Kevin Koster commented on Fox News Treats War With North Korea Like A Lighthearted Romp
2017-09-27 01:33:29 -0400
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When the North Korea situation escalates into actual conflict, and it’s only a brief matter of time before this happens, we’ll have clips like this to preserve the vicious obliviousness of the Right Wing on the precipice of a totally avoidable disaster that claimed the lives of millions of people. We shouldn’t be surprised at the Right’s childishness or its inability to deal with the reality of this situation. They just enjoy the schoolyard fun of the Trump bully making nasty comments about people they hate. There’s nothing new about this – other than the fact that the Pence White House actually does have the ability to do something truly horrifying in Asia, and appears enthusiastic about taking that action. We must remember this moment – as I’ve previously noted, it’s a shining example of how elections have consequences. The next time someone tells you that your vote doesn’t count or won’t make a difference, remind them about how 3 million people in the US sat on their hands and allowed a spectacular catastrophe to occur.
Kevin Koster commented on Disgraced Bill O’Reilly To Be A Guest On Hannity Tonight
2017-09-27 01:19:46 -0400
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It’s inconceivable for O’Reilly to understand the notion that Dem Senators are actually standing up for principle when dealing with a dangerous child in the Oval Office. It’s inconceivable for O’Reilly to understand why John McCain would, in his final days, stick up for the notion of regular order in the Senate rather than be bullied into voting for a Far Right freight train where Dems would be completely ignored or shouted down. To O’Reilly, this must have been McCain being angry about a personal slight – because that’s the way O’Reilly sees the world. O’Reilly can’t conceive of a world where someone would actually stand up on principle – because O’Reilly frankly doesn’t believe in that concept.
I’ll be curious to see if O’Reilly is brought back into the fold by other Fox News shows on a faster timeline than previously thought. I’d always thought they’d bring him back in his preferred “Elder Statesman” position, essentially as the new Brit Hume. But O’Reilly’s too much of a back room brawler for that idea to fly very far.
I’ll be curious to see if O’Reilly is brought back into the fold by other Fox News shows on a faster timeline than previously thought. I’d always thought they’d bring him back in his preferred “Elder Statesman” position, essentially as the new Brit Hume. But O’Reilly’s too much of a back room brawler for that idea to fly very far.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox's Hegseth: Steph Curry Is A ‘Coddled’ ‘Millionaire Millennial’
2017-09-27 01:50:42 -0400
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Ellen, I agree that there is a big difference between differing on policy and having major issues with Trump’s casual sneering bigotry. But while I deeply disagree with Right Wingers, I have to acknowledge that someone like Hannity will always try to play that argument in reverse – they’ll try to say that the Left Winger who stands on principle is just complaining about policy or is ignorant, while the Right Winger who snubbed Obama was devoutly standing on principle. To the Right, someone like Matt Birk, and people like Langer, Kuechenberg and Fernandez are principled heroes to be idolized. But that’s because of who they’re protesting. If Birk had refused to go to the Pence White House, Sean Hannity would never have had him on his show. My point is to show the total hypocrisy of Fox News and Hannity in particular – they’re quite shameless about it.
And I don’t weep for Ronald Reagan. I lived through his presidency in my teen years, and I vividly remember that disaster. I remember the graft and the corruption and the selfishness and the greed, all pushed hard by Reagan and his handlers. His was a thoroughly venal administration – one that saw an all-time high in the number of its members who were prosecuted and/or disciplined for criminal behavior. Including, by the way, Ann Gorsuch, the mother of the man who stole the Supreme Court seat that should have been filled by Merrick Garland.
I personally find it tragic that in subsequent presidencies, we have found Right Wingers who have been even more outrageous than Reagan – to the point that people today point to Reagan as a positive figure who engaged both sides, etc. When the opposite was true. The only difference is that in the subsequent years, the Hard Right have pushed the GOP much farther over to their corner. So that now we have truly scary figures like Pence and Bannon trying to dictate policy in this country, and people say that Reagan was much more reasonable. No, Reagan and his group were pretty scary too. It’s just that the W presidency was much scarier, as those guys had taken the gloves off even the public amiability that Reagan worked to project. And the Pence White House is downright horrifying in its viciousness. But just because the current group is a nightmare doesn’t lessen the meanness of the Reagan White House. I don’t know that I would have gone to the Reagan White House or the W White House – those were houses that presided over immense cruelty to others. And I know for sure that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the current White House – it’s an embarrassment to this country and to the entire world.
And I don’t weep for Ronald Reagan. I lived through his presidency in my teen years, and I vividly remember that disaster. I remember the graft and the corruption and the selfishness and the greed, all pushed hard by Reagan and his handlers. His was a thoroughly venal administration – one that saw an all-time high in the number of its members who were prosecuted and/or disciplined for criminal behavior. Including, by the way, Ann Gorsuch, the mother of the man who stole the Supreme Court seat that should have been filled by Merrick Garland.
I personally find it tragic that in subsequent presidencies, we have found Right Wingers who have been even more outrageous than Reagan – to the point that people today point to Reagan as a positive figure who engaged both sides, etc. When the opposite was true. The only difference is that in the subsequent years, the Hard Right have pushed the GOP much farther over to their corner. So that now we have truly scary figures like Pence and Bannon trying to dictate policy in this country, and people say that Reagan was much more reasonable. No, Reagan and his group were pretty scary too. It’s just that the W presidency was much scarier, as those guys had taken the gloves off even the public amiability that Reagan worked to project. And the Pence White House is downright horrifying in its viciousness. But just because the current group is a nightmare doesn’t lessen the meanness of the Reagan White House. I don’t know that I would have gone to the Reagan White House or the W White House – those were houses that presided over immense cruelty to others. And I know for sure that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the current White House – it’s an embarrassment to this country and to the entire world.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Guest Claims She Wants To Help The Poor By Getting Rid Of Medicaid
2017-09-24 15:24:13 -0400
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Payton’s position here is consistent with Right Wing ideology, and with the opinions of Fox News. To this way of thinking, Medicaid is a handout for people who should have made better choices. It’s a Right Winger’s tax dollars being given to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Further, Payton’s comments point to the usual Right Wing talking down of any government program’s efficacy. The basic philosophy says that the government can’t solve problems because government itself is the problem. Meaning that people should just take care of themselves and leave the rich alone.
It’s for this reason that we always hear from the Right about how Medicaid doesn’t work, how Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes that will bankrupt us, about how Welfare is used by people gaming the system and Food Stamps are being abused. (Although I have found some grim humor in Sean Hannity’s obsession with how many people were on Food Stamps during President Obama’s terms, since Hannity wanted to ignore the massive recession until the exact moment that President Obama took the oath of office.) And there’s a strategy to using the code word “entitlements” – that’s supposed to give you the impression that someone is getting something they really don’t need and shouldn’t be taking. They’re just gaming the system because they feel “entitled” to everyone else’s hard-earned tax dollars.
Payton’s just throwing that into the mix as a cheap shot. She’s fully aware that the point of the Graham Cassidy iteration is not to help deal with Medicaid issues or with the hardships those patients face – and frankly, Payton couldn’t care less about those issues. She just wants to get in the dig that “Hey, Medicaid doesn’t really work anyway, so why are the Dems expanding it other than to give out another handout?”
Payton is dodging what this bill would actually do to millions of patients across the country and how it would do it. The bill is designed to shift Medicaid dollars away from blue states that participated in the ACA and give that money to red states who actively obstructed it. In other words, it’s a reward to Right Wing governors who refused to have their states participate and a punishment to anyone who actually had the temerity to be part of it. It’s a fairly mean-spirited move, and one that shouldn’t surprise us coming out of this Congress or the Pence White House. It’s more than a punch in the face to President Obama’s supporters – it’s a second backhand to make sure you got the message.
