Scott Walker Promises To Ruin …er… Turn America Around

Posted by Mark NC on July 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm. 31 Comments :

The latest passenger in the Republican Presidential Clown Car is Wisconsin’s union-busting governor, Scott Walker. His announcement address today was rife with the routine braggadocio required by all aspirants to high office.

Among his laundry list of campaign pledges was the promise to “fight and win” for the “born and unborn.” And apparently what Walker thinks born and unborn Americans need most is to have their health insurance repealed, because that’s what he swore to do to ObamaCare. Although he did express support for healthcare for veterans, which is fortunate because he practically declared war on Russia and China, so they’re gonna need it.

Walker spoke at length about his record in Wisconsin but, not surprisingly, left out his numerous failures that place Wisconsin near the bottom on job creation, education, economic growth, etc. But perhaps the most intriguing pronouncement he made was his promise that…

Well, that’s a relief. Because if America had to proceed any further in the positive direction it has been going for the last six years, who knows how long we would endure. Thankfully, Walker has arrived just in time to turn things around, back in the direction that George W. Bush had taken us.

And if anyone can turn things around from the course of sustained prosperity that we’ve been on, it’s a Koch brothers puppet like Scott Walker. He was famously fooled by a blogger who called him pretending to be David Koch (YouTube audio below). They spoke for about ten minutes with Walker pandering shamelessly to who he thought was the billionaire who has been a reliable donor to his Wisconsin campaigns. At one point “David” suggested that Walker should plant troublemakers among the protesters who were packing the capital office. Walker answered saying “we thought about that.”

Of course, it would have been illegal for Walker to dispatch provocateurs to disrupt people who were exercising their free speech rights, but Walker is no stranger to unlawful activities. He is currently being investigated for election irregularities that have already seen six of his associates convicted.

Here is a transcript of the Walker phone call with the fake Koch.

Donald Trump Exposes The Illegal Alien Lizard Overlords Controlling The Planet

Posted by Mark NC on July 12, 2015 at 9:39 pm. 6 Comments :

It’s no wonder that both David Letterman and Jon Stewart have expressed deep regrets at leaving their programs just as Donald Trump has announced his pretend campaign for the Republican nomination for president. It seems that every day there is another gift to comedy emanating from The Donald. Today Trump is testing the totally insane conspiracy theorist waters and, in the trademark Trump fashion, he is making a HUGE splash.

With the news that Joaquin Guzman (aka El Chapo), the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, has engineered an elaborate escape from prison, Trump is conspiracy theorizing that “Corrupt Mexican officials obviously let him go.” Of course they did. Why wouldn’t they after just having spent years and untold sums of money to capture him only last year? Trump’s theory goes on to surmise that Guzman is “possibly” in the U.S. because naturally a fugitive Mexican drug lord who Trump says was released by friendly Mexican officials would hightail it to a country that would love to put him away for two or three hundred years, rather than stay in his homeland where he has allies, hideouts, and, according to Trump, cooperative government accomplices who will spring him from prison should he get nabbed again?

But it gets even more bizarre. In the same statement, Trump veered off to accuse American politicians of being responsible for El Chapo’s jailbreak, even though he just finished blaming it on the corrupt Mexican officials.

So all of a sudden his amigos in Mexico are merely the unfortunate victims of some unnamed cabal of American politicians. No doubt President Obama is the kingpin of this gringo crime syndicate that is now harboring El Chapo in a San Fernando Valley safe house. [Hmm, isn’t San Fernando Spanish?]

Glenn Beck and Alex Jones had better watch out. Trump is rapidly moving in on their delusional, tin-foil hat territory. He has even earned the enmity of the boss of the world’s biggest media family. When Fox News Godfather Rupert Murdoch got around to paying attention to the Frankenstein monster that he and his network created he tweeted…

That’s actually true. And furthermore, cities like New York and Los Angeles, where the undocumented immigrant population is the highest, also have declining rates of crime that are lower than cities with fewer immigrants. But these are not the sort of facts that Fox News regards as newsworthy. Geraldo Rivera tried to report it as a fill-in guest on The Five, but was quickly shouted down by the other four goons who were busy exploiting the murder of a San Francisco woman whom they they felt it necessary to shamelessly politicize before she was even buried.

The Trump Show is certain to keep getting better and better. Here’s hoping he stays in the race long enough to participate in a debate or two. He still has not filed his financial reports which are due in four days. He could request an extension (which he swore he would not do) and that would permit him to continue running, but it would exclude him from the first debate that is on Fox News. So stay tuned kiddies. The fun is just beginning.

