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• The emphasis on militarism
• The emphasis on nationalism. (Do you here that America was exceptional?)
• The emphasis on colonialism
• The emphasis on mysticism and the state
• The emphasis on warriorship
• Suppression of trade unions
• Foreign policy based on the myth of national power and greatness (covered above)
• Skepticism in democracy.

Here are some fascist traits associated with liberal politics:

• Broadened mandate for government intervention in the economy
• Anti-materialist -- but qualified that this is really not like liberal econuts -- since fascists are supposed to be sustained by their ideological commitment.

Here are some fascist traits that are identifiably both liberal and conservative (or a third rail in the two party system):

• the belief in the states role in monitoring its citizens.

Here are some fascist traits that are neither liberal nor conservative:

• endorsing terror to gain political power
• the notion that the entire population should be permanently and emotionally engaged in the political process.

DrHat, you are an ideologue, so don't bother me with logical contortions about how the Dems are really the more fascist of the two parties. But if there a legitimate argument, grounded in what Karl Rove pejoratively called the reality based community, then I'm all ears, because I love actually knowing things.

As we have seen through history the only real fascists have always been liberal

This is just partisan nonsense. If you actually, you know, read about fascism, you'll learn that it doesn't fit into the current left/right political divide.

People generally think of fascism as far-right because:

• The emphasis on militarism
• The emphasis on nationalism. (Do you here that America was exceptional?)
• The emphasis on colonialism
• The emphasis on mysticism and the state
• The emphasis on warriorship
• Suppression of trade unions
• Foreign policy based on the myth of national power and greatness
• Skepticism in democracy.

These are all defining qualities of facism that you see on the political right *today*

But facism is also leftist in that:

• It broadens the mandate for government intervention in the economy
• It is anti-materialist. (I suppose people in facists states seek spiritual sustenance.)

Furthermore, both the Dems and the GOP (in practice) have an overlapping facist trait: the belief in the states role in monitoring its citizens. This is a true 3rd rail in US politics, since as many Rs/Ds are for it as against it.

Fascism has traits not seen in either the Dems or the GOP, such as endorsing terror to gain political power, and the notion that the entire population should be permanently and emotionally engaged in the political process.

Stop reading just right-wing books, and broaden your horizon a little. Just because you read it doesnt mean you have to believe it. And just because something is written down doesn't make it true. Real scholarship starts when you seek out differing views, and try to understand them.

The audience of Fox News contains a minority of moderates and VERY few liberals. 94% of Fox News viewers self identify as republican or republican leaning. In what universe is that a "broad audience"?

Since Fox has the highest ratings of the news networks, it sounds like you are acknowledging that they are moderate by US standards.

Also, Warren Buffet is a leftist. Most of the wealthy elite are.

I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate.

"Moderate"? Compared to what? There is almost endless evidence that Fox News intentionally presents a staunchly conservative viewpoint and they have an audience to match. It's not even a meaningful debate at this point.

You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one.

Just because they invite some token liberals on to some of the shows doesn't mean their coverage is remotely balanced. Fox News is basically a mouthpiece for the republican party. Name one talking head (ala Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow) on Fox News who is a clear liberal. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.

The audience of Fox News contains a minority of moderates and VERY few liberals. 94% of Fox News viewers self identify as republican or republican leaning. In what universe is that a "broad audience"?

Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators.

Really? Warren Buffet is an "extreme" political donator?

Authorized in the Patriot Act. http://www.politicususa.com/bernie-sanders-blames-congressional-support-patriot-act-verizonnsa-snooping.html

Please give specific examples to demonstrate reactionary bias in Fox News' reporting.

There are way too many to list in a Slashdot post so you can start with these:

http://foxnewslies.net/
http://www.politicususa.com/fox-news-hosts-speak-words-written-laughing.html
http://aattp.org/category/fox-news-lies-2/
http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=8583

In fact, Fox has admitted to lying in Federal Appellate Court:

http://foxnewsboycott.com/resources/fox-can-lie-lawsuit/

You should become a democrat today then. Look at the facts. During republican presidents, the deficit rises. During democrat presidents, the deficit goes down unless they are cleaning up a recession, in which case it goes up until the recession is over. It has been the Republicans who have given up on fiscal responsibility since the Reagan years. Look here for more information.

However, there are lots of Jesus freaks in the ranks of the Democratic party. There just aren't as many Southern Baptist types, owing to the civil rights act of 1964.

