Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Joe tosses his hat in the ring again

Joe Biden announced this morning that he is running for re-election.  Giulia Carbonaro (NEWSWEEK) reports:




During the slightly over 3-minute video, the president attacks "MAGA extremists" around the country who "are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms" he and his administration are fighting for.

His words are accompanied by footage of Greene dressed in a white fur coat and shouting "liar" at Biden during the State of the Union address in February. The video then cuts to an image of former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis together.

On February 7, Greene, from Georgia, shouted at the president several times and was joined by other GOP lawmakers after Biden mentioned Republican efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Biden repeated these accusations in his bid for re-election. "Cutting Social Security that you've paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make. Banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote," he said.


Here's the video announcement.




Best campaign announcement I could imagine.  As C.I.'s noted, the GOP crazy is scaring voters who self-label independent as well as some suburban moms who have voted Republican.  They uncorked the crazy and now it could drag them down.  The election is months and months away so anything can happen but C.I. has been saying this online and with several Democratic senators and party officials.  They need to make sure that the American people know just how crazed and crazy the GOP is.  That's the path to success.  

You don't have to lie, you don't have to spin.  You just need to show the American people how out of step these reactionary fundamentalists are.  They want to destroy women's rights, they want to "eradicate" transgender people, they are hateful and think they have the right to tell us what we can read or what we can wear.  

No matter how some submissive like Glenneth Greenwald might salivate at the thought of being under Ron DeSanits' dominion, the rest of us just aren't that sick.



"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, April 25, 2023.  Ding! Dong! The Wicket Witch is dead.  Tucker's gone where the goblins go, below . . . 


Well let Joan Walsh (THE NATION) get the first words in:

I hate to find happiness in the misfortune of others… oh, screw that. The news that Fox fired racist misognyist authoritarian Tucker Carlson, its top-rated host, makes me very happy indeed. I know they’ll replace him with someone comparably monstrous. But Carlson is a uniquely awful monster, and his departure is good news for truth, democracy—and women.

The immediate reaction to the news: This must be another shoe falling in the wake of the network’s massive $787 million settlement of the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. Pretrial discovery featured a ton of incriminating, embarrassing texts from Tucker, which swung wildly between trashing Donald Trump—“I hate him passionately”—and trying to get Fox colleagues fired for telling the truth about Trump’s stolen-election lies. The Washington Post reported that his texts included harsh criticism of Fox management. Probably in his favor, at least to Rupert Murdoch, were texts showing that he was worried about the fall in the company’s stock price after it declared Biden the legitimate election winner and (occasionally) debunked Trump lies.


Yes, that Mother Tucker is gone.  At LGBTQ NATION, Daniel Villarreal reminds you of what a bigot and general piece of filth Tucker is. Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) rounds up some quotes.   At FAIR, Ari Paul notes:


The discovery process of the Dominion case revealed numerous texts from Carlson—whose entire persona at Fox News rests on the wave of the Make America Great Again movement—showing his intense dislike of Donald Trump (New York Times, 3/8/23). “What [Trump is] good at is destroying things” was among one of the key texts, but everyone’s favorite, of course, is Carlson saying of Trump, “I hate him passionately.”

No, Carlson’s on-air racism (Independent, 4/13/21; ADL, 4/22/21), transphobia (New York Post, 12/28/22), xenophobia (Washington Post, 12/15/18), admiration for authoritarians (FAIR.org, 8/3/21, 10/20/21) and flirtations with antisemitism (Daily Beast, 10/11/22, 12/23/22) were never the problem for Fox News. If the Washington Post’s report that the Dominion texts were definitive is true, it’s poetic justice: The texts exposed Carlson for who he is, a pompous, rich media elitist who gives not one single damn about MAGA voters and hates their king, only cynically using Trump’s political popularity for his own media grift. That lifting of the veil, the end of the conceit for a corporation whose entire modus operandi is disguising its ruling-class politics to sell faux populism to its viewers, is a major outcome of the Dominion settlement.


Ava and I covered it last night in "TV: The media circus" and we'd covered it before.  Which is why I laugh at Brian Selter using a ton of words to say nothing at VANITY FAIR.  Say nothing, because he knows nothing.  It wasn't a difficult decision for Rupert Murdoch.  They were paying Tucker a ton of money and he wasn't delivering.  It became our story because no one wanted to do the work on FOX NATION -- a streamer in serious trouble.  Tucker was supposed to boost it and he didn't.  B-b-b-but he gets good ratings!  He's not paid for what he did, he's paid for what he will do.  And the ratings weren't that great when they got better ratings -- and better demographics -- for less money -- see THE FIVE which has a real return on the dollars FOX "NEWS" invests into the program.  Tucker is a crater.  They keep throwing money down there.  Yes, he was number one but advertisers didn't want him.  And he wasn't the future.  While no one was paying attention, FOX "NEWS" was trying to branch out into streaming and convinced this would be a huge success.  People who pay for streamers weren't impressed with Tucker.  His content was only streamed if it was Roseanne Barr.  Otherwise, they ignored him and they loathed him.  Some people thought he was cruel and mean, yes.  But he even lost the right wingers many of whom referred to him as a "vicious queen" and a "closet case" which makes me laugh to this day to think that he preached so much homophobia but to some on the right that was just an indicator that he himself was gay.