Bonus Addendum: Trump Tweets:
“When will people, and the media, start to apologize to me for my statement, “Mexico is sending….”, which turned out to be true? El Chapo”
Trump continues to think that Mexico has an official policy of organizing undesirables and arranging for their transport to the U.S.

“The U.S. will invite El Chapo, the Mexican drug lord who just escaped prison, to become a U.S. citizen because our “leaders” can’t say no!”
Just like all the other drug lords that have received invitations to visit America – mostly from red-state drug addicts who dominate the the demand in this country for illegal narcotics.

“Can you envision Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton negotiating with ‘El Chapo’, the Mexican drug lord who escaped from prison?”
After previously saying he would negotiate with ISIS, Trump now adds El Chapo to the list of criminals he thinks should be negotiated with.

“Sleep eyes @ChuckTodd is killing Meet The Press. Isn’t he pathetic? Love watching him fail!”
This is Trump’s typically personalized and insulting (and oh-so-presidential) response to the devastating “Trump vs. Trump” segment Todd did on Meet the Press yesterday.

The Stupid Party: Jeb Bush Fears That Big Words Make The World Dangerous

Posted by Mark NC on July 12, 2015 at 3:55 pm. 7 Comments :

The new Prince of the Bush Dynasty is succeeding in stealing back some of the limelight that Donald Trump has been hogging. However, Jeb Bush’s method of getting attention may not be the most effective in terms of gaining respect. In the same interview where Bush revealed that he thinks Americans are not working enough, he also expressed his disdain for “sophisticated” communication:

Oh my, Matilda. The prezdent uses them long words what make chaos. It’s all parta his socialismic plot.

The problem with Bush’s criticism of President Obama et al, is that it affirms what can only be described as the aspirational ignorance (sorry for all the syllables, Tea Partyers) of the GOP. There has long been a deliberate objective within the conservative political sphere to literally dumb down their discourse to appeal to a constituency for which they obviously have little respect.

This could be traced back to Ronald Reagan’s fist-shaking demand that “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” which today is regaled by fans as soaring oratory on the scale of Churchill’s “blood, sweat, and tears.” In fact it’s more akin to an old man bellowing at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn. If Reagan had been FDR he would have settled for “Just stop fearin’ y’all.”

Jeb’s aversion to being articulate seems to run in the Bush family. His brother George is famous for his verbal gaffes and low-brow manner of speech. What’s worse, he actually regards under-achievement as a virtue. Part of a commencement speech he gave included this inspirational message: “To the C Students I say, you too can be President of the United States.” A similar message of intellectual lethargy was conveyed in a commencement address by Rick Perry who said “I’m very proud to tell you I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class – of 13.”

Academic achievement and critical thinking is not particularly valued among some of the other current Republicans aspiring to the White House. Scott Walker is a college dropout. Rand Paul is a serial plagiarist. Harvard law grad Ted Cruz thinks the Supreme Court is too political, so the judges should be subjected to political reconfirmation votes. Chris Christie’s idea of adult discourse is to tell people to “sit down and shut up.” Ben Carson thinks that ObamaCare is the worst thing since slavery. Donald Trump just tweeted that he had 20,000 people in a hall that only fits 4,100 (He has since deleted that tweet). And of course, Bobby Jindal is the guy who coined the phrase “The Stupid Party” in reference to the GOP. Apparently he knows of what he speaks.

Remember also that Republicans are opponents of education in general. They oppose increased funding and anything that benefits teachers. They are fiercely anti-science. They cannot agree that evolution is a valid theory or that Climate Change is actually occurring, despite all of the scientific evidence for both. They advocate teaching so-called creation science in public schools. They are a party that has open disdain for the high-performing Ivy League institutions that they regard as elitist. And they are strong advocates of homeschooling where no standards of education are maintained.

No wonder leading Republican candidates are so notorious for talking down to their constituents. No wonder they talk in sound bites and bumper sticker cliches. They either don’t understand more complex concepts, or they are afraid their audience won’t. Consequently, Jeb Bush has to demean Obama for using too many syllables and holding “fancy” meetings. I guess the meetings held during a Bush administration would be dominated by coloring books and nap time. Why waste energy with boring and complicated discussions about international law and treaties? That sort of advanced intelligence doesn’t sit well with the right-wing electorate.

