Fox News Gets Exclusive Access to Voter Suppression Bill Signing By Florida Governor

In what can only be described as a submission to state TV politics, Florida governor Ron DeSantis held a bill signing ceremony where he denied access to every media organization – except for Fox News. Even the local station that was designated as the pool representative was refused entry.

Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis

This is the sort of journalistic atrocity that would be expected in a third world dictatorship or a Donald Trump administration. As the Tampa Bay Times reported

“When Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new bill this morning to change the future of mail-in voting in Florida, the only television cameras allowed to capture the moment belonged to Fox News.

“Outside, reporters and videographers from local news outlet were told the ceremonial bill signing was an ‘exclusive’ for Fox & Friends, the conservative network’s morning show. DeSantis confirmed as much later in the day.”

This was a public event paid for by taxpayers. But DeSantis turned it into a totalitarian style propaganda affair covered only by approved state media. It assured that the only people who would be able to see this farce were Fox News viewers who, ironically, would be the primary beneficiaries of a bill that suppressed voting by low income and minority voters. Anyone who didn’t have cable, or who chose to watch actual news networks, were shut out. And to make matters worse, the whole idea was DeSantis’ alone. In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, Fox News said that…

“Fox never asked for the special treatment. In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, the network said, ‘FOX & Friends did not request or mandate that the May 6th event and interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis be exclusive to FOX News Media entities.'”

The bill itself is another initiative to make voting more difficult, similar to bills passed in Georgia and Texas. DeSantis held up a placard detailing what he said the bill would accomplish, including common Republican strawman issues like enforcing voter ID, banning ballot harvesting, prohibiting mass mailing of ballots, increasing election transparency, and prohibiting private money from running elections. None of these activities were identified as having caused any problems in any past election.

RELATED: The Republican (and Fox News) Agenda for 2021: Less Voting, More Guns

What DeSantis left out was that the bill also provided for restricting mail-in ballot drop boxes, making it harder to vote by mail, forcing people to request mail-in ballots every two years, criminalizing giving food or water to voters in line, and expanding partisan challenges to vote counting.

When asked why he restricted news coverage to Fox News, DeSantis dodged the question, saying only that it was “a wonderful bill signing […] on Fox and Friends and we were happy to give them the exclusive on that.” But granting exclusive coverage to a public event is a brazen assault on democracy. And it only confirms that DeSantis was afraid of the broader Florida population finding out just how deceitful and despicable he and the Republican Party are.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

HUH? Fox News Hack and GOP Senator Say Corporations are ‘Kind of Scary’

The hypocrisy of the Republican Party is a remarkably resilient toxin that has infected the American body politic. They have abandoned any sense of reason or rationality. And if they have to contradict even their longest held “principles” (to the extent they exist) in order to sustain whatever outrage they are peddling, they’ll do it in a flash.

Fox News, Censorship

The GOP has always had an affinity for big business and the wealthy elitists who reign over it. But now they are experiencing a sea change due to events in Georgia and Texas and some other red states that are drafting and passing legislation aimed at suppressing the votes of Democrats in general, and people of color in particular.

This trend began when Georgia passed a series of suppressive bills that reduced ballot access, made voting by mail more difficult, and even criminalized giving water to voters waiting in line. Subsequently, some companies in Georgia responded to the protests of their customers by renouncing the anti-voting bills. Major League Baseball moved their All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. And Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, and others let the GOP politicians in Georgia know that there would be consequences, including cutting off campaign donations.

This corporate revolt has spread as similar bills spread to other states. And now the corporate world’s best friend, the Republican Party, is shocked and appalled and ready to strike back. They have even threatened to revoke the preferential tax codes that the GOP had previously given them (Oh no, not that!). The GOP Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has called for corporations to get out of politics. Well, except for their financial support.

On Monday, Lisa Boothe, a Fox News contributor, expressed what has become the new mantra of the GOP with regard to their Big Business ex-allies:

Really? People like Boothe never thought it was scary when corporations shoveled funds into their campaign war chests. They never thought it was scary when those corporations spoke out against fair taxation. They never thought it was scary when corporations campaigned against reproductive rights or civil rights or environmental protection or regulations that protected the safety of food, water, or workplaces. They never thought it was scary when those corporations backed their candidacies for public office. And they certainly never think it’s scary when Fox News, itself a monstrous corporation, gets entwined in politics every minute of every day.

