Half-Term Governor Sarah Palin Calls Obama ‘Lackadaisical’ In Racist Rant

Sarah PalinFox News is already getting its money’s worth by re-hiring Sarah Palin. When the need came for an imbecile to provide an incoherent rhetorical jumble of nonsense in response to President’s Obama’s remarks about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Fox was fortunate enough to have Palin back on the payroll. Who else could deliver a level of idiocy that so perfectly meshes with the bigoted leanings of the Fox audience?

President Obama was asked Thursday about his involvement in efforts to bring Snowden back to the United States. His answer was measured and appropriate: “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said. Indeed, there is no justification for engaging in acts of war over one guy who has had a negligible impact on foreign relations. Whatever one thinks of Snowden, his apprehension certainly has no discernible impact on international relations and doesn’t require the attention of the President.

That, however, is not the way Sarah Palin sees it. She appeared on Fox News with her predictable objection to whatever Obama might have done. But in this case she revealed an ugliness that is known to many, but which she tries to disguise.

Palin: “With Obama deciding to just, oh I guess, lead from behind on this issue too, that’s the community organizer in our president. That’s a little bit of that lackadaisical, eh you know, don’t have to take responsibility. And his resume proves he hasn’t had to take responsibility for much in all these years. This is just another issue, another example that falls in line with a community organizer.”

“Lackadaisical?” Surely Palin is aware that this word is associated with derogatory racial stereotypes that have persisted for decades. African-Americans have long been portrayed in the media and popular culture as lazy and shiftless. It’s an enduring insult that is kept in circulation by racists like Palin. And this isn’t the first time she has resurrected a classic vulgarity to attack the President. Last October she reached into her bag of verbal bigotry to say that “President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.”

Even from a substantive perspective, there is no logic in her repulsive condemnation of Obama. If she ever met a community organizer she would know that they are the hardest working people in politics. There is no activity in public life that requires more commitment and devotion to mission than pounding the pavement and securing the support of diverse constituencies in pursuit of a political goal.

But how would Palin know these things when she didn’t even have the fortitude to complete the one term as governor to which she had been elected and for which she had begged the people of Alaska for their support? For someone with such a lazy approach to duty, Palin has a lot of nerve to invoke a repugnant reference to the work habits of others. She doesn’t even have the good sense to educate herself on the issues on which she pontificates in order to avoid appearing the fool that she is. Now that’s lackadaisical.

This is not an isolated incident. This is a pattern for Palin and most of her conservative cohorts. It is repeated frequently on a daily basis. Both racism and lethargy (especially with regard to obtaining and reporting facts), are hallmarks of the Palin wing of the right. They are emblematic of the Tea Party’s absence of moral integrity and commitment to anything other than their narrow self interests. And they are also characteristics that fit squarely into the editorial philosophy of Fox News.

[Note: To those who argue that marking Palin as a racist because she used the word “lackadaisical” is too far a reach, please understand that it is not the word by itself, it is the context and the history. Maligning African-Americans as lazy goes back for decades. Disparaging representations abound, from Stepin Fetchit to “welfare queens.” Like the rest of the kneejerk Obama-haters, Palin has often characterized the President as a determined socialist bent on destroying America. Well, she can’t have it both ways. If Obama is a hard-working tyrant, he can’t also be sluggish lout. And for Palin to portray him as such can only be interpreted as an effort to associate him with the old and offensive stereotype.]

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

The Fox News Campaign To Keep Citizens From Learning About ObamaCare

We all know about the Republican support for a health care system that gouges patients, fails to serve at-risk constituencies, and enriches heartless corporations (who in turn enrich the Republicans). We know about the right-wing’s indifference to families who are thrust into bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills. And we are all too aware of the Tea Party conservatives’ fixation on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which they have voted on thirty-seven times in the House of Representatives knowing full well it would never advance to the senate.

There is no ambiguity in the fact that the GOP is determined to defend a broken system that favors the rich and abandons everyone else to a Randian law of the jungle that guarantees that people will die unnecessarily. And Fox News is a critical component in the anti-health propaganda fest designed to keep the American people ignorant and sick.