I also note that by pushing the Graham Cassidy bill, the Right Wing effectively destroyed the attempt by Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray to do something on a bipartisan basis. Because this bill is intended to be voted by Republicans for Republicans, without a single Dem vote needed. They don’t want to talk to the Dems about this, and they don’t want to hear the complaints. They just want to get rid of the ACA and not have to be held accountable for the result.
It’s for this reason that we always hear from the Right about how Medicaid doesn’t work, how Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes that will bankrupt us, about how Welfare is used by people gaming the system and Food Stamps are being abused. (Although I have found some grim humor in Sean Hannity’s obsession with how many people were on Food Stamps during President Obama’s terms, since Hannity wanted to ignore the massive recession until the exact moment that President Obama took the oath of office.) And there’s a strategy to using the code word “entitlements” – that’s supposed to give you the impression that someone is getting something they really don’t need and shouldn’t be taking. They’re just gaming the system because they feel “entitled” to everyone else’s hard-earned tax dollars.
Payton’s just throwing that into the mix as a cheap shot. She’s fully aware that the point of the Graham Cassidy iteration is not to help deal with Medicaid issues or with the hardships those patients face – and frankly, Payton couldn’t care less about those issues. She just wants to get in the dig that “Hey, Medicaid doesn’t really work anyway, so why are the Dems expanding it other than to give out another handout?”
Payton is dodging what this bill would actually do to millions of patients across the country and how it would do it. The bill is designed to shift Medicaid dollars away from blue states that participated in the ACA and give that money to red states who actively obstructed it. In other words, it’s a reward to Right Wing governors who refused to have their states participate and a punishment to anyone who actually had the temerity to be part of it. It’s a fairly mean-spirited move, and one that shouldn’t surprise us coming out of this Congress or the Pence White House. It’s more than a punch in the face to President Obama’s supporters – it’s a second backhand to make sure you got the message.
I also note that by pushing the Graham Cassidy bill, the Right Wing effectively destroyed the attempt by Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray to do something on a bipartisan basis. Because this bill is intended to be voted by Republicans for Republicans, without a single Dem vote needed. They don’t want to talk to the Dems about this, and they don’t want to hear the complaints. They just want to get rid of the ACA and not have to be held accountable for the result.
Kevin Koster commented on Sen. Cassidy Runs To Fox News For Some Jimmy Kimmel, Graham-Cassidy Damage Control
2017-09-22 04:24:58 -0400
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What Cassidy isn’t admitting is that this bill is essentially the “skinny repeal” only with an added bit of fun – it specifically pulls the Medicaid expansion money from the states that went with it and needed it the most, and gives that money to Red states that made a point of obstructing the ACA. So California will lose up to 40 billion dollars in Medicaid funds while Texas, which pointedly worked to sabotage the ACA, will receive up to 40 billion as a reward.
I have my doubts that this bill will pass, as Collins and Murkowski are likely to oppose it just as they did the other nonsensical bills the GOP flung around over the past few months. But even if the ACA is not outright repealed, we should remember that the conduct of the Pence White House is effectively killing it anyway. And that may be Pence’s long-term objective in any case. If he can’t get the law completely thrown out, he could just keep its situation uncertain, so that more and more insurers will abandon it or skyrocket their premiums. After another couple of years of the exchanges being wracked with these attacks, I could see the GOP voting in lockstep to finally put it out of its misery.
I have my doubts that this bill will pass, as Collins and Murkowski are likely to oppose it just as they did the other nonsensical bills the GOP flung around over the past few months. But even if the ACA is not outright repealed, we should remember that the conduct of the Pence White House is effectively killing it anyway. And that may be Pence’s long-term objective in any case. If he can’t get the law completely thrown out, he could just keep its situation uncertain, so that more and more insurers will abandon it or skyrocket their premiums. After another couple of years of the exchanges being wracked with these attacks, I could see the GOP voting in lockstep to finally put it out of its misery.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox Haz A Sad Over Criticism Of Trump’s U.N. General Assembly Address
2017-09-21 11:47:11 -0400
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This was a fairly chilling exchange, and we should unpack a bit more of it to understand the depth of the hypocrisy and the viciousness.
First, we have the desperate attempt by Fox News to attack anyone who dares to call out the Pence White House for its bigoted, mean-spirited and childish behavior. Or anyone who understands the outrageous comments of Donald Trump at the UN for what they are. So they put together a soundbite collection and try to play that off as biased attacks, including the mashup of regular news anchors with pundits. Which is interesting because the Fox News personalities are engaging in serious projection here. In reality, it’s Fox News where the anchors themselves regularly read Right Wing talking points converted to what might appear to be news bulletins. At other networks, the anchors read the facts. At Fox News, the facts may or may not be reported, depending on whether it furthers the agenda of the Right. If it doesn’t, they’ll find some “alternative facts” that will further that agenda.
Then we have a refreshing acknowledgment by Fox News and the Right Wing. Suddenly, they want everyone to watch the entire horrifying address by Donald Trump, because if you don’t listen to EVERY WORD, you probably don’t know what you’re talking about and you have no credibility. Now, this is a position I agree with, on general principle. But the Right Wing doesn’t. Because I don’t recall them listening to EVERY WORD when they quoted Nancy Pelosi’s comment “We have to pass the bill for you to find out what’s in it” – where the context might easily explain the remark. And I don’t recall the Right listening to EVERY WORD when they decided that a 10 minute address by Joe Biden in 1992 could be boiled down to a single statement so they could declare that a nonexistent “Biden Rule” changed major policy. And I don’t recall the Right listening to EVERY WORD when they cherry picked comments by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or anyone else they despised. I wonder if now they’ll acknowledge that an entire political career does not consist of a single soundbite pulled at random.
Finally, it’s blatantly obvious that the intent by the Right Wingers on this show was to disrupt anything that Marie Harf had to say, hoping they could hold her off until the show went to a commercial…
First, we have the desperate attempt by Fox News to attack anyone who dares to call out the Pence White House for its bigoted, mean-spirited and childish behavior. Or anyone who understands the outrageous comments of Donald Trump at the UN for what they are. So they put together a soundbite collection and try to play that off as biased attacks, including the mashup of regular news anchors with pundits. Which is interesting because the Fox News personalities are engaging in serious projection here. In reality, it’s Fox News where the anchors themselves regularly read Right Wing talking points converted to what might appear to be news bulletins. At other networks, the anchors read the facts. At Fox News, the facts may or may not be reported, depending on whether it furthers the agenda of the Right. If it doesn’t, they’ll find some “alternative facts” that will further that agenda.
Then we have a refreshing acknowledgment by Fox News and the Right Wing. Suddenly, they want everyone to watch the entire horrifying address by Donald Trump, because if you don’t listen to EVERY WORD, you probably don’t know what you’re talking about and you have no credibility. Now, this is a position I agree with, on general principle. But the Right Wing doesn’t. Because I don’t recall them listening to EVERY WORD when they quoted Nancy Pelosi’s comment “We have to pass the bill for you to find out what’s in it” – where the context might easily explain the remark. And I don’t recall the Right listening to EVERY WORD when they decided that a 10 minute address by Joe Biden in 1992 could be boiled down to a single statement so they could declare that a nonexistent “Biden Rule” changed major policy. And I don’t recall the Right listening to EVERY WORD when they cherry picked comments by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or anyone else they despised. I wonder if now they’ll acknowledge that an entire political career does not consist of a single soundbite pulled at random.
Finally, it’s blatantly obvious that the intent by the Right Wingers on this show was to disrupt anything that Marie Harf had to say, hoping they could hold her off until the show went to a commercial…
Kevin Koster commented on Jimmy Kimmel Scorches His Graham-Cassidy Critics, Including Brian Kilmeade
2017-09-21 02:54:55 -0400
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Kimmel makes a few important points here. Along the way, he quickly disposes of the desperate Right Wing talking points raised against him today – that he’s uninformed, that he spoke out of turn, that he was rash, that he somehow doesn’t understand how wonderful this bill is, etc. And we should keep in mind that his comments last night and tonight have had a big impact – the Right Wing is frantic to get rid of the ACA and Kimmel has exposed the hypocrisy behind their behavior.
