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.

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

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:

“This is not going to end well. Republicans in the Congress have shown that they have no ability to conduct successful investigations of this administration. Everything they have touched has failed or backfired, even Benghazi.”

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.

CBS Edits Out Gun Discussion On Obama’s 60 Minutes Interview

Posted by Mark NC on October 13, 2015 at 7:43 pm. 2 Comments :

The myth of the “liberal” media has been thoroughly debunked by volumes of evidence, and yet many people continue to believe that news operations owned and operated by giant multinational corporations still harbor a liberal bias for some unexplained, and unexplainable, reason.

The latest proof that Big Media slants their coverage away from true progressive issues comes from last Sunday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes on CBS. The twenty-four minute interview of President Obama was sufficient time to cover a variety of subjects that have a real impact on the lives of real Americans. However, one subject was left on the cutting room floor: The crisis of gun violence (video below).

The fact that CBS found time in an interview of Obama for an extended discussion of Hillary Clinton’s email server, but was unable include a brief segment of the gun dialog, says something about the editorial decision making at the network. If you wanted to know what Obama thought about how guns affect our society, and what can be done about it, you would have had to search for it online. What you would have found was a three minute segment that could easily have been slipped into the CBS broadcast. And it’s fair to say that this issue holds more value for the American people than adding to the tabloid sensationalism that Fox News has been feverishly stirring up about emails that have uncovered no wrongdoing whatsoever.

This sort of bias is not new to CBS or 60 Minutes. In 2013 they ran a story about Benghazi that was so full of holes that they had to retract it and apologize for airing such an embarrassing and obvious hoax. At that time News Corpse published an explanation for how CBS could have been taken in by such a conspicuous fraud. That explanation revolves around the personalities in the network’s executive suites who are still running the newsroom. This is what I wrote in November of 2013:

The President of CBS News is David Rhodes, who assumed the post in February of 2011. His bio on the CBS website tells us something of his professional past:

“Rhodes began his career as a Production Assistant at the newly-launched Fox News Channel in 1996, where he later became Vice President of News. At the network he managed coverage of three presidential elections, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricanes including Katrina, and was the channel’s Assignment Manager on the news desk the morning of September 11, 2001.”

What this tells us is that Rhodes was a top executive at Fox News during the hotly contested 2000 presidential election where Fox mistakenly called the state of Florida (and thus the nation) for George W. Bush. He was there when Fox News was cheerleading for the U.S. to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and did not pose any threat to America. He was there when Fox was defending Bush’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. He was there during the economic meltdown of 2008 to make sure that it was blamed on poor people buying homes and the Democrats in Congress. He was there when Fox was hyping electoral attacks against candidate Obama that included maligning ACORN, advancing associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, and of course, the everlasting nonsense of birtherism.

In short, Rhodes was one of the principal architects of the Fox News slant toward far-right extremism and brazen conservative partisanship. CBS News must have known what they were getting when they hired him.

So is it any wonder that CBS would focus so sharply on dramatic, but insubstantial controversies? They clearly have an editorial mission to push a conservative agenda and suppress any progressive initiatives for reform. The same sort of problems exist at other networks and news outlets. The current executive vice president of CNN, Ken Jautz, is the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job on television. Even MSNBC is heading toward the right as they remove progressive hosts and plan to expand Morning Joe another hour. Which is why I say “Liberal media my ass.”

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

Obama Mocks Fox News For ‘Making Me Scary’

Posted by Mark NC on October 12, 2015 at 8:17 pm. 3 Comments :

Just in time for Halloween, President Obama has revealed the costume that Fox News made to heighten the fears of their perpetually skittish viewers. It’s something they have been dressing up the President in for the past seven years, but it doesn’t get much attention from the President himself.

In an interview with author Marilynne Robinson, the discussion turned to the values that are found in the diversity of American life. This led the President to recall his experiences in small-town America when he first began campaigning for the White House.

