Michelle Obama’s Last Commencement Speech As First Lady Scorches Donald Trump

Posted by on June 4, 2016 at 10:50 am. 1 Comments :

This being an election year, the media is understandably consumed by political news and the wrangling of the candidates. Consequently, it’s easy for other significant events to be overlooked. For instance, this is also the last full year that Barack and Michelle Obama will reside in the White House. There will be a lot of “lasts” as the year unfolds for the first African-American to serve as President of the United State. Then, in November, a new president will be elected and she will be inaugurated in late January of 2017.

Michelle Obama

On Friday, Michelle Obama gave the last commencement speech that she will ever give as First Lady (video below, full transcript here). It took place at the City College Of New York and it was full of the inspirational vignettes that typically populate these ceremonies. What made it extraordinary was the unmistakable blows she landed on a particular political foe:

“…despite the lessons of our history and the truth of your experience here at City College, some folks out there today seem to have a very different perspective. They seem to view our diversity as a threat to be contained rather than as a resource to be tapped. They tell us to be afraid of those who are different, to be suspicious of those with whom we disagree. They act as if name-calling is an acceptable substitute for thoughtful debate, as if anger and intolerance should be our default state rather than the optimism and openness that have always been the engine of our progress.”

Now which name-calling, angry, intolerant person who avoids thoughtful debate do you suppose she might be thinking about? Well, just to make sure that there is no ambiguity about it, Obama continues with some rather direct criticism of leaders who “dehumanize entire groups of people” and do so “because they have nothing else to offer.” She rejected such thinking saying…

“That is not what this country stands for. No, here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other. Because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.”

Then she winds up and delivers the knock-out blow:

“And here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out because we know that our greatness has always depended on contributions from people who were born elsewhere but sought out this country and made it their home.”

Coming the day after former First Lady Hillary Clinton delivered an epic smackdown of Donald Trump, this represents a powerful one-two punch from two of America’s most prominent and accomplished women. It is worthy of noting that women, along with Latinos, African-Americans, veterans, Muslims, and the disabled, have been among the most frequent victims of Trump’s divisive and hateful rants. It’s encouraging to see them responding with such intelligence and grace.

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

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Prophets Of Rage Will Rock Against The Machine At The Republican National Convention

Posted by on June 3, 2016 at 3:51 pm. 3 Comments :

Cleveland, Ohio is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It will also be the site of the Republican National Convention next month where the GOP will nominate Donald Trump as their candidate for President of the United States. And those two worlds are about to collide as the supergroup, Prophets of Rage, prepares to invade the city just in time for the GOP’s festivities.

Prophets of Rage

Prophets of Rage is a musical collaboration that includes Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D of Public Enemy, and B-Real of Cypress Hill. Their mission is to “Make America Rage Again.” While all of these musicians, and the bands they represent, are epic rockers, they are also committed progressive activists who fight on behalf of the poor, the homeless, victims of discrimination and abuse, and all the rest of the 99 percent who are too often forgotten by conventional politicians. As Morello told interviewers John Heilemann and Mark Halperin of Bloomberg News, “The times demand a band like Prophets of Rage to rise.” And in the spirit of that, the Prophets just announced that they will be making the pilgrimage to Cleveland to “cause a ruckus” at the GOP convention:

“Well there’s a thing called the Republican National Convention in July, and that will be a perfect place for a band like Prophets of Rage to cause a ruckus, and we will be there on the streets, in the field,” Morello said. “We have a venue and there may be venues that will be spontaneous venues, it’s hard to say. This is the kind of thing you don’t broadcast to the local authorities prior to arrival.”

The prospect of these radicals popping up unexpectedly in the streets of Cleveland might be cause for the Republican Party establishment, and the local police department, to worry. But the GOP convention has already been threatened with riots by none other than their presumptive nominee. In March Trump told CNN that if he didn’t get the nomination at the convention “I think you’d have riots…I think bad things would happen.”

Morello spoke about the group’s view that politics as usual is insufficient to meet the crises that the nation and the world faces today. He found blame enough to go around for both parties saying that staking all of your hopes on hope isn’t going to work, but that “xenophobic, fear-based racism” isn’t going to work either. He complained that the narrative in the media that portrays the electorate as angry misconstrues the message:

“It’s my contention that we can no longer stand on the sidelines of history. Dangerous times demand dangerous songs,” Morello said. “Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both constantly referred to in the media as raging against the machine. We’ve come back to remind everyone what raging against the machine really means.”

