WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2024
The latest thing Gutfeld has said: For starters, it might be worth reposting what JD Vance recently said.
He said it last Saturday evening, during the Atlanta rally at which Candidate Trump staged a long rant about Georgia's (Republican) governor. As Trump staged this highly peculiar rant, he kept repeating his favorite (unsupported) claim:
The 2020 election had been stolen from him in that state!
Trump's rant, and his endless claims about stolen elections, were and are basically nuts. But as we noted in Monday afternoon's report, none of Trump's comments was more remarkable that the remarkable thing his running-mate said during his brief introduction of Trump:
VANCE (8/3/24): Eight years ago, Donald Trump had everything—fame, fortune, family, friends. He gave up the easy life so we could get our country back.
He traded everything he had for unjust persecution—for slander and scorn from the fake news, all for this country, for you and me.
They couldn't beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him.
They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison. They even tried to kill him.
They even tried to kill him! What an astonishing thing to say!
What a remarkable statement! But almost surely, you've seen this astonishing remark mentioned nowhere else.
Full fairness to Jennifer Rubin! This helps explain why we're inclined to agree with her recent claim that "a bizarre double standard" may seem to exist with respect to the coverage of Candidate Trump.
By now, statements like Vance's routinely go unreported and undiscussed. In effect, such remarkable conduct has been "normalized"—is being treated as if there's nothing to see there, as if there's nothing of interest or consequence in the existence of such remarkable statements.
Nothing to see here! Move right along! So it's been with respect to that statement by Vance, and with Trump's endless unsupported claims about the 2020 election supposedly having been stolen.
Tomorrow, we'll turn to those claims by Trump. For today, consider the most recent behavior by the fellow widely known as "The Termagant"—by the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld.
We refer to this 59-year-old man's behavior on last evening's Gutfeld! program. On Monday night, he had returned from a one-week vacation and had pried the lid off the garbage can all over again.
Last night, though, on his second day back, he took matters one step beyond.
He opened with a couple of jokes, as he always does. This allows his owners, the Fox News Channel, to pretend, and to directly claim, that they're airing a comedy program.
That isn't what they're airing! Just for the record, three of the termagant's opening jokes dealt with these topics last night:
Themes of the termagant's handful of jokes, August 6 Gutfeld! program:
Tim Walz "looks like the guy at church who remarries one month after his wife mysteriously passes away."
Governor Walz "looks like the high school football coach who made sure that everyone showered after practice," hint hint hint hint hint.
Rosie O'Donnell's too fat.
It's the law on this idiot's program. Every night, there has to be at least one liberal or progressive woman who is way too fat.
(Also, Nancy Pelosi has used too much Botox. It very much needs to be said!)
Last night, Walz was that kind of coach (hint hint), and Rosie was way too fat. By now, it was 10:03 p.m., and it was time to get down to the actual business of this crime-adjacent program.
From 10:03 until 10:15, the termagant engineered a truly deranged pseudo-discussion. During this imitation of discourse, he directly suggested that 20-year-old Thomas Crooks was acting as a government agent when he tried to shoot Donald J. Trump back on July 13.
The termagant made that direct suggestion at the end of his monologue on the topic. Actually, let's be fair—he was merely asking a question. Inquiring minds wanted to know:
GUTFELD (8/6/24): The attack on Trump was weeks ago but the media has moved on and we don't know why the shooter did it and nobody seems to care...Which makes us wonder what's going on.
Unguarded roofs. No counter drones. Knowledge of a man with a rangefinder. Photos of the shooter by the Secret Service a half hour before the shooting.
Not checking IDs. Rallygoers pointing out Crooks to law enforcement and nothing being done.
[...]
It wasn't like Thomas Crooks was James Bond. He did everything he could to arouse suspicion. Were all those government agents failures? Or was Crooks the only government agent that failed?
Yes, that's what he said. There followed a pseudo-discussion straight out of a fever swamp in which four enablers played along with what had been said.
("It's all laid out," the former professional wrestler said. "You just—in your monologue, you brilliantly laid out the entire thing...We don't need to wait for their investigation. Just look at the footage.")
Gutfeld had brilliantly laid it out! They don't need no stinkin' investigation—not on this particular Fox News Channel program!
Once again, this isn't a comedy show. This is a baldly disordered propaganda program drawn from a dark fever dream.
