Tag Archives: Eric Bolling

April 25, 2013 · 8:23 AM

Jon Stewart destroys Fox News for jettisoning the Bill of Rights after Boston bombing

Jon Stewart screenshot

In my opinion, Jon Stewart and his writers are nothing short of genius…

The Raw Story

On his show Wednesday night, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart illustrated how Fox News personalities feigned love of the U.S. Constitution, but quickly abandoned it when it conflicted with their opinion.

In particular, Stewart observed that various Fox News hosts and pundits trashed the Bill of Rights following the Boston Marathon bombing.

Many at Fox were upset that bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights, while others called for him to be declared an enemy combatant despite the fact he is a U.S. citizen.

“So in the wake of an assault on our freedom and way of life, we have quickly jettisoned the Sixth Amendment right to a fair and speedy trial, and the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination. What’s next?” Stewart remarked, before playing a clip of Sean Hannity saying Tsarnaev should be waterboarded. “So there goes the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Any freedom lovers what to take a crack at some of the lower ones?”

Stewart showed that Brian Kilmeade and Eric Bolling both called for the FBI to place listening devices in mosques, a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. Meanwhile, “Fox’s most prominent liberal voice” Bob Beckel jettisoned First Amendment rights by calling for a moratorium on Muslim exchange students. Ann Coulter took at stab at the Ninth Amendment by calling for the widow of the deceased bombing suspect to be imprisoned for wearing a hijab.

“Ann Coulter doesn’t just want a police state, she wants a fashion police state,” Stewart remarked.

Watch video, via Comedy Central.

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April 9, 2013 · 9:21 PM

There Is Nothing Controversial About Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC Promo

You may have heard that the right-wing hysteria machine is at screaming level over an MSNBC thirty second promo.  I cannot believe the reaction she’s receiving from the paranoid right.

If you get a chance check out the comments on Mediaite.  Here’s just one example:

Esteban Rey  Ima Winnah • 31 minutes ago

I thought white conservative southerners used to like it when black women raised their kids for them.

Ima Winnah  Esteban Rey • 15 minutes ago

Mammy obviously doesn’t know her role.

(D-Ed. note:) Ms. Perry is a Professor of Political Science at Tulane University.

Mediaite

Everything that Melissa Harris-Perry says in her latest “Lean Forward” promo for MSNBC is completely reasonable. And no, that last sentence was not sarcastic.

Since the “controversial” promo first appeared this past weekend, conservatives have been apoplectic over its content. Glenn Beck called the ad “almost a parody.” Fox News’ Eric Bolling said she “declared war on the American fabric.” And, Sarah Palin was so angry she had to invent a completely new word: “unflippingbelievable.”

Those three and others across the internet and on TV are utterly outraged that Harris-Perry would suggest that America should take a more “collective” approach to child-rearing. They can’t believe she dared to tell them that their children, don’t just “belong” to them, but also are part of a larger community. It’s those two words–”collective” and “belong”–that are at the root of conservatives’ outrage, and also their major misunderstanding.

Starting with “collective,” Harris-Perry says “We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children.” As Bob Beckel pointed out on The Five today, that word is often associated with socialism. As in, everyone works together for the collective good and shares the wealth. That’s fundamentally not what Harris-Perry is talking about here. As Beckel said, it may not have been the best choice of words for her to use, but she is simply using the word “collective” to describe the way members of a community help each other, while clearly maintaining their own, capitalistic identities.

The issue with the second word, “belong,” I believe hinges on two distinct definitions that often get conflated and confused. Someone or something can “belong” to another person in terms of being their property. Or they can “belong” to an organization in terms of being a member. This issue arose during the Democratic National Convention last September when another promotional video featured the phrase “the government is the only thing we all belong to.”

Mitt Romney‘s campaign attempted to turn that innocuous line into the second coming of “you didn’t build that” by proudly declaring in response “We don’t belong to government, the government belongs to us.” Just as Romney seemed to miss the fact that the word “belong” can have two meanings, critics of Harris-Perry do not realize that while a child can be the “property” of their parents, they are a “member” of the community. These are two very different notions that Harris-Perry to tying together using the word “belong” for rhetorical effect.

Obviously, there is something about Harris-Perry and the words that came out of her mouth that have conservatives enraged. But when you break it down, all she was saying is that by attending school every day, and living in the world, children are members of a larger community than just their nuclear families. In no way is she suggesting that the government owns your children and should have the right to take them away or make any other major decisions about how they are raised.

