First of all, Jan Brewer has no moral ground upon which to stand when making her claims. She was responsible for multiple vicious statements about President Obama and infamously attempted to lecture him while being under appropriate criticism herself for what was going on in her state.

More importantly, we need to be realistic about what the impact of Betsy DeVos will be for the Dept of Education and for schools in this country. In the simplest terms, DeVos is going to be the Anne Gorsuch of the Dept of Education. She will oversee a slashing of its funding and size, most likely in the direction of eliminating the department altogether by 2020. As many services and areas that can be thrown back to the individual states will be done, leaving only a general administration that tilts its emphasis to private schools, charter schools and voucher programs to allow wealthier people to get a reimbursement for their tuitions.

DeVos’ real emphasis is an attack on public education and particularly on the teachers’ unions. Her intent is to marginalize and bankrupt those unions and make it look as though charter schools or home schooling is somehow the equivalent of a proper K-12 educational curriculum. By pushing her notions of “school choice”, what she’s really doing is pulling the money from the public school system, which will in turn reinforce her hypothesis that the public schools are just an underperforming drain on our communities.

Given the way these things tend to play out, I foresee a major graft scandal coming up within the next year or two, as it becomes clear that various private and charter school systems are getting preferenced and that certain individuals are profiting at everyone else’s expense. If the Senate changes hands in 2018, I wouldn’t be surprised to see significant discussions of this. Not sure if we will see the extent of what happened at the EPA under Gorsuch in the early 80s, where the department head was driven from office in disgrace and her deputy went to jail – particularly given that the House is unlikely to shift to the Dems for another decade. But as the truth comes out about how craven these people are (and as happened repeatedly under the W/Cheney group), the public’s unhappiness with the Pence White House will only accelerate.

I note that there are several other departments also being impacted by unfortunate Pence appointments, including the EPA, Energy, Labor, Justice etc. Some of this is synergistic. For example, Labor will no longer be looking out for unions’ rights – instead, they’ll be siding with the employers to find ways to minimize the impact of the workers. Teachers’ unions and public employees will essentially be put in a corner. Justice for its part will not be looking at civil rights issues or anything that would benefit lower income students and families. And at least until November 2018, there will be no area of recourse for the public other than protesting outside the Congress and the White House. We can look forward to near-constant events of that throughout the next two years.

I’m also foreseeing massive cuts, if not wholesale elimination of other departments like Energy and the EPA. These have long been Far Right goals and there’s no reason to believe they won’t pursue them now that they have an opportunity.

This is the same person who also insists that three million votes cast in the 2016 election were fraudulent, who insists that any truthful reporting of his vicious behavior is “fake news”, who insists that his sparsely viewed inauguration was somehow a record-breaker, who refuses to believe poll after national poll that show him to be increasingly unpopular.

So it makes sense that he believes President Obama is somehow a fan of his.

David, to be brutally honest, I don’t believe that the Pence White House has enough self-awareness to do anything like calling a former Democrat President in to help them. As far as they’re concerned, they’re doing great and they don’t want to hear anything that says they aren’t. And they think that anything the prior President did needs to be erased, just as they’ve been doing for their entire time since they moved into the White House.

A group of people who would prioritize erasing the ACA is not a group that particularly cares to hear what Barack Obama or any Democrat has to say.

I take Trump’s comments about this with a large grain of salt. It sounds good for him to talk nicely about the prior President, but his actions indicate otherwise.

And the Year of the Bully rolls right along, doesn’t it?

Fun for Meghan McCain to recycle a childish insult from Rush Limbaugh’s show and then dignify it as okay because hey, Trump liked it too. (And we should remember that Donald Trump clearly follows the lead both of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News hosts like O’Reilly and Hannity)

If anything, McCain is unintentionally confirming what saner people in this country are quickly realizing – that there’s a bigger problem than Donald Trump’s childish public behavior and his attempts to bully anyone who doesn’t agree with him. The problem is that Trump’s rabid supporters, mostly angry white men but also some angry white women, are now thinking that they are free to let their inner bully fly. (Not to mention their inner bigot, inner racist and inner hater in general) Since they see Trump get away with this behavior, they figure now they can say the things they’ve always wanted to say and there will be no consequences. It’s the same mentality that led Rush Limbaugh to have one of his promo lines be “Well, SOMEBODY had to say it!” It’s the same mentality we discussed here a year ago, where Trump supporters actually said in public that they felt they couldn’t say what they really felt because they were afraid someone would call them a racist. Clearly, they’re not afraid of that anymore – and that’s going to have major ramifications for the rest of us.