The Republican convention promises to be an entertaining affair, and not just because their pending leader is a bombastic, controversy-baiting, former reality TV star who thrives on the adoration of his glassy-eyed followers. Donald Trump has incited his supporters to violence while casting venomous insults at his perceived enemies, usually women and minorities. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren noted, there is “more enthusiasm” for him “among leaders of the KKK” than leaders of the GOP.

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

So expect the convention to reflect those values, the values of their standard bearer. While Prophets of Rage will be stirring up emotions and inspiring grassroots activism outside the convention hall, the delegates inside will be fighting among themselves for an agenda of division and hate. At least we’ll get some awesome music out of it.


A Summary Of Hillary Clinton’s Righteous Smack Down Of Donald Trump

Posted by on June 2, 2016 at 6:17 pm. 6 Comments :

Hillary Clinton was in San Diego, California, today to deliver an address on national security. And while the speech she gave enumerated her priorities for a Clinton presidency, it began with a masterful indictment of her presumptive Republican opponent Donald Trump. Anyone who is interested can read the transcript of entire speech here, but what appears below is just a portion of the speech’s opening that nailed Trump to the wall. It seems appropriate that this be documented for all voters to reference as the campaign moves forward.

[Update 6/3/2016: Trump has responded via tweet (his favorite means of communication). He said “In Crooked Hillary’s telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!” So I added links to the evidence of his actual statements. Hillary Clinton also posted annotated support for her remarks]

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump’s ‘Dangerous Incoherence’

Americans aren’t just electing a President in November. We’re choosing our next commander-in-chief – the person we count on to decide questions of war and peace, life and death. And like many across our country and around the world, I believe the person the Republicans have nominated for President cannot do the job.

Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different – they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas – just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.

He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.

This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America.

This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.

This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO – the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.

He believes we can treat the U.S. economy like one of his casinos and default on our debts to the rest of the world, which would cause an economic catastrophe far worse than anything we experienced in 2008.

He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists – even though those are war crimes.

He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors and other high officials, because he has – quote – “a very good brain.”

He also said, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” You know what? I don’t believe him.

He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and he has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.

He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope.

He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.

And to top it off, he believes America is weak. An embarrassment. He called our military a disaster. He said we are – and I quote – a “third-world country.” And he’s been saying things like that for decades.

Those are the words my friends of someone who doesn’t understand America or the world.
And they’re the words of someone who would lead us in the wrong direction. Because if you really believe America is weak – with our military, our values, our capabilities that no other country comes close to matching – then you don’t know America.

And you certainly don’t deserve to lead it.

Well said Madame Secretary.

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


John Kerry Rips Donald Trump’s ‘Unbelievable Contemptuous Ignorance’ On Climate Change

Posted by on June 2, 2016 at 1:45 pm. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party long ago committed itself to a position on climate change that is at odds with reality. The question is settled with 97 percent of the scientists who study the subject agreeing that climate change is occurring and that it is caused by human activities. But that hasn’t stopped faith-based GOP politicians, with help from the Fox News propaganda machine, from rejecting the voluminous data validating the unprecedented scientific consensus.

John Kerry

Leading the brigade of science deniers is the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. In a widely ridiculed comment he called climate change a hoax that “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He advocates anti-environment policies such as eliminating regulations on energy exploration and production, opening up federal lands to oil drilling, and building the KeystoneXL pipeline. He promises to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which he thought was called the Department of Environmental (DEP?). And most recently he said that he would rip up the United Nations’ historic Paris climate agreement that currently has 177 signatories.

Responding to Trump’s attack on the Paris accords, Secretary of State John Kerry was interviewed on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes (video below). He did not mince words when asked about Trump’s hostility toward the international effort to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change:

“Ripping up the climate agreement that was reached in Paris would be reckless, counterproductive, self-destructive. It would be an act of extraordinary danger to our country because of the path it would put us on both in terms of our global leadership on the issue as well as the actual policies we need to implement and it would in the end be an act of ignorance, of utter unbelievable contemptuous ignorance to get rid of something that the world has worked for since 1992 in Rio.”

