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Sean Hannity and Rush,were they lieing

A

Anonymous

Guest
Sean Hannity's Act of Neo-Contrition
So last night, Fox News host Sean Hannity did something many will call shocking, some will call phony and insincere, and I'll call, at the very least, uncharacteristic of his network and those it speaks for: he apologized.

At the end of his show, which as usual featured an hour of unrestrained Obama-bashing and GOP cheerleading, Hannity copped to something he in many ways had no choice but to cop to -- at least if he wanted FNC to be able to maintain the illusion that it's a legitimate news network. He admitted that Jon Stewart was right when, two nights ago, the host of The Daily Show pointed out that Hannity and company had run video of a September Tea Bagger rally on Capitol Hill during a story about last week's Tea Bagger rally. The difference? Maybe 40 or 50 thousand people. Stewart's point was that it looked as if Hannity had used the old footage of the much bigger crowd to try to hype the numbers at the more recent protest; what made The Daily Show staff apparently think that Hannity's deception was deliberate -- aside from the fact that it would take a 6-year-old with Down Syndrome to mix up file footage with brand new video -- were the startlingly obvious differences in the images themselves: leaves still on the trees in the September clip, people in late-summer short sleeves versus mid-fall coats and scarves, etc.

Regardless, Hannity now says he's sorry:

"Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, he was right. Now on his program last night, he mentioned that we had played some inccorect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct, we screwed up. we aired some video of a rally in September along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So, Mr. Stewart, you were right. We apologize. But by the way, we wanna thank you and all your writers for watching."

You've almost gotta admire Hannity for managing to come off as both contrite and a smarmy little prick to the end. More on that in a minute, though.

If you're asking yourself right now whether Sean Hannity really is sorry that his show ran a bad piece of video -- one that regardless of intent would've mislead the viewer into thinking that last week's Frootloopalooza was on the scale of September's -- you're obviously not familiar with the Fox News Channel or right-wing punditry in general these days. True, Hannity made the somewhat surprising and magnanimous gesture of admitting to an error and crediting the right's mortal enemies at The Daily Show for busting him on it. Contrast that with Rush Limbaugh's response a few weeks ago when confronted with the news that he'd just spent an entire radio show angrily railing against Barack Obama for writing a college thesis decrying the Constitution, when in reality the paper in question had never even existed -- the article he got the story from was nothing more than satire. Limbaugh didn't give a crap that he'd just made what any well-adjusted person would consider a monumental ass out of himself; "I don't care if these quotes are made up, I know Obama thinks it," was his jaw-droppingly defiant response. So yeah, the fact that simply admitting you fucked up is such a big deal isn't so much a nod to, say, Fox News's reputation for honesty and respectability as it is proof of how far we've lowered the bar when it comes to what we expect from the right's obstinate mouthpieces.

Once again, Hannity pretty much had to man up because he may not have a responsibility to the truth but, unlike Limbaugh, he has a responsibility to the illusion. He couldn't not concede that the video his show aired was essentially a lie because no matter how much we all know that it's bullshit, Fox still goes to great lengths to bill itself as an unbiased news network. There are some things that are beyond the pale, even for a nominal news outlet that slants drastically in one direction: You can't run one piece of video and say it's something else.

Did Sean Hannity's show really make an "inadvertent mistake?" Probably not. Like I said, something like that is a very hard mistake to make. Is Hannity really sorry for the screw-up? No, of course not; he's sorry he got caught, and his less-than-humble admission that he'd been busted -- right down to getting in that last little barb in his retraction, the one that's the trademark faux-genteel "**** you" of all official Fox responses to critics -- is the tip of the cards that lets Fox acolytes know that while he's conceding this battle to the enemy, it's being done with a wink and crossed-fingers.

Because in the end, Fox News still wins the war.

Related blogs: T.J. Ortenzi: Hannity: Jon Stewart Was Right About Protest Footage (VIDEO)
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Hannity apologized for the mistake. The story you posted wreaks of bias, the exact thing that the writer is accusing someone else of

Did Huffinton post let you know about this little lie?

