WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2025
What were Fox viewers told? Under current arrangements, the zone keeps getting flooded.
Often, the zone is flooded with events which might qualify as distractions. Consider the alternate topics which have arisen since Saturday morning, June 14, when news of the political murders in Minnesota was first reported.
By that time, the military engagement between Israel and Iran was already a major topic. Stating th obvious, that remains a major, consequential topic right on through today.
The murders were reported on Saturday morning. On that same day, the military parade in D.C. took place, as did the "No Kings" protests around the nation.
Two days earlier—on Thursday, June 12—Senator Padilla had been forcibly removed from the room, then shoved to the ground and handcuffed, after he interrupted Kristi Noem's opening statement at a Los Angeles press event.
At that event, Noem announced that ICE would remain in Los Angeles as the agency worked to liberate Los Angeles from the policies of its mayor and its governor.
While those events were being discussed, up jumped Senator Mike Lee with a pair of extremely unusual social media posts about the Minnesota murders. Discussion of those posts was underway as of Monday morning, June 16.
Other events fought for attention during this handful of days:
On Wednesday, June 11, President Trump had been booed at the Kennedy Center. On Monday, June 16, Donald Trump Jr. "announced the launch of Trump Mobile, which will utilize the nation’s three major wireless networks—AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA—to offer 5G service to its customers."
Elon Musk released the alleged results of an alleged drug test. The MyPillow guy was ordered to pay $2.3 million as the result of a defamation lawsuit.
The president threw Tulsi Gabbard under a bus, two times. It was reported that the president might add 36 more countries to his travel ban.
The president left the G-7 conference a day early. Also, he called Tucker Carlson a kook.
Terry Moran managed to get himself fired from ABC News. On Monday evening, President Trump recommended the evacuation of Tehran.
Along with the usual array of colorful insults delivered by the usual suspects, those were some of the events which crowded the scene in the days which surrounded the murders in Minnesota.
That said, nothing stopped the promulgation of the latest tribal Storyline. As of Sunday morning, callers to C-Span's Washington Journal were already telling the nation that the assailant in Minnesota had in fact been a Democrat. There the liberals had gone again!
Those phone calls aired on Washington Journal during Sunday morning's 7 o'clock hour. Last evening, the attempt to establish this tribally pleasing claim continued apace on NewsMax, as described in a new report from Mediaite.
Warning! Some of the claims which get quoted in that report are either false or are grossly misleading. Headline included, Mediaite's report begins as shown:
Newsmax Host Asks: ‘Is Governor Walz Running a State or a Terror Organization?’
Newsmax host David Harris Jr. asked on Tuesday whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was “running a state or a terror organization” after it was reported that the suspect in the shooting of State Representative Melissa Hortman and state Senator John Hoffman had ties to the governor.
Reacting to the arrest of suspect Vance Boelter—who was reappointed by Walz to the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board in 2019, after having previously been appointed by former governor Mark Dayton—Harris questioned, “What were his motives?”
He continued, “Well, just days before, state Representative Melissa Hortman, before she was killed, she voted no on Governor Tim Walz’s plan to give healthcare coverage to illegal aliens. After the vote, she seemed very noticeably afraid for her safety in a local news interview.”
And so on from there. Very important:
Already, that quoted statement by Harris seems to be multiply wrong.
It's true! Boelter had been reappointed by Walz to that minor, inconsequential state board. But that's where the accuracy seems to end.
Based on local reports, in real time, about the late Melissa Hortman's recent vote on Minnesota's new budget legislation, we'll suggest that everything else that Harris said was either false or was grossly misleading. We'll offer two links below.
To appearances, Harris was telling citizens in Red America that Hortman was shot and killed because she failed to support a proposal by Governor Walz, the possible terror kingpin. This tribally pleasing lunacy ignores the fact that another Democratic state lawmaker had been shot before Melissa Hortman was killed, and that the assailant had apparently tried to kill two other Democratic lawmakers before he, disastrously, arrived at Hortman's home.
Madness takes that murderous form. Madness also takes the form of that "news report" on NewsMax.
