Not Even Fox Cares If Trump Loses On Tuesday

 

Mike Venable has served as Betsy de Kos' chief of staff at the Department of Education, deputy finance director for the RNC, and chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party. Yesterday he wrote an OpEd for the Detroit News urging fellow Republicans to vote against Trump on Tuesday, which he isn't doing either. "For the good of the party I have supported my entire life, but more importantly, for the sake of the country I love," he wrote, "I implore all patriotic Republicans to join me... Trump thrives on purposely sowing strife and discord. I have seen it up close and in person. He does so at the expense of the nation’s interests, the health and prosperity of our fellow citizens, alliances forged through generations of sacrifice, and the personal safety of public servants."

The Republican Party has allowed Trump to mortgage its soul, devolving into nothing more than a morally bankrupt conduit to propagate the president’s politics of division and destruction.

I ask my fellow Republicans: Is this honestly who we are? Are the Pyrrhic victories worth it?

...Trump lacks even a modicum of the character the Founders recognized as requisite for the proper functioning of our self-governing Republic.

So, yes, I am tired. But I am not “tired of winning,” as you claimed I would be, Mr. President. I am tired of the division, discord, chaos, vitriol and hate. I am tired of your failure and refusal to lead.

Our party can-- and must-- do better. America deserves nothing less from us.

How will Fox News handle a Trump defeat. Washington Post reporter Jeremy Barr wrote that most of them-- starting with Murdoch-- don't much care. "Behind-the-scenes staffers at the Fox News Media networks," he wrote, "say that most people who work on the news side of the company are not pulling for either Trump or Biden. Rather, they’re just exhausted from covering Trump’s frenetic first term... [Murdoch] fully expects that Biden will win-- and frankly isn’t too bothered by that... [H]e is resigned to a Trump loss in November. And he has complained that the president’s current low polling numbers are due to repeated 'unforced errors' that could have been avoided if he had followed Murdoch’s advice about how to weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to associates who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The network’s current lineup is a reflection of the Trump presidency, with opinion hosts such as Hannity, Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, who have leveraged their personal relationships with the president for ratings success; and a morning show, Fox & Friends, that has become Trump’s go-to venue. On shows such as The Five, Trump skeptics such as Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld have quieted their reservations and embraced their roles as critics of Trump’s critics; while the network’s finance-focused cousin, Fox Business Network, has catapulted Trump allies Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo to greater prominence through exclusive interviews with administration officials and Trump himself.

If Biden wins, that access disappears. Yet Murdoch has always considered Fox News’s original underdog status to be its strength. And while he valued the White House access, he is ready to welcome a new inhabitant-- partly because it may give Fox the central role in the Republican Party that it occupied before Trump co-opted the party.

“Fox thrives when it is in the opposition because they have a real-time bad guy to beat up on,” said Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN. “A Biden win would be great for Fox’s business.”

One Murdoch executive envisions the Fox prime-time lineup emerging as “the standard-bearer of the resistance” under a Biden administration. And former Fox executives point to the network’s role in championing the tea party movement in the Obama years as a model for how the network could find a way forward should Trump lose in November.

“If anything, I think they will be more successful,” said Sean Graf, who worked at Fox for the news division’s well-regarded research staff before leaving in January 2020. “There’s going to be an audience for Biden controversy.” And few envision viewers abandoning Fox for lower-rated rivals such as the conservative upstarts One America News or Newsmax.

The greater risk for Fox News, as exists for all cable news outlets post-Trump, is that with the frenetic atmosphere of the Trump administration gone, viewers will be less likely to tune in altogether. Conservative media typically operates better when it is attacking rather than defending-- but Trump broke that model because of the media’s addiction to his every tweet and scandal. Biden may also be an exception.

“He’s so boring and engenders so little enthusiasm on both sides of the political spectrum that it’s going to be hard to find narratives to program against him,” said one veteran conservative media executive.

“It’s hard to imagine Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes and stammering to somehow be more evil than the idea that Trump has completely ripped off the American people with his tax fraud,” said Carl Cameron, who logged 22 years at the network before leaving to create his own progressive news aggregator.

Hannity, who has prospered from the president’s eagerness to appear on his show, may be the Fox pundit facing the most awkward pivot from a Trump presidency. He signed a new contract earlier this year but suggested in an August interview that he’s already thinking about when to leave the network. “I’ve kind of made a pledge to myself that I don’t want to push it to the very end,” he said.

But Fox veterans say that news-side stars, such as Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, would fare far better, having cultivated relationships with Democrats. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just appeared on Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, where the Democrat blamed Trump for rhetoric that encouraged a failed attempt to kidnap her.

Lachlan Murdoch has expressed confidence that a Biden presidency would not hurt the company’s bottom line. “We’ve grown ratings in multiple administrations, from both political parties,” he said at a conference in September. Indeed, Fox News has been the No. 1 cable news network since 2002.

One of the biggest question marks hanging over Fox News if Trump leaves the White House is: Where will he go?

Before his 2016 win, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, explored the possibility of launching a Trump-focused media enterprise. One way or another, Trump is almost certain to attempt to maintain some kind of a media presence when he leaves office, so Fox probably will have to contend with him-- whether it's as a contributor on its own airwaves or a competitor.

The elder Murdoch has stopped speaking as frequently as he once did with Trump, but his associates say that those conversations probably will pick up again after Nov. 3, when Trump will either be a second-term president or a free agent on the media circuit.

