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.

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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.


Sarah Palin Prefers Slavery To Planned Parenthood

Posted by on July 27, 2015 at 11:21 pm. 11 Comments :

If there is one thing that Donald Trump can be credited with, it’s sucking all the air out of the media and preventing every other right-wing lunatic from advancing their ultra-conservative agenda. In order to get any attention from the tabloid-obsessed press, it’s necessary to be even more bizarro than The Donald himself. The Republican candidates for president are finding this out in a big a way, and now so is has-been, half-governor, VP-flop, reality show loser, Sarah Palin.

Palin’s entry in the 2015 Trumplympics is a Facebook posting that features images of a Confederate flag and the Planned Parenthood logo. Her caption reads: “Which symbol killed 90,000 black babies last year?”

Sarah Palin

Of course, it’s a trick question because everyone knows that symbols don’t kill people, people do. And the people behind the Confederate flag were responsible for killing millions of African-Americans before, during, and after the Civil War. In fact, as we saw last month in Charleston, South Carolina, they are still doing it.

On the other hand, Planned Parenthood cannot be shown to have killed anyone. The premise of the anti-choice activists that life begins at conception, has never been proven scientifically. And abortion is still a legal means of terminating a pregnancy that has resulted in saving untold numbers of lives of women who would otherwise have been relegated to back alleys and medical charlatans.

Palin’s desperation for attention has compelled her to make one of the most nauseating ideological comparisons imaginable. The pro-choice movement is not unaccustomed to vile attacks including associations with historic evils like the Holocaust. It would be bad enough if Palin were trying to smear Planned Parenthood by asserting that it was somehow like the loathsome racists of the Confederacy. But she isn’t. She’s actually arguing that slaveholders and their descendants are praiseworthy next to an organization that provides health care, cancer screenings, birth control, and even prenatal services for women.

Planned Parenthood not only doesn’t kill people, it saves lives every day. What Palin is engaged in now is a coordinated right-wing attack on Planned Parenthood to destroy it by cutting off federal funding. In reality, this effort is another front in the Republican War On Women. Yet defunding Planned Parenthood would have almost no effect on abortion in America. That’s because only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion related. It is the other vital health care services that women rely on that will be constrained if Palin and her GOP pals in Congress get their way. And, ironically, the result would be not only more women suffering with undiagnosed or untreated illnesses, but more unwanted or unplanned pregnancies.

In addition to the Confederate worship, Palin posted another graphic that reads: “80% of Planned Parenthood clinics located in minority neighborhoods.” What this tells us is that, not only is Palin an abhorrent racist, she is also an ignorant purveyor of virulent myths. The message she is passing along here is a favorite of organized bigots. It has also been proven to be untrue by many independent sources. One of them, Factcheck.org, researched similar claims and wrote that “There’s no evidence that was true then. And today, only 9 percent of U.S. abortion clinics are in neighborhoods where half or more of residents are black.” But Palin couldn’t be bothered with doing her own research and presenting the facts.

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 not a coincidence that Palin’s flurry of Facebook posts were joined together by their connection to racist propagandists. But even for her it is somewhat surprising that she would so openly embrace such bigotry. And the explanation has to be that she has been despondent since being jettisoned by Fox News and getting upstaged by Trump. So she’s doing what she has to do get her dimwitted minions to notice her again. Buckle up, kids. This could get ugly….er….uglier.


New Poll Shows 18% Of Republicans Are Ignorant Dupes With Severe Mental Decay

Posted by on July 26, 2015 at 9:52 pm. 17 Comments :

There is much being made about a new CNN poll that shows Donald Trump leading his GOP rivals in the race for the Republican nomination for president. However, there is less substance in these numbers than the media is pretending there is. What is astonishing is just how shallow the media analysis of these polls are. The ranking at which Trump finds himself can easily be explained by the clinical dementia of today’s Republican (Tea) Party. And despite these polls, Trump will never get the nomination or reside in the White House.

trump-house

Let’s take a closer look. Trump currently has 18% of the support of the GOP voters. The truth that everyone is ignoring is that that’s an awfully pitiful expression of support. It means that 82% are not supporting him. Why does anyone in the press think that’s a positive showing?

Nevertheless, 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.

