This morning, Fox disappointed me. I went to their site expecting it to be wall-to-wall Jimmy Carter, who is quoted by Der Speigel as saying “America has no functioning democracy”. Instead, today Fox is leading with the IRS scandal. What gives? I wanted to see them call Carter a traitor and ask for his retroactive impeachment. Instead, I find that someone at the IRS is implicating “higher ups”, by which I assume they mean that the boss of someone 12 notches below Obama on the organization chart is blaming someone 11 notches below Obama. What a snoozer.
The old Fox would be pimping the Carter story, but the new Fox is so intoxicated by its perceived ability to move the narrative that they still think they can get Obama impeached over what a few IRS bureaucrats did in a couple of offices. IRS could have been a contender, but Darrell Issa blew it by overplaying his hand, and Jonathan Karl got burned by repeating Republican lies, so now major media outlets won’t touch that turd. It’s just rattling around the 27 percenters, the 2013 equivalent of a 1963 John Birch newsletter typed out in someone’s basement and reproduced by mimeograph.
geg6
LOL! I want to marry that sentence.
Napoleon
. . . and of course the US really does not have a functioning democracy any more, so Carter is right to boot.
geg6
OT, but I’m hearing that a student loan deal may actually be coming today. If what I’m hearing is true, I can live with this compromise. It’s not what I’d want in a perfect world (that would Elizabeth Warren’s plan), but it has a caps on both Staffords and PLUS loans and the fixed/variable rate (rate may change each year for new loans but is fixed for the life of the loan).
Shakezula
Fxd4U
Shakezula
Moderationville again?
Baud
Saw this yesterday but couldn’t figure out the context. Was he talking about the GOP, NSA, or something else?
Snarki, child of Loki
…but less entertaining.
Original Lee
Maybe they’re saving Carter for when they break the story that Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was part of a deal to reduce violence worldwide by agreeing to allow all the gun nuts to live in the U.S. That’s why immigration reform is such an issue – too many of the foreign gun nuts are browns.
c u n d gulag
I think even FOX is tired of beating on that Carter drum.
Besides, a lot of the older Evangelical’s in their audience probably voter for him, before being seduced by the racism of Reagan.
handsmile
President Carter may have complicated somewhat the response of Fox Noise by his recent statement agreeing with the verdict in the Zimmerman trial:
“I think the jury made the right decision based on the evidence that was presented, because the prosecution inadvertently set the standards so high that the jury had to be convinced it was a deliberate act by Zimmerman, that he was not at all defending himself, and so forth. It’s not a moral question, it was a legal question, and American law requires that the jury listen to the evidence presented.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jimmy-carter-agrees-with-zimmerman-verdict-jury-made-the-right-decision/
How could a “traitor” hold the same view (not as emphatically or triumphantly to be sure) as Ailes’ minions?
But I think you’re just being impatient. Fox is probably now working on an even more inflammatory translation from the German.
Nicole
@Napoleon:
Made me think of this 2008 chestnut from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-got-what-america-needs-right-here,11356/
jake the snake
Considering the wingnuts are saying the same thing, they probably won’t focus on it. Of course, wingnuts are happy with that
when wingnuts are in charge.
Jay Cost on government is not us.
Warning douchebag Weakly subStandard link.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/jay-cost
Napoleon
@Nicole:
I love that Onion bit
Mandalay
@handsmile:
I think you answered your own question. TNC and mistermix also expressed views similar to Carter. The difference between them and Fox is that they didn’t gloat about the verdict.
Mark B
So I thought it had been determined that the targeting of right-wing political groups for trying to dodge taxes wasn’t done any more than other political groups. In fact, progressive groups often got even harsher treatment by the IRS. How can Fox keep flogging this horse, when it’s clearly deceased?
Japa21
Uncfortuantely, the comparison with the John Birch Society only goes so far. The JBS probably appealed to 2.7% of the population, not 27%. Well, maybe a little more than 2.7% but nowhere close to 27%.
quannlace
Not really OT cause the blog is pretty cat-centric now…..
