Media Bias

OH NO: Hannity Can’t Find Joe Biden, Maybe Because Fox News Refuses to Cover Him

Posted by on February 19, 2021 at 2:30 pm. 13 Comments :

The stench of desperation at Fox News is thick enough to choke an elephant. Try as they might, they can’t seem to construct a plausible dystopian nightmare centered on the budding presidency of Joe Biden. It doesn’t help their cause that in Biden’s first month in office he’s already racked up an impressive array of achievements.

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Fox News, Sean Hannity, Joe Biden

Among the first four weeks of work Biden has drafted a COVID relief bill (that Republicans are blocking). He’s restoring Obamacare to the state prior to Trump’s sabotage of it. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization. He’s introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And he’s addressing income inequality with plans to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

No wonder the Debbie and Donnie Downers at Fox News are in a panic. They have nothing to rage about. Some of their recent misfires include blaming the Texas storm catastrophe on the Green New Deal, which has not been enacted into law; celebrating Donald Trump’s allegedly enduring popularity as represented by “spontaneous” rallies that were planned long in advance; and mocking the marriage of Jill and Joe Biden for being too romantic. Seriously, that’s all they’ve got.

One other tool in their propaganda workshop is to manipulate their editorial decisions to erase Joe Biden from the news cycle. To date Fox News has not aired a single White House press briefing, which the Biden team has returned to doing daily. Nor have they aired a single press conference by the White House COVID-19 Response Team. Recall that Fox News aired every similar meeting during the Trump administration, live and uninterrupted, along with his campaign rallies and staged photo-ops. The only coverage Biden is getting on Fox news are stories they can tarnish with negativity and lies.

Friday morning, Fox was the only national news network that failed to carry Biden’s first major foreign policy address before the Munich Security Conference (video below). He articulated the triumphant theme that “America is back.” It was a substantive discussion of critical national security issues including NATO, the coronavirus, China trade, Russian espionage, climate change, Iran nuclear pact, and the winter storm wreaking havoc on Texas and much of the eastern United States. But none of that was deemed newsworthy by Fox.

This banishment of all things Biden by Fox News is a deliberate attempt to disappear the new president. They have made an editorial decision to pretend that Biden doesn’t exist or is doing nothing. It’s the impression they intend to burn into the weak minds of their viewers. And at the forefront of this effort is Sean Hannity, who is himself pretending that he doesn’t know where Biden is:

“Where is our commander-in-chief? You know, that new guy? Oh, that’s right! This morning, he decided to take a snow day. The guy ultimately in charge of FEMA and all of the country’s emergency resources and federal agences (sic)? Yeah, he took a day off in the middle of this natural disaster. Where’s the feigned phony, selective liberal outrage on this? […] To be fair, it’s not even really totally clear that Joe even fully understands what’s going on in Texas.”

First of all, if Hannity can’t find Biden it’s just because he’s only watching Fox News where Biden has been cloaked in invisibility. It’s also interesting that Hannity is admitting that he can’t find any “phony liberal outrage.” But that’s because none of the liberal outrage is phony. It’s all entirely authentic and warranted. More to the point, and contrary to his infantile insult, it’s Hannity who doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on in Texas.

The basis for Hannity’s perversion of reality is a repot that the White House Communications Office “called a lid” on Thursday morning. Hannity, due to either dishonesty or ignorance, interpreted that as Biden taking the day off. But a “lid” isn’t a work holiday. It only means that there wouldn’t be any press avails for the rest of the day. Everyone, including the President, is still working. In fact, on the same day Hannity said was a “snow day” Biden phoned Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and he also approved emergency declarations in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

It’s ironic that Hannity would choose to take this time to take Biden to task for being AWOL on Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz (Q-TX) was just chastised for jetting off to Cancun while his constituents were back home freezing and dying. Humiliated, Cruz returned to Texas, but rather than getting to work on behalf of the people he purports to represent, he immediately rushed to do an interview on Fox News with – that’s right – Sean Hannity.

Hannity, not surprisingly, spent much of the segment excusing Cruz’s insensitive and tone-deaf Mexican vacation jaunt. He didn’t say a word about Cruz’s “snow day” or “taking the day off.” (Actually, it was four days). It was an Olympian exercise in hypocrisy that could win gold medals. And it’s more evidence that Hannity, and the rest of his confederates on Fox News, simply cannot be taken seriously.

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. 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.

Newsmax: Ted Cruz Can Do More For Texas Storm Victims By Fleeing To Cancun

Posted by on February 18, 2021 at 2:07 pm. 12 Comments :

Never let it be said that Republicans are afraid to march into controversy no matter how unpopular or self-serving. They have spent decades proving that there is noting too asinine for them to pursue with gusto and shamelessness in the face of universal criticism.