Now for the rest of the story:
Hortman had voted one way on the Minnesota budget bill. Joined by Republicans in the dead-even Minnesota legislature, she and Walz had worked together to produce the compromise legislation for which she voted.
As best we can tell, those other lawmakers, Democrats all, had voted the other way. The assailant had already shot one of them, and had apparently hoped to shoot the two others, before he arrived at the home of Hortman, where he did murder two people.
Walz had (re)appointed the apparent assailant to that (inconsequential) post! Also, Melissa Hortman had voted the wrong way on some bill, or something vaguely like that.
On Sunday morning, those claims were already being bruited by the callers to C-Span, who said the assailant had been—what else?—a Democrat.
Assassination attempts have been launched by various assailants from various sides of various aisles. But can a modern nation expect to survive a media regime in which people like Harris work hard, around the clock, to spread such perceptions around?
Bright and early on Sunday morning, less than a day since the news hit the wires, C-Span viewers were hearing callers say that the assailant was known to be a Democrat. This claim had spread with remarkable speed. It spread even further on C-Span that day.
That brings us to the question we want to explore in the next two days:
As of Sunday morning, how were the "cable news" stars on the Fox News Channel reporting the murders in Minnesota? What were viewers of the Fox News Channel being told about that event?
Tomorrow, we'll visit the reporting on Sunday morning's edition of Fox & Friends Weekend. On Friday, we'll show you what was said that evening on The Big Weekend Show.
Governor Walz is a terror king! As Blue news orgs avert their gaze, Red news orgs and other such types have been spreading such claims around.
All in all, a revolution is underway with respect to the spread of "information."
That revolution is deeply entrenched. It may be hard to survive.
Tomorrow: Fox star asks nine questions
Friday: Possibly the dumbest work we've ever seen on a news broadcast. Nothing to look at, we're told.
About that Minnesota budget legislation: For one local report, just click this. For a second report, click here.
ReplyDelete"What were Fox viewers told? "
I don't know what Fox viewers were told, but I do know what I would've told them, had I owned a news channel.
A Minnesota liberal politician betrays her tribe voting against one of the most precious liberal dogma: free medical services for criminal invaders. And then someone assassinates her, under extremely weird circumstances.
Does this sound accurate enough, Mr. Somerby?
Nope.
DeleteIt is fascinating in a disturbing way watching maggots run away from themselves. He's your guy, 11:27 am, embrace him.
DeleteUmm...no.
DeleteThere is nothing "weird" about the circumstances.
DeleteA Trump voter and supporter killed a Dem and tried to kill some other Dems.
This is par for the course under Trump's version of the Republican Party.
Trump incites violence as part of his overall strategy.
Sure, it is a psychotic strategy, but it is now the norm for Republicans.
anon 11:27, no offense, but you're so stupid it hurts.
Delete@11:27 Did you even read today's post? The assassin first shot Dems who voted for the proposal. Then he shot the one Dem who voted against it.
DeleteOh, and your boy Mike Lee? He was finally shamed into retracting this bullshit.
How the f Someday analyze motives and fail to mention abortion. Weak.
DeleteHit a nerve? Good. Squeal Soros-bots, squeal.
DeleteI am unclear what stories Bob considers" distractions." I hope he meant that discussions of Boelter's politics was a distraction from the real news like the Israel/Iran war, not vice versa.
ReplyDeletethat war would never have started if Trump were president now, right Dickhead in Cal?
DeleteAn antiabortion white christian nut tries to gun down dozens of Democratic leaders is not news? You a strange one.
DeleteWait until you hear what pro-abortion anti-Christian nuts do to a million babies a year.
Delete@11:54 faults Trump for achieving less than he promised. That makes for a snappy post. But, that view discourages setting ambitious goals. It leads in the direction that promising nothing and achieving nothing is better than promising a huge amount and only achieving a lot. A better approach is to evaluate leaders on an absolute scale of what they accomplished.
DeleteKilling fully functioning people vs. killing a spec of snot. Got it. The horror of snot killing.
