Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Hate Screech: Trump Tells U.S. Born Democratic Congresswomen to ‘Go Back Where You Came From’

Posted by on July 14, 2019 at 11:31 am. 8 Comments :

On his regularly scheduled Sunday Morning Tweetstorm, Donald Trump affirmed his devout racism by attacking four Democratic representatives who also just happen to be women of color. Trump’s tweets are so abhorrent that even his own administration refused to defend the blatantly bigoted remarks. But Trump’s hatefulness extends even beyond the racism aimed at political foes.

Donald Trump, Klan Leader

In the series of tweets that Trump posted, he managed to include an array of hate messages that are, sadly, typical, of his public comments. He tweeted that:

The representatives Trump is targeting are Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Although he is too afraid to actually mention their names. And it’s inescapable that his comments were directed exclusively to “Progressive Democrat Congresswomen.” So he is not only exposing his festering bigotry, he is also displaying the misogyny that has long been a part of his repugnant character. It is what leads to his abuse of women and his friendships with other abusers (i.e. Jeffrey Epstein, Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly).

What’s more, Trump is maligning the countries that he is telling these women to go back to. He calls them “the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world” and “totally broken and crime infested.” It’s reminiscent of his blanket disparagement of what he called “shithole countries” last year.

The unmistakable signals that Trump is sending to his white nationalist base is disgusting and intolerable. But it’s made all the worse by his ignorance. Three of the four representatives Trump targeted for this harassment were actually born in the U.S. So Trump’s attack is based solely on his stereotyping of them by the color of their skin. It’s notable that he never made any such demands of Republican representatives who really are foreign born (Dan Crenshaw: UK; Mark Meadows: France; David Rouzer: Germany; Ted Cruz: Canada). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they are all men from predominantly white, Eurocentric countries.

In addition to these tweets that call for banishing Democratic women of color, Trump also posted a frantic flurry of twenty-one (21!) tributes, by mostly random and anonymous tweeters, to an utterly phony “movement” aimed at persuading African-Americans to “walkaway” from the Democratic Party. It’s part of the broader “Blexit” fraud that Fox News has pushed.

The white-wing of the GOP really thinks that African-Americans are stupid enough to ignore hateful diatribes like the ones Trump just posted, and join the party of oppression and white supremacy. And Trump is so demented that he believes that promoting the racist walkaway scam, in the same barrage of tweets where he insults congressional women of color, is a winning strategy to advance black acceptance of the GOP. This only confirms the many diagnoses of Trump as a sociopathic narcissist who is unfit to serve.

And for those who were curious, Fox and Friends thought it was funny:

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

Diamond and Silk Embarrass Themselves and Fox News (Again) with Their Ignorant Views and Demeanor

Posted by on April 5, 2019 at 4:16 pm. 6 Comments :

With all of the smarmy characters who populate Fox News, it is often difficult to focus on who stands out the most for their flagrant idiocy and boorishness. Is it Sean Hannity, personal friend and shadow chief of staff to Donald Trump? Is it the leader of Fox’s White Nationalist Brigade, Tucker Carlson? Do the Fox and Friends crew have an advantage due to the number of blowhards concentrated in one program?

Diamond and Silk, Fox News

No doubt about it, the competition is fierce. But there are a couple of less prominent players who ceaselessly strive to outperform the the big shots at Fox News. The unintentional comedy duo of Diamond and Silk bring their “A” game every time they make an appearance. So long as the “A” stands for “asinine.” They are favorites of Trump who retweets them at every opportunity. And they outdid themselves on Friday morning while visiting the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends.

The segment started off with a slur directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who noted that the battle over climate change was not dissimilar to the civil rights battles of the past. Both involved people struggling to change the entrenched attitudes in society and government that were suppressing necessary change. But Diamond and Silk didn’t see it quite that way. they immediately lashed out at AOC saying…

“Listen, you have to realize that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s reckless, she’s clueless, and she have a vacuous mindset. First of all, civil rights have nothing to do with climate change. First of all.”