Fox News
Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook

In recent days Fox News has been escalating their disinformation campaign by attacking uncontroversial plans to give the American people information about their options under the new law and to educate them about the health insurance exchanges that will be launching next year. Fox has taken the side of the GOP anti-health zealots by criticizing routine efforts to provide the public with details about the program.

Reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to publicize the availability of insurance plans by advertising and otherwise partnering with sports leagues, libraries, and schools have been met with ludicrous objections from the right. They have characterized these efforts as communist-style indoctrination and tyrannical coercion, even though they are nothing more than free market publicity. Fox News anchor Bret Baier went so far as to call it “threatening.”

Bret Baier: Forget reading, writing and arithmetic, you are paying about a million dollars to train public school children in California how to promote President Obama’s health care reform law. […] Officials are promising – or threatening – strict enforcement of the grants with monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

Holy crap! Now the feds want reports to ascertain whether federal grant money is being used effectively. What’s next, concentration camps?

Other plans being discussed include working with the NFL and the NBA to educate citizens about their options. This has been lambasted by right-wingers on Fox who seem to think that providing information to citizens about programs that they are entitled to use is the work of Satan. They call it propaganda, but it is no more propaganda than public service announcements about seat belts or the dangers of drug use.

The only propaganda here is that employed by Fox News who is trying desperately to misrepresent ObamaCare and the efforts to educate the public about it. Their arguments against publicity campaigns that work with sports leagues, schools, and libraries, consist mainly of phony attempts to turn it all into a political debate. However, ObamaCare is not a political debate – it is the law. And consequently, people are entitled to know what it is and how to use it. There is nothing partisan about that.

What Fox and the GOP are hoping to do is to sabotage the new health care law. They want it to fail (like everything else this administration tries to do) so that they can achieve their goal of repeal and restore the previous system that made them all rich, but that left millions of Americans without coverage. And the best way to produce failure is to make sure that the American people are kept ignorant of the program, which would keep enrollment down. So any effort by the government to let the people know what their options are must be shot down by any means necessary.

This campaign of deceit by Fox and their benefactors is meant only to harm citizens who may be interested in improving health care for themselves and their families. It is not an effort to persuade anyone of the political merits of the plan. It merely informs people of what is currently available. But the anti-health right prefers that the nation be kept as ignorant as possible. That’s something that is apparent to any objective person who watches Fox News. But in this case, the result is not merely being ill-informed, it can lead to serious repercussions for the medical well-being of innocent citizens who are more interested in the health of their families than the phony political controversies that Fox is trying to create.

Fox is embarking on a shameful exercise in greed over humanity. And even Fox viewers should be concerned that their network is working so hard to make sure they stay stupid.


ObamaCars: The Latest Loony Fox News Conspiracy Theory

What do you do when you are the national mouthpiece for vile propaganda against a political party and a president that you were created to destroy, but all of your efforts have collapsed into a pile of bullshit due to the complete lack of evidence or even common sense? Well, just ask Fox News who have seen their every attempt to manufacture scandal blow up in their lying faces.

From Benghazi to the IRS, Fox News has struck out in their efforts to hang a juicy controversy around President Obama’s neck. So their answer to the question above is to trot out a brand new conspiracy theory that they invented from scratch: ObamaCars.

Fox News

For more made-up Fox-aganda, get the acclaimed ebook:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth

On Fox & Friends, the curvy couch potatoes were joined by radio shrew Laura Ingraham, Bush’s former press secretary, Dana Perino, and Rupert Murdoch’s personal lawyer, Peter Johnson, Jr. (the man with three names that are all synonyms for penis). In the course of their conversation they introduced a budding scandalette that they clearly believe will rip the heart out of their beastly foe in the White House.

What the Foxies are alleging is that, in the words of Steve Doocy, “there’s a provision in the Immigration bill that could be used to give free cars, motorcycles, scooters, and other vehicles, to young people.” Oh my. That would troubling – if there were even a scintilla of truth to it which, of course, there is not. This laughably ridiculous claim seems to have originated at the Official Birthplace of Laughably Ridiculous Claims, Breitbart News, where they extrapolated a nonsensical analysis of an amendment attached to the bill to allocate funding for youth job programs. The language that Breitbart and Fox found so offensive simply described that the funds were to be used…

“…to provide summer employment opportunities for low-income youth, with direct linkages to academic and occupational learning, and may be used to provide supportive services, such as transportation or child care, that is necessary to enable the participation of such youth in the opportunities.”

