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Obviously FEMA is a government agency, and we all know how conservatives feel about pretty much anything to do with the government. Funny thing, though; I always notice that when a massive disaster happens to strike one of these “strongly Republican” regions of our country, suddenly those impacted by the disaster become huge fans of FEMA and Republican leaders from the impacted areas are quick to seek funds and help from the federal government.

The truth is, when it comes to the government Republicans love to hate it - until they desperately need it.

Well, possibly the most asinine argument I’ve ever heard against FEMA was uttered Sunday morning on Fox News’ Fox & Friends when Fox Business host John Stossel stated that we don’t really need the government’s help following major disasters because private companies like Walmart will “spontaneously” come in and fix everything.

“If you hadn’t seen a skating rink, you would say, ‘No, you need skating police, people go in this direction,’” Stossel said. “Think of how much of life is spontaneous - jazz, there’s no direction. So much of life is spontaneous, but our instinct is to say, ‘Government, give us a plan.’”

The simplistic mind of the average libertarian never ceases to amaze me. They take very small, much less complex examples, then try to claim that an entire society can be run in the exact same way. As if the direction people go on a skating rink is anything like how a massive society functions.

But Stossel’s main focus was how overly dependent people are on the government to help them following a massive disaster.
“After Katrina, Walmart and private charities helped people in many more ways than FEMA did,” he continued. “Because FEMA is incompetent because government tends to be. But also Walmart everyday needs to know what people need, and they were ready. They had more weather forecasters than some of the local governments do.”

More: Fox News Moron Insists Walmart Will Spontaneously Save Us When Disaster Strikes (Video)

Images of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive by the militants of Islamic State (Isis) began to filter on to social media and mainstream news sites on Monday. As with beheadings and other brutal acts carried out by the group in the past, there were calls not to share the video or stills of it, out of respect for the dead pilot and his family and in order not to further publicise the terrorists’ message. But it seems the details were so gruesome that many couldn’t help but watch and share.

I refused to look (I never do: it feels too much like giving Isis the attention it craves). But that didn’t stop others trying to tell me in vivid detail what the video showed. Someone even said it was “Bond villain-like”. Isis, it seems, has created a whole new kind of murderous cinematic experience.

Some internet users clearly find the unrelenting goriness of it all captivating - stonings, decapitations, throwing people off tall buildings, sticking severed heads on spikes. Perhaps there’s a compulsion to see just how far Isis will go. But the very act of choosing to witness these things makes us, in some way, complicit.

full story

Fox News is doing its bit for IS of course: Fox News site embeds unedited Isis video showing brutal murder of Jordanian pilot

Pamella Geller, looking like moron, photo via nathanlean.com

Here’s the Audio clip Rightwing Watch found where she mouths off. She’s angry that Fox News, dared to apologize for spreading anti Muslim hate.

Yeah Muslim no go zones are “real.” I wonder if that’s why people not just in the United States, but also Europe, see Fox News as a joke now. Those people now include British Prime Minister, David Cameron who couldn’t believe how stupid Fox was. Also the entire idea, that that Sharia law will take over Europe or the United States anytime soon is ridiculous. Last I checked Muslims only made up about zero point six percent of our population, and its hardly accurate to say all, or even most of them are extremists, who would support turning America into a theocracy.

I wonder if this is why Fox News could get sued in France for their claims about “no go zones” in Paris. I guess its all fear of the Muslims, and the non existent “no go zones” that they live in.

As for her bizarre claim that for liberals Islam trumps gay rights. Its not like liberals never condemn homophobia in the name of Islam, just like they condemn homophobia in the name of Christianity. Its not like mainstream news organizations who reject the nonsensical idea of “stealth Jihad” or “Muslim no go Zones” haven’t reported on homophobia in Muslim majority countries. Pamela Geller on the other hand, Is only pro gay rights when Muslims are persecuting homosexuals. She doesn’t seem to care when Christians do it, especially if they’re anti Muslim like her.

Now Its official, only the “white genocide” morons can outdo the “counter Jihad” for laughable bigoted stupidity!

Update 1/24/15 at 4:50pm.

Note: I originally stated that Muslims made up only point six percent of the US population, but it confused some LGF regulars so I changed it to read “zero point six percent” instead just to make it clearer as to what I meant.