Let’s keep in mind what the Right Wing really wants here, and why they’re so desperate to push this bill here and now. Let’s deal with the latter part first – they’re desperate to do this right now because in 10 days they can no longer take this action under Reconciliation – meaning that they’ll suddenly need 60 votes. (That is, unless Mitch McConnell changes that rule like he changed the other one to ram the Gorsuch gargoyle onto the Supreme Court, as Trump has begged him to do.) If they can somehow get this thing over the finish line before September 30, they don’t need to bother with talking to a single Democrat – they can just ram this thing in and have Mike Pence get Trump to sign it.
And what is it that they really want here? Do they want to reform Health Care? Do they want to make coverage more affordable? Do they want to help more Americans get the treatment they need? Of course not. This was NEVER about whether someone could be treated by a doctor, and the Right Wing couldn’t care less whether the average Joe can afford a hospital visit. As far as the Right Wing is concerned, that’s YOUR problem, not theirs. If you can’t afford treatment, then that’s a YP. The GOP has had decades to work out a way to stabilize premiums and make health care costs a more reasonable notion than the gouging we have seen in recent times. And they had all those times where they voted in vain to get rid of the ACA. People are surprised to hear that the GOP had no prepared plan for what to do to actually replace the ACA. That frankly surprises me. The point is, they never intended to replace it. They didn’t want it to exist in the first place. And more importantly, they didn’t want President Obama to get it through the Congressional Mill. But he did, and the ACA is law. And the Right Wing has been bent on getting rid of it by any means necessary from the moment it got across the finish line over 7 years ago.
It’s interesting to note, as has been stated on multiple programs over the past few days, that this bill actually doesn’t provide any real reform to the ACA. It doesn’t frankly do much of anything – other than take a mean-spirited swipe at any state that went along with the ACA and give a boon to the Right Wing governors who worked to sabotage the ACA by keeping their states out of the scenario. Oh, and it has that gratuitous kick in the teeth to Planned Parenthood too. But that’s not enough for the hardcore Right Wingers who want the bill and its architects hung from the nearest yardarm. Which is why Rand Paul is making a show of opposing it. Paul, like many Right Wingers, just wants the ACA scrapped – don’t worry about a replacement, just get rid of it and let everyone just take care of themselves like good Libertarians. As I’ve noted before, Paul’s idea was to separate the Repeal and Replace ideas, with the idea being that the ACA would be repealed in short order, but no replacement would be coming within our lifetimes. Because the real goal is just to get rid of the ACA and to punish those voters who dared to think that something could be accomplished here.
I also note that Graham and Cassidy deliberately cut off a bipartisan effort led by Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray to actually work to amend the ACA and finally provide the fixes people have talked about for years. And that would be fine, if the GOP actually wanted to do that. But they don’t. The Graham/Cassidy bill is intended to kill any bipartisan efforts and just ram a repeal through by GOP votes alone. Which would slake the Right Wing hatred of President Obama and give them that victory moment when another of the prior administration’s works get scrapped. And what’s really interesting here is that this bill still keeps a bunch of the ACA’s ideas intact – the main thing that happens is that the insurers no longer need to cover anyone and the Right Wing governors get rewards for their intransigence. And Donald Trump gets to tweet that there is no more ACA.
Let’s keep in mind what the Right Wing really wants here, and why they’re so desperate to push this bill here and now. Let’s deal with the latter part first – they’re desperate to do this right now because in 10 days they can no longer take this action under Reconciliation – meaning that they’ll suddenly need 60 votes. (That is, unless Mitch McConnell changes that rule like he changed the other one to ram the Gorsuch gargoyle onto the Supreme Court, as Trump has begged him to do.) If they can somehow get this thing over the finish line before September 30, they don’t need to bother with talking to a single Democrat – they can just ram this thing in and have Mike Pence get Trump to sign it.
And what is it that they really want here? Do they want to reform Health Care? Do they want to make coverage more affordable? Do they want to help more Americans get the treatment they need? Of course not. This was NEVER about whether someone could be treated by a doctor, and the Right Wing couldn’t care less whether the average Joe can afford a hospital visit. As far as the Right Wing is concerned, that’s YOUR problem, not theirs. If you can’t afford treatment, then that’s a YP. The GOP has had decades to work out a way to stabilize premiums and make health care costs a more reasonable notion than the gouging we have seen in recent times. And they had all those times where they voted in vain to get rid of the ACA. People are surprised to hear that the GOP had no prepared plan for what to do to actually replace the ACA. That frankly surprises me. The point is, they never intended to replace it. They didn’t want it to exist in the first place. And more importantly, they didn’t want President Obama to get it through the Congressional Mill. But he did, and the ACA is law. And the Right Wing has been bent on getting rid of it by any means necessary from the moment it got across the finish line over 7 years ago.
It’s interesting to note, as has been stated on multiple programs over the past few days, that this bill actually doesn’t provide any real reform to the ACA. It doesn’t frankly do much of anything – other than take a mean-spirited swipe at any state that went along with the ACA and give a boon to the Right Wing governors who worked to sabotage the ACA by keeping their states out of the scenario. Oh, and it has that gratuitous kick in the teeth to Planned Parenthood too. But that’s not enough for the hardcore Right Wingers who want the bill and its architects hung from the nearest yardarm. Which is why Rand Paul is making a show of opposing it. Paul, like many Right Wingers, just wants the ACA scrapped – don’t worry about a replacement, just get rid of it and let everyone just take care of themselves like good Libertarians. As I’ve noted before, Paul’s idea was to separate the Repeal and Replace ideas, with the idea being that the ACA would be repealed in short order, but no replacement would be coming within our lifetimes. Because the real goal is just to get rid of the ACA and to punish those voters who dared to think that something could be accomplished here.
I also note that Graham and Cassidy deliberately cut off a bipartisan effort led by Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray to actually work to amend the ACA and finally provide the fixes people have talked about for years. And that would be fine, if the GOP actually wanted to do that. But they don’t. The Graham/Cassidy bill is intended to kill any bipartisan efforts and just ram a repeal through by GOP votes alone. Which would slake the Right Wing hatred of President Obama and give them that victory moment when another of the prior administration’s works get scrapped. And what’s really interesting here is that this bill still keeps a bunch of the ACA’s ideas intact – the main thing that happens is that the insurers no longer need to cover anyone and the Right Wing governors get rewards for their intransigence. And Donald Trump gets to tweet that there is no more ACA.
Kevin Koster commented on No, Tucker Carlson, Manafort Wiretap Did Not Prove Trump Right And You Should Know Better
2017-09-21 02:23:32 -0400
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Carlson is trolling here. He knows very well that his take here doesn’t hold water. He just doesn’t care. He knows that his Fox News audience will eat up his comments and agree with them. Because what he’s saying is what they believe.
The truth is that Donald Trump never won anything by virtue of a “populist uprising” by any stretch of the imagination. The Right Wing would like their base to keep holding onto that idea, but the facts say something very different. In reality, Donald Trump only squeaked through the Electoral College (something he’d been attacking up to the moment that it became his ticket to the White House) because about three million Dem voters didn’t show up at the polls when it counted. And their failure to appear had nothing to do with a “populist uprising”. It was the result of a deliberate Right Wing strategy to make the 2016 campaign so negative, so angry and so dirty that many Dems would feel discouraged from even wanting to vote. And unlike 2012, this strategy worked in 2016. Trump still lost the popular vote by millions but he got the votes where he needed them and was able to eke out a close win – which was enough to put Mike Pence into the driver’s seat and allow the Right Wing to do what they’d wanted for 8 years – namely erase every single thing ever done by “that awful black man in the White House.”