“Maybe Rupert can just back the truck up and pay Trump to appear on Fox’s air at will,” Klein said. “Trump might prefer that to the rigors of having to actually run an actual business.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

-The infamous 14 Words slogan coined by David Lane, founder of the white supremacist organization known as The Order.

It's official, the KKK is broadcasting in plain sight, on national TV no less. Just compare the chyron in the screen capture above to the "14 Words" of the quote. KKK or FOX. Both stand for the same thing. I suppose we can be generous and give Tucker "Tiki Torch" Carlson credit for cutting the historic slogan down to his own "10 Words" or "best words." And, of course, for extra messaging, Tucker Tiki Torch combined his "10 Words" with the photos of two prominent non-caucasian American women who were elected to office by their constituents, one a Representative, the other a Senator. He literally called them vandals in order to terrify his republican audience. He even manages to verbally add his ongoing questioning of their patriotism, evilly and cynically glossing over the fact that one of them even gave both of her legs for this country. For this Mr. Tiki Torch says she doesn't love America. As an extra measure of his miniscule brain power, the irony of Tucker Tiki Torch preaching the gospel of the draft-dodging Cadet Bone Spurs while so denigrating a woman who sacrificed so much doesn't even occur to him or anyone else at FOX.

It's not like we needed any more evidence of the Murdoch family mission but FOX "News" is getting bolder by the week. No doubt they are operating in concert with our white supremacist president. We already know Traitor Don hires FOX "News alumni, talks directly with the current FOX people and has stepped up his white supremacist rhetoric, even channeling the words of Adolf Hitler in two speeches this past weekend as he decried, just like Tucker Tiki Torch, the very existence of the notion that Black Lives Matter. FOX "News" and the White House feed on each other's negativity, nihilism, and, most of all, racism. This is a Republican team approach. Already, many Republicans are talking up their Tiki Torch god as "presidential material" for 2024. This is who they are. This is the Republican Party brand, their platform is built on this.

The ratings for the Tucker Tiki Torch show are rising. Every night now, Mr. Tiki Torch sits there on camera and whines into the homes of America like some adolescent Grand Wizard. Republicans flock to their TVs for comfort and reassurance that someone is in their corner, a dark, dank, fetid, stinking corner at that. It's only a matter of time before Tucker Tiki Torch takes a pillow case from his last remaining sponsor, the My Pillow guy, cuts a couple of eye holes in it, puts it over his head, and broadcasts his show to the rapturous cheering and applause from every republican in the land. The rest of the FOX "News" staff will follow Tucker and President Trump in goose step. Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham will be kicking themselves for not doing the broadcasting in a hood thing first, even though they've obviously thought about it for years. If the current president gets another four years, the Murdochs will be giving him at least an hour of his own every night to read from his legendary well-worn book of Adolf Hitler's speeches.

Is Losing His Broadcasting License Enough Of A Punishment For Murdoch For All The COVID Deaths Fox Has Caused?

Believe it or not, I was once a dj-- and professional advisor-- at a radio station owned by the Jesuits-- KUSF in San Francisco. The friendly faculty advisor, Steve Runyon, frequently told me my broadcast license could be in jeopardy because of the songs with "dirty words" that I played. I recall, for example, him being unhappy when I played this unedited version of Prince's "Let's Pretend We're Married," not to mention with the frequent repetition on my playlist of the Pop'O'Pies' The Catholics Are Attacking. But I never did lose my broadcast license. In fact it was another Bay Area station, KSJO in San Jose, where I was suspended for having a couple of Sex Pistols--Paul Cook and Steve Jone-- on my show, where the session was eventually released as a track, "Big Tits Across America," on the album Some Product: Carri on Sex Pistols. I can understand why the suspended me. Two week suspension, but... it was worth it because years later, it helped with my music business bona fides in the U.K. no end.

But you know what... if I could get suspended for that interview, the entire Murdoch family and all of Rupert's Fox News hosts should get the death penalty for the thousands of Americans they killed with COVID-19. No, I'm not kidding. "The data," wrote Margaret Sullivan, "is in." Fox News broadcasters kept their viewers-- many of whom are old and out-of-shape-- from taking the pandemic seriously. And they died in droves. "Three serious research efforts," reported Sullivan, "have put numerical weight-- yes, data-driven evidence-- behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread. Dangerously duped. The studies 'paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others,' wrote my colleague Christopher Ingraham in an analysis last week. Here’s the reality, now backed by numbers:"

Those who relied on mainstream sources-- the network evening newscasts or national newspapers that President Trump constantly blasts as “fake news”-- got an accurate assessment of the pandemic’s risks. Those were the news consumers who were more likely to respond accordingly, protecting themselves and others against the disease that has now killed more than 123,000 in the United States with no end in sight.

Those who relied on Fox or, say, radio personality Rush Limbaugh, came to believe that vitamin C was a possible remedy, that the Chinese government created the virus in a lab, and that government health agencies were exaggerating the dangers in the hopes of damaging Trump politically, a survey showed.

“That’s the real evil of this type of programming,” Arthur West of the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics, which sued Fox News in April over its coronavirus coverage, told The Times of San Diego. “We believe it delayed and interfered with a prompt and adequate response to this coronavirus pandemic.” (A Fox News lawyer called the suit “wrong on the facts, frivolous on the law,” and said it would be defended vigorously; a judge dismissed the suit in May.)

