NewsBuster’s Hysterical Defense Of Rush Limbaugh’s Lies About The Clinton Foundation

Last week Rush Limbaugh told his dittohead audience that “Eighty-five percent of every dollar donated to the Clinton Foundation ended up either with the Clintons or with their staff.” Consequently, Limbaugh asserted, only fifteen percent was spent on actual charitable activities. This attack on the Clinton’s finances is just the latest right-wing effort to invent controversies where none exist. It comes as a new book smearing Bill and Hillary Clinton is about to hit the shelves. That book, “Clinton Cash,” has already been debunked in a major way and it won’t even be out until next week.

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh’s contribution to the Clinton bashing stems from an article written by Sean Davis for the Federalist blog. The article’s analysis was fatally flawed and misleading. Nevertheless, Limbaugh ran with it and even spun its conclusions further from reality. PolitiFact evaluated his remarks and declared them Mostly False.”

In short, the Federalist/Limbaugh contention was based on Clinton Foundation tax returns that report that approximately 15% of their funds were distributed as grants to other charitable organizations. They then surmised that all of the remaining 85% went into the Clinton’s pockets. However, what they failed to grasp is that the Clinton Foundation is not a grant-making institution. Rather, they spend their money on charitable operations that they implement in-house, with 88% of their funds going directly to their charitable projects. It’s comparable to the Red Cross that also does not give grants to outside groups, but runs their own relief missions. For comparison, the Red Cross only gave out about 6.5% of their funds in grants in 2013. And, once again, that’s not because Red Cross executives are lining their own pockets, it’s because they finance their own internal projects. PolitiFact explained these differences like this:

“When most people in the charitable world think of foundations, they think of organizations that give away a lot of money in the form of grants to others who go out and do good works. The Clinton foundation works differently — it keeps its money in house and hires staff to carry out its own humanitarian programs.”

These facts were not only lost on Limbaugh and the Federalist, but also on Tom Blumer of NewsBusters who wrote an article defending Limbaugh’s ignorance and criticizing PolitiFact’s “Mostly False” determination. Blumer embraced the same misunderstanding of the Clinton Foundation’s finances and referenced an article by the Washington Examiner’s T. Becket Adams (formerly of Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze) that sought to dismiss PolitiFact’s analysis by alleging that the fact-checking site is biased in favor of the Clintons.

The evidence that Adams claimed exposed PolitiFact’s bias was that the Ford Foundation was a donor to both PolitiFact and the the Clinton Foundation. By this warped logic, every recipient of a donation from the extremely generous Ford Foundation is also tied to the Clintons (That’s almost 3,000 organizations in 2013). That, of course, is utter nonsense and a brazenly desperate attempt at guilt by fantastically tenuous association.

Newsbusters thinks it is an unforgivable failure that PolitiFact did not disclose that they received funding from Ford which also donated to the Clinton Foundation. [For the record, Newsbusters receives funding from the rabidly anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic Koch brothers, but made no disclosure of that in their article] And surprisingly, that wasn’t the stupidest thing in Blumer’s column.

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To further drive home his incoherent point, Blumer also cited a report by Fox News that he said supports Limbaugh and the Federalist. Now if you have to rely on Fox News for affirmation you are already in deep trouble. But in this case the report Blumer cited actually did agree with the data Limbaugh used from the Federalist. However, that’s because the source Fox News used for back-up was – are ya ready? – the Federalist. That’s right, Blumer is defending sketchy data published by the Federalist with a Fox News story quoting the same guy who wrote the article in the Federalist.

This is how it works in Wingnutlandia, where you get to provide corroboration for yourself. Just make an outlandish claim on your blog. Then make the same outlandish claim to Fox News. Then some schmuck at Newsbusters will say that Fox News backs you up. It must be nice to live in that reality-challenged, psycho-looping sphere of anti-logic.

[Update 5/8/2015] Now Peter Schweizer, author of the widely debunked smear book “Clinton Cash,” is also regurgitating the phony Clinton Foundation charitable expenditures. Although Eric Shawn of Fox News called it “incredibly misleading.”

