The Trump Cult Knows He’s Guilty, So They’re All on Fox News Yammering About Planted Evidence

In the wake of the FBI searching Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bunker, his worshipful cult followers have been mired in panic mode. Their reaction is perhaps the the most telling proof that Trump is guilty of serious crimes, and they know it.

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Donald Trump, Fox News

What’s astonishing about the post-FBI search is that none of Trump’s Deplorables are attempting to argue that he’s innocent. They are in lockstep formation attacking the the FBI and the Justice Department as corrupt, dishonest practitioners of radical leftist, banana republic tactics. Never mind that they haven’t produced a shred of evidence to support their hair-on-fire harangues. And pay no attention to the fact that FBI Director Chris Wray was appointed by Trump, who said he was “an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity.” Oops.

RELATED: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Bunker Has Been Raided by the FBI, and His Reaction is Predictably Bonkers

More specifically, the Trumpists are falling in line behind the utterly baseless charge that the FBI planted evidence against Trump during the Mar-a-Lago visit. It’s a shameful and reckless allegation for which the only basis is their perverse imaginations. But it has rapidly become the mantra at Fox “News” because, despite it’s pitiful idiocy, it’s the least idiotic defense they can fabricate on such short notice.

What Trump and his Fox friends are doing is laying the groundwork to deny the validity of the evidence that they know the FBI has confiscated from Trump’s Palm Beach compound. In other words, they know that Trump is guilty. And since the hard documents that Trump stole from the White House – many of which are classified – will be unimpeachably incriminating, the only thing Trump’s minions can do is try to characterize them as fake or planted by a cabal of dozens of law enforcement professionals working in tandem with Justice Department officials and the White House.

RELATED: Fox News Spews Knee-Jerk Defense of Wannabe Dictator Trump After FBI Search of Mar-a-Lago

It’s a conspiracy theory that puts the “lizard people” proponents to shame. But it’s what is on the script for Team Trump today. As evidence of the coordination in place for this preposterous fan fiction, what follows are some of the wild commentaries on Fox News from just the past 24 hours…

Jesse Watters: What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence, which is what they did during the Russia hoax. We also have a hunch that they doctored evidence to get the warrant.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba: Quite honestly, I’m concerned that they may have planted something. At this point who knows? I don’t trust the government.

Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt: What Was in Those Backpacks?
Sen. Rand Paul: Do I know that the boxes of material they took from Mar-a-Lago, that they won’t put things in those boxes to entrap him? How do we know? […]
Ainsley Earhardt: His lawyer said they brought in backpacks, what was in those backpacks? Did they bring those in to fill them up or did they have something in there?

Trump attorney (and former OAN shill) Christina Bobb: At this point I don’t “necessarily” think that they would even go to the extent of trying to plant information. I think they just make stuff up.

And of course, Wannabe messiah Trump

“The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’ Why did they STRONGLY insist on having nobody watching them, everybody out? Obama and Clinton were never ‘raided,’ despite big disputes!”

Who wants to to tell Trump that neither President Obama nor Hillary Clinton committed crimes that warranted being raided? Although the FBI did examine Clinton’s emails just eleven days prior to the presidential election of 2016, she never presented any risk of tampering with, or destroying evidence. Unlike Trump. Also, it is routine for search warrants to be executed without others around contaminating the potential crime scene. Particularly others with interests in altering the outcome of the search.

RELATED: Eric Trump Admits on Fox News that the Trump Admin Interfered with Justice Department Business

Trump is known to have shredded, flushed, and even eaten documents that were required by law to be preserved. He took dozens of boxes from the White House and, when challenged, only returned some them, lying that it was all he had. And now that the FBI has recovered more of the materials that Trump stole, he and his goon squad are maligning law enforcement and manufacturing an argument that any evidence of a crime was planted. Which is a pretty good indication that they know there is evidence of a crime – or crimes – in what the FBI recovered.

Finally, if Trump is really so upset that the search warrant was improper, why doesn’t he release his copy of it as proof? The FBI cannot do so if it is under seal, but there is nothing stopping Trump – except his consciousness of guilt. Trump’s glassy-eyed disciples should ask themselves this question: Why would he hesitate to release information that would exonerate him? The answer: For the same reason he refuses to testify under oath and obstructs his supporters from doing so. He’s guilty and he knows it.