Tucker Carlson’s constant, smug trolling of anyone who had the temerity to vote for Clinton or to stand up for any principles this year frankly speaks for itself. Carlson is trying to emulate Trump in the idea of constantly bullying his enemies and doubling down whenever the slightest hint of doubt crosses his mind. It will be interesting in a few years when the Pence gang is thankfully out of the White House to go back and look at Tucker Carlson’s behavior over these months and years. I don’t think it’s occurred to him that his comments are preserved for all posterity to see him for who he really is.
The truth is that Donald Trump never won anything by virtue of a “populist uprising” by any stretch of the imagination. The Right Wing would like their base to keep holding onto that idea, but the facts say something very different. In reality, Donald Trump only squeaked through the Electoral College (something he’d been attacking up to the moment that it became his ticket to the White House) because about three million Dem voters didn’t show up at the polls when it counted. And their failure to appear had nothing to do with a “populist uprising”. It was the result of a deliberate Right Wing strategy to make the 2016 campaign so negative, so angry and so dirty that many Dems would feel discouraged from even wanting to vote. And unlike 2012, this strategy worked in 2016. Trump still lost the popular vote by millions but he got the votes where he needed them and was able to eke out a close win – which was enough to put Mike Pence into the driver’s seat and allow the Right Wing to do what they’d wanted for 8 years – namely erase every single thing ever done by “that awful black man in the White House.”
Tucker Carlson’s constant, smug trolling of anyone who had the temerity to vote for Clinton or to stand up for any principles this year frankly speaks for itself. Carlson is trying to emulate Trump in the idea of constantly bullying his enemies and doubling down whenever the slightest hint of doubt crosses his mind. It will be interesting in a few years when the Pence gang is thankfully out of the White House to go back and look at Tucker Carlson’s behavior over these months and years. I don’t think it’s occurred to him that his comments are preserved for all posterity to see him for who he really is.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox’s Kennedy: Hillary Clinton is ‘A Tight, Black, Fade Haircut Away From Being’ Kim Jong-un
2017-09-21 02:09:38 -0400
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Lisa Montgomery has no credibility whatsoever, and her desperation here is showing. If you want to see her at her finest, look up the clip of her blown interview with Martin Landau on the subject of Mission: Impossible. I realize that she wants to cultivate an image of herself as a brilliant snarker, but her history is that of a deeply ignorant person who spends a lot of time ridiculing other people who have actually spent their lives trying to accomplish something of substance.
As for the question about who Fox News would hate if they didn’t have the Clintons to kick around? That’s easy. President Barack Obama. They never tire of hating on him. And in 2020, I’m sure they’ll find new reservoirs of hatred for the next Dem nominee for President too.
As for the question about who Fox News would hate if they didn’t have the Clintons to kick around? That’s easy. President Barack Obama. They never tire of hating on him. And in 2020, I’m sure they’ll find new reservoirs of hatred for the next Dem nominee for President too.
Kevin Koster commented on Bill O’Reilly Attacked One Of His Sexual Harassment Accusers On The Today Show
2017-09-20 09:42:41 -0400
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Bill O’Reilly’s comments here are typical of his entire career, and consistent with the way he has always dealt with someone calling him on his personal behavior. He doubles down.
It doesn’t matter that the facts show O’Reilly’s behavior was swinish and unacceptable. It doesn’t matter that he cost his employer millions of dollars in legal costs and settlement payments. It doesn’t matter that it was O’Reilly’s own behavior that put him in this position. To O’Reilly, the only thing that matters is that he thinks he was somehow wronged and he’s trying to get revenge.
It’s understandable that O’Reilly feels wronged. He had a cushy gig on Fox News and was setting himself up to be an Elder Statesman of the Right, someone who could opine as a real authority on Current Affairs and be thought of as a true Man of the World by Fox News viewers and Right Wingers everywhere. Instead, he’s been publicly humiliated and reduced to ranting on his website or on Glenn Beck’s increasingly wacky radio show. I’m sure it rankles him to no longer have his bully pulpit to yell at everyone.
It’s interesting that O’Reilly wants to point fingers at David Brock’s group rather than acknowledge his own behavior. The reality is that Fox News would never have fired him if O’Reilly was this innocent paragon of virtue. They fired him because the damage he had caused them was real, and was increasing. They fired him because they knew the facts about his awful behavior and they could no longer bury them. They fired him because in the wake of Roger Ailes’ humiliation, they knew they couldn’t get away with encouraging this behavior any further.
O’Reilly is delusional if he thinks that his downfall occurred because some left wing conspiracy concocted “a political and financial hit job”. His downfall, like Ailes, like Eric Bolling, happened because of his own conduct. If he wants to know who’s responsible for his situation, he should follow the Right Wing’s trademark advice: Look in the Mirror. (Why is it that the Right Wing never wants to take individual responsibility when it’s for something that actually matters? It’s like Mitch McConnell saying he had “no choice” but to destroy the filibuster rule this year. Of course McConnell had a choice – and he made one to ram his gargoyle through. And then he ran and hid from the consequences of his choice.)
I’d recommend that if O’Reilly actually thinks he has a case for wrongful termination, or for slander or libel here, he should stop making childish threats and file his lawsuit. If he really thinks he has a case, then put his money where his mouth is. Until then, this is just more hot air from the blowhard at the end of the bar.
It doesn’t matter that the facts show O’Reilly’s behavior was swinish and unacceptable. It doesn’t matter that he cost his employer millions of dollars in legal costs and settlement payments. It doesn’t matter that it was O’Reilly’s own behavior that put him in this position. To O’Reilly, the only thing that matters is that he thinks he was somehow wronged and he’s trying to get revenge.
It’s understandable that O’Reilly feels wronged. He had a cushy gig on Fox News and was setting himself up to be an Elder Statesman of the Right, someone who could opine as a real authority on Current Affairs and be thought of as a true Man of the World by Fox News viewers and Right Wingers everywhere. Instead, he’s been publicly humiliated and reduced to ranting on his website or on Glenn Beck’s increasingly wacky radio show. I’m sure it rankles him to no longer have his bully pulpit to yell at everyone.
It’s interesting that O’Reilly wants to point fingers at David Brock’s group rather than acknowledge his own behavior. The reality is that Fox News would never have fired him if O’Reilly was this innocent paragon of virtue. They fired him because the damage he had caused them was real, and was increasing. They fired him because they knew the facts about his awful behavior and they could no longer bury them. They fired him because in the wake of Roger Ailes’ humiliation, they knew they couldn’t get away with encouraging this behavior any further.
O’Reilly is delusional if he thinks that his downfall occurred because some left wing conspiracy concocted “a political and financial hit job”. His downfall, like Ailes, like Eric Bolling, happened because of his own conduct. If he wants to know who’s responsible for his situation, he should follow the Right Wing’s trademark advice: Look in the Mirror. (Why is it that the Right Wing never wants to take individual responsibility when it’s for something that actually matters? It’s like Mitch McConnell saying he had “no choice” but to destroy the filibuster rule this year. Of course McConnell had a choice – and he made one to ram his gargoyle through. And then he ran and hid from the consequences of his choice.)
I’d recommend that if O’Reilly actually thinks he has a case for wrongful termination, or for slander or libel here, he should stop making childish threats and file his lawsuit. If he really thinks he has a case, then put his money where his mouth is. Until then, this is just more hot air from the blowhard at the end of the bar.