Kerry didn’t stop there. He addressed the fact that each of the past years and decades marked record highs in global warming and were each hotter than those that preceded them, poignantly noting that “Somewhere people ought to be catching on to what is happening.” Along with the obvious and harmful impact of rising temperatures and sea levels, there is an alarming threat to national security. Kerry summarized this threat saying:

“Refugees that are being created in various parts of the world as a result of lack of water, or fights over food, or the fact that they have to move from where they live today. To talk about casually, without even understanding the work that has gone into it or the rationale for it, ripping it up would be one of the most reckless irresponsible, historically wrong acts I can think of.”

Conservative opponents of environmental reforms frequently try to belittle proponents as prioritizing climate change over terrorism. Of course, there is no reason why both issues cannot be tackled simultaneously. More to the point though, climate change actually is a more ominous threat that has the potential to instigate bloody wars and wipe out billions of people. Terrorism is unquestionably a tragic reality that requires a determined effort to defeat, but it does not approach the scale of climate change for global disaster. This was realized by no less a figure of right-wing stature than former George W. Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The Rolling Stone published a comprehensive examination of “The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk,” that cited Rumsfeld:

“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.”

OK? So now the climate-hoaxers cannot simply blame Obama and his socialist cabal of Sharia lawyers for inventing the crisis. Sources as deeply ingrained in the rightist dregs of warhawk free-marketism as Rumsfeld and Bush warned of the very same threat. In fact, four of the past Secretaries of Defense (Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that Climate Change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And three of the four are Republicans.

That leaves Donald Trump and his ilk to be the standard bearers of an utterly delusional rejection of the dangers that face a planet that is rapidly heating up, both in terms of temperature and hostility. Kerry characterized Trump’s denialism perfectly by labeling it reckless and ignorant. Unfortunately the Republican Party is now Trump’s plaything and they can be expected to wholly embrace his ignorance with enthusiasm and obedient blindness.

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


Six Times Donald Trump Lied In A Totally Unhinged Press Conference

Posted by on May 31, 2016 at 6:54 pm. 4 Comments :

This morning Donald Trump held a press conference (video below) to address the numerous questions surrounding the alleged veterans charity event he held four months ago. The telethon-like affair was announced after he dodged a Fox News primary debate for fear of facing moderator Megyn Kelly, and it generated much controversy after reports that the veterans had not received any of the donations.

Donald Trump

In typical Trump fashion, it did not take long for the press conference to devolve into a spectacle of whining and lying on the part of the GOP’s nominee for president. Trump became combative and insulting toward his critics and the media in the room saying that “The press should be ashamed of themselves. You make me look very bad.” If there’s one thing this press conference proved it’s that he doesn’t need any help in that regard. And in spite of the fact that the media has been slobbering all over him for the past year, he still holds them in contempt saying:

“I have been dealing with the press a long time. I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I have ever met. I have to tell you that, okay? Of course, you’re excluded, Carl [Cameron of Fox News].”

The Bottomless Pit Of Donald Trump’s Lies

1) Right from the start Trump was unable to stick to an honest representation of the veterans’ charity. He complained about protesters outside of Trump Tower who were rightfully upset that the funds Trump claimed to have raise had not been disbursed. Trump said that “The money’s all been sent.” But even if that’s true as of this morning (and there has been no confirmation of that), it has not been true for the past four months, which is far longer than necessary for the beneficiaries to receive funds.

2) Trump then diverted to an excuse that “If we could, I wanted to keep it private, because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business if I want to send money to the vets.” There are two problems with that comment. First, it isn’t his money that he’s supposedly sending to the vets. It is money he raised from other donors who have a right to know where it’s going. Secondly, he can hardly claim that he wanted any of this to be private when he has been shamelessly boasting since he conceived of it and made it available for a live television broadcast. He also previously posted a list of alleged beneficiaries on his website, which is a not the act of someone hoping to remain private. [Note: PolitiFact rated this a “Pants On Fire” lie]

3) Trump said that he “raised close to six million dollars,” which contradicts his previous statements when he said that the amount exceeded six million. That number has been fluid in the last couple of weeks with his campaign disagreeing with the actual take. They even disclosed that some donors reneged on their pledges.

4) Trump claimed that “This started with a speech in Iowa when I said ‘Let’s raise some money for the vets.'” As noted above, this actually started when he skipped out on a commitment to participate in a Fox News debate. Then he scheduled his telethon to take place at the same time as the debate in a vindictive attempt to steal audience away from it. [Note: Trump claimed that it was the lowest rated debate, but there were actually two other debates that had lower ratings]

5) Trump repeatedly said that he didn’t want any credit for the veterans charity. So it’s curious that he also whined about the press holding him to account. Trump cried “Instead of being like ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Trump,’ or ‘Trump did a good job,’ everyone said ‘Who got it, who got it, who got it?’ and you make me look very bad. I’ve never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job.” Poor baby. And he’s not looking for any credit, is he?

