Think Progress: Beck: ‘What a surprise,’ Obama didn’t call on Fox News during his press conference.
Think Progress: Brownie Attacks Obama Administration’s Response To Swine Flu: Officials Are Just Crying ‘Chicken Little’On his radio show today, conservative talker Glenn Beck recycled a year-old talking point to complain about President Obama not calling on anyone from Fox News during his press conference last night. "What a surprise" he said sarcastically before asking, "I mean how can the guy face Ahmadinejad but he can't face Fox?" Listen here:
It's hard to suggest that Obama doesn't want to "face" Fox News, given that its White House correspondent, Major Garrett, was called on at the two previous prime-time news conferences. When Fox suggested that they were not being given enough access to Obama during last fall's presidential campaign, Garrett actually defended Obama. "[M]ay I point out Obama has done 5 interviews with me and one with Chris Wallace, one with Brit Hume and one with Bill O'Reilly," Garrett wrote in an e-mail obtained by Huffington Post.
Think Progress: Conservative talker suspended after blaming swine flu on the ‘millions of leeches’ from Mexico.Yesterday, former FEMA chief Michael Brown went on Fox Business to talk about the response of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Obama administration to the H1N1 flu virus. Brownie, who gained infamy for his incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, launched into a tirade accusing the WHO for addressing the H1NI virus in a selfish bid to gain "more attention" and said the Obama administration is recklessly overreacting:
BROWN: Well I think there’s one thing they’re legitimately worried about and that is this H1N1 is a new strain we haven’t seen before so we’re not sure how Tamiflu and everything will work against it. Here’s what I really think is going on. I think they want to raise this level because that gives them more attention, it gives them more, you know, more legitimacy, and allows them to get out there and say ‘oh look at us, we’re in control we've got this thing taken care of.’ It legitimizes what they’re doing. We shouldn’t be scaring the public. [...]
Neil, my theory always was after Katrina that the Bush administration and now the Obama administration will do it too. They will come out and they will do everything including the kitchen sink because they don’t want to get caught with their pants down. But what that does is, that’s the same as crying the sky is falling, chicken little. And next time people will be less inclined to believe it.
Watch it:
Host Neil Cavuto tried to rehabilitate Brownie's image by telling him that he was a "sacrificial lamb" for the Bush administration's Katrina failures. But just as Brown was woefully unqualified to take the job of FEMA director, it is unclear that he knows anything more about reacting to a possible pandemic.
After all, Brown (aka "Brownie") was a central figure in the Bush administration's dismissive, inadequate response to the disaster. He waited days after Louisiana had declared an emergency to even request DHS personnel to the Gulf region. As officials attempted to inform Brown that people were dying at the New Orleans Superdome, his press secretary responded that Brown needed "much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes" to eat at a restaurant. Brown told the press he had just learned about the situation at the Superdome four days after Katrina made landfall and a day after his colleagues had tried to tell him. He later resigned in disgrace.
Despite Brown's attacks, the Obama administration has been praised by experts for its response to the flu outbreak. Officials have made rapid moves to dispel "unjustified fears about the flu virus," while "stressing the need for precautions, such as washing hands, covering sneezes and seeking medical attention for flu-like symptoms." The WHO has raised its global alert level to phase 5 because the virus appears to be spreading easily person-to-person, and cases are appearing that have no link to Mexico.
- Prudent or panic?
April 30: Rachel Maddow presents a range of swine flu responses to Dr. Michael Osterholm to gage their degree of hysteria on her Worry Meter.Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Conservative talker Jay Severin was suspended indefinitely today by Boston's WTKK-FM after using the current swine flu outbreak to attack Mexicans and immigrants. On his radio show, Severin blamed the swine flu on what he called "some of the world's lowest of primitives in poor Mexico":
So now in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico -- women with mustaches and VD -- now we have swine flu. ... We should be if anything surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types considering the number of cimminalieans already here. [...]
[W]hen scoop up some of the world's lowest of primitives in poor Mexico and drop it down in the middle of the United States. Poor, without skills, without language, not share our culture, not share our hygiene. ... It's millions of leeches from a primitive country. ... Now they are exporting a rather more active form of disease which is the swine flu.
Listen to a compilation of his remarks:
Despite his comments, Severin's agent believes that Severin "will be back on the air doing great radio soon."
digby: Narcissistic Parasites
Economist Robert Frank, creative thinker and all around nice guy (and friend of this blog) went into the Lion's Den today and found that the beast was rabidly foaming at the mouth:
I've been writing about this phenomenon for a while now. It's an outgrowth of puerile Randism. These people really believe they are something very, very special. More absurdly, they really believe they work harder than everyone else. That's right, a moronic, blow dried FOX TV celebrity who spends more time with a tailor and manicurist in one week than most people spend in a lifetime, considers himself to be wealthy and successful not because he's a TV performer who got lucky, but because he's superior to everyone who makes less money than him. Indeed, these overpaid, Galt-worshipping wingnuts actually think they produce something and what they produce is unique and important.
If there is anyone in the world who should be thanking his lucky, lucky stars that Rupert Murdoch created a TV propaganda arm to protect the aristocracy and decided to hire a bunch of vapid spokesmodels to parrot talking points, it's a FOX News gasbag. John Galt would call such people parasites --- and in this case, he wouldn't be wrong.
Another case in point:
digby
Republican road show April 30: Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, unveiled a new initiative called the "National Council for a New America," which is being billed as a traveling road show featuring top Republican Congressmen. Is this really going to help the Republican Party's image problem? Rachel Maddow is joined by MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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