Fox News Hypocritically Attacks Washington Post for Something Fox Does Repeatedly

The spectacle of anyone at Fox News complaining about media bias is always an adventure in mind-blowing hypocrisy. The network created purposefully to disseminate right-wing propaganda has devolved into full fledged State TV during the Donald Trump administration. It’s entire schedule is populated by Trump-fluffers who unabashedly fawn over his every word and fiercely defend his innumerable lies, insults, and harmful and illegal actions.

Fox News

However, they may have outdone themselves this weekend with a segment on Trump’s favorite TV show, Fox and Friends (video below). Co-host Pete Hegseth found an article by the ultra-rightist Free Beacon that pretended to discover a covert liberal plot to meet with other liberals and talk to each other. Oh.My.God! It had all the elements of a wingnut nightmare: Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, and a representative of the lefty, mainstream, “fake” news. Hegseth stared vacantly into the camera and delivered this fearsome rant:

“A Washington Post reporter is under fire after she got caught attending a top secret meeting with the Democracy Alliance where Democratic donors were outlining their future of their progressive agenda. According to the Washington Free Beacon, that reporter, Janelle Ross, gave a presentation at the California event without notifying her superiors at the Washington Post. The paper says she’s been reminded that the Post discourages participating events that can be perceived as partisan. I wonder what would happen if the same so-called journalist attended an – I don’t know – a Koch brothers session.”

Let’s unwind this cognitive mess. First of all, the Democracy Alliance event was not “top secret.” It’s an annual affair that invites Democratic political dignitaries and donors. The notion that Pelosi, the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, could sneak off to a clandestine gathering at a fancy resort without being noticed is just plain stupid.

The presence of the Post’s Janelle Ross may have stepped over the line of journalistic neutrality, but it was hardly a conspiracy. She’s a little known beat reporter who attended the conference on her own with full disclosure in the event’s brochure. It in no way reflects on the Washington Post organization as whole.

However, the worst part of Hegseth’s tirade was when he speculated about the reaction if a reporter were to show up at a conservative conference sponsored by famous right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. What Hegseth somehow failed to mention was that the woman sitting next to him and co-hosting the program, Lisa Boothe, is currently being promoted as a featured speaker at an upcoming conservative conference sponsored by, among others, the Koch brothers. And it bears repeating that she’s sitting right next to him.

Turning Point USA is a right-wing operation that is reaching out to millennials. It lists its partners as the Leadership Institute, Heritage Action, and the Heartland Institute. All of these are recipients of Koch funding. A glance at the event’s advertisement reveals that Fox News is deeply embedded in the affair. And it’s not just some backbenchers. The network’s anchors are proudly attending and speaking at the conference. They include, in addition to Boothe, Jeanine Pirro, Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, and Brian Kilmeade.

What’s more, some regular Fox News contributors and frequent guests are also on the roster. Notable names such as Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, Sebastian Gorka, and Guy Benson. And let’s not leave out Trump’s inner circlers Steve Bannon (of Breitbart News), Kayleigh McEnany (RNC spokesperson), even headliner Donnie, Jr. Rounding out the team are the right’s premier scumbags Dinesh D’Zousa, Joe Walsh, James O’Keefe, and Anthony Scaramucci.

Fox News is obviously an integral part of this conservative conference. You don’t have five anchors as featured speakers without having fully signed on as partners. Fox News has not issued any statement as to their participation or indicated that it violates any internal standards (I know. “standards” and “Fox News” in the same sentence is a joke). The abundance of well known Fox associates makes the actions of WaPo’s reporter seem trivial. But Hegseth and Boothe ignoring the hypocrisy of this segment is almost too ludicrous to believe were it not on video.

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

Fox News Host Exposed as Running a Scam Charity That Received Funding from Trump

The journalistic fraud that is Fox News is well known. It’s a network that was contrived as a right-wing spin factory, but dishonestly marketed as being “fair and balanced.” They have a revolving cast of scripted characters who alternately play politicians and pundits. Often the same person in both roles. Their commitment to partisan deceit is rooted deeply in the foul culture nurtured by its founders Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

Tucker Carlson Fox News

However, a new investigation proves that ideological fraud is not the only unethical practice employed by Fox News. Following the scandal-driven departures of Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, a new cretin was crowned as the top Foxie. Tucker Carlson was awarded O’Reilly’s prized time slot that anchors the network’s primetime lineup. Never mind that Carlson has a record of failure on the three previous networks foolish enough to hire him. Fox News put all their faith behind Carlson. And he soon proved that he was totally undeserving. Last month, for the first time in seventeen years, MSNBC’s primetime beat Fox News.