6) Trump falsely bragged that he is “the only one in the world who could raise six million dollars for the veterans – have uniform applause from the veterans’ groups.” Let’s just set aside the absurd claim that he’s the only one who can raise funds on behalf of veterans. He is flagrantly lying when he says he’s received “universal applause.” The truth is that many veterans groups refused to be involved with this stunt and vociferously condemned it.

The Disgusting, Dishonest Press

Trump spent much of his time lambasting the media as disgusting, dishonest and losers. In a particularly notable exchange, Trump went after ABC News correspondent Tom Llamas. Earlier in the press conference Llamas asked Trump if he was “setting a low bar today for being contentious.” Llamas asked “Is this what it’s going to be like covering you if you’re president?” Trump responded simply “Yeah, it is going to be like this.” But later Trump lashed out at Llamas calling him a “sleaze,” and saying “Your a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well.”

That’s a peculiar reason for Trump to criticize a reporter. However it makes perfect sense that Trump would be disturbed by someone who is well informed and knowledgeable about facts. It is also not surprising that Trump would seek out a Latino reporter as the object of his attack. Particularly one who has the gall to ask: “Your critics say you tend to exaggerate and have a problem with the truth. Is this a prime example?”

Donald Trump ‘Acting’ Presidential?

The remainder of the press conference consisted of Trump defending himself on the charges of fraud related to his defunct Trump University and insulting fellow Republicans like Bill Kristol and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez. There was nothing about his demeanor today that suggests he is finally pivoting to “act presidential.” And he certainly isn’t trying to hew any closer to the truth (see the Trump Bullshitopedia).

One more thing: Trump noted that he had donated a million dollars himself. He said that the full amount was given to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. He also noted that this foundation had “honored” him last year, which makes the donation seem a little like a payoff. What’s more, the charity watchdogs at Charity Navigator designated this group as “not eligible to be rated” “because it does not meet our criterion of having nontrivial fundraising expenses.”

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


GOP Insider Leaks Donald Trump’s Secret Plan To Slash Social Security

Posted by on May 30, 2016 at 12:41 pm. 6 Comments :

Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign for president he has taken numerous positions on fundamental issues that directly contradict his prior statements on the same issues. For example, in years past he has said that he is pro-choice, that he supported a ban on assault weapons, and that he favored universal healthcare. Today he holds the exact opposite positions on each of those issues. It’s impossible to know precisely where Trump stands because either his opinions are so malleable they can shift with a stiff breeze, or he is outright lying to pander to voters.

Donald Trump

On the subject of Social Security Trump has made his opposition to cuts in the program a stock part of his campaign repertoire. He boasts about his support for it despite being at variance with the official stance of the Republican Party. Paul Ryan, the GOP Speaker of the House of Representatives, has been proposing cuts and/or privatization for Social Security and Medicare for years.

Republicans have been taking heat for their eagerness to make seniors pay for the deficit that they ran up with tax cuts for the rich and two wars. Now they are understandably worried about being seen again as the enemies of Social Security, one of the most popular government programs in history.

What Donald Trump Isn’t Telling You

Which begs the question: Is Trump really committed to preserving the benefits of Social Security? He recently met with Ryan in a widely publicized attempt to smooth over their differences as he became the presumptive GOP nominee for president. Neither of them disclosed the details of their discussion or any new areas of agreement. However, news is beginning to leak out from others who were in attendance. A source has told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that Trump’s promise to protect Social Security may not be particularly trustworthy. With regard to cutting benefits in order to reduce the deficit, Trump said…

“From a moral standpoint, I believe in it,” Trump told Ryan. “But you also have to get elected. And there’s no way a Republican is going to beat a Democrat when the Republican is saying, ‘We’re going to cut your Social Security’ and the Democrat is saying, ‘We’re going to keep it and give you more.’ “

Trump’s “moral” belief in cutting Social Security should be of concern to the majority of Americans who would oppose such a move. It is a program that is often labeled an entitlement, although it is actually more of a savings plan that the beneficiaries paid into into during their working years.

