Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

He really is that stupid.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

This fight is for everything.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Let there be snark.

I was promised a recession.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

I really should read my own blog.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Bark louder, little dog.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart

But he can’t be wounded ’cause he’s got no heart

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Everyone who’s not an idiot knows that the primary cause for the rise of Trump is right-wing media. I don’t know how different things would have been without Roger Ailes, but he’s certainly had 10 times the influence of any Republican office holders. The stories coming out about him since his fall are amazing:

But with Ailes gone, Fox executives are now looking closely at how Ailes spent Fox money. And what they are discovering is that, beyond the sexual harassment claims, Ailes was also able to use portions of the Fox budget to hire consultants, political operatives, and private detectives that reported only to him, according to a senior Fox source.

….

According to one highly-placed source, Solivan worked out of what Fox insiders called “the Black Room,” an operation Ailes established around 2011 to conduct PR and surveillance campaigns against people he targeted both inside and outside the company.

….

Targets of the campaigns included journalists John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, who have aggressively covered Ailes for Gawker. According to one source, private detectives followed Cook around his Brooklyn neighborhood and Fox operatives prepared a report on him with information they intended to leak to blogs

Reader Interactions

215Comments

  6. 6.

    MattF

    Murdoch let Ailes do whatever. Exactly why? Could it be that some of those detectives were looking into Murdoch’s business practices? Well, goodness gracious heavens to betsy, could that possibly be true?

  7. 7.

    The Other Chuck

    @MattF: More likely Ailes was doing Murdoch’s bidding. It’s well-established how much Murdoch likes to conduct illegal wiretaps. Given that, what makes anyone think the next guy running Fox News won’t be Murdoch’s hand-picked replacement just as odious as Ailes?

  9. 9.

    Joseph Nobles

    Has someone registered a complaint about the Blue Plate Mayo video commercial in the right column that forces the page to align to it and won’t let you scroll until you start playing the video? Because I’m organizing a mob with torches and pitchforks as soon as I find out where Blue Plate headquarters are.

  11. 11.

    Warren Terra

    @MattF: I don’t think you need to come up with such a scenario. It’s far simpler to imagine that giving Ailes free reign with a corporate slush fund run out of Fox News instead of privately was part of his compensation package, that it was not that much money (on the scale of Ailes’s pay) and was a boost to Ailes’s ego and self-conception to have it organized by his office rather than out of his home, and doing it that way kept Ailes in the office rather than meeting with these people at home..

  15. 15.

    The Other Chuck

    @Mark B: Any bare link does. It has to do with a buggy spyware plugin in FYWP rewriting the links and triggering the equally shitty anti-spam software. I think it’s just Cole’s way of ensuring we always have a hostile relationship with the blog platform. Keeps us on our toes or something.

  16. 16.

    SFAW

    @shomi:

    You know, your other comments are usually not bad.

    Now, if you could just get off your “I FUCKING HATE ALL THE FUCKING FRONT-PAGERS AND ALL THEIR FUCKING POSTS BECAUSE THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK!!!!” schtick …

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel

    @SFAW:
    you should give Wally Ziff all the attention he deserves . . . none

    BTW – I have for some time assumed Roger had blackmail on one or more of his ‘talents’. I simply cannot believe some of these people act such buffoons just for money. Carlson graduated from Stanford with high honors yet acted the dumb blond for years. I can’t imagine a normal person degrading themselves that much simply for money/

  18. 18.

    FlyingToaster

    @Joseph Nobles: I had to block ora.tv on all my browsers because besides the autoplay, it usually crashes them. I sent the bug report on to the site fixer.

    You don’t need an adblocker per se; I have a blocksite plugin (different for each browser) to stop facebook and ora.tv. I don’t mind ads; I mind ads that crash my browser :)

  19. 19.

    JGabriel

    The Other Chuck:

    Given that, what makes anyone think the next guy running Fox News won’t be Murdoch’s hand-picked replacement just as odious as Ailes?

    Perhaps nearly as odious as Ailes is conceivable, but just as odious? It seems vanishingly unlikely that another such person with the requisite experience and background to run Fox News for Murdoch, and also equally or more odious than Ailes, could exist in the same field.

    Even if such a person existed, Fox/Murdoch would forego hiring him simply to avoid repeating the same set of scandals that Ailes engendered. Murdoch & Sons will probably be seeking someone capable of creating a wholly new and original set of scandals instead.

  21. 21.

    The Other Chuck

    @Schlemazel: Every so often I unhide people in the troll filter because I can’t remember why I added them in the first place. I remembered pretty quickly with this guy: nonstop whining about some front pager or another.

  22. 22.

    Shalimar

    @Mark B: Any naked link puts you in moderation. Highlight the text you want the link to be from, for example Watching the Detectives, then click link and copy the text in the box that pops up. So easy and obvious, even I only had to be shown once (and only messed up twice before getting it right).

  23. 23.

    Mark B

    @The Other Chuck: I think posting a bare link is actually a little more considerate to the users looking at the page. They can see the address before they click on it and decide whether they want to visit the site or not. That’s why I usually post links in public forums as just the bare URI.

