Ben Carson’s Brazen Dishonesty Still Isn’t As Bad As His Glaring Lunacy

Posted by Mark NC on November 6, 2015 at 8:45 pm. 7 Comments :

The recent revelations about Ben Carson’s proclivity for embellishing his life story are certain to present him with problems going forward. He has now been found to have been less than truthful about a scholarship offer to West Point. On the same subject he said that he met with General Westmoreland at time that he was hundreds of miles away. His recollections of childhood hostility have come under scrutiny for having changed in substantive ways on each telling. The tale of cowardice in a fast food restaurant when he directed a gunman to assault someone else has no evidence of ever having occurred. He appears to be making up his legend as he goes along.

As serious as that sort of mendacity is, it is still not the biggest problem with Ben Carson and his improbable candidacy for president. That’s because, in just the past few days, Carson has added to a series of strikingly ignorant commentaries. It is truly baffling that a respected neurosurgeon can utter such nonsense. It is equally baffling that so many Americans can be fooled into supporting him. And the examples herein don’t even include the stupendously idiotic assertion that the great pyramids of Egypt were built to store grain.

The three most blatantly harebrained remarks that Carson made this week should make any voter cringe. For instance, defending his absence of political experience, Carson conceded that…

The argument that a lack of political experience is an endorsement of one’s fitness to be the Leader of the Free World makes about as much sense as a brain surgeon boasting that he’s never actually performed surgery. But Carson’s comment is also off base because nearly every signer of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience. Whoever is doing Carson’s research should be fired.

In another attempt to exalt the inexperienced, Carson turned to the bible and constructed an analogy that in his dementia he must have thought supported his argument. he said that…

Is he now advocating that all shipbuilders be interrogated to assure that they have never actually worked on ship construction? Just hire the ones with the most piety and confidence that God will guide them to build a nice boat. What’s more, Carson is comparing the seaworthiness of Noah’s Ark, a vessel for which there is no evidence that it ever sailed, or even existed, with the infamous Titanic. The logical flaw in this analogy is that the Titanic, which existed, was extremely well built. It didn’t sink due to any construction or design flaw, but due to the bad navigation and judgment of the captain and crew who steered it into an iceberg. Consequently, this analogy undercuts Carson’s point, because it’s the experience of the sailors that would have made the difference.

The introduction of God into Carson’s political philosophy occurs with great frequency. He freely mixes religion into matters of politics and science. For instance, he believes that the Big Bang Theory and evolution are the work of Satan. However, he also believes that…

Who knew that the Lord Almighty was directly responsible for Fox News and for making it available to Carson? What’s more, who knew that Fox News is the only reason that the United States is not a tiny communist island? The notion that America would have fallen into the sphere of Soviet style communism, but for the existence of a cable news network that is watched by about one percent of the population, is further evidence of Carson’s acute derangement. What kept America from becoming Cuba prior to 1996 when Fox was launched?

Indeed, it is important to be able to believe what those who aspire to lead the nation say. Hillary Clinton is getting a lesson in the value of trust herself. But she doesn’t go around spouting fables as facts and turning history into mythology. So Carson, as many people are now learning, may be a bald-faced liar, but that isn’t nearly as bad as his being a totally unhinged schizoid who is convinced that God sent him to save America and the world.

[Update:] As if to affirm his utterly insane perspective, Carson went on an epic rant complaining that the media was responsible for his misrepresentations of reality. In the course of his barely lucid explanation he rattled off a bunch of old and widely debunked conspiracy theories about President Obama, saying “I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running.” He included: Frank Marshall Davis, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s “sealed” academic records. Of course, upon examination, there was either no truth or nothing controversial in any of these issues. But more to the point, and despite his faulty memory, they were all scrutinized by the media in far greater depth than anything Carson has experienced yet. Why he doesn’t recall months and months of endless reporting on these and other phony issues is another reason to question his fitness for office.