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Ted Cruz, Cancun

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas helpfully demonstrated that reputation for abhorrent audacity on Thursday as he packed his bags and jetted off to the balmy climes of Cancun, Mexico, while his constituents were freezing and dying, back home. While Texans were suffering without power, heat, food, or water, Cruz was languishing in the sun at a luxurious resort. As CNN reported…

“Sen. Ted Cruz and his family flew to Cancun, Mexico, he confirmed in a statement to CNN, as a winter disaster in his home state left millions without power or water. Cruz, a Texas Republican, said in the statement he flew down for a night because his daughters ‘asked to take a trip with friends.'”

It was clever of Cruz to blame this fiasco on his minor children. He’s learned a lot from his crush, Donald Trump (aka Cadet Bone Spurs), about evading responsibilities. Likewise, Cruz is beginning to master outrageous hypocrisy. CNN also reported that “In a radio interview Monday, Cruz told people to ‘stay home’ and not ‘risk it. Keep your family safe and just stay home and hug your kids.'” Good advice – for the little people.

This sort of insensitivity is nauseating on so many levels. It is an affront to the people who made the mistake of voting for him. It exposes his callous disregard for people in distress. Just the horrid optics of this behavior alone would have prevented a decent person from boarding that plane with his privileged family.

Naturally, Cruz has his defenders and apologists. They begin with the right-wing media that has so staunchly propped up Trump for four excruciating years. Fox News has been busily blaming green energy for Texas’ problems. And the arguments trotted out to justify Cruz’s vacationing were predictably galling. Let’s start with the ultra-conservative Newsmax:

So the Newsmax crowd believes that Cruz was selflessly relocating to a better command post to help his fellow Texans? To be sure, there are problems with power and communications in the state. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t places were those resources are available. And even if they weren’t, Cruz could have gone to a neighboring state rather than a ditch the country. Not even Cruz tried to peddle that nonsense excuse. In his statement he admitted that he was going on vacation.

Moving on, Longtime Trump shill and election fraud felon, Dinesh D’Souza, had a similar take on how Cruz was acting in the interest of his constituents. “What could @tedcruz do,” D’Souza tweeted. He elaborated saying that…

“If he were here in Texas? I’m hard-pressed to say. If he’s in Cancun, that means he’s not using up valuable resources of energy, food and water that can now be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing he could do for the state right now”

Wasn’t that thoughtful? By skipping out Cruz left a bounty of power and other resources for some other fortunate family. I hope they realize how lucky they are to be in Texas consuming Cruz’s share of the food and energy, while he’s sacrificing on their behalf in Cancun.

Finally, uber-jerk Ben Shapiro managed to pound out another of his painfully illogical diatribes. He observed that…

“It’s not a real time crisis that Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, can do anything about […] Do they expect Ted to go there with, like, a blowtorch and start defrosting all of the pipelines?”

Shapiro is right. Cruz would have been utterly useless had he remained in Texas. But then he was equally useless in Cancun. His uselessness has nothing to do with where he is physically. That’s just the way he is anywhere. For an example of a Texan who contributes to his community, see this from Beto O’Rourke:

In the end, the notion that Texas is better off when Ted Cruz is far away is difficult to argue with. But that being the case, he shouldn’t be representing the state in any official capacity. And the same goes for the rest of the Republican wankers who believe that government shouldn’t be helping people. Any political party whose philosophy rests on the jungle theory wherein everybody fends for themselves fails to understand why there are governments at all.

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. 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.

COLD-HEARTED LIES: Fox News Callously Exploits Deadly Winter Storms to Attack Green New Deal

Posted by on February 17, 2021 at 1:09 pm. 8 Comments :

Apparently Fox News wasn’t satisfied with lying about the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Even though their deliberate, politically motivated distortions resulted in untold thousands of deaths that could have been avoided. That isn’t hyperbole. Studies have actually proven that watching Fox News increases COVID-19 fatalities. Some studies singled out watching Sean Hannity as being linked to higher rates of coronavirus deaths.

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Fox News

Now that there are historically severe winter storms ravaging much of the country, Fox News has made a typically idiotic, right-wing based, editorial decision to lie about that as well. Rather than just reporting the facts about the storm and how those battered by it can get help, Fox News is spreading ludicrous falsehoods and laying blame on their political foes.

