Slow News Day: Fox News Correspondent With Paper Fetish Reveals Meaningless Documents

Posted by on June 4, 2015 at 12:13 pm. 2 Comments :

OK, Rick Perry just announced that he is running for president, but anyone who thinks that is news is probably still wondering whether Saddam had WMDs. So, in the absence of anything more substantial to report, News Corpse would like to present Catherine Herridge, a Fox News correspondent with a particularly unique on-air presence.

Fox News Catherine Herridge

For some reason, Herridge insists on augmenting her reporting with visual aids. Whenever she discusses some government revelation that was discovered in a memo or email or agency report, she feels the need to hold up a handful of papers to validate her reporting. Of course, the papers she displays cannot be read on the TV screen and really just take up space. For all the viewer knows, they are instructions to assemble an IKEA bookcase, or the results of her recent colonoscopy. [Note: If Fox’s graphics are to be believed, all of the examples above have something to do with Benghazi, an issue that Fox has tried in vain to scandalize for years]

The only thing interesting about this behavior is that Fox News regards this stagecraft as enhancing the storytelling on the part of their reporter. There is an inference that Fox viewers are persuaded by this “evidence” that whatever Herridge is saying must be true because there are some papers in her hand with printing on them. It is emblematic of the shallow standards of journalism as practiced by Fox News and the low bar for authenticity required by its audience.

In short, this useless theatrical gimmick captures the core of Fox’s broadcast methodology: Wave a shiny object on the screen while making unsupported assertions about its meaning. It’s basically the same tactic they use to promote Megyn Kelly and ISIS videos.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

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Missing From Fox News: The Incredible Disappearing Sarah Palin

Posted by on June 3, 2015 at 10:12 pm. 13 Comments :

An article from yesterday’s McClatchy Washington Bureau noted that the whereabouts of Sarah Palin are in some doubt. The headline asked “Where’s Sarah,” and the opening line answered vaguely that “Sarah Palin has disappeared from the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Where's Sarah Palin

Indeed, Palin seems to have dropped from sight. A sidebar posted with the article listed ten prominent Republican campaign events held over the past four months that attracted numerous GOP luminaries, including presidential candidates, that were not graced by the presence of Palin.

This disappearance is all the more peculiar when coupled with her assertion last January that she is “absolutely…seriously interested” in running for president herself. Of course, nobody with any functioning brain cells is taking her campaign conjecture seriously. She has no organization or staff and her SarahPAC is drawing paltry contributions. [On a side note, Palin has given just 6.6% of her PAC funds to other candidates over the past two years. Instead, she is spending the money mostly on herself. Yet she still has the gall to criticize Hillary Clinton for helping to run a charitable foundation that has helped millions of deserving people]

More ominous from the perspective of Palin, and those who need a regular fix of her unique brand of incoherence, she has been absent from her duties as a Fox News contributor. The last appearance on the network seems to have been in January on Sean Hannity’s program. That booking four months ago was clearly arranged as an attempt to recover from a speech she gave at Wingnut Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Summit, where she so embarrassed herself that even fellow conservatives were turning their heads in shame. Hannity recognized the ditch that Palin had dug and tried to give her a platform to redeem herself, but it didn’t go well:

Hannity: You also got criticized for the speech by a lot of people, even some of the people in the crowd that tend to be supporters of yours. Did the TelePrompter go down? Did you have trouble with the copy? Was there any moment in the speech where you had any difficulty, because people have been so critical?
Palin: Well, you know I don’t read the praise and I don’t read the criticism cause I know how you guys, or how the media in general works.

Thereupon she went on to defend the speech against the criticism that she said she didn’t read. Her defense consisted mainly of insisting that the Iowa audience that came to see her were satisfied, and besides the media, and um America, and um we the people, and um you betcha.

During the entire segment she seemed to be pissed off. Was it her sensitivity to the humiliating address in Iowa? Was she mad at Hannity? Hard to say. But even when he asked about her presidential ambitions she snapped at him:

Hannity: While you were there, on the ground, you were asked if you’re considering running for president. Your answer?
Palin: I was asked by a pesty reporter while I was promoting my Sportsman Channel show, Amazing America with Sarah Palin, I was asked if I were to be interested at all in running for office, maybe the presidency, and it’s certainly not newsworthy for me to have answered “Oh yeah, I’m interested, yeah. Next question.”

