Why Are Republicans and the Media Not Discussing Real Scandals

Why are Republicans and the Media Not Discussing Real Scandals

1. Carbon pollution reaches historic highs, threatening human existence. The concentration of climate warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm),” scientists estimate. “At the beginning of industrialisation the concentration of CO2 was just 280ppm,” said Prof Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We must hope that the world crossing this milestone will bring about awareness of the scientific reality of climate change and how human society should deal with the challenge.” The last time the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels that high, humans did not exist. The West Antarctic ice sheet also did not exist, and sea levels were as much as 82 feet higher than they are today. During an earlier period when CO2 levels were this high, temperatures were 5° to 10°F warmer globally.

2. The devastating impact of sequestration on kids, cancer patients and first responders. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the budget deficit will shrink to its smallest level since before the Great Recession in 2013, and it will continue to decrease through 2015. But despite the smaller deficits, Republicans remain focused on spending reductions — even as the most recent round of cuts has kicked children out of preschool, left cancer patients without needed screenings, undermined public health and fire safety, and gutted programs that help low-income Americans in a variety of ways. Those cuts have also threatened to derail the economic recovery, which has sputtered along despite the headwinds created by a consistent focus on deficit reduction.

3. Massive cuts to food stamps for the most vulnerable Americans. The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps by $20.5 billion — more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Earlier this week, the Senate Agriculture Committee also agreed to a $4.1 billion reduction. The program keeps hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans out of the deepest pits of poverty, and even as the Great Recession swelled SNAP rolls, the program continued to push its erroneous payments rates to record lows.

4. 1100 workers die in garment factory collapse in Bangladesh and most American retailers plan business as usual. Since a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,100 clothing industry workers, American retailers have been hesitant to adopt safety plans that could prevent similar tragedies. Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would sign a safety upgrade plan that has been approved by six major European retailers and one other American company, but many other manufacturers — including Walmart and Gap — are holding out. Although some retailers fear the costs of upgrades, they could pass them on entirely to consumers and only raise prices by 10 cents per garment.

5. 4,000 gun deaths due to gun violence since Newtown. A crowdsourced effort to count every person killed by a gun in the United States since the Newtown tragedy is currently being hosted by Slate. As of this writing, the count is 4,150. The Senate rejected gun safety legislation in April and has not yet set a date for reconsidering the measure.

Republicans have tried to make scandals where there are none. Certainly the IRS out is Cincinnati - or two employees could have used better judgement, but Obama started firing people as soon as he heard. Benghazi went nowhere because Obama has in truth been better at protecting America than conservatives. The AP scandal is going nowhere because the DOJ did nothing illegal - though many of us may find it disturbing.

The New Propaganda, ABC News and The Weekly Standard Shill For Republicans, Put Out False Benghazi Email

The New Propaganda, ABC News and The Weekly Standard Shill For Republicans, Put Out False Benghazi Email

CNN is challenging the accuracy of reporting on a supposed email from a White House aide that seemed to suggest an effort to provide political cover for the administration following the September attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The new revelations regarding the email comes after the allegedly flawed reporting has spread through the media.

CNN host Jake Tapper reported today that a newly obtained email from White House aide Ben Rhodes about Benghazi "differs from how sources inaccurately quoted and paraphrased it in previous accounts to different media organizations." Tapper writes that the email shows that someone provided outlets like ABC News and The Weekly Standard with "inaccurate information" to make it appear that the White House was "more interested in the State Department's desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and warnings about these groups so as to not bring criticism to the State Department than Rhodes' email actually stated."

From Tapper's report:

    In the email sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m., obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source, Rhodes wrote:

    "All -

    "Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

    "There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don't compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

    "We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies."

    You can read the email HERE.

    ABC News reported that Rhodes wrote: "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting." The Weekly Standard reported that Rhodes "responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee the following morning."

    Whoever provided those quotes seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department's concerns.

The allegedly inaccurate characterizations of the Rhodes email by ABC News and The Weekly Standard were repeated in numerous media outlets, and a Republican research document. 

ABC News' alleged misquote of the Rhodes email -- filed by Jonathan Karl -- was cited and repeated in numerous outlets, including USA Today, Politico, The Daily Mail, National Review Online, and Fox News. During Special Report's panel discussion on May 10, contributor Charles Krauthammer cited the email to claim the White House was more interested in "political cover for all the agencies and not about the truth."

    KRAUTHAMMER: There is in one of the memos that you mentioned the deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. So he is writing in the heat of this when they're trying to get revisions and redactions. He writes, "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities." Not reflect the truth, but reflect -- an "agency equity" is a way of saying, bureaucratese, reflects the interests and the political cover of all of the agencies. The point of the exercise is what he is saying, it has to reflect stuff that will be political cover for all the agencies and not about the truth. And we know now that it was a document completely rammed through by the White House and the State Department reflecting all their objections. And the bottom line is in the end they redacted the truth.

