Roseanne vs. Trump: You Can Lose Your Job If You’re a Racist – Unless You’re the President

Posted by Mark NC on May 29, 2018 at 1:23 pm. 2 Comments :

The media is buzzing over the surprise cancellation of Roseanne. Not that it wasn’t warranted, just that corporations making a fortune off of disgusting celebrities usually find ways to justify preserving their revenue stream. ABC deserves credit for doing the right thing in this case.

Roseanne’s tweet on Tuesday was about as repulsive an act of overt racism as you’re ever likely to see by such a well known pubic figure. The deleted tweet likened former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett to an ape. That isn’t a joke, as Roseanne tried to use as an excuse. It’s a window into her rotting soul. It’s no wonder that ABC’s announcement of the cancellation referred to Roseanne’s remarks as “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” Even her co-star and producer, Sara Gilbert, blasted Roseanne for the comments that have made them all unemployed (which sadly includes many innocent people in the cast and crew).

But Roseanne’s racism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She is a player in of the Age of Trump wherein bigots have become emboldened to proudly proclaim their foul prejudices. She is comfortable enough to not only entertain these thoughts, but to say them out loud. It is a state of mind that is emblematic of professional racists like David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan – and Donald Trump.

The difference between Roseanne and Trump, however, is that she is subject to her show being cancelled as a consequence of her nauseating behavior. But Trump still resides in the White House despite having done the same thing as Roseanne, only many times more and often worse. His five year obsession with the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and thus ineligible to be President, was what Trump used to boost his political aspirations. His speech announcing his candidacy was rife with bigoted expressions about Latinos.

And if all of that weren’t bad enough, Trump courted and embraced the support of virulent racist and neo-Nazi groups. He retweeted memes from Klan-affiliated people and Hitler supporters. He even called fascist protesters in Charlottesville “fine people.”

These are sentiments that Trump and Roseanne share. They both have toxic personalities with malicious intent. Earlier on Tuesday Roseanne was posting horrendous lies about Chelsea Clinton and George Soros. She first stated falsely that Chelsea was married to a Soros nephew. After being corrected by Chelsea, Roseanne made heinous allegations about Soros working with the Nazis. That’s not only untrue, it’s stupid in the extreme. Soros was a thirteen year old Jewish refugee at the time. But that didn’t stop Don, Jr. from retweeting Roseanne’s bile.

It’s no wonder that Trump and Roseanne get along so well. They have bonded in the same way that Klan members do. They have all the same mental deficiencies and hate all the same people. It will be interesting to see how Trump responds to his friend’s cancellation. Will he defend her and attack the “liberal” media? Will he accuse Obama and his “Deep State” cabal of having gotten her fired? Or will he say nothing at all about her repulsive comments, thereby giving them his passive approval?

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

One more thing: ABC Television is owned by the Walt Disney Company. Disney is currently trying to complete the acquisition of 21st Century Fox (most of the entertainment businesses, not including Fox News). Will Trump intercede to block the acquisition as he has done with AT&T and Time Warner? He is certainly that spiteful and unconcerned about the law. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Trump held a rally in Nashville Tuesday night and never mentioned Roseanne. And he hasn’t tweeted anything in over 20 hours. Apparently he isn’t offended by his fellow racist’s comments. Plus, Roseanne has been tweeting up a storm after saying that she was leaving Twitter. Including several affirmations of her disgusting lies about Soros. Also, I facetiously speculated that Trump might blame Obama for Roseanne’s cancellation. But Roseanne herself did so, retweeting this:

UPDATE 2: Trump finally responded by whining about not getting his own apology from ABC “for the HORRIBLE statements made” about him.” Poor thing. That’s because all of the horrible things said about him are true. But while obsessing over himself (as usual) he said nothing critical about Roseanne’s racist remarks. And that’s because he probably agrees with them.

Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018

Fox News PANICS Over New Voter Fraud Plot They TOTALLY Made Up

Posted by Mark NC on October 26, 2016 at 3:41 pm. 6 Comments :

Seeking to prop up Donald Trump’s frantic and baseless cries of a “rigged” election, Fox News has their fiction writers working overtime. This morning on Fox & Friends the “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited Betsy McCaughey to expound on a new theory. McCaughey is best known for having coined the term “death panels” which Sarah Palin made famous. It became PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year“ for 2009.

