It was inevitable that Fox host Bill O'Reilly would weigh in on the Planned Parenthood/Komen Foundation controversy. And perhaps just as inevitable that he'd mangle the facts along the way.

Here he is, on Friday night (2/3/12):

Last year the Komen Foundation gave Planned Parenthood $680,000. Now, that is the source of controversy because as you know, Planned Parenthood is primarily in business to provide abortions, more than 300,000 each year.

Later he added:

Planned Parenthood does not give women who visit its clinics the other side of the abortion story because again PP is in business for abortion.

Here is Planned Parenthood's breakdown of medical services (h/t Ezra Klein):

O'Reilly was fortunate enough to book an opposing guest--talk radio host Leslie Marshall--who wasn't prepared to argue this point:

O'REILLY: OK their big business, Planned Parenthood is abortion. And lobbying for abortion, would you concede that?

MARSHALL: I would concede that they perform abortions and they are politically --

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: No the largest part of their business, the most things that they get involved in concerns abortion, would you concede that.

MARSHALL: I can't because I've heard a good argument on both sides and information on both sides.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: OK, well, all right, there is no good argument. The absolute truth is PP is in business for abortion; 300,000 a year and they make tons of money from it.

Mitt Romney might need some help defending his considerable wealth or controversial career in private equity. But he doesn't need the kind of help Bill O'Reilly is offering.

Mitt Romney's declaration that he pays about a 15 percent tax rate on his income has generated plenty of chatter, in part because it confirms that much of the Republican candidate's yearly income is taxed at a rate appropriate for capital gains and dividend income--much lower than if Romney were actually working for a living.

But enter into the picture Fox host Bill O'Reilly, who apparently thought he should rescue Romney by making an argument that even the candidate himself isn't making--that Romney is being taxed twice. On a segment last night (1/18/12) with two progressive guests (an exceedingly rare sight on Fox), O'Reilly explained things to Heather McGhee of the think tank Demos:

O'REILLY: Do you know what the 15 percent rate is all about. Do you understand that?

McGHEE: Yes, absolutely it's about his capital gains.

O'REILLY: OK, so ordinary income in Romney's tax bracket taxed at 35 percent, right.

McGHEE: Yes.

O'REILLY: OK, so he already got taxed 35 percent on his investment money. It's already been paid. So then he invests it, all right, and he gets more money from the investment in which he pays another 15 percent on top of the 35 percent of anything that he makes.... So isn't it misleading to tell the public, as Warren Buffett has done, that Romney's whole resume is a 15 percent deal? Isn't that misleading?

This would be slightly more convincing if it were accurate. As Pat Garofalo pointed out at Think Progress (1/17/12):

One of the reasons Romney is able to drive his tax rate down so low is that he is still earning money from his private equity firm, Bain Capital, that is likely subject to a pernicious tax loophole. This loophole lets wealthy money mangers like Romney pay the capital gains tax rate on profits they make investing other people's money, turning the justification for having a lower capital gains tax rate completely on its head.

The other guest on O'Reilly's show--Public Citizen's David Arkush-- tried to point this out:

O'REILLY: But Mr. Arkush, do you see my point here about Mitt Romney? He paid his fair share, 35 percent on the money he made when he was in the work force. He got out of the work force and he's living on his investments and paying another 15 percent on top of the 35. One percent, and I'm in that 1 percent, pay 37 percent of the income, and you're going to sit there and tell me I'm not paying my fair share? Come on.

ARKUSH: Well, I actually think you're mistaken about Mitt Romney. One of the things that's going on here is he's actually exploiting a tax loophole in paying only 15 percent. He didn't pay 35 percent on his original income. He got to treat ordinary income, which most people would pay a regular tax rate on, as capital gains.

It was at this point that O'Reilly interrupted:

Did he do anything illegal? Did he do anything illegal, Mr. Arkush?

Of course, that's entirely missing the point, which is that  a perfectly legal tax loophole allows Romney to earn millions of dollars and pay little in income taxes. If Romney were really being taxed twice, as O'Reilly seems to think is the case, you'd think he might make that argument himself.

O'Reilly closed the segment by telling his guests, "We're going to continue the discussion; I think you're both good guests." Let's hope it corrects his misinformation.

In its new issue, Newsweek puts this as #4 on their list of "31 Ways To Get Smarter In 2012":

4. Get News from Al Jazeera

Don't shut yourself out from new ideas. A 2009 study found that viewers of Al Jazeera English were more open-minded than people who got their news from CNN International and BBC World.

