Kevin Koster commented on Hunter Biden Threatens Tucker Carlson And Fox With Defamation Suit
2023-02-03 10:33:41 -0500
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I have a feeling that Fox will continue to play games until the defamation suit is filed, and even then they’ll keep trying to throw mud.
We should keep in mind that the Biden family has been consistent in refusing to dignify the lies about the “laptop” and the various emails over the past 2 1/2 years. It’s clear that the continuing viciousness of angry Right Wingers such as Carlson (not to mention the propagandists on the various minor web copycats like OAN, “Real America”, Newsmax and Glenn Beck) has angered Hunter Biden to the point that he’s had enough of the constant libels and slanders.
Reporting from actual journalists at Time and Politico has shown that hacked Hunter Biden data was being offered for sale in the Ukraine in July 2019 and September 2019 (at which point the price had risen to 5 million dollars). This data was being sold as truly salacious stuff including emails and nasty pictures and videos, etc. It’s probably just a coincidence that Rudy Giuliani was known to be in Ukraine around those times frantically looking for “dirt” on Hunter Biden and his father. And it’s probably just another coincidence that Mike Pence’s childish former spokesman chose that time to blackmail the Ukrainian President to make him announce a non-existent “investigation” into the Bidens. And wow, it’s probably an even bigger coincidence that we’re meant to believe that someone went into a legally blind Trump fan’s computer repair shop around that exact time with “laptops” supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden containing the same data.
We should also note that the data in the hacked cache has long been acknowledged to contain genuine Hunter Biden emails and data. If anything, the fact that there is real personal and private data here should be a major worry for the angry Right Wingers who have peddled this “story”. Because it’s actually proof of the theft of Hunter Biden’s data, which he’s consistently stated he has never given permission to anyone to access. While we’re there, let’s also note that the supposedly “incriminating” emails show nothing more than Hunter Biden trying to do business, mentioning his father but then being repeatedly told no by his father. In other words, there’s no there there. The only missteps the hacked data have revealed are a possible underpayment of taxes (even though Hunter Biden made a large late payment quite a while ago) and a possible improper owning of a handgun while he was in rehab. That’s it, after all the angry Right Wing posturing.
And let’s look at the supposed “laptop” “story”. We’re meant to believe that this legally blind repairman runs a shop that has no security cameras and that his habit is to snoop through the data of the laptops he repairs and then make his own copies of that data and distribute it to political cronies. There’s a reason why no legitimate reporter wanted to touch this story in 2020 – it wouldn’t pass a smell test or even a laugh test. When it finally ran as a failed “October Surprise” in October 2020 in the NY Post, the writers took their name off the story. They did as Rupert Murdoch demanded, by running the propaganda and thus giving it legitimacy for other outlets to discuss it, but they didn’t want their names associated with this. When only the typical angry Right Wing propagandists tried to push it later, the Right Wing changed their propaganda line to saying that somehow their failed smear was being “censored”.
There’s a reason that the Bidens did not dignify this story over the past 2 1/2 years – they didn’t want to provide more air to this balloon. The fact that at least some of the emails are genuine would open them to exactly the nonsensical screams we’re now hearing from angry Right Wing pundits today. If the “laptop” were to be discounted by the Bidens, we’d be into a discussion about how the data is real and somehow a “bombshell”, as well as a discussion about how Hunter Biden is somehow just like Hillary Clinton with her server. Angry Right Wingers have demonstrated a strong resilience to the truth, even when confronted with facts that contradict their wishes. At some points, they pivot to whataboutism. At others, such as with Kari Lake or Pence’s childish former spokesman, they literally just continue to lie and hope that nobody will notice.
I’m frankly most curious to see what happens when Rudy Giuliani and the computer repair shop guy are required to answer questions under oath about where the data came from and how it got onto the “laptop” in the first place. If I were them, I’d be in the process of finding a good criminal defense attorney.
We should keep in mind that the Biden family has been consistent in refusing to dignify the lies about the “laptop” and the various emails over the past 2 1/2 years. It’s clear that the continuing viciousness of angry Right Wingers such as Carlson (not to mention the propagandists on the various minor web copycats like OAN, “Real America”, Newsmax and Glenn Beck) has angered Hunter Biden to the point that he’s had enough of the constant libels and slanders.
Reporting from actual journalists at Time and Politico has shown that hacked Hunter Biden data was being offered for sale in the Ukraine in July 2019 and September 2019 (at which point the price had risen to 5 million dollars). This data was being sold as truly salacious stuff including emails and nasty pictures and videos, etc. It’s probably just a coincidence that Rudy Giuliani was known to be in Ukraine around those times frantically looking for “dirt” on Hunter Biden and his father. And it’s probably just another coincidence that Mike Pence’s childish former spokesman chose that time to blackmail the Ukrainian President to make him announce a non-existent “investigation” into the Bidens. And wow, it’s probably an even bigger coincidence that we’re meant to believe that someone went into a legally blind Trump fan’s computer repair shop around that exact time with “laptops” supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden containing the same data.
We should also note that the data in the hacked cache has long been acknowledged to contain genuine Hunter Biden emails and data. If anything, the fact that there is real personal and private data here should be a major worry for the angry Right Wingers who have peddled this “story”. Because it’s actually proof of the theft of Hunter Biden’s data, which he’s consistently stated he has never given permission to anyone to access. While we’re there, let’s also note that the supposedly “incriminating” emails show nothing more than Hunter Biden trying to do business, mentioning his father but then being repeatedly told no by his father. In other words, there’s no there there. The only missteps the hacked data have revealed are a possible underpayment of taxes (even though Hunter Biden made a large late payment quite a while ago) and a possible improper owning of a handgun while he was in rehab. That’s it, after all the angry Right Wing posturing.
And let’s look at the supposed “laptop” “story”. We’re meant to believe that this legally blind repairman runs a shop that has no security cameras and that his habit is to snoop through the data of the laptops he repairs and then make his own copies of that data and distribute it to political cronies. There’s a reason why no legitimate reporter wanted to touch this story in 2020 – it wouldn’t pass a smell test or even a laugh test. When it finally ran as a failed “October Surprise” in October 2020 in the NY Post, the writers took their name off the story. They did as Rupert Murdoch demanded, by running the propaganda and thus giving it legitimacy for other outlets to discuss it, but they didn’t want their names associated with this. When only the typical angry Right Wing propagandists tried to push it later, the Right Wing changed their propaganda line to saying that somehow their failed smear was being “censored”.
There’s a reason that the Bidens did not dignify this story over the past 2 1/2 years – they didn’t want to provide more air to this balloon. The fact that at least some of the emails are genuine would open them to exactly the nonsensical screams we’re now hearing from angry Right Wing pundits today. If the “laptop” were to be discounted by the Bidens, we’d be into a discussion about how the data is real and somehow a “bombshell”, as well as a discussion about how Hunter Biden is somehow just like Hillary Clinton with her server. Angry Right Wingers have demonstrated a strong resilience to the truth, even when confronted with facts that contradict their wishes. At some points, they pivot to whataboutism. At others, such as with Kari Lake or Pence’s childish former spokesman, they literally just continue to lie and hope that nobody will notice.
I’m frankly most curious to see what happens when Rudy Giuliani and the computer repair shop guy are required to answer questions under oath about where the data came from and how it got onto the “laptop” in the first place. If I were them, I’d be in the process of finding a good criminal defense attorney.
