Racism

Debased Debate: Trump’s Petulant Interruptions Were Filled with More and Bigger Lies

Posted by on September 30, 2020 at 11:11 am. 3 Comments :

What happened on Tuesday night was not a debate. It was an unprecedented and disgraceful debasement of the proud tradition of American political discourse. Donald Trump managed to embarrass himself (and the nation) to a degree that exceeds every other incidence of his doing so. And that’s really saying something. He’s validating a recent poll wherein a majority of voters said that Trump doesn’t have the mental soundness to serve.

Donald Trump Baby at Podium

Prior to the debate, Trump was laying the groundwork to make excuses for what he apparently believed was his inevitable loss. Those excuses consisted primarily of bizarre conspiracy theories. Trump also made the preposterous accusation that the debate moderator, Chris Wallace, was “controlled by the radical left.” And Trump’s GOP confederates were convinced that Biden would be cheating by being smarter than Trump. How devious.

Among the rhetorical atrocities uttered by Trump was his abject failure to call on his white supremacist supporters to refrain from violence in the event of his electoral loss. Trump was incapable of making a simple statement condemning all violence, as Joe Biden did. Instead, Trump gave a shout out to the racist Proud Boys, telling them to “stand back and stand by.” It was as if he was issuing orders as their commander. And that’s precisely how Trump’s racist militias interpreted it.

However, the most pronounced departure from civility during the debate was Trump’s repeated and incessant interruptions of both Biden and Wallace. And he made these interruptions in order to squeeze in as many flagrant lies as possible in the limited time available. CNN’s fact checker, Daniel Dale, documented the avalanche of untruths throughout the debate. What follows are some of the most blatant and shameless examples of deliberate dishonesty ever recorded in a presidential debate (as enumerated by Dale in his live tweeting). Or as Dale describes it…

“This president is a serial liar who keeps serially lying. This is just so much dishonesty on the biggest stage by the President of the United States. […] This is always what it’s like with Donald Trump. This is what it’s been like for five years. Basically any unscripted event featuring Donald Trump will feature a huge quantity of false claims. […] Trump is an unprecedented liar in the Oval Office. […] You’re be hard pressed to find literally any subject on which the American people can, right now and over the last five years, have been able to take Donald Trump at his word.”

TRUMP’S DEBASED DEBATE LIES:

It’s not true Biden would “extinguish” the private insurance of 180 million people. He opposed the Sanders-style “Medicare for All”

Trump didn’t “ban” travel from China or Europe. He imposed travel restrictions with numerous exemptions — for US citizens, green card holders, many of their family members — and the Europe restrictions exempted entire countries.

There’s no evidence Trump’s executive order will reduce drug prices 80% or 90%.

Trump lies that he was talking “sarcastically” when he mused about injecting disinfectant to fight the virus.

Biden has not proposed a shutdown or put forward a shutdown plan. He said in an August interview that he’d shut things down *if scientists said that was necessary in a virus crisis.*

No basis for Trump to claim that there have been no problems from his big pandemic-era rallies. [Just ask Herman Cain]

Trump claims he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income tax despite the NYT having obtained his tax returns, which show he paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 & 2017

Trump falsely claims he’s brought back 700,000 manufacturing jobs.

There’s no evidence Biden acted corruptly or improperly re the Ukrainian prosecutor.

It’s false that Biden does not have “any” law enforcement support [via Fox News].

Biden has not said that riots are peaceful protest. He’s called peaceful protest peaceful protest.

Our suburbs would not be “gone” if Biden was elected.

Biden is not talking about defunding the police. He just said he opposes defunding the police.

Kellyanne Conway DID say more violence was good for Trump’s prospects; she said on Fox that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better news for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

“Unsolicited” ballots are not fraud prone.

It’s not true that 30% and 40% of ballots are being “lost.”

Trump has gotten insulin prices so low, it’s “like water.” – insulin still retails for roughly $300 a vial.

A post-debate poll of debate watchers by CNN is an early indicator that Trump’s rudely Neanderthal behavior has succeeded only in sabotaging his own already floundering campaign. Biden was judged by a solid majority to have won the debate (60-28%). He was seen as being more truthful (65-29%). A majority of voters said that they trusted Biden more than Trump on critical national issues like racial inequality (66%), health care (66%), the coronavirus outbreak (64%), and Supreme Court nominations (54%). And while most respondents (57%) said they were unlikely to change their vote, those who were moved were three times as likely to have moved into Biden’s camp than Trump’s (33-11%). And overall favorability was strongly on Biden’s side (62-35%).