Meeeow! Imagine the nerve of that “pesty” reporter asking a perfectly ordinary question that anyone in Palin’s shoes should expect. In fact, Hannity just asked her the very same question. Next those jackals will wanna know what magazines she reads. It’s especially cute that she refers to her own cable reality show as Amazing America “with Sarah Palin,” as if she has a contractual obligation to formally include her name whenever mentioning the title.

Palin’s demeanor was so unpleasant that it would be understandable if Hannity and other Fox News hosts are now reluctant to invite her back. Or maybe she’s busy with her web video channel. Nah, that can’t be it. She only posted nine videos the whole month of May for a total of 20 minutes of programming. A more likely scenario is that a Fox honcho (i.e. CEO Roger Ailes) has decided that Palin is now a liability as the 2016 campaign season heats up and they don’t want her around screwing up their plans to send a Republican to the White House.

I suppose that we shouldn’t complain about Palin being off the air, whatever the reason. But while her mindless inanities will not be missed, the country’s comedians are going to suffer a severe drought of primo material. Just to tide you over in case Palin remains sequestered in the tundra, here is how Jon Stewart covered her disaster in Iowa last January (the whole clip is worth watching, but if you can’t wait, Palin enters at about five minutes in).

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Sarah Palin Redux: Hillary Clinton Pallin’ Around With Terrorists? Here We Go Again

Posted by on June 2, 2015 at 3:00 pm. 5 Comments :

Fading reality TV loser and notorious political quitter, Sarah Palin, hasn’t been heard from much lately. Her sightings on Fox News have become rare, with the last appearance sometime back in January. Unfortunately, her unique brand of dementia seems to be enduring as one of her classically idiotic themes made a comeback on the Fox Nation website:

Hillary's Benghazi-Qaeda Brotherhood

A featured article on Fox Nation was topped with a headline that declared that “Hillary’s Terror-Tied Aide Had Full Access to Benghazi E-Mails.” This immediately brings to mind the memory of Palin’s famously loony “pallin’ around with terrorists” allegation that falsely tried to tie then-candidate Barack Obama to former Weather Underground radical (now mild-mannered college professor) Bill Ayers.

The reprise of this stupidity is based on the thoroughly discredited accusations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a deep-cover agent of the Muslim Brotherhood who is plotting to destroy America from within. Never mind that Abedin, who was born in Michigan, has been a trusted and respected public servant for many years. The charges against her were originally leveled by congressional “intelligence” experts, Michelle Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and other Tea Party fruitcakes.

When the terrorist slurs first began circulating they were shot down by everyone that knew Abedin, including prominent Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner defended her saying that she had a “sterling character.” Lindsey Graham called the attacks on her “ridiculous.” John McCain praised her saying that she “represents what is best about America” and that the charges were “an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman.” Ed Rollins, who managed Bachmann’s presidential campaign, repudiated the attacks as “downright vicious.”

The Fox Nation article links to the ultra-rightist propagandists at Truth Revolt, a website that was founded by Breitbart Editor-at-Large, Ben Shapiro. Truth Revolt, in turn referenced the conspiracy crackpots at WorldNetDaily, who are still grasping feverishly to the birther nonsense. The WND article was written by Aaron Klein, who believes that Obama might be a Muslim who sides with Al Qaeda. So Truth Revolt re-posts WND and Fox Nation re-posts Truth Revolt, with an opening paragraph that launches into a surreal fantasy:

“It has been revealed that Huma Abedin, senior aide to Hillary Clinton, had access to Clinton’s personal e-mails including highly-sensitive details surrounding Benghazi. Abedin is also accused of having ties to Muslim extremist groups. […] WND reports personal and familial ties between Abedin, the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as al Qaeda.”

There you have it. With absolutely no factual basis, Fox News has bought into scurrilous charges against a respectable woman, associating her with America’s most virulent enemies. And as an additional bonus, Fox worked in a mention of their favorite recurring non-scandal, Benghazi.

