Environment

Fox News Blatantly Lies that Biden ‘Praised’ High Gas Prices When He Actually Criticized Them

Posted by on May 24, 2022 at 1:24 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s another day that ends in “Y” so Fox News is creating another in their perennial series of flagrant falsehoods aimed at maligning Democrats. It’s an awesome burden that they bear to keep coming up with new lies. And President Biden isn’t helping by failing to provide them with actual catastrophes that they can plausibly blame him for.

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Fox News, Joe Biden, Fake News

On Tuesday morning the official “Message of the Day” as chosen by Fox’s editorial board was that Biden confessed to intentionally raising gas prices and “praised” the increases. That was the wholly contrived narrative introduced by Maria Bartiromo for her segment on the subject following a video clip of Biden commenting on energy matters. An exasperated Bartiromo exclaimed “Look, he just admitted it in that sound bite that this is all intentional. It’s a plan.”

RELATED: Fox News Lies that Poll Shows a ‘Majority’ of Americans Blame Biden for Inflation – It Doesn’t!

Of course Biden never “admitted” anything of the sort. Not even close. But that didn’t stop Fox News from disseminating this deceitful drivel across their media platforms. On the Fox News website they posted a story headlined “President Biden seems to praise high gas prices as ‘incredible transition’ Americans must go through.” For the record, what Biden actually said was…

“When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.”

Nowhere in that commentary did Biden suggest that high gas prices were intentional. Nor did he praise or celebrate them. To the contrary, when someone includes the phrase “God willing” in this context, it indicates an explicit desire for relief from hardship. And Biden’s optimism that “the world will be stronger … when this is over” affirms his acknowledgement of the troubles that people are presently enduring, with a hopeful eye toward the future.

To put an even finer point on how wrong the Fox News analysis of this was, Biden later spoke about “what I’ve been able to do to keep it from getting even worse — and it’s bad.” So apparently Fox News regards words like “worse” and “bad” as synonymous with “praise.”

Fox News never bothers to explain why Biden would want to deliberately increase gas prices. Do they think that Biden’s agenda views punishing people at the pump as a strategy that will deliver more votes?

Such logical considerations are foreign to Fox’s faux journalism. To Fox News all that matters is that Biden used the adjective “incredible” to describe the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. And because Fox’s vocabulary is so shallow, they think that the word “incredible” can only mean fantabulous, rather than just notable or uncommon.

Fox News is also fixated on opposing environmentally sound alternatives to fossil fuels, which Biden correctly notes would make the U.S. and the world stronger. In their article they complain that Biden’s policies contributed to the increase in gas prices. Their evidence is that he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and paused some oil and gas leases on federal lands. Neither of those measures would have any effect on gas prices. The Keystone XL pipeline was slated to move oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast where it was to be shipped overseas. And the leases were withdrawn because the oil companies weren’t using them.

RELATED: Biden Brilliantly Debunks the Lies By Trump and Fox News About Energy Production in America

Another thing that Fox News never bothers to explain is why gas prices are increasing around the world. And in most places the increases are far higher than here in the U.S. In fact, rating the highest gas prices in 170 countries, the U.S. at $4.66 per gallon is way down the list at #106. Does Fox News think that Biden is also president of Norway where gas is twice as much at $9.64 per gallon?

The lies that Fox News is dispensing have already spread to their political affiliates. The New York Post writes that “Biden praises high gas prices as part of ‘incredible transition.'” The Federalist says that “Biden Celebrates Record-High Gas Prices As ‘Incredible Transition.'” The Daily Caller asks “So the high prices are intentional, Joe?” And of course Republicans in Congress (i.e. Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Steve Scalise, etc) are regurgitating the false reporting.

The right-wing echo chamber is reverberating with this rubbish. And it will continue as long as they think they can get some political mileage out of it. After which they will have to invent some other fake scandal and start all over again. It’s what they were created to do. It’s why Biden appropriately called them out for being “One of the Most Destructive Forces in the U.S.“ But the only thing that they accomplish is making their audience more stupid every day. And at they they are pretty darn good.