Re: John’s Boss…..I always thought Maine Coon cats tailless. Then I realized I was confusing them with the Manx. But then I remembered a snippet from Steinbeck’s great book ‘Travels With Charlie’ where he mentions visiting Deer Isle, Maine, with it’s resident tailless coon cats.
I’m confused.
Earl
…and isn’t it fucking beautiful?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I love you, man.
Walker
@quannlace:
You may be thinking of the Pixie-bob.
Gex
We have a minority rules system when the GOP is out of power and a majority dictates system when the GOP is in power. They’ve only ever wanted there to be one party. I’ve always assumed the hatred for Saddam was for his very high reelection vote counts/percentages and the virtual lack of opposition to the Baath party. It’s exactly what they want here. When they win they ACT like they got 98% of the vote.
So yeah, I think he’s on to something.
AliceBlue
@Mark B:
Cause when the Fox bobble heads heard the words “progressive groups” they put their hands over their ears and went “LALALALALALA……”.
A Ghost To Most
@Mark B:
Because accuracy isn’t important. There was a general in the Civil War (his name escapes me at the moment) who wanted a volley of artillery fired at his opponent. When informed that the enemy were too far away to hit anything with any degree of accuracy, replied “Damn the accuracy; it’s the sound we want”.
Wingtards often remind me of that general, especially Issa.
Patricia Kayden
How is Fox News pushing a non-scandal instead of this?
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/07/17/2318421/treasury-inspector-general-blocked-irs-from-releasing-documents-that-show-agency-targeted-progressive-groups/
Alex S.
Isn’t it the case that republicans think that
1. Carter is always wrong and the most evil man of the world, and
2. Obama is always wrong and the most evil man of the world?
When these two paradigms meet, the contradiction creates a paradox and the memory of that event vanishes from reality.
Villago Delenda Est
One of the problems with the Zimmerman case was that the prosecution didn’t want to win. Hell, they never wanted to be there in the first place, and it took a lot of protests to even bring up charges on Zimmerman (which outraged the wingtards in and of itself, because as Ed Meese taught them, if you’re indicted, you’re guilty of a crime).
So, naturally, the prosecution itself set the bar so high the jury couldn’t find a way to convict, even if they wanted to. The coward carrying the gun was in fear of his life. Sure.
He stalked and murdered a kid for walking through his neighborhood while black. End of discussion.
SatanicPanic
The problem with the IRS scandal is that if you’ve gone around calling the IRS jackbooted thugs for decades it’s hard to get people shocked about some alleged new wrongdoing. People trying to get traction with the NSA or BENGHAZI! scandals have the same problem.
currants
@quannlace: @Nicole:
Thanks for the LOLs!
nineone
Remember election night when, to prove Turdblossom wrong, Roger The Hutt pulled back the curtain, and showed the world that Fox always being wrong was a CHOICE? Apparently the average Fox viewer don’t give a fuck. Who knew?
Meagan Kelley’s “walk of shame” that night, although titillating, was also unintentionally revealing. Hey, we keep all the smart people locked in the dungeon, crunching numbers, doing science, and monitoring reality. Then we broadcast the opposite.VICTORY!
Jay C
@Gex:
I disagree. They act like that even when they lose…
Yatsuno
@Mark B: You assume their purpose is to exploit the scandal. It’s not. Their aim is to undermine and destroy the IRS. Easy to drown the beast if it’s weak and starving. They tend to forget that we also fund their military playtoys and fatcat contractors.
quannlace
Too true. And it’s a huge cottage industry for them to obsess on all the ‘reasons’ why they lost.
Betty Cracker
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think it’s the law that’s the problem rather than the prosecutors (not that I’m excusing them; I think they did a shit job of presenting the case). Here are FL’s jury instructions before SYG:
Here is what the Zimmerman jury received post-SYG:
It’s becoming a wingnut meme that SYG had nothing to do with the Zimmerman case. That’s bullshit. SYG is turning FL into a subtropical OK Corral.
Chris
@Napoleon:
Wingnuts are always telling us “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY” whenever they’re telling the masses to go fuck themselves. Maybe they just agree with Carter.
