvement and that we should allow the region to sort out its own differences.

Hume said:

“I don’t buy this whole argument, but I sense that President Obama does and would prefer to take no action against ISIS beyond some air strikes in Iraq. But he felt his hand was forced by the public’s outrage and alarm over those video-taped beheadings so he came up with a strategy for ISIS’ eventual defeat which is designed not to succeed so much as to fail slowly, in a mission he doubts should even be undertaken.”

Ted Cruz Gets Asked Hard Question by Fox News, Makes a Fool Out of Himself with his Answer

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in March of 2010, has now been the law of the land for over four years. But even before it became law, Republicans had already spent an inordinate amount of time doing everything they could to sabotage and slander it.

Even as the marketplace had been open for a few months and millions of people began signing up for health insurance, Republicans still continued with their futile efforts to repeal the law. They’ve voted 50 times to repeal all, or parts, of the law in the last four years. Hell, they even shut down the government trying to “stop Obamacare.”

One of the most vocal opponents of the health care law has been Ted Cruz. There’s really no need to listen to him talk about Obamacare because all he does is spout off every right-wing talking point Republicans have been using since day one. Besides, almost everything he says about the health care law is an outright lie.

Well, during an interview with Fox News he was asked to provide his alternative to Obama’s signature law, but all he ended up doing is making a complete fool of himself.

Cruz led off with his usual rhetoric, saying that the Affordable Care Act is “the most profoundly unpopular law we have seen in modern times.” A statement that’s utterly ridiculous. Even the worst polls show nearly an even split between those who support the law and those who don’t. But even in those polls a decent amount of those who oppose the law do so because they don’t believe that it is liberal enough.

But then he said something even more ridiculous than that, “We need to delink health insurance from employment so that if you lose your job, you don’t lose your health insurance. Just like you don’t lose your car insurance or life insurance or health insurance or your house insurance. And if you do that, then health insurance becomes personal, portable and affordable. That’s the sort of reform that empowers consumers.”

That statement is ridiculous because that’s exactly what the Affordable Care Act does. It allows people access to health insurance outside of their employer. If anything what his comment does is defend what Obamacare is. It’s a means for people to purchase insurance on their own, for it to be affordable and gives consumers the power to shop around for health insurance.

It seems to me that Republicans actually love Obamacare – just as long as it’s called anything but Obamacare.

The War On Whites: Why The Conservative Media Sells Excuses For Racism

In the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson or the suspicious death of Victor White III while in the back seat of a police car here in Acadiana, the typical response from the Fox News crowd is to deny and deflect the fact that racism is still alive and well in America.

Instead of acknowledging the fact that a disproportionate number of black men make up the prison population in the United States, they blame groups like the NAACP for stirring up racial tensions. Rather than accepting that “stop and frisk” police activity was heavily targeting minorities, they pretend it’s necessary to prevent crime – all while claiming that President Obama is trying to take away their freedoms.

Yes, grasp the utter hypocrisy for a moment; they’re complaining about violations (real or imagined) of their 2nd and 4th Amendment rights. At the same time, you have right-wing pundits and politicians advocating for unconstitutional violations of the 4th Amendment and heavy-handed police tactics, just so long as they’re aimed at minorities. Here’s what the 4th Amendment says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (Source)

Remember how all of those people who supported Cliven Bundy in his defiance of the federal government showed up in Ferguson to protest the excessive force used against protesters? Oh yeah, that’s right – they didn’t.

As I said before, it’s proof positive to the likes of Sean Hannity that Obama is a ruthless (and at the same time utterly incompetent) dictator who hates America and white people when the Bureau of Land Management tries to kick a rich squatter off federal land. To hear the conservative media tell it, those who joined Bundy and even threatened to shoot federal agents are heroes and American patriots. You know, because there is a war on conservative values and against white people. On the other hand, when the death of an unarmed black teenager is protested, you’ll actually see comments on conservative websites and Facebook pages wishing the police would massacre the crowd and that a black teenager deserved to die for alleged shoplifting and jaywalking.

WARNING: This article contains graphic images. If you do not wish to see them, do not scroll down.

We condemn ISIS’ public beheadings, but in 2012-13, our allies in Saudi Arabia cut the heads off of 79 people.

Let’s play “Compare and Contrast” for a moment: Two oppressive, authoritarian Muslim regimes acting under the auspices of Sharia Law publicly behead scores of non-violent people, primarily to instill fear in those who might resist said regime’s self-asserted authority over the region.

People whose heads are cut off are disproportionately foreign nationals, or locals with religious or ideological differences. One of them is ISIS, the other is the government of Saudi Arabia. Which one are we bombing again?