The narrative that Fox is adopting is that somehow the Green New Deal and wind turbines are responsible for the power outages that have devastated Texas. Never mind that wind power represents a small portion of the power generation in Texas which is run by Republicans who have always been opposed to alternative energy sources. Fox News wants their viewers to believe that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in charge of the Texas power grid and is conspiring to undermine it. That narrative was evident during an interview of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Hannity, where he said that…

“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy such as natural gas and nuclear, as well as solar and wind. Our wind and our solar got shot down and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid. And that thrust Texas into a situation where we’re lacking power on a statewide basis.”

That is an unvarnished, flat out lie. Even if wind and solar “got shot down,” their contribution to the total energy supply in Texas would have had a negligible impact. Abbott’s own administration expert agreed as reported by the Daily Beast:

“A senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, however, said hours earlier that frozen wind turbines during the deadly winter storms have been ‘the least significant factor in the blackouts,’ noting that the main factors are ‘frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear facilities.'” [More info here]

Meanwhile, fresh from his pathetic attack on Jill and Joe Biden’s marriage, the undisputed Champion of Fox News Assholery, Tucker Carlson, added to the avalanche of bullpucky by babbling out this barrage of nonsense:

“Unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas. The power grids became totally reliant on windmills. Then it got cold and the windmills broke. Cause that’s what happens in the green new deal. You’re without power. Millions are still without power tonight. Several have died. Now the same energy policies that have wrecked Texas this week are going nationwide. They’re coming to your state.”

Nearly every word of that rant is deliberate deceit. The Green New Deal has not come to Texas, or anywhere else in the United States. It is currently a draft of bill in Congress that hasn’t been introduced or voted on. As noted above, the power grids in Texas are not “totally reliant on windmills,” or even minimally reliant. They didn’t break. They just need to be de-iced. That isn’t what happens in the Green New Deal. People are still without power because the fossil fuel sources have failed. And the energy policies that wrecked Texas were entirely the work of Republicans beholden to the fossil fuel industry.

The only things Carlson got right are that people have died (which he couldn’t care less about), and that eventually, with luck and hard work, the Green New Deal will be implemented across the country. Which will be a huge improvement over the archaic Dirty Old Deal. In the meantime, Fox News will continue to exploit tragedies in their zeal to advance a heartless, destructive, ultra-conservative agenda. And, of course, to juice their sagging ratings.

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. 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 Family Values: Tucker Carlson Viciously Mocks Media and – Biden’s Marriage?

Posted by on February 17, 2021 at 10:16 am. 9 Comments :

It goes without saying that there are a lot of repulsive cretins on Fox News. But even in that maggot infested bog there is no one who competes with Tucker Carlson as the undisputed King of Sleaze. His facility for falsehoods and pious prattle is unmatched by mere mortals.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson

On the Tuesday night episode of Carlson’s White Power Hour he sought to malign the free press that he regards as “the enemy of the people,” just like his crush Donald Trump does. Carlson bellowed maniacally that “the people who run [America’s institutions] are rotten.” Not just some of them, but “all of which are corrupt.” And he singles out one institution as “looming above the rest [as] our most corrupt institution: The mainstream news media.” He elaborates that…

“The media are more crooked than Jimmy Hoffa ever was. They’re more dishonest than your average bribe-taking building inspector in Queens and more treacherous than the Mafia. They make cops in Tijuana look trustworthy. You’ll get fairer treatment from an inner-city DMV than you would from CNN.”

Let’s set aside for the moment Carlson’s asinine analogies comparing the media to murderous organized crime figures. More repugnant is how his sanctimonious verbal assaults rely entirely on offensive stereotypes and racist dog whistles? It’s integral to his hallmark brand of hate speech.

However, Carlson’s sour soliloquy does hit some sweet spots, albeit inadvertently. In a moment of unintended self-reflection, Carlson articulates the best description of himself saying that “Dumb and conventional now pass as impressive.” He continues seemingly still determined to define himself and his Fox News confederates:

“Yes, the news media are profoundly dishonest. All of us lie from time to time, that’s the human condition. Imagine, though, if lying was your job. Imagine forcing yourself to tell lies all day about every subject in ways that were so transparent and so outlandish that there is no way the people listening to you could possibly believe anything you said. Then imagine doing that again and again and again every day of your professional life for your entire life. Could you do that? […] you’ve got to respect those skills.

You don’t need to imagine any of this. Just watch five minutes of any Tucker Carlson program if you have the stomach for it. And remember that Fox News lawyers actually argued successfully in court that Carlson cannot not be held liable for the lies he tells because he “cannot be understood to have been stating facts,” and that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.”