McCaughey’s latest fiction is the charge that perennial wingnut boogieman, George Soros, is clandestinely maneuvering to steal the election from Trump. The plot alleges that voting machines manufactured by a company he controls are being used across the country. Fox host Steve Doocy lays out the conspiracy in a typically hysterical fashion (video below):

Doocy: “Donald Trump has made the rigged system a centerpiece in his campaign. And now there are new concerns after a report showing that 16 U.S. states, 16 of them, have used voting machines tied to leftist billionaire George Soros in the past […] tied directly to George Soros and his personal quest for open borders.”

McCaughey: “That’s right. This really bears investigating. Because Smartmatic, this UK company, one of the top guns there, Lord Mallach-Brown, is very involved with George Soros’ left-wing globalist enterprises, many of which are trying to tilt elections in Europe and in the United States.”

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? And it would be except for the fact that none of it is true. Soros has no financial involvement with Smartmatic whatsoever, and never has. The actual owner sits on the board of Soros’ Open Society Foundation along with dozens of other board members. That hardly equates to a direct connection to the voting machine manufacturer. But that didn’t stop distraught Trump supporters from launching a petition on the White House website demanding that Congress “meet in emergency session about removing George Soros owned voting machines.” At the time of this writing it had 89,000 signatures, on its way to a goal of 100,000.

However, that’s not even the most ridiculous part of this lame attempt at scandal mongering. The Smartmatic machines in question are not being used in the United States at all. Not a single one will be used in any state in the 2016 election. So Fox News, and nearly 90,000 crackpot conservatives, are incensed and determined to rid America of something that doesn’t exist.

Not satisfied with making unhinged allegations about voting, Mcaughey continued her rant to assert that mentally ill and homeless people are being paid to cause violence at Trump events. She doesn’t bother to provide any proof of that, and Doocy doesn’t ask for any. She further claims that:

“There is already an airtight case against Soros trying to tilt this election, steal this election, using his money. He’s very close to Hillary Clinton. He is pouring millions of dollars into third party organizations like the Super PAC, Priorities USA.”

To be clear, McCaughey is now criticizing the Super PACs that were set loose by the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. Welcome to the progressive movement, Betsy. Liberals have been fighting that decision for years. But don’t expect her to have the same sense of outrage over the Koch brothers or the many other financiers of right-wing PACs. For the record, Soros’ own son started a Super Pac to end Super PACs.

What we can expect is for Fox News to get ever more absurd with far-fetched fairy tales in the few remaining days of this campaign. They are desperate and morose and ready to fling themselves off of rooftops. So maybe they can be forgiven for exhibiting signs of acute dementia.

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

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).

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

2014: An Epic Year For Conservative Crackpot Conspiracy Theories

Posted by Mark NC on December 29, 2014 at 12:29 pm. 2 Comments :

Recalling the bygone year, there were enough examples of political foolishness, public embarrassment, and unabashed propaganda, to fill a trainload of FEMA caskets. But nothing comes close to boggling the mind like conspiracy theories rooted in nothing but psychotic paranoia and partisan dementia.

News Corpse has covered much of what the right-wing media has attempted to pass off as legitimate news, but was actually evidence of severe cognitive failure. So, as a reminder of 2014’s most ludicrous departures from reality, here is a compilation of some of the best (worst?) excretions from the imagination of the conservative hive mind.

CONSPIRACY: President Obama Is Trying To Impeach Himself

The evil genius in the White House orchestrated the whole Obama-hate campaign from its earliest days in 2008 just so that he would be able to use impeachment, which is every president’s dream, as an election strategy six years into his presidency. He had the foresight to anticipate that his anti-America agenda, developed in concert with the Muslims and Marxists in his inner circle, would make the 2014 midterms so difficult that he would need something positive, like having himself prosecuted before Congress for high crimes and misdemeanors, in order to stem the tide of opposition that would rise up.

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

Ben Carson Fears That Obama Will Declare Himself President for Life.