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WHUT? Asked How He Sees the Ukraine War Unfolding Trump Replies that ‘Windmills Don’t Work’

Posted by on March 10, 2022 at 12:15 pm. 5 Comments :

One thing that Donald Trump has never been credibly accused of is being even marginally knowledgeable on any subject. Despite his own impression of himself as a “stable genius,” his words and actions invariably prove that he is neither psychologically stable nor any genus of genius.

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Donald Trump

If anything, Trump is severely mentally deficient. His all-consuming – and utterly baseless – fixation on the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “rigged” is evidence of his cognitive incoherence. And he is, after all, someone who recently expressed his desire to see Hillary Clinton executed for crimes that exist solely in his diseased brain.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump made some humiliating remarks during a YouTube interview by a couple of shlock jocks. The “Full Send” podcast was just the latest friendly forum that Trump visited, because he’s too big a coward to let a legitimate journalist interview him. And what happened during this discussion is proof that he’s right to stick with hacks like the Full Send crew. When the conversation turned to the serious subject of Ukraine, Trump just couldn’t handle it:

Full Send Host: What do you see happening next then? Cause it seems like the tensions are high. How does this all end? Is this going to be like a long-term thing? How do you see it unfolding?
Trump: Well, and I said this a long time ago, if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes. And yet the environmentalists love the windmills. And I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills – and I had them way down – but the windmills are the most expensive energy you can have. And they don’t work.

HUH? Trump was asked a straight forward question about how he viewed the future of the genocidal assault on Ukraine by Russia and his BFF Vladimir Putin. And instead of taking the opportunity to castigate Putin and stand up for Ukraine, Trump veered off into a robotic rehashing of his tedious and obsessive aversion to windmills.

Needless to say, everything Trump said about windmills is false and has been debunked repeatedly. They work quite well, and produce economical energy. But his opposition to them goes back a long way. Despite bragging that “I know a lot about wind,” he launches hysterical claims that they cause cancer, reduce property values, and that you won’t be able to watch TV if the wind isn’t blowing. And as for birds…

What’s more, windmills and green energy are actually the best way to achieve energy independence and prevent future situations wherein Russia, or any other oil rich dictatorship, can hold the U.S. hostage. But, as usual, Trump is taking a position that is most closely aligned with his own self-interests. His long opposition to windmills goes back to a dispute he had with their construction near a golf course he owned in Scotland. He complained that the development would spoil the view. He lost that dispute in British courts, and is still seeking vengeance.

Trump’s typically ridiculous attempt to evade the question about Ukraine shouldn’t surprise anyone either. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he has no idea what’s going on, or what to do about it. But then that is pretty much the case with just about anything he ever addresses.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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COVID Gets Even Redder, While Trump Worries More About Windmills (Not) Killing Birds

Posted by on November 8, 2021 at 4:08 pm. 3 Comments :

An exhaustive analysis of COVID-19 data by David Leonhardt of the New York Times has found that the efforts of right-wing media like Fox News to deceive their audience about the coronavirus have been remarkably effective. The result confirms previous studies that show that those who rely on Fox News for information are significantly more at risk for contracting COVID than those who do not.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

The article in the Times is validation that trusting Fox News is dangerous to your health, as well as that of your family, your community, and your nation. Leonhardt goes into detail in the article, but he summarized some of his findings in a handy Twitter thread beginning here (with some key points following):

“The true explanation is straightforward: The vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe COVID, and almost 40 percent of Republican adults remain unvaccinated, compared with about 10 percent of Democratic adults, per @KHNews polls.”

“As a result, COVID deaths have been concentrated in counties outside of major metropolitan areas. Many of these are in red states, while others are in red parts of blue or purple states.”

“This situation is a tragedy, in which irrational fears about vaccine side effects have overwhelmed rational fears about a deadly virus.”

“It stems from disinformation — promoted by right-wing media, like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, the Sinclair Broadcast Group and online sources.”

“[C]onservative Americans will probably continue to suffer an outsized amount of unnecessary illness and death.”

This is indeed a tragic situation. And the problem is not limited to conservatives and Fox News viewers. Their stubborn refusal to accept the science has the potential of allowing the virus to mutant into new variants that are vaccine resistant. So they are putting everyone else at risk to satisfy their partisan blindness and selfishness. What’s more, they are preventing businesses and schools from fully opening up so that we can return to some semblance of normalcy.