In other words, no reasonable viewer would believe Carlson’s BS. That’s according to the Fox News lawyers speaking on Carlson’s behalf. The problem is that Carlson doesn’t have any reasonable viewers. So the cult disciples he’s disinforming on a nightly basis will blindly buy into whatever he says. And among the nauseating absurdities he unleashed in the same episode was this sarcastic grotesquery:

“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.”

Technically, since climate change is undeniably real according to the vast majority of credible scientists, Carlson is actually affirming the authenticity of the Bidens heartwarming romance. Which is something that’s been conspicuously absent from the White House for four chilly years. Carlson’s smug dismissal of marital affection may be more than naked hostility. It may just be another sad and thinly veiled confession about the hollowness of his own pathetic life.

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. 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 Gets Spanked for Shamelessly Lying About ‘Spontaneous’ Trump Rally

Posted by on February 16, 2021 at 3:27 pm. 4 Comments :

The sagging fortunes of America’s Biggest Loser, and former reality TV game show host, Donald Trump, continue to swirl down the drain. Not only did voters decisively reject him last November, but his approval ratings have fallen precipitously ever since. He never hit 50% in four years. While President Joe Biden in his first month has been enjoying a post-election honeymoon with a soaring 62% approval.

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Donald Trump Circling the Drain

All of this puts Fox News in an awkward position. They are desperately struggling to frame current events in a manner that is a sharp diversion from reality. The result is a flurry of bizarre stories about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being responsible for the Capitol Hill riots instigated by Trump; or Lindsey Graham threatening to impeach Vice-President Kamala Harris; or Republicans trying to disassociate themselves from QAnon. Needless to say, none of that is working.

For his Part, Sean Hannity is taking up the call to float some more preposterous notions of how the nation still madly adores their deposed Dear Leader Trump. Hannity led off a segment on his Monday night program by attacking Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for his lambasting of Trump as “disgraceful” and “responsible” for inciting the January 6th assault on Congress (video below). He put McConnell on notice, slamming him as “sanctimonious” and “way out of touch” with the GOP base. Elaborating, Hannity said…

“Let’s make one thing clear. The seven Republican senators that voted to convict Donald Trump, and other Republicans who have turned their backs on the former president are way out of touch with the base of their own party. A record 75 million Americans turned out for Donald Trump in November and they support him to this very day. […] A few hours ago, spontaneously, thousands of people in Palm Beach lined up in support of the former president as his motorcade traveled through Florida.

Let’s break down this heap of nonsense. First of all, While the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump might have been out of touch with the radical GOP base, they were steadily aligned with the majority of the American people. What’s more, if the other Republican senators weren’t such cowardly hypocrites, they would have voted to convict Trump as well.

Secondly, Hannity is parroting Trump’s brag about having gotten 75 million votes (it was 74 million). But they are both conveniently forgetting that Biden got 81 million votes. So whatever point he is trying to make about Trump’s alleged popularity, it is still significantly below that of Biden.

However, lying to his viewers is standard operating procedure for Sean Hannity. So it will come as no surprise that he highlighted a video that was posted on Twitter by a former Trump staffer. It showed crowds of Trump cultists lining the streets of Palm Beach as Trump drove by on his way home after golfing. Hannity described this show of support as “spontaneous.”

Later in the same program Hannity interviewed Don Trump Jr. and made the same claim. “Did you see?” Hannity asked. “Thousands of people out of nowhere. Nobody organized it that I could see. Certainly nobody associated with your father that I know of. Do you?” To which Donnie replied “No. This is totally organic. This shows that the American people are with Donald Trump.”

However, it was not the least bit organic. In fact, it had been planned for over a week. The evidence of that was deliciously revealed by CNN’s Brianna Keilar:

This is just another example of how disreputable Hannity and all of his Fox News confederates are. They can’t be relied upon to tell the truth, even on the small things. So naturally the big things are just going to be smothered in even bigger lies. Such as the the one about the election being stolen, which led to five people being killed, and many more injured, by Trump’s Seditionist Brigades.

Hannity polished off his segment with some equally absurd outrages concerning Mitch McConnell, demanding that he “give a speech on the Senate floor and hold [Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters] accountable for their incitement of insurrection.” Huh?

Hannity also claimed that he has “a long and growing list of Democrats who should now qualify for impeachment and impeachment trial. You can start with Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and work your way through the list.” Really?

He closed with an unusually honest commentary, so long as he was directing it at himself and Fox News: “Journalism in this country is dead and buried. We are in the middle of an information crisis in this country. And media is not coming back to life anytime soon.” Actually, with Fox News now floundering in third place behind CNN and MSNBC, I may be a little more optimistic than Hannity.

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. 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.