Now it has come to light that Carlson is more than just a terrible TV host. The Center for Media and Democracy conducted an exhaustive investigation into the stewardship of his website, The Daily Caller (TDC). Carlson launched the site six years ago and it quickly became a staple of wingnut propaganda. The Washington Post published CMD’s findings with this summary of the scam:

“Most of the roughly 50 journalists who produce content for the Daily Caller actually work for the Daily Caller News Foundation, a tax-exempt organization with 501(c)(3) status that is ostensibly separate from DailyCaller.com. The two entities share the same floor of the same Washington office, however, and virtually everything produced by the foundation — which accepted $3 million in donations in 2015, according to an IRS filing — appears on the for-profit website, which sells advertising on the articles.

In short, TDC takes in tax-free donations to finance their for-profit newsroom. Then they use the articles written by foundation authors to populate a commercial website that receives advertising revenue. The Post cites legal experts that describe this an obvious tax dodge:

“‘It’s a huge rip-off for taxpayers if the Daily Caller News Foundation is receiving revenue that it doesn’t pay taxes on, to produce stories that are used by the for-profit enterprise, which then makes money on the stories through ads,’ said Lisa Graves, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration who now serves as executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.”

The unscrupulous business practices that Carlson employs are part of an established pattern. TDC was first bankrolled by Republican stalwart and notorious climate change denier, Foster Friess. He laid out $3 million to get the site off the ground. The Koch brothers were also generous with Carlson’s new venture. They contributed over $800,000 to the effort.

More recently, Carlson enjoyed the benevolence of an even more prominent financier. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump sought out Carlson’s help to reach out to conservative voters. Trump purchased the use of TDC’s mailing list to solicit both votes and contributions. The CMD estimates that Carlson took in about $150,000 for his services.

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

So Carlson was feverishly promoting Trump, hosting his surrogates, and even interviewing him on Air Force One after the inauguration. However, he failed to inform his audience that he was paid substantial sums of money by Trump. It’s an unambiguous lapse of ethics that calls into question Carlson’s integrity and motives. Furthermore, Fox News is equally unprincipled for allowing Carlson to go on the air under these circumstances. But in neither case would anyone familiar with the Fox code of ethics be surprised. It’s just standard operating procedure for a network that was born to deceive.

Trump vs. ISIS? Wingnut Video On Fox News That Mocks Harvard Students Backfires Terribly

One of the favorite stunts that conservatives use to try to shame liberals is the “man on the street” interview. Generally they purposefully skew the presentation to reflect their preconceived prejudices. Any responses that fail to advance their point of view are left on the editing room floor. Then they release a video with six people who agree with them, but never tell viewers that there were sixteen others who disagreed but were cut out.

fox news trump

This week on Fox and Friends they featured a “reporter,” Cabot Phillips, from the ultra right-wing organization Campus Reform. He visited Harvard University in an effort to expose the alleged liberalism of the students and faculty. The question he asked was “Who is more dangerous to Americans, Donald Trump or ISIS?” Of course, he fully expected to find students who selected Trump, whom he would then try to make look foolish.

Surprise! He found just what he expected. Then, after showing the video (posted below) on Fox News, Phillips sought to explain what could possibly cause these students to have such radical and shocking opinions. He said that:

“It’s from President Obama, who they all look up to. Who for so many years said, “Well, ISIS is the J.V. team. They’re not this real threat. And also it’s from professors and the media who are again constantly saying “Look, Donald Trump is the real threat here,” and trying to shield their eyes from actual threats.”

That analysis was wholly constructed from his over-active imagination. Nowhere in the video did any student attribute their views to either Obama or their professors. And Phillips didn’t bother to interview any of the faculty to ascertain their views. What’s more, while Obama did once try to marginalize ISIS as a J.V. team, he also spent years outlining precisely the peril they pose. More importantly, he attacked them relentlessly, killing thousands of their operatives, including many of their leaders.