“It’s interesting, because we’re talking in Iowa; people always, I think, were surprised about me connecting with folks in small-town Iowa. And the reason I did was, first of all, I had the benefit that at the time nobody expected me to win. And so I wasn’t viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media, and making me scary.“

Indeed, Fox News has since toiled feverishly to turn Obama into a fearsome entity bent on the destruction of mankind. They have literally accused him of conspiring with our mortal enemies; of plotting to murder millions of Americans; of surrendering our liberty and land to foreign tyrants; and even taunting God so as to bring about the End Times. It’s a nightmarish vision that was constructed from nothing but their seething hatred for a dark-skinned stranger who they believed had no right to rise to leadership and reside in the White House.

For his part, Obama has been aware of the animosity that consumed his ideological foes. There was, however, little he could do about it. The more he would try, the more they interpreted it as an insidious ploy to enslave them with charm. Witness this hideously secret assault as described by Obama to Robinson:

“And the thing I’ve been struggling with throughout my political career is how do you close the gap. There’s all this goodness and decency and common sense on the ground, and somehow it gets translated into rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics. And some of it has to do with all the filters that stand between ordinary people who are busy and running around trying to look after their kids and do a good job and do all the things that maintain a community, so they don’t have the chance to follow the details of complicated policy debates.”

What a monster! How dare he try to find common ground in a democratic society while partisans in the press and politics are stirring up irrational dissent. And why does he want to close The Gap? Is he biased in favor of Urban Outfitters? Or is he just fundamentally opposed to the free market?

Later in the interview, Obama pinpoints one of the potential causes of the adversarial nature of our country. He describes it as the natural tendency of Americans to mistrust governments, which he says is “in our DNA.”

“We’re suspicious of government as a tool of oppression. And that skepticism is healthy, but it can also be paralyzing when we’re trying to do big things together.”

That’s true. And it certainly doesn’t help when you have giant media networks deliberately fomenting fear and ignorance and using the naivete of their audience to build opposition based on lies. In fact, all it does is pave the way for cartoonish demagogues like Donald Trump, and leave Grand Old Parties struggling to find anyone who actually wants to lead their parade of clowns.

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

Westboro Baptist Church Tactics Deployed By Gun Nuts On Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on October 9, 2015 at 7:35 pm. 20 Comments :

It’s bad enough seeing Christianist extremists congregating outside of funerals for soldiers with signs declaring that God hates them, but now the disciples of the NRA have taken to using the same tactics employed by Westboro Baptists crackpots to advance their agenda in Roseburg, OR, the site of last week’s tragic massacre at the Umpqua Community College. And these miscreants were eagerly abetted by Fox News.

The occasion for the protest in Roseburg was a visit by President Obama to console the families of the victims. Despite the President’s remarks a few days ago about advocating increased political pressure to get Congress to do something – anything – to address the continuing problem of gun violence, there was nothing political about this visit. The press was not even permitted to attend the family sessions with the President. He made a brief statement afterward that avoided any hint of politics.

Nevertheless, Obama was met as he arrived by a motley band of malcontents with bitter messages aimed at driving the President out of their neighborhood. Signs carried an array of derogatory remarks including “Obama Not Welcome,” “Go Away,” “Go Back To Kenya,” as well as a flurry of confederate flags and the Tea Party’s Gadsden flag. The Westboro freaks would be proud. And yet this is the behavior of people who complain about politicization of the issue. What’s more, had Obama declined to go to Roseburg the same people would have criticized him for not caring.

On Fox News they covered the protesters extensively. As apparent in the graphic above, the protests were overtly political, identifying them as “Gun Rights Advocates” rather than mourners. Fox aired multiple on air interviews with the anti-Obama Roseburg residents. For some reason they were unable to find any residents to interview who were grateful that the President would join them in this time of grief. Other news networks didn’t have that problem. And the disingenuous cries of politicization were abandoned when it was Fox News personal engaging in it.

