Month: March 2016

Days Of Our Lies: Fox News Fantasizes About Hillary Clinton Abortions And Lesbianism

Posted by on March 31, 2016 at 11:03 am. NO Comments :

A posting today on the Fox News community website Fox Nation contains the sort of tabloid scandal mongering that they usually save for the final days of election cycles that they are desperately losing. Perhaps their eagerness to sink to this low so soon is an admission that being saddled with noxious characters like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz has already ruined any chances for their victory in November.

The Fox Nationalists posted an article sourced to a suspiciously obscure website that featured a video interview with Sally Miller, a former Miss Arkansas who claims to have had an affair with then-Governor Bill Clinton. In the video (below) Miller makes some wild and wholly unfounded allegations about Hillary Clinton that are so outrageous they would seem implausible if they were plot lines in a daytime TV soap opera.

Fox News Soap Opera

Miller leads off with charges that Clinton had several abortions until Bill convinced her that “if they were ever going to move up in politics they had to have a child.” That allegedly led to the birth of Chelsea, a purely political offspring whom Clinton, a confirmed feminist, didn’t want. In fact, Miller described Clinton, and most feminists, as “cold,conniving, bitches” who “don’t care about anyone but themselves” and “don’t like men.”

Miller went on to assert that the man-hating Clinton was a lesbian. When asked how she knew this, Miller laughed and said that “Bill told me.” Apparently the chatty governor also confided that in college Clinton and some other girls “experimented and she liked it.” Of course, there is no evidence that any of Miller’s gossipy ramblings are true. Not that there would be anything wrong with it if they were. These are the sort of allegations that are only regarded as insults by right-wing bigots and religious zealots. However, that just happens to be the audience that Fox is aimed at.

The source for Fox’s scandal-fest was The American Mirror, a website with no masthead, no identification of any publishers or editors, no mission statement, nothing to lend it any credibility whatsoever. The author attached to this article, however, does have a record. Kyle Olson is also the founder of an organization called the Education Action Group, a Koch brothers funded, anti-union front group for a conservative brand of education reform that primarily opposes teachers’ unions and public schools. Its reputation is a joke that includes nonsense like an investigation into “racist” peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at Portland schools. That piece of journalistic garbage was rated a “Pants on Fire” lie by PolitiFact.

These charges about Clinton are not new. They have been floating around the ultra-rightist mediasphere for years and were even ridiculed by the National Enquirer when Miller was trying to pitch her fantastical imaginings in a book that she was never able to get published due to her utter lack of credibility. But she did find allies among the crackpots and fringe-dwellers like Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge, who giddily embraced her bizarre ravings.

What’s new is that now Fox News has taken up her delusions and is passing them off as reality. Which tells you something about how severely degraded and abused the word “news” has become, particularly when in proximity to the word “Fox.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Loyalty Loath: The GOP Pledge Of Allegiance Goes Up In Flames

Posted by on March 30, 2016 at 10:18 am. NO Comments :

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy in June of last year it was widely speculated that he would ditch the Republican Party if it failed to give him the party crown to which he feels entitled. That controversy caused the GOP to insist that all candidates sign a “loyalty oath” if they wanted to participate in party sanctioned debates or even get on the primary ballot in some states. The pledge required the candidates to promise allegiance to the party and its eventual nominee and to forswear any future attempt to go independent. It also commenced a roller-coaster ride of concessions and threats by an unstable megalomaniac whose word is worth less than a diploma from Trump University.

Donald Trump

It’s difficult understand how Trump could endorse other Republicans that he has already disparaged as weak, incompetent, corrupt, ugly losers, but then they all have that problem. Nevertheless, under pressure from the party, Trump signed the pledge and tweeted how proud he was of the commitment. He further stated that “I will be totally pledging my allegiance to the Republican Party,” and that “I see no circumstances under which I would tear up that pledge.”

You’ll never guess what happened next. Just two and a half months later Trump was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week and was asked whether he still intended to honor his pledge. He responded that “I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly.” Of course Trump’s idea of fair treatment is when everybody stoops to kiss his wrinkled butt. Consequently, anyone who relies on his pledge is asking to be bitch-slapped by the wannabe tyrant who invents his own exceptions to signed contracts. A few days later, Trump’s attorney offered a medieval-flavored affirmation of his threat to bolt the party saying “woe be on them,” who treat The Donald unfairly.

Trump’s vacillation on party allegiance was not matched by his opponents who continued to assert their loyalty. If anyone had justification for abandoning a Trump candidacy, it was the victims of his campaign abuse. What’s more, the disintegration of Trump’s campaign into a neo-fascist movement was all too apparent and did not go unnoticed. President Obama’s press Secretary, Josh Earnest, commented on it after Trump proposed to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. He said that such a blatantly unconstitutional plan “disqualifies him from being president. And for Republican candidates to stand by their pledge to support Mr. Trump, that in and of itself is disqualifying.” Well, not to Republicans.

