Seriously? Bill Maher Disses Dems For Refusing To Appease FOX News With Presidential Debate

Before dealing with comedian Bill Maher's MJ-induced brain fart from Friday night (that the Democrats are wimps for not agreeing to a FOX News televised debate), blabbing:

"Last week, the Democrats made a terrible decision when they announced that they had turned down Fox News."

 Let us try to agree to what ought to be an unremarkable proposition: FOX News is the modern day epitome of yellow journalism. Indeed, the modern incarnation of PRAVDA - the former Soviet state propaganda arm - its one mission to brainwash Soviet citizens to believe they never had it so good.

Obama, for his part, didn't hold back saying that those who watch FOX news are "living on a different planet from those who get their information from other sources." Of course, any sane and educated person who watches FOX News- even for five minutes - would see that remark is spot on.   The complete remark made was:

"One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts.  If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.'"

I  have posted on this bifurcation of news- information sources for some time, warning it creates two distinct national perspectives  and no nation can last for long if it contains two populations accepting widely divergent realities. I have also singled out FOX News as the biggest culprit in gutting the febrile and already gullible brains of a segment of the populace,  dividing our nation more with each passing month.  FOX's role in deforming and debasing perceptions was first exposed thirteen years ago when surveys disclosed how many FOX viewers actually believed the codswallop that al Qaeda was part of Saddam's Iraqi forces.  Nearly all who believed this to be true (67 percent) were FOX News viewers. This compared to 22 percent who obtained their news from CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.   

Another endlessly recited FOX News lie (in 2011) had been spuriously questioning  Obama's birth certificate and attacking the legitimacy of his citizenship and hence right to be President.  This slander was fueled by Donald Trump putting in his two cents, including referring to Obama's step-grandmother and  repeatedly claiming Obama was born in Kenya. Not mentioned, and doubtless inciting too much fact for Fox zombies, was that this was debunked in 2008. 

We also know that since Trump's ascension to power FOX has literally become state TV, otherwise known as FOX Pravda, or simply "Trump TV".  The reason is they are shameless in their pandering to Trump, humping his most rancid,  unhinged conspiracy theories and his scattered generic delusions.  The imps responsible range from Laura Ingraham - who dumped on one of the Parkland Survivors (David Hogg) -  to the insufferable trio of dingbats known as Fox and Friends who humped other nonsense, to Sean Hannity, and the odious, bow-tied twerp Tucker Carlson.  

 In effect with the possible exceptions of Chris Wallace (son of esteemed CBS newsman Mike Wallace) and Shepherd Smith, there are NO truly qualified or serious journalists in the ranks of the network.    Even if we were to grant that only members of this elite duo be allowed to ask the candidates questions, there is no assurance that a cockeyed order wouldn't emanate from on high (Murdoch) that "gotcha" or CT inanities be tossed out to cause one or more to stumble, which would then be inflated in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. Or on FOX News.

So knowing all this, why on Earth would a political party trying to unseat the most odious, most reviled president in history-   in fact almost certainly a traitor-   agree to do presidential debates on such a biased venue?  Especially one for which, let's face it, Trump literally takes his marching orders.   It would literally be political suicide, and crush any hopes for a Dem victory given how Rupert Murdoch (irrespective of the crew delivering the questions) would ensure they are rigged, devastatingly stacked, or trip- wired to cripple the Dems.  

Do I really, really need to remind blog readers of the devastating question asked in 1988 to then Dem candidate Mike Dukakis (by Bernard Shaw), i.e.

''if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" 

 See the question asked live and in person at link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9_pRmRlzY4


Make no mistake that the questions the FOX panel would come up with - at the orders and behest of Rupert Murdoch - would make Shaw's question look like a verbal party favor.  One possibility I toss out there, knowing how FOX has played into wacky conspiracy claptrap:

"If  newly uncovered FBI  surveillance  were to show Hillary Clinton ran a child sex slave ring in 2016, would you be prepared to have hearings on her actions now? If not, why not?"

Or, more likely:

"If  Christopher Steele had been found to have made the infamous "pee tape" how soon would you hold hearings and order him to appear? Would you demand a new Mueller probe?"

Ah, 'batshit crazy' you say.  No way! Well, don't be surprised because if the Dems were stupid enough to allow themselves to be captives to FOX anything could happen.  The point is, FOX would be playing for its deranged base who would then spread all manner of insolence and BS on their social media, including:  4chan, Infowars, Gateway Pundit,  Reddit and related enclaves of web trolldom.  