If there is anyone left who still thinks that Fox News is a reputable journalism enterprise, or that they might have moderated their extremist views since the last presidential election, this should put an end to those fallacies. As the next presidential cycle gets into gear, it is clear that Fox intends to ramp up the crazy to levels at least as deranged as those in 2008 and 2012. So here come the terrorist charges against the presumptive Democratic nominee. Because if you’re a Tea Party wingnut it isn’t enough to merely have policy disputes with political rivals, you must demonize them as threats to the continued existence of mankind.

As evidence of this trend, note the latest outrage being hyped on Fox News. It’s a brief video clip that shows Clinton politely asking a supporter to take her place in line in order to get a photo with the candidate.

On Fox News this is proof that Clinton is an Ice Queen who cannot relate to regular humans. Of course, the fact that the video is chopped into a fragment that fails to put Clinton’s encounter in context is irrelevant to the spinners at Fox. To them it is more important to create an artificial persona for Clinton that makes her look mean and elitist. And surprisingly, an anchor at Fox actually admitted that it is their intention to promote this video misrepresentation.

Martha MacCallum: Oh my, why don’t you go to the end of the line. When I saw this yesterday, this is just gonna get played over and over here, and elsewhere, and this is not good for Hillary Clinton regardless of what the circumstances exactly were.
Byron York: I should say that some people have looked at the whole video and Mrs. Clinton was actually trying to accommodate the people who had lined up to see her. But it points really to a bigger problem.

So MacCallum admits that Fox will put this video on an endless loop even if the impression it leaves is false. And her guest confesses that in the uncut video Clinton’s behavior was entirely appropriate, but that doesn’t matter when you are trying to slander her.

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Available now at Amazon.

That’s the sort of dishonesty and bias that has been the hallmark of Fox News. Consequently, it’s not particularly surprising that they are continuing to debase journalism just as they have from their inception. What’s a little surprising is that they are openly admitting it even as they are doing it. That shows how certain they are that they can get away with their deceit without any repercussions. They know very well that their audience couldn’t care less about truth or lies, even if they could tell the difference.


Pew: Millennials Distrust Fox News More Than Any Other News Source

Posted by on June 1, 2015 at 4:16 pm. 10 Comments :

A new study by the Pew Research Center reveals some striking generational disparities between America’s news consumers. The study’s results cast the light of perspective on the marketing hype of Fox News, who brag incessantly about being the highest rated cable news network.

The ratings boast has always been a specious act of puffery by Fox News considering that their numbers are achieved by herding all of the wingnut demographic into a single corral, while the remaining TV viewing universe is dispersed to the rest of the available channels. What’s more, Fox’s ratings represent a tiny portion (about 1%) of the nation’s population on their best showing.

Go Fox Yourself

What we learn from the Pew study is that Fox’s appeal among young viewers sets a low water mark for the network. Millennial respondents in the study say that they trust Fox News less than any other news source. A plurality of 43% distrust Fox News. That’s significantly more than the next lowest source, Rush Limbaugh, who is also distrusted by far more millennials (32%) than trust him (4%). The 43% of Millennials who distrust Fox is nearly three times the number who distrust MSNBC (15%).

Looking at the numbers from the other direction, the percentage who trust Fox (35%) is less than CNN (60%), MSNBC (37%), and 4 to 12 points less than the three broadcast news networks. Even sources like the Daily Show and Al Jazeera, whose sample sizes are smaller, are still rated with more viewers that trust them than distrust them, compared to Fox’s net distrust results.

The numbers aren’t much better in other demographic groupings. Gen-Xers trust Fox News less than every other source except for Limbaugh. And the same thing is true for the Baby Boomers who are Fox’s best demo. With a median age of 68.8 years, Fox’s audience is over six years older than either CNN or MSNBC. It’s even worse for their top rated program (Bill O’Reilly) who’s average viewer is over 72 years old.

In addition to the poor showing by Fox News, the rest of the study’s bottom dwellers are primarily right-wing radio talkers, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.