  24. 24.

    NorthLeft12

    Shocker! Business executive uses publicly owned company money and employees like it is his own for his own personal gain and protection.

    L’etat c’est moi?

    When will shareholders wake up and stomp down hard on these thieves?

  25. 25.

    SFAW

    @Shalimar:

    You know, if you were as evil-minded as some of us here are, the “Watching the Detectives” link would have sent one to Astley.

  26. 26.

    Schlemazel

    @The Other Chuck:
    Because I run chromebook I don’t have a troll filter sadly. I usually just skip over them but once in a while it is fun to poke them. But ‘ol Wally Ziff here is not the least bit entertaining, any novice programmer could write a bot that could do what he does in about 15 lines of code.

  29. 29.

    Schlemazel

    @NorthLeft12:
    inter-locking boards, large blocks of stock owned by institutional investors with incestuous relationships to the BoDs and outright lying.

  30. 30.

    JPL

    @Mark B: I tend to agree, however on my computer, I’m able to view what the link is, before clicking. I don’t know, if that works on smart phones.

  32. 32.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Mark B: Everyone on the Web should know to hover the mouse over a link before clicking on it. Mobile users probably have to do something different (I rarely Web surf on mobile). It looks like a “long press” on Android does it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    Schlemazel

    inter-locking boards, large blocks of stock owned by institutional investors with incestuous relationships to the BoDs and outright lying.

    EDIT: apparently there is another word in here that sends you to moderation hell – I should have guessed that

  34. 34.

    greennotGreen

    @Mark B: Can’t you usually see the URL by mousing over the link? I can on my PC and by touching and holding the link on my iPad.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    @NorthLeft12: A comment of the Washington Post, disputed the claim that Ailes would have to harass females for sex. After all he’s soooo good looking.

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    @Mark B:

    It was the real thing, when I clicked on it. Of course, Shalimar could have gone back and edited it afterward, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble — not to mention requires relatively precise timing — for a RickRoll.

  38. 38.

    ThresherK

    I don’t want to say “I’m not surprised”, but exactly what do the Fox-curious in the mainstream media expect that place’s internal organization to be run like?

    After years of FNC has spewed about Obama, and HRC, and Bill, and everyone down to Sandra Fluke, who really thought that the meetings there were something like Socratic debate out of “The Paper Chase”?

    Projection is a hell of a drug.

  39. 39.

    germy shoemangler

    “A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.”
    – Dr. Winston O’Boogie

  40. 40.

    Shalimar

    @JGabriel: The British part of the Murdoch empire has been in the news for some horrible shit over the last 5 years, yet none of the leaders there seem to approach the same sort of evil that Ailes had. Maybe because their lack of morals was in pursuit of profit and market dominance, not ideology, political control and personal lecherism.

  41. 41.

    Schlemazel

    @SFAW:
    Wally is nobody, a never was that never will be. Less than a zero. an insignificant nit on an unnoticed flea. So insignificant he can’t even get a google hit.

  42. 42.

    greennotGreen

    I don’t think higher-up Fox execs can claim any innocence about the dirty little secrets coming out of Ailes’ coffin. It would be like Jeffrey Dahmer’s landlord saying, “I didn’t know anything was going on. He told me the screams were the TV, and the blood dripping down the wall was from a nose bleed.”

  43. 43.

    Mike E

    @The Other Chuck: It’s all I ever do, surf via droid on chrome… this site works fine, tho my plaintive cries for a thread navigation widget at the bottom of the page go completely unheeded ?

  47. 47.

    germy shoemangler

    In April 2011, Lindsley had a falling out with Ailes and quit the paper along with two co-workers. Ailes assigned private investigators to follow Lindsley around Putnam County. He also asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts, two sources said. Meanwhile, Solivan posted negative comments about Lindsley on blogs, a source said.

    Her comments on the network are so consistently idiotic, but this Mata Hari role sort of surprised me. I thought she was just hired because of the quality of her ideas and her journalistic professionalism.

  48. 48.

    Mark B

    @SFAW: I was kidding. Balloon Juice commenters, in general, are too earnest and straightforward to RickRoll someone just for the hell of it. John Cole, on the other hand …

  49. 49.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Mark B: It’s impossible to know what a YouTube link points to, so having it as a bare link doesn’t really help the reader much. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    Mark B

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: You know it points to YouTube and not ‘NigerianPrinceWithMoney.com’. But I’m belaboring the point, so I’ll stop. I think it’s a stupid policy, but it’s the blog owner’s prerogative, so I’ll just adapt.

  54. 54.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Mark B: JC didn’t write the WordPress code or pick the plugins. The code here gets “upgraded” every year or two, but it has lots of cruft that seemingly can’t be removed so there are lots of “quirks” that we have to put up with. It’s just the way it is.

    I get thrown in moderation almost every time I try to edit a comment, so I’ve mostly given up trying.

