Angry Right Wing pundits are continuing to run with the spin Carter was pushing. It doesn’t matter to them that this has been debunked. They’re tripling down on their story of the supposedly “brave truckers” as “freedom fighters” rather than the reality that this was a group of angry Right Wing ant-vaxxers who have shown contempt for the health of their fellow Canadians.

Let’s not forget that Sara Carter has made a risible career for herself of pushing angry Right Wing propaganda and pretending it to be “reporting”. In recent times, she was a reliable cultist for the Pence White House and particularly for Mike Pence’s childish former spokesman. She repeatedly tried to push “bombshell” propaganda tidbits about supposed Dem wrongdoing during the many times that Pence White House criminality came under scrutiny. She also jumped on the bandwagon to push fraudulent spin about, ironically, election “fraud”. (All of this was meant to get approval from Pence’s childish former spokesman, who wanted to hear his loyalists say that he had not done anything wrong and that he had not just lost an election. When the reality is that he actually committed multiple crimes, got himself impeached twice, and then actually did lose the 2020 Election in a fairly humiliating fashion.)

Sara Carter may have found a way to monetize Right Wing bias and bigotry, but she has never been able to achieve credibility as anything more than a mouthpiece for Far Right propaganda. On the other hand, she’s at least been consistent in her approach. From her first “big story” in the 2000s where she tried to lionize convicted felons Ramos & Compean to her current dark work pushing the “brave truckers” canard, Carter has shown she can be counted on to stick up for the bigots, bad actors and bullies on the Far Right.

Just to make sure I’ve put it in the right thread, I’m going to repeat something I posted earlier:

Regarding the non-story of the Durham mention, there really isn’t much to it. Durham was just discussing how as part of his examination and interviewing, he was finding that there had been plenty of pings of I believe American phones contacting Russian phones/contacts/IMs. Not actual surveillance of content so much as contact pings. And most of this was from individuals in President Obama’s White House (which I believe is based on typical diplomacy and business between our countries). They had also noted a bunch of activity pinging the Russian contacts from the Trump campaign, and the Durham interviewee apparently turned that information over to the FBI, which is frankly normal procedure. (I believe the pings are tracked based on the receiver, which is how Flynn got caught in his malfeasance – ie that they weren’t wiretapping Trump Tower but instead catching contacts to Russians and tracing them BACK to Trump Tower and phones like Flynn’s.) Durham added that he believed the person who found the Trump Campaign pings and passed them to the FBI was doing so in an improper way, that he was using his access to information not publicly available rather than staying in his lane at that time. The person involved sounds like they worked at that time (in the 2016 race) in support of an arm of Clinton’s campaign. The point is, when they catch what look like suspicious/shady activity, cops tend to report it. If they didn’t, we would think THAT was corrupt.

I note that nothing in Durham’s update says anything about Hillary Clinton being involved or even knowing about this bit of normal procedure as it was happening. Nothing in the update says anything about anyone being arrested or indicted for this. Nothing in the update gives any indication of anything more than a little more background information around Durham’s discussion of one man, Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with lying to the FBI. Sussmann disputes this and says he believes Durham is trying to “inflame media coverage” with what looks like a gratuitous mention that does not carry any charges. The mention of the pings is in a subsection of the update and it’s indicated that this area has been looked at and is already in the rear view mirror.

So we have Durham issuing an update with a bit of tech-wonk detail which basically says he has no further charges or indictments at this time. That’s it. Except that angry Right Wingers are having a week where they need something, anything to get attention away from actual news events they’d prefer you didn’t notice. Such as the Pence White House failing to prevent the January 6 Committee from gaining access to their papers. And the spectacular revelation that Pence’s childish former spokesman regularly tried to conceal classified documents (including his theft of 15 boxes of such materials and his transport of the stolen goods to Mar-a-lago) and to destroy other classified materials by tearing them up and/or flushing them down the White House toilets. And then we have this week’s bombshell – that the Trump organization’s longtime accountants are running, not walking away from the Trumps, including the accountants publicly stating that Trump’s financials are fraudulent, and the accountants turning over what look like hundreds of thousands of papers to the New York Attorney General. And that’s without getting into all the fraudulent schemes being regularly uncovered about how angry Right Wing Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 Election in various ways, including the assembly of illegitimate “electors” for states that they lost.