In 2012 and 2013, Saudi Arabia cut the heads off of 79 people for various “crimes” throughout the nation, and it looks like they’re trying to hit the same target this year. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a slowdown earlier in the year, so Saudi Arabia is doing its best to catch up and maintain its previous record.

But Saudi Arabia’s beheadings aren’t just about keeping a title. As London researcher Sevag Kechichian told Al Jazeera:

How One Small Business is Debunking Nearly Every Lie Republicans Tell About Raising the Minimum Wage

Every single time a push to raise the minimum wage gets going, the American people are subjected to the same old propaganda from Republicans. It’s bad for job creation, hurts small businesses, stifles growth, causes businesses to actually cut jobs – you know, the usual nonsense that never happens.

And the way I look at it is if a business can’t afford to pay its employees a decent wage (at least enough to survive on) then they’re probably not a sustainable business to start with – or so poorly run that they can’t prioritize spending properly.

Well, a local Minnesota business is essentially debunking nearly every talking point Republicans use against raising the minimum wage.

Before Minnesota passed a law raising the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2016, Punch Pizza decided to make the bold move to raise their minimum wage to $10 per hour. This represented a $2.5 million investment over a decade for the company.

Co-owner of Punch Pizza John Puckett is also two weeks from opening store number nine in the state, just six months after he made that $2.5 million investment by raising employee wages.

“We are hiring 50 new people and it’s a million dollar investment. We’ve seen a big jump in sales and I think part of that is because people feel connected to the investment we are making,” Puckett said.

“Most importantly, we have a stack of applications at each store for people who want to work at Punch Pizza,” Puckett said.

Also just applying a little common sense I would say that when more people are wanting to work for a particular company because that business offers better wages, that company then has the ability to hire better employees.

Puckett might also consider the fact that employees who are well paid tend to be more productive. They work harder, they’re more reliable, call in sick less and are usually more loyal.

And all of that tends to result in happier customers – which usually translates into an increase in revenue and repeat business.

So here we have a small business deciding to raise its wages, leading to more loyal and happier employees. This has also brought about an increase in sales, which has resulted in the ability for the company to expand and grow.

There goes that whole right-wing rhetoric about “raising the minimum wage punishes small businesses, hurts growth and eliminates jobs.”

But, as with most things, the typical conservative belief on an issue is based more off of whatever Fox News tells them to believe rather than actual facts or reality.

Fox New Logic

Fox

FOX News Host Tries to Shock Public with All-Gender Restrooms, Fails

Remember how Fox & Friends host Heather Nauert was so confused by Illinois State University's "all-gender" bathrooms that she and her staff laughed openly on camera? They thought that was a well worth going back to, so on Thursday host Steve Doocy took to the streets with a copy of the new bathroom sign and showed it to a collection of Fox News fans to get their feedback. When shown the male/female/trans emblems, their responses were jaw-dropping:

"Maybe a family restroom?"
"Restrooms for both genders."
"Transgender, that's right."

Shocking.

Responding to the viewer's lack of dismay, confusion, or moral outrage, host Brian Kilmeade snarked, "Well, they're better people than us."

And for once, a Fox News talking head said something factual.

Fox's Keith Ablow Doesn't Understand Marriage Equality, Warns Of Man-On-Dog Marriage

Isn't this the very thing that led to Rick Santorum's "Google problem"?

Fox News talking head and quack psychiatrist Keith Ablow weighs in on California Governor Jerry Brown's decision to replace the terms "husband" and "wife" with "spouse" in the state's marriage laws, with the predictable level of absurd misinformation that even other Fox hosts have called him out for:

Here's the thing, the states need to get out of the marriage business. There's no way that the state of California can deny a marriage license to four spouses now. Eight spouses, or I would say three human spouses and the canine they absolutely love because if love is the foundation of marriage, they can love their dog, too.

Because in his diseased mind, equitable and reciprocated love between two sentient humans who happen to be the same gender engaging in a legal union that requires informed consent is the same thing as an orgy with a corgi - or "corgy", if you will.

You can watch Ablow make a fool of himself:

Fox Business Host Actually Whines On Twitter About Low Unemployment Rate, Thinks It’s Bad For Economy

Last month, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1 percent as 288,000 jobs were added to the economy. Not only is this the lowest rate since President Obama took office, it means every single job lost during the Great Recession has been recovered. But not everyone is happy about more people finding the jobs they need.