    You can still post naked links if you want – you just have to wait for a front-pager to free it from moderation. It can be less than 5 minutes, or half-a-day, later depending on your luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Everyone who’s not an idiot knows that the primary cause for the rise of Trump is right-wing media.

    I guess I’m an idiot. The primary cause for the rise of Trump is long-standing American racism, distilled into insanity by thirty years of Reaganite ‘polite’ racism resulting in a black president. Fox egged it on, but is as much fulfilling a pre existing need as making it worse. The social process leading to conservatives demanding a hate-screeching moron was already in place.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    there is absolutely NOTHING that’s being revealed that would make me say..
    REALLY? REALLY?

    EVERYTHING that’s being revealed is EXACTLY WHO we thought Ailes was…and EXACTLY what we thought Fox Noise was.

    NOTHING is surprising.

  59. 59.

    Shalimar

    @germy shoemangler: I thought Tantaros was hired because of the sexy way she foams at the mouth when she spits out her ideas. Of course, she is gone now, another victim of a contract dispute with Ailes.

  60. 60.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I don’t even recognize the tacky lyrics in his title although I have no doubt it must be.

    I don’t recognize the English in this comment.

  62. 62.

    Peale

    @greennotGreen: companies that have poor financial control structures are usually high grown start ups who haven’t figured out how to set them up, larger companies who somehow got stuck with a staff that didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t care to improve that staff through retraining or termination. Or by design. I’m guessing with this case, there are probably dozens of guys like ailes in fox who can hire “outside consultants” and as long as no one expense exceeded $1m, controllers weren’t looking into the business purpose too carefully.

  63. 63.

    Keith P.

    Everyone who’s not an idiot knows that the primary cause for the rise of Trump is right-wing media.

    I thought it was because America was literally founded on a bunch of Native American burial sites.

  65. 65.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Didn’t I hear Murdoch himself was taking over? That makes no sense, because the old bastard doesn’t need a job, but I’d swear it was what I heard when Ailes’ departure was announced. If so, Fox will only get worse.

  66. 66.

    germy shoemangler

    “This is Obama’s America. It’s like the Soviet Union. He said he’d change the country. He said it, he said it, he said it, and a lot of people voted for him. And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor, punch ‘em in the face.”

  67. 67.

    Shalimar

    @germy shoemangler: Her contract apparently expired in April and she hasn’t been on the air since then last time I checked. I haven’t seen any Ailes comment from Tantaros, but haven’t searched around for one either.

  69. 69.

    germy shoemangler

    Nice girls, not one with a defect
    Cellophane shrink-wrapped, so correct
    Red dogs under illegal x
    She looks so good that he gets down and begs

  70. 70.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    After 25 years of smears and hundreds of millions of dollars spent investigating Hillary Clinton and they got bubkas. A few months of intense examination and both Trump and Ailes wilt under the pressure. Just more proof Clinton is Satan and she must be guilty of something!

  72. 72.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yeah I had to pause at that statement in the blog post also. There is no doubt that racism is the main element behind Trump’s popularity, despite the constant blather about his “working class” support, which endless think pieces then stretch into the claim that his support is mostly about economic issues.

    His supporters report an average income of $72,000 a year, for one thing. They’re also on average white, male, and people with racist views and fears.

    So while FOX News definitely served as the propaganda outlet for a long-term Republican campaign of dog whistling or more blatant racism, it’s only part of the cause. And it’s definitely about racism. Everyone writing those think pieces pondering the mystery of Trump’s rise — is it economic? — seems to have completely forgotten that he gained his political popularity as Birther in Chief, combining racism and religious bigotry in one package. “The black man is a Muslim” is what launched him, and it could still almost summarize his whole appeal.

    If you’re looking for a clear cause, you really have to go waaaay back to original sins, certainly way before FOX and the other right-wing media appeared on the horizon.

  74. 74.

    germy shoemangler

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    His supporters report an average income of $72,000 a year, for one thing.

    Household or individual income? And should I wonder if the average Trump supporter would ever tell a lie?

  78. 78.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @germy shoemangler: I would actually wonder if they’d tell a lie in the other direction from what you’re thinking. The whole song and dance is that it’s all working people and they can’t get ahead because of Obama. It might be more embarrassing as a Trump supporter to admit that you’re comfortably upper middle class, than to admit that you’re poor. At most I’d say those are equally likely thus cancel each other out, so I’d imagine the figure is about right.

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @Mark B:

    You can see the destination of any dressed-up URL by hovering your mouse over it or, on a phone or tablet, pressing and holding the hyperlink.

  84. 84.

    Patricia Kayden

    Sam Seder of Majority Report was encouraging Democratic voters to vote against Ryan in his open primary this Tuesday so that his opponent would beat him and be more easily defeated by the Democratic challenger in November. Brilliant! Hope some Democrats in Ryan’s district are planning to do this to mess up the GOP since it would take out Ryan as House Leader and put his seat into play for the Democrats.

  85. 85.