Kevin Koster commented on Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Is The NM Shooting Fox Wants To Talk About
2023-01-21 17:01:03 -0500
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Regarding angry Right Wingers’ hatred of Alec Baldwin, that goes back over 25 years, frankly.
Baldwin made some frankly offensive comments about GOP congressmen just before they impeached President Clinton and had to walk them back. He made a comment in 2000 that he would leave the United States if George W Bush won the election. And he was a strong supporter of President Obama. And all of that was well before he began regularly lampooning Mike Pence’s childish personal spokesman on SNL.
Back in the early 1990s, angry Right Wingers loved Baldwin for his alpha male performances in movies like “Glengarry Glen Ross” and for being in “Hunt for Red October”. When his political preferences became publicly known, they turned on him and began inflating any misbehavior as a way to attack and diminish him. His unfortunate and mean-spirited message to his daughter about a decade ago is just one item they’ve repeatedly dredged up.
The current situation just shows that angry Right Wingers have not forgotten their hatred for him, and their fervent wish to see him sent to prison.
I note that Fox is not the only entity playing this game. Angry Right Wing AM radio shock jocks across the country have been expressing their glee at these charges. Disgraced former Fox personality Eric Bolling made a point of making several nasty statements about Baldwin, to the point of indicating his own utter ignorance about the entire matter. Inevitably, we will see a heck of a lot more of that before the matter is concluded. And if Baldwin is acquitted, as I believe he will be, those same angry Right Wing pundits will scream that the fix is in. Because the facts here don’t matter to the Right Wing – just their hatred for Baldwin.
Baldwin made some frankly offensive comments about GOP congressmen just before they impeached President Clinton and had to walk them back. He made a comment in 2000 that he would leave the United States if George W Bush won the election. And he was a strong supporter of President Obama. And all of that was well before he began regularly lampooning Mike Pence’s childish personal spokesman on SNL.
Back in the early 1990s, angry Right Wingers loved Baldwin for his alpha male performances in movies like “Glengarry Glen Ross” and for being in “Hunt for Red October”. When his political preferences became publicly known, they turned on him and began inflating any misbehavior as a way to attack and diminish him. His unfortunate and mean-spirited message to his daughter about a decade ago is just one item they’ve repeatedly dredged up.
The current situation just shows that angry Right Wingers have not forgotten their hatred for him, and their fervent wish to see him sent to prison.
I note that Fox is not the only entity playing this game. Angry Right Wing AM radio shock jocks across the country have been expressing their glee at these charges. Disgraced former Fox personality Eric Bolling made a point of making several nasty statements about Baldwin, to the point of indicating his own utter ignorance about the entire matter. Inevitably, we will see a heck of a lot more of that before the matter is concluded. And if Baldwin is acquitted, as I believe he will be, those same angry Right Wing pundits will scream that the fix is in. Because the facts here don’t matter to the Right Wing – just their hatred for Baldwin.
Kevin Koster commented on Rep. Jason Smith Suggests GOP May Impeach Biden Over Phony Classified Docs Issue
2023-01-12 15:23:15 -0500
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The Special Counsel for the Biden documents is appropriate, and he will almost certainly find that there is very little here. A tiny handful of documents that staffers didn’t return when they should have, and another two or three that accidentally got left in files that nobody has looked at in years. Nothing where anyone would be going into Biden’s garage looking for materials. More along the lines of a single paper here or there that absolutely should have been kept in the classified archive, but nothing anyone was trying to find or there would have been a concerted effort about these papers years ago.
It is notable that the Biden team immediately reported finding the materials and turned them over – as opposed to the staffers for Pence’s childish former spokesman, who lied about having them and then lied about having unilaterally “declassified” hundreds and hundreds of stolen materials.
The nonsensical “investigations” that angry Right Wingers wish to inflict in the House for the next two years have nothing to do with justice or fairness. They are about a childish need to take revenge. Dems are appropriately reluctant to dignify the false premises that the GOP are trying to get them to fall for here.
We should also note for the 8613th time that the 2017 GOP Tax Transfer was NOT AT ALL a “tax cut” for millions of Middle Class Employees and Blue State residents, who saw their federal tax burdens gleefully skyrocketed by thousands of dollars every year. Smith’s devotion to that attack on Middle Class America is telling.
And we should remember that the ominous threats GOP congressmen are making about the debt ceiling and “fiscal responsibility” are specifically about blackmailing the country into accepting disastrous massive slashes in Social Security and Medicare – ie another massive attack on Middle Class America. There are actual common sense adjustments that needed to be made with the funding mechanisms for SS and Medicare for the past 20 years, but angry Right Wingers in Congress refused to take any of them so they could establish a false “imminent disaster” to set up their latest attempt to gut the programs. Make no mistake – angry Right Wingers have no intention to make Social Security function. Their intention is to sabotage the program and retroactively prove their constant mischaracterizations of SS as a “Ponzi Scheme” and a “failure”. If they are allowed to get away with this, neither SS or Medicare will be available in any meaningful way to Americans born after 1967.
It is notable that the Biden team immediately reported finding the materials and turned them over – as opposed to the staffers for Pence’s childish former spokesman, who lied about having them and then lied about having unilaterally “declassified” hundreds and hundreds of stolen materials.
The nonsensical “investigations” that angry Right Wingers wish to inflict in the House for the next two years have nothing to do with justice or fairness. They are about a childish need to take revenge. Dems are appropriately reluctant to dignify the false premises that the GOP are trying to get them to fall for here.
We should also note for the 8613th time that the 2017 GOP Tax Transfer was NOT AT ALL a “tax cut” for millions of Middle Class Employees and Blue State residents, who saw their federal tax burdens gleefully skyrocketed by thousands of dollars every year. Smith’s devotion to that attack on Middle Class America is telling.
And we should remember that the ominous threats GOP congressmen are making about the debt ceiling and “fiscal responsibility” are specifically about blackmailing the country into accepting disastrous massive slashes in Social Security and Medicare – ie another massive attack on Middle Class America. There are actual common sense adjustments that needed to be made with the funding mechanisms for SS and Medicare for the past 20 years, but angry Right Wingers in Congress refused to take any of them so they could establish a false “imminent disaster” to set up their latest attempt to gut the programs. Make no mistake – angry Right Wingers have no intention to make Social Security function. Their intention is to sabotage the program and retroactively prove their constant mischaracterizations of SS as a “Ponzi Scheme” and a “failure”. If they are allowed to get away with this, neither SS or Medicare will be available in any meaningful way to Americans born after 1967.
Kevin Koster commented on Rep. Perry: Extremists’ Ability To Take Down U.S. Govt. ‘A Win For The American People’
2023-01-10 15:24:49 -0500
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The intent of angry Right Wingers in their current hair’s breadth majority in the House is to completely stop any business from happening other than their show trial “investigations”. And those hearings will only be conducted as a revenge action for the Dems having had the temerity to actually look into the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021 as well as the rampant criminality of the Pence White House and its childish former spokesman.
The operating premise of angry Right Wingers today is that “government can’t get anything done”. So it’s natural that they will spend their time deliberately setting up situations that prove that hypothesis. The Pence White House made a point of not properly staffing its cabinet departments – in many departments, veteran staffers were effectively chased out of their jobs and harassed into retiring or leaving without being replaced. Literally dozens of ambassadorships were never filled around the world, not because those rascally Dems wouldn’t approve a nominee but because Pence and his cronies didn’t nominate anyone for many positions. In the worst example of this approach, Pence allowed the CDC to be wildly understaffed, including a complete absence of personnel in regions like where COVID popped up in Asia. Pence’s stated position was that we were spending too much money on all these career staffers in the various departments like State and the EPA and that if we had an emergency, we could just “hire the best people” at that time. Which was utter foolishness when it came to a deadly pandemic, where the CDC needed to have a team in place in advance of the problem. (Had Trump not squeaked through in 2016, we would never have had the significant pandemic of COVID of 2020. There would have been a much smaller outbreak that would have been quickly contained, and Trump would of course have tweeted that it was much worse. Because we had Pence in the White House and an utterly incompetent group that couldn’t manage such a problem, COVID spread like wildfire and killed more than a million Americans.)
