Month: June 2015

Chris Christie: Telling It Like It Is – If “IT” is Vulgar, Tactless, And Rude

Posted by on June 30, 2015 at 10:27 am. 7 Comments :

The Republican Party has its fourteenth official candidate to be their nominee for President of the United States. This morning Chris Christie made his announcement from his hometown in New Jersey. Christie joins a parade of hopefuls, none of whom have succeeded in igniting much enthusiasm on the part of GOP voters. Christie enters the race at 2% (according to a Fox News poll) in a field whose leader, Jeb Bush, has a pitiful 15%. And he has some weighty baggage.

Chris Christie 2016

Most of Christie’s speech was focused on his family history and the struggles faced by his two single-parent grandmothers who raised his parents. Other than that, he spoke of his mythical reputation as a frank-speaking truth-teller. He didn’t offer a single specific regarding the platform for a Christie administration. And he left out the fact that his state has had a record nine credit rating downgrades during his tenure.

Christie’s campaign theme of “Telling it like it is,” is ironically one of the most dishonest presentations in modern politics. There is very little to substantiate the claim of straight-talk attributed to Christie. What the media seems to be mistaking for candor is actually Christie’s tendency to be crude, vulgar, and insensitive to common civil behavior. But insulting constituents, berating reporters, and in general being verbally abusive in public is not the same thing as telling it like it is.

The arrogant brutishness evident in Christie’s so-called personality makes it easy to believe that he would order a major bridge closure to retaliate against a mayor who was not sufficiently obsequious. Why would someone like Christie care about who was harmed? And while he still denies any role in that unlawful and potentially dangerous act of revenge, the fact that so many close members of his staff were involved can only mean that he is either lying or incompetent.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Currently Christie does not meet the requirements established by Fox News to participate in the upcoming GOP debate. That leaves him out of a group that includes Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson. It’s hard to see a path to victory for Christie if some his party’s biggest jokes are pushing him out of contention. And he has his work cut out for him anyway since the Tea Party fruitcakes still haven’t forgiven him for embracing President Obama following the hurricane that devastated much of his state. That is what likely has resulted in his polling second only to Trump on the question of “Who would you never vote for?”

That’s a far fall from grace for candidate who once topped the polls and was personally solicited to run by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Setting aside that gross ethical breach by an alleged “news” operation, Christie will still enjoy Fox’s favor when he visits Sean Hannity tonight for his first post-announcement interview, just as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio did before him. So welcome to the Clown Car, Gov. Christie. And as they, buckle up, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Stupid Congressional Tricks: ScotusCare Act To Force Supreme Court Justices Into ObamaCare

Posted by on June 29, 2015 at 6:32 pm. 3 Comments :

Maybe it’s not fair, but candidates for president often suck up most of the air during the campaign season. This often results in embarrassing displays of ignorance or incompetence or just plain lunatic notions that are part and parcel of the wingnut agenda. A few weeks ago Jeb Bush provided an example by being unable to answer a question on whether or not he would have invaded Iraq knowing what we know today. And Donald Trump served up an example with his bitterly derogatory remarks about immigrants. Other examples abound from folks like Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, etc.

ScotusCare

This state of affairs must be making members of Congress uncontrollably jealous. After all, most of the time they have a free reign of the idiotic terrain. Now one congressman has been driven to do something about it and has taken a bold step to restore the reputation for dumbfuckery that the Republican-run Congress has always treasured. GOP Rep. Brian Babin of Texas (where else?) introduced what he calls the ScotusCare Act of 2015. It’s purpose is to force the Justices of the Supreme Court and their staff to acquire health insurance policies available on an ObamaCare exchange.

Babin’s obvious intention is to inflict what he regards as punishment on the Court for doing their job, which in this case was to rule in favor of the availability of ObamaCare subsidies nationwide. Babin thinks that by making the Court live under ObamaCare it will teach them a lesson, and thus influence their behavior in the future. There are a couple of reasons this qualifies as being hysterically stupid.

First of all, it is a violation of the Constitution for Congress to use its law-making authority to retaliate against, coerce, or threaten another branch of government or its personnel.

Secondly, Babin’s intention to “force” people unto ObamaCare reveals his ignorance about what the Affordable Care Act actually does. The objective of the legislation is to make health insurance available to all Americans. That means that if you are not covered by your employer, or as part of a family policy, or by Medicare, or some other means, you can sign up for a policy on an exchange. However, the Supreme Court justices and their staff do have an employer who provides health insurance: the Federal government. So what Babin is proposing is to amend ObamaCare so that these specific Americans are treated differently and are denied the insurance that other federal employees get. Thus making the ObamaCare exchange their only option. That is brazenly punitive.