From a business perspective, Fox News has to be deeply concerned about the next generation of viewers. If their opinions remain constant they are not going to be tuning in to Fox. However, putting this in a political context is more complex. While Millennials clearly have an aversion to Fox’s conservative programming, they are also less likely to participate in the electoral process. On the other hand, about half of the older Baby Boomers are fond of Fox, and they are more reliable voters. So Republicans may have some short-term advantage from that, but looking forward to the next generation of seniors is going to be a problem for Fox and the Republican Party.

Of Course , all of that may change if Millennials become more active politically due to factors like the first African-American president, or the first woman, or Latino, or candidates who support marriage equality and marijuana legalization. And Fox has been busy alienating all of the fastest growing voter blocs while simultaneously insulting their base of seniors with derogatory swipes at Hillary Clinton’s age. Even before this Pew study, polls have shown Fox News as both the most and least trusted news network.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The technological platforms for news are also drawing more young people. So participation by those connected to Facebook and Twitter will likely increase. In short, the future is a mystery. What isn’t mysterious is that Fox News is rapidly becoming a universally hated network. Its biases and brazenly dishonest reporting are being rejected in ever greater numbers. It is a fading entity whose prospects are dwindling with time. And that’s good news for democracy and America and the world.


Obama Declares Texas A Disaster: Prelude To Martial Law?

Posted by on May 30, 2015 at 12:12 pm. 2 Comments :

Late Friday, in response to a request from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, President Obama signed an order declaring Texas a disaster area. The action makes federal funds available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government sources for recovery efforts in the area affected by severe storms and flooding.

Obamapocalypse

Who does the President think he is calling the great state of Texas a disaster? The fact that he feels free to fling this insult is further evidence of the animus that Obama has for Texas and its citizens. It was only a few short weeks ago that Obama’s Storm Troopers (aka United States Armed Forces) designated Texas as “hostile” territory during preparations for the Jade Helm 15 invasion and subjugation of the state. Now he is granting himself additional powers to deploy his real “storm” trooping henchmen to impose “order.”

This appalling new development flies in the face of the defenders of liberty who cherish the freedom for which Texas stands. This includes former patriots like Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Louie Gohmert who bitterly objected to using taxpayer dollars to bailout the moochers who complained following other natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, but who are now complicit to the White House conspiracy. Remember, it was not long ago that former governor Rick Perry was holding rallies to “Pray for Rain.” Apparently God has answered those prayers.

However, the tyrants in Washington, D.C. are not fooling the real Americans in Texas with their phony declarations that are merely cover for more widespread abuses to our civil liberties. The language in the disaster declaration includes ambiguous code words for carrying out “hazard mitigation measures.” What is stopping the Feds from invoking that language to confiscate guns from law-abiding patriots, detain “dissidents,” and/or impose martial law? This plot is still so clandestine that even Glenn Beck and Alex Jones have not caught on.

As the illegitimate government proceeds with its agenda of oppression they will employ the media to brainwash the gullible masses with propaganda that attributes simple rain storms to allegedly catastrophic myths about Climate Change. An example of this deception was recently exposed by the media watchdogs at NewsBusters whose headline blared “NBC Continues Media Push Blaming Flooding in Texas, Drought in California on Climate Change.” The article sought to highlight the hypocrisy of attributing both storms and droughts to the specious scientific theory. Even though the “experts” agree that such changes in the Earth’s atmospherics can occur as climate patterns are transformed by the accumulation of greenhouse gasses, heroic science deniers refuse to fall for the scam.

Even more impressive was the observation by NewsBusters that NBC deliberately skewed its reporting to ignore the positive side of torrential rains that have so far claimed the lives of 25 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. NewsBusters noted that the current rainfall followed years of drought and “As opposed to expanding upon on the benefits of this news, [NBC reporter Miguel] Almaguer decided to invoke climate change.” Can’t these people see the bright side of anything?

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Given the threats that are so apparent, Americans must be on their guard against efforts by aspiring dictators to enslave the population. And declarations of so-called disaster areas may be the first step toward complete slavery. This administration has proven that it is determined to breach the Constitution via its assault on the long-cherished American principles of gun fetishism and Christian supremacy. Notice how Obama has nearly depleted the nation of firearms already, and devout Christians are victims of rampant discrimination. The message to patriots is: Now is not the time to surrender (you crazy motherf*ckers).