Assessed by any normal standard, this program's suggestions land just this side of Pizzagate and QAnon. We think it's time to start saying the names of the various people who enable the termagant in this remarkable conduct.
Once again, let's be fair! The corporate owners of the Fox News Channel have the First Amendment to hide behind as they air this propaganda vehicle.
For that reason, we're only speaking metaphorically when we say that programs like this have begun to strike us as part of an ongoing "criminal enterprise"—metaphorically, as an ongoing act of fraud committed against the millions of people who watch this "cable news" show.
We're only speaking metaphorically! But we'd say there's a criminal vibe.
Now for the rest of the story:
Blue America's finer news orgs avert their gaze from this conduct. They avert their gaze from what happens at the Fox News Channel as a general matter.
They've averted their gaze from Vance's statement in Atlanta. They also tend to avert their gaze from Candidate Trump's endless claims about stolen elections, including his recent claim about the 2020 Minnesota election.
They tend to avert their gaze from such claims. On the rare occasions when they try to push back, they tend to try and to fail.
Tomorrow, we'll plan to show you what happened when Trump recently claimed that Minnesota had been stolen and would likely be stolen again. He offered no evidence in support of this inflammatory claim.
To its credit, CNN tried to push back. We would say the spirit was willing, but the skill levels were weak.
For today, one final point:
Gutfeld's presence on the air is an artefact of the ongoing "democratization of media." To wit:
First, democratization came with its partisan talk radio shows—with Rush Limbaugh aired nationwide. Not long after that, the Internet was up and running, with "segregation by viewpoint" emerging within a few years.
Before long, we had wholly partisan "cable news" channels offering tribal comfort food served by arrays of good friends. Social media has also stepped in, further extending this "democratization" mess.
"Democratization" sounds like a very good thing. In practice, the democratization of media has had its tiny small problems.
At one time, a person like Gutfeld couldn't have been on the air as host of a major "news" program. As our democracy struggles and strains, those days are now long gone—and the finer people at the finer news orgs are sound asleep at their posts.
They tried to kill him, the candidate said. Meanwhile, was Thomas Crooks a government agent—a government agent who failed?
The termagant was only asking! A corporate termagant's inquiring mind very much wanted to know!
Tomorrow: The flesh was weak
The FBI has seized Representative Andy Ogles' cell phone, apparently investigation campaign finance violations. He pledges full cooperation.
ReplyDeletehttps://thehill.com/homenews/house/4814715-andy-ogles-fbi-phone-campaign-finance/
Apparently investigating.
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"By now, statements like Vance's routinely go unreported and undiscussed. "
ReplyDeleteYes, Vance made a crazy statement repeating conspiracy theories that Trump was targeted by Biden or the left. But Vance didn't originate those theories himself. He is repeating right wing garbage akin to Q-Anon conspiracies. Trump has said as much himself about his shooting. This is not being discussed because it is (1) not news, and (2) obviously untrue, and (3) not worth dignifying by repeating. There is not enough room in today's newspapers to list and evaluate all of the lies being told by the right. Fact checkers have already evaluated that particular lie:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-assassination-biden-tiktok-misinformation-fact-check-4b7ab8e21c00aa6ef47f25ec76984fe6
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/07/16/trump-shooting-assassination-attempt-facts-details/74431164007/
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/misinformation-narratives-fact-checked-wake-trump-assassination-attempt-2024-07-15/
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-shooting-assassination-conspiracy-theory-staged-biden-poll-1925723
This is a lot of attention already paid to conspiracy theories that are simply being repeated by Vance in order to attack the left. No one thinks Vance believes what he is saying -- this is motivated political trash talking and it is ugly, but not something for the news to evaluate when it has already fact checked the conspiracy theory itself.
Somerby is wrong to demand that more attention be given to these lies. The attention should go to Vance for saying them, but if no one is reporting Vance's efforts, how did Somerby know what he said? It isn't like he attended the rally and heard it. Of course the Republicans are lying and being mean to their opponents. It is what they do.
But Somerby helps spread the message today by not only repeating Vance but also transcribing more Gutfeld, for those of us who have chosen not to watch Fox.
Somerby says: "Once again, this isn't a comedy show. This is a baldly disordered propaganda program drawn from a dark fever dream. "
If so, why does he give them more exposure? And why was he unwilling to report Rubin's writing yesterday, when he was praising her, yet he can endlessly repeat the lies told by right wingers such as Gutfeld and Vance?