That's a nice idea. Someone should tell my cable company, who make me pay way too much for the privilege of having Fox News Channel.

Sean Hannity got his start in radio on UC Santa Barbara's KCSB in the late 1980s, where he got in trouble for promoting homophobia and disinformation about HIV and AIDS. I wrote about this in a 2003 Extra! profile of the then-Fox News show Hannity & Colmes:

After airing for less than a year, Hannity's weekly show was canceled in 1989, when KCSB management charged him with "discriminating against gays and lesbians" after airing two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts About AIDS (Independent, 6/22/89). Written by homophobic Christian-right activist Gene Antonio, the book crankily argued that AIDS could be spread by casual contact, including coughs, sneezes and mosquito bites. Antonio charged that the government, medical establishment and media covered up these truths in the service of "the homosexual movement."

When Antonio appeared by phone on one of the shows, Hannity and his guest repeatedly slurred gay men. At one point, according to the UCSB campus newspaper the Daily Nexus (5/25/89), Hannity declared: "Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal." According to the campus paper, Antonio responded by calling gay men "a subculture of people engaged in deviant, twisted acts."

When a fellow KCSB broadcaster called the show to challenge the host and his guest, Hannity pointed out that the caller, a lesbian, had a child through artificial insemination, and Antonio dubbed the child a "turkey-baster baby." When the caller took issue with that "disgusting" remark, Hannity followed up with "I feel sorry for your child" (Independent, 6/22/89; KCSB, 4/4/89).

This information as indicated was gleaned from local Santa Barbara and UCSB print media. At the time, I was unable to get audio of Hannity's KCSB shows, a situation now remedied by KCSB programmers Elizabeth Robinson and Richard Flacks, who have packaged two of the original Hannity shows in a station archival retrospective, "50 Years of People-Powered Radio."

What Hannity said on the air more than 20 years ago would perhaps not be overly relevant today but for the fact that he has always denied being homophobic...and his homophobia continues: For instance, reacting to the 2009 Academy Awards broadcast featuring a montage of romantic film kisses (not exactly a new feature of cinema), Hannity paraphrased his wife in protesting the inclusion of same-sex kisses in the montage (Hannity, 2/23/09): "They keep showing the scenes of men kissing. And I'm thinking, do we have to expose our children to more and more sex, more and more violence, you know, more and more controversy?"

The Monday broadcast of CBS Evening News (12/19/11) began with big news, with anchor Scott Pelley announcing:

The secretary of Defense says tonight that the United States will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. In an interview with CBS News, Leon Panetta says that despite efforts to disrupt their nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less.

To ratchet up the drama, Pelley told viewers that Panetta was aboard  "the jet nicknamed the Doomsday Plane. This is the command post where he and the president would direct a nuclear war."

Pelley reiterated that, according to Panetta, "Iran needs only one year to build a nuclear weapon." Then came this exchange:

PELLEY: So are you saying that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in 2012?

PANETTA: It would be sometime around a year that they would be able to do it. Perhaps a little less. The one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel.

PELLEY: So that they could develop a weapon even more quickly than we believed?

PANETTA: That's correct.

Near the end of the segment, Pelley made this remark:

Panetta told us that while the Iranians need a year or less to assemble the weapon, he has no indication yet that they have made the decision to go ahead.

So Iran could have a weapon in a year--or maybe not at all.

In today's New York Times, we see a story headlined, "Aides Qualify Panetta’s Comments on Iran," which leads with this:

An assertion by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that Iran could have a nuclear weapon as soon as next year was based on a highly aggressive timeline and a series of actions that Iran has not yet taken, senior Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The report added these comments from a Pentagon spokesperson (bolded for emphasis):

"The secretary was clear that we have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon," Mr. Little said. "He was asked to comment on prospective and aggressive timelines on Iran’s possible production of nuclear weapons--and he said if, and only if, they made such a decision. He didn't say that Iran would, in fact, have a nuclear weapon in 2012."

Now without knowing what was actually said in the full interview, it's hard to know whether Panetta's office is trying to walk back his careless, inaccurate rhetoric, or whether the CBS interviewer was pushing a hard line on Iran and nuclear weapons, treating the allegations being made about that country's nuclear program as if they were facts.

If it's the latter, it wouldn't be unprecedented. At the December 15 Republican debate, Fox host Bret Baier posed this question to Ron Paul:

Congressman Paul, many Middle East experts now say Iran may be less than one year away from getting a nuclear weapon. Now, judging from your past statements, even if you had solid intelligence that Iran, in fact, was going to get a nuclear weapon, President Paul would remove the U.S. sanctions on Iran, included those added by the Obama administration. So, to be clear, GOP nominee Paul would be running left of President Obama on the issue of Iran?