I didn't believe it either, but apparently, Arizona really did do what he said. http://www.politicususa.com/arizona-perpetual-pregnancy.html

That being said, I had always assumed that "girlintraining" meant "man" when I had seen his posts in the past.

Here's a link to a fairly biased story on the pregnancy law in Arizona, http://www.politicususa.com/arizona-perpetual-pregnancy.html

So I guess he's not smoking to much crack

Perhaps she's referring to these results I got from Google:

N. Carolina aims to outlaw warming

Arizona legislates Women into a state of perpetual pregnancy

I don't know the validity of the articles. It's just what I found.

Teabaggers came up their own terms, but your lame attempt at poutrage is noted.

Ah... a clear headed, and hopefully informed and intelligent, opponent. I apologize for my previous remark. I was pissed off by his post and was trying to troll him a little to make myself feel better. A hypocritical moment of weakness on my part.

I had another response that claims that Obama was "Breitbarted" and backs it with this link. I am at work right now so unable to research it fully (or watch the videos), but it contradicts your article and seems to back it with primary sources (C-SPAN). I will research it further tonight, but I would appreciate any rebuttal you want to supply.

I realize that the grandparent was exceptionally rude, but you do harm by responding in kind. Your comment about "the party of ignorance" does nothing to promote rational discourse.

The link to the video that he provided is a one minute clip taken out of context to dupe people into thinking that the president was in favor of indefinite detention for Americans. Not the case:

http://www.politicususa.com/ndaa-breitbarted.html

It's best to assume that the GP was himself duped, and to be forgiving, rather than playing the blame game and assuming that he was out to dupe others. In fact, the NDAA only legitimizes all of the bad things that we've been doing for the past ten years. It doesn't grant any additional powers to detain people that the previous administration hadn't already been using.

The goal of the protests is real accountability from the financial giants. Similar to the Tea Party protests, there is no "official" goal but you can detect motive from signage or even (gasp) news coverage.

Here's a good example of why people say that about Fox: Fox News Finally Admits There Are No Death Panels. And it's hardly the only example of them flat out making up shit to put on the air in their never ending war against liberalism.

Death panels. At no point was there a provision for death panels in the health care reform package. Nobody has been able to point to the language at any point, and yet well after it was settled as not being in the bill, Fox chooses to resurrect the claim. Fox News Finally Admits There Are No Death Panels

Remember this is the same "news" organization that went to court defending their right to make up news for ratings.

The snarky ad hominem bit was "teabagger". And don't pretend you didn't mean it that way.

Too bad the facts don't meet your storyline.

Keith Olbermann Reminds the Teabaggers that They Coined Their Own Name

Olbermann said, "It is as useful to remind them anew of how the term originated and with whom. A TV news report aired last March 14 in which a correspondent described the original protest act, 'take a teabag, put it in an envelope, and mail it to the White House.' He added, 'reteaparty.com has a headline Teabag the Fools in D.C. on tax day.' Thus the verb to teabag was invented by the teabaggers themselves, and the correspondent who put it on TV was a Griff Jenkins of Fox News. Send your complaints to him."

The teabaggers coined their own name, without realizing what it also means, and then they blamed their critics for their stupidity. By the way, why did it take them so long to figure out what a teabagger is? Why has this outrage on their part flared up recently?

Now, stop pretending the teabaggers aren't reaping what they sowed.

You're getting distracted by the example. Most people agree that pictures of naked women or men, in an artistic conceptualization, is free speech and the dividing line between that and pornography is fuzzy. I would tend to want to protect your right to pontificate about the evils you see in our government and that includes holding up signs, shouting slogans and standing up on a proverbial soapbox, holding forth on your opinions. I also think you would agree that this is free speech.

But, in certain circumstances, courts (not always the Supreme Court) have ruled that one may be arrested for standing on the side of the road with a sign that says "The President is a War Criminal." And, during the last administration there were zones along motorcade routes that had prohibitions from you holding such a sign so that the President could, possibly, if he was looking out the window at the right moment, see your sign. The ACLU had problems with this practice. And it would seem that the Bush Administration thought that the 9-11 attacks gave them the pretext to abolish the First Amendment

.

Were these attacks on our freedoms to actually have seen the light of day in a courtroom, I believe the long precedents of re-labeling "speech" a "verbal act" in SCOTUS decisions offer the path that would have been gleefully taken.

According to Wirenius, the way you ignore the First Amendment in arresting someone for speaking, exercising press freedoms and so on, is to call it a "verbal act" and not speech, which is protected.

"Teabagging" referring to the American neo-idiot movement was a term coined by the American neo-idiot movement.

