Liberal Icon Dennis Kucinich Now Part Of Fox News Family (VIDEO)

By Wendy Gittleson/Addicting Info

In a marriage that proves that opposites truly do attract, former Congressman and liberal stalwart, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), is joining the team on Fox News.

He will debut on Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor. From the Huffington Post:

“I’ve always been impressed with Rep. Kucinich’s fearlessness and thoughtfulness about important issues,” Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes said. “His willingness to take a stand from his point of view makes him a valuable voice in our country’s debate.”
Fox is the nation’s top-ranked cable news network, particularly popular with Republicans. Its big-name Republican contributors include Karl Rove, Sarah Palin and John Bolton. Democrats in the Fox stable include Evan Bayh, Joe Trippi and Bob Beckel.

Is this an attempt on Fox’s part to live up to its “Fair and Balanced” motto or is it a sign of a shift in ideology on the part of Kucinich? Perhaps neither. While Kucinich is a Democrat, he has never been particularly partisan. He has been a vocal critic of the president, regardless of who has been in office during his 16 years in the House, especially on issues of war and peace.

Fox News, rather than being a conservative outlet, has morphed from “defend Bush at all costs” to becoming a full-time Obama attack machine. It’s doubtful they care if the attacks come from the right or the left. In fact, the left is probably preferred, since Fox has already maxed out their audience of angry white people. Angry liberals are still a relatively untapped resource. While it’s probably safe to assume that Kucinich won’t get behind Fox’s ‘Bomb Iran’ agenda and he will likely not be a conservative ally on guns, Kucinich will offer enough anti-Obama rhetoric to please Fox shareholders and many angry liberals.
For a preview of Kucinich’s role on Fox, watch this video where Greta Van Susteren interviews him on the Affordable Care Act:

Kucinich eventually gave in and voted for the Affordable Care Act.

O’Reilly Blames Women’s Health Care ‘Breast Feeding Stuff’ For High Unemployment

By Marie Diamond /Think Progress

Fox host Bill O’Reilly has worked himself into a lather over the Obama administration’s recent decision to require new health insurance plans to cover birth control without co-pays. Last week he declared that women don’t deserve government subsidized birth control because they’re too “blasted out of their minds” during sex to use it. Yesterday during an interview with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), O’Reilly went a step further in his tirade against women’s health care and said it was the reason businesses aren’t hiring:

O’REILLY: Now the federal government is ordering the health insurance companies to pay for all breast feeding stuff, all female birth control stuff, all preventative measures for doctors for ladies that go in. What do you think that’s gonna do? That’s going to inhibit hiring even more!
KUCINICH: Frankly, we ought to be very concerned about women’s health care.

O’REILLY: I am concerned, but they’re not going to expand and hire if they have to pay higher health care premiums for workers! Businesses aren’t going to do it…You can’t have both. You can’t have a welfare state and a robust capitalist system.

Watch it:

By “breast feeding stuff,” O’Reilly was railing about the fact that under the administration’s ruling, health insurers will be required to pay for a range of preventative care services, including HPV, DNA, and HIV screening, and the costs for renting breastfeeding equipment. Women’s premiums will actually pay for the services. But apparently conservatives like O’Reilly only support “family values” as long as the government never has to spend a dime to help poor women care for their children.

It’s also surprising that a professed fiscal conservative would be opposed to preventative health care for women, which not only improves the health of women and their families, but saves the government money when illness is caught and treated early on.

O’Reilly is wrong to suggest that women’s health care is the reason businesses aren’t hiring. Corporations are reaping enormous profits and sitting on a record pile of cash, but are stillsending jobs overseas or hiring less than they were before the recession. Additionally, according to a recent Wall Street Journal survey, “the main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies.”

Scott Walker Admits Union-Busting Provision ‘Doesn’t Save Any’ Money For The State Of Wisconsin

By Zaid Jilani

Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Peter Shumlin (D-VT) to testify in a hearing titled “State and Municipal Debt: Tough Choices Ahead.” Much of the hearing was spent probing Wisconsin’s spate of anti-union restrictions it recently passed.

At one point, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) confronted Walker about his crackdown on public employee unions. The congressman referenced a provision Walker signed into law that would require union members to vote every year to continue their membership. Kucinich asked the governor how much money the state would save from the provision. Walker repeatedly dodged the question and eventually admitted that it actually wouldn’t save anything at all.

Kucinich then asked Walker how much money would be saved by barring union dues from being drawn from employee paychecks, another provision of Walker’s legislation. Walker claimed that it would save workers money, but was unable to explain how it would save the state any money. Kucinich then produced a document from the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, that concluded that Walker’s measures were “nonfiscal” — meaning they had no impact on the state’s finances. Kucinich asked that the letter be included in the public record, but Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) refused:

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?
WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]
KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?
WALKER: It doesn’t save any. [...]
KUCINICH: I want to ask about another one of your proposals. Under your plan you would prohibit paying union member dues from their paychecks. How much money would this provision save your state budget?
WALKER: It would save employees a thousand dollars a year they could use to pay for their pensions and health care contributions.
KUCINICH: Governor, it wouldn’t save anything. [Goes on to present letter from LRF and is denied unanimous request for it to be placed in the public record by Issa]

Watch it:

Walker’s admission is crucial because he had long claimed that his anti-union “budget repair bill” was designed to save the state money, not bust unions. But his words today echo those of Wisconsin state senate leader Scott Fitzgerald (R), who last month effectively admitted that the union fights are not about budgetary issues, but rather about winning the next election by depleting the ranks of organized labor.