For instance, on The Five, co-host Eric Bolling waxed political by quoting what he said was a portion of Obama’s statement wherein the President said that “we have to work on these rights,” a reference to the 2nd Amendment. However, Obama never said anything remotely similar to that. Fox viewers, of course, will now be forever certain that he did. Then Greg Gutfeld not only hit the President on guns, but tied it to abortion in a perverse analogy that defies reason. He said that…

“The gun argument and the abortion argument are complete mirrors of themselves. The left thinks that the right is using the Planned Parenthood videos to ultimately ban abortion. The right thinks that the left is using mass shooting in an effort to get rid of the 2nd Amendment. So they’re both the same.”

No, they are not even a little bit the same. If the left thinks that the right is using the Planned Parenthood videos to ultimately ban abortion it’s because the right explicitly tells them that that is what they want to do. The right is not the least bit shy about declaring their intention to ban all abortions. On the other hand, the right has no reason to believe that the left is using mass shootings to get rid of the 2nd Amendment because there has never been any effort by the left to do that. In fact, the left is very clear that they merely want to make it more difficult for particularly dangerous weapons to get into the hands of people that ought not to have them.

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

For the past seven years of the Obama administration, alarmist nuts at the NRA have been screaming about the imminent threat of Obama’s plot to disarm America. Yet there has never been a single bill passed, or even drafted, that would do any such thing. The whole campaign is designed to stir up irrational fears of imaginary tyranny. And that is precisely what is happening today with Fox’s coverage of the Obama protesters in Roseburg. Because to the NRA-theists, losing 28,000 lives a year to gun violence is just the price we have to pay for having access to any kind of weapon, any time, by anyone.

Alex Jones And Matt Drudge: The Most Bizarre Interview You Will Ever Imagine You Witnessed

Posted by Mark NC on October 8, 2015 at 12:13 pm. 10 Comments :

You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the InfoWars Interview.

On Tuesday’s episode of InfoWars (video below), host and the conspiracy theory’s chief theoretical conspirator, Alex Jones, almost invited yellow pseudo-journalist Matt Drudge to join him in a discussion of the current state of the world of the deranged. I say almost because the interview began with Jones announcing that his teen crush Drudge was in the studio, but that he would not appear on camera (for fear of losing his soul?).

Jones: I did not do this as a stunt. Neither did Matt Drudge. He is here. We got a hot mic over there. He wants to stay literally in the shadows behind the curtain.

So in this version of the Wiz, the great and powerful Drudge commands that you do pay attention to the man behind the curtain. In a bizarre bit of Burlesque theater, Jones conducted the whole interview with Drudge allegedly a few feet away, out of camera range. There was never an explanation for why Drudge refused to be seen. He isn’t exactly camera shy as he once hosted his own TV show (on Fox News of course). What could be more perfect for the conspiratorial set than for a reclusive disseminator of rightist propaganda to lurk off-camera and send his disembodied voice across the webosphere in a dialog with a sociopathic skeptic? What self-respecting minion of Alex Jones would believe that Drudge was really there at all? Wake up, sheeple!

As a testimonial to the fabulousness of this chin-flapping, Sarah Palin tweeted that this is “One of the best interviews I’ve heard in a long time!” And why not? The pair spent much of their forty-six minute “bull” session congratulating each other on their bravery for standing up to some unseen oppressor who has shackled them to a dreary existence as mere multimillionaires with legions of glassy-eyed disciples. The horror! Although there were a couple of subjects that were examined in a fair amount of detail that deserve attention.

