Faux News:Trump Not As Bad As Civil War

Faux News tried to downplay the disaster of the Toupee Dynasty in Washinton, D.C.  To do so, they had to go back almost 170 years to say that Trump's misadministration isn't as bad as the Civil War:

They almost got that one right!

Almost being the operative word:

Walker Loses Fox Focus Group After Weak Debate Appearance

After the first GOP debate and three ring circus, Frank Lutz of Faux Newz talked to a focus group watching the debate:



Walker did not do very well with the group, outside of the first guy who somehow that Walker was clear on his domestic and foreign policy. Maybe it's because the man knows how to speak gibberish.

But after that, things got good (for us, not for Walker).

A woman named Erika took Walker to task on illegal immigration, calling him out on a lie about when he changed his mind regarding his position on the subject.

Erika is absolutely correct. Walker did his flip flop on immigration in March. It's not clear if Walker even knows what his position is on the subject anymore.

Then a man named Anthony called Walker's performance weak and said that he has switched his support to Huckabee. (Really?!)

While this sample is obviously very, very small, it does give one pause to hope that Walker's campaign will be short lived.

I mean, if even people who daily slurp up the swill served by Faux Newz is catching on to Walker's lies and that he is nothing more than an empty suit, serving only as a puppet for the Kochs, then intelligent people will be seeing through it as well, only faster.

Baltimore Gets The Palm Tree Treatment

During the unrest in Baltimore, a local Fox News affiliate posted this picture (courtesy of ReverbPress):

There's a problem with the photo though.  It's not from Baltimore. And it's not from 2015.

From the article:
This fake Baltimore photo is from the 2014 Venezuela riots. That’s right: Fox posted a photo taken around 2,000 miles away and claimed that it was in the center of Baltimore.
I know I can't be the only one that is reminded of the way Faux News covered the 2011 protests in Madison:



Madison, Wisconsin. Palm Trees. Short sleeves. In February.

The saddest part is that not only do people buy into this propaganda, they deny the truth even when confronted with it.  That should be the definition of insanity.

Now You Know Scott Walker Is In Trouble

Via digby, we see an excerpt of Scott Walker's appearance on Faux Newz.

One would think that it would be a snap for Walker, with the hosts fawning all over him and only giving him softball questions so he can trot out his campaign talking points.  Instead, Chris Wallace asked Walker some basic questions regarding the emails that came out last week.  Watch as Walker starts getting histrionic and actually lashes out in anger:



You can tell Walker is flustered by the way he is yammering and his voice is breaking. Many people from both sides of the political aisle have complemented Walker on his political savvy and his smooth talking.  However, those of us that have had to deal with Walker for over a decade know that he is rather flappable once he is knocked off his script and his talking points.

It should be noted that Walker did try to stick to his script by repeatedly emphasizing that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm is a Democrat and that John Doe ended last year.  What he doesn't mention - nor does Faux Newz mention - that thee is a second series of John Does going on and that there are both Democratic and Republican district attorneys that requested these investigations.

As expected, Walker then tried to deflect the question by moving the focus to his false claims of success.  He trotted out the same tired, threadbare stories of balancing the budget, finding a surplus or creating more than 100,000 jobs.  But when this didn't work for even on a toady like Wallace, you could see the panic rise in Walker.

But of all the lies that Walker told in that short time, the one that really made my jaw drop is the one where he said that he did not have any of the staff from the Walkergate documents working for him.  What utter rubbish!

Just take a look at some of the people that were named in those documents and where they went after the election:

• Tom Nardelli - Walker's former chief of staff was not only given a state job but then a handsome promotion before the pressure got to him and he skulked off, hoping not to be noticed.
• Cindy Archer - Walker's Director of Administration is still working for Walker.  Although he has tried to distance himself from her, he still makes sure that she is well rewarded
• Brett Davis - Lest the gentle reader forgets, at the time of the emails, Kelly Rindlfeisch was working for Davis, whom Walker had chosen to be his lieutenant governor.  Davis is now Walker's Medicaid director.
• Keith Gilkes - After the election, Gilkes worked for Walker as his chief of staff and as his chief of graft before leaving to once again take over Walker's campaign.