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More: Fox Rips Into University for Course Titled ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ (VIDEO)

A segment on Friday’s “Fox and Friends” chastised Arizona State University for offering a course this spring that examines the “problem of whiteness.”

Co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck spoke with Lauren Clark, an ASU student who was disturbed by a course in the school’s English department titled “Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.” Clark is also a writer for Campus Reform, a student news website backed by the Leadership Institute, which organizes conservative groups on campus.

Clark took issue with the class book list, which included titles like “Everyday Language of White Racism” and “Possessive Investment in Whiteness.” A syllabus for the class was not available online.

“All of these books have a disturbing trend and that’s pointing to all white people as the root cause of social injustices for this country,” Clark said.

Hasselback then asked Clark whether ASU would dare offer a course called “The Problem With Blackness” or “The Problem With Being Female.”

“I don’t think that would fly at the university,” Clark responded. “Quite frankly, as an ASU student myself, I’m disappointed that my school would offer a course like this. Clearly we have a lot of work to go as a society in terms of racial tension, but having a class that suggests an entire race is the problem is inappropriate, wrong, and quite frankly, counter productive.”

Hasselback added that she thought the course seemed “quite unfair and wrong and pointed.”

More at TPM

Jimmah’s earlier page on Bobby Jindal going in for Fox News’ lie about ‘no go zones’ in Paris moved me to page an article I’d earlier link to here on LGF, because I think that like the current issue of Charlie Hebdo it needs as wide a circulation as possible. It is wonderful in its smacking down FNC. Here’s some choice excerpts:

Apart from the usual delinquency found in any poor part of any urban center on the planet, the tableau portrayed by Fox News and “Warzone expert” Nolan Peterson, and the deceiving name the network has coined for the occasion (“No-Go Zones”) seems like a complete fabrication of what’s really going on there.

SNIP

Those red circled parts of the city contain the districts of Porte Saint-Denis, Porte Saint-Martin, Belleville, Ménilmontant and La Goutte d’Or, among others. Many of those are supposed to be (and I’m quoting) “governed by Islamic Sharia law”, and “off-limits to non-Muslims”.

I lived and worked in all of those districts. All of them.

Take Porte Saint-Denis and the Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Denis that leads to it. This street and its surroundings are home to much of Paris’s new culinary scene. There you’ll find Richer, L’Office and 52 Faubourg, the three restaurants run by Charles Compagnon’s team, Vivant and Vivant Cave formerly of Pierre Jancou fame. You can find all these eateries’ adresses in any up do date guide to Paris. Lonely Planet doesn’t usually send its reader to lawless islamist-ridden parts of the world, but hey, maybe Fox News knows better. A block away, on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, sits the headquarters of BETC, one of the world’s leading ad agencies. In the vicinity, you can also find Turkish soup parlors, Kebab spots, Indian restaurants and eco-friendly coffee shops not unlike the ones you’d find on every street of Williamsburg or Brooklyn: it’s one of the most cosmopolitan parts of Paris. On any day or evening of the week, thousands of Parisians walk these streets, dine at these restaurants, drink at the incredible array of bars and shop at the dozens of stores in the area, including Julhes, one of the city’s most ancient wine sellers. Doesn’t sound much like downtown Mosul, does it?

And the king hit:

The Syndicat National du Journalisme, the highest authority for self-regulation of the news industry in France, states, as the third rule of its Ethics Charter, that a journalist should always “Hold a critical mind, truthfulness, exactitude, integrity, equity, and fairness as the pillars of journalistic work.” Fox News and Nolan Peterson, with these segments, betrayed every single one of those words.

Read the whole piece, because its a very good look at what Paris is really like and its got what look like some good places to eat if you are going there in the near future.

Most of us here, probably realize that Fox News is a major outlet for spreading bigotry against Muslims, however, as Max Fisher, points out, they’re only part of the problem.

Bill O’Reilly’s October 6 monologue on Islam

On September 17, 2001, President George W. Bush gave his “Islam is peace” speech from the Islamic Center of Washington DC, tucked into a leafy stretch of embassy row. He urged the country to embrace “fellow Americans” who are Muslim as well as Islam itself “with respect,” explaining to a country full of “anger and emotion” that the jihadists who’d struck a few days earlier were insane outliers and not representative of the religion.

