Islamophobic Fox Fans Call For 9/11 Style Attacks In NY Over ‘Sharia’ Financing

Posted by Mark NC on May 21, 2016 at 4:56 pm. 5 Comments :

The Fox News community website, Fox Nation, is often a welcoming place for bigots and hate mongers. Their history of tolerating repulsive comments, on a site that claims to have moderators keeping the discourse civil, is testimony to their intention to embrace and encourage right-wing hostility (see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community). But the latest episode of wingnut spleen-letting may surpass anything that has come before it – and that’s saying something.

Fox Nation Frets Over Sharia Law

The article that incited the heinous comments below was a report in the New York Post (a corporate cousin to Fox News) that a Muslim developer was preparing to build a 43-story luxury condominium tower and Islamic cultural museum in lower Manhattan. The Post’s article was featured on Fox Nation with a somewhat more ominous headline that invokes Sharia Law. That’s part of what set off a rash of rhetorical racism, along with certain details that were predictable triggers for Fox’s intolerant audience.

First of all, the site of the development was once proposed as a site for an Islamic cultural center that Fox News branded as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” despite the fact that it was neither a mosque, nor at 9/11’s Ground Zero. Fox, along with a cacophony of conservative pundits and politicians, turned the issue into a bitter debate that fed on the bigotry of the anti-Muslims on the right. As a result, the center was never built. Now the same developer, Sharif El-Gamal, is hoping to complete a project that will bring jobs and commerce to the area. What a monster!

Secondly, the Fox brigades are disturbed by the method of financing for the project. Consistent with Islamic principles, El-Gamal sought financing from institutions that avoid the collection of interest on loans. And not surprisingly, the mention of “Sharia-compliant financing” in the article set off alarms at Fox Nation. However, there is nothing unsavory about this method of financing. In fact, it contains protections that arguably make it a more ethical way to deal with loans. [Here is a summary explanation of Sharia-compliant banking] Also, it is not a law and is no more an intrusion on American laws than keeping Kosher is for Jews.

Finally, the Fox Nationalist bigots were generally objecting to the fact that the project is headed by a Muslim (It’s a good thing they don’t know that the architect is a Mexican-American). Since they regard all Muslims as terrorists, they are certain that there is some ulterior motive that involves the murder of innocent Americans. And their response to that is to suggest replicating the tactics of terrorists themselves. They see no irony in advocating the sort of destruction that would result in countless fatalities throughout the vicinity, including the first responders who would rush to the scene to try to save lives. Here is sampling of the comments attached to the Fox Nation article:

Fox Nation Hankering For Another 9/11:

No commentary is needed for the nauseating remarks by the hateful Fox Nation mob. However, it is worth noting that the editors at Fox chose a photo of the devastation at the site of the World Trade Center, which has nothing to do with the new development or the article about it. They might have chosen to show a picture of the proposed high-rise, but then that wouldn’t have manufactured a controversy that would set their dimwitted readers’ blood to boil, which is Fox’s highest priority.

New York Post’s Latest Hillary Clinton Lie Refuted In Their Own Article

Posted by Mark NC on May 9, 2016 at 10:03 am. 5 Comments :

It takes a special kind of stupid to make an argument stating one thing, and then provide support for that argument that proves the opposite. Yet that’s exactly what the New York Post did Friday with an editorial attacking Hillary Clinton. The editorial carried the provocative headline: “Hillary’s latest email lie didn’t even last a week.”

This headline is not only accusing Clinton of lying with her response to a new question about her email, it also declares, without evidence, that she has lied about it previously. The Post expects their readers to blindly absorb their dishonest “reporting” and, lucky for them, they are right. Conservatives have demonstrated that they are more than willing to accept unsubstantiated BS as gospel without ever bothering to verify it.

In this editorial, the unidentified authors claim that Clinton gave a false answer to a question by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell who asked “Have you been contacted — or your representatives contacted — by the FBI to set up an interview.” Clinton answered “No,” which the Post immediately labeled a lie. They gave two “reasons” to back up their accusation, both of which don’t hold up.

