Bernie Sanders

Trump Floats Yet Another Crackpot Conspiracy Theory: Bernie Sanders/Fake News Edition

Posted by on February 12, 2017 at 12:58 pm. 3 Comments :

Sunday morning Donald Trump was once again up early playing with his Twitter machine. Despite the best efforts of his handlers, they have failed to wrest his phone away and prevent these embarrassing episodes. The problem is that they are not just embarrassing for Trump, but for America.

Bernie Sanders Donald Trump

The latest tweet-bleat from The Donald concerned an interview on CNN with Sen. Bernie Sanders (video below). The subject was Trump’s National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn, and his recently disclosed communications with Russia. In particular, Flynn’s having allegedly told Russia not to worry about the sanctions imposed for interfering with U.S. elections. Erin Burnett asked Sanders about Trump’s dubious claim to not know anything about the matter. That led to this amusing exchange:

BURNETT: He says says he doesn’t know anything about it. Hasn’t seen any of the reports. Is that a problem?

SANDERS: Well, I don’t know. Maybe he was watching CNN’s fake news. What do you think. [adding] That was a joke.

BURNETT: I know it was a joke.

Whereupon, the signal was lost and CNN went to a commercial. On the basis of that, Trump contrived a nefarious plot to silence Sanders and any talk of CNN’s “fakery.” He tweeted:

How Trump concluded that Sanders was “cut off for using the term fake news” is a total mystery. As usual, he provided no evidence of his outlandish accusation. In the Trump mind, all that’s necessary is to spout off random thoughts and pretend they are factual. Of course, his delusions are generally easy to refute. In this case, CNN came back from the commercial break and began by apologizing for the technical difficulties and resuming the conversation with the very words that Trump thinks were censored:

BURNETT: Sen. Sanders is back with me, and I want to apologize to our viewers for that technical issue. And Senator, you had just been talking, joking about CNN’s fake news, but there were reports about … go ahead.

If CNN were trying to scrub any discussion about Trump’s juvenile fake news slur, they surely wouldn’t have led with it upon resumption of the interview. So how could Trump have concocted this nonsense? Well, as Brian Stelter reported, Fox & Friends had made the same phony characterization of the interview just half an hour before Trump tweeted it. As happens frequently, Trump was just regurgitating something he saw on Fox News. And we all know how reliable that is.

For the President of the United States to blindly parrot falsehoods he saw on TV sets a new low for the intellectual honesty of the office. But then Trump does that every day. The one silver lining that may emerge is that the attention Trump brings to this interview may cause a few of his supporters to watch the entire segment. Bernie is absolutely on fire and makes an outstanding presentation of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and hypocrisy. He even defends referring to Trump as delusional and questions his mental health. Watch and enjoy (or shudder).

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

Bernie Sanders Live Tweeted ‘Dictator’ Trump’s Horror Show Speech – And It Was Awesome

Posted by on July 22, 2016 at 11:06 am. 1 Comments :

In a marathon 74 minute harangue, Donald Trump accepted the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States. The speech recounted a vision of America as a dystopian hellhole where every citizen should be shivering under their beds. And when he wasn’t trying scare the bejeebus out of everyone, he was enumerating the reasons they should all hate each other, and especially Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders

In the opening of his speech Trump promised that “there will be no lies,” a bold claim from someone with a long record of pathological lying (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). And this Trump speech didn’t fare well with the fact checkers either. He also made promises to bring back jobs from overseas (presumably his own clothing manufacturing), destroy ISIS, repeal ObamaCare, and end violence and crime in America (not reduce it, end it). Of course, he never proposed a single policy that would achieve any of those goals in his speech, nor in the prior twelve monts of his campaign.

Watching all of this from his lair in Vermont was Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders was privileged to have been mentioned in Trump’s speech in a particularly delusional passage wherein Trump insisted that “His supporters will join our movement.” Because what self-respecting Democratic Socialist wouldn’t rush to support a wealthy, racist, right-wing, wannabe dictator? Not surprisingly, Sanders had a few things to say about Trump’s fear mongering tirade. So he took to Twitter (#RNCwithBernie) to engage in a running commentary. Here is his contemporaneous response to Trump’s lecture on how awful america is:


FYI: Sanders tweet about Trump’s dictatorial tendencies was the most retweeted tweet during Donald Trump’s acceptance speech.