The United States and its democratic system has endured for over 200 years, through economic catastrophes, civil and world wars, Nixonian corruption, and assassinations. Yet Carson thinks that it may all soon be over because of our present economy (with it’s soaring stock market, record profits, and low unemployment), and a band of desert rats 8,000 miles away?

Glenn Beck Asserts That Obama Purposely Planted Ebola In Dallas

Obviously President Obama’s agenda centers around the fact that he hates Dallas so much that he arranged to have an Ebola-infected Liberian fly there and die. […] First and foremost, it is not true that Dallas “doesn’t particularly care for the President.” In 2012 Obama was reelected with 57% of the vote from Dallas County. That’s a larger margin than he won nationally. Obama also beat McCain in Dallas by the same amount in 2008.

Steve Doocy Discovers A Mysterious Photo Of Two Men With One Pair Of Legs.

Doocy: Fox News Alert: New questions about those two Iranian men who boarded flight 370 with stolen passports. Did somebody Photoshop this picture of them, because they both appear to have the same legs. That’s leading many to believe there is a cover-up happening. […] The Malaysians are saying ‘No, we didn’t Photoshop or anything like that. They had a Xerox copy and part of the guy on the left was put on top of the duplicate of the guy on the right. Do you buy that?

According To “Doctor” Keith Ablow, Obama Orchestrated The World Cup To Distract From [???]

Somehow Obama orchestrated FIFA’s scheduling of the quadrennial games to coincide with whatever scandal is presently infecting Ablow’s brain so that the American people, who usually ignore soccer, won’t notice that FEMA has already begun incarcerating Tea Party leaders and the EPA is deploying new Pentagon technology to increase global temperatures. What a devious plot our Kenyan in the White House has devised.

Conservative Media Freak Out Over Obama’s Plan To Grant Amnesty To 34 Million Illegal Aliens

The usual conservative media mouthpieces are reporting that there is a plot afoot by the Obama administration to grant amnesty to some 34 million “illegal” aliens soon after the midterm election. To put that number into perspective, that’s more than three times as many undocumented immigrants as are currently estimated to be in the United States. It’s a third of the entire population of Mexico. If they all occupied a new state it would be the second most populous state in the country after California with 38 million.

Louie Gohmert Accuses Comcast Of Attempting To Silence Glenn Beck

Gohmert found an angle to question the [Comcast/Time Warner] merger that only he could have dreamed up. He believes that Comcast is engaged in a conspiracy to silence Glenn Beck. And Al Gore is in on it along with Al Jazeera who “wanted to get their Sharia law push into the United States.”

Pat Caddell Says That It Is Republicans That Want The IRS To Go After The Tea Party

Did the Republicans infiltrate the IRS and orchestrate a strategy to deny Tea Partiers tax-exempt status? Did they conduct sham hearings in the House, led by the crusading committee chair (and recidivist criminal) Darrel Issa, all the while maneuvering secretly to oppress Tea Party organizations and cast the blame on Democrats?

GOP Rep Tells Fox News That Obama Plans To Flood U.S. With Foreign Ebola Patients

The plot was discovered by the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, who claims to have confidential information that came to him via an “inside source” within the administration. Naturally he takes this skimpy, unverifiable gossip to Megyn Kelly of Fox News. The alarmist anxiety of Rep. Goodlatte is typical of the fear mongering that Republican politicians and pundits engage in so frequently.

Fox News Imagines Another Covert Plot Against Rick Perry (And America) By George Soros

Brent Bozell’s op-ed for Fox News is titled “Mainstream media censors Soros’ connection to Rick Perry indictment.” He begins his bill of peculiars by alleging that the media has suppressed the truth about Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), the group that originally filed the complaint against Perry. Bozell claims that “the group responsible for that indictment had received a half million dollars” from Soros. However, there is a very good reason that the press failed to disclose this information: It isn’t true.

Fright-Wing News: Fox News Reports, As Fact, The Missing Libyan Planes Hoax

Fox News anchor Jon Scott introduced a segment saying “A potentially terrifying scenario is playing out as we approach September 11. Nearly a dozen airplanes are missing – flat out missing – from an airport in Tripoli, raising new fears of the possibility of another terror attack from the air.”