The absurdity of this is evident when considering what would prevent a similar bill from prohibiting people in some other profession, lawyers or plumbers, from getting insurance from their employers. It is an arbitrary burden that serves no purpose. The ObamaCare exchange is the solution for people who have no other access to health insurance. For them it is a valuable benefit that gives them the opportunity get insurance as part of pool that lowers their costs and assures effective, comprehensive coverage. But for people who have employers who provide insurance the exchange isn’t necessary.

The ScotusCare Act, therefore, is a poorly thought out, vindictive prank that is intended to hurt a perceived political adversary. And it isn’t the first time that Congress has sunk this low. In an even stupider display of irrational vengeance, Congress did the very same thing to themselves. And now members of Congress and their poor, innocent staff, are denied access to the health insurance that other federal employees get. All because some idiots wanted to lash out at something, oblivious to the harm it would cause or to whom.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

What this tells us above all is that Republicans are completely incapable of governing. They are proving once again that their hostility to government is an impenetrable obstacle to acting responsibly, or even maturely. And furthermore, their professed aversion to big government is a facade, otherwise they wouldn’t use the tools of government to arbitrarily punish people. These are the same people who voted more than fifty times to repeal ObamaCare. And even with those failures, and two decisions from the Supreme Court, they continue to insist that they will fight to make sure that millions of American lose their health insurance. What a brilliant campaign platform.

These Republican cretins seem to get a perverse pleasure from putting people’s lives, health, and financial well being in jeopardy. And yet, they still manage to con some dimwitted, tea-sotted people into voting for them. And that’s really stupid.

Boycott Trump: The Donald Declares A War On Latinos That He Can’t Possibly Win

Posted by on June 27, 2015 at 4:35 pm. 26 Comments :

Well, there can be no more doubt about. Donald Trump is the most pathetic ignoramus in the Republican Presidential Clown Car Primary. If it wasn’t bad enough that his laughably embarrassing announcement speech was riddled with falsehoods, or he claims to have a foolproof plan that will “bring ISIS to the table or, beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly,” but he refuses to say what it is, he is now launching a trade war against Latinos, the fastest growing demographic in the American electorate.

Boycott Donald Trump

The war was instigated after Trump insulted Mexican immigrants by saying that “they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” And although he probably thinks that he was being complimentary with his appended assumption, it certainly wasn’t taken that way by those he was insulting. Subsequent to his remarks, the Spanish-language TV network, Univision, announced that they would no longer partner with Trump on his Miss USA Pageant, and would cease all business relationships with Trump.

Univision was not alone in condemning Trump. Many other Latino celebrities, executives, and politicians cited Trump’s vile comments and pledged to avoid associations with him. In one instance that crossed the line of civility, a Univision exec retweeted a photo juxtaposing Trump with Charleston killer, Dylann Roof. The Tweet was quickly deleted despite the obvious similarities in appearance and expression. But not before the poor attempt at humor pierced The Donald’s thin skin.

The war, now raging, saw Trump escalate to threats of lawsuits against Univision. But even more frightening, Trump declared that Univision execs would not be permitted on Trump’s golf courses. That’s a pleasant bit of imagery. Trump is now running restricted country clubs that prohibit Latinos. Somehow, I don’t think that any of them are losing any sleep over not being able to play on Trump’s lawn.

Perhaps the most absurd volley in this battle is Trump’s attempt to get the Republican National Committee to cancel the GOP presidential primary debate on Univision. It’s absurdity rests on the fact that Univision is not scheduled to be hosting a debate, and was explicitly snubbed when the RNC put together their debate plans. RNC Chair Reince Priebus called Univision “a long-term enemy of the Republican Party.” Instead, the RNC went with the number two Spanish-language network, Telemundo, which has half the viewers of Univision and is owned by the GOP-friendly (?) NBC network. So Trump’s temper tantrum to terminate Univision is just another figment of his dementia.

Not surprisingly, Trump has gotten some support from the Wingnut Echo Chamber. One of those digging deep to defend him, Breitbart News, leaped face first into the dump Univision shallow end. An article by their editor, John Nolte, began by agreeing with Trump’s insult to Mexicans saying that “What Donald Trump said about illegal aliens and rape and crime was not untrue.” So Nolte is also a racist who believes that there are eleven million Mexican criminals and rapists in America. As for the Univision debate, Nolte agrees that the broadcast should be removed from the schedule that it already isn’t on. But his brilliant alternative is to have the fictional debate moved to Fox’s Spanish-language network, MundoFox. Nolte apparently thinks that the MundoFox audience of about 170,000 is a better platform for the GOP Comedy Hour than Univision’s 2.1 million (more than ten times greater).