Jon Stewart Challenges Fox News To A ‘Lie Off’ – He’s Gonna Lose

Last night Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show with a commentary (video below) on how his announcement that’s he’s leaving did not go unnoticed. He took particular umbrage at Megyn Kelly of Fox News for saying that “he was not a force for good,” and that “in his later years he got a little nasty.” But surprisingly the part that bothered him was “in his later years.” He then insisted that he still has “four to five productive years left,” but eventually he would hit “the last four or five angry confused years, or as they are sometimes referred to, the Fox News viewer demo years.”

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Then Stewart played clips of Fox Newsers accusing him of ignoring facts to offer nothing but “sarcasm, insults and dishonest editing.” (Sounds like watching Fox News). Once again Kelly was highlighted alleging that Stewart had “no foothold on the facts.” That spurred Stewart to challenge Fox News to a “Lie Off,” a contest that guarantees a victory for Fox News. He then played a six second Vine video that contained 50 Fox News lies. PolitiFact reviewed all of the lies in Stewart’s Vine video and agreed that every single one of them was false (eleven of them Pants On Fire). However, that evidence, as Stewart noted, would have no impact on Fox’s twisted perception of reality because…

“You see…Something of a conventional wisdom about this show has taken hold on the right. A thought that they’ve become so comfortable with that they don’t feel the need to offer evidence to support it. That we lie and distort things all the time to make them look bad.”

Stewart marveled at the suggestion by Rush Limbaugh that he “poisoned the Republican brand,” and after showing hilarious clips of how Limbaugh represented that brand asked “How do you poison a cyanide factory?” Then, challenging the notion that Fox cares about the truth, Stewart stated something that has been obvious for years, that “What matters to the right is discrediting anything that they believe harms their side. That’s their prime directive.”

Despite the conventional “wisdom” that Stewart mentioned, conservative media has often recognized the many times that Stewart’s wit was aimed at President Obama or other Democrats and liberals. Fox News has trumpeted those segments dozens of times. (News Corpse has documented them here and here). Nevertheless, they suffer a peculiar sort of amnesia that causes them to forget his even-handedness whenever they feel like bashing him again over some new perceived slight.

While conservatives may be celebrating the sunset of the Stewart Era on cable TV, they are forgetting that he will be replaced by somebody, and it will probably not be Dennis Miller or Sarah Palin or some other right-wing clown. There is a reason that there aren’t any conservative comedians (or any funny ones). Their world view is inherently humorless. It is consumed by fear and hatred and worship of the privileged. Jokes about the homeless, or sick folks without health insurance, are only funny to the ignorant, the sadistic, and the GOP (or Greedy One Percent), who are only aware of their own selfish concerns.

That’s why Fox News suffices as a comedy channel for conservatives. It’s as close as they can get to it. But liberals also find humor in some of the ridiculous and embarrassing statements that tumble from the tongues of Fox’s personalities. They also learn things from Stewart and gain insight from his well-informed satire. That’s why you hear many of them say that they get their news from Comedy Central and their comedy from Fox News.

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Who Hates America? Here Are Three Haters Who Happily Admit It

Rudy Giuliani’s recent comment that he doesn’t believe that President Obama loves America is just another example of the “othering” of the nation’s first African-American president by the pseudo-patriots of the right. As previously noted here on News Corpse, Giuliani has begun channeling Glenn Beck with increasingly ludicrous right-wing blathering.

However, if you really want to know who hates America, just look to conservative politicians and pundits who actually come right out and admit to it. In fact, it’s getting to be a regular thing with them.

Beginning with the latest diss on America by the noted war-mongering senator, John McCain, who said that he is “Ashamed of my country.”

John McCain Ashamed

But before that there was Sean Hannity, the Fox News patriopath, who wanted us to know that he is “Humiliated for my country.”

Sean Hannity Dumbass

And who can forget Rush Limbaugh informing us all that he too is “Ashamed of my country.”

Rush Limbaugh

Do you notice a pattern? And all of this explicitly articulated despising of America is coming from the same people who constantly complain that liberals and Democrats are insufficiently worshipful of this nation’s alleged exceptionalism (which is just a made up word for supremacy). This language would be regarded as treasonous were it to come from anyone on the left. First Lady Michelle Obama was virtually tarred and feathered for merely expressing her pride in how far America had come after the election of her husband.