Paul tried to explain to Baier that there is not, in fact, any intelligence suggesting Iran is less than a year from having the bomb. As Paul explained:

For you to say that there is some scientific evidence and some people arguing that maybe in a year they might have a weapon, there's a lot more saying they don't have it. There's no UN evidence of that happening. Clapper at the--in our national security department, he says there is no evidence. It's no different than it was in 2003. You know what I really fear about what's happening here? It's another Iraq coming. There's war propaganda going on.

Baier, for his part, followed up by demanding that the candidate answer a question based on a false premise:

Congressman Paul, the question was based on the premise that you had solid intelligence, you actually had solid intelligence as President Paul, and yet you still at that point would pull back U.S. sanctions, and again, as a GOP nominee, would be running left of President Obama on this issue?

It's probably not that these journalists want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But they do seem to want to have a public debate that assumes Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon. Given the possible repercussions, that's bad enough.

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claims he was accosted by a "screaming" man "armed with a cell phone camera" on December 7 while walking to a media party at the White House in Washington, D.C. On his show the next night (O'Reilly Factor, 12/8/11), O'Reilly explained,

I told the guy to get lost, but he came closer and closer, armed with a cell phone camera. When he was about a foot away, I turned to shield myself and my assistant with an umbrella. At this point, we were just a few feet away from the White House gate.

According to O'Reilly, at the White House gate he tried to get the Secret Service and the D.C. police to arrest the man, but was told by a police officer that according to the law, no assault had occurred. Claiming the police had also told him that his tormenter was a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Fox News host concluded his commentary with an attack on OWS:

Ironically, a few nights ago, I told you bad things were going to happen because these occupy protesters are becoming increasingly aggressive. But I never thought it was going to happen to me. However, these anarchists are now everywhere.

The problem with O’Reilly's account is…just about everything. As the videotape posted by interviewer Branden Lane shows, he was not screaming, he was much more than a foot away when O'Reilly opened his umbrella at him (apparently hitting his camera in the process), and did not appear threatening as he straightforwardly asked O'Reilly if he was returning from a fundraiser for Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich.

One could argue that the man was less threatening and intrusive, and more professional, than the video teams O'Reilly sends to ambush subjects while they are at their homes or on vacation or when they are with their young children. In fact, O'Reilly's producers have actually physically interfered with subjects on some of their ambush stakeouts.

Is Fox News Channel going soft? In an election year? Some media figures seem to think the hard-right channel is going to the "middle," but this seems to be a figment of the centrist imagination.

New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman has a short piece trying to make this case. His first bit of evidence is that  Fox granted backstage access at its recent Republican debate to a New York Times reporter--as Sherman put it, "Fox's decision to allow Times scribe Jim Rutenberg into the building to confront the candidates in person." That sounds rather aggressive, and Sherman sees this as some sort of political shift:

That "sweating" session was a debate moderated by three Republican attorneys general, who are in some ways to the right of some of the candidates--particularly Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Given that the conservative base of the Republican party seems to have questions about the ideological commitment of these two--especially Romney--the fact that Fox convened a debate where the candidates had to field questions from the right doesn't really seem like playing to the "center."

Sherman argues:

Conservative David Frum writes in the new issue of New York:

Back in 2009, I wrote a piece for Newsweek arguing that Republicans would regret conceding so much power to Rush Limbaugh. Until that point, I’d been a frequent guest on Fox News, but thenceforward some kind of fatwa was laid down upon me. Over the next few months, I’d occasionally receive morning calls from young TV bookers asking if I was available to appear that day. For sport, I’d always answer, "I'm available--but does your senior producer know you’ve called me?" An hour later, I'd receive an embarrassed second call: "We've decided to go in a different direction."

This is interesting. Up to this point we've only been familiar with progressives--including FAIR staffers--who have been invited, and then promptly uninvited, to appear on Fox. There have also been reports about journalists who were critical of Fox who are barred from appearing.

In other Fox-related news, Bill O'Reilly last night proved that irony is alive and well, announcing that he'd be doing a segment on what the cable news networks should do when people "lie on the air." Naturally, the lie he wants corrected is about something someone said about Bill O'Reilly. Later on, he told guest Bernie Goldberg:

I mean, on this program, if a guest says something that is untrue on this program, I will correct it as soon as we know it's untrue. And I think all the networks should have that rule in place. You have to do that.