This is more bad news for Trump who was already lagging in every national poll, as well as most of the crucial battleground state polls. What this says for the future of the debate schedule is hard to predict. Biden would have justification for not participating in any more of these Trump-induced psyche ward rumbles. But the next debate has a town hall format and it would be interesting to see if Trump would insult the voters to their faces. Either way, expect to Trump to become even more despicable and deranged. Because, as Biden said with regard to Trump’s negligent and and incompetent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, “It is what it is, because you are who you are.”

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

Racist President Trump Terminates Federal Anti-Racism Programs

Posted by on September 5, 2020 at 11:56 am. 0 Comments :

This has been another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for Donald Trump. It began with a string of post-convention polls that show Joe Biden increasing his lead over Trump nationally, as well as in most of the critical battleground states. And it ended with an article that exposed his repugnant comments about fallen American soldiers being “losers” and “suckers,” which even Fox News independently affirmed.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Consequently, Trump has revved up his outrage in a desperate effort to change the subject to one he believes would be more favorable to him. But once again, he’s blown it completely.

On Saturday morning Trump unleashed a 20+ tweet barrage about an issue that is wholly an invention of his perverse imagination. It began with his ordering the White House Office of Management and Budget to terminate what it says are un-American training sessions on “critical race theory.” The memo written by OMB Direct Russel Vought began…

“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda.

“For example, according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” or where they are required to say that they “benefit from racism.” According to press reports, in some cases these training have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.”

The memo fails to cite any place in the federal government where these alleged trainings are occurring. It only asserts that their existence came to Trump’s attention via unidentified “press reports.” No one is likely to be shocked to learn that the press reporting this was Fox News. Tucker Carlson’s White Nationalist Hour has lately been harping on this non-issue. He has hosted guests claiming that “critical race theory” is behind this effort to “engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.” And if anyone knows about engendering division and resentment it’s Carlson and Trump. The memo continued…

“The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions. Accordingly, to that end, the Office of Management and Budget will shortly issue more detailed guidance on implementing the President’s directive. In the meantime, all agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. In addition, all agencies should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these un-American propaganda training sessions.”

For the record, critical race theory is not the bureaucratic horror story that the Trump regime is portraying it as. It is a scholarly “attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.” So naturally our viscerally racist president is opposed to it. After all, he is the same president who lauded neo-Nazis as “very good people,” and maligned Black Lives Matters as “domestic terrorists.”

Trump’s directive to terminate federal critical race theory trainings is also notable in that there aren’t any. None! Neither are there any trainings that teach that “the United States is an inherently racist or evil country.” What he may be targeting is diversity training intended to address and reduce racial and other prejudices in the workplace.

However, the purpose of his determination to concoct a phony controversy is obvious. He needs a diversion from the other horrendous news that is engulfing him and his floundering presidency. He is in a state of utter panic as his reelection prospects continue to wither. And his frantic morning tweetstorm is just further evidence of how desperate he has become.

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

Trump Desperately Pushes a Phony, Racist Narrative of Rampant Violence.

Posted by on August 31, 2020 at 2:21 pm. 4 Comments :

Psychotic delusions are tricky to interpret. For instance, it’s hard to tell if Donald Trump truly believes that he is a beloved national leader who is a shoo-in for reelection, or if he realizes that he’s toast but doesn’t want to suffer the humiliation of admitting it publicly. Either way it is confirmation of an acute mental infirmity.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Consequently, in response to the clear evidence of his floundering campaign, Trump is angling to shape an electoral narrative that he thinks will give him some advantage. But he is painfully incapable of articulating a second term agenda. Obviously the topics that matter most to the American people – the economy, jobs, racial equality, climate change, healthcare, and the still surging coronavirus pandemic – are not working for him. He is losing in every national poll, as well as in most of the crucial swing states. and he wasn’t helped by his “American Carnage II” convention.

The position that Trump seems to have settled on is patently absurd. He is seeking to convince voters that the streets of America are awash in blood and that it is the fault of Democrats. Trump is calling this cataclysm “Biden’s America.” Never mind that it is actually – literally – happening in Trump’s America. His argument is that if he’s reelected all of this turmoil that he has created will magically go away, as if it were a deadly virus (oh wait…).