OK. First of all, reckless, clueless, and vacuous are registered trademarks of Diamond and Silk Industries. But more to the point, that isn’t what AOC said. She wasn’t comparing the substance of the issues. She was comparing the struggles to educate people and effect change. However, although AOC wasn’t addressing it, there are areas where civil rights and climate change do intersect. Just ask anyone who lives in a low income community where government often places its biggest polluting industries. But Diamond (who does most of the talking while Silk nods and interjects “That’s right,” every few seconds) continued:

And then second of all, her Green New Deal is a green new scam that we must stay away from. Now, I know that she’s worried about climate change, but she need to talk to Mother Nature. Because with the Earth rotating at 1,000 miles per hour, OK, 365 days of the year, we subject to feel climate changing a little bit. But not to the tune where we have to dismantle everything and start the Earth back over again. It’s a absolutely no for us.”

It appears that she is defining climate change as the temperature variations between night and day. That’s the generous explanation for these crackpot comments. In reality, she’s just foaming at the mouth and spitting out irrelevancies that have no real meaning. They certainly aren’t descriptive of anything resembling the science of Earth’s climate. She closed this subject by somehow segueing to an accusation that Democrats are the party that opposes civil rights. Never mind that the Klan and other hate groups have universally endorsed Trump and his GOP.

Later in the segment the hosts played a clip of Beto O’Rourke pointing out the racist overtones that have been embedded in Trump’s policies and are central to his speeches. This spurred the Fox duo to declare that O’Rourke’s remarks reminded them of a slave owner because he supports humane immigration reform. Don’t even bother trying to figure that one out.

What’s most puzzling is that Fox News invites these members of their “news” contributor staff to offer an analysis of issues they obviously know nothing about. That’s something that Fox does frequently whether the topic is climate change or immigration or economics or national security. Somehow Diamond and Silk have impressed Fox’s editors and producers as experts on virtually every subject. So they are featured on multiple shows where they do their tired clown act that consists almost entirely of personal slurs and amens as if they were insult comics who became holy roller evangelists.

It’s old news that Fox is the home of bigoted hate mongers and right-wing propagandists. But it’s still somewhat surprising that they have allowed these two cringeworthy Trump-fluffers to overtake so much of their airtime. It’s a concession that they have given up any pretense as being an informational enterprise and are now openly embracing their role as a lowbrow entertainment medium. Which will make things even easier for their production staff. They never really cared much for doing research or fact-checking. And now they can dispense with it altogether.

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

Fox News Flat Out Lies that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Compared Climate Change to 9/11

Posted by on March 30, 2019 at 2:56 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s never exactly breaking to news to report that Fox News has broadcast something that is blatantly contrary to reality. In fact, it would be easier to point out when they say something that’s even marginally true. Nevertheless, it’s important to set the record straight lest we allow their lies to linger and get a foothold on the weaker minds that populate their audience of Deplorables.

Fox News, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

On Saturday morning, Donald Trump’s favorite breakfast club, Fox and Friends, put together a segment that was obviously intended to deceive. The target of their dishonesty was a familiar one: Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), for whom they have developed a perverse obsession. The subject of the segment was emblazoned on their chyron which read “Ocasio-Cortez Compares Climate Change to 9/11.” There’s just one little problem with that. AOC never did anything of the kind.

The “Curvy Couch” potatoes began the segment with a clip (video below) of AOC making a point about the of the Trump administration’s utterly incompetent response to the tragic hurricane in Puerto Rico. She said that:

“On the events on September 11, 2001, thousands of Americans died in the largest terror attack on US soil. Our national response was war in one, then eventually two countries. Three thousand Americans died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria. Where is our response?”

So AOC did make some mention of 9/11, but it had nothing to do with climate change. And it wasn’t even a comparison to the devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico. She was only observing that this country can devote resources to a disaster when it has the will to do so. She was comparing the response, not the event. But the hosts of Fox and Friends were more committed to attacking AOC than to reporting what she actually said. Not that she didn’t address climate change in the hour long town hall she did with Chris Hayes of MSNBC. She did, and in a very profound and compelling manner. But Fox News never played that part:

“Our greatest existential threat is climate change. And to get us out of this situation – to revamp our economy, to create dignified jobs for working Americans, to guarantee healthcare, and elevate our educational opportunities and attainment – we will have to mobilize our entire economy around saving ourselves and taking care of this planet.”

The producers of this Fox program also appended a bit of video to the end of their clip that was unrelated to the rest of it. It showed her commenting about the critics of the “Green New Deal,” saying that she “didn’t expect them to make total fools of themselves.” That comment was actually a response to a video montage of Republicans and Fox News shills (which is redundant, I know) attacking her. And after maligning and misrepresenting her for the whole piece, the Fox hosts suggested that she should come on their show. Yeah, right. At least Fox didn’t compare her to Hitler and Stalin like it did a couple of months ago.