Boothe’s tweet was followed less than an hour later by a similar posting from the GOP Senator from Missouri, and insurrection proponent, Josh Hawley. He repeated the same message about how the corporations he once loved have turned evil:

Not to be outdone, Fox News primetime host, Laura Ingraham, devoted her entire opening segment on Monday night to a monologue demanding that “conservatives have to rethink their relationship with Big Business,” because “Corporate America has gone all-in on helping Democrats secure a permanent majority.” Right, because Democrats have always been Corporate America’s favorite party. Elaborating, Ingraham disgorged the ludicrous theory that corporations are intent on “protecting liberals’ grip on power.” “Democrats,” Ingraham babbled, “know their agenda is gonna crush working class Americans. They hate it when wages go up.” Which is why Democrats are the party fighting for a higher minimum wage and an end wage disparities due to race and gender, while Republicans steadfastly oppose that.

Hawley, Boothe, Ingraham, and the rest of these ultra-rightist hypocrites have apparently forgotten how supportive they were when corporations would “get together to plan how to control legislation” that favored the corporations and the Republican political power base. They must have forgotten about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a confederacy of corporate lobbyists and state legislators that work together to draft legislation on behalf of its corporate members.

For the record, what triggered Boothe and Hawley at this time is that a group of more than 100 top corporate leaders got together to discuss how they should respond to the Republican voter suppression movement and the GOP’s threats of reprisals. It’s a voluntary association driven by the reaction of the American people to the red state anti-voter initiatives. And contrary to Hawley’s reference to “oligarchy” it wasn’t started by the corporate titans, but by Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean of the Yale School of Management.

Corporations will always have their own best interests at heart. But it is decidedly better for the world when they are pursuing those interests due to free market pressure placed on them by their customers, than by the greed that motivates their executives and shareholders. And it’s the fact that these recent events are marketplace-driven that is so objectionable to the Republican Party. They simply can’t stand it when the people decide to rule. They don’t like it when people rule by voting in record numbers. And they don’t like it when people convince corporations to behave like good corporate citizens.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Tucker Carlson of Fox News Fears Democrats are ‘Importing New Voters’ to ‘Replace’ Him

The flaming racism on Fox News continues to be the core of its editorial policy. It’s a theme that is repeated on multiple programs, especially during primetime with their openly bigoted hosts, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Fox’s Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Klan

On Thursday night Carlson made some of the most overtly racist comments he’s ever lowered himself to utter. Which is saying something, considering the hundreds of examples that have been documented. His remarks amounted to a full-throated endorsement of the repugnant “White Replacement Theory” that is a foundational principle of the world’s worst hate-mongers. It was the stated motivation behind numerous mass shootings including those at a mall El Paso, Texas, a Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and mosques in Christchurch, NZ. Those mass murderers explicitly referenced it in their manifestos. And let’s not forget Trump’s “very fine people” in Charlottesville, Virginia who marched through the streets chanting Jews will not replace us.” Now Carlson is doing the same.

Carlson felt so strongly about promulgating this rancid rhetoric that he appeared as a guest on another program, Fox News Primetime, hosted this week by Mark Steyn. While there he delivered an explicit sermon on white replacement saying that…

“[T]he government shows preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself and they are being treated better than American citizens.”

Carlson is trying to incite the anger of his racist viewers by lying about “contemptable” immigrants receiving benefits that aren’t available to the oppressed white citizens. He continues saying that…

“Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term “replacement,” if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening actually.”

Apparently Carlson knows that the white replacement theory rhetoric is offensive, but chooses to articulate it anyway. That’s how committed he is to it. And he’s working hard to frighten his dimwitted audience. He continues saying that…

“If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

Here Carlson is peddling the nauseating notion of voters being “imported” to “dilute the political power” of his white brethren. He continues saying that…

“This is a voting right question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that?”

