Revealed: Why Stupid Republicans Embrace The Stupidity Of Donald Trump

The manufactured pseudo-phenomenon of Donald Trump is running the media ragged as they try to explain (to themselves mostly) how such a preposterous caricature of a politician could be leading in the polls of a supposedly serious political party. The truth is that Trump isn’t leading anything. He is merely registering with the lunatic fringe demographic of the Republican Party which is as much support as he will ever get. As I wrote a few days ago in an article titled New Poll Shows 18% Of Republicans Are Ignorant Dupes With Severe Mental Decay

“The media is heralding Trump as the runaway GOP leader with his measly 18% of support. For perspective, note that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, is pulling support from 19% of Democratic voters. Yet the press is dismissing him as trailing Clinton badly. So Sanders has more support among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans, but the schizophrenic media declares Sanders a loser and Trump a phenomenon.”

What the press isn’t telling you is that Trump’s 18% in the polls means that 82% are rejecting him. And if that weren’t bad enough, he has the highest unfavorable ratings of any candidate and the largest percentage of respondents who say they will “never” vote for him. However, for those who must have a deeper understanding of this temporary diversion from reality, there is an observation that was made by the philosopher Bertrand Russell that succinctly describes what we are witnessing: “Our great societies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.”

Donald Trump Stupid

As evidence of the rampant stupidity being displayed by the Trump contingent of the GOP, look no further than the responses by members of a focus group held by John Heilemann of Bloomberg News. When asked to comment on what they liked about Trump they provided vagaries that were devoid of any substance that could be applied to an actual agenda. And what’s worse, they seem to think that being obnoxious is synonymous with being truthful. The group responded with statements like…

  • “He’s honest.”
    You can tell by his volume and how certain he sounds no matter how wrong.
  • “He doesn’t care what people think.”
    Now that’s a quality you want in a representative democracy.
  • “He isn’t choreographed.”
    In other words, he foregoes thoughtful consideration or diplomacy.
  • “We need business and I like his roughness.”
    So he’s a boorish version of Mitt Romney who offends everyone (not just the 47%).
  • “He’s not a politician.”
    He’s just been pretending to run for president for nearly thirty years.
  • “He’s like one of us … He’s so in tune with what everybody is wanting.”
    Well, everybody except the huge majorities who find him repulsive and would never vote for him.
  • [A Trump presidency would be] “Classy.”
    I don’t even know how to react to that frighteningly deranged notion.

None of these people could articulate a single policy position or detailed proposal that Trump would implement were he elected. But then again, neither can Trump. His campaign platform consists mainly of insulting his rivals and spewing hollow cliches that mirror the hollow agenda of the Republican Party. For instance, he is virulently anti-immigrant. He advocates cutting taxes for the rich and regulations for big business. He wants boots on the ground in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (and maybe Russia and China and North Korea). He is against reproductive rights and marriage equality. He doesn’t believe that Climate Change poses any imminent risks or is caused by human activity. He regards the Second Amendment as sacrosanct and opposes reforms like universal background checks. He has promised to repeal ObamaCare. And let’s not forget his leadership as America’s foremost Birther.

The people who support Trump are ideal reflections of the ignorance that permeates his campaign. Yet his supporters believe that his loutish and uncivilized behavior is an asset that connotes honesty and leadership. It’s the culmination of the moronic inquiry that keeps creeping up every election cycle asking “Who would you rather have a beer a with?” As if the souse at the end of the bar sucking on a Budweiser is the best qualified person to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The only thing more revealing about the character of Trump than the idiocy of his supporters is their hostility. They like his roughness. They like it when he insults immigrants, or POWs, or other Republicans, or the media. And it is not unworthy of notice that among his most staunch supporters are America’s white supremacists, who regard him as the champion of disaffected whites. That’s how stupid the Trump constituency is. Trump is proving what Napoléon Bonaparte said two hundred years ago: “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” As an avid golfer, Trump should understand that his handicap is his base, because it tells us so much about him.

Addendum: If any further proof is needed that Trump’s supporters are imbeciles, Ted Nugent just said that Trump is “What America needs.” Case closed.

Fox News EXCLUSIVE: Jon Stewart’s Secret Plot To Rule The World (w/Stewart’s Response)

When Jon Stewart announced a few months ago that he was leaving the The Daily Show it came as a shock to millions of Americans who couldn’t understand why he suddenly decided to give up the program that had brought him so much success and notoriety. After sixteen years of skewering the media and the public parasites who feed off of it, Stewart was inexplicably walking away while still at the height of his game.