But the more troubling part of this disclosure is that Trump is admitting that he is withholding his true position on the matter because of the political backlash that would ensue if voters knew what he really thinks. He’s well aware that you “have to get elected” and that proposing to cut Social Security would be a huge impediment to that. And this isn’t the first time that he has publicly acknowledge the need to keep such an agenda secret for political purposes. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2013 he said:

“As Republicans, if you think you are going to change very substantially for the worse Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in any substantial way, and at the same time you think you are going to win elections, it just really is not going to happen.”

Clearly, for many years, Trump has held the belief that lying about his position on Social Security was a necessary deception to win elections. And he intends to continue the charade throughout his campaign. Even as he states publicly his support for Social Security, he has staffed his team of advisers with long-time opponents of the program. Sam Clovis and John Mashburn are two of Trump’s advisers who have advocated for privatizing Social Security or converting it to a block grant program that would allow states to limit benefits.

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

Lying Is Donald Trump’s Campaign Strategy

From the start of his campaign, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he will tell every audience exactly what they want to hear to gain their support. It doesn’t matter that he may have held completely different positions in the past, or currently for that matter. His only motivation is to win without regard for the truth. And this latest revelation is evidence that he is comfortable lying to voters in order to get the victory that he wants.

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Fox News Just Gift-Wrapped Their Primetime Schedule And Gave It To Donald Trump

Posted by on May 28, 2016 at 5:30 pm. NO Comments :

It won’t surprise anyone to learn that Fox News has jumped aboard the Donald Trump bandwagon in a big way. His most ardent supporters are featured regularly to exalt the presumptuous Republican presidential nominee. Those supporters include the anchors of Fox’s most watched programs in primetime.

Trump News Channel

This past week Fox News handed over its primetime schedule to hour-long specials dedicated to Trump. Every single program set aside all other news stories for an episode of fluffing their favorite candidate. This is unprecedented even for Fox. It comes just a week after the chairman of the Fox News empire, Rupert Murdoch, was reported to have embraced Trump’s candidacy. New York Magazine’s veteran Fox-watcher, Gabriel Sherman, revealed that…

“According to a half dozen sources familiar with Murdoch’s thinking, the media mogul has signaled he plans to fully back Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton.”

So it’s no coincidence that the following week Fox’s schedule is littered with packaged profiles of Trump that add nothing to the viewer’s store of knowledge or ability to make an informed decision. Here is what Fox’s primetime offered up last week as a gift to Donald Trump:

Greta Van Susteren’s “Meet The Trump’s”

Van Susteren devoted the whole hour of her show to interviews with Trump’s family, She spent the most time with his wife Melania whose relentless praise was reminiscent of victims of Stockholm Syndrome. She even said that she and Donald never argue. Does that sound like a normal marriage or a paid campaign infomercial?

Megyn Kelly’s Donald Trump File

This episode of the Kelly File was partly a rebroadcast of “Megyn Kelly Presents,” the widely panned special that aired on the Fox Entertainment Network. There was some additional footage included that was left out of the original broadcast and, having seen it, Kelly was right to have cut it in the first place. It contained nothing new or interesting.

Bill O’Reilly’s “The Trump Phenomenon”

Not wanting to be left out, O’Reilly cobbled together a bunch of old interviews and presented them as a package for any of his viewers who haven’t seen enough of Donald Trump on television lately. O’Reilly and Trump are old pals and the interviews are a tribute to the sort of softball journalism that you would expect between friends.

And Then There’s Sean Hannity

To his credit, Hannity is the only one of the four primetime hosts who actually bothered to deliver a significant amount of new material featuring Trump. Of course it was substantially the same as everything that Hannity has delivered in the past. He has the distinction of having provided Trump with more airtime than any other program on Television (over 17 hours). To illustrate how much time that is, Fox & Friends came in second with less than half that amount.

Since Trump just surpassed the number of delegates necessary to clinch the GOP nomination, we can expect much more of this hero worship from the folks at Fox News as the general election unfolds. The network that has been pretending to be “fair and balanced” for the past twenty years is wholly engaged in their mission to smear Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump.

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

While Clinton has not made herself available to Fox with much frequency (she did appear on Fox News Sunday recently), there is nothing stopping them assembling a packaged piece like these ones that they did for Trump. And maybe that’s for the best because, if they did, they would likely accuse her of blowing up the Hindenburg or assassinating Lincoln.