Deletefuck you and your ambitious goals bullshit, Dickhead, the only ambition Prince Orange Chickenshit has is to win the next golf tournament and grift as much petro dollars as he can from the arabs, you fucking fascist freak
DeleteSomerby wants to begin talking about the even on the day after, when the shooter had been identified and caught, not on the event unfolding at the same time as the Iran/Israel conflict, the nationwide marches protesting Trump's presidency, and the president's boondoggle of a parade. By the time period Somerby wants to discuss, Trump was at the G7 and knowledge about the shooter was public to counter the idiotic right wing smears of Walz. There was a mean-spirited victim-blaming attack on Democrats used to distract attention from the fact of this shooter being a right wing extremist engaging in domestic terrorism himself. This is the old Republican technique of attacking and blaming the left for whatever the right does itself. Because of how early they started calling Walz part of a terrorist plot, it appears the right already knew the identity of the shooter and his actual affiliation with the Christian nationalist and anti-abortion right. How did they know?
DeleteIn a rational world, the FBI would be investigating that aspect of this crime too, but I'm sure they are busier covering up the right wing affiliations not exploring the connection between a shooter who planned his crimes to compete with a massive citizen protest and other right wing factions. This guy will be considered a patriot by the right and his crimes were clearly well-planned and deliberately carried out. He has obvious help, after the fact, from people like Mike Lee and others on the right, making this look like a right-wing planned terrorist action, just like the other measures moving us closer to fascism under Trump. I believe the cover story about Walz was created before the shootings as part of that plan, not as a spontaneous right wing crazy explanation. The right was too quick to call the shooting a "false flag operation" immediately after the shootings were on the news. This whole event stinks of orchestrated terrorism by Trump cronies, just as some on the left have suspected was true of the fake assassination attempt that wound up killing a father protecting his family. The people who are shot or killed are collateral damage and of no consequence to Republicans.
How many here are aware that there was a shooting at the Salt Lake City march involving a Kyle Rittenhouse-type figure waving around an automatic weapon. Police fired three shots, hitting the guy with the gun but also killing one of the marchers who was an entirely nonviolent bystander exercising his First Amendment rights when shot. Clearly the guy who took a gun to shoot protesters planned his action. But did he have help? And were the right wingers there where Mike Lee lives planning to call him a violent protester instead of a right wing extremist targeting protesters?
Somerby might profitably discuss the "kill the protesters" sentiment whipped up on the right, along with the "kill the immigrants" slogans appearing all over right wing websites and especially in comments sections on blogs.
The right breed violence by breeding hate. Somerby might focus on that disparity between the right and left. While the left was talking about keeping the protests non-violent, the right was talking about shooting them.
Biden set (or was handed) very ambitious goals and he achieved them. What did he get as thanks, even from Somerby? They called him old and speculated that he had dementia and was merely someone else's puppet. Names suggested as real president were Hillary, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, not even Putin. That's what happens when you achieve something remarkable, excellent, difficult, that no other leader in the rest of the world equalled. They call you a poopy-pants and sabotage your second term. Better to set ridiculous goals, ignore them after the election, and instead ruin the economy, persecute all citizens and pave over the White House rose garden, earning the nickname among Historians of "worst president ever."
Deleteambitious goals...
Deleteyou mean a torrent of bullshit spewed out of the assholes foul mouth?
You fucking piece of shit, Dickhead. You have posted right here numerous times attacking President Biden blaming him for not being strong enough to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Oct 7 attack on Israel. You explicitly argued numerous times that these would not have happened if Trump were president. Now we have a fucking full scale war launched by Israel and the US being drawn into it by our true president Bebe Netanyahu.
So what is good for your goose, you fucking dishonest piece of shit, is good for your gander, fuckface. This attack on Iran would not have happened under Obama or Biden.
Go crawl back up Prince Orange Chickenshit's ass, where you live, you fascist freak.
Lying is a sin, but not one of the seven deadly sins or cardinal sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth.
DeleteHow many of these seven sins has Trump committed? All of them. Why would a truly religious person select someone who has committed all of the major sins as a leader?
No wonder weak-minded people are confused about whose behavior to emulate.
