Is It Only Terrorism if White People are Attacked?

There was an act of domestic terrorism, an attack on the Colorado office of the NAACP, on January 6th.  You probably never heard of it.  That's because the media didn't cover it.

A bomb, consisting of an explosive device attached to a can of gas, went unnoticed in America's mainstream media.  That is until word leaked out on Twitter and the story went viral.  The outrage became more than the media could take and so they belatedly and obviously reluctantly ran the story.

Reluctantly?  That's certainly the impression you might get from reading the first graph of the USA Today report:  The hashtag #NAACPbombing has gone viral, reflecting frustration among one of Twitter's most vocal communities about what they say is a glaring disparity in how news outlets cover violence against blacks.  Most vocal?  You could easily substitute "uppity" for most vocal.

The cops are looking (we hope) for a suspect described as a balding white male in his 40s driving a dirty white pickup truck.  Good luck with that, cops.

And, if you need another bite of batshit crazy American racism, consider this performance from, what else, FOX.

Suck On It, FOX!

I don't believe I have ever enjoyed watching FOX News - until tonight.   When they declared Barack Obama elected it was as though each of them was made to swallow broken glass.   And I've been waiting so long to see those degenerates swallow broken glass.

Tonight may spark a lot of introspection among the far Right.  They had the corporatist backing, they had the bigots and the racists and the fundies.   They started off the race spotted a handy hunk of the electorate.

To anyone named Koch or Coors or those who sail in their wake, Suck It.

FOX News Admits Global Warming Science is Legit

This FOX News panel has stumbled upon a breathtaking discovery - apparently this anthropogenic global warming theory is true.   Yep, the facts do seem to back it up.  Why they've even got the FOX "brain room" looking into it right now.

So you're probably asking, "what's the catch?"   And there is indeed a catch.   While FOX News says Republican presidential nomination contender Rick Perry is a bag of wind for denying the truth of global warming - wait for it - it doesn't matter.   That's right, global warming doesn't matter.   Republican primary voters couldn't care less about global warming.  It simply doesn't matter.





And while we're on the topic of the Republican front-runner whack job, Rick Perry, there's this report from Grist that the never-ending extreme drought plaguing Texas may shut down several of Perry's state's power plants this fall.   Even though these plants are run on fossil fuels, all that heat is useless unless there's plenty of fresh water to boil to produce the steam that turns the generator turbines.  No water, no power.   No water, all you're left with is more useless hot air, just like the governor himself.

A number of Texas power plants may need to cut back operations or shut down completely if the state’s severe drought continues into the fall, an official with Texas’ main transmission manager told FuelFix.

 If the state’s drought continues for much longer and water levels continue falling at other power plant reservoirs, other units could be forced to curtail operations or shut-down completely, [said Kent Saathoff, vice president of system planning and operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.]

Now the bitch is no power, no air conditioning, no refrigeration, which also, in a state beset by record-breaking temperatures, means no economy.   Simply put, Texas is screwed and it's screwed by something its highest elected officials won't even acknowledge exists.  Adios, suckahs!

OutFOXxed

What has been the biggest media story for the past week?   Could it be News Of The World exploding?   Rupert Murdoch and News Corp?  Telephone hacking and journalists corruption a national police service?  Criminal journalism?

Well, that all depends.   FOX News has a media criticism panel show called, predictably, FOX News Watch.   This, to FOX, was what mattered in media news:



And then there's this, from AlterNet:

FoxNews.com posts "Behind the breaks" videos featuring panelists' discussions during Fox News Watch's commercial breaks. In one, Fox News contributor Cal Thomas asks, "Anybody want to bring up the subject we're not talking about today?" and adds, "I'm not going to touch it."

In the remote chance you didn't know, FOX is owned by News Corp.   So much for "fair and balanced."

Is Beck Too Much Even For FOX?

Is FOX News ready to ditch Glenn Beck?  New York Times media columnist, David Carr, claims that FOX execs have about had it with this lunatic:

He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.


On the other side, people who work for Mr. Beck point out that he could live without Fox News. Unlike some other cable hosts, Mr. Beck has a huge multiplatform presence: he has sold around four million books, is near the top of talk-radio ratings, has a growing Web site called The Blaze, along with a stage performance that still packs houses. Forbes estimated that his company, Mercury Radio Arts, had more than $30 million in revenue.

How could a breakup between Mr. Beck and Fox News — a bond that seemed made in pre-Apocalyptic heaven — come to pass? They were never great friends to start with: Mr. Beck came to Fox with a huge radio show and had been on CNN Headline News, so he did not owe his entire career to Fox and frequently went off-message. The sniping between Fox News executives and Mr. Beck’s team began soon after he went on the air in 2009.

Many on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people” — have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network. Some 300 advertisers fled the show, leaving sponsorship to a slew of gold bullion marketers whose message dovetails nicely with Mr. Beck’s end-of-times gospel. Both parties go to some lengths to point out that that the discussion has nothing to do with persistent criticism from the left.

The idea of FOX without Beck isn't all that appealing.  If anything, Glenn Beck shows FOX as it truly is.   He IS what FOX is all about and nobody, including Hannity and O'Reilly, shows that more clearly than Glenn Beck.  This guy is the unhealing scab.

Iraq, The Arab Democracy Success Story - Not

FOX News mouthpiece Sean Hannity recently denounced the Egyptian protesters, rambling on about how made-by-America Iraq was the only democracy in the Arab world.  To Hannity, it seems, no backward Arab people can achieve democracy without first getting a taste of American shock & awe.

We don't hear much about Iraq these days which is why creeps like Hannity are able to get away with lying about it.  However all's not well, not by a country mile, in Mesopotamia.  Democracy is faltering, at least if you measure such a thing by law and order, maintenance of the rule of law, transparency, curbs on corruption and other democratic niceties.

Human Rights Watch has released a report claiming that the Iraqi government is running a string of secret detention centres at which captives are routinely tortured.

One of the sites is at a military base where U.S. forces maintain an advisory team, the U.S. military confirmed.


Former prisoners who were held at another of the facilities, a military base in the Green Zone that was vacated by U.S. troops last summer, have told Human Rights Watch researchers that detainees there were regularly abused, by being hung upside down, beaten and given electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the existence of the Green Zone prison, which is being operated by the 56th Brigade of the Iraqi army and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both of which are controlled by the prime minister's office. 

Well, unlike Saddam, at least the current Baghdad regime isn't out gassing its own people.   Of course Saddam didn't either at the outset of his reign.

Want to Hit Back at Fox? Call Your Cable Company.

That little nest of diseased vipers also known as Fox News has really gone too far in mocking Canada's military and our contribution to the war in Afghanistan.

No point e-mailing Fox. Straight into the electronic dustbin.

Here's something you can do. Write your cable provider - Shaw or Rogers mainly - and demand that they drop Fox News from their lineup. They've already got plenty of porn channels, Fox News won't be missed.

Jonathon Kay Bites Fox News on the Ass

It takes some doing for a scribbler from the National Toast to tear a strip off Fox News but that only makes today's piece by Jonathan Kay that much more enjoyable. Read it for yourself:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/23/jonathan-kay-on-the-juvenile-rantings-of-greg-gutfeld-and-while-i-m-at-it-ann-coulter.aspx

Last I heard, CanWest, Kay's employer, owner of the financially challenged rag, also held the Canadian rights to Fox.