Given that, it’s clear why angry Right Wingers want to push their latest Durham “bombshell”. It’s partly the usual reason – putting out a vague threat to everyone that angry Right Wingers want their revenge for all the Mueller indictments and both impeachments of Pence’s childish former spokesman. (And we can absolutely expect the GOP to attempt to do a revenge impeachment of President Biden and possibly of VP Harris should they retake the Congressional majorities in November) But it’s mostly to give them something to repeatedly shout while clapping their hands over their ears so they don’t hear the actual news.

The Durham update is absolutely not “Way Worse Than Watergate” by any means. Durham’s update is about DOJ procedure and progress in a minor and disputed case of one man who may or may not have said something untrue to the FBI. As opposed to the Trump Campaign and Pence White House minions who were caught red-handed in all kinds of criminal behavior and then pleaded their cases down to just misleading the FBI so they could get lighter prison time. Or the matter of the Watergate scandal, where angry Right Wingers in the Nixon White House were caught in multiple illegal acts, after the exposure of their burglary of the DNC HQ and their attempts to plant bugs. The Watergate “plumbers” were not involved in a DOJ investigation into foreign interference and computer hacks – they were simple burglars who got caught. (I note that angry Right Wingers repeatedly tried to dismiss the Watergate scandal back in the day, and some are continuing that propaganda even today. John O’Connor has made a cottage industry of trying to change the Watergate narrative and rewrite the history into one that Right Wingers can tell their kids rather than the truth – and he’s part of the new push to reframe Watergate and attack Hillary Clinton. I also note that angry Right Wingers with money made sure to reward the Watergate burglars for their “service” – for example, G. Gordon Liddy made millions and enjoyed celebrity status for decades after his imprisonment.)

But angry Right Wingers are hoping you won’t know any of that. And they’re hoping that they can intimidate and bully their enemies by threatening them with “execution” based on nothing. We should not take this lightly. If the GOP retake Congress this November, we must expect them to initiate revenge actions. And if an angry Right Wing GOP man retakes the White House in 2024 with angry Right Wing majorities in Congress, things could get far worse. We already saw what could happen when Fox News pundits had their way in the Pence White House as well as the W/Cheney disaster of the 2000s. The damage done by the epic deliberate mismanagement intended to prove “government can’t get anything done”, by the fumbling of a deadly pandemic, by all the emboldening of bigotry and hatred. At this point, Fox News is rushing to catch up to the farthest rightward fringe nonsense from web outlets like Newsmax. What happens when US policy is driven by Newsmax? Will we recognize this country after that?

Regarding the non-story of the Durham mention, there really isn’t much to it. Durham was just discussing how as part of his examination and interviewing, he was finding that there had been plenty of pings of I believe American phones contacting Russian phones/contacts/IMs. Not actual surveillance of content so much as contact pings. And most of this was from individuals in President Obama’s White House (which I believe is based on typical diplomacy and business between our countries). They had also noted a bunch of activity pinging the Russian contacts from the Trump campaign, and the Durham interviewee apparently turned that information over to the FBI, which is frankly normal procedure. (I believe the pings are tracked based on the receiver, which is how Flynn got caught in his malfeasance – ie that they weren’t wiretapping Trump Tower but instead catching contacts to Russians and tracing them BACK to Trump Tower and phones like Flynn’s.) Durham added that he believed the person who found the Trump Campaign pings and passed them to the FBI was doing so in an improper way, that he was using his access to information not publicly available rather than staying in his lane at that time. The person involved sounds like they worked at that time (in the 2016 race) in support of an arm of Clinton’s campaign. The point is, when they catch what look like suspicious/shady activity, cops tend to report it. If they didn’t, we would think THAT was corrupt.