Beyond the risks the general public faces from consuming this nonsense and misinformation, there’s the fact that the president himself has been picking up these same ideas and using them to steer policy. Instead of tapping experts in the medical and scientific community-- many of whom are on the government payroll-- he has chosen to educate himself by watching right-wing news outlets.

Recall the South Carolina campaign rally in late February where Trump dissed his political adversaries’ criticism of his virus response as “their new hoax.” Or the Feb. 26 White House news conference where he said of the virus: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time.” The next day, he offered his now-infamous “it’s going to disappear” reassurance.

As the weeks went on, and the toll of the virus became undeniable, Fox’s offerings became somewhat more responsible, but viewers were misled for far too long. As late as March 6, a Fox “medical contributor” was falsely assuring Sean Hannity’s audience that the virus wasn’t all that bad: “At worst, worst-case scenario, it could be the flu.”




To his credit, Fox’s Tucker Carlson was delivering a different, much more reality-based, message, but he was an outlier on the network in those early weeks of the crisis. In fact, one of the studies found that Carlson viewers took protective measures much earlier than Hannity viewers.

The upshot was clear: For too long, many devotees of most right-wing news decided they didn’t need to stay home. Others absorbed the idea that wearing a protective mask was an act of left-leaning partisanship.

But disease leaps across the political aisle quite nimbly.

And so, it’s tragic-- but again not all that surprising-- to see the virus spiking now in red states where governors and other public officials joined Trump and his favorite news outlets early on in downplaying the dangers.

When confronted with the information in one study that cast Sean Hannity in a dim light, Fox News responded with defensive gaslighting-- even using the specific phrase “reckless disregard for the truth,” which is most typically deployed by those threatening a libel suit.

Fox’s response also included releasing a timeline of Hannity segments in the early months of this year-- with titles such as, “We have the best people working on coronavirus”-- to prove the show covered the topic relentlessly. The network noted that Hannity interviewed the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, as early as January.

Hannity’s interviews, though, tend to be exercises in Trump sycophancy rather than fact-finding missions. His first probing question to Fauci in a March interview: “The quarantine that the president did within three weeks, [which was] the fastest ever-- do you believe it likely prevented thousands of Americans from contracting the virus and was a smart thing to do?”

One of the study’s authors persuasively rejected Fox’s criticism that underlying data was chosen unfairly: There’s no “cherry-picking” possible, he said, because the independent coders read every transcript between late January and late March. These academic studies, published in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review and the National Bureau of Economic Research, are cautious. They don’t make wild claims, and they wisely hedge their conclusions because they don’t want to go too far.

Still, it’s difficult to come away from them without believing that serious harm has been done. And that it’s far from over.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

An Update Of Yesterday's Midnight Meme Post:

In lieu of my usual Sunday Thoughts, I have decided to devote today's Midnight Meme Of The Day! to another form of Republican religion; FOX "News" and their primetime Jesus.

On Wednesday, some sponsors, emphasis some, began withdrawing their corporate sponsorship of FOX's Tucker Tiki Torch Carlson program. Among those were Papa John's, SmilDirectClub, T-Mobile, and ABC's traditionally far-right homophobic Disney. It's horrific enough that any corporation had ever supported Carlson's racist diatribes but Disney's press comment was particularly heinous. They claimed that their ads had been placed by a third party without their knowledge! Here's their statement.

The ABC advertisements were placed on the show without our knowledge by third party media buyers who were unaware that we do not advertise on the show, and they have been notified not to place any further ads.

Welcome to Neverland! Un-fucking believable! Can you imagine a corporation the size of ABC-Disney not knowing where their advertising is appearing? Yeah, me neither. In my career, I worked for 4 corporations. 3 of them were among the largest entertainment corporations in the world. I, and people in similar positions, approved the script, visuals and placement of every single advertisement for the things we were selling to the public. That included the show or publication, the frequency, and the time. Disney says they had no idea. Who knew? Give me a break!. Assholes!

The larger question is why does the corporate world advertise on ANY FOX "News" program let alone Carlson's but we know the answers to that one. No doubt, these, and other "very fine" corporations will continue to put money into the Murdoch family pockets by advertising on various FOX "News" programs as they continue to do the dance of death on the necks of any minority they see.

As for Mr. Tiki Torch himself, he continues and continues to venture further off the rails of sanity. On the same day that some advertisers began pulling their advertisements, he did a double down of sorts. I'll quote you this from FOX's own "news" site. If you want to read the whole thing you can click on the link but don't say I didn't warn you. It's more than jaw-dropping. Here's the first paragraph:

Tucker Carlson blasted Democratic leaders Wednesday night, accusing them of using the coronavirus pandemic and the unrest over George Floyd's death to distract the American public from the negative impacts of lockdowns.

Nice to see that FOX "News" now calls the pandemic a pandemic and no longer a hoax, eh? But, yeah, Mr. Tiki Torch went there. He used the death of George Floyd to attack proponents of saving American lives by sheltering in place and locking down. He did this while the numbers of cases and deaths are exploding in states, like Florida and Arizona, that re-opened way too early or otherwise didn't take the idea seriously. This is the stuff of a virulent sociopath.

Here's how Tucker Tiki Torch describes his own show. I guess self-awareness is not his forte-

Tucker Carlson Tonight is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and group think

Oh, and one more thing: Today is Trump's Birthday. Tweet him a nice picture of Obama. It's a thing. Millions are saying.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Then: June 6, 1944.
Now: June 6, 2020.