Bernie Sanders, of course, has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. But his movement continues along with his positive vision to reform the nation so that everyone can benefit from its vast riches. He wants all Americans to be represented by politicians who take seriously their pledge to serve the people. He is a strong advocate of voting rights and opposes the GOP’s efforts to disenfranchise minority and low-income citizens. And he has fought for decades on behalf of the working class that is a trickle-down afterthought of Republicans like Trump.

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

The vast majority of Sanders’ supporters would never consider backing an elite, narcissistic, throwback to an era of 1930’s Aryan supremacy. Trump’s exceedingly dark outlook on both the present and future of America is anathema to the progressive mindset. Trump’s speech revealed to the nation that he is just pitching a warmed-over version of Pat Buchanan’s rightist populism. That isn’t going to sell to Sanders’ supporters, or to most of the country’s voters.

Fox News Smears Seniors And Students In Lame Attempt To Smear Bernie Sanders

Posted by on June 6, 2016 at 9:27 pm. 1 Comments :

Today on Fox News the network put in their rotation a chart illustrating the professions of donors to the Bernie Sanders campaign. The chart is dominated by a long bar that is labeled “Not Working.” The implication from the chart, which was backed up by the Fox News anchors who displayed it, was that donors to the Sanders campaign are unemployed, lazy, leeches on society.

Fox News

As you may already have guessed, Fox’s implied shiftlessness of Sanders’ donors is a deliberate lie. The data came from the Los Angeles Times, and while it is true that about 28% of Sanders’ donors do not have jobs, what Fox fails to disclose is that it is a group comprised mainly of retirees (13.5%), students (6.5%), and stay-at-home spouses (14.5%). So what does Fox have against America’s seniors, its youth seeking an education, and its families? If Fox were to report honestly they would have remarked on the large percentage of such honorable people who flock to the Sanders campaign.

Of course, nobody expects Fox to report honestly. And this is just the latest example of their purposeful deceit. No wonder surveys of Fox News viewers consistently show them as being the least informed, and the most misinformed, news consumers in the country. And no wonder they are supporting Donald Trump for president – perhaps the stupidest, most dishonest candidate in the nation’s history.

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

Majority Of Americans (Including 41% Of Republicans) Favor Socialist Healthcare

Posted by on May 20, 2016 at 9:18 am. NO Comments :

The Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) has been a contentious point of debate in the media ever since it was proposed by a timid Congress that worked fervently to water it down and excise its most progressive elements. In subsequent polling the nation has appeared divided on whether they favored the insurance reforms, although the polls often neglected to differentiate from those who opposed it because it went too far and those who who opposed it because it didn’t go far enough.

Medicare For All

This week Gallup released a poll that definitively settles that question. They gave respondents a clear choice that included the option of “Replacing the ACA with a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.” That option, which is essentially universal healthcare, received a clear majority of 58% favoring it.

What’s more, when Gallup broke down the responses by party, it revealed that 41% of Republicans were in favor of the federally funded option as well. Not a majority, nor even close to the 73% of Democrats, but a surprisingly high figure representing the heretofore unknown socialist wing of the GOP.

The other options in the poll were “Keeping the Affordable Care Act in place,” which was divided 48-49%, and “Repealing the Affordable Care Act” which was also close at 51-45%. However, as Gallup noted:

“…the group of Americans in this survey who favor the law’s repeal, a core policy proposal of many Republican presidential candidates during this campaign season, includes some who apparently want the ACA repealed to replace it with an even more liberal system.”

ObamaCare, in its present form, has been an unqualified success. It has brought the number of uninsured down to historically low levels. It has kept the cost of healthcare down, both in premiums paid to insurers and direct costs of care. It has guaranteed access to insurance for people with preexisting conditions and provided equality of cost and care for women. These are just a few of the reasons that, despite a concerted effort by Fox News and other conservative media to scare Americans away from it, ObamaCare continues to enjoy widespread popularity.

