Fox News: It’s Open Season On Christians In America

Posted by on January 11, 2016 at 8:23 pm. 21 Comments :

Good news for the satanic sportsmen of the country. Fox News has announced that “It’s Open Season On Christians In America.” That’s right. This sorely put upon majority of crybabies is at imminent risk of total eradication from the Secular Progressive cabal of evildoers.

Fox News

The creeping danger that is casting a shadow on these righteous Americans now was identified by Rev. Franklin Graham and brought to the attention of the faithful by the Fox News resident evangelical correspondent, Todd Starnes.

In a conversation with Starnes, Graham fretted that “I believe we are perilously close to the moral tipping point for the survival of the United States of America,” and he declared that he would “refuse to be silent and watch the future of our children and grandchildren be offered up on pagan altars of personal pleasure and immorality.”

Well, that’s comforting. After all, he has already witnessed the Supreme Court redefining marriage, the rise of Islamic radicals, and the horror of Christians losing their First Amendment rights (which he freely said to a national news network). What this all leads to is the foreboding reality that…

“There now exists deep-seated antagonism and hostility toward Christianity in every seat of power in this nation – government, media, courts and education.”

To this Starnes stood up proudly to proclaim that “Instead of ignoring the rotting of America’s culture,” Graham promised to do something about it. And that somnething is to embark upon the “Decision America Tour,” a series of prayer rallies at the capitol buildings of all 50 states. Graham insists that this is not a political movement, but an appeal to the Almighty. He says that he will “lead this nation in prayer, confessing the sins of our country, asking for God’s forgiveness and encouraging Christians to get engaged in the political process.” Because, of course, this is not at all political. And to further confirm the non-political nature of this campaign, Graham complained that…

“The churches have allowed the government to take away their responsibility and so the government is feeding people, the government is clothing people, the government is now in charge of health care.”

Never mind the fact that there is nothing stopping churches from fulfilling their mission to provide food, clothing, and assistance with health care and other necessities to the many people who are still in need. Many churches are doing just that while Graham is busy whining and politicking. And he is way off base with his assertion that government is charge of health care. All government is doing is making it more affordable and accessible.

Where these paranoid Christianists constantly get the idea that they are under attack and likely to be defeated by some vague enemy is a persistent mystery. Aren’t they supposed to have an omnipotent, all-powerful God on their side? And even better, they have an omnipotent and all-powerful cable news network proselytizing on behalf of their Lord, who apparently has a bad PR agent and has to turn to Fox News.

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

And yet, with the help of God and Fox News they are still convinced that they will meet their doom at the hands of the infidels whom they greatly outnumber. So they are forced to take to the streets and inspire their believers to get politically active. And they run to Todd Starnes and Fox News to achieve that goal. It must be an awful burden to live constantly in fear of the handful of pagans that apparently are more formidable than their creator and savior. Maybe they should seek a mightier Almighty.

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Paranoid Wingnut Media Imagines Liberal “Plants” On The Attack

Posted by on January 10, 2016 at 4:58 pm. 1 Comments :

The conservative response to criticism has always been a mixture of denial and accusations of liberal media bias. They have never been particularly adept at debating a subject on its merits and employing critical thinking skills to construct a coherent rebuttal. But now, during what may be one of America’s most hysterically delusional election seasons, right-wingers are falling into an abyss of paranoia.

Night of the Living Plants

This week there were a couple of Republican campaign events that demonstrate how ludicrous the wingnut media have become. They both exhibited laughably dishonest methods of dismissing valid criticism and deceiving their audience.

The first occurred at a Donald Trump rally in South Carolina. During Trump’s standard spewing of thinly veiled hate speech, a woman in a turquoise blue hijab stood up in silent protest. Almost immediately the crowd began a vile chant of disapproval. Trump joined in and ordered her to be ejected from the hall. She was escorted out amid continuing taunts and insults, including one Trumpster asking her if she had a bomb. She responded wonderfully saying “No. Do you?”

The reporting of this disgraceful act of prejudice and intolerance of free expression made its way to the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, with a headline saying “Muslim Woman Removed From Trump Rally Used CNN To Coordinate Her Spectacle.” The story was sourced to the right-wing web-rag BizPac Review, who said that she had “disrupted the event.” How standing silently constituted a disruption was never explained.