First of all, Drudge dredged up the obsession that kicked off his career twenty years ago: Hillary Clinton. Apparently he is still enthralled with her terrifying omnipotence and simultaneous impotence. Here is an abridged summary of his rambling and incoherent remarks about his Wicked Witch of the White House:

Drudge: How sick are the American people right now? They could put Hillary Clinton’s brain in a jar in the Oval Office and she’d be elected. People are really sick. […] Before this country is so completely altered and we’re left with Hillary’s brain in the Oval Office in a jar – ‘cuz that’s what we’re getting. She is old and she’s sick. She is not a contender. They’re making her a contender with these propped up Saturday Night Live things. It’s like a head on a stick. […] I’m very pessimistic on this race because I’m just not so sure it’s not gonna end up with the dreaded brain in the jar in the Oval Office, once known as Hillary Clinton – who is hypo-thyroid. Anybody who is seventy years old who’s hypo-thyroid you do not elect president, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t do it. […] Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers? Excuse me? Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers? Where’s the cover-up on this?

The only question arising from that schizoid rant is whether Drudge is on too many psychotropic drugs or too few. Either way he needs some serious medical attention. He is particularly disturbed by the thought of a jar of brains, which may be attributable to simple jealousy that Clinton has something that he and his wingnut cohorts can only dream about.

The other subject that received considerable scrutiny was a paranoid diversion into acute crackpottery. Abandoning any pretense of reality, Drudge unveiled a historical account of the legend of ISIS that would make J.K. Rowling blush with embarrassment.

Drudge: We never really heard of ISIS until recently and I remember when that name first started coming up. Do you know that it was designed to be confused with Darrell Issa? Did you know that’s what it was. Because Darrell Issa was the enemy at the time of this administration. […] They came up with the name ISIS to be confused with Darrell Issa. I’m really being hinest with you. I remember the first time Christiane Amanpour sputtered out this word ISIS thinking did she get that one? […] And then the President going it’s not even ISIS, it’s ISIL or IS. This Dr. Seuss. This is madness.

Obviously. How could we have missed it before? Barack “Svengali” Obama invented the acronym ISIS (Islamic State of Syria and Iraq) and somehow got the terrorists to use it to refer to themselves. But in a bit of brilliant strategic jujitsu, Obama himself sidestepped it in favor of ISIL, which doesn’t sound as much like Issa, but still has an “I” and an “S” in it, preserving the theory’s tenuous plausibility.

It is inspired analysis like this that has made Matt Drudge an icon in conservative media. And his reputation among rightists and Teabaggers will only be enhanced by this eccentric display of lunacy. It perfectly reflects Drudge’s own plaintive question: “Where are the flamboyant characters? This is what America needs right now – flamboyant, intellectual characters.” By entering the lair of professional whack-job Alex Jones, and establishing the natural affinity between the two fringe constituencies, Drudge and Jones have not only answered that question, but they have advanced the level of idiocy that will be forthcoming from the right, as well as the level of laughter from the left.

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

On Fox News: Misinformed People Should Not Vote – And Obama Is Just Like Hitler

Posted by Mark NC on September 19, 2015 at 1:15 pm. 4 Comments :

With the methodical precision of the German train schedule, Fox News has come out with their regular feature arguing that the fewer people who participate in America’s democracy the better. They seem to trot out this theory before every election, along with efforts to slash democrats from the voter rolls, in an obvious attempt to exclude those they regard as unfit to vote. This year’s version features right-wing economist, and frequent Fox News guest, Thomas Sowell.

Appearing on Neil Cavuto’s program on the Fox Business Network (video below), Sowell elaborated on an article he published that made the case for shrinking the electorate so that only the “right” people voted. In response to Cavuto’s brazenly leading question, with the premise that voting “is not necessarily a birthright,” Sowell said that…

“Elections are not held just for social participation. They’re not held just to vet our emotions. They’re held to elect people who will hold our lives and the lives of our loved ones in their hands, as well as the fate of the entire nation. To go out as if we’re voting for homecoming queen is madness. I advise in that column that people who really haven’t had a chance to study these things and know much about it, their most patriotic act would be to stay home on election day, rather than vote on the basis of their whims or their emotions, which is really playing Russian roulette with the history of the country.”