Press exposure is free to political candidates. Exhorting the press to cover Vance's lies is like begging them to give Vance more free exposure for lies against the left. That helps the right and hurts the left. Why would a supposed liberal like Somerby be doing such a thing, instead of asking the press to cover the real activities of Harris and her campaign?
We don't need another dose of right wing nonsense and there is nothing to talk about with Vance. His other remarks are worse than this one and we've already heard them. I am waiting for Somerby to urge the news to cover Vance's position on pregnancy monitoring. It is right out of the Handmaid's Tale (another book Somerby has not read).
It is a non-negotiable condition of remaining in the Trumplican party to never admit that the orange abomination lost the 2020 election. Everyone knows this by now. Nothing more needs be said.
Delete"to give Vance more free exposure for lies against the left. That helps the right and hurts the left."
DeleteThe unstated premise of Bob's post is that exposing a lie lessens its power.
The unstated premise of your comment is that people lack the ability to distinguish truth from lie, but are more like unthinking sponges absorbing as true whatever lie is put before them.
Which is more realistic?
11:13 welcome to right wing America, where your latter scenario reigns supreme.
DeleteTo be fair, it is not so much that those lies are believed, but they soothe the emotional discomfort of those obsessed with dominance and in constant fear of losing it.
How do they perform this soothing function without being believed?
Delete11:47 you need to learn some psychology, and some history.
DeleteI learned some anonymouses prefer vapid condescension to answering a question. Was that the lesson you intended?
Delete12:11 you are limited by your personality trait, others not as much.
DeleteInterestingly, you sneer and snark in order to soothe your emotions; it is like you are offering yourself up as a case study to debunk your own nonsense.
My posts had nary a sneer nor a snark. I offer myself only as a humble seeker of the truth.
DeleteTell me more, let's talk about your mother.
Deleteanon 12;23, you're an idiot
DeleteFew here are more ignorant and disingenuous as you AC/MA, so that's pretty rich.
DeleteThat is the power of storytelling, from the Bible to advertising. Duh.
DeleteHector, Somerby spends no time at all debunking right wing lies. That happens largely in comments. As 10:48 said, the lies have been refuted by the media already. That doesn't need to happen every day, every time someone like Vance repeats a lie again.
Delete"Somerby spends no time at all debunking right wing lies."
DeleteA remarkable comment, coming as it does in reference to one of Bob's posts that consists almost entirely in denying right wing lies.
Debunking means pointing out the part that is untrue and correcting it. It doesn't mean calling someone a liar (which Somerby never does, because he doesn't believe in lies for Trump who likely believes what he is saying, according to Somerby).
DeleteSomerby rarely debunks anything. Sometimes he tells his own lies, such as when he said the kids in MS were not improving their reading. Debunking today would involve explaining how Vance is wrong and correcting his untruth. Somerby only complains that the press didn't do that -- he would never stoop to doing it himself because it might help the Democrats.
"Somerby rarely debunks anything."
DeleteRight. He writes a media criticism website, not a conspiracy-debunking website.
Being excessively literal is something g to be embarrassed about, not to trot around proudly about.
DeleteYes Hector, we get you’ve been duped by Somerby, you don’t need to continually shame yourself.
Termagant is a gendered derogatory term describing a shrewish woman. Last I heard, Gutfeld is still identifying as male. It is sexist to apply gendered female terms to men as a form of abuse. It demeans women to do that, as if there were something wrong with women such that a man should be insulted to be compared with women.
ReplyDeleteSomerby persists in this behavior deliberately, because it is a twofer for him. He gets to insult both women and Gutfeld. But his lack of interest in avoiding sexist behavior suggests Somerby is far from liberal, since typically liberals care about hurting other people via ill chosen language and try to correct inadvertent mistakes when they are pointed out. Not Somerby. He is in-your-face about using language to hurt his political targets, much as the right deliberately mispronounces Kamala (and Somerby encourages them in that, saying the name is too hard). Maybe vocabulary is too hard to Somerby to master and he should give up and just go back to watching Fox 24/7?
Termagant isn't gendered. You aren't gendered, either.
DeleteAll of the definitions refer to a woman. Somerby is not talking about some Middle Eastern Islamic deity or he would have capitalized the word (and it would make even less sense applied to Gutfeld).
DeleteMy gender, as an anonymous commenter, is unspecified. That doesn't mean I have no gender.
You have no gender.
DeleteNo-one with a gender cares about termagant.