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

Peak Stupidity: Ranking GOP Member of House Intel Committee Thinks Asking for Straws is Socialism

Posted by on March 10, 2019 at 11:45 am. 3 Comments :

The most recent polls show that the American people, particularly the young, are not generally fearful of what used to be portrayed as the scourge of socialism. In fact, a more enlightened public is now aware that some of this country’s most cherished institutions (Medicare, Social Security, public schools, etc.) were developed directly from socialist ideas. And new policies that advocate universal health coverage and tuition-free college are gaining in popularity.

Devin Nunes

Of course those views are not shared by the Fox News viewing Deplorables who still worship at the Cult of Donald Trump. Their disdain for an agenda that seeks to mitigate the historically high income inequality, and to make fairness in jobs, taxation, and education a priority, is as strong as ever. And it’s strength is rooted in the ignorance of what socialism actually is.

A perfect example of that ignorance exposed itself Sunday morning in the form of a tweet by Republican Devin Nunes. He is best known for his corrupt chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee wherein he distorted the hearings it held and colluded with Trump to shape White House propaganda. With the Democrats having taken over the majority in the House, Nunes is now the ranking member, while Adam Schiff was elevated to chairman.

The tweet Nunes posted displays his pitiful misunderstanding of socialism, while also advancing his prejudicial views. He tweeted that:

Nunes is breaking the sound barrier of dumbassedness here. He is somehow associating a policy that seeks to reduce pollution and waste with his nightmare of a government controlled society. But free citizens in a democracy frequently enact bills that produce a desired and positive effect. That’s actually a validation of freedom, not some imaginary “Straw Police State.”

Nunes must also oppose separating recyclable garbage, banning cancer causing asbestos, health warnings on cigarettes, and increasing vehicle fuel efficiency standards. Anything that actually improves the lives of the people is inherently anti-Republican, because it interferes with their right to unlimited profits despite the public harm.

What’s more, Nunes is blissfully unaware of his own embrace of socialism. As a farmer in the Central Valley of California (although that is in dispute), Nunes has received tens of thousands of dollars in government subsidies. The district that he represents has received nearly half a billion dollars since 1995. How would Nunes define those handouts to people and businesses who are already prosperous?

This is the kind of idiocy that marks the Republican aversion to, and attacks on, socialism and the new breed of proud Social Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is the result of being uninformed and unwilling to learn. And that problem is exacerbated by Fox News, who disseminate the lies and distortions of numbskulls like Nunes. It’s one of the reasons that Donald Trump says that he “loves the uneducated.” Without them he would never have been elected and no one would show up at his cult rallies.

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

Fair and WTF? Fox News Insults Democrat as ‘Bird-Brained’, Exalts Republican as ‘Modern Marvel’

Posted by on March 9, 2019 at 11:50 am. 3 Comments :

Last week the media was abuzz over the “controversy” about whether or not Fox News should be permitted to host a Democratic primary debate. That’s a pretty easy question to resolve considering Fox’s history of bias. And a few weeks ago, Tom Perez, the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reversed his prior public statements on the subject and announced that Fox News would not be considered as a debate broadcast partner.

Fox News Alert

Naturally, this outraged Fox News and it’s forward flank of Storm-Trumpers who were appalled at losing their opportunity to disparage Democratic presidential candidates on national television. But their disingenuous consternation was a fraud from the start. They complained that they are a legitimate news enterprise with reputable journalists. Never mind that the vast majority of their airtime is dominated by rightist surrogates for Donald Trump who pretend to be nonpartisan reporters.

When that argument failed to persuade anyone that Fox News was an appropriate platform for a Democratic debate, they accused Democrats of being afraid of Fox. Why Fox thinks that impugning the character of Democrats as cowards is a good way to convince the party that Fox is unbiased is puzzling, to say the least. That charge is both unfair and untrue. It isn’t fear, but intelligence, that drove Democrats to decline to assist Fox in sabotaging their candidates. It makes no sense to reward a network that spends twenty-four hours a day promoting Trump as their savior, while viciously maligning Democrats and others who dare to challenge Trump’s divine right to absolute power.