The arrogance of Sowell’s perspective is both wrong and dangerous for two reasons. First, he fails to define what he regards as “whims” and “emotions.” It would be way too easy to label anyone who disagrees with him as emotional and, therefore, unfit to cast a vote. What’s more, emotions have always been a part of the democratic process and should continue to be considered by a compassionate electorate. And secondly, Sowell’s advice that allegedly uninformed or misinformed voters stay home is more of an avoidance of the problem than a solution. How about educating the voters so they can make informed decisions? Apparently Sowell and Cavuto would prefer to just exclude them.

After hearing Sowell’s theory that misinformed citizens should abstain from voting, Cavuto offered a typically snarky response saying that “By that measure I think it’s safe to say that every MSNBC viewer should just stay home.” Very funny, Neil. But actually Cavuto has a point, just the wrong one (as usual). If anyone should refrain from voting based on the cable news network they watch it should be Fox News viewers. Numerous studies have shown that Fox viewers are consistently the most uninformed. Even among Republicans, the ones who watch Fox have the worst grasp of reality.

The political bias in Sowell’s article was starkly evident in his deranged assertion that Obama is the same sort of “glib egomaniac” as Donald Trump. He provided no examples to support that absurd claim. Certainly Obama has never engaged in ludicrous boasts about how he is the greatest, smartest, bestest at anything and everything the way Trump does. But where Sowell goes completely off the rails is when he makes this disgusting comparison between Obama and Hitler:

“No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008.”

See? Obama is just like Hitler, according to Sowell. And all because he attracted large crowds. You know who else attracts large crowds? Donald Trump. The difference is that Obama’s crowds represented the diversity of America and never devolved into insults and hostility. Trump’s crowds, on the other hand, are predominantly white and they are openly hostile to Latinos, Muslims, and gays. So which crowd is more like the Nazis? And which party, with it’s demagogic appeals to American Exceptionalism (aka American Supremacy), is more aligned with Hitler’s mission? I’m just sayin’…

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

Birther, Bigot, Donald Trump Wants To Make America Hate Again – Update: Trump Rejects ‘Moral Obligations’

Posted by Mark NC on September 19, 2015 at 10:14 am. 5 Comments :

At a rally in New Hampshire, Donald Trump demonstrated why he is better suited to running a Klan Kouncil than the U.S. He briefly addressed his audience of crackpots and then opened up the event for questions. The very first one tells us everything we need to know about both Trump and his warped disciples. (Video below)

Question: We’ve got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American, birth certificate man. But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?

This would be a perfect opportunity for Trump to exhibit some intelligence or dignity or … what the hell, we’re talking about Donald Trump here. That isn’t going to happen. This was his response:

Trump: We’ll be looking at a lot of different things. And, you know, a lot of people are saying that. A lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re gonna be looking at that, and plenty of other things.

So Trump is gonna be looking at how to get rid of Muslims like President Obama? Despite his recent reluctance to talk about it, he is apparently as committed as ever to his birtherism. It would have been easy to dismiss the question and repudiate the bigoted inferences of the questioner, but Trump’s prejudices are deep seated and he wasn’t about to cut any slack to either the President or the millions of Muslim-American citizens.

Trump’s defenders might complain that he was blindsided by the question and should not be held accountable for not responding appropriately off the cuff. But that wouldn’t explain the statement provided by his campaign hours later after having plenty of time to develop a considered response.

Campaign response: The media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging a war against Christians. Christians need support in this country. Their religious liberty is stake.

Ferchrissakes. They took their time in order to compose the most nauseating, racist, idiotic, official reply they could think of? First of all, the media isn’t making this about Obama. The questioner explicitly made reference to him. The bigger issue is that Trump is now awkwardly attempting to divert attention to his delusional and wholly unsupported claim that “Obama is waging a war against Christians,” whose “religious liberty is stake.”

Where on Earth does he get these lunatic ravings from? Obviously he thinks that by retching up the most grotesque lies imaginable he can distract people from his boorish bigotry. That may work for the putrid collection of imbeciles who support him, but anyone with an IQ higher than Trump’s favorability among Latinos aren’t so easily fooled. And the only question left is how long will Republicans continue to prop up this jerkwad?

