FOX Ratings Fail: November Increase For CNN, MSNBC Double That Of FOX News

Posted by on November 28, 2012 at 7:54 pm. 8 Comments :

Confirming the ratings slowdown of Fox News post-election, the November ratings show Fox with a comparatively small increase for November 2012 over their numbers for the same month in 2011. While all three networks rose due to this being an election year, Fox’s unimpressive 55% bump was barely half the leap of either CNN or MSNBC.

Fox News Ratings Nov 2012

Perhaps this what you get when you deceive your audience by leading them to believe that their lame candidate was actually in contention despite all the objective evidence to the contrary. Prior to election day Fox hyped notably partisan polls like Rasmussen, and famously idiotic pundits like Dick Morris, who confidently declared that Romney would win in a landslide.

Then, on election night, Fox continued the charade by hosting Karl Rove, who refused to accept the reality of Romney’s defeat. The spectacle that played out on live television had Rove arguing with Fox’s election desk. This caused Anchor Megyn Kelly to ask Rove “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?” Only on Fox would someone seriously ask their own paid contributor if what he was saying was real.

Since the election Fox News has struggled to make sense of a world they had tried so hard to pretend did not exist – a world where a socialist, Muslim from Kenya could prevail over the richest presidential candidate ever put forward by a major political party. What has America come to?

The flagrant fallacies tendered by Fox were insufficient to topple Obama from his pedestal. Not his trysts with commies like Bill Ayres, nor his scandalous Fast and Furious gunrunning, nor his sordid embrace of gay soldiers, nor his lack of a birth certificate, and not even his culpability for a devastating hurricane, could prevent the President’s reelection. And since all of these would-be scandals were propagated by Fox News, it’s possible their audience is no longer willing to accept what they say at two-faced value.

It’s still too soon to make any predictions about the future rankings of the cable news market. The Fox audience may yet prove to be as gullible and prone to deception as ever. But for the time being there is a glimmer of hope that the marketplace will make purveyors of faulty products pay a price.

If anyone bought a pair of shoes that were as poorly constructed and uncomfortable as most of the stories on Fox News, that shoe company would quickly go out of business. Now we have just to wait to find out if a significant number of Americans are willing to bear the pain of walking another mile in Fox Shoes.

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Glenn Beck Dunks American Flag (And Obama) In “Urine”

Posted by on November 28, 2012 at 4:05 pm. 7 Comments :

This may be one of the most asinine stunts Glenn Beck has ever engaged in. Apparently he was mocking an art exhibit that featured a painting of President Obama with his arms outstretched and a wearing a crown of thorns. That’s not a particularly original concept as I did a similar work years ago featuring Beck:

Glenn Beck Messiah

When I did my artwork portraying Beck as a Messianic figure it was in response to Beck’s own behavior and his wailing about being the subject of attacks. He wept and hollered and whined that he was being persecuted. Obama has never done any of those things.

Beck’s lame attempt at satirizing Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was really just a big waste of time – which makes it no different than anything else Beck does. On this occasion he dropped a toy Obama doll into what he said was a jar of his own urine. Beck asserted that he was only defending the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression, but there was really nothing of substance that he had to say about either the artwork or the Constitution. He just seemed to be getting an excessive amount of personal pleasure from his childish prank that was really nothing more than a desperate attempt to get publicity.

Glenn Beck Urine

The pretend artwork that Beck introduced in his pretend French accent was placed up for auction on eBay and generated bids in excess of $11,000 before eBay removed it. That says something about what his followers find valuable. What he seemed to have missed entirely, however, was that he was also submerging an American flag in the jar of pee. How patriotic of him.

And there was more craziness emanating from Beck yesterday. He delivered a sermon about his search for a plan to save the world. It was a disturbing display of a psychosis that should be troubling to anyone concerned about his mental health. In the course of the sermon he lamented that God was trying to tell him what he should do, but there was just so much that he was overwhelmed.

How can one guy with a video blog reform politics, culture, the economy, education, family, media, and the faith of a nation? Beck looked into the camera and lamented that he had no idea of how to do all of this – yet. But he was getting close to figuring it out. And he had diagrammed his draft of the solution on a giant chalkboard. But it looked like the scribblings of someone in the midst of a schizophrenic seizure, or peaking on LSD, or both.