More to the point, the article also never explained how she “coordinated her spectacle” with CNN. The only thing that tied these two events together was that she was interviewed by CNN after she was removed from the hall. That’s a fairly typical occurrence in this situation, and Fox News has made it a regular feature to interview people who protested President Obama or Democratic candidates. Nevertheless, in the minds of rightist crackpots, it was a plot designed by the liberal media cabal to force Trump into throwing a peaceful advocate for improving interfaith relations out into the cold.

On a side note, the story also mentioned that she was wearing a Jewish Star of David, but she was not. She did have an eight-pointed yellow star on her outfit with the word “Muslim” written on it (the Star of David has six points). This may have been a reference to the Nazi practice of forcing Jews to wear identifying patches, but since Trump has actually called for Muslims to be marked with identifying badges and cataloged in databases, the rightist media has no cause to complain about such messaging.

The other event this week was an appearance in Iowa by Sen. Ted Cruz. While taking questions from the audience a young Latina stood up to ask him about his policy on immigration. She said that she was “worried about whoever comes next to the presidency and what’s going to happen to people like us.” It was a heartfelt plea for understanding from someone who was clearly concerned about whether she would be able to remain in the country she loved and in which she was raised. Cruz adopted a mock compassionate tone while telling her that, if he becomes president, she will very likely be deported as a criminal because “violating the laws has consequences.”

It should be noted that this woman broke no laws. She was brought to the U.S. as a child by her parents and has distinguished herself by finishing school and working for a non-profit that assists children with special needs. She was even praised by GOP Rep. Steve King, a notoriously anti-immigrant Tea Party Republican who just happened to have met her previously and was impressed.

Once again, this story found a home at Fox Nation where they plastered on a headline reading “DNC DREAMer Plant Tries To Ambush Ted Cruz And It Backfires Miserably.” This article was sourced to something called Red Alert Politics and alleged that…

“The Democratic National Committee tried to entrap Cruz at a campaign event in Storm Lake, Iowa yesterday by having an illegal immigrant DREAMer named Ofelia Valdez confront the Texas senator.”

There was no evidence in the article that tied the woman to the Democratic National Committee. Apparently, just the fact that she asked a question that was less than a sycophantic exercise in kissing up to Cruz was enough to label her a plant. The reality that there are millions of people just like her isn’t sufficient to presume that she is merely a sincere constituent who is genuinely concerned about her future.

This paranoid behavior is nothing new for the right-wing press. Last September at a Trump rally, a man rose to complain about what he called “the Muslim problem” and asked “When can we get rid of them?” That led to an article in the ultra-conservative Daily Caller that baselessly alleged that the questioner was a plant. And the intrepid pseudo-journalists over at Breitbart News went even further to claim that they had found proof that consisted of a photo that was plainly somebody else entirely.

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

This is what happens when crackpot partisans abandon reason and rely on conspiracy theories and the blathering of fact-averse propagandists like Alex Jones, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh. It goes beyond conventional disinformation to a state of reduced capacity wherein the only response to criticism is to allege that your critics are members of secret societies bent your destruction. Because – well, of course they are. Can’t you tell? Or maybe you’re one of them.


The (Master) Race For President: White Supremacists Are Campaigning For Donald Trump In Iowa

Posted by on January 9, 2016 at 9:29 pm. 1 Comments :

It is often said that you can judge the character of a man by the company he keeps. With that in mind it is illuminating to know that a notorious assembly of white supremacists have begun actively campaigning for Donald Trump in Iowa.

Donald Trump

A group led by American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor has launched a robo-call operation to inform Iowans that Trump is their “Great White Hope” for 2016. The recorded call says…

“I urge you to vote for Donald Trump because he is the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America. We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”

American Renaissance is an openly racist organization that believes that whites are superior to other races. They are affiliated with other racist hate groups including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. It’s easy to understand why this group is backing Trump. His campaign has been a rallying cry for America’s bigots who see him as a candidate that has their supremacist interests at heart.

This isn’t a new development for the Trump campaign. From the day he announced his candidacy he has appealed to bigots by disparaging anyone who was not a white European. He called Latinos rapists and murderers. He falsely claimed that 81% of whites murdered in America were killed by African-Americans (The correct number is 16%. 82% of whites were killed by whites). He has proposed a ban on all Muslims coming into the country. Just yesterday he ejected a Muslim woman from one of his rallies, which sent his supporters into a frenzy of hateful abuse aimed at her as she was escorted out.