Well, now it can be told. Thanks to intrepid reporting by the journalists at Fox News we can reveal that Jon Stewart is only resigning from The Daily Show so that he can take his place as Supreme Leader, a post for which he has been preparing for years. The evidence cited by Fox revolves around the disclosure that Stewart met secretly with President Obama, presumably to grease the wheels for his eventual ascendance to power.

Jon Stewart Roger Ailes

Never mind that the meetings at the White House were not actually secret at all. They were readily available in the public records that identify all White House visitors. And set aside that there were only two meetings in seven years, which hardly seems sufficient to have much impact on either Stewart or Obama. The discovery of these rendezvous can only be interpreted as ominous portents of what is to come. (See Stewart’s response to the “secret meeting” allegations in the video below)

Witness the editorial commentary used on Fox News to describe the affair. Anchor Bret Baier said that Stewart “has a close working relationship with the President. It turns out a lot closer than we thought.” Exactly. What could be closer than two meetings in seven years? They were practically joined at the hip.

Then there was anchor Jenna Lee who surmised that “Maybe that’s the secret of [Stewart’s] success. The White House has been writing his show.” An astute observation. Especially considering the wealth of talent and comedic brilliance for which political functionaries are known. Without that help Stewart would have been left to rely on mere comedy writers. Although it does make one wonder who was writing his material during the Bush administration.

Fox’s media analyst, Howard Kurtz, weighed in to reveal that “Last year the President chatted up Stewart hours before warning Russia about further military intervention in Ukraine. The next Daily Show mocked Vladimir Putin.” Obviously Stewart was carrying out orders from Chairman Obama. Why else would he do a segment on his daily news satire program that referenced something that was in the news that day?

Kurtz is among many Fox News commentators who frequently lambaste Stewart for allegedly being a fierce devotee of a far-left ideology. Bill O’Reilly called Stewart “a key component of left-wing television.” Megyn Kelly said that “he was not a force for good.” Greg Gutfeld called Stewart’s departure “a big loss for the simpering, left-wing media.” Eric Bolling reprimanded Stewart for “protecting the corrupt politicians.” And Sean Hannity took the high road by simply calling Stewart “a sanctimonious jackass..”

Fox News criticizing Stewart for being biased is something like Bill Cosby criticizing you for sexually assaulting drugged women. Fox News is the undisputed champion of bias in journalism. Their entire schedule is rife with right-wing propaganda. They are currently engaged in a blatant promotional campaign for Republican presidential candidates. Hannity’s show has so far given his full hour over to eleven of the GOP primary contenders (Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul). Even the daytime “news” portion of Fox’s schedule hosted five GOP candidates for the full hour of Outnumbered (Jindal, Santorum, Rubio, Mike Huckabee, and Lindsey Graham).

To reiterate, these are not candidate interview segments. They are gifts of the entire hour of the program which the candidates don’t have to declare on their financial disclosure forms. And when Fox isn’t donating free airtime to Republicans they are bashing Hillary Clinton for anything from her email etiquette to rope lines for reporters, and always Benghazi.

The relentless bashing of Stewart is all the more absurd in light of the fact that when it suits Fox they will hail him for attacking liberals and/or Obama. As documented by News Corpse, Fox has published dozens of articles heaping praise on Stewart for either “destroying, tearing apart, eviscerating, or grilling” Obama and other liberals (see this list here). And if that weren’t enough, they also highlighted the many times Stewart “mocked, roasted, savaged, scorched, ridiculed, and obliterated” the President and his lefty allies (see this list here).