Kevin Koster commented on Lou Dobbs Adores Trump’s U.N. Address: ‘The Strongest’ President ‘In My Lifetime’
2017-09-20 09:26:12 -0400
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When the North Korea situation goes over the edge, and it’s only a matter of time now before that happens, I’m sure Dobbs will applaud the carnage. Because these guys really do want that carnage to happen. They’ve been frustrated for a long time that we don’t drop bombs on whole populations and they’ve been looking for a chance to get to do it again.
The reality of yesterday’s sinister behavior by Trump is that we just witnessed him trying to bully the entire world in his usual manner. The reaction of the rest of the world to his threats was pretty easy to see coming – we’re now even more isolated than we were before, something I didn’t think was possible.
The Right Wing loves what Trump did there because he was really speaking to them in any case. I heard AM Radio hosts practically giddy with their joy at hearing Trump act like a five year old at the UN.
Again, this is a stark reminder of what happens when people decide that their vote doesn’t matter and choose to stay home. Had the three million Dem voters who sat on their hands actually taken the time to vote last November, we would not now be facing a situation like this. Elections have consequences and this is a big one.
The only questions I have are about what will happen after the Pence White House attacks North Korea. What are the consequences for us, past whatever weapons get lobbed at us during the immediate event? How does China react to our behavior, when they’ve stated they will have a response? I’m assuming that will mean a major economic impact, but we’ll have to see. And how does the UN react? Do they sanction us? Does the UN move its HQ out of New York, as I’ve been expecting them to? The only thing we can say for certain is that the next presidential administration is going to have a much bigger mess to clean up than President Obama faced in 2009.
And I note that childish threats and tantrums like Trump’s do not project strength in any case. Trump’s behavior is that of an increasingly weak person – one who is prone to make irrational choices as he flails around in his desperation. It appears that the Right Wing is joining him in that behavior.
The reality of yesterday’s sinister behavior by Trump is that we just witnessed him trying to bully the entire world in his usual manner. The reaction of the rest of the world to his threats was pretty easy to see coming – we’re now even more isolated than we were before, something I didn’t think was possible.
The Right Wing loves what Trump did there because he was really speaking to them in any case. I heard AM Radio hosts practically giddy with their joy at hearing Trump act like a five year old at the UN.
Again, this is a stark reminder of what happens when people decide that their vote doesn’t matter and choose to stay home. Had the three million Dem voters who sat on their hands actually taken the time to vote last November, we would not now be facing a situation like this. Elections have consequences and this is a big one.
The only questions I have are about what will happen after the Pence White House attacks North Korea. What are the consequences for us, past whatever weapons get lobbed at us during the immediate event? How does China react to our behavior, when they’ve stated they will have a response? I’m assuming that will mean a major economic impact, but we’ll have to see. And how does the UN react? Do they sanction us? Does the UN move its HQ out of New York, as I’ve been expecting them to? The only thing we can say for certain is that the next presidential administration is going to have a much bigger mess to clean up than President Obama faced in 2009.
And I note that childish threats and tantrums like Trump’s do not project strength in any case. Trump’s behavior is that of an increasingly weak person – one who is prone to make irrational choices as he flails around in his desperation. It appears that the Right Wing is joining him in that behavior.
Kevin Koster commented on Eric Bolling Is Gone For Good From Fox News (UPDATED WITH TRAGIC NEWS)
2017-09-09 21:46:18 -0400
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It is unfortunate for the Bolling family to have this tragedy occur while in the midst of dealing with his inevitable firing from Fox News.
At the same time, Bolling is overdue on the retraction he will need to make on that SLAPP suit against Ali, and he has yet to apologize to his family or to the women he harassed at Fox News. One can only hope he will gain some perspective from these events and do something positive moving forward. I believe he did try to do so with regard to the female UAE pilot, when he made his second on-air apology a couple of years ago. And I believe he is capable of doing so again. If so, perhaps something positive can come out of this.
At the same time, Bolling is overdue on the retraction he will need to make on that SLAPP suit against Ali, and he has yet to apologize to his family or to the women he harassed at Fox News. One can only hope he will gain some perspective from these events and do something positive moving forward. I believe he did try to do so with regard to the female UAE pilot, when he made his second on-air apology a couple of years ago. And I believe he is capable of doing so again. If so, perhaps something positive can come out of this.
Kevin Koster commented on Kris Kobach: Deport Parents Along With DACA Recipients To Keep Families Together
2017-09-06 17:02:04 -0400
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The brazen viciousness of Kobach’s approach here should not be surprising to anyone in this Year of the Bully. Kobach is clearly delighted (as were nearly all the Fox News hosts today) to see the Pence White House finally take a blatant open shot at the DACA group. KFI hosts John and Ken in Los Angeles gleefully hosted Kobach for another round this afternoon, in which they openly laughed at the fun of deporting the DACA participants – including one amazing moment where they discussed the notion of ICE using the DACA information to help round up and deport the participants (“That was mistake number two!” said John Kobylt with a pretty scary snicker…)
We should also note that Kobach is using an identical talking point set to racist ideologues like Mark Krikorian on Tucker Carlson’s show in the evening. The first thing they do is echo the false narrative voiced by Jeff Sessions in the morning. They start with the fiction that President Obama’s executive action was “illegal amnesty”, which it was not. (And they ignore that the GOP had sworn to block every single thing President Obama did, and repeatedly blocked every attempt by the Dems to get something through Congress on this issue, before and after DACA was enacted.)
We should also note that Kobach is using an identical talking point set to racist ideologues like Mark Krikorian on Tucker Carlson’s show in the evening. The first thing they do is echo the false narrative voiced by Jeff Sessions in the morning. They start with the fiction that President Obama’s executive action was “illegal amnesty”, which it was not. (And they ignore that the GOP had sworn to block every single thing President Obama did, and repeatedly blocked every attempt by the Dems to get something through Congress on this issue, before and after DACA was enacted.)
Kevin Koster commented on Hannity Applauds Trump’s Pardon Of Racist, Civil-Rights Violator Joe Arpaio
2017-08-27 13:29:10 -0400
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We should be very careful about drawing larger conclusions from these studies. They’re really polls of a few thousand voters (in the same way that voter polls are not completely reliable at any time). There are a couple of these studies where the researchers have extrapolated their numbers to say that Sanders voters were the ones who made the difference. There are other studies that say that maybe 6 percent of Sanders voters chose to either vote for Trump or chose to stay home, and that number makes more sense to me.
Keep in mind that there was always a contingent of Sanders voters who were not Dems. Remember that he was an Independent for decades. He only took the banner of the Dems when he wanted to run for President (and there were many Dems I spoke to last year who would not support him for that reason alone). I’m not surprised that a small percentage of Sanders voters were people who just liked his populist message and hated Clinton and the Dems. Like the rest of you, I’ve encountered this group online a few times during and since the election, and their anger at everyone is both palpable and infantile.
But I don’t think it was the Sanders crowd that turned this election, no matter how many extrapolations the researchers try to make. I don’t doubt that this crowd was part of the problem, but the problem numbers were much higher. Put it another way: It’s true that thousands of Bernie voters in the swing states didn’t show up when they could have helped stop Trump. But it’s also true that hundreds of thousands of Clinton and Dem voters in those states didn’t show up either, and they’re the ones who made the bigger difference. And it’s true that Trump was able to con a fair amount of disgruntled Dems in the Rust Belt into voting for him, just by showing up there and telling them the basest version of what they wanted to hear. Clinton lost those votes by taking those voters for granted. Trump used those voters to fill in the blank space left by a fair amount of GOP voters who refused to vote for him in those areas – which is why his overall totals are about the same as Romney’s in 2012. (I’d be interested to see a study showing how many moderate GOP voters in those same areas opted to support Clinton over Trump…)
The uncomfortable truth here is that it wasn’t Bernie Sanders voters by themselves who turned this election, even if they want people to believe that. This was not a Ralph Nader situation by any means. Sanders himself exhorted his voters to support Clinton, and all of the studies indicate that the massively overwhelming majority of them did so. It was the 2-3 million Dem voters around the country that just didn’t show up. For some, it was because they bought the Right Wing smears that have circulated about the Clintons for 25 years. For many, it was because they assumed Clinton would win and it was inconceivable that something like Trump could prevail. We could even factor in how the Right Wing always tries to make it harder for non-Whites to vote in rural states, but even that wasn’t the deciding factor.