“Supportive services,” as regards transportation, are nothing more ominous than bus fare. They are certainly not promises to purchase vehicles for kids looking for work. Yet that is precisely what the conspiracy theorists at Fox have alleged. This delusion was directly refuted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the author of the amendment, who said that…

“…the program has the option of providing funding for bus fare or subway tickets or other means of transportation. It is only the wild imagination that we have come to expect from Fox TV that would come up with this preposterous idea that we are buying automobiles for young people.”

This Fox fantasy was also refuted by Tea-publican Sen. Marco Rubio and was given a “Pants-on-Fire” designation as a lie by PolitiFact.

Where does the dementia end with these people? It would be one thing if this were a fringe newsletter published by radicals in robes and hoods, pretending to defend liberty from their wilderness camp in Idaho. But is this Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, and their leading anchors and contributors. The next thing we can expect to hear from Fox is that Obama supporters were found to be using their ObamaPhones while driving their ObamaCars which led to their need for emergency ObamaCare. Don’t laugh. I’m sure they are working on this story right now.


DOMA vs. Voting Rights: Justice Scalia’s Jaw-Dropping Hypocrisy

The rulings today from the Supreme Court will undoubtedly dominate the part of the news cycle that isn’t filled with testimony from the George Zimmerman trial.

The decision on California’s Prop 8 was essentially a punt wherein the Court ruled that the plaintiff did not have standing to bring the case. The result is that the lower court ruling that struck down Prop 8 remains in effect and gay marriages will resume shortly in California.

The decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was the more profound ruling as it struck down the legislation congress had passed in an attempt to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Consequently, the federal government is now prohibited from discriminating against same-sex couples with regard to marriage.

Not surprisingly, the media has pounced on these events with analysis, interviews, and opinions from across the political spectrum. However, one fairly obvious observation seems to have been ignored by many in the mainstream press. And that is the rank hypocrisy of Justice Scalia when you juxtapose his opinion from yesterdays ruling on the Voting Rights Act (VRA) with today’s dissent on the DOMA case. On DOMA Scalia complained that…

“We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation […] That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive.”

But just the day before Scalia had signed on to the Court’s majority decision to strike down the Voting Rights Act – which, of course, was democratically adopted legislation by the people’s representatives. In fact, the law was just reauthorized by congress in 2006 with a vote in the senate of 98-0 and in the House by 390-33. The reauthorization was signed by then-President George W. Bush who effusively praised the bill.

Nevertheless, Scalia condemned the VRA previously despite its broadly bi-partisan approval in congress. He belittled it as a “racial entitlement” that was somehow immune to the “normal political process.” He even noted the huge majority vote it received, but portrayed that with derision as if it were a defect.

“And this last enactment – not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. […It is] a phenomenon that is called ‘perpetuation of racial entitlement.’ Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political process.”

So on one day Scalia takes a position that congress is incapable of making valid decisions on behalf of the people and, consequently, the Supreme Court must step in to make the decisions for them. That was his justification for striking down the VRA. However, the very next day Scalia bitterly castigates his colleagues for taking action to invalidate a law that had been enacted by the people’s representatives, and he repudiated the notion that it is the Court’s role to second guess the congress. That was the gist of his dissent on DOMA.

Literally overnight, Scalia went from asserting the Court’s authority over congressional actions, to asserting that the Court had no such authority. So the question is: Is that just Scalia being a hypocritical jerk, or is the 77 year old jurist suffering from a cognitive disorder?

Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook
Antonin Scalia


Romancing The Unabomber: Fox News ‘Psycho’ Analyst Praises Terrorist’s Manifesto

What can you say about Keith Ablow, the Fox News ‘psycho’ analyst who recently charged that President Obama was waging psychological warfare on the American people? You may recall “doctor” Ablow as the lunatic who actually praised Newt Gingrich for being unfaithful to multiple wives; who welcomed the pain of Americans suffering through the recession; who repeatedly diagnosed President Obama and others without ever having met them. No wonder he was booted from the American Psychiatric Association.

Well, despite all the odds, Ablow has managed to surpass his own Olympian record for demented commentary by writing an op-ed for Fox News paying tribute to the philosophy of convicted murderer and terrorist, Ted Kazcynski, aka the Unabomber.