Now that the secret meetings have been revealed, all of the anti-liberal material Stewart did can be seen as sly attempts to throw everyone off the trail of his otherwise flagrant socialistic allegiances. Even the actual secret meeting Stewart held with a powerful media czar takes on new meaning. As Stewart notes in the video below, his meetings with Obama were not really secret, but his meeting with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes ended with him being told that “This conversation never happened and if you say it did, I’ll deny it.” It’s nice of Ailes to admit that he is not above lying.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Next week will be the last for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. His departure will leave a noticeable gap in the world of social satire. It remains to be seen if new host Trevor Noah, or Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, will take up the slack. One thing is obvious, however. Conservatives have no intention (or ability) to offer up any quality humor. Fox News is trying – and failing – with their new Greg Gutfeld program. And this morning on Outnumbered, Fox booked a comedian guest host (Ryan Reiss) who fell flat with this opening gag: “Let’s first address the issue of [Hillary Clinton’s poll] numbers falling. She’s an older candidate so I’m sure she’s familiar with falls. At this point I think we’re gonna have to get her a Life-Alert.” Even the regular all-female panelists on the show greeted that joke with silence or groans. But sadly, that’s all they’ve got. The right is so full of hostility and hatred and prejudice and undeserved superiority that they have no sense of humor whatsoever. Their idea of comedy is a noxious blend of insults and childish chest-thumping.

For some of the real thing, here is Jon Stewart’s response to the scandal of the secret meeting. This should tide you over until Stewart’s control of the planet is complete. While Fox News revealed Stewart’s plot prematurely, they cannot stop his progress to impose his left-wing brand of comedyism on the world.

Even More Proof That Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Harvard University is validating the media analysis of News Corpse. Last year News Corpse published an article that affirmed that Fox News, despite the conventional wisdom, is actually a powerfully destructive force within the conservative political world. The article, Fox News Is STILL Killing The Republican Party.” examined the results of a survey conducted by the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute that compared the views of Republicans who watch Fox News to Republicans who don’t. The conclusions revealed that Fox News Republicans are even more uninformed and extreme in their views than their non-Fox viewing comrades in the same party. That article from last year was itself a follow up to one published by News Corpse six years ago that originally took the position that Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Back then I wrote that…

“By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.”

News Corpse was not alone in noticing the detrimental effects of Fox News on the GOP. Bruce Bartlett, a veteran strategist who worked in both the George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan White Houses, published a paper titled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.” The paper’s premise was that Fox News has had a harmful effect on the Republican Party’s electoral appeal by herding its already right-wing flock into an even fringier parish where it is shielded from differing views. He literally (and correctly) accused much of the conservative base of being brainwashed by Fox News and other right-wing media.

Fox News Bad For GOP

Now a study by Jackie Calmes, a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, has been released that makes some of the same observances of how Fox News, talk radio, and other right-wing media sources are damaging the Republican Party’s ability to either govern or get elected. the study titled They Don’t Give A Damn About Governing, Conservative Media’s Influence On The Republican Party,” is a lengthy and detailed analysis of the historical and contemporary influences that have shaped conservative politics. It includes interviews with Republican politicians, operatives, and pundits who almost unanimously express their concerns for a party that has lost control to the outer fringes of their most radical rightist wing in the media. The study begins by asserting that “the leaders of the Republican Party are not setting its agenda […] it is conservative media” that represents…

“…an expanding web of ‘news’ sites and social media outlets with financial and ideological alliances with far-right anti-government, anti-establishment groups like Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. Once allied with but now increasingly hostile to the Republican hierarchy, conservative media is shaping the party’s agenda in ways that are impeding Republicans’ ability to govern and to win presidential elections.”

The GOP conservatives interviewed for the study (some of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation) had opinions that were predominantly negative with regard to the state of affairs in the party. Here are a few examples:

Unnamed Republican: “There’s no incentive to ever really bother with reality […] the loudest voices drown out the sensible ones and there’s no real space to have serious discussions.”

GOP Rep. Tom Cole: While [talk radio is] conservative in its orientation, it’s a financially driven enterprise and market share matters. And playing to the prejudice of their audiences or reinforcing them – as opposed to engaging in enlightened and intellectual debate – is pretty widespread.

Unnamed Republican: Now it seems that so many people are going for the niche, for the red meat, and there are all these outlets where you can do that. It’s playing to the base, but the base doesn’t live in reality. And that’s the problem: It’s taken the party in a really self-destructive direction.

GOP operative John Feehery: “[C]onservative media has become ideologically and financially entwined with the network of no-compromise advocacy groups financed by the Kochs and other right-wing patrons. Together, media and activist groups are part of ‘this conservative-industrial complex that has risen up. And they have a vested interest in failure, not in success.”

The Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez: “Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross-promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted.” […And that] “conservative media’s logic had become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately.”