This same schizophrenia is shown in how Republican operatives and pundits portray the relationship between the media and the candidates. If Clinton declines to do an interview or makes reporters walk behind a rope line so they don’t interfere with her interactions with voters, she is condemned as being anti-media and disrespectful to the fine men and women of the press who are struggling mightily to bring truth to the American people. But if Trump or any other Republican bashes the press or denies them access (as Trump just did to the Des Moines Register), they are cheered for putting those unethical press weasels in their place.

Getting back to Trump’s placement in the GOP polls, the explanation for it is that there is a demographic in the Republican electorate that can best be described as batshit insane. And Trump has managed to secure a near monopoly on that addle-brained GOP faction. Prior polling has revealed that a significant subsection of the GOP holds some hysterically idiotic views. For instance:

Having established that a fair percentage of Republicans embrace a measure of dumbassedness in frightening proportions, the fact that a particularly knuckleheaded candidate has corralled them into his camp is not especially surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if these dimwits did not coalesce around a similarly daft contender, just as they did in the last election cycle with Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, et al.

Consequently, Trump’s confederacy of dunces is sufficient in numbers to rise above his rivals, so long as there’s a lot of them. That’s because when you divide the remaining Republicans who are not wacko-birds (h/t John McCain) among the fifteen other candidates, there aren’t enough of them left to surpass the Trump/crazy constituency. That does not mean that Trump has a commanding lead. It means that there are way too many players on the field diluting the results for each of them. As they whittle down to a more manageable number, the 82% of non-Trump supporters will disperse to other candidates who will then tower over his paltry flock.

While the media is obsessing over the fake Trump “dominance,” they are missing some real news in the same CNN poll. For starters, they missed that Trump has the highest unfavorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Meanwhile, Clinton has the highest favorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Furthermore. Clinton is beating every Republican matched against her (Trump loses by 18 points). And the icing on the cake: Sanders is also beating the Republicans in head-to-head matchups (Trump loses by 20 points).

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

This is what passes for political reporting these days. Is it any wonder that people hold the media in such low esteem? They are littered with lightweights who seem to have no analytical skills or historical memory. If they did they would not be so shocked that a loudmouth buffoon has earned the admiration of the GOP’s most radical, racist, and ignorant bloc of voters, while four out of five of the poll’s Republican respondents reject him.


Lewis Black Endorsed Donald Trump For President In 2012 – And It Was Hysterical

Posted by on July 25, 2015 at 10:41 pm. 2 Comments :

The rants of Lewis Black are brilliant because they say so much that so many of us wish we could scream. Just watching him is cathartic therapy that brings near instant relief from the insanity of the day.

So it was fortunate that I stumbled upon one of Black’s most ferocious meltdowns on The Daily Show. It was back in March of 2011, and Donald Trump was making noises about running for president. Only Black could see the merit in having Trump lead our nation with his ignoramus, third-world dictator, ego-soaked persona.

Donald Trump Lewis Black

This being a slow news Saturday, I thought people could use a little uncontrollable laughter to top off the evening. The news was so slow in fact that even Fox News completely ignored Trump’s stump speech in Iowa this morning. While both CNN and MSNBC aired significant portions of The Donald live, Fox aired none of it. What do you suppose they were trying to hide? It really says something when CNN and MSNBC are more interested in exposing people to Trump’s blathering than Fox is.

Maybe it has something to do with the rift between Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch who was reported to have told Ailes to “back off the Trump coverage.” Murdoch himself posed a question in a tweet last week asking…

“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?”

An excellent question. Especially coming from the potentate of Fox News. Of course the answer is “Never!” Trump has no ability, much less intention, of ceasing to embarrass himself, his party, or the country that he calls a “Hell Hole.” So without further ado, here is Lewis Black throwing his full support behind Trump. Enjoy.

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


Bill O’Reilly Must Be Terribly Disappointed The Lafayette Theater Shooter Isn’t Mexican

Posted by on July 24, 2015 at 11:41 pm. 13 Comments :

It is getting more difficult every day to dismiss the epidemic of gun violence that has gripped our nation. The past few weeks has seen a racist in South Carolina massacre nine churchgoers, a young Muslim in Chattanooga mow down five American soldiers, an undocumented immigrant shoot a woman strolling on a pier, and a crazed “drifter” go on a rampage in a Louisiana movie theater.