Trump was asked again during CNN’s GOP debate in December if he was “ready to assure Republicans tonight that you will run as a Republican and abide by the decision of the Republicans?” He answered “I really am. I’ll be honest, I really am.” Oh – so this time he’s being honest (allegedly). Since Trump has already made a public statement that he could renege on the written pledge that he signed, why would anyone trust that he would keep any promises made on a debate stage?

And you’ll never guess what happened next – again. In the midst of an unhinged tirade against Ted Cruz, who Trump accused of using negatively slanted push polls against him in South Carolina, Trump unleashed a flurry of threats to challenge Cruz’s eligibility to run for president with a lawsuit based on the fact that he was born in Canada. And attached to those threats was one aimed at the Republican National Committee warning that “the RNC should intervene and if they don’t they are in default of their pledge to me,” thus, once again, opening the path to his own renunciation of the pledge.

Following the CBS GOP debate in South Carolina, Trump escalated the un-pledging rhetoric with more complaints about the RNC that he said “does a terrible job.” He threw another of his patented tantrums alleging that the party was conspiring against him and that “they’re in default of their pledge.” And yet, the charade that the loyalty pledge remained in effect continued to be played out. Until now.

At a CNN town hall event in Wisconsin yesterday, Anderson Cooper asked Trump outright if he still stood by the pledge. His answer this time was an unequivocal “No, I don’t.” To be fair, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have indicated that they were also wavering on backing the GOP nominee depending on who it was, a thinly veiled inference that a Trump candidacy would be disavowed.

So now it appears that the entire field of Republican candidates has abandoned the pledge they made such a big deal about signing six months ago. It was a farce from the beginning designed to reign in Trump, which never worked, and now it is crumpled up in the trash along with the GOP’s principles and prospects for a November victory. Among the questions that linger are whether the pledge’s demise means that Trump is again considering a third party run. That would be the ultimate F.U. to the Republican Party that Trump is convinced is his enemy, but it would also bring joy to the Democratic Party.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

An easier solution, however, is one that I proposed last December. Just let the crybaby Trump have his GOP nomination and then the rest of the party could leave and start a new club minus Trump and his racist, idiot brigade of Storm-Trumpers. Now THAT’S entertainment. It’s a solution that the reality TV celebrity candidate and the ratings hungry news networks could both embrace.

Donald Trump Finally Admits That He Is An Ignorant Ass

Posted by on March 29, 2016 at 10:00 am. 6 Comments :

From the beginning of Donald Trump’s ludicrous pursuit of the presidency, his glaring lack of even a hint of knowledge about any of the duties and responsibilities of the office has been painfully obvious. His remarks on the economy, healthcare, trade, immigration, and especially foreign affairs have been a window into the abyss of prideful idiocy.

Donald Trump

For the most part, Trump has dodged most questions on the pressing matters of governing by either diverting to irrelevancies like his standing in the polls, or by relying on bumper sticker platitudes that are thoroughly lacking in substance. His standard policy statement is generally a hollow declaration that he will end terrorism by ending it, or that he will eliminate the deficit by eliminating it. And always there is the boast that he is the only human being capable of producing those results, even though he can’t say how he would do so.

A couple of recent interviews have exposed Trump for the phony braggart that he is. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times provided him with an opportunity to elaborate on his policies. And in both cases he embarrassed himself by not being able to address any topic with anything resembling coherence.

The reviews of these interviews were universally negative, with some expressing surprise at how badly he flopped. The common denominator in the critiques is that Trump is evasive and uninformed. Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said that “When he doesn’t know something, he just changes the subject, makes it all about himself. […] He is completely uneducated about any part of the world.” The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson said that “Donald Trump’s ignorance of government policy, both foreign and domestic, is breathtaking.” CNN’s Tara Setmayer said that “he’s deflecting from the fact that he is wholly unqualified to handle the real issues facing America.” Max Boot, conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations said that “Trump is the most radical and most ignorant major-party presidential candidate in our history.” And it goes on.

Well now we have confirmation from Trump himself. The man who has bragged that “My primary consultant is myself” because “I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” spoke with Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes and displayed the very same cluelessness that he did with the Washington Post and the New York Times. But he went even further to define himself in terms that are effectively admissions of his own issue illiteracy.

When asked by Sykes to explain his abhorrent remarks directed at women, Trump replied that “I never thought I would run for office,” implying that it’s acceptable to malign women so long as you’re a just a businessman or a television personality or in any profession other than politics. Even worse, Trump’s reply to Sykes’ inquiry about his contradictory stances on issues like single-payer healthcare, abortion rights, and gun control, was that “As a businessman, I never even thought of many of the things you’re talking about.”