However, what was most conspicuous about the video was the fact that the students who said Trump was more dangerous had good reasons for thinking so. One of the students spelled it out saying that:

“Do I think ISIS is going to cause a threat to me living my everyday life? Not really. Do I think the rhetoric that Donald Trump is using and empowering these folks hidden in a corner for a long time with hateful views … do I think that’s more of a threat than ISIS? Yes.”

Indeed, Trump has done more for hate groups in America who espouse prejudice and violence than any President before him. It is not coincidental that the KKK and white supremacists uniformly endorsed Trump and worked to get him elected. Trump’s rhetoric during his campaign and presidency has encouraged America’s bigots and increased the number of hate crimes. African-Americans, gays, Muslims, Latinos, and Jews have all been victimized in greater numbers in the Era of Trump.

The harassment and assaults that Trump has inspired have a much more direct impact on the safety of Americans. That doesn’t diminish the horror of terrorist activity by ISIS. It’s just a fact. It is not, therefore, the least bit surprising that people consider Trump more to be dangerous with respect to their personal lives.

A study by the CATO Institute last year revealed the relative dangers of common occurrences. Death by foreign terrorists came in 34th out of forty-eight items. Activities more likely than terrorism to be fatal included walking, choking on food, and police encounters. You are 260 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than by terrorists. You’re 129,000 times more likely to die in a gun assault.

Not mentioned in this video were risks posed by Trump’s actual policies. The president’s erratic behavior makes him a poor choice to be in charge of the nuclear codes. And his anti-environment stance could result in millions of lives lost due to famine, drought, extreme weather events and war.

Taking a logical approach to the question, it’s clear that Trump is potentially far more dangerous to America and the world than ISIS. He commands a much bigger military with far greater resources. The video is a blatantly partisan sham by conservative activists. Campus Reform is a project of the uber-rightist Leadership Institute that receives much of their funding from the Koch brothers. Their alumni includes hacks like Mitch McConnell, James O’Keefe, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove, and even Vice-President Mike Pence. That’s a fraternal order that speaks volumes as to their political and ideological mission. And it’s why Fox News devotes segments to their lies on a regular basis.

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

The ‘So-Called’ Trump Presidency Is Crumbling Under The Pressure – And They Know It

Since the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated, the American people have flooded the streets and town halls to express their opposition to his agenda. Unprecedented numbers of citizens turned out for the nationwide Women’s March on January 21. A week later, more protesters showed up spontaneously at airports to oppose Trump’s Muslim ban. Now town halls are being inundated by angry voters who won’t stand for Trump’s efforts to gut ObamaCare.

Mitch McConnell GOP Town Hall

These protests are having a profound effect on the Republican Party. Nervous GOP representatives in Washington, and across the nation, are running scared – literally. Many are avoiding their own constituents meetings for fear of encountering their wrath. And the ones that are going are being greeted by passionate advocates for progressive policies and values.

For those who are skeptical that these tactics are effective, set aside your worries. There is abundant evidence that they are working better than anyone anticipated. And the best proof of that comes from Republicans themselves. Take for instance the remarks by former GOP senator Jim DeMint. He is currently the president of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. Tuesday night he was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren on MSNBC (video below). His intent was to vent his displeasure with citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. But he ended up validating the efforts of the citizens he hoped to discredit:

“It’s not really like the Tea Party. I was going through this document today, Indivisible. These folks are very well financed. Very well organized. They’re being bused around to go to these different town halls to disrupt them.”

First of all, he’s partially correct about the Tea Party. It was quite different in that it was bankrolled by the billionaire Koch brothers. The Indivisible Movement is a grassroots campaign whose partners are social activist organizations, not multinational corporations. However, DeMint’s assertion that protesters are being “bused around” is delusional. They would have to have thousands of buses motoring across the whole country at impossible speeds. But DeMint wasn’t finished:

“So it’s gonna be difficult for congressmen to go out and defend their positions. Because these folks who are coming are not coming to contribute. They’re coming to disrupt. So it’s an organized effort to make it hard for Trump and Republican congress to be successful.”