Totally in agreement. But what about when the untruths come from the host?

Just because he wears cowboy boots and drops his G's doesn't mean he's a dummy. Perry may be a small-town boy who went to an ag school (Texas A&M University), but he's an extremely cagey and strategic politician who has been among the state's most successful governors at getting what he wants. Put another way: Even if he's not book smart by University of Chicago standards, he's plenty street smart - and street smart is still smart. The better lens through which to regard Perry is inside vs. outside, establishment vs. anti-establishment, elitist vs. jus' folks. Don't make the mistake of thinking that jus' folks is jus' dumb.

--Evan Smith ("5 Myths About Rick Perry," Washington Post, 8/21/11)

Whatever his brain power is, he was elected three times governor of Texas. He is now a first-tier presidential contender. He's smart enough to be President of the United States. He's smart enough to be elected, I think. At this point, I think we can stipulate that. So whatever his book smarts are, I think that's irrelevant for this discussion. He has clearly met the bar in Texas several times. The voters in Texas have said three times he's smart enough to be governor, and he's had a record that he's now running on.

--ABC World News senior Washington editor Rick Klein (Fox News' On the Record, 8/29/11)

Liberals often say Republicans are stupid, but they really believe it with regard to Gov. Perry. For liberals, credentials and holding fashionable opinions are more important markers of intelligence than knowledge or accomplishment.... Gov. Perry scorns their opinions, and he went to Texas A&M, not Harvard or Yale. So when a new book said his is "the brainiest political operation in America," liberals were shocked.
--Jack Kelly ("Kicking Rick: Mainstream Media and Democrats Fear the Texas Governor, So They Smear Him," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/4/11)

What those dummies Bush and Perry have in common, other than having been Texas governors, pilots and cheerleaders (what is it with Texas?), is that they're not stupid at all.... They're smart enough to know that most people in this country didn't go to Ivy League colleges -- or any college for that matter.... Until someone emerges to remind Americans of who they are in a way that neither insults their intelligence nor condescends to their less-fortunate circumstances, smart money goes to the "stupid" politicians, who are dumb as foxes and happy as clams when their opponents misunderestimate them.
--Kathleen Parker ("Not So Dumb After All," Washington Post, 9/18/11)

I will tell you: It's three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, Education and the--what's the third one there? Let's see.... OK. So Commerce, Education and the-- ... The third agency of government I would--I would do away with the Education, the ... Commerce and--let's see--I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.

--Rick Perry (Republican presidential debate, 11/9/11)

On his Friday night show, Bill O'Reilly took his viewers to a magical place--one where the right-wing Koch brothers have no connection to the Tea Party movement, while Occupy Wall Street is a secret project directed and financed by the likes of Moveon.org, SEIU and  George Soros.

At the top of his broadcast, O'Reilly wondered if we are now in "phase two of the campaign to undermine America"--this would apparently be the phase where activists protest against police brutality, with an assist from "the radical MoveOn organization, which is funding some of the occupiers."

As he explained his conspiracy theory:

The Occupy Wall Street Movement is not a spontaneous protest against economic inequality. It is a well-thought-out campaign to bring down the infrastructure of this country, to turn us into a Western European-type entitlement state.

That's what George Soros, MoveOn, the SEIU and many far-left journalists want. And they are using the protests to that end.

Moments later, O'Reilly was "interviewing" Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall, who mentioned the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers. That left O'Reilly visibly upset:

O'REILLY: OK, well, you can believe anything you want, you're an American, but you made a statement that the Koch brothers were tied into the Tea Party financially. Can you prove that?

MARSHALL: Well, the Koch Brothers (INAUDIBLE) such as Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

O'REILLY: Can you prove it. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, Leslie.

MARSHALL: Yes.

O'REILLY: Leslie, you're a Fox News contributor. You have a responsibility. Can you prove the Koch brothers are tied into the Tea Party financially? Can you?

MARSHALL: With a check in hand, no.

O'REILLY: OK. Thank you.

While it's certainly the responsibility of a guest to be able to document such facts, it's rather unlikely that O'Reilly would have accepted any such facts anyway.

Do the Koch brothers have anything to do with the Tea Party? Well, yes. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation was founded by Charles Koch, and has served to train Tea Party activists. As Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker (8/30/10):

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement's inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a website offering supporters "Tea Party Talking Points." The Arizona branch urged people to send tea bags to Obama; the Missouri branch urged members to sign up for "Taxpayer Tea Party Registration" and provided directions to nine protests. The group continues to stoke the rebellion. The North Carolina branch recently launched a "Tea Party Finder" website, advertised as "a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina."