OMG! That is truly terrifying. I can almost hear the roar of a dozen jet engines filling the sky with thunderous evil as they aim for defenseless skyscrapers packed with unsuspecting victims. Why doesn’t Obama raise the threat level to “Unrestrained Panic” and evacuate America’s cities? Perhaps because the story is not true.

Fun With Rush: Limbaugh Explains How The Dreaded Polar Vortex Was Created By Liberals

El Rushbo has dusted off his fake degree in meteorology to explain to his dittohead audience how something that has been studied for decades was just invented by some Democrats this week.

Limbaugh: So, ladies and gentlemen, we are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country. And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented. Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have. It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’ The dreaded polar vortex. […] Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week.

And there you have it. Just a taste of the insanity that has infected one of America’s two major political parties. And all of it occurring in just one hilarity-packed year. The only thing that makes these frighteningly absurd episodes of psychosis even more disturbing, is that in 2015 these are the folks who will be in charge of both the United States House of Representatives and Senate. So happy new Year America, and good luck. You’re gonna need it.

Fox News Imagines Another Covert Plot Against Rick Perry (And America) By George Soros

Posted by Mark NC on August 24, 2014 at 4:07 pm. 6 Comments :

The folks at Fox News are on the case of yet another scheme by super-villain George Soros who seems to be at the helm of every evil deed that Fox stumbles over. This time they have dispatched Brent Bozell, founder and president of the uber-rightist media watch-mongrel, Media Research Center (MRC), to pull the curtain aside on the Soros machine and reveal that he is the puppet master behind the indictment of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

For more delusional nonsense from Fox News…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Bozell’s op-ed for Fox News is titled “Mainstream media censors Soros’ connection to Rick Perry indictment.” He begins his bill of peculiars by alleging that the media has suppressed the truth about Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), the group that originally filed the complaint against Perry. Bozell claims that “the group responsible for that indictment had received a half million dollars” from Soros. However, there is a very good reason that the press failed to disclose this information: It isn’t true.

First of all, TPJ is not responsible for the indictment. They merely filed a complaint that would have been dismissed if it were without merit. It was the Grand Jury, impaneled by a Republican prosecutor who was appointed by a Republican judge, that brought the indictment. As usual, if Republicans are alleged to have broken a law it is always the fault of Democrats. That includes GOP governors Perry, Chris Christy, Scott Walker, Bob McDonnell, and Rick Scott. Detect a pattern there?

Secondly, TPJ never received $500,000 from George Soros. Since Bozell failed to cite his source for that allegation, I had to track it down myself. As it turns out it was reported by the Business & Media Institute (BMI), which just happens to be a division of Bozell’s MRC. Fancy that. BMI describes their mission as being “devoted solely to analyzing and exposing the anti-free enterprise culture of the media.” Searching further I did find a $500,000 donation from the Open Society Institute, which was founded by Soros, to a coalition of groups that came together to ensure that stimulus funds were well spent. From their press release…

“The Open Society Institute today announced a $500,000 grant to groups in Texas to monitor stimulus spending, encourage public participation in state-level decisions, and advocate for an equitable distribution of recovery funds. […] The coalition includes Texas Impact, Texans Together, the Sierra Club, Texas Legal Services, La Fe Policy Research and Education Center, Public Citizen, the Center for Public Policy Priorities and Texans for Public Justice.”

OK then, TPJ was the beneficiary of some amount of largess from Soros, but certainly not half a million dollars. Even if the donation was divided evenly among the members (unlikely because groups like the Sierra Club and Public Citizen are so much larger than TPJ), it would have amounted to only $62,500. It was intentionally dishonest for Bozell to imply that TPJ received the whole amount. Another detail that he left out was that this donation was made five years ago (November 2009). That was long before TPJ had filed its complaint against Perry and even before any of the issues cited in the complaint had occurred.

No objective person could conclude that an organization that received a small portion of a donation five years prior was still beholden to that donor. But Bozell implausibly proclaims that he “wasn’t in the least bit surprised to learn the Soros machine’s fingerprints were all over this brazen, partisan ploy. It’s what they do.” How Soros’ fingerprints got all over an event that took place many years after he made a donation can only be attributed to his well-known omnipotence and clairvoyant powers. Either that or Bozell’s well-known paranoia and aversion to the truth.