On her MSNBC blog today, Harris-Perry “doubled-down” on her comments, writing, “One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of more than our households, they are part of our communities and deserve to have the care, attention, resources, respect and opportunities of those communities.” When she puts it like that, it doesn’t sound so crazy, does it?

Current TV shows the commercial (partially) and analyzes the right-wing “shock and anger” response:

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November 15, 2012 · 12:34 PM

Fox News Kicks Off New Jobs Number Conspiracy

Apparently Fox News has no reason to change their ways after the “shellacking” they got with the recent presidential election results.  They seem to be comfortable in their little conspiracy bubble and apparently so do their viewers…

Think Progress

The Labor Department today announced that 439,000 workers filed for initial jobless claims last week, a large jump from the previous week. The increase is largelyattributable to Hurricane Sandy. As the Associated Press explained, “applications increased by 78,000 because a large number of applications were filed in states damaged by the storm. People can claim unemployment benefits if their workplaces close and they don’t get paid.” Economists expect the storm to distort economic data for at least a few more weeks.

However, Fox News and other conservatives have a different explanation: More cooking of the books by the Obama administration. When the unemployment rate dropped in September,conservatives alleged a conspiracy on the part of the Labor Department to aid Obama’s re-election. Fox News, along with Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), were once again alleging a conspiracy after the latest numbers were released today:

– FOX NEWS’ ERIC BOLLING: “The Department of Labor is getting sketchier and sketchier with each one of these numbers.”

– FOX NEWS’ GRETCHEN CARLSON: “A lot of people are going to be raising some eyebrows pretty high today that, after the election, we go up to this whopping number of 439,000.”

– GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R-WI): “Well, real concerns about the numbers. Certainly, some will question the timing.“

Watch it:

However, Fox’s television anchors evidently did not coordinate coverage with the network’s own website, which posted the AP’s take on the number:

Ed: Doh!

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February 16, 2012 · 8:02 PM

Fox Host Eric Bolling To Rep. Maxine Waters: ‘Step Away From The Crack Pipe’

I’ve figured it out.  Bolling and the other bottom feeders over at Faux News have to feed their ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic, brain-dead viewers with this sort of fodder every evening and on their internet site Fox Nation, so they say and do things like this just to get a rise from their base and from angered liberals.

Now that I get what they’re doing, I’m not as angry as I was when I first read this piece.  I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re all a bunch of sick asses over there.

Think Progress

Fox News host Eric Bolling — who is fond of discussing President Obama’s penchant for “chugging 40′s” and inviting “hoodlum[s] in hizzouse” and the “crib” — told Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) this morning that she should “step away from the crack pipe.” While discussing Waters strong rhetoric about bankers and the GOP leadership, Bolling, without any apparent relevancy aside from the fact they are both African-American women, offered some friendly advice: “Congresswoman, you saw what happened to Whitney Houston. Step away from the crack pipe.” Watch it via Media Matters.

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February 6, 2012 · 10:51 AM

Fox And Friends Pretty Sure The Labor Department Is ‘Cooking The Books’ On Jobs Numbers | ThinkProgress

Think Progress

On Friday, ThinkProgress noted that Fox News appeared to be systematically ignoring the strong jobs report that day, perhaps in an effort to avoid giving President Obama any credit. The network mentioned the jobs numbers half as often as some of their competitors, and buried the big news on their website, but on Fox and Friends today, the network went a step further.

Hosts Eric Bolling, Steve Doocy, and Gretchen Carlson went beyond merely downplaying the numbers to contriving a conspiracy theory to explain them away:

BOLLING: So are they playing around with the numbers? Look, it’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s supposed to be non-partisan, but that’s the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis heads the Department of Labor, Hilda Solis works directly to Obama. I’m — you know.

DOOCY: Are you saying they’re cooking the books?

BOLLING: I’m saying there’s room for error. There’s room — when you’re talking about 4 million people, how do you know?

DOOCY: How do you know?

CARLSON: I don’t think anyone should surprised that in an election year — [...]So it’s interpretation, I think is the way in which we’d describe it.