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Rand Paul Goes We, We, We, All the Way Hoping that COVID Kills More Americans

The nation is currently in the midst of a fourth wave of the COVID pandemic. And sadly, this one was entirely preventable. It was caused by the ignorant and stubborn resistance of anti-vaccine deadenders who have bought into the reckless lies of Fox News and the sociopathy of Donald Trump and his Republican Party.

Rand Paul, COVID

Among the most obsessed anti-vaxxers is Kentucky senator Rand Paul (R-COVID-19). He has been a staunch opponent of the CDC and other health experts, including America’s foremost epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Paul is so far out on the fringe that he actually made a criminal referral of Dr. Fauci to the Justice Department for allegedly lying to Congress. Dr. Fauci’s response was that “You do not know what you’re talking about…If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”

On Monday morning, Paul posted a video to Twitter (see below) that stated his case in support of the much maligned coronavirus. And to be certain that it was consumed by as many dimwits as possible, it was also posted as an op-ed on the Fox News website. Paul reiterated his position that the virus is nothing to be concerned about and presented himself as the guardian of pro-COVID “freedom.” The terminally deranged commentary began with Paul courageously declaring that…

“It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us. They can’t keep all your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed.”

Never mind that no one was threatening to have him arrested, or keep his kids home from school, or close any government buildings. So Paul is boldly standing up against “threats” that nobody has made. He went on to tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that…

“You will not arrest or stop me or anyone on my staff from doing our jobs. […] so you can continue your drunk with power rein over the Capitol.”

Again, Pelosi has never suggested any such thing. And the rules in the House of Representatives were implemented at the direction of the House’s Office of Attending Physician. Paul’s complaints, however, were pulled straight from his asinine failure to understand public health matters. Which is what must have triggered his idiotic edict that “No one should follow the CDC’s anti-science mask mandates.” And even worse, Paul completely contradicted reality by saying that “Children are not at any more risk from COVID than they are for the seasonal flu.” To the contrary, recent data shows that children are being infected and hospitalized in greater numbers than at any time prior during this pandemic.

Likewise, Paul’s petty retaliation for anyone who disagrees with him will be to petulantly block every bill that comes before the Senate. And he’s doing all of this for an unnamed horde of vaccine-averse rebels who don’t care at all about exacerbating the pandemic and potentially aiding in its continuing mutation until a variant that is vaccine resistant emerges. Throughout the video Paul refers to some vague collective of “WE” who he claims to represent, but who are never defined:

  • We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and feckless bureaucrats.
  • We can simply say no, not again.
  • We have all either had COVID, had the vaccine, or been offered the vaccine.
  • We will make our own health choices.
  • We will not show you a passport.
  • We will not wear a mask.
  • We will not be forced into random screening and testing.
  • We will not accept your agencies’ mandates.
  • We will not allow you to do more harm to our children.
  • We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads.

In other words, “we” will expose ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our work associates, and every stranger with whom we come into contact, to a deadly virus that could be stopped with a simple shot in the arm. “We” will not be moved from our pigheaded stupidity just to save the lives of other innocent people who made smarter choices. And “we” will follow blindly the pundits and politicians who know nothing about epidemiology, rather than the doctors and experts who spent their lives studying it.

This isn’t about freedom. It certainly isn’t the freedom to go about our business without the fear of coming into contact with disease-carrying fools like Rand Paul. This is the kind of cognitively twisted thinking that has resulted in more than 600,000 COVID deaths in the U.S. so far. And if Paul and his confederate have their way, there will more suffering to come.

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
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Rand Paul Gets Spanked as He Continues to Push the Big Lie that the Election Was Stolen

To Republican deadenders still fighting to overturn Joe Biden’s decisive victory over Donald Trump, there are an endless stream of lies and alternative facts to disseminate. Never mind that doing so incited a violent insurrection in Washington, D.C., by Trump’s glassy-eyed cult disciples. To Republicans the battle to install an authoritarian dictatorship is an overwhelming compulsion.

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Rand Paul, Republican Brand

Confirmation of the GOP’s tyrannical aspirations was provided by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. On Sunday morning he appeared for an interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. And he was as determined as ever to advance the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump. Stephanopoulos should have ended this interview after the first thirty seconds.

Paul didn’t add anything new in the six minutes that followed to his primary argument that consisted of two points: 1) There was massive fraud for which there is no evidence, and 2) Liberals are being mean to him by calling him a liar when he lies about there being massive fraud. (Full video below if you have the stomach for it).