Media historian Nicole Hemmer: “We used to say, ‘You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.’ Now we are all entitled to our own facts and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, actually I could have, and I did last year and five years before that. But at least they are catching up. Unfortunately, even acknowledgment of these problems is not likely to result in a course correction. Particularly after the new paradigm exemplified by the loudmouthed, ignorant, hostility of Donald Trump, who is proving that no matter how abhorrent you are, never apologize or backtrack or show any signs of reasonableness or humility. It is that lesson that forms the greatest obstacle to progress for Republicans. The study confirms this in its concluding paragraphs saying that…

“The unanimity among establishment Republicans – many of them conservatives by the definition of anyone but purists – that rightwing media has become a big problem for the party, and their readiness to talk about it, was something of a surprise to this reporter of three decades’ experience in Washington. Of the establishment Republicans among several dozen conservatives interviewed, nearly all were flummoxed about how to moderate the party. Most expressed despair.”

That despair is not without justification. What was once the “Grand Old Party” is now populated by “Grouchy Obstinate Purists” who represent the “Greedy One Percent.” And there is no sign that any of it is going to improve any time soon. Particularly as long as Fox News is the preeminent media mouthpiece for the right, and they continue to promote nut cases like Trump, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Legitimate Rape? Donald Trump’s Consigliere Issues Mob-Style Ultimatum To Reporters

The Daily Beast published an article today that recounted events leading up to the 1990 divorce of Donald Trump and his ex-wife Ivana. All of the material was taken from public records as revealed in a contemporaneous book: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, by Harry Hurt III.

trump-lost-tycoon

Some of the more salacious chapters included an allegation by Ivana that Trump had raped her. While her current account of the situation has been softened to characterize it as something that made her feel “violated,” the description still sounds very much like rape. However, the details of that sordid affair are not what this article is about.

When contacted by the Daily Beast, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, went into full meltdown mode. He made some rather remarkably repulsive comments in defense of his client. For starters, he attempted to dismiss the allegations outright because, in his words, “You cannot rape your spouse. There’s very clear case law.” For an attorney to make such a statement is not only an egregious misstatement of fact, it is downright dangerous as it could lead to others committing heinous crimes believing that they are immune from prosecution based on Cohen’s false assertion. There is no exemption from laws prohibiting rape if the rapist is married to the victim.

But Cohen wasn’t finished. Hoping to intimidate the reporters he leveled an unbelievably harsh verbal assault that sounded more like a Mafioso delivering a mortal threat. Here is how he hoped to gently persuade the reporters from publishing their story:

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very f*cking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f*cking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

The only thing Cohen left out was the severed horse’s head in the reporter’s bed. Cohen later issued an apology for the comment about rape law, acknowledging that his prior interpretation was false and blamed it on his “shock and anger” at the charges in the Daily Beast’s article. Of course none of those charges were made by the reporters who were simply recounting events that had already been published years ago. Cohen did not, however, apologize for his overt threats to “mess up” the lives of the reporters in a “f*cking disgusting” way.

What is most disturbing about this is that it aligns very closely to the sort of rancid rhetoric that is the hallmark of Cohen’s client, Donald Trump. He has only been a candidate for a few weeks and he has already called immigrants criminals and rapists; he has disparaged a veteran and prisoner of war saying that he is not a hero; he has given out the private phone number of a political rival; and he repeatedly insults his critics as stupid, ugly, losers, and worse. And when confronted with his petulant boorishness, he will not only refuse to apologize, he will reiterate his vulgarities with even greater emphasis.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

It’s a good thing that his aspirations to be president are a deranged fantasy with zero hopes of being realized. Because the thought of having someone like that representing the American people seems like a bad plot from a 1950’s horror movie. But the horror is not alleviated just because he is certain to flame out. There is still the painful reality that an astonishing number of misguided Americans regard him as presidential. That is going to be hard to live down.

Sarah Palin Prefers Slavery To Planned Parenthood

If there is one thing that Donald Trump can be credited with, it’s sucking all the air out of the media and preventing every other right-wing lunatic from advancing their ultra-conservative agenda. In order to get any attention from the tabloid-obsessed press, it’s necessary to be even more bizarro than The Donald himself. The Republican candidates for president are finding this out in a big a way, and now so is has-been, half-governor, VP-flop, reality show loser, Sarah Palin.

Palin’s entry in the 2015 Trumplympics is a Facebook posting that features images of a Confederate flag and the Planned Parenthood logo. Her caption reads: “Which symbol killed 90,000 black babies last year?”