Glenn Beck Chalk Wall

Seriously, this dude needs help. It’s really too bad that the people in his life are too dependent on his cash generation to intervene and get him into therapy. When he goes off it is going to be messy.


Fox News Makes Shameful Attack On MSNBC’s Touré

Posted by on November 27, 2012 at 7:58 pm. 10 Comments :

In a Fox News op-ed, Dan Gainor, of the uber-conservative Media Research Center, hurled some disparaging and nearly incoherent insults at Touré, one of the hosts of MSNBC’s The Cycle.

Gainor took issue with a commentary Touré delivered (video below) about the GOP’s unfounded and politically-motivated attack on UN ambassador Susan Rice. Touré made some rather cogent points about the spectacle Rice’s critics, particularly Sen. John McCain, were making over a manufactured controversy. McCain and others seem feverishly obsessed with Amb. Rice’s comments on a number of Sunday news programs regarding Benghazi. Any fair observer would have to recognize that what Rice said was provided to her by intelligence authorities and was the best information available (or permitted to be disclosed) at the time. But fair observation is not the business that Gainor and the MRC are in.

Gainor’s tirade was topped with a headline that read “MSNBC Anchor Touré makes shameful attack on McCain.” What constitutes shamefulness to Gainor is hard to figure. His specific complaints were that Touré was playing the “race card” in his remarks. But Gainor’s examples were not the least bit focused on race. For instance, Gainor cited Touré saying that McCain…

“…gave us the horrible optics of he and Lindsey Graham as old, white, establishment folks wrongly and repeatedly attacking a much younger black woman moments after an election in which blacks and women went strongly blue.”

Gainor’s shallow grasp of the English language resulted in his interpreting that as a racial criticism of McCain. However, the rest of the English speaking world would notice that Touré was speaking about the “optics” of the criticism, not whether there was any actual racism involved. Touré was plainly addressing the potential harm for the Republican Party in being perceived as insensitive to racial and gender issues by repeatedly attacking minorities and women. That’s not an accusation of racism or sexism, it is an acknowledgement that the subjects of such attacks might be less likely to support those who make the attacks. That’s not only common sense, it is precisely what occurred on election day a couple of weeks ago. And to affirm how cognitively-challenged Gainor is, he added this as further evidence of Touré’s alleged race-baiting:

“Never one to ignore a chance to paint all Republicans as racist, he added one more dig: ‘Looks like the GOP is already laying the foundation for losing in 2016.'”

How is that one more “dig” that paints anyone as racist? If anything, it is one more affirmation that Touré was speaking only about political matters. Nevertheless, Gainor is determined to turn this into a “shameful” racial affair. With that purpose in mind Gainor reached back to a September column wherein Touré wrote “Part of my job when I speak about politics is to speak up for black people and say things black people need said.” If Gainor thinks that that is shameful, he needs an EKG EEG stat, because there is good reason to suspect that there is no brain activity going on his head. The reason that it is important to have diversity in the media is precisely because it provides perspectives that otherwise would not be represented. Our media is enhanced by the inclusion of minorities and women who say the things that these previously excluded members of society need said.

Notwithstanding the fact that Gainor’s tantrum over Touré’s commentary was ridiculous and he failed to identify anything remotely racial about it, Fox News is demonstrably racist and the evidence of that is in its coverage. While it may be too broad to say that Fox’s attacks on Amb. Rice alone constitute racism, take a look at some of the most prominent targets of Fox’s smear machine and ask yourself what they have in common:

Fox News Racism

That pretty much says it all. If Touré had wanted to make an issue of racism, he would have plenty of evidence.


Fox News Lies About Alleged Tom Ricks Apology

Posted by on November 27, 2012 at 11:55 am. 5 Comments :

For the past couple of days the media has been abuzz with reports about foreign policy expert, Tom Ricks, calling Fox News “a wing of the Republican Party” while on Fox News (video below). It was a perfectly appropriate remark in the context of the discussion, but Fox host Jon Scott abruptly ended the interview, which only made the controversy more prominent.

Fox News Tom Ricks

Ricks’ observation that Fox is the media division of the Republican Party is neither original nor unique. Many others have noticed the same obvious bias, including the former director of communications for the White House, Anita Dunn. And conservatives like David Frum have recognized that Fox has become even more influential in GOP politics than an ordinary PR firm would be.

