Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Flips Off Jon Stewart

Posted by on August 6, 2015 at 12:10 pm. 6 Comments :

The most bitter, paranoid, hostile media boss in the business just affirmed all of those character flaws in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Roger Ailes was questioned about the end of Jon Stewart’s reign as host of The Daily Show and, while pretending to be above it all, he revealed that he is painfully obsessed with Stewart and delighted to see him go.

ailes-the-hutt

The interview began with Ailes whining about Stewart being “after us for years,” but insisting that “he never made a dent.” That’s probably why they did so many stories attacking him. Stewart has been the target of some scathing insults on Fox News from everyone from Bill O’Reilly (who called Stewart “a key component of left-wing television,” and his audience “stoned slackers”) to Sean Hannity (who called Stewart “a sanctimonious jackass”). Ailes himself demeaned Stewart as a lefty who hates conservatives, adding that “He’s crazy.” Pretty much every time Stewart did a segment that mentioned Fox News even briefly, the dullards at Fox would retaliate with venomous assaults consuming valuable airtime.

Ailes then demonstrated the signature reality distortions for which Fox News is known.

Ailes: As he faces the end of his career, he’s beginning to wonder: ‘Is this as popular as I’m ever going to get? Is this as much power as I’ll ever have? The one person I could never get rid of was Roger Ailes. I tried. I did everything I could.’ This was all a plea to his lefty friends. I think he’s disappointed that he didn’t accomplish that goal, and we, of course, supplied him with half of his comedy. It’s just a matter of disappointment.

Ailes had to reach deep into his anus to pull out the assertion that Stewart is at the end of his career. Stewart is not retiring. He is leaving one job and moving on to other projects. And as for his future popularity, here are a few people who left The Daily Show but whose careers have soared: Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Steve Carell, Larry Wilmore, Olivia Munn, Ed Helms, Kristen Schaal, and Michael Che.

It is also a notable indication of how ego-driven Ailes is to believe that Stewart’s goal was to get rid of him. In truth, Stewart’s goal was to expose the dishonesty, prejudice, and hypocrisy of Fox News, as well as other mainstream media outlets. And that is a goal he accomplished in spades. Nobody regards Fox News as an impartial news source, not even conservatives. And most people recognize that Fox practices a wholly unethical brand of pseudo-journalism and thinly disguised propaganda for the Republican Party. Stewart deserves some of the credit for that.

One thing that Ailes gets right is that Fox News supplied Stewart with much of his material. But that’s an odd thing to brag about. In effect Ailes is conceding that so much of what he airs on Fox is ludicrous bullspit that is ripe for mockery. Indeed it is, and Stewart took full advantage of it.

Elsewhere in the interview Ailes exhibited a severe case of denial. He said that he never worries about Stewart, but that is contradicted by how knee-jerk reactive he and his network are to anything Stewart says. He said that Stewart couldn’t work for Fox because “He would depress everyone.” Like everyone at Fox isn’t already swimming in despair as they anguish over everything that President Obama does and says. He complained about Stewart’s mood saying that “You can’t say that many negative things about people unless you’re really unhappy about something.” Has Ailes ever looked in the mirror? [Note: that was meant figuratively to point out that he and Fox News are the ones that are relentlessly negative. However, if you want to take literally, that works too]

As a parting shot in the interview, Ailes launches an unprovoked attack on his own corporate family:

Ailes: Knowing [Stewart], he’ll direct movies with sort of a left-wing point of view, and America’s a terrible country. Somebody needs to tell him that 90 percent of what Hollywood puts out already does that. He’s going to have to find another niche.

Somebody needs to tell Ailes that 21st Century Fox is one of the top five film studios in the world (it is #4). It also owns one of the four broadcast television networks (Also #4). It is firmly ensconced in Hollywood and is as responsible for its output as any other studio. Perhaps he is upset that it was Warner Bros., not Fox, that released that despicable, unpatriotic, left-wing movie “American Sniper,” that grossed more than any other film in 2014.

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 apparent that Roger Ailes is a deeply disturbed and emotionally tormented individual. His loathsome and cantankerous personality is evident in this interview and in the programming on Fox News. It would be almost pitiful but for the damage he causes. And in the end, he must know that Stewart will be remembered far more fondly than he will, and for a far more honorable body of work.

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Fox News Presents The Trump-tacular Republican Party Propaganda Telethon And Bitchfest

Posted by on August 5, 2015 at 3:40 pm. 21 Comments :

While we are still six months away from the first Republican Party caucus in Iowa, and fifteen months from the 2016 election, Fox News is feverishly promoting its exclusive presentation of the very first primary debate among the candidates for the GOP nomination for president. Can you feel the excitement?

The debate which will take place on Thursday will feature ten candidates selected by the powers that be at Fox News. The remaining seven losers will get their own kiddie matinee affair in an earlier afternoon timeslot. Fox manufactured the selection process and provided the means for the candidates to attempt to influence it. Fox’s method of using the average of the five most recent national polls has been repudiated by nearly every independent expert. The value of national polls at this stage of an election is literally zilch since very few candidates have mounted national campaigns, preferring to build support in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. What’s more, the variance in the numbers between the candidates is within the margin of error for the majority of the field. Therefore, it is absurd to use such polls to determine who is ahead.