Nor does it work for viewers of Fox News, who are treated to a 24/7 barrage of painfully ignorant and dishonest propaganda. That’s a sad fact that was hilariously explained by Monty Python’s John Cleese, who offered a brief description of the Dunning-Kruger effect wherein stupid people are too stupid to realize how stupid they are.

Ted Cruz Whines Because NY Times Won’t Let Him Cheat His Way Onto The Best Sellers List

Posted by Mark NC on July 10, 2015 at 2:01 pm. 8 Comments :

What is it about Conservatives that makes them so ultra-sensitive about persecution when they are caught doing something wrong? Whenever they are discovered to have broken a law or violated an ethical principle, they turn it into a case of an out-of-control government trying to put the boot of tyranny on their throats.

For instance, Dinesh D’Souza insisted he was a victim of Obama’s Storm Troopers right up until he admitted guilt of election fraud. Same thing with serial slanderer James O’Keefe who confessed to unlawful activity in the office of a United States senator, but now thinks he’s a victim of federal oppressors. And then there is former Fox News anchor, Glenn Beck, who regards himself as more persecuted than Jesus.

Now we can add Senator and Republican presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz to the list. Cruz recently released a propaganda tract that he calls “A Time For Truth.” And to start off the book tour Cruz is discarding the truth in order to bitch about his book not being included on the New York Times best sellers list. Why he would want to be recognized by a news enterprise that he considers to be in cahoots with the international communist conspiracy is anyone’s guess.

More to the point, Cruz and his disciples are certain that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy intent on suppressing his book and his First Amendment rights. No doubt President Obama himself ordered the Times to remove Cruz’s book from the list in order to smother his sizzling ascendancy to the White House (for which he is currently in a distant eighth place according to the latest Fox News poll).

Of course, there may be another reason that Cruz failed to make the list. When asked by Politico why Cruz was omitted, the Times told them that “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.” In other words, Cruz’s book was bought by his campaign or its allies in an effort to game the system. This is often done to artificially inflate sales and grab a spot on the coveted Times list. Then they give the books away to supporters as candidate swag. The Times has procedures in place to ascertain the actual sales data so that only authentic buyers are counted. Otherwise the Koch brothers could purchase a few thousand copies of any book that they want to promote and it would become a Times best seller.

If any other evidence is needed to debunk the paranoid notion that Cruz is being singled out for persecution, a quick check of the current best sellers list shows that several right-wing authors who didn’t cheat (so far as we know) managed to get recognized. They include David Brooks, Ann Coulter, Dana Perino, and Bill O’Reilly. Going back a little further we find folks like Charles Krauthammer, Edward Klein, Dinesh D’Souza, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin. We even see current GOP primary candidates Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Ben Carson.

So obviously Ted Cruz alone has been stifled by the liberal gatekeepers of the literary world. The socialists at the Times are penalizing him simply because he and his publisher chose to engage in deliberate fraud in order to gain benefits from the Times to which they were not entitled. And they probably think that their only crime is that they were caught. Because that’s how paranoid cheaters with persecution complexes view every dilemma they encounter. In fact, this article is all part of the conspiracy.

The ReTrumplican Party: The GOP Cannot Pretend That Donald Trump Isn’t One Of Them

Posted by Mark NC on July 9, 2015 at 4:59 pm. 6 Comments :

The past few weeks have revealed a deep division between the values of Donald Trump and those of most Americans. His words maligning immigrants as criminals and rapists have been repudiated by prominent figures in politics and business. He has been shunned by groups as diverse as the PGA and Macy’s, as well as some of his fellow Republicans. However, try as they might, the GOP cannot disassociate itself from The Donald.

Trump’s demeanor may be crass and antagonistic, but the views he expresses politically are firmly rooted in those of the Republican Party. He is, of course, virulently anti-immigrant. He supports an impenetrable wall at the border that he thinks Mexico will pay for. He opposes any measures to afford legal status to the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. That opposition includes the so-called “Dreamers” who were brought here as children and don’t know any other country as home.

Those are precisely the positions of the rest of the Republican Party on the immigration issue. And Trump is in agreement with his GOP peers on every other issue as well. He advocates cutting taxes for the rich and regulations for big business. He wants boots on the ground in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (and maybe China and North Korea). He is against reproductive rights and marriage equality. He doesn’t believe that Climate Change poses any imminent risks or is caused by human activity. He regards the Second Amendment as sacrosanct and opposes reforms like universal background checks. He has promised to repeal ObamaCare. And let’s not forget his leadership as America’s foremost Birther.