DeleteGender is a social construct with little utility beyond identifying groups that are being oppressed.
DeleteI read Gutfield transitioned so he could have sex with Bill O'Reilly.
Delete"At one time, a person like Gutfeld couldn't have been on the air as host of a major "news" program."
ReplyDeleteGutfeld is not now and never has been a news reporter. The hosts of major news programs are journalists. Gutfeld's show is not a news program. It does spew propaganda but it is not reporting news. There is nothing to be gained by blurring these lines, as Somerby attempts to do today. Considering Gutfeld a journalist gives him more credit and stature than he deserves and it would add weight to his statements that they do not deserve coming from a political comedian (good or bad). No one should take Gutfeld seriously and yet Somerby comes here regularly urging that this right wing sludge be given greater weight by non-believers (which is anyone who knows how to evaluate what is real and what is not).
Gutfeld and the MAGAs will retreat to the dark corners of fringe belief once Trump is finally defeated. The conmen and grifters who ride Trump's coattails will not have the ability to keep conning once Trump is in jail (or house arrest or whatever is imposed on him after sentencing). They will slink away on their own and the right will learn that their candidates must have some semblance of legitimacy or voters will reject them. That will be the lesson of Trump's times.
Somerby is clearly working against that outcome. He wants to keep Vance and Gutfeld in the spotlight, to enhance their legitimacy in viewers' eyes and promote the Vance/Trump candidacy. Who knows why, but that would be the result of doing what Somerby today suggests. Don't be fooled, just because Somerby pretends to dislike crazy old Trump.
If Somerby were liberal, he would be discussing Walz and expressing some enthusiasm for the changes in the Democratic ticket. He would be repeating what Walz said at his rally yesterday and talking about how Walz has real not phony rural cred and will represent working class voters in ways Vance cannot. Somerby's focus would be on Democratic strengths, not whining about why the press is ignoring Vance's lies.
Dear Bob: Are you going to gently demand that the accidental candidate with 0 votes, Kamala Harris, whose cackles you find endearing, sit down for some interviews without a teleprompter? It can be with friendly reporters where she can elaborate on the significance of various things (like the passage of time or diplomacy). The country needs to see what a low IQ moron she really is.
ReplyDeleteGood one! Q: when will the spray-tanned, lumbering ape man agree to debate cackling Kamala?
DeleteSpeaking of morans the convicted felon's speeches are performed at a third graders reading level.
DeleteSomerby is dumbly conflating democratization with corporatism and the ending of the fairness doctrine - circumstances that are the opposite of democratization.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, it has been the democratization of media that has started to chip away at the dominance of corporate media, playing a significant role in how smoothly Dems transitioned from Biden to Harris, deftly outmaneuvering Republicans; this is the real reason why Somerby is currently attacking democratization, along with his broader right wing concern about losing hierarchies.
I agree. Democratization was represented by public broadcast networks (PBS NPR, C-SPAN), The Fair Access Doctrie (which Republicans eliminated), and by the chance for citizens to present their views on UHF stations. Today, it consists of substack and podcasts and independent news sources on the internet. But these are harder to find than the corporate networks and require some level of education and familiarity with media. Somerby seems to want gatekeepers not public access.
DeleteBob is wrong about how the Democrats supposedly tried to kill Trump. Here's the method being accused:
ReplyDelete1. Democrats demonized Trump to a level that some people believe his death would be good for of the world. E.g., seriously equating him with Hitler. Predicting that his election would result in a dictatorship.
2. Dems encouraged the need for his death to the degree that a mentally unstable person could be inspired to attempt to kill him.
3. Dems saw to it that Trump's Secret Service protection was inadequate. So poor that a naïve, untrained kid could come within an inch of success.
Well stated, David in Cal. I don’t see why Vance’s statement is off limits. This is standard issue politics in the US today and the Dems are a lot, lot nastier. And Gutfeld is not a news program – it’s political comedy.
DeleteThomas Crooks was a White male Republican gun enthusiast who was a staunch conservative that had Trump signs in his yard; he was not influenced by Dems demonizing Trump.
DeleteIt is evident that Trump was grazed not by a bullet but by shrapnel, as the minor nick to his ear healed in under two weeks and was similar (less severe even) to the shrapnel injuries of the four policemen that were nearest to him.
As Somerby has previously noted, Repubs have been demonizing Dems for longer and on a larger scale, burning effigies and making ads with target graphics and shooting up things, talking about 2nd amendment solutions, on and on.