With Trump banishing Univision from his country clubs and trying to get his party to nix a debate that doesn’t exist, he is begging for retaliation. This is something that he would surely regret if Latinos en masse responded by ditching the Trump brand. They could all boycott his golf courses, and his hotels as well. They could refuse to buy his ties, cologne, or other cheesy consumer goods. That includes the Trump line at Macy’s (who should also feel the heat of partnering with a racist). They could shun his real estate properties. And this economic backlash could extend to anyone who is repulsed by Trump’s overt racism. Asians, Saudis, Europeans, and American consumers can and should withhold patronage from him on the basis of his prejudice. And if he thinks he can prevail by blackballing all of them from his golf course, then his reality blind-spot is even bigger than his ego (and that may not be possible according to the laws of physics).

[Update 6/29/15: NBC has announced that they have cut all business ties with Trump. This includes the Apprentice programs and the pageant broadcasts. And while Univision is not a debate host, NBC’s Telumundo is. Will Trump now lobby the RNC to cancel that debate? Stay tuned]

Donald has always been a fraud who is more adept at promoting himself than any business venture. For a sampling of his tendency to fail, take a look at these 12 Donald Trump businesses that no longer exist. There is a reason he embarrasses himself by hosting a TV game show. Can you think of any other billionaire who has the time to do that? Obviously he needs the money. He is no more a businessman than Kim Kardashian.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

What’s more, Trump is a way too obnoxious to get anywhere in politics. It is simply idiotic to say that Mexico “is not out friend,” when they are one of America’s biggest trading partners (second biggest market for exports and third biggest for imports).

The fact that he suffers from Doofus Tourettes Syndrome doesn’t help either. How else do you explain his birtherism, or his recent declarations that “America is a hell hole,” and that “the American dream is dead?” These are not the bumper-stickers of a winner. But they do define the cretinous, narcissistic, anti-personality of Donald Trump. And Democrats couldn’t be more thrilled that he is among those who want to be the banner carriers for the Republican Party in 2016.

God Didn’t Destroy America For Slavery. But Married Gays On ObamaCare?

Posted by on June 26, 2015 at 8:06 pm. 82 Comments :

The Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage must be recognized as legal in all fifty states has set off a right-wing, evangelical hysteria complete with warnings of civil war, natural disasters, and a general descent into the End Times. Anti-gay extremists have declared what amounts to a Teabagger Apocalypse.

Gay Marriage/Slavery

Republican presidential candidates are vowing to ignore the Court’s ruling. They insist that it is unconstitutional, proving that they have no idea what “constitutional” means. They continue to press their religious argument that the United States should adhere to the principles of faith that they hold, rather than honoring America’s religious freedom. They are convinced that this decision will result in their arrest and incarceration, which the decision explicitly forbids.

Christianist activists go even further to assert that America has now gone past the point of no return. They say that God will smite our nation and its people for permitting the freedom to love one another in the way that nature made them. They believe that Christians will be subject to a horror worse than the Holocaust.

The question that none of them can answer is: Why is God so upset about marriage equality when he seems to have let other atrocities go by unpunished? If God were going to destroy America why didn’t he do it when we enslaved, brutalized, and murdered thousands of his children shipped over from Africa? Why didn’t he smite our young nation as it marched westward slaughtering the native inhabitants along the way? Why didn’t God get mad when we murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with nuclear bombs? Even from the Christianist perspective, how could God let America survive after legalizing abortion, which they believe is child murder? Apparently their God is tolerant of dead babies, but the thought of two consenting adults committing themselves to one another for life is deserving of total annihilation. (Or maybe God just has a more rational view with regard to when life begins).

In addition, God has also given immunity to Germany, which continues to thrive despite their abhorrent past; and Russia, the nation led by Stalin whose regime killed millions; and Mao’s China. And today he lets ISIS march through the Middle East leaving untold corpses and misery it its path. If God is judging us humans, and punishing us when we do wrong, what the hell is he waiting for?

The Christian extremists can’t answer that question. They can’t explain why God is itching to turn America to dust, but doesn’t seem to care much about Syria. They just continue to spew their foreboding messages of doom based on nothing but their imaginary fears and whatever they believe will fill the collection plate. That’s why they are now settling on marriage equality as history’s greatest abomination when there is no logic or reason to support such a claim.

In the conservative media there is a rush to idiocy, as Fox News wonders whether people will now be allowed to marry in groups, or to marry their pets, or to engage in pedophilia or incest. Glenn Beck is worried that this decision will result in him being thrown off of radio by Feds who he thinks can now regulate speech. Others vow to defy the law and, if necessary, resort to revolution.

Reminder: We’re talking about the legal status of a state of cohabitation, not killing babies, gassing Jews, or owning human beings. What kind of God do these people believe in who regards the definition of marriage as worthy of eternal damnation, but not those other atrocities? And what are they so worried about anyway? Isn’t Armageddon the final stage of man’s tribulations on Earth, after which the righteous rise to Heaven to sit at God’s side in paradise for eternity? Don’t they want that to happen, the sooner the better?

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Given the absurdity of their thought processes, you have to wonder why anyone is taking them seriously. They can’t justify their outrage. They can’t even make sense of their own beliefs. If there is a judgmental God who values intelligence and reason, then the human race may actually have something to worry about.