Paul repeatedly whined that Stephanopoulos was calling all Republicans who pushed the Big Lie liars. But there’s a simple way to prevent being called a liar: Stop Lying! Paul never considered that option and throughout the interview continually reiterated the Big Lie that the election was stolen. That’s the same lie that resulted in the Capitol riots where five people died, dozens more injured, and American democracy fouled by the stench of Trump and Republican treason. Not that Paul cared about any of that, as demonstrated in this exchange:

Stephanopoulos: I want to begin with a threshold question for you. This election was not stolen. Do you accept that fact?
Paul: Well, what I would say is that the debate over whether or not there was fraud should occur. We never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence since most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing, which is a procedural way of not actually hearing the question.

Notice that Paul does not accept the fact that “This election was not stolen.” Even worse, he expands on the lie by asserting that the matter was never adjudicated in court. It is patently false that “most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing.” In fact, very few were dismissed for that reason. Most of the cases – 86 of them – were thrown out after the evidence was presented and found to be wholly without merit. Paul went on to lie that…

“There were several states in which the law was changed by the Secretary of State, and not the state legislature. To me those are clearly unconstitutional.”

Actually, making decision of that sort is what secretaries of state were elected to do. And Paul is hallucinating if he sees anything in the Constitution that says otherwise. But he still wasn’t through lying…

“Were there people who voted twice? Were there dead people who voted? Were there illegal aliens who voted? Yes, and we should get to the bottom of it.”

There probably were some instances of invalid votes, just as there are in every election. But all fifty states, including those with Republican governors and election officials, certified the election results. Even Trump’s own Attorney General, Bill Barr, said there was no evidence of voter fraud that could have had any impact on the outcome. Yet that wasn’t enough for Paul either. He continued his lying…

“What I would suggest is that if we want greater confidence in our elections – and 75% of Republicans agree with me – is that we do need to look at election integrity, and we do need to see if we can restore confidence in the elections. […] Where you make a mistake is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say that everything’s a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything.

First of all, the only reason that 75% of weak and impressionable Republicans agree with Paul and lack confidence in the election is because of Paul and Trump and the rest of the liars who have been hammering the blatantly false conspiracy nonsense that the election was stolen. If he wants to restore the people’s confidence in elections, he should try telling them the truth, that the election was fair and accurate.

Secondly, Paul’s contention that “there are two sides to everything” is pitifully idiotic. There are not two sides to facts. For instance, there isn’t another side to the fact that the Earth is round. And there isn’t another side to the facts that have been established by both Democratic and Republican officials that the election was not altered by fraud.

Paul’s reckless dishonesty is not just another incident of radical right-wing distortions of reality. The deadly consequences of his lies were seen by the world three weeks ago as his confederates sought to invade Congress and assassinate its members. People like Paul need to be held accountable and expelled from Congress for their deliberate and dangerous deceit. And the determination of these cretins to continue to spread their lies makes the impeachment conviction of Trump all the more necessary in order to preserve the integrity of our democracy.

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

Fox News Bosses Told Hannity and Other Trump-Fluffers Not to Identify Whistleblower

The right-wing media machine has been chomping at the bit to expose the identity of the intelligence community whistleblower. He/she has been at risk since filing a complaint with the Inspector General regarding Donald Trump’s “quid pro quo” phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. That complaint led to Trump being pressured to release a “summary memo” of the phone call, that he falsely asserts is a verbatim transcript.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, White House

Ever since the complaint was filed, Trump has been rattled and fearful due to the obvious legal jeopardy that it puts him in. He has repeatedly tweeted “READ THE TRANSCRIPT” in an effort to exonerate himself. Nevermind that even his edited memo incriminates him further. Trump’s desperate objections have wandered into deranged territory. And subsequent to the whistleblower’s complaint, additional witnesses and evidence has emerged that make his/her account moot.

Nevertheless, Trump and his propagandist media continue to demand that the whistleblower’s identity be revealed and that he/she testify in person before Congress. That would violate the security measures that the whistleblower statutes were designed to protect. And it would subject the whistleblower to potential harm. Consequently, Fox News found it necessary to advise their on-air “personalities” to refrain from reporting the alleged name of the whistleblower that has been floating around in wingnut media circles. CNN acquired a copy of the Fox News memo and reported that…

“…on October 31, a Fox executive sent an email to staffers that said the network had not ‘independently confirmed [the] name or identification of the anonymous whistleblower.’ A copy of the email was obtained by CNN Business.