So how exactly does that differ from any other establishment Republican? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. Nevertheless, some of the GOP honchos are trying to put distance between themselves and Trump. Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus, let it be known that he asked Trump to “tone down” his rhetoric. Karl Rove has been using his appearances on Fox News to dismiss Trump as not credible. And this just in: Fox News just adopted Rove’s criteria for inclusion in Fox’s GOP primary debate. Rove proposed that each candidate must have filed their financial disclosure forms before being permitted into the debate. This is seen as a possible means of excluding Trump.

Despite the angst that is eating up some of the GOP elite, Trump fits squarely in the Republican mold. Evidence of that is the polling results that show Republican voters boosting Trump into the top tier of candidates. Now those numbers may change, as they have in the past. In fact, the Republican electorate is notoriously kooky at these early stages of a campaign. But that doesn’t negate the obvious compatibility between Trump’s agenda and that of the GOP.

That may be why the Democratic Party is taking this opportunity to point out the close embrace in which the Republican Party and Donald Trump are entwined. They share a deep affinity for the same regressive principles and an affection for society’s privileged upper-crusters. And so this union can be reasonably called the ReTrumplican Party.

No, Fox News, Bernie Sanders Did Not Honeymoon In The Soviet Union

Posted by Mark NC on July 8, 2015 at 3:37 am. 56 Comments :

When Hillary Clinton was running away with the Democratic nomination, it was not unusual to hear Fox News pundits pumping up Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t because they admired his progressive policies or his grassroots appeal. It was because they reflexively jumped at any opportunity to knock Clinton down a peg.

Now that the Sanders campaign is actually looking competitive, the same Foxies are getting nervous and looking for ways to discredit him. The primary line of attack has been to feverishly repeat that Sanders is a (gasp) Socialist. Under ordinary circumstances that would be sufficient to rattle the fear centers of their perpetually anxious viewers.

However, these are not ordinary times. Consequently, more creative measures were required by the Fox punditocracy. So they brought in Jamie Weinstein, senior editor of Tucker Carlson’s ultra-rightist Daily Caller, to slip a brazen lie into the discussion at the very end when there was no time left for it to be rebutted. The segment sought to concern-troll Clinton’s less commanding, but still substantial, lead over Sanders, while simultaneously dismissing the surging challenger as a far-left crank.

Where the broadcast went off the rails was at the end when Weinstein concluded his final diatribe by making an assertion that was utterly false and intended to defame Sanders. He offered as evidence of Sanders supposed extremism that he had spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. That allegation is almost laughable, but it will assuredly be swallowed whole by Fox’s dimwitted viewers. Following Weinstein’s false comment, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett smiled and noted that you learn something new every day. The problem is that, with Fox News, what you learn each day just makes you more stupid than you were the day before.

The origin of the this made-for-Fox fallacy was a 2007 interview of Sanders’ wife, Jane, by Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. In the interview she was describing how she and Bernie met and some of their early engagements which were almost entirely related to their shared interest in community affairs. They were so involved in these sort of activities that she joked…

The context was obviously humorous. Who could possibly read that and come away thinking that she seriously meant that they honeymooned with ten other people who were implementing a sister city project? Well, apparently Weinstein and others of his ilk came away believing just that. Weinstein likely picked up the lie from uber-conservative John Fund who wrote an article for the National Review containing the same misrepresentation of Sanders’ diplomatic trip.

We are going to have to get used to wingnuts hyperventilating over the political labels attached to Sanders. Today there was an extended discussion on Fox’s The Five about “Sanders’ Socialist Agenda.” At no time during the broadcast did anyone on the show identify any policy advocated by Sanders that they could actually call Socialist (if they really have any idea what the word means). The policies they did mention were his support for higher taxes on the rich, for expanding access to education, and for single-payer healthcare. Those are pretty mainstream policies that millions of Americans support. And the right has been absurdly calling Obama a Socialist for so long that the word has lost all meaning.

There was also much feigned hand-wringing about whether Sanders was going to pull Clinton farther to the left and damage her electability in the general election. The consensus on the program was that she was already a far-left candidate without Sanders’ influence. But these cretins think that just being a Democrat means being far-left. What they don’t realize is that Sanders’ platform leans to the mainstream of the American people who elected President Obama twice. Any effect he has on Clinton moving in that direction will only enhance her electability. So bring it on, and don’t complain if the people once again reject the regressive and repressive policies of the Republican Party in November of 2016.