[Addendum:] Much of the discourse that has developed in comments is focused on the question of whether the Bible or Jesus condemns, or even mentions homosexuality. That’s an interesting question, but it is not the one posed in this article. Near the beginning of the article the question is asked: “Why is God so upset about marriage equality when he seems to have let other atrocities go by unpunished?” And none of those posting their interpretations of scripture regarding the Bible’s stance on being gay answers that. Even if we were to accept the position that being gay is a sin, it still doesn’t explain why God would destroy America and its 360 million residents because a law honoring religious freedom (which is a founding principle of the country) is upheld by the high court to protect a minority of the population, when far worse atrocities went unpunished. Clearly the ultra-pious among us are feverishly struggling to find an argument that makes them feel comfortable holding a position that is patently irrational, even if it’s an argument that has nothing to do with topic at hand.

Republicans Despondent Over ObamaCare Should Be Sending The Supreme Court Fruit Baskets

Posted by on June 25, 2015 at 2:50 pm. 1 Comments :

Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court upholding the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is being portrayed in the media as an historic victory for President Obama. And, to be sure, the ruling does affirm the constitutionality of the law and prevents the cancellation of more than six million health insurance policies nationwide.

However, from a political perspective, the big winners are the Republican Party. Chief Justice John Roberts really pulled their butts out of the fire with his decision finding that…

“In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people. […] Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

For the rest of the day, and throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, you will hear the moaning and gnashing of teeth of disingenuous Republicans pretending to be disappointed by the ruling. In fact, they could not be happier. This ruling allows them to run on a platform of repealing what they claim is a disastrous law that curtails all freedoms and sets the course of the nation toward Armageddon.

ObamaCare Supreme Court

Had the Court ruled against the subsidies, millions of Americans would have lost their health insurance, and the the remainder would have been subject to higher premiums as the pool of the insured became smaller and sicker. In that scenario, Republicans would have had to run the gauntlet of enraged voters who were suffering the consequences of the GOP’s greedy self-interest. Most of those voters would have been from red states and the south where the most recipients of subsidies from federal exchanges reside.

As a result of the this ruling, the GOP will still run on a “repeal and replace” campaign, but they won’t have to do it with their own constituents breathing down their necks in disgust. Instead they will lament the corrupt socialists on the Court and promise to deliver something better if they win the White House and Congress in 2016. Never mind that they have made that promise for more than six years but have never produced a viable replacement. To their credit/shame, they have voted more than fifty times to repeal ObamaCare.

On the other hand, Democrats won the legal and logical battle with this ruling. But they lost the opportunity to run against a Republican Party that had stolen the health insurance from millions of Americans. One of the great ironies of democracy is that it is harder to run on your accomplishments than it is to run on your opponents’ failures. So while millions of voters who were rescued from the heartlessness of the GOP by this ruling should be grateful to Democrats for passing the legislation, their gratitude will be harder to translate into votes than if the Court had struck down the bill and they could vote their disapproval of Republicans.

In the final analysis, it is far better that the Court upheld the subsidies because, politics aside, real people’s real lives hang in the balance. For whatever period of time that ObamaCare may have been obstructed by a negative ruling, Americans would have suffered both financially and medically. Indeed, people without access to health care would have become sicker and even died. And those who survived would have lost much of their financial security, including their homes and retirement savings. So if Democrats have to try harder to get their message across, then so be it.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

In light of that, every time you hear a Republican whining about the awful Supreme Court decision, remember these two things: 1) They are actually ecstatic that it takes them off the hook for all the outraged voters who would have lost their insurance had the decision gone the other way. And 2) Their feigned despair is actually an expression of disappointment that millions of people didn’t get shafted and forced to face poor health and bankruptcy, which is what they were ostensibly rooting for.

Off His Meds: Bill O’Reilly’s Lunatic Rant That Only “Lunatic Fringe” Are Racist

Posted by on June 24, 2015 at 8:26 pm. 5 Comments :

Bill O’Reilly has a long history of refusing to acknowledge reality. He has adamantly denied that there are any homeless veterans in America. He has refused to accept that Christians are a privileged majority. And now he is staunchly insisting that racism is a nearly non-existent problem that is only represented by what he calls the “lunatic fringe.”

Bill O'Reilly

On last night’s episode of “The Factor” {video below) O’Reilly pressed that point until the veins on his forehead nearly burst. It was a vivid display of rancor, mostly aimed at his guest, Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers. Considering that Powers is generally a weak version of a Fox liberal, O’Reilly’s assault seemed grossly overplayed. He shouted, interrupted and barked orders at Powers as if she was his…slave? And all because Powers made the absurd claim that “racism is a serious issue in this country, and I don’t know why you are so unable to see that.”