Some religious people prefer to be guided by the 10 commandments, brought by Moses from God to instruct human behavior:
DeleteI am the LORD your God; you shall not have strange gods before me.
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
Remember to keep holy the LORD’s Day.
Honor your father and mother.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Arguably, there might be one or two of these that Trump has not broken, but he makes up for that by routinely breaking others. He's done a lot of lying and stealing, lusted after children and done a lot of coveting, even to the point of rape and assault. He plays golf on Sunday, but he may have been polite to his mom and pop, although i doubt they would be proud of him now. Trump killed a lot of people during Covid, killed more by dismantling aid, and now he is party to war with Iran. He authorized his share of executions as president last time.
Overall, it is hard to say that Trump cares about these commandments, nor has he made much effort to keep them, especially when it might interfere with his own self interest.
Why would a super-religious guy who would kill in God's name choose someone like Trump to be his leader? Trump is the worst ever role model for truly religious people, and Trump isn't even trying to be a better person.
There has to be more to the story about what inspires and motivates religious people to kill.
Naw, you can put a check mark next to all of them being broken by the convicted felon.
Delete"To some degree, the roots of Boelter’s beliefs can be traced to a Bible college he attended in Dallas called Christ for the Nations Institute. A school official confirmed to me that Boelter graduated in 1990 with a diploma in practical theology." Fucking piece of shit fake movement Christians should study Christ for Christ's sake. What the fuck is wrong with American Evangelical Christians? And why try to hide your sick intent. Don't deflect blame to Walz, wear your murderous rampages, own it, in the name of the Christ who's teachings you fucking ignore. Sick twisted and deluded is a he'll of a way to go thru life.
ReplyDeleteInteresting tidbit. "Practical theology" sounds like an oxymoron. I guess he was putting his degree to practical use.
DeleteObviously, Walz has nothing to do with anything. However, I am always hesitant to attribute the actions of a single deranged individual to some political causes. When we see ICE arresting Democratic politicians en masse, then we can start becoming concerned.
I disagree Ilya. A few democratic politicians have been arrested and that may be enough to encourage the rest to behave in ways that do not interfere with Trump's goals. The point of arresting some token Democrats is to discourage the rest. You don't have to arrest en masse to achieve social control. Look at the control Trump already exercises over Republicans without arresting any of them, simply by preventing them from feeding at his trough. Same with business leaders.
DeleteWe should be concerned now because Trump has already exceeded the authority granted to the presidency by our constitution. He has already broken norms about using the presidency for personal gain, already committed many impeachable offenses and he is ignoring the courts. If you wait longer, it may be less possible to correct the situation. I suspect that if you are not concerned now, you will find reasons to remain unconcerned when things get worse, even much worse. What will you do when Trump decides not to leave office in 2028, for example?
I guess that it was my flippant way of saying that I am more concerned about ICE and federal troops invading and declaring war on LA than I am about a single deranged individual. So far as we know, he was a lone wolf. Obviously, the murders are truly awful, but I can't attribute it to Trump's incessantly belligerent administration.
DeleteIt's possible that we will see some Proud Boys militia forming to harass anti-trump protesters and otherwise do his bidding. It's further possible that they will receive his imprimatur, and that will certainly be a cause for concern.
This makes more sense. Note that politically motivated crime has increased greatly under Trump, beginning with his first administration. That suggests a connection between this guy, even as a lone wolf, due to political climate. Bandy Lee warned about that, not just Trump's own actions.
DeleteThere were proud boys at the No-Kings march, in Nashville, Miami, and Georgia. Probably some other places that I missed. Trump has less need for proud boys and militias now that he has ICE and the Marines to do his dirty-work. That's why this is disturbing to so many of us. Proud boys are amateurs but our military is trained professionals. They shouldn't be the president's personal goon squad unless we do want to become a dictatorship.
meant to say: politically motivated violence, not crime.
Deletewomp womp
ReplyDeleteNew - Trump job approval poll
Approve 54% (+10)
Disapprove 44%
Insider advantage #A+ - 6/16
Sick twisted and deluded is a hell of a way to go thru life.