What if FOX "News" had existed back then? Do you ever wonder whose side Trump's propagandists at FOX "News" would be on? I don't. I think the likes of Tucker Tiki-Torch, his fellow white supremacist Sean Hannity, the Hilter salute gal, Laura Ingraham, and the rest would probably be trying to broadcast their pro-Nazi propaganda from a hidden bunker or a ship at sea. Sure, there are degrees of fascism. Corporations and banks around the world push it as much as we let them, and sadly, we do let them by allowing our representatives in government to let them, for the cash put in their pockets, of course. But, FOX crossed different line long ago and you can tell they'd keep crossing lines until they were running concentration camps themselves and not just applauding them. Right, Lou Dobbs?

Nowadays, Republicans like the fascist sympathizers at FOX and the fascists in the White House, don't hesitate to label loose groups who call themselves Antifa (for Anti-Fascist) terrorists, but, it's more than revealing that they never label white supremacists, the KKK, and the white nationalist militia groups like those who stromed the Michigan legislature with guns terrorists. Nope. Those are all "very fine people," if you're a fellow Nazi.

So, can you see people like Tucker Tiki-Torch aiming bullets at American, Canadian, British troops and democracy itself as the troops stormed the shores on D-Day? I can. He already does it with words. He would have done at least that then. He's just a half step from the next line now.

The First Lawsuit Against Fox For Misleading The Public On COVID-19 Has Been Filed In Seattle

Early into the pandemic-- with Trump endangering peoples' lives daily with his lies and misinformation-- I asked a few of the legal scholars I know if he could be sued by the the families of people who followed his false information and died. The answer was the same from each: nope. Fox News, on the other hand, is another story.

There has been a great deal of chatter online about class action law suits against Fox for broadcasting a steady stream of coronavirus misinformation-- and not all of it from Trump. Last week, the Seattle Times published a piece by Sara Green about a Seattle nonprofit suing Fox in the King County Superior Court. The Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics (WASHLITE) is claiming Fox and the Murdochs "violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act and acted in bad faith by disseminating false information about the novel coronavirus through its television news broadcasts and minimized the danger posed by the virus as COVID-19 began to explode into a pandemic."

They claim that "Fox New Fox News engaged in unfair or deceptive acts by representing the coronavirus as a hoax in broadcasts that aired in February and March. Those broadcasts caused viewers to fail to adequately protect themselves or mitigate the virus’ spread, and therefore contributed to the public-health crisis and preventable mass death, the lawsuit says.

Yakima attorney Liz Hallock, who is running for governor as a Green Party candidate, is representing WASHLITE in the lawsuit against Fox News.

“We are not trying to chill free speech here. But we believe the public was endangered by false and deceptive communications in the stream of commerce,” Hallock said in phone interview Friday. “There are a lot of people who listen to Fox News, and they’re not taking the recommendations of public-health officials seriously. This is not about money; it’s about making sure the public gets the message this is not a hoax.”

According to Hallock, several members of WASHLITE live in King County and one of them has COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus.

...Though the lawsuit does not fully enumerate instances when Fox News personnel characterized the virus as a hoax during the two-month period, it points to March 9 broadcasts by Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Trish Regan as examples.

On that day, Hannity said, “They’re scaring the living hell out of people and I see it as, like, ‘Oh, let’s bludgeon Trump again with this new hoax.'”

Late Night host Seth Meyers on Wednesday lampooned Hannity over his comments, playing the March 9 clip alongside one from nine days later in which Hannity said his program has always taken the coronavirus seriously “and we’ve never called the virus a hoax.”

Regan’s March 9 broadcast prompted her dismissal from Fox Business News. A video posted on The Daily Beast’s website shows Regan delivering a monologue next to a graphic that reads, “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam.” Regan accused the left of creating mass hysteria over the virus and shutting down the economy, saying COVID-19 wasn’t as significant as other recent disease outbreaks such as SARS and Ebola.

“So why the melodrama on such an agitated scale right now? Why are the markets acting like this? I’ll give you two words: Donald Trump,” Regan said in the video.

Hallock said her clients are seeking only nominal damages and reasonable attorney’s fees. Ideally, she would like a judge to find Fox News violated the Consumer Protection Act and to tell the media organization to stop disseminating false information about the virus. She’d also like to see Fox News issue a clear retraction and an apology to viewers.

She said the classic example to demonstrate the limits of free speech is someone yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no danger. In contrast, Hallock said of Fox News: “They’re yelling, ‘There is no fire!’ when there is a fire.”

The Daily Beast reported that "Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are girding for a pandemic of public-interest lawsuits over misinformation and conspiracy theories dispensed by certain Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network personalities... According to a top Murdoch executive, the father-and-son media moguls are ready to go to war with potential plaintiffs such as the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics." Fox is screaming "frivolous lawsuit" every time it comes up. Besides, Fox isn't the worst media outlet. There's a genuine fascist one, OAN, Trump's favorite. Watch John Oliver explain what OAN is:

Trump Vows To Cut "Entitlements" If He Gets A Second Term

That was quite the Fox New town hall in Scranton-- Biden's brithplace-- Thursday. The very first question was about his incompetence regarding the coronavirus. Trump responded that "we've been given tremendous marks... We've gotten the highest poll numbers of anybody for this kind of a thing." An election between he and Biden would leave voters to decide which codger's dementia is worse. anyway, Trump's answer wasn't just disjointed and manipulative; it was false. The U.S. response is being held up all over the world as the worst responder imaginable.