While each of these incidents were unarguably tragic, only one of them produced a fervent call to action by knee-jerk conservatives. After Kate Steinle was killed in San Francisco, the right-wing outrage machine cranked up to eleven. There were immediate allegations that the crime was wholly attributable to the city’s so-called “sanctuary city” laws and the fact that the perpetrator was an undocumented immigrant.

Pundits primed with prejudice whipped up xenophobic fury despite the fact that the crime could just as well have been committed by a native-born citizen without changing a single one of the circumstances. Politicians wasted no time in drafting bills to punish cities with progressive laws (that are favored by law enforcement), and mandating harsh sentences for repeat immigration violations.

For some reason, none of the panic stricken conservatives bellowing about the awful fate of Ms. Steinle were able to recognize the one thing that all of these incidents had in common: Someone who ought not to have had access to a gun was able to acquire one of more of them and forever destroy the lives of some innocent people.

Fox News Bill O'Reilly

Chief among these carping cretins was, as usual, Bill O’Reilly. In a matter of hours he was pontificating on the horrors of alien invaders pillaging our defenseless womenfolk. He started an online petition to gather support for something he called “Kate’s Law” to increase the penalties for immigration violations. His entire spiel was based on the assertion that the only reason Steinle was killed was because of lax border security.

The sad truth is that people like Steinle are killed every day under similar circumstances by American citizens. But this fact is an inconvenient distraction for O’Reilly who is intent on blaming a population of immigrants, most of whom are peaceful people who are merely trying to find ways to care for their families.

However, when the perpetrator turns out to be a white, Tea Party wingnut, O’Reilly can’t seem to muster up a public response to address the situation. There are no petitions or hastily drawn up bills, or wild accusations or vein-bursting rants. In fact, Reilly doesn’t even bother to acknowledge that the Lafayette suspect, John Russel Houser, is an Obama-hating supporter of the Westboro Baptist nut cases and a card-carrying member of the Tea Party Nation. And despite his long history of offensive postings on Internet discussion sites, O’Reilly never connects the dots to associate him with the network of violent domestic terrorists.

Houser was previously denied a permit to purchase a gun and he has a history of mental illness. His ex-wife had secured a restraining order to protect her from his “extreme erratic behavior.” Nevertheless, he managed to acquire an arsenal and shoot up a theater, killing two innocent women and injuring several others. But as far as O’Reilly is concerned, it’s just too bad that he wasn’t an illegal alien from Mexico so there could be a lynching party formed to march up to the castle with torches and pitchforks.

All of the evidence shows that right-wing domestic terrorists pose a far greater threat to Americans than the much-hyped ISIS brand. Sovereign citizens, Klan groups, militias, and extremist Christianists have been responsible for many more deaths and injuries than the fabled Islamic sleeper cells. But even after Tea Party disciples of Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch gang murdered two Las Vegas police officers, there was no call to action by O’Reilly or his conservative colleagues.

President Obama lamented today that he was “distressed” about not having been able to do something about gun safety during his term in office. He told the BBC that…

“If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands,”

And throughout the last seven years, as throughout the last seventy, it is the right-wing, NRA fearing, Republican Party that has stood in the way common sense solutions. As noted above, the one thing that all of the tragedies that are occurring in ever more rapid succession have in common is the use of deadly weapons that have no practical purpose other than killing human beings.

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

Until we solve the problem of these weapons being so easily accessible to people with hostile intentions, there will be more tragedies and more grieving survivors. And, no doubt, more pathetic excuses from grand-standers like O’Reilly who search desperately for vulnerable victims unto whom he can shift the blame.

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Immaculate Birther: Donald Trump Says He Doesn’t Have To Ask God For Forgiveness

Posted by on July 23, 2015 at 12:09 pm. 14 Comments :

The world-class ego, narcissism, and arrogance of Donald Trump have been on public display for decades. He can hardly complete a sentence without exalting himself as the richest, smartest, biggest, and bestest at whatever he attempts or proposes. There is absolutely no trace of humility in the non-stop parade of vainglorious self-promotion that he exudes.

This annoying character flaw would be bad enough if it was constrained to his business exploits and personal self-appraisal. However, Trump has recently enlarged his bubble of pride to encompass his faith as it relates to his presidential candidacy. When asked by Republican “Word Doctor” Frank Luntz if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump said “I am not sure that I have […] I don’t think in terms of that.” While that answer fits perfectly with Trump’s signature pompousness, it also reveals why he is so reluctant to apologize for anything, including his blatantly offensive remarks about immigrants and Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero. If he won’t ask God for forgiveness, why the hell would he ask anyone else?