Keith Ablow
Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook

After making an obligatory condemnation of Kaczynski’s crimes, Ablow proceeds to express his admiration for the ideas laid out in the “manifesto” that the serial killer demanded be published in exchange for his promise to stop blowing people up.

Ablow: “Kaczynski’s ideas, however, described in a manifesto entitled, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” cannot be dismissed, and are increasingly important as our society hurtles toward individual disempowerment at the hands of technology and political forces that erode autonomy.”

Ablow then describes Kaczynski’s work as a treatise in opposition to “the industrialization of America and the world, and our increasing reliance on technology,” which he and Kaczynski believe is “short-circuiting the ability of human beings to think for themselves.” There is kernel of truth in this concept. However, there are also dozens of other, more reputable proponents whom Ablow could cite if he were interested in advancing these theories.

However, Ablow quickly reveals that he isn’t interested in this as a discussion on societal progress. Like everything else he touches, this is just another opportunity for Ablow to disparage the President and hurl screwy psychological insults at his perceived enemies. Ablow is nothing if not consistently obsessed with liberal bashing. His article continues with an overt swipe at “the left” that he borrows from Kaczynski.

Ablow: “He [Kaczynski] saw the political “left” as embracing these technologies with special fervor, because they were in keeping with the “leftist” ideology that centralized power was the way to govern men.

“He saw these “leftists” as psychologically disordered—seeking to compensate for deep feelings of personal disempowerment by banding together and seeking extraordinary means of control in society.”

For those of you who have wondered what the Unabomber thought about liberal politics, it’s true that Kaczynski had some harsh criticisms of leftists in his manifesto. But there are three problems with Ablow referring to them in order to make his point.

First of all, whether or not you have some philosophical agreements with someone like Kaczynski, it is utterly insane to cite him as a corroborating source. It’s like trying to persuade a friend to become a vegetarian because Hitler was one. You might have better results if you use Einstein as an example.

Secondly, even if you were foolish enough to try to associate yourself with Kaczynski’s aversion to liberals, you would have to dishonestly and deliberately hide the fact that he also despised conservatives. Which is exactly what Ablow did. Here is what Kaczynski wrote about the right:

Kaczynski: “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”

Even worse, Kaczynski assailed one of the most cherished sacred cows of the right when he wrote this…

Kaczynski: “Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Nevertheless, I would never promote the fact that Kaczynski said something with which I agree. Not when more ethical folks like Robert Reich, or Howard Zinn, or Bernie Sanders, or a thousand other people’s advocates, have also said these things and don’t happen to be deranged killers. Which brings us to third reason not to recruit Kaczynski as an ideological ally: HE’S NUTS!

Still, Ablow expands on his tribute to Kaczynski with the assertion that the emergence of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) must have caused Kaczynski to have “even more certainty, that he was onto something,” and to “marvel at the ease with which technology taps the ego and drains the soul.” Ablow further speculated favorably that Kaczynski must have wondered whether “the widespread use of GPS…erodes your real sense of direction — on highways and, perhaps, in life.” Seriously. Ablow actually believes that using GPS can erode your direction in life. That would explain why so many people looking for the nearest Starbucks ended up with their noses in copies of Atlas Shrugged.

Now, if you think that Ablow has reached a pinnacle of dementia, you don’t know Keith Ablow. He segues from his comically delusional analysis of new media to his favorite target, President Obama. Ablow sets about to connecting non-existent dots to draw a picture of the President as a master manipulator who is putting “the core of human life” “under seige.” Ablow’s evidence of this is that Obama won election to the presidency “in part, by mastering the use of the Internet as a campaign tool.”

See what he did there? According to Ablow/Kaczynski, technology is an evil usurper of individual autonomy that will destroy traditional values and make us all slaves to Big Government and/or Big Business. And Obama is the master of technology. Could it be any clearer? Obama must be the Techno-Anti-Christ – a demon so rare and powerful that only Ablow is aware of its existence. And aren’t we lucky that he is here to warn us?