"Mike Pence is working 20 hours a day on this-- or more-- on this and really doing a fantastic job." Gee, how did he fit in that Vern Buchanan fundraiser in Florida where he shook hands with a guy now quarantined as a suspected coronavirus sufferer? "Nobody is blaming us for the virus-- nobody." OK, true-- he didn't create the virus; he just allowed it to spread to the U.S. with his stupid response to it.

Then he started lying about the impact of the pandemic on the economy. "we were set to hit 30,000 on the Dow. This is a number that nobody even came close to. And already we have the number and even though it’s down 10 or 11%, it’s still the highest it’s ever been, by far. It certainly might have an impact. At the same time, I have to say, people are now staying in the United States, spending their money in the U.S.-- and I like that. I've been after that for a long time. You know that. I've been saying 'let's stay in the U.S. and spend your money here-- and they're doing that, sought of enforced doing that. We met with the airline companies yesterday. They're doing a fantastic job... It's gonna all work out; everybody has to be calm. It's all going to work out. Feel reassured? The Dow dropped another xx points when it opened a few hours later.





Later they got to Trump promising to cut "entitlements," which is the way conservatives refer to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It came inside the discussion of trillions of dollars by which Trump has run up the national debut (up 18%). He said he had to fix the military; didn't mention the tax cuts for the wealthy. And then blamed the debt on Obama. He said he will focus ("absolutely") on cutting the debt in his second term. Asked about entitlements, he answered flippantly, "Oh, we'll be cutting."

Jonathan Chait noted in his column yesterday that that Trump's attempt to reassure people about the economy amounted to a "string of sentences like an onion of stupidity, and peeling back each layer revealed even more stupidity lying beneath." That's an accurate description. Trump's followers at the event cheered and applauded throughout. After all, Biden has spent his entire career vowing to cut entitlements as well. Maybe I made a mistake when I moved back to the U.S. from Holland in the '70s.

Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and former managing director at BlackRock, noticed Trump admitting his intentions even if the fools in the audience didn't. He reminded everyone why no one should be surprised. "This is straight out of the Republican playbook," he said. "First they passed the $2 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, giving a huge windfall to millionaires, billionaires, and special interests. Next, they play shocked that cutting taxes results in less tax revenue, and say that the only way to shrink the deficit that they caused is to cut vital services that millions of Americans rely on. As GOP donors laugh all the way to the bank, GOP leadership calls for cuts to services the American people need and have earned and have paid for. That’s just un-American. When Republicans are cutting taxes for the rich they are allowed to change the deficit to whatever they want. When Democrats try to pass spending legislation, the deficit number is written in stone and cannot be changed. And when the Republicans decide to be 'deficit hawks' again and claim to worry about the increasing deficit, the only people they ask to sacrifice are the poor and needy. Tax cuts for the rich we can afford, but programs that give the poor and elderly healthcare are out of the question. This is textbook behavior, and it’s textbook cruel."

The perfect Democratic Party scenario-- a lesser of two evils election. The elites at the top of the party don't believe in Democratic Party values so they offer Republican-lite candidates as alternatives. Voters are then forced to choose between a complete nightmare or a... bad dream. Trump or Hillary? That went poorly. Trump or Biden? If that happens it will probably go even worse. Imagine an election about which one's family is more repulsive and corrupt. Which one's dementia is more advanced? Which one will cut Social Security and Medicare less? This is what anyone who votes for Bidenin the primaries is asking for. Knock yourselves out; you'll deserve exactly what you get... and it ain't gonna be pretty. Remember, a lesser evil is still evil. After primary season, it's too late to fix that.

Trump's War Against... Fox News

Yesterday's New York Times carried a rather spectacular quote about Trump from Robert DeNiro, who knows a little something about organized crime. "[T]hat’s what he is. He’s a petulant little punk. There’s not one thing that I see in him or his family, not any redeeming qualities. They’re out on the take. It’s like a gangster family."

This slide up top, from a Fox News poll last week, indicates that just 41% of Americans think Trump should not be impeached. Half think he should be impeached and removed and another 4% think he should be impeached but not removed. So... 54% (to 41%) agree that the House should impeach him, which they will likely do on Wednesday. But it wasn't this poll that Señor Trumpanzee was screeching about over the weekend. Fox News in general was though.

Like Louis XIV, Trump actually believes he is the state and that the apparatus of the state belong to him and is there to serve his purposes. Trump isn't an educated man and has no idea what the constitution says and no interest in finding out. I'd say something like 40% of Americans agree with him-- either actively or passively and would embrace an authoritarian form of government. It speaks to what Fox News is that Trump also believes they are also there to serve his needs-- part of his team-- and act not as a legitimate news outlet, not even part of the time, but as a propaganda arm of his government. So... over the weekend he let loose with this tweet:

And then a few minutes later, obviously obsessed, this one:

Comey and Schiff were both Chris Wallace's guests on Fox News Sunday, where they gave Fox viewers the opportunity to get a glimpse of the real world outside the Trump propaganda bubble. Trump hates Wallace and calls him names and has tried to get him fired. Any glimmer of independence for a tyrant is intolerable. Wallace's speech to Newseum on Wednesday probably didn't soothe Trump's feathers. This is worth watching:





Wallace: "I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct, sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history... He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try to de-legitimize us... I think his purpose is clear: to raise doubts when we report critically about him and his administration that we can be trusted. Back in 2017, he tweeted something that said far more about him than it did about us, quote: 'The fake news media is not my enemy. It is the enemy of the American people.'"

