Media Bias

Crybaby Trump and His Whining Republicans Threaten Illegal Retaliation Against Facebook

Posted by on May 5, 2021 at 1:28 pm. 4 Comments :

Several months ago, Donald Trump was suspended by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among others, for disseminating lies and disinformation that had a certifiably dangerous impact on the nation. On Wednesday morning Facebook released the decision by its independent Oversight Board to uphold that suspension, at least for the time being.

Donald Trump WTF

The Board found that…

“…in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.” […] “At the same time, the panel found the indefinite suspension inappropriate and asked Facebook over the next six months to review the decision and develop a ‘proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.'”

The reaction to that decision by the Trump camp was as swift as it was ludicrous. Trump’s response was a post to his pitifully comical new “communications platform” saying that…

““What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country. Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before. The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process.”

To give credit where credit is due, Trump knows plenty about being “a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country.” However, his assertion that “free speech has been taken away” from him proves that he doesn’t have any idea what the term means. For the record, free speech is the constitutional protection against the government (not private business) suppressing speech.

What’s more, Trump apparently doesn’t think that being able to appear at will on national cable TV propaganda networks (i.e. Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, etc.) and a multitude of other right-wing media outlets (i.e. Breitbart, Daily Caller, New York Post, etc.) constitute platforms for free speech. If he’s really concerned about free speech, he might want to stand up for Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who is presently being shut down for telling the truth about Trump and his incitement of the deadly Capitol insurrection.

More troubling is Trump’s overt threat that “social media companies must pay a political price.” That is, in itself, an attack on the free speech rights of the businesses that operate social media sites. And it is purely political retaliation for what he imagines is bias against conservatives. Never mind that the highest trafficked pages on Facebook are by right-wingers:

Joining Trump in this directed assault on social media are his Republican Party confederates. They are now openly threatening to retaliate against Facebook with legislation aimed at punishing them and even breaking them up. Those threats are, of course, being amplified by Fox News.

To be sure, there are problems with the power wielded by Facebook, Twitter, et al, that need to be addressed in a rational and fair manner. But Trump and the GOP are mounting a knee-jerk assault based entirely on their political peeves. You won’t see them make the same complaints about Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson not giving airtime to Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi. But you will see House GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy threatening to “rein in big tech power“. Or GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida introducing a bill to “hold big tech accountable.”

Now Trump likely doesn’t know that these actions are blatantly illegal because he’s a raving ignoramous. But these legislators undoubtedly know that the Constitution prohibits them. They are called “Bills of Attainder,” and defined as “a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment.” Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the Constitution states plainly that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”

So whatever you think about Facebook’s decision regarding Trump, it is unarguable that Trump and the Republican Party are proposing to break the law with their retaliatory smackdown. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has paid attention to Trump and the GOP for past four years (or 40 years?). They simply don’t care about the law. The only thing that matters to them is the acquisition and preservation of power by any means necessary. And that, as Trump says, is something that “the people of our Country will not stand for.”

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Tucker Carlson of Fox News: ‘Creepy Old Guy’ Obama Will Force Your Kids to Get Vaccinated

Posted by on May 4, 2021 at 11:57 am. 3 Comments :

Fox News has been on a campaign to assure that as many Americans as possible get sick and die from COVID-19 for the better part of a year. They have devotedly supported Donald Trump’s aggressively idiotic positions, including the promotion of fake cures like hydroxychloroquine and bleach. They have downplayed the severity of the illness as being comparable to the common flu. (See also RAGE, by Bob Woodward). And, sadly, they have had some success at persuading their pitifully gullible viewers that the pandemic is a hoax.

Obama Fox News

As a result, studies have shown that watching Fox News actually increases coronavirus fatalities. And no one on Fox has contributed more to the deliberate harm than the network’s Senior Pro-COVID Correspondent, Tucker Carlson. Among his recent oral atrocities are conspiratorial assertions that the vaccine “doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that.” He also commanded his dimwitted viewers to call the police to report parents who made their children wear face masks as child abusers.