Watch it, via Media Matters:

If it weren’t improper to psychologically analyse strangers, one might think the Fox hosts are displaying a textbook example of cogitative dissonance here, a psychological phenomena in which people who hold on strong belief about something invent (sometimes far fetched) explanations for new evidence that conflicts with their existing views. Obama is bad for the economy, the jobs numbers show the economy is doing better, so there must be something wrong with the jobs numbers. Needless to say, this is hardly the behavior one expects from fair and balanced journalists Fox hosts claim to be.

Meanwhile, some conservatives have developed a more sophisticated excuse for the jobs report, saying the drop in unemployment rate is only due to decreasing participation in the jobs market. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and others have refuted this claim.

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July 15, 2011 · 11:17 AM

Fox News Host Eric Bolling’s Emotional Defense Of 9/11 Omission: ‘Thank You, Liberals, For Reminding Me How Petty You Can Be’ (VIDEO)

Since Glenn Beck left, this guy is the biggest clown on Fox News…

Huffington Post   

Fox News’ Eric Bolling delivered an angry, emotional response to the attention he received for mistakenly saying there had been no domestic terror attacks during President Bush’s term.

Since the statement–which Bolling made on Wednesday’s episode of “The Five”–omitted 9/11, Bolling drew some ridicule. On Thursday’s episode, he addressed his critics directly, with his voice shaking. Bolling said that “obviously” he had meant that there were no domestic terror attacks in the aftermath of 9/11, but that the “radical liberal left pounced on us and me” instead of letting the statement go.

He then assured people that he remembered 9/11 all too well.

“I happened to be standing there watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning,” Bolling said. “I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my closest friends, and I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services. I’ll never forget 9/11, but thank you liberals for reminding me how petty you can be.”

WATCH:

 

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June 14, 2011 · 5:14 PM

Fox’s Bolling Issues Brief, Dishonest Apology For “Hoodlum[s]” In “The Hizzouse” Segment

Eric Bolling’s short apology comes way too late and didn’t cover a similar statement by him when the POTUS was on his trip to Europe. 

Media Matters

Eric Bolling apologized Monday night on Fox Business for his story saying that President Obama is hosting “hoodlum[s]” in “the hizzouse”:

BOLLING: One editorial note. On Friday, we did a story about the president meeting with the president of Gabon. We got a little fast and loose with the language, and we know it’s been interpreted as being disrespectful, and for that, I’m sorry. We did go a bit too far. More Follow the Money coming up in just a minute.

This is a dishonest apology for several reasons.

First, it’s simply not true that the problems on his Friday show consisted of him and his guests getting “a little fast and loose with the language.” Some of the most racially inflammatory language Bolling used on his Friday show was in the two teases for the segment, both of which were apparently scripted and accompanied by equally inflammatory images.

In the tease at the top of the show, he said, “Guess who’s coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa’s kleptocrats. It’s not the first time he’s had a hoodlum in the hizzouse.”

[...]

The intro to the segment itself, which lasted more than five minutes, also appeared to be scripted. In it, Bolling said this: “So what’s with all the hoods in the hizzy? A month after the White House hosted the rapper Common, who glorifies violence on cops, the president opened his doors to one of Africa’s most evil dictators. Here’s Ali Bongo, the Gabonese president, who’s been accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country’s dollars.”

Putting together multiple pieces of script that contain racially inflammatory language, two of which were accompanied by fairly elaborate graphics, is not “fast and loose.” The instance in which he goaded Fox Business reporter Sandra Smith into referring to the “White Hizzy” could perhaps be covered by that explanation, but that, too, seemed fairly considered.

Continue to images…

H/t Gilligan

Related Media Matters Links:

Neal Boortz: “We Got Too Damn Many Urban Thugs, Yo … We Need More Dead Thugs” In Atlanta

On ABC’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg Responds To Bolling’s “Hizzouse” Segment: “Not All Of Us Speak Like That”

 

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June 13, 2011 · 3:43 AM

Fox Business’ Eric Bolling: Obama inviting ‘hoodlums’ to the ‘hizzouse’

I should not be shocked or dismayed at anything that the Fox News Network says about the POTUS.  However I am in fact quite disgusted with Fox News’ constant “scary Black man meme“.

Did these people forget that George W. Bush invited Osama Bin Laden’s son, Omar Bin Laden to White House ?  Not to mention a male hooker and even some Taliban members, right before 9/11.

Raw Story

Referring to a meeting in the Oval Office between President Barack Obama and Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, Fox Business’ Eric Bolling said, “It’s not first time he’s had a hoodlum in the hizzouse” while displaying a picture of the rapper Common.