Fascists In Austria, Fascists On Fox News, Fascist In The Oval Office

I have a recollection from a history class that after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the unification of Germany and Austria-- Anschluss. Unification was one of the goals Hitler laid out in Mein Kampf. In 1934 Austria's fascist Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by pro-Anschluss Austrian Nazis in a failed coup. His successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was also a fascist and also resisted the idea of unification with Germany claiming Austrians were racially superior to the Germans. He had local Nazis rounded up and put in concentration camps. Hitler went crazy and made a series of demands that increasingly exterminated Austrian independence until in March of 1934-- to prevent a plebiscite-- Hitler invaded Austria, breaking the Treaty of Versailles. The Austrians greeted the German troops with wild enthusiasm, flowers and Nazi salutes. Hitler toured the country the next day announced Anschluss. Although there was some rumblings of disapproval from Britain, Italy and France, it was just hot air. Mexico's protests were louder. Austria's Jews were immediately targeted with the aggressive approval of Austria's non-Jews. The following month there was a plebiscite to approve the unification and it passed with 99.7% of the vote and Austria became the German province of Ostmark. In London, The Times likened the union as the same as Scotland having joined England 300 years earlier. Austrians generally became enthusiastic Nazis and in many cases, even more so than the Germans, contributing, aside from Hitler himself, lots of Nazi leaders including monsters like SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Jewish extermination chief Alois Brunner, Nazi operative Otto Skorzeny, and, of course, Adolf Eichmann.

In the early 1970's-- probably '72 or '73-- I got stuck in Innsbruck for about 5-6 months. World War II was long over but the people there came across as a real bunch Nazis, especially the older ones. It was pretty horrible and I would escape to Munich, across the border with Germany or through the Brenner Pass into Italy and to Venice whenever I could. I guess because Vienna was so cosmopolitan and sophisticated it came across as far less of a Nazi bastion that little Innsburuck in Tyrol.

Yesterday, Austria elected a neo-Nazi chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, although U.S. media, or at least those bothering to report on it at all, refer to him and his facsist People's Party as "center right." The People's Party is more known as a cesspool of corruption rather than a cesspool of fascism, but Austrian voters-- overwhelmingly Nazis themselves-- are always happy to embrace both. Kurz's freedom party increased it's share of the vote from 2017 from 31.5% to 38.4% yesterday. The center-left Social Democrats went down from 26.9% to 21.5% and Kurz's junior partner in the coalition government, the even further right Freedom Party did pretty badly-- down to 17.3% from 26.0%, probably because it had worked with the Social Democrats to bring down the People's Party previous government after a video-taped corruption scandal exploded.

The Greens share of the vote went from 3.8% to an impressive 12.4%, making it a major player in Austrian politics. The pro-EU party (NEOs) increased their share of the vote from 5.3% to 7.8%. These are the estimated number of seats in the 183-Parliament each of the main parties will hold:

• People's Party- 73
• Social Democrats- 41
• Freedom Party- 32
• Greens- 23
• NEOs- 14

So, since we're talking about fascists... strange how Trump seems to be working so hard to fracture Fox News! He was certainly storming away on Twitter about Fox over the weekend. He really got into the exchange between Ed Henry and Mark Levin yesterday. Martin Pengelly of The Guardian had the best report I saw, Trump jumps shark with retweets attacking Fox News host. He started by making the point about Señor Trumapnzee's well-known fear of sharks. "Trump," he wrote, "may be the great white hope of the Republican party, but his dislike of sharks is well known. It seemed odd, then, that in a Sunday feeding frenzy of retweets attacking a Fox News pundit, the president gave voice to a bot that seeks to satirise his rampant galeophobia.

Trump appeared to have been watching TV at the White House, before leaving for a second straight day at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.

On Fox & Friends, host Ed Henry had asked radio host Mark Levin if he thought the president did anything “illegal” in the 25 July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy which is at the heart of impeachment proceedings.

True to form, Levin reacted angrily. This seemed to please the president, who retweeted more than 20 tweets about the exchange.

One referred to another Fox News anchor whose coverage of the Ukraine scandal has stoked turmoil at the network: “Can we face off Levin and worlds [sic] worst anchor Chris Wallace?”

Others included: “Mark Levin ripped Ed Henry a new one” and “Mark Levin sure put that lying shit head Ed Henry in his place didn’t he?”

In less vulgar fashion, the president also relayed a message from @TBASharks.

The account is a bot, full title Trump But About Sharks, which explains its mission thus: “Trump apparently hates sharks, so this bot does some word replacement on his tweets to make them about sharks.”

The message retweeted by the president therefore read: “RT @BulldawgDerek @foxandfriends A Sunday Morning; Amen Mark Levin, Preach Brother! You shut down Ed Henry and the Pro Shark Media with the fac[ts].”

The original tweet, which Trump also retweeted, referred to “the fake news,” a common target for Trump if not usually including hosts of Fox & Friends.

Trump’s fear and dislike of sharks is well established. In 2013, two years before he emerged Jaws-like from the depths to savage the body politic, he tweeted: “Sharks are last on my list-- other than perhaps the losers and haters of the world!”

In 2018, the adult film maker and actor Stormy Daniels revealed that during the brief affair she claims to have had with Trump in 2006-- which he denies-- he enthused about a TV special about a shipwreck.