Fox News Editorial On Climate Change Still Using Bogus Argument By Disgraced Author

Posted by on May 29, 2015 at 4:24 pm. 6 Comments :

The debate over climate change is over. Not only is it occurring, it is man-made and dangerous. That is not one person’s opinion. It is the consensus opinion of thousands of climate scientists who have studied and written on the subject. The evidence was published in a study led by John Cook of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia, that examined nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed papers that were categorized by both independent researchers and the paper’s own authors. The result: “97% of those expressing a position…endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of the expert’s opinions, conservatives and right-wing media continue to try to dismiss reality in favor of a viewpoint that benefits the giant fossil fuel industry and defenders of the status quo. Leading the pack is Fox News where climate change denialism is clutched unto as a matter of faith. The twisted coverage of environmental issues by Fox News, and the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has actually resulted in the countries where his media dominates (particularly the U.S.) to be the most ignorant of the risks associated with climate change.

Rupert Murdoch

In keeping with their pro-pollution doctrine, Fox News published an editorial disputing a tweet by President Obama citing the 97% consensus.

The article was written by Richard Tol, a Dutch professor who has turned his denialism into a fetish. So much so that even after he was embarrassed by a prior effort to criticize the consensus he is still using the same failed arguments in this new article. Tol makes several wholly unsupported allegations against the consensus study, but focused on his assertion that the papers reviewed in the study were categorized improperly. He complains that…

“The paper claims that each abstract was read by two independent readers, but they freely compared notes. Cook and Co. collected data, inspected the results, collected more data, inspected the results again, changed their data classification, collected yet more data, inspected the results once more, and changed their data classification again, before they found their magic 97 percent.”

Tol is overstating the process that actually consisted of only two reviews – an initial review followed by a re-review if the two researchers disagreed on a category designation. If they still disagreed after the second review, a third researcher would break the tie. There is no evidence, or incentive, for anyone conspiring to falsify the categorization. Even so, the gist of Tol’s complaint is that the study was just too darn thorough. That’s a negative in Tol’s view. Although real scientists tend to prefer thoroughness, shills and propagandists favor Tol’s disdain for it.

Additionally, Tol attempts to misrepresent the study’s findings by saying that of the 12,000 papers reviewed only 64 explicitly endorsed the climate change consensus. He exuberantly declares that that is only “half a per cent or less of the total, rather than 97 percent.” However, the study’s category for endorsement consists of three sub-categories including a range from explicit to implicit endorsement. Tol separated out just the papers with the highest level of explicit endorsement which was indeed 64. But he left out the other 3,832 papers that were also unambiguously endorsements. That’s the kind of math distortion that deniers embrace to make their illogical arguments seem reasonable.

A year ago, Tol tried to to make many of these same arguments to discredit the consensus study. He was roundly trounced in an article for the Guardian (a must read) by one of the study’s contributing authors, Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist and risk assessor. In fact, Tol’s effort inadvertently confirmed the consensus study. Among the false claims that Tol made previously (and in his new article for Fox) was that Cook did not disclose the data used in the study. He must have overlooked the data that was fully published on a website where any interested party could make their own categorical assessments and compare them to those in the study.

Nuccitelli pointed out that using Tol’s methodology, which Tol himself miscalculated, resulted in an even stronger consensus, raising the figure from 97.1% to 97.2. Nuccitelli also revealed that Tol had tried to get his rebuttal theory published by the same journal that published Cook’s study, but he was rejected – twice.

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In some sense you have to admire the tenacity of someone who can persevere despite being embarrassed repeatedly. But since this subject has such important ramifications for the planet and all of humankind, it is hard to have much respect for Tol, who perseveres in an effort to deceive people and advance the interests of those who would profit from the misery they create. No wonder this tripe was published by Fox News, whose own reputation is in tatters and for which there is also widespread consensus – of deception.

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Media Fails To Report That Hillary Clinton Is Crushing Every GOP Candidate In New Poll

Posted by on May 28, 2015 at 4:41 pm. 13 Comments :

The 2016 election season continues to heat up with most of the action on the Republican side of the field. The GOP Clown Car is filling up with with two new entries, Rick Santorum and George Pataki, bringing the official count to eight. It will be closer to fifteen before they are done.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate that the press takes seriously. Never mind that Bernie Sanders is stirring up the passion of the party base and that Joe Biden, Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb all have more experience that most of the GOP aspirants.

