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Jon Stewart roasts Rupert Murdoch over his bid to buy the LA Times. Murdoch already had a chance at the news publishing business with his News of The World rag, which blew up in his face over criminal activities and now new arrests. So why would he be given a special waiver to buy the storied newspaper?

It appears that Murdoch's hope rest on one man's shoulders.

In weighing a bid for The Los Angeles Times, Rupert Murdoch finds himself in a familiar role: waiting for rule changes from the government. With the resignation last week of Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he may have to wait a little longer.

Mr. Murdoch, who has never shied away from a regulatory battle, has been beefing up News Corporation’s lobbying efforts in Washington in the last few months to urge regulators to revise a media ownership rule that would prevent the company from acquiring The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers in markets in which it already owns television stations.“He wants it,” one person close to Mr. Murdoch said of The Los Angeles Times.“They’re working on getting a waiver now,” added this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks. But another person close to Mr. Murdoch said he currently considered a potential deal more trouble than it is worth given the regulatory hurdles in Washington.

The resignation of Mr. Genachowski, a Democrat, could further stall a plan favored by the departing chairman that would relax a longtime ban on consolidation between television stations and newspapers in local markets. The F.C.C. signaled on Friday that a vote on easing media ownership rules would move forward despite Mr. Genachowski’s departure.Initially expected to be presented for a vote early this year, the measure has already faced several setbacks. Last month, Mr. Genachowski said there would be no vote until the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, a Washington-based nonprofit, completed a study of the impact of cross-ownership on news gathering. That process could take several weeks, potentially pushing a vote to the summer.

(h/t Heather@VideoCafe)

Reuters:

An education technology conference this week in Austin, Texas, will clang with bells and whistles as startups eagerly show off their latest wares.

But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students' information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

Entrepreneurs can't wait.

"This is going to be a huge win for us," said Jeffrey Olen, a product manager at CompassLearning, which sells education software.

Yeah, maybe. Parents are pretty creeped out over the idea of tracking their kids' school performance over their K-12 educational careers. I have some ambivalence about the whole idea, but it's a non-starter for me when I see how they've structured it, and particularly knowing Rupert Murdoch is involved.

The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, built the infrastructure over the past 18 months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it.

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After Michelle Rhee's disingenuous claim that she was just marching "for the children" last week, she tossed $250,000 into the kitty for Kate Anderson, the "reform" candidate looking to oust Steve Zimmer.

LA Times:

A group led by former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee donated $250,000 Wednesday to contests for seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education, adding further political fuel to a battle over the direction of reform efforts in the nation's second-largest school system.

The support of StudentsFirst, which is based in Sacramento, will benefit an independent campaign on behalf of school board President Monica Garcia as well as Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez, who are seeking to join the seven-member body.

That's not all. Michael Bloomberg tossed in a million last week, and News Corp has tossed in $50,000 too. Then there's Netflix chairman Reed Hastings with his donation of $100,000, Jeffrey Katzenberg with $50,000, and Laurene Powell Jobs, who has given $112,500 between a foundation she runs and her own personal funds.

But wait! There's more! Venture capitalists don't want to be left in the dust, so they're digging into their pockets, too, giving a collective total of $200,000.

Since January 1, 2013, $2.8 million dollars in outside money has been given to three candidates backed by the Coalition for School Reform, which supports Kate Anderson, Antonio Sanchez, and incumbent school board president Monica Garcia.

As usual, Michelle Rhee has her own agenda first, rather than students:

Rhee said her involvement in Los Angeles could advance school reform statewide.

"We think it's important that John Deasy be able to continue on the job to finish the work he started," she said.

Deasy is developing an evaluation system that incorporates the use of student standardized test scores as one measure of an instructor's effectiveness. Last week, he directed principals to count test results as 30% of an evaluation. He also has altered district rules so that layoffs are not based strictly on seniority.

As a reminder, that "evaluation system" was used to humiliate Los Angeles teachers by using their students' performance on standardized tests which don't account for underfunded facilities, poverty, and other barriers to student learning.

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos:

This is the kind of money that's behind corporate education policy, with its attendant privatization, teaching to the test, and union-busting. And when you look at the players giving six and seven figures here, you realize how much more money is coming down the pike.