    Shalimar

    I guess this is tangentially related to Ailes since it is about cable news: Does anyone know what happened to Steve Benen? He basically was Rachel Maddow’s blog up until a few posts Tuesday morning, then nothing at all since then. They have filled in with links to video from the show along with interesting Twitter remarks. I don’t see any announcement that he would be taking time off or explanation for where he went.

  86. 86.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bill E Pilgrim: The basic Trump outlook, which galvanized his supporters and shows no signs of relenting, is, with apologies to Abe Simpson, “There are too many brown people in this country. Please eliminate most of them. I am not a crackpot.”

  88. 88.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @germy shoemangler: Forgot to answer your other question. From the article I linked to:

    The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

  89. 89.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    @Shalimar: He’s probably on vacation after the conventions. All of his social media accounts have been silent for a few days as well.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @The Other Chuck:

    Why? I almost like mobile Balloon Juice on my phone and tablet more than the regular. Have had to adapt to certain idiosyncrasies, though.

  91. 91.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @FlipYrWhig: True, though I think he decided not to even worry about that last line. I am a crackpot. You don’t care. I know this.

  92. 92.

    greennotGreen

    @germy shoemangler: And what percentage of them are retired? $72,000 is a pretty healthy income if you’re retired, house is paid for, no commuting costs, just the cable bill so you can watch Fox News and keep your bile levels up.

  93. 93.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I think that is a grave error in thinking. Janesville is full of knuckle draggers likely to vote R. If the party of Lincoln – George Lincoln Rockwell – retains the House, you are looking at a level of insanity in the office of the Speaker that is pure insane. No appropriations bills move forward under Speaker Gohmert or Speaker Broun, and there is an impeachment vote within a month of the new term.

    Ryan’s a craven, sleazy asshole, but not crazy.

  97. 97.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @SFAW:

    Now, if you could just get off your “I FUCKING HATE ALL THE FUCKING FRONT-PAGERS AND ALL THEIR FUCKING POSTS BECAUSE THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK!!!!” schtick …

    I’ve always been puzzled by the psychology of trolls with a repetitive schtick, and most of them do. If you go on site X every day and post exactly the same thing you posted yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and the day before… don’t you get bored? What is the amusement value? Why even bother writing when everybody already knows what you’re going to say? How does that NOT make your life feel like a pointless empty chasm?

  99. 99.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @greennotGreen: Right, and I guess the point here lest it get lost is that economic level is no predictor of who will support Trump. Certainly there are some working class supporters, but a lot who are comfortably well off.

    What is a predictor (from that same article, in turn quoting other articles) :

    What is it that most of these people do have in common that would draw them to Donald Trump? Philip Klinkner, professor of government at Hamilton College set out to find out and the answer isn’t pretty. Via Vox:

    You can ask just one simple question to find out whether someone likes Donald Trump more than Hillary Clinton: Is Barack Obama a Muslim? If they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.

    That’s more accurate than asking people if it’s harder to move up the income ladder than it was for their parents (54 percent), whether they oppose trade deals (66 percent), or if they think the economy is worse now than last year (81 percent). It’s even more accurate than asking them if they are Republican (87 percent).

  100. 100.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @germy shoemangler:

    One simple trick for posting naked links… Cole hates it!
    make a comment. then go back to it using the edit comment feature and paste in your naked link!

    A problem with your trick for avoiding moderation: Editing puts me in moderation.

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    . …I guess I’m an idiot. The primary cause for the rise of Trump is long-standing American racism, distilled into insanity by thirty years of Reaganite ‘polite’ racism resulting in a black president. Fox egged it on, but is as much fulfilling a pre existing need as making it worse. The social process leading to conservatives demanding a hate-screeching moron was already in place.

    Yep. Fox News feeds the beast, but they did not give birth to it.

  102. 102.

    Mike E

    @germy shoemangler: The Letterman show ad, where Dave asks Trump where his shirt line was manufactured (he sees Bangladesh on the label iirc) and where his ties were made (somebody off camera sez China) is pretty good… Trump is all about creating “jobs” doncha know

  103. 103.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Schlemazel: You’re in my haid. This is a huge part of the problem. Sociopaths in charge, fueled by insatiable greed, who learned all this at business school.

  104. 104.

    Brachiator

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    You can ask just one simple question to find out whether someone likes Donald Trump more than Hillary Clinton: Is Barack Obama a Muslim? If they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.

    Only 89 percent? Seems too low. What a bunch of dopes.

  106. 106.

    scav

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym: The repetitive schtick is branding and, allied with the any notice or PR is good notice and PR, it does all it is designed to do. Why did Drump drag out all the golden oldie insults about bleeding and start jerking about the stage: same principle.

    ETA: The mere fact that one interrupts an electron beam is proof of life and thus, apparently, triumph! Doing it in public? Swoon!

  107. 107.

    hovercraft

    @Shalimar:
    They posted a note earlier this week saying posting would be light as they geared up for the sprint. I assumed they were vacationing during the olympics. I’m hoping they’ll be back around Labor Day.

  108. 108.

    Brachiator

    @The Other Chuck:

    As for the mobile site, I just don’t bother reading BJ on mobile anymore.