On Monday night Carlson escalated the crazy in a tirade against vaccines and anyone who advocated getting them. What triggered Carlson this time was new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) making everyone 16 years and older eligible for vaccinations. Responsible media and public figures conveyed that message to the nation. And that was something that Carlson just couldn’t tolerate:

“NBC News is now running – you may have seen these PSAs – public service announcements with its on-air talent – demanding that everyone in the country get the shot. Barack Obama just released this creepy little video telling small children to get the shot.

‘Hi everybody. It’s Barack. Now that every American over the age of 16 is eligible to get the vaccine, I want to talk about you getting your. The vaccine is safe, it’s effective, it’s free. I got one. Michelle got one.. People you know got one.. And now you can got one too. It’s the only way we can get back to all the things we love. From safely spending time with grandparents, to going to concerts and watching live sports. So get the vaccine as soon as you can.’

“Some creepy old guy telling your children, your little kids to take medicine whose effects we do not fully understand. Totally normal. Yeah, that happens every day. Don’t ask questions. Just do it. As CNN explained just recently, ‘We’re not getting our freedom back until you do.'”

First of all, nobody is “demanding that everyone in the country get the shot.” That’s Carlson’s patently dishonest way of fostering irrational fears of tyrannical overlords. Certainly Obama didn’t demand anything. He calmly presented his personal advice about a vaccine that is safe, effective, and will save lives.

So naturally Carlson jumped into a vat of angry bombast to malign Obama as a “creepy old guy,” purposely insinuating the mental image of a child molester. And he repeated his scare mongering that a vaccine that more than 100 million Americans have already received is dangerous and untested.

Later in the segment Carlson complained that The View’s Sunny Hostin had made race an issue when she noted correctly that 45% of white evangelicals and nearly 50% of Republicans were resistant to vaccines. Carlson, as Fox’s most prominent white nationalist, routinely makes race an issue no matter what the subject might be (see his advocacy of the “white replacement theory“).

Whenever Carlson unleashes his bitter, hateful, and ignorant harangues, we must remember that Fox News defended him in a defamation lawsuit by arguing – successfully – that he couldn’t possibly be guilty because “no reasonable person” would take him seriously. The problem is that his viewers are not reasonable and they take his word as gospel. And in matters involving the mitigation of a deadly pandemic, that makes life more perilous for everybody.

For that reason – as well as his rancid racism – Carlson should be banished from TV and public life. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are ultimately responsible for perpetuating this horror show. And they must be held accountable if they fail to act.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. AThanks for your support.

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

STILL? Fox News and Texas AG Shamelessly Peddle Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ on Election Fraud

Posted by on May 2, 2021 at 1:43 pm. 1 Comments :

Are we still doing this? The election that Joe Biden won decisively by more than seven million votes was six months ago. It was certified by Congress (after a violent insurrection by Donald Trump’s cult followers) four months ago. All fifty states validated their own election results, even those dominated by Republicans. Biden was sworn into office three and a half months ago. And yet…

Fox News, Maria Bartiromo

Fox News is continuing to promulgate the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. They contend that he would be lounging comfortably in the White House bedroom, watching Fox News, with a Big Mac and a Diet Coke, but for the alleged “fraud” that they insist occurred despite the total absence of even a shred of evidence. There’s a good reason that Fox News was recently labeled a “Bullshit Factory” by CNN’s Jim Acosta, and that a former Australian Prime Minister called it a “Market for Crazy.”

On Sunday morning Fox’s Senior Trump-Fluffer, Maria Bartiromo (who is currently the subject of a billion dollar lawsuit for defamation), interviewed Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General notorious for spearheading a preposterous lawsuit to steal the election from Biden. His suit asked the Supreme Court to throw out millions of votes, not in Texas, but in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all states that Biden won. And in this segment with Bartiromo, they both wandered farther down that path of anti-democratic idiocy (video below):

Bartiromo: Are you saying that because of what we saw on mail-in ballots in Georgia you’re questioning the results?
Paxton: I absolutely am questioning. I know what would have happened here. They would have stopped counting just like they did in those states. And they would have been counting mail-in ballots until they get the right number of votes and suddenly Trump loses.