It is all very easy for comedian Bill Maher to make sport about this refusal to appear on FOX as he did in his Friday night Real Time show, but this is deadly serious business.  This is about this nation's future, and whether we have four more intolerable years of Trump - from which we may never recover - or start anew to gain respect in the world and mend our own civil divisions. Or at least begin to.

But all yucks aside,  the biggest insult to his viewers' intelligence was comparing assorted Repukes (like former Reps. Jack Kingston (GA) and Dana Rohrbacher (CA))  going on his show and sharing their views, with Dem candidates going on FOX for a presidential debate.

Excuse me, Maher, but that's comparing chalk and cheese, apples and oranges. At worst Kingston  - if he spouts Reepo rubbish - will get some boos from the Real Time audience of 200 or so. The Dems- if they get a horrific rigged question (like Bernard Shaw hurled at Dukakis), could be made to look as clueless and hopeless as Dukakis did, and have their presidential ambitions just as easily shattered.  Worse, Trump given endless time to respond with his own brand of putdowns and tweets- endlessly broadcast in FOX "cinemascope" in the aftermath. Oh, and on an continuous loop!  

"But ya know they could prepare for it!"

Yeah, maybe they could. But maybe the question might be so far out of left field, so outlandish,  they'd never see it coming or have any inkling how to respond and not be eaten alive in the media, i.e. "If JFK were still alive today would you prosecute him for his sex crimes?"


Perhaps the most toxic fallout would be the very act of dignifying all that FOX represents, validating it via sheer presence. Not to mention,  in the process, enabling the further spread of FOX's vile, irrational beliefs and memes - including many that have already been exposed as false. Those include the phony "Uranium One"  gambit, and HRC conspiring with the FBI and Christopher Steele to go after poor Donnie Dotard.

One can certainly understand a jive turkey and hack like Lance Morrow jumping on this FOX News debate bandwagon- but one expects a more discriminating intellect and take from Bill Maher. Even on a 'New Rules' segment.

In the case of Morrow, his recent op-ed ('Shocked By Bad Journalism? Please, WSJ,  March 13, p. A15) confirmed for me he scribbles most of this dreck while on MJ candy eaten with Ripple.  How else explain writing such twaddle as:

"The Democrats consider FOX a propaganda arm of the Trump administration, but they have their own propaganda arms"

This besotted nincompoop then goes on to actually cite CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and New York Times  In other words, the few remaining repositories of actual news and facts in a nation now flooded by FOX's fake news,  Dotard's 9,000 lies and whackjob conspiracy ideations from the likes of QAnon, Info Wars and Breitbart.com. 

Morrow, who's become a suck up to right wing spiels and tropes since TIME tossed him overboard, then scrawled:

"It will be fatal the Democrats' chances in 2020 ...if they won't' tolerate points of view that differ from progressive orthodoxy'

Hardly!  It will rather be fatal if the Dems show up to remotely confer dignity on FOX and its distorted orbit of disinformation, misinformation and hyping outlandish conspiracy bunkum such as the FBI - James Comey "conspiracy" to bring down Trump, or related gibberish. In short, there is absolutely no upside, zero, for the Dem candidates to show up for a FOX debate, while there are umpteen downsides.  Even Morrow, tool that he is,  concedes "True, Sean Hannity whispers in Trump's ear".

And also that Hannity's whispers often translate to Trump actions and reckless tweets that affect the rest of us.  But to assert "there is historical precedence" for such behavior shows how out on a limb (in terms of sane opinion) Morrow is. I mean to even remotely think, far less write, that the Hannity -Trump relationship is on a par of that between JFK and the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee is not only deluded but demented.  I can assure Morrow  (whose weed -Ripple combo seems to have left his brain up his ass), that at no time did JFK ever allow Bradlee to dictate national policy to him, such as Trump allows Hannity, i.e. on immigration, guns etc. 

The difference is that Kennedy was his own man, and possessed the intellect, confidence and courage to make his own decisions  not a puppet to let others (like a Hannity or Putin) do it for him.

Morrow does try to assure us that "FOX employs many credible journalists" and names Chris Wallace and Brett Baier among them.  But again, a couple is not "many" and even if these "credible" ones were allowed to ask debate questions, there is no guarantee - as I noted earlier - good ol' Rupert wouldn't have final say on what's actually asked.