Donald Trump Immaculate Birther

Yesterday Trump expanded on his spiritual principles during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. He was asked to revisit his previous comments and given an opportunity to refine them. He rejected that opportunity and, as usual, he doubled down on his immunity from needing to seek God’s grace.

Trump: Well, I like to work where I don’t really have to ask for it. I like to do the right thing where I don’t actually have to ask for forgiveness. Does that make sense to you? You know, where you don’t make such bad things that you don’t have to ask for forgiveness. I mean, I’m trying to lead a life where I don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. […] Why do I have to repent? Why do I have to ask for forgiveness if you’re not making mistakes?

Talk about your Original Spin. Trump is effectively saying that a good Christian can avoid having to seek forgiveness from God by simply never making any mistakes. Who knew it was that easy? Of course, to do that would require a level of perfection not seen in about two thousand years from the perspective of believers. And yet he argues that he has achieved this pinnacle of purity. But if you ask the Presbyterian Church, of which Trump claims to be a member, they have a completely different interpretation:

“Presbyterians believe the Bible when it says that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). Unlike crime, which involves the breaking of human law, sin is a condition of the heart or an expression of that condition where we are estranged from God and fail to trust in God.” […]

“Presbyterians believe God has offered us salvation because of God’s loving nature. It is not a right or a privilege to be earned by being ‘good enough.’ No one of us is good enough on our own — we are all dependent upon God’s goodness and mercy. From the kindest, most devoted churchgoer to the most blatant sinner, we are all saved solely by the grace of God.” […]

“Presbyterians believe it is through the action of God working in us that we become aware of our sinfulness and our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Just as a parent is quick to welcome a wayward child who has repented of rebellion, God is willing to forgive our sins if we but confess them and ask for forgiveness in the name of Christ.”

Trump seems to think that forgiveness is something that you request when you have told a lie, cut someone off in traffic, or cheated in golf. His understanding of religion is on the level of a four year old (no offense to four year olds). He has no concept of the tenets of his faith that regards all men and women as sinners. And setting aside the scriptural rendering, Trump doesn’t seem to think that his own mistakes (of which he has none) rise to the level of sins. That means his three marriages and serial infidelity are wholly virtuous in God’s eyes. His four bankruptcies that left thousands of creditors in the lurch were just divine accounting. His fraudulent Trump University that ripped off hundreds of “students” actually taught them a valuable lesson in dealing with charlatans. And these say nothing of his sins of greed, lust, and pride.

To make matters worse, Trump has assumed the posture of a beleaguered victim of the dark forces of Hell (aka the media). He believes he is being crucified by his enemies in the press and the Republican Party. This persecution may lead to his self-excommunication and a holy war via a third party candidacy for the White House. Oh God please, we pray.

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

If there’s one thing that has been made clear, it’s that The Donald doesn’t need the forgiveness of God or anyone else. That’s because he is his own deity with omnipotent powers to solve every problem bigger and better than any mere mortals. And just as he remains certain that he will win the votes of the Latinos he has insulted, and the veterans he has demeaned, he is equally certain that evangelicals and other faith-based voters will flock to his holiness despite his heresy, profanity, and obvious Messiah complex. By the way, these are the same people who have been calling President Obama the Anti-Christ for seven years.


Stiffed: No Emmy Nominations For Fox News – Again

Posted by on July 22, 2015 at 3:23 pm. 22 Comments :

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences just announced their nominees for the 36th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards. Among those honored by the Academy are PBS with 47 nominations, CBS with 44, ABC with 17, NBC with 14, CNN with 10, and MSNBC with 2. The only major television news broadcaster that came away empty-handed was Fox News.

Go Fox Yourself

The easy explanation for this rejection is that Fox is not actually in the news business. They are a thinly disguised tabloid entertainment outlet with a mission to advance a right-wing agenda and demean Democrats and liberals. It is a network that is filled with fiction, drama, scandal, soap opera, soft-porn, and a prodigious amount of unintentional comedy. Earlier this year Fox News CEO Roger Ailes admitted that his business model is geared toward entertainment saying that he doesn’t regard CNN or MSNBC as rivals and that “We’re competing with TNT and USA and ESPN.”

