Fox News is Lying to You -- AGAIN

Fox News reported that a video of Dept. of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod talking to an audience of NAACP members proved she was racist, and shows her saying that she was proud of withholding help for a white couple who were in danger of losing their farm.

Only one problem: When you view the whole tape, you see that this is not so.

Ms Sherrod was relating doubts she had way back in 1986, when she was working for a non-profit. She was explaining how for a while in her position there, only black clients had come through needing help. Then one day, she had her very first opportunity to help a white couple. As she explained after this controversy broke out, she was at the time "telling the story of how working with [the white client] helped me to see the issue is not about race. It's about those who have versus those who do not have."

She related how she had joined this non-profit to help other blacks, since that was all she had seen suffering growing up. So when a rare white couple in this area applied for help, she was, at this early point in her career twenty-four years ago, taken aback, and she admits, tempted to see them as not worthy of help somehow. But the whole point of the story she’s relating, as you see if you watch her whole talk, is that she saw the light, and realized it was poor people in general she wanted to help.

And another small detail left out by the makers of this video, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, and Fox “News” is that the white couple in question -- you know, the “victims” of Sherrod’s “racism”? -- absolutely love her. When questioned on this story, the old couple were incredulous that anyone could call her racist, and talked about how great she was with them, and how she helped save their farm.

The farmer's wife, Eloise Spooner, 82, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that Sherrod helped save their land. Spooner, who considered Sherrod a "friend for life," said that "the federal official worked tirelessly to help" the couple hold onto their farm as they faced bankruptcy in 1986. "Her husband told her, ‘You're spending more time with the Spooners than you are with me,'" Spooner said. "She took probably two or three trips with us to Albany just to help us out."

Some racist.

Look, we all experience doubts in life, and adjust our viewpoints as we mature. Shirley Sherrod was courageous enough to talk openly about her doubts, to make a point that she knows she was wrong to think that way, and that she realized it is better to unite with all races to fight the injustice of poverty.

And this is the type of person Fox News wants to smear? What are they really doing here? Just stoking racial resentment in whites?

No? Are you sure? After all, there’s a pattern here. There was the episode in September 2009 with White House Adviser Van Jones being forced to resign after it was revealed that he said some bad things about Republicans before joining the administration, basically. And what about the ACORN video circus, brought to you by the same folks who brought you this latest “creatively edited” tape?

That one was also proven to be surreptitiously edited with nefarious intent, for once again, when you view the unedited tape, you find that you are being deceived. In the ACORN case, tapes were edited to make it seem employees were helping a pimp and his whore with plans for housing underage prostitutes from Mexico. Just one problem: This too, was a big lie.

One of the employees these slimeballs were trying to frame turned out to be a guy who was actually eliciting as much information as he could from them. After all, he believed that they were criminal sex slave traders -- he bought their act -- and he wanted to report them to the police. Which he did -- immediately after these soulless “pranksters” left with their secret video “evidence.”

Which “evidence,” as you may recall, was dutifully reported by Fox News. And reported. And reported. It was all they talked about for days. Playing the clips over and over again. The heavily edited clips. The intentionally misleading, slanderous clips. Reported as news. By Fox “News.”

Now the latest is that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said his department will reconsider the ouster of Shirley Sherrod. He decided this after civil rights leaders told him they were "snookered" into believing a conservative website's charges of racism against her were true, which was what had caused them to make an earlier, rushed statement that she should resign.

So, conservatives, I ask you: Is this really “fair and balanced” reporting? Is this the “trusted news source” you want to get your information from?

Because, if it is, you must really like being lied to.

And we ain’t talkin’ no “white” lies here, either.

Yes, by now the truth is plain. It is, shall we say, black and white.

* * * * * * * * *

Check out Rachel Maddow’s brilliant dissection of this story, as well as her brilliant dissection of the Obama administration’s terrible habit of kowtowing to right wing media on these character assassination attempts, before thoroughly investigating the charges. The administration is, as she puts it, “feeding the dog at the table -- and the dog is going to keep coming back.”