I note that nothing in Durham’s update says anything about Hillary Clinton being involved or even knowing about this bit of normal procedure as it was happening. Nothing in the update says anything about anyone being arrested or indicted for this. Nothing in the update gives any indication of anything more than a little more background information around Durham’s discussion of one man, Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with lying to the FBI. Sussmann disputes this and says he believes Durham is trying to “inflame media coverage” with what looks like a gratuitous mention that does not carry any charges. The mention of the pings is in a subsection of the update and it’s indicated that this area has been looked at and is already in the rear view mirror.

So we have Durham issuing an update with a bit of tech-wonk detail which basically says he has no further charges or indictments at this time. That’s it. Except that angry Right Wingers are having a week where they need something, anything to get attention away from actual news events they’d prefer you didn’t notice. Such as the Pence White House failing to prevent the January 6 Committee from gaining access to their papers. And the spectacular revelation that Pence’s childish former spokesman regularly tried to conceal classified documents (including his theft of 15 boxes of such materials and his transport of the stolen goods to
Mar-a-lago) and to destroy other classified materials by tearing them up and/or flushing them down the White House toilets. And then we have this week’s bombshell – that the Trump organization’s longtime accountants are running, not walking away from the Trumps, including the accountants publicly stating that Trump’s financials are fraudulent, and the accountants turning over what look like hundreds of thousands of papers to the New York Attorney General. And that’s without getting into all the fraudulent schemes being regularly uncovered about how angry Right Wing Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 Election in various ways, including the assembly of illegitimate “electors” for states that they lost.

Given that, it’s clear why angry Right Wingers want to push their latest Durham “bombshell”. It’s partly the usual reason – putting out a vague threat to everyone that angry Right Wingers want their revenge for all the Mueller indictments and both impeachments of Pence’s childish former spokesman. (And we can absolutely expect the GOP to attempt to do a revenge impeachment of President Biden and possibly of VP Harris should they retake the Congressional majorities in November) But it’s mostly to give them something to repeatedly shout while clapping their hands over their ears so they don’t hear the actual news.

The Durham update is absolutely not “Way Worse Than Watergate” by any means. Durham’s update is about DOJ procedure and progress in a minor and disputed case of one man who may or may not have said something untrue to the FBI. As opposed to the Trump Campaign and Pence White House minions who were caught red-handed in all kinds of criminal behavior and then pleaded their cases down to just misleading the FBI so they could get lighter prison time. Or the matter of the Watergate scandal, where angry Right Wingers in the Nixon White House were caught in multiple illegal acts, after the exposure of their burglary of the DNC HQ and their attempts to plant bugs. The Watergate “plumbers” were not involved in a DOJ investigation into foreign interference and computer hacks – they were simple burglars who got caught. (I note that angry Right Wingers repeatedly tried to dismiss the Watergate scandal back in the day, and some are continuing that propaganda even today. John O’Connor has made a cottage industry of trying to change the Watergate narrative and rewrite the history into one that Right Wingers can tell their kids rather than the truth – and he’s part of the new push to reframe Watergate and attack Hillary Clinton. I also note that angry Right Wingers with money made sure to reward the Watergate burglars for their “service” – for example, G. Gordon Liddy made millions and enjoyed celebrity status for decades after his imprisonment.)

But angry Right Wingers are hoping you won’t know any of that. And they’re hoping that they can intimidate and bully their enemies by threatening them with “execution” based on nothing. We should not take this lightly. If the GOP retake Congress this November, we must expect them to initiate revenge actions. And if an angry Right Wing GOP man retakes the White House in 2024 with angry Right Wing majorities in Congress, things could get far worse. We already saw what could happen when Fox News pundits had their way in the Pence White House as well as the W/Cheney disaster of the 2000s. The damage done by the epic deliberate mismanagement intended to prove “government can’t get anything done”, by the fumbling of a deadly pandemic, by all the emboldening of bigotry and hatred. At this point, Fox News is rushing to catch up to the farthest rightward fringe nonsense from web outlets like Newsmax. What happens when US policy is driven by Newsmax? Will we recognize this country after that?