We need to remember that for all the silliness like the anarchists disrupting a Berkeley talk by a vicious Breitbart hate-speech monger, there have been thousands of acts of hate documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, perpetrated by angry Trump supporters against everyone else. Acts ranging from swastikas painted on synagogues or on people’s houses, other offensive graffiti being spray painted, cars being smashed and vandalized, to the more chilling spectacle of children in schools following the Tweeter-in-Chief’s example by attacking non-white children. The Right holds a serious responsibility for this conduct, and they do not get to claim any moral high ground when they happily indulge in it themselves, as McCain just did.

I also note that Mitch McConnell’s stunt in trying to shut Elizabeth Warren up yesterday is an interesting one, aside from the long-term backfire effect. First, everyone knew that Sessions and DeVos would be confirmed, as will all of the Pence White House’s cabinet picks, unless one of the picks chooses to step away, as the one lesser guy did this week. The GOP does not need a single Dem vote for this and they’re ramming these idiots through. So we can look forward to a gutted Education Dept along with a gutted Energy Dept and EPA – assuming these Depts even exist by 2020. (I’d keep an eye open for which one is completely dismantled first.) Second, Warren’s intention of raising awareness of the serious inappropriateness of these people to be put in charge of these departments has now been given an even louder platform than she thought she had before. But thirdly, it’s interesting to see McConnell try to shut things down with this selective enforcement of an obscure Senate rule about disparagement. I’m betting there’s one in there that applies to all the really vicious statements made by angry Right Wing GOP members of both houses about President Obama and his cabinet at every possible opportunity from 2009 through to January 19, 2016. But we didn’t hear McConnell jumping up and down about any of those, did we? Only when he thought he could score some kind of cheap point – and as he’s noted, it blew up in his face. This from the same man who said his proudest moment in the US Senate was when he churlishly refused to do his job for the past year and smugly announced that intention to the sitting President to his face.

The interview was a fawning embarrassment. O’Reilly was essentially serving up polite softballs for Trump to expound upon his supposed greatness.

Note that Trump is continuing to insist on this phantom “massive voter fraud” idea, and is unable to reconcile his paranoia about it with the actual facts. At one point he actually said that he’d already proved his case, when in fact he has only shown he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Trump also made clear he intends to ditch the Iran nuclear deal and made clear that he did in fact threaten the Mexican President when he spoke with him a week ago. And he’s holding onto this idea that somehow Mexico will be paying for his offensive wall idea – something that will never happen.

If anything was demonstrated past O’Reilly’s sudden respect for the presidency (now that it’s not a Democrat), it was Trump’s complete blindness to reality.

Not a surprise here. Makes perfect sense that Fox News would preference the handful of Trump supporters and try to diminish the fact that we are now in our third straight weekend of nationwide protests.

If anything, the fervency of the continuing protests is going to propel the Pence White House into acting as quickly as it can to push its goals forward – they’re aware that they may only have until mid-2018 before much of Congress will need to defend their seats against what is looking like a grassroots uprising against them.

I note that legal analysts have pointed out that Trump’s deportation plans go far, far beyond just the undocumented immigrants in the criminal courts and jails today. The EO is broadly worded and likely covers up to 8 million people – the only ones they don’t intend to deport are the people who have expired visas. The EO also allows the Sessions Justice Dept to skip the process of actually putting undocumented immigrants through a court hearing, which means the deportation schedule is going to move a LOT faster than people were thinking it would. This is likely the reason that the DACA program hasn’t been addressed in public yet – they’re waiting for the first wave of raids and deportations to start.