In order to get that narrative to take hold, Trump has been furiously posting tweets that portray the nation as embroiled in a raging and constant conflagration of bloodshed and savagery. On Sunday he unleashed an avalanche of horror stories on Twitter. More than half (58 out of 110) of his tweets were about allegedly rampant violence and Black Lives Matter “mobs” that he says are running wild in the streets. It’s an unambiguously racist campaign aimed at dividing the nation and firing up his white nationalist base.

According to FiveThirtyEight Trump has become “singularly obsessed with the topic” of crime, and HuffPost reveals that in July the vast majority of his campaign dealt in some way with public safety. He speaks in utterly bizarre hyperboles, like a five year old who has no realistic comprehension of the world around him. For instance he said Monday that “If I didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now.” Really? The whole city of 100,000 would have disappeared from the face of the Earth?

There is, however, a small problem with this campaign theme. Crime in America is trending down. And the crime that occurs is taking place in both Democratic and Republican cities. So try as he might, Trump cannot blame lawlessness on Democrats, and certainly not on Joe Biden. However, Biden can, and does, make a rational argument for Trump’s culpability (videos below):

“I look at this violence and I see lives and communities and the dreams of small businesses being destroyed. And the opportunity for real problems on the issue of race and police reform and justice being put to the test. Donald Trump looks at this violence and he sees a political lifeline.”

Biden went on to note the absurdity of Trump running on the claim that “Quote ‘You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.'” (video below)…

“And what is their proof? The violence we are seeing in Donald Trump’s America. These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future. These are images of Donald Trump’s America today. He keeps telling you, if only he was president it wouldn’t happen. If he was president. He keeps telling you if he was president you’d feel safe. Well, he is president, whether he knows it or not. And it is happening.”

“It’s getting worse. You know why. Because Donald Trump adds fuel to every fire. Because he refuses to even acknowledge that there’s a racial justice problem in America. Because he won’t stand up to any form of violence. He has no problem with right-wing militias, white supremacists, and vigilantes with assault weapons”

On a side note, the infantile, lying, cretins running the Trump campaign clipped the part of Biden’s speech where he said that “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” and made it look like that’s his own opinion of himself when, in fact, he was quoting Trump. It has already been tagged as “manipulated media“ by Twitter. That’s actually the second Trump video so labeled just today. The other video showed Biden supposedly sleeping prior to a TV interview. But the real video was an interview of Harry Belafonte.

That’s the kind of dishonesty and craven lack of ethics that we have to look forward to for the next couple of months. But hang in there, and continue to do the hard work necessary to achieve a landslide victory and to send Trump back to civilian life and, hopefully, to prison.

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

GOP Fascists Float Resolution to Ban the Democratic Party

Posted by on July 24, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 6 Comments :

The devolution of the Republican Party continues to accelerate headlong toward the rocky cliffs of ultimate oblivion. Its leader, the aspiring tyrant and sociopath Donald Trump, is the key propellant of this political disintegration. The Party’s worshipful devotion to Trump makes every member complicit in his heinous crimes against America and humanity.

Donald Trump

The latest testament to the downward spiral of the GOP (Greedy One Percent) is a resolution introduced by Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. Gohmert’s resolution instructs the Speaker of the House to “remove any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy.” It further directs that any such party “be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.”

This is what Gohmert likely believes is a crafty way of disparaging the Democratic Party which, as the party of the South during the Civil War era, advocated for slavery and secession. He is proposing this resolution in response to Nancy Pelosi’s order to remove statues, and other tributes to Confederate traitors, from the Capitol building. The bill approving the order passed the House this week, 301 to 113.

Gohmert and a couple of his GOP colleagues were unable to constrain their dismay over this initiative to finally put an end to the official honorary treatment of treasonous confederate politicians and generals. “The time has come,” Gohmert ranted, “for Democrats to acknowledge their party’s loathsome and bigoted past.”