Sarah Palin

Of course, it’s a trick question because everyone knows that symbols don’t kill people, people do. And the people behind the Confederate flag were responsible for killing millions of African-Americans before, during, and after the Civil War. In fact, as we saw last month in Charleston, South Carolina, they are still doing it.

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood cannot be shown to have killed anyone. The premise of the anti-choice activists that life begins at conception, has never been proven scientifically. And abortion is still a legal means of terminating a pregnancy that has resulted in saving untold numbers of lives of women who would otherwise have been relegated to back alleys and medical charlatans.

Palin’s desperation for attention has compelled her to make one of the most nauseating ideological comparisons imaginable. The pro-choice movement is not unaccustomed to vile attacks including associations with historic evils like the Holocaust. It would be bad enough if Palin were trying to smear Planned Parenthood by asserting that it was somehow like the loathsome racists of the Confederacy. But she isn’t. She’s actually arguing that slaveholders and their descendants are praiseworthy next to an organization that provides health care, cancer screenings, birth control, and even prenatal services for women.

Planned Parenthood not only doesn’t kill people, it saves lives every day. What Palin is engaged in now is a coordinated right-wing attack on Planned Parenthood to destroy it by cutting off federal funding. In reality, this effort is another front in the Republican War On Women. Yet defunding Planned Parenthood would have almost no effect on abortion in America. That’s because only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion related. It is the other vital health care services that women rely on that will be constrained if Palin and her GOP pals in Congress get their way. And, ironically, the result would be not only more women suffering with undiagnosed or untreated illnesses, but more unwanted or unplanned pregnancies.

In addition to the Confederate worship, Palin posted another graphic that reads: “80% of Planned Parenthood clinics located in minority neighborhoods.” What this tells us is that, not only is Palin an abhorrent racist, she is also an ignorant purveyor of virulent myths. The message she is passing along here is a favorite of organized bigots. It has also been proven to be untrue by many independent sources. One of them, Factcheck.org, researched similar claims and wrote that “There’s no evidence that was true then. And today, only 9 percent of U.S. abortion clinics are in neighborhoods where half or more of residents are black.” But Palin couldn’t be bothered with doing her own research and presenting the facts.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

It’s not a coincidence that Palin’s flurry of Facebook posts were joined together by their connection to racist propagandists. But even for her it is somewhat surprising that she would so openly embrace such bigotry. And the explanation has to be that she has been despondent since being jettisoned by Fox News and getting upstaged by Trump. So she’s doing what she has to do get her dimwitted minions to notice her again. Buckle up, kids. This could get ugly….er….uglier.

New Poll Shows 18% Of Republicans Are Ignorant Dupes With Severe Mental Decay

There is much being made about a new CNN poll that shows Donald Trump leading his GOP rivals in the race for the Republican nomination for president. However, there is less substance in these numbers than the media is pretending there is. What is astonishing is just how shallow the media analysis of these polls are. The ranking at which Trump finds himself can easily be explained by the clinical dementia of today’s Republican (Tea) Party. And despite these polls, Trump will never get the nomination or reside in the White House.

trump-house

Let’s take a closer look. Trump currently has 18% of the support of the GOP voters. The truth that everyone is ignoring is that that’s an awfully pitiful expression of support. It means that 82% are not supporting him. Why does anyone in the press think that’s a positive showing?

Nevertheless, the media is heralding Trump as the runaway GOP leader with his measly 18% of support. For perspective, note that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, is pulling support from 19% of Democratic voters. Yet the press is dismissing him as trailing Clinton badly. So Sanders has more support among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans, but the schizophrenic media declares Sanders a loser and Trump a phenomenon.

This same schizophrenia is shown in how Republican operatives and pundits portray the relationship between the media and the candidates. If Clinton declines to do an interview or makes reporters walk behind a rope line so they don’t interfere with her interactions with voters, she is condemned as being anti-media and disrespectful to the fine men and women of the press who are struggling mightily to bring truth to the American people. But if Trump or any other Republican bashes the press or denies them access (as Trump just did to the Des Moines Register), they are cheered for putting those unethical press weasels in their place.