It is, therefore, interesting to see how the media is handling their coverage of Clinton. For the past several weeks they have said very little other than to hype false allegations about the Clinton Foundation raised in a book that is notable primarily for its abundance of errors. They also filled time with wild speculation about her emails, despite having no evidence of any wrongdoing. And when they weren’t mining those dry holes they were complaining about her preference for talking to voters over reporters. Can anyone blame her?

Today the media again displayed an uncontrollable compulsion to avoid any discourse of substance. A new poll was released by Quinnipiac that showed Clinton beating every Republican she was matched against. The margin of victory spread from four points (vs. Rand Paul) to eighteen points (vs. Donald Trump). All of these Clinton leads exceeded the poll’s margin of error.

Clinton Beats GOP

Clinton’s domination of the entire GOP field, however, was not particularly newsworthy to most of the media. Instead, they reported on the horse race between the Republicans that had five of them bunched up at the top with no clear leader. Somehow, that bit of vaguery was deemed a more important news item than Clinton’s clear cut clean sweep.

The Washington Post’s answer to this poll came in an editorial by conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin. Her article on Clinton’s polling success carried the headline “Hillary’s strategy isn’t working.” Of course, because besting every one of your challengers is a sure sign of a failing strategy to wingnuts like Rubin.

Instead of the candidate match-ups, Rubin focused on two other questions in the poll. First was Clinton’s favorability which registered only 45%. What Rubin left out is that Hillary’s 45% was higher than any of the Republicans. Secondly, Rubin brought up the question of trustworthiness, wherein the poll’s respondents gave Hillary a low 39%. Once again, Rubin neglected to mention that all but two Republicans (Huckabee and Paul) registered even lower. And for the record, Clinton also rated higher than any of the Republican on leadership and caring about people.

With the election over eighteen months away, there will be plenty of time for the press to hurl questions at Clinton. The problem is whether they will come up with any inquiries that have relevance to the country or will they keep embarrassing themselves with trivialities and spin? For example, yesterday Clinton made public statements in South Carolina that addressed serious issues like pay equality and helping the middle class. But all the media saw fit to report was their impression that she spoke with a southern accent [Note: She lived in Arkansas for more than fifteen years. Y’all think that doesn’t make a dent in yer speakin’ voice?]

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Available now at Amazon.

In the meantime, we can expect the press to continue to fish up sparkly nonsense in an attempt to turn the election into a tabloid melodrama that dispenses with any of those serious matters that only make people depressed and force them to think. And Clinton’s campaign strategy will fail her straight up into the White House while the media is still trying to parse an old sentence fragment into something scandalous.


Donald Trump Can Save The World From ISIS, But Won’t Unless We Let Him Be President

Posted by on May 27, 2015 at 8:28 pm. 15 Comments :

In case you haven’t heard, there is a bloodthirsty terrorist militia marauding through Iraq and Syria, killing innocent, mostly Muslim civilians and making hundreds of thousands refugees as they flee the crusading army. These same murderous fanatics are threatening to turn the streets of America red with blood. They are being fought by Iraqi and Syrian soldiers, rebel groups who oppose Bashar al-Assad, Shiite militias backed by Iran, Jordanian fighters, and American bombers and drones. Yet they manage to endure and even achieve some measure of victory.

The problem that ISIS presents to the world is clearly one that defies easy solutions. However, that doesn’t stop self-serving demagogues from pretending they have one. So what can realistically be done to put an end to the slaughter? Who will step forward to save us? It can only be the Ego of the East, Donald Trump, who recently unveiled his 2016 campaign slogan:

Donald Trump Hell Hole

It is times like these that we must be grateful to have heroes like Trump walking among us. The ferret-topped reality TV host, and alleged business genius (alleged by him), has come forward to reveal that he knows precisely how to squash the terrorist hoards once and for all. This what he told Greta Van Sustern today on Fox News (video below):

Trump: I do know what to do and I would know how to bring ISIS to the table or, beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly. And I’m not gonna tell you what it is.