Of course, the Democratic Party long ago acknowledged – and renounced – the tangential past association with the doctrine of southern racism. Historians agree that it was just southern Democrats, not the Party, that trafficked in such bigotry. What Gohmert isn’t saying (but surely knows) is that there was a realignment in the mid-20th century wherein Democrats embraced civil rights, resulting in the flight of southern bigots to the Republican Party. And that’s where they remain today with the fervent support of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

So Gohmert’s snarky resolution is just another thinly disguised shout out to the GOP’s racist base. It calls on a party that for decades has demonstrated its support for civil rights to be banned, while ignoring the fact that Republicans continue to work for suppression of civil rights and equal justice. There is a reason that the Democratic Party today has the support of 92% of African-Americans.

If Gohmert were sincere about his proposal it would call, instead, for the banning of Republicans and acknowledge their “loathsome and bigoted” present. His resolution’s call to ban any political party that has ever supported the Confederacy seems tailor-made for the GOP. That is made all the more clear with the vote on the bill to remove Confederate statues. All 113 votes opposing the bill (including Gohmert), and thus supporting the confederacy, were Republicans. And not to be left out, Donald Trump weighed in on the matter in his typically deranged way. Trump tweeted that…

First of all, this isn’t up to Sen. Inhofe. The bill has now passed both the House and the Senate by veto-proof margins and will shortly be on Trump’s desk. Should he live down to his racist standards and veto it, his veto is unlikely to be sustained. What’s more, Trump’s assertion that he’s “not a believer in ‘Cancel Culture'” is contradicted by all of the times he has personally “canceled” people and businesses that he disapproved of.

What Trump is a believer in is the same thing that Gohmert and the rest of the GOP believes: That they should have unchallenged, dictatorial, single-party rule over America. Unfortunately for them, the American people have a different perspective and will fight for the democracy and liberty that the Constitution guarantees. And the next battle in that fight is November 3rd.

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

Trump Resorts to Racist Fear Mongering to Draw the Votes of Suburban ‘Housewives’

Posted by on July 23, 2020 at 2:23 pm. 3 Comments :

It never fails. Whenever Donald Trump is cornered by events that expose his disastrous mismanagement of the people’s business, he falls back on the Republican Party’s established, all-purpose defense mechanism: Racism. It’s a tactic that has been employed for decades by the GOP, but never with such knee-jerk consistency as by Trump.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Trump is currently juggling multiple crises, including a raging pandemic that has already taken the lives of more than 143,000 Americans, civil unrest across the nation, economic recession and historic unemployment, and the only problems that Trump actually care about, his disintegrating public image and the approaching presidential election.

So naturally Trump has made a typically tone-deaf, self-serving, executive decision to inflame more racial animus. On Thursday morning he tweeted that…

It’s notable that Trump’s tweet attempts to appeal to an archaic demographic of “Suburban Housewives,” a degrading label that died decades ago along with anachronisms like “the little woman.” But more importantly, Trump is brazenly trying to frighten suburban women and families with thinly veiled inferences to marauding hordes of dark people moving into their exclusive neighborhoods.

This is a purely political desperation ploy that Trump is taking in the wake of polling that shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. Specifically with regard to the suburbs, polls show Biden handily beating Trump by a 52-43% margin. A recent CNN poll found that Biden was leading Trump 63-34% among suburban women.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to scare suburban women with nightmares of neighborhood diversity. But it may be the first time that he’s explicitly blamed Biden for it. However, Trump’s link to an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is hardly justification for this scare tactic.

The article is headlined “Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs.” However, it describes a part of the Fair Housing Act that was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 – fifty-two years ago. The mangling of facts like that in this article shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that it was written by Betsy McCaughey, the woman who coined the deceitful term “death panels” when she lied about Obamacare a dozen years ago. More recently, she appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that “The number of deaths from the shutdown may exceed the number of deaths from the coronavirus” That was more than 100,000 deaths ago. In her article McCaughey claims that…

“Biden’s plan is to force suburban towns with single-family homes and minimum lot sizes to build high-density affordable housing smack in the middle of their leafy neighborhoods — local preferences and local control be damned.”

There is nothing remotely resembling any of that in the law. The specter of high rises in the suburbs is a fiction formed entirely in McCaughey’s mendacious mind. The truth is that the law seeks to advance the goal of “Diverse, inclusive communities with access to good jobs, schools, health care, [and] transportation.” Oh, the horror of it all.