To me, the biggest factor was that the Right Wing succeeded in their double down on their 2012 strategy. As we’ll recall, in 2012, the Right went super-negative throughout Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. The idea was to make the process so unpleasant, so viscerally awful that many Dem voters would choose to stay home rather than deal with it. If the plan worked, it would reduce turnout to closer to midterm levels and they could get whichever GOP candidate they had across the finish line. Because GOP voters always turn out and Dems are known for being flakier. In 2012, this backfired badly – Obama’s voters showed up again in sufficient numbers to clearly reject the hatred and the Right Wing was humiliated. (Particularly those who smugly predicted their ploy would work and Romney would somehow win a “landslide”.) In 2016, rather than reach out to the rest of the country, the Right Wing went even more negative than they had in 2012 – figuring that Clinton did not have the personal popularity of Barack Obama and that the ploy could work this time. They fed this by constantly repeating a narrative of how Clinton was a terrible and corrupt politician on the one hand, and also an incompetent, weak person who couldn’t even get past Sanders without “cheating” on the other. Between the nonstop barrage of negative press about both candidates, and the constant flinging of mud, the atmosphere last year became toxic. I knew people who had bumper stickers that read “Everybody Sucks 2016”. Sure enough, the actual turnout on the day in the key swing states was lower than it had been for either of Barack Obama’s campaigns. President Obama saw this coming and practically begged those voters to show up, saying that it would destroy his legacy if they allowed this to happen. But that group didn’t respond – and Clinton’s ignorance of the problem doomed her there. Result – more Trump voters than Clinton voters turned out in the key areas by a slim margin.
I’ll continue to say that I hope these voters learned from this situation. If they haven’t, it will be repeated.
Keep in mind that there was always a contingent of Sanders voters who were not Dems. Remember that he was an Independent for decades. He only took the banner of the Dems when he wanted to run for President (and there were many Dems I spoke to last year who would not support him for that reason alone). I’m not surprised that a small percentage of Sanders voters were people who just liked his populist message and hated Clinton and the Dems. Like the rest of you, I’ve encountered this group online a few times during and since the election, and their anger at everyone is both palpable and infantile.
But I don’t think it was the Sanders crowd that turned this election, no matter how many extrapolations the researchers try to make. I don’t doubt that this crowd was part of the problem, but the problem numbers were much higher. Put it another way: It’s true that thousands of Bernie voters in the swing states didn’t show up when they could have helped stop Trump. But it’s also true that hundreds of thousands of Clinton and Dem voters in those states didn’t show up either, and they’re the ones who made the bigger difference. And it’s true that Trump was able to con a fair amount of disgruntled Dems in the Rust Belt into voting for him, just by showing up there and telling them the basest version of what they wanted to hear. Clinton lost those votes by taking those voters for granted. Trump used those voters to fill in the blank space left by a fair amount of GOP voters who refused to vote for him in those areas – which is why his overall totals are about the same as Romney’s in 2012. (I’d be interested to see a study showing how many moderate GOP voters in those same areas opted to support Clinton over Trump…)
The uncomfortable truth here is that it wasn’t Bernie Sanders voters by themselves who turned this election, even if they want people to believe that. This was not a Ralph Nader situation by any means. Sanders himself exhorted his voters to support Clinton, and all of the studies indicate that the massively overwhelming majority of them did so. It was the 2-3 million Dem voters around the country that just didn’t show up. For some, it was because they bought the Right Wing smears that have circulated about the Clintons for 25 years. For many, it was because they assumed Clinton would win and it was inconceivable that something like Trump could prevail. We could even factor in how the Right Wing always tries to make it harder for non-Whites to vote in rural states, but even that wasn’t the deciding factor.
To me, the biggest factor was that the Right Wing succeeded in their double down on their 2012 strategy. As we’ll recall, in 2012, the Right went super-negative throughout Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. The idea was to make the process so unpleasant, so viscerally awful that many Dem voters would choose to stay home rather than deal with it. If the plan worked, it would reduce turnout to closer to midterm levels and they could get whichever GOP candidate they had across the finish line. Because GOP voters always turn out and Dems are known for being flakier. In 2012, this backfired badly – Obama’s voters showed up again in sufficient numbers to clearly reject the hatred and the Right Wing was humiliated. (Particularly those who smugly predicted their ploy would work and Romney would somehow win a “landslide”.) In 2016, rather than reach out to the rest of the country, the Right Wing went even more negative than they had in 2012 – figuring that Clinton did not have the personal popularity of Barack Obama and that the ploy could work this time. They fed this by constantly repeating a narrative of how Clinton was a terrible and corrupt politician on the one hand, and also an incompetent, weak person who couldn’t even get past Sanders without “cheating” on the other. Between the nonstop barrage of negative press about both candidates, and the constant flinging of mud, the atmosphere last year became toxic. I knew people who had bumper stickers that read “Everybody Sucks 2016”. Sure enough, the actual turnout on the day in the key swing states was lower than it had been for either of Barack Obama’s campaigns. President Obama saw this coming and practically begged those voters to show up, saying that it would destroy his legacy if they allowed this to happen. But that group didn’t respond – and Clinton’s ignorance of the problem doomed her there. Result – more Trump voters than Clinton voters turned out in the key areas by a slim margin.
I’ll continue to say that I hope these voters learned from this situation. If they haven’t, it will be repeated.
Kevin Koster commented on Gina Loudon: The Media Focused Too Much On Trump And Race, Not Enough On His Accomplishments
2017-08-22 03:13:41 -0400
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I’m wracking my brain, and I honestly haven’t been able to come up with any accomplishments that the Pence White House can crow about on “Main Street”.
They can say that they were able to take advantage of Mitch McConnell’s shenanigans in the US Senate to steal a Supreme Court seat for a completely inappropriate ideologue, but I don’t know that I’d call that an accomplishment. They can say that they’ve been systematically dismantling sections of the government with which they disagree, such as the EPA and the Depts of Labor, Energy and Education.
They can say that they’ve endangered the entire world by trying to out-bluff North Korea, and that they are known for having questionable intentions toward Russia.
And they can say that they’ve continued the Obama Recovery with roughly similar numbers of improvement in job growth and consumer spending and stock prices.
So basically, not much at all. And it all gets overshadowed by Pence’s spokesman, who has managed to misstep every way possible and who has made the USA the laughingstock of the world.
They can say that they were able to take advantage of Mitch McConnell’s shenanigans in the US Senate to steal a Supreme Court seat for a completely inappropriate ideologue, but I don’t know that I’d call that an accomplishment. They can say that they’ve been systematically dismantling sections of the government with which they disagree, such as the EPA and the Depts of Labor, Energy and Education.
They can say that they’ve endangered the entire world by trying to out-bluff North Korea, and that they are known for having questionable intentions toward Russia.
And they can say that they’ve continued the Obama Recovery with roughly similar numbers of improvement in job growth and consumer spending and stock prices.
So basically, not much at all. And it all gets overshadowed by Pence’s spokesman, who has managed to misstep every way possible and who has made the USA the laughingstock of the world.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox’s Favorite Black Bigot Calls Charlottesville ‘A Left Creation’ And ‘A Joke’
2017-08-20 17:02:32 -0400
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There’s a false argument being promulgated by the Right about how these statues and monuments are just historical and how any opposition to them must be an attempt to erase history. And this whole argument is a false dilemma.