DeMint is admitting that the GOP’s position is difficult to defend. No kidding. Their platform calls for throwing twenty million people off of their health insurance plans. It proposes tax reforms that will shift the burden from the rich to the middle-class and poor. They are pushing bigoted immigration schemes that will ban Muslims and deport Latinos. And DeMint wonders why that might be difficult to defend? But here’s the best part:

“Hopefully they [Republicans] will continue to plow through. Although I’m concerned that all of this push-back has delayed the repeal of ObamaCare, and certainly other agenda items that need to be taken up.”

That’s right. It’s working. Keep it up. It is highly unusual for a right-wing political operative to concede that his opponents are winning. This admission ought to encourage every progressive to redouble their efforts to prevent the Trump agenda from being implemented. These actions are also being felt all the way up to the White House. They’re rolling out their talking points intended to portray the protests as “fake news.” Press secretary Sean Spicer (Fibby Spice) laments that “There is a bit of professional protester, manufactured base in there.” And Trump himself tweeted this:

We previously were warned about “so-called judges,” and now we have “so-called angry crowds.” Apparently our so-called President is living in a so-called reality where anything he doesn’t like is fake. SAD! It’s not surprising that he’s baffled by citizens “planning” their activities, rather than behaving erratically the way he does. Even worse, in a recent press conference Trump made it clear that he is not the president of all the people:

“We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It’s a disaster. You can say, oh, Obamacare — I mean, they fill up our alleys with people that you wonder how they get there, but they’re not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.”

Setting aside the odd reference to “alleys,” Trump just confessed that he’s only interested in what Republicans have to say. He continues to prove that he’s a divisive, partisan politician with no interest in having a productive dialog. The extremists in Trump’s administration are determined to steamroll their agenda of hate and elitism through a rubber-stamp congress. Unfortunately for them, the American people do not seem willing to allow it. And if we keep the pressure on, we can stop them in their tracks and replace them in 2018. Forward.

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

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

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.

Fox News

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.

The Plaintive Wailing Of A Republican Party Crumbling Under The Weight Of Donald Trump

As this wacky election season continues to spiral out of control, the sound of an increasingly impotent Republican Party scratching at the door is becoming ever more noticeable. The so-called establishment candidates are falling to the wayside as a creature manufactured by reality TV lumbers across the GOP landscape, flattening its hopes like cardboard models being trampled by a carrot-topped Godzilla.

Trumpzilla

In the frantic chaos that ensues, the Republican National Committee is exhibiting signs of desperation. Party chair Reince Priebus has mounted a backroom campaign to convince everyone that he has everything firmly under control, a claim that has evoked nothing but laughter. Politico is reporting that Priebus is…

“…stating in private meetings that the party has sway over its at times unwelcome front-runner because it has tools Trump will need to use to win a general election — voter data and field, digital and media operations that a nominee typically inherits from the party infrastructure.”

“Dangling access to these resources, Priebus thinks he can help steer Trump toward partywide policy goals and away from the inflammatory rhetoric that Republican officials see as divisive and dangerous.”

Well, that ought scare the savage Trumpzilla into bowing to the supremacy of the party that he has been running against for eight months. The lunacy that Priebus thinks Trump cares about the RNC’s “resources” is almost as absurd as his belief that Trump would ditch his potty-mouth politics, or that he doesn’t already espouse the wingnut policy goals of the party at large. If Trump cared about partnering with the RNC he would not be repeatedly threatening to abandon the party and run as an independent. He wouldn’t be accusing them of distributing illegal solicitations. He wouldn’t be criticizing their debate audiences as being deliberately stacked against him.

Even setting aside the hostility that exists between the RNC and The Donald, the GOP’s services are not exactly state of the art. Last year it was revealed that the Koch brothers were building their own campaign machine that includes many of the services that are typically performed by a political party. The Koch operation was said to be angling to replace the party’s electoral architects by building and distributing the voter access tools and outreach capability.