Let’s just set aside the fact that any responsible citizen would have given thought to issues. Considering that Trump was a businessman a mere nine months ago, this comment ought to be troubling to anyone considering supporting him. He is saying that matters of war, terrorism, public safety, economics, abortion, immigration, education, civil rights, etc., had not crossed his mind until less than a year ago. In light of that total lack of preparation for the job he’s seeking, it isn’t surprising that he has proven to be a world-class idiot.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The only thing worse than Trump’s obvious intellectual infirmity is the fact that there are substantial numbers of Republicans who are still willing to back his campaign. GOP voters, office holders, and candidates seem ready to disregard his dangerous weakness on critical matters including nuclear proliferation, national defense, and a plethora of pressing domestic affairs. They appear to be perfectly happy to nominate and vote for a man who admits that he’s a moron. Which makes them just as stupid as he is. The voters will have a chance to redeem themselves come election time. But Republican Party regulars and candidates need to disavow Trump now. If not for his boorish behavior, advocacy of violence, racism, and misogyny, than for his inability to comprehend any of the issues that a president must face.

How Fox News Uses Visual Messaging To Keep Their Audience Dumb And Angry

Posted by on March 27, 2016 at 9:20 pm. NO Comments :

If there is one thing that Fox News is determined to do, it’s to make sure that their audience is fed a constant stream of lies. Their purpose is to insure that they are incapable of understanding the real world around them and remain in a perpetual state of outrage over the falsehoods that Fox disseminates.

Fox Nation

Case in point: Today’s headline story on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation blasted the lede that “‘Our Openness To Refugees’ Is How We Fight ISIS: Obama Reiterates Pledge to Bring In 100,000 Muslim Refugees” There is so much wrong with both the text and the image associated with it that it requires a detailed analysis.

First of all, notice that the picture juxtaposes President Obama with a band of ISIS terrorists in a manner that nearly suggests he is leading their mission. That obvious bit of visual messaging aims to create an impression of Obama as a traitor who is aligned with the enemy. The allegation that Obama, or other Democrats and liberals, are terrorist sympathizers or worse is one that has been expressed explicitly by Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests. Just this weekend, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox to declare that Hillary Clinton could be considered a founding member of ISIS.

Additionally, the use of ISIS fighters in the image is a distortion of the accompanying text in that the story is about refugees, not terrorists. But Fox deliberately chose not to use refugees in the picture. By using ISIS fighters they imply that the refugees themselves are terrorists, which in fact is what Fox and other conservatives believe. That is their justification for opposing the humanitarian admittance of refugees into the U.S. And it mirrors the official positions of the two leading Republican candidates for president. Donald Trump has been saying for weeks that he would prohibit any Muslims from entering the country, while Ted Cruz has proposed surveilling the ones already here.

For the full measure of just how deplorable that message is you have to understand that the refugees are the victims of the terrorists. That’s why they are seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere. What Fox is saying is akin to associating Jews with the Nazis who tortured and murdered them. If Fox News, Trump, Cruz, et al, were around in the 1940s they would have called the Jews potential terrorists and forced them to remain in the region were they were being slaughtered.

Next we’ll look at the the headline on the article which purports to be quoting the President. But contrary to Fox’s account, Obama did not say that “‘our openness to refugees’ is how we fight ISIS.” What he said was that our openness to refugees is “another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our counter-terrorism work, and our diplomacy.” That’s an important distinction in that the humane treatment of refugees is just one part of a broader strategy to defeat the enemy militarily while also undermining their propaganda campaign. The Fox News, right-wing plan to insult our Muslim allies and stigmatize Muslim Americans will only help the enemy recruit new fighters. That’s the message Obama gave in his weekly address. He said in part (video below):

“As we move forward in this fight, we have to wield another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our counter-terrorism work, and our diplomacy. And that’s the power of our example. Our openness to refugees fleeing ISIL’s violence; our determination to win the battle against ISIL’s hateful and violent propaganda — a distorted view of Islam that aims to radicalize young Muslims to their cause.” In that effort, our most important partners are American Muslims. That’s why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim Americans and their enormous contribution to our country and our way of life. Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a country built around the idea of religious freedom. It’s also counter-productive. It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another.

Finally, the headline on the article also lies about the President’s efforts to rescue refugees by saying that he is proposing to admit 100,000 refugees (Trump, in his pathologically lying way, has escalated that to 250,000). However, the current plans call for admitting 10,000, so Fox is only off by 90%. But misinforming their audience on this matter plays right into their continuing effort to demonize the refugees and make Americans afraid of an imaginary horde of potential suicide bombers. The truth is that entering the U.S. as a refugee is perhaps the most difficult path to entry. It takes going through a rigorous array of inspections that can take years to complete. Why would a terrorist subject himself to a process that takes so long and is likely to result in his capture?

That’s a question that Fox News will never bother to address because they are only interested in portraying refugees as clandestine evildoers. And it’s why they construct these graphical lies in order to deceive their all too willingly ignorant audience. Keeping them dumb and angry is the core mission of the Fox News cultists.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Is Hyperventilating About Climate Change vs. Terrorism – Again

Posted by on March 27, 2016 at 12:14 pm. 2 Comments :

One of the most predictable lines of attack on President Obama by Fox News and other right-wing media is to latch unto his commitment to mitigating the catastrophic effects of anthropomorphic climate change, and suggesting that his commitment to fighting terrorism is lax in comparison. The idiocy of that argument has been demonstrated numerous times, but since the right keeps bringing it up like a meal of rotten clams, it still needs to be debunked.

