What confuses me is that Obama is lowering taxes and even the top tax rate is being raised to a level that was lower than under Reagan.

What's happening here is a lot of people are in debt, and they can't protest against Citibank or refuse to make their credit card payments, so it's easier to complain about taxes. They've lived beyond their means for years, and now they have to choose either reel in their personal expenses, pay Citibank or pay Uncle Sam.

Out of those three choices they will: reel in personal expenses, pay Citibank, and pay Uncle Sam. To feel better about it: they go to the Tea Party to complain about the money they have to pay Uncle Sam.

What's ironic is most of these folks voted for Bush. Bush's Vice was Cheney. Cheney said "Deficits don't matter."

So where were these folks while their beloved leaders were doing the amazingly idiotic thing of reducing gov't revenue (by cutting taxes on the rich) while over-spending (not even counting Iraq and TARP, which was a Republican plan!). That's like if I quit my job and then bought a plasma television set! You an spend when your reducing revenue. This is why the GOP has been bad for America. And it's also why Fox News has suddenly become the network of libertarian crazies rather than just a solidly pro-Republican network.

It's funny how much more you're hearing "this isn't a partisan issue" now that the social conservatives had their asses served to them in the past TWO election cycles.

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How does Keith Olbermann look himself in the mirror when Janeane Garofalo claims that the tea-baggers and their cause is about racism and doesn't ask her a qualifying question? Like maybe, "What makes you say that, Janeane?"

How does Susan Roesgen actually attend a Tea Party in Chicago under the guise of covering it, find a single enraged protester, cuts him off and doesn't talk to any of the relatively sane (by protester standards) people in attendance?

How does Dan Rather look himself in the mirror when he decides to go forward with a story despite the fact that the it is backed by fraudulent documents and then asks the New York Times to sit on an unrelated story for a week so that he could spring it on the American people two nights before the 2004 election? Incidentally, how does this hack keep finding employment?

I agree that the ambushes have gone way to far. It was one thing when O'Reilly was ambushing judges who were letting child rapists off with three month sentences, but to stalk people because you don't agree with what they are saying is thuggery.

I try to watch all three cable news networks, because not a single one of them does their job properly. If we didn't have Fox News, I would have never heard about the Oil for Food Scandal. In fact, I wouldn't even know what the Tea Parties were about without Fox News. I would have been treated to a delightful variety of tea-bagging jokes (I'm not being facetious in my use of the word "delightful." It was kind of funny). The jokes were fine, but also cover the story. I have a group of idiotic friends that will sit around with me and make hysterical double entendre jokes. I need content in my news.

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@ChillbearLatrigue: Why watch any cable news when print journalism does it all much better?

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Is that because you don't READ? Because I read about it! But I guess pointing that out makes me "smug".

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Who did you vote for? Because I'm pretty sure I didn't vote for people who believe the Ronald Reagan proved that "deficits don't matter".

Also: Where are all these Angry White Conservatives when Bush was creating the largest deficits in history (including the largest expansion of "entitlements", the Medicare Drug Bill) and saying there are "jobs Americans won't do?" and then promoted and expanded legal foreign temporary workers?

After eight years of the shite leadership, suddenly Fox News is libertarian and talking about how this is a non-partisan issue?

BULL-SHIT. BULLSHIT! I call BULLSHIT. Nyah nyah nyah.

You, Mr. Social Conservative, OWN THIS PROBLEM. It's yours. You created it.

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If I had to describe the difference, I'd say that the other networks continually realize what they say on the air must be bounded by a world of fact, and that crossing that boundary will injure their reputations. Again, I say this not from watching the shows, but from working with professional journalists, who I tend to believe still make key decisions at those networks.

While my suspicion is that Fox lacks any such constraint or oversight, and that in fact their reputation depends on their coverage issuing from outside the world of fact. And my further suspicion is that this occurs because Fox News is run by people who did not succeed in other areas of journalism, or who declined ever to try it in the first place.

My opinion, once more, is all speculation based on nonprimary sources. But I do know something about how a professional journalistic enterprise is run, and what the final product looks like. That's what I'm going on.

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@gawkimo: As I recall, that story was broken by Fox News. Smug bastard.

@skahammer: You realize it's kind of hard for me to argue your opinions that you've based on here say, but for now I will try. If the other networks have such a superior set of journalistic standards, how do you account for my examples?

Let's put reputations aside and talk about the lives of human beings. Do you recall when Newsweek reported on the Koran abuse at Guantanamo in 2005? They retracted their story a week later, but not until 11 people had died in riots. I consider Newsweek to be a fairly mainstream magazine although not a very good one. This is the kind of things that happen all of the time with non-Fox News outlets, but I only see the criticism pointed at that channel.

In the past week, I watched a bunch of news network shows ridicule the tea-baggers (sorry, I can't stop saying it either). They would follow it up with a discussion with some talking head who would generally say that the group doesn't stand for anything. Well, that is not journalism. It's entertainment. It would take someone asking a few intelligent questions to get to the meaning behind the Tea Party movement. When you cover a war protest it's pretty apparent on the surface why the protestors are there. The same applies to a Pro Life rally or a Gay Rights march.

The Tea Party movement (which I am not part of), wants to stem the expansion of government that is occurring through debt or proposed taxation. I pretty much summed it up in one sentence, but that is more than what I received in a week from the other cable networks.

Seriously, though, how can you form an opinion on something that you're not watching? You should at least glance over a few of the shows if for no other reason than to be informed. You can skip Beck.

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Actually, it was an Iraqi newspaper that first published a list of corrupt beneficiaries to the program. Then the Christian Science Monitor published a report that led to a libel suit from Britain's Galloway.

This happened before Fox news took the story and turned into a anti-Clinton tirade.

And this isn't just something "I recall" -- it's something that comes from the fact-based community of smug bastards who read instead of sit in front of the teevee being spoon-fed opinions and bullshit.

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Other than mudslinging and character assassination, what other great news have they produced for you?

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I like the logic, though. It's fun. Nothing is real. It only exists because we imagine it does. So it's real. And lots happened back before time was.

I'm still working on how them Thetans kept appointments before time was ...

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What I am saying is that they were the first large news organization in this country to actually cover Oil for Food.

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