    I have not had problems running the site on either my tablet or Android phone. Not doing anything special, as far as I can tell.

  109. 109.

    Gex

    @Bill E Pilgrim: This. The GOP pursued something they called the Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights Act. They’ve been literally building a coalition around racism for longer than I have been alive. Why we must all pretend that there was something new with right wing radio or with Trump is beyond me. We know what Paul Weyrich said attracted the evangelicals. We know what Lee Atwater said their economic talking points were really about.

    No one has to take a liberal’s word on what the modern GOP is. They just need to listen to the architects of the modern GOP.

  110. 110.

    japa21

    In a very real way, Fox News is the primary moving factor in today’s RW world. Yes, a lot of the racism, etc. did exist. It isn’t that Fox News created them. But what Fox did is allow those things into the mainstream instead of them being where they belong, on the fringes. Charles Pierce discusses this in depth in Idiot America.

    By being a voice for the Creationists, the racists, and just about every fringe theory out their, they gave those things a legitimacy they did not have before. So yes, without Fox News or an equivalent, things would be different today.

    And this doesn’t even take into account the way CNN and MSNBC altered their approaches to mimic Fox to at least some degree.

  111. 111.

    Chat Noir

    @Shalimar: They’re taking a summer break. Will Farina at the Maddowblog posted a note saying so. He said Steve and the rest of their bloggers will be back for the fall political campaign.

  112. 112.

    satby

    @Steeplejack (tablet): I only read on the Kindle now, no ads, less crud to deal with. And since Hotmail was ported to the truly execrable Outlook, it’s easier to read it on the tablet too.
    Outlook has no good way to mass sweep and delete mail by senders like hotmail did. You have to do it one sender at a time. Sucks.

  114. 114.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:

    It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

    Interesting, but not surprising. Minority voters simply are considered “working class” in our political culture.

  116. 116.

    MattF

    @Baud: I wonder if the Dem income distribution is bimodal. If so, a lot of the usual statistical parameters are meaningless.

  119. 119.

    SFAW

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym:

    Why even bother writing when everybody already knows what you’re going to say? How does that NOT make your life feel like a pointless empty chasm?

    Not disagreeing with MattF’s comments, but it also strikes me, to some degree, as similar to xkcd’s SIWOTI strip — except, in this troll’s case, it’s not someone being “wrong,” it’s certain persons existing/posting. Does that fall under the “perseveration” umbrella? I don’t know.

  120. 120.

    janeform

    Haven’t read the thread but had to leave this here. CNN chyron: Is Trump’s bad week due to media bias?

  125. 125.

    Capri

    @Brachiator: Yes, the whole Fox/right wig media opened things up for any demigod, but they also specifically helped Trump. He’s been fluffed on that channel for years. He was given legitimacy as a “great businessman” and an “expert” for a long time.

  127. 127.

    Brachiator

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    …Didn’t I hear Murdoch himself was taking over?

    Very unlikely. That’s not how Murdoch runs his empire. I could see him having one of his kids oversee the operation.

  128. 128.

    patrick II

    I have read how paranoid Ailes was. I guess he though someone might be doing to him what he was doing to everone else. RWNJ/psychopath/amoralist projection as always.

  129. 129.

    dmsilev

    @janeform:

    Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

  130. 130.

    trollhattan

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    IIRC one of his kids, as they supposedly were behind getting rid of Ailes.

    Rupert is interested in one thing: making money. Driving the conservative agenda is gravy.

  131. 131.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    Was in the Barnes & Noble yesterday and was flipping through this Doonesbury all-Trump collection. Pretty amazing to see 30 years worth of the same bluster.

    Spoiler: Both Duke and Honey show up, and in a bizarre plot twist, they get married. I didn’t read the whole thing so I don’t know what happened to that particular subplot.

    I guess it’s been over 30 years since I was a regular reader of Doonesbury, because I don’t remember ANY of this Trump stuff.

  134. 134.

    Mike in NC

    @janeform:

    CNN chyron: Is Trump’s bad week due to media bias?

    Going to go waaaaaay out on a limb here to predict starting on Monday the media will decide Clinton needs to have a bad week. For “balance” and to keep the absurd horse race going.

  136. 136.

    Brachiator

    @japa21:

    ..By being a voice for the Creationists, the racists, and just about every fringe theory out their, they gave those things a legitimacy they did not have before. So yes, without Fox News or an equivalent, things would be different today.

    About 34 percent of Americans reject evolution entirely. That ain’t fringe.

    Fox News exploits, feeds on anger and resentment, but it is a fantasy to deny that it has always been there, or to believe that it was safely pushed into the margins before Fox News came along.

  137. 137.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @MattF:
    ‘Please, please don’t let the American public find out that Trump is what the Republican Party has always stood for!’ I wanted Trump to win the primary precisely so this would happen.

    That’s just what the PC crowd does on the left.

    See? You’re a bigot yourself, Rick Wilson. You just don’t like that Trump might make you face it.

    And after the party gets this philosophical poison out of its system, it needs to re-professionalize the way it wins elections.