Fox News

The latest regurgitation of this nonsense came when Obama spoke at a press conference with the President of Argentina. He was asked a question about the post-Brussels optics of his decision to stay in Cuba and attend a baseball game. Obama expanded on his previous statement asserting that allowing the terrorists to disrupt our lives would be counter-productive, and that the message we need to send is that “You do not have power over us.”

Obama: Groups like ISIL can’t destroy us. They can’t defeat us. They don’t produce anything. They’re not an existential threat to us. They are vicious killers and murderers who perverted one of the world’s great religions. And their primary power, in addition to killing innocent lives, is to strike fear in our societies, to disrupt our societies, so that the effect cascades from an explosion or an attack by a semi-automatic rifle. And even as we are systematic and ruthless and focused in going after them, disrupting their networks, getting their leaders, rolling up their operations, it is very important for us not to respond with fear.

That profound and powerful statement was contorted into an expression of indifference by the spinmeisters at Fox News with help from CNSNews, a division of the uber-rightist Media Research Center. The problem they had with Obama’s remarks was that they were followed by his support for advancing a positive agenda, including solutions to the very real global threats posed by climate change.

Obama: So it’s important for the U.S. president and the U.S. government to be able to work with people who are building, and who are creating things and creating jobs, and trying to solve major problems like climate change, and setting up educational exchanges for young people who going to create the next great invention or scientific breakthrough that can cure diseases. We have to make sure that we lift up and we stay focused as well on the things that are most important to us.

The Horror! President Obama had the audacity to advocate a path forward that seeks to prevent suffering from disease and worldwide climate-related disasters. Anyone with a clear perspective understands that these are real threats that will affect millions of people. And while terrorism is unarguably agonizing and barbaric, it’s impact is much more narrow in terms of victims. What conservatives want is to terrify people by focusing on the immediacy and bloodshed of incidents like those in Brussels. Which is, ironically, the same thing the terrorists want.

However, most experts on terrorism and international security (including four of the past Secretaries of Defense, three of whom are Republicans) have concluded that climate change, unlike terrorism, is an existential threat. The military has been crystal clear for years about the very real consequences of a world where water and arable land become scarce, and nations erupt into chaos and war. Last year the Rolling Stone published an extensive examination of The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk. Among its many documented examples of the threat certified by numerous military analysts is one that ought to be persuasive to the conservative Republican deniers:

“In 2003, under Donald Rumsfeld, former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ Commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who is sometimes jokingly referred to within the Pentagon as Yoda — and who was a favorite of Rumsfeld’s — the report warned that threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism.”

You might think that with Rumsfeld warning about the dangers of climate change from a national security perspective, the naysayers at Fox would keep their mouths shut. You would be wrong. And that’s because their goals have nothing to do with solving problems. The Fox propagandists are tightly focused on bashing the President to the exclusion of any other objective, including the best interests of the American people and the rest of the world.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

For the record, Obama didn’t just bring up climate change at the press conference to rattle conservative cages. The issue was one of the key subjects on the agenda for his trip to Argentina. And during the visit Obama and Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri agreed to take significant measures to cut carbon emissions from air flights and integrate solar and wind power into electricity grids.

What’s more, the criticism from the right that Obama has not properly prioritized the fight against terrorism in his public statements was put to rest the very same day in these remarks which Fox News neglected to report:

“I’ve got a lot of things on my plate. But my top priority is to defeat ISIL and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world. The issue is how do we do it in an intelligent way. But what we don’t do, and what we should not do, is take approaches that are gonna be counter-productive. So when I hear somebody say we should carpet-bomb Iraq or Syria, not only is that inhumane, not only is that contrary to our values, but that would likely be an extraordinary mechanism for ISIL to recruit more people willing to die and explode bombs in an airport or in a metro station. That’s not a smart strategy.”

In conclusion, Fox News is blatantly disinforming their dimwitted audience when they try to portray Obama as disinterested in terrorism, when in fact it is one of his highest priorities. And they are likewise disinforming their audience by leading them to believe that climate change is not an existential threat, in particular when compared to terrorism. But what they are doing mostly is advancing the interests of terrorists by helping them to spread the fear that is at the heart of their strategy.

Despite A Week Of Fox News Bashing, Obama’s Approval Rating Hits 3-Year High

Posted by on March 26, 2016 at 2:28 pm. 6 Comments :

It may be time to send Fox News a thank you card for helping President Obama to achieve his highest level of approval since December of 2012. Gallup’s latest numbers show Obama with a 53% approval rating, and 44% disapproval (as of 3/25/2016). Of course, it wasn’t for lack of trying to smear the President with anything they could dig up. Apparently they just underestimated the American people’s appreciation for a leader who engages in positive forward movement, rather than the sort of juvenile antics that are being showcased by Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail.

