In their desperation to ensure that taxes are not raised on their corporate sponsors, Republicans have been successful in convincing their followers, as well as their poodles in the corporate media, that only the rich — not the poor and middle class — pay taxes.
That is not just a lie — it is a big [...]

More evidence, as if any were needed, that what Fox and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing NewsCorp media empire does is not “news,” it’s propaganda:
Fox News stayed mainly silent on the News of the World scandal during prime time Thursday, largely filling its roster of shows with discussions about topics such as the [...]

he Center for Constitutional Rights has sent a letter to Fox president, Roger Ailes, warning him that Republican propagandist Glenn Beck’s on-going, libelous criticism of Dr. Frances Fox Piven has generated threats of violence against the 78 year old professor:
the CCR asks that Ailes distinguish between First Amendment rights, of which they are “vigorous defenders” [...]

Plans by a tiny Gainesville, Fla. church to burn Qurans on Sept. 11 were condemned by a guy who knows how to act toward Islam. Gen. David Petraeus is pleading with the Christian extremists to tone it down or put American troops at risk.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. [...]

78,000 — 96,000

– CBS News estimates of crowd size at Mormon Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in Washington on Aug. 28, based on work commissioned by CBS from AirPhotosLive. The company uses photos taken from tethered balloons shot at the peak of the crowd, which are then broken into 2-D and 3-D grids, and the individuals counted.

Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands

– Figure quoted by NBC Nightly News

More than 100,000

– ABCNews.com

Crowd Attending Beck Rally Estimated at Over 500,000

– FOX News headline

As low as 300,000 and as big as 650,000

– Glenn Beck on FOX News Sunday

“We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today – because we were witnesses.”

– Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

This is obviously scaring white people. What they have done is essentially try to put off-limits any parts of the city where these main tea partiers believe you might be able to encounter, dare I say, black people.

-- Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC, describing a post by tea bagger Bruce Majors, which Majors said was intended as informational to participants in Glenn Beck’s “Million Moron” rally. The post listed subway lines and neighborhoods to avoid (diverse ones), and warned that most cab drivers are Arab or African. It also included a map showing the “safe” areas, which were mainly around the Washington Mall. City leaders countered that millions of tourists visit happily every year, and that Majors is out of touch with the times, since many of the areas he said to avoid are the hippest and trendiest.

It was not my intention to select 8-28 because of the Martin Luther King tie. It is the day he made that speech. I had no idea until I announced it.

– Talk radio and FOX News personality Glenn Beck, stating the obvious. No one doubts that the date of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was outside Beck’s frame of reference when he planned his “Restoring Honor” tea bagger rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, site of King’s world-changing speech.

Disgraced HCA Columbia Healthcare CEO Rick Scott (who was forced to resign rather than face criminal charges in the nation’s largest Medicaid fraud case, resulting in a $1.7 billion fine) sums up all the Republican lies about the Islamic Center in New York in one TV spot, going FOX News one better by tying construction of the facility to health care reform. Why Scott, who is running for governor of Florida — a state which will have little if any say in the issue — would chose this as a campaign platform is unclear.

Sarah Palin has done a great dance all over the 1st Amendment this week, first over the proposed NYC Islamic Center and the insensitivity of it. Then about Dr. Laura and her freedom to speak insensitively.

Commentor “citizen x” on a Florida newspaper letter to the editor about Republican governor candidate Rick Scott’s new anti freedom of religion TV ad

6 in 10

– Number of Americans who mistakenly believe Pres. Obama is a Muslim who also report they were told this by the media, with 16 percent (the largest segment) attributing it to television. Another 11 percent say they figured it out themselves from the president’s “behavior and words.”