Nevertheless, Fox News has committed to this method of selection. Well, except for the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, they decided to skip the fifth most recent poll (by Monmouth) and instead average in the sixth (by Quinnipiac). This breach of their own rule results in advancing Ohio governor John Kasich into the primetime debate in place of Texas governor Rick Perry. That’s significant because it would look bad if the governor of the state where the debate is being held (Cleveland, OH) were excluded from participating. Also of significance is that Kasich is a close personal friend of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and a former employee who hosted his own Fox show for six years. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

Adding to the absurdity is that candidates hoping to be in the primetime debate had to goose their standings in the polls to assure themselves a spot. And, of course, the best way to reach prospective Republican poll respondents is to advertise on Fox News. So this sham methodology does serve the purpose of inflating Fox’s bank account.

Now that the ten lucky Primetimers have been identified, Fox has also revealed their placement on the debate stage. For some unexplained reason they decided that the candidates with the highest average poll numbers would be placed in the center. Why? As previously noted, the earliness of the election season and the surveys’ margins of error make the poll numbers irrelevant. However, the stage placement does have a visual impact that casts the center spots as stars and the fringes as supporting players (or literally fringe candidates). It would have been more fair and balanced had Fox assigned spots randomly or alphabetically or by how many Reagan bobbleheads they can stuff up their bum.

This sports bracket-style staging puts reality TV star Donald Trump right where he wants to be. He is effectively in the CEO’s spot in the boardroom from where he can point at his rivals and fire them. He will be in nearly every shot where his reactions will become a key part of the program whether or not he is speaking. Fox News should have just dropped the facade and let Trump have a gold-plated podium with his name in big capital letters. They could also give him above-the-title billing. You have to wonder whether these things were part of the contract rider demands submitted by the Trump team.

GOP/Trump Debate Stage

The content of the debate can be predicted with a fairly high degree of probability. Kira Lerner at ThinkProgress has already done so in article outlining “11 Things You’ll Probably Hear During The First GOP Debate That Are Totally False.” Indeed, the debates will be an extended opportunity for Republicans to bitch about how awful America is and how much worse it will get if Hillary Clinton is elected next year. By having to split the debates into two programs it actually creates even more time for the bitchfest. If you watch both debates you will have spent a marathon three and a half hours exposed to right-wing hate and fear mongering. This might be a good time to invest in pharmaceuticals or distilleries because the use of anti-depressants and alcohol are sure to spike during and after these programs.

Finally, if anyone is expecting Fox’s moderators to be fair and balanced, you will be sorely disappointed. Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace have proven themselves to be shamelessly biased. This does not always mean favoritism toward the Republican Party, but also favoritism within certain factions of the party or for favorites of the network’s bosses. Even the candidates are suspicious of the impartiality of the moderators. The New Yorker’s Gabriel Sherman disclosed that Trump’s organization is already complaining:

“Given Fox’s power to shape the 2016 GOP primary, campaigns are taking an aggressive approach to lobbying Ailes before Thursday’s debates. According to a source close to the Trump campaign, Trump’s friend Rudy Giuliani called the Fox chief the other day and asked Ailes to make sure Megyn Kelly doesn’t go after Trump in her questioning. The feeling inside the Trump campaign — following an on-air grilling in May — is that Kelly doesn’t like Trump.”

So the candidates feel that it’s appropriate to try to bully the moderators into going soft. That is not a left-field assumption since GOP chairman Reince Priebus explicitly cited that as a reason for taking more control over the debate process (control that he subsequently ceded to Fox News). Two years ago as he was drafting plans for 2016 Priebus said that…

“…the thing that is ridiculous is allowing moderators, who are not serving the best interests of the candidate and the party, to actually be the people to be deposing our people. And I think that’s totally wrong.”

So Priebus has declared that the debate moderators are there to serve the interests of the party and the candidates – not the voters or democracy or the country. By that standard we can expect that the demands by Trump’s surrogates, and those of the other candidates, will be adhered to. From the party’s perspective the debates are nothing more than free television advertising time and the moderators are prohibited from trying to elicit anything of substance from them.

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Available now at Amazon.

That said, I think the moderators will stray from the straight and narrow path that Priebus has proscribed. They will do so out of a desire to maintain a sliver of self-respect. So expect a challenging question or two that will enable them to say afterwards that they were professional and probing. Of course, asking a probing question does not guarantee a substantive response. My prediction is that there will be nothing substantive revealed during the entire three and a half hour affair. The best we can hope for with regard to entertainment value is if someone successfully provokes Trump into a meltdown, which shouldn’t be that hard to do.


A Tool Of The Obama Administration? Jon Stewart Responds Hilariously

Posted by on August 4, 2015 at 4:33 pm. 3 Comments :

A couple of weeks ago, Fox News invented a scandal surrounding the allegedly “secret” meetings that Jon Stewart had with President Obama. The truth of the matter was far less scandalous than Fox News tried to make it appear. There were only two meetings over seven years and neither of them were secret.

