In an apparent attempt to censor the President as he engaged in an informative and conciliatory question and answer session with GOP members, FOX News decided to cut off transmission and divert the discussion. This does not inspire trust in news, but represents yet another example of how FOX News manipulates the truth and engages in lies and deception to further their political agenda.
Appearing for the first time on ABC’s “This Week,” Ailes said that Beck’s often over-the-top rhetoric was politically legitimate, even if it ruffled a few feathers.
Reminded by Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington that Beck has warned of “slaughter” and a “killing spree” for those not on board with the Obama administration’s agenda, Ailes insisted that the reference wasn’t to this president but rather to murderous dictators.
“Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people, so I think he was probably accurate,” he said. “I think he speaks English, I don’t know. But I don’t misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing that he apologized for. But that happens in live television.”
Ailes was wrong. Beck’s reference was, indeed, to Obama.
UPDATE:
Here is Beck warning of a possible impending “slaughter” in November 2009:
I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit — there’s one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!
Most likely, it’ll happen sometime after Christmas. You’re gonna see this economy come up — we’re already seeing it, and now it’s gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they’re doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No — we’ll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!
Next Wednesday, President Obama will give his first State of the Union address. It’s a safe bet he’ll discuss the Afghanistan war. You probably recall that the President recently committed to start drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July 2011.
Setting a target date for the start of a withdrawal is a good step, but if we are going to make the president’s commitment into a reality, we need a concrete exit strategy.
In your State of the Union address on January 27, 2009, I want you to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan that begins no later than July 2011 and which completes a withdrawal of combat troops no later than July 1, 2012.
A concrete exit plan will lay the groundwork that will help make President Obama’s commitment to a draw-down a reality. Our country cannot afford to keep spending billions of dollars on a war that’s not making us safer. Staunching the flow of American blood and treasure into the Afghanistan war will be essential to the success of the Obama presidency and to getting our economy back on track. We need more than a date. We need a plan.
Please sign the petition today. If we get 10,000 signatures, we’ll deliver them to the White House on Monday. Your signature will help put us on a defined path to the end of the war in Afghanistan.
Why did the Democrats lose this week in Massachusetts? Brave New Films put this question to Celinda Lake, pollster for the Coakley campaign, and Stephanie Taylor from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Forget the conventional wisdom about moving to the center versus moving toward the base: both parties have been bought and paid for by corporate special interests, Lake argues, and consequently, the Tea Party Patriots have become a more popular political force than either the Democratic or the Republican Party:
The Democrats didn’t lose the Massachusetts Senate race this Tuesday. They lost it over twelve long and agonizing months ago, well before anyone even knew there would be a Massachusetts Senate race in January of 2010.
To put a rough date on it, this race was lost for the Democrats sometime between the 2008 election and the inauguration, whenever it was that the Obama administration made the fateful decision not to challenge Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, AIG and the rest of the white collar criminals that drove the U.S. economy into the ground, and chose instead to appoint Wall Street’s most prominent boosters and apologists to his economic advisory team. It was compounded when the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership spearheaded a healthcare reform strategy rooted in the false notions that the opponents of reform are operating in good faith, that legislation directly challenging the profit motives of one of the biggest industries in America can be achieved by consensus, and that the era of political partisanship is over. And as the Afghanistan war grows ever more disastrous, the political swamp the Democrats find themselves in today will become an inescapable quagmire, in the 2010 midterms and beyond.
When voters look at the Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats today, they see little of the ‘change’ they cast their ballots for last November. On healthcare, the White House has been outmaneuvered, out-organized, and outmatched by the health insurance industry from the very beginning, while the Democratic leaders in Congress have allowed the will of the caucus’ majority to be flouted and marginalized by a handful of industry-bought pretenders like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.
Failure over healthcare reform has been a shortcoming of political competence. Worse for the perception of voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere are the cases of the foreclosure crisis and re-regulation of the financial industry. In these cases, the administration has taken a timid stance, abdicating responsibility and even defending the status quo. These were failures not of competence, but of moral leadership. The upshot of this state of affairs in the minds of voters is the continuation of business as usual in Washington DC.
Ted Kennedy’s seat was lost this Tuesday not because voters abandoned Obama’s call for change, but because they continue to embrace it. The truth is that the mainstream of the Democratic leadership has forfeited its claims to that mantle. Voters continue to seek change, but they have found that the solution is not so facile as simply electing Democratic majorities to the House and Senate.
Obama famously instructed us that we are the change we are seeking. That message resonates now more strongly than ever, but only because we have discovered, to our dismay, that it is not to be found in Congress or the White House. This is the lesson coming out of Massachusetts this week: change will come, but its catalyst will not be found in Washington DC. It will have to come from us.