Is it any wonder why racist groups like American Renaissance would endorse Trump? Last month Politico published an in-depth article detailing the broad-based admiration for Trump among America’s white supremacists. The article revealed that…

“The Ku Klux Klan is using Donald Trump as a talking point in its outreach efforts. Stormfront, the most prominent American white supremacist website, is upgrading its servers in part to cope with a Trump traffic spike. And former Louisiana Rep. David Duke reports that the businessman has given more Americans cover to speak out loud about white nationalism than at any time since his own political campaigns in the 1990s.”

Surprisingly, despite Trump’s overt hostility he continues to insist that he will win the votes of African-Americans and Latinos. That is a demonstration of what may be the most advanced case of self-delusion on record. Not only is he oblivious to the impact his hate-speech has on the minority communities he despises, he is unable to recognize the correlation of his hateful rhetoric to the type of racist supporters he attracts.

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

Given the severity of Trump’s tunnel-blindness, it is unrealistic to expect him to comprehend the reasons that white supremacists are flocking to his campaign. But his supporters who were attracted by his celebrity, and the phony facade of an anti-establishment outsider, ought to wake up and notice with whom they are rubbing shoulders. They should realize that if the KKK is campaigning for Trump, maybe they ought to reconsider their own support. And if they don’t, then they should not complain when the rest of the country classifies them as the same sort of crackpots who are propping up The Donald and his vile agenda of bigotry.


Foiled Attempt To Kidnap Obama’s Dog Fuels Assassination Comments On Fox News Website

Posted by on January 8, 2016 at 8:39 pm. 8 Comments :

In Washington, D.C. today, the Secret Service apprehended a disturbed man from North Dakota who claims to have come to the capital to kidnap the First Dog, Bo. On the surface this seems like a joke, but there are some very serious and sad details surrounding the incident.

The story was reported by a number of news outlets including Fox News, where the gist of the story said that…

“A search of [Scott] Stockert’s car revealed a 12-gauge pump shotgun and pistol grip, and a black bolt action rifle, neither of which were registered. Officers also found more than 300 rounds of ammunition, a machete and a billy club. He was arrested and charged with illegally carrying a rifle or shotgun outside a home or business.

“Stockert also said his parents were John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, and that he was on his way to the Capitol to try and get $99 per month health care and announce his intention to run for president. Later, he said he was Jesus Christ.”

Clearly this is a sick individual who needs professional care. He certainly is not someone who should have had access to the weapons that were found. And while it may be tempting to laugh at the Savior spawn of Kennedy and Monroe, he could have done some serious damage and hurt innocent people or police.

What’s really sad, however, is that the readers of the Fox News website may be even sicker than the would-be dognapper. Responding to the story was a flurry of offensive remarks directed at the President and his family. They ran the gamut from being insulting (including to the Obama’s children) to outright fantasies of assassination.


Fox News Comments

These comments are fairly typical of the Fox News community. Whenever there is story that about the First Family, you can expect that there will be disgusting statements expressing their fervent wishes for harm to come to the President and his family. News Corpse has been collecting these comments as The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community. It’s a pretty depressing display of open hostility from folks who like to characterize themselves as Christians and patriots.

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

It doesn’t take much to set them off either, as this story demonstrates. And it is the same expressions of hatred that are fueling the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the Republican circus.


Politico Nails Donald Trump As A Lazy Old Geezer

Posted by on January 7, 2016 at 3:21 pm. 6 Comments :

Among the favorite insults that Donald Trumps throws around at his rivals is that they lack the vigor required to perform the job of President of the United States. He has called Jeb Bush “low-energy” and accuses Hillary Clinton of not having the necessary “strength and stamina.” However, these are adjectives that more accurately describe Trump himself.

Donald Trump

Politico published a story today that looks at “Donald Trump’s low-energy campaign.” It goes into considerable detail to prove that it is Trump who is so averse to doing any work that he makes all of the other candidates look like film on fast-forward. In the early paragraphs they report that…

“Trump, who once derided Jeb Bush for lacking energy, has done fewer campaign swings than any of his top-tier rivals — 100, versus, for example, Bush’s 172. […] He has held only 27 events in New Hampshire over the course of 22 visits to the state, according to a tally kept by New England Cable News. By comparison, Christie has held 139 Granite State events.”