In fairness, Angle knowingly pushed angry Right Wing propaganda on a daily basis for nearly 2 decades. He knew that what he was saying was neither true nor actual news. He knew these falsehoods were being pushed as “news”, but he did nothing to mitigate them. And in so doing, he enriched himself.

I’m sure this is a sad day for his family, but it’s a heck of a reach for Fox to try to present this as the passing of a lion of journalism. And it’s frankly insulting to actual journalists. His co-workers at the Fox propaganda platform should absolutely mark his passing as they wish. I’m not certain that it’s meaningful to anyone else.

Angry Right Wingers have certainly been in a snit this week about Joe Rogan supposedly being “cancelled”, although they are simultaneously gloating about Whoopi Goldberg’s suspension.

But the Right Wing outrage is based on false premises. Rogan wasn’t “cancelled”. He continues to enjoy his 100 million dollar podcast every day. He is being appropriately castigated by other Americans who wish not to be associated with his blatant and dangerous falsehoods. And they have the right not to be connected to his behavior.

It’s interesting to watch angry Right Wingers trying to play two different games with Neil Young and the others retracting their permissions from Spotify. On the one hand, we’re meant to be outraged that Rogan is somehow being “silenced”. On the other hand, Right Wingers have taken pains to sneer that nobody cares about Neil Young anyhow. Which would indicate that it’s not an issue. But they’re still saying this means Rogan is being “silenced”. So that would indicate that the Right Wingers really DO care what Neil Young does. And there’s the part where angry Right Wingers are loudly shouting how much they don’t care what Neil Young does. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the very same 2nd Grade schoolyard behavior encouraged and emboldened by the Pence White House and its childish former spokesman.

To set the record straight, Rogan is not somehow being denied his first amendment right to free expression. He’s being called out for abusing that right, and for doing so in a particularly dangerous way. Free Speech does not mean it’s okay to shout Fire in a crowded theater. In other words, it’s not okay to spread wild falsehoods and conspiracy theories around a public health emergency that has killed millions and is continuing to kill. It’s not okay to exhort people to take quack “instant cures” that have actually led to even more deaths. And hiding behind the flimsy curtain of “I was just asking questions” does not change the record of Rogan’s behavior. The reason these blatant falsehoods get tagged is because they have been shown to cause very real harm. If Faulkner really is so concerned about being “stickered” every time she brings up another debunked conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden, perhaps she could consider not telling blatant lies on the air?

A final thought: Watching multiple artists refuse to associate with rumor mongers and falsehood spreaders, I’m reminded that this also applies to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I note that this award has not been given since Pence’s childish former spokesman befouled it by throwing it away on Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and most infamously, unrepentant bigot Rush Limbaugh. The tricky part of presenting this award to the next Maya Angelou or Steve Jobs is that the new recipient would be forced to share the stage with such unsavory company. Multiple people were offered this award by the Pence White House after the befouling and declined for the obvious reason. In order to present this Medal again, it will need to be redesignated, with the prior winners save Limbaugh, Jordan and Nunes grandfathered in. In that way, we’ll be able to maintain that tradition and scrub some of the sewage left over from the Pence White House.

Somehow, I typo’ed “vice” for “voice”.

I’d like to also note that there are such things as real journalism networks. Like CBS News. The New York Times. CNN. They employ reporters to research and present current events every day. They have done this for their entire existence, going back hundreds of years for some newspapers. There was never any “need” to inflict a Fox News.

Fox News is not, and never was, a real journalism network. It was always intended to be angry Right Wing propaganda that could counter any inconvenient facts and truths, and thus give an angry Right Wing audience a safe space where they could have their prejudices reinforced “on the news” every day and night. And it was designed to make enough of a negative space that when sane people called it out for its behavior, angry Right Wingers could retort that it was the real journalists who were the propagandists.