I'd go into depth but Olbermann says it much better.

Oh yeah... Asshole.

Where are all the conspiracy theorists on this one? Did Obama cause the leak so that he can push against the oil companies and car companies even more?

The far-right kooks have been pushing an Obama conspiracy theory for a while now. For example, Limbaugh: "what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants than by blowing up a rig?"

Stewart himself points out over and over again that TDS is comedy.

True, but for the majority of the audience, it is their primary "news" source.

Which goes to show you, people would rather laugh at comedy and get a little news than watch "news" and have dark laughter that the "news" is presented as something respectable.

Fox News bills itself as, well, news. Then again, why am I saying anything who says O'Reilly gives liberals a fair shake?

First, Bill O'Reilly is a commentator, not a news anchor. If you want to call Bill O'Reilly or any of the other FNC commentators "news", then shouldn't you do the same for Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews (who got a tingle up his leg from hearing Obama speak)? Why are not you not here screaming about how unfair MSNBC is?

Funny. Plenty of people do. 24/7 news channels are quite horrible precisely because they aren't 24/7 news. They're one to two hours of news and 22 hours of fluff to fill air time. Having said that, MSNBC/CNN both have the same issue as Fox News even when they're covering actual news: sensational focus on fluff news.

Next, I have never, EVER seen a conservative on Olbermann's show. I see several on O'Reilly every night. HERE is a video of a liberal on O'Reilly that, strangely enough, is not shouted down. (That must not be a real video, since you believe that it never happens). Can you find an Olbermann video of a conservative? No? I guess you have to admit that FNC is more "Fair and Balanced" than MSNBC.

If FNC has dog *and* cat shows, it's more "Fair and Balanced" than Animal Channel? Well, who the fuck cares. I just want FNC (and MSNBC and CNN) to do decent journalism.

Oh, and HERE is a story about Bill O'Reilly "blasting" Laura Ingraham. Laura is a conservative and O'Reilly was defending Michelle Obama. Have you ever seen Matthews, Olbermann, or Maddow (a feminist) stand up for Laura Bush over the objections of one more liberal than they are?

Personally, I wouldn't care if Bill O'Reilly were a saint. Political commentary shows are almost entirely sensational claptrap designed more to anger or energize the watchers than to engage in actual discussion. But, then, that makes perfect sense: discussion that resolves issue is relatively boring while a few people shouting their own personal views, no matter how offensive they might be, is at least interesting from the "traffic accident" aspect of it. They're really no better than daytime talk shows.

In short, I'd like to see actual news on News Channels.

Stewart himself points out over and over again that TDS is comedy.

True, but for the majority of the audience, it is their primary "news" source.

Fox News bills itself as, well, news. Then again, why am I saying anything who says O'Reilly gives liberals a fair shake?

First, Bill O'Reilly is a commentator, not a news anchor. If you want to call Bill O'Reilly or any of the other FNC commentators "news", then shouldn't you do the same for Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews (who got a tingle up his leg from hearing Obama speak)? Why are not you not here screaming about how unfair MSNBC is?

Next, I have never, EVER seen a conservative on Olbermann's show. I see several on O'Reilly every night. HERE is a video of a liberal on O'Reilly that, strangely enough, is not shouted down. (That must not be a real video, since you believe that it never happens). Can you find an Olbermann video of a conservative? No? I guess you have to admit that FNC is more "Fair and Balanced" than MSNBC.

Oh, and HERE is a story about Bill O'Reilly "blasting" Laura Ingraham. Laura is a conservative and O'Reilly was defending Michelle Obama. Have you ever seen Matthews, Olbermann, or Maddow (a feminist) stand up for Laura Bush over the objections of one more liberal than they are?

Obviously neither of you use google much. He didn't post any links because he is lazy, not because liberal sites don't report on the matter:

Huffington Post - "Obama's Broken Promise: Federal Agencies Not More Transparent Under Obama Administration"
Media Matters - "Andrew Malcolm's opaque transparency attack"
Politicususa - "How The Huffington Post got it wrong about Obama and Transparency"

If you want to find a news source that only reports news from one perfectly biased perspective, look no further than FOX, the propaganda arm of the ultra-conservative movement.

"At a fundraiser in Philadelphia where he was flanked by PA governor Ed Rendell, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, and Sen. Bob Casey, Barack Obama said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I've seen Eagles fans."
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I think that it is quite a stretch to claim that this Obama comment is evidence that Obama is nothing new."
http://www.politicususa.com/en/Obama-Philly

http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/bring+a+knife+to+a+gunfight.html