Barack Obama

The past week was full of the sort of poll-shifting events that often shape the public’s opinion of national leaders. And true to form, Fox News worked rigorously to turn those events into negative fodder for their Obama-phobic audience. They began by brazenly politicizing the tragic terrorist attacks in Brussels. Various Fox News characters desperately tried to blame Obama for the bombing. They asserted that his strategy for combating ISIS was so weak that it encouraged more attacks. However, the truth is that Obama’s counter-terrorism efforts have seriously degraded the capabilities of the enemy, including killing more than half of their top commanders. ISIS has lost 40% of the territory it once held in Iraq. Many experts regard resorting to terrorism as a sign of weakness by combatants who are unable to make military gains.

Then Fox criticized Obama for continuing his historic visit to Cuba. They would have preferred that he tucked his tail between his legs and scurried back to D.C., as if there were anything he could do there that he couldn’t do on the road. Why they think that it would be a good thing for the President to exhibit fear and panic in the wake of terrorist act (whose purpose is to incite fear and panic) is a mystery. And they never criticized presidents Bush or Reagan who both remained on vacation following similar incidents.

There has also been a dust up in Washington concerning the vacancy on the Supreme Court caused by Antonin Scalia’s sudden death. Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a widely admired moderate judge who has been praised by Republicans in the past. But now they are clinging to an imaginary constitutional clause prohibiting presidents from doing anything in the last year of their term. The rhetoric on Capital Hill has been decidedly hostile toward Obama simply because he is complying with his constitutional obligations. GOP senators have accused him of trying to “shove” his nominee “down their throats,” and attempting to “pack the court.” All of which is nonsense. He is only asking them to do their jobs as stipulated by law.

Finally, the Republican primary has been a non-stop Obama-bashing extravaganza. For the past eight months every GOP candidate has bitterly castigated the President as inept, dangerous, arrogant, feckless, and even treasonous. They simultaneously claim that he has done more than any other president to harm America, but also that he has done nothing for his entire term. Likewise, he has shown brilliant cunning in his plots to destroy the nation while also being an utter fool who was never up to the job. That kind of schizophrenic contradiction really has be worked at.

So it must be frustrating for the GOP to observe that while all of these heavy-handed and baseless condemnations were being flung at Obama, the American people were warming up to him more than at any other time than in the past three years. By significant majorities they approve of his opening diplomatic relations with Cuba. They want the Senate to confirm Judge Garland for the Supreme Court. And their opinions of the Republican contenders for the GOP nomination range from embarrassment to disgust (even among Republicans).

President Obama must be doing something right. And Fox News is demonstrating that they have far less influence on the electorate than like to pretend. They have yet to report these latest presidential approval numbers from Gallup, even though they gleefully announce any polling down tick with a flashy “ALERT” accompanied by whooshes and gongs to make sure their dimwitted viewers are paying attention.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So the Fox audience will remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that Obama is riding high in the polls, and will continue to wallow in the fantasy that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump are going to trample the Democratic candidate in the fall. Just like they did in 2012 when they were lied to by Fox into believing that Mitt Romney was going to win by landslide. That’ worked out pretty well, didn’t it?

In His Own Words: Donald Trump Is Selling Himself Like A Bag Of Cheetos

Posted by on March 25, 2016 at 1:45 pm. 4 Comments :

The Republican Party has saddled itself with one of history’s most repulsive characters in this, or any, election season. Donald Trump is the manifestation of the racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and general anti-intellectualism that has long festered behind a thin veil of the GOP’s pseudo-respectability. As much as many of the party’s relative moderates are embarrassed by Trump, they cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for him.

Donald Trump Cheetos

Trump’s campaign strategy has resembled nothing more than the sort of reality TV battles that made him a household name. He trades in hyperbole and personal attacks and dumbed-down misrepresentations of issues. More often than not he lies without shame to advance his self-serving interests (see the Trump Bullshitopedia) And always, he casts himself as a sort of Messianic savior who is the only hope for rescuing America from the hordes of enemies, within and without, who yearn to destroy us in unspeakably horrific ways.

However, if you pay attention to Trump’s own descriptions of his operational tactics you will find that he is selling himself more like a consumer product than a candidate. Trump is essentially marketing himself like the corny, air-puffed, cheese snack, Cheetos, which has little substance but lots of toxic chemicals and seasoning. And while the comparison has been made before, Trump is surpassing all previous efforts by confessing to his marketing schemes. He is slapping a label on his snake oil that actually says “Snake Oil.”

What follows are some of the comments that expose Trump as a smarmy salesman. And the fact that he is unashamed to admit that his entire candidacy is akin to a pitch for fast food makes it all the more distasteful.