The conservatives who work at Fox News have bitched and moaned for years about how the economy isn’t being fixed fast enough after Republicans nearly crippled it during the Bush Administration. At the same time, they’ve had no problem complaining about people using food stamps and unemployment benefits to get by until the job market improves. The GOP propaganda arm has accused the jobless of being lazy moochers who are stealing from taxpayers. Fox has literally demanded that these people get a job to solve their own problems. But now that more people are getting jobs and the economy has improved, at least one Fox host is whining about the economy becoming too improved.

Charles V. Payne took to his Twitter account to openly complain about the lower unemployment rate and implied that the numbers were fixed by the government. Apparently, too many people are finding work and that’s somehow bad for the economy.

Here’s the tweet.

Is the jobs number too good for the stock market…equity futures are drifting lower not sure how to react

— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) July 3, 2014

In a comment to another Twitter user, Payne said he didn’t have faith in the jobs report put out by the Bureau Of Labor Statistics and suggested the numbers were exaggerated to “move markets and policy”.

Leave it to Fox News to spin an improving economy into a bad thing.

Tea Partier Who Compared Poor People to Animals Didn’t Pay Staff Enough to Feed Families

In April, failed Senate candidate Annette Bosworth compared poor Americans to wild animals. “There has to be a way that you begin the conversations. I've been in this race for ten months and it’s the first time someone has slowed down to say talk about food stamps, talk about what that program does to people, so if that’s what it took I’ll take the heat,” Bosworth said in May, while defending the comparison.

Soon after, she found out she lost her election bid in a painfully awkward FOX News interview. The following day, Bosworth was arrested for perjury following allegations that she circulated nominating petitions while on vacation in the Phillipines.

Now, a former employee has come forward to tell the world that the good Doctor Bosworth didn’t pay employees enough to feed their families. LeAnn Batiz once supported bosworth’s Senate run. However, after her experiences as an employee she can’t stomach throwing her weight behind the Tea Party politician.

“Someone who I can’t trust to pay her employees I don’t want to be making decisions for me in Washington,” Batiz explained.

“I did not get paid what I was promised or enough to survive,” Batiz said. According to Batiz, Bosworth promised a salary of $80,000 per year–but proceeded to pay her just over $10,000 in a six month period. “Ten-thousand in almost six months. Almost six months, so you figure that out and that turns out to be about $24,000 a year. That’s a long way from $80,000 a year,” she said.

Batiz was shorted so much on pay that she was forced to become one of the “animals” about which her employer spoke. She and her family were forced to rely on food stamps–in fact, Bosworth’s office even helped her enroll!

“But instead says, ‘Hey, I want you to keep working for me. I don’t want to have to pay you. Instead we’ll help you get on welfare,’ and then to turn around and say people who are on welfare are bad people, people who are on welfare are dependent people that was just the end,” Batiz said.

Fox ‘News’ Relies On ‘Secret Documents’ Provided By Sleazy Right Wing Group

Looks like it’s all over for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. It seems that Fox News has gotten the goods on him and his defection to the Taliban. In case you missed it, here is what Fox reported on June 6:

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

“Secret documents.” But where did those documents come from, and how reliable are they? The answer to the first part of that question provides the answer to the second part. The Fox story explains the origin of the documents, and at the same time provides a hint as to their accuracy, or lack thereof.

These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe. 

The group is run by Duane R. (“Dewey”) Clarridge, a former senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980s best known for having been indicted for lying to Congress about his role in the tangled set of events that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. He was pardoned by the first President Bush in December 1992 while on trial.

Clarridge was the subject of a New York Times feature in 2011. According to the Times, since he left the CIA, he has been involved in running his own spy network. The U.S. military cut off funding for his group in May 2010, and since then he has relied on private donations to pay his operatives. Mark Mazzetti, who authored the Times story, makes the following observation:

For all of the can-you-top-this qualities to Mr. Clarridge’s operation, it is a startling demonstration of how private citizens can exploit the chaos of combat zones and rivalries inside the American government to carry out their own agenda.

Donations from secretive right wing groups and individuals to pay private spies? Of course there’s no way the “intelligence” gathered by those spies would fit neatly into the pre-drawn conclusions of their benefactors, right?

We’ve seen this movie before.

According to Mazzetti’s story, Clarridge was hired by a security consulting firm in 2008 to try and obtain the release of reporter David Rohde, who was being held by the Taliban. Rohde escaped on his own, but Clarridge was able to use his involvement to advertise his spy group to the military. In late 2009, the security firm that had hired Clarridge was awarded a Pentagon contract. The contract was arranged by Michael D. Furlong, who was a civilian employee in the Pentagon at the time. Furlong has since been the subject of a criminal investigation for unauthorized intelligence gathering, and lying about it.