So Trump is conducting a fraction of the number of events that other candidates are holding. But it’s even worse than that. The events that Trump holds are large rallies that require almost nothing of him. He flies into town on his luxurious private 757 jet, is driven to the hall in the back of a limousine, delivers a speech that he spent no time writing or rehearsing since it’s all off the top of his head (and largely repeats of previous speeches), and then is whisked back to his plane for the ride back to his Manhattan penthouse. He could literally sleep through all of that except for the speech itself (which we sleep through).

This would also explain the complete lack of substance of his campaign. He has not produced a platform other than sloganeering and hollow blathering about building walls, deporting eleven million immigrants, and bombing the hell out of ISIS. In seven months of campaigning he has not explained how he would accomplish any of those goals. He just expects his glassy-eyed disciples to believe in him and nod in agreement. Fortunately for Trump, most of them are more than ignorant and unquestioning enough to do just that.

Trump’s campaign argues that he is reaching more people with his stadium events. That’s true. However, the process of winning primaries involves reaching out to broad constituencies and persuading them to vote for you. The people attending Trump’s rallies are mainly those who are already committed to him in his capacity as a celebrity and are not necessarily voters or even residents of the community or state where the event is held. There is no evidence that he is persuading new people to support him, which would make his rallies virtually pointless. Meanwhile, his opponents are holding smaller events at restaurants and school gymnasiums where they are shaking the hands of locals and working to make converts among people who actually vote and can influence others to do so.

The Trump people also cite the ridiculous amount of media he gets (ridiculous is his word for it). But he was getting that exposure before he started having rallies. And much of his media comes from his interviews on Fox News or Morning Joe. With respect to that, it is further proof that he is a lazy candidate since he rarely appears in the studio, preferring to phone in from his penthouse, in his silk pajamas, and have his intellectually vacant conversations with equally lazy television presenters.

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

This perspective reveals that the facade Trump is promoting is just more dishonesty from a candidate who is breaking all records for lying about himself and others (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). It is an old tactic of accusing your opponents of the things for which you are most guilty (projection). And it takes some real chutzpah to call Clinton or Bush lazy when you have done far less than any of the other candidates. But that’s the Trump brand that consists mainly of insulting others and bragging about himself. He’s a textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and a slothful one at that.


Bill O’Reilly’s War On Reality: There Is Not A Gun Crime Epidemic

Posted by on January 6, 2016 at 2:31 pm. 5 Comments :

When it comes to being utterly oblivious to easily observed facts about the real world, no one is more wrapped in delusion than Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. And the wonderful thing about Billo is that he is not shy about providing evidence of that on a regular basis.

oreilly-no-idea

Last night O’Reilly delivered his response to President Obama’s address on gun violence (video below). It was a typically disjointed lecture that relied more on bluster than logic. Right out of the gate O’Reilly sought to establish a premise that was totally contradicted by the facts that he provided himself:

O’Reilly: According to the latest FBI stats, slightly more than 8,000 people were victims of firearm murders in 2014. There were 118,000 robberies involving a firearm. And almost 150,000 aggravated assaults involving guns. The population of the U.S.A. is approaching 330 million.

And his conclusion from all of this: “So you can see there is not a gun crime epidemic.”

Really? More than 8,000 deaths – over twice the number killed on 9/11 – does not constitute an epidemic even though it is repeated annually, not just once fourteen years ago? And there were nearly 300,000 additional crimes that involved guns, but were not fatal. But O’Reilly cavalierly dismisses these statistics – and the victims – as unworthy of recognition as a crisis. That callousness is representative of the right-wing attitude that regards the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Americans as the price we pay for the alleged “freedom” to possess any kind of weapon we desire. And to the NRA-theists it doesn’t matter if you are a felon, a domestic abuser, or even on the Terrorist Watch List. Gun nuts have even advocated for the “rights” of the blind, the mentally ill, and the dead to own guns.

For the record, Media Matters has compiled documentation showing that gun violence in American is indeed at an epidemic level. They note that the National Physicians Alliance has called it “a public health issue that has reached epidemic proportions;” the medical director of the New York State Office of Mental Health said that “the mass murders infesting our country now behave like an epidemic;” and the Surgeon General has said that it “constitutes a public health issue.”