The best place to start is where Trump helpfully defines the marketing premise of his campaign by telling Politico that “I’ve done my job. I’m the product, the product is me.” That was his attempt to explain why he relied on massive rallies to promote himself, rather than the face-to-face town hall gatherings that are the standard in early state primaries. It’s the marketing equivalent of putting up a Superbowl ad instead of having a taste test at a local grocery store. Trump doesn’t really want anyone to get that close for fear of being exposed as a phony.

Way back in 2006 Trump was on the O’Reilly Factor where he laid out for Bill O’Reilly the reason he fights dirty saying that “If I attack on a purely intellectual basis nobody would listen and the response would not be nearly as effective.” So he is admitting that his rancor and bombast is an act designed to bring him more attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s truthful or tactful so long as it has shock value and the media laps it up.

Then there was the time that Trump openly admitted that his antics were crafted to generate drama and controversy: “If I weren’t in the race you’d have the same as you did four years ago, just the same boring things that would be just boring, that’s the way it is. Maybe That’s why The Apprentice was so successful.” In this comment Trump actually openly associates his success as a candidate with success as a contestant on a TV game show.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone after they learn that his measure of power in politics is the same as his measure of power in television: “It’s ratings. I go on one of these shows and the ratings double. They triple. And that gives you power. It’s not the polls. It’s the ratings.” And furthermore, he believes that that capacity for drawing an audience (which rests primarily on appealing to their bloodlust for seeing a horrible train wreck live on the air) puts the TV networks in his debt: “The networks are making a fortune off of me!” Sadly, the networks are buying into that as recently revealed by Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS who said “Who would have thought that this circus would come to town. It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. […] Go Donald, go.”

Which brings us to how Trump extends his marketing philosophy to his opponents. He has coined little slogans to disparage other candidates, or anyone whom he regards as an enemy. For instance, “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz and “Little Marco” Rubio. He has also tried to stick labels on Ben Carson as a “psychopath,” Jeb Bush as “low energy,” and Hillary Clinton as “lacking stamina.” What all of these have in common is their resemblance to marketing catch phrases that he repeats every time he mentions their names.

Donald Trump is bound and determined to create a public perception of his rivals as evildoers who strive intentionally to cause harm to America and its good citizens. At the same time he offers himself up as the solution to every problem anyone could ever have. His self-branding positions him as the best at whatever he is currently talking about: building a wall, killing terrorists, creating jobs, curing disease, etc. He is likewise the bestest of friends to the poor, women, veterans, evangelicals, and “the blacks.” In short, he’s an all-purpose elixir to cure whatever ails ya.

This characterization of himself serves the purpose of certifying his role as savior to the ignoramuses who worship him no matter what disgusting thing he says or does. It’s a phenomenon that even the obsequious media has recognized. Trump’s support seems to congeal following some grotesquery like a blatant lie (thousands of Muslims celebrating 9/11), or brazen misogyny (blood coming out of Megyn Kelly’s, whatever), or embrace of hatred (declining to rebuke KKK support), or advocacy of violence (promising to pay the legal fees of supporters who assault protesters).

These are not coincidental factors in his campaign. Trump is deliberately setting up his followers to behave like the zombie fanatics for which he desperately yearns. They are expected to follow him into literal battles as exemplified by his threat of riots at the GOP convention if he is not crowned as the Party’s nominee. His egomaniacal compulsions are typical of a cult leader who requires total devotion from an unquestioning flock. And he is as open about that aspiration as he is about his crass commercialization of politics. He regards his supporters as disciples who will follow him anywhere, as he revealed in this tweet:

“Because of me, the Republican Party has taken in millions of new voters, a record. If they are not careful, they will all leave. Sad!”

And just to reiterate the point, he told Joe Scarborough on MSNBC that “If I go, I will tell you, these millions of people that joined, they’re all coming with me.”

And so the Tribe of Trump is born. And in order to belong you must literally pledge your allegiance. This is a bit more demanding than becoming a part of the Pepsi Generation, but is sold in much the same way – through sloganeering, repetition, and the packaging of a social sect that promises acceptance and the welcoming embrace of a de facto family. Even if it is more like the Manson Family, it still offers a measure of warmth and communion. It is a shield from the tribulations of a world they perceive as hostile with enemies everywhere, including where they used to find friends.

In that regard they have even joined Trump’s war against the most reliably biased right-wing media empire in history, Fox News. Trump’s war on Fox has been joined by his minions who are all too happy to boycott the network to which they once clung obsessively. And Trump eggs them on tweeting “Wow, you are all correct about @FoxNews – totally biased and disgusting reporting.” So what we have here is the Trump Cult competing directly with the Fox News Cult. This should be fun.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump has adopted a mix of missionary work and marketing that exploits the tried and true methods of televangelists and telemarketers (but I repeat myself). He employs the persuasion technology of modern media to appeal to people’s fear and dependency on a sense of belonging (i.e. white supremacy). And his methods include the emotional power of proselytizing patriotism, faith, and rampant scapegoating of vulnerable minorities. It’s a potent cocktail that approaches a form of mass hypnosis, and it has been used before on frightened and disaffected populations. Which makes it all the more understandable that, by his own admission, Trump is not bothered by comparisons to Hitler. In fact, Trump probably views him as an inspiration and role model.