Now Fox News is helpfully validating the decision by the DNC by continuing to demonstrate their abject hatred for Democrats. On their website they posted two stories next to each other that tells the tale of of Fox’s blatant political prejudices. One story featured a favorite foil for Fox News, Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was pictured with a caption that read “Bird-Brained” and was accompanied by an article by an avowed climate denier who criticized her “Green New Deal.”

The other story was about Republican representative Dan Crenshaw. He is also a veteran who lost an eye in Afghanistan. His story had a caption reading “Modern Marvel” and was headlined “GOP Rep Reveals ‘Captain America’ Glass Eye to Avengers Star.” The accompanying piece was a short, unnarrated video of Crenshaw meeting actor Chris Evans.

Fox News, Ocasio-Cortez, Crenshaw

So Fox News chose to juxtapose a story about a Republican they portrayed as a superhero with one about a women they maligned as ignorant and evil. And this is the network that has seriously tried to argue that they should be treated like a legitimate news operation that can fairly moderate a political debate by the party they so obviously despise. What a joke. At least we can be thankful that they are so profoundly stupid that they continue to provide these examples of why they should never be taken seriously.

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

The Fox News Fetish for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Just Keeps Getting Creepier: Ivanka Trump Edition

Posted by on February 26, 2019 at 12:48 pm. 10 Comments :

Ever since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected last November, the right-wing media has been beside themselves trying to slander her as an ignorant and un-American little brown girl who has no business having an opinion, much less serving in Congress. And no one has been more determined to disseminate this disparagement than Fox News.

Fox News, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson

Consequently, the State TV network reached out to Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, to deliver the administration’s smackdown on Ocasio-Cortez. Unfortunately, her interview merely revealed that she is a spoiled rich kid with no comprehension of what ordinary Americans are experiencing. She tried to respond to Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement that she intended to pay her staff a {gasp} living wage. Previously on Fox News this was greeted with a pathetic display of math illiteracy. And Ivanka’s response was equally embarrassing:

“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last 4 years. People want to work for what they get. So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want.”

So a woman who has lived her entire life off of what she was given by daddy is certain that other Americans wouldn’t want fair compensation for their work, which is all that Ocasio-Cortez is proposing. If this is what Ivanka learned from four years of traveling around the country, she has a severe learning disability. But she does have an excellent grasp of the sort of harebrained talking points required to be a Fox News pundit.

The obsession that Fox News is nursing every day is evidence that Ocasio-Cortez is one of the new class of representatives who Fox fears the most. There is no other explanation for how maniacally focused they are on her. She was only sworn in a month and a half ago, but Fox’s most prominent hosts are fixated squarely on her every word (as well as her youth, clothes, and dancing ability). The entire primetime roster on Fox all featured her on their programs Monday night. They were also transcribed into op-eds for the Fox website. The amusingly alarmist headlines and ledes were:

  • Sean Hannity: It’s scary how prominent Dems, the media are supporting Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist views.
    “We are once again featuring the 29-year-old socialist from New York who is both revered and feared inside her own party. […] But now, she is taking her insane views even a step further.”
  • Laura Ingraham: Spike Lee, Smollett, Ocasio-Cortez and her mini-mes tell us lots about modern day liberalism.
    “Like most of today’s social justice warriors, Ocasio-Cortez truly believes she is always morally right. And that notion entitles her to be one of the leaders of not the #MeToo movement, but the ‘Me-me-me’ movement.”
  • Tucker Carlson: How dumb, arrogant Ocasio-Cortez became the boss of the Democratic Party
    “It’s a measure of how cowardly impassive everyone has become all of a sudden that a chorus of right-thinking Democrats hasn’t told this idiotic windbag to be quiet and take a seat.”

These are the extreme, unhinged, and disrespectful lengths that the Foxies will go to in order to malign a committed, intelligent young woman who stepped up to serve her country. And the fear that she has stirred in their shriveled hearts is unmistakable. This is the sort of full-court press that the right generally reserves for Kenyan-born, terrorist-sympathizing, Muslim atheist commies who stole the presidency by actually getting a majority of the popular vote.

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

Ocasio-Cortez has earned this vitriol in record time. She should be proud that she has these dimwits from Fox News stalking her. It’s a validation of her effectiveness as an activist and a communicator. And at the same time it exposes Fox as a puerile confederacy of dunces who are utterly incapable of making a coherent response to someone they belittle as immature and inexperienced. Which, by the way, is a much better description of their Dear Leader, Donald Trump.