Getting back to Trump’s placement in the GOP polls, the explanation for it is that there is a demographic in the Republican electorate that can best be described as batshit insane. And Trump has managed to secure a near monopoly on that addle-brained GOP faction. Prior polling has revealed that a significant subsection of the GOP holds some hysterically idiotic views. For instance:

Having established that a fair percentage of Republicans embrace a measure of dumbassedness in frightening proportions, the fact that a particularly knuckleheaded candidate has corralled them into his camp is not especially surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if these dimwits did not coalesce around a similarly daft contender, just as they did in the last election cycle with Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, et al.

Consequently, Trump’s confederacy of dunces is sufficient in numbers to rise above his rivals, so long as there’s a lot of them. That’s because when you divide the remaining Republicans who are not wacko-birds (h/t John McCain) among the fifteen other candidates, there aren’t enough of them left to surpass the Trump/crazy constituency. That does not mean that Trump has a commanding lead. It means that there are way too many players on the field diluting the results for each of them. As they whittle down to a more manageable number, the 82% of non-Trump supporters will disperse to other candidates who will then tower over his paltry flock.

While the media is obsessing over the fake Trump “dominance,” they are missing some real news in the same CNN poll. For starters, they missed that Trump has the highest unfavorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Meanwhile, Clinton has the highest favorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Furthermore. Clinton is beating every Republican matched against her (Trump loses by 18 points). And the icing on the cake: Sanders is also beating the Republicans in head-to-head matchups (Trump loses by 20 points).

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This is what passes for political reporting these days. Is it any wonder that people hold the media in such low esteem? They are littered with lightweights who seem to have no analytical skills or historical memory. If they did they would not be so shocked that a loudmouth buffoon has earned the admiration of the GOP’s most radical, racist, and ignorant bloc of voters, while four out of five of the poll’s Republican respondents reject him.

Lewis Black Endorsed Donald Trump For President In 2012 – And It Was Hysterical

The rants of Lewis Black are brilliant because they say so much that so many of us wish we could scream. Just watching him is cathartic therapy that brings near instant relief from the insanity of the day.

So it was fortunate that I stumbled upon one of Black’s most ferocious meltdowns on The Daily Show. It was back in March of 2011, and Donald Trump was making noises about running for president. Only Black could see the merit in having Trump lead our nation with his ignoramus, third-world dictator, ego-soaked persona.

Donald Trump Lewis Black

This being a slow news Saturday, I thought people could use a little uncontrollable laughter to top off the evening. The news was so slow in fact that even Fox News completely ignored Trump’s stump speech in Iowa this morning. While both CNN and MSNBC aired significant portions of The Donald live, Fox aired none of it. What do you suppose they were trying to hide? It really says something when CNN and MSNBC are more interested in exposing people to Trump’s blathering than Fox is.

Maybe it has something to do with the rift between Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch who was reported to have told Ailes to “back off the Trump coverage.” Murdoch himself posed a question in a tweet last week asking…

“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?”

An excellent question. Especially coming from the potentate of Fox News. Of course the answer is “Never!” Trump has no ability, much less intention, of ceasing to embarrass himself, his party, or the country that he calls a Hell Hole.” So without further ado, here is Lewis Black throwing his full support behind Trump. Enjoy.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Bill O’Reilly Must Be Terribly Disappointed The Lafayette Theater Shooter Isn’t Mexican

It is getting more difficult every day to dismiss the epidemic of gun violence that has gripped our nation. The past few weeks has seen a racist in South Carolina massacre nine churchgoers, a young Muslim in Chattanooga mow down five American soldiers, an undocumented immigrant shoot a woman strolling on a pier, and a crazed “drifter” go on a rampage in a Louisiana movie theater.

While each of these incidents were unarguably tragic, only one of them produced a fervent call to action by knee-jerk conservatives. After Kate Steinle was killed in San Francisco, the right-wing outrage machine cranked up to eleven. There were immediate allegations that the crime was wholly attributable to the city’s so-called “sanctuary city” laws and the fact that the perpetrator was an undocumented immigrant.

Pundits primed with prejudice whipped up xenophobic fury despite the fact that the crime could just as well have been committed by a native-born citizen without changing a single one of the circumstances. Politicians wasted no time in drafting bills to punish cities with progressive laws (that are favored by law enforcement), and mandating harsh sentences for repeat immigration violations.

For some reason, none of the panic stricken conservatives bellowing about the awful fate of Ms. Steinle were able to recognize the one thing that all of these incidents had in common: Someone who ought not to have had access to a gun was able to acquire one of more of them and forever destroy the lives of some innocent people.