So essentially, Ablow, who once declared that Obama “has it in for America,” constructed this whole article as a vehicle to cast the President as a monstrous aberration bent on America’s ruin. The surprising thing is that he enlists the help of a domestic terrorist to make his case. And to insure that no one misses the point, he closes his column with a profoundly flattering review of Kaczynski’s opus saying that…

Ablow: “It is time for people to read “Industrial Society and its Future,” by convicted serial killer Ted Kaczynski. His work, despite his deeds, deserves a place alongside “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley, and “1984,” by George Orwell.”

There are some notable differences between Kaczynski’s rambling, psychotic screed, and the inspiring fiction of Huxley and Orwell. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the latter two were gifted novelists who never murdered anyone. And the former is a criminally insane sociopath who has found common ground with a member of the Fox News Medical “A” Team. God help anyone who takes advice from this maniac. And if I were you, I wouldn’t open any packages with Ablow’s name on the return address.


Wonkette: IRSgate Joins Solyndragate and Benghazigate In Fake Scandal Heaven

I’d like to thank Wonkette for saving me the trouble of writing the post-mortem on the phony IRS scandal. After new evidence emerged revealing that groups other than conservative Tea Party organizations were subjected to stricter scrutiny, I intended to write a detailed report exposing the partisan fraud manufactured by Rep. Darrell Issa and his right-wing cohorts.

Tea Party Republicans

But Wonkette just published a superb summary of the affair with an abundance of humor and righteous mockery. So I’m gonna just leave it to them. Read it here for yourself, but here are a few tasty excerpts:

“In addition to being a cosmic turd straight from Satan’s bunghole, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now just a laughing stock on Capitol Hill. If anyone anywhere takes this clown seriously in the future, we will be shocked.”

Actually, I won’t be shocked. There will be plenty of idiots at Fox News, WorldNetDaily, and the Tea Party Gazette, who will continue to take Issa seriously.

“[S]uck it all you teabagger crazies complaining about how much butthurt you went through while suffering from your goddam persecution complex. Turns out you are all a bunch of whiny babies who jumped the gun before all the facts were in, and now you look like completely incompetent political hacks who are better off crawling back to whatever cosmic bunghole you came from.”

As reported here at News Corpse, evidence has been emerging for weeks that the whole premise of the scandal was falling apart. Most of the principles turned out to be Republicans. Issa was cherry-picking information to release. The more data that was made public, the more obvious their lies became. And now Issa, who had decided before any of this began the President was guilty of masterminding the whole thing, is whining about prejudging.

“Rep. Issa is worried that someone else is jumping to conclusions! We are pretty sure there is a word for that, but at the moment all that comes to mind is ‘fuck that guy.'”

The article is actually full of relevant facts and links, and is well worth a look-see. Thanks again, Wonkette. Now I can concentrate on more important matters like the Fox News “psycho” analyst who is praising the Unabomber (yes, that’s real).

I’d also like to thank Wonkette for their fantastic review of my book, Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth, that they called “A valuable contribution to the effort to chip away at Bullshit Mountain.”

Find us on Google+
Advertisement:

Judicial Bipolar Disorder: Republicans Respond To Court Ruling

Judicial Bipolar Disorder

This morning the Supreme Court issued a decision on the Voting Rights Act that struck down Section 4 which provided for constitutional reviews of voting practices in jurisdictions where there has been a history of discrimination. As might be expected, opinions began flying around as soon as the news hit the wires. Here are some of the views expressed by Republicans and other conservative figures:

  • Mitt Romney: Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people.
  • Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO): Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people … demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.
  • Sen. Jeff Sessions: This ‘Washington-knows-best’ mentality is evident in all branches of government, but is especially troublesome in the judiciary, where unelected judges have twisted the words of our Constitution to advance their own political, economic, and social agendas.
  • Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): I’m appalled that unelected judges have irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench and overturn the will of the people.
  • George W. Bush: This concept of a “living Constitution” gives unelected judges wide latitude in creating new laws and policies without accountability to the people.
  • Thomas Sowell: Unelected judges can cut the voters out of the loop and decree liberal dogma as the law of the land.
  • Laura Ingraham: We don’t want to be micromanaged by some unelected judge or some unelected bureaucrat on the international or national level.
  • Gov. Rick Perry: [The American people are] fed up with unelected judges.
  • Pat Robertson: We are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.
  • Robert Bork: We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own.
  • Sen. Orrin Hatch: A small minority and their judicial activist allies are seeking to usurp the will of the people … Ultimately, the American people, not unelected judges, should decide policy on critical social issues such as this one.
  • Glenn Beck: Even if you agree that the role of government is to take wealth from one to another, should it be the role of unelected judges and justices that do this?
  • Justice Antonin Scalia: Value-laden decisions such as that should be made by an entire society … not by nine unelected judges.