So F**king What? Fox News Obsessed With Hillary Clinton’s Media Rope Line

Posted by Mark NC on July 6, 2015 at 8:29 pm. 1 Comments :

You can always tell when the right-wing media is getting desperate for mud to fling at liberals, Democrats, and especially Hillary Clinton. The lunacy level of their attacks increases geometrically in both content and frequency. Today was one of those days when the wingnut press simply ran out of BS to spew.

During a fourth of July parade in New Hampshire this weekend, Hillary Clinton marched and celebrated with the local residents pretty much like every candidate does on such an occasion. The difference this time is that Fox News needed a hook to slander Clinton and there wasn’t one that was readily available. Consequently, they invented a controversy having to do with the the manner in which Clinton separated herself from the media mob that constantly surrounds her.

Clinton used the common practice of placing a rope between the candidate and the media (aka a rope line). However, since this event was a moving parade, her staff got creative and had the rope move along with the press pack down the path of the marchers. There was nothing remotely scandalous about this. But Fox News turned it into a metaphor for their preconceived and derogatory portrayal of Clinton as being hostile to the media. Then they ran it over and over again all day long.

This may be one of the most stupendously trivial attempts to manufacture a political controversy. Does anyone really care that some reporters were directed to walk a few feet away from a candidate who was trying to connect with voters? Would anyone really care if Clinton had packed them into bus and sent it to an Appleby’s in the next county? Most Americans don’t have much regard for the press to begin with. A Pew Research poll in 2013 found that only 28% felt that “journalists contribute ‘a lot’ to society’s well-being.” And that was a ten point drop from 2009.

But what really makes this more than a piddling waste of time is the fact that Fox News is turning somersaults to suddenly pretend that they have some empathy for the media. No news organization is more hostile to the non-Fox press than Fox. They constantly complain that journalists are biased and ill-informed and arrogant and elitist. And particularly with regard to Democrats, Fox is convinced that the media is working for them to advance their socialist plot to destroy America.

So you have to wonder why Fox is making such a big stink about these reporters being “corralled” like “cattle,” as if walking behind a rope was some sort of torture. If it were abusive, and a Republican did it, Fox News would be cheering the candidate for giving the media what it deserves. Every time that Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush, lash out at the press, Fox News gives them a figurative high-five. Chris Christie’s verbal abuse of reporters has made him a hero to Fox News and their audience. But if Clinton asks them to stay behind a rope line so that they don’t stumble all over each other and interrupt her conversations with voters it is viewed by Fox as “bad optics” that “reinforces the images of the regal queen in a coronation into the White House.”

This is part of Fox’s well-worn tactic of whining that Clinton doesn’t spend more time talking to reporters. But if Fox really believes that the press are Clinton’s lackeys, why are they so interested in her spending more time with them? Wouldn’t they just ask her softball questions and promote her candidacy? Clearly Fox’s complaints are either completely disingenuous or they make no sense at all.

They are simply complaining because it’s what they do. If Clinton starts giving more interviews to the media, Fox will immediately switch sides and complain that she is desperate for attention, or hogging the limelight, or ignoring the voters. And besides the reporters are all her pals who won’t challenge her on anything anyway. Fox pundits will demand that she stop preening before the press and do some old-fashioned campaigning – exactly like she is doing now.

Hopefully Clinton will do something Fox considers newsworthy soon, like slipping on a banana peel. Otherwise we will have to endure their made-up scandals for the foreseeable future. In which case, you better get ready for the bombshell disclosure that Clinton’s socks don’t match or that she uses the wrong kind of mustard on her pastrami sandwich.

Trump Bump: Just In Case You Forgot How Psycho Republican Voters Are

Posted by Mark NC on July 5, 2015 at 10:08 pm. 8 Comments :

This year’s Celebrity Pretentious Republican candidate is, without a doubt, the gold-plated ego wrapped in an orange comb-over, Donald Trump. Ever since he announced his joke of a campaign a couple of weeks ago, he has been been getting dumped by former business partners and associates who are embarrassed to be seen with him in public. To no one but Trump’s surprise, his repugnant racism directed at immigrants has insulted the fasted growing electoral demographic in the country.