“The executive further advised production staffers to ‘NOT fulfill any video or graphic requests’ related to the whistleblower’s identity.”

Among the hosts on Fox that were given these instructions was Sean Hannity. CNN reported that Hannity claimed to have “confirmed independently” the identity of the whistleblower, but declined, so far, to name the person on air. “But you know what?” Hannity said, “I will play the game for a little bit.” Then he pretended to not be afraid of being sued by the whistleblower’s attorney.

CNN’s report also included a paragraph that should be required in every article about Fox News:

“Much of Fox effectively operates as a messaging arm of the White House. Its opinion hosts have defended the President at nearly every turn, and the network employs a stable of pro-Trump contributors who appear throughout the day to offer commentary. Fox’s news anchors and journalists also frequently cover the day’s news from angles beneficial to the Trump White House.”

Well said. But Fox’s admonition to it’s personnel is not likely to be sufficient protection for the whistleblower. Hannity and others on the network have defied their bosses before, with little or no consequences. And people like Sen. Rand Paul are also claiming to know the whistleblower’s identity and threatening to release it. The StormTrumpers are fully prepared to violate the whistleblower statute without concern for the his/her welfare, or for the principle of confidential reporting of wrongdoing in the government.

Their intention is to scare off any other potential whistleblowers who discover criminal or unethical behavior. Which is a pretty good indicator that there is more illegal activity that has yet to be revealed. Hopefully, the patriots in government will stand strong and do what’s right despite these threats. They are a lifeline to keeping government honest and holding wrongdoers accountable.

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

Trump is Threatening to Punish Former Obama Officials for Exercising Their Free Speech Rights

The president who has been the most hostile to the First Amendment of any president in history is accelerating his attack on the Constitution. Donald Trump’s latest threats toward his critics should frighten all Americans, not just those unlucky enough to be in his crosshairs at the moment. And he’s doing it for the most flagrantly political reasons.

Donald Trump Censorship

At the White House press briefing Monday morning (only the third one in July so far), Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to a question about Sen. Rand Paul’s request that Trump revoke the security credentials of former CIA director, John Brennan. Paul alleged, without proof, that Brennan was “monetizing his security clearance” and “divulging secrets to the mainstream media.” Sanders replied with a prepared statement that went even further (video below):

“Not only is the president looking to take away Brennan’s security clearance, he’s also looking into the security clearances of Comey, Clapper, Rice, Hayden, and McCabe.”

Note that these all are national security professionals who served at least part of their tenures in the Obama administration. Note also that they have been outspoken critics of the President. There has been no discussion of revoking security clearances for Sean Spicer, Rex Tillerson, or Reince Priebus (if they ever had any). Sanders continued reading her statement:

“The President is exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance because they politicized, and in some cases monetized, their public service and in some cases security clearance making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia, or being influenced by Russia against the President is extremely inappropriate. And the fact that people with security clearances are making the baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.”

No one has politicized and monetized their public service more than Donald Trump. He uses his Twitter account to post brazenly partisan political messages including defenses of his collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. Furthermore, he posts his robo-endorsements of Republican candidates for Congress. He also promotes his visits to his golf resorts and other properties he owns where he profits from both government expenditures and private reservations from corporations and foreign dignitaries seeking to influence American policies.

The activities of the people Trump is threatening are standard expressions of opinion in the media by experts with the experience to comment intelligently. They are granted the right to have and express their opinions by the Constitution. And by having done so, they have now become the targets of Trump’s infantile and un-American wrath. It should be noted that in no case have any of these people disclosed any confidential information. The assertion that what they have said is “false” is just the unsupported opinion of Trump and his lackeys. But it wouldn’t matter if it is false. There is no prohibition on expressing a false opinion. If there were Fox News would be out of business. And Trump as well, for that matter.

Trump’s rabid aversion to free speech is well established. He repeatedly refers to the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.” And just this morning he rattled off a couple of tweets castigating the Washington Post for some peculiar and unexplained anti-trust violations. In fact, he’s only attacking them because he perceives them as critics. Which makes the assault an unambiguous breach of the First Amendment.

If Trump follows through on these threats, it would be an obvious attempt to silence his critics. And it would only add to the high crimes and misdemeanors that he is already guilty of, and that warrant his immediate impeachment and removal from office. As if his treasonous collusion with Russia, his obstruction of justice, his financial corruption, and his sexually predatory assaults on women weren’t enough.