Bozell closed by saying that “In this case, the media have gone beyond mere bias and are complicit in the Soros machine’s scheme to take down a conservative leader.” And with that he comes full circle to branding the entire controversy as a Soros scheme. No longer is it a just a partisan ploy by democrats. Bozell has named the perpetrator and his accomplices in the media. And with the help of Fox News this delusional fabrication will become a fact in the minds of wingnuts across America.

Shadowy Koch Brothers-Backed Group Links Up With Fox News To Sway Midterms

Posted by Mark NC on May 20, 2014 at 4:50 pm. 3 Comments :

As the midterm elections heat up this year, Fox News will begin to shift their attention from hysteria involving Benghazi to hysteria involving Democratic candidates and campaigns. Not that their fictionalized Benghazi horror stories won’t be a part of the mix, but the selection will be expanded to include more outright politicking.

The prelude to this coming torrent of anti-liberal electioneering was evident today in a Fox News report that warned that a “Shadowy Soros-backed group readies $40M war chest for midterms.” George Soros, of course, is one of the right’s favorite bogeymen to frighten their dimwitted audience into quivering subservience. Just the mention of his name produces Tea-filled goosebumps. As usual, though, Fox News presents a thoroughly dishonest accounting of the facts, while simultaneously concealing the sources of their reporting and their prejudices.

For more Fox News lies…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

The first notable divergence from the truth is that the group that Fox News is referencing in their report is not a “Soros-backed” group. The story, by Lachlan Markay of the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon, is about the Democracy Alliance, an association of liberal donors who contribute to organizations that further their shared goals. George Soros is a member of the association. He is not a founder, a director, a board member, an executive, a staffer, and does not hold any other position of management or authority. He is merely one of about 100 members with no more influence than any of the others. By referring to the association as “Soros-backed” Fox is deceptively trying to convey that Soros has some special power or control that fits with their nightmare vision of an omnipotent Soros-run world.

Secondly, the revelation that some well-heeled Democrats are engaged in activities that advance the principles in which they believe is not exactly news. Nevertheless, it made headlines on Fox and was hyped as an “exclusive” by the drooling Beaconites. Much of the information in the story was previously known and published, including the names of the people connected to the Democracy Alliance and the organizations that received funding from them.

Even the dollar amounts were not particularly newsworthy. When it was reported by Politico just a couple of weeks ago that the two Koch brothers are embarking on a “$125 Million spending spree,” the $40 million dollars being raised by a group of more than 100 Democrats seems rather paltry by comparison. Yet Fox News goes into full-frenzy mode about the Democracy Alliance, and fails to report the Koch brothers’ activities at all. Additionally, it should also be noted that the $125 million Koch budget, which Politico described as “unprecedented,” is attributed solely to their Tea Party front group, Americans for Prosperity. They will surely spend far more than that through their broad network of conservative advocacy groups and think tanks.

Thirdly, the Washington Free Beacon is itself the creation of Republican Party honchos and is closely affiliated with the billionaire Koch brothers, a relationship that the Beacon is careful to keep under wraps. So the fake outrage expressed in this story about Soros must be weighed against the fact that the news entity reporting it is snugly in bed with the Koch brothers who oppose Soros. That kind of conflict of interest obliterates any credibility that the Free Beacon might have brought to the story.

Finally, the notion that there is a substantive equivalence between the philanthropic work of George Soros and the members of the Democracy Alliance, as compared to the single-minded self-interest of the Koch brothers is patently absurd. News Corpse recently highlighted the distinctions in an article that sized up the differences between right and left wing millionaires:

“For one thing, the Republican rich can usually be found bankrolling people and projects that benefit them personally or professionally. Thus the Kochs’ fixation on opposing unions and denying climate change is closely aligned with their exploitative and polluting business interests. Well-off Dems, on the other hand, commonly finance more philanthropic endeavors (civil rights, environment, aid to the poor) that aim to improve the quality of life without necessarily enriching themselves.”