Nobody anywhere is saying that the Civil War did not occur. Nobody is saying that we shouldn’t remember what happened. What people are saying is that Confederate military leaders are not something we are asking people to celebrate and idolize as honorable men. We absolutely should remember what they did – and there many appropriate places to do so. We can discuss them in classrooms, in museums, in gatherings. Ken Burns has a wonderful documentary about the Civil War and nobody is saying that we shouldn’t continue to examine it.
The Right Wing is only upset about taking these monuments down because they were hoping to be able to continue celebrating what the South stood for during the Confederacy, and instead they’ve been caught. It would be nice if the Right Wing would be honest for once about their motives.
Nobody anywhere is saying that the Civil War did not occur. Nobody is saying that we shouldn’t remember what happened. What people are saying is that Confederate military leaders are not something we are asking people to celebrate and idolize as honorable men. We absolutely should remember what they did – and there many appropriate places to do so. We can discuss them in classrooms, in museums, in gatherings. Ken Burns has a wonderful documentary about the Civil War and nobody is saying that we shouldn’t continue to examine it.
The Right Wing is only upset about taking these monuments down because they were hoping to be able to continue celebrating what the South stood for during the Confederacy, and instead they’ve been caught. It would be nice if the Right Wing would be honest for once about their motives.
Kevin Koster commented on Bill Maher: Fox News Is Part Of ‘The Perfect Storm’ That Gave Us Charlottesville
2017-08-20 16:54:39 -0400
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It should not be a surprise to anyone that the Right Wing has been stoking hatred and violence for quite a long time. Charlottesville was not the product of a “perfect storm” – it was the inevitable result of what’s been building up in the country and it sadly won’t be the last of these violent events.
Maher would be more correct to say that Fox News is a major part of the reason why we have a Pence White House rather than a Hillary Clinton presidency. They spent 20 years attacking the Clintons to the point that many people gullibly assumed that there must have been some fire behind all the smoke – so the smear campaign did finally work enough to make sure they could tank her candidacy and put something like Donald Trump into the Oval Office. That’s something that pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly had stoked for decades, in the hope that they could achieve this result. (Which is why O’Reilly and Hannity were so smug about the election result.)
But the violence? That’s something we’ve been seeing build up over the course of the Trump campaign, where more and more of these wingnuts were empowered and emboldened by the Trump people to let their inner hater loose. Repeatedly, they were told it was okay to hate other people, and even to physically attack them. We saw more and more assaults and acts of bullying as the campaign dragged on, with Trump never acknowledging that his people were the ones instigating the problem. Instead, he offered to provide legal defense to anyone caught doing it. And after Trump squeaked into the White House, there were over 1000 documented hate crimes committed by Trump supporters against everyone else, and those continue to this day. The response by Right Wing outlets like Fox News has been to ignore the real crimes wherever possible and to focus on either the occasional hoax call or the occasional hate crime committed AGAINST a Trump supporter. But never to acknowledge the very real wave of hatred and violence that the Pence White House has stoked across the country. It doesn’t help that this presidential team doesn’t even believe in discussing facts if they are inconvenient. We are told instead to focus on “alternative facts”.
What happened in Charlottesville is a natural progression from what happened in April in Berkeley. The Far Right came to a town with the purpose of attacking it and terrorizing the locals into submission. In both cases, they succeeded in generating a violent confrontation with everyone else, and in both cases there were injuries. The difference in Charlottesville is that the Far Right is now more actively engaged in homicidal behavior. And the Fox News has been addressing this via Tucker Carlson and Hannity and Watters to say that the violence is just a response to their imaginary Left Wing crime wave – the false premise that because there are principled people standing up to them, the Right is entitled to try to attack and kill them. The horrifying posts on the Fox News page about this are testament to the fact that the Right indeed intends to continue its violence, and will likely ratchet it up farther the next time. We should be prepared for this – protestors dealing with Right Wing crowds should expect to be attacked any time they encounter them at this point, and that they face potential injury. Until another presidential team gets to the White House in 2021, we sadly face a continuing wave of this behavior.
This is the unhappy fruit of 2016, a year in which millions of voters chose not to vote because they didn’t think it would make a difference, or because they felt uneasy about the Clintons or because they just didn’t think Trump could ever be elected anyway, or maybe all of the above. But they didn’t show up when it counted, and we have seen the result. The next time people have a chance to vote, they really do need to show up. Because Trump’s voters will, no matter what. And because these people did not show up when they should have, we must continue to endure the Year of the Bully. We must work hard to make sure that it doesn’t turn into the Decade of the Bully.
Maher would be more correct to say that Fox News is a major part of the reason why we have a Pence White House rather than a Hillary Clinton presidency. They spent 20 years attacking the Clintons to the point that many people gullibly assumed that there must have been some fire behind all the smoke – so the smear campaign did finally work enough to make sure they could tank her candidacy and put something like Donald Trump into the Oval Office. That’s something that pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly had stoked for decades, in the hope that they could achieve this result. (Which is why O’Reilly and Hannity were so smug about the election result.)
But the violence? That’s something we’ve been seeing build up over the course of the Trump campaign, where more and more of these wingnuts were empowered and emboldened by the Trump people to let their inner hater loose. Repeatedly, they were told it was okay to hate other people, and even to physically attack them. We saw more and more assaults and acts of bullying as the campaign dragged on, with Trump never acknowledging that his people were the ones instigating the problem. Instead, he offered to provide legal defense to anyone caught doing it. And after Trump squeaked into the White House, there were over 1000 documented hate crimes committed by Trump supporters against everyone else, and those continue to this day. The response by Right Wing outlets like Fox News has been to ignore the real crimes wherever possible and to focus on either the occasional hoax call or the occasional hate crime committed AGAINST a Trump supporter. But never to acknowledge the very real wave of hatred and violence that the Pence White House has stoked across the country. It doesn’t help that this presidential team doesn’t even believe in discussing facts if they are inconvenient. We are told instead to focus on “alternative facts”.
What happened in Charlottesville is a natural progression from what happened in April in Berkeley. The Far Right came to a town with the purpose of attacking it and terrorizing the locals into submission. In both cases, they succeeded in generating a violent confrontation with everyone else, and in both cases there were injuries. The difference in Charlottesville is that the Far Right is now more actively engaged in homicidal behavior. And the Fox News has been addressing this via Tucker Carlson and Hannity and Watters to say that the violence is just a response to their imaginary Left Wing crime wave – the false premise that because there are principled people standing up to them, the Right is entitled to try to attack and kill them. The horrifying posts on the Fox News page about this are testament to the fact that the Right indeed intends to continue its violence, and will likely ratchet it up farther the next time. We should be prepared for this – protestors dealing with Right Wing crowds should expect to be attacked any time they encounter them at this point, and that they face potential injury. Until another presidential team gets to the White House in 2021, we sadly face a continuing wave of this behavior.
This is the unhappy fruit of 2016, a year in which millions of voters chose not to vote because they didn’t think it would make a difference, or because they felt uneasy about the Clintons or because they just didn’t think Trump could ever be elected anyway, or maybe all of the above. But they didn’t show up when it counted, and we have seen the result. The next time people have a chance to vote, they really do need to show up. Because Trump’s voters will, no matter what. And because these people did not show up when they should have, we must continue to endure the Year of the Bully. We must work hard to make sure that it doesn’t turn into the Decade of the Bully.
Kevin Koster commented on Pirro And Huckabee Justify Trump's Refusal To Denounce Charlottesville White Supremacists - Because Obama!