Stewart, of course, mocked the the Fox News segment that appeared on MediaBuzz with Fox’s chief hack, Howard Kurtz. With his characteristic exasperated wit he demonstrated the utter foolishness of Kurtz and his lame attempt to portray Stewart as a White House pawn. But that only stirred Kurtz up even more. He followed up the story with another segment featuring professional Stewart-hater David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun. Zurawik repeated his mantra that Stewart is hopelessly liberal and that…

“He has become more and more and more a tool of the Obama administration. […] If you serve a politician’s ideological agenda, you are a propagandist.”

Indeed. And Fox News was created to serve politicians’ ideological agendas. It is the prime directive of the network founded by an arch-conservative press magnate (Rupert Murdoch) and a far-right, Republican media operative (Roger Ailes). Fox has essentially branded the Republican Party as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Murdoch empire (in partnership with Koch Industries). Particularly with the upcoming primaries over which Fox is exerting an unprecedented measure of control. So for anyone on Fox to accuse Stewart, or anybody else, of being a “tool” of a political entity is hypocrisy on an Olympian scale.

Jon Stewart

Stewart’s latest rebuttal (video below) to the Fox News hysteria over his alleged political allegiances sought to humorously help Kurtz to prove that he is a leftist toady. The only problem was that each example he provided proved instead that he was fairly even handed with biting criticisms of the President and other Democrats. Even Fox News gleefully reported on those occasions when Stewart hammered Obama. That is something that News Corpse documented years ago. Here are a few (like 45) examples:

  • Jon Stewart Continues Piling on Scandal-Plagued Obama: He’s Either Nixon or Mr. Magoo
  • Stewart Tears Apart Obama: You Can’t Keep Saying You Found Out About News At the Same Time As Us!
  • Jon Stewart Destroys Obama Over IRS Scandal
  • Jon Stewart Goes Hog Wild on CNN
  • Stewart Eviscerates Obama for Withholding Drone Memos
  • Jon Stewart Tears Up Congress for Quietly Scaling Back Insider Trading Law
  • Stewart Destroys Former Obama Spox Robert Gibbs
  • Jon Stewart Tears Apart CNN
  • Jon Stewart Grills Hypocrite Al Gore
  • Jon Stewart’s F-Bomb Tirade Against Obama
  • Stewart Rips Obama SOTU: ‘Who’s Running This Sh*thole?!’
  • Jon Stewart Tears Into Obama’s ‘Attractive’ AG Comment
  • Jon Stewart Grills Susan Rice
  • Jon Stewart Tears Into Obama Hypocrisy
  • Jon Stewart Destroys Media Over Inauguration Coverage
  • Jon Stewart Mocks ‘All-White’ Obama Cabinet Controversy
  • Jon Stewart Mocks Obama’s Hot Mic Moment
  • Jon Stewart Roasts Obama for Failed SOTU Joke
  • Jon Stewart Mocks CNN Iowa Coverage
  • Jon Stewart Makes Mincemeat Out of Jon Corzine
  • Jon Stewart Takes a Weed Whacker to Obama’s Squandered Green Initiatives
  • Jon Stewart Ruthlessly Mocks CNN
  • Jon Stewart’s Anti-Obama Tirade
  • Jon Stewart Turns on Obama: ‘Did the President Just Quit?’
  • Jon Stewart Savages Democrats: Your Big Plan Is to Label the Tea Party Extreme
  • Jon Stewart Mocks Obama’s Fake ‘Puerto Rican’ Accent
  • Jon Stewart Scorches Obama Over Transparency
  • Jon Stewart Knocks Obama Bus Tour
  • Jon Stewart Mocks Ridiculous Union Protest
  • Jon Stewart Rips Obama for Mosque Flip-Flop
  • Jon Stewart Ridicules Obama Press Conference
  • Jon Stewart: Obama Dances Like White Man
  • Jon Stewart: Obama ‘Delusional’
  • Jon Stewart Scolds Maddow, NBC News For Saying ‘Teabagger’
  • Jon Stewart Mocks CNN to Larry King’s Face
  • Jon Stewart Blasts Obama’s Cartoonish Response to Spill
  • Jon Stewart Mocks NPR
  • Jon Stewart Ridicules Rick ‘Twit’ Sanchez
  • Jon Stewart Pokes Fun at MSNBC’s New Ad Campaign
  • Jon Stewart Obliterates CNN’s Rick Sanchez
  • Jon Stewart Takes Obama to Task Over Weatherization
  • Jon Stewart Mocks Obama’s Teleprompter Dependence
  • Jon Stewart Slams Democrat Healthcare “Incoherence”
  • Jon Stewart Tells Obama to Act More Like Bush
  • Jon Stewart Calls Palin a Genius

Clearly Stewart has not shied away from criticizing Obama. And clearly Fox News is aware of that as evidenced by their own giddy reporting. Now Stewart has has addressed this false premise with his own examples of Fox praising his fairness and balance. In each case they qualify their commentary by prefacing it with “Even Jon Stewart…” After a damning reel of Foxies slobbering over Stewart’s Obama-bashing he plaintively asks “How often does a dude have to criticize the President before his name legally changes from “Even Jon Stewart” to “Unsurprisingly Jon Stewart?”