Frustrated with Powers’ reasonableness, O’Reilly shifted to his other guest, wingnut pundit Monica Crowley. She was much more accommodating to O’Reilly’s forced perspective as she asserted that America’s enemies like ISIS and Russia are trying to take down the country from the outside, while the “left” is trying to take it down from the inside. This elicited some audible sighs from Powers which O’Reilly simply could not abide. He admonished her saying that “You’re snortin’ out there and I want you to knock it off.” That’s because only O’Reilly can interrupt people rudely, which he did repeatedly to Powers. Then he sought to brag about how magnanimous white folks have been over the years:

O’Reilly: O’Reilly: We are trying to overcome the legacy [of racism]. How? Laws, civil rights legislation, fast track, entitlements, affirmative action. I mean, how many more programs can we have?

O’Reilly didn’t specify what legislation he was referring to, and he also didn’t mention the recent dilution of landmark civil rights laws by the right-wing Supreme Court. However, he did include fast track in his list, which has nothing to do with civil rights. Nor does entitlements, which are available for, and mostly received by, white citizens. Then O’Reilly contends that any racism in America is just the “lunatic fringe.” To which Powers responds…

Powers: No, it’s not the lunatic fringe. There are actually a lot of people in this country who are racist. And you just refuse…I really have to wonder, how many black friends do you have?
O’Reilly: (ignoring the question) Most Americans are not racist. They’re not. If you think most Americans are racist I’m ashamed of you.
Powers: First of all, I didn’t say most Americans are racist.
O’Reilly: You just said it.

Actually, as the video shows, Powers did not say that most Americans are racist. But that didn’t stop O’Reilly from shouting her down with his false allegation. And he continued to repeat his characterization of America’s racists as a trivial minority, despite the fact that there are over a thousand hate groups in the country and race-based crimes are committed every day. Certainly O’Reilly doesn’t have any personal experience with racism. After all, he’s the guy that went to Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem and was surprised that “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'”

This is just the most recent demonstration of the severe psychological defect that O’Reilly is suffering from. He is a bully and and liar and a purposeful distorter of reality. His sickness even extends to his supposed friends and colleagues, like Powers.

Despite how obviously wrong he was in this argument, he will neither acknowledge it nor apologize. That’s just the way tyrants and emotional terrorists operate. It may get him ratings, because there are enough meatheads in the Fox demographic who enjoy this sort of manufactured melodrama, but it doesn’t give him any credibility or dignity as a TV pundit or a person.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Update: O’Reilly defended his lunatic rant the following night with claims that the far left is advancing a narrative that all of America is awash in white supremacy. Of course, that is not what anyone on the left (far or otherwise) is saying. They are simply acknowledging the reality that there are some white supremacists in America, along with other garden variety bigots. O’Reilly goes on to glorify Fox News and lament the lack of fairness in the rest of the media because brazenly racist, wingnut websites like Daily Caller, Breitbart, WorldNetDaily, and Newsmax, don’t get enough attention. He says “You want a war, you got a war. I’m not gonna sit here anymore and take this garbage.” Something tells me he is gonna sit there, like he always does. He’s just gonna bitch about it louder.

Sarah Palin Fired From Fox News (Again)

Posted by on June 24, 2015 at 12:57 pm. 4 Comments :

Politico is reporting that Fox News has declined to renew Sarah Palin’s contract which expired June 1. This development might have been predicted based on Palin’s recent history of appearances (or lack thereof) on the network. In fact, News Corpse did predict it back on June 3, in an article titled “Missing From Fox News: The Incredible Disappearing Sarah Palin,” that revealed her mysterious absence from her cable news home.

Sarah Palin Fired by Fox News

“More ominous from the perspective of Palin, and those who need a regular fix of her unique brand of incoherence, she has been absent from her duties as a Fox News contributor. The last appearance on the network seems to have been in January on Sean Hannity’s program. That booking four months ago was clearly arranged as an attempt to recover from a speech she gave at Wingnut Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Summit, where she so embarrassed herself that even fellow conservatives were turning their heads in shame.” […]

“Palin’s demeanor was so unpleasant that it would be understandable if Hannity and other Fox News hosts are now reluctant to invite her back. Or maybe she’s busy with her web video channel. Nah, that can’t be it. She only posted nine videos the whole month of May for a total of 20 minutes of programming. A more likely scenario is that a Fox honcho (i.e. CEO Roger Ailes) has decided that Palin is now a liability as the 2016 campaign season heats up and they don’t want her around screwing up their plans to send a Republican to the White House.”

So the paucity of Palin’s bookings was no accident. She was unceremoniously dumped without a farewell or a tribute or even a press release offering best wishes for what ever she does to make a laughing stock of herself in the future. This should leave her more time to focus on her neglected web video channel. Or maybe not. Since her dismissal from Fox she has spent even less time there, having posted only five videos in June so far, for a total of less than seven minutes. And yet she still makes her glassy-eyed disciples pay the full $9.95 a month for her lame video selfies and stream of unconsciousness meanderings.

