Tag Archives: Greta Van Susteren

MSNBC Primetime is killing Fox “news” in ratings

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Rachel Maddow Beating Hannity: Are People Finally Catching on to FOX News’ BS? | Alternet

“Particularly impressive were the results of the two powerhouse programs on the MSNBC lineup: Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. Maddow won seven of the eight days against her Fox competition, Sean Hannity. For the 8-day run Maddow beat Hannity by 18% and her 544k average was second to only Bill O’Reilly in all of cable news. O’Donnell won all eight days against Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. His margin of victory over Van Susteren was 17% for the eight days.

This can no longer be considered a temporary blip on the ratings scales. With two weeks having elapsed, the MSNBC programs are showing steady strength against competition that was once thought insurmountable. Only Bill O’Reilly is holding his top position for Fox in primetime. This may indicate that Sean Hannity is wearing thin with viewers who are likely disappointed with his overly confident (and harebrained) assurances that all the polls were wrong and that Mitt Romney would emerge victorious.

Hannity is perhaps the most stridently partisan host on the Fox News network and frequently augments his analysis with that of the pundit world’s most notorious nutcase, Dick Morris. As for Van Susteren, she never had the cult-like following of her Fox comrades, but she has been closely associated with her good friend (and client of her husband), Sarah Palin… “

One also has to factor in all the non-believers / anti-fans who watched Fox prior to the election because of the OMG Factor or, in other words, the rich vein of comedy material and/or outrage one could always find there. Now that the election’s over, people can just relax and watch what they really enjoy… So Fox has not only lost the anti-fan progressive audience, but perhaps it’s also losing people who are waking from their comas.

The Iraq war is over! Good news to everyone (except for the Fox-GOP-Teaparty-nation)

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THE IRAQ WAR IS OVER ON OBAMA’S WATCH? Time for the Fox-News-Republican-Teaparty-nation to attack:

October 22 edition of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

Van Susteren to John Bolton: “[A]t what point, though, do you get out, do you say, ‘Look, it’s time to go home’?”
Bolton: “We’re still in Germany. We’re still in Japan.”

October 22 edition of Special Report: 

Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes: [the announcement] is “a major setback” and “a disservice to our men and women in uniform”
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer: [the announcement] was a “big, big failure.” … endorses keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq “the same way that we retained forces in Korea, Germany, and Japan 50 years ago, to our advantage”

It’s sad and unfortunate that neither Romney nor Perry, the top GOP presidential candidates, seem to understand that it was ultimately up to the Iraqis to decide whether U.S. troops stayed in Iraq past the 2011 deadline, not the U.S. military:

Romney: “…The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.” (via)
Perry: “…The President was slow to engage the Iraqis and there’s little evidence today’s decision is based on advice from military commanders.” (via)

And once-relevant hawks are truly upset:

Bitter, bitter loser and perpetual war advocate John McCain said: “This decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East…” (via)

Stand by for equally “interesting” statements from members of the former (and as yet unpunished) Bush Administration…

Keep in mind:

Here are some relevant numbers:

8 years, 260 days since Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program

8 years, 215 days since the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq

8 years, 175 days since President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln

4,479 U.S. military fatalities

30,182 U.S. military injuries

468 contractor fatalities

103,142 – 112,708 documented civilian deaths

2.8 million internally displaced Iraqis

$806 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011

$3 – $5 trillion in total economic cost to the United States of the Iraq war according to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes

$60 billion in U.S. expenditures lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001

0 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq

If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, there is no scenario where Feds would be paid

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AND YOU WOULD HOPE that means the House and Senate members wouldn’t get paid either — in fact, especially the House and Senate members. From the Federal Times:

The government could choose to pay interest on Treasury securities, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment insurance and defense contractors, BPC said. But that would leave no money to fund the Education, Labor, Justice and Energy departments, Federal Highway Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, tax refunds and veterans programs.

Under another scenario laid out by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the government could try to protect the so-called social safety net by leaving defense contractors unpaid and instead spend on food stamps, housing assistance, veterans programs, special education grants and tuition assistance. But that would still leave large portions of the government — including the FBI, Interior, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — shuttered.

Federal salaries and benefits? Forget about it. In the center’s list of priorities, feds don’t come close to getting paid in either scenario.

This will be GREAT for our economy!