So contrary to Trump’s alarmist warning about how this will “destroy…your American Dream,” the law actually guarantees it for more Americans. What Trump is hoping is that his fear mongering will reverse the trend of suburban women voting for Biden. But that isn’t going to be easy if he all he has are racist lies about good government and labels that disparage and belittle the very people to whom he’s trying to appeal.

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

Fox News Insiders: They Created a White Supremacist Cell Inside the Network

Posted by on July 17, 2020 at 1:04 pm. 2 Comments :

The flamingly racist rhetoric of Donald Trump is somehow managing to heat up even further. His remarks supporting the Confederate flag, and the statues of the slavery proponents it represents, cut deeply into the concept of equality for all Americans. And his latest public statements have included thinly veiled bigotry such as his assertion that Joe Biden, if elected, will pursue policies that will bring an end to the white exclusivity of suburbia by prohibiting discrimination in the housing market.

Fox News, KKK

Trump’s reinvigorated boldness in advancing such blatant prejudice is attributable to two primary factors. First, there is his desperation resulting from how poorly he is doing in presidential polling. Biden is steamrolling him in every national poll, as well as in every crucial swing state. and his job approval rating is in the gutter.

Secondly, Trump is buoyed by his State TV Propaganda Network, Fox News, that remains devoted to him and his Republican cult despite his frequent attacks on the network. And Fox has particularly embraced the racist themes that have long been an integral part of Trump’s persona (as recently affirmed by his niece, Mary Trump).

The allegations of racism by Fox News are nothing new. The network was birthed in the bigotry of its founders Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. But now there are increasing numbers of voices from within that are beginning to leak out to the world. The Daily Beast interviewed some of Fox’s Black staffers who took part in an internal company conference call discussing racial issues in the workplace. And as the Daily Beast described it, “It wasn’t pretty.” According to the Daily Beast, “participants on the call expressed anger and distress about rampant racism at Fox, both on- and off-air.”

“The Daily Beast spoke to more than a dozen Fox News insiders, who all suggested that behind the scenes there is a growing despair among employees about the network’s role in demonizing and spreading fear about Black Americans in particular. One employee was especially angry, saying, ‘They created a cell—they created a white supremacist cell inside the top cable network in America, the one that directly influences the president… This is rank racism excused by Murdoch.'”

And what’s more…

“The network frequently deploys right-leaning Black contributors and guests to give cover to racially insensitive content. ‘That’s something they routinely do—they turn out these people, like Candace Owens, to support these things, and use Black apologists to denigrate other Black men and women and victimize them.'”

The article features examples of overt racism from Fox’s most watched hosts, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. A senior writer for Carlson’s program just got axed after his virulently racist comments on the Internet were revealed. Carlson issued a typically Foxian non-apology apology wherein he never even mentioned what the writer had done wrong. But he did attack anyone who took pleasure from the bigot’s departure from the show.

The outrage expressed by these Black Fox Newsers was met generally with either disingenuous platitudes or outright indifference by Fox brass. But the fact that they remain at the network and are able to continue disclosing what they see from inside the bubble is promising. It may even expose more of Trump’s rancid hatred as he continues to appear almost exclusively on the network that serves as his Ministry of Propaganda.

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

REALLY? Trump is Afraid that Electing Biden ‘Would Lead To Disaster’

Posted by on July 5, 2020 at 1:45 pm. 2 Comments :

The United States of America is currently undergoing one of the most troubling and turbulent times in its short history. The American people are suffering hardships that have not been imagined for decades. The list of leadership failures under “president” Donald Trump are almost too numerous to mention. But the consequences are far too too painful to ignore.

Trump Fear

An international pandemic has hit the U.S. especially hard, resulting in the deaths of 130,000 people, many of which would have been avoidable if we had competent leadership. The economy is in recession, and 20 million people are unemployed. Our allies are either laughing at us or pitying us, while our adversaries are gladly exploiting opportunities to achieve hostile objectives they have long sought. And in the midst of these calamities, Trump has the unmitigated gall to tweet that the policies of President Joe Biden…

Seriously? This makes you wonder just where Trump thinks his policies have led us. If we are not already in the throes of an epic disaster, then what would one look like? Biden would somehow have to put the Earth in the path of massive asteroid to satisfy Trump’s idea of disaster.