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Racists On Fox News Are OUTRAGED At People Protesting Donald Trump’s Racism

Posted by Mark NC on November 5, 2015 at 1:22 pm. 20 Comments :

Barring any last minute surprises, a couple of days from now Donald Trump will take to the stage of Saturday Night Live to engage in an evening of carefree hilarity. The program’s network and producers have so far shown no inclination to respect the millions of Americans who are offended by Trump’s undisguised bigotry, which to them is no laughing matter.

The opposition to Trump’s hosting gig has grown significantly with petition drives (here and here) that have gathered over 350,000 signatures. Nevertheless, NBC doesn’t seem to be the least bit dissuaded from permitting Trump to host their iconic comedy program even while Trump is the leading advocate for boycotting NBC/Telemundo’s Republican primary debate (the only GOP debate with a Latino sponsor).

The SNL controversy has been played out across the media spectrum including, of course, Fox News where the audacity of people protesting the repackaging of hate as comedy would not be tolerated. For example, this morning on Fox’s Outnumbered they did a segment about the protests that featured one of the hosts, Katie Pavlich, making a determined effort to outdo Trump’s own racism.

Pavlich led off by regurgitating Trump’s repulsive insult to millions of peaceful, hard-working undocumented American residents, saying that they are rapists and murderers. Furthermore, she seems to believe that there are no Latino activists working every day on the issues related to crime and violence in their communities. And based on that ignorant assumption, Pavlich blames Latinos for the horrible lies that Trump tells about them. But she wasn’t finished.

First of all, what Pavlich characterizes as both a stereotype and “the truth” is actually patently false. Studies have proven that immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born. So maybe it is people like Pavlich that should stop shooting off their mouths until they rid their communities of criminal activity. Also, the notion that nobody can protest an injustice until every shred of any other bad behavior is eliminated, whether related to the protest or not, is just plain idiotic. Were that the standard, no one could ever protest anything.

So Pavlich made a compelling case for racists who want to distort the facts and spread fear and prejudice. And her co-hosts on the program unanimously agreed with her hate mongering. It was a nauseating display of unity for shameless bigots, but not surprising for Fox News. And when confronted with this sort of assault aimed at people exercising their constitutional right to protest, there is only one reasonable response, and it was made by these enlightened kids:

Fox News Continues To Donate Millions Of Dollars Of Airtime To Donald Trump

Posted by Mark NC on November 4, 2015 at 9:23 pm. 6 Comments :

The one thing that people will remember most from the Republican primary campaign of 2016 is going to be the fantastical story of a megalomaniac billionaire named Donald Trump. And the reason that he is going to be remembered is because Fox News contributed untold millions of dollars worth of valuable airtime to his campaign. Well, that and his penchant for being a boorish, conceited, loudmouthed, ignoramus.

Donald Trump News

It’s somewhat ironic that the richest man in the race (in history) to run for the presidency is being given so much advertising time for free. After all, he can afford to pay for it. And yet, month after month Fox News has made a gift of their time to the wealthy candidate. In their latest analysis of time distribution to Republican candidates, Media Matters shows that, once again, Trump has been the recipient of more of Fox’s generosity than any other candidate.

The unfairness and imbalance of the airtime differential is, as Trump might say, “Huuuuge.” He was featured on Fox for a total of four hours and twenty-seven minutes in October. Coming in at a distant second was Rand Paul with a comparatively measly one hour and forty-four minutes, or less than half of Trump’s time. Everyone else, of course, scored even less than that.

To put the distribution of time in perspective, Trump actually got more airtime than the combined total of nine of his GOP rivals (Bush, Cruz, Kasich, Graham, Santorum, Fiorina, Jindal, Pataki, and Gilmore). With that kind of promotion he could outsell Coca-Cola. And since there is no equal time provisions for news organizations, Fox can continue to blanket their air with Trump while burying his opponents.