This is just the latest example of the conservative media feeding on itself, as a Koch-associated news enterprise funnels its propaganda to Fox News, and all of them demagogue about how awful it is that a billionaire named Soros is helping liberal groups, without ever disclosing their own affiliation with the Koch brothers. It just illustrates how dishonest the right-wing wags are, and how shamelessly they will exploit their power to invent news stories and distribute them among themselves and other friendly outlets like Fox.

George Soros Talks About Civil Society: Fox News FREAKS OUT!

Posted by Mark NC on May 13, 2014 at 12:20 pm. 3 Comments :

This week has already started off with more than its share of absurdly delusional ravings from the usual roster of right-wing fear mongers. Karl Rove is asserting that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. His Fox News colleagues grossly misquoted former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as saying that Obama aides asked him to lie. The uber-rightist Washington Free Beacon falsely accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of fundraising off of Benghazi (something the right has been doing relentlessly). And now the wingnut press is all ferklempt over a public appearance by their favorite progressive puppet master, George Soros.

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The latest atrocity being committed by Soros is that he has accepted an invitation from Secretary of State John Kerry to speak at a forum for State Department personnel. The subject of the speech will be “strengthening civil society, democracy and the world economy.” Clearly a villainous plot is being hatched. At least that’s the view of the Washington Free Beacon (again) that funneled this story to Fox News. The Beacon’s article alleged that Soros is using his political connections to further foreign policy goals that will enhance the billionaire’s already substantial wealth:

“Critics say Soros leverages his political connections to increase the returns on his investments. […] The administration’s proposal to offer incentives to companies that use trucks powered by natural gas would benefit Westport Innovations, a company that converts diesel engines for natural gas use and is partially owned by Soros’ hedge fund.”

The example cited by the Beacon is laughably idiotic. The Soros Fund owns about 5.26% of the shares of Westport Innovations. That makes his stake worth about $30 million dollars. The Soros Fund, however, has a valuation of close to $30 billion. Therefore, this stock represents about one-tenth of one percent of his total holdings. And on the basis of that minuscule investment, the Beacon believes that Soros is “pulling strings at the State Department.” Furthermore, The Soros Fund is far more heavily invested in conventional energy and oil concerns including Halliburton, which is the eight largest holding in his portfolio.

This is the sort of trivia that conservatives need to latch onto because they haven’t got anything of substance to bring to contemporary political debates. It’s the reason that they spent four years lying about ObamaCare (aka the Affordable Care Act), and when those attacks fizzled as the program exceeded all expectations of success, they switched to hysterically screeching about Benghazi.

For the record: The Washington Free Beacon that is now so outraged that a wealthy businessman is engaged in political advocacy, is the creation of Republican Party honchos and is closely affiliated with the billionaire Koch brothers, a relationship that the Beacon is careful to keep under wraps. But just last week News Corpse posted an article outlining the stark differences between right and left wing millionaires that included a revealing poll of America’s wealthy.

What’s The Difference Between Wealthy (Koch) Republicans And (Soros) Democrats?

Posted by Mark NC on May 8, 2014 at 5:36 pm. 9 Comments :

The billionaire Koch brothers have been corrupting democracy for decades. Their labyrinthine web of front groups toil 24/7 to distort the facts on issues like climate change, voter suppression, gun control, and taxes. And if that collection of topics sounds familiar, it’s because the Kochs almost single-handedly created the Tea Party (with PR help from Fox News) to push their views on those subjects unto a gullible sector of the American populace.

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One of the right’s favorite knee-jerk responses to criticisms of the Kochs is to point to wealthy Democrats who contribute to candidates and causes that lean more to the liberal side of the political spectrum and claim that the Koch’s critics are hypocrites. However, there have always been some obvious distinctions between the right and left wing upper-crusters. The false argument of equivalency falls flat when given scrutiny.

For one thing, the Republican rich can usually be found bankrolling people and projects that benefit them personally or professionally. Thus the Kochs’ fixation on opposing unions and denying climate change is closely aligned with their exploitative and polluting business interests. Well-off Dems, on the other hand, commonly finance more philanthropic endeavors (civil rights, environment, aid to the poor) that aim to improve the quality of life without necessarily enriching themselves.