First, they pointed out that “the FBI has already interviewed Clinton’s closest confidant, Huma Abedin, and other top aides.” So how does that support the claim that Clinton lied? She wasn’t asked if any of her associates were interviewed. She was asked if there had been any efforts to set up an interview for her. She said that there have not been, and all of the available information supports her answer. The Post has no information whatsoever that contradicts her.

The second reason the Post gave to “prove” that Clinton lied is that “officials close to the probe say Hillary’s to be interviewed in the next few weeks — which means she’s surely been contacted.” Actually the Post has no knowledge that Clinton has “surely been contacted” and are themselves lying by making up what they would like to think it “means” when a general statement is made that Clinton will be interviewed at some unspecified time in the future. It does not, in fact, mean what they say it does.

What the Post is not reporting (and that CNN did report) is that “so far investigators haven’t found evidence to prove that Clinton willfully violated the law the U.S. officials say.” That’s not consistent with the guilty-until-proven-innocent (and probably not even then) narrative that the conservative media is pushing. So don’t expect to see it in the Post or on Fox News.

As for the Post’s article, both of the reasons supplied in it to affirm that Clinton lied actually affirm that she told the truth. This is the sort of bogus perversion of journalism that is the hallmark of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The Post article was also published on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation which, along with the Post is owned by Murdoch.

The Trump Cult Marches On As His Disciples Obey Their Master’s Call

Posted by Mark NC on April 26, 2016 at 8:46 pm. 2 Comments :

The latest round of Republican primaries has returned the results that pretty much everyone expected. Donald Trump prevailed in the northeast corridor over his hapless GOP rivals who are only competing to challenge Trump at an open convention in July. The fact that Trump continues to pull out victories like this is evidence of how low the Republican Party has sunk into blind obedience to the overlord of reality TV celebrity worship. It’s behavior that they have learned faithfully from being loyal devotees of Fox News for so many years.

Trump’s disciples don’t care that he is a flagrant racist who has demonstrated his prejudice against African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and women. They aren’t put off by his promises to commit war crimes against women and children in Syria and Iraq. They let slide that he isn’t bothered by being compared to Hitler. And no matter how much he lies they just brush it off and keep applauding like slap-happy seals (See the Trump Bullshitopedia) They even applaud when he insults them as mindless baboons or threatens to incite riots.

It is that sort of unquestioning devotion that forms the foundation of every successful cult. And those components were built into Fox News from its inception. In an effort to document this phenomenon, News Corpse published a collection of articles that highlighted the deception, propaganda, and outright lies disseminated by the Fox News community website, Fox Nation. The second volume of this series was dubbed “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult Of Ignorance.” Every chapter is fully verified by reputable sources and exposes the website for its shameful dishonesty and lack of ethics. It reveals the concerted effort by wealthy and powerful media fabulists that is aimed at crippling the intelligence of the willfully dimwitted. It is a great resource for proving to your Fox-deluded friends and family what a den of deceit it is. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

Stay to to News Corpse for more insights into the media and its incestuous intersection with politics. Be sure to like us on Facebook. And here is where you can get your copy of Fox Nation vs. Reality:

Racists On Fox News React To The Harriet Tubman $20.00 Bill

Posted by Mark NC on April 21, 2016 at 3:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Like clockwork, all that needs to happen is for some news event to address something involving race that can be tied to the Obama administration and the bigots come slithering out from the crevices in the floor. The latest example of this is the long overdue initiative to place a woman on U.S. currency. The woman selected for the honor is the heroic former slave and abolitionist, Harriet Tubman. Oh, and she just happens to be black.

Leading the way, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News delivered a commentary (video below) that portrayed the decision to put Tubman on the $20.00 bill as an “awful” idea that amounts to “dividing the country.” Van Susteren blasted the plan in the most insulting terms, saying that “The Obama administration went stupid, and went stupid for no reason.” Then she offered her own alternative to put Tubman on a non-existent $25.00 bill instead, saying that it would be “the smart and easy thing to do.”