Donald Trump Lies, Denies Proposing That Japan, Saudi Arabia Get Their Own Nukes

Posted by on May 27, 2016 at 7:40 pm. NO Comments :

It isn’t exactly breaking news to reveal that Donald Trump has lied about something. He does that nearly every time he opens his mouth (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). But it is still necessary to hold him accountable for his blatant dishonesty. That’s especially true when the consequences include world annihilation.

Donald Trump Lies

At a rally in Fresno, California today, Trump delivered another of his incoherent, stream-of-consciousness, performance art pieces. When he got to the point where he taunts Hillary Clinton with his childish nicknames he spun a little story for his audience, complete with an awful Clinton imitation, about how he spent the previous evening.

“I watched her last night and she lies so much and she was saying last night, ‘Donald Trump wants to see Japan get nuclear weapons. He wants to see South Korea arm themselves and get nuclear weapons.’ I never said that.”

First of all, let’s take a look at what Clinton actually said (and it was last week, not last night):

“Look what he’s done just in the last week. He’s attacked our closest ally, Great Britain. He has praised the reckless dictator in North Korea. He has said we should pull out of NATO, our strongest military alliance. He has advocated for more countries having nuclear weapons.”

Clinton did touch on the fact that Trump has, in contravention to more than fifty years of American foreign policy, advocated for scrapping our nuclear non-proliferation stance. But more to the point, what Trump claims to have never said, he actually did say just two months ago to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who specifically asked him if he was OK with more nations acquiring nuclear capability:

“At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself. … Saudi Arabia, absolutely. … It’s going to happen anyway.”

So it was Trump who enumerated the countries that he thinks should be nuclear armed. Clinton merely summarized his proposal. And now Trump wants to pretend that he never made it at all. In the process he is calling Clinton a liar for saying that he said some stuff that he did, in fact, say.

That’s the level of derangement that we’re dealing with in this era of reality TV presidential campaigns. Donald Trump is unarguably the most dishonest candidate in contemporary politics. That has been certified by the non-partisan fact-checkers at PolitiFact who found that he has been untruthful in 76 percent of the statements they have rated. That compares to Hillary Clinton’s 71 percent truthful ratings.

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

PolitiFact Trump Clinton


As Donald Trump Clinches Nomination The GOP Schemes To Prevent Future Trumps

Posted by on May 26, 2016 at 1:27 pm. 3 Comments :

Political parties are hard-wired to reflexively defend their candidates no matter what controversy arises. They have war room strategists and surrogates at the ready to “clarify” what the candidate really meant when he said that he wants to date his daughter. But you know you have a problem candidate with Donald Trump when the party is revamping its rules, before he’s even officially nominated, in order to short-circuit any possibility of another similar candidate being chosen in the future.

Donald Trump GOP

That’s what is happening today in the inner sanctums of the Republican Party. Insiders have been mulling over procedural changes designed specifically to avert another primary season like the one currently winding down. If they were confident of their prospects in November they would be carving the current rules into stone, but the mayhem and acrimony that characterized the past year for the GOP contestants, and the catastrophic ascendancy of Donald Trump, has party regulars in a tizzy. As reported by the New York Times:

“Leaders of the Republican Party have begun internal deliberations over what would be fundamental changes to the way its presidential nominees are chosen, a recognition that the chaotic process that played out this year is seriously flawed and helped exacerbate tensions within the party.”

It says something about a party when they are so horrified by the choice of their voters that they begin to plot to prevent such an awful choice in the future before their nominating convention commences. Donald Trump represents the very worst of right-wing America: the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, demagoguery pandering to ignorant celebrity worshipers who don’t care about his frequent lies, hypocrisy, or the absence of any coherent policies. But that’s who the Republican voters chose as their champion to lead the nation and the free world.

The party’s blueprint for a Trump-free future includes rearranging the primary calendar to put less emphasis on the traditional early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Their proposal would keep these states at the front of the line, but pair each with another state to inject some diversity and to prevent any single candidate from gaining unstoppable momentum. They also want to narrow the field of primary voters to just their most loyal constituents. As the Times reports:

“[P]arty activists are also pushing to close Republican contests to independent voters, arguing that open primaries in some states allowed Donald J. Trump, whose conservative convictions they deeply mistrust, to become the presumptive nominee.”

Both of these ideas are actually pretty sound and have been floating around both party camps for years. The artificial exaltation of Iowa and New Hampshire has done nothing but advance candidates who appeal to largely rural, mostly white electorates. Those candidates are not likely to be as popular in states with more diverse and urban voters who make up the majority of the country. And it was never a good idea to permit independents and other non-party members to have a say in selecting candidates for parties to which they don’t belong and may seek to harm.