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to "educate," fund and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.

Or as one source rather colorfully put it:

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party: "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It's like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud--and they're our candidates!"

And Dick Armey's FreedomWorks group, which has very publicly helped organize Tea Party activists, is the product of a merger between Empower America and Citizens for a Sound Economy--the latter heavily backed by the Koch brothers.

So other than founding and funding the groups that have been key organizers and trainers of the Tea Party movement, the Kochs have little to do with it.

Don't tell that to Bill O'Reilly, though. He can only connect certain dots:

This isn't a spontaneous demonstration against crony capitalism. If it were, they would be in front of the White House. This is organized by the unions backed up by George Soros and the MoveOn people.

The links between those groups and OWS prompted the other guest, Caroline Heldman,  to turn the tables on O'Reilly:

HELDMAN: Bill, do you have evidence to back up those links? Do you have evidence?

O'REILLY: Yes, absolutely, we have reporters down there all the time and the reporters ask people who they are, where they are going. The spontaneous people are back to their jobs; 85 percent of them, Dr. Heldman, have jobs. You can't stay off the job for a month. I can back what I say up.

Now THAT is evidence--Fox-style.

The country is on the brink of bankruptcy, Fox host Bill O'Reilly warned last night--all because Barack Obama is spending too much money. Drastic cuts are required, but "the far-left loons want to spend more."

And he's got the number to prove it:

In 2007, during the Bush administration, federal deficit spending was $161 billion, despite the Iraq and Afghan wars. Four years later under President Obama, the deficit spending is $1.3 trillion, eight times as much.

To be fair, the economy collapsed on Bush's watch, and both Republicans and Democrats committed almost a trillion dollars to prop up the economy. As we all know, the stimulus spending did not work very well.

But the Obama administration has not cut back. Today the feds are spending $9.8 billion every day. That breaks down to $410 million per hour. Tax revenue has actually gone up. It's 21 percent higher this year than last, but there's no way Americans can bring down the federal debt with their tax dollars. The spending is just too massive.

It would be surprising to find out that government tax receipts increased 21 percent. They didn't. O'Reilly is misreading the Wall Street Journal editorial where he got these number, which says that "federal receipts grew by 6.5 percent in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6 percent gain in individual income tax revenues."

Actually, the whole piece is unhelpful to his argument, since it argues that the rise in spending has actually been pretty modest over Obama's term;  it actually fell slightly from fiscal year 2009 to 2010. And the current deficit as a share of GDP--which is a better way to measure the deficit anyway--has dropped over the past two years.

And it's not clear why O'Reilly would choose the 2007 fiscal year to compare Bush's record to Obama's--unless the point is to make Obama look worse. The 2008 deficit was $459 billion.

O'Reilly says that he "is playing Paul Revere" here.  More like Chicken Little.

Fox's coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has often looked and sounded like Glenn Beck were still working there.

On Friday's broadcast of the O'Reilly Factor (10/14/11), Beck was there to show how wild conspiracy-mongering is done:

O'REILLY: What's the George Soros factor here?

BECK: George Soros is connected with this through the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation, his Open Society and Code Pink are involved in what is called the Wall Street Journal... Occupied Wall Street Journal. And it is a--it's a full color newspaper.

O'REILLY: Right.

BECK: You know what it costs to print a newspaper.

O'REILLY: Somebody is behind that.

BECK: Huge money. Huge money.

O'REILLY: Right, and what's the editorial bent of the newspaper?

BECK: Revolution.

O'REILLY: OK, overthrow?

BECK: Yes, I mean, you know, collapse the system.

Beck manages to names names. SEIU and the Working Families Party are involved in what is obviously a global Marxist revolution. (Some of the evidence has been erased from Craigslist, but Beck has it.)

And, Beck warns, it goes all the way to the White House. Barack Obama is a "street organizer.... He knows everything that's going on, he knows all the people that are involved." Beck went on to predict that there will be violence, and that Van Jones will emerge to reap the benefits.

To be fair, O'Reilly offered another take, one more sympathetic to the protests. That came courtesy of Geraldo Rivera.

Last night's O'Reilly Factor (10/13/11), with guest Megyn Kelly, talking about how to deal with Iran:

BILL O'REILLY: What do we do?

MEGYN KELLY: It's a political question for President Obama and a military question for him, but it's not really much of a legal question because legally he can do it.