No, the conclusion is that going on FOX for a presidential debate would be a massive self-inflicted error of stupendous proportions.  There is nothing to be gained, and way too much to be lose.  Oh, and little in the way of recouping the losses!

Cliven Bundy a 'Patriot'? How About A Racist Idiot Scofflaw?

"I wanna tell yuh one more thing I know about the Nigras! Weren't they better off as slaves, pickin'  cotton  and havin' a family life  and doin' things or are they better off under government subsidies ? They didn't get no more freedom they got less freedom"  -  Cliven Bundy on Saturday

"They're not slaves no more but they seem to be slaves to the welfare system..." - Cliven Bundy in a press conference yesterday - trying to defend the earlier balderdash

In doing my earlier blog on Cliven Bundy and his clueless followers I was prepared to be generous and just grant that the man and his toadies were ignorant. They were ignorant of the Nevada state constitution which clearly sets out the purview of federal power, i.e. to act in concert with state law. This is in Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution:

.....the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States.

Did any of Bundy's Bozos read this? I doubt it.  But now, rather than merely reinforce he's ignorant Cliven Bundy has opened his yap on Saturday (see quote above - from a  live Youtube recording - so it's his absolute words) proving he's a racist idiot and scofflaw to boot.

African Americans had it better as slaves?  Having "a family life and doin' things"  together? Are you fucking kidding me? What school did this asshole go to in order to learn that? There was NO family life,  you fucking moron! Families were often broken up - as when they first arrived for auction at the old slave market in New Orleans - with kids sent to different plantations while mom and dad - IF they were lucky- got sent to the same cotton plantation. Usually they weren't. Even if they did somehow get to the same plantation together, ol' Massah could have his way with the woman any time he wanted and her husband couldn't lift a hand!  (Let us bear in mind also that marriage was frowned upon by the slave masters, who considered it antithetical to the slave system - as Prof. Eric Dyson observed last night on Chris Hayes' 'All In'.)

Doing things? Yeah, when ol' Massah Whitey wanted some entertainment he'd use some subterfuge or excuse to take out his whip and flog one or more of the slaves while banjo music played. Or.....he'd  drag the slaves out from their crowded digs early in the morning to dance for him - again to banjo music. The slaves had no choice -  NONE as to what THEY would do, or how they'd entertain themselves.

Now look at Bundy's words above (I still wonder if he's related to Ted Bundy the mass murderer), and ask yourselves this:

Suppose you're an African-American living in this country, paid at the lowest wage scale or not hired at all, with  the Neoliberal capitalist system considering you only for prison labor  (25 cents an hour to make rugs) - would you rather accept welfare to at least survive and feed your kids? Or, would you rather be sent back to a Louisiana plantation in a time slip where you can be whipped at will, your wife can be raped by White Massah at his pleasure, and your kids dispatched to any other plantation the Massah wants?

C'mon - give an answer here! You have uh.....five nanoseconds!

In the wake of Bundy's asinine remarks, it's no surprise that many of his high profile media and political supporters have exited stage right from this fool, including FOX's Sean Hannity ("that was despicable"), Nevada senator Dean Heller, and Tea Party favorite, Rand Paul.  Hannity, let us recall, was among the main bloviators to jump on Bundy's Bandwagon posing idiotic questions that pandered to the massive FOX audience's ignorance, including (with the rational, informed responses):

“Since when does the government send armed officers to collect a debt?”

Actually, many repossession and foreclosure actions often involve a sheriff or other armed officials, and confiscation of property is an ordinary means by which a government resolves a debt.  For example, if you accumulate 20 years of unpaid parking tickets, a court will order that your car be booted and towed until you pay. And if you point a rifle at the cop or otherwise assault him, you might get shot (or tased). The same applies if the IRS dispatches armed agents to your domicile after you've ignored paying taxes for years or have committed massive tax fraud. In addition, here in Colorado if you owe property taxes that have been unpaid for years, a lien can be placed on the property - it can then be purchased by a collection agency, and the home foreclosed. Armed agents will kick your ass out if you don't cooperate.

“Nobody has seen any bill for $1.1 million. It doesn’t exist.