On the ACA front, Pence is waiting for Tom Price to be confirmed and seated at HHS before having the reconciliation repeal bill signed by the Tweeter-in-Chief. The idea is likely to have Price announce his wonderful new health care idea simultaneously with the scrapping of 99% of the ACA, so that the Right can make a convincing lie about having replaced the ACA. (Price’s wonderful idea involves health savings accounts and tax adjustments, including dropping the tax credit given to employers for covering their employees – this will be presented as a way to get government out of the health care business and restoring “freedom” to the system – when in fact the purpose is to kill the ACA and dump the costs onto what’s left of the middle class. When the system collapses and people can’t afford the care, they’ll get the same answer that is always heard from libertarians: IGMFU)

On the Supreme Court front, McConnell is waiting for the Dems to filibuster Gorsuch so he can justify scrapping the filibuster. I’m anticipating that happening within the next two months, but it could come more quickly if McConnell rushes the Gorsuch hearings forward. If I were a Dem at those hearings, I would spend as much time as possible asking Gorsuch about Merrick Garland and the conduct of the GOP Senators in not conducting any hearings for him last year. Gorsuch will still get onto the Court, and the Dems can’t do anything about it, but it would at least provide some entertainment in the middle of the gloom.

Joseph, you’re correct about the House. There is no chance to do anything there until after the 2020 Census, which the Dems will really need to get involved in NOW. I’d love to think that public outrage in those districts could swing a bunch of seats, but it’s simply too many seats in too many places.

The Senate is another story. My instincts say that the palpable anger at the GOP and Trump across the country for their bullying and viciousness is going to result in a very different midterm than smirkers like Jesse Watters are hoping to see. The Senate will be a tough lift, but I do think it’s possible that you could see the Dems retain their seats and potentially pick up 3 more. That’s all they need to stop the nonsense with the various appointments, policies and SC nominations, particularly after McConnell gets rid of the filibuster next month.

The thesis here is absolutely correct.

CNN is trying to bring on some Right Wing voices in the hope that they can appeal to the Trump voters and maybe keep some access to the White House. Essentially, they’re pivoting to the Right since we have an extreme Far Right ideologue group now occupying the White House and controlling the entire debate in Washington DC.

Now, for an outlet that has never taken that kind of approach, I continue to recommend Democracy Now and Amy Goodman. But I do have to acknowledge that CNN has been doing a mostly solid job of calling the Pence White House out on its extremism, its lying and its general viciousness. From what I can see, this is a much more grounded approach than we saw 16 years ago with the W Bush selection and presidency.

I’m frankly sick and tired of all these attempted bullying lectures from Fox News and the usual bullying tweets that follow from the Pence White House’s spokesman.

I really wish the protesters in Berkeley had simply shunned this jerk peacefully and leafletted his event – I would even have encouraged them to have appeared at the event and asked him challenging questions about his predilection for hate speech and viciousness. Having a riot over it is a criminal act that just fuels the Fox News nonsense machine. Most Berkeley students weren’t supporting having a riot, and while most sane people think this guy is a jerk, they’re not going to dignify his behavior with further violence.

That said, if the Tweeter-in-Chief wants to cut off federal funds to UC Berkeley, then just do it and stop talking about it. If the GOP wants to cut off funds to Los Angeles or California, then just do it and stop all this posturing. I’m not impressed by bullying tactics. If they mean what they say, then stand up and follow up. If they don’t mean it, then admit that they don’t even know what they’re talking about. But enough of the huffing and puffing.

As anticipated, the Pence White House has indeed gone with a young, extreme Hard Right judge in the exact mold of Scalia. And as anticipated, Fox News has been cheerleading the pick. (It appears from their coverage that they knew Gorsuch would be the nominee at least a week early, as they suddenly began pushing stories about him for a full week before the Tweeter-in-Chief confirmed he was the choice.) Hardiman was never under very serious consideration, at least this time. The Pence White House has admitted that they didn’t even prepare briefing materials on Hardiman – that was just to create the illusion of a contest when Trump had already made up his mind to go extreme weeks earlier.

I find it hilarious that Bill O’Reilly felt it necessary to talk up what he thought the virtues were of Gorsuch, and to note that Gorsuch was approved to the bench by bipartisan acclamation, and to desperately insist that Dems must somehow be in a tough place if they don’t vote for him. Not one mention of how the GOP had no problem whatsoever ignoring and obstructing Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for nearly a year after they had similarly supported him.