Considering the broad appeal of a universal, Medicare-for-all style healthcare program, it would be advantageous for the presidential candidates to pay heed to the will of the people. To date, only Bernie Sanders has taken a position that fully embraces this policy. Hillary Clinton, though, has been inching toward it with a recent statement in support of a public option.

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

It would also be helpful if the media would cover this preference on the part of the American people. This may not be as sexy a subject as Donald Trump’s latest sleaze mongering, but the press is supposed to be a source of credible information, particularly in the midst of a presidential campaign. No one would expect Fox News to report the results of this poll, and they haven’t. It would completely contradict their phony free-market, crony-capitalist, Republican sponsored narrative. But the rest of the national television newscasters have largely ignored it as well. And without a responsible media giving this issue the attention it deserves, the candidates for both national and local offices will feel no pressure to address it either.

Donald Trump On Disruptive Protesters At A Bernie Sanders Rally: That Will Never Happen With Me

Posted by on March 11, 2016 at 8:14 pm. 19 Comments :

This evening in Chicago Donald Trump was scheduled to appear at a rally at the University of Illinois. However, after protesters arrived and created a significant disruption, Trump canceled the rally leaving thousands of disappointed Trumpsters and an untold number of celebrating protesters.

Donald Trump

This seems like a good time to recall what Trump said about an incident at a Bernie Sanders rally where some Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted his speech and made some remarks of their own at the podium.

“I watched Bernie Sanders have a protest. He was up at the microphone and two young ladies came up and took the microphone away from him. That will never happen with me. He walked weakly to the back of the room and I said ‘Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t that sad?'”

What happened tonight is evidence that Trump is a phony who likes to put on a macho image. He frequently taunts his critics and pretends to be prepared to engage in battle. The truth is that he is a coward who shrinks from any conflict that might soil his Ferragamos. This is a man who wears a mask of patriotism as he claims to love our nation’s veterans (who he appears to have shafted with a phony charity event). But he received five deferments to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. This is a man who warns would-be assailants that he is armed and that if “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked.” He must mean that they’ll be shocked at how fast a dude pushing seventy can run away.

To be clear, I think Trump did the right thing by canceling his rally. It is not worth taking the risk of violence breaking out and innocent people getting hurt. But Trump is in total denial about why the cancellation was necessary. He continues to reject any suggestion that his hate speech is responsible for setting a tone that is rancid with hostility. He won’t admit that telling his dimwitted followers how much he would like to punch protesters in the face might result in some of them carrying it out as a favor to their hero. He has even promised to pay for the defense of anyone who would “knock the crap out of” a peaceful protester. That is literally a solicitation of criminal assault.

The only threat of violence that has ever been exhibited at a Trump rally has come from his supporters. Not a single protester has ever been observed engaging in any violence, contrary to Trump’s bald-faced lie that some protesters were hitting people. So canceling the rally was the right thing to do because of the risk of Trump’s brownshirts assaulting peaceful protesters. And if voters in the Republican Party can’t see what awaits them if Trump is their nominee, they are either living in a fantasy world or they are hoping for the chaos and turmoil that Trump evokes.

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

Bill O’Reilly Covers For Donald Trump’s Fascism – And Guess Who He Blames

Posted by on March 10, 2016 at 2:42 pm. 4 Comments :

Fox News blowhard, Bill O’Reilly, is very upset that “some in the media, both left and right, are portraying Mr. Trump as a 1930’s type fascist, and his supporters as budding brownshirts.” Now why would anyone ever suggest such a thing about Donald Trump and his legion of glassy-eyed disciples?

Bill O'Reilly Donald Trump

Just because Trump has initiated a campaign of hate directed at Latinos, African-Americans, and Muslims in much the same way that Hitler demonized Jews; just because he has called for massive deportation programs for undesirables; just because he has promised to order the military to commit war crimes by targeting the families and children of terrorists; just because he advocates marking Muslims with badges and cataloging them in government databases; just because he has encouraged violence against Americans protesting at his rallies and promised to pay for the legal defense of his followers who assault them; just because of that, where would anyone get the idea that Trump and his supporters were reminiscent of Nazi fascists?

O’Reilly devoted his Talking Points Memo segment to defending Trump, his long-time personal friend, from critics who simply point out the truth about Trump’s repulsive hate mongering. He began by explaining the reasons why many Americans are supporting Trump. In O’Reilly’s view it is because of an array of hoary tropes that he and other lock-step conservatives have been lobbing at liberals for years. He rattled off these subjects as reasons for Trump’s popularity.

  • Attacks on police officers, labeling them racists who hunt down young black men.
  • A porous southern border where narcotics and people smuggling continue unabated.
  • A stagnant economy where workers have little bargaining power.
  • A growing jihadist terror threat that the Democratic Party refuses to define.
  • A Democratic president who, after he announces the beheading of an American citizen, goes out to play golf.
  • A culture that now demands political correctness even if it goes against sincerely held religious beliefs.
  • A legal system that may actually harm a business owner if he or she does not want to participate in a gay marriage.
  • A press corps that generally embraces liberalism.
  • An educational system dominated by teachers and administrators who often impose their view of the world on defenseless children.
  • A grievance industry that is often promoted by the media.

That reads like a program summary for a Rush Limbaugh radio show. It’s a fairly comprehensive itemization of the meritless wingnut griping that goes on everyday on Fox News. But it has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. This is just O’Reilly’s way of re-iterating his own festering laments and baselessly attributing them to Trump’s ascendancy in the GOP. And after laying out this nonsense, O’Reilly re-introduces Trump as the savior and a Messianic figure:

“In the face of all that an avenger named Trump has risen promising to stop the madness and giving blunt voice to millions of angry Americans.”

O’Reilly goes on to dismiss any relationship between Trump’s ultra-rightist agenda and the fascism it clearly recalls. He argues that Trump is merely representing a strain of “furious dissent.” That doesn’t remind anyone of Hitler, does it? And referring to the endorsement of Trump by America’s white supremacists, O’Reilly waves it off as merely “some bad people” exploiting his campaign. What O’Reilly fails to address is why Trump’s campaign is so ripe for exploitation by the KKK. Not stopping to consider that, he immediately shifts to a ludicrous comparison to Bernie Sanders.

“The same thing is happening with the Bernie Sanders crew. Some haters are supporting Bernie Sanders in order to tear down marketplace freedoms and inflict pain on prosperous Americans.”

Haters? The people O’Reilly is slandering as haters are the majority of Americans who are tired of wealthy elites (like O’Reilly) hoarding all of the economic opportunity and prosperity in the nation. Contrary to being motivated by hate, as Trump’s followers admit, the Sanders “crew” are driven by a desire to see all of their fellow citizens enjoy the benefits of our nation’s rich heritage. And what O’Reilly characterizes as inflicting pain on the prosperous is more like demanding that they pay their fair share. It can hardly be called pain if the Koch brothers are forced to get by on a mere $39 billion rather than $41 billion (the horror).

And here’s where it gets weird. O’Reilly concluded on the point that “charges of racism and fascism are easy smears designed to stop freedom of expression and stifle debate.” He, of course, would never resort to such a tactic and is visibly perturbed that others would dare to express themselves in such a repugnant manner. Well, that is until his next sentence:

“It’s funny, because the people that are doing this, they’re using techniques that the Nazis used. By them calling Trump a Nazi, and his supporters little brownshirts, they’re doing the same thing that Goebbels, who was the Minister of Propaganda, that Adolf and all of those boys did.”

That’s right, immediately after condemning people for calling Trump a Nazi (with ample justification), and asserting that such language was a tactic “designed to stop freedom of expression and stifle debate,” O’Reilly calls Trump’s critics Nazis. Is O’Reilly trying to stop their freedom of expression and stifle debate? His guest for the segment, Bernard Goldberg, giggled as he agreed with O’Reilly. Then he elaborated to say that “if their are any brownshirts in this country it’s liberals on college campuses.”

So now they’ve both called liberals Nazis after just complaining that such rhetoric was tantamount to suppression of speech. This is what passes for informed commentary on Fox News, the network that literally created Donald Trump and has gifted him with more than twice as much airtime as his Republican rivals. Having a close friend like O’Reilly is paying dividends for Trump, who is also afforded privileges on Fox News that other candidates are denied. For instance, live, uncut coverage of every stump speech; permission to phone in interviews; and uncritical reporting of his numerous, flagrant lies (see the Trump Bullshitopedia).