DeleteLatest polls from even Republican friendly polls like Quinnipiac and Fox News have Trump approval around 38%.
DeleteTrump is currently the least popular president in history, 12:04 trying to push phony polling is just hilarious copium.
womp womp
Actually the quoted poll numbers are legit, and Insider Advantage fairly unbiased. A lot rides on how question is phrased, responds anymore, and how they fudge the numbers to account for it.
DeleteI watched Fox News hours before the noon marches were set to begin on the East Coast. They were already calling the shooter(s) "terrorists" in keeping with the Walz theory although they were not discussing the conspiracy theory at all, only repeating the facts dispensed at the official briefings on the scene and discussing the manhunt. The name of the shooter was made public about a half hour earlier on Fox than on MSNBC, I assume because the info came from social media and they were trying to confirm it. MSNBC waited until reporters on the scene confirmed the name of the shooter with police in MN. There appeared to be a delay due to the lack of trust of sources on the left vs the right.
ReplyDeleteHarris did not invent the theory about Walz and the shooter being a Democrat. I don't know where Republican talking points originate, but there is little doubt that everyone repeats them without restraint, including the right wing media.
I do not understand why Somerby ignores the reporting side of Fox News and only focuses on the hosts on their various discussion shows. It seemed to me that reporters were biased too, in the sense that the word terrorist was never used by MSNBC to describe the shooter. Fox totally ignored the evidence that emerged about Boelter's Republican affiliations and Christian anti-abortion motivation. So there is a filtering of info that would be negative toward the right.
It is very obvious that Walz cannot be treated with the respect due a governor, cannot be accepted as an authority figure in his state, as someone knowledgeable and doing the work to track down and capture the killer. Walz is being targeted because he ran against Trump and that makes him a scapegoat and someone to be attacked even when the story is about other people. The use of any and every opportunity to atttack a political enemy, even in the news reporting side of Fox, is very different than what happens at MSNBC, where the focus is on the news itself and details of the actual crime.
If Somerby has any tendency to equate Fox and MSNBC in their reporting it is mistaken. There is no equivalnce between how they approached this story.
Similarly, when Fox began discussing the marches nationwide, the focus was on violence entirely and screen shots were of police standing by and on the ethnicity of the marchers, portraying them negatively. The coverage was much different at MSNBC, which conducted interviews with immigrant marchers in LA and focused on crowd sizes and marchers even in red states and small towns. Fox appeared to be slathering at the mouth for even the tiniest violence, replaying previous encounters and ICE arrests. There was no attempt at Fox to report any facts from the marches except that they were occurring and authorities were ready to quell violence by any means. Fox kept returning to coverage of the manhunt in preference to showing marchers. It was hard to know who was marching where from the Fox coverage. When the Trump parade came on, that was the only coverage, no switching away to cover the shooting or the marches. No mention of small crowds or that Trump was displeased by the parade itself. Lots of upbeat banter by the Fox reporters, much as occurs at a New Year's Day parade, false good humor and manufactured excitement by Fox reporters.
The only excitement in that parade was when the felon shit himself.
DeleteHow did Trump get Melania to show up?
Delete12:50 -prenup
DeleteTrump paid Melania, she is little more than a hooker, although Trump has not been allowed to touch her for years.
DeleteEven with all the planning and the millions of dollars and paying people off and Fox News adding fake crowd cheering, Trump still kept falling asleep at his own parade.
Trump seems determined to not just ruin America, but also destroy the Republican Party - a true nihilist/fascist.
He also fell asleep at the conference table during G7. That's not normal.
DeleteThe Bible is big on letting God punish people for their sins, not judging lest ye be judged, removing the mote from your own eye, and so on. Nothing in the Bible justifies killing people because you hate them. This shooter committed way more sins than just impersonating an officer, assessed in the context of his own religion. How do guys get that way? I doubt any Bible college taught him to kill for Jesus.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't listened to Jerry Falwell or our current ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have you?
DeleteIs there such a thing as a retroactive prenup?
DeleteMost abortions are preformed by Christians on Christians.
DeleteThis is unsurprising because there is nothing against abortion in the Bible.