Schlemizel
@Japa21:
And therein is the seed of Americas downfall. When I was a kid everyone knew at least one of the 2.7%’ers and almost everyone pointed and laughed when they spewed this bullshit. Today 27% seems to be enough to dominate the conversation and instead of being laughed at they get cushy gigs on TV and in newspapers spewing the same bullshit that would have gotten them shunned from decent society 40 years ago
Short Bus Bully
It’s just rattling around the 27 percenters, the 2013 equivalent of a 1963 John Birch newsletter typed out in someone’s basement and reproduced by mimeograph.
Shakezula
@Betty Cracker: So did that create a new standard for SYG? As read it suggests I could follow some guy down any street uttering obscenities about his mother and if he turned towards me with his fists raised I could shout “Le yipe! I am askeered!” and shoot him.
(When I say “I”, I mean I if I were a white man and the person I was following was black.)
Soon the OK Corral may seem to be an oasis of calm and peace by comparison.
Chris
@nineone:
I’ve always suspected that a lot of conservatives have the same thing going as the white people of Maycomb in To Kill A Mockingbird – “yes, we know Bob Ewell’s blowing smoke up our ass. We don’t care. He’s still white, and the other guy’s still black, so he gets what he wants.”
Hence the not caring if Fox or others of the same nature are misleading them.
gbear
I heard Fox News has fired all of their new personatlities and hired pundits.
I heard Fox News has got a compilation tape of every single Obama takedown ever made.
I heard that Fox News has fired all of their pundits and hired news personalities.
I heard that Fox News has an original sealed copy of the whitey tape.
…
Bokonon
Right … except that in 2013, the viewpoints in that particular 1963 John Birch newsletter is backed by billions of dollars of political contributions … supportive think tanks and coordinating groups like ALIC … plus an extensive network of friendly news outlets on cable and radio and print that amplify and popularize its agenda on a daily basis. Even the Bircher’s old foes at the National Review are on board with their program. And those viewpoints are essentially accepted and mainstream inside the GOP. Which is actively and aggressively promoting and enacting their agenda at the federal and state level.
So the Birchers aren’t marginal players any longer, plotting and railing from the outside. They are on center stage, and they are controlling the GOP’s agenda.
With that sort of money and clout, the hard, committed 27 percent you are talking about is swinging the nation around by its tail.
ericblair
@SatanicPanic:
It’s like heroin addiction: you’ve got to keep upping the dose to get the same effect. The outrage industry needs to keep getting their viewers off, and therefore the outrage has to escalate or else your hardcore audience is going to go elsewhere for their fix. However, the escalation means you’re going to peel off some of your audience who realize how nuts they’re now expected to be and head to detox (viz. our humble bloghost). So you get what you see now: an increasingly smaller but increasingly more bugfuck horde of Real Murkins.
gbear
@SatanicPanic:
By pushing this IRS non-scandal to such an extreme, I think Fox has actually managed to make the IRS employees look like sympathetic characters. Everything that’s come out seemt to point to them just doing their job the best they can in a political world.
scav
@Shakezula: Best I can tell, the case + verdict demonstrated that “I’m askeered! Bang! Bang! shoot shoot.” combo is not just SYG it’s SOP in Flor-i-da any more.
Gex
@Jay C: I stand corrected.
@quannlace: And somehow those reasons mostly involve unreal Americans who totally shouldn’t count.
Betty Cracker
@Shakezula: Conceivably, yes, though you’d probably have better luck if you were roughed up a bit. No life-threatening injuries, of course: a bloody nose would do.
I can sorta understand eliminating the “duty to retreat” provision in home invasion cases, making it legal for someone to shoot an unarmed burglar in their home, which was in part how the law was sold to the public.
My preferred approach would be to retreat and call the cops, but I don’t think it’s batshit insane to take a different view of that narrow question. But making the whole state every armed individual’s “castle” is just nuts.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Fox is losing their edge because the average age of a Fox viewer is about 70 years old, and their audience is getting aged enough to start seriously disconnecting from politics.
Plus, their viewership just has to be suffering from outrage fatigue.
Bokonon
Maybe Fox News isn’t flogging the Jimmy Carter statement because they don’t want to amplify it.