The answer, of course, is that there is no point at which Fox, or the rest of the rightist media, will admit that Stewart has made all sides of the political debate subjects of his satire. No matter what he does or says they will continue to malign him as a one-sided enemy of American values. The same is true for Stephen Colbert. So when he begins hosting The Late Show next month he should ignore the wingnuts who will similarly paint him as a socialist stooge.

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


Romancing The Hicks: Ted Cruz Makes Bacon With A Machine Gun (Video)

Posted by on August 3, 2015 at 4:49 pm. 1 Comments :

Coming on the heels of his bizarre Trumpian assertion that environmentalists are flat-earthers, Ted Cruz released a video that seems to cement the already widespread impression of the American redneck as a borderline deranged nut case.

Ted Cruz

In the video (posted below) Cruz is seen at a firing range where he expresses his appreciation of cooking breakfast with his family on weekends. Then he adds “Of course, in Texas we cook bacon a little differently than most folks.” He then proceeds to wrap a few strips of bacon around the muzzle of an AR-15 and fire it at a target. After which he picks a piece of the bacon off the muzzle with a fork and eats it. Eww. It’s not exactly sanitary.

What exactly is the point of this video? Is it Cruz’s intention to reinforce the negative stereotype of Texans and southerners as corpulent, pork-encrusted, gluttons, and skeevy, gun fetishing hicks? Because that’s what he’s doing as he reinforces two of the most repugnant attributes commonly associated with the hillbilly culture to which he seems to be appealing.

Let’s face it, this is nothing more than a desperate cry for attention by a candidate who has rapidly sunk into near oblivion. His poll numbers have been cut in half in the last few months. But if he thinks that frying cured pig flesh on a rifle barrel is the way to attract more voters he is shooting blanks. He is only proving that he knows nothing about either food or guns.

Candidates like Cruz are adopting the scripts of reality television to ramp up their ratings …er… votes. It might be referred to as the Trump effect (although Sarah Palin was there first), and it is turning democracy into a pathetic season of Keeping Up With The Republicans.

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


Flat-Earther Ted Cruz Makes A Valiant Effort To Out-Trump Trump

Posted by on August 2, 2015 at 11:10 pm. 10 Comments :

The Republican presidential primary has utterly devolved into a festival of crotchety buffoons whose most steadfast goal is to attract more publicity than their current front-runner, Donald Trump. However, it says something rather pitiful about a collection of GOP candidates that are repeatedly upstaged by a boorish TV reality show host. That’s gotta hurt.

Consequently, every so often one of them will take a wild swing for fences to see if they can sponge up a little attention. Doing so almost never involves contributing something meaningful to the discourse on government, politics, or society. No, it usually means sinking to lower levels of dumbfuckery than Trump himself. And the latest contestant to step up to the plate is Sen. Ted Cruz, who in the pre-Trump era was the undisputed champion of the lunatic fringe.

Ted Cruz

Speaking at gathering of wealthy Republican donors sponsored by the wealthiest of them all, the Koch brothers, Cruz addressed the subject of Climate Change. He began by making the bizarre assertion that the vast majority of scientists whose studies prove that Climate Change is a real and imminent threat, are “Flat-Earthers.” That’s right, he used the phrase that ordinarily mocks those who reject science against actual scientists. And he used it to reject science.

You have to give Cruz some credit for managing to pull off this daring escape from reality with a straight face. And undoubtedly the imbeciles listening to this tripe will soak it up eagerly since they have already demonstrated that their capacity for rational comprehension is at or near zero. Cruz went on to dismiss Climate Change as a hoax saying that…

“If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there’s been zero recorded warming. The satellite says it ain’t happening … They’re cooking the books.” […and that…] “It is always disturbing to hear science use the language of theology. Deniers. Heretics. That’s not what science is supposed to be about. Science should follow the facts.”

Indeed. Science should follow the facts. And with 97% of scientists who have studied Climate Change agreeing that it is real and is caused by humans, the facts are not in doubt. What’s more, Cruz’s complaint about the “language of theology” comes entirely from his warped imagination. The term “deniers” was previously used mostly with reference to fake historians who claimed that the Holocaust never occurred. That is not a theological reference. And I would wager that Cruz could not cite a single instance of someone referring to Climate Change deniers as heretics.

As for Cruz’s claims about satellite data, cooked books, and the alleged absence of any recorded warming, he is obviously working from materials provided by the same Exxon lobbyists who previously worked for cigarette companies on the health benefits of tobacco. Because if he had asked the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration they would have told him that the planet has been steadily warming for decades and that 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record. And that 2015 is on track to surpass 2014.

This isn’t the first time that Cruz has wondered from the realm of reality by flipping the concept of flat-Earthers. Back in May he said much the same thing while adding that he and other science-deniers were modern-day Galileos. The only problem with that is that it is bass-ackwards. Galileo was persecuted for advocating theories derived from scientific method (like the 97%). His critics, mainly the Catholic Church, rejected his work because they were committed to preserving long-held myths that benefited the status quo (like Koch brothers). So Cruz assuming the mantle of Galileo is a complete reversal of logic. He’s the one using an unsupported belief system to supplant today’s Galileos who rely on actual science.