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

TBT: Trump’s Twitter Rants on Syria are a Steaming Heap of Hypocrisy

The videos of Syrian children suffering and dying from chemical bombings are almost too awful to watch. But even as Donald Trump castigates Assad, he pivots to blame President Obama for the atrocity. Trump’s public comments so far manage to produce nothing but bluster and impotent finger-pointing. He chastises Obama for not having done enough, but over the past couple of years Trump has repeatedly argued for doing nothing at all.

Donald Trump

Now CNN is reporting that:

“President Donald Trump has told some members of Congress that he is considering military action in Syria in retaliation for this week’s chemical attack, and recognizes the seriousness of the situation, a source familiar with the calls tells CNN.”

In light of that news, let’s revisit his Twitter posts for the past three years:

Those last two tweets have particular significance. Any military action has the potential of going awry. Civilians are too often the victims, even in well-intentioned missions. And already Trump has presided over more than 1,400 civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq, according to some reports. More than 200 in one incident alone. And he’s been in office less than three months. Is this what he meant during the campaign when he said that he would “bomb the hell” out of ISIS?

Also, it will be interesting to see if Trump will comply with his demand to get congressional approval before taking any military action. Needless to say, Trump has not exactly been a bastion of consistency. But on this matter he will be challenged by his Republican colleagues on Capital Hill. Sen. Rand Paul has already said publicly that he will oppose any military moves on Syria without authorization from Congress.

There really are no good solutions to this problem. Surface level analyses that advocate sending in the Marines will almost certainly result in painful losses. That includes both innocent Syrians and American troops. But more complex combinations of diplomacy and international cooperation are seemingly beyond Trump’s mental capacity to comprehend. And none of these routes guarantee a desirable outcome.

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

Unfortunately, America is now burdened with a leader who has no experience addressing these kinds of problems. Nor does he have any relationships with other world leaders. And he has recruited a staff that is just as unfit as he is. Does anyone really think that Jared Kushner or Rex Tillerson will find a path to peace? That leaves us with little more than crossed fingers and anxious hopes that the Pentagon will muster up some common sense and be able to exert some influence over our incompetent president. It isn’t much to hang onto, but it’s all we’ve got.

GOP Debate Lowlights Featuring Donald Trump’s ‘Sarah Palin Moment’

Fox Business Network is patting itself on the back for pulling off the most boring primary debate to date (transcript). They led the candidates through what amounted to a two hour Republican infomercial. The moderators were so detached that when Donald Trump flew off on a tangent about China in response to a question about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, they failed to inform him that China was not a party to the deal. Rand Paul stepped in to correct the record, but they never followed up to get a straight answer from Trump.

And speaking of Donald Trump, he contributed some of the most hair-brained comments of the evening. Most notably, Trump may have delivered what will become his “Sarah Palin Moment.” He was asked what he would do in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Trump said “I got to know [Vladimir Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes.” That’s about as delusional as Palin’s belief that her geographical proximity to Russia gave her insight into the region’s labyrinthine complexities.

The Republican Foreign Policy Dream Team:
Donald Trump Sarah Palin

Furthermore, Trump never actually met Putin who taped his 60 Minutes segment in Moscow. Trump was interviewed in his Manhattan penthouse. So what he meant by being “stablemates” is incomprehensible. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that he was being deliberately misleading.

In addition to his fudging a close relationship with Putin, Trump came out against raising the minimum wage because he thinks that people “have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum.” He continued saying that if wages were higher it would make the U.S. less competitive. In other words, he expects American labor to compete with the slave-wage earners of China and other nations that abuse their working class. That should make a good campaign bumper sticker.

But a Trump rant wouldn’t be complete without his descending into rancid bigotry. And Trump didn’t disappoint. While answering a question about his utterly ludicrous proposal to round up and deport eleven million undocumented residents, Trump sought to validate his approach by comparing it to a program implemented by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. And as if to put a sunny disposition on the controversial program, Trump introduced the comparison with a reminder of Eisenhower’s chummy campaign slogan, “I like Ike.” What Trump left out is that Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback (yes, that was what it was called) resulted in dozens of fatalities and a taint of racism. Approximately 1.2 million people were deported to rural areas of Mexico with none of their possessions or other resources necessary to survive. Trump is calling for ten times as many deportations and still won’t explain how he will do it.