In the meantime, Donald Trump has not even mentioned this matter, even though it is affecting his supporters more than anyone else. But he did have the time to tweet (via his Twitter ban defying spokes-shill) that energy generating windmill turbines are “Destroying our oceans, landscapes, and birds!” He forgot to mention his ludicrous belief that they also cause cancer.

Trump’s tweet linked to a three week old article in the New York Times about the Biden administration’s plans “to build 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind in the United States by 2030.” The article said nothing about birds. That was another of Trump’s tropes that has no basis in reality, but which he frequently repeats to keep his cult disciples in a perpetual state of fear. For the record, according to the Sierra Club…

“Estimates of up to a million or more birds a year are killed by turbines in the US, but that is far exceeded by collisions with communications towers (6.5 million); power lines, (25 million); windows (up to 1 billion); and cats (1.3 to 4.0 billion); and those lost due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change (American Bird Conservancy, Nature). Even if there were twenty times more wind turbines, enough to supply the US with electricity, the number of birds killed, assuming no improvement in wind turbine design, would be about 10 million–still far less than most other causes of bird deaths.”

So apparently Trump is more worried about his false notion that windmills are killing an excessive amount of birds, than he is about COVID actually killing people – particularly Republicans, the people who he purports to represent and who worship him. It’s a grotesque mangling of priorities that rests on a foundation of lies.

And if that weren’t bad enough, Trump and his GOP confederates are so utterly incapable of responding to the recent good news for Democrats and America (infrastructure bill, jobs report, climate conference, COVID decline), that they are resorting to attacking (the fictional) Big Bird of Sesame Street for having the audacity to educate children about vaccines. There goes his pretense about caring for birds.

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

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

Big Baby Trump Says AOC has ‘the Mind of a Child’

Posted by on September 1, 2020 at 4:20 pm. NO Comments :

In another demonstration of pure projection, Donald Trump is maligning Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a manner consistent with his well documented misogyny. His notorious disrespect for strong women who have the audacity to challenge him has been aimed at political opponents, journalists, and those who have been unfortunate enough to crossed paths with him in their personal lives.

Donald Trump

On Monday Trump was “interviewed” by Laura Ingraham on Fox News. It was another embarrassing tongue bath by a devoted sycophant whose job is to promote Trump’s propaganda and disinformation. In the course of the program Trump began to dispense his routine lies about Joe Biden’s tax proposals. However, Trump’s mental infirmities prevent him from engaging in a coherent discussion or staying on any topic for more than ten seconds. So we end up with this bizarre blowup (video below):

“[Biden’s] going to do $4 trillion in tax increases. He’s going to do things that are going to cost so much on the Green New Deal, which is — which is done by a child, OK? That’s the mind of a child. Because the Green New Deal is ridiculous. It doesn’t work. They’re going to do things under the Green — you know, the Green New Deal, if you actually did it, is $100 trillion. That’s more money than this country could make in a thousand years.”

First of all, Biden has no plan to raise $4 trillion in taxes, He has said that he will reverse Trump’s tax scam, which was a giveaway to corporations and the wealthy, and drastically inflated the national debt. But that is not a $4 trillion dollar plan and it is only going to raise taxes for those making more than $400,000 a year.

More to the point, Trump’s remarks about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the key congressional proponents of the Green New Deal, are blatantly insulting and reflect his hatred for women. And it isn’t the first time he insulted Ocasio-Cortez’ maturity. Last month he said that her Green New Deal proposal was “written by a foolish child.” However, the woman he says has “the mind of a child” (and whom he previously said is “dumb as a rock“) is an elected representative from the state New York. She also graduated cum laude from Boston University with degrees in international relations and economics. And, unlike Trump, she didn’t have to get someone to take her SATs for her to get into college.

Ocasio-Cortez has both the academic background and professional experience to advocate for the Green New Deal and other initiatives to address the climate crisis. Trump, on the other hand, has no idea what he’s talking about and believes that climate change is a hoax. His assertion that it would cost $100 trillion dollars was pulled straight out of his astonishing supply of ignorance. The same is true for his claim that the United States couldn’t make that much money in a thousand years.