Fox News Bill O'Reilly

Chief among these carping cretins was, as usual, Bill O’Reilly. In a matter of hours he was pontificating on the horrors of alien invaders pillaging our defenseless womenfolk. He started an online petition to gather support for something he called “Kate’s Law” to increase the penalties for immigration violations. His entire spiel was based on the assertion that the only reason Steinle was killed was because of lax border security.

The sad truth is that people like Steinle are killed every day under similar circumstances by American citizens. But this fact is an inconvenient distraction for O’Reilly who is intent on blaming a population of immigrants, most of whom are peaceful people who are merely trying to find ways to care for their families.

However, when the perpetrator turns out to be a white, Tea Party wingnut, O’Reilly can’t seem to muster up a public response to address the situation. There are no petitions or hastily drawn up bills, or wild accusations or vein-bursting rants. In fact, Reilly doesn’t even bother to acknowledge that the Lafayette suspect, John Russel Houser, is an Obama-hating supporter of the Westboro Baptist nut cases and a card-carrying member of the Tea Party Nation. And despite his long history of offensive postings on Internet discussion sites, O’Reilly never connects the dots to associate him with the network of violent domestic terrorists.

Houser was previously denied a permit to purchase a gun and he has a history of mental illness. His ex-wife had secured a restraining order to protect her from his “extreme erratic behavior.” Nevertheless, he managed to acquire an arsenal and shoot up a theater, killing two innocent women and injuring several others. But as far as O’Reilly is concerned, it’s just too bad that he wasn’t an illegal alien from Mexico so there could be a lynching party formed to march up to the castle with torches and pitchforks.

All of the evidence shows that right-wing domestic terrorists pose a far greater threat to Americans than the much-hyped ISIS brand. Sovereign citizens, Klan groups, militias, and extremist Christianists have been responsible for many more deaths and injuries than the fabled Islamic sleeper cells. But even after Tea Party disciples of Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch gang murdered two Las Vegas police officers, there was no call to action by O’Reilly or his conservative colleagues.

President Obama lamented today that he was “distressed” about not having been able to do something about gun safety during his term in office. He told the BBC that…

“If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands,”

And throughout the last seven years, as throughout the last seventy, it is the right-wing, NRA fearing, Republican Party that has stood in the way common sense solutions. As noted above, the one thing that all of the tragedies that are occurring in ever more rapid succession have in common is the use of deadly weapons that have no practical purpose other than killing human beings.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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Until we solve the problem of these weapons being so easily accessible to people with hostile intentions, there will be more tragedies and more grieving survivors. And, no doubt, more pathetic excuses from grand-standers like O’Reilly who search desperately for vulnerable victims unto whom he can shift the blame.

Immaculate Birther: Donald Trump Says He Doesn’t Have To Ask God For Forgiveness

The world-class ego, narcissism, and arrogance of Donald Trump have been on public display for decades. He can hardly complete a sentence without exalting himself as the richest, smartest, biggest, and bestest at whatever he attempts or proposes. There is absolutely no trace of humility in the non-stop parade of vainglorious self-promotion that he exudes.

This annoying character flaw would be bad enough if it was constrained to his business exploits and personal self-appraisal. However, Trump has recently enlarged his bubble of pride to encompass his faith as it relates to his presidential candidacy. When asked by Republican “Word Doctor” Frank Luntz if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump said “I am not sure that I have […] I don’t think in terms of that.” While that answer fits perfectly with Trump’s signature pompousness, it also reveals why he is so reluctant to apologize for anything, including his blatantly offensive remarks about immigrants and Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero. If he won’t ask God for forgiveness, why the hell would he ask anyone else?

Donald Trump Immaculate Birther

Yesterday Trump expanded on his spiritual principles during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. He was asked to revisit his previous comments and given an opportunity to refine them. He rejected that opportunity and, as usual, he doubled down on his immunity from needing to seek God’s grace.

Trump: Well, I like to work where I don’t really have to ask for it. I like to do the right thing where I don’t actually have to ask for forgiveness. Does that make sense to you? You know, where you don’t make such bad things that you don’t have to ask for forgiveness. I mean, I’m trying to lead a life where I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. […] Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?