New Yorkers are starting to get acquainted with their new neighbor, former Tennessee Congressman and bank executive Harold Ford, Jr.
So who is the REAL Harold Ford, Jr.?
Well, for starters, he’s a staunch opponent of abortion rights. He also disapproves of marriage equality for gay couples, opposes public safety laws to keep guns off the streets, and blames immigrants for America’s problems. Doesn’t sound like much of a New Yorker, does he?
Of course, now that he’s living in Manhattan instead of south of the Mason-Dixon line, Ford is remaking himself as a pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun control progressive. But unfortunately for Harold, this is the age of the internet, and you can’t just walk away from your past statements. That’s why we compiled this video of the REAL Harold Ford, Jr., to introduce New Yorkers to their latest carpetbagger.
Join the fast-paced team at the helm of Brave New Foundation’s Cuentame’ , the exciting, innovative bilingual Facebook project at the cutting edge of the Latino community! Cuentame’ frames what’s going on in culture, history, arts and news, activism and more from our collective past, present and future. Jobs include:
Basic online research: organizations, news clips, archival video and photos, logging video footage, transcribing interviews, and translating interviews.
Skills Required
Bilingual (Spanish English).
VERY Facebook literate.
Strong sense of the Latino community’s interests, concerns.
Excellent written verbal skills.
Attention to detail.
Positive, can-do, fast-paced team member.
Working knowledge of Final Cut Pro a plus.
We will train if other skills are needed.
Administrative
A fast-paced film production / distribution nonprofit with its eye on public affairs / politics / civic engagement, Brave New Foundation has immediate opportunities for volunteer interns to help out in various departments including Administrative / Operations and Production.
Skills Required:
Basic office skills
Internet savvy
Microsoft Office Suite (especially Excel, MS Word)
Post Production
The Post-Production Department seeks career-track interns to assist in digitizing footage, outputting to tape, DVD authoring, basic Final Cut Pro editing, as well as compiling research and presenting reports.
Reports to: Lead AE / Post Supervisor
Technical Requirements:
Basic hands-on knowledge of Final Cut Pro
Familiar with the process of posting videos to YouTube and other online websites
Familiar with DVD Studio Pro & Soundtrack Pro
Familiar with multiple video formats & codecs
Familiar with operating DVR / Tivo decks
Recommended: Basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop
Other Requirements:
Detail-oriented and organized
Self-starter, proactive, and uses time efficiently
Excellent research / report writing skills
Strong knowledge of Microsoft Excel; FileMaker is a plus
Tech-savvy: able to learn new programs quickly
Documentary Production
Documentary production team is seeking an enthusiastic intern to assist with various aspects of production, including: Online Research (e.g. archival photos, video, etc.) and fact checking, logging footage and transcribing interviews
Reports to: Producer
Required skills
Excellent online research
Good writing / typing
Good organization
Generalist with good disposition
Applicants familiar with Final Cut Pro Plus
“Rethink Afghanistan” National Screenings Coordinator
The National Screenings Coordinator will connect and work with volunteers across the country who are organizing local screenings of this hard-hitting documentary in community centers, homes, churches / temples, theatres, political headquarters, schools, offices, etc. It’s a great gig for someone who loves the excitement (and details!) of grass roots community organizing and wants to get involved on a cutting-edge national project that’s making impact from Congress to living rooms across America.Tasks include tracking Congressional impact.
Commitment
10 hours / week minimum, weekdays (Monday – Friday, 10 am – 7pm), in our Culver City offices / studios. (After initial training, possible to work remotely off-site)
Required Skills
Basic computer skills (MS Office: Word, Excel, e-mail, internet research)
Smart public relations skills, including phone and written communications
Unless noted, all internships / volunteer commitments are 2 – 3 days / week, Monday – Friday, during office hours (10 am – 7pm) in our Culver City studios / offices. (Half days and off-site work may be arranged depending on the project.)
Need college internship credit? We will work with you and your academic advisor.
To Apply: Please send a resume (noting highest degree of technical skills if required) and cover letter to: volunteers@bravenewfoundation.org
From there, we eight — outraged at what we learned during the making of Outfoxed — established the blog, News Hounds in June of that year.
Among us we watched thousands of hours of Fox “News.” During the summer and fall of 2004 we watched in horror as Fox lead the charge in the Swift Boating of John Kerry and Kerry’s refusal (or inability, or whatever it was) to fight back. After the election, we were exhausted.