In the longer term, outlets like Fox News have not simply begot their more extreme progeny like OAN – they’ve allowed more cynical Right Wingers to push the false narrative that EVERY news organization is pushing biased propaganda. And too many people are falling for that line today.

One would have thought Bachmann’s 15 minutes were up after the humiliating failure of her 2012 Presidential run. It’s not surprising that she’s continuing to make foolish and dangerous comments like this, or that Fox News is desperate enough to have her on again. But it’s a pathetic sight.

Given that Watters is aware of the actual dangers of COVID and of how the Omicron variant has been both wildly contagious and deadly to the unvaccinated, one can only believe he’s hoping that Palin has been exposing and infecting New Yorkers.

It’s extraordinarily offensive for angry Right Wingers to play games with the very serious issue of Right Wing bigotry and discrimination. We are literally only one year removed from possibly the most openly bigoted White House since before the Civil War, one that openly promoted male Caucasians for all positions possible, one that rammed three extremist Far Right Caucasians onto the Supreme Court. And this bunch complains when the Biden/Harris White House continues their pledged work to appoint the highly qualified non-Caucasians the Pence White House snubbed? When Pence repeatedly appointed extremist partisan idealogues, his childish former spokesman was celebrated on angry Right Wing media for “promises fulfilled”. When the current White House continues to follow an appropriate and even noble approach, the very same angry Right Wing pundits respond with howls of feigned outrage. It’s as though they figure nobody will call them on their behavior.

And let’s be clear about the outcome of this appointment. It will not change anything about the makeup of the Supreme Court. Replacing Breyer with another centrist moderate means we will stay at 3 centrist moderates/mild liberals while the Right will continue to enjoy having a supermajority of 6 Far Right idealogues, with 5 of them being wildly beyond understandable norms. An actual shift in the Court would require the resignations of at least two of the Far Right idealogues, and that is unlikely for at least another decade, if not two. A replacement for Breyer just means that the current disaster does not get any worse just yet. The howls from the Right indicate either that they just want to try to bully the Dems into a defensive crouch or that they truly think they can bully everyone into letting them have a 7-3 uber-majority of Far Right idealogues.

Regarding Reagan’s appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the SC, we should remember he was not just appointing a female Justice to curry favor. Reagan’s handlers were using a short list of Right Wing women who passed the infamous “litmus test” started under that White House to make sure any potential appointee would be a reliable Right Wing vote. (The Right was skeptical of just naming Republicans after Warren Burger turned out to not be sufficiently loyal and after both Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens moved to the center.) O’Connor was not only grilled by the handlers; she was brought to Reagan, who personally interrogated her to be sure that she found reproductive choice “abhorrent.” Reagan’s point was that the justice might be female so he could say that he’d appointed the first woman. But she would be a reliably Right Wing Republican woman. O’Connor would become a swing vote in time, but her fulcrum was decidedly to the Right of where the SC’s middlepoint had been before.

Michael Moore sadly destroyed his own credibility over the past two decades. I could understand backing Ralph Nader in 2000, when Gore was running a tepid campaign and constantly tacking to the Right. But he then turned on those principles in 2004 and debased himself in begging Nader not to run that year. He then moved to being a constant doomsayer, regularly predicting that the Dem would lose whatever presidential election was current.

For example, here’s Moore being super helpful in 2012:
“Mitt Romney is going to raise more money than Barack Obama. That should guarantee his victory. I think people should start to practice the words ‘President Romney.’”

Moore would go on to repeat the game in 2016, where he then took a gleeful victory lap where he claimed to have his finger on the pulse of the American electorate. In reality, he made the same predictions over and over again and happened to land on a year when the result matched him. A broken clock will correctly state the time twice a day, but we don’t give it any credence because it’s still just a broken clock. Moore does not merit any more credence than that himself.

In fairness, it wasn’t Moore who tipped the 2016 election. While it’s true there was a loud subsection of the Bernie Sanders group who pushed the “dime’s worth of difference” argument, over 90% of the Sanders wing voted for Clinton in the general. Clinton herself could have headed off the squeaker in 2016 by spending real time and effort in the swing states rather than assuming those mainstream voters would appear. Moore is pretty much an irrelevant sideshow now.