ABC News' report about the email was also cited in a Republican National Committee research document about "Obama's Bungled Benghazi Response":

The Weekly Standard's alleged mischaracterization, filed by Stephen Hayes, was cited and repeated in conservative outlets like Townhall.com, The American Thinker, Hot Air, and Breitbart.com.

Media Matters has previously noted numerous problems with the media's Benghazi reporting.

UPDATE: NBC News' Chuck Todd is also reporting that he obtained Rhodes' email and it paints a "different picture" than previously reported and "contradicts" ABC News' Benghazi report.

UPDATE 2: The Washington Post's Erik Wemple reports that a "spokesman for ABC News says, 'Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.'" While ABC News has reportedly suggested that Karl's reporting on the email simply provided a "summary," Karl's ABCNews.com piece actually purported to present a direct quote from the Rhodes email -- a quote which does not appear in the email posted by CNN

The Daily Mail, National Review Online, Fox News Townhall.com, The American Thinker, Hot Air, and Breitbart.com are all anti-American neo-fascist "news' outlets. They'll say anything to make the USA weaker and look more like 1852 than 2013.

UnAmerican Fox News Promoted Claim That Benghazi Witness Was Threatened Falls Apart

UnAmerican Fox News Promoted Claim That Benghazi Witness Was Threatened Falls Apart

After Fox News pushed a claim that a Benghazi witness had been "subjected to threats and intimidation" by State Department employees, the witness' lawyer admitted on the network that his client never said he had been threatened by anyone.

In a May 6 article for FoxNews.com previewing the then-upcoming House hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Fox News reporters James Rosen and Chad Pergram wrote that Mark Thompson, one of the scheduled witnesses, "has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress." The claim was sourced to Joseph diGenova, the Republican attorney representing Thompson.

But in a May 9 appearance on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, when diGenova was asked by guest host Stuart Varney about Thompson's claims that "he was the target of threats and intimidation," diGenova responded that Thompson "actually hasn't said that."

Fox News, just another way of saying dangerous thugs who are are threat to true American values.

 The full size chart gives s snapshot of how the sequester affects average Americans.

The Radical Conservative Movement Terrified It's Benghazi Conspiracy Madness Is Not Working

The Radical Conservative Movement Terrified It's Benghazi Conspiracy Madness Is Not Working

Right-wing media are using a congressional hearing to push new myths about the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. In fact, these myths are discredited by previous congressional reports and testimony, which show that the politicized nature of the hearings come from right-wing media and Congressional Republicans, that the military could not have rescued personnel from the second attack, that the administration was in constant communication at all levels during the attacks, and that the intelligence community believed there was a link to an anti-Islam video at the time of the attacks.
MYTH: Latest Benghazi Hearing Is Apolitical

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade Attacks The Claim That Benghazi Hearings Are "Politically Driven." On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade claimed that because self-identified whistleblowers are testifying at congressional hearings on Benghazi at a time that elections are not being held, the hearings can't be politically driven, saying "politics is out, and whistleblowers are in":

    KILMEADE: [A]nyone who says this is politically driven, or it's against the president, that's out the window. Because if there's a non-political season in this world in American politics, it's now. The mid-terms aren't close --

    STEVE DOOCY [co-host]: Sure.

    KILMEADE: And the president is not running. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/7/13, via Media Matters]

FACT: Right-Wing Media And Congressional Republicans Have Politicized The Hearings

Fox News' John Bolton: "I Hope [Benghazi] Is A Cover Up ... If It Was Merely A Political Cover-Up Then There Can Be A Political Cost To Pay." On Your World, Fox News contributor John Bolton said he hoped the hearings found that despite all evidence to the contrary, the Obama administration had engaged in a "political cover up" by altering CIA talking points to suggest that the attacks came in response to an anti-Islam video:

    BOLTON: I'd have to say for the good of the country, I hope it is a cover up rather than the alternative, which is the Obama administration was so blind to the reality of the threat of Islamic terrorism, the continued threat from Al Qaeda... If that's the problem there's no cure for it. If it was merely a political cover-up then there can be a political cost to pay. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 5/6/13, via Media Matters]

Lawyers Representing The "Whistleblowers" In Hearings Are Long-Time GOP Activists With History Of Pushing Discredited Claims. The lawyers claiming to represent some of the witnesses at the Benghazi hearing, Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, are long-time Republicans known for pushing false claims in the media and for having conflicts of interest in their professional work. They have both served as advisors to Republican candidates and donated thousands of dollars to GOP candidates and causes, and have been criticized for a conflict of interest for serving in a dual role in separate Justice Department investigations and for dropping "the air of impartiality, non-partisanship, and professionalism required" by their roles as leaders of a congressional investigation. [Media Matters, 4/30/13; 5/6/13]

Conservatives would like patriotic Americans to believe that the military operates like some movie fantasy in which they either can see into the future and arrive with a full special forces unit anywhere in the world on fifteen minutes notice.