Many (but not all) of Trump’s fellow Republican’s have repudiated his characterization of immigrants as criminals and rapists. And the all but the most ultra-conservative media outlets have recognized the idiocy of his comments and written him off as an un-serious candidate. Even corporations that are generally aligned with any Republican candidate are washing their hands of Trump.

What’s troubling, however, is that the Republican constituencies to whom he is addressing his hate speech are, for the time being, eating it up. In recent polls Trump has spiked up to second place behind Mr. Establishment, Jeb Bush. That exposes the GOP voters as being just as bigoted as Trump and willing to lap up his spittle-inflected rants.

That said, anyone who worries that Trump is now a plausible contender for the GOP nomination can rest easy. The Republican electorate is as fickle as they are ignorant. Trump’s polling at this stage of the campaign is less than meaningless. For some evidence of why that’s so, take a look at some of the polls during the GOP primaries in the 2012 race. It seems every crackpot got their turn at the top for brief moment in time. The GOP leaders included Trump himself, as well as Sarah Palin and Herman Cain.

In addition to this parade of losers, there was Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Rudy Giuliani, all taking turns leading the polls, despite none ever having the remotest chance of becoming president, or even their party’s nominee. That’s how crazy these freaks are.

Thankfully, they all lost just as Trump is going to. Well, that’s if he ever even becomes a legitimate candidate. He still has not filed the required financial disclosures, and he has just ten days left to do so (unless he requests an extension, which he promised not to do). Even if he stays in the race he will certainly fall in the polls as voters inevitably drift toward the more mainstream candidates (i.e. Bush, Walker, etc.) as they always do in both parties.

So everybody calm down. Trump aint goin’ nowhere. If you want to get excited about something, perhaps it should be how addle-brained your average Republican voter is. While none of the nut cases actually managed to make it into the winner’s circle, the GOP voters did flirt with them before marrying their designated loser. That’s a pretty scary statement of where they stand and what sort of leader is acceptable to them. And if you don’t get just a little nauseous knowing that the same people who thrust Palin, Cain and now Ben Carson, and Trump, to the top of the polls, are still allowed to vote in the general election, then you’ve got a stronger stomach than I do.

To Kill A Meme: No Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton Did Not Start The Birther BS

Posted by Mark NC on July 2, 2015 at 7:46 pm. 3 Comments :

There must be something in the DNA of right-wingers that prevents them from grasping simple truths and retaining them for periods longer than a Vine video. Case in point: Conservatives who for years have been suckling on the moronic accusations that President Obama is not legally qualified to serve because, they say, he was born in Kenya, have also disseminated a related bit of idiocy that Hillary Clinton was the first Birther. Despite the easily obtainable facts that prove that Clinton was not in any way involved in birthing Birtherism, wingnuts cling fiercely to the lie in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that they have been fully immersed in this nonsense from the beginning. And it isn’t just some fringe characters who have this trouble differentiating fantasy from reality.

In an interview with Katie Couric on Yahoo News, Sen. Ted Cruz, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, was asked about critics who raise his Canadian birth as an obstacle to his candidacy. Rather than simply repudiating them as idiots who don’t understand the Constitution, he veered from Couric’s question to this wholly unrelated and irrelevant drivel:

If you think that a sitting U.S. senator and aspiring president should know better than to spew demonstrably false information like that, then you don’t know Ted Cruz (or most of the GOP). This charge against the Clinton campaign has been around for seven years now. And some proponents of the lie attribute the meme to Clinton herself (see the headline from Fox Nation above). However, a little research shows that the roots of Birtherism lie with an extremist group of hard-core Clinton supporters who were not affiliated with the campaign. As revealed by Daily Beast editor John Avlon:

The theme was then taken up by Philip Berg, a 9/11 Truther who filed the first Birther lawsuit. He also had no connection to Clinton or her campaign. Thereafter, it spiraled out of control online and in emails. And all the while it was Republicans furthering the fallacy. Many of of them were prominent figures in the party, notably another current candidate for the GOP nomination, Donald Trump. [Fun Fact: Cruz is, so far, the only Republican candidate who is defending Trump’s repulsive and bigoted comments about immigrants for which Cruz doesn’t think Trump has any need to apologize]

It is significant that Cruz employed this dodge to answer a question that had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. He wants to duck allegations by the lunatics questioning his own national origin without calling them lunatics and alienating an important GOP constituency who still believe that Obama is a foreigner unlawfully squatting in the White House. This is how Republicans embrace ignorance and pass it along to their followers. And no one is a better representative of that mission than Ted Cruz.

