Month: February 2021

Congress Asks Cable Companies Why They Carry Disinformation By Fox News, Newsmax, Etc.

Posted by on February 22, 2021 at 11:50 am. 2 Comments :

The deliberate mission of right-wing “news” operations to deceive the public has been an ongoing threat to American democracy. Their aim has been to spread disinformation in order to advance the interests of far-right agendas and politicians. And they have demonstrated a total lack of concern as to the destructive consequences of their purposefully dishonest propaganda.

Donald Trump, Fox News, Lies

The efforts by conservative outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, and their confederates on talk radio, has contributed to a culture of rightist hostility. They seek to sow discord by propagating conspiracy theories which have resulted in tangible harm to the American people.

That harm includes exacerbating the contagion and fatalities of COVID-19 by flagrantly lying about its severity and even portraying it as a hoax. Likewise, these conservative outlets have disseminated Donald Trump’s Big Lie that Joe Biden stole the election and is thus an illegitimate president. Those repeatedly debunked allegations resulted in the deadly assault on Congress on January 6th by Trump’s Insurrectionists.

The threats posed by these factories of falsehoods are now coming under scrutiny by Congress. The Communications and Technology Subcommittee has announced that they will hold a hearing on Wednesday, February 24, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Their announcement stated that…

“‘The prolonged severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attack on our Capitol on January 6 have driven home a frightening reality: the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,’ said [Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank] Pallone and [Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Mike] Doyle. ‘Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.'”

The Committee sent letters to cable operators such Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, and Verizon, asking about their role in “the spread of dangerous misinformation.” According to the New York Times the Committee sought to know…

‘What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?’ […and…] ‘Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date? If so, why?'”

It’s about time this problem has been addressed by Congress. Although their inference that Fox News, et al, ever had any “devotion to journalistic integrity” teeters on the absurd. Some of these news distorters have already been named in billion dollar lawsuits for defamation. The Biden Communications Office has called into question their White House press credentials. And even a member of the Murdoch family has castigated the family business as a provider of “disinformation” and “toxic politics.”

While it’s easy to point out the offenses to journalism by these organizations, it’s much harder to craft a constitutional remedy. Nobody wants to inhibit free speech or freedom of the press. Some version of an updated “Fairness Doctrine” could be drafted if there is a way to make it applicable to cable and digital entities.

However there are free market solutions that can be implemented without the involvement of Congress. Consumers can let their cable and/or streaming providers know that they are not willing to pay for services that spread dangerous lies and encourage violence. Most of the money made by programmers like Fox News comes from cable access fees, not advertising. But advertisers could also be targeted in public preference campaigns. For more information, see UnFox My Cable Box.

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

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

Fox News Trump-Fluffer Accuses Biden of Plotting the ‘Take Down of America’

Posted by on February 21, 2021 at 3:17 pm. 4 Comments :

Joe Biden has only been president for one month. In that short span of time he has accomplished much, including drafting a COVID relief bill (that Republicans oppose); undoing Donald Trump’s efforts to sabotage Obamacare; rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization; introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill; all while battling on behalf of working people to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

Jeanine Pirro Fox News

Meanwhile, Fox News is working overtime to malign Biden’s achievements by inventing controversies that strain credulity. They are so bereft of legitimate criticisms that they are attacking the romance in Jill and Joe Biden’s marriage, and the grooming of their dogs. That’s a state of desperation that is truly transcendent.

Among the most prominent scandal mongers is Fox’s “Judge” Jeanine Pirro. On Saturday night she delivered an opening monologue that chastised Biden for an array of offenses that exist only in her perverted mind. She contrived nightmarish scenarios of “a daily caravan of 3,000 untested, unvaccinated illegals … being released into our towns, cities, and villages.” That’s a flagrant lie. Any immigrants granted entry into the U.S. have been tested affirmed negative. Pirro also whined that “Joe Biden says we won’t be in the clear on COVID until Christmas. And he wants us double mask. I don’t know about you, but I can’t breathe with one mask.” Her diatribe went on, saying that…

“It has been one month since Joe Biden has assumed the role of commander-in-chief. In that one month we have gone from President Trump’s policy of “America First” to Biden’s new policy, “America Last.”