Palin’s last appearance on Fox seems to have been on June 8, where she defended the repulsive Duggar family. It was a typically dimwitted tirade of the sort that may have been the inspiration for her now ex-boss Roger Ailes calling her an idiot. Although there is no shortage of reasons to hold that opinion, including Palin’s campaign to impeach President Obama for both solving and not solving the debt crisis, or her infamous and mythical death panels.

No wonder Ailes had fired her once before. It was back in January of 2013, when the story was that Fox offered a low-ball contract renewal that she was certain to reject. Six months later they made up and Palin was back on Fox. The reasons for the reconciliation run from Ailes’ admission that he rehired her to “piss off the people that wanted her dead,” to the reality that her finances took a nosedive after she departed from her Fox News perch.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So what’s next for the Quitta from Wasilla? She still has her low-rated travelogue on the Sportsman Channel. She still has her Facebook page. And she still has an abundance of fans too stupid to grasp what the rest of America has already realized: That Palin is a grifter who has never had an original thought or an ambition that didn’t involve enriching herself. It is always comedians who are first to suffer when a cartoon character like Palin leaves the stage. But this couldn’t have happened at a better time, since Donald Trump just announced that he is running for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. Hallelujah.

Murdoch’s Media Machine Digs Desperately For Anti-Clinton Dirt

Posted by on June 23, 2015 at 3:21 pm. 7 Comments :

Republicans just got a jolt of reality smashed in their faces by a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing that Hillary Clinton is wildly popular among Democrats (92%) and is beating the GOP front-runners by substantial margins (Jeb Bush by eight points, Marco Rubio by ten, Scott Walker by fourteen). This is after much of the right-wing media has been crowing about how Clinton is supposedly damaged goods due to the manufactured scandals that have been aimed at her. Fox News in particular has been almost giddy reporting that Clinton’s reputation for trustworthiness has allegedly been tarnished by Fox-generated stories about emails and charities and Benghazi.

The new poll results indicate that the glee in the imagineering suites at Fox may be premature. So something in the realm of Rupert Murdoch must be done to churn up the Clinton-loathing and cheer up the Fox viewers. And they apparently have settled on their plan.

Clinton Bash

The Murdoch-owned New York Post just published a story by Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash,” the the widely debunked book from Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing subsidiary. The Post article then became the topic of a segment on Murdoch’s Fox News program “Fox & Friends.” The article was also re-posted on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. This is obviously an effort to flood the zone with as many Murdoch-run outlets as possible. The article features a headline that will likely score the Delusional Headline of the Week Award: “Clinton Cash Author Demolishes Hillary’s Self-Defense.” That headline is completely accurate – as long as your definition of “demolish” is “to utterly fail to rationally impair.”

Schweizer attempts to rebut some recent comments made by Clinton in response to a reporter’s inquiry. She was asked about her role in approving the sale of a uranium mining company to a Russian enterprise. She answered clearly that she had no role in the decision as it does not fall into the purview of the Secretary of State. Schweizer seems to have been incapable of understanding that response and set about to “demolish” it in three steps. Here is what Post readers and Fox viewers are supposed to think is a demolition of Clinton’s defense in Schweizer’s own words:

“First, nine investors who profited from the uranium deal collectively donated $145 million to Hillary’s family foundation … But Hillary expects Americans to believe she had no knowledge [of it].”

The issue of donations to the Clinton Foundation is old news that has been extensively analyzed and dismissed for lack of any trace of wrongdoing. There are thousands of donors to the Foundation which, unlike similar groups, fully discloses who their donors are. And with all of that information available, there has not been a single proven allegation of the Clintons trading favors for contributions. Furthermore, Clinton has never said that she had no knowledge of these affairs, just that the decisions were made at a lower level within the State Department. Therefore, there could not have been any influence peddling.

“Second, during her Sunday interview, Clinton was asked about the Kremlin-backed bank that paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a single speech delivered in Moscow. Hillary’s response? She dodged the question completely.”

What makes this assertion interesting is that the paragraph following the one in which Schweizer accuses Clinton of dodging the question completely, includes her explicit answer to the question. Some dodge. Clinton said plainly that “The timing doesn’t work.” because the speech, and the compensation for it, came “before I was Secretary of State.” So having failed to make any sense, Schweizer shifts gears to point to an entirely different financial transaction about which Clinton was not asked. Even so, without having been asked, her prior response stating that she could not have traded any favors since she was not making the decision applies to this transaction as well.

“Third, Clinton correctly notes in the interview that ‘there were nine government agencies who had to sign off on that deal.’ What she leaves out, of course, is that her State Department was one of them.”