So now it’s open season on America for conservatives. And they aren’t going to let any opportunity to disparage the country get by. But just let a liberal try to offer even mild criticism and all hell will break loose. We are definitely living in Bizarro World.

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An Open Letter To Rush Limbaugh From The Deranged, Literally Insane, Filled With Hatred, Democrat Party Base

Dear Rush,

Have you finally gone completely off your titanium-reinforced, bubble-enclosed, Viagra IV-fitted, rocker? Not that anyone could tell the difference from what you have been spewing for the last quarter century, but your latest tirade is either evidence of a severe thrombotic stroke, or you are deliberately providing late night comedians with new material.

Rush Limbaugh

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Your re-imagining of recent history with regard to the catastrophic falsehoods that were dispensed by the Bush administration in order to justify the invasion of Iraq is simply preposterous. Rather than recognizing the reams of documentation that the Bush administration mislead the nation and the world about “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” you attempt to turn that fact into a lie saying that…

“One of the biggest lies told during the Iraq war was that Bush lied us into war. That lie, that propaganda has done more damage to this nation’s ability to take on legitimate terrorism with confidence and assurity (sic) and defeat it. For however many years the Iraq war went on, every night on Comedy Central, practically every night, the audience there heard about it was all a lie. That Bush lied, people died, Bush Hitler.”

So it’s Comedy Central’s fault that America has failed to eradicate terrorism from the planet? [Damn you Jon Stewart!] And because of them the U.S. military has been drained of its legitimacy and confidence? That’s a pretty nasty remark to make about the heroes who are defending your freedom. Setting aside your contention that “practically every night” they were associating Bush with Hitler (which is more like never on any night), the assignment of responsibility to a cable comedy network for what you believe to be damaging to military readiness should be cause for concern by those who care for you. But you didn’t stop there:

“Every night for whatever number of years, seven years, six years, Comedy Central, Stewart, Colbert, you name it, Bush lied. The mainstream media, every day, every week, Bush lied. What did that do? In the minds of young skulls full of mush, it turned around the Iraq war into a joke, number one. It turned Bush into a joke. It turned the country into a joke, and it told everybody that everything we were doing over there was illegitimate because we had no business being there, that there was no terrorism.”

For your information, Bush didn’t need any help to be turned into a joke. And America’s “Young Skulls Full Of Mush” [YSFOM: The name of my next punk rock band] had the same opinion as most of the rest of the nation about his criminal adventures in the Middle East. We didn’t have any business being there since it had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, and all of the evidence presented as validation was fabricated.

For much of your rant you diverted to subjects that had no bearing on your topic. For instance, you found some excuse to complain bitterly that feminist extremists were pushing an agenda that defined all sex in college as rape. I have a disturbing notion that you are subconsciously projecting your own experiences during your truncated college years which, by all indications, were unsuccessful both academically and socially. And when you returned to the harangue of the day, your hostility could no longer be restrained and was loosed with a fury at the innocent and unsuspecting fans of a television comedy channel:

“Many of these people make up the deranged, literally insane, filled with hatred, Democrat Party base. And Obama can’t call it terrorism because his comedian buddies have spent seven years saying it didn’t exist.”

Well that settles it. Now that you have established that the millions of “literally insane” hate-mongering viewers of political satire are the core of the Democratic Party it will be much easier to dismiss them when they point out that your insights about the President are completely without merit. Where, for instance, did you get the idea that Obama’s comments about terrorism were influenced by “his comedian buddies?” Even if that were true, it’s better than being influenced by the terrorists, which is the case for you, Fox News, and other right-wing bloviators.

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In closing, it is hard to fathom your assertions that the YSFOM ever accused Bush of lying about ISIS since there was no ISIS when Bush was president. Maybe you are conceding the fact that his ill-advised policies resulted in the creation of ISIS and led to a rise in terrorism worldwide. But that would require an assumption that there is still some remnant of sanity in your diseased brain. Lacking any other corroborating evidence of that, it would be safer to assume otherwise.

Yours truly (if you still know what that means),
The Deranged, Literally Insane, Filled With Hatred, Democrat Party Base.
cc: Young Skulls Full Of Mush

WTF? Now Conservatives Love The Lamestream Media Because – Obama

The only thing that tingles the naughty parts of right-wingers more than bashing President Obama over some trumped up scandal or context-deprived sentence fragment, is railing against the greatest threat to America since gay, Ebola-infected, terrorist children sneaking across the border – The “Lamestream” Media (which, ironically, was responsible for most of the panic about gay, Ebola-infected, terrorist children sneaking across the border).