Now, I can just hear the Walker apologists and trolls say, "But, capper, those people weren't convicted. Walker was only talking about the convicted people."

OK, fine.  

I would then point out Brian Pierick, Tim Russell's significant other, who was convicted for going after teenage boys.  He worked for the state even though he was under investigation.

And then there was the center of attention, Kelly Rindfleisch.  Even after her office and her home had been raided by the police, Rindlfeisch continued to work for Walker's campaign.  And if she wasn't working for Walker directly, he and Gilkes were pulling in favors to get her some income, or as most people call it, hush money.

As an added bonus, make sure you watch the video all the way to the end.  When Wallace starts talking about Walker running a presidential campaign, Walker finally stops falling over his tongue and starts talking like it's a given he's running for president, despite all of his denials to the local press.   

He was happy because he was able to get back on script.

To Err Is Human, But To Really Screw Up, You Need The Corporate Media

It is well known in Fitzwalkerstan that the Teapublicans that are in charge of the state legislature don't write their own laws.  Instead, they rely on their wealthy campaign donors to write the bills for them.

This has been shown to be the sad state of affairs many times.  G-Tac wrote the mining bill.  Chris Abele and his fellow plutocrats at the Greater Milwaukee Committee hired a silk stocking law firm to write the bill consolidating power in Milwaukee County into Abele's particularly inept hands.

Most recently, it was reported that the sleazy Rep. Joel Kleefisch is pushing a bill written by the even sleazier Michael Eisenga to help Eisenga get out of paying a decent amount of child support.

In order to take the heat of their bought and paid for legislators, the corporate media did what it always does in these situations - they tried to distract the people by yelling "Squirrel!"

To be more specific, Adam Tobias of Wisconsin Reporter, a Koch Industry subsidiary, wrote a piece of propaganda claiming that Big Labor wrote the living wage resolution for Milwaukee County Supervisor David Bowen.

Tobias' proof is that SEIU had supported Bowen in his last election and some hearsay:

County Supervisor David Bowen wrote the legislation in collaboration with the Service Employees International Union.

Bowen, endorsed by the SEIU Wisconsin State Council in his 2012 election, worked with labor union representatives on about 15 drafts and met with them several times in his office at the county courthouse, County Supervisor James “Luigi” Schmitt confirmed.

“SEIU, they’ve been lockstep with it,” Schmitt told Wisconsin Reporter.

As one might expect, Tobias' reporting leaves a lot to be desired. And the greatest things desired would be accuracy and honesty.

I contacted Supervisor Bowen after seeing this and asked him if the SEIU had written the resolution. He was quite clear in saying they did not. He said that they did ask to have some input on it, as did about fifteen other groups, including other unions.

He also told me that the person Tobias had specifically referred to wasn't even part of SEIU.  Obviously, Tobias was just making things up by the time he wrote the article.

So why didn't Tobias include some information and then made up other things?

He wasn't completely honest because that would not fit into the corporate agenda of smearing the unions and keeping workers from making a living wage.  Why, if people were allowed to make a living wage, they just might be able to make enough money that they didn't need to work two or three jobs and would be able to see just how much the corporate special interests have been ripping them off.

And who knows where it would go from there! People might be able to make educated choices at the election booth and vote the corporate sponsored Teapublicans out.  They might unionize at the job site and start demanding things like respect and safety.  Then there might be a push for women's rights, voters' rights and who knows what!

Anyway, I digress.

The point is that the corporate shills being funded by the corporate special interests are trying to detract from how badly their puppets like Joel Kleefisch are failing in the public relations department.  And since there is no way to justify this level of greed and corruption, they try to conflate a situation to distract people from what is really going on.

But then there is more.  There is always more.

The granddaddy of all corporate media, Faux News, picked up the propaganda piece.  Unsurprisingly, they did a copy and paste job without a trace of fact checking...not that they would have reported the truth even if they had been aware of it.  But then, for some bizarre reason, they decided to go with this picture and even odder yet, this caption:

Click on image to embiggen

Well, they are still failing geography, but at least they dropped the palm trees.  Or do you suppose they all just died from being uprooted and transplanted 70 miles to the east?