Those surveys -- and I'm sure the press can get them -- probably without paying for them -- I paid for them -- made clear that FOX "NEWS" had to rethink because it's not the 20th century anymore and they're being left behind.


Due to advertising, Tucker didn't generate a return on the investment.  It was a business decision.  If you can't grasp it, he was KNOTS LANDING.  KNOTS LANDING ran for years and when it got the axe it was a still a top-rated program.  But it was now to expensive to make.  People were being paid too much to continue the show.  Tucker Carlson was paid a huge amount of money but he couldn't deliver on it.  He couldn't bring in big money in advertising and his ratings that seemed so huge didn't justify the amount of money being spent.  


Has no one noticed how the audience for THE FIVE has grown?  I feel like I'm pitching the show here, and I'm not.  But FOX "NEWS" invests far less money in that show.  It turns a better profit and they're hopeful that shows like that -- built around groups of people -- are the future for FOX "NEWS."


As for Tucker?  He's "a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot."

 



Some videos on his departure (and that of Don Lemon).





Not a comedy video but Glenn Greenwald went on Megyn Kelly's show as they wept over Tucker.  I'd post but Megyn's been 'freshened up' again and looks even less like a human being while the left side of Glenneth's face continues to dip like he had a stroke or, more likely, bad botox.  First the bad hair dye out of a box to save a few pennies and now Glenneth's going to third-rate dermatologists for cheap botox? 

And then there's Max Blumenthal.  It's just like when MSNBC fired Phil Donahue!!!!

Except . . . it's not.  Phil was fired as the US was moving to war on Iraq.  And, more importantly, idiot, Tucker Carlson cheerleaded the Iraq War.  I guess you were too busy inspecting your newly sprouted hairs to grasp that, Junior.  I really don't have time for idiots, Max, try growing the hell up.  It takes a lot of nerve, with the Iraqi blood on Tucker's hands, to compare him to Phil Donahue -- that's so insulting to Phil.


People are dead in Iraq because of Tucker Carlson.  That's the reality you and Glenneth and Aaron will never cop to.  You pretend you're honest, but you're not.  You're honest about A but dishonest about B and then turn around and whine about others without ever grasping how much you are part of the problem.


I'm looking at idiotic Tweets (including Jimmy Dore's) and I'm just not in the mood to write something new, Ava and I already covered it:


Mildly amused is how Tucker Carlson always came across -- mildly amused and slightly off.  The boy with the bowl cut grew up to be the man with no clue.  After failing on CNN's THE SPIN ROOM, he got a job on CNN's CROSSFIRE where he degraded the nation's intelligence and when Jon Stewart pointed out what a mockery of news the garbage was, the Mother Tucker was out of a job.  He tried to spin it, insisting that he had resigned from CROSSFIRE in April of 2004 -- guess he just forgot his resignation as, week after week, he continued to do the show until January of 2005.  TUCKER CARLSON UNFILTERED lasted a year at PBS.  Onto MSNBC at a time when it was already featuring garbage like Michael Savage and had plenty of room in the toilet for Tucker. TUCKER lasted a little less than 3 years on MSNBC.  

Not being a journalist, talk show host Tucker took time to do what many did in recent years, take a spin around the floor on DANCING WITH THE STARS.  That he was the first celebrity eliminated should have told him something about how beloved he wasn't.

When Melissa Gates gave then-husband Bill the ultimatum, all the hate merchants were kicked off MSNBC and Tucker landed eventually at FOX "NEWS." He was a panelist, kind of the 21st century version of Kitty Carlisle Hart.  By toadying and creating many mini-'controversies' passed off as news, Mother Tucker eventually worked himself up to a weekend co-host on FOX & FRIENDS   Finally, he was ready, he thought, once again for prime time.  TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT debuted in 2016 and got cancelled last week.

Tucker is homeless yet again.


It's greatly upset his friends -- racists and transphobes like the Great Glenneth Greenwald:




One reason there's so much hatred among left-liberal media types toward Tucker is petty jealously: that goes without saying. They always hate most those who succeed in journalism. But he's also hated by that crowd because he holds up a mirror to the failures of their heroes.