Notice that Bartiromo doesn’t identify “what we saw” in Georgia because no one saw any voting irregularities at all, including the Republican Governor and Secretary of State. Nevertheless, Paxton was adamant in his refusal to accept the election results. And the only reason he could muster was his fantastical speculation that a clandestine cabal of evildoers were plotting to miscount ballots on behalf of Biden.

Paxton offered zero support for this crackpot conspiracy theory that lawless Biden operatives were burrowed deep into the GOP-dominated Texan government. Neither did he provide any explanation for how that plot was foiled. But he and Bartiromo did repeat their dubious claims about the election being stolen:

Bartiromo: So are you questioning what happened in the 2020 election?
Paxton: Absolutely! They didn’t follow state law in those states. It’s clear. Whether you think there was fraud or not. It’s almost impossible to prove the fraud because they’ve separated the ballots. They never did the signature verification. So the proof, the evidence is gone.

Paxton’s complaint about the ballots being separated without any signature verification is simply a lie. What’s more, he fails to mention that in the states he is complaining about, the procedures were challenged by republicans in the courts and in every case were deemed to be in compliance with state law. But that didn’t stop him from making bizarre allegations that the “fraud” he insisted was “clear” could not be proven. If fraudulent activity is unprovable due the absence of evidence, then it can’t be considered “clear.” Paxton seems to believe that the absence of evidence is proof of guilt. By that standard, he’s the Zodiac Killer.

The fact that Paxton and Fox News are still pitching this bullpucky is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party and their right-wing PR machine (aka Fox News). It says that they are still beholden to the Cult of Trump and to his delusional aspirations of dictatorship. And it affirms that they cannot be taken seriously as partners in democracy. Their only agenda is the pursuit of power and the dissemination of the the lies necessary to sustain it.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

WHOA! CNN’s Jim Acosta Rips New York Post and Fox News: USDA Grade A Bullshit

Posted by on May 1, 2021 at 4:09 pm. 8 Comments :

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Anchoring CNN’s Saturday Newsroom, Jim Acosta reported on the debunked and ridiculed story that the children’s book – Superheroes Are Everywhere – by Vice-President Kamala Harris was given to every migrant child who arrived at border detention facilities.

Fox News, Fake News

Acosta’s take on the easily disproven story was an epic smackdown of the fake news purveyors that included the New York Post and Fox News. It was a thing of beauty:

“Take for example the uproar over this New York Post story that claimed that copies of a children’s book written by Vice-President Kamala Harris was being given to migrant kids in their “welcome” kit. That tale from the border didn’t just border on BS, This was USDA Grade A bullshit and the reporter who wrote the story resigned claiming she was forced to make it up. But the damage was done, pumped out over the airwaves at the bullshit factory also known as Fox News.”

“From there the lie kept spreading. Prominent Republicans like House Minority Whip, Steve Scalise, who suggested the Vice-President was profiting off the problems at the border. His tweet is still up.”

The story, of course wasn’t true. There was a single book received among donations to help the kids by members of the community. But that didn’t stop the right-wing fabulists intent on manufacturing fake scandals from jumping on the phony allegation and disseminating it to their fact-averse followers.

Numerous high-ranking politicos regurgitated the flagrant falsehood. And their tweets also still remain online. They include GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, GOP Party Chair Ronna McDaniel, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Jim Jordan, to name just a few.

The New York Post deleted the original story and then replaced it with another version that said that “Kamala isn’t at the southern border — but at least one migrant kid got Veep’s book.” The new version, which changed little more than the headline, was also attributed to the original author, despite her having resigned amid complaints that she was forced to write the false article.