One of the ways Fox pushes Trump to their audience is by airing most of his public addresses live in their entirety [Fox is not the only network guilty of this, as noted here]. They do this despite the fact that there is rarely, if ever, anything newsworthy about them. And they pointedly refuse to do this for any other candidate. Can you imagine the response if Hillary Clinton insisted that Fox air her speeches in full every day?

Another interesting observation is that Trump has achieved this status as Fox’s most frequent flier even though he has been embroiled in a series of very public and hostile feuds with the network. He has viciously insulted Megyn Kelly (whose show he still has not been on since their break up), and encouraged his supporters who expressed their intention to boycott Fox. Yet the network still keeps their nose a dark shade of Trumpish Brown. Just think how much more he would have been on if they were on good terms the whole time.

This past week there was a mini-tsunami by the GOP candidate club over what they thought was ill-treatment by CNBC during a debate they sponsored. Their anger resulted in a meeting to unite the candidates against the media overlords who were oppressing them. One of the outrageous demonstrations of brazen unfairness regarded the unequal time allotted for questions to each candidate. But if they were so disturbed by CNBC not giving each of them equal time during that one debate, then why aren’t they the least bit bothered by Fox News favoring one candidate over all the others for months on end? Shouldn’t they be holding meetings to castigate Fox News and to reform the way Fox News treats them all?

That’s not likely considering that the post-debate meeting they held to reform the debate process produced a letter to the networks with a list of demands that explicitly excluded Fox because “people are afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad.” And so the status quo will flow on without interruption. And Trump will continue to get special treatment while his opponents grin nervously, beg for scraps, and beam their gratitude for whatever they get.

The GOP’s Debate Dysfunction Is A Mirror Image Of Their Governing Dysfunction

Posted by Mark NC on November 3, 2015 at 11:21 pm. 13 Comments :

Anyone who is surprised by the clumsy efforts of Republicans to try to manage their circus of a primary hasn’t been watching what they have been doing in Congress for the past several years. Their legislative record is by far the least productive in modern times with both the fewest bills passed and the fewest hours in session. They have developed a reputation as ineffective, incompetent, and obstructionist, even failing to pass their own bills.

The recent calamity surrounding their election of a new Speaker, following the wingnut driven exile of John Boehner, didn’t do much to enhance their reputation. They eventually settled for Paul Ryan, who doesn’t want the job and is despised and distrusted by their right wing “Freedom” caucus. What the Tea Party has wrought for the GOP is The Congress That Can’t Govern Straight. And not surprisingly, the resounding chaos and absence of leadership that is emblematic of the GOP’s congressional majority is precisely what is being seen in their response to what they regard as a poor debate performance.

Following the debacle at CNBC, the candidates attempted to band together to insist that reforms be made in order to avoid the messy affair that took place last week. They resolved to produce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would include a list of demands to present to the media organizations that produce and broadcast the debates. But as soon as it began the edges started to fray leading to a complete collapse. Within days the congregation of candidates fell apart. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and John Kasich have said that they will not sign on to the draft MOU. Carly Fiorina didn’t even send a representative to the meeting. Chris Christie called out his rivals for complaining and boasted that all he needs is a stage and a podium (a line that Trump later stole, after he had already done his share of whining). Consequently, the group’s MOU appear’s to be a non-starter.

The whole process, however, was a catastrophe resulting in a set of criteria that was in no way different than what was already being done. In other words, it was a lot of frantic bluster that changed nothing. If you compare their demands to the debate agreement drawn up between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, you are not going to find much difference. What’s more, nothing in the MOU would have prevented any of the things that occurred during the CNBC debate to which they so fiercely objected. So what’s the point?

Some of the candidates had suggestions for reform that never made it into the MOU. Ted Cruz expressed his desire to see the debate moderators limited to registered Republicans like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. Because these respected journalists would bring a air of dignity and rationality to the debate. Ben Carson floated the idea of not broadcasting the debates on TV. He also lobbied for a two hour time limit with all 15 candidates in the same debate. Each would get a five minute opening and closing statement. Of course that would take two and a half hours.