The spark that triggered Trump’s latest tantrum was an article in the ultra-rightist Washington Examiner. The article reported on remarks that Biden made to high-dollar donors at a recent fundraiser:

“In a donor meeting Monday evening, Biden said he was ‘going to to get rid of the bulk of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cut.’ He added about President Trump’s 2017 tax law, enacted with a Republican Senate and a House then under Republican control, ‘A lot of you may not like that, but I’m going to close loopholes like capital gains and stepped-up basis,’ mentioning the numerous wealthy people in attendance virtually.”

Naturally Trump regards this as a disaster since it would adversely affect him and his upper-crust pals in the GOP (Greedy One Percent). But you have to give Biden credit for telling prospective donors – and the very people whose taxes would be raised – that this is what he intends to do. Fortunately, there are some in the high income group who understand the need to raise taxes in order to “promote the general Welfare” (as the Constitution says), and that they are the ones who can best afford it. In the end, the reduction of the deficit, and the benefit to the overall economy, will serve the interests of the wealthy as well. It’s working people who drive economic prosperity. Without consumers the corporations will wither and die.

Trump’s Tax Scam was never a good idea. It was intended to further enrich the already wealthy, and to entice them to contribute to Republican campaigns. The benefits of the tax cuts were distributed overwhelming to the rich. But in the wake of Trump’s catastrophic negligence, incompetence, and even deliberate malfeasance, many of the most reliable right-wingers are abandoning ship.

Biden’s pledge to reverse Trump’s tax cuts include raising the top corporate tax bracket from 21% to 28%. Which is still below the 35% it was at prior to Trump’s cuts. However, it would help to bring the budget closer to balance and, of more immediate concern, raise funds to help the American people, small businesses, and local governments weather the pandemic storm. It’s exactly the sort of progressive agenda that’s needed at this critical juncture.

As for Trump’s priorities, they remain precisely what they’ve been since the day he announced his candidacy by disparaging Latinos as criminals and rapists. His recent Independence Day speeches were littered with racist dog whistles, or more accurately, foghorns. Judging by the content of his speeches, the most pressing national problems are protecting the statues of Confederate traitors and suppressing the First Amendment rights of citizens protesting injustice and systemic racism. On these matters Trump believes that the if the people are allowed to exercise their rights…

It’s unclear who Trump thinks would be “calling the shots” in the Biden administration, but his list would surely include Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and the ghost of Osama Bin Laden. For the record, Kimberley Strassel, a Trump-fluffing Wall Street Journal columnist, misrepresented Biden’s remarks. Biden was not asked if he would “condemn” the protesters, only what he thought should be done about the offensive monuments. And only a seriously deranged mind could interpret Biden’s answer to be the ominous foreshadowing of “the beginning of the end.” Luckily for Trump, that’s exactly the kind of mind he has. And it has led us unarguably to the disaster that he now says he fears.

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

Trump Fails to Renounce ‘White Power’ Tweet in Official Response

Posted by on June 28, 2020 at 11:51 am. 3 Comments :

The White House Deflection Shields are on full force this morning as Donald Trump is faced with some of the most damning evidence of his despicable negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to date. He has turned to his customary tactic of hurling insults, shifting blame, and denying reality. In other words, it’s the same old Trump who is only concerned with himself and his image.

Donald Trump, MAGA

Following the publication of the New York Times story about Russia paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops, Trump tweeted that “Nobody briefed or told me” about the matter. Then he casually dismissed it with his tedious whining about “fake news.” There is virtually zero chance that this sort of intelligence report would not have been conveyed to the president. But even if Trump were not lying, the contention that he wasn’t told makes matters even worse. It would mean that his intelligence apparatus is dangerously inept and that Trump was ill-informed about the welfare of the troops he is allegedly commanding.

What’s more, Trump continues to downplay the increasing severity of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic as its spread throughout the nation accelerates. He triples down on his defense of Confederate traitors and the offensive statues paying tribute to them. He obsessively watches his “shadow cabinet” advisors on Fox News. And then he goes golfing. This is how Trump is handling the duties of his office at a time of extreme crises and distress for the American people.

In addition to these disturbing examples of Trump’s dereliction of duty, he is also reaffirming his most abhorrently racist tendencies. He tweeted a video Sunday morning that featured his MAGA supporters shouting “white power” as they paraded in their golf carts through The Villages retirement community:

Trump’s comment in the tweet , which he deleted a few hours later (but is preserved here), thanked “the great people” expressing these repugnant views. That’s reminiscent of his praise for neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” and the corroborating views of his Fox News sycophants who last week defended slave owners saying that “It doesn’t mean they were terrible people.”