Michelle Fiore, R-Nevada Assembly, bloviated this (while a guest on MSNBC).  Bundy says he has “never been sent a bill” but also says he never opens mail from the U.S. government because he does not recognize the U.S. government’s existence.   This is as fucking dumb as a homeowner who receives mortgage or credit card bills but refuses to open the mail. Can you say STUPID?

In the Bundy case, a court had ordered him to pay a debt of $1.1 million in accumulated fines and fees for having put greater than his allowed quota of cattle on federally protected tortoise habitat. Meanwhile, lawful citizens who are Bundy's neighbors are fed up with this millionaire asshole acting like a dead beat while they pay their legitimate fees for cattle grazing. As one observer -neighbor put it: "If that isn't leeching off welfare, I don't know what is!"

"The BLM provoked, escalated this controversy.”  

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, made this accusation, as have numerous others. If an armed resistance is put up against an asset seizure by law enforcement officials who are acting under a court order, the provocation is exclusively the work of those who have chosen to threaten the lawmen with violence.  If the IRS sends armed agents to confiscate your property for unpaid taxes you better damned well not pull out your Glock unless you want to see an early grave!

 The land is not being used — it’s not like they want to build a school, road or hospital on it.”  

This was put out by Hannity who doesn't seem to understand that how federal land is used is determined by federal law. No citizen gets to decide for himself whether the land should remain vacant or grazed, or whether something should be built on it. Not if it is federal land, which it is.

“How could a cow possibly eat $1.1 million of grass?”

This one was trotted out by Bundy’s  equally clueless daughter, Stetsy Bundy. She doesn't get that whether  cows can eat a million bucks worth of grass is neither here nor there. Grazing fees are not assessed by weighing the amount of tonnage that a cow eats. It is a per-animal-unit, per-month fee, and it adds up over 20 years. Furthermore, Bundy’s liability is as much  for fines for illegal trespass as it is for fees.

  “Bundy has rights to the land because his ancestors worked the land prior to formation of BLM.”  

Bundy - predictably -  has made this argument himself and others have parroted it.  Even if Bundy’s ancestors did work the land (and we only have his word that they did, and he is notoriously dishonest), with the passage of the Taylor Act in 1934 they would have had to pay grazing fees. And it was never private land.  The parcel that Bundy is trespassing has been owned by the U.S. government ever since it was purchased and/or won from Mexico or Spain.

Again, Bundy merely shows he's a scofflaw as well as a deadbeat and racist idiot. Those who still defend him are no better. The "militias"  that trot around  his place with automatic weapons at the ready are really cowards at heart. They are bold and ready to pull out their weapons and fire at some little BLM guys with tasers in Nevada, but you won't see any of them squaring off against the U.S. Army in Pinon Canyon here in Colorado. Say to defend the rights of the ranchers here whose land stands to be seized for specious reasons (e.g. the Army testing of Predator drones).

Why? Because they know they'd face real, serious opposition with the likelihood they'd get shot at and wounded, not just tased. Hence, it's much easier for them to sashay around,  posturing with Bundy in Nevada than to stand up for ranchers' rights against the Army in Colorado. Bullies, posturing paper patriots and gun toting pseudo-toughs always seem to find out their bravado limits in a hurry when confronted by a formidable opposition- even one based in the federal gov't they "hate".

Why did so many line up with this misfit and racist? Because the indiscriminate anti-government meme is so powerful among right wing circles that it only takes one asshole to blow an anti-fed/  "Patriot"  dog whistle to get all the loonies to come running. But what this episode discloses is that those eager to be seen as "anti-government patriots", need to take more care with whom they align themselves.  Newsflash: it isn't with the likes of  racists like Bundy.

As for Bundy, any dunderhead who still defends him after the racist revelations is no better than he is. If they have a grain of sense they will abandon this idiot bigot like his former political allies have. Again, if they want a REAL cause they will stand with the ranchers of Pinon Canyon, Colorado against the U.S. Army instead!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/55615/dimwitted-patriots-and-phony-cowboys

Flight MH370 Conspiracy Theories - Insults to Human Intelligence!

Malaysian Flight MH370 has now been missing for over 2 weeks, and while sober heads and high technology - including satellite and plane capabilities we never knew existed - are finally localizing its probable whereabouts, oddballs are allowing their speculations to run riot. These wild brain eruptions are primarily invested in confecting conspiracy "theories" (I hesitate to even dignify them with the term), that amount to basic insults to human intelligence.