We should note that all the various wild conditions angry Right Wingers were demanding of Kevin McCarthy had already been agreed to before they blocked his temporary ascension to the Speaker position. The only part of it that McCarthy had balked at was allowing any single member to challenge his status as Speaker and call for a new vote. McCarthy offered instead to allow that if only 5 members called for it. But the extremists were all set to get everything they’re taking credit for “achieving” before they wasted a week on 15 votes. It’s clear that their point wasn’t to “achieve” the nonsensical conditions they were demanding but instead to make this as humiliating as possible for everyone involved.
Lastly, we should note that McCarthy’s speakership may not be for that long. When the angry Right Wingers make their move this year to shut down the government rather than deal with the debt ceiling, it is likely that McCarthy will be forced to compromise. And the second he does so, he will likely be voted out.
The operating premise of angry Right Wingers today is that “government can’t get anything done”. So it’s natural that they will spend their time deliberately setting up situations that prove that hypothesis. The Pence White House made a point of not properly staffing its cabinet departments – in many departments, veteran staffers were effectively chased out of their jobs and harassed into retiring or leaving without being replaced. Literally dozens of ambassadorships were never filled around the world, not because those rascally Dems wouldn’t approve a nominee but because Pence and his cronies didn’t nominate anyone for many positions. In the worst example of this approach, Pence allowed the CDC to be wildly understaffed, including a complete absence of personnel in regions like where COVID popped up in Asia. Pence’s stated position was that we were spending too much money on all these career staffers in the various departments like State and the EPA and that if we had an emergency, we could just “hire the best people” at that time. Which was utter foolishness when it came to a deadly pandemic, where the CDC needed to have a team in place in advance of the problem. (Had Trump not squeaked through in 2016, we would never have had the significant pandemic of COVID of 2020. There would have been a much smaller outbreak that would have been quickly contained, and Trump would of course have tweeted that it was much worse. Because we had Pence in the White House and an utterly incompetent group that couldn’t manage such a problem, COVID spread like wildfire and killed more than a million Americans.)
We should note that all the various wild conditions angry Right Wingers were demanding of Kevin McCarthy had already been agreed to before they blocked his temporary ascension to the Speaker position. The only part of it that McCarthy had balked at was allowing any single member to challenge his status as Speaker and call for a new vote. McCarthy offered instead to allow that if only 5 members called for it. But the extremists were all set to get everything they’re taking credit for “achieving” before they wasted a week on 15 votes. It’s clear that their point wasn’t to “achieve” the nonsensical conditions they were demanding but instead to make this as humiliating as possible for everyone involved.
Lastly, we should note that McCarthy’s speakership may not be for that long. When the angry Right Wingers make their move this year to shut down the government rather than deal with the debt ceiling, it is likely that McCarthy will be forced to compromise. And the second he does so, he will likely be voted out.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox & Friends Guest Whines 'Woke' College Curriculum Forced Him To Drop Out
2023-01-10 13:16:10 -0500
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This is but the latest feint in the angry Right Wing narrative about how schools are not educating but “indoctrinating” and about how learning different points of view is somehow “being forced to be woke”.
There is nothing new in the Right Wing’s attack on education. They’ve been at this since 1954, when they were infuriated by the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board. Right Wingers today like to make noises that they are totally on board with that ruling, but the reality has been that they’ve been fighting it since the day it was announced. It literally took decades to get Right Wingers in Red states to stop overtly refusing to honor Brown.
When angry Right Wingers they could no longer use school districts and Boards of Education to discriminate against non-whites, they turned to the idea of pulling their kids out of the public schools and putting them in private schools. And then demanding “vouchers” to help support the tuitions. This had a twofold purpose – it was mostly to keep their kids from being put in schools that were being integrated, and it also caused many public schools to lose funding, thus setting up a downward spiral since the 1970s.
By the 1990s, angry Right Wingers had taken over many local school boards and were able to facilitate the creation of “charter schools” to further the goal of making sure that their preferred places to have their kids educated did not fall under any requirement of integration or diversity.
And in the last two decades, we’ve seen a significant movement by angry Right Wingers toward home schooling, where the parents literally remove their children from any schooling environment whatsoever and claim they are providing education themselves. We are only now seeing how devastating the effects of this have been on young people now going into their 20s after having never been exposed to anything other than the extremist views of angry and controlling parents. Frankly, the behavior of the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world would stand as an unfortunate example. (Rittenhouse dropped out of high school, saying he was an “online” student somehow…)
It should be no surprise that angry Right Wingers view any attempt to educate their kids as “indoctrination”. The only surprise now is that too many people are allowing Right Wingers to get away with this nonsense rather than calling them out for their bigotry.
There is nothing new in the Right Wing’s attack on education. They’ve been at this since 1954, when they were infuriated by the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board. Right Wingers today like to make noises that they are totally on board with that ruling, but the reality has been that they’ve been fighting it since the day it was announced. It literally took decades to get Right Wingers in Red states to stop overtly refusing to honor Brown.
When angry Right Wingers they could no longer use school districts and Boards of Education to discriminate against non-whites, they turned to the idea of pulling their kids out of the public schools and putting them in private schools. And then demanding “vouchers” to help support the tuitions. This had a twofold purpose – it was mostly to keep their kids from being put in schools that were being integrated, and it also caused many public schools to lose funding, thus setting up a downward spiral since the 1970s.
By the 1990s, angry Right Wingers had taken over many local school boards and were able to facilitate the creation of “charter schools” to further the goal of making sure that their preferred places to have their kids educated did not fall under any requirement of integration or diversity.
And in the last two decades, we’ve seen a significant movement by angry Right Wingers toward home schooling, where the parents literally remove their children from any schooling environment whatsoever and claim they are providing education themselves. We are only now seeing how devastating the effects of this have been on young people now going into their 20s after having never been exposed to anything other than the extremist views of angry and controlling parents. Frankly, the behavior of the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world would stand as an unfortunate example. (Rittenhouse dropped out of high school, saying he was an “online” student somehow…)
It should be no surprise that angry Right Wingers view any attempt to educate their kids as “indoctrination”. The only surprise now is that too many people are allowing Right Wingers to get away with this nonsense rather than calling them out for their bigotry.
Kevin Koster commented on Maria Bartiromo Now Promoting Kari Lake’s Stolen Election Lies
2023-01-10 13:04:36 -0500
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Lake’s behavior following her decisive loss has been risible. In reality, the technical issues at voting booths in Maricopa County did not stop a single person from voting. As even the supposed “bombshell” videos from those locations show, the ballots that the machines couldn’t feed were able to be placed in separate bins to be manually counted. It is true that a tiny number of angry Right Wingers chose to throw tantrums and huff out of their voting locations, but they were irrelevant to the process.