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

With the Koch’s running election services and Fox News running PR, you might be wondering what purpose the RNC serves. A lot of political operatives and analysts are wondering the same thing. Under the direction of Priebus the party has become less of a factor than in previous years. It has struggled with Trump’s candidacy from the beginning when his refusal to rule out a third-party run resulted in a loyalty oath that all candidates were required to sign (and which Trump has already hinted he might break). It would be wishful thinking to imagine that Trump would suddenly buckle under to a weakened GOP that’s begging him to play nice.

Is Tea Party Godfather Charles Koch Feeling The Bern?

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.

Flat-Earther Ted Cruz Makes A Valiant Effort To Out-Trump Trump

The Republican presidential primary has utterly devolved into a festival of crotchety buffoons whose most steadfast goal is to attract more publicity than their current front-runner, Donald Trump. However, it says something rather pitiful about a collection of GOP candidates that are repeatedly upstaged by a boorish TV reality show host. That’s gotta hurt.

Consequently, every so often one of them will take a wild swing for fences to see if they can sponge up a little attention. Doing so almost never involves contributing something meaningful to the discourse on government, politics, or society. No, it usually means sinking to lower levels of dumbfuckery than Trump himself. And the latest contestant to step up to the plate is Sen. Ted Cruz, who in the pre-Trump era was the undisputed champion of the lunatic fringe.

Ted Cruz

Speaking at gathering of wealthy Republican donors sponsored by the wealthiest of them all, the Koch brothers, Cruz addressed the subject of Climate Change. He began by making the bizarre assertion that the vast majority of scientists whose studies prove that Climate Change is a real and imminent threat, are “Flat-Earthers.” That’s right, he used the phrase that ordinarily mocks those who reject science against actual scientists. And he used it to reject science.

You have to give Cruz some credit for managing to pull off this daring escape from reality with a straight face. And undoubtedly the imbeciles listening to this tripe will soak it up eagerly since they have already demonstrated that their capacity for rational comprehension is at or near zero. Cruz went on to dismiss Climate Change as a hoax saying that…

“If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there’s been zero recorded warming. The satellite says it ain’t happening … They’re cooking the books.” […and that…] “It is always disturbing to hear science use the language of theology. Deniers. Heretics. That’s not what science is supposed to be about. Science should follow the facts.”

Indeed. Science should follow the facts. And with 97% of scientists who have studied Climate Change agreeing that it is real and is caused by humans, the facts are not in doubt. What’s more, Cruz’s complaint about the “language of theology” comes entirely from his warped imagination. The term “deniers” was previously used mostly with reference to fake historians who claimed that the Holocaust never occurred. That is not a theological reference. And I would wager that Cruz could not cite a single instance of someone referring to Climate Change deniers as heretics.

As for Cruz’s claims about satellite data, cooked books, and the alleged absence of any recorded warming, he is obviously working from materials provided by the same Exxon lobbyists who previously worked for cigarette companies on the health benefits of tobacco. Because if he had asked the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration they would have told him that the planet has been steadily warming for decades and that 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record. And that 2015 is on track to surpass 2014.

This isn’t the first time that Cruz has wondered from the realm of reality by flipping the concept of flat-Earthers. Back in May he said much the same thing while adding that he and other science-deniers were modern-day Galileos. The only problem with that is that it is bass-ackwards. Galileo was persecuted for advocating theories derived from scientific method (like the 97%). His critics, mainly the Catholic Church, rejected his work because they were committed to preserving long-held myths that benefited the status quo (like Koch brothers). So Cruz assuming the mantle of Galileo is a complete reversal of logic. He’s the one using an unsupported belief system to supplant today’s Galileos who rely on actual science.

Perhaps the funniest diversion from sanity in Cruz’s speech was his ludicrous reasoning for why Democrats are pursuing Climate Change as an issue. First, he says that they plan to use it as a means to assert total control over … EVERYTHING! It’s all part of a grand conspiracy that concludes with universal slavery to environmental dictators forcing people to live with clean air and water in a habitable climate. The fiends! And even worse, Democrats only pretend to care about the issue in order to please the army of environmentalist billionaires (we all know how numerous and bloodthirsty they are) and to gain access to their campaign donations. Keep in mind that Cruz was offering this ominous conspiracy theory to a room full of some 450 wealthy campaign donors assembled by the Koch brothers from whom he is seeking donations.

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

The only question for Cruz is, is this blockheaded stunt crazy enough to steal back some of Trump’s thunder? In ordinary times it would have more than sufficed. But these are not ordinary times. Trump has advanced the idiocracy to new, unforeseen heights. If Cruz really wanted to clinch the deal he should have accused the scientists of aiding and abetting ISIS, or thrown in a reference to environmentalist Nazis like Mike Huckabee did with Planned Parenthood. Now that’s how you out-Trump Trump.

Scott Walker Promises To Ruin …er… Turn America Around

The latest passenger in the Republican Presidential Clown Car is Wisconsin’s union-busting governor, Scott Walker. His announcement address today was rife with the routine braggadocio required by all aspirants to high office.

Scott Walker (Lumbergh)

Among his laundry list of campaign pledges was the promise to “fight and win” for the “born and unborn.” And apparently what Walker thinks born and unborn Americans need most is to have their health insurance repealed, because that’s what he swore to do to ObamaCare. Although he did express support for healthcare for veterans, which is fortunate because he practically declared war on Russia and China, so they’re gonna need it.

Walker spoke at length about his record in Wisconsin but, not surprisingly, left out his numerous failures that place Wisconsin near the bottom on job creation, education, economic growth, etc. But perhaps the most intriguing pronouncement he made was his promise that…

“The good news – it’s not too late, we can turn things around.”

Well, that’s a relief. Because if America had to proceed any further in the positive direction it has been going for the last six years, who knows how long we would endure. Thankfully, Walker has arrived just in time to turn things around, back in the direction that George W. Bush had taken us.

Scott Walker vs. Obama Record

And if anyone can turn things around from the course of sustained prosperity that we’ve been on, it’s a Koch brothers puppet like Scott Walker. He was famously fooled by a blogger who called him pretending to be David Koch (YouTube audio below). They spoke for about ten minutes with Walker pandering shamelessly to who he thought was the billionaire who has been a reliable donor to his Wisconsin campaigns. At one point “David” suggested that Walker should plant troublemakers among the protesters who were packing the capital office. Walker answered saying “we thought about that.”

Of course, it would have been illegal for Walker to dispatch provocateurs to disrupt people who were exercising their free speech rights, but Walker is no stranger to unlawful activities. He is currently being investigated for election irregularities that have already seen six of his associates convicted.

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

Here is a transcript of the Walker phone call with the fake Koch.

What Republican Party? Fox News And The Koch Brothers Have Replaced The GOP

Everyday there is more and more evidence that the Republican Party is dissolving into the ether of a new political atmosphere. It began with Fox News usurping the PR responsibilities of the party. For anyone to advance in the GOP they had to go through Fox News. At the same time, the Koch brothers have been moving in on party operations and raising more campaign money than the party could ever hope to.

Koch Brothers

News Corpse has covered this phenomenon in some detail here and here, examining how the interests of Fox News came to supersede those of the GOP:

Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). […] The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum. […] So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

The trend is accelerating as we go into the 2016 presidential campaign season. Now Fox has appointed itself the gatekeeper of the GOP primary, wherein they will only permit the top ten Republican candidates, as determined by certain unnamed polls, to participate in their televised debates. Even Republican party operatives are opposed to this power grab by a media company.

In addition to Fox News assuming the roll of party spokesman, the billionaire Koch brothers are angling to replace the party’s electoral architects by building and distributing the voter access tools and outreach capability that used to be the sole province of the political party. Yahoo News published an in-depth investigation that shows how the Koch’s syndicate has moved in on party territory, much to the consternation of the party chieftains.

“The RNC is now openly arguing, however, that the Kochs’ political operation is trying to control the Republican Party’s master voter file, and to gain influence over — some even say control of — the GOP.

“‘I think it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how,’ said Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff.”

So if the Koch brothers end up running the electoral operations of Republican candidates, and Fox News continues its role in media strategy and execution, the only question that remains is: What’s left for the remnants of the Republican Party to do? They become an organization with no authority, responsibility, or relevance.

If they don’t take steps to reverse these trends, and do it soon, the GOP will drift into an ignoble and faded history. Ordinarily, that might not seem like such a horrible idea. But if their replacement is Fox News and the Koch brothers, we might all be better off rooting for the GOP.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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