The election is March 5th. Who knows how many other billionaires will pony up to buy Los Angeles schools by then. Voters, beware.

It's pretty clear that Rupert doesn't know a) the difference between Guantanamo, Cuba and Guatemala, the country; and b) what "silence" means.

Unless, of course, he thinks Glenn Greenwald, Daily Kos, Marcy Wheeler, Digby, the New York Times and the ACLU are all on the right.

And yes, these are the same people and organizations that were outraged by Bush/Cheney's torture and gulags -- while the GOP remained silent.

But thanks for tweeting, Rupert!

(h/t Scarce)

It looks like Politifact got it right this year, or at least more right than the past. They have selected their "Lie of the Year", and it was definitely a doozy. For 2012, Politifact has named Mitt Romney's lie about Jeep moving jobs to China as the Big Lie.

People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.

PolitiFact has selected Romney's claim that Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

But as the Baltimore Sun points out, the real story is that Fox News and Karl Rove are equally responsible for that lie spreading and getting enough traction to land right smack dab in the middle of the 2012 election:

No, the news about Fox News that mattered Wednesday was connected to PolitiFact naming the Mitt Romney campaign ad that said Jeep was going to move production and ship jobs to China “Lie of the Year.” Lie of the year.

And why that matters in any discussion of Fox is that the Rupert-Murdoch-owned channel “fact checked” the ad during the campaign and vouched for its accuracy – not once but twice. And, furthermore, Fox did it in one instance with Jim Angle, who is part of the news operation not the host of an evening show, doing the vouching. The channel’s website describes Angle as “chief national correspondent.”

And that cuts to the heart of the lie Fox News tries to sell about its news operation being as journalistically sound and non-ideologically driven as anything on the networks or CNN. Sure, Fox executives have said to me, the prime-time shows have opinion in them – just like opinion pages in a newspaper. But not our news programs and the reports by our correspondents.

Except, I guess, when it’s an election year, and things are going badly for the Republican candidate. Then, you use your chief national correspondent to vouch for the essential accuracy of the ad that is the “Lie of the Year.”

For a fuller discussion of Fox’s role in helping create an echo chamber for this Jeep-jobs-to-China lie, check out Media Matters. I know it’s an ideologically-driven liberal website. I’ve fought with Media Matters and been denounced by some of the best folks there. But the research and reporting on this matter are detailed and accurate.

The first part of that article described how sad and disheartened Rove and O'Reilly were over, well, just everything. Good. They should be sad. They are not news; they are propagandists, and they undermine our democracy on a daily basis when they pretend they're "fair and balanced."

Congratulations to Rove, Fox News, and Mitt Romney! They've received an honor which finally matches the recipient: Lie and Liars of the year.

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Nestled deep in Sunday's Washington Post Style section, there is a little bombshell from Bob Woodward about secret messages passed by Fox News commentator KT McFarland to General David Petraeus about a possible run for the White House in 2012, or 2016.

The Fox News chairman’s message was delivered to Petraeus by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former national security and Pentagon aide in three Republican administrations. She did so at the end of a 90-minute, unfiltered conversation with Petraeus that touched on the general’s future, his relationship with the media and his political aspirations — or lack thereof. The Washington Post has obtained a digital recording from the meeting, which took place in Petraeus’s office in Kabul.

McFarland also said that Ailes — who had a decades-long career as a Republican political consultant, advising Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — might resign as head of Fox to run a Petraeus presidential campaign. At one point, McFarland and Petraeus spoke about the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., which owns Fox News, would “bankroll” the campaign.

Roger Ailes shrugged it off with a laugh, minimizing McFarland's involvement as some kind of cloak-and-dagger joke. Anyone with half a brain knows that's nonsense. Roger Ailes would have died a happy man after running a Petraeus campaign.

There are a lot of disturbing things about just the snippet of audio I've posted above. The transcript is posted here, and highlights some of the things illustrating how deeply entrenched Fox News is in the military-industrial complex. Here's one highlight:

MCFARLAND:: That’s not the question at this point. He says that if you’re offered chairman, take it. If you’re offered anything else, don’t take it, resign in six months and run for president. Okay? And I know you’re not running for president. But at some point when you go to New York next, you may want to just chat with Roger. And Rupert Murdoch, for that matter.

PETRAEUS: Well . . . Well, Rupert’s after me, as well. Look, I . . . what I have told people is, I truly want to continue to serve my country if it is in a — you know, a quite significantly meaningful position. And there’s all of about two of those in the world. You all have really got to shut your mouths — or shut your . . . Yeah, shut your mouths, too.

Yes, General Petraeus. Please do pay Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch a visit so they can determine your political future. Or the one you may have had before you started playing potsie with your biographer, anyway.

Who is Roger Ailes to be telling anyone what to do, anyway?

Honestly, it's McFarland that bothers me far more than Petraeus. For example, she raises the possibility of President Obama ignoring the Constitution and running for a third term.

Q: Well, but . . . and here’s the thinking: that they’re nervous about. . . . They feel that Obama had this mandate. And the mandate — in his own mind. Obama wanted to do Obamacare. . . . He wanted to do environment, which is basically controlling all aspects of the economy. And education, which is the future. So he pushed for Obamacare. He got that done. They didn’t anticipate 2010 results. But he now is going to lie low and be very centrist so that they win in ’12 and they get the other two. Now, what they need — and this is not from the chiefs, this is from political people — and what they need to cement it so that it doesn’t get reversed is a third term. And that means 2016, they need to win, the Democrats need to win, and they need to win with their guy. Their kind of guy. So that then you’d have the stuff as locked in place for a generation. Nobody can come in like Reagan came in and reverse.

And you thought wingnut theories were just for the likes of Alex Jones.

Earlier in the conversation Petraeus complains that Fox (yes, Fox!!!) has made a skeptical turn about the wars. That's disturbing too. At one point early in the recording, McFarland asks Petraeus what he thinks they're doing right or wrong. Petraeus' response is astonishing: He complains that they don't seem to be as gung-ho on the wars as they once were, and aren't bolstering them like they used to.

Kathleen McFarland isn't any kind of objective reporter at all. She's a Republican ideologue who cut her teeth in the Reagan administration, flogs "Benghazi-gate" to death every chance she gets, and functions as the Fox News spokespiece for neocon fantasies of world domination. Just a week ago, she was spouting nonsense on Fox News about Obama's Middle East policy being a failure because he does the opposite of George Bush. She was beside herself with joy at the prospect of a Mitt Romney presidency in August, and joined the frat boys on The Five to call young progressives "dorks" and "bastards."

If you are reading this and think we exaggerate here at C&L about Fox News, I suggest you listen to that paid Fox News commentator relay messages on behalf of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. When you finish, you'll realize how insidious Fox really is.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is trying to change the agency’s ownership rules to pave the way for Murdoch to get control of the newspapers in the same cities where he already owns TV stations. Even more disturbing, Genachowski and Murdoch are trying to keep this under the radar, hoping we don't notice.

Rupert Murdoch, in addition to being the malignant force behind Fox News, is the lawless conservative who’s under investigation in England for phone hacking, influence peddling and bribery. Now he wants to own the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune -- major papers in the nation's second- and third-largest cities -- and the FCC wants to help him? I don't think that's a good idea. Do you?

Unsatisfied with his media empire in the UK and Australia and his several media holdings in the United States like TheWall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News, Rupert Murdoch wants more. He wants a media monopoly.

Murdoch is currently jockeying to buy the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, which just so happen to be the largest newspapers in the nation’s second and third largest cities. That will add to his current media empire in the United States, which includes the most watched cable news network in the nation, Fox so-called News, and the most circulated newspaper in the nation, The Wall Street Journal. The only thing standing in Murdoch’s way of full-spectrum media domination in America are Federal Communication Commission rules that forbid one company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in one community. Murdoch already owns local television stations in both Chicago and Los Angeles.

But according to sources within the FCC, Chairman Julius Genachowski is quietly planning to scrap those rules. Under pressure from major media moguls like Murdoch, who see big bucks and huge political power in a consolidated national and local media, Genachowski circulated a new order to other FCC Commissioners that would allow for cross-ownership of TV and newspapers in the nation’s twenty biggest media markets.