Donald Trump Too Busy Filing Lawsuits To Run For President (with Classic Letterman Clip)

Posted by Mark NC on July 1, 2015 at 11:46 am. 12 Comments :

On the day that phony real estate magnate Donald Trump announced that he is running for president of the United States he made the first of what will surely be many boneheaded and offensive remarks. And ever since he maligned Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals he has faced the wrath of decent Americans who find such bigotry unacceptable.

In less than two weeks Trump has seen his Miss USA/Universe beauty pageant bumped from broadcasts on both NBC and Univision. Other media enterprises including Telemundo and Televisa have also cut ties with Trump. The latest of his business relationships to collapse is his clothing line at Macy’s who, like the others, say that Trump’s values do not represent those of their company (or their species).

And in a hysterical display of delusion, Trump says that he broke off the relationship with Macy’s. He even criticized the fact that his products were largely manufactured in China, a fact which he defended a couple of weeks ago on CNN’s State of the Union by blaming China for his decision to do business there, rather than in the U.S. It’s an excuse he has been making for years, as evidenced by this hilarious two year old clip from The Late Show with David Letterman:

In response to his critics, Trump is demonstrating the sort of immaturity that disqualifies him for public office by throwing a temper tantrum as he refuses to apologize for his repulsive comments. In fact, he has spent the last couple of days reaffirming his rank prejudices. And now he claims to have filed a $500 million lawsuit against Univision. But is he also going to sue NBC and Telmundo and Televisa and Ricky Martin’s charity foundation (which has moved its golf tournament out of Trump’s course in Puerto Rico) and all of the celebrity participants who have quit his pageants and Macy’s too? You have to wonder when he will have time to run for president.

This is just the beginning. Fair-minded people and responsible businesses will continue to distance themselves from Trump. The next big player ought to be the PGA which is currently scheduled to host its PGA Grand Slam of Golf (October 2015), the 2022 PGA Championship, and the 2017 Senior PGA Championship (presented by KitchenAid) at Trump golf courses. There are plenty of other world-class facilities to hold these events. The Golf Channel (which is owned by NBC) should also reconsider whether to broadcast any event that originates from a Trump property. [See update below]

Of course, as the list of those who “Dump Trump” grows, so will the list of potential litigants for Trump to file against. The GOP already has three candidates who are the subjects of ongoing criminal investigations (Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and Chris Christie). Trump himself has been charged with criminal violations of defrauding students of his fake Trump University. It would be particularly unseemly for him to become embroiled in more litigious controversies of his own making. Yet that is exactly what Trump is doing, and it only took him two weeks into his campaign to achieve this distinction. I can’t wait to see what the next two weeks bring.

[Update: (This was fast)] Donald Trump was interviewed on the Golf Channel today and told them that “I’ve had tremendous support from the golf world, because they all know I’m right.” Well, not exactly. Shortly thereafter the four major golf organizations issued a joint statement contradicting Trump’s arrogant assertion of support:

The statement does not make clear whether these organizations will cancel tournaments scheduled for Trump courses, but the pressure is on. The National Hispanic Media Coalition says it will call for a boycott of PGA events if they do not end their business relationship with Trump.

[Update: 7/7/2015] The PGA has severed ties with Trump on their Grand Slam of Golf which was scheduled to be held at Trump’s Los Angeles course in July. Also, ESPN is moving their Celebrity tournament from Trump’s L.A. course to another one nearby. And Trump continues to refuse to reconsider his bigoted comments, or to apologize.

The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay

Election

Scott Walker Promises To Ruin …er… Turn America Around

Donald Trump Exposes The Illegal Alien Lizard Overlords Controlling The Planet

The Stupid Party: Jeb Bush Fears That Big Words Make The World Dangerous

Ted Cruz Whines Because NY Times Won’t Let Him Cheat His Way Onto The Best Sellers List

The ReTrumplican Party: The GOP Cannot Pretend That Donald Trump Isn’t One Of Them

No, Fox News, Bernie Sanders Did Not Honeymoon In The Soviet Union

So F**king What? Fox News Obsessed With Hillary Clinton’s Media Rope Line

Trump Bump: Just In Case You Forgot How Psycho Republican Voters Are

To Kill A Meme: No Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton Did Not Start The Birther BS

Donald Trump Too Busy Filing Lawsuits To Run For President (with Classic Letterman Clip)

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