And wait, I thought the capitol of Fitzwalkerstan was in Walkersha...

Really, it is beyond me how anyone can believe these corporate puppets, much less cite them as credible sources.

A tip of the crown to blue cheddar for pointing it out to me.

Megyn Kelly's New Found Self-Respect

Megyn Kelly, one of the anchors at Faux News, lambasted both Erik Erikson and Lou Dobbs for their sexism and misogyny:



While it is admittedly a lot of fun watching two neanderthals catch hell, especially from a conservative and doubly specially if it's from a conservative woman.

But I have to question Kelly's sincerity. After all, it was just a few months ago that she was willingly allowing herself to be sexually objectified:

With neither side backing down, senior producers had to find a way to split the difference. One idea was for two members of the decision team, Mishkin and Fox's digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, to go on camera with Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier to squelch the doubts over the call. But then it was decided that Kelly would walk through the office and interview the decision team in the conference room. “This is Fox News,” an insider said, “so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go for it.” The decision desk were given a three-minute warning that Kelly would be showing up.

Something tells me that this video was only a momentary bout of sanity and that she is already back degrading herself on national TV.

Making An Ugly Thing Even Uglier

Horrible, inexplicable events like the bombings that happened in Boston are bound to stir strong emotional responses, regardless of who you are.

Fortunately, as there are some beautiful people out there - the ones that donate money, supplies, their homes, their blood.  The ones that first worry about the needs of the victims and their families.

And in balance, there are those who show the ugly side of their natures by trying to hurt through their ignorance and their hate.

The bombings in Boston are no exception.

The corporate media are in angst because President Obama didn't feed into their fear and smear method of "news reporting" by not using the word terrorism.

Then there is the Faux Noise contributor who is screaming for genocide.

Also spouting off are the usual teahadists who can't understand why we pay taxes.  Here's a nice reminder of how shallow that attitude can be:

And going deeper into the psychotic side of the pool, we have the expected reaction - Benghazi!  

And what would be any tragedy without the fools from Westboro having a field day over the deaths and injuries and promising to protest the funerals.

Thank goodness that the good people vastly outnumber the bad people.  Let it always be so.

Next, They'll Waterboard People Into Believing

Watching Faux News is just like torture anyway.

Fair and balanced just took on a whole new meaning...

Michigan: Malfeasance, Malarkey and Motivation

By now, I'm sure the gentle reader has heard the tragic news that Michigan is no longer a free state. Through an act of great malfeasance, the lame duck state legislature passed the Right to Woe law. Within hours, the feckless Governor Rick Snyder signed this odorous piece of legislation into law.

It's not a law that the people wanted. This is evident by the fact that many of the reprobates who did this vile deed had lost their election in November after the voters rejected their malevolence. It is also evidenced by the fact that Michigan's Right to Woe law is written verbatim from ALEC's playbook.

But the madness didn't end there.

Shortly after the legislature did their nefarious deed, this video appeared and went viral among the RWNJ community:



Holy mayhem!

Of course, the likely suspects, aka the paid propagandists like Charlie Sykes and James Wigderson ran with it. I really got a chuckle from Wigderson's bluster about the video:

I’m looking forward to reading on leftwing blogs a) it never happened, b) Americans for Prosperity deserved it, and c) the Koch brothers faked the whole thing to make unions look bad.

But as one might expect, there is a problem with this scenario. A couple of problems really.

As the blogger emptywheel adroitly points out:

All this, in spite of the fact that witnesses say the Americans for Prosperity people were trying to provoke union members to violence, and witnesses reportedly saw AFP people loosening the ropes on the tents so they would come down. And in spite of the fact the place was crawling with cops (shipped in from around the state) who didn’t do see anything amiss. (Cops are as we speak arresting people engaging in civil disobedience at the Romney Building, where the Governor’s office is.)

And we know all too well that the state police has not been hesitant to abuse their authority and use force even when it's not needed. If there was something criminal happening, does anyone thing that the police would idly stand by?