I frankly wonder how the GOP would react if the Dems were to treat Pence’s upcoming replacement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018 by saying “this is a midterm election year and we’d like the American People to decide this matter”.

Sadly, if history teaches us anything, it’s that the Dems will most likely cave on this matter and allow Gorsuch to take the seat that was stolen from Merrick Garland. If they don’t cave, the Right Wing is practically salivating about abolishing the filibuster and simply ruling by fiat. But the Dems get to choose. I find it interesting that CNN is trying to play this situation as the Dems trying to decide if they want to risk the rule being changed regarding further appointments, when it is clear that the Right will abolish the filibuster anyway. And yes, McConnell is itching to do it. He hates the Dems he has to deal with and would be happier if he didn’t even need to look at them anymore. His public posture is just intended to somehow lend him some ethical or moral high ground that he’s forgotten he forfeited over the past several years. He wants to make it look like he’s reluctant to take this step, when his behavior and comments through the Obama presidency betray his actual intent. A man who would prioritize obstruction, who would refuse to even have a hearing for Merrick Garland, and who would smugly gloat about his proudest moment in the US Senate being when he told Obama “You will not be filling this Supreme Court seat” is not a man who has any integrity or moral standing. At the drop of a hat, he’s ready to “go nuclear”, and he knows that the Dems know it.

My thinking is that the Dems should filibuster on principle and force the GOP’s hand – let them go ahead and get rid of the filibuster, and thus make it clear to the country who and what they are. At the least, this would show some spine from the Dems and lay the groundwork for their base to be more seriously involved in the 2018 midterms.

And make no mistake, Gorsuch is an extreme, vicious choice. This is a middle-aged man who has spent his life on the Far, Hard Right – this is not a man who will be going to the Supreme Court and suddenly having an epiphany about justice. This is a man who openly has enjoyed taking Far Right partisan positions, and who regularly has embraced those in his rulings. And at the age of 49, we can expect, he will do exactly what Scalia did, if not worse – he will be a vote against progress and for a reversion to a USA that has not existed since before Brown v Board of Education. And he’s only the first of what will likely be at least three young Scalias to be inflicted upon the Supreme Court. We can now count on Kennedy and Thomas to step down during Trump’s first term – the only question is whether the midterms allow the Dems to regain a small majority in the Senate to thus block him from further extremists. I fully expect the other two Right Wing justices to each announce their retirement within the next year. Those seats are lost, but the bigger problem will be if either Ginsberg or Breyer needs to step down for any reason. Should that happen, the Supreme Court will wildly swing to the Right, and pretty much every sane ruling we’ve seen since 1955 is in imminent danger of being overturned.

Again, I really hope that the people who sat out the 2016 election are paying attention. Elections have consequences and these are some pretty nasty ones.

Conway dropped the mask a few times in this discussion. It was interesting to behold. The sheer level of vicious anger she’s sitting on is unsettling. And then she’d go back into the false smile and resort to a long recitation of irrelevant statistics that did not answer the simple questions she was being asked.

I find it interesting that her response to multiple judges finding serious legal problems with this weekend’s door slam at the airports was to dismiss the first judge for being an Obama appointee. As though that would dismiss the whole problem.

I find it interesting that her response to the issue of Trump offending the President of Mexico enough to cancel his scheduled visit was to immediately interject “We cancelled it first.” She must have missed the part where the Mexican President openly discussed cancelling the meeting, followed by Trump tweeting out a tantrum of suggesting he go ahead and cancel it. After which, the meeting was toast. We’re looking at a serious situation here – either a trade war with Mexico or worse. If the Pence White House doesn’t figure this out quickly, we could easily be looking at a cutoff in relations until competent people get back in the White House in 2020. And Conway’s focus is on whether Trump tweeted about cancelling first? Seriously?

I find it interesting that Conway is complaining that the press didn’t cover all of the EOs Pence cooked up for Trump to sign this week, when we had a non-stop barrage of coverage of exactly that. CNN has a running counter of everything they’ve done. Maybe Conway could spend five minutes looking at the CNN website before making these embarrassingly false claims.