HUH? Fox News’ Math-Challenged Hosts Declare that Free Market Salaries are Communism

Posted by on February 24, 2019 at 1:13 pm. 4 Comments :

The disease that infects the talking headcases at Fox News is apparently degenerative and causes its victims to decline ever further into the abyss of cognitive infirmity. This is especially true of the “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, whose combined IQ has yet to break the grass ceiling.

Fox News, Pete Hegseth

Donald Trump’s favorite morning show has a long history of hysterically offbase utterings. Their ratio of wrongness is in the stratosphere. Which is probably why Trump loves it so much. And a stinging example of this dumbassedness was aired on Sunday morning in a segment (video below) that was trying to make Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look dumb. They failed miserably.

The segment was a response to the recent announcement by Ocasio-Cortez that she would be paying all of her congressional staffers a living wage of at least $52,000 per year. The thought of people being treated with respect, and compensated fairly for their work was just too much for the Fox Newsies, so they concocted an argument that they were certain would slay the newest Democratic monster at their gates. It went a little something like this:

Griff Jenkins: Get a load of this. A tweet went out yesterday. She said “Leadership begins at home,” whatever, or however she put it. She’s basically announcing that she is going to ‘redistribute’ the money appropriated to her congressional office to make sure that the entry level staffers get a fair share of money.

Heaven Forbid! Whatever will become of our country if the representatives we elect to serve our interests start actually behaving in accordance with our values? Notice how Jenkins worked in the term “redistribute,” in order to invoke the memory of some imagined socialist nightmare. Never mind that redistribution of wealth is common in free societies (even capitalist ones) where some measure of equity is sought through taxation and public assistance. In fact, the Trump Tax Scam was textbook redistribution, except it went from the working class to the wealthy.

Jenkins then went on to “Fox-plain” what was so terribly wrong with Ocasio-Cortez’s salary plan. He failed to observe that it was completely in line with the free market decision making of any employer. Instead, he complained that in order to pay entry level staffers a little more, she would have to pay her chief of staff a little less. Holy Crap! Anything but that. Our nation was built on the principle that the elitists at the top should receive all the benefits and the peons should be grateful for scraps. And this is when Jenkins’ co-host chimed in to agree:

Pete Hegseth: She said, “Everyone in my office will be paid a living wage. So I’m going to pay $15 an hour.” Which means your entry level intern is making fifty-two grand, while your chief of staff, who has a very important role in a congressional office, now is capped at eighty, as opposed to the actual market rate on Capitol Hill, which is closer to $150,000. So everyone’s between 52 and 80. It’s actually socialism and communism on display.”

You have to wonder how much Hegseth is getting paid, since being able to do simple math is apparently not a requirement for his job. His claim that $15.00 an hour would be $52,000 per year is only off by $20,800. But more importantly, his contention that an employer choosing to set salaries as she sees fit is tantamount to communism proves that he is as bad at political science as he is at math.

Employers make these decisions based on multiple factors, including experience, recruiting, workplace morale, retention, and yes, even personal values. But according to Hegseth, all employers should be bound by externally imposed rules that may not satisfy their business goals. That’s actually closer to communism than anything Ocasio-Cortez has done. And it’s closer to assholery than anyone spewing opinions on television should be allowed to get away with.

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

Fox News Compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Hitler and Stalin in Unhinged Rant

Posted by on January 23, 2019 at 1:03 pm. 4 Comments :

It’s always easy to tell who the Republican Nationalist Party is most afraid of. It’s the person they lie about most, and whose character they malign with the most vicious insults. Their obvious defensiveness gives away their fear and betrays their intentions to destroy anyone they think is having a real impact on changing the status quo.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The current ogre under the GOP’s bed is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has had the audacity to advocate for the common American, the oppressed, and those who have been left out of the nation’s prosperity. Her recent comments regarding raising the marginal tax rate for multi-millionaires to 70% has brought severe anxiety to the rightists in Congress and the media who serve the wealthy. So their response to this common sense proposal, that was in effect for decades prior to the Reagan administration, is to lash out in the most absurd and offensive way imaginable.