Blaming the Victim: GOP Accuses Pelosi of Allowing the Capitol Riots that Targeted Her

Posted by on February 15, 2021 at 3:44 pm. 1 Comments :

It’s about time that we all finally recognize that you CAN make this up! The Republican party is notorious for manufacturing radical, rightist mythologies that conform to their dystopian world and self-serving political environments. They couldn’t care less if there are facts to support their half-baked diversions from reality. They are a factory for fantastical fiction.

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Fox News, Nancy Pelosi

The latest GOP fractured fairy tale strives to achieve new lows of contempt for the truth and insensitivity toward the real victims of heinous crimes. And it’s brought to you by Fox News and some of the GOP’s most noxious and dishonest characters, including Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes. As Fox reported Monday morning…

“House Administration Committee Ranking Member Rodney Davis, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member James Comer and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes sent a letter to Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday, saying that ‘many important questions’ about her ‘responsibility for the security’ of the Capitol on Jan. 6 ‘remain unanswered.'”

The article is full of quotes by these Republican cretins making patently baseless charges regarding the security preparedness for the January 6th Congressional session where the Electoral College vote would be certified. That, of course, devolved into an insurrectionist coup attempt instigated by Donald Trump, who sent his cult disciple to the Capitol on mission to suppress democracy.

The charges in the letter are entirely speculative and intended to raise wholly unwarranted suspicions about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that have no foundation in reality. They are brazenly smearing the Speaker in an attempt to tarnish her reputation while diverting attention from their own culpability. Their allegation rests on the fact that Pelosi, as Speaker, was responsible for security for the whole of Congress.

These Republican whiners want to make people forget that they were the ones who propped up Trump’s Big Lie about a “stolen election” that was the impetus for Trump’s Insurrectionists to attack the Congress while they were doing their constitutional duty. They were Trump’s accomplices in the assault on Congress, and his apologists afterward. But now they are trying to lay the blame on Pelosi, who was the target of Trump’s Seditionist Brigades. They think that she was a party to her own attempted assassination.

What’s more, the GOP congressmen make no mention of the fact that Sen. Mitch McConnell was the in charge of the Senate and would have had the very same authority for security as Pelosi does. But they aren’t condemning him or demanding that he answer their antagonistic questions. They are exhibiting rank partisanship while throwing around false allegations that Pelosi’s efforts to scrutinize the assault were partisan. Never mind that those efforts included appointing retired General Russel Honoré, a universally respected crisis management expert, to conduct an independent security review, and advocating for a 9/11-style, bipartisan commission to investigate the matter and its causes.

Pelosi’s chief of staff. Drew Hammill, responded to the letter saying that it was a…

“transparently partisan attempt to lay blame on the Speaker, who was a target of assassination during the insurrection fueled by the lies of House Republicans.”

[…and that…]

“We look forward to these Ranking Members asking these same questions of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As the target of an assassination attempt, the Speaker knows all too well the importance of security at the Capitol and is focused on getting to the bottom of all issues facing the Capitol Complex and the events that led up to the insurrection. Clearly, these Republican Ranking Members do not share this priority.”

for Republicans to send this accusatory letter to Pelosi, the intended target of Trump’s insurrectionist mob, is abhorrent in the extreme. Particularly when they are the ones who are guilty of the crimes they are charging her with. But it’s also the predictable behavior of purposefully dishonest, moronic, conspiracy-obsessed, crackpots with nefarious agendas. And it’s what we should expect of them – and be prepared for – for the foreseeable future.

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. 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.

WTF? Lindsey Graham Threatens to Impeach … VP Kamala Harris?

Posted by on February 14, 2021 at 2:10 pm. 6 Comments :

The madness of the Republican Party is skidding off the trail and over a cliff. Despite having just lost the legal debate over the impeachment of Donald Trump, and resorting to “cancelling” their own members for daring to vote their conscience, the GOP’s top spokesmodels are exhibiting signs of severe mental collapse.

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Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Sen. Lindsey Graham visited with Fox News’ Senior Trump-Fluffer, Maria Bartiromo, Sunday morning to defend his unconscionable vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection. He ignored a mountain of evidence in order to obediently comply with the demands of his Dear Leader. But during the segment on Fox News, Graham trotted out the most ludicrous allegation imaginable as a means of diverting attention from his own detestable behavior:

“The trial record was a complete joke. Hearsay upon hearsay. And we’ve opened Pandora’s box to future presidents. If we use this model I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if Republicans take over the House. Because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open. So we’ve opened Pandora’s box here, and I’m sad for the country.”