It was hard to get back on the horse but we all essentially committed to keep going; to keep exposing Fox for what is was — anything but “fair and balanced.” We hoped Democrats — particularly Democrats who had a say in things — were noticing what an amazing and well-oiled propaganda machine Fox was. Still don’t know if they were or are.
Deborah Yesner was one of us; one of the original eight. She taught special needs kids in her real life. She worked all day — five days a week — at that thankless job. Exhausted, frustrated, underpaid, she’d come home and — how she found the energy I don’t know other than to say that it was a testament to how much she believed in what she was doing — she’d monitor Bill O’Reilly; The Factor. (Can you imagine doing that after a hard day’s work?) She’d spend an hour watching the show and then an hour or three posting about it — for four years — for no pay mind you, other than the pittance in donations we’d split among us every quarter. (ChrisBG, another member of our group, figured it out at one point: we were bringing in roughly 6¢ and hour for the hours we worked.)
Then, in October of 2008, after suffering from very bad headaches for several days, Deborah — Deb as we called her — suffered a ruptured aneurysm in her brain. For the past year+ her husband and daughter have cared for her as she suffered infection after infection; was moved in and out of the hospital, back home and then to a nursing home and back to the hospital. On and on. The hospital took care of her physical needs, but the nursing home that her husband’s insurance would pay for was unequipped to care for her medical needs as well as provide the physical therapy required to give her a fighting chance to recover to the fullest extent. A facility like that was a step or ten above what his insurance would pay for and he couldn’t afford the out-of-pocket expense. (One can only imagine — $10,000 per week?)
On Tuesday I learned that Deb had contracted a very serious infection. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Her husband and daughter decided to put her on a morphine drip and make her as comfortable as possible. Today her devastated and heartbroken family had the strength to inform us that Deb died later that day.
Deborah Yesner was a fierce believer in freedom of the press and in the freedom of speech. But she did not think it was right that a “news” network that claimed it was “fair and balanced,” but in reality was the primary propaganda outlet for the Republican party, should be allowed to use that slogan.
Deb was a jewel. She loved her husband and daughter with all her heart and soul. She was a wonderful person and a cherished friend. Her death is an indescribable loss to me and to the world.
Good-bye Deb. Love you (but I can’t believe I’m writing these words).
2009–a challenging year for us all. Thanks to your help and support, we were able to make a difference in the fight for social justice and take meaningful strides toward a more equal America for everyone.
With Rethink Afghanistan, we raised awareness about the realities of the war in Afghanistan and the need for new non-military solutions. Some 830,000 online views of Robert Greenwald’s documentary and over 100,000 petition signatures presented to Congress later, Brave New Films has become a major voice for the movement to question the Afghanistan war and our campaign has had an impact in the mainstream media and the national public discourse surrounding this war. Join us today as a Peacemaker as we step up our efforts and our demands to congress next year.
With Sick for Profit, we were able to expose the obscene profits of the healthcare industry’s worst villains: UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Wellpoint. These CEOs raked in millions of dollars while denying ordinary people necessary health care. The fight’s not over yet. We need to stand up for real healthcare reform and against the corporate greed of health insurers.
We also launched two exciting new series:
Brave New Conversations features progressive opinion leaders and celebrities talking about the most pressing topics of the day. Subscribe and find out what Amy Goodman, Shepard Fairey, Tom Hayden, Billy Bragg, and former Afghan prime minister (and bravest woman in Afghanistan) Malalai Joya had to say about art, music, and war. Slated for the coming year: Jane Fonda, Oliver Stone, Tim Robbins, Tom Morello, and Janeane Garofalo.
Hundreds of thousands nationwide viewed Senator Sanders Unfiltered in its first season and heard from the senate’s most progressive member on up-to-the-minute topics every week. Senator Sanders called out the ways the Fed coddled Wall Street, which enjoyed a flood of enormous bailouts while credit to consumers, ordinary homeowners, and small business owners continues to be a trickle.
We couldn’t have brought you these important stories without your help.
Join us as we continue our work in the coming year. To all Brave New Films’ supporters–stick with us through 2010 and the upcoming mid-term elections where we’ll continue the fight.
Brave New Films has launched its iPhone app. Now, you can watch all Brave New Films’ videos on the go and share them with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or Email all via your iPhone. Best of all, it’s completely FREE. Download it now
Here are a couple screen shots of the app:
Make sure you download the app today! From exposing abusive health insurance companies to the latest on the Rethink Afghanistan campaign, you will be informed and able to act on the most pressing social and economic issues with one click.
Not an iPhone user? Not a problem, you can still check all of our content on our Youtube channel and share them with your friends via Facebook.