On the Fox Business Network program host Trish Regan invited right-wing clown and alleged economist, Ben Stein, to discuss Ocasio-Cortez. The segment was utterly devoid of any substantive discussion of her ideas or her role in Congress. Instead, it was a bitterly personal assault that was nothing but invective and slander. Stein delivered a thoroughly deranged tirade dismissing her impact and insulting everyone who supports her. “She’s seeing success,” Stein began, “because there’s a lot of people just as ignorant as she is out there.” Never mind that he’s disparaging the majority of Americans (59%) who agree with her.

Stein believes that “messages about justice and equality … always turn out to be messages that lead to a dictatorship.” And his extended comments on Fox affirm that opinion, but go even farther into an abyss of slime (video below):

“We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Miss Ocasio-Cortez is promising. And it led to mass murder. It led to dictatorship. It led to genocide. These promises are old promises and they invariably led to bad things.”

Stalin? Hitler? Does Stein really believe that Ocasio-Cortez is an aspiring tyrant who hungers for the blood of the masses? Does he really believe that her agenda, which is squarely in the mainstream of America’s principles and history, will lead to genocide? Or is he merely mouthing off with noxious hyperbole intended to incite the hatred of Fox’s viewers? If Stein is looking for an aspiring tyrant, he might want to look at Donald Trump, who actually kept a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside. And Trump’s anti-press chant of “the enemy of the people” was stolen verbatim from Stalin. But Stein wasn’t finished:

“Capitalism is a system that allows people to make something of themselves, instead of suppressing other people. Making money is … what our society is about. It’s not about ordering people around, putting them in concentration camps. What do you do if a person is a richer person or a poorer person? What do you do? Do you take him away and shoot him?”

Where on Earth did Stein get that from? Certainly not from anything Ocasio-Cortez, or any Democrat, has ever said. It’s simply Stein inventing horror stories for the Deplorables watching him on Fox News. And the number one viewer is, of course, Donald Trump, who spends countless hours watching, and live tweeting, what he sees on Fox. And as a result of crackpot diatribes like this one, watch for Stein to be hired by Trump as an economic advisor or, perhaps, his new Billionaire Tax Elimination and Peasant Revenue Collection Czar.

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

Fox News Guest Dinesh D’Souza Honors the Humanitarian Slave Owners of the Old South

Posted by on October 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm. 3 Comments :

Leave it to Fox News to find the bright side of slave owners. While the rest of the civilized world condemns human trafficking, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends managed to produce a segment that highlighted the freedom loving Confederates on the old plantations of Dixie.

Fox News, Dinesh D'Souza

Co-host Steve Doocy interviewed one of Fox’s favorite shameless disseminators of flagrant lies, confessed felon Dinesh D’Souza. Earlier this year Donald Trump pardoned D’Souza for the federal crime that he had pleaded guilty to. The Fox segment began as an attempt to mock Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for what they asserted was a gaffe. It wasn’t. She tweeted that:

Ocasio-Cortez was replying to a tweet that noted that two recent presidents who lost the popular vote have put four justices on the Supreme Court. Doocy then asked D’Souza “Why does the Electoral College matter,” and “what do you think she was talking about?” D’Souza’s reply began by mansplaining what Ocasio-Cortez really meant (video below):

“Well, first of all, I think she’s confusing the Electoral College with the “three-fifths” laws. The three-fifths laws was about slavery, and it had to do with an argument between the North and the South over representation. Ironically, the North, which was the anti-slavery side, wanted blacks to count for zero because they wanted to reduce the representative power of the slave states. The South wanted blacks to count for a full person. So the three-fifths laws which was usually presented to show that the founders didn’t consider blacks to be fully human, doesn’t actually show that at all.”

D’Souza is almost right. The problem is that he leaves out the fact that the South only wanted to count slaves because it gave the region more clout in the federal government. Slaves would still be denied any rights and considered to be property. The South wanted it both ways: to own blacks like chattel, but count them to increase the political power of their white masters. Then D’Souza swung back around to the Electoral College:

“Now the Electoral College was a different matter. The Electoral College emerges out of this contest between the large states and the small states. Not an antiquated issue. We have that now. We have large states, we have small states. And if we had a system that gave power only to the large states, the small states would essentially be unrepresented. The whole point, remember, the core of our founding is the consent of the governed. So to create the union the founders needed the consent of the large states and the small states. The Electoral College is a part of that arithmetic.”