Now we don’t want to pick on Trump exclusively. Ben Carson also indicated his opposition to raising the minimum wage saying that “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases.” Once again, Carson is pulling data out of a human body part far removed from area that he generally operated on. There is ample evidence that raising the minimum wage has no negative impact whatsoever on job creation. But not satisfied with merely misstating reality, Carson went on to actually call for lowering the minimum wage for some workers.

Marco Rubio weighed in on the matter of wages and education. Apparently he is not too anxious to encourage Americans to seek higher education. Consequently, he advocated for vocational training as opposed to college. Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with vocational schools, which may be superior alternatives for some students. But Rubio reduced the argument to “Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.” However, Rubio’s argument is not based in reality. The median salary for philosophy professors is almost $64,000. The median salary for welders is about $37,400. And philosophy majors (who often go into many other lines of work where an understanding of people and society is required) command higher average salaries throughout their careers. We need both welders and philosophers, but no one should be persuaded based on dishonest applause lines from self-serving politicians.

Rand Paul’s breakout moment in the debate came during a discussion on income inequality when he said that “If you want less income inequality, move to a city with a Republican mayor or a state with a Republican governor.” Not surprisingly, this is another Republican distortion of the truth. Of the ten states with the worst income inequality gaps, six are run by Republicans. Do these people ever get tired of being wrong?

Apparently not. Because Carly Fiorina joined the parade in a rant against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She inexplicably said that “We’ve created something called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a vast bureaucracy with no congressional oversight that’s digging through hundreds of millions of your credit records to detect fraud.” What Fiorina considers a “vast bureaucracy” is a relatively small agency with fewer than 1,000 employees. For comparison, the IRS has about 90,000. What’s more, it has the same measure of congressional oversight of almost every other federal agency. It’s director must be confirmed by the Senate, and it is subject to budgetary constraints imposed by Congress. Finally, you’ll have to ask her what she finds so offensive about uncovering fraud and protecting America’s consumers.

To give credit where it’s due, there some questions that where genuinely probing and worthwhile. Sadly, not one of them got a direct answer. The candidates exercised the old debate strategy of not answering the question you are asked, but the question you wish you were asked. And the moderators did nothing in the way of follow ups to attempt to get a responsive answer. Here are three outstanding, and unanswered, questions:

Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal: Now, in seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month. Under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you’ll probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?

Maria Bartiromo, Fox Business: [Hillary Clinton] was the first lady of the United States, a U.S. senator from New York, and secretary of state under Barack Obama. She has arguably more experience, certainly more time in government than almost all of you on stage tonight. Why should the American people trust you to lead this country, even though she has been so much closer to the office?

Baker: Income inequality has been rising in the United States. Fifty years ago, for example, the average CEO of a big corporation in this country earned 20 times the average salary of one of his or her workers. Today, that CEO earns about 300 times the average salary of a worker. Does it matter at all that the gap between the rich and everyone else is widening?

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

This debate was a peculiar creature from the start. The Fox Business Network has program ratings so low that Nielsen doesn’t even publish them. The only explanation is that it was a gift from the Republican Party to Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News family. As it turns out, it was a generous gift in that the debate drew a record number of viewers (13,500,000) for the tiny network. Although it was still the smallest audience of any of the debates held so far this election cycle. The next debates are scheduled for November 14 (Democrats on CBS) and December 15 (GOP on CNN).

Rand Paul Follows Ted Cruz To Sean Hannity’s Fox News/GOP Welcoming Party

Yesterday marked the arrival of the second official candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Kentucky senator, and former self-certified ophthalmologist, Rand Paul placed himself in contention for the nomination at the Galt House in Louisville. For those fortunate enough to have never slogged through Ayn Rand’s tedious and preachy novel “Atlas Shrugged,” John Galt is a leading figure who is best known for epitomizing the childish “take my ball and go home” philosophy of social interaction.

Rand Paul 2016

In what may signal a trend in the GOP’s strategy for launching a political campaign, Paul went straight from the Galt House to Sean Hannity’s House at Fox News for his first post-announcement interview. That is exactly what Ted Cruz did after announcing his candidacy at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, where students were threatened with fines if they did not attend. Perhaps Fox News has implemented the same policy wherein Republican candidates will be fined, or otherwise punished, if they do not pay their respects to Hannity before proceeding with their campaign.