“It was like the worst shark attack in history,” said Daniels. “He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks.

“He was like, “I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’ He was like riveted. He was like obsessed.

“It’s so strange, I know.”

Alan Grayson, after reading Trump's deranged threats to stoke up a civil war, had a comment, addressed to Trump: "Note to Donald Trump: nobody gives a damn about you, you self-indulgent fool, and nobody is going to war for you, even though you do exhibit a slaveowner mentality that this country hasn’t seen much in the past 150 years." I thought it would be a good way to end the evening.

Maybe Fox Should Extend Tucker Carlson's Exile To... Forever

Fox News sent Tucker Carlson away on a little unannounced vacation until the heat dies down on his white nationalist TV show. Most normal people didn't know Fox was running a nightly KKK rally in prime time until the media exploded in a frenzy about Carlson's claim that White Supremacy is nothing but a hoax, immediately after the white supremacist mass murders in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton. At the end of his Wednesday show, Carlson announced: By the way, I am taking several days off-- headed to the wilderness to fish with my son. Politics is important, fishing with your son, sometimes more important. So I’m doing it, saying he'd be off on Thursday, back on Friday for something he called "a special investigation," and then off for all of next week. New York Daily News columnist Leonard Greene noted around the same time that Carlson had earned the backlash he's getting. in response to Carlson's flawed "reasoning"-- that "the combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium"-- he pointed out that "not every white supremacist is a member of a white supremacist organization. Only a fraction probably are, so we can quickly dispense with Carlson’s college football stadium theory. And to be in denial about the very philosophy that our country was founded and built on is not only racist-- it’s delusional... Never mind that Hispanics were in Texas long before there was a Texas... The real hoax is when people like Trump and Carlson pretend that what they say doesn’t have bigoted and violent consequences. So, if I’m out of line for suggesting Carlson might be a racist, then I’m sorry. I also apologize for saying that sugar is sweet."




Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan took issue with Carlson's premise, as though he were a normal pundit rather than a neo-Nazi propaganda agent. "In his ongoing and remarkably successful quest to be the worst of the Fox News nighttime hosts," she noted, "Tucker Carlson hit a new low on his Tuesday show. White supremacy, he claimed, isn’t a real problem in America: 'This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.' (Let’s set aside, for a moment, the truth that the Russian attacks on America’s voting integrity, to help Donald Trump become president, are anything but a hoax, as the Mueller report made abundantly clear.) And, Carlson insisted, he has empirical evidence: 'I’ve lived here 50 years and I’ve never met anybody, not one person who ascribes to white supremacy,' he said, adding, 'I don’t know a single person who thinks that’s a good idea.' Hmm. Maybe his sample size is a bit flawed." Or maybe he gave up looking in the mirror decades ago.

Anyway, Carlson’s wrong. Here’s the dictionary definition of white supremacy: the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them.

It’s undeniably one of the core tenets of the opinion-mongers at Fox News-- and of some portion of its supposedly straight news coverage, too. (Remember the network’s feverish attention to “the caravan” of migrants moving northward toward the United States-- and how abruptly that coverage faded after it was no longer useful as a Republican talking point in the 2018 midterms?)

Understand: I’m not suggesting that Carlson or his Fox colleagues are stashing their Klan robes in the newsroom closet. They may not display the most obvious and virulent strain of white supremacy or belong to organizations dedicated to the cause or pick up assault weapons and destroy innocent lives, as the El Paso gunman did on Saturday. (Remember, the 2,300-word screed-- let’s not dignify it with the term “manifesto”-- that authorities linked to the suspect stated: “This attack is a response to Hispanic invasion of Texas.”)

Nevertheless, Carlson’s nightly show does a great deal to portray nonwhites as the dangerous “other,” a force to be beaten back to save America.

His denials and rhetoric must be called out for the lies that they are.

Consider his and his Fox colleagues’ insistence on using the word “invasion” to describe migrants coming to America-- generally people of color from countries south of the border.

Here’s what a recent Media Matters study found about the use of that term so far this year on Fox News: There have been more than 70 on-air references to an invasion of migrants; there have been at least 55 clips of President Trump calling migrants an invasion. And Carlson himself spoke of the United States being invaded nine times, including “This is an invasion, and it’s terrifying.”

Carlson’s colleague Brian Kilmeade argued: “If you use the term ‘an invasion,’ that’s not anti-Hispanic. It’s a fact.”

No, it’s racist propaganda.

As Ben Zimmer wrote recently in The Atlantic, exploring the ugly history of the term: “The American brand of nativism has long relied on menacing images of immigrant invaders. The ‘invasion’ trope has gone hand in hand with similar metaphors of contamination and infestation.”

Or, as Rolling Stone’s Jamil Smith put it: “By likening people to insects or vermin, even if he considers them criminals, [Trump] provides himself license to be an exterminator. We know that story.”

Recognizing the white supremacy at work here does not deny that there is a real need for sensible, humanitarian immigration reform, including aid to the countries from which immigrants are fleeing as they try desperately to find a better life. Nor does it translate to support for open borders.

I really don’t know what drives Carlson to be so hate-filled and divisive. Is it all about ginning up ratings by playing to audience prejudices, rage and fear of “replacement” by immigrants?

Does he really believe what he says? Is he an egalitarian, tolerant fellow in his heart of hearts?