NRA Flack Wayne LaPierre Boasts About How Smart Gun Owners Are

Posted by on March 24, 2016 at 9:55 pm. 3 Comments :

When I saw this article at Right Wing Watch I could hardly believe the audacity of it. Wayne LaPierre is the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association and it’s chief propaganda spewer. He has a long history of ludicrous pronouncements and conspiracy theories, mostly warning of imaginary armies of firearm confiscators invading the bunkers of America’s gun fetishists.

The subject of this self-glorifying harangue (video below) was a tribute to the historically unparalleled genius of gun owners. LaPierre was not shy about heralding the brilliance of his troopers during a speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He said…

“So many of those elites, they think they’re better than us. They somehow think they’re more sophisticated. They think they’re more intellectually evolved somehow than we are. Or they think they’re just somehow plain smarter than we are. Well, I’ve got news for the elites who look down their noses at all of us and our rights: We gun owners are a heck of a lot smarter than you’ll ever be. It’s true.”

Well that just about settles then. Who can argue with that? Just be careful not to pay any attention to the abundance of news stories that present a somewhat different picture. All you have to do is venture over to Twitter and check out the hashtag #GunFAIL. What you will find is an endless array of incidents that expose the geniuses that LaPierre is exalting as idiots. Some of the reports are comical or ironic. But others are tragic despite their foolishness.

The stories include people who shoot themselves while demonstrating their firearm safety expertise. Others report on people who shoot their friends while pretending to aim “unloaded” weapons at them. The most heartbreaking are the stories of children who shoot other children, sometimes their siblings, after finding an unsecured weapon in the home.

And let’s not forget that some of the most infamous and celebrated NRA members include Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent. Those two alone bring down the average IQ level of the organization to single digits. And then there’s this brainiac:

Ted Cruz

I don’t mean to portray all gun owners as ignorant dopes. Certainly many of them are intelligent and responsible. But any community of people wherein these types of tragedies are so painfully common cannot possibly pass themselves off as, in the words of LaPierre, “in all of the world, some of the smartest citizens.”

But what makes LaPierre and the hardcore NRA-theist crowd really stupid is their opposition to common sense reforms that would prevent much of the suffering caused by irresponsible gun use, whether accidental or intentional. Universal background checks, hi-tech trigger locks, limiting magazine capacity, mental health screening, etc., are just a few of the measures that could save lives but are opposed by the NRA. If they really wanted to demonstrate some intelligence they would start backing these proposals like the majority of Americans do.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Hey Fox News, Donald Trump, And All You Other Gutless Republicans: Stop Helping ISIS

Posted by on March 23, 2016 at 8:21 pm. 5 Comments :

One of the first reactions to the tragic bombings in Brussels came from conservative pundits and politicians who berated President Obama for being in Cuba and sticking to his scheduled activities. They were outraged that the President didn’t drop everything and hightail it back to Washington so that he could…

Well, I’m not sure what they thought he could do there that he couldn’t do from Cuba. Still, for some reason they thought he should have tucked his tail between his legs and scurried back to D.C. In the 21st century the notion that a president has to be in the Oval Office for anything to get done is ludicrous. A few years ago Obama was delivering a hilarious address at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner while Seal Team 6 was disposing of Osama Bin Laden. The mission was ordered, engaged, and in progress without the President chained to his desk. And it was an undeniable success. But to the Fox News crowd America is being let down unless terrorists get to decide where our president should be. And if the President isn’t as rash and irrational as wingnuts think he ought to be, the terrorists win.

That’s the sort of defeatist rhetoric that makes life easier for terrorists. They know that they can’t beat the United States in a military battle, so they engage in acts of terror whose only purpose is to spread fear in the West and to promote recruitment to their cause among extremist Muslims. Of course, they don’t have any governmental infrastructure or media apparatus so they depend on the private press to promote their activities. And like every other public relations campaign, the more press coverage they get, the better for their cause.

Fox News ISIS Flag

That’s why the President was right to stay in Cuba and continue with his historic visit, including a baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays. Obama himself put it clearly in remarks to ESPN:

“The whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives. […] What they can do is scare, and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us. And as long as we don’t allow that to happen, we’re gonna be okay.”

Exactly. So why don’t conservatives get it? The truth is, they probably do, but they would rather scold the President for invented misdeeds than to admit that he is demonstrating strength, wisdom, and representing the nation’s best interests.