Fact Check: Trump didn’t specify what he meant by how much the country could make. So here are a couple of likely scenarios: The gross domestic product of the United states is about $20 trillion dollars, so by that measure it would only take five years. Annual federal tax revenue is about $3 trillion, so by that measure it would only take 33 years. In either case, it wouldn’t take a thousand years no matter how you figure it.

The bottom line is that Trump is the one acting like a child. He has these ludicrous outbursts that are completely removed from reality. He is focused intently and solely on his egomaniacal needs. He attacks critics in the most infantile manner imaginable. He throws tantrums if he doesn’t get his way. And his capacity to understand complex ideas is stuck at about a second grade level, if that. To say that he has the mind of a child would an an insult to children.

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

A Brutal AP Fact Check Exposes Trump’s Intellectual Laziness and Hostility Toward the Truth

Posted by on December 1, 2018 at 6:44 pm. NO Comments :

If there is anything that we’ve learned from Donald Trump’s first two years in the White House it’s that he is utterly uninterested in educating himself about the issues a president is required to know. Even worse, he has a stifling aversion to the truth and will callously lie to advance whatever message he’s pushing at the moment.

Donald Trump

The Associated Press took inventory of some of the President’s recent public remarks and compared them to reality. The result is a pathetic and troubling expose of a man completely unfit to lead a remedial scout troop, much less the most powerful nation on the planet.

The AP described Trump’s failings as a “slippery grasp of science as well as trade policy.” But their observations go way beyond that, covering most of the subjects that will eventually touch every American’s life. What follows are a few choice selections from the article that illustrate just how dangerous Trump’s willful ignorance is:

TRUMP: “Billions of Dollars are pouring into the coffers of the U.S.A. because of the Tariffs being charged to China, and there is a long way to go. If companies don’t want to pay Tariffs, build in the U.S.A. Otherwise, lets just make our Country richer than ever before.”
THE FACTS: That’s not how it works. Yes, money from tariffs is going into the federal treasury, but it’s coming from U.S. businesses, not from overseas. Tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter or government in another country. Beyond that, tariffs paid by U.S. companies tend to result in higher prices for consumers. So a tariff is a transfer of wealth from business to government, and sometimes from consumers to government as well. It is not a foreign payment to the U.S.

TRUMP: (On the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement): “The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern and balanced trade agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly. It is probably the largest trade deal ever made, also. ”
THE FACTS: It’s not the largest trade deal ever made. It covers the same three countries as its predecessor, NAFTA.

TRUMP: “Our steel industry a year ago was dead, and now it’s one of the most vibrant anywhere in the world. Big Steel is opening and renovating plants all over the country.”
THE FACTS: Construction spending on factories has yet to take off significantly after having been in decline between 2016 and much of 2018. […] A year ago, the steel industry employed 141,200 people, says the Labor Department. Now, 145,100. That’s a gain of 3,900 jobs during a period when the overall economy added 2.5 million jobs.

TRUMP: “You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean.”
THE FACTS: Last year had the most unhealthy soot days since 2011. The number of days with unhealthy smog levels was down from 2016, but higher than 2015, 2014 and 2013.

TRUMP: (On the confrontation between migrants trying to rush into the U.S. and authorities who used tear gas to drive them back): “Three Border Patrol people yesterday were very badly hurt, getting hit with rocks and stones.”
THE FACTS: This didn’t happen, according to the account by the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan. He said there were no “reported serious injuries on either side of the border.”

TRUMP: (Retweet): “Illegals can get up to $3,874 a month under Federal Assistance program. Our social security checks are on average $1200 a month.”
THE FACTS: Wrong country, wrong numbers, wrong description of legal status of the recipients. The $3,874 refers to a payment made in Canada, not the U.S., to a legally admitted family of refugees.

TRUMP: “Obama had a separation policy; we all had the same policy. I tried to do it differently, but Obama had a separation policy. But people don’t like to talk about that.”
THE FACTS: Obama did not have a separation policy. The Trump administration didn’t, explicitly, either, but that was the effect of his zero tolerance policy, which meant that anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted, even if they had few or no previous offences. The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings and their children were separated.