O’Reilly went on to embarrass himself by making self-contradictory statements. In an effort to argue that background checks are a meaningless exercise that will have no effect on crime or gun violence, O’Reilly said…

The truth is terrorists are not gonna submit themselves to background checks. Neither are dangerous felons or insane people. They’re not gonna sign any paper when they buy a gun. They will buy their guns on the black market. And no registration law will prevent that.

On the other side, the NRA and gun owners should be reasonable. The FBI should background check anyone buying a firearm in America. That just makes sense.

Huh? Why does O’Reilly think it makes sense to “background check anyone buying a firearm in America” if he also thinks that all of the people the checks are intended to prevent from buying guns aren’t going to submit to one? Either he knows that background checks work, or he’s arguing for a policy that he thinks is pointless. In any case he’s being blatantly dishonest and swinging so wildly that he has abandoned all reason.

Abandoning reason is nothing new for Bill O’Reilly. After all, this the same guy who denied that there were any homeless veterans in the U.S. He’s the same guy who contends that Fox News is not a conservative network. He’s the same guy who argues that racism is a nearly non-existent problem. He’s the same guy who insisted that no one on Fox ever said there was a jail penalty for not getting ObamaCare, despite all of the video evidence.

That’s the advanced state of O’Reilly’s obliviousness to reality. He simply lives in another world where whatever he imagines is made manifest in his warped mind. And that’s how he can enumerate all of the tragic statistics on gun violence and then blithely declare that there is no epidemic. It’s a classic case of “ignorance is bliss,” or more simply – plain old ignorance.

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

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The Creeping Fox News Contagion: MSNBC’s New Executive In Charge Of Morning Joe

Posted by on January 5, 2016 at 6:06 pm. 12 Comments :

Taking another leap toward the dark side, MSNBC announced today that they have hired Kevin Magee to serve as executive in charge of Morning Joe, the three hour block of programming hosted by former Republican representative Joe Scarborough. Magee is a former executive vice-president at Fox News.

Morning Joe Scarborough

The immediate ramifications of this staff change will not be particularly earth shattering. The program is already a bastion of right-wing propaganda with predominantly conservative punditry. However it does represent a congealing of the Fox Effect on the mainstream media. It is an advance of the virus emanating from Fox to infect other networks with their deliberately deceitful approach to journalism.

Morning Joe already has a weakened immune system. Last year they added Amy Holmes to their roster of contributors. Holmes is also the anchor of Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze Internet Video program. Scarborough himself is hopelessly biased and nearly oblivious to the right-wing dominance of the press. In November he went on an extended rant demanding his guests to name a single Republican on a nightly news program (they couldn’t, but I could). And Morning Joe is the MSNBC home of Donald Trump, who has become a regular fixture on the show – and nowhere else on the network.

One thing that this should put an end to is the talk that MSNBC is the liberal answer to Fox News. That has never been true, mainly because, while MSNBC was generally more progressive, it remained fact-based as opposed to the blatant lying that is the hallmark of Fox. More to the point, Fox News would never give a three hour block of airtime (soon to be expanding to four hours) to a liberal ex-congressman, but Scarborough not only has that, but is also featured on NBC’s Meet the Press. Just imagine if Fox & Friends was hosted by Anthony Weiner or if Sean Hannity were replaced by Rachel Maddow.

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

Since NBC/Universal was bought by Comcast, MSNBC has undergone some troubling changes. Comcast’s owners, the conservative Roberts family, insisted that there would be no substantive changes, but Ed Schultz, Joy Reid, and Alex Wagner lost their shows shortly after the acquisition. And now they are beginning to stuff the deck with right-wing pundits and producers. This cannot possibly lead to anything positive for the network. If they were smart they would recall that when Keith Olbermann was on in primetime, his show regularly challenged, and occasionally beat, Fox’s O’Reilly Factor. And Olbermann just happens to be available now.


The Fox News Blackout Of Bill Clinton

Posted by on January 4, 2016 at 2:21 pm. 6 Comments :

For the past several weeks the media has been anticipating the entrance of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail for his wife Hillary. It has been a hotly debated subject, not just because he is a former president, but because he is regarded as a masterful communicator with the potential to shape the political landscape.

Among those eagerly engaging in the discussion is Fox News. They have broadcast numerous segments analyzing the former President’s ability to boost Hillary’s prospects, his continued popularity as a public figure, and the possible downside due to some old personal “indiscretions.” Fox has spent untold hours speculating about how Bill’s presence might affect the course of the campaign.

