It's all About Intentions, Credibility and the Truth!

The media matters article, "Fox and Friends Deceptively Edits Obama's Comments on Small Business" by Remington Shepard shares the details of Fox's "selective editing".

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/16/fox-amp-friends-deceptively-edits-obamas-commen/187146

For anyone to give Fox News a single shred of credibility after their years of hack "reporting" continues to amaze me. The hatchet job Fox did Monday as detailed by Remington, resulted in an outright misrepresentation of the truth on President Obama's remarks on why small business, or anyone else for that matter, does not achieve success solely by themselves. This whole incident only confirms for me again that Fox watchers must be intentionally blinding themselves to the truth due to their extreme hatred for liberals and the President. This hatred is whipped up by years and years of rumors and outright falsehoods, presented by Fox to both shelter the bad behavior of the right, and constantly bash efforts of the left to make our country whole again after the disastrous Bush, Cheney, Rove debacle.

By the way, if you're going to hate a liberal, by proxy you hate me. Just for the record, if you are on the right, I do not hate you in any way. I'm completely confused by your apparent hateful, humorless, bitter, aggressive behavior but I do not hate you. To most accurately describe how I feel toward you would be to say, I miss you. I long for the days we can sit together and talk and debate and ultimately work together to solve our nation’s issues, but I do not hate you. I truly do wish we could talk. We should make it a priority to stop emulating the non-productive behavior of those in Washington who refuse to talk or work together unless or until they get their way regarding whatever policy is being discussed or regain the majority they aspire to. In my opinion their behavior is exactly why George Washington strongly warned against political parties in his farewell letter to a young nation of states. His main concerns were that people would become more allegiant to their political parties than they would be to their country. Look at us, it seems we have not heeded Washington’s advice and that is very sad. It’s time we take matters into our own hands and start talking more and shouting less.

The hatred many of us have observed has been fostered by years of people submitting themselves to the propaganda from Limbaugh, Beck, Savage, Gaffney, Fox and many others for decades. Remember Frank Gaffney? He's the one who accused the Obama administration of redesigning the missile defense program logo to claim that this new logo was smoking gun evidence of Barack Obama's submission to Sharia law. When he found out the logo was from the Bush administration, he quietly retracted his claim. Any guess how many right wing bloggers are still running with that bit of complete nonsense? Remember Michael Savage? He's the one who wrote a book titled, "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder", a title so off the scale offensive to both those who suffer from mental illness and to liberals, that it's only real enlightenment is to the right wings total disregard for civility and honest and open discourse. From the rights perspective, in America today, unless you agree with them you can't possibly be sane or American. Even your legitimacy as a person, who knows anything, or about what it takes to "understand America", as John Sununu stated earlier this week, plays into the dog whistle politics challenging the Presidents legitimacy and citizenship. This is the same John Sununu who was born in Havana, Cuba, the son of Victoria and John Saleh Sununu. He is of Palestinian and Greek descent. His father grew up in Jerusalem and his mother was born in San Salvador. No one, including me is challenging Sununu's right to an opinion or is questioning his citizenship. He is a citizen of the U.S. in spite of actually being born in a foreign country. John, on the other hand feels quite comfortable highlighting President Obama's "otherness" and excoriating the President for being born in Hawaii, (last I checked that was a State within the United States) and living abroad as a child. This is yet another amazing example of complete and total hypocrisy from someone who is a leader of the right and carries considerable baggage from his past position of political power himself.

As White House Chief of Staff, Sununu reportedly took personal trips, for skiing and other purposes, and classified them as official, for purposes such as conservation or promoting the Thousand Points of Light. The Washington Post wrote that Sununu's jets "took him to fat-cat Republican fund-raisers, ski lodges, golf resorts and even his dentist in Boston. Sununu had paid the government only $892 for his more than $615,000 worth of military jet travels. Sununu said that his use of the jets was necessary because he had to be near a telephone at all times for reasons of national security. Sununu worsened the situation shortly afterwards when, after leaking rumors of financial difficulties in his family, he traveled to a rare stamp auction at Christie's auction house in New York City from Washington in a government limousine, spending $5,000 on rare stamps. Sununu then sent the car and driver back to Washington unoccupied while he returned on a corporate jet. In the course of one week, 45 newspapers ran editorials on Sununu, nearly all of them critical of his actions.