Graham is not the only one who is sad for the country. So are the majority of Americans who supported the conviction of Trump and are looking forward to his being held accountable in criminal and civil courts.

More to the point, Graham’s suggestion that Vice-President Kamala Harris could be subjected to impeachment if Republicans take control of Congress is the best argument for voting against every Republican in 2022 and beyond. He is shamelessly conceding that it would only be done as brazen political vengeance. Not that this shady motive hasn’t been evident in everything that Graham, and most of his Republican confederates, have done for years.

In addition to his craven politicization of impeachment, Graham is also lying about Harris. She never bailed out anyone, especially not rioters or other violent lawbreakers. The thread that Graham is dangling from concerns a tweet wherein Harris expressed support for the Minneapolis Freedom Fund (MFF), an organization that raised money to bail out peaceful protesters in Minnesota who were arrested following the police murder of George Floyd.

The MFF did provide bail for others who were charged with more serious crimes, but had nothing to do with the protests or those Harris was seeking to help. Even so, there is no evidence that any protester, or any other beneficiary, committed any crimes after being bailed out. Graham’s statement that Harris “actually bailed out rioters” and that “one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open,” is a bald-faced lie.

This is a demonstration of how desperate Graham and the GOP are. They know that Trump is guilty of inciting a deadly riot, and they know that they are culpable for aiding and abetting his treason. That’s why they will only show up on Fox News where they know that they won’t be challenged by partisan suck-ups like Bartiromo. However, they also won’t stem the tide of disgust that is rising against them as they continue to engage in pathetic and desperate displays like this preposterous attack on VP Harris.

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. 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.

Despite What Fox News Says, Democrats Won the Impeachment Debate

Posted by on February 13, 2021 at 2:07 pm. 8 Comments :

Donald Trump has secured a place in history as the only reality TV game show host to be impeached twice. He holds fully 50% of all impeachments for United States Presidents. And while the outcome of this second attempt by Democrats in Congress to hold Trump accountable for betraying his oath of office and his country was never in much doubt, his legacy will forever reflect his treasonous acts.

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Donald Trump Walking the Plank

The Senate is an august body that is often referred to as “deliberative.” That is less true in these modern times as hyper-partisanship has infected a cowardly confederacy of Republicans who ignored the fact-based evidence in order to express their blind devotion to a dishonest and disgraced demagogue whose lust for power very nearly brought down the American experiment in democracy.

However, the much larger constituency of the populace at large was not as easily misled as their senatorial so-called representatives. The latest polling of citizens on the question of Trump’s guilt diverges sharply from the survey of Senators voting in Trump’s impeachment hearing:

“Seventy-one percent of American adults, including nearly half of all Republicans, believe former President Donald Trump was at least partially responsible for starting the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Ipsos poll conducted for Reuters.”

So nearly three-quarters of the American people believe Trump is guilty. And while all fifty Democratic senators agree with the nation’s citizenry, only seven Republicans did. Even so, that still makes this the most bipartisan vote to convict an impeached president in history.

For Trump and his apologists to regard having lost a majority of 57% of the Senate is a bizarre twist on the concept of victory. Even GOP leader Mitch McConnell ultimately conceded Trump’s guilt. After the vote he described Trump’s behavior as a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” about which he said “There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” Which makes his vote to acquit an exercise in flaming hypocrisy and cowardice.

It isn’t very often that poll respondents ever approach 71% agreement on any political issue. So it’s significant that a majority that lopsided has occurred with an issue as controversial as impeachment. And this unity (which many in politics and the press have been clamoring for) occurred despite the best efforts of Fox News to distort reality and thrust their biased propaganda down the throats of their eagerly deceived audience.

What this tells us is that Fox News doesn’t have the broad-based influence to which they like to pretend. In fact, the ratings for the impeachment hearings prove how weak Fox’s grip on the nation’s news consumers really is. For instance, CNN reports that “Fox fell below 1 million viewers during the afternoon coverage period. For comparison’s sake MSNBC averaged 3 million and CNN averaged 2.9 million viewers.” Fox News has been coming in third regularly since the election in November of last year.

Some pundits have been asserting that Trump’s hide was saved by the existence of an ultra-rightist network that was parroting his lies and propaganda. But the ratings show that that isn’t the case. Trump’s support among his cult followers was baked in before the Senate hearings began. The efforts by Fox to shape the debate were seen by only a tiny faction of already convinced devotees. And during much of the time leading up to the impeachment, the only news for Trump was bad news. His lawyers were embarrassing themselves and/or quitting. And Fox News shills were being caught in flagrant lies and/or getting fired.