Carlson couldn’t care less about voting rights. His problem with what he calls a “brand new electorate” is that they are dark-skinned people from third-world countries. Never mind that they can’t vote, and that the process for becoming citizens, even for legal immigrants, can take more than ten years. But Fox News wants to make people believe that Democrats are recruiting illegal immigrant, drug-dealing, sex trafficking, MS-13 gang members, to come to the U.S. and be rewarded with voting privileges upon arrival.

This sick deception is exacerbated by Carlson’s opposition to “those people” voting here in the U.S., even if they are natural born citizens. There is a brand new electorate with every new generation. That’s why he supports the voter suppression bills being advanced in states like Georgia and Texas, where the LatinX population is growing faster than that of whites. Those bills are squarely aimed at people of color and, by golly, Carlson isn’t gonna sit back and take it.

This isn’t the first time Carlson has gone down the white replacement road. Just last month he ranted about Democrats allegedly “packing the electorate” with immigrants. He called it an issue that “we know for certain will change the country forever.” He frequently maligns people of color as “dirty,” and diversity as a threat to “traditional” America. And he’s doing it all with the knowledge and approval of his bosses at Fox News. And America should not sit back and take it.

UPDATE: The Anti-Defamation League has sent a letter to the Fox News CEO, Suzanne Scott, demanding that Carlson be fired. “Given his long record of race-baiting,” the letter says, “we believe it is time for Carlson to go.” It elaborates that…

“Last night, in a segment on his program dealing with voting rights and allegations of voter disenfranchisement, Tucker Carlson disgustingly gave an impassioned defense of the white supremacist “great replacement theory,” […] this is not legitimate political discourse. It is dangerous race-baiting, extreme rhetoric. And yet, unfortunately, it is the culmination of a pattern of increasingly divisive rhetoric used by Carlson over the past few years.

Despite the fact that Carlson has already lost most of his national advertisers (MyPillow is currently his top account), Fox will still probably be too scared of their white supremacist viewers to cancel Carlson. Meanwhile, The Daily Show put together a supercut of how Carlson “plagiarized” white nationalist mass shooters.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

King of Cancel Culture Trump Clings to ‘Big Lie’ in Nasty Easter Message

Despite having been unceremoniously evicted from the White House five months ago, Donald Trump continues to beg for relevancy from the confines of his Mar-a-Lago bunker. Never mind that he is the subject of numerous criminal and civil lawsuits. Or that he was just exposed for having defrauded his own supporters (again).

Donald Trump Walking the Plank

His plaintive yelps coming in the form of angry, inarticulate press releases since he has been banished from Twitter and other social media. The latest outburst from Trumplandia is a blasphemous Easter bulletin announcing his displeasure with what he calls “the Radical Left Democrats” and their “WOKE CANCEL CULTURE,” whatever that means. Trump’s communique to his glassy-eyed cult disciples is a call to arms for Republicans to do precisely the same thing for which he is condemning Democrats:

“For years the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. Now they are going big time with WOKE CANCEL CULTURE and our sacred elections.”

The irony of Trump whining about Democrats engaging in boycotts is hysterical. Trump has called for boycotts of too many American companies to count. He is, in fact, the King of Cancel Culture, boycotting dozens of companies “when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends” him personally. That includes his loyal Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, along with Harley-Davidson, CNN, Apple, Macy’s, Univision, Mexico, HBO, Rolling Stone, and AT&T. Now he’s adding some more names to his enemies list:

“It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back—we have more people than they do—by far! Boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck. Don’t go back to their products until they relent. We can play the game better than them. They didn’t even get approval of State Legislatures, which is mandated under the U.S. Constitution.”

First of all, if Trump had more people than the Democrats, he wouldn’t be hiding out in Palm Beach firing off hostile missives in celebration of Easter, the day commemorating the resurrection of his alleged lord and savior. Secondly, there is nothing in the Constitution that mandates the approval of state legislatures (or election officials, which is what the former Idiot-in-Chief meant) to conduct business as they see fit in accordance with the law. As usual, Trump is just making stuff up.