Clearly these people cannot be taken seriously. It is unlikely that they even intended to pursue these debate negotiations. All they really wanted was an opportunity to bitch about the media, an easy target and a reliable applause line. But it wasn’t the media in general, just a specific subset that irks them. That would include anything in the NBC family and any network with a foreign sounding names (i.e. Telemundo). To be fair, Jeb Bush asked that Telemundo’s debate be reinstated, but Trump quickly slapped that down saying that if it was he would walk. There was one network though that got a free pass. All the parties agreed that the debate demands would not apply to Fox News because “people are afraid to make Roger [Ailes] mad.”

If there is one thing that is obvious about this charade, it’s that it couldn’t possibly succeed. Republicans aren’t really looking for fairness or balance in their debates. They want to turn the debate into an infomercial for the GOP. The networks could never agree to that. And with all of the infighting and conflicting priorities among the candidates it was destined to disintegrate. And like everything they have tried to do Washington, Republicans have proven once again to be bumbling fools.

MSNBC’s Scarborough Has On-Air Mental Breakdown Over Liberal Media Myth

Posted by Mark NC on November 2, 2015 at 6:22 pm. 12 Comments :

The resident Republican blowhard on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, has staked out his post as the network’s voice of rightist disinformation. He commands his three hour block of airtime like a junta leader, ordering the topics of discussion and interrupting his guests incessantly.

This morning Scarborough appeared to have a severe cognitive collapse during a segment about the Republican Party’s debate-o-phobia (video below). Like most of his ideological allies, he is suffering from the delusion that the American media, owned by a handful of megalithic, multinational corporations, is dominated by liberals. Scarborough set off on a rant about the absence of conservatives on nightly news programs, Sunday shows, and in the executive suites. He badgered his guests to come up with examples of Republicans in those roles, and insisted that they could not do it.

Setting aside the fact that Scarborough conveniently leaves out Fox News, the most watched, and therefore mainstream by default, cable news network, he repeatedly spits out this challenge to his colleagues, who are not particularly well informed on the subject. For instance, Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for MSNBC, responded sheepishly saying “Joe, I agree with you 100%.” No one else on the panel was able to take up Scarborough’s challenge either.

For their future reference, they may want to note that Chris Wallace, now the anchor of Fox News Sunday, hosted NBC’s Meet the Press for a year. Tony Snow, who went on to serve as press secretary for George W. Bush was the first host of FOX News Sunday. Diane Sawyer anchored ABC’s World News Tonight for five years after serving as a press aide to Richard Nixon. So Scarborough’s sweaty insistence that no one can name such people is demonstrably false.

Scarborough kept switching from asking for on-air-personalities to executives in charge of the news operations. On that front there are right-wingers like David Rhodes, the current President of CBS News who had a similar position at Fox for fifteen years. Ken Jautz, the head of CNN, is the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job on television. NBC is now owned by Comcast, whose Roberts family owners are notorious righties.

There are certainly more conservatives in television newsrooms, but it’s hard to pin them down with proof. That’s because most career journalists are careful to avoid any open expression of partisanship. So people like CBS’s Scott Pelley, or NBC’s Chuck Todd, and many more, may have distinctly conservative views, but they have never worked for a GOP senator or made a donation to any political campaign, or even registered with a party, so there is no hard evidence. And the same is true for journalists who are accused of being liberals. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And it doesn’t warrant the loony outburst that Scarborough let loose today. If anything, the fact that no one at the table could cite any of the people mentioned above is proof that the media is conservative, and blind to their bias.