In the end, Trump’s defense was a humiliating mish-mash of the sort of malarkey that was dispensed by Trump-fluffers on Fox and other wingnut media, and that used to appear in Trump’s now-canceled Twitter feed. And the ridiculousness of the Trump defenders wasn’t lost by credible and respected observers who commented on their ineptitude, as well as Trump’s grim future:

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. 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 Wants to Know ‘Why Are the Democrats So Angry?’

Posted by on February 12, 2021 at 2:28 pm. 11 Comments :

In January, the United States House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump – again. It is only the fourth time a president has ever been impeached, and the first time that a president was impeached twice. Furthermore, with ten Republicans voting in favor of Trump’s impeachment, it was the most bipartisan impeachment in history.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson

Nevertheless, Fox News continues to distort reality with utterly ridiculous versions of Trump’s tribulations. And not surprisingly, Tucker Carlson is leading the way with flagrant lies and wholly manufactured inventions of what others are feeling. The Thursday night episode of his Fox News melodrama (video below) asked belligerently “Why are the Democrats so angry.” It’s a burning question in the minds of people who live in the same fantasy universe as Carlson. He ranted…

“Why are the Democrats so angry? We’ve asked that question a number of times. It doesn’t seem to make any sense. Truly. In November the Democratic Party won everything Full control of the federal government. They seethed for years while they were out of power. […]They are crazy person mad. Florid-faced, irrational, yelling and making threats. It is bizarre.

You really have to wonder which Democrats he’s referring to. If he’s been watching the Senate impeachment hearings he would have seen the House Democratic impeachment managers calmly delivering an effective and devastating case against Trump, based on facts and testimony that included Trump’s own words. There wasn’t a single incident of yelling or threats or anything approaching such alleged histrionics. Talk about bizarre. Carlson may just be projecting what he sees within himself. Carlson went on to malign Democrats for even bothering to impeach Trump:

“You would think they’d get to work fixing the country they inherited. They promised to do that. Instead, they set about breaking things and hurting people. What is going on here?”

First of all, it’s unusually candid of Carlson to concede that Joe Biden inherited a country that was desperately in need of repair. But his assertion that Democrats are “breaking things and hurting people” is curious, to put it mildly. Does anyone knw WTF he is talking about? Carlson also revealed that he is either in a coma, or resorting to his standard mode of communication, shameless lying.

Democrats have been working vigorously to fix the problems caused by Trump and the GOP. They have drafted a COVID relief bill (that Republicans are blocking). They are restoring Obamacare to the state prior to Trump’s sabotage of it. They have rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and World Health Organization. They have ramped up coronavirus testing and vaccinations.

And that’s not all. They are addressing income inequality with plans to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. And Biden has addressed critical issues with Russia (cyber-espionage, election interference, bounties on American soldiers, Navalny poisoning) and China (virus origination, trade, Hong Kong independence, territorial waters) that Trump ignored and/or made worse. And Biden has only been President for three weeks. What more does Carlson want?

The tirade continued with Carlson complaining that Democrats were involved with Google’s YouTube taking down a pro-life account. Carlson accused Google of doing that because “Google supports abortion, like a lot of big corporations do. Children distract the labor force. If you’re raising your family, you are not serving shareholders.” Does that idiocy even need to be rebutted? For the record, Carlson is lying again. The real reason the account was closed was because it was “repeatedly sharing videos that spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines against it.” That is a violation of YouTube’s stated terms of service.

Carlson also complained that “Twitter shut down James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Twitter feed. There was no justifiable reason to do this.” Once again, Carlson is lying. The reason Twitter shut down O’Keefe’s account was because of its “repeated violations of the platform’s policies prohibiting sharing — or threats of sharing — other people’s private information without consent.”

Carlson was especially perturbed over what he views as the victimhood of Fox News, saying that…

“Fox is the last big organization in the American news media that differs in even the smallest ways from the other big news organizations. The only one. That’s it. Just us. At this point, there’s everyone else in the media standing in crisp formation, in their starched matching uniforms and their little caps, patiently awaiting orders from the billionaire class.”

Umm… It seems like it’s Carlson and his tribe that is goose-stepping in formation, wearing little red caps, and taking orders from billionaire Rupert Murdoch. There is nothing similar in the rest of the media that reports to a single source of ultra-partisan dogma. In fact, there’s a great deal of competition and diversity. That’s the reason that Fox News stands alone. They have cornered the radical right news market. And they are the only network that so brazenly dispenses with journalistic ethics and the principles of honest reporting. So naturally they are “different” in the most biased and dangerous way.