However, the embarrassing failure to be recognized for even a single program is rooted in a much deeper problem for Fox. They are not simply failing to offer programming that is deserving of praise from their “peers,” they are purposefully producing stories that are false and serve only to malign their ideological adversaries.

A conveniently timed example of this is the Planned Parenthood story Fox is currently hyping. It involves a video that has already been repudiated by independent analysts as grossly distorted and unrepresentative of the facts. Nevertheless, Fox is repeatedly airing segments that go into some length disparaging Planned Parenthood without offering any time for rebuttal by the organization.

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

This is typical of the phony fare that Fox broadcasts. They obsess over fake scandals like Benghazi, or Jade Helm 15, or Obama phones, or death panels (which they recently revived), and on and on. They combine relentless hostility toward liberals with obsequious fawning over Republicans. It is their brazen unprofessional and unethical brand of journalism that best explains why they are passed over for awards from actual news professionals year after year.


Racist Moron Declares His Gun Store To Be A “Muslim-Free” Zone

Posted by on July 21, 2015 at 4:30 pm. 5 Comments :

Andy Hallinan is the owner of a gun store in Florida who has had enough of the senseless violence that his products cause. Well, that is if said violence is committed by a devotee of a specific religion – in this case Islam – to which he is virulently opposed. His solution to the problem is to deny service to all Muslims.

Muslim-Free Zone

Announcing the implementation of this flagrantly biased policy, Hallinan posted a video on YouTube (see below) that reeks of both bigotry and ignorance in painfully huge doses. Not surprisingly, Fox News promoted this revolting diatribe on their Fox Nation website. Hallinan begins by warning his fellow fear-infected viewers that…

“We’re in a battle, patriots. The leaders of the country want you to believe that this [Confederate] flag represents white supremacy, hatred, and intolerance. That’s not true.”

Hallinan then delivers an abbreviated remedial history of the flag that ignores the contemporary embrace of it by openly racist people and organizations, including the KKK and white supremacists. He entirely leaves out the fact that the flag had virtually disappeared from public display for nearly a century after the Civil War until it was removed from mothballs as the banner of southern segregationists in the 1950’s and 1960’s. [Side note: Hallinan also seems not to have noticed that, in his hasty patriotic zeal, he hung his flag upside-down (notice the stars)]

He goes on to whitewash the flag’s symbolism as representing “nothing but the rich heritage of the South and the willingness of patriots to stand up against tyranny of all sorts.” By that he must mean the rich heritage of slavery and standing up against the tyrants who fought against it under the flag of the United States of America.

After insisting that he is not a racist, Hallinan asserted that “Racism was on the decline in America until Obama took office.” Perhaps he missed the obvious subtext of his own statement, which is that the emergence of the country’s first African-American president brought out the racist cockroaches who had slithered under the floorboards as advancements in civil rights made it more difficult for them to showcase their hatred in public.

Then this “not-racist patriot” inserted video clips of civil disturbances in Baltimore to shore up his claim that he isn’t racist by presenting images of African-Americans engaged in riots following the tragic and unexplained death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Hallinan never brought up the reasons for the protests, nor did he show the vast majority of protesters who were peaceful. Clearly his intent was to leave a decidedly negative impression of the protesters. And he wasn’t through yet.

“Our leaders are telling you that the cross is a symbol of intolerance and hatred, bigotry, anti-homosexuality. Don’t believe their lies. Our leaders are telling you that Islam is a peaceful religion, full of tolerance and love and hope. Don’t believe their lies.”

I wonder which leaders he is referring to that are making those charges against the cross. He doesn’t say. But he does reveal more of his rancid prejudice with his ridiculous and contemptuous perception of Islam. Hallinan then warned his viewers that they are in “a battle with extreme political correctness that threatens our lives.” Who knew that political correctness could be a mortal foe?

This is when Hallinan got to the meat of his presentation. Saying that he “will not train and arm those who wish to do harm to my fellow patriots,” he declared his store a “Muslim-Free” zone. That course of action is so patently idiotic that it is hard to know where to begin. So let’s start with the fact that he is violating the Constitution by discriminating against people on the basis of their religion. Apparently the patriotism that he espouses so freely is conditional when it comes to equal protection of the law.