The cause of this damaging rhetoric doesn’t matter. But the results certainly do.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop constantly reinforces the notion that black and brown people are to be feared and despised-- whether they are in “rat-infested” cities like Baltimore, as Trump would have it, or at the Mexico-Texas border.

Tucker Carlson has become one of the most high-profile perpetrators of this appalling and divisive message, one constantly amplified by the president.

So if Carlson thinks he hasn’t met a single white supremacist, he might want to take a searching look in the mirror.

One of Carlson's Fox colleagues-- the one Señor Trumpanzee was having a conniption over this week-- also took Carlson to task for claiming white supremacy isn't real and just a hoax. I don't think Fox anchors are allowed to attack each other so Shepard Smith said "White nationalism is without question a serious problem in America," without mentioning Carlson by name. Commenting on the speech one of Biden's aides wrote for him, Smith noted that Biden was "calling us to our better souls, to recognize that white nationalism is real, that white nationalism is on the rise, that white nationalism is without question a very serious problem in America and beating down those who would help facilitate it and encourage it."

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The FOX "News" moral compass spins around like a ceiling fan stuck on high speed. Not to wish anything bad would happen to the three blind morons on the couch but, if there was a god, the bolts on the ceiling fans above them would come loose and do the work of karma, making FOX And Fiends look like a delightful brand new Sam Peckinpah film, on live morning TV. Great day in the morning!

Variations on a FOX AND FIENDS theme, an adaptation:

1) "Like it or not, those people in London are not our citizens. It's not like Mr. Hitler is bombing people from America. Those people are from another country! Besides, Mr. Hitler is making the German trains run on time."

2) "Like it or not, Rev. Martin Luther King wasn't our pastor. It's not like his shooting means anything to our viewers! He didn't know his place!"

3) "Like it or not, AIDS is just something those deviant prevert homos get. It's not like I should give a damn."

4) "Like it or not, those Puerto Ricans are not our people. It's not like the hurricane hurt part of America! What? It is? The whole island? Well, they should have moved out of harm's way, but not here, though. Definitely not here. No way. Not here."

5) "Like it or not, President Obama is not an American. It's not like he was born here like a real president is supposed to be! He's from another country!"

What I Learned Last Night

In 1879, Fyodor Dostoevsky, gave us "The Grand Inquisitor"-- a poem within The Brothers Karamazov-- widely considered one of the greatest pieces of literature in history. This week, James Inman wrote "If Jesus came back today and saw Notre Dame he'd say, 'Fuck your church. What is this stained glass bullshit? Back in my day we worshipped God out in a field. Oh you saved my crown of thorns? Whoop-de-fucking-do!' Then you'd plot to kill him again for speaking the truth." Same-same-- just a shorter and less ambiguous version.

An out-of-town friend asked me to meet him at Crossroads (on Melrose), my favorite vegan restaurant. There was no traffic so I got there really early. Across the street is a small office building and the pot shop I used when I needed CBD oil after chemo is-- or was-- in that building. But I didn't know about the "was." So I figured I'd stop there and get some CBD balm for my neuropathy. But there'll gone. So how to kill half an hour at 8pm?

Three blocks away my former favorite non-vegan restaurant, Ink, had closed down but was replaced with a lovely-looking shop called Cookies. Hmmm... maybe they have sugar-free cookies, I thought. I decided to walk over there and take a look. But gee, there was a helluva lot of security in from of the store. Maybe it was a grand opening. I'll just make like I belong-- the way Paul Kantner taught me to-- and slide right in. It seemed to work; I got right through the door. It was bright and shiny and modern and kind of nice. "Can I see your ID?" asked the lady inside the front door. I took out my driver's license and she did some kind of high tech picture of it. And then I noticed the smell. It was a nice smell, but very strong. Pot? Was I actually in a pot store? I was. She asked me to wait til as associate could come over and show me around. I said I could show myself around. "Nope," she said. The associate was fantastic. He showed me around a really large cannabis emporium with more products than I could have imagined. I bought some of the balm. They charged a huge tax for this stuff. I was shocked. I complained. They said, "Oh, we have a senior discount." It was 10% and I was happy-- happy to pay less and happy to know that seniors pay less for cannabis in the 21st Century.

So, I can't say who my out-of-town friend was. Because he (or she) told me something in strict confidence. "Please don't put this on your blog." I asked if I could but without his (or her) name on it. A role of the eyes was immediately accepted by me as an OK. Here's what I learned: After the GOP started their jihad against Ilhan Omar, senior Democrats by and large refused to publicly back her. Jerry Nadler was a conspicuous exception. Eventually someone pulled a very half-assed defense out of Pelosi. But... and here it comes... while this was raging in the media-- including death threats against Ilhan-- the #2 Dem in the House, Steny Hoyer was workin' it hard behind the scenes. Workin' what? Oh, yeah... working to get Ilhan kicked off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. After all, no one is supposed to be on there without being pro-Likud anyway. right? By the way, a progressive woman named Mckayla Wilkes is primarying Hoyer. We'll be talking about her more, of course, but meanwhile... please consider giving Ilhan a hand by tapping that thermometer on the right.





And one more thing! The folks at Now This who put this clip together should all get a Pulitzer for something. Remember when we had a real president and when Fox News was the disloyal opposition, instead of the state propaganda arm? Well this clip is meant to show you what Fox would sound like if they were covering Señor Trumpanzee the same way-- the exact same way in fact-- they used to cover President Obama. In their own words: