Saturday, February 08, 2014

This is from Alan Grayson's camp:

Dear Dot,

Fox News is attacking me. They want me out of Congress, and they want it bad.

Some background. A while back two peace groups called Reprieve and Code Pink organized a briefing on Capital Hill regarding the consequences of drone warfare.

The participants included innocent drone attack victims from Yemen.

Maybe you didn’t realize we are at war in Yemen.

Surprise!

According to the Guardian, our drone attacks in Yemen killed over 500 people in 2012, and almost 300 in 2013.

Fox News didn’t report on the drone death figures in Yemen, because the military-industrial complex wouldn’t like that.

Nor did Fox News report on the dozens of innocent children who have been killed in these attacks.

Nor did Fox News report on the bold efforts of Reprieve, Code Pink and allied organizations to inform the public about these awful acts of war.

No.

Instead Fox News is trying to smear me.

I wanted to learn more about the innocent victims of these attacks.

When I heard about the briefing, I informed other members of Congress in case they wanted to come.

Then I attended the briefing and I listened to the evidence which, according to Fox News, means I pal around with terrorists.

In 2008 Fox incessantly dumped garbage on candidate Barack Obama because he had once been in the livingroom of Bill Ayers 45 years ago.

Ayers helped found the Weather Underground.

Eventho they were never losted. (Sorry, that’s an oldie but goodie.)

Muttonhead Sarah Palin chimed in, accusing candidate Obama of palling around with terrorists.

Pretty thin gruel, right?

But Fox News didn't think so, and now Fox News is doing the same hit on me.

Here is Fox News's malicious expose against me:

The peace organization Reprieve invited someone named Mohammed Al Ahmady to the briefing.

I didn't invite him, Reprieve did. But what if I had invited him, wonders Fox News?

Mohammad Al Ahmady didn't attend the briefing, apparently because he couldn't get a visa.

So he wasn't there, but what if he had been there, wonders Fox News?

Mohammal Al Ahmady himself has no involvement whatsoever in terrorism.

In fact, he works for a human rights group.

But what if Al Ahmady were a terrorist, wonders Fox News?

Mohammad Al Ahmady is a member of a human rights group called Al Karama. Al Karama is not a terrorist organization.

Al Karama works with the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. If anything, it is an anti-terrorist organization.

But what if Al Karama were a terrorist organization, wonders Fox News?

One of the leaders of Al Karama is named Abdul Rahman Naimi.

At the time of the Yemen drone briefing, he had no known connection to terrorists or terrorism. But what if he had, wonders Fox News?

Thirty days after the briefing, the U.S. Treasury Department alleged that Abdul Rahman Naimi--not Al Karama, not Al Ahmady--had provided funding to Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Naimi denies it.

But what if it's true, wonders Fox News?

So here is the scandal, according to Fox News: I didn't invite someone who wasn't a terrorist to a briefing that he didn't show up for.

Oh, but you see, the person whom I didn't invite, and never met, who isn't a terrorist--he belongs to an organization one of whose leaders subsequently was charged with providing funding to a terrorist group.

You see? You see? You see?

Now you know why I call Fox News Monty Python's Lying Circus.

This is how Fox News spun it: that I attended a briefing on the effects of drone strikes in Yemen [that] almost included someone from an organization whose leader has ties to Al Qaeda.

Almost.

Well, by that logic, a horse is almost a horseshoe. A straw is almost a strawberry.

And Fox News is almost a news organization.

I told Fox News: This is guilt by non-association. I have as much in common with someone there [in Al Karama] as with Kevin Bacon.

Doesn't matter--not to Fox News.

As far as Fox News is concerned, I'm palling around with terrorists.

Fox News is denigrating and defaming me, and I need your help to fight back.

Look, Fox News put this nonsense on its 6 pm news report, which has over two million viewers.

Grayson is Bad--That's what the right wing bullhorn is blaring out today.

Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, knows how to play the game.

He is trying to drag my name through the mud, so that some right-wing fool can beat me in November.

I feel like saying to Fox News just what Joe Welch said to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

But the question is this: Who will hear that?

Who will listen?

Campaigns are all about communications.

What the voters see and hear. And the biggest propaganda megaphone in America is spewing out lie after lie against me.

That's why I need your help.

I need to counter their lies with our truth. I need to counter their subterfuge with our facts. I need to counter their evil with our righteousness.

You can watch silently as the world drowns in Fox News's fibs, fables, fictions, fabrications, forgeries and falsehoods.

Or you can help our campaign beat them back.

Beat the lies.