Indeed, the Bible indicates that life starts at first breath (not at conception) and that a fetus in the womb is not a person but mere property of the woman.
Anti-abortion has nothing to do with religion, it is a weaponized issue to distract the rubes while the wealthy elite pick their pockets.
Famously Trump paid for his daughter Ivanka's abortion when she was a teen.
Inflation is creeping higher, hiring is creeping lower, so of course the Fed announces no rate cuts.
ReplyDeletewomp womp
The Fed forecasts higher inflation, lower employment, and meager gdp.
DeleteThe Fed still has two rate cuts penciled in for later this year, but analysts read that as performative in order to curtail Trump's ire.
Unfortunately for Trump, if he wants rate cuts, he need to govern more competently and with less chaos. Trump has made his own bed but is grumpy about laying in it.
Nothing says good economic governance like announcing 120 tariffs in 120 days. How do the yokels keep routing for the disturbed dunce?
Delete"All in all, a revolution is underway with respect to the spread of "information."
ReplyDeleteThat revolution is deeply entrenched. It may be hard to survive."
We survived the dark ages, when there was no information. We survived the Middle Ages, when most people were not literate and information was filtered through priests or royalty and most people were guided by tradition instead of knowledge.
We are now in an age where there is a surfeit of info but education is required to sift the wheat from the chaff. We have science (a method for determining what is real in the world) to help us separate the two. That enabled us to make progress, extend our lifespans, live in greater comfort, and develop arts and leisure activities. Our main problem is that not all people have access to the same advances, there remains considerable inequality in most aspects of life. So all do not benefit or suffer to the same degree, as mostly occurred in pre-industrial time periods.
Somerby seems to be confused and upset by the changes in how info is accessed. He tends to confuse communication with information with knowledge. The internet made info widely available and allowed people to communicate across time and space instantaneously, for better or worse. Computers made statistics more practical for analyzing trends and patterns in data, but only for those trained. The need for education has become greater just at a time when many are rejecting it in favor of advertising, social consensus and peer pressure, which have replaced tradition as a guide to living. The jury is out on whether crowd-sourcing results in reliable knowledge. Somerby wants to abandon the whole project and go back to receiving info from authority figures. Unfortunately those figures no longer serve at the pleasure of their constituents but serve their own interests and not those of the common good.
It may be that our society evolves into an authoritarian version of 1984 where people are told what to think and not allowed to dissent, while being distracted by drugs and games. It may also be that AI evolves to be able to detect truth and thus becomes a source of knowledge and a way to make good decisions on an individual and a societal level. Sci Fi predicts that AI will then become a danger by wanting to rule humanity, but I doubt whether it has any motives beyond those AI is endowed with by computer scientists. AI may become a considerable aid to us all by refereeing lies in the public sphere. Or it may not. It is hard to imagine authoritarian control of AI because the output of AI emerges from everything it can access to learn, and that will be difficult for a person or state to control in an already worldwide net of data. At this point, it may be safe for most people to retreat from education and instead rely on advice from a computer. The New York Times already serves that function but it is corrupted by ads and product promotion. It doesn't have to be. I think that will result in greater homogeneity across societys worldwide (Somerby's wish) and a higher standard of living to the extent that people follow the advice received. Dr. Spock improved parenting when it became the main source of child-rearing advice, for example.
Cont.
DeleteIs no knowledge better than bad knowledge? I tend to think not, because people used to make up bad knowledge (myths, religion) in the absence of real understanding of the world and applying bad knowledge does not produce workable technology. But there is no reason why methods for testing facts and ideas empirically needs to go away with the advent of AI and the internet. People's activities must supply the input for AI to use to make decisions and report info. Disappearance of education would hamper that, but I don't see people losing their curiosity due to anything on the horizon.
So, I have trouble understanding what Somerby's doom and gloom over information is going to be based on. Even negativity of Somerby's type (nihilism) needs some foundation and Somerby has never clearly explained his.
Most likely, he won't get around to discussing any of his promised topics, as usual. He is more distractible than a kitten chasing a laser pointer.