It’s also notable that Trump’s amended enemies list is way too short to encompass all the companies that have expressed opposition to the GOP election tampering campaign. The Washington Post reports that…

“Nearly 200 companies on Friday joined in a strong statement against proposals that threaten to restrict voting access in dozens of states, in a further sign of corporate willingness to speak out on social justice issues.”

Along with the companies Trump called out above, others include Dow, Estee Lauder, Hewlett-Packard, Levi’s, Lyft, Uber, Morningstar, Paypal, Salesforce, Under Armour, Univision, and nearly 200 more. Will Trump insist that his flock boycott all of them? Undeterred by reality, Trump went on to rant that…

“They rigged and stole our 2020 Presidential Election, which we won by a landslide, and then, on top of that, boycott and scare companies into submission. Never submit, never give up! The Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them. We will not become a Socialist Nation. Happy Easter!”

So Trump is still peddling the “Big Lie” that the election was “stolen” from him. And he’s still framing it in the way that incited a deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill, with pleas to “never submit” because “they” will “destroy our Country.”

To be clear, the voter suppression legislation in Georgia, Texas and 40+ other states has nothing to do with election integrity. Not a single proponent of those bills can cite any voting irregularities beyond minor infractions, and most of those were by Republicans.

It is no coincidence that this surge of suppressive legislating came immediately following an election that saw Democrats win the presidency and a majority in the Senate. That election was certified by all 50 states, including those with Republican leadership, some of whom are sponsors of these bogus bills.

So the motivation for this isn’t securing elections. It’s manipulating them to quash Democratic voters and, indeed, democracy. And if Trump gets his way there will be more seditious uprisings, more pain and suffering, and more disseminations of purposefully inflammatory rhetoric aimed at inciting riots on behalf of the traitorous cretin that American just cast out.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Disgusting Fox News Hacks Compare Waiting in Line for Hours to Vote to … What?

Desperate Republicans in Georgia, having recently lost two Senate seats and the presidency to Democrats, just passed a blatantly discriminatory law whose unambiguous purpose is to suppress votes. The law will impact predominantly people of color, the poor, workers, and students.

Fox News Friends

This is a backdoor admission that the GOP can’t appeal to the concerns of voters with their policies, so they resort to obstructing citizens from exercising their Constitutional right to vote. And naturally, Fox News is supporting this abhorrent electoral tactic. On Thursday morning the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends addressed the subject, focusing on a bizarre provision in the law that prohibits anyone from offering food or water to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots.

For the record, it is Republicans who created the mess that has resulted in voters having wait for many hours to vote. The GOP made it more difficult to vote by mail. They closed precincts, but only in districts that tended to vote Democratic. The precincts that remained open were provided fewer staffers and voting machines. The results were predictable delays intended to discourage people from voting at all. This new legislation is intended to make matters even worse.

In light of that, Fox News saw fit to mock the problem that obviously isn’t affecting any of them or their privileged class. It’s an exercise in brazen callousness and elitism:

Ainsley Earhardt: The water argument is what cracks me up. Because what line have you stood in – If you go to Yankee Stadium and stand in line to get a ticket, do they serve you water? Do you care?
Brian Kilmeade: Just hot towels. That all you get.
Steve Doocy: I have been voting for over forty years and I have never thought to myself, “Okay, I have to go vote today. Will they have snacks?”

Whereupon everybody shares a hearty laugh at the hardships of people that they can’t possibly relate to. The comparison to waiting in line for Yankees tickets is painfully ludicrous. Let’s set aside the fact that you buy those tickets on line. More to the point, attending a baseball game isn’t a constitutionally protected activity, the results of which will impact the lives of you, your family and your community for decades.

Doocy’s observation that he has never had to think about “snacks” when going to vote only reinforces how out of touch he is with the problems of people not in his upper crust socioeconomic class. Obviously he hasn’t had to worry about that. In his neighborhood they have plenty of polling places, and he can take whatever time he needs to go cast his vote.

The fact that these three hacks find this dilemma so hysterical is downright nauseating. They should be forced to vote in precincts that have the disadvantages that low income citizens have to deal with. They aren’t pampered TV personalities complaining about not having snacks for an hour or two. They are often elderly voters stuck in an outdoor line in November for six, eight, ten hours, or more.