First of all, what would be smart or easy about minting a new bill just for the purpose of putting Tubman on it? It would waste millions of dollars to design, produce, and maintain, despite the fact that there is no demand for a denomination that’s $5.00 more than the twenty. That would make it a pretty stupid thing to do. And the only thing that is making any of this divisive is the right-wingers like Van Susteren who insist on dredging up controversy where there need not be any.

What’s more, segregating Tubman to a new, unwanted denomination smacks of a form of the “separate but equal” philosophy that was really just an excuse to practice discrimination. Van Susteren is effectively saying that Tubman isn’t fit for the currency that the rest of us white folk use. That reasoning has also been adopted by Ben Carson and Donald Trump who have both advocated for an even more devalued denomination for Tubman: the $2.00 bill.

Not surprisingly, the response to Van Susteren’s commentary by the cretins at the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, was an avalanche of racism. This has become a predictable aftereffect of any race-related news story (see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community). Here are just a few examples of the bigoted opinions that Fox fans are comfortable expressing when they are among their own kind:

Fox News Freak Out: Sesame Street Introduces Afghan Girl Muppet

Posted by Mark NC on April 9, 2016 at 12:52 pm. 6 Comments :

This week the venerable PBS children’s program, Sesame Street, made a historic addition to its cast of lovable characters. For the first time in its decades long run an Afghan girl will join the Muppets for its broadcast in the Afghanistan version of the show. Zari is six years old and is excited about the opportunities she will have to learn and make new friends. But not everyone feels the same way.

The news of Zari’s debut has produced the all too predictable rash of bigotry that we’ve all come to expect from the conservative hate mongers who believe that all Muslims are terrorists. Apparently this also applies to cloth puppets of children on educational TV. What they are afraid of was announced by the producers in this press release and video:

Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? What’s more, Sherrie Westin, Executive VP of Sesame Workshop, told reporters that Zari “is modeling for young girls that it is wonderful to go to school and that it’s OK to dream about having a career.” In a country where girls are often discouraged, or even forbidden, to attend school, this should be welcomed as progress toward a more inclusive society. It’s an example of American media having a positive influence on some of the more oppressive cultural aspects of other countries.

Unfortunately, the hatred that infects the right-wing in this country is at least as oppressive as the Taliban. A few of the headlines generated by conservative media include knee-jerk condemnations like “Sesame Street Uses New Muslim Muppet, Zari, To Indoctrinate Kids,” “Sesame Street Goes Halal, Incorporates Sharia Law & Islam Into New Episodes,” and “Sesame Street Afghanistan Gets New Female Muslim Puppet: ‘Asalaam Alaaikum'” Of course, much what they allege is simply untrue. Zari is identified as Afghan, not Muslim. And there is no indication that religion or Sharia Law will play any part in the character’s role on the program.

Some of the more heated criticisms of Zari are centered on what the wingnuts regard as hypocrisy for having a girl represented on the program despite the sexism that exists in that part of the world. This is an utterly absurd argument. First of all, if they were really worried about the place of women in Afghan society they should be thrilled that a TV show is working to improve the situation by advocating for more education and opportunity for girls and women. Secondly, it’s the wingnuts who are the hypocrites. They are as dismissive of women as many of the Muslims they castigate. Take a look at the type and tone of complaints they level at American women in politics, including Hillary Clinton. For the record, a ranking of the proportion of legislative seats held by women in 213 countries puts Afghanistan at 49. The United States is 94th – below Kenya (93), Saudi Arabia (92), and Pakistan (83), to name a few.

Nevertheless, the rightist bigots are flying off the rails with vile insults directed at a make-believe character in the form of an adorable puppet. They make insinuations about her being fitted with a suicide vest or preparing to engage in a jihad. This sort of xenophobic zealotry was particularly notable at the home of brain-dead bias, Fox Nation. As usual, the commenters there spoke for the community of American bigots with their customary flare for blind hatred (see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community).

Days Of Our Lies: Fox News Fantasizes About Hillary Clinton Abortions And Lesbianism

Posted by Mark NC on March 31, 2016 at 11:03 am. NO Comments :

A posting today on the Fox News community website Fox Nation contains the sort of tabloid scandal mongering that they usually save for the final days of election cycles that they are desperately losing. Perhaps their eagerness to sink to this low so soon is an admission that being saddled with noxious characters like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz has already ruined any chances for their victory in November.