Since the on-air dust-up, Fox VP of News, Michael Clemente, told The Hollywood Reporter that Ricks had apologized to him off the air. That’s a convenient tale considering there is no evidence or witnesses to the alleged apology. Clemente went even further by personally insulting Ricks saying that he “doesn’t have the strength of character to do that publicly.”

And it doesn’t end there. Ricks later responded to Clemente in remarks to the Hollywood Reporter saying…

“Please ask Mr. Clemente what the words of my supposed apology were. I’d be interested to know. Frankly, I don’t remember any such apology.”

Now, this morning, Clemente fired back again calling Ricks’ response “utterly dishonest,” and snidely needling him:

“I’ll refresh his memory – what he said following the segment was, ‘Sorry… I’m tired from a non-stop book tour.’ Perhaps now he can finally get some rest.”

This is typical defensive behavior from Fox News. They do not countenance criticism, and when they encounter it they lash out wildly at their critics. One memorable example of this is when a study was released by the University of Maryland that Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid, Clemente hit back by insulting the University’s students who had nothing to do with the study. He also alleged that the university was ranked as the “Best Party School,” by the Princeton Review, which was patently false.

So we have evidence that Clemente will brazenly lie when he is confronted by criticism. Consequently, it would be foolish to accept his assertion that Ricks had apologized in the privacy of Clemente’s office. And why would anyone assume that an executive at a network that makes up the news they broadcast would be the least bit averse to making up conversations that cast critics in a negative light?


Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Case Of The Imaginary Regulations

Posted by on November 25, 2012 at 3:03 pm. 10 Comments :

When Fox Nation needs to disseminate some fictional talking points, they turn to disreputable blogs like Hotair.com for new material. That’s what they did this weekend when the Fox Nationalists posted this fallacious item about 80 regulations that were supposed to have been proposed by the Obama administration in a single day:

Fox Nation

As usual, the headline, and the underlying article, are not even remotely true. The article links to the web site Regulations.gov, and specifically to a page where there were indeed 80 items listed. Unfortunately for the credibility of Fox News, they were not 80 regulations. Most of the items were simply notices of comment periods where the public could have a say in the administration of their government agencies. Some were requests to collect additional information. There were announcements of appointments to performance review boards. Here is one of my favorite items on the list: “Meetings: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.” That was merely the publication of a meeting date.

The magnitude of ignorance required for somebody to construe this list as being entirely comprised of proposed regulations is stunning. But here we have both the Hotair blog and Fox Nation doing just that. They would only have to have read a few lines to know that, while these items had some relation to regulations previous and pending, they were not regulations themselves.

It’s one thing for some dippy blog to misconstrue something so obvious, but a legitimate news enterprise should check before regurgitating their stupidity. That, of course, explains why Fox News didn’t check – it’s not even marginally legitimate.


Glenn Beck’s Agenda 21 Conspiracy Extravaganza And Acute Paranoia Revue

Posted by on November 25, 2012 at 12:48 pm. 3 Comments :

Thom Hartmann had an enlightening segment last week (video below) that delved into the delusional Psycho-Chicken Littles who are convinced that the United Nations is plotting to take over the world and make slaves of us all. The alleged UN conspiracy centers around an environmental and economic sustainability program called Agenda 21. It is an entirely voluntary set of proposals that member nations can reference for solutions to ongoing problems in their own countries. It imposes nothing on anyone, and the solutions are well researched approaches to serious issues that face our planet.

Agenda 21 is also the title of a new book published by Glenn Beck (although there is some controversy over whether he stole credit for it). But it is so much more than just another literary divergence. It is both a book and an action plan to combat the plot to impose what Beck describes as “centralized control over all of human life on planet earth.” The book is presented as a “thriller” but it incorporates the very same paranoid ravings that Beck and other whack jobs are spewing. The obsessive fear of a UN led one-world government goes back decades with roots in the neo-fascist John Birch Society’s anti-communist campaigns. The Birchers, along with conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones, appear to be where Beck lifted this issue. And, not surprisingly, Beck also injects George Soros into the affair as its clandestine financier.