    ‘Trump doesn’t hire enough people like me! We can’t let that spread!’

    Both the conservative movement and the country need a vibrant center-right media culture that challenges the predicates of the left, educates America on our beliefs and fights for a national political culture centered on personal liberty, economic freedom and constitutional values.

    ‘In my dream world, spreading race hate is what intelligent, educated people do, and this barbarity must be caused by something else.’

    Donald Trump and the revolting personality cult he has built around himself are an affront to the Party of Lincoln, to constitutional conservatism and to the fundamental beliefs of the American republic.

    ‘PLEEEEEASE don’t tear down the mask! I don’t want to know I’m a racist!’

    She’ll nominate liberal Supreme Court justices. We’ll lose religious liberty. We’ll have our Second Amendment freedoms compromised. Chuck Schumer’s immigration bill is going to be so bad it will make many of us beg for the Gang of Eight.

    ‘What will happen to voter suppression? What if our bigoted anti-LGBT laws are overturned? Without assault rifles, how will we scare the darkies back into their place? My god, man, Clinton will treat Hispanics like human beings!!!’

    No sympathy for this asshole or his party whatsoever. The only difference between him and Trump is reading/writing grade level.

  139. 139.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    While your sentiment is admirable, I disagree. This is precisely the time to drum home, now and for the rest of the election, that Trump is the Republican Party. He’s no fluke. He’s not leading them astray. He represents what the party believes and stands for, and it’s the whining spokespeople who are the party’s fringe. ‘Donald Trump’ needs to be branded on them for a generation.

  140. 140.

    mike in dc

    Kasich just reaffirmed the story about being offered VP and being put in charge of both foreign and domestic policy. I think he’s not going to lift a finger to help Trump win Ohio, and probably won’t free up his state machine to do so either.

  141. 141.

    hovercraft

    @Capri:
    Didn’t he have a regular spot on Fox and Friends? I think he had a segment every Monday or Friday going back to 2012. They took him from being some crack pot birther who endorsed RMoney, to a regular ‘contributer/commentator’ who they brought on to bash Obama. They made their audience, the base, believe that he was a credible person with valuable insight and knowledge into the state of the nation/world. They built this.

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    @Mike in NC:

    .. Going to go waaaaaay out on a limb here to predict starting on Monday the media will decide Clinton needs to have a bad week. For “balance” and to keep the absurd horse race going.

    I’ll take that bet. I think that Trump will find something new stupid to do.

    And as to the horse race thing? You mean that Hillary has it in the bag?

  145. 145.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hovercraft: To be fair, the “mainstream” media outlets, eager for ratings on the cheap, invited him on because he attracts an audience, no matter how idiotic, and that means more viewers, higher ad revenue, more profit. It’s all about the simoleons, all the time.

  146. 146.

    ? Martin

    @Bill E Pilgrim: White working class voters aren’t quite Trump’s base. White working class generally doesn’t vote just like working class minority voters generally don’t vote. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people that aren’t sympathetic to white working class that do vote – either voters that have worked up into better paid blue collar jobs or management, or people that see white working class voters as a marker for what they believe America should look like.

    If you believe that the US is indeed a meritocracy and you see white workers struggling while minorities and immigrants gain increased status, then you would probably (wrongly) conclude that minorities and immigrants have gained greater social and economic power than whites. Requires that you have a strong racial bias, but we know that they do.

  147. 147.

    satby

    @Frankensteinbeck: Your translation is probably accurate, but he’s writing to other Republicans, who also want to pretend in just the same way. He’s giving them cover, probably to go vote Johnson, but not to vote for Drumpf at least. Every voice in that chorus helps.

  148. 148.

    ThresherK

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Genuine Question Time: Did Bernie Sanders once call Wolf Blitzer “Jake” during an interview? Or the other way around (like it makes a difference whether it’s Tapper or Blitzer doing the journamalism)?

    Well, a wag posted a meme photo of a crying 10-y.o. girl captioned

    Leave Wake Blapper Alone!

    And now whenever I think of them, or CNN, that’s all I can think about: One smushed-together undifferentiated hack.

  149. 149.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Frankensteinbeck: Abso-fucking-lutely. Drumpf is the id of the GOP made manifest, and he represents precisely what the GOP base is all about. They built this monster, they’re responsible for it, and it needs to be made to utterly destroy them.

  150. 150.

    germy shoemangler

    @Brachiator:

    .. Going to go waaaaaay out on a limb here to predict starting on Monday the media will decide Clinton needs to have a bad week. For “balance” and to keep the absurd horse race going.
    I’ll take that bet. I think that Trump will find something new stupid to do.

    It’s already begun. My local news affiliates keep repeating the following clips: HRC at the press conference saying she must have short-circuited (by the way, can’t they show any other clip from that press conference? NO), and then a quick cut to Trump saying We can’t have a president who short-circuits (points to his head in a gesture suggesting HRC ain’t right in the head).

    I’ve already seen this segment about five times over the past day or so.

    They really want me to hate her.