Super Sleuths At Fox News Finally Find Hillary Clinton’s ‘Smoking Gun’ Email

Posted by Mark NC on November 1, 2015 at 3:56 pm. 36 Comments :

On Friday the latest batch of nearly 7,000 of Hillary Clinton’s emails were made public. As with with prior data dumps, conservative media feverishly combed through the documents desperately seeking some damaging material with which to put Clinton out of their misery.

Most of what they found was precisely the boring material that Clinton has been telling everyone would be there for months. There was nothing incriminating, or even controversial. The best they could come up with were emails that exposed her as inquiring about the use of smileys on her phone and having communicated with Ben Affleck. It’s not the stuff on which impeachments are based. That is, until Fox News stepped up to uncover the biggest bombshell to date that may upend her campaign for the presidency: “Hillary’s Email Subject Read ‘GUNMEN Try To ASSASSINATE Head Of Libyan Army’ But That’s NOT What She Wrote About…”

That’s right! The former Secretary of State exchanged emails with a top aide that were not related to what was written in the subject line. Assemble the firing squad!

What we have here is a situation wherein Clinton aide, Huma Abedin (whom most wingnuts are certain is a mole for the Muslim Brotherhood), sent Clinton an email with an attached article from the Associated Press about an event in Libya nearly a year before the famous Benghazi attack. So Clinton took advantage of the email to reply with something else that was on her mind without bothering changing the subject line.

Millions of Americans do this every day without being accused of treason. But to the brainiacs at Fox News this was so significant that they posted it to the very top of their Fox Nation website, where it remained most of Sunday morning. [When they eventually updated the site it was with another article about Clinton that implied she was headed for jail] After all, this is big news. And notice their use of caps that were not used on the actual email.

The absurdity of this article was evident in the graphic that the Fox Nationalists were kind enough to include. It shows the exchange between Clinton and Abedin, with the ominous parts highlighted in red.

If this is the sort of “journalism” that Fox News thinks will bring down Clinton, they are pitifully delusional. Although it is typical of their lame efforts in the past to attempt to turn completely trivial events into full-fledged scandals. Jesse Watters has proven himself to be an immature, logic-challenged, amateur in his role as editor of Fox Nation, as well as his duties as staff doofus on Bill O’Reilly’s show.

The only thing this type of story can accomplish is to set the saliva glands of the dimwitted Fox audience to flowing uncontrollably. But that isn’t a particularly difficult task. All you really have to do is show them a picture of Clinton or President Obama with a swastika and stink lines and these miscreants will guffaw and wave their Gadsden flags.

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Crybaby Donald Trump Calls For NBC Debate Boycott But Still Wants To Host SNL

Posted by Mark NC on October 31, 2015 at 3:19 am. 4 Comments :

Following the debate fiasco on CNBC, the Republican candidates announced that they would be meeting to discuss how they could could strong arm the media into producing debates that weren’t so hard on their fragile and weak-kneed candidates. They are exposing themselves as the cowards that they are and responding like bullies, as cowards often do. I wrote a more detailed analysis of this situation yesterday, but there is a new development that requires attention.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, announced that he would punish NBC for what took place on CNBC by suspending the agreement to have NBC host a GOP debate that was scheduled for February. It’s another act of Republican cowardice with a side of revenge. And shortly after this announcement, Donald Trump’s campaign came aboard saying that he “supports the RNC’s decision to suspend the debate on February 26th due to the total lack of substance and respect.”

What a pompous act of hypocrisy. If a “total lack of respect” is sufficient justification for the RNC to cut NBC’s debate, then it’s more than sufficient for NBC to cut Trump from hosting Saturday Night Live. Trump’s disrespect to Latinos (and so many others) is far worse than anything that happened at the CNBC debate. And now that he is attacking NBC and Telemundo, they should respond in kind. What obligation do they have to allow him to host their program while he is advocating a boycott of their network?