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

[Update:] Trump Rejects ‘Moral Obligations’ After ducking the issue, Trump is now responding to his flagrant bigotry in a series of tweets that illustrate his complete obliviousness:

Tweet 1: Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don’t think so!
This isn’t about defending the President. It’s about defending the truth and repudiating prejudice. Trump should have excoriating the questioner, not as a favor to Obama, but because what he said was both false and hateful. And yes, that is a moral obligation if you expect to be regarded as a leader. Note: Trump got this line from Fox & Friends who spent much of the morning trying to justify Trump’s assholiness and specifically saying he had no moral obligation to respond.

Tweet 2: This is the first time in my life that I have caused controversy by NOT saying something.
This is a vain distraction that ignores the responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Martin Niemöller’s famous poem “First they came for…” is a stark reminder of what happens when you do NOT say something. You have to wonder if Trump would have said something if the questioner had said Jews instead of Muslims. Would he have been morally obligated?

Tweet 3: If someone made a nasty or controversial statement about me to the president, do you really think he would come to my rescue? No chance!
This is projection on Trump’s part. If someone at an Obama rally said Trump was a fascist Christian and asked how to get rid of them, based on his record of tolerance, Obama would almost certainly have slapped him down.

Tweet 4: If I would have challenged the man, the media would have accused me of interfering with that man’s right of free speech. A no win situation!
What utter nonsense. Trump has the example set by John McCain who faced a similar situation and reacted honorably. He was universally praised for his dignified response. And therein lies the problem for Trump: He has no honor or dignity.

The Next Jade Helm Hoax Per Fox News: Obama Orders Behavioral Experiments On American Public

Posted by Mark NC on September 16, 2015 at 4:52 pm. 3 Comments :

This summer there was a flashing wingnut red alert warning that President Obama was plotting to invade Texas with federal troops to enslave the residents, confiscate their guns, and generally wreak havoc on the Lone Staters. In Realityland, Jade Helm 15 was a military training exercise to prepare soldiers for battle in desert environments and it has been conducted many times before. But that didn’t stop the conspiracy freaks (including Texas governor Greg Abbott) from waxing idiotic about the looming tyrannical threat from the Kenyan Muslim occupying the formerly White House.

This week the Pentagon announced that the Jade Helm operation was complete, and despite the deranged ranting of the right-wing Psycho-chicken Littles, not a single “patriot” was hauled off to a FEMA camp and every armed Texan continues to strut around with their surrogate phalluses, except those who offed themselves while defending their pseudo-freedom. However, the absence of this delusional diversion has left the paranoia hoarders one panicky horror story short. Lucky for them that Fox News is here to fill the void.

The Fox News community website, Fox Nation, reached out to the Daily Caller and Fox’s bitch, Tucker Carlson, for a story that contains all of the vital elements for a crackpot conspiracy theory. It begins, of course, with Chairman Obama abusing his power by issuing an executive order (which he has issued fewer of than any of his modern predecessors). But this particular order includes a hint of the sort of mind control that makes conspiracy theorists’ toes tingle. The headline blared “President Obama Orders Behavioral Experiments On American Public,” and warned that…

“President Obama announced a new executive order on Tuesday which authorizes federal agencies to conduct behavioral experiments on U.S. citizens in order to advance government initiatives.”

Oh my. Obama is planning to turn America into a nation of guinea pigs. Now that’s the sort of brain-fried idiocy that hatched Jade Helm (and Obamaphones, and death panels, and Benghazi, etc.). There was nothing in the article to corroborate the wild claim made by these fruitcakes. They just left the charge hanging out there to strike fear into the withering hearts of their dimwitted readers. But if any of them were curious enough to seek out the actual executive order and peruse the contents themselves, they would have found this: Executive Order — Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People.