Sununu repaid over $47,000 to the government for the flights on the orders of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, with the help of the Republican Party. However, the reimbursements were at commercial rates, which are about one-tenth the cost of the actual flights; one ski trip to Vail, Colorado alone had cost taxpayers $86,330.

Now this very same man is held up as a representative of Governor Romney. We are expected to listen to him as if he were the paradigm of truth and justice. All I see is a bitter, hateful, hypocritical, divisive person who presents nothing positive in the political discourse.

I will say again as I have said many times before, my father very specifically warned me to keep a wary eye on someone once I discovered that person or institution had been exposed in a lie. This was especially this case when the discovered lie was intentional. Dad would say and I paraphrase, their tendency to continue to be a false source of information is high, and you should never trust anything else they say unless when presented with the truth they correct themselves. This is in keeping with who my father was, a man of grace.

For those of you who may feel compelled to come back at me with "everyone lies", keep it to yourself. I already know that oft used defense mechanism. It only serves to muddy the waters and cover the bad deeds being presented. Inaccuracies are out there, we all know that. I try to follow sources that when they state something that turns out to be wrong, they as quickly as possible take the time to, in detail, correct themselves. In the case of folks who get "over the top passionate" and say offensive things, I watch to see if they humbly and assuredly apologize for their misconduct and or misstatements. I believe I am following my father’s advice when I do this. It has served me well in determining who is really trying to make sure they present the facts as honestly as they can.

To reiterate, I am talking about intentional bold faced misrepresentations of what a person said, i.e., a group of Fox editors sitting in a room with the entire context of what the President said, and intentionally taking 30 or so words out of hundreds to willfully misrepresent what he said and then repeating it on national T.V.

My God, is it asking too much to acknowledge your source of information is corrupt?

Much to my embarrassment I admit that I was a Fox watcher for years, until 2004 right after the re-election of President Bush. The day after the election I turned Fox News on and much to my dismay there was just as much shouting and discontent as ever. I felt sick inside. They got their guy in office didn't they? What were they so unhappy about? Was there never a time that they would just lighten up and at least try to look like they were happy about something, anything?

The image of that day stuck with me for a long time. I stopped turning on Fox when I got home and immediately noticed a marked difference in my disposition. I wasn't up tight and full and angst all the time. My life was more peaceful. With the help of my lovely wife I started doing the research and found what I had already suspected for years, Fox had an agenda, and the truth be damned in their pursuit of it. I am so grateful to be free from that and the constant state of anxiety I felt. I let those professional agitators keep me locked into a permanent state of discontent.

Then one day I turned on the local news and there was this young man standing on a platform, positive and vibrant and talking about the injustice of job migration overseas as a result of corrupt tax and trade policies. I'll never forget that moment! I had turned the T.V. on and started to walk down the hall and was stopped in my tracks by this man’s words. I had lived and worked in manufacturing for 30 years at the time, and had experienced and seen the effects of outsourcing first hand for 25 of those years. I spun on my heels and ran to the living room and shouted to my wife, FINALLY! A politician who is defining the problem and showing the will to put forth and work on the solution!

My life changed that day when I saw Barack Obama for the first time. It has never been the same since as I have learned to listen to people and watch what they actually do after they have staked out their positions. I don't agree with every position Barack Obama takes but one thing occurred to me on this matter. If we are honest, there is no politician we agree with on 100% of the issues. In fact we may disagree on some pretty significant things, even core issues, but we are compelled to identify what a political leader represents in terms of what is best for America overall and move from there. I find this man to be honest and genuine and free from malice. He shows a real willingness to stay away from the politics of personal destruction. Does he highlight his opposition to his political opponents point of view and ask the electorate to make a decision based on the differences? Absolutely. That is as it should be. What I have seen to this point is a man who has an amazing ability to take the high road even in the midst of strongest political disagreements. That is what I consider to be a leader and that is the man I support to lead our Nation.