The AP article (posted on the Fox Business website) goes into greater detail and has some additional examples of Trump’s lies. However, this is a representative sampling of how little regard Trump has for conveying facts to his dimwitted cult followers. It’s this sort of dishonesty that makes it difficult for average Americans to engage in rational discourse with Trump supporters. His glassy-eyed disciples live in a world of make believe that turns them into regurgitation machines for his deliberate falsehoods. And that blind devotion to Trump’s manufactured unreality poses serious risks for the future of the country – and the world. Which makes it incumbent on the rest of us to redouble our efforts to correct the record and spread knowledge.

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

Was EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Ambushed on Fox News Under Orders From Donald Trump?

Posted by on April 5, 2018 at 12:03 pm. 2 Comments :

Every now and then somebody on Fox News strays from the herd and does or says something critical of Donald Trump. It’s a rare event that is mostly confined to outliers like Shepard Smith or a courageous guest. In most cases it is treated as the aberration that it is and quickly buried under the rush of Fox’s typical pro-Trump propaganda.

Fox News, Scott Pruitt, EPA

On Wednesday, however, the criticism came from an unlikely source. Ed Henry, the chief national correspondent for Fox News, interviewed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Scott Pruitt (video below). In what Pruitt must have assumed would be a friendly media encounter, he was surprised by the aggressive tone of Henry’s inquiries. The questions addressed some of the most controversial scandals that have erupted during his tenure at the EPA.

Henry asked Pruitt why he went around Trump to give two top aides raises after the President refused the request. When Pruitt said that it was staffers who did that and that he didn’t know anything about it, Henry pushed back asking Pruitt to confirm that he didn’t know what was going on in the department he was supposedly running.

Henry also asked how renting a Washington, D.C. apartment at sweetheart rates from the wife of a lobbyist with business before the EPA was “draining the swamp.” Pruitt replied that there was nothing untoward about the arrangement. So Henry offered examples demonstrating that his $50.00 a night rental was way out of line with Washington rates for residences or hotels.

This appearance of actual journalism at Fox News is peculiar in general, but downright bizarre for Ed Henry.. He is one of the most squishy Trump-fluffers on Fox News. He is a frequent co-host of Trump’s favorite Fox show, Fox and Friends. There was a time in the past when Henry passed himself off as a straight-up reporter. But then he was suspended by Fox for having had an extramarital affair. When he returned to the air it was like he had been given a new mission to serve as a Trump sycophant. Perhaps it was the price of his reinstatement.

So why would Henry suddenly show some gumption and take on Trump’s EPA boss? The most plausible theory is that he was ordered to do so. And those orders could only have come from one place: Donald Trump. Fox wouldn’t independently direct Henry to go on the attack. They would have to have had instructions. And Trump has reasons to want Pruitt to look bad in public. With the scandals he has brought to the White House, including ludicrous spending for things like first-class air travel and a $40,000.00 secure phone booth in his office, Trump might be looking for excuses to fire him.

The signs are cropping up throughout the White House. When asked about Pruitt’s status Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was “under review.” Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley was similarly non-committal saying that he “can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt.” It sounds very much like Trump’s people are bailing on Pruitt. They would not do that without permission. Nor would Fox News. So it would be interesting to find out if there were any communications between Trump and his State-run TV network that directed Henry to filet Pruitt. He has been meeting with Fox Newsers much more in recent weeks, which suggests that their already close relationship is getting even closer.

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

Sorry Trump: House Votes to Affirm that Climate Change is a ‘Direct Threat’ to National Security

Posted by on July 14, 2017 at 4:02 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump is unarguably the most hostile president to the environment this country has ever seen. He is an unabashed science denier who believes that climate change is a hoax invented by China. He petulantly withdrew the United States from the Paris Accords that mobilized more than 170 countries to protect the planet. His director of the Environmental Protection Agency is an avowed critic of the institution and has lobbied to abolish it. Trump opposes development of eco-friendly, renewable energy and supports expanding use of coal and fossil fuels.