Well, today was the day that Bill made his debut appearance as a surrogate for his wife’s 2016 candidacy. He delivered a half hour speech to an appreciative audience in New Hampshire, the first primary state. The speech was carried live by both CNN and MSNBC. Fox News, however, showed just fifty-five seconds, then quickly cut away. That’s less than one minute of a half hour speech by a former president, and husband of a current presidential candidate, on his first campaign appearance, which was taking place in an important primary state. And for the record, there was no breaking news to justify snubbing this event.

Donald Trump News

Compare that the coverage that Fox News gives Donald Trump. They broadcast the entirety of his events live, despite the fact that they rarely contain anything more newsworthy than his standard stump speech that everyone has heard ad nauseum. Fox interrupts scheduled programming for these marathon speeches and repeats significant clips of them throughout the rest of the day. So far, Fox has not replayed anything from Clinton’s speech, although they have brought it up as an excuse to level attacks against the Clintons.

News Corpse has documented the wholly unprofessional and biased manner in which Fox News has virtually turned their network over to Donald Trump. No other candidate, even other Republicans, have received the sort of preferential treatment that Trump has enjoyed. And that’s even after he has repeatedly feuded with and insulted the network’s anchors, pundits, and owners. He even called for a boycott of Fox News after another delusional fit of whining about being treated unfairly.

So while Fox News kisses up to a crybaby who bullies them at every turn and has achieved nothing in the realm of public service, they completely ignore a former president who is widely admired with an unsurpassed record of achievement. And this is the network that wants people to believe they are “fair and balanced?” Some people may retort that this is Bill and not Hillary, so why should Fox broadcast it. Well, they have never aired a speech by Hillary live and in full either, so that argument doesn’t really fly.

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

Look for more of this bias as the campaign proceeds. Fox will continue to feature Trump and disregard Democrats as a whole, unless it is to disparage them. And they will especially avoid Bill Clinton because they know that he might be effective in making the case for Hillary. That’s something that Fox is simply too afraid to confront.


The NRA Has Been Financing Their Death Cult By Cheating On Their Taxes

Posted by on January 3, 2016 at 2:34 pm. 9 Comments :

This weekend there has been rampant speculation about whether President Obama will advance a gun safety agenda via executive orders. Most of the talk suggests that he will expand background checks to include gun shows where weapons are often sold without any inquiry into the legal status of the buyer. They could be felons, or mentally ill, or under a restraining order, or linked to terrorism, or Ted Nugent. But under the current laws regarding gun shows, they could all acquire deadly armories.

NRA Problem Solver

The National Rifle Association is firmly in favor of the status quo. They have been working hard to prevent any reform that might make a dent in the 30,000+ gun deaths every year. And their efforts are in direct contradiction to the will of the American people who broadly favor common sense reforms like closing the gun show loophole (89%) and banning assault weapons (58%). These numbers include many gun owners.

Now, in addition to supporting gun rights for people on the Terrorist Watch List, news reports have revealed that the NRA has been lying on their tax returns for years. Their filings have asserted ridiculously false claims such as that they do not receive membership dues or engage in political activity. And that’s not all:

“For seven years, the NRA also skipped a key question on its tax form — whether or not it engaged in lobbying. Asked to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ it simply left the space blank. […] Asked to detail expenses on its tax form, the NRA told the IRS it spent nothing on lobbying each year from 2008 to 2013.

“In 2014, it finally recorded $1 million in lobbying expenses. But even that figure is at odds with the amount reported to Congress of $3.4 million, according to data on the OpenSecrets Web site. It also recorded spending $23 million on unspecified ‘legislative programs.'”

Those are some pretty significant discrepancies that cannot plausibly be explained away as inadvertent. The NRA is, at its core, a political lobbying organization that receives millions of dollars in membership dues. It would be like Pepsi accidentally failing to report any income from selling beverages. Most of the NRA’s funding comes from firearms manufacturers and dealers seeking to expand their businesses. Lobbying on their behalf is why the NRA exists.

Before all the right-wing ammosexuals out there start whining that this must be a liberal conspiracy by the lamestream media attacking the NRA and its holy crusade to defend the Second Amendment, it was the conservative New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, that published the results of their investigation of the NRA-theists and their apparent tax filing perjury.