The Fox Nationalists posted an article sourced to a suspiciously obscure website that featured a video interview with Sally Miller, a former Miss Arkansas who claims to have had an affair with then-Governor Bill Clinton. In the video (below) Miller makes some wild and wholly unfounded allegations about Hillary Clinton that are so outrageous they would seem implausible if they were plot lines in a daytime TV soap opera.

Miller leads off with charges that Clinton had several abortions until Bill convinced her that “if they were ever going to move up in politics they had to have a child.” That allegedly led to the birth of Chelsea, a purely political offspring whom Clinton, a confirmed feminist, didn’t want. In fact, Miller described Clinton, and most feminists, as “cold,conniving, bitches” who “don’t care about anyone but themselves” and “don’t like men.”

Miller went on to assert that the man-hating Clinton was a lesbian. When asked how she knew this, Miller laughed and said that “Bill told me.” Apparently the chatty governor also confided that in college Clinton and some other girls “experimented and she liked it.” Of course, there is no evidence that any of Miller’s gossipy ramblings are true. Not that there would be anything wrong with it if they were. These are the sort of allegations that are only regarded as insults by right-wing bigots and religious zealots. However, that just happens to be the audience that Fox is aimed at.

The source for Fox’s scandal-fest was The American Mirror, a website with no masthead, no identification of any publishers or editors, no mission statement, nothing to lend it any credibility whatsoever. The author attached to this article, however, does have a record. Kyle Olson is also the founder of an organization called the Education Action Group, a Koch brothers funded, anti-union front group for a conservative brand of education reform that primarily opposes teachers’ unions and public schools. Its reputation is a joke that includes nonsense like an investigation into “racist” peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at Portland schools. That piece of journalistic garbage was rated a “Pants on Fire” lie by PolitiFact.

These charges about Clinton are not new. They have been floating around the ultra-rightist mediasphere for years and were even ridiculed by the National Enquirer when Miller was trying to pitch her fantastical imaginings in a book that she was never able to get published due to her utter lack of credibility. But she did find allies among the crackpots and fringe-dwellers like Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge, who giddily embraced her bizarre ravings.

What’s new is that now Fox News has taken up her delusions and is passing them off as reality. Which tells you something about how severely degraded and abused the word “news” has become, particularly when in proximity to the word “Fox.”

How Fox News Uses Visual Messaging To Keep Their Audience Dumb And Angry

Posted by Mark NC on March 27, 2016 at 9:20 pm. NO Comments :

If there is one thing that Fox News is determined to do, it’s to make sure that their audience is fed a constant stream of lies. Their purpose is to insure that they are incapable of understanding the real world around them and remain in a perpetual state of outrage over the falsehoods that Fox disseminates.

Case in point: Today’s headline story on the Fox News community website, Fox Nation blasted the lede that “‘Our Openness To Refugees’ Is How We Fight ISIS: Obama Reiterates Pledge to Bring In 100,000 Muslim Refugees” There is so much wrong with both the text and the image associated with it that it requires a detailed analysis.

First of all, notice that the picture juxtaposes President Obama with a band of ISIS terrorists in a manner that nearly suggests he is leading their mission. That obvious bit of visual messaging aims to create an impression of Obama as a traitor who is aligned with the enemy. The allegation that Obama, or other Democrats and liberals, are terrorist sympathizers or worse is one that has been expressed explicitly by Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests. Just this weekend, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox to declare that Hillary Clinton could be considered a founding member of ISIS.

Additionally, the use of ISIS fighters in the image is a distortion of the accompanying text in that the story is about refugees, not terrorists. But Fox deliberately chose not to use refugees in the picture. By using ISIS fighters they imply that the refugees themselves are terrorists, which in fact is what Fox and other conservatives believe. That is their justification for opposing the humanitarian admittance of refugees into the U.S. And it mirrors the official positions of the two leading Republican candidates for president. Donald Trump has been saying for weeks that he would prohibit any Muslims from entering the country, while Ted Cruz has proposed surveilling the ones already here.

