THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2024
Did she get this other point right? Yesterday morning, a surprising disagreement broke out on Fox & Friends.
It happened early in the 7 a.m. hour; we happened to be watching at the time. At Mediaite, Colby Hall reported the spat—but he omitted one part of what was said.
Weird! Out of nowhere, Steve Doocy blurted the statement shown below about the GOP's attempt to impeach President Biden. For Hall's report, click here:
DOOCY (2/28/24): On Capitol Hill, a lot of Republican lawmakers say they have seen zero evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. And right now, the Republicans do not have enough votes to impeach. And after dozens of interviews and over 100,000 documents released to the committees, the Republicans have yet to produce any direct evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden.
Weird! Doocy started by saying that, and then he just kept going!
At Fox, friends don't let friends say things which make them seem to be drunk! Brian Kilmeade hurried to push back against Doocy's highly peculiar lapse. Ainsley Earhardt tried to help Kilmeade do that.
"Things got a bit spirited," Hall correctly wrote. To watch this surprising debate between friends, you can start by clicking here.
Doocy basically stuck to his guns in the face of the pushback. Eventually, Earhardt said this:
EARHARDT: They're just so corrupt. The whole family is so corrupt.
KILMEADE: Unbelievable.
EARHARDT: How does Joe Biden have multimillion-dollar houses? We know what he makes. He had to have gotten money somewhere.
Eventually, that's what Earhardt said. At Mediaite, Hall didn't report her remark.
Where did President Biden get his money? If you're a red tribe cable news viewer, you've seen that obvious insinuation advanced a million times.
At Fox, it's a standard talking point. Everyone knows to repeat it.
Meanwhile, the answer to Earhardt's question has been reported a million times. You just aren't allowed to hear the answer on Fox News Channel programs.
Where did "middle-class Joe" get his money? Headline included, Politico reported the matter as shown below during Campaign 2020:
Bidens earned $15 million in 2 years after Obama administration
Former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill earned more than $15 million during the two years after they left the White House, with the bulk of it coming from lucrative public speaking and book deals, according to new financial disclosures and tax returns released Tuesday.
The disclosures offer a new, more comprehensive look at the money the Bidens amassed since leaving the White House—a sharp uptick from where their finances stood in the final years of the Obama administration and Biden’s time in the Senate, when he referred to himself as “middle-class Joe” and put a working-class life story at the center of his political campaigns.
That report came from Politico. For the AP report, click here.
These facts were reported a million times as part of the coverage of Campaign 2020. If you google the topic, you'll find this matter reported again and again, often with a direct tie to the purchase of the Bidens' Delaware beach house.
In fairness, we wouldn't assume that Earhardt actually knew that. We assume that Ingraham would have known, but she played the same "where did he get his money" card on her Fox News program last night.
Just a guess:
We'll guess that Earhardt was simply repeating a standard talking point, one she'd heard a million times. We'd assume that Ingraham would have known that her insinuation was perhaps a bit bogus.
On the other hand, we thought Ingraham made a fairly decent point last night about the brutal killing of Laken Riley, age 22, down in Athens, Georgia.
For the record, Ingraham is plenty smart. She's also fairer than a Fox bombastic like Sean Hannity, though she doesn't necessarily overdo it in any particular circumstance.
Last night, she opened her program with a segment about the brutal murder of Riley. She started by drawing a comparison between the way the killing of George Floyd was treated within the liberal world, as opposed to the way the killing of Riley has been ignored by the Biden administration, even as it has been afforded nationwide attention within other demographic segments.
Why not consider taking the Laura Ingraham Challenge? To watch that opening segment, you should start by clicking here.
We thought Ingraham made a fairly decent point, though you have to be prepared to ignore some formulations that will surely strike you, correctly or otherwise, as inaccurate / overstated / unfair.
When Ingraham snarked about the source of Biden's wealth, it seemed to us that she was selling a point where she likely knew better.
When it came to the killing of Riley, we thought she made a fairly decent point. We mention that for only one reason:
At present, President Biden is getting beaten by Candidate Trump on the basis of such concerns. At some point, will we blues ever get around to wondering how we look to tens of millions of others—why we could even end losing in November to the world's least electable man?
"When it came to the killing of Riley, we thought she made a fairly decent point. "
ReplyDeleteAnd yet Somerby does not tell us what her point was. He provides a link, which would require us to watch Fox and then try to figure out which point is the one Somerby is talking about. That is not only too much work to require of readers, but it exposes liberals here to Fox propaganda, something most of us do not want to experience. And it would have been so simple for Somerby, who says he wants improved understanding, to have just told us what her point was.
This is why Somerby comes across as dishonest, a person with ulterior motives, who hides his own politics from his readers. He seems to be incapable of being direct. That leaves him slippery, evasive, unwilling to let us see him for who he really is. And what are we to conclude about him when he writes like this?