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

Trump knows that he has Fox News, and much of the rest of the press, wrapped around his abnormally short fingers. They are lapping up his bigotry in exchange for ratings. That was even admitted by the president of CBS who recently said that “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” And that pretty much sums up the treasonous attitude of the corporate media.

Is Tea Party Godfather Charles Koch Feeling The Bern?

Posted by on February 19, 2016 at 4:09 pm. 2 Comments :

The Washington Post (you know, that bastion of the so-called “liberal” media) just published an op-ed by Charles Koch of the infamous Koch brothers. The headline declared that “This is the one issue where Bernie Sanders is right.” While that’s a fairly generous admission, it is hardly representative of Koch’s actual worldview.

Koch Brothers Bernie Sanders

Koch begins his article by acknowledging the obvious – that he and Sanders “disagree on plenty when it comes to public policy.” Then he disingenuously asserts that he sees benefits in searching for common ground and greater civility.” That’s a bit difficult to believe coming from someone who has spent years bankrolling Teabaggers, the most uncivil movement of rightist malcontents in decades. Nevertheless, Koch sought to align himself with part of the Sanders platform of income inequality:

“The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.”

While criticizing policies of both parties that “helps perpetuate a cycle of control,” Koch also took the opportunity to lash out at the regulations that have been a staple of his anti-government agenda. And he remains opposed to the sort of reforms that make it possible for people rise out of poverty (i.e. ObamaCare, unions, increasing the minimum wage, non-discrimination in employment, parental leave, etc.).

Despite the facade of a conciliatory partner in advancing the interests of all Americans, Charles Koch and his brother David are devoted to the fraternity of the one-percent to which they belong. They enjoy the fruits of income inequality. They are ardent foes of environmental protection and programs to mitigate climate change. Even worse, they would abolish the EPA, even while their businesses are among the worst toxic polluters in the nation. They favor privatizing Social Security and Medicare. They create media front groups to spread right-wing propaganda. And they are the biggest supporters and beneficiaries of Citizens United.

In addition to all of the above, the Koch brothers virtually created the Tea Party. Groups like FreedomWatch and Americans for Prosperity are nothing more than surrogates for the disgruntled goofballs who dress up in tri-corner hats and carry racist signs with pictures of President Obama as a witch doctor. The Koch brothers have invested multi-millions of dollars in the Tea Party in an attempt to crush Democrats and replace them with the sort of hard-line, right-wing extremists that have produced gridlock in Congress. They lust for shutdowns of government even if it means sinking the economy or denying healthcare for 9/11 first-responders.

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

This article is just another component of their campaign to rehabilitate their public image, cleverly referred to as “The New Koch” by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. But, they are just as committed to their wingnut agenda as ever. They announced that they will spend nearly a billion dollars in the 2016 election cycle in support of conservative Republicans who promise to dismantle the government, leaving them free to pollute the planet and plunder the economy. So don’t let this faux Valantine to Bernie Sanders fool you. The Koch brothers are what they have always been: John Birch Society Libertarians with strong Ayn Rand leanings.

Donald Trump LOST To Hillary Clinton And Bernie Sanders In New Hampshire

Posted by on February 10, 2016 at 8:00 pm. 12 Comments :

The typhoon known as Donald Trump continues to be exaggerated by a media infatuated with a celebrity candidate whose psychotic fits are utterly unpredictable. He is covered obsessively by the press mainly because they are hoping to catch him in a juicy controversy or a slap-fight with an elderly widow.

To a certain extent the press has gotten exactly what they want. Trump’s behavioral meltdowns have already yielded tabloid gold. He has fought with Fox News, directed his supporters to “knock the crap out of” protesters, and called Ted Cruz a “pussy.” And for his reward the press provides him with uninterrupted attention that magnifies his wholly manufactured TV fiction persona.