News report on the Shirley Sherrod story.

Reform Health Care Reform

Despite the hyperbolic cries of "socialism" from misinformed Limbaugh-listening, Fox 'news'-watching ditto heads, this bill is far too friendly to the corporate insurance industry.

To really bring health care costs down to where it should be in a truly market-driven economy, we need a robust public option or a Medicare buy-in option. Currently, there is very little competition between health insurance companies, as they have divvied up areas and pretty much charge what they want.

This bill, despite the exchanges to be created, will not reign in these greedy companies sufficiently, as their motivation is money, not the health of the American people.

Health care reform has been a long time coming, and the battle this time around has been fierce. The insurance companies and their corporate lobbyists threw everything they had at Congress and at the public to try to sway Congress in order to kill reform and keep things just the way they are.

Thanks to representatives like ours, Congresswoman Doris Matsui of Sacramento, California, we are on the way to true reform.

But please don't stop now. Let's get a public option (or the option to buy into Medicare) done, and that will not only bring down costs, it will insure we keep the "Corporations-First" party in the minority, where they belong.

I guess Palin and Hannity showed them liberals!

By backing an independent conservative in a New York race (23rd Congressional District) over the Republican nominee who was too "liberal" for them, Sarah Palin and the rest of the rabid neo-con pack hoped to really sock it to Obama and show the country that conservatives were on the rebound. Oops! The strategy backfired! The Democrat was elected to the historically Republican-held seat!

Talk about a rift in the party -- the GOP is reeling! By letting the loony neo-con talking heads on Fox and talk radio take over their message, they are reaping a bitter harvest. Maybe it's time to head back to the center, eh, Repubs?

Hate-spewing media responsible for sick brainwashed Adkisson

Holy cow! What a sick puppy! And misinformed too. The twisted Mr. Adkisson killed two adults and wounded seven others before being overpowered by congregants, authorities said, in a shooting at a Knoxville, KY church. According to the report on CNN.com:

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement," Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV told reporters Monday.

Authorities also discovered a letter from the state government telling Adkisson he was having his food stamps reduced or eliminated, police said.

How on earth could he blame "liberals" for his predicament? Must've been a Fox News watcher. Still, how could anyone, no matter how brainwashed by Fox and their ilk, think that food stamps being reduced is because of liberals? All I've heard for decades from the right is that welfare should be eliminated, including food stamps, while liberals are blamed for continuing the "welfare state." (Meanwhile, of course, the really huge "welfare" bill we pay year after year is for corporate welfare, which, as I write, has now grown to unfathomable proportions, as the corporate greedheads who caused our current economic meltdown get bailed out.

And his frustration at not being able to find work? Once again, the result of Bush and conservative policies, exporting jobs and destroying our economy in any number of ways.

I think Fox and the likes of Rush Limbaugh, etc., should be implicated in these murders, for brainwashing people and filling them with hate.

Attack Iran? Why not, look how well our other unilateral attacks have gone!

The drumbeat for a military assault on Iran is getting louder and louder, mainly from Bush and Cheney, etc, conservative think tanks, and of course the Fox Opinion – er, I mean "News" – channel.

And heck, why not? Things have gone so well in Iraq, and we've hardly scratched the surface of what Halliburton and all our favorite war-mongering corporations can profit off the war industry yet! I mean, c'mon, let's spur the upper-echelons of our economy with more death and destruction! Just think – we could probably triple the America-hating terrorist groups we've already helped create in the middle east!

Of course, all you crazy liberal types will whine and say we'll only be hurting ourselves. You obviously need to listen more to the great minds of our time, like Ann Coulter! And stop being so unpatriotic! After all, patriotism means supporting our resident-in-chief, no matter what hellhole he drags us into, right?

World War III, here we come!