The tweet to which Acosta was referring is one that Scalise posted with a video of Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. She was responding to a question from Peter Doocy of Fox News who asked whether Harris “was making any money” off of the book’s distribution that never happened. Scalise asked in his tweet if “Kamala Harris [is] profiting off the border crisis?” No, she wasn’t. And, yes, it’s still there:

It’s satisfying to see the more conventional news networks speaking truthfully about the blatant dishonesty of Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda enterprises. They are the most prominent and prolific source of disinformation and they present an imminent danger to democracy and America. It’s long past time that they be treated by legitimate journalists as the right-wing domestic terror PR agency. Because that is what they are.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Dandelion-Gate! Newsmax Wins the ‘Most Asinine Biden Conspiracy Theory’ Award

Posted by on May 1, 2021 at 11:29 am. 6 Comments :

The dedicated disciples of Donald Trump in the right-wing mediaverse have distinguished themselves many times over for their blind adulation of the twice-impeached, pathological lying, narcissistic, fake billionaire, and former reality TV game show host. It’s a love affair that transcends any coherent explanation other than cult worship.

Joe Biden, Newsmax

The efforts by the conservative press to inflate the Trump mythology is exceeded only by their efforts to demean the real world accomplishments of President Biden. But nothing to date rises to the level of lunacy as a segment that aired on Newsmax this week. Perhaps the ultra-rightist network was trying to deflect from the news that they had just settled a defamation lawsuit and admitted that their coverage of the 2020 presidential election was littered with lies. Or maybe they were trying to find some comfort after having lost half their audience since the fall of Trump.

Whatever the reason, there is really no excuse for what Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield unloaded after seeing Biden stoop to pick a flower for his wife, First Lady Jill Biden. It was a bizarre twist on what most people with actual human emotions would have felt. He said that…

“I want you to take a look at this. Joe Biden getting on Marine One and stops and picks up – I think it’s a dandelion, but the dandelion hasn’t even blossomed into a flower yet. Like it gives everybody asthma. So you blow it, it goes everywhere, and everybody starts sneezing.

“Well, he picks up the weed and gives it to Jill in what I guess is supposed to be some kind of sweet gesture – gives dandelions all over the place, I say it was a planted dandelion there. Who knows.”

Seriously? First of all, Stinchfield might want to brush up on the life cycles of dandelions. They flower first, then go to seed, which results in the floating wisps that every normal child recalls making wishes upon. The fact that he associates them solely with health problems says more about his sad childhood than anything else. And his inability to recognize the romance in the gesture by a husband to his bride of 44 years is a sad commentary on his loveless existence.

However, capping off the inanity of this yackery is Stinchfield’s allegation that the dandelion was “planted.” That’s how deranged these wacked out wingnuts have become. They actually believe there’s a White House advance team setting up staged encounters with common yard flowers to enhance the President’s charm quotient. And his isn’t the first time that right-wing hacks have sought to bash the Bidens’ marriage. In February Tucker Carlson of Fox News mocked the First Couple saying that…

“The Bidens affection is totally real and in no way part of a slick PR campaign devised by cynical consultants determined to hide the president’s senility by misdirection. Their love is as real as climate change.”

The raving right attacks Biden for absurdities because they can’t come up with any substantive criticism. All they are left with is laments about the alleged demise of Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. They failed miserably to smear his COVID relief and stimulus plan, that even a majority of Republicans supported. The same is true with Biden’s infrastructure/jobs bill and their tone-deaf efforts to make it harder to vote. In fact, they label Biden initiatives “anti-American,” despite having broadly popular support by the American people.

As for Newsmax and Stinchfield, their take on the Biden administration can be safely disregarded. Stinchfield is a committed Trump cultist who this week posted a tweet of the Former Guy repeating his “Big Lie” BS that resulted in the Capitol insurrection. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump babbled, “if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes,” in the Arizona scam audit. The glassy-eyed Stinchfield thanked Trump and agreed that “I think they might find a lot!”