Climate Change

That reprehensible record of extremist anti-environmentalism notwithstanding, many of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress just told him to frack off. An amendment to the Pentagon’s budget sought to eliminate language that addressed the threat of climate change. But the amendment failed with the help of some Republicans and most Democrats. As reported by Axios:

“Forty-six House Republicans joined Democrats Thursday to protect language in defense policy legislation that calls climate change a ‘direct threat’ to national security and requires new Defense Department analysis of its effect on the military. The House voted 185-234 against GOP Rep. Scott Perry’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have stripped the language.”

The bill’s author argued that the military has more important matters to deal with and should leave climate change to other agencies. But others pointed out that rising sea levels are already threatening existing military installations. Even more troubling is the fact that global weather patterns are creating disasters that exacerbate regional conflicts. And countries suffering from drought, floods, and resource depletion can become dangerously unstable and vulnerable to extremist insurrections and war.

Opposition to Trump’s climate blindness from within his own ranks is nothing new. Earlier this year his Defense Secretary, James Mattis, openly contradicted his boss. Mattis said that climate change is “a real-time issue, not some distant what-if.” And furthermore, “it is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.”

Mattis isn’t the first defense secretary to hold these views. In fact, six of the past Secretaries of Defense (Mattis, Ash Carter, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Donald Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that climate change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And four of the six are Republicans. Especially notable is Rumsfeld, under whose leadership the Pentagon published a report on the subject. It’s title was “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.” The report warned that threats posed by climate change were even more perilous than terrorism.

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

It’s encouraging that a few dozen Republicans joined with Democrats to kill this amendment. But it’s troubling that the majority of the GOP still voted in favor of it. Trump and the Republican Party continue to deny the accumulated wisdom of both scientific and military experts. They support an agenda that advances the interests of oil barons and apocalyptic Christianists. So this victory must be celebrated with a measure of uncertainty and a resolve to keep fighting for positive goals.

John Kerry Rips Donald Trump’s ‘Unbelievable Contemptuous Ignorance’ On Climate Change

Posted by on June 2, 2016 at 1:45 pm. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party long ago committed itself to a position on climate change that is at odds with reality. The question is settled with 97 percent of the scientists who study the subject agreeing that climate change is occurring and that it is caused by human activities. But that hasn’t stopped faith-based GOP politicians, with help from the Fox News propaganda machine, from rejecting the voluminous data validating the unprecedented scientific consensus.

John Kerry

Leading the brigade of science deniers is the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. In a widely ridiculed comment he called climate change a hoax that “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He advocates anti-environment policies such as eliminating regulations on energy exploration and production, opening up federal lands to oil drilling, and building the KeystoneXL pipeline. He promises to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which he thought was called the Department of Environmental (DEP?). And most recently he said that he would rip up the United Nations’ historic Paris climate agreement that currently has 177 signatories.

Responding to Trump’s attack on the Paris accords, Secretary of State John Kerry was interviewed on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes (video below). He did not mince words when asked about Trump’s hostility toward the international effort to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change:

“Ripping up the climate agreement that was reached in Paris would be reckless, counterproductive, self-destructive. It would be an act of extraordinary danger to our country because of the path it would put us on both in terms of our global leadership on the issue as well as the actual policies we need to implement and it would in the end be an act of ignorance, of utter unbelievable contemptuous ignorance to get rid of something that the world has worked for since 1992 in Rio.”

Kerry didn’t stop there. He addressed the fact that each of the past years and decades marked record highs in global warming and were each hotter than those that preceded them, poignantly noting that “Somewhere people ought to be catching on to what is happening.” Along with the obvious and harmful impact of rising temperatures and sea levels, there is an alarming threat to national security. Kerry summarized this threat saying:

“Refugees that are being created in various parts of the world as a result of lack of water, or fights over food, or the fact that they have to move from where they live today. To talk about casually, without even understanding the work that has gone into it or the rationale for it, ripping it up would be one of the most reckless irresponsible, historically wrong acts I can think of.”