They also have another problem - eye witnesses:



At the same time this is going on, some putz from Faux News was going around trying to agitate union protesters. He finally got someone to go after him. Funny thing is, even with all the police around, he never reported it and they never responded to it.

It's pretty safe to say we can chalk this one up in the same category as Sean Kedzie and Kyle Wood - playing the false victim. I can't wait for Christian Schneider to tell us he interviewed and verified everything before taking his post down and trying to bury it.

And as for the faux Faux News story, well, I'm also waiting to see if they show Lansing's palm trees:



The ALEC zombies think that they have it all sewed up in Michigan. They even added a fiscal note to the bill to keep the new legislature from overturning the law next year.

But things aren't as airtight as they'd like to think.

One, the Michigan law exempts police and firefighters. That's the same mistake that Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans made and which got Act 10 overturned.

Secondly, even though the legislature might have their hands tied, the people don't. They will have to ride it out for a year, but they can do for themselves what the government can't (emphasis mine):

However, labor unions believe they have found a way to challenge these bills at the ballot box, even if they would be allowed to remain in place for a while in the interim. As first reported by NBC News, an analysis by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan shows that labor would have recourse to put the right to work laws up for a citizen initiative. Republicans thought they short-circuited this by including an appropriation of funds in the legislation. By virtue of a state law, this means that the legislation cannot be challenged at the ballot box, they contended. However, the CRC of Michigan analysis shows that this is only true for one type of initiative. Here’s the full language of the analysis.

There are four methods whereby a proposal can be placed on the statewide ballot in Michigan: (1) statutory initiative, (2) voter referendum, (3) legislative referendum, and (4) constitutional amendment.

STATUTORY INITIATIVE is defined by Section 9 of Article 2 of the Michigan Constitution as the power which the people reserve to themselves “to propose laws and to enact and reject laws.” The power of initiative extends to any law the Legislature may enact and is invoked by filing petitions containing signatures of registered voters equal in number to at least eight percent of the total votes cast in the last election for governor. The Legislature is required to enact, without modification, or reject any proposed initiative within 40 session days. An initiative not enacted by the Legislature is placed on the statewide ballot at the next general election. A law that is initiated or adopted by the people is not subject to gubernatorial veto and one adopted by voters cannot subsequently be amended or repealed except by the voters or by a three-fourths vote of the Legislature.

VOTER REFERENDUM is defined by Section 9 of Article 2 of the Michigan Constitution as the power “to approve and reject laws enacted by the legislature.” Referendum must be invoked, within 90 days of final adjournment of the legislative session during which the law in question was enacted, by filing petitions containing signatures of registered voters equal in number to at least five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the last general election. The effect of invoking a referendum is to suspend the law in question until voters approve or reject it at the next general election.

LEGISLATIVE REFERENDUM is authorized by Section 34 of Article 4 of the Michigan Constitution, which provides that “[a]ny bill passed by the legislature and approved by the governor, except a bill appropriating money, may provide that it will not become law unless approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon.”

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT is authorized by Sections 1 and 2 of Article 12 of the Michigan Constitution and may be proposed either by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or by filing petitions containing signatures of registered voters equal in number to at least ten percent of the total votes cast for governor in the last general election.

The question of CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION is required by Section 3 of Article XII of the Michigan Constitution to appear on the ballot automatically every 16 years after 1978.

Only the legislative referendum is short-circuited by the appropriation of funds. Labor could use the voter referendum or the statutory initiative to put right to work on the ballot, for example. This will take more signatures than the legislative referendum, but that just represents an organizing opportunity.

I hope that the good people of Michigan don't make the same mistake we made. Instead of marching in circles or yelling a building, they need to get all boots on the ground now to start collecting signatures.

The corporate special interests might have one this round in Michigan, like they did in Wisconsin, but they have in no way won the war.

POSTSCRIPT: I keep seeing comparisons between Michigan and Wisconsin and how similar they are. Does this mean that Snyder has a secret router and a legal defense fund too?