If you think Somerby is fundamentally dishonest, go read someone else! Don't feel you owe some duty to other readers to spill your bile here.
Delete“And yet Somerby does not tell us what her point was. He provides a link, which would require us to watch Fox and then try to figure out which point is the one Somerby is talking about. That is not only too much work to require of readers, but it exposes liberals here to Fox propaganda, something most of us do not want to experience.”
DeleteAnonymouse 3:22pm, if you could have worked something in here about women feeling uneasy watching strange networks and that it’s indicative of Bob’s animus toward women that he would demand that they put themselves in harm’s way or else be confused as to his references, it would have been anonymouse perfection
You’re slipping.
Somerby is so often critical of female cable news hosts and guests that it is odd when he praises someone like Ingraham. That IS how you know something is up with him.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:34pm, this is how you know he’s not a misogynist. He’s crediting a lady who clerked for SCOTUS as being smart. He doesn’t say that about Martha McCallum or Dana Perino.
DeleteAnd yet he couldn’t bring himself to call Ketanji Brown Jackson smart, and she is a supreme court justice.
DeleteSomerby is crediting the lady .. by implying that she was either lying or knowingly allowing propaganda to go unchallenged. Some praise there, chief.
DeleteThe way to tell if someone is posting in good faith is to ask them if they can produce a link to a single comment out of the thousands of comments they made where they were in any way agreeing with the blog author, about even the most trivial thing.
DeleteWhen they are unable to do so, it becomes quite apparent they are not participating in a genuine manner, so you can safely ignore everything they write.
Why is it a requirement that they agree with the author?
DeleteAonynouse 9:04pm, no, he literally could not ( rather than would not) conclude that Kentanji was the best candidate for the position, even within the black female category.
DeleteBob wasn’t comparing Laura to a SCOTUS justice, he was comparing her to her Fox colleagues.
This is a multiple part essay. First Somerby says that Doocy got pushback when he told the truth and said that there is no evidence against Biden that warrants voting for impeachment by Republicans. Notice that Somerby never uses the word truth, just says the others disagreed, leaving the reader unsure whether Biden deserves impeachment or not (to those of you confused, he does NOT because Doocy was right).
ReplyDeleteThen Somerby repeats the right wing propaganda that Biden must be guilty because he owns expensive houses. He is an old man with a working wife and both of them have high income jobs, but he supposedly cannot own real estate in Delaware (any inherited money aside)? Somerby says it is because he got paid a lot for speeches and a book deal after leaving office. He doesn't say that ALL former politicians do that. It was how the right claimed that Hillary was corrupt too, even though Republicans do the same thing. So Somerby repeats the right wing propaganda about his expensive houses, but with half-hearted debunking.
Then Somerby gets to his read point for the day. He says a good point was raised about the migrant who killed a jogger. That is akin to endorsing the right wing propaganda story that supposedly proves all immigrants should be kept out, in case one of them might commit some future murder. Who knows what the actual point is -- he doesn't say. But he does get that migrant story front and center again, as if Biden should have closed the door to each and every migrant at the border -- something Biden is not allowed to do by law because we permit asylum applications. No one has the ability to foresee which person might commit some future crime, after admission to the US, so there is no basis for decided who to admit. Criminals are already barred.
And Somerby offers no perspective to readers that would clarify how restrictive Biden has been at the border. Most of us who are supportive of immigration know that Biden has been way more restrictive than we would like, continuing most of Trump's policies and far from the "open borders" that Republicans claim Biden has enacted. That is the propaganda lie behind Somerby's subterfuge about Ingraham's valid (he says) point.
This is how Somerby manages to call himself a liberal while presenting right wing views to liberals here, under the guise of discussion. This is Somerby's dishonesty.
Don't forget Roy Moore. Somerby encouraged Moore to rape babies. And then to feed them to porcupines.
DeleteAnd the proof of this baby-raping/porcupine-feeding is found somewhere in the quarter-century of Somerby's archives! Go look! I'm not going to look it up for you!
DeleteAnonymouse 3:34pm, if there was a prize for a 10,000 word screed that is a classic example of the straw man fallacy, you’d win.
DeleteI rather like reading posts critical of Somerby. It brings another side to the story. I personally don’t visit blogs to stroke the blogger’s ego, but to think about the issues raised.
DeleteSuomynona, you won’t merely get another perspective on Bob’s take, you’ll get a day from night different in perspective from what anonymices have said the day before.
DeleteI don’t really see inconsistencies so much. But whatever.
DeleteNot really, so much, whatever? Can't you commit either way? I sense something's up.
DeleteYes, “something’s up”, like, I can’t remember every single comment. It was Cecelia who claimed inconsistencies. Let her prove it.
DeleteI don't see how you would have to remember every comment to pick up on the fact that they take whatever position or argument is convenient day to day to make Somerby look bad, which they prove every time they post.
DeleteCecelia is this one of the trolls?
And I said that that is not my impression. It’s an unproven assertion on your part.