White House spokesperson Judd Deere frantically issued a statement in an attempt to clean up Trump’s latest mess. Deere said that…

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

Really? The “white power” chant occurred in the first ten seconds of the video. It’s hard to imagine how anyone, even someone as cognitively challenged as Trump, could have missed it. And if all he saw other than that was “tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters,” he must have a mental filter that edited out all the people shouting “F*ck Trump!” and asking “Where’s your white hoods?” All things considered, it’s surprising that Trump ever thought it was a good idea to post this video. In fact, it’s possible that he deleted it because of the criticism of him, not the racism.

What we didn’t hear from Trump’s spokesperson, or Trump himself, was any denunciation of the racist epithets so viciously bellowed by those unashamed bigots. There was not one word indicating that Trump disapproved of that hateful rhetoric. Perhaps he was worried about alienating his equally racist supporters and Klan pals. The entire statement said only that he hadn’t heard it and that he’s a big fan of those who said it. And that pretty much settles the question as to Trump’s flagrant racism. If he can’t repudiate this painfully obvious bigotry, then he simply doesn’t want to.

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

Fox News Defends Slave Owners: ‘It Doesn’t Mean They Were Terrible People’

Posted by on June 26, 2020 at 1:23 pm. 10 Comments :

There is a bitter controversy spreading across America like a viral pandemic. The nation’s past is being held to greater scrutiny as a result of repeated incidents of unarmed black Americans being murdered by the police. This evidence of systemic racism has boiled over into a much needed dialog on what values our country ought to be preserving and encouraging.

Fox News, KKK

Citizens have been pouring into the streets to express their anger and their refusal to tolerate the prejudice that presents itself in the form of “historical” statues. These monuments were intended to pay tribute to leaders of the treasonous Confederacy. In some cases these statues have been ripped from their pedestals or otherwise defaced. Donald Trump has taken the side of the traitors (while accusing others of treason) and is calling for the arrests and harsh punishment of the protesters. On Friday morning he even tweeted “Wanted” posters. He is doing far more to persecute these demonstrators than he has ever done to hold actual racist murderers accountable for their crimes.

Those making arguments in favor of maintaining these statues barely disguise their racist motives. They assert that it’s a matter of preserving history. But we do not erect statues of traitors and criminals as historical markers. If we did there would be statues of Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray. Statues are honorific, not history lessons. And removing them doesn’t erase any historical data. The South’s rebellion to preserve slavery is still recorded in history books and documentaries, as it should be.

Cut to Fox News (the network that is literally killing people). On Friday’s edition of Fox and Friends, the now social distancing “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham to discuss these issues. Co-host Brian Kilmeade led off with this wholehearted embrace of what Trump once called the “very fine people on both sides” of the racial hatred debate. “These people were right,” Kilmeade began, and “Those people were wrong. But it doesn’t mean they were terrible people. They were people of their times.”

Really? Kilmeade is defending the slave holders who were wonderful folks who just liked to own and brutalize other human beings as if they were cattle. What’s so terrible about that? As “people of their times,” how could they be faulted? How are they any different than the Nazis who were people of the 1940s in Germany? How are they any different than the KKK and the white nationalists in America today who are merely people of these times?

Here’s a creative way some Bulgarian artists dealt with the Russian oppressors of their times:

The fact that Kilmeade considers that a valid argument is precisely what’s wrong with Fox News and those who align themselves with their heinous political ideology (including Trump and his Deplorables). When it was Sen. Graham’s turn to contribute to this dialog, he didn’t bother to renounce what had been said so far. In fact, he elaborated by attacking the protesters in even more loathsome terms (video below):

“The people doing this hate our country. They hate the way we were founded. They hate capitalism. They have no respect for religion. They have no respect for diversity of thought. These people are the most radical people known to America. We’re at war with them politically. They want to destroy America as we know it. They hate America and every symbol of our country from the flag to the statues.

They hate. They want to turn us into a socialist nation. They want to destroy the family unit as we know it. And I tell you what, to the listeners out there. You may not believe you’re in a war, but you are, politically, and you need to take sides, and you need to help this president.”