Maybe they think that thoughts like that could be bad for the GOP … if the American public starts looking at the condition of their federal and state legislators, and saying “yeah … hmmm … look at that … “
gene108
If Rupert Murdoch had never been born, though focuses on his impact in the U.K., I think I speak for everyone that the English speaking world would be much better off if there had never been a Rupert Murdoch.
Chris
@Bokonon:
Although, as I recall (nitpicky as this is), the disagreement between the National Review and the John Birch Society was much more over style than substance. Both agreed that America had gone socialist and evil and preached a gospel of white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism and Gilded Age economics. It’s just that the NR were people you could take out in public and the JBS not so much.
Redshirt
If I’m scared of everything, I can shoot everything, right? I would just be protecting myself, of course.
gene108
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
That is as unpossible as Peak Wingut…
Fox viewership outrage fatigue would herald the onset of Peak Wingut and as we have proven scientifically Peak Wingnut can never be reached, there is always another level of outrage and asshatery.
maya
@Chris:
Yup. Not too long ago 9 sheriffs of 9 NorCal counties attended a meeting sponsored by a group that called itself, The Northern California State Militia headed by some wank who calls himself ‘Gunny Bott’.(There is no such official org sanctioned by the state).
One after another of these sheriffs proclaimed the same thing – “We’re a Republic”. without explaining exactly what they were talking about in relationship to anything specific except “private property rights”.
Of course, all these star collared sheriffs conveniently forgot that they were elected through a democratic voting process. Sadly one of them represents my county – which doesn’t surprise me atall. Not all of California is blue. There are a lot of Libertarian Magentas around in high places.
Chris
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I don’t know if that’s even possible. I think Fox News outrage has literally (in the actual sense of “literally”) become like a drug or alcohol addiction for them.
Keith G
,@Shakezula: You have put your finger on a way in which this law would be quickly modified. I imagine there is threshold number of white Floridians being stalked, confronted, and then legally shot. Once that number is achieved, The law will be changed.
Roger Moore
@gbear:
To you, maybe. To Fox viewers, not so much.
Redshirt
Wingnuts are the main reason I want Hillary as President for the next two terms. It will drive them completely and utterly mad. Imagine First Hubby Bill cavorting around the world on “ARE TAXES”! Imagine Hillary giving a SotU speech. Imagine everything.
They’ll lose their minds in fiery balls of confusion and rage.
maya
@Redshirt:
“The only thing we have to fear is the fear of not being afraid”. (From the Book of Quotes Looking for an Author.)
mclaren
@geg6:
On the contrary, mistermix is showing his age. I doubt anyone under the age of 40 on this forum knows what a “mimeograph” is.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
If you really want to drive the wingnuts crazy, Hillary is small beans. Yes, they hate her, but she’s familiar, has been in the halls of power for a long time, and meets a bunch of other standards of ordinary Americanness. I would suggest an all Tammy ballot: Baldwin and Duckworth.
scav
@mclaren: Absolute Baseline Goldstandard of Quality is Entirely what a Determinedly Ignorant Hypothecized Yuff would get if unable to access information. I can see how you dominate and reflect your target audience. Because that sentence might be even funnier and more effective if mimeograph is only interpreted as unknown, presumably ancient or entirely fictional form of replication.
johnny aquitard
@Chris: What is it with wingnuts and “we’re a republic!” thing anyways? It’s like a mantra.
I’m guessing they think “republic” ties into their state’s rights fetish, and because — I know this is dumb but these are wingnuts I’m talking about here — “republic” sounds more like “republican” and they like that, while “democracy” is too close to “democrat”.
They seem to think “democracy” is bad because it means direct democracy, ie mob rule. And a republic is the good and virtuous kind of democracy, so much better it’s not democracy, it’s a republic.
Edit: this reminded me of some comment many years ago about associational thinking. Its where truthiness belief comes from, iirc. Dunno who it was,not sure if it was even from b-j.
Roger Moore
@johnny aquitard:
It means they don’t approve of the 17th Amendment or “one man, one vote”. They want to go back to the days of state legislatures appointing senators and districts giving grossly disproportionate representation to rural areas.