If you haven’t already figured it out, these are not responses to today’s decision on the Voting Rights Act. These opinions were expressed following other legal cases where the rulings were contrary to the wishes of these conservative hypocrites. If they had any intellectual integrity, they would be joining liberals who are disappointed with today’s ruling.

When a decision like today’s is handed down, the wingnuts are ecstatic that our judicial branch upheld the rule of law and preserved democracy and liberty. But when the courts rule against them the judiciary is filled with collectivist tyrants who despise freedom and dismiss the people’s will. This demonstration of Judicial Bipolar Disorder is a sad commentary on the state of modern governing. Let’s hope that science can find a cure before too many more suffer from this plague. It would also help if the sufferers believed in science.


Gutting Voting Rights: Supreme Court Gives Racist Republicans Just What They Wanted

This morning the Supreme Court issued their decision on one of the most highly anticipated cases of the year. The Court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, that provides for review of potentially discriminatory practices in jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression, is no longer necessary.

The Court justified the decision by citing the provision’s effectiveness. The logic there is peculiar, to say the least. It’s an argument for eliminating those things in the law that work best. Would the Justices signing onto this decision ever suggest that, since laws prohibiting murder resulted in a noticeable decline in victim deaths, that those laws are unnecessary and should be dispensed with?

The Voting Rights Act has been doing precisely what it was intended to do for nearly fifty years. It was reauthorized in 2006 with overwhelming support in congress (98-0 in the senate, 390-33 in the House) and signed by George W. Bush. For the Court to overturn the will of the people in this regard tags them as just the sort of activist jurists that right-wingers usually assail. The Act’s usefulness was demonstrated just last year when numerous localities tried, but failed, to implement voter suppression schemes. Here are a few of the cases that were struck down:

Unfortunately, many other examples exist of racist legislation prevailing within states that have dominant GOP representation. The fact that so many attempts to sideline citizens, whether successful or not, have taken place is evidence of the continuing need for vigilance. Initiatives that inhibit registration, reduce voting opportunities, or require extraordinary measures to exercise the right to vote, are still in place or are being pursued.

War on Voting
Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook

The GOP has been surprisingly open about their desire to limit voting to predominantly white, conservative constituencies. Here is what some of their leading lights have had to say on the subject:

John Stossel (Fox News): “Let’s stop saying everyone should vote.”
Rush Limbaugh: “If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?”
Roger Vadum: “Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American.”
Judson Phillips (Tea Party Nation): “If you’re not a property owner, I’m sorry, but property owners have a little bit more of a vested stake in the community than not property owners do.”
Steve Doocy (Fox News): “With 47% of Americans not paying taxes – 47% – should those who don’t pay be allowed to vote?”

It is also notable that coverage on Fox News of the Court’s decision didn’t run until 20 minutes into their 11:00am (et) broadcast and lasted for about one minute. It followed stories about Edward Snowden, the IRS, George Zimmerman, Benghazi, the Massachusetts senate race, and Snowden again. Obviously Fox needed some time to determine how they were going to spin this news. So they simply announced that the decision was handed down and then waited for further instructions from Roger Ailes or other opinion czars at the network.

While technically this decision throws much of the responsibility for future voting rights back to congress, the reality is that congress in its current form is such a dysfunctional heap of failure, that any reasonable attempts to remedy the damage done to democracy by the Court’s action are doomed to suffer from the same partisan obstructionism that has plagued Washington ever since the GOP decided that its top priority was to destroy President Obama. The only hope would be for the people to rise up and return control of the House to Democrats in 2014. That’s tall order, but one worth pursuing.