Setting aside the lunatic notion that Trump would ever sit across a table from ISIS negotiating an armistice, his childish refusal to share his military brilliance could be seen by some as rather unpatriotic. After all, people are dying right now and ominous threats of escalation are being thrown around that include domestic attacks.

Now, anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex knows that Trump is not going to run for president. He’s pulled this scam before, and there is no way that he would engage in an activity that would require him to disclose his shady finances. But if we indulge that fantasy for a moment, we would also have to be dumb enough to pretend that he would have a shot at winning the nomination and beating Hillary Clinton. So it would not be until January of 2017 at the earliest that Trump would be able to launch his ISIS-crushing plan. Could Trump be held responsible if another 9/11-like attack occurred in the next year and a half because he withheld his magic formula for victory?

Of course we should believe Trump because he has been so credible on all of the other proclamations he has made in the past. Like the time he said that the private investigators he sent to Hawaii to finally discover where Barack Obama was really born were telling him that “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” Trump never revealed those findings to us, they were that unbelievable.

Then there was the time that Trump told the Kurvy Kouch Potatoes of Fox & Friends that he had “very big news … concerning the president of the United States” that would significantly alter the race between Obama and Mitt Romney. The payoff came several days later he released a cheesy video wherein he made Obama an offer that he could not refuse. Of course, the offer to tempt Obama with a five million dollar bribe to hand over to Trump his college transcripts and passports was not only refused, it was completely ignored.

So now Trump says that he will decide in June whether or not he will run for president (he won’t) and that his decision will surprise everyone. Frankly, I’m surprised he can complete a sentence without drooling.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.


Wingnut News: Ultra-Rightist Group Blames California Drought On Immigrants

Posted by on May 26, 2015 at 9:34 pm. 5 Comments :

Conservatives are fond of attributing all manner of perceived evil on the nearest liberal or Democrat who happens to be handy. The blame game reaches epic levels of absurdity at times with right-wing accusations that gays are responsible for hurricanes and that the poor caused the banking collapse and Great Recession of 2008.

California Drought

However, the competition for the the most ludicrous assignment of liability for society’s ills is heating up with the charges brought by an organization called “Californians for Population Stabilization” (CAPS). This group pretends to have an environmental mission that consists of reducing population in order to save natural resources. But its real goal is to lobby against immigration, particularly from our neighbors to the south. Their allegedly environmental activities have spanned everything from opposing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants to overturning the Constitution’s provisions for birthright citizenship. A real “back to nature” outfit.

The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that CAPS has launched a television campaign that asks the question on everyone’s mind, “If Californians are having fewer children, why isn’t there enough water?” They answer this question by asserting that immigrants, legal and otherwise, are the reason that the state is running dry. Of course, it’s so obvious. Among their allegations is that “Every newcomer to California adds 140 gallons of water demand per day.” There is no explanation for how they arrived at that ridiculous figure.

A saner analysis would recognize that the number of immigrants in California have little impact on the availability of water. The state’s problems were not the result of overuse, they are the result of an historic years-long drought that has depleted the snowpack and drained reservoirs throughout the state. What’s more, residential water consumers are hardly the main draw for these resources. Agriculture is consumes the majority of water in the state by far.

But mere facts are not sufficient to blunt the accusations of such determined racists. For evidence of the underlying motives of the Folks at CAPS you need only look into their funding. The group is supported almost entirely by grants from the uber-rightist Scaife family. And the projects they bankroll have included the notoriously anti-Latino activists at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA. Additionally, at least three organizations deemed hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center have benefited from CAPS grants, including the vile bigots of VDARE.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So just when you thought you’d heard it all, a pseudo-environmental nativist enterprise pops up to blame a major drought on the presence of immigrants. What must they think of Texas right about now, where there is also a large immigrant population, but they are suffering from torrential rains and flooding? I suppose they are just waiting for the frogs and locusts so they can declare this the Apocalypse and get it over with.