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

In a just world the NRA and its executives should be indicted for tax fraud and punished accordingly if found guilty. However, according to the NYPost, the New York Attorney General’s office would not comment on whether there is an investigation in progress. That often means that there isn’t, but they are rushing to put one together to avoid being embarrassed by the disclosures in the press. Time will tell. In the meantime the NRA has been exposed as a dishonest enterprise that is not only making the nation a more dangerous place to live, but rips off the American people while doing it.


Fox News Throws Tantrum Because Twitter Won’t Let Them Be Abusive Jerks

Posted by on January 2, 2016 at 8:08 pm. 5 Comments :

The new year has brought about some new rules and regulations both online and off. Among them are new rules on Twitter governing abusive language. The terms of service now state that…

“Twitter will not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice […] You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”

These rules are intended to prevent abusive behaviors that constitute “threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism. So of course the hate mongers at Fox News are going to be upset. This severely suppresses their “freedom” to spew their rancid bigotry and castigate Muslims or gays or immigrants or liberals as sub-humans that true patriots should eradicate from the Earth. And without the ability to attack people based on the criteria above, how will they fill their airtime?

Fox News

It says a lot about the Fox mindset that they would bother to lash out at these reasonable limits to online threats and abuse. They are inadvertently admitting that their rhetoric crosses the line from being merely ignorantly boorish to approaching terroristic bullying. You have to wonder why they would be so resistant to complying with rules that compel civility.

During the segment (video below), the hosts of the Saturday edition of Fox & Friends were in agreement these new rules were aimed at shutting down conservatives. And maybe they have a point because who else would be harmed by banning threats based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, etc.? Only conservatives engage in that sort of openly malevolent dialog that Twitter is seeking to abate. It’s the same sort of dialog that is expressed by world-class hate monger Donald Trump.

Introducing the segment, Tucker Carlson noted that the new policies say that “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people.” To which his co-host, Clayton Morris said…

“Critics argue there is no mention of the terrorist organization and the wording is so vague that it could really be applied to anyone. So could the new rules be used to kick conservatives off that platform if they are reported by the left?”

That question was taken up by their guest, from the right-wing National Review, Katherine Timpf, who joined the chorus complaining that the language was too vague and saying that…

“Someone can say ‘Oh, this looks like intimidation’ and they can flag it and then it ends up getting taken down and in the meantime you don’t have an account. So, really, what could it be? They don’t mention ISIS at all.”

For some reason it seems important to these pundits that the rules explicitly mention ISIS. Were that the case, wouldn’t they have to also mention every other terrorist organization? And what about threats by radical Christianists against Planned Parenthood, or against an African-American church, or a gay establishment, or any other random threat, even if it were directed to only one person? It is patently absurd to craft a policy that is only valid if the perpetrator is identified by name.

At this point, co-host Tucker Carlson chimed in to say that “People have been silenced on Twitter, and it seems to me that a lot of them are conservatives.” Whereupon he displayed a graphic of four conservatives that he alleged were silenced by Twitter. Unfortunately, he never revealed what they said that might have resulted in their being temporarily suspended. He just implied that it was nefarious and represented a trend toward silencing conservatives. To this Timpf responded saying sarcastically that…

“We know the government would never target conservative groups. Like the I.R.S. would never do anything like that. But of course it can be used that way.”

This would be a good time to note that Twitter is a private company and can set their own criteria for civility. They are not the government and thus are not violating anyone’s constitutional rights if they suspend a user who violates their rules. But Timpf went on to say that she thinks Twitter executives are applying tougher standards to conservatives. And her proof of this is that…

“I don’t hear any liberals complain about getting banned on Twitter for something they’ve said and I hear every day about this happening to conservatives.”

Well, that settles it. This right-wing writer hasn’t heard any liberals complaining, but she hears it everyday from conservatives. What a coincidence. If this were happening every day, Carlson’s graphic might have had more than four names on it.

What is really being revealed here is that conservatives simply complain a lot more than liberals. They bitterly complained when they accused Twitter of permitting terrorists to have accounts where they could communicate with one another and recruit new members. Now they are complaining when Twitter takes steps to prevent that very thing. And they especially complain if their penchant for hate speech is impeded in any way.

The problem is that if Fox News wants to prohibit ISIS from tweeting their threats and attacks, they are gonna have to stop doing it themselves. And for some examples of the sort of violent rhetoric that is inspired by Fox News, see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community – a collection of comments posted on Fox’s websites by their audience.

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