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Rudy Giuliani Weaves an Absolutely Loony Tale of His Encounter with the FBI

Posted by on April 30, 2021 at 5:18 pm. 2 Comments :

On Wednesday the FBI executed a search warrant at the home and office of Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. It was, according to Giuliani, a travesty on the part of the “Biden Vindictive government,” despite the fact that the investigation was launched by Bill Barr’s Justice Department when Trump was still in the White House.

Rudy Giuliani

On Thursday Giuliani visited Fox News in an attempt to extricate himself from the web of deceit he was trapped in due to his own shady dealings. He was “interviewed” by Tucker Carlson, the host who Fox News successfully argued in court could not be taken seriously. That was his first mistake. During this segment Giuliani recited his version of what took place when the feds came to his door. It’s pretty pathetic script that fails to make any sense or advance his interests. He began by constructing a thoroughly unbelievable exchange involving hard drives that he said belonged to Hunter Biden. Here is how he described the encounter:

Giuliani: ‘Don’t you want these?
FBI: What are they?
Giuliani: Those are Hunter Biden’s hard drives.
FBI: No, no, no, no!’
Giuliani: Are you sure you don’t want them? The warrant required them to take it.
FBI: No, no!
Giuliani: Don’t you think you should take it.
FBI: No!

Think about how preposterously unlikely all of that is. First of all, Giuliani wants us to believe that he was in possession of Hunter Biden’s hard drives and that he did nothing with them for two years, even though he was obsessed with destroying the Bidens. Then the FBI raids his home and he’s suddenly anxious to give them away to agents that he believes are hostile and intent on persecuting him. If there was anything incriminating on those hard drives, wouldn’t Giuliani want to retain possession of them?

Secondly, why would the FBI refuse to take these hard drives? Giuliani is insinuating that the agents are operatives of the “Deep State” who want to cover for the Biden family. So wouldn’t taking the drives serve that purpose? It would remove them from Giuliani’s custody and allow them to “lose” the alleged evidence, if that were actually their goal.

Thirdly, Giuliani’s telling of this encounter suggests that the FBI agents vehemently and repeatedly refused to take the hard drives. Are we supposed to believe that just being near the hard drives made the agents visibly nervous, and that they would expose their anxieties to the subject of their investigation?

Giuliani went on to claim that the agents were “required” to take the alleged hard drives. That’s false. They have discretion to take only what they consider to be relevant to the investigation. Giuliani also wondered why the agents would take his word for what the hard drives contained, saying that “They could have been Donald Trump’s. They could have been Vladimir Putin’s.” What exactly is he implying, and does he really want to go there? By the same token, Giuliani is asking us to take his word that any of this happened at all.

Finally, Giuliani’s claim that the evidence seized would be “exculpatory” isn’t in the remotest sense plausible. If it were true, then why would he be upset about having been served the warrant? He should be pleased that he’s about to be exonerated. Clearly his simmering panic indicates that he knows he is in legal peril.

Giuliani’s appearance on Fox News demonstrates precisely why credible lawyers don’t want their clients talking on television. Even when they they think they are among friends. In fact, being with Tucker Carlson makes it more likely that Giuliani would feel at ease and, thus, susceptible to letting something slip that is incriminating.

As a lawyer, you might think that Giuliani would know this. But as an idiot who has lost some sixty cases related to election fraud on Trump’s behalf, he has proven that he doesn’t have a clue. And he’s still Trump’s lawyer, which should make all the prosecutors investigating him very happy.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Tucker Carlson Orders Viewers to Harass Mask Wearers and File False Police Reports

Posted by on April 27, 2021 at 11:20 am. 6 Comments :