“Where Federal policies have been designed to reflect behavioral science insights, they have substantially improved outcomes for the individuals, families, communities, and businesses those policies serve. For example, automatic enrollment and automatic escalation in retirement savings plans have made it easier to save for the future, and have helped Americans accumulate billions of dollars in additional retirement savings. Similarly, streamlining the application process for Federal financial aid has made college more financially accessible for millions of students.

To more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the Federal Government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs. By improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Government, behavioral science insights can support a range of national priorities, including helping workers to find better jobs; enabling Americans to lead longer, healthier lives; improving access to educational opportunities and support for success in school; and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.

So it turns out that the order is simply an initiative to better design forms, applications, and processes so that they are easier to understand and navigate. The goals are spelled out in more detail and include “streamlining processes” and “removing administrative hurdles, shortening wait times, and simplifying forms,” as well as to “reduce regulatory burdens.”

What a friggin’ nightmare! Someone has to stop these fiends before they make government so efficient that people come to appreciate it and welcome interactions with its agencies. That, of course, would be a real nightmare for conservatives whose mission is to make everything associated with government fail so that they can argue that it is unnecessary and then propose to cut its budget and fire everybody in Washington. Never mind whether or not it actually helps people and saves money.

Republicans are the party of deliberate failure. They know that if federal services were managed competently, Americans would get used to the benefits and the cost savings and reject the right’s agenda of shrinking government so that only the privileged would benefit. That’s why electing Republicans to run government is like hiring bank robbers as security guards. They both have an incentive to screw everything up.

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

It is no coincidence that these screwball conspiracies almost always originate with right-wingers. They thrive on fear and the falsehoods that produce them. Without their alternate realities they wouldn’t be able to sustain their innate anger and animus toward anyone that looks different. And media like the Daily Caller and Fox News are the fuel that ignites their hate and hallucinations, and obviously they intend to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, unfortunately.

Fox News Headline: That Drowned Syrian Boy On The Beach Is Obama’s Fault

Posted by Mark NC on September 4, 2015 at 4:34 pm. 10 Comments :

The list of things that are Obama’s fault just keeps getting longer. You have to wonder how he has managed to get so much done in so short a time. After all, conservatives have blamed Obama for everything from riots in Ferguson, MO, to California’s drought, to Ebola, to Hurricane Katrina (No, really). And that happened three years before he was inaugurated. He is to blame for high gas prices that hurt consumers, as well as for low gas prices that hurt oil companies. They blame him for increased immigration (which has actually gone down), and for the rising number of abortions (which are declining).

It really doesn’t matter what the subject is. Conservatives will spin it as evidence of America’s doom and blame Obama for it. And if you need another example, look no further than Fox News, where today they ran a story with the headline “That Drowned Syrian Boy On The Beach Is Obama’s Fault.” Because, of course it is.

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson is the one assigning the blame on this occasion. He has to stretch mightily to justify his ludicrous opinion that the responsibility for the death of a child refugee from Syria rests on the President’s shoulders. He does this by twisting the facts beyond all recognition and inventing motives that aren’t supported by reality. The sad story began when the boy’s family, along with thousands of others, fled the oppression and atrocities perpetrated by ISIS in Syria. Erickson viewed that situation as the “direct result” of Obama’s alleged pride and cowardice.

Erickson: “ISIS only became a thing when the White House, out of pride and arrogance, decided it was better to placate the left by withdrawing all troops from Iraq rather than help the Iraqis maintain their stability.

“A young boy has died, washed up on the shores of Europe. His picture has shocked the world and his death is direct result of Barack Obama fleeing the Middle East, tail tucked between his leg, so he could pridefully say he ended a war he never wanted.

“The boy is dead because Barack Obama chose to abdicate American leadership in the world.”

Apparently Erickson either doesn’t know, or is deliberately lying, about the circumstances that led to the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. The truth is that a “Status of Forces Agreement” was negotiated by the administration of George W. Bush that called for complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. The Obama administration attempted to extend the agreement, but the Iraqis were opposed to any extension so Bush’s deadline was carried out.

