Day: 1/14/2018

This Fox News Lie About a Uranium One Indictment is Outrageously Stupid, Even for Fox News

Posted by on January 14, 2018 at 2:47 pm. 2 Comments :

Never let it be said that Fox News wouldn’t hype a pile of steaming bullpucky whenever they had an opportunity to do so. The frailty of their so-called logic is often built on making absurd connections between disparate subjects just because they might share a single word, even if they have nothing else in common. And a perfect example of that was aired Sunday Morning on Fox (video below):

Fox News Lies

The headline blaring from Fox News was “1st Indictment in Uranium One Probe.” That would be a pretty significant development in the bogus scandal that Fox News and the Republican Party have been trying to push. Never mind the fact that it has already been fully investigated and no wrongdoing was found. Trump is improperly directing his Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton for imaginary crimes.

The thirty second story on Fox News Sunday morning didn’t address any of the details of the indictment they were reporting. They only raised it long enough to imply that Clinton was somehow involved:

“The first indictment is out in the Justice Department probe of the Clinton State Department Uranium One Deal […] The deal was okayed by the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, giving a Russian company twenty percent of the U.S. uranium.”

Fox News correctly reported that there was an indictment served by the Department of Justice. But that was the only thing that was true in their report. Fox’s claim that this indictment was connected to a probe of Clinton was utterly false. For an honest account of the matter see the report by Reuters who wrote that:

“U.S. authorities have charged a Maryland businessman with bribing a Russian official in an effort to win contracts to ship uranium to the United States. […] Prosecutors allege Lambert, former co-president of a Maryland-based shipping company Transport Logistics International (TLI), bribed a Russian energy official through a series of shell companies in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland in exchange for contracts to ship nuclear fuel to U.S. utilities.”

The debunked conspiracy theory that Trump, Fox News, and other rightist propaganda merchants have tried to hang around Clinton’s neck has to do with the sale of Uranium One, a company in Wyoming that refined uranium for non-military use within the United States. The indictment in this new report was against a Maryland businessman for bribing Russian officials in order to secure a contract to transport uranium from Russia to the U.S. It has nothing to do with Uranium One or Hillary Clinton.

That, however didn’t stop Fox News from connecting the two, and even saying outright that the Maryland deal was approved by the Obama administration and Clinton. It wasn’t. It was strictly a case of a dishonest businessman allegedly trying to get an unfair, illegal advantage for himself. And while the lies Fox News told about Uranium One included the allegation that the deal would send U.S. uranium to Russia (it wouldn’t), this indictment involves a contract to ship Russian uranium into the U.S.

There is nothing remotely connecting these two news stories other than the fact that both involve uranium in some respect. But Fox News reported the Maryland bribery indictment as the “1st Indictment in Uranium One Probe,” which it isn’t related to in any way. It’s like connecting the Charles Manson murders to the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping because both involved someone named Charles. Or more to the point, it’s like connecting Fox to news because it has “news” in its name. Let’s face it, the only reason that Fox News promotes nonsense like this is to distract their dimwitted audience from the very real crimes of Donald Trump. But because they’re so inept, they only end up bringing more attention to their obvious deceptions and refocus the spotlight on the corruption of Trump and his conservative co-conspirators.

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

In a Fit of Petty Vengeance Following His Racist Vulgarity, Trump Declares DACA ‘Dead’

Posted by on January 14, 2018 at 11:46 am. 2 Comments :

From the beginning of his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump has displayed a pattern of bigotry and hatred toward people of color. His campaign announcement speech famously smeared Mexicans as criminals and rapists. So the vulgar insult directed and Haiti and Africa as “shithole countries” should not come as much of a surprise to those who have been paying attention.

Donald Trump

Of particular interest to Trump has been the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected immigrants brought into the United States as children. Trump has occasionally expressed a rather disingenuous support for the program, despite his refusal to take any positive action to preserve it. In fact, last year he unilaterally repealed it by executive action. At the time he pretended to be concerned about the plight of the DACA recipients (Dreamers), but claimed that it would be up to Congress to resolve the matter. He tweeted that:

Four months later Trump found himself in a controversy over his blatantly racist remarks during a meeting with members of Congress. So naturally his reaction was to deflect from the reality of the situation and, blame others for the problem, and make the innocent suffer:

To put the onus on Congress for the problem he created is just plain ludicrous. And it’s made all the worse by the comments he made during the meeting wherein he explicitly deferred to the will of Congress to settle on a bipartisan solution (which they did, but he rejected):

“I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with. I am very much reliant on the people in this room. I know most of the people on both sides. I have a lot of respect for the people on both sides. And my — what I approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with. I have great confidence in the people. If they come to me with things that I’m not in love with, I’m going to do it because I respect them.”

So Trump was committing to accept whatever Congress agreed on. But when presented with that agreement he told them to go to hell. And then there was this exchange with Sen. Diane Feinstein:

Feinstein: What about a clean DACA bill now, with a commitment that we go into a comprehensive immigration reform procedure?
Trump: […] We’re going to do DACA, and then we can start immediately on the phase two, which would be comprehensive. I would like to do that. Go ahead. I think a lot of people would like to see that, but I think we have to do DACA first.

Trump was quickly interrupted by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who frantically sought to correct the President’s miscomprehension of the Republican position on this issue. But it was clear that Trump still didn’t understand where he went wrong after McCarthy’s correction.

It took two days before Trump was sufficiently schooled on his “mistake” to offer any further comments. And the direction he chose to go was to threaten the total demise of DACA and preposterously blame it on Democrats. Even worse, he implied an absurd connection to military funding as a related victim of the dispute. He’s trying to smear Democrats as anti-military even though it has nothing to do with DACA.

That’s just his knee-jerk reaction to any controversy. He thinks if he cites some other popular theme (military or law enforcement, the flag or national anthem, America first, MAGA) he can stir up support from his dimwitted base. And the sad thing about that is that he’s right. In the meantime, let’s not gloss over the fact that Trump has shut the door on DACA for his own partisan and racist reasons.

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