It is also notable that conservatives advocate for less regulation of money in politics, creating an environment where the rich get ever more power to bend society to their will. Liberals, conversely, spend more of their cash on trying to remove money from politics. As an example, it was conservatives, including the Kochs, who pushed for Citizens United so that they could fund their self-serving projects without restrictions or even identification. But Jonathan Soros, the son of the right’s favorite wealthy liberal George Soros, created the Friends of Democracy PAC, a SuperPAC aimed at ending the influence of SuperPACs.

A new survey was just published that affirms these distinctions between the rightist rich and the lefty leisure class. Conducted by the Spectrem Group for CNBC (Wall Street’s cable news network) the Millionaire Survey “polled 514 people with investable assets of $1 million or more, which represents the top 8 percent of American households.” Among the sometimes surprising findings was that more than half of the respondents agreed that “inequality of wealth in our nation is a major problem.” Also, 64% favored higher taxes on the rich. A similar number (63%) support an increase in the minimum wage. And only 13% said that unemployment benefits should be reduced. Remember, these are all millionaires in this survey.

Digging a little deeper into these numbers, another interesting trend takes shape. It turns out that there is a marked difference in the views expressed by the millionaire class depending on their political affiliation.

“Democratic millionaires are far more supportive of taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage. Among Democratic millionaires, 78 percent support higher taxes on the wealthy, and 77 percent back a higher minimum wage. That compares with 31 percent and 38 percent, respectively, for Republicans.”

So the breakdown reveals that it is the Democratic wealthy who are the most conscientious and concerned about their country and their fellow citizens. While the Republican rich are selfishly and characteristically concerned mainly with themselves. It’s the difference between Patriotic Millionaires and Ayn Rand sociopaths. That’s not a particularly surprising revelation, but it is nevertheless useful to see it validated by hard data.

The Mind-Blowing Detachment From Reality Of Fox News Over Media Bias

Posted by Mark NC on May 27, 2013 at 4:57 pm. 1 Comments :

During a segment of Happening Now on Fox News, anchor Jon Scott hosted conservative Jim Pinkerton and liberal Alan Colmes to debate the latest pet scandal at Fox. Having abandoned Benghazi after it failed to tarnish President Obama’s standing with the American people, Fox is now harping on the events at the Internal Revenue Service.

One thing that can be said for this pseudo-scandal is that it has united the ire of both sides of the controversy. Democrats and Republicans alike have repudiated those at the IRS who employed politically partisan criteria to determine which organizations applying for tax-exempt status would be subject to stricter scrutiny. But like all of the past scandals, no one has been able to tie this affair to the White House either. And that fact is driving the right batty (or battier than usual).

Right out of the gate, Scott primed the discussion by quoting ultra-right Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto saying…

“Never has the prevailing bias of the media been so closely aligned with the ideological aims and the political interests of the party in power.”

Is that so? Apparently Taranto was in a vegetative state during the Bush administration when the media, and particularly Fox News, was sucking Bush’s Dick Cheney-led propaganda straight from the bottle. Fox was an unabashed cheerleader for the war in Iraq. And they were not alone. Even MSNBC fired Phil Donahue when he was their top rated host due to his skepticism about the rush to war mongering. And does anyone remember the press criticizing Bush for cutting the taxes of millionaires and transitioning the Clinton budget surplus into a deficit?

The truth is that Fox is the first and only major media enterprise that was built from scratch to proselytize on behalf of a political Party. Fox’s devotion to the people and policies of the right extend far beyond merely parroting their agenda (which they do non-stop), but Fox actually employs Republican operatives and candidates in an effort to advance their prospects. And of course, Fox’s CEO, Roger Ailes, was himself a Republican operative before he took the reins of international corporatist Rupert Murdoch’s cable news network.

Adding to the epic irony of this cognition failure is that the anchor, Jon Scott, is hardly one to raise the issue of media alignment with party politics. Scott was caught red-handed reading GOP talking points on the air as if they were his own news reporting. He even included a graphic that contained the same typos that were in the original Republican memo. And now he has the gall to cast aspersions of bias on what he describes as the liberal media, but without offering a single example.