Finally, returning to the comparison to getting Yankees tickets, these cretins forget that waiting for sporting events is actually a cultural activity that famously includes elaborate snacks and refreshments provided in tailgate parties. That’s still legal. But giving food or water to oppressed citizens who only want to participate in their democracy is now against the law in Georgia.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Tucker Carlson Freaks Out Over Fake Plot to ‘Pack the Electorate’ with Immigrants

In the wake of the election of Joe Biden as President, Fox News has clearly made an editorial decision on how best to disparage him and the Democratic Party. Fox’s CEO Lachlan Murdoch even admitted publicly that he regards his network as “the opposition” saying “That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration.”

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Klan

Consequently, the network has focused intensely on an issue that is near the bottom of the American people’s priorities. Fox News is rabidly attacking immigrants – mostly children – and the Biden administration’s handling of the border and detention facilities. While there are serious problems in that regard, Fox’s campaign is a blatant attempt to demean Biden and distract from polling that shows overwhelming approval for the President, particularly with his handling of the COVID pandemic, which is near the top of the people’s concerns.

Chief among the killjoys is the Fox News Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson. His program seems to be dedicated to anti-Democratic bluster and conspiracy theories that appeal to his audience of QAnon disciples. On Wednesday Carlson visited with the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends. The discussion was predictably filled with fear mongering of “others’ invading America to destroy it. The segment began with a question from Ainsley Earhardt:

Earhardt: What do you make of what’s happening now on the border? Is that our biggest issue right now?
Carlson: Well, yeah. Unlike so many issues we face, this one we know for certain will change the country forever. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The question is a central question. This is a democracy. So when you change the population, you change the outcome of the vote, which means you change the way the country is run. And that of course is the whole point of this. […]

This is an effort, basically, to pack the electorate. So if you open the borders and then sponsor legislation giving citizenship and voting rights to the people you’ve just admitted illegally, what are you doing? You’re trying to change election outcomes and that’s what they [Democrats] are doing.”

Carlson isn’t just against immigration. European immigrants have come to America for decades, becoming citizens and voters. What Carlson believes will “change the country forever” is the prospect of non-white people becoming a larger part of the American electorate. So he has invented a conspiracy theory that Democrats are plotting to grant undocumented immigrants immediate citizenship and register them as Democrats. There is, of course, no such plot, no such legislation under consideration, and no Democrat advancing this malarkey.

Carlson is pretending to be worried about “packing the electorate” in order to “change election outcomes.” And he’s frightening his viewers with his wholly contrived horror story of aliens seeking to “change the nature of the people who live here.”

“The Democratic Party is extremely frustrated by the idea that there are Americans who don’t vote for them, who reject their programs so if you change the nature of the people who live here, then you win forever.”

The notion that it is Democrats who are frustrated by a lack of voters is especially bizarre while Democrats are sponsoring legislation to expand access to the polls for all American citizens. The bill (H.R. 1) is a historic and comprehensive solution to election problems that have plagued the nation for decades. It includes reforms for campaign fundraising, gerrymandering, registration, security, and much more.

So naturally, the Republican Party is committed to killing it. Likewise, Fox News is serving as the GOP’s PR division to disseminate flagrant falsehoods intended to deceive voters. They persist in propagating debunked allegations of widespread election fraud as their justification for opposing these critical reforms.

Tucker Carlson is at the forefront Fox’s campaign to spread these racist lies. His only concern is keeping America’s rapidly declining white majority in power, despite the inevitable demographic changes that are already taking place. And rather than seeing those changes as the positive contributions that they are, he maligns people of color as “dirty,” and diversity as a threat to “traditional” America. And he’s doing it all with the knowledge and approval of his bosses at Fox News.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

The Republican (and Fox News) Agenda for 2021: Less Voting, More Guns

Every political party displays their priorities in the initiatives they choose to pursue. And voters get to decide which party is more closely aligned with their vision for the nation. That’s the essence of democracy and the concept of government of, by, and for the people.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gun

Today’s Republican Party is doing their part in providing voters with a look at what they hope to achieve were they in the majority. And, as usual, it isn’t a pretty picture, nor one that represents the views of most Americans.