Sean Duffy on Social Security: Um, Er, Um, Er Um

Watch Sean Duffy get some softball questions on Social Security during an interview on Faux News and still not be able to give an answer:



If Pretty Boy Duffy, star of reality TV, can't handle these lobs from friendlies, I would pack a lunch to watch him in a debate with Julie Lassa.

But really, millionaires couldn't live without their $800 bucks a month? Even though they don't pay into based on 100% of their salary like regular folks have to?

Trouble With A Capital TEA

So yesterday was Tax Day and all the TEA Party aficionados and profiteers were out to take full advantage of it. But there are some things that I wonder about.

First of all, what are they exactly protesting against?

The common understanding is that TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already, which would obviously mean they're against taxes. But then you have self-proclaimed TEA heads, like Dad29, claim that it is about government spending. Others claim it's about the stimulus or about the health care reform. It seems that they just want to complain about something, anything, and the government, especially President Obama, is their favorite target.

Their protests against taxes have a certain amount of irony to it. First of all, unless they were making more than $200,000 they probably got a tax cut. Furthering the irony is that Wisconsin's tax rankings are not nearly anywhere as bad as the TEA people would have one believe.

Another issue is if they are protesting government taxes and/or spending, why would they have Tommy Thompson, one of the most egregious governors of doing both, as one of their speakers? Wouldn't that seem rather hypocritical? Apparently, some of the tea partiers felt that way, since there was a lot of talk of various tea groups boycotting yesterday's event.

And regarding the subject of high costs, why is it that when the government raises taxes by one or two percent, it sends these people into fits of foaming-at-the-mouth rage, but they do not say a word about health insurance companies raising their rates by up to 40% so that their CEOs can take home big pay outs or when the energy companies raise rates for the second time in three months? One would have to think that it might have something to do with the fact that these TEA parties are actually being sponsored by big businesses and right wing groups.

But what might be the most ironic part of yesterday's events would be the way they shot themselves in the foot regarding their own members. Leading up to the events, the Internet was abuzz with stories of how those mean old lefty liberals who were going to go and pretend to be one of them so that they could make them look bad.

That would be quite a feat. It means that the liberals would have had to go back into time and take over some of these movements, like the one in Ohio:

Several weeks ago, during a march supporting immigration reform, Tea Party leader Sonny Thomas had tweeted, "Illegals everywhere today! So many spicks makes me feel like a speck. Grr. Where's my gun?" That original tweet appears to have been scrubbed from Thomas's Twitter feed, although a few retweets calling it "disgusting" can still be found.

"So he's referring to Hispanics with the most offensive word that you can use," Sanchez remarked, "and then he implies that he wishes he could shoot them? Nice."

Thomas's "racially insensitive" remarks have already caused an Ohio state senator to drop out of an event organized by his Springboro Tea Party group. Thomas appears to be known for his racist attitudes, and CNN found a photo on his MySpace page of him wearing a "white pride" t-shirt, although that also now appears to have been removed.

In fact, the tea bangers got them so worked up that they were turning on their own (as well as their own paranoid thinking):

Paranoia about infiltrators has led some activists to become wary of fellow protesters who don’t fit the profile of a typical Tea Partier. At the rally, I met two heavily pierced and tattooed young activists, dressed head-to-toe in Goth-style clothes and carrying a black version of the ubiquitous "Don’t Tread on Me" sign. "Due to the way that many in the Tea Party have been wrongfully stereotyped, they don't think that I fit that mold," said Mario Jones, 27, vice president of a Tea Party group in West Virginia's Marion County. His 20-year-old companion agreed. "A lot of people are like, you don't look like you belong here. This is my freedom—this is how I dress every day," said Amanda Chatham, an unemployed mother from Philadelphia. She noted that she'd been spurred to protest by concerns about "getting [monitoring] chips put into our hands" as part of health care reform.

And I think that the gentle reader can make their own conclusions about how FOX News, who has long been pushing these things, pulled Sean Hannity from one of the TEA Events because they were afraid someone else might make money off of it.

I don't know which bothers me more. They fact that some of these people are feeding into some seriously deranged thinking or that there are so many people willing to take advantage of them.

TEA Party Not So Favorable

I could have told them this:



The best part is that the news came from Faux News originally.