Lake has repeatedly tried to take different approaches to avoid admitting the fact that she is the loser of the 2022 Arizona midterm. She’s tried to declare fraud that doesn’t exist. She’s tried to declare vote suppression when nothing of the sort happened. She’s tried to falsely declare victory and announce a “transition team” to nowhere. And now she’s in the middle of fruitless litigation that is wasting the time of multiple courts and getting her attorneys sanctioned.
Lake would do better to start looking for an actual job, given that there are many employers in Arizona where her skills could be used. Those Burger King and KFC applications won’t fill themselves out.
Lake has repeatedly tried to take different approaches to avoid admitting the fact that she is the loser of the 2022 Arizona midterm. She’s tried to declare fraud that doesn’t exist. She’s tried to declare vote suppression when nothing of the sort happened. She’s tried to falsely declare victory and announce a “transition team” to nowhere. And now she’s in the middle of fruitless litigation that is wasting the time of multiple courts and getting her attorneys sanctioned.
Lake would do better to start looking for an actual job, given that there are many employers in Arizona where her skills could be used. Those Burger King and KFC applications won’t fill themselves out.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox News Supports Kevin McCarthy While Farther Right Media Oppose Him
2023-01-05 00:58:18 -0500
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A couple of things to note:
Hannity went out of his way to challenge Boebert on the air, making his own rather nonsensical “point” that over 200 Right Wingers support McCarthy. (He forgot to mention that 212 Dems support Jeffries. Did Hannity mean to say that Jeffries should be declared Speaker, since he has the most votes?)
The trashing of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pence’s childish former spokesman is one of the malfeasances of the Pence White House that could most easily be corrected. Pence’s childish former spokesman actually tossed that Medal away on three separate people who should never have been allowed to get anywhere near such an award: Jordan, Devin Nunes and unrepentant bigot Rush Limbaugh.
Decent people have been urging the Biden/Harris White House for two years to address the Medal problem by redesignating the award. The simple and appropriate way to go would be to create a new Medal of Freedom and Distinction. And then grandfather in all prior recipients of the Medal of Freedom other than Jordan, Nunes, Limbaugh and Paul Harvey. That way, the next Maya Angelou will not be forced to share the stage with the likes of Limbaugh.
Hannity went out of his way to challenge Boebert on the air, making his own rather nonsensical “point” that over 200 Right Wingers support McCarthy. (He forgot to mention that 212 Dems support Jeffries. Did Hannity mean to say that Jeffries should be declared Speaker, since he has the most votes?)
The trashing of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pence’s childish former spokesman is one of the malfeasances of the Pence White House that could most easily be corrected. Pence’s childish former spokesman actually tossed that Medal away on three separate people who should never have been allowed to get anywhere near such an award: Jordan, Devin Nunes and unrepentant bigot Rush Limbaugh.
Decent people have been urging the Biden/Harris White House for two years to address the Medal problem by redesignating the award. The simple and appropriate way to go would be to create a new Medal of Freedom and Distinction. And then grandfather in all prior recipients of the Medal of Freedom other than Jordan, Nunes, Limbaugh and Paul Harvey. That way, the next Maya Angelou will not be forced to share the stage with the likes of Limbaugh.
Kevin Koster commented on Get Ready For A Fox News House Of Reps: Looting Edition
2022-11-29 16:10:53 -0500
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Comer certainly wants to do the racist dog whistle here, but he has also made clear that his biggest priority is to continue the false Hunter Biden “laptop” narrative in a series of pointless hearings.
Kevin Koster commented on Nobody Minds When Fox Guest ‘Jokes’ About Sen. Warren Sending Smoke Signals
2022-11-28 22:44:14 -0500
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BTW – the entire Hunter Biden “investigation” is nonsensical on its face. In reality, Hunter Biden is no criminal. He certainly has tried to cash on his family name, and various companies have legally offered to pay him to be involved with them. Regardless of any other issue, there is nothing illegal about them offering him a salary or him agreeing to accept one.
We should also keep in mind that the entire narrative about the “laptop” is an invented one. In reality, Time Magazine and WaPo covered the fact that in mid 2019, there were people trying to sell Hunter Biden emails and embarrassing photos in Ukrainian cities for up to 5 million dollars for any American propagandist who wanted to take them. Given how fishy that looks on its face, even “Newsmax” wouldn’t take them. But apparently Rudy Giuliani did, and it’s after that point that we started to hear about this laptop repair shop. The problem is that during the time the “laptop” was supposedly in the repairman’s possession, the offers were already happening.
It’s more than obvious that Giuliani and company cooked up the “laptop” ruse as a way of having a legitimate vehicle to carry the hacked goodies. And Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda rag, the NY Post, agreed to go ahead and carry that story, even though the writers involved took their names off of it.
Let’s remember that the Bidens have never made any statement about the “laptop” being real in any way. All they have done is consistently say that Hunter Biden has never given his consent for anyone to access any data or device of his. And this makes sense – the family isn’t going to dignify this nonsense by pointing out the ruse, and even if they did, angry Right Wingers would just use the additional airtime to play a “But His Emails” game.
CBS just aired a report by former Fox News personality Catherine Herridge where she tried to once again make hay out of the “laptop” but all she actually did was repeat what outlets have been consistently saying for three years now. Which is that the emails appear to be genuine (which means that they were stolen and someone should investigate that…).
The actual emails, when examined, do not show anything of significance or major illegality. Frankly, they show Hunter Biden trying to parlay the family name and usually failing. The supposed “bombshell” email that notes the “10 percent held by HB for the big buy” is actually followed up by another one where Hunter Biden sheepishly admits “the Chairman of the Board” said no. The only actual misbehavior (other than his long-known drug addiction issues) that the DOJ has found even remotely interesting are two misdemeanors: One is a possible underpayment of taxes, which would be handled by a fine and a demand for payment. The other is a possible illegal possession of a handgun while he was in rehab, which would be handled by a fine and a relinquishing of the handgun – something that likely already happened years ago.
The only reason that angry Right Wingers keep playing these games with Hunter Biden’s private data is that they want to embarrass President Biden and get him to emotionally lash out in defense of his son. And that strategy hasn’t really borne any fruit yet, but these guys keep trying, don’t they?
We should also keep in mind that the entire narrative about the “laptop” is an invented one. In reality, Time Magazine and WaPo covered the fact that in mid 2019, there were people trying to sell Hunter Biden emails and embarrassing photos in Ukrainian cities for up to 5 million dollars for any American propagandist who wanted to take them. Given how fishy that looks on its face, even “Newsmax” wouldn’t take them. But apparently Rudy Giuliani did, and it’s after that point that we started to hear about this laptop repair shop. The problem is that during the time the “laptop” was supposedly in the repairman’s possession, the offers were already happening.
It’s more than obvious that Giuliani and company cooked up the “laptop” ruse as a way of having a legitimate vehicle to carry the hacked goodies. And Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda rag, the NY Post, agreed to go ahead and carry that story, even though the writers involved took their names off of it.
Let’s remember that the Bidens have never made any statement about the “laptop” being real in any way. All they have done is consistently say that Hunter Biden has never given his consent for anyone to access any data or device of his. And this makes sense – the family isn’t going to dignify this nonsense by pointing out the ruse, and even if they did, angry Right Wingers would just use the additional airtime to play a “But His Emails” game.
CBS just aired a report by former Fox News personality Catherine Herridge where she tried to once again make hay out of the “laptop” but all she actually did was repeat what outlets have been consistently saying for three years now. Which is that the emails appear to be genuine (which means that they were stolen and someone should investigate that…).