Ironically, the rules that these party activists are now attempting to alter were put in place after a similarly tumultuous primary season in 2012 that saw Mitt Romney eventually rise from a field of crackpots like Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain. The GOP chairman, Reince Priebus, was instrumental in changing the rules to limit the number of debates and shorten the primary calendar. He must have noticed that the more people saw of his candidates, the less they liked them. The intention was to reduce the embarrassment caused by their frequent televised brawls.

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

Unfortunately for them, the emergence of Donald Trump and his whiny, hostile, substanceless debate performances insured that the embarrassment would continue for yet another election cycle. And unlike 2012, when the process yielded a credible and arguably sane candidate, 2016 produced a narcissistic, ignoramus with designs on a dictatorship. And now they’re stuck with trying to defend him while simultaneously working behind the scenes to avoid a similarly distasteful fate in 2020.


Fox News ‘Psycho’ Analyst Assails ‘Obama’s America’ For ‘Get High, Stay Home’ Generation

Posted by on May 25, 2016 at 7:00 pm. 8 Comments :

This week the Pew Research Center released the findings of a study on Millennial living arrangements that showed more of them are staying in their parents’ homes longer. They cited a variety of reasons for this, but none of them included the farcical conclusions of Dr. Keith Ablow, a member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.

Keith Ablow

Dr. Ablow appeared this morning on Fox & Friends (video below) to discuss the Pew report’s findings. He began by falsely claiming that most young people cannot afford to live on their own. That was a flagrant exaggeration since the number of Millennials found to be living at home was only 32.1 percent. It’s a plurality, but not anywhere close to a majority. He went on to attributed the number of youthful homebodies to a lack of available jobs. While mentioned as a contributing factor, it was not a primary factor according to Pew:

“This turn of events is fueled primarily by the dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who are choosing to settle down romantically before age 35. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other.”

The Get High, Stay Home Kids

So the study found that the decision to delay marriage or other romantic commitments played the largest role in kids’ decisions to remain at home. But Ablow’s analysis went even further off the deep end when he declared that the whole situation “was stoked by Obama,” and his “agenda for America,” which he described as “Get high, stay home, don’t be autonomous.” According to Ablow…

“These kids are high, they’re high on pot. They’re high on Facebook. They’re high on Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat. So they can’t be bothered to cobble together three jobs.”

Ablow accused Millennials of feeling “entitled to all kinds of free stuff,” and essentially being too high and/or lazy to take care of themselves. Of course this typically hollow assessment neglected to take into consideration that the vast majority of Millennials are actually quite independent. The Pew study found that 31.6 percent were living with a spouse or partner in their own household. Another 14 percent were living alone. And there are still many more who live with non-romantic roommates, in college dorms, or with non-parental family members (i.e. siblings, cousins, grandparents, etc.)

However, none of these facts prevented Ablow and his Fox & Friends cohorts from distorting the truth and laying all the blame on President Obama. That seems to be a signature compulsion with Ablow, who has blamed the President for everything from riots in Ferguson, MO., to Ebola. Even his assertion that the job market resulted in Millennials residing with their parents was characterized as Obama’s fault, rather than the Great Recession of Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush. It is the Obama administration that has produced more than 22 million jobs and 74 straight months of private sector job growth.

It seems peculiar that Ablow and Fox News would be so anxious to insult Millennials in the middle of this election cycle. They are the largest generation of Americans and are notoriously independent in their political allegiances. If the recent poll by the Washington Post and ABC News is any indicator, there has just been a significant shift in preference among Millennials from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. Clinton still leads, but the margin is much narrower. These polls will likely continue to fluctuate, but it can only be helpful to Clinton if Fox News continues to disparage this important voting bloc.

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

The Keith Ablow Affliction:

For the record, Keith Ablow has been dispensing ludicrous psychological diagnoses for years. Some of his past adventures in malpractice include his charges that President Obama was waging psychological warfare on the American people, that Newt Gingrich was honorable for being unfaithful to multiple wives, accused Obama of wanting Ebola to spread in America, and my personal favorite, he actually praised the Unabomber’s sociopathic philosophy. These are a few of the reasons that may have contributed to his abrupt separation from the American Psychiatric Association. But who needs those medical establishment elitists when you have Fox News?