Ever since Sarah Palin’s speech writers pretended to coin the term, conservatives have vociferously criticized the conventional media outlets that they regarded as hopelessly corrupted by liberal bias and deference to the powers that be. They blasted the broadcast networks and cable news channels (except for Fox News, the biggest, most mainstream of them all) with condemnations of their allegedly slanted reporting and anti-American partisanship. Never mind that all of the major news enterprises are divisions of giant, multinational corporations that benefit directly from the hyper-capitalist, free-market mutations that Randian conservatives worship.

Invariably it is Fox News leading that attack pack to blister those associated with the big media organizations. And everyone on the far right gets in line to wield blows. But now they have an ally seeking to join the parade of criticism. An unwanted ally, apparently.

Fox News

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In what must be a deliberate attempt to upend the rightist ideologues’ mission, Obama made some remarks in an interview with Vox.com, an alternative Internet media company, that has shaken the press sparling’s brains into a state of utter confusion. decrying what he called “the balkanization of the media,” Obama said that…

“You’ve got the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh folks and then you’ve got the MSNBC folks… [it] allows us to narrow our point of view. […and that…] My advice to a future president is increasingly try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable.”

That, of course, is precisely what the right has been saying ever since the black guy occupied the White House. Rightist thought bleeders like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck have relocated to cyberspace outposts where they enjoy the freedom to pontificate as incoherently as they please. And everyone from Wingnut Land has advocated the very same advice that Obama offered about finding new venues.

Despite that apparent agreement, conservative hypocrites, upon learning of Obama’s support for new and alternative media, have now flipped their stance and are furious that Obama would say anything derogatory about the conventional press. They have adjusted their blinders so that all they can see are Obama’s comments regarding Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. The single-note chorus erupting from the right-wing choir is that Obama is specifically blaming just those two sources for all of his problems, despite his having mentioned MSNBC in the very same breath. And the fact that he would consent to being interviewed by an Internet media publisher like Vox is an insult to the good people who toil so valiantly in the now wonderful mainstream media.

This is not new complaint from the right. They howl when Obama appears with popular comedians like Stephen Colbert and Zach Galifianakis. They grumble when he hosts Google Hangouts. More recently, they went totally bonkers when he allowed YouTube stars, with audiences bigger than Fox News, to interview him. On that subject, Fox contributor Jonah Goldberg of the ultra-rightist National Review whined that Obama “only likes to talk to people who think he’s awesome.” That will come as some surprise to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and Bret Baier, who have both interviewed Obama.

The lesson here for the President is that he must hunker down in the White House basement and speak to no one. Because if he conducts an interview with ABC News he is a pandering to the lamestream elitists who are in the tank for him. And if he bypasses them he is insulting the indisputable dignity of the American press and proving that he’s afraid of tough questions. As always, Fox News and the right have constructed a bullet-proof, lose-lose scenario from which Obama cannot hope to escape. Unless, of course, he uses simple logic and reason, concepts that escape the ability of the right to comprehend.

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Obama Vox Interview

2014: An Epic Year For Conservative Crackpot Conspiracy Theories

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.

Impeach Obama


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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?

Ben Carson


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.

Glenn Beck Ebolamania


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?

Fox News Cover Up Passengers


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.

Keith Ablow


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.

Fox News


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.”

Glenn Beck


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?

False Flag


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 Ebola to America


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.

Fox News Rick Perry


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.

Fox News Missing Planes

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.

Rush Limbaugh


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.

To Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, And The Idiots Who Blame Cigarette Taxes For Eric Garner’s Death

Conservative zealots have been in a quandary over what to make of the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death on video. They don’t want to be seen as agreeing with the liberals they so feverishly despise, but they can’t find a reasonable argument to justify the unambiguously brutal killing of a man caught committing a crime on the scale of jaywalking. And unlike the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, there is video evidence of the officer’s brutality.