What Conservatives (And Politico) Still Don’t Understand About Fox News

Posted by on May 24, 2015 at 4:20 pm. 8 Comments :

Earlier this month Bruce Bartlett published a paper titled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.” Bartlett is a veteran conservative operative who worked in both the George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan White Houses. His paper’s premise is that Fox News has had a harmful effect on the Republican Party’s electoral appeal by herding its already right-wing flock into an even fringier parish where it is shielded from differing views. Bartlett appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources this morning and said…

“I think many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people. When they go on to the Internet, they look at only conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily, and so they are completely in a universe in which they are hearing the same exact ideas, the same arguments, the same limited amount of data repeated over and over and over again, and that’s brainwashing.”

Fox News Bad For GOP

Brainwashing is not too strong a word. Fox News has become the central authority in a cult-like cabal of rightist true-believers who envelope themselves in the scripture as preached by Fox. This has been proven by in-depth studies that show how conservatives have drastically constrained their news sources to a narrow collection of like-minded, far-right outlets. There’s an implicit belief that exposure to a contrary ideological creed would be a breach of faith and a mortal sin.

It is encouraging, therefore, to see a conservative with an open mind and the ability to recognize the toxic role that Fox has played in the media and in politics. Bartlett’s paper is an interesting and well-documented read. However, it took him long enough to come to these conclusions. News Corpse published an analysis of how “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party“ six years ago, with an update expanding on the theme last year. I wrote in part that…

Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.) […and that…] Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

Conservatives, of course, are appalled by the treasonous utterings of Bartlett. A good representative example of the reaction comes from Politico’s Jack Shafer who wrote a column that seeks to reveal “What Liberals Still Don’t Understand About Fox News.” However, in his attempt to rebut Bartlett he fails to even grasp the logical concepts being discussed. Nowhere is that more evident than when he writes that…

“Fox in its current incarnation is neither a help nor a hindrance. Fox News — and its Svengali Roger Ailes — aren’t the Republican kingmakers they’re made out to be. […] the network is better at employing presidential candidates than electing them.”

Let’s set aside the fact that this alleged rebuttal actually agrees with Bartlett’s core thesis that Fox is having an adverse effect on Republican politics. Where Shafer really goes off the rails is arguing that Fox’s failure to succeed in electing Republicans is not a negative for the Party. If creating a field of losers is not a hindrance, what is?

Shafer goes on to correctly note that Fox’s power is often exaggerated. What is bragged about as ratings dominance is, in reality, a rather minor victory. Shafer notes that “Fox’s most popular program, The O’Reilly Factor, pulls in about 3.3 million viewers on its best nights.” Once again, Shafer is late to the party. That is something News Corpse pointed out six years ago with some additional perspective:

“[S]uccess in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling […because it is…] focused on consumers, not voters […and that…] There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.”

O’Reilly’s 3 million viewers is less than 1% of the American population. It’s also fewer viewers than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program).

So what ever power Fox has is not vested in its audience. And this where Shafer, and most other conservative media pundits, fall off the wagon. Fox’s viewers were not turned into conservatives by watching Fox. They watch Fox because they are conservatives who need to have their preconceptions validated. Then, by being exposed to the bias and disinformation that makes up Fox’s programming, they become ignorant, radicalized conservatives.

The real power that Fox wields is with Republican office-holders, candidates and party strategists. They have been fooled into believing that Fox’s ratings are an indication of the nation’s political mood. Consequently, they believe that taking positions aligned with the extremist right-wingers on Fox will advance their electoral goals. That has cost the party dearly in the last two national elections. In fact, they were so befuddled by Fox that the election results, which most Americans could have predicted, were a shock to many Republicans and Fox pundits (recall Karl Rove’s tantrum on election night?).

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All of this should make the next few weeks oodles of fun as GOP candidates seek to please the Fox-gods so that they win a spot on the debate stage. Fox announced that only the top ten candidates in an average of certain polls (that Fox will decide) will be included in the debates. Therefore, between now and then the candidates on the edge will have to take aggressive measures to appeal to the people who they think are likely to be polled.

That means more chest-beating about war with Iran, more hate-speech about gays, more talk of bigger, stronger fences on the border, more promises to slash taxes and government programs, and much more bashing of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. And that competition to become the most extreme wingnut will filter into the campaign strategies of the rest of the GOP field as they struggle to become the Fox favorite.. All of which will result in making them completely unelectable in the fall of 2016.