Trump should not be surprised if NBC decides to do the right thing and cancel his SNL hosting gig. After all, he is currently forbidding any reporters from Univision (another Latino news outlet) to cover his campaign events. The nonsensical reason he gives is that he is suing the network’s entertainment division because it canceled their contract to broadcast his Miss Universe pageant after he disparaged Latinos as murderers and rapists. He says it would be a “conflict of interest” – a phrase he apparently doesn’t know the meaning of – to admit Univisions’s reporters. Don’t try to figure that out, it’s the Trumpian anti-logic that he uses to justify his bigotry.

The invitation to host SNL came after NBC had broken business ties with Trump due to his “derogatory statements” about Latinos. NBC said such rhetoric was contrary to their values. Have their values changed? Is it now acceptable to do business with the same noxious blowhard who’s pushing a boycott of your network? What’s more, Latino groups are appalled that SNL would allow an overtly racist hate monger like Trump to appear as host, especially considering the fact that there are zero Latinos in the current SNL cast, and only two in the whole forty-one year history of the program. What message does the network send by embracing Trump?

In conclusion, if it’s OK for Trump to banish Univision’s Latino reporters from his campaign events, and to advocate a prohibition of Republican debates on NBC and Telemundo, then it is more than justified for NBC to retract their offer to let him host SNL, and they should do so immediately. [There is a petition to urge NBC to rescind the offer here.] The question is, do they have the principles and the backbone to do it, or will they kneel before The Donald in utter disgrace?

GOP Candidates Frightened Away From Scary Debates They Can’t Control

Posted by Mark NC on October 30, 2015 at 3:44 pm. 10 Comments :

The Republican field of presidential primary candidates are cowering together to formulate a new debate process that isn’t so darn frightening to them. Following the debacle on CNBC, they are taking steps to insure that such ghastly encounters are avoided in the future in favor of more friendly frolics through the political pastures of pussy willows and wingnut trees.

The Republicans spent two hours Wednesday night whining about how the debate questions were framed. They had some justification, but they carried it so far as to dodge even the substantive questions, using their frothy indignation as an excuse. Immediately afterward they went into high hysterics over what they asserted was a fiendish plot by commie instigators to tarnish them and their party. But accusing the Wall Street defenders at CNBC of being ultra-liberal conspirators against these poor, dumbfounded conservatives smacks of severe mental breakdown.

See how badly the GOP’s meeting to reform debates went here.

Now the GOP contenders are planning to huddle together to come up with a new debate format that better suits their needs. They intend to address how they might take more control over the process, diminish the role of the Republican National Committee, and decide how the debates are conducted, including the selection of moderators. It’s an unprecedented initiative to transform what is supposed to be an open dialog that provides voters with an informative look at the candidates, into a PR vehicle that functions more like propaganda.

The RNC, which is taking some heat from the candidates, had already barred MSNBC from hosting any debates when they originally published their schedule back in January. That admission of fear has now escalated as the RNC chairman, Reince Priebus, advised NBC today that the one debate they had scheduled (Fox News has four), in partnership with Telemundo, has been “suspended,” whatever that means. So the RNC intends to punish NBC for the perceived wrongs committed by a separate unit of the Comcast/NBC family, And in the process they are also risking their only access to a minority audience, via Telemundo, that the GOP desperately needs to make inroads with. Will Republicans make demands as to who will moderate or what can be asked in order to lift the suspension? Well, Priebus is now saying that “Every debate on the calendar is going to be reevaluated, reset — look at the format, the moderators, everything,”

What really makes this whole phony controversy ridiculous is that it doesn’t benefit any political party to impose such strict demands. First of all, if they get their wish and appear before “friendly” moderators like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh (as Ted Cruz actually suggested last night on Hannity’s show), they might find the questioning even more damaging. The rightist Taliban, as represented by Limbaugh et al, will be more likely to force candidates to stake out extreme positions which they will be unable to “Etch-a-Sketch” away after the primaries. The wingnut media are notoriously committed to the sort of ideological purity that voters find repugnant. What’s more, even if they got the sympathetic treatment they desire, it would only result in the candidates being woefully unprepared for the full-contact combat they will eventually encounter in the general election.