What’s more, this moron doesn’t explain how he is going to determine the religion of his customers in order to discriminate against them. Maybe he only intends to discriminate against Muslims who look Middle-Eastern. But then he will likely also be denying service to brown-skinned folks who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, and even other Christians. Maybe he could use beards as an indicator. But then he would have to send away ZZ Top and the Duck Dynasty family. And of course, any European Muslims like the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston marathon would escape detection entirely.

Perhaps even more absurd is the fact that Hallinan is violating the favorite Amendment in the Bill of Rights for right-wing nut cases like himself. The Second Amendment says nothing about permitting the infringement of the right to keep and bear arms from people associated with a particular religion. Although it does include a qualification for “well regulated Militias,” which they generally like to ignore. In Hallinan’s perverted view, law abiding and patriotic American Muslims have no right to protect themselves or their families with firearms. Apparently Hallinan is unaware that the most frequent target of Islamic extremists like ISIS is other Muslims. And never mind the fact that many Muslims are currently serving with distinction in the U.S. military. Many have even given their lives defending this country.

Just for the record, Hallinan doesn’t seem to have any problem with selling guns to domestic abusers, rapists, drug traffickers, car-jackers, bank robbers, serial killers, suicides, or right-wing domestic terrorists. At least he doesn’t have a policy addressing any of those. And they occur with a far greater frequency than any Muslim violence. In fact, the sort of guns that he sells are responsible for about 30,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

It is always somewhat depressing to stumble upon the sort of deranged idiocy that people like Hallinan represent. And unfortunately, there are way too many like him. They are the core audience of Fox News. They are the listeners of Glenn Beck. They are the disciples of evangelical hucksters like Pat Robertson. And they are the voters who are currently swarming around their Meathead Messiah, Donald Trump.

Hallinan closes his video screed by proclaiming definitively that Islam is evil and that our government is not to be believed. So apparently he has hostility for both in equal measures. Yet he still considers himself a patriot. The final frame of the video tells his frightened viewers to “Get armed. Get trained. Carry daily.” But of course he only means that if you are recognizably not Muslim, because Hallinan will not do business with you if you are.

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


Donald Trump Cites Racist Hate Group To Support His Anti-Immigrant Rants

Posted by on July 20, 2015 at 11:13 pm. 1 Comments :

There is no one currently in the Republican Party who is more rapidly assuming the role of the new Sarah Palin than Donald Trump. It seems with every utterance from his spittle-inflected mouth he demonstrates an ever more ignorant and repulsive caricature of a throwback Jim Crow era bigot. This is, after all, a candidate running on the theme that “America Is A Hell Hole.”

Donald Trump Hell Hole

The beating that Trump is taking for his recent remarks belittling John McCain’s war record may actually be a welcome respite from the beating he was previously taking for his slander of immigrants as criminals and rapists. However, he is still not letting go of the immigration issue that has won him so much adoration from the hate-mongers of the GOP. Late yesterday Trump retweeted a link to an article by Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News that supposedly supported his argument against undocumented immigrants. The article was headlined: “TX Taxpayers Pay for Illegal Aliens to Use State Services.” But there are a couple of problems with this article.

First of all, it is over two years old and it uses as its source a report from an organization called the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR is a notoriously dishonest group whose mission is to end all immigration by anyone who is not a white European. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated FAIR a hate group and noted that “Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness. FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements.”

It is not surprising that Trump would affiliate himself with a known purveyor of rancid bigotry. That is pretty much the hallmark of his public profile. However, the report referenced by Trump via Breitbart is riddled with inaccuracies. An analysis by the American Immigration Council provided a detailed account of the fallacies in the report and the deliberately dishonest conclusions. For instance…

“According to FAIR’s calculations, unauthorized immigrants are costing Texas taxpayers $12.1 billion dollars every year. However, $7.4 billion of this estimate, or 61%, consists of K-12 education for the children of unauthorized immigrants — of whom 71% are native-born U.S. citizens.”

The entire project is a fraud intended to smear both immigrants and citizens of Latino heritage. It appears that Trump had to dig back two and a half years to find a flawed article, published by a disreputable “news” site, and based on the allegations of a horde of avowed racists, in order to buttress his ignorant biases. At least this provides more evidence of his ingrained prejudices and the lengths he will go to promote them.

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