MSNBC: Gun-Toting Protesters are 'White' Racists

ScreenHunter_02Nov112013.gif


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI&feature=player_embedded

Here's how ABC reported the same event.

ScreenHunter_01Nov112012.gif


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syx26QtQIM&feature=player_embedded
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
When can we expect Obama's apology / retraction, whatever on his "no lobbyists in my White House" promise?
And I'm sure we can we expect the Chosen One's apology for telling these "not-exactlys"?
Black LA Talk Radio Host Exposes Obama Lies Obama's Not Exactlys...
8-28-8


Terry Anderson, Black LA Talk Radio host listed the following "Not Exactlys" regarding many of Obama's claims...

(http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/obamas_not_exactlys1)

1.) Selma March Got Me Born - NOT EXACTLY, your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 - Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma was in 1965. (Google'Obama Selma ' for his full March 4, 2007 speech and articles about its various untruths.)

2.) Father Was A Goat Herder - NOT EXACTLY, he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the Kenyan Government.

3.) Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter - NOT EXACTLY, he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had.

4.) My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom - NOT EXACTLY, your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya . It is the first widespread violence in decades. The current government is pro-American but Odinga wants to overthrow it and establish Muslim Sharia law. Your half-brother, Abongo Oba ma, is Odinga's follower. You interrupted your New Hampshire campaigning to speak to Odinga on the phone. Check out the following link for verification of that....and for more.

Obama's cousin Odinga in Kenya ran for president and tried to get Sharia muslim law in place there. When Odinga lost the elections, his followers have burned Christians' homes and then burned men, women and children alive in a Christian church where they took shelter.. Obama SUPPORTED his cousin before the election process here started. Google Obama and Odinga and see what you get. No one wants to know the truth!

5.) My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian - NOT EXACTLY, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5 am according to her own interviews. Not to mention, Christianity wouldn't allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.

6.) My Name is African Swahili - NOT EXACTLY, your name is Arabic and 'Baraka' (from which Barack came) means 'blessed' in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama.

Barack Hussein Obama is not half black. If elected, he would be the first Arab-American President, not the first black President. Barack Hussein Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side and 43.75% Arabic and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. While Barack Hussein Obama's father was from Kenya , his father's family was mainly Arabs.. Barack Hussein Obama's father was only 12.5% African Negro and 87.5% Arab (his father's birth certificate even states he's Arab, not African Negro). From... .and f or more....go to.....

http://www.arcadeathome.com/newsboy.phtml?Barack_
Hussein_Obama_-_Arab-American,_only_6.25%25_African

7.) I Never Practiced Islam - NOT EXACTLY, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until your wife made you change, so you could run for office.

4-3-08 Article 'Obama was 'quite religious in Islam'' http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60559

8.) My School In Indonesia Was Christian - NOT EXACTLY, you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book).

February 28, 2008. Kristoff from the New York Times a year ago: Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it'll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as 'one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.' This is just one example of what Pamela is talking about when she says 'Obama's narrative is being altered, enhanced and manipulated to whitewash troubling facts.'

9.) I Was Fluent In Indonesian - NOT EXACTLY, not one teacher says you could speak the language.

10.) Because I Lived In Indonesia , I Have More Foreign Experience - NOT EXACTLY, you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn't even speak the language. What did you learn except how to study the Koran and watch cartoons.

11.) I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs - NOT EXACTLY, except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies.

12.) I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion - NOT EXACTLY, you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify - your classmates said you were just fine

13.)An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office - NOT EXACTLY, Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn't, and never did, exist.

14.) A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life - NOT EXACTLY, Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn't, and never did, exist.

15.) I Won't Run On A National Ticket In '08 - NOT EXACTLY, here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first.

16.) Voting 'Present' is Common In Illinois Senate - NOT EXACTLY, they are common for YOU, but not many others have 130 'NO' VOTES.

17.) Oops, I Misvoted - NOT EXACTLY, only when caught by church groups and Democrats, did you beg to change your misvote.

18.) I Was A Professor Of Law - NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.