A similar effort was made in 2007 by George W. Bush’s FCC, but it was shot down after the Senate voted to repeal it and a federal court blocked it. Not to mention, 99% of the public comments the FCC received opposed that media consolidation effort.

But, undeterred, Murdoch and other media moguls kept lobbying, and now President Obama’s FCC is expected to consider these rule changes again in December. And if Americans don’t get involved in this issue and pressure the FCC to say “no,” then Murdoch and his billionaire buddies will likely get what they want, which is complete domination of our news media.

In fact, as Ben Bagdikian points out in his book, The New Media Monopoly, the United States is already dangerously close to falling victim to a complete media monopoly. Today, only five corporations – one of which is Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp – own the majority of all the media seen, read, or listened to by Americans. If the FCC gets completely out of the way, then further consolidation will follow suit.

You can send a message to the FCC here.

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Peggy Noonan to Stuart Varney on November 6th, before the polls closed: "I'm seeing Romney rising here."

Apparently Peggy was smoking some really good something before she had this interview with Stuart Varney on Fox Business yesterday. She waxed poetic about how Romney was "stealing in like a thief with really good tools", spinning Romney rallies as huge overwhelming successes and Obama rallies as unfilled stadiums.

And oh, that Nate Silver! Noonan's Sunday Wall Street Journal column was rife with denial. This particular section made me double over with laughter, actually:

Obama and the storm, it was like a wave that lifted him and then moved on, leaving him where he’d been. Parts of Jersey and New York are a cold Katrina. The exact dimensions of the disaster will become clearer when the election is over. One word: infrastructure.

Yes, that would be the infrastructure the president asked Congress to repair in 2011 when he sent the framework for the American Jobs Act to Congress. You remember President Obama's speech in front of the bridge between Ohio and Kentucky that desperately needs repair? The roads, the bridges, the infrastructure that the president practically begged Congress to tackle before something catastrophic happened? That infrastructure.

Instead we got 30 bogus 'jobs bills' and Congressional obstruction on anything to do with infrastructure.

Yet here comes Peggy Noonan, cheering the infrastructure like a holy God coming down from the heavens to spark...enthusiasm. For Romney. Yes, Peggy Noonan and her bobblehead Stuart Varney are nodding away like she's a sage with prophetic God-given powers to Know What This Country Needs.

Hilarious and not hilarious.

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If Mitt Romney loses the general election there are many different narratives in play for his loss. Here's just two.

1) Mitt didn't run as a true conservative.

Conservatives have been yelling at Romney and this meme for a while now and it's the most common excuse used by Cons. And the new one.

2) Chris Christie blew the election for Mittens because he became Obama's Greek column during Hurricane Sandy.

#2 has real legs now because Rupert Murdoch has thrown down the glove in a tweet. You all know the glove so smell the glove.

Rupert Murdoch
@rupertmurdoch Thanks Bloomberg right decision.@now Christie, while thanking O, must re- declare for Romney, or take blame for next four dire years.

How dare the Governor do the unthinkable and praise President Obama for his quick response to Hurricane Sandy? OK, WTF does it mean to re-declare to Romney? There's a few days left before the election so his praise of O is probably inconsequential, but not to the diehards. If Obama wins reelection it will be fun to watch conservatives roast the anointed one. However, in a couple of years the fan boys will be back on board Christie's magic carpet ride once again. See, Conservatives forgive their own, Democrats do not.

It clearly doesn't take too many cocktails for Rupert Murdoch to sound like the crazy wingnut at the bar, shouting at the teevee.

But seriously, what does this even mean?

Why would we "listen" to a Russian oligarch about anything? And how can the US simultaneously be hated and "a joke"?

The problem for Murdoch -- and Mitt Romney tonight -- is that Obama is a hawk. He surged in Afghanistan, widely expanded drone strikes, killed bin Laden and drove the nail in Gaddafi's coffin. All to the dismay of the left, I should add.

This causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance for Republicans since they JUST KNOW that Obama's a weak, feckless appeaser. So, when they try and discuss his foreign policy, they're reduced to babbling complete nonsense like the above.

(h/t Karoli)