Talk about your Original Spin. Trump is effectively saying that a good Christian can avoid having to seek forgiveness from God by simply never making any mistakes. Who knew it was that easy? Of course, to do that would require a level of perfection not seen in about two thousand years from the perspective of believers. And yet he argues that he has achieved this pinnacle of purity. But if you ask the Presbyterian Church, of which Trump claims to be a member, they have a completely different interpretation:

“Presbyterians believe the Bible when it says that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). Unlike crime, which involves the breaking of human law, sin is a condition of the heart or an expression of that condition where we are estranged from God and fail to trust in God.” […]

“Presbyterians believe God has offered us salvation because of God’s loving nature. It is not a right or a privilege to be earned by being ‘good enough.’ No one of us is good enough on our own — we are all dependent upon God’s goodness and mercy. From the kindest, most devoted churchgoer to the most blatant sinner, we are all saved solely by the grace of God.” […]

“Presbyterians believe it is through the action of God working in us that we become aware of our sinfulness and our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Just as a parent is quick to welcome a wayward child who has repented of rebellion, God is willing to forgive our sins if we but confess them and ask for forgiveness in the name of Christ.”

Trump seems to think that forgiveness is something that you request when you have told a lie, cut someone off in traffic, or cheated in golf. His understanding of religion is on the level of a four year old (no offense to four year olds). He has no concept of the tenets of his faith that regards all men and women as sinners. And setting aside the scriptural rendering, Trump doesn’t seem to think that his own mistakes (of which he has none) rise to the level of sins. That means his three marriages and serial infidelity are wholly virtuous in God’s eyes. His four bankruptcies that left thousands of creditors in the lurch were just divine accounting. His fraudulent Trump University that ripped off hundreds of “students” actually taught them a valuable lesson in dealing with charlatans. And these say nothing of his sins of greed, lust, and pride.

To make matters worse, Trump has assumed the posture of a beleaguered victim of the dark forces of Hell (aka the media). He believes he is being crucified by his enemies in the press and the Republican Party. This persecution may lead to his self-excommunication and a holy war via a third party candidacy for the White House. Oh God please, we pray.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

If there’s one thing that has been made clear, it’s that The Donald doesn’t need the forgiveness of God or anyone else. That’s because he is his own deity with omnipotent powers to solve every problem bigger and better than any mere mortals. And just as he remains certain that he will win the votes of the Latinos he has insulted, and the veterans he has demeaned, he is equally certain that evangelicals and other faith-based voters will flock to his holiness despite his heresy, profanity, and obvious Messiah complex. By the way, these are the same people who have been calling President Obama the Anti-Christ for seven years.

Stiffed: No Emmy Nominations For Fox News – Again

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences just announced their nominees for the 36th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards. Among those honored by the Academy are PBS with 47 nominations, CBS with 44, ABC with 17, NBC with 14, CNN with 10, and MSNBC with 2. The only major television news broadcaster that came away empty-handed was Fox News.

Go Fox Yourself

The easy explanation for this rejection is that Fox is not actually in the news business. They are a thinly disguised tabloid entertainment outlet with a mission to advance a right-wing agenda and demean Democrats and liberals. It is a network that is filled with fiction, drama, scandal, soap opera, soft-porn, and a prodigious amount of unintentional comedy. Earlier this year Fox News CEO Roger Ailes admitted that his business model is geared toward entertainment saying that he doesn’t regard CNN or MSNBC as rivals and that “We’re competing with TNT and USA and ESPN.”

However, the embarrassing failure to be recognized for even a single program is rooted in a much deeper problem for Fox. They are not simply failing to offer programming that is deserving of praise from their “peers,” they are purposefully producing stories that are false and serve only to malign their ideological adversaries.

A conveniently timed example of this is the Planned Parenthood story Fox is currently hyping. It involves a video that has already been repudiated by independent analysts as grossly distorted and unrepresentative of the facts. Nevertheless, Fox is repeatedly airing segments that go into some length disparaging Planned Parenthood without offering any time for rebuttal by the organization.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This is typical of the phony fare that Fox broadcasts. They obsess over fake scandals like Benghazi, or Jade Helm 15, or Obama phones, or death panels (which they recently revived), and on and on. They combine relentless hostility toward liberals with obsequious fawning over Republicans. It is their brazen unprofessional and unethical brand of journalism that best explains why they are passed over for awards from actual news professionals year after year.