2017-08-13 14:18:06 -0400
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The massive hypocrisy of the Right Wing over the viciousness yesterday is quite stunning. The rally in Charlottesville is only the latest event of this kind of thing, which has been happening in a consistent pattern since the infliction of the Trump campaign in the first place. Trump’s rallies and rhetoric have been a starting gun for open bigotry across this country. We saw this in the brutality at his rallies, and we saw it in the massive number of hate crimes committed by Trump supporters in the weeks and months after he squeaked through last November. Trump’s pattern of saying hateful things and tweeting juvenile personal attacks has empowered many neighborhood bullies and loudmouths to go big with their racism and sexism. Why should they cover up their viciousness when Trump can get away with it on a massive scale every morning? After all, as Rush Limbaugh’s ads like to trumpet, “well SOMEBODY had to say it!”
I find it interesting that Fox News spent hours carefully trying to parse the facts of Charlottesville, including the notion that “these guys are just a small fringe group and they don’t speak for anyone but themselves.” Where was this concern for parsing when the Right Wing was attacking UC Berkeley for the protests there over the last six months? Where was this concern for detail when the Right was trying to say that UC Berkeley should lose its federal funding after the same alt-right bigots went on the warpath in Provo Park in April? Suddenly, Fox News is parsing that “well, most of these protestors came in from out of town.” That’s not what they were saying about Berkeley – the Right Wing made it sound like all the violence in Berkeley was somehow home-grown and another reason to hate that community.
Trump’s behavior yesterday was both shameful and telling. He was specifically asked to address the fact that White Nationalists generated this situation and clearly had committed vicious acts as part of their activities. Trump’s only statement was to assign some of the blame to the victims and give a false equivalence where “everybody was wrong”. Which is nonsensical. If the White Nationalists had the right to speech, then so did the rest of the people there. If anything, it was necessary to rebut the bigotry the Right was inflicting upon Charlottesville. When Trump was asked specific follow-ups, he made a face and then made a show of ignoring the question and walked out. His primary Tweet afterwards was to sympathize with the police officers who were killed in the helicopter crash – not with the young woman who was murdered.
As I said, it’s telling that Trump could not condemn these people – they’re a big part of his base. But we should note that Fox News tried to make hay out of David Duke not liking even the comment that Trump did make. Which is nearly irrelevant, since many, many commenters on the Fox News website yesterday were gleefully using every bigoted epithet they could to celebrate the carnage – including calling the counter-protestors “mud people”.
In simple terms, the Right Wing just confirmed that they have no moral ground on which to stand when it comes to protests and political discourse. If they’re going to throw false equivalences around prevaricate about a vicious murder, they don’t get to take a pious tone when Ann Coulter throws a tantrum over her speaking schedule.
I find it interesting that Fox News spent hours carefully trying to parse the facts of Charlottesville, including the notion that “these guys are just a small fringe group and they don’t speak for anyone but themselves.” Where was this concern for parsing when the Right Wing was attacking UC Berkeley for the protests there over the last six months? Where was this concern for detail when the Right was trying to say that UC Berkeley should lose its federal funding after the same alt-right bigots went on the warpath in Provo Park in April? Suddenly, Fox News is parsing that “well, most of these protestors came in from out of town.” That’s not what they were saying about Berkeley – the Right Wing made it sound like all the violence in Berkeley was somehow home-grown and another reason to hate that community.
Trump’s behavior yesterday was both shameful and telling. He was specifically asked to address the fact that White Nationalists generated this situation and clearly had committed vicious acts as part of their activities. Trump’s only statement was to assign some of the blame to the victims and give a false equivalence where “everybody was wrong”. Which is nonsensical. If the White Nationalists had the right to speech, then so did the rest of the people there. If anything, it was necessary to rebut the bigotry the Right was inflicting upon Charlottesville. When Trump was asked specific follow-ups, he made a face and then made a show of ignoring the question and walked out. His primary Tweet afterwards was to sympathize with the police officers who were killed in the helicopter crash – not with the young woman who was murdered.
As I said, it’s telling that Trump could not condemn these people – they’re a big part of his base. But we should note that Fox News tried to make hay out of David Duke not liking even the comment that Trump did make. Which is nearly irrelevant, since many, many commenters on the Fox News website yesterday were gleefully using every bigoted epithet they could to celebrate the carnage – including calling the counter-protestors “mud people”.
In simple terms, the Right Wing just confirmed that they have no moral ground on which to stand when it comes to protests and political discourse. If they’re going to throw false equivalences around prevaricate about a vicious murder, they don’t get to take a pious tone when Ann Coulter throws a tantrum over her speaking schedule.
Kevin Koster commented on Fox’s Lisa Boothe Won’t Mind If Trump’s Rhetoric Leads To N. Korea Attacking Guam – Because Obama!
2017-08-11 11:27:06 -0400
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It’s fairly clear that Fox News and the rest of the Right are eager for a massive military confrontation with North Korea. It will get the continuing investigation of the Trump campaign off the front page and it will allow the Pence White House to show how tough it is. And they think a war will force the country to somehow unify behind their figurehead.
Of course, this confrontation will result in a horrifying amount of death and destruction, but it does not appear that the Right Wing cares much about that – Hannity’s smug faux-concern from last night notwithstanding. The reality is that the Right thinks Trump can somehow get a “win” here if he can devastate North Korea quickly, and even if North Korea bombs the heck out of the region, that’s far away from us anyway, right?
So how does this play out, given that the Pence White House has no idea how to handle an international conflict and Donald Trump only knows how to beat his chest? Most likely, as Dana Perino has stated, the North Koreans will carry out their promise to attack Guam, and we’ll hear about launches on Tuesday morning. Trump will then demand an overwhelming response so that he won’t appear to be wimpy. The North Koreans, seeing our launches, will then retaliate with everything they have, since they’ll have nothing to lose. Which spells disaster for multiple countries in the area, and may even include launches to distant targets. All of this will happen on a single day, and while the bodies are being counted, Trump will undoubtedly Tweet about his big victory.
I would be happy to learn of another alternative, but we simply don’t have anything else in the offing. This group does not understand diplomacy or channels – they only understand how to look butch for their base.
Elections have consequences, and this is a very serious one. I again hope that the millions of Dems who refused to vote last November are paying attention. Had they actually shown up, this scenario would not now be unfolding.
Of course, this confrontation will result in a horrifying amount of death and destruction, but it does not appear that the Right Wing cares much about that – Hannity’s smug faux-concern from last night notwithstanding. The reality is that the Right thinks Trump can somehow get a “win” here if he can devastate North Korea quickly, and even if North Korea bombs the heck out of the region, that’s far away from us anyway, right?
So how does this play out, given that the Pence White House has no idea how to handle an international conflict and Donald Trump only knows how to beat his chest? Most likely, as Dana Perino has stated, the North Koreans will carry out their promise to attack Guam, and we’ll hear about launches on Tuesday morning. Trump will then demand an overwhelming response so that he won’t appear to be wimpy. The North Koreans, seeing our launches, will then retaliate with everything they have, since they’ll have nothing to lose. Which spells disaster for multiple countries in the area, and may even include launches to distant targets. All of this will happen on a single day, and while the bodies are being counted, Trump will undoubtedly Tweet about his big victory.
I would be happy to learn of another alternative, but we simply don’t have anything else in the offing. This group does not understand diplomacy or channels – they only understand how to look butch for their base.
Elections have consequences, and this is a very serious one. I again hope that the millions of Dems who refused to vote last November are paying attention. Had they actually shown up, this scenario would not now be unfolding.
Kevin Koster commented on Eric Bolling And The Dick Pics Get The Stephen Colbert Treatment
2017-08-12 04:13:58 -0400
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As expected, Yashar Ali has prepared an anti-SLAPP countersuit and his attorneys have issued a stern letter to Bolling’s lawyer to demand they immediately withdraw. If Bolling doesn’t come to his senses very quickly, he’s looking at a situation that will ruin him – both in the courtroom and in the pocketbook. If he’s as smart as he wants people to think he is, he’ll get out of this mess now and publicly apologize to Ali. If he insists on pushing his line, Bolling is looking at losing millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to deny truth and facts.