It is frankly offensive to see angry Right Wingers attempting to appropriate MLK for themselves.
In reality, angry Right Wingers openly hated MLK during his lifetime. They attacked him as what they considered to be a dangerous rabble rouser. They cheered when police attacked MLK and his fellow marchers with dogs and fire hoses. They decried MLK as a communist and traitor when he had the temerity to criticize the US attack on Vietnam. When MLK was murdered, Right Wingers took grim satisfaction – in the same way that disgraced former Fox personality Bill O’Reilly did when his screeds led to the vicious murder of George Tiller.

Angry Right Wingers have no credibility when they try to take MLK Day for themselves. It would be far more credible if they were to instead spend the day in quiet, remorseful atonement.

First, Ellen: I do hope you’re feeling better. Had no idea about your situation (been fairly busy at work and needed to focus there for more hours than usual). Given the days since, I’m hoping you may have turned the corner on this.

Regarding Carlson’s bizarre statements:

1. He’s flat-out lying about what happened. This was a serious matter, one where a mob physically attacked the Capitol and attempted to physically attack the Congress in order to stop them from going through the usual process to confirm the election of a President. Because they couldn’t bear to admit that Pence’s childish former spokesman is a loser. Because Pence’s childish former spokesman can’t admit that to himself.

2. Carlson threw in a blatant lie about the death of Ashli Babbitt, when he said that she was “an unarmed protestor who was shot to death without warning by a cop.” Let’s try that one again. Babbitt was an unstable and violent person who had a history of threatening and attacking others. (A brief look into her history reveals that, among other things. She was, among other things, a major Qanon follower, as evidenced by her own statements, usually angry and violent ones.) Babbitt was killed by a Capitol Policeman while she was in the act of attempting to lead a breach to take over the Speaker’s Lobby and then attack Congressmembers. The policeman repeatedly warned the crowd to stay back and fired his weapon when Babbitt continued to try to breach the door windows and open the doors. Had Babbitt succeeded, the Lobby would have been flooded with the angry mob and one can only imagine how many Congressmembers would have been assaulted or worse. Had Babbitt followed the instruction of the policeman, she would be alive today. Her refusal to do so, and her commitment to attack, makes clear that she was not an innocent tourist. She intended harm, and sadly, she received harm.

3. It’s fairly obvious that Carlson is pandering to his audience. He knows full well what happened in the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. But he also knows full well that if he admits what happened on the air, he’ll alienate the angry Right Wingers Fox News is desperate to keep in the fold. Further, if he admits ANYTHING, he will potentially lose his position and be replaced by someone along the lines of Jesse Watters or who knows who else.

4. It is important for all sane people to remember what actually happened, not only on January 6, 2021, but throughout the miserable epoch of the Pence White House, and throughout the bizarre behavior of angry Right Wingers going back 25 years, and frankly throughout the despicable tenure of Fox News.

What this illustrates is that Cruz is desperate to keep the Fox News audience in his corner as he (unbelievable as it sounds) warms up for yet another attempt to run for President in 2024.

The groveling before Fox News was actually nothing out of the ordinary for the usual angry Right Wing politico – the only ones I’ve seen to push back on Fox News were John McCain from time to time, and Donald Trump whenever he felt he wasn’t being totally worshipped. (I’ll note that many angry Right Wingers took the occasion of McCain’s death to join Trump in their dismissal of McCain, which is but one of many reasons why the McCain family backed Biden in 2020.)

The only surprise in this entire story is the anomaly of Cruz admitting that anything even remotely violent occurred on January 6, 2021. The standard angry Right Wing line for a year has been to deny the violence and/or blame it on the Left. One really has to ponder why Cruz went off script here. He apparently is pondering it too.

While I’d be interested to see the spectacle of Hannity being forced to testify in front of Congress about his behavior in collusion with the Pence White House, I strongly doubt we’ll ever see it happen.