And I’m not even going to get into the pandering Conway did to the anti-choice crowd, or the truly scary way she referred to all abortions as murder of innocent babies.

Make no mistake – these are cruel and vicious people and Conway’s attempts to justify their viciousness only makes a sour situation go rancid.

Autocorrect deleted that is said that Alito replaced the more moderate O’Connor. The next sentence should have started “The judges they are evaluating now…”

I really don’t understand why anyone would go on a show hosted by someone like Tucker Carlson and expect anything other than his usual snideness, bullying and invective.

The only appropriate way to deal with such an invitation is to prepare for Carlson to try the early cheap shot, and have something ready. For example, if he’s going to talk about injecting a moral tone, have a few of his own columns and op-eds ready that you can read back to him, with the date and subject ready to be discussed. Because Carlson has always been known for his false moralizing.

Or you could bring up where Carlson published remarks by Mike Tyson about Sarah Palin and got schooled on that little problem by Greta van Susteren on the air. Where Carlson defended how he was quoting Tyson on the air and discussing a Vice Presidential candidate (whether she was ever that serious of a person is a different issue).

Or if he wants to discuss why someone was trying to engage in affirmative action, which is not racism but actually an attempt to provide opportunities for everyone and not just Caucasians, you could raise Carlson’s constant, snide promotion of bigotry.

There is no reason to allow Carlson to go on the offensive in any of these situations – the only way to handle him is to answer his snide opening with your own question and put him back on his heels. And when he tries to throw another cheap shot, send him another apropos question and put him back on his heels again. Even money says Carlson will frantically end the interview at that point, since he has no chance of pulling an Ingraham and getting his guest to essentially prove his preset hypothesis.

I tend to doubt we’ll see that much of Pence, other than at occasional events like this one. He’s too busy running the domestic and foreign policy in his White House while Trump cavorts in public. This was always the plan.

And it’s a no-brainer that this event doesn’t merit wide coverage. It’s one of many single-issue marches that happen in DC every month, and it’s one that is particularly focused on an angry, hateful group. There are also marches about police violence, about violence against women, about the environment, etc. The only time these marches get attention is when you see massive crowds as we did on the 21st. A march in the tens of thousands is fine for the organizers of that march – if in fact they even got to that number. A march in the hundreds of thousands or higher is a different matter – and when you multiply that by all the cities in which marches were held a week ago, it becomes clear why that story was appropriate to cover.

If Fox News wishes to make an issue about the media not covering this anti-choice event, then they must be agreeing to cover all the other marches and rallies that regularly happen in DC. Something tells me that they don’t wish to cover those – they only want everyone to cover the little rally that they supported. Once again, hypocrisy and nonsense. And bullying to try to cover it over.

The Right took repeated shots at Chelsea Clinton back in the 90s, including one extremely vicious taunt by Rush Limbaugh where he referred to her as “the White House dog”. The Right has also repeatedly made comments about the Obama daughters, although I must acknowledge that Fox News has also decried that when it’s come up. A good listing of the various shots at the daughters can be found here:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-girls-targeted-criticism-again-conservatives

I recall one or two nasty comments being made about the Bush daughters during the 2000s, but nothing at the level of viciousness we saw both in the 90s and over the past 8 years. Bemused is correct that the Bush twins repeatedly got themselves in the news for various partying problems, but the press really went out of their way not to cover it.

Bob, you’re absolutely right.

NBC only hired them to up their Right Wing credibility so that they could get people like Paul Ryan on the air. The amount of viewers that Kelly or Van Susteren can pull in is actually not very high in network news terms. Van Susteren may actually do okay at MSNBC if she can draw some of the Fox News folks over there. But the numbers at NBC itself are much higher than anything a cable news outlet like Fox can pull.