O'REILLY: OK.

KELLY: If he wants to do it....

O'REILLY: Let me stop you there. So there's no difference between killing bin Laden, Al-Awlaki with a drone? OK. Just today they killed another big terrorist guy in Pakistan with a drone. We could drop a drone right down Ahmadinejad's nose legally?

KELLY: We can go after Iran. We can start a military conflict with Iran. President Obama can do that tomorrow.

O'REILLY: With the drones. Boom.

KELLY: Just the same way...

O'REILLY: Ahmadinejad, ah.

KELLY: Look what we did in Libya. It's a lot more than what you are talking about right now. And he didn't seek congressional authority. Although he should have, technically, under the law. But even if he didn't, which he didn't, no one has ever gone after a president for doing this.

O'REILLY: OK. So legally, he could take the mullahs out. He could take Ahmadinejad out. He could send them a message, saying, "Look, you try to do this on our soil, here's what happens to you."

KELLY: The law is, technically, he's supposed to have an imminent threat against the homeland. Or....

O'REILLY: I think blowing up an embassy in Washington is an imminent threat. Do you?

KELLY: But that's been stopped. So technically....

O'REILLY: But the fact that it's been stopped doesn't really matter, because the threat is still there.

It sounded like it, but it was just Bill O'Reilly channeling Beck's Soros/MoveOn/Big Labor paranoia, minus the chalkboard:

On Wednesday in New York City, there was another far-left demonstration as a bunch of people marched on Wall Street. Why? We aren't exactly sure.

What we do know is that these folks are zealots who are being organized by some very interesting people. Does the name MoveOn.org mean anything to you? How about George Soros? Well, for the first time, MoveOn, funded in part by Soros, has openly allied itself with the protesters.

In addition, we have some unions in the mix: the United Auto Workers, the United Federation of Teachers and, of course, the always reliable SEIU. Of course, not all workers in those unions support bringing down capitalism. They don't. But their leadership is certainly sympathetic to the demonstrators.

But, again, what do these people want?

The common thread seems to be "income equality." Groups like the Working Families Party and the Strong Economy for All Coalition are basically socialistic outfits. They want the government to take money away from the affluent and give it to them, a nice deal if you can get it. And you can get it in places like Cuba and Zimbabwe.

The big money behind these protesters, Soros, he doesn't want socialism. Soros is the biggest capitalist on the planet. He wants power and these groups are using the far-left zealots to try to achieve that.

In case your tinfoil hat is not getting good reception, O'Reilly's point is that MoveOn endorsed Occupy Wall Street two weeks after it started, and George Soros contributed to MoveOn in 2003-04, and therefore Soros is "the big money behind these protesters."

Maybe the chalkboard would help.

Yesterday's AP "factcheck" (9/20/11) of Barack Obama's speech about raising taxes on the super-wealthy cleverly debunked an argument that Obama didn't make. No one is saying that all millionaires pay a lower rate than their secretaries--Warren Buffett drew attention because he said he did, and there are undoubtedly other multi-millionaires in the same boat. As Dean Baker observed at Beat the Press today (9/21/11):

President Obama made a simple and true statement in his speech on the budget Monday. He said that there were millionaires and billionaires who pay tax at a lower rate than middle income families.

Many news outlets went to town to point out that on average millionaires and billionaires pay tax at a higher rate than middle income families. Of course this is not what Obama said. He was pointing out that some of the richest people in the country (Warren Buffet was his model) get most or all of their income as capital gains and therefore only pay taxes at the 15 percent capital gains rate.

Baker recommends a piece in today's New York Times (9/21/11) that was more factual than AP's factcheck:

In 2009, 238,000 households filed returns with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million. One-quarter of them paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 15 percent, the data shows, and 1,470 paid no federal income tax at all....

Though the group is small, the dollars are large. For the top 400 taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate has dropped from 29 percent in 1993 to 18 percent in 2008. The average adjusted gross income of those 400 households was $271 million. By comparison, households with $50,000 to $75,000 in income paid an effective rate of 15 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But the AP piece has legs--a Slate article noted: "But as a general point, Buffett is wrong: In aggregate, richer earners do pay higher rates." The link goes to the AP factcheck. Again--Buffett was talking about himself and others like him. It would not seem to be a hard concept to grasp, but for whatever reason there are reporters who seem interested in protected the super-wealthy.

In other tax news: Fox's Bill O'Reilly has apparently threatened to quit working if his taxes go up. Let's hope Congress considers the enormously positive political and social effects this could have on American life.