DeleteWhat is wrong with you haters? If you look at Drum's site, you won't see all this crap. If you don't like what Somerby writes, be a normal person and read someone else.
ReplyDeletePiper, they aren’t going anywhere, despite your frustration. Either accept that, or quit reading/responding.
DeleteAnd just to be clear, Drum’s commenters do occasionally criticize him, rather vigorously, especially when he urges liberals to “move to the center.”
DeleteSuomynona - Anybody ever call Drum a paid propagandist for Putin who defends pedophiles?
DeleteThe main troll here has posted on Drum - but it was when Drum was writing about Bob. Bob actually responded to them in Kevin's comments. Something like "I don't understand why you are so obsessed."😆
DeleteShort answer: Bob is generally full of shit and Drum generally isn’t.
DeletePied Piper, anonymices have called Drum something worse in their book than a Putin-paid-prevaricator-for-pedophiles.
DeleteThey’ve labeled Drum centrist-adjacent.
"Putin-paid-prevaricator-for-pedophiles"
DeleteFull points for alliteration.
4:20 - Interesting. Somerby's right, I think - these haters are obsessed stalkers. CC thinks they're estranged ex-girlfriends, and she may have a point.
DeleteI’m pleased with the plaudits, Piped Piper.
Delete(ok…ok…i’ll stop.)
Well, most of the time you seem to be dodging brickbats, CC.
DeletePutin-paid pro-pedophilia prevaricator.
DeletePP, you know that George Bernard Shaw quote about pigs and dirt?
DeleteGuilty.
Anonymouse 5:34pm, practically perfect.
DeletePlease, piper. Cecelia has been extremely nasty and troll-like on many occasions. She doesn’t need or deserve your defense.
DeleteKevin Drum moderates his comments. Somerby does not. Writing comments on a blog is not "stalking."
DeleteSomerby has the ability to either moderate or shut down his comment section, but chooses not to. He seems less of a snowflake than Cecelia or pied piper.
DeleteA boomer tinged neoliberal like me can claim to be a centrist. One even faintly rationalizing Trump can not.
DeleteBob had a hard time watching corporate liberals who disagree with on TV. I don’t think he is going to be able to read those who shred his nonsense in the comment section.
DeleteIsrael and the New York Times lied about Hamas and sexual violence.
ReplyDeleteHere’s the link:
Deletehttps://www.eschatonblog.com/2024/02/probably-biggest-nyt-scandal-in-my.html?m=1
I doubt it.
DeleteYou're the liar, 4:05. FOAD, Nazi filth.
DeleteSo comparing the death of somebody killed by a cop while being arrested and somebody killed by an illegal immigrant is a fairly decent point? Hmmm……
ReplyDeleteDefund the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteWell, let’s get rid of the bribery to Thomas first and see if that’s good enough.
DeleteRawstory brings some facts to the migrant crime story:
ReplyDelete"Former President Donald Trump likes to focus on one particular purported consequence of the influx of migrants coming into the U.S. from the southern border: an increase in crime.
There's just one problem, according to an NBC News report: Trump's supposed increase in crime isn't happening. In fact, crime is broadly down around the country — and it's down the most in many of the cities that have seen the largest numbers of migrants.
“You know, in New York, what’s happening with crime is it’s through the roof, and it’s called ‘migrant crime,’” Trump told a recent Michigan rally. “They beat up police officers. You’ve seen that they go in, they stab people, hurt people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form, and they have gangs now that are making our gangs look like small potatoes.”
However, wrote Olympia Sooner and Garrett Haake, "An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ 'Operation Lone Star,' which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants. Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles. Crime has risen in Washington, D.C., but local officials do not attribute the spike to migrants." Moreover, the report says, "a Department of Justice report found that 'there was no evidence that the percentage of unauthorized or authorized immigrant population at the city level impacted shifts in the homicide rates and no evidence that immigration is connected to robbery at the city level.'"
This is consistent with decades of studies showing that immigrants — both those here legally and illegally — are across the board less likely to commit crimes than native-born American citizens, from violent crime to property crime to sex offenses."
https://www.rawstory.com/fact-check-trump-and/
Another quote I like from the time, since Somerby brought up the revolutionary war.
ReplyDelete"A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation."
-Thomas Paine
And what is an example of “something great”?
DeleteAdmittedly, it's been awhile since the nation rallied behind a unifying cause. But you seriously can't remember anything? Hmmm.
DeleteYou supplied the quote. I’m asking YOU for an example. I can’t read your mind.
DeleteMy comments illustrate the opposite of my nym.
ReplyDeleteMust have struck a chord. See above for an example of the maturity level of the trolls.
ReplyDeleteRegistered. I should thank the troll for giving me the impetus to do so.
DeleteFor a rationalist, you’re awfully emotional.
DeleteRepublicans keep repeating this even though it has been extensively reported where Biden got his money from. That's why no rational person takes this seriously.
ReplyDelete