Worse, Trump says those with disabilities should just die, and that those that gave their lives in war are losers. Right wing evangelicals are even casting side-eyes at Jesus, wondering if he was infected by the woke virus.
In reality, it was Harris who nearly lost her life, being a few feet away from a pipe bomb on Jan 6.
DiC - No major Dem "encouraged the need for [Trump's] death." Trump did try to steal an election, but failed. Is it really "demonization" for Dems to warn that he might try again and succeed?
Delete"Dems saw to it that Trump's Secret Service protection was inadequate."
DeleteDo you acknowledge that this is a baseless slander? If not, please provide any evidence that "Dems" did this.
PP - when you say "No major Dem", does that mean you acknowledge that some Dems DID encourage the need for Trump's death?
Delete...seriously equating him with Hitler....
DeleteNo, that would be his running mate.
How would a Dem, major or not, influence a Republican? Your premise is false, leading you to an invalid conclusion.
DeleteDiC - There are more than 100 million Dems. I'm sure someone somewhere said something stupid. So what?
DeleteFrom "America's Hitler" to America's hero, when right wingers flip flop, they go big!
DeletePP - the Dems who run the Secret Service decided how to deploy their resources.
Delete"The Secret Service repeatedly denied requests for more personnel and other security resources from agents guarding former President Donald Trump prior to the assassination attempt on the candidate at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a Secret Service official told NBC News." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/secret-service-denied-requests-security-resources-trump-events-rcna162888
One explanation I've read is that the Secret Service was stretched thin because it was preparing for the Republican National Convention. They considered the venue low risk. That isn't a conspiracy but misjudgment of the danger posed to Trump by his own MAGA followers.
DeleteSo, lifelong Secret Service agents conspired to enable the assassination of one they are sworn to protect with their very lives. And the best evidence for this ridiculous charge is that there was a disagreement about the deployment of resources.
DeleteIt seems to me that this is a slander that is beyond vile.
A Right-winger with a Trump sign on his lawn taking a potshot at Trump is what's called "chickens coming home to roost".
DeleteDickhead in Cal is not happy unless he can claim conspiracy to make him a victim. He is most happy being aggrieved.
DeleteYou're talking crazy talk, Davey Dave. "Dems encouraged the need for his death"? You might find a few online weirdos who said something like that, but no Dems did not "encourage the need for his death." Didn't happen.
DeleteAlso Dems did not "see to it that Trump's secret service protection was inadequate." Trump had the same level of coverage as the current President. Once again, you're making stuff up or repeating stuff that someone else made up.
Go outside. Get back in touch with the real world.
David hears these things in the media he consumes, which is all in on lying. He can never get the truth from them. And he had told himself that the mainstream media is all lies, so he helps to construct his own bubbie of epistemic closure.
Delete@DiC
Delete"...does that mean you acknowledge that some Dems DID encourage the need for Trump's death?"
I'm sure that a thorough search would turn up a few folks who could be somehow identified as a "Dem" and who wrote something stupid online.
Is that the evidence you were using to make your case? It's insufficient.
@DiC: You conveniently omit that some on-line postings by the shooter have been discovered. These posting would indicate that calling Trump a Hitler wouldn't have been a negative in his eye.
DeleteSetting that aside. No one could've ever imagined that a 20-something year-old would endeavor to shoot at a person for no reason. Never happened before. It must be them Democrats demonizing Trump.
Your diatribe is such mindless claptrap that a sentient adult would be ashamed to post it. But we have people on TV spouting this gibberish as well. Not surprising that their feeble-minded listeners would run with it.
I am so old I remember Reagan was shot as "Hinckley believed the attack would impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had developed an erotomanic obsession after viewing her in the 1976 film Taxi Driver." (When she was 12 btw.)
DeleteBut do go on idiot DiC with your well reasoned nonsense on weird folks motivations. I would think felon Trump's shooter is just the bog standard 20 something male with a shit job and no friends committing suicide by cop with huge media exposure like 98% of mass shooters. Occam's Razor Dave. Or what Ilya said.
@Arty: Yes, John Hincley Jr springs to mind. Before then there was an attempt to assassinate George Wallace. Given his segregationist rhetoric, you would've thought that it was some deranged liberal who tried to stop him. Nope. It was just shiftless 22 year-old looking for fame. You truly have to be a mindless partisan to attempt to connect this to some anonymous "Democratic" rhetoric, which, by the way, is not nearly as vile as what well-known Republicans, e.g. Vance or Trump, spew.