The mirror Tucker held up was to his own ass.  Is that what Glenneth found interesting?

Glenneth and Tara wanted you to know that Tucker hosted plenty of lefties.  Tucker brought on lefties who played his game or served up the red meat his deluded audience wolfed down.  The same way Bill O'Reilly had done a decade prior with, for example, Susara Taylor.  Mother Tucker didn't invent anything, he was just the new Bill O'Reilly.


And now he's fired.


And Glenneth tries to spin this as a good thing:


A major irony is that Tucker's separation from Fox may be the best thing that could happen to him in terms of his influence and impact. The sector of media growing most explosively are independent platforms. Joe Rogan is vastly more influential than every MSNBC and CNN host.



Yeah, but Joe Rogan has charisma.  Tucker doesn't.  Tucker is not Joe Rogan who makes people laugh intentionally.  Tucker is an uptight prig.  That's not going to play well in 'new media.'  It didn't play well for Bill O'Reilly when he tried to survive being fired from FOX "NEWS."  And Tucker already failed as a podcaster.


And there are the internals.  As the ones -- and only ones -- who have reported the realities about FOX "NEWS" finances, we can tell you he was not worth his salary.  His podcast for FOX was a failure and then came FOX NATION and TUCKER CARLSON TODAY. 




And since some of them are whining about AOC, let's include this section too:


FOX "NEWS" has to do more than tighten its belt.  There are no friends on Wall Street willing to bail it out -- NEWS MAX and other similar outlets can continue even if FOX "NEWS" falters.  And they're sinking in debt.  Tucker Carlson became an ugly face for the network -- an admitted liar (in texts, he not only admitted to hating Donald, he also admitted that despite making 'stolen election' claims on air, he didn't actually believe them).  This is a problem because AOC rightly noted the FTC when she was on Jen Psaki's talk show over the weekend.

Glenneth and others didn't understand what AOC was talking about because they're not real smart.  Oh, censorship! - they cried.

No.  

She mentioned the FTC which handles issues like fraud and consumer protection.  Viewers are consumers.  A TV host telling them that an election was stolen when the host admits privately that he didn't believe it was stolen?  That's fraud.  And eliminating that type of fraud is why the FTC exists.  This had nothing to do with The First Amendment.



I would think even the idiots on Twitter could grasp that.  Not the FCC, the FTC.  Remember, that's what did in Pat Boone -- the sanctimonious liar who sold a pimple 'cure' that wasn't.  The FTC came down on his ass.  And it could have come down on FOX "NEWS" because, as the texts revealed, this wasn't an opinion that Tucker held, he was just lying to viewers.  That's fraud, it's not a free speech issue.  Again, FTC, not FCC.  



Let's wind down with this from IAVA:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 21, 2023
CONTACT: press@iava.org

Washington, DC- Following is a statement from the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Allison Jaslow, on the current proposal to address the need to raise the debt limit and cut spending before the House of Representatives: 

“Earlier this week, in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, America was assured that our veterans would be taken care of as Washington politicians prepared to address the upcoming need to raise our country’s debt ceiling. Then veterans saw what was in their proposal and whether the words spoken on a stage also translated to the words on the pages of the bill that was unveiled on Capitol Hill.”

“There are zero guarantees that veterans care is protected in the bill that will soon be before the House of Representatives to raise the debt limit in exchange for spending cuts. And worse, it specifically targets unspent COVID aid that news reports indicate is currently planned to be spent to support veterans’ medical care.”

“This is unacceptable. The Limit, Save Grow Act of 2023 should explicitly protect benefits and care for veterans. As this debate continues, America needs to also know that veterans and their families get support from programs like SNAP and Medicaid, so efforts to target those areas of the federal budget could also have an adverse effect on members of our community.”

“Politicians can say they support our veterans, troops, and their families until they’re blue in the face, but what matters is what happens when they take action. Thankfully, the action to introduce a bill is only one step in the process. The next step is a vote. IAVA urges any member that is thinking of supporting the Limit, Save and Grow Act of 2023 to ask for a written guarantee that veterans will be protected. We should prioritize the needs of our nation’s veterans as spending cuts are considered in this plan. No Congressmember should give their blessing to the bill otherwise.”

IAVA is the voice for the post-9/11 veteran generation. With over 425,000 veterans and allies nationwide, IAVA is the leader in non-partisan veteran advocacy and public awareness. We drive historic impacts for veterans and IAVA’s programs are second to none. Any veteran or family member in need can reach out to IAVA’s Quick Reaction Force at quickreactionforce.org or 855-91RAPID (855-917-2743) to be connected promptly with a veteran care manager who will assist. IAVA’s The Vote Hub is a free tool to register to vote and find polling information. IAVA’s membership is always growing. Join the movement at iava.org/membership.

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