20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill - NOT EXACTLY, you didn't write it, introduce it, change it or create it.

21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass - NOT EXACTLY, it took just 14 days from start to finish.

22.) I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill - NOT EXACTLY, your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came.

23.) I Have Released My State Records - NOT EXACTLY, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within.

24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess - NOT EXACTLY, you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens . You failed to mention anyone else but yourse lf, in your books.

25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America - NOT EXACTLY, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill.

26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois - NOT EXACTLY, even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part.

27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year - NOT EXACTLY, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office.

28.) No One on my campaign contacted Canada about NAFTA - NOT EXACTLY, the Canadian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.

29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism - NOT EXACTLY, you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction off Israel . ;

30.) I Want All Votes To Count - NOT EXACTLY, you said let the delegates decide.

31.) I Want Americans To Decide - NOT EXACTLY, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.

32.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - NOT EXACTLY, you passed 26, most of which you didn't write yourself.

33.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - NOT EXACTLY, you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you.

34.) I Don't Take PAC Money - NOT EXACTLY, you take loads of it.

35.) I don't Have Lobbyists - NOT EXACTLY, you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting.

36.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad - NOT EXACTLY, your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon.

37.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq - NOT EXACTLY, you weren't in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time.

38.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care - NOT EXACTLY, your plan leaves us all to pay for the 15,000,000 who don't have to buy it.

39.) My uncle liberated Auschwitz concentration camp - NOT EXACTLY, your mother had no brothers and the Russian army did the liberating


May 27, 2008

http://www.rense.com/general83/lah.htm
 

Steve

Well-known member
as a person who was at both rallys...isn't the MSM being dishonest in not covering it?
calling it AstroTurf?

seems when the MSM shows a clip of 4 people protesting.. and then ignores thousands.. it is just as dishonest..

I like Hannity.. but he screwed up and was exposed, so he should have apologized and admitted the mistake.

but I think your piece calling me a Frootloopalooza, or referring to Tea Partys as teabaggers shows how low a so called News producer and so-called journalist will stoop.. , I guess his degree in journalism skipped the part about calling ordinary folk expressing their freedoms names..

real footage at about 10:30 am
camerapictures1051.jpg


a real example of the shirt slogans
camerapictures1052.jpg


Obama shaking my hand on the way to the rally
camerapictures1049-1.jpg
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Why don’t we hear about this from the “Main Stream Media”? Is it because they don’t want us to know or are they afraid of Obama and his Chicago ACORN thugs?

Obama’s Lies Matter, Too
The president pushes back against health care misinformation, then spreads a bunch of his own.
Matt Welch | September 10, 2009


On Wednesday night a broad chunk of the American left, and an overlapping circle of media commentators, got what they'd been aching for since the beginning of August: A presidential bitch-slap of the lying liars who've been, in the words of stereotypical L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten, "crowding out nearly all substantive and realistic discussion of the critical issues surrounding healthcare reform."

"But know this," President Barack Obama said in one of several such satisfying passages in his health care speech last night. "I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out."

Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh could barely contain herself at this nearly Snoop Doggesque display. "'We will call you out' on lies," she Tweeted. "love it!"

It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you'd think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.

The lies last night began in Obama's opening paragraph. "When I spoke here last winter," he began, "credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse." In fact, Obama spoke on Feb. 24, at least six weeks after credit markets began to thaw, and one week after he proclaimed that the passage of his $787 billion stimulus marked "the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans." Obama's speech that day wasn't about staving off a collapse, it was about cleaning up the mess and tackling long-ignored issues. Such as health care.

It's never encouraging when a politician who desperately needs to convince skeptical Americans of his fiscal sobriety starts off by slurring his words. As you might then infer, Obama was just warming up. "Insurance companies," the president announced, "will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies," in part because such prevention "saves money." Looks like someone forgot to tell the Congressional Budget Office, or other non-White House sources that have analyzed the cost-benefit of prevention.