Not only did Clinton correctly note that nine agencies are required to sign off on the deal in question, she has repeatedly noted that the State Department was one of them. In fact, it was Clinton’s staff that corrected the error in Schweizer’s book that omitted this fact. So Clinton did not leave out the State Department’s role, but Schweizer did leave out the role of the other agencies. What’s more, he continues to suggest that there are some financial shenanigans on Clinton’s part, even though she could not push through any favors for donors because without the other agency head’s approvals there would be no deal.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

In the end, Schweizer failed to coherently rebut a single thing that Clinton said in her interview. His only recourse was to incredulously ask whether Americans can believe Clinton’s version of events. Well, according to the poll cited above, the answer seems to be an enthusiastic “yes.” And all of the effort, investment, and deceit that went into this full-court press by the Murdoch media against Clinton seems to have been wasted. Unfortunately, that is not likely to deter these unethical, pseudo-journalistic cretins from doing more of the same for the next year and a half. So settle in for a campaign season of viciousness and lies, because that’s all the right has to work with.

WTF? The Childish Fox News Reaction To Obama Saying Nig…. Um, The N Word

Posted by on June 22, 2015 at 5:43 pm. 8 Comments :

President Obama spent an hour in Marc Maron’s garage to record a podcast with the popular comedian (full audio below). They discussed numerous subjects including politics, climate change, family, and media. And given that the tragic massacre in South Carolina was just a few days earlier, it would have been surprising if they had not also talked about race and racism in America. But leave it to Fox News to inflate a trivial segment of an hour-long interview in order to insult the President and distract from the other important issues that were being discussed.

During the portion of the interview that dealt with race (@46:25), Obama spoke movingly about his personal experiences and the broader context of race relations in America. At one point he said…

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 2-300 years prior.”

Oh lordy me. Pass the smellin’ salts Martha. The President uttered the unmentionable, and the inevitable demise of Western civilization will surely follow. Everyone knows that in adult conversations you have to spell naughty words rather than communicate with other grown-ups in a manner that reflects intellectual maturity. Because if you say the “F” word, or the “N” word, or the “X” word (don’t ask), no one will know that you really mean a word with more letters that will cause your ears to seal up. Responsible adults know to always speak as if you’re addressing children or others with stunted emotional development (or, as it turns out, Fox News viewers).

It’s notable that conservatives suddenly find this word so objectionable as an expression of hatred and division, yet they don’t have any problem with the official banner of hateful dividers, the Confederate flag.

Obama Confederate Flag

The reaction by conservative media to POTUS dropping the “N” Bomb was swift and stupid. Taking the lead, of course, was Fox News, where their early morning gabfest, Fox & Friends, accused Obama’s language of being beneath the dignity of the office of the presidency. Saying “‘N’ word” is so much more dignified. And besides, Fox News has declared that racism is over so there is no need to even bring the subject up anymore, much less use controversial language.

The Curvy Couch Potatoes, Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, both speculated that Obama might also use the word in a State of the Union address because, in their cartoon brains, whenever someone uses a word in one venue, it will then be used everywhere else: State of the Union, United Nations, The Tonight Show, PTA meetings, etc.

Throughout the morning (and afternoon and evening) the editorial mandate on Fox News was to keep repeating this non-story that involved a five-second blip from an hour long interview. Perhaps the most strikingly obtuse opinion was rendered by Fox contributor Deneen Borelli, who called Obama the “Rapper-in-Chief,” and said that “He has really dragged in the gutter speak of rap music. So now he is the first president of rap, of street?”

Really? Borelli’s attempt to equate a substantive discussion of race, wherein the President made thoughtful remarks about lingering problems, with the provocative creative license exercised by rappers, is beyond ludicrous. Apparently she would also blanch and\or giggle at the words breast or penis if a doctor used them in a medical context, because in her mind it’s the same as if they were used in a dirty limerick.

On Fox News and elsewhere, Obama was accused of using the word as a “grand distraction.” The absurd hilarity of that charge rests in the fact that it is only the right-wing media that is using this to distract. They plucked the sentence fragment out of a long, in-depth interview and ignored everything else that was discussed. As an indication of just how fixated they were on Obama’s use of this word, they completely missed what he said about Fox News:

Obama: There’s this big gap between who we are as a people and how our politics expresses itself. And part of that has to do with gerrymandering and SuperPACs and lobbyists, and a media that is so splintered now that we’re not in a common conversation. And the fact that if you watch Fox News you inhabit a completely different world with different facts than if you read the New York Times. And that becomes self-reinforcing. And there’s a profit both for politicians and for news outlets simplifying and polarizing.