DeleteNot to mention the many people whose lives have been endangered by the orange abomination that DiC admires so much. The motherfucker falsely accused the FBI agents who recovered the stolen documents in FL of planning to assassinate him and Smith had to go to court to try to get that lying motherfucker gagged because he was endangering FBI agents lives by spreading his insane false accusations. But surprise, surprise, his judge in FL just fucking dismissed the whole case unbelievably.
DeleteSo go fuck yourself, Dickhead in Cal. You're spreading reckless and inflammatory accusations.
Alex Jones peddled the idea months ago that assassinating Trump would be beneficial to the right wing, via retaliatory killings of Biden and other "deep state" individuals. His guest, some clown by the name of Raiklin, gleefully conjectured that it would "be so over for them." This is the most easily accessed concrete public advocacy for assassinating Trump. DIC is a right wing troll who has little regard for facts and spews rhetoric that is commonly debunked with minimal effort on a search engine. He has earned the disrespect bestowed upon him by virtue of a lazy intellect that is unburdoned by the kind of embarrassment that an ordinary person would experience having been corrected on simple facts so many times at this site.
Delete3:09,
DeleteYou're overthinking it.
David is a standard issue Reagan Republican (i.e. a bigot).
The Republican Party's bigotry turns him on, and he thinks the Democratic Party might take that feeling away from him.
The rest is window dressing.
This is how we deprogram America (from Thom Hartmann):
ReplyDelete"All across America families are in mourning: their parents and grandparents, particularly the men in their lives, have been stolen from them by the rightwing hate and rage machine.
Jen Senko produced a movie — The Brainwashing of My Dad — about losing her own father to Fox “News”; it was also made into a book of the same title. She’s been a guest on my show a few times and her story is one replicated across America millions of times: her father — a totally normal Midwestern guy — began watching Fox “News” when he retired and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.
Jen and her family staged an intervention and locked Fox out of Dad’s TV with the child lock option built into her cable system; within a few months, back to watching normal TV news like CNN, MSNBC, and BBC, Dad made a full recovery from the temporary mental illness Murdoch’s infamous hate machine had thrown him into.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is America’s intervention against the mind poison Trump, Fox “News,” and rightwing hate radio have infected our nation with.
He’s a normal guy, who joined the Army National Guard right out of high school at 17, rising to the rank of Commander Sergeant Major and becoming a top advocate for America’s vets during his decade in Congress.
He used the GI bill to go to college, getting his masters’ degree and going on to teach high school social studies. He coached his schools’ football team, taking it to the state championships for the first time ever.
He smiles. His students love him, as does his family. He’s a normal guy. He’s the father everybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family wishes they had. He’s the grandpa everybody who’s lost one to Fox “News” wishes could sit down with their own and set him straight.
He carved butter at the state fair. He helped start the school’s first gay-straight alliance back in the 1990s when homophobic hate was still widely accepted; he said the coach doing so would be a powerful statement of support. He loves his country, his community, his family, and his nation."
Somerby is right to be concerned about Americans who have been sucked into Trump's nightmare. He is wrong about what to do about it. We need to turn off Fox, not watch it 24/7, repeating what Gutfeld says and complaining bitterly and angrily about everything in life. Somerby needs to turn off his TV and get back to solid normal pursuits that don't involve Homer or weirdness like trying to prove Einstein was stupid.
HE. TAUGHT. IN. CHINA! COMMIE. COMMIE. COMMIE is coming soon...
DeleteCalling the Republicans weird is another way of saying that we need to get back to normal. Trump was not good for our country and many of us are tired of the scandals, chaos, crazy statements, conspiracies, hate and noise. Trump isn't funny any more and his confusion makes us all feel a bit lost. The solution is common sense, a return to solid American values, and working toward a better future for everyone in our nation. I suspect that future historians will regard Trump as a temporary aberration arising from the scary lockdown phase of covid, even though he arrived in 2016. Historians will sort out Trump's collusion with Russia and his self-serving relationship with the Saudis, we will realize how we've been duped, and our country will return to electing public servants with real expertise instead of phonys and conmen. All of us, even many MAGAs, are sick of this turmoil.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They are hard working folks with a vision for building on our covid recovery and making our country better for everyone, even crazy Republicans mired in red state blundering. Even Somerby.