Throughout his tenure on Fox News, Tucker Carlson has distinguished himself as the network’s preeminent white nationalist and most prolific disseminator of ultra-rightist propaganda. He recently devoted episodes of his program to ranting incoherently that coronavirus vaccines don’t work, he advanced the Nazi-inspired “white replacement theory,” and he expressed his support for Trump’s Capitol insurrectionists, insisting they were just peaceful protesters.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Coronavirus

Not content to rest on his loathsome laurels, Carlson is now advising his dimwitted viewers to take hostile actions against anyone they see on the street wearing a mask in order to prevent exposure to COVID-19. His primetime tirade was tantamount to a directive to harass innocent citizens who are behaving responsibly and voluntarily in the exercise of their rights to stay alive and protect others. Carlson’s harangue began with this utterly false assertion (video below if you can stomach it):

“Masks are purely a sign of political obedience. Like Kim Il Sung pins in Pyongyang. We wear them because we have to. The only people who wear masks voluntarily outside are zealots and neurotics.”

Actually, people who wear masks are following the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and virtually every public health expert in the country. [Note: New CDC guidance has relaxed mask wearing outside, but only for those who are fully vaccinated]. No one is forced to wear masks outside. But Carlson wants to force everyone to obey his warped perspective of life during a deadly pandemic. He is the wannabe totalitarian demanding obedience. He continued…

“They are the aggressors. It’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in. So the next time you see somebody in a mask, on the sidewalk on a bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ‘Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.’ We should do that, and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro inside an elevator. It’s repulsive.”

Carlson’s command to his minions is, to say the least, bizarre. How does someone wearing a mask make someone else uncomfortable? Obviously it doesn’t. It’s just Carlson’s way of justifying his demands for compliance with his directives. And anyone confronted by one of Carlson’s criers should let them know precisely where they can get off. But Carlson still wasn’t finished. In fact, he was getting worse…

“As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal. Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse. It’s child abuse and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.”

Seriously? Carlson is equating the wearing of a soft cloth face covering with physical assault. And he’s intruding on the lawful and responsible parenting duties of strangers. But his advice is not only offensive, it’s illegal. He is instructing his viewers to commit felonies. It is against the law to file a false police report. And that’s the only way to describe what Carlson is suggesting. No law enforcement officer, or district attorney, would regard a child wearing a mask as the victim of abuse.

This is a not a matter of free speech. Just as yelling “fire” in a crowded theater where there is no fire is not constitutionally protected, neither is provoking hostilities and suborning unlawful acts. Carlson’s rhetoric in this diatribe is unambiguously dangerous both to people who want to avoid virus transmission, and to parents and children who are victimized by Carlson’s cult followers.

Fox News has successfully argued in court that no reasonable viewer would take Carlson seriously. The problem, though, is that Carlson’s viewers are not reasonable. This latest outburst has the clear potential to incite violence. And if it does, Carlson – and Fox News – must be held accountable.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Psaki Bomb: Nobody Cares that Joe Biden Hasn’t Met with Kevin McCarthy

Posted by on April 26, 2021 at 4:58 pm. 3 Comments :

The first hundred days of the Biden administration has seen unprecedented productivity. Along with delivering on – and doubling – a campaign promise to get 100 million Americans vaccinated for COVID, Biden has presided over the passage of a $2 trillion pandemic relief and stimulus bill, restored Obamacare, rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and drafted new infrastructure and jobs legislation.

Psaki Lightening

On virtually every one of these issues Biden has managed to secure majority support from the American people. On many of these issues that includes majority support from Republican voters. And despite that overwhelming popularity, the Republicans in congress have responded by objecting to anything and everything put forward by Biden and the Democrats to move the country forward. It’s knee-jerk obstructionism in the most poisonously partisan way.