Rush Limbaugh Tobacco Tax

With the passage of time some of these right-wingers have begun to settle on a debate strategy that absolves the police of any guilt. It was first articulated by Sen. Rand Paul from the tobacco-growing state of Kentucky. Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld joined the fruitcake choir. Shortly thereafter, Rush Limbaugh picked up the baton and ran a bit farther around the track. Here is what they said:

Paul: I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes […] For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians.

Limbaugh: The police in New York, because they’re so eager for tax collection, what is being done here with regard to taxes and the state’s desire to collect them no matter what […] I think the real outrage here is that an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes.

Let’s get one thing straight here: Eric Garner did not die for anything related to tax collection. He was murdered by a police officer who strangled him while ignoring his repeated cries that he could not breathe.

Furthermore, Garner was never alleged to have violated any tax laws. The fact that the police originally approached him regarding his allegedly selling single cigarettes was incidental to his death. Selling “loosies” is not a violation of any tax code. It is a violation of statutes that prohibit the unlicensed sales of controlled substances. Garner would have been subject to the same legal scrutiny had he been selling single shots of whiskey.

There is only one cause that can be cited for Garner’s death, and that is the excessive force and reckless endangerment by the officer that placed him in a chokehold, a tactic that was explicitly prohibited by the guidelines of the NYPD.

For anyone to shift the blame from the overzealous officer to the legal pretext for the arrest is patently absurd. This is just an opportunity for anti-tax extremists to exploit a tragedy to advance their agenda and simultaneously excuse the behavior of a rogue cop. If Garner had been stopped for allegedly shoplifting a pair of socks from a Wal-Mart, and subsequently died at the hands of the police, would any of these wacko Libertarians be arguing that the laws against shoplifting caused the death and that those laws should be repealed?

It takes a special kind of stupid to advance a theory that a minor legal infraction somehow compelled a police officer to use deadly force against a suspect. That behavior is not supported by any statute or the code of conduct of the police department. It was solely the decision of the officer.

The proponents of this theory, however, may have ulterior motives. First of all, they are desperate to avoid agreeing with their ideological adversaries that the police might be responsible for having overreacted. Secondly, they don’t want to allow legitimate charges of racism to settle in despite the evidence that black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by the police than white men. And finally, both Paul and Limbaugh have personal conflicts of interest. Paul represents the second biggest tobacco producing state in the country. And Limbaugh is an avid consumer, and visible proponent of, tobacco. They would both be very happy, no doubt, if regulations of tobacco were eased or revoked.

It is ironic that Republicans have wrapped themselves in the cloak of personal responsibility, but when it comes to the behavior of police officers who shoot down unarmed teenagers, murder twelve year olds with fake plastic guns in public parks, or fire on patrons in department stores carrying toy guns they intend to purchase, personal responsibility is cast aside. And the fact that in all of these recent incidents the victim was an African-American male speaks to the barely disguised racism that infects our society. Particularly when white men exercising their “right” to openly carry firearms in grocery stores and burger joints never seem to encounter any problem with the local police.

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BY THE WAY, Cigarette taxes save lives. They deter both adults and minors from consuming a product that will eventually make them acutely sick and probably kill them. Tobacco is far more dangerous than terrorism. In fact, if Al Qaeda or ISIL were interested in raising the number of fatalities they cause, they should consider buying Philip Morris. Cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans every year. That’s more than 100 times the death toll on 9/11 and far more than any terrorist organization has ever imagined. Plus it’s entirely legal so they could kill more Americans without having to dodge drones or Navy SEALs.

Nevertheless, the right is obsessed with permitting this wholesale slaughter to continue. And it goes back decades to the seeds of the Tea Party. That’s part of the reason that the AstroTurfed, Koch brothers funded Tea-bacco lobby launched their mission with attacks on public health care.

So not only did cigarette taxes not cause Garner’s death, they have prevented sickness and death for millions of Americans. It gives a whole new and meaning to the hashtag #ICantBreathe.

The Cult Of Fox News: New Study Affirms Blind Devotion To Cable’s Church Of Disinformation

One of the fundamental methods employed by cults to assure unwavering loyalty is to demand that devotees believe only in the doctrine bestowed by the cult. All others are presumed to be deceivers and unworthy of trust.

With that in mind, consider the results of the new Pew Research study on “Political Polarization & Media Habits.” The year-long research surveyed American news consumers and categorized their relationships to thirty-six sources for news and information about government and politics by political ideology. The differences in the levels of trust exhibited by consistent conservatives and liberals are profound.