  153. 153.

    germy shoemangler

    @satby: Johnson. He didn’t even know who Harriet Tubman was. Had to be reminded by an aide.
    He’s a guy who got rich as a crappy contractor and decided his brand of ayn randism is just the thing we need.

  154. 154.

    hovercraft

    @MattF:
    He hates Trump with a passion. He was on I think with Chris Hayes and called Trump “a virus that was eating the host from within” I’m pretty sure that he will be voting for Hillary, even if he never says so publicly.

  157. 157.

    Brachiator

    @germy shoemangler:

    . How a Chinese businessman funneled 1.3 million bucks to Jeb’s campaign

    It’s more how Jeb! suckered the Chinese into throwing a million bucks down a rathole.

    But interesting article on how Democrats and Republicans find a way to get their hands on illegal foreign cash.

  159. 159.

    Baud

    So, it should come as no surprise that the embodiment of racist, white male anger, the American Nazi Party, supports Trump. BuzzFeed posted audio on Saturday of American Nazi Party chairman Rocky Suhayda essentially endorsing Trump and saying a Trump victory would be “a real opportunity” for white nationalists to unite and become more public with their views.

  163. 163.

    hovercraft

    Jake Tapper just did a segment imagining (it was in the form of a cartoon) what went down at Obama’s star studded birthday. Saying that George Lucas was there, he wondered what the he would give the president for his birthday, and then Lucas presents Obama with a box containing Jar Jar Binks. Are you fucking kidding me?

  165. 165.

    germy shoemangler

    In April 2011, Lindsley had a falling out with Ailes and quit the paper along with two co-workers. Ailes assigned private investigators to follow Lindsley around Putnam County. He also asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts, two sources said. Meanwhile, Solivan posted negative comments about Lindsley on blogs, a source said.

    Andrea Tantaros: Honeypot.

    It’d make a great novel. Wingnut talking head’s real job is to trap network president’s enemy. Her job spouting hateful bullshit on-air is merely a cover.

  166. 166.

    germy shoemangler

    @AnotherBruce: I was an avid collector of Elvis Costello records from the ’70s through the ’00s. I could never understand a single word he sang. Sometime in the ’90s I bought a big book of every one of his lyrics. It was amazing! I finally saw that he is one of the great lyricists of the 20th & 21st century. And not a bad tunesmith.

    He was the best collaborator Paul McCartney ever had, after John Lennon.

  167. 167.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:
    A belief that, say, the sun went around the earth would also be a fringe belief, even if held by a majority of Americans. It’s not the percentage of people holding a belief that puts it on the fringe; it’s the fact that it’s been widely discredited, including by common experience.

  168. 168.

    Corner Stone

    This is an epic Men’s Foil match.

    ETA! Holy Shit! Massialas pulls out the win to advance for the US!
    He held Avola off for 7 points while he only needed one last touch.

  169. 169.

    ThresherK

    @SFAW: First African-American female nominee for an acting Oscar?

    @germy shoemangler: “My Brave Face” is a time-capsule single which belongs up there with the best of Paul’s work, and I can see Elvis’ fingerprints all over it.

  171. 171.

    trollhattan

    Add to the talent list a surprisingly accomplished guitarist. I’ve seen him three times, first with The Attractions early in his career around the time of the second album and a couple years ago, solo. He owned the house that show, telling stories as he swapped among a collection of at least a dozen guitars. Not Richard Thompsonesque but very good in an array of styles, including jazz. A treasure.

  173. 173.

    hovercraft

    Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, “the American people deserve a president who can speak grammatical english,” Trump supporter giggles and says “that’s so snobby,” Stephens “no, it’s true.” We are through the looking glass people.

  174. 174.

    Jeff Spender

    I don’t know why I find it surprising that the media wants their damn narratives so bad that they’ll prop up a man who treats nuclear weapons like dime-store firecrackers.

    I’m so weary of their bullshit.

  178. 178.

    germy shoemangler

    @Jeff Spender:

    I don’t know why I find it surprising that the media wants their damn narratives so bad that they’ll prop up a man who treats nuclear weapons like dime-store firecrackers.

    He’ll lower their taxes.

    And isn’t that all that matters?

  179. 179.

    Brachiator

    @germy shoemangler:

    It’s already begun. My local news affiliates keep repeating the following clips: HRC at the press conference saying she must have short-circuited (by the way, can’t they show any other clip from that press conference? NO), and then a quick cut to Trump saying We can’t have a president who short-circuits (points to his head in a gesture suggesting HRC ain’t right in the head).

    Interesting. And sad. I have not watched or listened to much national news this weekend, so I have missed this.

  180. 180.

    lollipopguild

    @Frankensteinbeck: Very nice summation/takedown. One of the reasons I come here the other being pet pictures and seeing if John has found a new and interesting way to injure himself.

  181. 181.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @Jeff Spender:

    I’m wondering how much of the likely drop in ad rates on products marketed to younger demographics (which are peeling away to streaming, ad free services) has led to efforts to slice away some of those oldsters.