Notice that Pirro places the prefix of “President” before Trump’s name, but not Biden’s. This is her way of perpetuating the Big Lie that Biden stole the election and that Trump is still president. Then she introduces what she thinks is the clever bastardization of Trump’s slogan “America First,” which he stole from early 1900’s American fascists. She continued…

“The end of an empire occurs when the leader of a country decides to make his country last. When he believes his country is not so great, And when his actions and policies make it clear he intends to make his country last. After a magnificent run of over 200 years with America the world’s number one superpower, we are left with a leader who believes in globalism, open borders, world equity in vaccines, even before all Americans are vaccinated.”

Pirro apparently doesn’t regard the storming of Congress by violent, anti-democratic hordes to be indicative of the end of an empire. But she does believe in rattling off a bunch of policies (globalism, open borders, etc.) that Biden has never supported. And she still isn’t through…

“We are watching in real time the take down of America, attributable to Joe Biden’s “America Last” policy.”

Once again, a forced invasion of the Capitol by murderous cretins proudly bearing flags representing the Confederacy and the Trump Cult is a far more literal “take down of America” than Biden’s agenda advancing the rights and welfare of working people.

Pirro utterly failed to make any case for her accusations. It was simply a spittle-inflected barrage of invectives and purposeful lies. And it was emblematic of what Fox News does every day to disparage the majority of the American people who value the progressive ideals embodied in the Constitution.

Last November the American people made it clear that they favor inclusion over prejudice, unity over division, and freedom over authoritarianism. And nothing that Pirro and Fox News says or does will change that.

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

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

Pence Aide on D.C. Riot: Trump Got ‘Bad Advice’ and Was Dumb Enough to Take It

Posted by on February 21, 2021 at 10:28 am. 4 Comments :

The apologists for Donald Trump scattered furiously to defend him after the January 6th attack on Congress by the Trump Insurrectionists. Some said that he didn’t overtly incite the riots by telling his cult followers to engage in violence. Others said the rioters were actually Antifa provocateurs disguised as MAGAts. Both of those excuses have been thoroughly contradicted by the facts.

Mike Pence, Donald Trump

On Sunday morning there was a new justification offered to explain Trump’s responsibility for the assault that resulted in at least five deaths and many more injured. Not to mention the stain on American democracy by people who hate the very thought of it. Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Mike Pence, was interviewed on CNN and asked about Trump’s inflammatory behavior that led to the riots. He replied that…

“I think, unfortunately, the President was getting bad advice from people who had articulated that the Vice-President would have some sort of extraordinary powers that had never been used before in the history of our country during Electoral College meetings and certifications by Congress. So that’s what we were heading into on the 6th [of January]. But I think that the Vice-President knows he swore an oath to the Constitution and was gonna fulfill that.”

This answer serves a dual purpose. First, it’s an attempt on Short’s part to absolve his former boss and Trumpy lapdog, Pence, of any liability. But more significantly, Short is trying to place the blame for Trump’s months-long incendiary and seditious rabble-rousing on unnamed “advisers” leading Trump astray.

The problem with this weaselly strategy is that it ends up holding no one accountable. But even worse, it implies that Trump is so stupid that he took advice that was legally preposterous and manifestly unconstitutional. Trump’s stupidity will not come as a shock to anyone. But the fact that Pence’s top aide is proposing it to vindicate Trump reveals that the Trump contingent has run out of plausible excuses.

In the meantime, Another Trump flunky, Republican minority whip Steve Scalise, continues to perpetuate the Big Lie that sparked the Trump Insurrection in the first place. After all the time that has passed – and the evidence that has been revealed – Scalise still can’t say without qualification that Joe Biden was elected legitimately. This is the sort of dangerous rhetoric that will fuel the next series of riots.

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

PRIORITIES: While Texas Freezes, Lindsey Graham Stumps for Trump’s Useless Border Wall

Posted by on February 20, 2021 at 10:43 am. 6 Comments :

The Republican Party long ago distinguished itself as a haven for cravenly selfish elitists whose primary purpose is to lower taxes on the rich, eliminate regulations that save lives, suppress minorities, and advance the agenda of extremist evangelicals. This week the GOP had some outstanding opportunities to affirm their commitment to that mission.

Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump

Without question, the biggest story of the week was the devastating winter storm that bombarded Texas and much of the eastern United States. What we learned from that ongoing catastrophe was that Republicans were more interested in politicizing the tragedy than in doing anything constructive to help their suffering constituents.