In the wake of yet another horrifying mass shooting, Republicans are once again showing their preferences for a society that permits such atrocities to occur. It’s a preference that is in direct conflict with what the American people want. Every poll shows that common sense gun reforms are popular across a broad spectrum of the electorate. Unfortunately, the GOP’s devotion to guns continues to result in ever more bloodshed. Republicans are telling us loud and clear what they want for America. Most of their agenda is focused on curtailing the rights and privileges of the American people. For instance, Republicans want less…

  • Healthcare. They have been been trying for years to sabotage Obamacare, a program that has gained the support of a majority of the people.
  • Wages. They oppose a living wage of $15.00 an hour, which is popular even among GOP voters.
  • Taxes on the rich. They have repeatedly cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans whose fortunes have increased, while the rest of the nation has struggled.
  • Environmental protection. They are staunchly opposed to advancing green energy and mitigating the climate crisis.
  • Pandemic relief. They lobbied fiercely to reduce the benefits of the recently passed American Rescue Plan, then every one of them voted against it.
  • Voting. Republicans are currently trying to pass more than 200 bills in 40+ states to make it harder to vote.

The one thing that Republicans are fervently in favor of having more of is access to guns and the dangerous ammo clips and accessories that adorn them. It’s a rather ironic contrast that the GOP is for more guns but less voting. However, that’s precisely the mindset that produced the violent Trump Insurrection in Washington. The rioters were pro-gun extremists who were intent on invalidating the votes of millions of citizens.

It’s not surprising that Republicans are so afraid of voters having easy access to the polls. They know that the more people that vote, the harder it will be for Republicans to win. They have said so explicitly. Senate GOP minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has threatened a “scorched earth” response to Democratic efforts to help people vote. Donald Trump told Fox News that it “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” He went on to complain that Democrats were “crazy” for supporting vote-by-mail, saying that “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

And of course, Fox News is backing up the GOP’s pro-gun, anti-democracy agenda. They regard easier access to voting as invitations to election fraud, despite a complete lack of any evidence of it. They promote the Republican positions on allowing anyone with a heartbeat to open-carry anywhere they want. They book GOP politicians and pundits to push the NRA’s wish list that includes unhindered access to assault weapons, cop-killer bullets, and the revocation of all regulations, including those that prohibit gun ownership for the violent mentally ill and domestic abusers.

The reason that Republicans are so scared of people voting is that the demographics of the nation are not friendly for them. This is no longer a country that caters to a white supremacist majority. In an op-ed for NBC News Lee Drutman, of the New America think tank, noted that…

“[D]emocracy reform has become a deeply partisan exercise. A Republican president has won the popular vote only once in the last 28 years (2004), and Republican senators have represented a majority of Americans only once in the last 40 years (1996-97). Republicans have increasingly pegged their political future to aggressive partisan gerrymandering and targeted voting restrictions.”

The only way that Republicans have been able to continue winning elections is by cheating. They have drawn bizarrely gerrymandered voting districts. They have passed laws that unfairly burden voters and remove them from the voting rolls. And they benefit from archaic practices like the electoral college and the Senate filibuster. Both of which give political minorities the ability to suppress the will of the majority. It’s why the half million residents of Wyoming have the exact same representation as the 40 million residents of California. That’s hardly democratic.

Significant reforms are urgently needed. The electoral college must be abolished. Senate voting procedures need to be more population-based. Congressional districts must be drawn by independent panels. And statehood must be considered for at least the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These reforms would begin to guide the nation to a more fair model of self-government, and to restore the promise of a democracy that can truly produce liberty and justice for all.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

GOP Senator Rants on Fox News: Voting Rights Bill Was ‘Written in Hell By the Devil Himself’

The House of Representatives has produced a transformational voting rights bill that is appropriately titled the “For the People Act” (HR1). It’s passage would significantly increase access to voting by guaranteeing early voting periods, mandating automatic voter registration, and creating transparency for money in politics, for starters.