This shit ain't temporary, the plutocrats have been working on this since Barry Goldwater had his RWNJ ass handed to him 50 years ago. Project 2025 is their end goal, idiot Trump is their vessel.
DeleteThe good news about Walz, from Heather Cox Richardson:
ReplyDelete"Today Vice President Kamala Harris named her choice for her vice presidential running mate: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Walz grew up in rural Nebraska. He enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress, according to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
He went to college with the educational benefits afforded him by the Army, and graduated from Chadron (Nebraska) State College. From 1989 to 1990, he taught at a high school in China, then became a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, who became his wife. They moved to Minnesota, where they both continued teaching and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF.
Walz became the faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance organization at the same time that he coached the high-school football team from a 0–27 record to a state championship. The advisor “really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said in 2018.
Walz ran for Congress in 2005 after some of his students were asked to leave a rally for George W. Bush because one of them had a sticker for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Walz won and served in Congress for twelve years, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Voters elected Walz to the Minnesota state house in 2018, and in his second term they gave him a slim majority in the state legislature. With that support, Walz signed into law protections for abortion rights, supported gender-affirming care, and legalized the recreational use of marijuana. He signed into law gun safety legislation and protections for voting rights, and pushed for action to combat climate change and to promote renewable energy.
Strong tax revenues and spending cuts gave the state a $17.6 billion surplus, and the Democrats under Walz used the money not to cut taxes, as Republicans wanted, but to invest in education, fund free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren, make tuition free at the state’s public colleges for students whose families earned less than $80,000 a year, and invest in paid family and medical leave and health insurance coverage regardless of immigration status.
While MAGA Republicans are already trying to define Walz as “far left,” his votes in Congress put him pretty squarely in the middle. His work with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan to expand technology production and infrastructure funding in the state was rewarded in 2023, when Minnesota knocked Texas out of the top five states for business. The CNBC rating looked at 86 indicators in 10 categories, including the workforce, infrastructure, health, and business friendliness. " She goes on to describe his impact on the upcoming election.
Speaking of lying and fact-checking, Yastreblansky examines what happened when Trump lied to the Black Journalists:
ReplyDelete"A story at Axios confirmed what I suggested earlier, that Trump's team delayed his appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention for 70 minutes with their demand that the planned live fact checking not proceed:
At the time, President Trump blamed the delay on audio problems.
[NABJ president Ken] Lemon told Axios, "There were audio problems, but they were resolved very quickly."
"The bigger problem was his threat not to take the stage when he had agreed to go on. He did not want to be fact-checked, but we could not let him on the stage without fact-checking," Lemon said....
"I was prepared to go on stage to craft a statement, saying he decided not to go on stage because of fact-checking... we couldn't compromise on that.
As Lemon was preparing that statement, Trump walked onto the stage.
What the Axios story is missing is that the live fact checking did not in fact happen (Politifact ran a kind of fact check on Trump's performance, I now find, but it wasn't live, as you can see by checking it out; it started at least a little over an hour after the performance ended, and I'm pretty sure over 25 hours after.
Maybe that was something the Trump team directly negotiated with Politifact and NABJ had nothing to do with it, and Lemon is telling the truth as far as he knows it. But it's really weird that none of the journalists who bothered to write about it, and nobody on the NABJ board, seems to have looked at the #nabjfactcheck to find out. If it's so vital that it should take place, as Lemon said, how did they not find out?
Let's just add, because I'm feeling nobody's saying this either, that Trump and his campaign just acknowledged that it is a necessary element of his rhetorical technique that he should be permitted to tell all the lies he can fit without challenge. He didn't intend to say it in public, but it's what he told the NABJ. He couldn't go on otherwise. And he got his way."
This is why trying to have a debate with that bullshitter is a waste of time if the moderators agree to not do any fact checking.
DeleteBesides, the ancient crank doesn't know what day it is, where he's at, and aside from the now 9-year-old stump speech, what the fuck he's talking about.
DeleteThe WaPo's media reporter, Jeremy Barr, offered this yesterday:
ReplyDeleteFox News shows helped spread false claims about gender of boxers
And Barr isn't shy about naming names and providing examples. He calls out Jesse Watters, Joe Concha, Brian Kilmeade, and many others.
J D: Who is the they who tried to kill him? The shooter was a right wing Republican gun nut who thanks to people like you had an AR-15.
ReplyDelete
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