For the full measure of just how deplorable that message is you have to understand that the refugees are the victims of the terrorists. That’s why they are seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere. What Fox is saying is akin to associating Jews with the Nazis who tortured and murdered them. If Fox News, Trump, Cruz, et al, were around in the 1940s they would have called the Jews potential terrorists and forced them to remain in the region were they were being slaughtered.

Next we’ll look at the the headline on the article which purports to be quoting the President. But contrary to Fox’s account, Obama did not say that “‘our openness to refugees’ is how we fight ISIS.” What he said was that our openness to refugees is “another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our counter-terrorism work, and our diplomacy.” That’s an important distinction in that the humane treatment of refugees is just one part of a broader strategy to defeat the enemy militarily while also undermining their propaganda campaign. The Fox News, right-wing plan to insult our Muslim allies and stigmatize Muslim Americans will only help the enemy recruit new fighters. That’s the message Obama gave in his weekly address. He said in part (video below):

Finally, the headline on the article also lies about the President’s efforts to rescue refugees by saying that he is proposing to admit 100,000 refugees (Trump, in his pathologically lying way, has escalated that to 250,000). However, the current plans call for admitting 10,000, so Fox is only off by 90%. But misinforming their audience on this matter plays right into their continuing effort to demonize the refugees and make Americans afraid of an imaginary horde of potential suicide bombers. The truth is that entering the U.S. as a refugee is perhaps the most difficult path to entry. It takes going through a rigorous array of inspections that can take years to complete. Why would a terrorist subject himself to a process that takes so long and is likely to result in his capture?

That’s a question that Fox News will never bother to address because they are only interested in portraying refugees as clandestine evildoers. And it’s why they construct these graphical lies in order to deceive their all too willingly ignorant audience. Keeping them dumb and angry is the core mission of the Fox News cultists.

Donald Trump Defenders Freak Out, Blame MoveOn.org And George Soros For Protests

Posted by Mark NC on March 15, 2016 at 11:39 am. 8 Comments :

The increasing incidences of violence at rallies for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are unambiguously incited by Trump’s own rancid rhetoric and open encouragement of hostility. No one can reasonably deny that Trump’s vocal approval of punching protesters in the face or carrying them out on stretchers doesn’t have an effect on his already enraged minions.

Nevertheless, the Trump Defense League is in full denial mode as they seek to absolve their Dear Leader of any responsibility for the ruckus that occurs only where Trump treads. They argue that the protesters are a conspiratorial lot that have been assembled by leftist overlords for the purpose of destroying The Donald’s crusade to make America hate again.

At the top of the list of puppet masters is the nefarious MoveOn.org. The Trump Defenders are convinced that MoveOn is orchestrating every one of the individuals who separately engage in acts of dissent at Trump’s rallies across the country. Sean Hannity is among the MoveOn accusers saying that their “liberal fascism” is behind a campaign to “silence any voice that liberals disagree with.” Hannity’s Fox News comrade Bill O’Reilly is also on the anti-MoveOn bandwagon saying that they are “far-left agitators who do not believe in freedom of speech.”

On Fox & Friends they hosted rightist crackpot Wayne Allen Root who tarred Trump’s hecklers as “leftist radicals, most of them paid protesters by MoveOn.org.” Also on the program was Peter Johnson, Jr, Roger’s Ailes’ personal attorney, who described MoveOn as sowing “the seeds of terror.” Trump’s own spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, charged MoveOn with initiating the violence saying that “They go into these Trump rallies and they start swinging and kicking.” And Trump surrogate Sarah Palin colorfully insulted the protesting as “punk ass little thuggery stuff.”

What almost all of these critics added to their harangues was that MoveOn is not just some obscure band of subversives. No, it is a cog in an evil plot managed by a notorious super-villain. And fortunately they have one with an unsettling Hungarian accent and a few billion dollars to finance his dastardly schemes. That’s right, it’s George Soros and he’s back. Whenever the right needs to manufacture a nebulous and all-consuming dread, it trots out the specter of Soros.