Again and again last night, the president's numbers didn't add up. "There may be those—particularly the young and healthy—who still want to take the risk and go without coverage," he warned, in a passage defending compulsory insurance. "The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people's expensive emergency room visits." No, it means that, on balance, the healthy young don't pay for the unhealthy old. The whole point of forcing vigorous youth to buy insurance is using their cash and good actuarials to bring down the costs of covering the less fortunate.

Such fudges reveal a politician who, for whatever reason, feels like he can't be honest about the real-world costs of expanding health care. "Add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years," he said, trying hard to sound like those numbers weren't pulled out of Joe Biden's pants, and won't be dwarfed by actual costs within a year or two. "We've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system–a system that is currently full of waste and abuse," he said, making him at least the eighth consecutive president to vaguely promise cutting Medicare "waste" (a promise, it should be added, that could theoretically be fulfilled without drastically overhauling the health care system). Any government-run "public option," he claimed, somehow "won't be" subsidized by taxpayers, but instead would "be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects."

And in a critical, tic-riddled passage that many of even his most ardent supporters probably don't believe, Obama said: "Here's what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits–either now or in the future. Period." In case you couldn't quite read his lips, the president repeated the line for emphasis. Then: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."

If that "one dime" formulation sounds familiar, that's because Obama made—then almost immediately broke—the same promise regarding taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year. Surely the no-new-deficits pledge is headed for the campaign dustbin faster even then that "net spending cut" we'll never see.

Such bending of the truth-curve matters, I daresay even more than the pressing issue of Marc Ambinder's "umpiric objections" to having the media take a former Republican vice presidential candidate seriously as a health policy commentator. Aside from the disturbing—if-predictable aspect of a commander in chief falling far short of telling the whole truth, there are practical impacts of presidential prevarications that should worry even those who'd rather live in China than in an America without universal coverage.

As the reform supporter and professional skeptic Mickey Kaus noted before the speech, "Obama doesn't need to get 'Republicans on board.' He doesn't need to get Blue Dog Democrats on board. He needs to get voters on board." And if there's any tactic less effective at wooing skeptics than number-fudging insincerity, it's number-fudging insincerity coupled with attacks on the veracity, motivation, and worldview of the skeptics themselves.

Again last night, Obama invoked the boogeyman of "special interests" who "lie" in order "to keep things exactly the way they are," despite the fact that the special interests in this case are lining up to support the president, and that the critics of his plan tend to bemoan, not defend, the status quo. Opponents of his plan, he said, were "ideological"; Ted Kennedy's support for health care reform, meanwhile, "was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience." Obama said his door was "always open" to those bringing "a serious set of proposals," and he slammed that door shut on any attempts to break the almost universally unloved link between employment and insurance. He yearned to "replace acrimony with civility," then got Democrats stomping on their feet with attacks against the Iraq War and "tax breaks for the wealthy." The center of the debate, as always, was wherever he chose to stand.

And above all else, Obama chose to shadowbox against the more extreme claims of the Sarah Palins of the world, rather than engage the most serious of the skeptics' arguments. No, the administration doesn't "plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens," but what about the possibility of government cost-cutters frowning upon expensive hip replacement surgeries for the chronically old? No, the proposal doesn't amount to a complete "government takeover" of health care, but it does continue to expand the government's role (and, promises aside, expenses) in ways that make a deficit-whiplashed nation nervous. No, "no one would be forced to choose" a public option, but what about the argument that incentives would eventually push Americans from private insurance to the public plan?

The result of this challenge-dodging counterpunch was a speech that pleased Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but I doubt will sway the many Americans who are both on the fence and off Sarah Palin's e-mail list.

There was one line in the speech last night that pointed to an alternative, more promising future: "My guiding principle," Obama said, "is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition." Unfortunately, the president evinces zero understanding of how increased regulation can reduce consumer choice, even or especially when the government joins the competition. And even if he did see the connection, we'd have good reason to suspect that he wouldn't talk about it openly with the American people. That, ultimately, worries me more than a senior citizen who wants to keep the government out of Medicare.

Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason magazine.

http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/10/obamas-lies-matter-too
 
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