Since the withdrawal date was not chosen by Obama, it can hardly be attributed to him as placating the left or resulting from his pride and arrogance. He didn’t “flee” the Middle East. He complied with the binding agreement of his White House predecessor. If Erickson is looking for someone to accuse of abdicating leadership, then he should be looking at Bush.

Furthermore, Erickson’s insinuation that Obama was responsible for the rise of ISIS is just as faulty as his understanding of international treaties. Many of the soldiers who formed ISIS were former officials and military operatives of Saddam Hussein’s Bath Party. They were only available to start their radical Islamic army because Bush’s operatives in Iraq prohibited them from having any role in the new Iraqi government. That move turned them into rebels who eventually aligned with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Erickson argued that the destabilization of Iraq that led to much of the region’s turmoil was Obama’s fault, even though one of the reasons that Obama had opposed the Iraq war from the start was the risk of destabilization. So Erickson was wrong about Iraq. He was wrong about the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. He was wrong about the beginnings of ISIS. He also failed to note that the dead child was not from Iraq, but was a refugee from Syria, where they were having problems of their own.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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Nevertheless, Erickson flatly stated that “That little boy would not have died had Barack Obama stood strong in Iraq. […] That dead child is Barack Obama’s fault.” But that opinion is so much more than merely wrong. It is contrary to the facts. It is slander against Obama. It is absolution to ISIS, the real perpetrators of so much death and misery. And it is perversely exploitative of a tragic loss of innocent life. However, it is exactly the sort of despicable smear campaign that Erickson, and his comrades on the right, and Fox News, have been engaging in for at least the last seven years.

The Unbearable Dumbness Of Being Republican

Posted by Mark NC on September 2, 2015 at 11:10 pm. 10 Comments :

Confirmation of the relentless idiocy of the Republican electorate continues to unfold as the primary season heats up. With each new day there are fresh examples of the trademark asininity that is emblematic of America’s wingnut demographic.

The latest revelation comes from a survey by Public Policy Polling that provides a profile of the GOP’s current voter base. It’s a sad picture of a sector of the population that is hopelessly lost and consumed with blind hatred. Here is what PPP had to say about their survey results:

“Our new poll finds that Trump is benefiting from a GOP electorate that thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born in another country […] 66% of Trump’s supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12% that grant he’s a Christian. 61% think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21% who accept that he was.”

And furthermore…

“Trump’s beliefs represent the consensus among the GOP electorate. 51% overall want to eliminate birthright citizenship. 54% think President Obama is a Muslim. And only 29% grant that President Obama was born in the United States. That’s less than the 40% who think Canadian born Ted Cruz was born in the United States.”

So 40% of Republicans overall (not just Trump supporters) think that Ted Cruz was born in the U.S. (He wasn’t. He was born in Canada). But 51% of the same meatheads think that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. (He was, of course, born in Hawaii). Meanwhile, 54% of Republicans (and 66% of Trump’s supporters) also believe that Obama is a Muslim, despite the fact that they criticized him mercilessly for all the years that he was a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ led by the now infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Whatever you think of Wright, there is no question that he did not preside over a mosque.

To make matters worse, Trump supporters are comfortable with his assertions that he is a devout Christian even though he says that he has never asked God for forgiveness. Due to his spiritual perfection he said “Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?” I thought that Christians believe there was only one perfect person and he died on a cross a couple thousand years ago. Is The Donald the Second Coming? Additionally, Trump was unable to cite a single verse from the Bible when asked last week. And the pastor of the Church to which he said he belongs denied that he is an active member.

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

But this isn’t about Trump. It’s about the whole of the Republican electorate whose absence of easily available knowledge borders on clinical dementia. It would be bad enough if they were merely ignorant of common facts. But it’s much worse than that. These people are convinced of things that are provably false. And as George Bernard Shaw said “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” Which begs the question, how did Shaw know about the Tea Party so many years before it existed?

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