Perhaps the funniest diversion from sanity in Cruz’s speech was his ludicrous reasoning for why Democrats are pursuing Climate Change as an issue. First, he says that they plan to use it as a means to assert total control over … EVERYTHING! It’s all part of a grand conspiracy that concludes with universal slavery to environmental dictators forcing people to live with clean air and water in a habitable climate. The fiends! And even worse, Democrats only pretend to care about the issue in order to please the army of environmentalist billionaires (we all know how numerous and bloodthirsty they are) and to gain access to their campaign donations. Keep in mind that Cruz was offering this ominous conspiracy theory to a room full of some 450 wealthy campaign donors assembled by the Koch brothers from whom he is seeking donations.

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

The only question for Cruz is, is this blockheaded stunt crazy enough to steal back some of Trump’s thunder? In ordinary times it would have more than sufficed. But these are not ordinary times. Trump has advanced the idiocracy to new, unforeseen heights. If Cruz really wanted to clinch the deal he should have accused the scientists of aiding and abetting ISIS, or thrown in a reference to environmentalist Nazis like Mike Huckabee did with Planned Parenthood. Now that’s how you out-Trump Trump.


Donald Trump: Bringing Back Jobs – And The Foreigners To Do Them

Posted by on August 1, 2015 at 10:47 pm. 4 Comments :

The Republican’s favorite jingoistic blowhard, Donald Trump, has made immigration the centerpiece of his alleged presidential campaign. Not that he’s proposed any coherent policies or solutions. That would only distract from his hate-speech and fear mongering. No, The Donald’s stunted ability to comprehend complex issues is limited to demonizing his perceived enemies and building walls. And he has the audacity to believe that after insulting Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists that American Latinos will still vote for him.

Donald Trump

Among the many things that Trump is convinced he can do better than any other mortal is creating jobs. Never mind the fact that it has always been a lie that the wealthy are job creators (Here is an infographic showing who the Real Job Creators are). And set aside that Trump’s businesses have long outsourced American jobs to China and elsewhere. He nevertheless said in his presidential campaign announcement speech that “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” This is a meaningless boast, and not just because he doesn’t have any respect for God.

Reuters is reporting that Trump’s businesses “have sought to import at least 1,100 foreign workers on temporary visas since 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.” It is notable that these are not the sort of hard-labor jobs in agriculture or construction for which it is sometimes difficult to recruit. The jobs Trump was seeking to fill were for maids, cooks, wait staff, and even golf-course superintendents, and hotel and banquet managers. These are sought-after positions in luxury resorts. They are also positions for which the employer must certify that “they tried and failed to hire Americans.”

So Trump expects people to believe that he was unable to find Americans to fill these jobs. Yet he still expects people to believe that he will be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” And perhaps he will, just not for American workers. It’s likely he is seeking people that he can exploit by paying less and treating badly. What’s more, the foreign workers he is employing are the very same ones that he is disparaging as rapists and promising to deport en masse. Reuters notes that…

“The temporary work visa program through which Trump’s companies have sought the greatest numbers of workers, H-2B, brings in mostly workers from Mexico. Mexicans made up more than 80 percent of the 104,993 admissions to the United States on H-2B visas in 2013. The Trump companies have sought at least 850 H-2B visa workers.”

It will be interesting to see if Trump’s stubbornly stupid supporters will hold him accountable for this slap in the face to American labor. Will they make him pay for his outrageous hypocrisy? Judging from the past few weeks, maybe not. If they weren’t offended by his racism, or his disrespect for POW’s, or his rebuke of God, then perhaps they aren’t bothered by hurting the American work force (and lying about it) either. After all, if you’re dumb enough to support Trump in the first place, you’re probably too stupid to figure out when you’re being screwed.

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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Revealed: Why Stupid Republicans Embrace The Stupidity Of Donald Trump

Posted by on July 31, 2015 at 10:23 pm. 8 Comments :

The manufactured pseudo-phenomenon of Donald Trump is running the media ragged as they try to explain (to themselves mostly) how such a preposterous caricature of a politician could be leading in the polls of a supposedly serious political party. The truth is that Trump isn’t leading anything. He is merely registering with the lunatic fringe demographic of the Republican Party which is as much support as he will ever get. As I wrote a few days ago in an article titled “New Poll Shows 18% Of Republicans Are Ignorant Dupes With Severe Mental Decay“ …

“The media is heralding Trump as the runaway GOP leader with his measly 18% of support. For perspective, note that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, is pulling support from 19% of Democratic voters. Yet the press is dismissing him as trailing Clinton badly. So Sanders has more support among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans, but the schizophrenic media declares Sanders a loser and Trump a phenomenon.”

What the press isn’t telling you is that Trump’s 18% in the polls means that 82% are rejecting him. And if that weren’t bad enough, he has the highest unfavorable ratings of any candidate and the largest percentage of respondents who say they will “never” vote for him. However, for those who must have a deeper understanding of this temporary diversion from reality, there is an observation that was made by the philosopher Bertrand Russell that succinctly describes what we are witnessing: “Our great societies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.”