The actual emails, when examined, do not show anything of significance or major illegality. Frankly, they show Hunter Biden trying to parlay the family name and usually failing. The supposed “bombshell” email that notes the “10 percent held by HB for the big buy” is actually followed up by another one where Hunter Biden sheepishly admits “the Chairman of the Board” said no. The only actual misbehavior (other than his long-known drug addiction issues) that the DOJ has found even remotely interesting are two misdemeanors: One is a possible underpayment of taxes, which would be handled by a fine and a demand for payment. The other is a possible illegal possession of a handgun while he was in rehab, which would be handled by a fine and a relinquishing of the handgun – something that likely already happened years ago.
The only reason that angry Right Wingers keep playing these games with Hunter Biden’s private data is that they want to embarrass President Biden and get him to emotionally lash out in defense of his son. And that strategy hasn’t really borne any fruit yet, but these guys keep trying, don’t they?
Kevin Koster commented on Sarah Huckabee Sanders Suggests Biden Should Resign Before Midterm Results
2022-11-08 19:01:21 -0500
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Sanders is in no position to make vicious comments like this. She frankly is showing that she will be just as divisive and unhelpful as DeSantis should she prevail this evening.
Kevin Koster commented on Brit Hume Calls Dr. Oz ‘Competent’
2022-11-08 00:35:13 -0500
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Ellen is absolutely correct in her assessment. I’d add a little more.
The efforts of angry Right Wing propagandists in infiltrating the polling community is not just about a single objective. They have multiple ideas in mind here.
When we were all a little younger, pollsters were groups like Gallup or Quinnipiac or various universities that would just run scientific surveys of voters, usually by calling them on their landlines and asking them a few questions. The pollsters were non-partisan and just wanted to find out what citizen awareness was of various issues and at the proper times, how the citizens were thinking of voting. The Right Wing community clearly got the message that the polls would help build a narrative of what the country was thinking as a community at any given time. So Right Wingers began creating their own partisan polling services to get results that would line up with what they wanted to hear.
There are now a pile of openly partisan Right Wing services like Trafalgar, Rasmussen, Remington, Insider Advantage and more, which make a point of putting their thumb or more on the scale to tip their results to what Right Wingers would prefer to hear. In the case of Rasmussen, they used to play this game up to the last week before an election and then switch up to razor sharp polling in the final few days, and use those numbers to claim to be “the most accurate pollster out there” on Fox. In the case of Trafalgar, the propagandist running that outfit has publicly stated that he takes his results and adds points to the Republican candidate to make up for what he says are the Right Wing citizens who don’t answer his questions. He assumes that anyone not responding or sounding neutral must be Republican. So his results always look wildly out of sync with everyone. In 2020, Trafalgar had a “D” rating and was properly considered unreliable. In 2022, Trafalgar now has an “A-” rating. It’s interesting how they pulled that off.
Propagandists like Rasmussen and Trafalgar are running both a short term game and a long term game.
In the short-term, their intention is to tilt the results of the poll aggregators like Real Clear Politics and 538, so that an average of polls will wind up looking like the Right Wing candidate is always going to win and the Democratic candidate is always going to lose. This allows the propagandist to create a narrative that “The Right Wing is winning!” throughout any election campaign. This in turn leads to mainstream news outlets thinking there must be something to all these polls showing Right Wingers ahead, and they begin running stories saying “Well, it certainly looks like a lot of people are planning to vote Right Wing now…” And this leads to a general consensus that the Right Wing is ahead and the Democratic voters have no chance. Which of course is intended to depress Democratic voter turnout while getting Right Wingers excited about showing up to vote for a winner. Now, this is short-term and really only plays up to the time of the Election. I’ll note that propagandists like Robert Cahaly at Trafalgar are not interested in polling what people actually think – their intention is Advocacy. They’re hoping to influence how people vote – by getting their target audience to show up while depressing their opponents into staying home.
In the medium term, this flooding the zone with partisan push-poll numbers serves a more sinister purpose, as Ellen noted. If the propagandist succeeds in their advocacy and their voters do drown out the rest of the populace, then the pollster can bring a pretense of integrity – and this is how Trafalgar now has an inexplicable “A-” at 538. Trafalgar got more GOP voters to show up in various races in 2020, so their tilted polling results resembled the result that Trafalgar generated. We’ll see if Trafalgar succeeds again, or if their results are belied by the facts we’re already seeing in early voting across the country for 2022. In the event that the propagandists succeed, then we’ll hear the same gloating we heard in 2016, and the propagandists will use this situation as another badge of accuracy and aggregators like 538 will shrug and give them a higher rating. On the other hand, if Democratic voters re-elect Raphael Warnock in Georgia and elect John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and otherwise do not do what Trafalgar keeps predicting, then the Right Wing will use the false narrative we’ve heard in the short-term as a way of spreading a story about “voter fraud” and “illegitimacy” just as they did in 2020. In other words, if the propaganda advocacy fails, the fall-back position of the Right Wing is to then challenge the results as somehow wrong. Which is why we’ve seen angry Right Wingers spending the last 2 years insisting that President Biden did not win when he in fact did.
In the longer term, Right Wingers have a more insidious notion in mind with the polling games. Win or lose, their constant flooding the zone with partisan push-polls winds up resulting in a scenario where the actual pollsters have one result (as we see from Marist and Quinnipiac) and the Right Wing propagandists have a diametrically opposed result. So general citizens take a position that “Well, everybody is biased, so you can’t trust ANY of the polls”. Because the propagandists have effectively poured sewage into the public aquifer. And at the same time that citizens are feeling they can’t trust any pollster, they also lose confidence in the ability of our governmental system to conduct free and fair elections. Because they keep being told that something is wrong with the elections if the Right Winger loses. Repeat this cycle enough times and most citizens throw up their hands and say they’d rather not get involved, as happened in 2016. Which allows Right Wingers to run the table whenever they like.
The only way to counter this is for people to show up and vote and not fall for the nonsense that propagandists like Cahaly and Kent and Rasmussen inflict. Do that enough times, and the propagandists will be repeatedly exposed for what they are, and they’ll eventually either retreat or be forced to live with the public not taking them seriously for a moment. We just need to see if enough Democratic voters have gone to the ballot box this year. It’s crucial that they do.
I’ll add that in the event of extremists like Kari Lake winning in Arizona, we would see a scenario in 2024 where a Democratic presidential candidate wins the state of Arizona, but Lake throws out those votes and install her own “alternate electors” anyway. The second we see that happen, there will be extraordinarily serious questions about whether a democratic republic can survive that kind of abuse. Personally, I’d rather avoid that situation entirely. But it does seem that angry Right Wingers and their pundits want that to happen.
The efforts of angry Right Wing propagandists in infiltrating the polling community is not just about a single objective. They have multiple ideas in mind here.
When we were all a little younger, pollsters were groups like Gallup or Quinnipiac or various universities that would just run scientific surveys of voters, usually by calling them on their landlines and asking them a few questions. The pollsters were non-partisan and just wanted to find out what citizen awareness was of various issues and at the proper times, how the citizens were thinking of voting. The Right Wing community clearly got the message that the polls would help build a narrative of what the country was thinking as a community at any given time. So Right Wingers began creating their own partisan polling services to get results that would line up with what they wanted to hear.