Some were on display last night on Chris Hayes' 'All In'   and ran the gamut from the plane encountering a black hole, to an alien abduction, to an event similar to that presented in one 1960s Twilight Zone episode where an airliner transits through a temporal barrier back to 70 million years ago.

Let's go through each of these in turn:

Black Hole:

Since a stellar black hole would consume the Earth, the other planets too, the only other alternative would be a "mini-black hole".  According to spaceanswers.com,
http://www.spaceanswers.com/deep-space/3021/what-is-a-mini-black-hole/

These are:

Black holes with masses less than their heavyweight relatives – the standard and supermassive black holes – and weighing in at less than three solar masses are dubbed mini black holes, formed in the pressure of interstellar clouds. Because they are so small, they also have a little bit of difficulty when it comes to forming on their own. Low mass also means low gravity and this directly implies that these pint-sized objects cannot completely collapse in on themselves. In comparison, black holes of more than three times the Sun’s mass are made when a star reaches the end of its life and gets crushed under its own gravity -.


Since they cannot completely collapse in on themselves, they cannot approach the steep gravitational wells of their stellar cousins.  This means the damage they can inflict is limited. However, it is inconceivable such an object could form within the Earth's atmosphere (or even outside it then enter it) - selectively take out a jetliner, and leave anything and everything else. Apart from that,  no one has found actual observational evidence they even exist, despite looking for them since Stephen Hawking proposed them - in the form of quantum-scale, 'evaporating' black holes -  several decades ago.


Alien Abduction:

 

This is perhaps the most absurd one of all. The proposal: a large extraterrestrial craft, perhaps hundreds of meters in diameter, selectively pinpointed this particular airliner at just the exact time after the co-pilot signed off with "All right, good night!" and the entire jet was 'abducted' ("transported" by energy beam aboard the craft) and taken.....who knows where? Tau Ceti? Zeta Reticuli? We don't know because the bozos that dreamed this one up won't say.  Why this abduction?  We aren't told but we are informed that "Hey, everything is possible!" 

 

Actually, no! That is the standard cop out, but merely exploits our current absence of evidence.

 

 

The 'Twilight Zone' Episode Analogy:

 

'The Odyssey of Flight 33'   first aired on February 24,  1961. It opens with the plane en route-  over the Atlantic - to New York,  after leaving London on what first appears to be a routine flight. Suddenly, however, the plane's speed increases to over 3,000 knots (3,450  mph). Neither the captain or crew can explain what transpired, but as they approach New York City it becomes obvious: they are staring down at living dinosaurs, basically seeing the Earth as it would have been 70 million years ago.

 

The captain realizes he can't land:  How would they survive in such a world? So he and the flight navigator attempt to bring the plane back  to where they caught the mysterious tailwind that brought them back in time. In their next effort, a similar acceleration occurs and they again approach NYC, this time looking down to see the 1939 World's Fair. Again, the time is out of synch....so they've no choice but to try again....

 

Apart from the fact that no consistent theory or even hypothesis exists that could indicate how a plane could cross a temporal barrier, we can only surmise the sheer mystery that initially surrounded MH370 may have led some people to grab at anything- even this wild conjecture.

 

The Diversion to Pakistan Conspiracy:

 

Chris Hayes displayed a segment of this one (originally presented on FOX, by Sean Hannity), which is not only ridiculous but odious since it can be exploited for the purpose of political attacks. According to the walking bobble heads interviewed by Hannity - including one retired general, if you can believe it  - MH370 was hijacked then flown to Pakistan, where it is now being "weaponized" to use in some future 9/11 -style attack, perhaps on Israel. No remote mention that any such flight path over land would have been immediately picked up by Indian radar, and certainly by U.S. radar operating from Afghanistan (e.g. at Bagram AFB).

 

Why the eruption of such nonsensical conspiracy conjectures? Because, as Hayes pointed out, there remains a huge chasm between the demand for news on the flight, and the supply of actual facts, evidence and verifiable information.

 

We now, at least, have an idea - thanks to high resolution satellite imagery - of where the 777 might have ended up, literally at the 'ends of the Earth' some 1,100 miles from Perth, Australia, and between latitude 40 S and 50S where strong ocean currents dominate and within a thousand miles of the Antarctic. Why it may have ended up here we've no idea.

 

Until more hard information is forthcoming it's best to rein in imaginations, or speculations, so they don't run wild. The families are distressed enough without being possibly exposed to some of this nonsense.