Clarridge’s history suggests that there is not much substance in the documents that Fox News claims to have seen. In May 2010 , Clarridge’s spies reported that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had been captured by Pakistan and placed under house arrest. The story was featured on biggovernment.com, which was run by serial fabricator Andrew Breitbart. The biggoverment.com piece was trumpeted as an “exclusive,” and was followed in early 2011 by another story that said that Mullah Omar had suffered a heart attack and had been taken to a hospital by Pakistani security forces. Neither report was ever confirmed, and news reports of a statement issued by Mullah Omar last week, concerning the Bergdahl release, give strong indications that both reports were false.

A private spy network, funded by right wing donors, and run by an ex-CIA agent with a past full of questionable activities, who was indicted for perjury, is what Fox News is now using for information to taint Sgt. Bergdahl. What’s next at Fox – interviews about Bergdahl from the cast of the “Bourne” films? Or maybe it would be more fitting to interview Chevy Chase, in character, as “spy” Emmett Fitz-Hume, from the movie “Spies Like Us.”

Coldwell Banker Fires FOX News Contributor Who Blamed Santa Barbara Shooter's 'Gay Impulses'

FOX News contributor Dr. Robi Ludwig, who made the claim over the weekend that Santa Barbara shooter Eliot Rodger went on his rampage because he couldn't deal with his "homosexual impulses" and then said she was "misunderstood", has been fired from her job as a spokesperson for Coldwell Banker Real Estate, according to a note left by the company on Facebook after an inquiry from activist Scott Wooledge.

Wrote Coldwell: "Dr. Robi’s comments on the tragedy in Santa Barbara do not represent the opinions of Coldwell Banker. Therefore at this time we feel it best to part ways with her as our lifestyle real estate correspondent."

Fox News Contributor Handily Debunks VA-Obamacare Connection

On a recent episode of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace tried to link the Veterans Health Administration scandal (VA) with Obamacare, suggesting that due to “big government,” Obamacare will eventually experience management problems similar to those plaguing the VA.

Panelist and USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers disagreed.

”They’re not the same thing. Of course, the VA is really government-run health care where you have the government controlling everything. That’s not what Obamacare is. Obamacare is more like insurance. You don’t have the doctors working for Obamacare. So I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

Powers went on to say that Wallace’s position is not an unusual one for Republicans. The specter of big government is a common weapon in the GOP arsenal, she said.

”So this is not a surprising argument coming from Republicans. It is always their argument. Take anything that is happening in the world and this is the argument that they funnel it through. It’s always proof that big government is a problem. So it’s not surprising.”

Many have suggested that privatization is the answer to the VA’s woes, but that would be a mistake said Powers:

”So this idea that somehow putting things off into the private sector is going to make everything work also doesn’t work if you consider your experiences, at least experiences I’ve had with insurance companies, health insurance companies.”

Fox News Psychotherapist Suggests ‘Homosexual Impulses’ Triggered Santa Barbara Mass Shooting

In a Fox News discussion on the mass shooting in Santa Barbara, California over the weekend, reality television psychotherapist Dr. Robi Ludwig speculated that the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, may have gone on the rampage because he couldn’t cope with his “homosexual impulses.”

Although Rodger explained in a disturbing video posted on YouTube that he planned the shooting as retribution for women rejecting him sexually, Ludwig still felt the need to vomit out this baseless claim:

“When I was first listening to him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s angry with women for rejecting him. And then I started to have a different idea: Is this somebody who is trying to fight against his homosexual impulses? Was he angry with women because they were taking away men from him? But this is a kid who couldn’t connect, and felt enraged, and wanted to obliterate anyone that made him feel like a nothing.”

Fox in the Hen House: Fair & Balanced, Depending on Which Way the Wind Blows

When Walter Cronkite, America’s most respected news broadcaster, reported that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, President Lyndon Johnson sighed: "If we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost the nation."

Anti-marriage forces are saying something similar, only this time it’s "If we’ve lost Bill O’Reilly." 

Fox News’ roster of on-air stars might continue to throw red meat to its core audience by fulminating against the "war on Christmas" and the "forced resignation" of the head of Mozilla. But if one starts peeling the onion of Fox’s ideology, it appears that Fox News is following polls that show the marriage battle has decisively gone our way. 

"Unlike abortion, nobody gets hurt when gays marry," wrote the network’s biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, back in May 2012. He hedges by complaining that anyone opposing marriage equality is branded a bigot. Look even further back: In 2002, O’Reilly called self-styled "ex-gay" poster boy Stephen Bennett an "idiot" on his radio show and "religious fanatic" later on TV. Full article here on Edge!