Fox News Obama Maron

Ordinarily, when Obama invokes Fox News, the network takes immediate and prolonged offense, even if it isn’t due, as is the case here where Obama also cited the New York Times. Regardless, Fox generally strikes back viciously and condemns Obama for trying to belittle or intimidate the alleged “news” channel that spends most of its time demonizing him. So for Fox to give this allusion a pass shows how seriously they were overwhelmed by the power of the “N” word’s utterance. Or at least it shows how seriously they are committed to using this to bash the President.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

[Update:] This afternoon the governor of South Carolina announced that she would back a plan to remove the flag from the grounds of the state capitol. She said that it was time to show that state property belongs to all South Carolinians. That’s funny, because all the South Carolinians who have been offended by the Confederate flag for decades never bothered these southerners until a white, racist brandishing the flag murdered nine African-Americans in a church. Let’s see how the other states that feature or allow the Confederate flag respond to this.

Bill O’Reilly Left Out Of Discussion On Lying Anchors By Fox News Media Liars

Posted by on June 21, 2015 at 4:50 pm. 8 Comments :

On this week’s episode of Fox News MediaBuzz with Howard Kurtz, the host invited TV critic David Zurawik to continue the pummeling of Brian Williams, who NBC just announced would be taking a role on MSNBC rather than returning to the anchor desk on the Nightly News.

Brian Williams has only himself to blame for the predicament he finds himself in. It was wholly uncalled for when he invented an exciting but false narrative of his exploits in Iraq. NBC is justified in reassigning him, as would any network be after discovering that their anchor had embellished his resume with fabrications. The problem here is that Fox News spent an entire segment pontificating on the issue of credibility without paying the least bit of attention to their own disgraced anchor, Bill O’Reilly.

Bill O'Reilly

O’Reilly was discovered to have lied far more seriously and often than Williams. And after being caught with incontrovertible proof, O’Reilly continued to deny the charges and slander his critics. Unlike Williams, he showed absolutely no remorse or contrition. He accepted no responsibility and even hung his former colleagues out to dry, implying that they were lying. For a quick refresher, here is what News Corpse reported when O’Reilly’s lies were first revealed:

ONE: The parade of falsehoods began with O’Reilly’s claim to have been “on the ground in active war zones” during the Falkland Islands war with the United Kingdom. He wasn’t. And now there is video of him reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina that contradicts the accounts he gave afterward.

TWO: O’Reilly also claimed to have been outside the Florida home of George de Mohrenschildt where he said that he heard the shotgun blast that marked his suicide. De Mohrenschildt was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald and was scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing on the JFK assassination. However, a recording of a contemporaneous phone call shows that O’Reilly wasn’t even in Florida when de Mohrenschildt died.

THREE: On another occasion, O’Reilly told a story about how he “saw nuns get shot in the back of the head” in El Salvador. That also was not true and O’Reilly himself admitted it in a statement that said he had actually just seen some “images of violence” but did not witness the incidents himself. Oddly, while admitting that his original assertions were false, he neither apologized nor acknowledged any wrongdoing.

FOUR: This was a similar case where O’Reilly spoke of his visit to Northern Ireland. While there he claimed to have witnessed bombings, however, when challenged Fox News issued a statement similar to the one about El Salvador that said he had merely seen pictures.

FIVE: Then there was the time that O’Reilly was covering the riots in Los Angeles sparked by the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King. He claimed to have been the target of attacks by rioters, however, his associates covering the story deny that any of them were assaulted or injured. They do, however, contend that some tensions flared due to O’Reilly being an asshole.

These fabrications by the guy who pretends to be running a “No Spin Zone” are hardly the only times he has lied. There have been numerous other episodes including bragging about winning two Peabody Awards (he didn’t), and claiming to be a registered Independent (he was a Republican for several years at the time).

Some other incidents may not have been lies technically, just horribly wrong statements that he refused to correct. For instance, he once argued that there were no homeless veterans in America; as proof that his boycott of France was working he offered a report by the “Paris Business Review,” which does not exist; and he insisted, after doing extensive research, that no one on Fox ever said that people who didn’t pay ObamaCare penalties would be subject to prison. PolitiFact gave that one a “Pants on Fire.”

All of that was swept under the rug as Kurtz and Zurawik lit into Williams and suggested that he should not have been given a second chance at MSNBC. Zurawik was apoplectic as he insisted that Williams should have been “banished” and sanctimoniously declared that “the moral reasoning here is so tortured that you have to wonder why would NBC not just end its relationship with him.” He went on to preach about journalistic standards saying that “people who lie in the news business, if you give everybody a second chance, we’re going to have no standards.”

Of course, none of this moralizing is meant to refer to Fox’s own primetime dissembler, Bill O’Reilly. And for some reason Zurawik and Kurtz are not concerned about the morality or credibility of a network that not only doesn’t punish their liars, but lets them continue their multi-million dollar careers without so much as a sideways glance. The reason for that, of course, is that O’Reilly’s lies are not regarded as violating Fox’s standards. In fact, he is the perfect representative of the Fox News brand. He’s the biggest liar on the network of lies. If the bulk of your programming is littered with partisan bullcrap, than Bill O’Reilly isn’t a problem at all. He’s your poster boy.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.