The study reveals that conservatives have drastically constrained their access to news to a very few, hard-right outlets. They behave as if any exposure to a conflicting viewpoint would be tantamount to fraternizing with Satan. Consequently, they rely almost solely on Fox News for their information intake. That is how Fox maintains their ratings position, by herding all of the conservative cattle into one corral.

Pray for Fox News

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Nearly half (47%) of conservatives identify Fox News as their “main source” for news. Nothing else even comes close. Compare that to liberals who cite CNN as a main source only 15% of the time with a half dozen other sources closely competing for their attention. What’s more, conservatives obediently trust Fox News by a larger margin (88%) than any other group of viewers. And the only other sources they trust more than 50% of the time are similarly far-right partisans: Sean Hannity (62%), Rush Limbaugh (58%), and Glenn Beck (51%). Of course, none of those sources are objective news providers, or even journalists.

While Conservatives have only four sources that they trust more than 50% of the time, liberals express trust for nine different sources at that rate: NPR (72%), PBS (71%), BBC (69%), New York Times (62%), CNN (56%), NBC (56%), MSNBC (52%), ABC (52%), and CBS (51%). Note that they are all (with the exception of MSNBC) generally regarded as legitimate journalistic enterprises. Except, that is, by conservatives who trust none of them. In fact, conservatives only have greater trust than distrust for twelve of the thirty-six sources in the study. So consistent with the cult maxim, conservatives actively distrust twenty-four (two-thirds) of the sources. Liberals flip that stat, having greater trust for twenty-eight of the sources and distrust for only eight.

The mission of Fox News from the beginning was to divide the nation by ideology. It is why they came up with their “fair and balanced” slogan with the implicit accusation that the other news providers were neither. They deliberately sectioned off their audience and told them that everyone else was lying to them. Subsequently, when they lied to their viewers (which they do constantly), there is no place for them to turn for the actual truth. The Fox version of events becomes the unqualified gospel for their audience/disciples despite being riddled with falsehoods and rancid partisanship. And additional proof of that is seen in the studies that show that Fox viewers are less informed than those who watch other media, or even those who watch nothing at all. And the more you watch Fox, the less you know.

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The correlations to cult status are unmistakable: Proselytize relentlessly (Fox is #1); repeat/preach the cult’s doctrine (anti-Obama, anti-government, Benghazi); reinforce obedience with fear (tyranny, terrorism, Ebola); glorification of idols (Ronald Reagan, Ted Cruz, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin); demonization of competing views (Democrats, the rest of the media); and fabricating a comforting home for faithful followers by casting experienced propagandists and appealing, mostly blonde, presenters as reporters. It’s a closed loop society that succeeds by keeping the flock secluded, ignorant, and artificially happy. I just hope they don’t start serving Kool-Aide.

Rush Limbaugh’s Defense For His Justification Of Rape Makes Matters Worse

When Rush Limbaugh took to the air to vindicate every rapist who ever claimed that the woman “really wanted it,” he found himself the subject of widespread revulsion and ridicule – again. His comment that “No means yes, if you know how to spot it,” gives permission to assault women after they’ve explicitly asked to be left alone. According to Limbaugh, those with advance perception skills know what women actually want and to deny these male mind-readers satisfaction “takes all the romance out of everything.”

Rush Limbaugh

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was one of thousands of critics blasting Limbaugh for his boorish advocacy of violence against women. As a part of their campaign to publicize Limbaugh’s comments, they sent emails to supporters that included a petition to persuade advertisers to shun Limbaugh. It also included a request for donations, as do all DCCC emails. Not surprisingly, this produced a response from the Limbaugh camp complaining that he had been taken out of context and that…

“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee emails about Rush Limbaugh are an intentional lie, using 10 words carefully selected from his full comments to imply the opposite of what he actually said.”