While it is no surprise that GOP presidential wannabes would kowtow to Fox News (aka the PR division of the Republican Party), it is a demonstration of their arrogance that they are not at least trying to disguise their biases for the sake of appearing to be credible. Apparently that ship has sailed, been commandeered by Fox pirates, and is now rusting on the ocean floor.

As for Paul, he delivered what he called a “a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words.” Indeed, it was loud. And that message turned out to be decades old sloganeering whose words relay nothing of substance: “We have come to take our country back.” It’s easy to mock this theme by asking simply “back to what?” From all appearances, Paul wants to take us back to the Reagan years, with its soaring deficits, crushing unions and working people, abandonment of the poor and mentally ill to the streets, and illegally bankrolling foreign terrorists with money made from selling arms to terrorist states.

However, the more interesting question is who does Paul mean when says “We?” The “we” that he is leading so that he can snatch the country back from the citizens who twice elected Barack Obama, are the bankers, oil barons, and other privileged elites who he would free from regulations that protect the public from their greed and abuse. Paul is a favorite of the Koch brothers and, of course, Fox News kingpin, Rupert Murdoch.

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It will be interesting to see how the rest of the GOP roster rolls out their campaigns. Marco Rubio is anticipated to be next in line. He would be smart to skip the Hannity ring-kissing ceremony, if just to differentiate himself from the pack. After all, he could go straight to Megyn Kelly and still satisfy his bosses at the network.

And just for fun…

Paul was famously outed as a plagiarist by Rachel Maddow who noticed that his speeches were curiously identical to the Wikipedia page for the movie Gattaca. If that seems like an odd source for staking a false claim of authorship, then what do we make of his having designed a logo for his presidential campaign that appears to be a rip-off of the logo for the hook-up site, Tinder?

World on Fire

I’m just asking. And while we’re at it, why do both Paul and Cruz feature flames in their logos? Is it to convey their belief that “the world is on fire,” as Cruz told a frightened little girl?

UPDATE: Marco Rubio did indeed make Hannity his first media stop. That makes Hannity and the GOP field three for three.

To Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, And The Idiots Who Blame Cigarette Taxes For Eric Garner’s Death

Conservative zealots have been in a quandary over what to make of the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death on video. They don’t want to be seen as agreeing with the liberals they so feverishly despise, but they can’t find a reasonable argument to justify the unambiguously brutal killing of a man caught committing a crime on the scale of jaywalking. And unlike the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, there is video evidence of the officer’s brutality.

Rush Limbaugh Tobacco Tax

With the passage of time some of these right-wingers have begun to settle on a debate strategy that absolves the police of any guilt. It was first articulated by Sen. Rand Paul from the tobacco-growing state of Kentucky. Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld joined the fruitcake choir. Shortly thereafter, Rush Limbaugh picked up the baton and ran a bit farther around the track. Here is what they said:

Paul: I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes […] For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians.

Limbaugh: The police in New York, because they’re so eager for tax collection, what is being done here with regard to taxes and the state’s desire to collect them no matter what […] I think the real outrage here is that an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes.

Let’s get one thing straight here: Eric Garner did not die for anything related to tax collection. He was murdered by a police officer who strangled him while ignoring his repeated cries that he could not breathe.

Furthermore, Garner was never alleged to have violated any tax laws. The fact that the police originally approached him regarding his allegedly selling single cigarettes was incidental to his death. Selling “loosies” is not a violation of any tax code. It is a violation of statutes that prohibit the unlicensed sales of controlled substances. Garner would have been subject to the same legal scrutiny had he been selling single shots of whiskey.

There is only one cause that can be cited for Garner’s death, and that is the excessive force and reckless endangerment by the officer that placed him in a chokehold, a tactic that was explicitly prohibited by the guidelines of the NYPD.

For anyone to shift the blame from the overzealous officer to the legal pretext for the arrest is patently absurd. This is just an opportunity for anti-tax extremists to exploit a tragedy to advance their agenda and simultaneously excuse the behavior of a rogue cop. If Garner had been stopped for allegedly shoplifting a pair of socks from a Wal-Mart, and subsequently died at the hands of the police, would any of these wacko Libertarians be arguing that the laws against shoplifting caused the death and that those laws should be repealed?

It takes a special kind of stupid to advance a theory that a minor legal infraction somehow compelled a police officer to use deadly force against a suspect. That behavior is not supported by any statute or the code of conduct of the police department. It was solely the decision of the officer.