“Our president’s sitting with one of Africa’s most wanted,” Bolling, the host of Follow the Money, said later in the segment. “It’s not the first time he’s had a hood in the big crib.”

Also during the segment, Human Events editor Jason Mattera added that “we shouldn’t be surprised that Barack Obama is going to get chummy with a reprehensible dictator” because he has a “pattern of yucking it up” with dictators and “likes to defecate on American allies.”

In May, Bolling was accused of racism for tweeting, “Obama chugging 40′s in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO.”

Watch video, clipped by Mediaite, below:

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November 27, 2010 · 9:10 PM

Media Matters: Beck tells audience to ruin Thanksgiving dinner with misinformation about inflation

Media Matters

While advising his Fox News viewers to talk about inflation at their Thanksgiving dinners, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that the government removed food and energy prices from its measure of inflation to hide rising prices, that a survey showed economists are “worried” about inflation, and that Social Security recipients are not receiving a cost-of-living adjustment because the government “changed the calculation.”

Beck: Government removed “food and energy” from inflation estimate so that people wouldn’t “recognize how bad things actually were.” From the November 22 edition of Fox News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: Then, you can say things like, “Did you know that Ben Bernanke is saying that we should be worrying about deflation?” Here he is:

BERNANKE : — rates of inflation, the constraint imposed by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is too tight. The short-term real interest rate is too high, given the state of the economy, and the risk of deflation is higher than desirable.

BECK: Ah, yeah. OK. George Soros says the same thing. He says in “spooky dude” voice, it is — “It is the U.S. that is not in the position of Europe’s heavily indebted countries, which must pay heavy premiums over the price at which Germany can borrow. Interest rates on U.S. government bonds have been falling and are near record lows, which means the financial markets anticipate deflation, not inflation, and I’m a spooky dude.”

All right. They don’t care. And you know what? George Soros and Ben Bernanke ain’t going out and doing the shopping. Mom and Grandma are. Your wife is.

And inflation isn’t even computed like it used to be computed. The government figured it out. The government realized that people could recognize how bad things actually were, so they changed how we calculated it. So, in other words, the TV could say, “There’s no inflation,” and you’d be going, “I’m broke. How’s that happening?”

Now, they calculate inflation without adding in the price of food and energy. Oh, well, other than those going up, we’re set.

Eric Bolling recently made similar claim on Beck’s show. During the November 18 edition of Beck’s Fox News show, Fox Business host Eric Bolling stated:

BOLLING: The government will tell you, people will tell that you we don’t even have inflation. The reason for that is because the government puts out an inflation number that removes food and energy. How convenient, right? Because the only two things that we really use every day — food and energy. So you remove that and things don’t look that [inaudible] bad.

Continue reading here…

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September 17, 2010 · 6:25 PM

Former Sen. Al D’Amato To GOP Guest: “Shut Up, I Listened To Your Racist Bullsh*t”

Former NY Senator Alphonse D’Amato is a Republican.  However, keep in mind that when D’Amato was in office, defining a republican back then is like defining a moderate today…

Mediaite

Things got a little heated on FBN’s Money Rocks last night while talking about the post office.

After GOP strategist Jack Burkman suggested the government organization consisted of unskilled Nigerians, former NY Sen. Al D’Amato called this argument “racist” and started dropping BS’s – uncensored.

I’m still not sure why the post office segment got everyone so fired up, but it definitely did. Burkman said “most of these guys working in the post office should be driving cabs,” and that they are “like a thing for ceremonial and memorial waste.”

At first, D’Amato held back. “Jack could have done well without all the name calling,” he said, although agreeing “it probably should be privatized.”

But after Burkman reiterated his ‘unskilled Nigerians’ argument, D’Amato went in for the kill. “You are a nasty racist,” he said. “That’s a bunch of bullshit. And you should be ashamed of yourself and have your mouth washed out. What the hell are you talking about?”

After Burkman tried interrupting: “Shut up, I listened to your racist bullshit.” Check out the video below for one bonus ‘bullshit’ comment!

Host Eric Bolling summed it up. “We kind of went postal on that segment,” he said. Money Rocks is a taped show, so it’s not clear why the BS’s weren’t bleeped. But it makes for a great video!

Check it out (the fun begins around the 4:30 mark, but the, uh, “racist bullshit” starts earlier):

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