Take the just concluded New Hampshire primary. Trump was declared the runaway winner in a rout that devastated his opponents. The shock registered by the media over his dominating electoral prowess went completely off the scale. It’s a typical exhibition of laziness by reporters who are incapable of putting information into context. So let me do it for them.

Trump-Clinton

Donald Trump received 35% of the Republican vote. That is indeed a significantly larger percentage than John Kasich, whose 14% earned him second place. However, it less than the 38% that Hillary Clinton got in her losing bid against Bernie Sanders (who drew a truly extraordinary 60%). This means that Clinton in defeat has greater support among Democrats than a victorious Trump does among Republicans.

What’s more, New Hampshire voters turned out in record numbers for this primary. As a result, Trump conned about 100,000 dimwitted voters to cast their lots with an overt racist and wannabe dictator. The Sanders total, however, bested that by 50%, with a 151,000 votes. Even Clinton’s losing effort came very close to Trump with 95,000 votes. And yet Trump is considered the phenomenon.

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

Everybody needs to take a breath, sit back, and reexamine what is taking place. Donald Trump is a blowhard who knows how to work the media refs to build himself up. He is only leading from within his own fractured party of crackpots in a large field of candidates that dilutes the anti-Trump vote. A more realistic assessment of Trump’s campaign will be possible when the contestants are whittled down to two or three (as they are for the Democrats). Until then, we can expect the media to wear their phony astonishment at Trump’s alleged success despite all the evidence that he’s a paper tiger pitching a reality TV character minus the reality.

Donald Trump’s NH Victory Brought To You By The So-Called Liberal Media

Posted by on February 9, 2016 at 9:03 pm. NO Comments :

The New Hampshire primary results are in and they tell us something far more significant than merely who won. There are some stark differences in the way the winners for each party managed to achieve their victories.

Fox News Donald Trump

The Republican race has been a seventeen ring circus for most of the past seven months. And the reality TV tenor of the campaign is due almost entirely to one man: Donald Trump. From the day he announced his candidacy with a hate-filled speech that castigated Latinos as rapists and murderers, to his embrace of and by white supremacists, Trump’s antics have served to expose Republican voters as ready to follow his racist, misogynistic crusade to the very gates of Hell.

Compare that to the Democratic race where, while there have been some sharp elbows thrown from time to time, for the most part it has been a campaign focused on issues and the differences between the candidates. Not once has either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders called the other a “loser” or a “p*ssy” or told any of their constituents to go “f**k themselves” (yep, Trump really did that).

However, the truly startling thing that the New Hampshire results reveal is the very lopsided role the media played a in how the campaigns progressed. Specifically, the television news coverage of the campaigns was strikingly different. As Media Matters reported in December, the three broadcast networks lavished Trump with an astonishing 234 minutes of coverage. And during the same period of time from the same networks, Sanders received 10 minutes of coverage. No, that is not a typo. In fact, Trump received more network coverage than all of the Democratic candidates combined, including non-candidate Joe Biden.

Then, when you add Fox News to the mix, Trump got another 23 hours of coverage in 119 appearances. Of course, the number for Sanders on Fox was zero. Even among other Republican candidates, none received even ten hours of airtime. Media Matters calculated the value of the airtime Trump was given at roughly $30 million, if he had to pay for it in advertising. Even Trump thought this was ridiculous and said so at a rally:

“Every time I go on television it’s gotta be live. It’s live. I said ‘Oh, can I have a rest please?’ Tonight it is live on Fox. Who likes Fox? I like Fox. It’s live on CNN. Who likes CNN? And it’s live on MSNBC, right? How come it always has to be live? Why don’t they just cover me like anybody else where they go the next day and they show little clips? Every time I speak it has to be live. It’s ridiculous, but it’s OK. Right? We have to suffer with it.”

The media has been playing into Trump’s hands by treating him as if he were Kim Kardashian and every public move or utterance had some prurient interest to their viewers. Even though his events rarely produced anything that was remotely newsworthy, the networks rushed to put him on live in the hopes that he might burst an artery or slap an elderly widow.

Consequently, Trump now brags that he has spent very little on his campaign but still achieved an important victory. The truth, however, is that he got tens of millions of dollars in free advertising that his rivals had to actually pay. His success was handed to him as gift by the media that he bitches about in every speech.