Related:

Boehner agrees with Obama: Social Security may not be paid if debt ceiling isn’t raised

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Think Progress reports on a Fox News interview John Boehner had with Palin’s biggest fan, Greta Van Susteren, on Friday night (via namelessgenxer):

Republicans have put forth the theory that Social Security is not subject to debt ceiling limitations because it is financed by payroll taxes. But it seems like Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) agrees with Obama, and not his GOP colleagues, on this one. During an interview last night with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Boehner agreed that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, Social Security is one of the programs that is on the chopping block.

Money quote from Boehner:

“It all comes out of the general fund, and the general fund is expected to be out of cash come August 3rd or August 4th, and then the Treasury Secretary would have to make decisions on what to pay and what not to pay.”

In other words, retired teaparty voters shouldn’t assume SS / Medicare are on top of the general fund priority list when the world burns down.

Further, both Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mars) and Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) have accused President Obama of lying about Social Security checks. Walsh went even further and said “You know darn well that if Aug. 2, comes and goes there is plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all Social Security obligations.”  This statement is what’s commonly referred to as ‘talking out of your ass.’

I think Walsh better take a look at the federal government’s budget for August: its incoming revenue as opposed to its outgoing obligations.

Of course there should be spending cuts, but incoming revenue is obviously WAY too low for the size / needs of our country. In case you weren’t aware (tea party voters), human population increases annually around the globe, even in the U.S. But let’s extend those tax cuts for the wealthy because one day soon they might decide not to bank the extra income and create a job instead!!

Sister Sarah: Just quittin’ and cancellin’ and twattin’ all over the place

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The real question is: what will Greta Van Susteren have to talk about on her Fox “News” show without Palin’s exclusive interviews? Palin really seems to have become Greta’s meal ticket.

Former [half-term] Alaska governor Sarah Palin has canceled a trip next month to war-ravaged Sudan, one of the most unstable nations in the world and the focus of passionate advocacy within the U.S. evangelical community.

Palin scrapped her visit to the North African country for scheduling reasons, several sources close to her said. She was planning to travel with Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical leader Billy Graham, as well as Fox News personality Greta Van Susteren, to the July 9 independence ceremony of South Sudan, the sources said. Van Susteren also canceled her trip. Graham said on Wednesday that he still plans to go.

And MMFA catches the lamestream media trying to piss on Palin. AGAIN! NATURALLY… AS USUAL!

Earlier today, one of Fox News’ websites, FoxNews.com, reported that Fox News contributor Sarah Palin is “end[ing] her ‘One Nation’ bus tour” and returning home where “it’s prime salmon fishing season” this time of year. Palin subsequently fired off a tweet sarcastically asking “I did?” and saying that the media “never cease to amaze.”

And then another Fox News website, the Fox Nation, jumped in to defend Palin against the report by its sister website, reporting that Palin “quiets bus tour rumors.” Palin later jumped back into the fray with a Facebook post decrying reports from unnamed media outlets that her bus tour had been canceled. Palin ended her Facebook note by declaring that these unnamed media outlets have a “long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.”

All the stories were generated by one lamestream source: Fox “News.” Heh. Oops!

 

Sarah Palin wonders if Libya is a ‘Squirmish’

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“I haven’t heard the President say that ‘we are at war’ and that’s why I, too, uh, I’m not knowing do we use this, the term ‘intervention,’ do we use ‘war,’ uh, do we use ‘squirmish’? What is it?” (at 4:00 in the video)

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Also, too:

Sarah Palin Overstates Cost of Libyan Operation by 700% – Last night on the nation’s center of right wing propaganda, Fox News, Sarah Palin casually overstated the cost of the Libya intervention — by 700%.

Pentagon figures show that the Libyan operation cost about $600 million in the first seven days, but Palin told her pal Greta Van Susteren (and millions of Fox viewers who will now repeat it endlessly like robot parrots) that it cost that much every day.

Weekend in the bunker

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Lady Gaga LITERALLY becomes a fashion victim -- TMZ

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NEWS

POLITICS / GOV

  • Village double standards: Ruth Marcus is outraged that President Obama would subvert democracy by making a recess appointment to get around Republican filibustering… except that BUSH APPOINTED HER HUSBAND TO THE FTC WITH A RECESS APPOINTMENT!

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Via Crooks and Liars, yet another one of these studies:

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it’s been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest—not only in amount but also as a percentage of income—which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

MISC

In Afghanistan, in the midst of war, many animals are lost and separated from their family. Many are found later by troops from the US, UK and Canada. Soldiers rescue these animals and get help from rescue groups that help them send these animals out of the country and to a forever loving home that they deserve. More…
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