In the ensuing frenzy of indictments of MoveOn as the right’s imaginary architect of acrimony, virtually every conservative media reference to them is prepended with the Soros label. If you didn’t know better you might come away thinking that the full, official name of the activist organization is “the Soros-funded MoveOn.org.” However, that’s an indicator of just how obsessed the right is with dangling Soros’ name to frighten their dimwitted throngs. Because if any of them were interested in reality they could easily look up the facts and discover that, while Soros did make sizable donations to MoveOn in the past (about $2.5 million), he has not done so since 2004. Apparently twelve years is not enough time for conservatives at Fox News and elsewhere to retire the “Soros-funded” branding.

As another example of the right’s fetish, the wingnut rag, Daily Caller (which is run by Fox’s Tucker Carlson) posted a bombshell exclusive that heralded their discovery that a Soros “associate” had contributed $200,000 to Gov. John Kasich’s presidential super PAC. That article was intended by the uber-rightist Daily Caller to stigmatize the comparatively moderate Kasich as the left’s favorite Republican. However, the Soros associate identified in the piece was Scott Bessent, a longtime Republican donor who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP candidates, PACs, and party committees. His donation to Kasich’s campaign was from personal funds and had nothing to do with George Soros. But that didn’t stop much of the wingnut mediasphere from blasting out headlines about Soros bankrolling Kasich.

This is emblematic of the mindset of the right that needs cartoonish demons to invoke the horror of an amorphous liberal threat. They need to be frightened into mobilizing against a monstrous enemy that will thrust the world into chaos and oblivion. How many times have you heard the right swear that Obama’s election, or reelection, or ObamaCare, or Climate Change mitigation, or immigration, or [fill in the scary blank], would doom America and the world to extinction? So rather than recognize the glaring evidence of Trump’s incitation to riot, right-wingers point their bony fingers to George Soros, or Saul Alinsky, or ACORN, or Barack Obama, or the armies of gay-married, Muslims on food stamps who are coming for your guns and fossil fuels. Be AFRAID!

Not to be left out, the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, joined in with a post linked to the “Moonie” Washington Times that feverishly proclaimed “Moveon.Org Raising Funds from Trump Protests, Warns More Disruptions to Come.” The article alleges a frightful conspiracy that is really nothing more than the standard fundraising of a non-profit group that is asking for three bucks to continue their public service activities. There is nothing in it that even remotely implies advocating any form of physical harm to persons or property. To the contrary, MoveOn is, and always has been, committed to peaceful dissent. And their current anti-Trump campaign is no different. Contrast that with the Fox Nation audience that has once again demonstrated their vile racism and embrace of volence (see The Collected Hate Speech Of The Fox News Community).

Fear Mongering Racists At Fox News Promote Voter Fraud Lies – Again

Posted by Mark NC on February 23, 2016 at 1:43 pm. 2 Comments :

The American media obsession with hair-raising tabloid journalism is responsible for lowering the political IQ of the nation. As an example, the wholly manufactured debate over voter fraud keeps popping up whenever there is a lull in stories about Hillary Clinton murdering U.S. ambassadors or if Donald Trump goes a couple of hours without saying something pitifully stupid.

Yesterday at the Fox News community website, Fox Nation, they linked to a story from the National Review that once again raised allegations of non-existent illegal voters invading polling places across the nation. This zombie myth has been debunked repeatedly but continues to surface in the conservative press that doesn’t have anything better to do than lie about fearsome minorities plotting to steal America away from its rightful, white Christianist owners. The headline blared that “The Obama Administration Wants To Make Sure Non-Citizens Vote In The Upcoming Election.”