Sound familiar? This is the dehumanizing rhetoric of the Old South that regarded people as animals and property. In Graham’s view, they have no rights, no decency, no family values. They represent everything that is unholy and against the country as seen by Graham and his ilk. And the only solution, according to Graham and his Fox News cohorts, is (civil) war.

Make no mistake, Graham and Fox News speak for Trump. Not that anyone outside of their bubble believes them, or that Trump needs their help. He’s been saying the very same things himself. This is the diseased mindset of people who still haven’t accepted that the South lost. They still want the statues that honor traitors. They still want to fly the Confederate flag. They still want to oppress African-Americans and others they regard as non-white deviants. And they are terrified that they are losing the battle to retain their delusions of superiority. Which, thankfully, they are.

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

Trump’s Feeble Effort to Reform Policing Validates the Protests He Condemned

Posted by on June 16, 2020 at 12:21 pm. 2 Comments :

Three weeks after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, America’s streets are still teeming with outraged citizens who are no longer willing to tolerate such injustices. It’s an unprecedented and sustained demand for change that has been fueled by a string of atrocities and populated by a truly diverse cross-section of Americans.

Donald Trump, Police

Conspicuously absent from this nationwide (worldwide) outpouring of grief and determination is the President of the United States, Donald Trump, whose only contribution has been to malign the protesters as “rioters,” “looters,” “thugs,” and even “terrorists.” Trump has repeatedly assaulted both the protesters and local governments with noxious threats of deploying the military against the American people. In Trump’s view these concerned citizens are enemies of the state simply because they oppose police brutality and are willing to act on their constitutional rights.

So for three weeks the people have clearly stated their intentions to compel meaningful change. And during that time, despite (or because of) his stubborn and bellicose opposition, Trump has seen his approval ratings decline into record low territory. The American people overwhelmingly support Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests lobbying for reform.

Consequently, Trump has pivoted in an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of his 2020 reelection campaign. He has apparently been convinced that he needs to grab onto this whirling tornado of dissent and score some undeserved points for himself. To that end he has hurriedly patched together a pitifully weak policing reform initiative that fails to address many of the core issues and solutions.

Trump’s latest exercise in hypocrisy comes in the form a unilateral move that Republicans regarded as an act of dictatorship when President Obama did it. His new executive order (EO) – the 162nd of his presidency – is an attempt to upstage congressional efforts to legitimately reform police practices by appropriating initiatives proposed by Democrats. However, this EO will be less comprehensive and will not have the force of law behind it. It can also be reversed or watered down by another executive order.

Additionally, Trump’s EO is a blatant contradiction of nearly everything he’s said about “law and order” since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began. Virtually every public comment he’s made has condemned Americans who have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and unequal justice. He has never acknowledged the systemic racism that permeates many institutions, and this EO doesn’t do so either. But the fact that he felt it necessary to take this step is actually a validation of the demonstrations and proof that they were required to force forward movement on these issues.

Trump’s Rose Garden speech, before a nearly totally white audience, spent far more time praising the police than criticizing the injustice and violence that his EO was supposedly drafted to address. And of course, he politicized the event by applauding himself as the great emancipator. He also heralded imaginary achievements with the economy, the coronavirus, and other matters that have nothing to do with law enforcement reform. And only Trump could say that “We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country,” during a speech meant to ease concerns about racist cops. It was a painfully obvious screed of propaganda aimed at boosting his floundering reelection prospects and nothing more.

Simultaneously, Trump falsely asserted that President Obama and Joe Biden “never even tried” to do anything about systemic racism. In truth, every time Obama tried to advance those matters he was blocked by Republicans and accused of being racist himself. The Trump administration actually repealed Obama’s reforms by executive fiat, slashed funding for community policing, and refused to enforce consent decrees won in court by Obama’s Justice Department. Obama also impaneled a task force to study the problems plaguing policing in December of 2014. In March of 2015, they issued a detailed report with specific policy recommendations. At the time, Trump was tweeting about how Obama was anti-police:

That tweet was in response to Obama’s remarks criticizing the failure of grand juries to indict police officers for the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Five years later Trump is still avoiding the real issues, and still doing nothing to prevent future tragedies because he only cares about how he can further his own personal and political interests. And anyone who fails to recognize that now is a fully indoctrinated disciple of the Cult of Trump and, sadly, beyond help.

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