The proponents of this theory, however, may have ulterior motives. First of all, they are desperate to avoid agreeing with their ideological adversaries that the police might be responsible for having overreacted. Secondly, they don’t want to allow legitimate charges of racism to settle in despite the evidence that black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by the police than white men. And finally, both Paul and Limbaugh have personal conflicts of interest. Paul represents the second biggest tobacco producing state in the country. And Limbaugh is an avid consumer, and visible proponent of, tobacco. They would both be very happy, no doubt, if regulations of tobacco were eased or revoked.

It is ironic that Republicans have wrapped themselves in the cloak of personal responsibility, but when it comes to the behavior of police officers who shoot down unarmed teenagers, murder twelve year olds with fake plastic guns in public parks, or fire on patrons in department stores carrying toy guns they intend to purchase, personal responsibility is cast aside. And the fact that in all of these recent incidents the victim was an African-American male speaks to the barely disguised racism that infects our society. Particularly when white men exercising their “right” to openly carry firearms in grocery stores and burger joints never seem to encounter any problem with the local police.

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BY THE WAY, Cigarette taxes save lives. They deter both adults and minors from consuming a product that will eventually make them acutely sick and probably kill them. Tobacco is far more dangerous than terrorism. In fact, if Al Qaeda or ISIL were interested in raising the number of fatalities they cause, they should consider buying Philip Morris. Cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans every year. That’s more than 100 times the death toll on 9/11 and far more than any terrorist organization has ever imagined. Plus it’s entirely legal so they could kill more Americans without having to dodge drones or Navy SEALs.

Nevertheless, the right is obsessed with permitting this wholesale slaughter to continue. And it goes back decades to the seeds of the Tea Party. That’s part of the reason that the AstroTurfed, Koch brothers funded Tea-bacco lobby launched their mission with attacks on public health care.

So not only did cigarette taxes not cause Garner’s death, they have prevented sickness and death for millions of Americans. It gives a whole new and meaning to the hashtag #ICantBreathe.

Rand Paul States The Obvious: The Republican Party Brand Sucks

Every now and then a politician will surprise people by saying something that is manifestly true. However, they often only resort to that strategy when it is also unarguably obvious or they have an absurd explanation for why the truth is what it is.

Sen. Rand Paul (KY-Tea Party) made just such a pronouncement yesterday while on the campaign trail for his Kentucky colleague, Mitch McConnell. The glaringly evident observation that Paul issued was that “The Republican Party brand sucks.”

Rand Paul

No, really? Who knew? Well, pretty much everybody except for GOP chair Reince Priebus and most of the cult-bound viewers of Fox News. Notwithstanding all of the media pouncing on President Obama’s low approval rating in recent polls, his 41% looks awfully good compared to the GOP’s ranking down in the low teens. So it’s understandable that Paul would seek to provide a tortured interpretation of reality to explain the public’s distaste for his party. And apparently it’s all the fault of colored folk.

Paul: For 80 years African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans. Why? Because of a perception. The problem is the perception that no one in the Republican Party cares.

Indeed there is a perception among African-Americans (and Latinos, and women, and gays, and youth, and seniors, and workers, and the poor) that Republicans don’t care about them. But it is a perception based on political reality. The GOP’s policies have been aimed straight at the heart of Americans who are not wealthy or otherwise privileged. When Republicans oppose raising the minimum wage, and cutting social security, and advocating tax reform that puts more money in the pockets of the rich while incentivizing corporations to send American jobs overseas, there will be a perception resulting from such deliberately harmful legislative practices.

What’s more, if African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans for 80 years, it may have something to do with the fact that throughout all of that time the Republicans have tried to suppress them by opposing the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and other measures aimed at insuring a more equal society. Even today the GOP has been fiercely fighting to impose obstacles to voting for minorities and other citizens they fear will vote against the GOP. Why on Earth would any of these disenfranchised Americans have a positive perception of Republicans?

Paul, it should be noted, is specifically among those who have advocated for policies harmful to African Americans. In an epic debate with Rachel Maddow he argued his position against parts of the Civil Rights Act, although he later denied he ever took such a position. This disparity is certain to come up again should Paul enter the primary for the GOP nomination for president in 2016, as many expect that he will.

So it is small wonder that the Republican Party brand sucks. It is more surprising that anyone might still hold it in high regard. But for Paul to carry this message as if he were positioned to fix the branding is ludicrous. And the notion that the GOP’s problems are merely related to perceptions, rather than substantive differences with their historical and current platform, is really just another example of why the party is so out of touch.