Something tells me Van Susteren is very comfortable in her new post, in that she can pontificate from the Right without having to worry about being in a building where Roger Ailes is harassing at will. If they’ve offered her a decent salary package, she’ll happily stay at MSNBC as their resident Right Winger. Kelly on the other hand is more ambitious. Note that she didn’t settle for the smaller cable news outlet – she wanted to go to the big network desk. But again, she’s only useful to them as their house Right Winger. She’s not a strong enough interviewer to be able to take the mantle of a Barbara Walters, and she’s too biased a person to hand the evening news desk. I have a feeling she’ll try to make a big move at NBC within the first year or two she’s there and wind up being rebuffed.

The anti-immigrant bigotry has been going on for quite a long time. Rush Limbaugh’s been screaming it on the air all the way back to when he first came to national attention 30 years ago. AM radio in California, particularly the John & Ken show in Los Angeles, has specialized in characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central/South America in the most racist manner possible. These guys were positively ecstatic yesterday. So much so that you could hear the repeated fist pumps in the air while they were celebrating the racism and the hatred.

If it were up to the spokespeople for the Right, we’d see buses loading up thousands of undocumented immigrants every day and throwing them over the border into Mexico. John & Ken have particularly distinguished themselves recently by saying that they would have no issue with ALL undocumented immigrants being deported, including the DACA kids. When someone raised the issue that you could be identified as being involved in the criminal justice system (the first level of deportations to be applied quickly this year) just by getting pulled over for a broken taillight, these guys responded by saying “Well, you’re already here illegally, so you know that if you break a law, you’re not going to be able to stay here, right?”

Last night, Fox News hosted an angry mother of a child who’d been killed at school by an undocumented immigrant, and she predictably demanded that ALL undocumented people be thrown out of the country as quickly as possible, including anyone from the DACA program.

And we had the chilling spectacle in early December of Rick Santorum telling a young woman in the DACA program that she should leave the USA and bring the skills and knowledge she was lucky to receive while illegally here to the rest of the world and then perhaps return as a legal immigrant. When she reminded him that this would not be permitted for at least 10 years, he acknowledged that maybe that penalty could be reduced a little. (Who knows – 9 1/2 years?)

So it’s clear that these people do intend to push the Pence White House into deporting as much of this population as they can, and they’re not going to make any bones about it. I don’t believe they’ll actually try to deport the DACA group, but I do think they will actively encourage them to leave on their own before such proceedings start. On the other hand, the viciousness we are already seeing could lead one to think that they’ll include the DACA group with everyone else once they pick off the low hanging fruit already in jail or on the books for the actual criminal charges.

Regarding the matters of building on private property, something tells me that the Pence White House will not be anywhere near as dainty as the Obama people or even the W. Bush people were. They’ll simply take the land and ask questions later. As for treaties with Mexico or any other country, I strongly doubt the Pence White House has any regard for them – particularly not for Mexico. They’ll simply break the treaty and dare Mexico to do something about it. The prevailing Right Wing attitude toward Mexico at the moment is one of saying that we have the power and they don’t, so let’s rub their nose in it. (It’s frankly the same attitude they have toward sanctuary cities, and it’s the reason they’re hoping they can get these cities to cave.) On this front, I believe the Right and the Pence White House may be in for a major shock.

Based on the outrageous behavior over the past week, I now think it possible that we could see an actual break in relations with multiple foreign countries, including Mexico and a fair amount of Central and South America. Yes, they tend to depend on aid from us, but if they are going to be treated in this manner, or if the aid is going to be considered contingent on them bowing down to Pence’s Tweeter-in-Chief, I could easily see several of these nations choosing to tell us where to go until these people are safely out of office. And I wouldn’t blame them.

There is a really ugly underside to the entire discussion about the DAPL situation. I haven’t heard Fox News mention the new North Dakota laws being rammed through their state legislature. The ones that will essentially make the protesters’ actions illegal by definition. And beyond that, there’s a really special Right Wing twist that’s been added, and it’s perfectly appropriate for the Year of the Bully.

The main new state law the Right is piling into North Dakota is one that says that if a driver runs over one of the protesters “inadvertently”, then it’s the protester’s fault.

I believe that this situation could become violent in a hurry – and not by the protesters. North Dakota is now looking to be a place where we really see principled people being physically assaulted on a level we have not encountered since the 1960s. I don’t think it’s alarmist to be concerned about what the Right intends to do here. It’s clear to me that they intend to instigate a confrontation and then use that as an excuse to brutally assault anyone that disagrees with them.