I expect that Sekulow and Hannity will not only refuse to cooperate, but that Hannity will take the same approach as multiple other former Trump minions and sue the congressional committee. The point of the lawsuits isn’t to actually win, or to prevail in a lower court. The point is to get the cases to a friendly district court and then potentially to the Supreme Court, and to drag them out for the next year. The goal here is to run out the clock until after the midterms and thus moot the entire scenario. Assuming that angry Right Wingers prevail in the midterms and the House switches hands, I would expect the GOP to immediately disband the January 6 committee and set up an alternate one blaming Nancy Pelosi.

Frankly, the Pence White House already succeeded in gutting the CDC, along with countless other federal departments, in their epic quest to make sure that government could not get anything positive done between 2017 and 2020. (Pence’s minions did put effort and time into caging children and trying to steal money from departments to put into the nonsensical “big beautiful border wall” that they were never able to actually build.)

The handling of the COVID pandemic was a mess from the beginning, mostly due to Pence and his childish former spokesman being caught completely flat footed by it, and then by angry Right Wingers trying to downplay the crisis for months. Pence had eliminated the advance CDC staff that could have headed off most of the crisis, under the angry Right Wing premise that “we don’t need to pay these people this much; we can just wait to see if there’s a crisis, and then we’ll hire the BEST people…”. Predictably, this resulted in everyone trying to play catch-up on the pandemic rather than having a handle on it. Pence’s childish spokesman spent the first month denying there was even a problem, and then turned on a dime to just blame the problem on China.

The Right Wing approach here was for two purposes. The first one was to make sure that public perception of the Pence White House was totally positive going into an Election cycle – and a raging pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans did not line up with that narrative. The other purpose was a longer game for the Right – that of showing that government cannot get anything done. (The old Reagan line of “the scariest words you’ll ever hear are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help”). By gutting the CDC, Pence set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. His minions made sure the CDC couldn’t do its work, and now we’re hearing angry Right Wing pundits blaming the CDC for not getting that work done. (We can add some extra sauce in for the Right Wingers – attacking the CDC and White House now means they are attacking President Biden’s team rather than the Pence guys…)

It’s obvious that the Right’s goal today is to prolong the crisis and use it as a hammer against President Biden and the Dems this year for the midterms and even for the 2024 campaign. The fact that the Right’s obstinance throughout the crisis has directly resulted in millions more being infected around the world is never discussed by the Right. As far as they’re concerned, they’re happy to continue doubling down on the same lies they’ve been telling for the past two years now.

Happy Holidays to all.

I’ve been able to travel home and to see immediate family, but it’s pretty much been a quiet holiday before going back to work.

I hope for everyone that 2022 brings vaccination to enough people that we can get to the other side of this pandemic.

The approach here is consistent with that of angry Right Wingers across the media spectrum, whether they be on AM Radio, Fox News or any of the minor apps like Newsmax or The First.

And let’s not fall for the nonsense she’s peddling – mask mandates and vaccination have saved tens of millions of lives. Had Fox News existed during 1917, we might still be in that pandemic. Angry Right Wingers have been lying for nearly 2 years about how getting infected with COVID gives you immunity. Virologists debunked that one in early 2020, and the same angry Right Wingers keep trying to push it anyway. So we’re clear – you can repeatedly be infected with COVID! Just because you had it once does not mean you can’t get it again. And the point of vaccination isn’t that you’ll never get COVID – it’s that you’re less likely to get a severe case that would put you in the hospital. Vaccination and safe protocols are how we can defeat a pandemic like this. Not quack “cures” like ivermectin or hydroxicholoriquine, and not quack “solutions” like telling everyone to go get infected.

The intention of the Right Wing regarding COVID is clearly to prolong the pandemic and use it as a hammer against the Dems in the midterms and the 2024 campaign. I fervently hope that we are able to get enough people vaccinated in the coming months to defeat the pandemic – not just because it will head the Right off at the pass, but more importantly because it will save lives. Something that angry Right Wingers clearly care very little about.