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. 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 is Vying for the Coveted ‘Fox News A-Hole of All Time’ Award

Posted by on February 11, 2021 at 12:50 pm. 7 Comments :

The Fox News Channel has long been the mouthpiece for an extremist right-wing agenda and the most radical fringes of the Republican Party. It’s what it was created to do by its founders Rupert Murdoch (an ultra-conservative media baron) and Roger Ailes (a GOP media consultant). And they have vigorously pursued their mission to distort the news and deceive their eagerly misled viewers.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson

Over the years there has been a parade of lying charlatans on the network who shamelessly spread blatant disinformation and propaganda. They included such nefarious luminaries as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, the recently terminated Lou Dobbs, and of course, the veteran of venality, Sean Hannity.

With such a stellar cast of cretins it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could sink below that roster and achieve new depths of disgust. But there is one Fox News stalwart who is unafraid of the formidable competition and is willing to debase himself sufficiently to descend to unprecedented new lows.

Tucker Carlson is undoubtedly Fox’s new leader in political lechery. He has earned this dishonor over many years of fashioning diatribes filled with flagrant falsehoods and hate speech. However, his most recent rants are testaments to his determination to reign as the Fox News GOAT (Grossest Of All Time). Just this week Carlson has unleashed these nauseating tirades:

Coronavirus Vaccines Are a Plot by the Left to Suppress Free Speech and Even Freedom Overall
Wherein Carlson asks a bunch of question about vaccines for which the answers are readily available, but because he’s too stupid to look them up, he insists they don’t exist and everyone is lying about it. The truth is that Carlson lied about virtually everything in this tirade. And his lies are going to get people killed by dissuading them from getting vaccinated. Media Matters answered his questions for him here:

George Floyd Died of a Drug Overdose, not the Cop’s Knee on His Throat for Eight Minutes
Wherein Carlson tries to divert attention from Trump’s historic second impeachment hearing in the Senate by bashing Black Lives Matter and making excuses for murderous cops. Which is a pretty wild diversion. And once again, according to Carlson everyone else is lying when it’s really just Carlson. He falsely asserts that George Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation from having a cop’s knee on his throat for more than eight minutes. Carlson says he died of a drug overdose, like all Black “criminals” who defy authority.

Here’s the truth: The Hennepin County medical examiner ruled Floyd’s death a homicide due to “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” Also, an independent autopsy determined Floyd died of “asphyxia from sustained pressure” on his neck and back that led to “impeded blood flow to the brain.” The report concluded that “Floyd has no underlying medical condition that would have contributed to his death.”

Defending Your Right To Believe That Democrats Eat Babies
Wherein Carlson’s segment sported a graphic that read “DEMS ARE TRYING TO CONTROL WHAT YOU BELIEVE,” although he never presented a single example of that. He began his demented dissertation on the dangers of censorship by sarcastically pronouncing that “The real threat is a forbidden idea, it’s something called QAnon.” This was his lead-in to a full-throated support for the crackpot conspiracy theorists.

Fomenting Civil War With Insanely Paranoid Lies
Wherein Carlson claims that Democrats are mounting a literal war against Republicans, with soldiers and everything. No, really. He actually said that Democrats “declared war on their rival political party. Not, by the way, a metaphorical war, but an actual one, with soldiers, paramilitary law enforcement, and the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies.”

This list could go on and on. But the point is made that Carlson is now the undisputed King of Crackpottery. And an especially dangerous brand of it. He is inciting violence with frightening tales of cannibalistic, freedom-hating Democrats. He is exacerbating the worst public health crisis in a century by maligning efforts to impede the COVID pandemic. He is stirring up his white supremacist audience to ever more noxious states of bigotry. And he is doing all of this tangible harm from his perch on Fox News where his ratings are higher than Hannity’s. Although the network suffered a sharp decline after the November election and is currently in third place behind CNN and MSNBC.

Fox News lawyers actually argued successfully in court that Carlson cannot not be held liable for the lies he tells because he “cannot be understood to have been stating facts,” and that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.” In other words, no reasonable viewer would believe Carlson’s BS. That’s according to the Fox News lawyers speaking on Carlson’s behalf.

The problem is that Carlson doesn’t have any reasonable viewers. So the cult disciples he’s disinforming on a nightly basis will blindly buy into whatever he says. And for that reason he’s earned the Fox News A-Hole of All Time Award. It’s an award that ought to be accompanied by a rapid cancelation so as to prevent any further harm to the nation. Sadly, Fox News is more likely to give him a raise and another hour to spew his bullcrap. Consequently, It might be more productive to do this: Un-Fox My Cable Box For more info on that, read this.

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. 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.