People need to realize that these heinous bombings are intended by the terrorists to inflame emotions and draw Western powers into a quagmire on their battlefield. And as if to validate that goal, war hawks among American conservatives are falling for the tactic and calling for an increased military presence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Donald Trump is even arguing that the U.S. should adopt the tactics of the terrorists in order to fight them on their own terms. He said that…

“I think we have to change our law on, you know, the waterboarding thing, and they can chop off heads, and they can drown people in cages, in heavy steel cages, and we can’t waterboard. So we have to change our laws and we have to be able to fight on an almost equal basis.”

Fighting on an equal basis as terrorists lowers us to their level. It obliterates any moral authority we might have. Trump is an ignorant cretin who can’t grasp the simple concept that America is only worth fighting for because of the principles we embrace. Resorting to the sort of savagery that is embodied by terrorism, including waterboarding and carpet bombing, makes us no better than the enemy and not worthy of defending. Not to mention that it is precisely what the terrorists want. The more they can portray us as the ruthless ones, the more converts they can acquire. Adopting their methods is a dangerous submission to the will of the enemy. Why would anyone want to give the terrorists exactly what they are hoping for? That used to be called treason.

In the process of castigating Obama with their knee-jerk criticisms, conservatives are demeaning not just the President, but the whole country. They make public statements that disparage our military and our resolve to be victorious. That must go over pretty well with the leaders of ISIS and Al Qaeda. When American senators and news commentators characterize our side as “weak” and “losers” it emboldens our enemies and invites them to escalate their attacks. It is also a blatant lie. What these traitors are forgetting (or not bothering to learn) is that…

“Since the beginning of the American-led air campaign against ISIS, the coalition has launched 8,000 airstrikes and dropped about 28,000 bombs on ISIS sites in Iraq and Syria. In other words, we’ve been launching about 17 airstrikes and dropping 60 bombs per day. Every day. For over a year.”

These missions have seriously degraded the capabilities of the enemy, including killing more than half of their top commanders. ISIS has lost 40% of the territory it once held in Iraq. A recent U.S. airstrike killed more than 150 terrorists at a Somalia camp. Critical ISIS figures such as Abu Salah, their financial chief in charge of its extortion activities, Hajji Mutazz, a deputy to the leader of ISIS, and chemical weapons expert, Abu Malik, have all been killed in recent actions. Clearly, anyone observing the available facts can see that there is a concerted effort to defeat these enemies. So the political distortions from the right are a dishonest campaign to harm Obama, and by extension the country.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

None of this is meant to diminish the genuine harm done by barbarians who have no respect for humanity. But it serves no purpose to give them the free advertising they crave. We are fulfilling their desires when we help them to spread fear and to foment despair. The only sane way to react to these events is to acknowledge that they occurred and then stop obsessing over them. Then we can conduct our retaliatory response calmly and decisively. But by no means should we panic, tear out our hair, and give the enemy the impression (and satisfaction) that they have crushed our spirit and won a victory.

President Obama At Cuban Baseball Game

Judge? Not! Sarah Palin Announces Her Next Pathetic Media Failure

Posted by on March 23, 2016 at 2:50 pm. 5 Comments :

Apparently the election season gods didn’t think there was enough comedy in this year’s political news. So they are providing us with a new object of ridicule that is really just a warmed over version of an old one.

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin has reportedly signed a deal to appear as a reality TV show judge in the mold of Judge Judy (with an emphasis on mold). At this point the show is just a proposal that has not even produced a pilot. If/when a pilot is available it will be shopped to independent television stations in the hopes of getting enough takers to make going into production financially viable. That may be a difficult task.

The potential market for a new Palin vehicle already knows that her previous forays in television have ended poorly. She was not able to keep her first series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on the air. Nor was she able to draw sufficient ratings to sustain her second attempt, “Amazing America With Sarah Palin.” She also suffered a total collapse with her subscription Internet video venture that didn’t even last one year. And, of course, she was jettisoned by Fox News who couldn’t justify paying an incoherent has-been to shoot off her mouth for a few minutes a day.

Now some enterprising producer thinks he can package Palin to star in a pseudo-legal reality show. This despite the fact that Palin is neither a lawyer, nor a judge, nor adept at anything associated with mediation, or for that matter, entertainment. What a great idea.

The only reason that seems plausible for this project to exist would be to prepare Palin for a future role in the administration of Donald Trump, should America be unlucky enough for that nightmare to manifest. Trump could then nominate Palin for a seat on the Supreme Court and cite her judicial experience in the realm of syndicated TV. She would be almost as qualified as the rest of the bozos that would infest a Trump administration.

Maybe Palin thinks that as a television judge she would have special powers to achieve her own personal goals. For instance, she could rule death panels unconstitutional and strike down ObamaCare. Or she could issue subpoenas for Hillary Clinton’s top-secret Benghazi confession. Or she might just keep things close to home and pardon her son for having beaten his girlfriend and brandishing an AR-15 while drunk. The options are endless for a season of legal buffoonery. Too bad the chance of this ever getting off the ground is about equal to the chance of Palin being named the GOP nominee for president at the upcoming Republican convention. Hmm. Maybe I should give them any ideas.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.