There are now a pile of openly partisan Right Wing services like Trafalgar, Rasmussen, Remington, Insider Advantage and more, which make a point of putting their thumb or more on the scale to tip their results to what Right Wingers would prefer to hear. In the case of Rasmussen, they used to play this game up to the last week before an election and then switch up to razor sharp polling in the final few days, and use those numbers to claim to be “the most accurate pollster out there” on Fox. In the case of Trafalgar, the propagandist running that outfit has publicly stated that he takes his results and adds points to the Republican candidate to make up for what he says are the Right Wing citizens who don’t answer his questions. He assumes that anyone not responding or sounding neutral must be Republican. So his results always look wildly out of sync with everyone. In 2020, Trafalgar had a “D” rating and was properly considered unreliable. In 2022, Trafalgar now has an “A-” rating. It’s interesting how they pulled that off.
Propagandists like Rasmussen and Trafalgar are running both a short term game and a long term game.
In the short-term, their intention is to tilt the results of the poll aggregators like Real Clear Politics and 538, so that an average of polls will wind up looking like the Right Wing candidate is always going to win and the Democratic candidate is always going to lose. This allows the propagandist to create a narrative that “The Right Wing is winning!” throughout any election campaign. This in turn leads to mainstream news outlets thinking there must be something to all these polls showing Right Wingers ahead, and they begin running stories saying “Well, it certainly looks like a lot of people are planning to vote Right Wing now…” And this leads to a general consensus that the Right Wing is ahead and the Democratic voters have no chance. Which of course is intended to depress Democratic voter turnout while getting Right Wingers excited about showing up to vote for a winner. Now, this is short-term and really only plays up to the time of the Election. I’ll note that propagandists like Robert Cahaly at Trafalgar are not interested in polling what people actually think – their intention is Advocacy. They’re hoping to influence how people vote – by getting their target audience to show up while depressing their opponents into staying home.
In the medium term, this flooding the zone with partisan push-poll numbers serves a more sinister purpose, as Ellen noted. If the propagandist succeeds in their advocacy and their voters do drown out the rest of the populace, then the pollster can bring a pretense of integrity – and this is how Trafalgar now has an inexplicable “A-” at 538. Trafalgar got more GOP voters to show up in various races in 2020, so their tilted polling results resembled the result that Trafalgar generated. We’ll see if Trafalgar succeeds again, or if their results are belied by the facts we’re already seeing in early voting across the country for 2022. In the event that the propagandists succeed, then we’ll hear the same gloating we heard in 2016, and the propagandists will use this situation as another badge of accuracy and aggregators like 538 will shrug and give them a higher rating. On the other hand, if Democratic voters re-elect Raphael Warnock in Georgia and elect John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and otherwise do not do what Trafalgar keeps predicting, then the Right Wing will use the false narrative we’ve heard in the short-term as a way of spreading a story about “voter fraud” and “illegitimacy” just as they did in 2020. In other words, if the propaganda advocacy fails, the fall-back position of the Right Wing is to then challenge the results as somehow wrong. Which is why we’ve seen angry Right Wingers spending the last 2 years insisting that President Biden did not win when he in fact did.
In the longer term, Right Wingers have a more insidious notion in mind with the polling games. Win or lose, their constant flooding the zone with partisan push-polls winds up resulting in a scenario where the actual pollsters have one result (as we see from Marist and Quinnipiac) and the Right Wing propagandists have a diametrically opposed result. So general citizens take a position that “Well, everybody is biased, so you can’t trust ANY of the polls”. Because the propagandists have effectively poured sewage into the public aquifer. And at the same time that citizens are feeling they can’t trust any pollster, they also lose confidence in the ability of our governmental system to conduct free and fair elections. Because they keep being told that something is wrong with the elections if the Right Winger loses. Repeat this cycle enough times and most citizens throw up their hands and say they’d rather not get involved, as happened in 2016. Which allows Right Wingers to run the table whenever they like.
The only way to counter this is for people to show up and vote and not fall for the nonsense that propagandists like Cahaly and Kent and Rasmussen inflict. Do that enough times, and the propagandists will be repeatedly exposed for what they are, and they’ll eventually either retreat or be forced to live with the public not taking them seriously for a moment. We just need to see if enough Democratic voters have gone to the ballot box this year. It’s crucial that they do.
I’ll add that in the event of extremists like Kari Lake winning in Arizona, we would see a scenario in 2024 where a Democratic presidential candidate wins the state of Arizona, but Lake throws out those votes and install her own “alternate electors” anyway. The second we see that happen, there will be extraordinarily serious questions about whether a democratic republic can survive that kind of abuse. Personally, I’d rather avoid that situation entirely. But it does seem that angry Right Wingers and their pundits want that to happen.
Kevin Koster commented on Hannity Interrupts Lindsey Graham To Get Him To Donate To RW Extremist Bolduc
2022-11-06 21:51:09 -0500
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I should also note that there is no need to make these draconian cuts in these programs. Social Security and Medicare can easily be funded for the next century by making several small adjustments:
-Raising the retirement age by one year for people currently aged 25 or younger
-Lifting the cap on applicable income for FICA
-Including the governmental employees in the FICA pool
-Raising the employer side of FICA by 0.3%
And these steps could have been taken 20 years ago, when the FICA increase could have been 0.1%. But angry Right Wing pundits and politicians insisted that they would never ever ever raise taxes ever. Of course, those same people cheered on the GOP Tax Transfer of 2017, so one should really wonder what they meant by those Grover Norquist pledges.
-Raising the retirement age by one year for people currently aged 25 or younger
-Lifting the cap on applicable income for FICA
-Including the governmental employees in the FICA pool
-Raising the employer side of FICA by 0.3%
And these steps could have been taken 20 years ago, when the FICA increase could have been 0.1%. But angry Right Wing pundits and politicians insisted that they would never ever ever raise taxes ever. Of course, those same people cheered on the GOP Tax Transfer of 2017, so one should really wonder what they meant by those Grover Norquist pledges.
Kevin Koster commented on Ronna McDaniel Distracts But Doesn’t Deny GOP Plan To Cut Social Security
2022-10-31 20:42:04 -0400
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Just so everyone is clear on what the GOP plan is for Social Security and Medicare:
They are following the Heritage Foundation plan from 2010, which is easily found online and has only been made stricter since the time that original paper was published.
The plan is to reduce Social Security to a flat rate of about $1200 per month, and to strictly means-test it so that seniors who receive decent pensions or have decent savings will be cut off. The original Heritage Foundation plan said this would only apply to people born in 1985 or later (meaning it was only for people who were 25 or younger at the time they presented it). The new plan goes into effect for anyone born in 1968 or later – meaning that people who are 54 years old today would be told they only qualify for a greatly reduced benefit, if they are not cut off entirely. This would mean that Middle Class Employees who paid FICA for the past 35 years would be told that they’re out of luck, and that would be within about 10 years of when most of them will want to retire. This is not accidental – the GOP Tax Transfer of 2017 was similarly a frontal attack on Middle Class Employees, particularly those living and working in Blue States. The GOP is well aware of what they’re doing here.
The Heritage Foundation today estimates that the revised GOP version of their drastic cutting plan would result in savings of over 640 billion dollars over the next several years. Which is understandable, since that’s the amount that would no longer be paid to retirees who paid into the system for decades.
As for Medicare, the GOP intention is to replace it with a tiny voucher program that would do little for anyone not living in poverty. Frankly, the entire GOP approach here would be to reduce Social Security and Medicare to welfare programs for the indigent elderly. Which would make the programs much easier to eliminate altogether, since they would no longer be any benefit to anyone else. And that’s the ultimate intention here. The GOP is following the same patient playbook they did in tossing Roe v Wade in the trash can. They’ve never wanted these programs to exist in the first place, and they were willing to take the long approach to getting them tossed. So with this move, they’ll reduce the programs to something that doesn’t help most people and thus is vulnerable to being scrapped. And then, ten years later, they can deliver the final blow and toss them entirely.