Beck’s fictionalized version of Agenda 21 describes a future America where “There is no president, no congress, no freedom. There is only Agenda 21.” Of course, Beck takes these horror stories seriously and extends them to new extremes with accusations that many local municipalities are already secretly putting the dastardly Agenda 21 principles into effect. He constructs a delusionally apocryphal scenario wherein Agenda 21 is the road map to tyranny. He is even mounting an effort to fight back by deputizing his glassy-eyed disciples to report back to him any evidence of the plot’s advance. There is a link and instructions for how to communicate with his own central command center, which he calls the Agenda 21 National Registry…

“Agenda 21 relies heavily on local governments. The problem is that there is currently no way to track on a national level just how prevalent Agenda 21-related efforts have become. But you can help. Check your town’s council minutes and agendas (and those of committees as well) or, if possible, attend a meeting. If any Agenda 21-related efforts have been discussed or implemented, please let us know!”

Beck helpfully includes a list of “keywords” that his faithful can use to recognize Agenda 21’s covert implementation. Among the frightening words that Beck warns are proof that the invasion has commenced: communities, quality, justice, sustainable, education, development. If you encounter any of these frightful buzzwords being used by your city government, then get the hell out of town, buy farmland, gold and guns, and be prepared to defend God and country from your cornfield bunker. For more of these incriminating words, refer to this actual word cloud from Beck’s web site:

Glenn Beck Agenda 21

By recruiting his spellbound followers, Beck hopes to build an army of informers who will populate his registry with ghastly evidence that global environmentalists and economists are well on their way to shackling Earth’s inhabitants via the oppression of economic equality, social justice, and {gasp} clean air and water.

It simply doesn’t get any crazier than this. What’s sad is that there are actually people who regard Beck as a righteous visionary struggling to save mankind. It’s going to be a tragic day when Beck leads his followers to Guyana and offers them all some tasty Kool-Aid. That will likely come after some valiant Beckian has attempted to cleanse the country of some the progressives that Beck has called a “cancer on America.” Hopefully these dire predictions will not come to pass, but Beck is playing with hellfire by inciting his audience of dimwits whose behavior cannot be accurately forecast.

Thom Hartmann on Beck and Agenda 21:

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Right-Wing Blames God For Romney Loss And America’s Descent Into Socialism

Posted by on November 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm. 7 Comments :

The Republican Party has been suffering debilitating and very public seizures produced by the results of the election a couple of weeks ago. They are desperately attempting to find explanations for how they could have lost on such a grand scale an election they presumed was in the bag. After spending unprecedented amounts of money, Republicans still had to wake up Wednesday morning with Obama returning to the White House for another four years, two more Democrats in the senate, and nine more in the House. Even with the propaganda power of Fox News, the top rated cable news network, and its frothing companion web site Fox Nation, conservative fanatics were unable deceive enough citizens to vote against their own best interests.

At first the excuses focused on typically lame dodges involving the weaknesses of their candidates. Then they shifted to assertions that it was a failure from not being sufficiently conservative. Eventually they trotted out accusations directed at the allegedly negative, Chicago-style campaigning of the Democrats. And sprinkled in amidst all of this were hysterical wails of imaginary corruption and voter fraud.

Now that some time has passed, the forlorn right-wingers have been able to reflect on these events and discovered the true source of their despair: GOD!

That’s right. The Heavenly Father on whom they had entrusted so much of their hopes had betrayed them. It has become impossible to ignore that God clearly preferred Obama and other Democrats to the roster of GOP loonies that pretended to speak in His name.

Prior to the election, folks like Pat Robertson had confidently declared that God had personally assured them of a Republican victory. Now Robertson has had to backtrack saying that “I thought I heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God, what happened?” What happened was that you were unable to distinguish the voice of God from the hallucinatory voices rattling around in your senile head.

And speaking of hallucinatory, Glenn Beck had his own divine prophesies mangled when he spoke of an inner certainty that the Lord was preparing the path for righteous Republicans to prevail:

“I am to the point to where I think that God is trying to make this so clear to us that if it happens, it’s his finger. Because, boy, nothing looks good. And yet, everybody I know who I consider a spiritual giant feels good.”

Glenn Beck Messiah

The day after the election Beck was singing a different hymn when he said “Man, sometimes God really sucks.” But what else can he say when the day before he declared “If [voters are] so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed.”

That’s typical of the sanctimonious zealots who believe that they are the only ones with a direct line to God. They exalt themselves and their imagined favor with a deity that their principles mock. They blithely ignore biblical instructions to “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and openly denigrate the faith of others – particularly President Obama, who is wrongly believed to be a Muslim by about one-third of Republicans.