That disparity between the negatively charged Republican Party and their hapless constituents was illustrated perfectly during Monday’s White House press briefing. Press Secretary Jen Psaki had to, once again, field questions from determined right-wing hacks posing as journalists. It’s becoming a routine spectacle that invariably results in what is now known as the “Psaki Bomb.” The latest example occurred when David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network initiated this exchange with Psaki:

Brody: [Biden] has not met with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. What does that say about unity? And also there are some other legislative issues as it relates to HR 1, and a commission studying on packing the Supreme Court, as you would say. And there’s a lot of other lists as well. Budget reconciliation. So there’s a lot of folks – you talk about tens of millions of people – they’re concerned that this doesn’t seem like unity at all.”
Psaki: Do you think tens of millions of people are concerned about him not meeting with Kevin McCarthy?
Brody: No. I think tens of millions of people are concerned about HR 1 and budget reconciliation and going that fifty vote threshold.
Psaki: I’m not sure the polling bears that out. but I will say that the President’s view is that bringing the country together is bringing the American people together.

Psaki wasted no time in shooting down Brody’s suggestion that “unity” is somehow dependent on whether or not Biden meets with the minority leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy. Particularly when Biden’s policies are better liked by Republican voters than McCarthy is (He currently has a 20% approval rating, while Biden’s is in the mid-50s). Psaki pointedly noted that voters don’t really care about whether Biden meets with McCarthy, and that Biden is more focused on bringing together the American people than on uniting members of Congress when the GOP has no intention of playing nice.

Brody’s phrasing of his question revealed his bias when he referenced the commission that Biden formed to study judicial reforms. Brody called it a study “on packing the Supreme Court.” That, of course, is right-wing talking point. But he came closer to matters that voters actually care about when he tweaked his question to direct it to HR 1, the House-passed voting rights bill. There really are tens of millions of Americans who are concerned about getting this bill passed and signed in order to block the efforts by Republicans to make voting more difficult in many GOP-run states.

Psaki continues to impress with her sharp intellect and her gentle snark. Or is that her gentle intellect and her sharp snark. Either way she is an effective communicator and not someone these half-witted right-wing shills should be challenging. But they just don’t seem to learn that.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Fox News Cherry-Picks COVID Data to Make Blatantly Dishonest Political Points

Posted by on April 26, 2021 at 12:10 pm. 1 Comments :

There has been profoundly positive news lately regarding the Coronavirus pandemic. Nationwide the number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have declined significantly. We’re not out of the woods yet, and variants still pose a risk, but we’re heading in the right direction. That’s a direct result of the competence and compassion provided by the Biden administration.

Fox News, Covid

Unfortunately, the reporting of this data continues to be distorted beyond any recognition to reality by Fox News and their confederates in right-wing media. On Monday morning Fox News put out a report that was deliberately misleading, in an attempt to boost the profiles of Republican led states Florida and Texas, while disparaging states with Democratic leadership. The headline read “Fully open Texas and Florida reporting fewer COVID cases than Democrat-led Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York.” The opening paragraph elaborated…

“Republican-led states including Texas and Florida are reporting fewer coronavirus cases than Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York — all of which are led by prominent Democrats who refuse to roll back COVID-19 regulations and statewide mask mandates, according to CDC data.”

The operative word in that paragraph is “reporting,” something that Fox News abandoned long ago in favor of making stuff up. It may be true that Texas and Florida reported fewer cases of COVID than New York and the other states mentioned, however, there’s two notable explanations for that. First, their “reporting” has been stifled by brazenly partisan administrators. And second, they have cut back significantly on the testing which would identify the true number of new cases.

A more honest and accurate presentation of the data shows that Texas and Florida are actually underperforming most of the big Democratic run states. California, for instance, currently has the lowest positivity rate in the nation. And it is not inconsequential that, while testing in Texas and Florida is far lower, their positivity rates are much higher:

State Positivity % New Daily Cases Tests per 100,000
Texas 5.2 1,239 220.9
Florida 9.1 4,671 299.1
Pennsylvania 8.4 2,494 356.1
Illinois 3.5 2,047 604.3
New York 2.2 4,064 1,022.5
Massachusetts 1.9 1,214 1,133.1
California 0.9 625 495.4

It’s fair to assume that if Texas and Florida were testing at the same rate as the other states, and reporting honestly, they would have higher incidents of new cases. But they are employing the Donald Trump Blind Math Maxim: If you don’t test, there aren’t any cases.