We should remember that there are much simpler ways to deal with Social Security funding – a lift on the cap on income that applies, an inclusion of governmental employees who qualify as part of the funding, a mild increase in retirement age for taxpayers under 30 years old, and a tiny increase in the employer side of payroll taxes. These steps could and should have been taken 20 years ago, but angry Right Wingers refused to allow it. Now those same angry Right Wingers make noises that the programs they starved of funds are going to have financial issues soon. In scientific terms, we call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If anyone truly thinks that the GOP will not work to eliminate these programs that Right Wingers have long hated, I advise that person to look no further than the Supreme Court. Angry Right Wingers are telling us exactly what they intend to do here. I strongly suggest that people pay attention and take them at their word.
They are following the Heritage Foundation plan from 2010, which is easily found online and has only been made stricter since the time that original paper was published.
The plan is to reduce Social Security to a flat rate of about $1200 per month, and to strictly means-test it so that seniors who receive decent pensions or have decent savings will be cut off. The original Heritage Foundation plan said this would only apply to people born in 1985 or later (meaning it was only for people who were 25 or younger at the time they presented it). The new plan goes into effect for anyone born in 1968 or later – meaning that people who are 54 years old today would be told they only qualify for a greatly reduced benefit, if they are not cut off entirely. This would mean that Middle Class Employees who paid FICA for the past 35 years would be told that they’re out of luck, and that would be within about 10 years of when most of them will want to retire. This is not accidental – the GOP Tax Transfer of 2017 was similarly a frontal attack on Middle Class Employees, particularly those living and working in Blue States. The GOP is well aware of what they’re doing here.
The Heritage Foundation today estimates that the revised GOP version of their drastic cutting plan would result in savings of over 640 billion dollars over the next several years. Which is understandable, since that’s the amount that would no longer be paid to retirees who paid into the system for decades.
As for Medicare, the GOP intention is to replace it with a tiny voucher program that would do little for anyone not living in poverty. Frankly, the entire GOP approach here would be to reduce Social Security and Medicare to welfare programs for the indigent elderly. Which would make the programs much easier to eliminate altogether, since they would no longer be any benefit to anyone else. And that’s the ultimate intention here. The GOP is following the same patient playbook they did in tossing Roe v Wade in the trash can. They’ve never wanted these programs to exist in the first place, and they were willing to take the long approach to getting them tossed. So with this move, they’ll reduce the programs to something that doesn’t help most people and thus is vulnerable to being scrapped. And then, ten years later, they can deliver the final blow and toss them entirely.
We should remember that there are much simpler ways to deal with Social Security funding – a lift on the cap on income that applies, an inclusion of governmental employees who qualify as part of the funding, a mild increase in retirement age for taxpayers under 30 years old, and a tiny increase in the employer side of payroll taxes. These steps could and should have been taken 20 years ago, but angry Right Wingers refused to allow it. Now those same angry Right Wingers make noises that the programs they starved of funds are going to have financial issues soon. In scientific terms, we call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If anyone truly thinks that the GOP will not work to eliminate these programs that Right Wingers have long hated, I advise that person to look no further than the Supreme Court. Angry Right Wingers are telling us exactly what they intend to do here. I strongly suggest that people pay attention and take them at their word.
Kevin Koster commented on Sen. Mike Lee Lies About His Efforts To Overturn 2020 Election On Fox News Sunday
2022-10-24 21:17:38 -0400
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It’s frankly unbelievable that a person who poses as such a devout spiritual person and upright man in his community would so blatantly engage in utter falsehoods.
In reality, Lee believes in a form of White Supremacism and is willing to compromise any principle to forward that agenda. He figures his followers (and Trump’s) will never notice if he dissembles, and that he has free reign to behave with impunity. His actual agenda is clearly about attacking what small gains happened in civil rights between 1954 and 2016, and returning the country to a time when females and non-whites knew their place and didn’t lift their heads.
In reality, Lee believes in a form of White Supremacism and is willing to compromise any principle to forward that agenda. He figures his followers (and Trump’s) will never notice if he dissembles, and that he has free reign to behave with impunity. His actual agenda is clearly about attacking what small gains happened in civil rights between 1954 and 2016, and returning the country to a time when females and non-whites knew their place and didn’t lift their heads.
Kevin Koster commented on Tucker Carlson Suggests That Drag Queens Are Pedophiles
2022-10-22 21:43:20 -0400
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John is correct. The entire narrative of “Evil Trans People Are Attacking Your Children” is just the latest anti-gay screed from angry Right Wingers looking for a new “outrage” to get them excited about voting.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Guest Calls Student Loan Forgiveness ‘Ploy To Buy Votes’
2022-10-22 21:40:51 -0400
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By the strangled “logic” that the angry Right Wingers are pushing here, the frantic attempts by Republicans to block anyone from receiving this minor student loan relief are a GOP ploy to anger and disappoint voters and presumably depress the turnout.
It’s truly unfortunate how driven angry Right Wingers are to play these games. Particularly when one realizes that 50 years ago, a public college was not an expensive proposition. All the student needed were good grades and a disposition to work hard in class. Nowadays, even the public colleges can be prohibitively expensive and millions of college students wind up buried in massive debt. Which of course means that anyone who had intended to be a lawyer for a non-profit or a volunteer or anything not in a lucrative profession is out of options. Which is of course the intention of the angry Right Wingers who support the college education situation being in this unfortunate place.
Note that Vera’s comments contain a veiled threat – telling students they better not even think of applying for this benefit because angry Right Wingers are going to take it away.
It’s truly unfortunate how driven angry Right Wingers are to play these games. Particularly when one realizes that 50 years ago, a public college was not an expensive proposition. All the student needed were good grades and a disposition to work hard in class. Nowadays, even the public colleges can be prohibitively expensive and millions of college students wind up buried in massive debt. Which of course means that anyone who had intended to be a lawyer for a non-profit or a volunteer or anything not in a lucrative profession is out of options. Which is of course the intention of the angry Right Wingers who support the college education situation being in this unfortunate place.
Note that Vera’s comments contain a veiled threat – telling students they better not even think of applying for this benefit because angry Right Wingers are going to take it away.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Ignores Herschel Walker’s Presser Deceit In Order To Make Him A Fake Racial Victim
2022-10-22 21:32:10 -0400
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It is truly shameful that angry Right Wing propaganda platforms like Fox are so bent on trying to push Walker that they’ve lost track of the “good Christian family values” they previously professed to support. The true victims in Walker’s story are the women he abused and the children he abandoned.
Kevin Koster commented on Scalise Covers Up GOP Plan To Force Cuts To Social Security, Medicare By Holding Economy Hostage
2022-10-17 16:22:06 -0400
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A few things to point out here:
The Republican Study Group plan embraces the approach of the Heritage Foundation and their paper from a decade ago. It goes far beyond just raising the eligibility age and means testing, although both of those actions are included. The HF plan has not been widely circulated itself in several years, but it can still be found online – and it’s something everyone should read. The HF plan calls for Social Security to be reduced to a flat benefit of the equivalent of $1200 per month (theoretically in 2010 dollars). This drastically reduced benefit would only be available to people seeing less than 55K per year in retirement outside of SS payments.