Donald Trump Stupid

As evidence of the rampant stupidity being displayed by the Trump contingent of the GOP, look no further than the responses by members of a focus group held by John Heilemann of Bloomberg News. When asked to comment on what they liked about Trump they provided vagaries that were devoid of any substance that could be applied to an actual agenda. And what’s worse, they seem to think that being obnoxious is synonymous with being truthful. The group responded with statements like…

  • “He’s honest.”
    You can tell by his volume and how certain he sounds no matter how wrong.
  • “He doesn’t care what people think.”
    Now that’s a quality you want in a representative democracy.
  • “He isn’t choreographed.”
    In other words, he foregoes thoughtful consideration or diplomacy.
  • “We need business and I like his roughness.”
    So he’s a boorish version of Mitt Romney who offends everyone (not just the 47%).
  • “He’s not a politician.”
    He’s just been pretending to run for president for nearly thirty years.
  • “He’s like one of us … He’s so in tune with what everybody is wanting.”
    Well, everybody except the huge majorities who find him repulsive and would never vote for him.
  • [A Trump presidency would be] “Classy.”
    I don’t even know how to react to that frighteningly deranged notion.

None of these people could articulate a single policy position or detailed proposal that Trump would implement were he elected. But then again, neither can Trump. His campaign platform consists mainly of insulting his rivals and spewing hollow cliches that mirror the hollow agenda of the Republican Party. For instance, he is virulently anti-immigrant. He advocates cutting taxes for the rich and regulations for big business. He wants boots on the ground in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (and maybe Russia and China and North Korea). He is against reproductive rights and marriage equality. He doesn’t believe that Climate Change poses any imminent risks or is caused by human activity. He regards the Second Amendment as sacrosanct and opposes reforms like universal background checks. He has promised to repeal ObamaCare. And let’s not forget his leadership as America’s foremost Birther.

The people who support Trump are ideal reflections of the ignorance that permeates his campaign. Yet his supporters believe that his loutish and uncivilized behavior is an asset that connotes honesty and leadership. It’s the culmination of the moronic inquiry that keeps creeping up every election cycle asking “Who would you rather have a beer a with?” As if the souse at the end of the bar sucking on a Budweiser is the best qualified person to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty.

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

The only thing more revealing about the character of Trump than the idiocy of his supporters is their hostility. They like his roughness. They like it when he insults immigrants, or POWs, or other Republicans, or the media. And it is not unworthy of notice that among his most staunch supporters are America’s white supremacists, who regard him as the champion of disaffected whites. That’s how stupid the Trump constituency is. Trump is proving what Napoléon Bonaparte said two hundred years ago: “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” As an avid golfer, Trump should understand that his handicap is his base, because it tells us so much about him.

Addendum: If any further proof is needed that Trump’s supporters are imbeciles, Ted Nugent just said that Trump is “What America needs.” Case closed.


Fox News EXCLUSIVE: Jon Stewart’s Secret Plot To Rule The World (w/Stewart’s Response)

Posted by on July 30, 2015 at 3:35 pm. 3 Comments :

When Jon Stewart announced a few months ago that he was leaving the The Daily Show it came as a shock to millions of Americans who couldn’t understand why he suddenly decided to give up the program that had brought him so much success and notoriety. After sixteen years of skewering the media and the public parasites who feed off of it, Stewart was inexplicably walking away while still at the height of his game.

Well, now it can be told. Thanks to intrepid reporting by the journalists at Fox News we can reveal that Jon Stewart is only resigning from The Daily Show so that he can take his place as Supreme Leader, a post for which he has been preparing for years. The evidence cited by Fox revolves around the disclosure that Stewart met secretly with President Obama, presumably to grease the wheels for his eventual ascendance to power.

Jon Stewart Roger Ailes

Never mind that the meetings at the White House were not actually secret at all. They were readily available in the public records that identify all White House visitors. And set aside that there were only two meetings in seven years, which hardly seems sufficient to have much impact on either Stewart or Obama. The discovery of these rendezvous can only be interpreted as ominous portents of what is to come. (See Stewart’s response to the “secret meeting” allegations in the video below)

Witness the editorial commentary used on Fox News to describe the affair. Anchor Bret Baier said that Stewart “has a close working relationship with the President. It turns out a lot closer than we thought.” Exactly. What could be closer than two meetings in seven years? They were practically joined at the hip.

Then there was anchor Jenna Lee who surmised that “Maybe that’s the secret of [Stewart’s] success. The White House has been writing his show.” An astute observation. Especially considering the wealth of talent and comedic brilliance for which political functionaries are known. Without that help Stewart would have been left to rely on mere comedy writers. Although it does make one wonder who was writing his material during the Bush administration.

Fox’s media analyst, Howard Kurtz, weighed in to reveal that “Last year the President chatted up Stewart hours before warning Russia about further military intervention in Ukraine. The next Daily Show mocked Vladimir Putin.” Obviously Stewart was carrying out orders from Chairman Obama. Why else would he do a segment on his daily news satire program that referenced something that was in the news that day?