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

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, got his victory the old fashioned way – he earned it by raising funds from millions of supporters and communicating a positive message to appreciative voters. He had little to no help from the so-called “liberal” media. And this obvious disparity in coverage is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. That is, unless either Trump is caught in bed with a fourteen year old boy or Sanders agrees to appear on Dancing With The Stars.

Feel The Bern: Wall Street Exec Blames Bernie Sanders For The Stock Market Decline

Posted by on January 24, 2016 at 8:25 pm. 3 Comments :

If you’re looking for signs that establishment players are getting nervous about the possibility that the privileged classes may soon have to share the wealth and be held accountable for their crimes, then watch for them to develop a paranoia about the fall of Western civilization and blame it people who advocate for fairness and equal opportunity.

sanders-fear-the-bern

This week Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone Group, a global private equity and financial advisory firm, was interviewed in Davos at the annual World Economic Forum. When the subject came of the recently volatile stock market, Schwarzman offered his opinion that it was caused by three factors. The first was his assessment that the U.S. economy is slowing a little and concerns about China, which he said were overdone. The second were destabilizing world events including international hostilities and terrorism. And then there was . . .

“The third reason that we have unsettled markets is the fact that Bernie Sanders has become a viable candidate, at least in Iowa and New Hampshire. And the reason why that’s troubling is that he’s really on the far left, and we have a Republicans, on the other hand, who don’t inspire enormous confidence in terms of their ability, perhaps, to handle that job. So all of a sudden – and it really keys on this market collapse with Bernie rising as a viable candidate – that the rest of the world looks at America not the way America looks at America. For us it’s a local election. For the rest of the world it’s a global election. They depend on America to do the right thing.”

So it’s Sen. Sanders who is exerting his omnipotent control over the world economy? This feat of dominance is occurring even though not a single vote has been cast in the Democratic primary. That is a truly impressive demonstration of power. Who knew that an obscure senator from Vermont could wield such commanding control over the captains of industry and finance?

Apparently all it takes to roil the markets, according to Schwarzman, is a champion of average Americans becoming a “viable” candidate for president. Why that is perceived as such a destructive force wasn’t clearly explained. It seems to me that a world that depends on America doing the right thing would appreciate someone who wants to expand prosperity to as many people as possible. Although Schwarzman may have a point about Republicans that aren’t able to handle the job.

Sanders was asked about this revelation of his heretofore unknown dominion over the financial universe by Martha Radditz of ABC News. He literally laughed at the question and said…

“The reason that I am laughing is I fully admit to having a big ego, like many other politicians. But the idea that Bernie Sanders’s candidacy, because it has growing support all over this country, is unsettling world markets is absolutely absurd.”

Indeed it is. There are many reasons that the stock market has been antsy in the first weeks of this new year. What most credible economists cite is the dropping price of oil, a commodity whose value is determined by worldwide supply and demand. In that regard, what I have heard nobody mention, is what a great decision it was to decline to approve the KeystoneXL pipeline. The project’s advocates claimed that it would have substantially boosted the production of oil. That, we know now, would have exacerbated the current situation wherein there is a glut of oil that has caused the price to tank. So Keystone would have made things even worse.

What’s more, those who are panicking about what they regard as a stock market collapse are failing to put it into perspective. Even after the declines (of about 8%) in the past couple of weeks, the markets are still twice what they were when President Obama took office. That’s typically referred to as “correction” territory and not a crisis. Unless there is a Democratic president and Fox News is reporting on it, in which case it is a full-blown catastrophe.

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

The Wall Streeters may actually have something to worry about if Bernie Sanders is the next President of the United States. For that matter, they should worry about Hillary Clinton too. But their worries should have nothing to do with whether the world economy is going to crash. The truth is, as Clinton said recently, “The economy does better when we have a Democrat in the White House. That’s just a fact.” And therein lies the problem. Republicans are, by nature, averse to facts. They are far more likely to explain things by ascribing supernatural powers to their villains as well as their heroes. Maybe they should start a draft Voldemort campaign. Or maybe not. They already have Donald Trump.