I’ll note that while this flat amount would be about what the average monthly SS payment is (if they actually did adjust for inflation, which I find doubtful), it also would mean that literally tens of millions of people who were eligible for higher benefits of at least twice that amount would suddenly get a massive cut. And that’s if they were even considered eligible for anything under the new rules. The HF plan had the idea of slowly phasing in and really only applying to people born after 1985. The Republican Study Group says they would make the drastic cuts applicable to anyone age 54 or younger. For those keeping track, that would mean anyone born in 1968 or later.
Heritage has noted in more recent articles that its plan would save over 640 billion dollars over the next several years. Which makes sense, since they’d drastically be cutting and/or eliminating benefits from so many of the potential recipients that would have received them before this change. I’ll also note that Medicare would essentially become a means-tested voucher system.
And the reason that angry Right Wingers want this approach is that it would turn SS and Medicare into welfare for the indigent elderly and make a point to most Americans that “you can’t count on the government for anything”. Which has been the approach of angry Right Wingers going back several decades. If they get away with these changes, it’s only a matter of time before they move to completely abolish the programs. Which would become a lot more possible given that most of the country would no longer see any benefit from those programs even after paying into them for decades.
This is the exact approach that the GOP had intended to take in 2019, but was unable to push as they’d lost their majority in the House and could no longer present it. The fact that they’re seriously trying to push it again and threatening to capsize the economy to do it should be chilling to anyone paying attention.
Social Security and Medicare can easily be stabilized by several common sense measures – including lifting the cap on applicable earnings and making a minute increase in the employer side of FICA payroll taxes. But angry Right Wingers have refused to do these simple things for decades, in the hopes they could starve the programs and force everyone else to agree to slashing them.
It is beyond despicable that Scalise thinks he can get away with accusing Dems of trying to bankrupt these programs when it is people like Scalise who have actually been working to make that happen.
The Republican Study Group plan embraces the approach of the Heritage Foundation and their paper from a decade ago. It goes far beyond just raising the eligibility age and means testing, although both of those actions are included. The HF plan has not been widely circulated itself in several years, but it can still be found online – and it’s something everyone should read. The HF plan calls for Social Security to be reduced to a flat benefit of the equivalent of $1200 per month (theoretically in 2010 dollars). This drastically reduced benefit would only be available to people seeing less than 55K per year in retirement outside of SS payments.
I’ll note that while this flat amount would be about what the average monthly SS payment is (if they actually did adjust for inflation, which I find doubtful), it also would mean that literally tens of millions of people who were eligible for higher benefits of at least twice that amount would suddenly get a massive cut. And that’s if they were even considered eligible for anything under the new rules. The HF plan had the idea of slowly phasing in and really only applying to people born after 1985. The Republican Study Group says they would make the drastic cuts applicable to anyone age 54 or younger. For those keeping track, that would mean anyone born in 1968 or later.
Heritage has noted in more recent articles that its plan would save over 640 billion dollars over the next several years. Which makes sense, since they’d drastically be cutting and/or eliminating benefits from so many of the potential recipients that would have received them before this change. I’ll also note that Medicare would essentially become a means-tested voucher system.
And the reason that angry Right Wingers want this approach is that it would turn SS and Medicare into welfare for the indigent elderly and make a point to most Americans that “you can’t count on the government for anything”. Which has been the approach of angry Right Wingers going back several decades. If they get away with these changes, it’s only a matter of time before they move to completely abolish the programs. Which would become a lot more possible given that most of the country would no longer see any benefit from those programs even after paying into them for decades.
This is the exact approach that the GOP had intended to take in 2019, but was unable to push as they’d lost their majority in the House and could no longer present it. The fact that they’re seriously trying to push it again and threatening to capsize the economy to do it should be chilling to anyone paying attention.
Social Security and Medicare can easily be stabilized by several common sense measures – including lifting the cap on applicable earnings and making a minute increase in the employer side of FICA payroll taxes. But angry Right Wingers have refused to do these simple things for decades, in the hopes they could starve the programs and force everyone else to agree to slashing them.
It is beyond despicable that Scalise thinks he can get away with accusing Dems of trying to bankrupt these programs when it is people like Scalise who have actually been working to make that happen.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Tries To Pass Off GOP Activists As ‘Virginia Parents’ In Midterm Messaging Effort
2022-10-16 21:47:20 -0400
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As Ellen noted, this kind of blatantly deceptive game-playing is common at Fox, and it gets even worse at other Right Wing propaganda platforms. And it goes farther than just creating an echo chamber of angry Right Wing voices as a “focus group”.
Multiple Right Wing pollsters, such as Rasmussen and “The Trafalgar Group”, regularly present blatantly tilted polling results as a way of trying to make the GOP candidates appear to be doing better than they are, as a way of depressing Dem voter turnout while goosing GOP voter turnout. This approach does work when the voters are not aware of who is presenting the numbers to them, or where the propagandists’ advocacy pays off in their people showing up in greater numbers.
What makes this scenario so dangerous is that angry Right Wingers are trying to literally create “facts” out of thin air and use those “facts” to bamboozle their way into real election victories that can have terrible consequences.
Multiple Right Wing pollsters, such as Rasmussen and “The Trafalgar Group”, regularly present blatantly tilted polling results as a way of trying to make the GOP candidates appear to be doing better than they are, as a way of depressing Dem voter turnout while goosing GOP voter turnout. This approach does work when the voters are not aware of who is presenting the numbers to them, or where the propagandists’ advocacy pays off in their people showing up in greater numbers.
What makes this scenario so dangerous is that angry Right Wingers are trying to literally create “facts” out of thin air and use those “facts” to bamboozle their way into real election victories that can have terrible consequences.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Contributor Blames Inflation For $28 Taco Bell Lunch
2022-10-13 10:44:14 -0400
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Martin’s hefty lunch order indicates two things:
1. The effect of inflation raised his costs for lunch by between two and three dollars. So two years ago, his cost for the same thing would have been a total of around $25 including tax. Meaning that he’s raising a complete red herring.
2. He needs to seriously consider going on a diet.
Angry Right Wingers keep trying to push the inflation numbers as much as they can, and it isn’t distracting the tens of millions of American women who are fully aware of how the Right Wing has treated them. As loud as the Right Wing propagandists yell “Inflation! Inflation! Inflation!” and “Hunter! Hunter! Hunter”, people in the real world are aware that most Red States are attempting to make it impossible for women to have any control over their own bodies, and that the Republicans are sneering while they take these actions.
We’ll just have to see how the turnout goes next month. Given the utter panic being shown by angry Right Wing pundits across the board now (as they scream at their listeners “VOTE!!!! VOTE!!! VOTE!!!!!”), the results may not be the ones that the Right Wing is desperately hoping to see.
1. The effect of inflation raised his costs for lunch by between two and three dollars. So two years ago, his cost for the same thing would have been a total of around $25 including tax. Meaning that he’s raising a complete red herring.
2. He needs to seriously consider going on a diet.
Angry Right Wingers keep trying to push the inflation numbers as much as they can, and it isn’t distracting the tens of millions of American women who are fully aware of how the Right Wing has treated them. As loud as the Right Wing propagandists yell “Inflation! Inflation! Inflation!” and “Hunter! Hunter! Hunter”, people in the real world are aware that most Red States are attempting to make it impossible for women to have any control over their own bodies, and that the Republicans are sneering while they take these actions.
We’ll just have to see how the turnout goes next month. Given the utter panic being shown by angry Right Wing pundits across the board now (as they scream at their listeners “VOTE!!!! VOTE!!! VOTE!!!!!”), the results may not be the ones that the Right Wing is desperately hoping to see.