Shakezula
@Betty Cracker: Agreed it would look better if the hypothetical Zimmerite was scuffed up a bit, but it seems to create a bully’s paradise. The Zimmerite can make threatening comments secure in the belief that people will be afraid to defend themselves. I also don’t assume people like Zimmerman will think “OK, I’m going to wait until he hits me so I have injuries to show to the cops.” The second they’re scared (and they’ll now be thinking of Zimmerman’s NEAR DEATH experience), the gun will come out.
Also understand why the law allows for home defense. If someone has broken into your home, it is a bit much to ask the person who lives there to inquire about the trespasser’s motives. And in my case, there would be a series of warning shrieks, alerting the person that I’m there and they should leave.
I guess now we’re in the period where we see how many creeps and cowards shoot someone before the state revisits the law.
Speaking of cowards with guns, if this place takes requests, can we get regular updates about this douchebag?
Roger Moore
@Shakezula:
And retreat may not be a practical option in many cases. Most apartments and apartment-style condos have only one door, so an intruder blocks the residents means of escape. Similarly, it’s easy for people to be trapped in a part of a larger house that only has only one access route, so an intruder can still block their escape. That isn’t true of most encounters in public areas.
IowaOldLady
@Redshirt: Hillary Clinton would indeed make them crazy. I keep thinking of them grilling her about Benghazi. I hope she filed that all away in a little box marked “people whose bills I will veto.”
Roger Moore
@IowaOldLady:
That’s either going to be a very big box, or a very small box with a scrap of paper saying “Anyone with a (R) after their name” inside.
scav
@Roger Moore: But us again listen to the wisdom of B37. She said on Tuesday that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin “played a huge role” in his own death. “When George confronted him … he could have walked away and gone home,” said B37 on Anderson Cooper 360. “He didn’t have to do whatever he did and come back and be in a fight.” So Trayvon is faulted exactly for not retreating.
This B37 Roberts court contender furthermore “said she knew Martin had thrown the first punch. Asked whether she felt sorry for Martin, she said: ‘I feel sorry for both of them. I feel sorry for Trayvon and the situation he was in, and I feel sorry for George because of the situation he got himself in.’”. got that? Trayvon was in a situation, whereas George got himself into a situation. In this reading of actions by the same woman Zimmerman is the active element. And yet he still gets off by benefit of the exact same law according to this vocal lawsplainer.
quotes from C&L
Lurking Canadian
@johnny aquitard: Like everything else wingnut, it’s about guns and brown people.
They have a second amendment, says they can have all the guns they want, and it don’t matter if 73% of the population wants regulation: fuck ’em, we’re a Republic!
They also have a tenth amendment, which they THOUGHT gave them the right to keep black people as farm tools, or AT LEAST let them not have to share their schools, water fountains, lunch counters and so on, and they don’t give a damn if 73% of the population thinks their racist assholes, ’cause it’s a Republic, dammit!
Lurking Canadian
@Shakezula: You could always bash yourself in the head after you shoot the kid. It’s not like the police are going to suspect you of anything, or collect forensic evidence, or do any of the other police stuff that might get you in trouble.
LauraNo
FOX is avoiding the issue because it is entirely due to the conservatives that our democracy is not functioning. Wouldn’t want to explain what Carter means.
Jebediah
@Redshirt:
Just remember to shout “Oh my God it’s coming right at us!” every time and you will be fine.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
When the public agrees with them, or they think it does, they whine that their opponents are Subverting the Will of the American People and that’s totally awful (e.g. health care reform). When the public doesn’t agree with them, they fall back on “we’re a REPUBLIC, not a DEMOCRACY.” So it’s basically shorthand for “yeah but fuck the people,” which in turn is side two of the “all that matters is that I get what I want” coin.
Redshirt
@Jebediah: OMG! They’re all around us! FIRE!FIRE!FIRE!
Original Lee
@Lurking Canadian: OMG, a Mark Trail plot line emerges into the real world! Epistemic closure foretold by Jack Elrod! I think my head just exploded!