Since then, there has been a tension in how Islam is discussed in American media, and especially in its most populist and popular form, television. Americans typically follow Bush’s advice, but sometimes they struggle, particularly when violent extremist groups are in the news. In recent days, that strain of Islamophobia in the US has risen along with media attention to the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, reaching crisis levels — particularly on American TV news. While this is often discussed as a problem of Fox News, in fact both left-leaning outlets and CNN participate as well,
normalizing and mainstreaming subtler forms of Islamophobia that may well be even more damaging.

Because 38 percent of Americans say they personally know someone who is Muslim, most of us rely on the media to shape our opinions of Muslims and of Islam. And the media is badly failing in its responsibilities to portray Muslims carefully and accurately. It has forgotten Bush’s entreaty, leaving Americans more ignorant about and more hostile toward the 2.6 million Muslim-Americans living in the United States, to the vast and diverse world of 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, and to the Muslim populations of the Middle East and South Asia with whom our foreign policy, and often our military, is so heavily engaged.

Read more at Vox

On New Year’s Eve, Christian Jose Gomez allegedly attacked his mother with an ax. Angry that she had been “nagging” him about moving some boxes up to the attic, Gomez beheaded Maria Suarez-Cassagne in the family’s garage and tried to stuff her headless body into a garbage can, according to investigators. When he couldn’t do that, he fled the home on his bike and was soon captured by local deputies in Oldsmar, Florida. Gomez calmly confessed to the crime and said he’d been planning it for days.

Note that Fox News ignored the Florida scene of grisly, domestic violence. Apparently, without a Muslim suspect under arrest for the beheading, Fox News wasn’t interested. The cable channel didn’t set aside hours to cover the horrific crime. There was no heated Fox News commentary, no panel discussions, no primetime news specials to comb over the evidence of the tragic beheading. Fox News didn’t care about the shocking story of an isolated beheading in America.

More: The Gruesome U.S. Beheadings Fox News Ignored

According to a Politico report, CNN commentator S.E. Cupp and Fox News communications consultant Jon Kraushar both gave media training to most major Republican Senate candidates leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The “bootcamp” was arranged by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and intended to keep GOP candidates from making campaign-crippling media gaffes. Politico pointed to former congressman Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks in 2012 as a prime example of such a blunder.

Cupp, who was a panelist on “Crossfire” before CNN canceled the show in October, remains a commentator at the network. She conducted mock interviews with candidates, simulating the kind of interrogation they might receive from the media in weeks prior to the elections. Kraushar, who has worked for Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Dick Cheney, handles most of the on-camera training at Fox News. He was also present to ensure that candidates were primed.

“Over the next two days, for eight hours a day, the candidates had to watch each other stumble, stammer, run from the cameras. They were drilled on policy, then had the cameras turned on them,” Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, Manu Raju and John Bresnahan report. “They were briefed on common media mistakes, then had the camera turned on them. They were shown footage of Akin and Richard Mourdock making fools of themselves two years ago, then had the camera turned on them again.”

More: CNN Employee, Fox News Consultant Provided Media Training to GOP Candidates (REPORT)

Well, my Imam was contacted by Hannity, as this little piece scooted onto my FB Timeline:

So much in this picture. EDIT: Autocorrect is no one’s friend

Well, what can we get out of this?

Firstly, it appears Fox may have been trying to spin their way out of trouble, after they had to pull up a story that was done last night, but at the same time still trying to smear Muslims. This can be seen in how there was an immediate hangup after being told that it would need to be a live show, to prevent the butchering of words.

Secondly, I do find it interesting he wanted to use the OKC memorial as a backdrop, considering it is the memorial to the second largest act of religious terrorism in the US, the OKC Bombing, done by a right-wing Christian Terrorist.

Thirdly, and most sadly, there is a large element among the Republican Party that wishes harm against any Muslims in the US. While I do know Republicans who think otherwise, including one very, very close friend, they need to wake up to the hate in their midst. Starting now.

Update:

Mosque had security issues with the Fox guys.

Abusive behavior by Fox News

Update 2

Unfortunately, Fox News carries on with the character assassination of people that care going to the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City.