If Republicans go through with this dictatorial mission to force news networks to obey their commands, the networks must refuse to participate and decline to broadcast any such manipulated program. In fact, networks that aren’t directly affected should also boycott the Republican debates in solidarity with the independence of the press. It would be a journalistic atrocity to submit to such interference in the role of the media. If Republicans want a fully scripted television farce, let them buy the time like any other telemarketer.

In the end, what Republicans are proposing now is not only hostile to freedom of the press, it is also horribly bad judgment with regard to their own interests. It will leave their candidates unprepared for debates with Democrats, and mired in ultra-rightist ideologies that will alienate voters. And if that weren’t enough, it also reveals them to be afraid of being exposed to the sort of tough questions that will occur throughout any political campaign. And if they can’t handle a few questions from reporters, how will they ever handle Vladimir Putin and ISIS?

What We Learned From The GOP’s Trainwreck Debate On CNBC: Republicans Hate The ‘Liberal’ Media

Posted by Mark NC on October 29, 2015 at 4:24 pm. 6 Comments :

In the best of circumstances, a political debate should be illuminating in a manner that allows voters to assess the fitness of candidates for public office. However, the best that can be said about the Republican primary debate on CNBC (transcript) is that it illuminated the rabid opportunism of the candidates and the penchant for provocation on the part of the moderators.

See the update to this article here.

While there was an attempt by the moderators to inject some substance into their questions, they inexplicably capped their queries with an inappropriate zinger that only left them wide open for criticism. For example, John Harwood constructed a perfectly legitimate question for Donald Trump that called on him to explain how his wall building, tax slashing, immigrant deporting policies could be achieved without wreaking havoc on the economy. But then Harwood finished off with “Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?” Regardless of the aptness of the imagery, the only conceivable purpose for that framing would be to give Trump something to complain about. This pretentious strategy was repeated throughout the debate.

And the complaints veritably gushed from debaters who were eager to hear some reasonable questions and avoid answering them (which they did all night). The backlash directed at the media and the moderators easily became the dominant feature of the debate, and it was almost the only thing that was discussed in the post-debate analyses. The most replayed moments included Marco Rubio tagging the mainstream media as a SuperPAC for the Democrats, and Ted Cruz lamenting that “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.” Consequently, the only takeaway from this debate was that Republicans hate the media, something everybody already knows.

Cruz went on to argue that the media treated Democrats differently, “fawning” over “Which of you is more handsome and wise?” That characterization of the Democratic debate is wholly inconsistent with reality. From the transcript of their CNN outing, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Democrats the following questions:

[To Clinton] Plenty of politicians evolve on issues, but even some Democrats believe you change your positions based on political expediency. […] Will you say anything to get elected?
[To Sanders] A Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House. You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?
[To O’Malley] Why should Americans trust you with the country when they see what’s going on in the city that you ran for more than seven years?
[To Clinton] Russia, they’re challenging the U.S. in Syria. According to U.S. intelligence, they’ve lied about who they’re bombing. You spearheaded the reset with Russia. Did you underestimate the Russians?

Those were not fawning, softball questions by any stretch of the imagination. But Republicans only retain information that comports with their preconceptions. Therefore, the liberal media is invariably portrayed as fiercely pro-Democrat and virulently anti-Republican. What’s more, the conservatives never apply the same standards to their benefactors at Fox News, to whom they still suck up despite the tough questioning they got when Fox hosted their debate.

One of the more shameful exchanges of the CNBC debate was when Becky Quick posed this query to Trump: “You had talked a little bit about Marco Rubio. I think you called him Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator because he was in favor of the H1B.” Trump interrupted to insist that “I never said that. I never said that.” So Quick quickly apologized. The problem is that Trump actually says exactly that on his own website. When the debate came back from a commercial, Quick noted that fact but never challenged Trump’s denial. And to make matters worse, this segment of the debate was discussed on Fox News the next day and host Jon Scott falsely asserted that it was Quick who was wrong, saying that “it seems that the research was not necessarily done.” This was after he already knew that she was correct and had cited her source during the debate.