Right-wingers on the Fox News community web site Fox Nation even go so far as to explicitly state that Obama is “God-Less.” This article linked to the execrable conspiracy obsessed Breitbart News.

Fox Nation

The spiritual consternation of the right is thoroughly understandable. They had just run a campaign that fervently tried to paint Democrats as socialists bent on imposing a secular, atheist dictatorship on America. They condemned their policies as big-government takeovers that would throw freedom-loving patriots into bondage. They cast Democrats as leaning far too extremely to the left to be acceptable to voters. Yet people voted for them anyway. That could be interpreted in some circles as a mandate for the sort of socialism that the GOP was running against.

What the right missed was that all of the left-leaning agenda of the Democratic Party had far more in common with God’s agenda than the rank selfishness and greed of the GOP. Democrats advocated for health care (healing the sick), immigration (brotherhood), financial assistance (caring for the least among us), income equality and separation of church and state (giving Caesar his due), and deescalation of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan (blessed be the peacemakers). What’s surprising is that Republicans could oppose all of these things and still think they were doing God’s work.

The funny thing is that they had plenty of signs. The religious right is fond of ascribing meaning to significant events such as natural disasters. Many of them told their disciples that Katrina was God’s wrath on the sinfulness of New Orleans. Why, then, did they not see that God was sending them a warning when Hurricane Isaac slammed down on Tampa, scuttling day one of the GOP convention? Why didn’t they hear God’s message when Sandy battered the New England states just days before the election, giving Obama an opportunity to look presidential?

Now that we know whose side God was really on, Republicans are expressing their bitterness and disappointment with the Lord. That doesn’t seem like a particularly good way to get back in His good graces. But then the GOP was never very good at humility or admitting their mistakes. So what we see now is an escalation of apocalyptic doomsday scenarios that thrust the weak-minded into fearful panics. Leading the way is Fox News who broadcast this cheerful special on Thanksgiving Eve: “Countdown to Doomsday.”

Fox News Doomsday

They might make out better if they take some time to study the teachings of their Savior and seek to integrate them into their political philosophy. But then that would just make them liberals, wouldn’t it?


Greta Van Susteren: The Obama Administration Is Trying To Punish Fox News

Posted by on November 21, 2012 at 1:10 pm. 8 Comments :

Poor Greta Van Susteren. Her Fox News program has lately been lagging in the ratings behind MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” And now she is feeling neglected by the Obama administration.

In a post on her Gretawire blog, Van Sustern has resorted to copious use of BRIGHT RED FONTS WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to express her dismay at being left out of all the reindeer games. She laments that Fox News was overlooked by the State Department when media briefings were held for various news organizations. She whines that this is “playing dirty” and was being done “to punish Fox” for their critical reporting.

Van Susteren: The Administration in what looks like a coordinated effort is denying Fox access to information that they are handing out to other news organizations. Why exclude Fox? That is simple – to punish — to try to teach us a lesson not to pry, not to look further for facts.

Van Susteren fails to disclose that the State Department had previously explained why Fox was not included in previous briefings and press releases. It had nothing to do with punishment. The State Department distributed their information to news organizations that had reporters who were assigned to cover the department. Fox News has no such reporters so they didn’t get on the list. In fact, Fox has a shoe-string news operation that doesn’t concentrate on actual reporting. Most of their “news” assets are allocated to anchors, analysts, and pundits, who are not doing any bona fide journalism. In short, the State Department had no one to notify and they weren’t going to send notices to everyone with a Fox News email address.

The administration would, nevertheless, be justified in bypassing Fox even if they did assign a reporter to the beat. Contrary to Van Susteren’s kvetching, Fox has not been “looking for facts” about the Benghazi attacks. Rather, they have been wallowing in speculation and wild conspiracy theories. Fox anchors and guests have dispensed absurd declarations that President Obama had deliberately allowed Ambassador Stevens to be murdered; that he personally ordered rescuers to stand down; that he refused requests for additional security (actually it was congress who voted to cut funding for embassy security); and that he could be subject to impeachment for unspecified high crimes and misdemeanors.