    If CNN starts running a lot of Lifelock/Rascal Scooter/Jitterbug/Reverse Mortgage/I’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up ads, we have our answer.

  183. 183.

    Jeff Spender

    @germy shoemangler: I don’t get that line of thinking. I once knowingly exposed myself to MRSA so that I could do CPR; didn’t have enough time for gloves or anything just got in there and saved a life.

    By the way, I’mma send Grover Norquist an altered version of his “no raising tax pledge.” He wants me to sign it and send it back. What he’ll get is a form for him to sign that pledges he’ll take a vow of poverty and never work more than a part time job with shitty insurance and a car always on the brink of collapse.

  184. 184.

    hovercraft

    @lgerard:
    He is scum, but the fact that even scum thinks Trump is toxic is telling. We’re watching a pit full of scorpions fight it out. Fun for us, so long as we don’t fall in the pit with them.

  187. 187.

    burnspbesq

    the primary cause for the rise of Trump is right-wing media

    Just a wee, tiny bit oversimplified, wouldn’t you say?

  188. 188.

    MomSense

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    In the NYT video one of the Trump supporters says that Trump is our last chance to preserve the culture he grew up in. It’s not about economics, it’s about women and black peoples being back in our place.

  193. 193.

    Brachiator

    @Amir Khalid:

    ..A belief that, say, the sun went around the earth would also be a fringe belief, even if held by a majority of Americans. It’s not the percentage of people holding a belief that puts it on the fringe; it’s the fact that it’s been widely discredited, including by common experience.

    Nope. Belief in a flat earth or that man did not land on the moon are fringe beliefs. Most people do not believe this, nor are they clamoring to have this included in school textbooks.

  195. 195.

    raven

    @scav:

    Nenê (Portuguese pronunciation: [neˈne]; born September 13, 1982) is a Brazilian professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). His birth name was Maybyner Rodney Hilário, but it was legally changed to Nenê in 2003.[1]

  196. 196.

    scav

    @raven: I guessed at something Olympiod. But a bird randomly yelling out the name of another bird unexpectedly in the middle of a thread is far far funnier.

  198. 198.

    Gravenstone

    @SFAW: It’s all the little fuckwad knows. It knows no one would come to a blog it owned, so it comes to larger blogs to shit all over the proceedings, braying about how it would do things. Only no one, anywhere cares about it or how it would do things. Sad, really.

  199. 199.

    ThresherK

    @raven: Wait, he changed his name, legally, and didn’t make it “Rodney Hilarious”? Talk about a wasted opportunity.

  200. 200.

    redshirt

    Speaking of trolls, Brinks Truck Unlimited Victory! hasn’t tried to come back recently. Maybe Adam finally squashed him for good.

  201. 201.

    The Lodger

    @redshirt: I haven’t seen Reginald Mandrill either. Maybe the troll factory shut down for an Olympic break. Wonder what they’re all doing for spare change.

  204. 204.

    Capri

    @hovercraft: Yes. Just think, if he weren’t such a squish on social issues, Jim Cramer would be the republican nominee right now.

    About the news coverage – the politics follows demographics. All the late night shows are liberal (and increasingly political across the board) because the viewers are young. The six-o-clock news hour type shows are conservative because the over 75 set are their viewers. The networks are chasing the age groups, and increasing the country’s polarization in the process.

  205. 205.

    Tehanu

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    We’ll lose religious liberty.

    Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good article until that line. He’s not going to lose the “liberty” of believing in a version of his own religion that’s almost exactly the opposite of what the person he worships taught — you know, the guy who hung out with whores and tax collectors and thieves and didn’t follow the purity rules of how to eat and who to eat with. He’s just going to lose the ability to force other people to lose their liberty by making them live according to his bigoted beliefs. Oh, the humanity, yadda yadda….

  206. 206.

    No One You Know

    @Shalimar: Yeah. That worked beautifully when I had a real keyboard, but I can’t get it to do that on my phone (the only way I have to get online conveniently, at the moment). All hail next month’s paycheck!

  208. 208.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @germy shoemangler:

    It’s already begun. My local news affiliates keep repeating the following clips: HRC at the press conference saying she must have short-circuited (by the way, can’t they show any other clip from that press conference? NO), and then a quick cut to Trump saying We can’t have a president who short-circuits (points to his head in a gesture suggesting HRC ain’t right in the head).

    She misspoke in a speech and called Trump her husband, which is a hilarious snark at Trump in itself, so Trump, being the idiot he is, is jumping all over Hilary about it and not using his surrogates. Harping on a woman for making a clear mistake must be Trump’s new outreach to the ladies to gain their votes because you know how women love it when guys do that.

    So basically Trump is going to make sure Hilary doesn’t get a turn to have a bad week.

  210. 210.

    No One You Know

    @Gex: True, although only a liberal will notice; believing is seeing. Seeing can’t happen if you’re not looking, I believe…

  212. 212.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mark B: I don’t know that BJers all necessarily too earnest to rickroll someone. Me, I’d be afraid of some sort of retaliation. ; )

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