Zimmerman Defense Lawyer Makes Callous Attempt At Comedy

In one of the most stunningly idiotic opening statements ever presented in a court of law, Don West, co-counsel for the defense of George Zimmerman, somehow managed to conclude that it would be appropriate to tell a knock-knock joke at the commencement of a murder trial with the parents of the deceased teenage victim sitting a few feet away (video below). West prefaced his turn at comedy by saying that “Sometimes it is necessary to laugh to keep from crying.” This was obviously not one of those times as West proceeded to strike out with the stunned jury.

West: Knock knock. Who’s there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who? All right. Good. You’re on the Jury.

George Zimmerman
Be Sure To “LIKE” News Corpse On Facebook

The only plausible explanation for this severe mental aberration is that the defense is already trying to set up a cause for appeal based on incompetent counsel. The jury sat in such abject silence after the alleged joke that West beseeched them for a response pleading “Nothing?” Then, after a break, the lawyer returned to continue his opening remarks, but started off with an apology and blaming his delivery for the lack of comedic punch.

That apology is further evidence that West has no idea what was wrong with his tasteless behavior. This was not a problem resulting from the joke not being funny enough, or that it was delivered poorly. The problem was that it was a joke. The problem was that a murder trial is not the same as open mike night the Laugh Factory.

What’s worse is that the point of this particular joke is an overt insult to the members of the jury. It was a slap at the ignorance of the panel for their having been selected based on how little they knew about current events. He was telling the jury that they were sitting in this courtroom because they are a bunch of morons who never heard of a notorious criminal defendant.

That’s not exactly the best way to win over an audience. It’s probably premature to presume that this counsel has permanently lost credibility with the jury, but he certainly has dug himself a deep hole that will take considerable effort to climb out of. If this flub signals anything, it’s that the defense has very little of substance to hang their case on, so from the outset they are throwing up irrelevancies and distractions. Look for more of that in the coming weeks.


Fox News And Donald Trump Use Snowden Story To Revive Birther Claims

No one is surprised anymore when Fox News brazenly brandishes their rightist leanings or promotes Republican candidates and causes. Anyone who is paying attention recognizes that Fox is the PR arm of the GOP. But having established that fact, Fox is now swinging for the fences and attempting to take the mantle of fringe fictionalists from the likes of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.

The media is clearly obsessed with this new melodrama revolving around Edward Snowden and the international chase scene that has reporters racking up frequent flier miles and dreams of sky-high ratings. They would like nothing better than a helicopter hovering over a white Bronco as it tracks Snowden to some exotic tropical sanctuary. Every media whore in the business is weighing in.

Sarah Palin

So it goes without saying that this morning on Fox & Friends, the kiddies on the curvy couch hosted national joke and Hair Club for Dicks spokesman, Donald Trump, to discuss the Snowden affair. Trump wasted no time in sensationalizing the matter with his typically shallow analysis by calling for Snowden (who has been convicted of nothing) to be executed and blaming Obama for everything. But Trump’s outraged is not reserved for Snowden alone. When he was asked what he thought about the newspapers that published Snowden’s documents, Trump said that it was “disgraceful.” So he is not only opposed to whistleblowers, he also opposes journalists. He even managed to inject a swipe at Climate Change when he mentioned some nonsense about magazine covers in the 1920’s reporting global cooling.

However, the focus was squarely on Snowden as Trump implied that America is weak and in danger of imminent extinction. Although, in the minds of these extremist right-wingers, America is always mortally threatened by whatever their issue du jour might be, whether it’s health care, immigration, or totalitarian bicycles (seriously). But the wheels really came off the interview when Trump segued from Snowden’s flight to his favorite subject, the President’s birth certificate.

Trump: You know the only thing we don’t seem to get are the records from the President. Isn’t that interesting?
Brian Kilmeade: Yeah, no one leaks that.
Steve Doocy: Yeah, where are those?

Yeah! How come that Kenyan socialist Muslim doesn’t release his records – again? Why is continuing to deceive the American people about his foreign nativity and his phony academic resume? And when will he come clean about his real father being former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers? And what his Marxist upbringing, his gay husband, and his alien reptilian body that lies beneath that human costume he wears?

America wants to know. And thank God for Fox News – the only media outlet courageous enough to ask these questions. As for Snowden, if he really wants to gain some credibility with the Free Speech crowd, he should show up in Red Square wearing a Free Pussy Riot t-shirt while he’s in Russia.

Snowden - Pussy Riot