Once again, D’Souza os only partly correct. Much of the dispute between the large and small states was still a matter of north and south. The population of the North far exceeded that of the South. So Ocasio-Cortez was correct in associating the Electoral College with slavery. What’s more, D’Souza is wrong in stating that smaller states would be unrepresented without the Electoral College. Their representation in Congress would be identical. The only difference would be in presidential elections.

However, that difference has become a useless and undemocratic anachronism. Given the boundaryless mobility of the modern U.S., we should not still be electing the president by states, but rather by voters. There is no coherent reason why the tiny populations of Idaho or Wyoming should have a greater say in presidential elections than the vastly more numerous populations of California or Texas. And it’s fair to say that there are a lot of former residents of Idaho and Wyoming who now live in California and Texas. Should their votes be diluted simply because they moved?

Ocasio-Cortez is right to raise the issue of eliminating the outdated Electoral College. It should have been done long ago. Hopefully her colleagues in Congress join her in that initiative when she gets there in January. In the meantime, Fox News needs to stop hosting racists who talk down to women and demean them personally as incapable of grasping these issues. But then they would have hours and hours of dead air.

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

Fox News Attacks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Encouraging Kids to Be Interested in Politics

Posted by on September 2, 2018 at 1:50 pm. 2 Comments :

The professional Trump-fluffers at State TV (aka Fox News) are very concerned about what is happening to innocent children. No, not the ones that Donald Trump has ripped from the arms of their immigrant parents and put in cages along the border. Fox News is worried about American children who are being indoctrinated into socialism by nefarious congressional candidates.

Fox News, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

On Sunday’s episode of Fox and Friends, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes latched onto a video that was posted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is running for the 14th district seat in New York. Ocasio-Cortez is seen talking to a group of kids in a park about what she’s doing. The kids are clearly interested and, when she mentions that she’s going to Congress to fight Trump, they spontaneously erupt in cheers. Several of the kids are heard volunteering that they don’t like Trump.

However, children engaged in civic affairs is viewed as a dangerous trend by the Fox News crew. Co-host Ed Henry refers to Ocasio-Cortez as a “cause celebre” on the left, and then introduces the video where he falsely says that she is “trying to rally kids to go after President Trump.”

In the video, the sin that Fox News is so rattled about is that Ocasio-Cortez asks a group of kids if they will go home and tell their parents to vote. Oh my heavens, no. What has become of the world? A candidate for Congress isn’t ignoring an exuberant group of young folks who clearly have an interest in what she’s saying. She isn’t dismissing them as waifs and then catering to the elders who can vote and donate to her campaign. She’s actually engaging them in a respectful conversation and encouraging their interest in civic affairs (see her video below). So naturally Fox News thinks this is abhorrent and must stop immediately. The Foxies continue their brazenly partisan harangue in this fear mongering exchange:

Rachel Campos-Duffy: I actually love this video because there’s so much about Alexandria that is so revealing. She’s such a novice that she really tells you the truth about socialism. This is what socialists do for kids. They don’t help kids. They organize kids. They indoctrinate kids. That’s what she’s doing. That’s what social justice warriors like her are best at.
Pete Hegseth: That’s a good point, you’re right. She’s naive. She’s talking to these kids. Go tell your parents how much you hate Trump.

So Campos-Duffy is glad that Ocasio-Cortez is a political novice because it results in her telling the truth. Unlike the propagandists on Fox News who are seasoned professionals with the experience to suppress any honest tendencies and stick to lying at all times. And Hegseth agrees that encouraging kids to engage in discourse with their parents is somehow subversive and anti-American. They are both apparently afraid that the adults in these families will be unfairly coerced into voting against Trump by their brainwashed offspring. It makes one wonder how susceptible the Fox News hosts are to what their manipulative kids are telling them to do.

Needless to say, including children in discussions about politics is a positive and educational exercise. It prepares them for when they will be old enough to participate in the civic duty of voting. But on Fox News it’s a frightening notion that evokes scary images of informed young citizens. Never mind that the notorious hypocrites at Fox regularly feature conservative kids, and even bring them on their network for extended interviews. For instance, Jesse Watters interviewed nine year old Trump fan Jacob Silva for nearly seven minutes. But they better be careful. Fox also hyped a thirteen year old conservative, Jonathan Krohn, who had the good sense to grow up and, by the time he was seventeen, was supporting Barack Obama.

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