Any method of reporting that twists reality into something that Fox News can peddle to their cult followers is, in their view, preferable to allowing their audience access to the truth. As a result, Fox News is, perhaps, second only to Donald Trump as most responsible for the avoidable deaths of more than 560,000 Americans. It’s why studies have shown that just watching Fox News actually increases coronavirus fatalities. Fox should be required to run a crawl that states that “Fox News is Hazardous to Your Health.”

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

QAnon Rep Lauren Boebert Has a Sad Over Biden Doing What He Was Elected To Do

Posted by on April 25, 2021 at 4:33 pm. 8 Comments :

President Biden is really confounding the Trump-deprived Republican Party. They have been struggling for weeks to find any line of criticism that is plausible, or even remotely believable. Their efforts have led to ludicrous contrivances roping in innocent victims like Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. But Biden’s approval has actually increased since he beat Donald Trump last November, and is double-digits higher than Trump’s was at the same point.

Republican False Knowledge

The GOP has taken a stridently anti-Biden path with knee-jerk opposition to his most ambitious initiatives. Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the COVID relief and stimulus bill that garnered majority support by the American people, including Republicans. They are similarly rejecting Biden’s infrastructure and jobs bill that has equal support across the political spectrum.

As a result, Republican backbenchers are throwing whatever mud they find handy at the wall and hoping something sticks. So far, they have come up empty, unless you count the humiliation they’ve accumulated. Take, for instance, Colorado QAnon congresswoman Lauren Boebert (please). On Sunday she tweeted this…

Fortunately, we don’t have to imagine that. Biden has come into office and set a course toward undoing much of the damage that Trump and his thug brigades worked so hard to achieve. Biden told voters he would do just that during his campaign, and he’s keeping his promise. What Boebert doesn’t get is that this is not some new staff at a business coming in and changing everything. It is a new administration in the White House that the American people put there to do precisely what they’re doing.

However, that isn’t the only thing that Boebert is too ignorant to comprehend. Later the same day she tweeted this…

Boebert thinks that America’s millionaires and billionaires deserve a tax holiday? Never mind that they already “profited handsomely” during the pandemic. As reported by USA Today, while “The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an economic crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression [and] more than half a year later, more than 11 million Americans remain unemployed […] America’s 614 billionaires grew their net worth by a collective $931 billion.”

So naturally Republicans like Boebert want to throw more money at their wealthy benefactors. Biden, on the other hand, is focused on rest of the population that has just received another stimulus check that every Republican voted against. And Biden thinks that it’s time for the rich to pay their fair share, so he’s proposing increases on taxes, but only for those earning more than $400,000.

What’s more, Boebert’s disingenuous sympathy for the small business that were locked down, and the job losses she mentioned, doesn’t acknowledge that all of that economic pain was exacerbated by Trump and her party’s negligent and incompetent mishandling of the pandemic. After that, it’s rather callous of her to use the suffering of the American people as a cudgel against Biden who is actually doing something to help them.

Finally, Boebert also posted a hysterical complaint regarding Biden’s attention to the climate crisis. She tweeted…

That tweet was in response to reporting by Fox News that consisted of their customary lies and distractions (and was even retweeted by the governor of Texas):

The only thing you need to know about this is that none of it is true. While it would be beneficial to both the health of the planet and its human occupants to reduce their intake of red meat, the charge that Biden made a proposal to force its elimination is flagrantly untrue. See this thread (and this article) for more details:

This is the sort of desperation that Republicans are resorting to attack Biden and other Democrats. They haven’t got anything substantive to talk about, so they invent “scandals” and distribute them to their dimwitted cult followers. But true to form, they don’t even do that very well.

UPDATE: Fox News issued a correction for their hamburger story.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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