Kurtz is among many Fox News commentators who frequently lambaste Stewart for allegedly being a fierce devotee of a far-left ideology. Bill O’Reilly called Stewart “a key component of left-wing television.” Megyn Kelly said that “he was not a force for good.” Greg Gutfeld called Stewart’s departure “a big loss for the simpering, left-wing media.” Eric Bolling reprimanded Stewart for “protecting the corrupt politicians.” And Sean Hannity took the high road by simply calling Stewart “a sanctimonious jackass..”

Fox News criticizing Stewart for being biased is something like Bill Cosby criticizing you for sexually assaulting drugged women. Fox News is the undisputed champion of bias in journalism. Their entire schedule is rife with right-wing propaganda. They are currently engaged in a blatant promotional campaign for Republican presidential candidates. Hannity’s show has so far given his full hour over to eleven of the GOP primary contenders (Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul). Even the daytime “news” portion of Fox’s schedule hosted five GOP candidates for the full hour of Outnumbered (Jindal, Santorum, Rubio, Mike Huckabee, and Lindsey Graham).

To reiterate, these are not candidate interview segments. They are gifts of the entire hour of the program which the candidates don’t have to declare on their financial disclosure forms. And when Fox isn’t donating free airtime to Republicans they are bashing Hillary Clinton for anything from her email etiquette to rope lines for reporters, and always Benghazi.

The relentless bashing of Stewart is all the more absurd in light of the fact that when it suits Fox they will hail him for attacking liberals and/or Obama. As documented by News Corpse, Fox has published dozens of articles heaping praise on Stewart for either “destroying, tearing apart, eviscerating, or grilling” Obama and other liberals (see this list here). And if that weren’t enough, they also highlighted the many times Stewart “mocked, roasted, savaged, scorched, ridiculed, and obliterated” the President and his lefty allies (see this list here).

Now that the secret meetings have been revealed, all of the anti-liberal material Stewart did can be seen as sly attempts to throw everyone off the trail of his otherwise flagrant socialistic allegiances. Even the actual secret meeting Stewart held with a powerful media czar takes on new meaning. As Stewart notes in the video below, his meetings with Obama were not really secret, but his meeting with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes ended with him being told that “This conversation never happened and if you say it did, I’ll deny it.” It’s nice of Ailes to admit that he is not above lying.

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

Next week will be the last for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. His departure will leave a noticeable gap in the world of social satire. It remains to be seen if new host Trevor Noah, or Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, will take up the slack. One thing is obvious, however. Conservatives have no intention (or ability) to offer up any quality humor. Fox News is trying – and failing – with their new Greg Gutfeld program. And this morning on Outnumbered, Fox booked a comedian guest host (Ryan Reiss) who fell flat with this opening gag: “Let’s first address the issue of [Hillary Clinton’s poll] numbers falling. She’s an older candidate so I’m sure she’s familiar with falls. At this point I think we’re gonna have to get her a Life-Alert.” Even the regular all-female panelists on the show greeted that joke with silence or groans. But sadly, that’s all they’ve got. The right is so full of hostility and hatred and prejudice and undeserved superiority that they have no sense of humor whatsoever. Their idea of comedy is a noxious blend of insults and childish chest-thumping.

For some of the real thing, here is Jon Stewart’s response to the scandal of the secret meeting. This should tide you over until Stewart’s control of the planet is complete. While Fox News revealed Stewart’s plot prematurely, they cannot stop his progress to impose his left-wing brand of comedyism on the world.


Even More Proof That Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by on July 29, 2015 at 4:48 pm. 4 Comments :

Harvard University is validating the media analysis of News Corpse. Last year News Corpse published an article that affirmed that Fox News, despite the conventional wisdom, is actually a powerfully destructive force within the conservative political world. The article, “Fox News Is STILL Killing The Republican Party.” examined the results of a survey conducted by the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute that compared the views of Republicans who watch Fox News to Republicans who don’t. The conclusions revealed that Fox News Republicans are even more uninformed and extreme in their views than their non-Fox viewing comrades in the same party. That article from last year was itself a follow up to one published by News Corpse six years ago that originally took the position that “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Back then I wrote that…

“By doubling down on crazy, 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.”

News Corpse was not alone in noticing the detrimental effects of Fox News on the GOP. Bruce Bartlett, a veteran strategist who worked in both the George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan White Houses, published a paper titled “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.” The paper’s premise was 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. He literally (and correctly) accused much of the conservative base of being brainwashed by Fox News and other right-wing media.

Fox News Bad For GOP

Now a study by Jackie Calmes, a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, has been released that makes some of the same observances of how Fox News, talk radio, and other right-wing media sources are damaging the Republican Party’s ability to either govern or get elected. the study titled “They Don’t Give A Damn About Governing, Conservative Media’s Influence On The Republican Party,” is a lengthy and detailed analysis of the historical and contemporary influences that have shaped conservative politics. It includes interviews with Republican politicians, operatives, and pundits who almost unanimously express their concerns for a party that has lost control to the outer fringes of their most radical rightist wing in the media. The study begins by asserting that “the leaders of the Republican Party are not setting its agenda […] it is conservative media” that represents…

“…an expanding web of ‘news’ sites and social media outlets with financial and ideological alliances with far-right anti-government, anti-establishment groups like Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. Once allied with but now increasingly hostile to the Republican hierarchy, conservative media is shaping the party’s agenda in ways that are impeding Republicans’ ability to govern and to win presidential elections.”