This goes somewhat beyond the run of the mill dishonesty where they merely complain that President Obama opposes unnecessary voter ID laws. In this article, by long-time voting fraud alarmist Hans von Spakovsky, the President is accused of wanting to “make sure” that illegal votes are cast by nefarious foreigners. This would make him an accomplice to the crime. Spakovsky wades into the weeds of arcane legalistic rhetoric containing baseless allegations of conflict of interest from unnamed sources. The crux of his argument centers around a wingnut lawsuit…

Spakovsky characterizes the dispute as an effort to prevent non-citizens from voting illegally (something that virtually never happens) by imposing identification requirements for prospective registrants. In fact, what the lawsuit aims to achieve is to prevent Democrats from voting. What the article leaves out entirely are the specific requirements proposed in Kansas by their ultra-rightist Secretary of State Kris Kobach and other GOP-led states. The consequences of the policies advocated by Spakovsky and his ilk resulted in some 40,000 voters being removed from the voting rolls in Kansas. They justified this on the basis of having found seven names of undocumented residents on those rolls, none of whom ever cast a vote. And guess who most of those 40,000 disenfranchised voters were: minorities, students, low-income workers, and other Democratic leaning constituents.

In addition to having no documented evidence of voter registration fraud or illegal voting, even after pouring through hundreds of thousands of votes, the voter suppressors themselves were found to be fraudulent. Both Spakovsky and Kobach were called out in a PolitiFact analysis as falsely representing data on illegal voting. This is the sort hypocrisy we are dealing with. And this is something they have been doing for years in an attempt to put up roadblocks for voters they don’t happen to like. Be watchful as November approaches because they aren’t through with this yet.

Stupid Polling Tricks: Fox News Hypes Absurd Poll Claiming That Trump Leads Big With Latinos

Posted by Mark NC on February 13, 2016 at 3:08 pm. 3 Comments :

One of the most bizarre tangents in the 2012 election was the effort to spin all the polls showing President Obama ahead as deliberately distorted by a vast conspiracy of nefarious pollsters. They set about to “unskew the polls” through various methods of mathematical mischief. But all they ended up doing was creating a false impression of Obama’s weakness that left them shocked by his eventual landslide victory. And that willful self-deception is still in play today.

Over at Fox Nation, the Fox News community website, they are featuring an article with the dubious headline “Poll: Trump Leads Big With Latinos.” However, there are a few details about this assertion that Trump is leading big (or as Trump would say, “bigly”) that have been left out.

The Fox Nation item linked to an article in The Daily Beast by conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr., that opened with a pertinent fact that the Fox Nationalists omitted from their headline. The Latinos in the poll were not from the population at large, but were exclusively Republicans. So whatever lead is alleged has to be put into the context that most Latinos (about 75%) are Democrats and, therefore, are not represented in this poll. The remainder of the article sought to explain why the premise of Latinos supporting Trump was not insane.

The most important of the omissions, however, was the fact that the poll was conducted on behalf of the ultra-conservative American Federation for Children. This benignly-named organization, according to Source Watch, is “a conservative 501(c)(4) advocacy group that promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other avenues.” And ALEC is closely associated with the Koch brothers. So right off the bat the integrity of this poll should be brought into question but, of course, it was not. In fact, the poll was distributed throughout the right-wing-echo chamber to outlets like the New York Post and Breitbart News.

In addition to the the poll’s partisan scope of respondents, the sample size of Latinos was hardly sufficient to draw any accurate conclusions. The folks at Latino Rebels drilled down into the polling data and discovered how weak the case is for the claim that Trump is popular among Latino voters. The sample size was so small that it took only 21 respondents to produce the 38% allegedly favoring Trump. A reputable pollster would decline to release the results of such a thinly supported survey.

This is reminiscent of another poll recently touted by Trump that claimed that “Minorities Line Up Behind Donald Trump.” In that laughably useless poll there were just four respondents that made up Trump’s 40% advantage (that’s 4 out of 10). So this new poll actually improves on that abject silliness to become merely ordinary silliness.

The Republican Party knows that they have to attract more Latino votes, as they noted in their post-2012 “autopsy.” But they still aren’t demonstrating that they have any idea how to do that while maintaining a thoroughly anti-Latino agenda. The RNC has banned the biggest Latino news network, Univision, from hosting any GOP debates, and Trump said that he would nix Telemundo (which is currently scheduled to co-sponsor an upcoming debate with CNN). And despite all of this Trump still insists that he will win the Latino vote, and the African-American vote too. Yeah, sure he will.

Fox Nation Frets Over Sharia Law

Fox Nation Hankering For Another 9/11:

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