For instance, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott rushed to Fox News to deflect blame for the failures of his administration to out of state Democrats and the “Green New Deal,” which has not been enacted into law anywhere, especially Texas. Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz jetted off to the sunny climes of Cancun, Mexico, with his family, rather than stay at home and do his job during troubled times. Humiliated by such a callous abandonment of his duty to his state, he frantically returned and immediately got to work making excuses on Fox News, where he blamed his minor children for his own poor decisions.

On Saturday, the GOP’s Senior Trump-fluffing Senator, Lindsey Graham demonstrated the same lack of human decency. After spending time with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Lindsey boarded a plane for the southern border where he could raise an issue that is topmost on the minds almost nobody: Trump’s idiotic, useless, and vain border wall. Graham’s cross-country jaunt to serve as Trump’s mouthpiece resulted in a propaganda video wherein he asserted that…

“The Biden Administration apparently has decided to stop plugging this hole here. As a result the Border Patrol is now gonna try to have a camera and people sitting up on that hill to watch them as they flow in. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put this section of the wall together? What good comes from allowing this hole to continue to exist? This wall is here for a purpose. To keep people from coming into our country illegally,”

For the record, what Graham is referring to is a thirty foot space along a double-tracked portion of the wall on a border that is 2,000 miles long. The other track at this point is complete, so if the wall is capable of preventing entry (it isn’t), it would already be doing that. Also, notice all of “them” who are flowing into the country in this video. Frightening, isn’t it?

This is what Graham dropped everything to do. Does it help the people of Texas who are freezing and dying? Does it further efforts to combat the coronavirus? Does it even address the issue of immigration, for which Joe Biden and the Democrats just introduced a comprehensive bill that Graham could be working on? Of course not. It’s ironic that, while Graham is obsessed with a wall (that Mexico was supposed to pay for) to prevent people from Mexico getting into the U.S., Ted Cruz couldn’t get out of the U.S. and into Mexico fast enough.

This is so emblematic of the Republican Party. They have a perverse set of priorities that seem to be perpetually at odds with what the American people actually want and need. And when they aren’t trying to distract the public with politically partisan culture war demagoguery, they are lashing out with vicious attacks that have no basis in fact or reality. Take for example this crackpottery by Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly who, unable to substantively criticize President Biden, he goes after one of his dogs:

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

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

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.

Despite Their Vote, GOP Senators Actually Think Trump is Guilty of Inciting Riots

Posted by on February 16, 2021 at 12:36 pm. 3 Comments :

The Senate trial of Donald Trump for inciting the deadly Capitol Hill insurrection on January 6th is over. But the debate over Trump’s guilt or innocence is not. While Trump was judged to be guilty by a significant, bipartisan majority of 57 senators – the most ever for an impeached president – the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority to convict Trump. But that is not the whole story.

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Donald Trump, Prison

The folks at Just Security, an online forum based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, did an analysis of the public comments made by all of the senators with regard to their positions on Trump’s culpability for the assault on the Capitol by Trump’s Seditionist Brigades. The results reveal that even those who voted to acquit Trump were not absolving him of responsibility:

“Some senators clearly voted in support of Trump’s defense against the allegations. Other senators, however, indicated that the House Managers proved their case but that the senator did not vote to convict on the theory that the Senate lacked jurisdiction to try a former president. […]

[A]s a matter of law, it is technically inaccurate to call many of these 43 senators’ decisions a vote to ‘acquit,’ at least not on the question of guilt or innocence. Indeed, over half of the 43 senators were either critical of Trump or expressed neither criticism nor support for him on the merits.”

So only 11 of the 43 senators who voted to acquit Trump did so because they thought he was not guilty. The rest did so because they thought the Senate couldn’t impeach a former president. Thirteen senators – including the GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – were critical of Trump as “disgraceful” and “responsible” for inciting the insurrectionist riots.

If those senators had voted with the other seven who voted guilty, there would have been more than enough votes to convict Trump. But because the Republicans were intent on letting Trump skate, they exploited a dishonest technicality (that the Senate had previously dispensed with) in order to achieve their pre-determined end.

In short, they chose to vote for political self-interest rather than truth. They chose to stand with a criminal, rather than with their country. And that perfectly defines the character (or lack thereof) of today’s Republican Party.

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.