In addition to that, the debate featured a couple of statements that were highly significant, but are not likely to garner much attention. First, Carly Fiorina said that “There is no Constitutional role for the Federal Government to be setting minimum wages.” Apparently ignorant of the Commerce Clause, Fiorina boldly came out in favor of ditching the minimum wage. Secondly, Carl Quintanilla directed a question to Trump with the preface that the site of the shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon “was a gun-free zone,” Trump readily agreed. But not only is that untrue, there were actually people there with guns who did not engaged the shooter.

So aside from all of the misinformation, the inter-party hostilities, and the failings of the moderators, the one thing that will persist as the defining characteristic of this debate is the intense loathing that Republicans have for the media. It is that rancorous acrimony that will supplant any useful knowledge that might have been gained about the candidates. And since everyone already knew that Republicans hate the press, the whole affair was a complete waste of time.

Republicans Launch Proxy Impeachment Proceedings Against Obama

Posted by Mark NC on October 29, 2015 at 8:03 am. 30 Comments :

There is a nasty streak of vengeance that runs through the Republican Party. They have been lusting for an opportunity to impeach President Obama since the day that he was inaugurated. It didn’t matter what excuse they drummed up, it could have been over anything from Fast and Furious, to the IRS, to ObamaCare, to immigration, to executive orders, to his birthplace. They even alleged that – and this is all too real – Obama was actually trying to impeach himself.

Having been denied their heart’s deepest desire, an actual reason to impeach Obama, the GOP went after administration stand-ins for the President. One of those was Lois Lerner, who was running the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit during a period when it was alleged that they were improperly targeting conservative applicants. There was never any evidence to prove the allegations, and last week the Justice Department announced that they had closed the investigation and would not be bringing any charges. They said that “We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”

In response to the DOJ’s determination, Republicans sought to lash out any convenient victim who might be available. Someone had to suffer their wrath if it wasn’t Lerner. So Jason Chaffetz (R-Wacko), chairman of the House Oversight (Overreach?) Committee, and his Republican Retributionists, have introduced a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The resolution accuses Koskinen of making false statements under oath and failing to comply with a subpoena.

This a curious persecution considering that Koskinen had nothing to do with the alleged targeting. He didn’t became IRS Commissioner until December of 2013, three years after the Tea Party’s whining about being scrutinized for improper political activity, of which they were clearly guilty. And back in the 2010 time frame, the IRS Commissioner was Douglas Shulman, an appointee of George W. Bush. Nevertheless, Koskinen is the target of opportunity, so the GOP is spewing their venom at him. They have determined that they need a scalp and they aren’t going home without trying at least once more.

This is just the latest in a string of partisan, expensive, and futile legislature abuse. The Republicans have already proven that they have no aptitude for governing, so they have adopted an agenda of hostility that relies on ludicrous hearings on Benghazi, Planned Parenthood, and now the impeachment of an IRS Commissioner. But make no mistake, all of these actions are thinly disguised swipes at President Obama. It is he that they wish they were impeaching, but they have even less justification for it than the phony scams they have already run. Even uber-conservative Fox News Yoda, Charles Krauthammer, is less than enthused with the GOP’s latest proxy attack on the President:

If the Republicans go through with impeachment proceedings against Koskinen they will only embarrass themselves further. There is no case to be made against him, and their transparent animosity will reveal them for the partisan hate mongers that they are. Their visceral disgust for Obama has driven them to extremes that only make them more repugnant to the average American voter. And as much as it would be in their best interests to try to at least pretend to be sane, expect more craziness to come. They obviously can’t help themselves.

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