Church Lady, Republican

Naturally, Republicans are steadfastly opposed to these measures because they would advance voter participation, particularly among communities that have been historically oppressed. If there’s one thing that Republicans hate more than democracy, it’s when democracy is practiced by minorities, workers, seniors, youth, and women. They know that they cannot use honest persuasion to attract voters because their policies are widely rejected. So they resort to suppression in order to keep turnout artificially low.

There are currently more than 200 bills being pushed by Republicans in 40-plus states aimed at making it harder for people to cast ballots. It’s a coordinated, nationwide campaign by the GOP to prevent Democrats from winning fair elections. And leading the effort is the Republican senator from Utah, Mike Lee. His remarks Wednesday on Fox News illustrate the manic desperation of Republicans to block the American people from expressing themselves at the polls:

“Everything about this bill is rotten to the core. This is a bill as if written in hell by the devil himself. This takes all sorts of decisions that the federal government really has no business making.”

Really? Sen. Lee actually thinks that providing early and weekend voting access is demonic? And isn’t cute that Fox News thinks that the bullet points in its graphic are bad things? For the record, the American people are broadly in favor (68%) of the reforms contained in this bill, including Republicans (57%).

However, Lee and his GOP confederates are against those reforms noted above. As well as curtailing the influence of big money, ending partisan gerrymandering, enhancing security, expanding mail-in voting, and numerous other efficiency and ethics reforms. Conversely he believes that cutting off access to the polls, permitting wealthy donors to have undue influence, carving out bizarre districts that protect incumbents, and otherwise defiling democracy is godly.

Lee complains that the reforms in the bill are an imposition of the federal government on state’s rights, which is an argument used frequently by racists and religious bigots to enact flagrantly discriminating laws. However, the fairness of national elections is clearly a concern for which federal standards are appropriate. What’s more, Republican hypocrisy regarding states rights is evident every time they try to federalize legislation about marriage, abortion, civil rights, guns, or the environment.

The “For the People” act is a critical reform that enhances and strengthens democracy. Sadly, its passage in the Senate is doomed by the prospect of a Republican filibuster. Unless the filibuster is abolished or altered, this legislation will fail and the GOP strategy of winning elections by preventing their opponents from voting will succeed. Hopefully the Senate Democratic leadership will do the right thing and make it possible for the people’s voices to heard in future elections.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

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

Trump Knows He’s Losing and It’s Driving Him Crazy(er)

There is an almost pitiable factor to the very public descent of Donald Trump into an abyss of anxiety and debilitating terror. His fragile mental state is so obviously decaying before our eyes as he unleashes ever more bizarre rants and transparent, implausible falsehoods.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

There may never have been a more conspicuous case of a public figure sucked into a downward spiral of emotional decomposition than what we are witnessing with Trump. He has been reduced to whining about an election that he’s already concluded he’s lost even though it’s still more than a month away. By his own estimation, the election has been rigged against him and the results will therefore be invalid. And not a single person has yet to cast a vote.

Trump is venting his rage at having lost in advance in an avalanche of tweets that all say essentially the same thing: “I’m a hapless victim of people having the audacity to vote against me.” He is baselessly warning that the “election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” and imploring to anyone who might be listening to “Stop Ballot Madness!” For instance…


So Trump wants to interfere with states’ rights in order to demand that all voters be forced to go to the polls amidst a deadly viral pandemic. He asserts that it would be “like always before” even though mail-in voting has been a part of the electoral process for decades.


For the second time Trump is threatening some unspecified “MAYHEM” if people vote the same way they have been for years. And he also repeats the vague admonition that these states had better obey him “before it’s too late.” Or what?


Now Trump is repeatedly alleging, without any evidence, that foreign countries will disrupt our election if voting by mail is permitted. But the only foreign interference that has been documented is that conducted by Russia with Trump’s cooperation. Also notable is that all three of the tweets above were flagged by Twitter for dispensing misinformation.


And to top it all off, Trump is now trying to persuade his cult followers to vote by mail themselves, after having declared the whole thing an invitation to fraud and espionage.