None of these assertions have any bearing in fact, but that doesn’t stop Van Susteren from yammering about Fox getting a cold shoulder from the administration. Fox deserves to be shunned. They are not a credible news enterprise. They are no more entitled to press passes than the UFO Gazette or the Hogwarts Herald. If Van Susteren did a little self-analysis before ripping into her imaginary slights by Obama, she might be better situated to complain. As it is, her post includes a curious admission/excuse for Fox getting the facts wrong:

Van Susteren: To the extent we get anything wrong is because the Administration is doing whatever it can to thwart us from getting the facts.

On the contrary, it would be more correct to say that to the extent you deliberately distort the facts, the administration is under no obligation to help you continue to get everything wrong. Van Susteren is, incredibly, blaming Fox’s mistakes on Obama. Nobody forced Fox to wade so far out into delusional speculation. In fact, based on their body of work, it appears to be their corporate mission. And the administration can hardly be criticized (or accused of punishment) if they should be reluctant to further that mission.


Here We Go Again: Fox News’ War On Christmas Lunacy Returns

Posted by on November 20, 2012 at 3:01 pm. 5 Comments :

It happens every year at this time. Chestnuts roast over open fires; Jack Frost nips at your nose; and Fox News declares that there is a “War on Christmas” that only they can see.

Fox News War on Christmas

Of all the phony stories that Fox News can invent, this is one of the silliest. This a nation in which a sizable majority is Christian. And many who are not also celebrate the Christmas holiday out of convenience. It is a national holiday for which most people, Christian or not, get the day off of work. Every store in America features Christmas sales with products designed for the holiday. Christmas decorations adorn homes, restaurants, offices, lampposts, and anything else that tinsel can be wrapped around. And amid this all-consuming, orgy of Candy Cane colors and Bing Crosby tunes, Fox News still thinks that Christmas is facing some sort of hostile threat.

Never mind that there is good reason for many Americans to feel slighted by the rampant yuletiding going on all around them. Jews don’t get a national holiday. There are no Muslim films scheduled to run non-stop for eight weeks on thirty different TV channels. Hindus and Buddhists and even Unitarians have to fend for themselves. And don’t even bring up atheists.

Nevertheless, the War on Christmas is something that seems to dominate the Fox News Channel every year despite having no evidence that any war is in progress, except against all of the non-Christians. And if it weren’t enough that Fox is once again ranting over a non-existent war, take alook at what else they are railing about as this holiday season commences:

Fox News Doomsday

Yep, that’s a real thing. “Countdown to Doomsday.” Fox News Reporting is covering this vital subject beginning this Wednesday. They are outraged over a made up war on Christmas, but they are producing specials about an expired Mayan calendar. They are committing their awesome journalistic assets to uncover the truth about an alleged Mayan prediction of the demise of planet Earth. Mark my words, brothers and sisters, Fox will get to the bottom of this and declare it to be an ancient hoax. They will firmly denounce any possibility that a civilization from the past can accurately prophesy the end of the world in an apocalyptic holocaust.

Oh wait a minute. I guess there is one ancient civilization’s prophesy of an apocalyptic holocaust with which Fox concurs. And that’s the one that is at war with … someone, maybe the Mayans.


One Term And Out: Allen West Finally Concedes Loss

Posted by on November 20, 2012 at 1:41 pm. 6 Comments :

Allen West (R-Whackjob), has finally given up his quixotic legal charades and conceded to Congressman-elect Patrick Murphy of Florida.

Allen West

In a rambling whine to the press, West complained that the election was fraught with corruption and wrapped his concession in a lame excuse, saying…

“Our legal team does not believe there are enough over-counted, undercounted or fraudulent votes to change the outcome of the election.”

Getting out our West-to-English dictionary reveals that the translation is: “We didn’t work hard enough on getting out our fraudulent vote.”

There is already much speculation on what West will do next. After being tossed out of the Army (and nearly court martialed) for malfeasance while serving in Iraq, and then being tossed out of congress for being a nut case who called his Democratic colleagues communists, his prospects are fairly narrow. What it comes down to is either a gig at Fox News or a talk radio show. He could also try a congressional comeback in a different district, or take up residency at a think tank. Ordinarily a think tank job would require being able to think, but that wouldn’t be the case for any of the right-wing organizations that would consider West.

Whatever West may chose to do in future, at least he will be unable to cast votes for the loony legislation that the Tea Party caucus in the House has been peddling. Perhaps he could join up with his fellow losers (Joe Walsh, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Linda McMahon, etc.) and form a support group for delusional ex-candidates.