Let’s be very clear-eyed about this.

The Right Wing and Fox News have no moral ground whatsoever to make these kinds of statements, and shame on them for attempting to do so. How dare they accuse the majority of this country of immaturity when in fact it’s the Right who has spent the past 8 years in a constant and vicious temper tantrum?

The Right Wing never accepted or acknowledged Barack Obama as a legitimate president. They worked to undermine him even before he was sworn into office into 2009. They deliberately undercut him at every opportunity, including their refusal to do their jobs whenever possible and even sending treasonous letters overseas to try to disrupt treaties he was negotiating with foreign leaders.

And now that the Right has an acting president in Mike Pence who will do their harshest bidding, we are meant to lay down and just enjoy the damage these people intend to do to the country? And if anyone raises an objection, it’s because they’re being childish?

Self-awareness is clearly not a keystone of anyone on the Right, is it?

When the Right Wing can acknowledge its own childishness and churlishness, then perhaps it can ask others to help in a healing process. But not when the tone being set by Donald Trump and Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway is that of screaming at everyone to get in line or else.

Of course. It’s the Year of the Bully. What better way to celebrate inauguration and democracy than to punch someone in the face? And these people are shocked, shocked that principled members of Congress and the overwhelming majority of the country chose not to attend the coronation of the Tweeter-in-Chief?

I realize that this is the Year of the Bully, and Bill O’Reilly is feeling especially nasty these days, but this whole segment was a vicious, vicious mean-spirited lie. O’Reilly is repeating basic Right Wing spin about the huge marches because it’s the Fox News Line of the Day and because he can’t let the truth about all those people in the street be the story.

The reality of those marches is that when people heard about them, they chose to go to them. I know over a hundred people who went to marches in multiple cities as a specific way to show their dissatisfaction with the Pence White House, their concern about its announced intentions, their disgust for the bigotry of the Tweeter in Chief, and their refusal to just take the bullying and the attacks now being thrown at them on a daily basis.

O’Reilly can whine all he wants about this. It will not change the facts. The facts are that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by a wide margin, that he only squeaked by to game the election, that he holds the lowest approval rating in our memory for a new president, and that his dreadful inauguration was marked by low attendance and lower ratings than he had fervently hoped to see. If O’Reilly had the slightest interest in actual facts and not in the spin he refuses to admit he engages in, he would note that the online viewing numbers being touted by Spicer and Conway are not showing what Trump wishes they did.

For the record, Spicer attempted to play up hits on online streams of the inauguration at various websites including CNN and Fox News, as a way of somehow giving a huge boost to Trump’s television ratings, which fell below the numbers marked by Obama and other presidents, and were over 10 million shorter than those marked by Reagan in 1981. But Spicer and Conway are dissembling about what the online numbers actually mean. Registered hits or page views on a website are not the same thing at all as Nielsen Ratings. Nielsen Ratings measure what channel was being viewed on a television set at any given time, usually broken out in 15 minute chunks. So, if the sample family’s channel was tuned to the local ABC affiliate for the whole time of the inauguration, ABC gets a higher rating, and it’s noted that the inauguration was being watched.

Unique page views or stream views are a different matter. Because it’s metered not from the user, but from the website. This means that the same person could leave the page and return to it, or could close their browser and re-open it to the specific page multiple times in an hour or even in a minute. I frequently do this in reading articles even at Newshounds. So quoting a number of 16 million hits at the CNN stream of the inauguration and equating that to the 31 million TV viewers estimated by Nielsen is a nonsensical comparison. It’s comparing apples to breadsticks. Those 16 million hits may only represent a quarter of a million people, or only tens of thousands of people. And many are likely to have only looked at a couple of minutes of the stream before turning it off.

I also note that Spicer and Conway carefully forgot to discuss the number of stream page views noted for the Obama inaugurations. Because it would show that even those were higher for Obama than for Trump. In trying to double down on this ridiculous lie, these guys are only proving that they cannot and must not be trusted. If they would lie about this, and the subject itself is trivial, then how should we think they’ll conduct themselves when it comes to something that really does matter?