These attacks on mail-in voting are simply Trump’s way of priming his deplorable disciples for what he clearly realizes is a historic electoral defeat. Rather than display some measure of dignity and patriotism, Trump is determined to incite civil unrest as he advances his aspirations for authoritarian tyranny.

So it’s up to the American people to prevent such an outcome by producing the sort of landslide victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (and Democratic senators and congresspersons and state representatives) that will make it impossible for Trump’s impotent accusations of fraud to be taken seriously. That means unwavering commitment and hard work. Because the clearer it is that Trump is a loser, the more insane his assaults on his political foes – and America – will become. Stay Strong!

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

Fear Factor: Now Trump Says Voting Will Give You the Coronavirus

Donald Trump is terrified! He knows he is losing badly to Joe Biden, despite his frantic and impotent efforts to characterize Biden as a puppet of scary, radical leftists, and/or as a mentally deficient socialist. And if you can’t beat a mentally deficient socialist puppet, you might as well give up. In many ways it seems like that is exactly what Trump has done.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump is demonstrating a measure of desperation that is unprecedented in American politics. He has resorted to bizarre, dystopian horror stories about how Democrats are plotting to “terminate” their opponents and that he is “the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness and chaos.” Which is true in reverse.

But even those preposterous assertions weren’t enough to satisfy Trump’s lust for a nightmarish vision of a future wherein he is the loser. So on Sunday morning he tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1297575466061053957

Oops. Apparently Trump’s tweet so profoundly offensive that Twitter flagged it for “violating our Civic Integrity Policy for making misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from participation in voting.” On his Twitter feed you have to click through the warning to see Trump’s tweet. For convenience, and in anticipation of Trump deleting the tweet, here is what Trump tweeted:

“So now the Democrats are using Mail Drop Boxes, which are a voter security disaster. Among other things, they make it possible for a person to vote multiple times. Also, who controls them, are they placed in Republican or Democrat areas? They are not Covid sanitized. A big fraud!”

Literally every word of that is false and/or ridiculous. To start with, there is no evidence of security issues with mail drop boxes that have been in use for decades. Trump fails to cite any source for his claim that they are a “disaster.” Secondly, it is impossible to “vote multiple times” because every ballot is checked for authenticity and duplication. Third, Trump’s inquiry as to “who controls” the drop boxes could be answered if he spent ten seconds on research. They are controlled by the local election authority, which is non-partisan and serves administrations of both parties.

Finally, Trump introduced a new and comically ludicrous concern about the drop boxes being “Covid sanitized.” This seems dreadfully insensitive coming from the person most responsible for the tragic loss of more than 175,000 American lives. It is Trump who failed utterly to control the spread of the coronavirus, and still mocks the use of masks and other safety guidelines, while promoting untested and dangerous therapies.

Now we’re supposed to take Trump’s alleged concern about infected drop boxes seriously? For the record, the drop boxes are well maintained and kept clean, and ballots may be inserted without ever touching the box. But more to the point, the only people who would believe this bullpucky are Trump’s own cult followers. Democrats will dismiss it and cast their votes eagerly, whether by mail or in person. But the Trumpists will more likely be scared off. And if they believe that the drop boxes are contaminated, they why wouldn’t they think the same thing about in-person polling places. Trump is so stupid that he doesn’t realize he’s scaring away his own voters.

Trump has a single purpose with this tweet. He is trying to frighten the American people. He is seeking to foment fear in order to suppress the vote.. He’s seen all of the national polls – as well as those in the crucial swing states – and there is no escaping the fact that his prospects for reelection are dismal. So the only course he has left is to dissuade people from voting. And he’ll do that by directing the Postal Service to interrupt delivery of ballots. Or by deflating confidence by insisting that the election will be rigged. Or by posting “police” at polling places to intimidate voters. And now by claiming that a completely safe alternative voting procedure could result in the transmission of a deadly virus.

There is a word for that. It’s “terrorism,” the definition of which is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” So Trump is now officially, by definition, a terrorist. And like any other terrorist, he must not be negotiated with. He must defeated utterly and irreversibly. And he must be brought to justice. And, ironically, the first step toward that end is to VOTE! If you don’t, the terrorists win.

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