The GOP conservatives interviewed for the study (some of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation) had opinions that were predominantly negative with regard to the state of affairs in the party. Here are a few examples:

Unnamed Republican: “There’s no incentive to ever really bother with reality […] the loudest voices drown out the sensible ones and there’s no real space to have serious discussions.”

GOP Rep. Tom Cole: While [talk radio is] conservative in its orientation, it’s a financially driven enterprise and market share matters. And playing to the prejudice of their audiences or reinforcing them – as opposed to engaging in enlightened and intellectual debate – is pretty widespread.

Unnamed Republican: Now it seems that so many people are going for the niche, for the red meat, and there are all these outlets where you can do that. It’s playing to the base, but the base doesn’t live in reality. And that’s the problem: It’s taken the party in a really self-destructive direction.

GOP operative John Feehery: “[C]onservative media has become ideologically and financially entwined with the network of no-compromise advocacy groups financed by the Kochs and other right-wing patrons. Together, media and activist groups are part of ‘this conservative-industrial complex that has risen up. And they have a vested interest in failure, not in success.”

The Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez: “Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross-promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted.” […And that] “conservative media’s logic had become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately.”

Media historian Nicole Hemmer: “We used to say, ‘You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.’ Now we are all entitled to our own facts and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Well, actually I could have, and I did last year and five years before that. But at least they are catching up. Unfortunately, even acknowledgment of these problems is not likely to result in a course correction. Particularly after the new paradigm exemplified by the loudmouthed, ignorant, hostility of Donald Trump, who is proving that no matter how abhorrent you are, never apologize or backtrack or show any signs of reasonableness or humility. It is that lesson that forms the greatest obstacle to progress for Republicans. The study confirms this in its concluding paragraphs saying that…

“The unanimity among establishment Republicans – many of them conservatives by the definition of anyone but purists – that rightwing media has become a big problem for the party, and their readiness to talk about it, was something of a surprise to this reporter of three decades’ experience in Washington. Of the establishment Republicans among several dozen conservatives interviewed, nearly all were flummoxed about how to moderate the party. Most expressed despair.”

That despair is not without justification. What was once the “Grand Old Party” is now populated by “Grouchy Obstinate Purists” who represent the “Greedy One Percent.” And there is no sign that any of it is going to improve any time soon. Particularly as long as Fox News is the preeminent media mouthpiece for the right, and they continue to promote nut cases like Trump, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc.

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


Legitimate Rape? Donald Trump’s Consigliere Issues Mob-Style Ultimatum To Reporters

Posted by on July 28, 2015 at 9:50 pm. 1 Comments :

The Daily Beast published an article today that recounted events leading up to the 1990 divorce of Donald Trump and his ex-wife Ivana. All of the material was taken from public records as revealed in a contemporaneous book: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, by Harry Hurt III.

trump-lost-tycoon

Some of the more salacious chapters included an allegation by Ivana that Trump had raped her. While her current account of the situation has been softened to characterize it as something that made her feel “violated,” the description still sounds very much like rape. However, the details of that sordid affair are not what this article is about.

When contacted by the Daily Beast, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, went into full meltdown mode. He made some rather remarkably repulsive comments in defense of his client. For starters, he attempted to dismiss the allegations outright because, in his words, “You cannot rape your spouse. There’s very clear case law.” For an attorney to make such a statement is not only an egregious misstatement of fact, it is downright dangerous as it could lead to others committing heinous crimes believing that they are immune from prosecution based on Cohen’s false assertion. There is no exemption from laws prohibiting rape if the rapist is married to the victim.

But Cohen wasn’t finished. Hoping to intimidate the reporters he leveled an unbelievably harsh verbal assault that sounded more like a Mafioso delivering a mortal threat. Here is how he hoped to gently persuade the reporters from publishing their story:

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very f*cking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f*cking disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.

The only thing Cohen left out was the severed horse’s head in the reporter’s bed. Cohen later issued an apology for the comment about rape law, acknowledging that his prior interpretation was false and blamed it on his “shock and anger” at the charges in the Daily Beast’s article. Of course none of those charges were made by the reporters who were simply recounting events that had already been published years ago. Cohen did not, however, apologize for his overt threats to “mess up” the lives of the reporters in a “f*cking disgusting” way.

What is most disturbing about this is that it aligns very closely to the sort of rancid rhetoric that is the hallmark of Cohen’s client, Donald Trump. He has only been a candidate for a few weeks and he has already called immigrants criminals and rapists; he has disparaged a veteran and prisoner of war saying that he is not a hero; he has given out the private phone number of a political rival; and he repeatedly insults his critics as stupid, ugly, losers, and worse. And when confronted with his petulant boorishness, he will not only refuse to apologize, he will reiterate his vulgarities with even greater emphasis.

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

It’s a good thing that his aspirations to be president are a deranged fantasy with zero hopes of being realized. Because the thought of having someone like that representing the American people seems like a bad plot from a 1950’s horror movie. But the horror is not alleviated just because he is certain to flame out. There is still the painful reality that an astonishing number of misguided Americans regard him as presidential. That is going to be hard to live down.