Nowhere in the response did Limbaugh’s spokesman indicate what the alleged lie was. Nor did he bother to put Limbaugh’s remarks in what he considered to be the proper context. And as to whether a full reading of Limbaugh’s remarks would reveal that he was saying the opposite of what was implied, well, you can listen to 346 words and decide for yourself:

The actual context of these statements was with regard to a policy at Ohio State University aimed at reducing the incidence of sexual assault and date rape. Limbaugh was criticizing the policy and arguing that consent is not a prerequisite for sexual activity. He further mocked it by claiming that it would only lead to frivolous lawsuits. What’s more, Limbaugh believes that it’s absurd to expect men to be respectful of women because their compulsion for sex overpowers their capacity for rational decision making.

“I don’t know how men can be held to that Ohio State agreement, policy, anyway, because everybody knows in sex men don’t think with their brains. Not the one in their heads, anyway. It’s just so silly.”

So in his argument that women are so dumb that they can be ignored when they express their wishes, Limbaugh actually asserts that men are too dumb to make responsible decisions. This tells us something about Limbaugh’s experiences with women and his own ability to conduct himself civilly. He is advancing a concept of gender relations that is more aligned with our prehistoric ancestors than with modern society.

Given his perverse view of sexuality and the welfare of women, it explains why he is on his fourth wife and has had to acquire massive quantities of Viagra on the black market.

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Rush Limbaugh’s Delusional Plot By Militant Vegetarians To Unleash Anti-Beef Ticks

Tick Talk, Tick Talk…To all of the militant vegetarians out there – and we know that people who advocate against cruelty to animals are amongst the most brutal terrorists of our time – be aware that your cover has been compromised. The corpulent defender of ill health and Oxycontin abuse, Rush Limbaugh, has discovered your clandestine scheme to turn all of America into a model of rosy-cheeked physical fitness. ABORT, ABORT!

Rush Limbaugh

On his radio communique Friday, Limbaugh unveiled the dastardly plot contrived by the enemies of meat to turn all Americans into vegetarians via a unique form of bio-terrorism. I’ll let him tell it:

“Veggie Revenge. What is it? Well, in Texas, Texas, of all places, they have discovered a bug that can turn you into a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off of red meat. […] In some cases, eating a burger or a steak has landed people in the hospital with severe allergic reactions. The culprit is the Lone Star tick. […]

“[T]he radicals are gonna try to get hold of these ticks and mass produce them, mass grow ’em and spread ’em all over the country in order to get people to stop eating beef.”

That’s right. As we speak there are covert vegetarians clad in Che t-shirts herding genetically modified ticks on the Texas prairie into tiny tick corrals. They intend to release them on unsuspecting Americans across the country. They will probably target McDonalds and other fast food franchises as likely spots to infect innocent carnivorous diners. Limbaugh notes that he has “tried to call your attention to the militant vegetarians,” for some time. Let’s hope that it is not too late.

The vegetists are a wily bunch who seek to control every part of your life. They include First Lady Michele Obama, who has brazenly spoken out in favor of healthier diets for all Americans, especially children. That unscrupulous bitch. Although Limbaugh courageously calls out the nefarious veggies, he generously exempts the masses whom he regards as victims, saying that…

“[M]ost of ’em are dupes in the sense they don’t understand they’re part of a political agenda. […] If you’re a vegetarian and you don’t realize there’s a political agenda attached to what you’re doing, you’re being duped.”

So wake up you vege-dupes. Can’t you see that you’re being used by international Climate Change conspiracies to invoke a One-World government where everyone has good health, the air and water are clean and safe, and the planet can sustain life for the indefinite future? Is that the kind of nightmare existence you want for yourself and your children? It’s not as if the vegetists really care about anyone. According to Limbaugh it’s all political. He says that…

“The very idea that militant vegetarians demand everybody do what they do is all the proof you need that it’s political.”

Never mind that no one has ever heard a militant vegetarian making such demands. And it goes without saying that conservative extremists like Limbaugh would never demand that anyone behave in certain prescribed manners. Unless, that is, you want to purchase contraceptives, marry someone you love, wish somebody a happy “holiday,” or vote without having to show your government approved papers.

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It’s a good thing we have Rush Limbaugh around to expose the nefarious plots being directed at an unwitting populace that would never know about these things were it not for his intrepid investigations and fearless devotion to us ignorant waifs in the hinterlands. So be grateful that there are such morally upstanding patriots like Rush to protect us all from our own stupidity. And, before you forget, strip and do a full body search to make sure you are free of militant vegetarian ticks.