Schmeck’s immature little stunt has backfired. The fact that he’s playing the victim now is a huge tell in that area. Angry Right Wingers have shifted into a predictable DARVO mode, which is their usual go-to when they are called out on their behavior.

Regarding Dave Ramsey, I’ll note that there is a fascinating podcast that has covered much of the seamier side of his organization. It’s called Untangled Faith and it’s the work of Amy Fritz, whose husband was a tech employee of Ramsey until 2019, when neither of them could stand it any longer – and that was before COVID. Fritz and her husband are not liberal or Left Wing by any means. But they are honest and clearly sincere about their beliefs. Fritz’s discussions make clear that Ramsey’s practices are anything but sincere. Ramsey presents himself as a devout Fundamentalist on the air – but his actual conduct indicates that he’s simply found a more lucrative business model than the one that drove him into bankruptcy in his prior iteration.

Regarding the slur, which actually isn’t “F you Biden” but rather “F Joe Biden”, it’s interesting to see the same angry Right Wingers pushing it that previously were scandalized that anyone would say anything less than fawning about Pence’s childish former spokesman. It’s not just an expression of sneering contempt. It’s fair to call the slur a continuation of angry Right Wingers’ doubling down on the 2020 Election they lost.

It’s entirely possible that O’Reilly is inflating the money numbers. It’s also likely that a good chunk of those money numbers are grosses that would go to the various arenas and not to the coffers of O’Reilly or Pence’s childish former spokesman. (They get some part of the take at the door plus the parking and a percentage of the concessions) I’ll also note that most of the higher-end tickets for the lower and closer seating did not sell, so they wound up letting many of the people in the cheap seats move to the lower ones so it wouldn’t look totally empty below. (In other words, they couldn’t have packed everyone up front if they’d wanted to, as those were the most expensive seats, and there weren’t enough people willing to pay those prices.)

The delay in coming out was attributed by O’Reilly to Secret Service concerns about “how many people there were and how large the crowd was”. That to me is a pretty bald lie. If anything, I’d say that Pence’s childish former spokesman was having a tantrum backstage about this being a repeat of Tulsa.

They’ll do the remaining dates in Texas and insist that they’ve “packed ’em in” when in fact this has been a humiliation.

Bemused is correct that Chris Wallace is likely attempting to rehabilitate his image after nearly 20 years helping Fox News inflict Far Right propaganda. Many of us have not forgotten his “gotcha” interviews, such as where he accused President Clinton of not doing enough to deal with terrorism and Osama bin Laden and then smirked in his face when Clinton reacted badly.

Regarding the difference between Shepard Smith’s departure and Wallace’s bolting, it boils down to Smith leaving in the middle of his contract and Wallace waiting for his contract to expire. Smith wasn’t held by a gag rule so much as a non-compete. Wallace on the other hand knew his contract was up and clearly negotiated a better one with CNN, where he will undoubtedly be one of their conservative voices.

I note that Wallace is still just as much the Right Wing conservative that he was when he was happily smearing Democratic politicians for years during the W/Cheney White House. The difference now is that the GOP and angry Right Wingers across America have lurched much, much farther to the Right – by about 6 football fields. He now appears to be more moderate than he really is, because he’s not an outright fire-breather like the gargoyles on OAN or Newsmax. It’s the same issue as people suddenly thinking that W was a “good president” in comparison to the Pence White House when in fact W was a terrible one and frankly an unpunished war criminal.

I don’t know that Bemused is particularly cynical here, but I do know that Wallace’s maneuver is a fairly cynical one.

Hume is still upset about how President Clinton publicly humiliated him when he tried to play a “gotcha” move on the occasion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

But he did survive to become a Fox News “Elder Spokesman”, something that Bill O’Reilly desperately wished to be and now helplessly rails about.

Catty little putdowns like his snide assertion of President Biden being “senile” continue to be Hume’s stock-in-trade. One presumes that will not change.