The remainder of the debate was a mashup of inane accusations that liberals were not condemning the IRS misbehavior. Colmes had to repeatedly prove that they were, eventually offering to write it in blood after Scott and Pinkerton seemed oblivious to the facts Colmes presented numerous times. And when all else failed they raised the specter of George Soros who had nothing to do with any of this. Wingnuts just go through withdrawal if they don’t say his name every two minutes.

Here’s the video for your amusement:

And for a little added fun, check out these screen grabs from the segment where Fox featured Tea Party protesters with signs saying “America is a Christian nation,” and “911 was an inside job.” Way to push the doctrine, Fox.

Breitbart Bear Hugs Fake Democrat Kirsten Powers Of Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on April 2, 2013 at 10:00 am. 16 Comments :

This weekend the Fox News farce “News Watch” featured its customary panel of four slobbering ultra-rightists and one alleged Democrat. This week’s lefty lamb was Kirsten Powers, who did her job of pretending to be a liberal while denigrating everything liberals stand for.

In a segment about an NPR story on wasteful spending for disability programs, the discussion suddenly veered off course to attack Media Matters with the program’s host, Jon Scott, calling it “that liberal media watchdog group funded by George Soros.” Scott complained that Media Matters had “a problem” with NPR’s report because “it has become fodder for the right wing.”

Right off the bat it should be noted that Jon Scott, whom Fox inexplicably installed as host of a media analysis show, is the Republican Party’s man at Fox News. He was caught red-handed (by Media Matters) reading “news” copy that had been cribbed, word for word, from an RNC press release.

Scott also suffers from a malady that has infected most of Fox News that could be called “Soros Tourettes Syndrome.” Its primary symptom is the uncontrollable shouting out of the name George Soros whenever some organization is mentioned that he might have made a donation to in the past five decades. Given that he is a well known billionaire philanthropist, that’s a pretty long list. In this case. Soros did make a donation to Media Matters exactly one time two years ago, which hardly puts the organization in his pocket. What Scott failed to report was that NPR, whom Scott is alleging was attacked by the Soros-funded Media Matters, also received a hefty donation from Soros. In fact, it was nearly twice what he gave to Media Matters. So Scott seems to think that Soros is attacking one of his front groups with another.

Which brings us to fake Democrat Kirsten Powers. When asked about the NPR affair, she detoured to make this baseless observation: “I just want to say first of all, Media Matters is not a legitimate organization. And they do not exist to be a media watchdog group.” She provided no support whatsoever for her allegation, however, it was enough to attract the adoring gaze of Breitbart’s John Nolte. He posted a short item fawning over Powers for her “honesty” and gushed “I disagree with Powers on almost everything, but she’s good people.”

The assertion that BreitBrat John had substantive disagreements with Powers struck me as peculiar given her overt conservative leanings. So I looked up some previous references to her on the Breitbart web site for evidence of how starkly their opinions differed. This is what I found:

Liberal Kirsten Powers Fights Back Against Obama’s War on Fox News
Kirsten Powers: Obama Nominating Rice As Secretary Of State ‘Would Be His Undoing’
Kirsten Powers: Obama’s ‘You Didn’t Build That” Comments Offended Me Too
Kirsten Powers: What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?
Kirsten Powers: ‘Obviously, There’s A Bias Behind’ Cable News Not Covering Catholic Lawsuit Against Obama
Liberal Pundit Powers: Obama Removing Work Requirement From Welfare Huge Issue For Romney
Liberal Columnist: Double Standard In Media’s Attack On Rush

These were just the articles that referenced Powers in the headlines. There were many more plaudits for her on the site within various articles. So all of this admiration and accord raises an obvious question. When Nolte says that he disagrees with Powers on “almost everything,” what the hell is he talking about?

Powers is plainly another right-wing plant in the Fox News garden. She consistently rips the President and other Democrats and rarely offers enthusiastic praise or defense for progressive policy or people. She is only on Fox representing the left because Fox couldn’t get Ann Coulter to do it believably. But Powers is in the same conservative bag as Coulter, even going so far as to outrageously accuse Obama of sympathizing with terrorists. No wonder BreitBrat John is so infatuated.

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