Conservative opponents of environmental reforms frequently try to belittle proponents as prioritizing climate change over terrorism. Of course, there is no reason why both issues cannot be tackled simultaneously. More to the point though, climate change actually is a more ominous threat that has the potential to instigate bloody wars and wipe out billions of people. Terrorism is unquestionably a tragic reality that requires a determined effort to defeat, but it does not approach the scale of climate change for global disaster. This was realized by no less a figure of right-wing stature than former George W. Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The Rolling Stone published a comprehensive examination of “The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk,” that cited Rumsfeld:

“In 2003, under Donald Rumsfeld, former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, the Pentagon published a report titled ‘An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.’ Commissioned by Andrew Marshall, who is sometimes jokingly referred to within the Pentagon as Yoda — and who was a favorite of Rumsfeld’s — the report warned that threats to global stability posed by rapid warming vastly eclipse that of terrorism.”

OK? So now the climate-hoaxers cannot simply blame Obama and his socialist cabal of Sharia lawyers for inventing the crisis. Sources as deeply ingrained in the rightist dregs of warhawk free-marketism as Rumsfeld and Bush warned of the very same threat. In fact, four of the past Secretaries of Defense (Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld) all subscribed to the policy that Climate Change is one of America’s top strategic risks. And three of the four are Republicans.

That leaves Donald Trump and his ilk to be the standard bearers of an utterly delusional rejection of the dangers that face a planet that is rapidly heating up, both in terms of temperature and hostility. Kerry characterized Trump’s denialism perfectly by labeling it reckless and ignorant. Unfortunately the Republican Party is now Trump’s plaything and they can be expected to wholly embrace his ignorance with enthusiasm and obedient blindness.

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

Fox News Suddenly Embraces The Environment To Scold The EPA For Toxic Spill In Colorado

Posted by on August 11, 2015 at 12:54 pm. 4 Comments :

The science deniers at Fox News have spent years dismissing the claims of environmentalists on matters relating to everything from water and air quality, to endangered species, to clean energy, to climate change. The network has vigorously denounced advocates for reform as propagating hoaxes or having ulterior financial motives. And always at the top of their list of evildoers is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Fox News

Pretty much every Republican presidential candidate has called for some measure of interference with the EPA’s mandate, up to and including abolishing the agency that began with an executive order by Republican president Richard Nixon.

In Colorado last week an EPA crew accidentally breached a debris dam that resulted in a massive flow of arsenic, lead, and other toxins into the Animas River. The crew had been working to repair leaks that were already leaching toxins into the river. It was an unfortunate accident that occurred during a commendable effort to restore the local ecosystem.

However, on Fox News this became a villainous atrocity by pernicious characters who aspire to deliberately destroy America. They have had numerous stories that explicitly and disparagingly cite the EPA’s responsibility for the spill as if it were intentional. Furthermore, they go out of their way to report the outrage of the local victims. What’s interesting about that editorial spin is that they never do the same when it is a corporation that was responsible.

For instance, when a pipeline burst near Williston, North Dakota, Fox didn’t once address the “anger” it may have caused. Instead, they interviewed the pipeline’s owner who gave assurances that everything would be fine. Fox covered another incident in West Virginia the same way. In North Carolina, toxic sludge from a coal ash dump polluted the Dan River, which was already contaminated from a previous spill. There, Fox quoted a Duke Energy spokesperson who downplayed the incident saying that “no immediate action was necessary.”

In story after story Fox declined to criticize the guilty energy companies whose greed created environmental nightmares. They pointedly neglected to advocate for penalties or reform. But in this story, where the EPA is the culprit, Fox repeats their name with noticeable sneers and insists that the agency needs to be reigned in. It is the most disingenuous, hypocritical, and self-serving expression of environmentalism imaginable.

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Surely the events that led to the EPA crew’s accident should be investigated and all efforts to prevent further incidents should be taken. But Fox News obviously doesn’t care about that. They only care about slandering a government entity that was trying to improve an already harmful situation. As opposed to the energy companies whose accidents occur while they are trying to line their pockets.

And it should not be forgotten that many of those same polluting energy companies are advertisers on Fox News and other Fox media outlets. So as the corporations profit from their dirty enterprise, Fox News profits right along with them. Indeed, Fox has a financial incentive to bury bad news about their advertisers and to exaggerate accusations against their foes at the EPA.

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.