Posts Tagged → credibility
Did FOX News throw the fight?
Much left-windrow hay has been made over the past week over FOX News settling out of court with Dominion Chinese Voting Machine Co., which FOX News had correctly, accurately, and with great piles of evidence described as being inaccurate and likely corrupted by the machines’ illegal connection to the Internet and to flashdrives.
Plus there was Dominion’s Eric Coomer bragging about how he did or would or had used his position at Dominion to block President Trump from receiving the actual vote tally Trump had earned on Election Day 2020. Coomer was Dominion’s director of security and had unique access into and control of the voting machines across America, and so his threat or bragging really amounted to something substantial. Basically the guy was bragging about having tampered with the most important election in Western Civilization in the past 100 years.
Coomer’s many partisan gaffes and showing of illegal playing cards, so to speak, would play quite well in a court room in favor of FOX News. A jury would have a tough time discounting Coomer’s claims to have illegally thrown the 2020 election.
So why did FOX News suddenly settle with Dominion, when the legal eagle work, like depositions and evidence production and cross examination and arguments, had just begun? Normally, it makes no sense for someone who has the evidence on their side to suddenly roll over and give up. And again, on the left side of the hay windrow, this settlement is being purveyed as an indication that President Trump was wrong to criticize the 2020 election outcome. This legal settlement is being interpreted by some as a vindication of Biden’s claim to have won the 2020 election fair and square.
So here is what seems to be happening to my jaded eyes: FOX News sure looks like it is unnecessarily rolling over and dying in order to paint the widespread claims of 2020 election interference and vote fraud as baseless, empty, and without merit.
And why would FOX News do this?
Because FOX News is owned by never-Trumper Republican Rupert Murdoch and his two registered Never-Trumper Democrat Party sons.
Not too long ago the Murdochs had already gone to one great and painful length to hurt President Trump’s 2024 re-election possibilities by officially declaring Trump persona non exista and persona non grata on FOX News. That is, FOX News reporters and talking heads and hosts were/ are not allowed to even mention President Donald J. Trump’s name on air, unless it is in a negative context. The Murdoch family’s goal is to make Trump invisible and thereby politically irrelevant.
The Murdochs’ political declaration of war on Trump via a supposed news reporting channel is an open declaration of war against the politically conservative FOX News audience. This is not a bluff, this is literally laying all your cards on the table, come what may. It carries real risk to the FOX News brand and to the Murdochs’ financial future.
So…Dominion…when it has now become apparent to everyone watching American politics that all the bogus criticism of Trump and the fake lawsuits against Trump and the fake criminal accusations against Trump are not only having no effect on Trump’s standing with American voters, but are actually bolstering his claim among voters to be the greatest innocent political victim in human history, and thus bolstering his just demand to be the re-elected president in 2024, it appears that the Murdoch Family had only one card left to play: The Dominion card, which looks to me like either the Joker card or the Suicide King card.
The FOX News settlement with Dominion appears to be a last-ditch effort by Trump’s FOX-RINO enemies to undermine his complaints about the 2020 election.
Because normal people would not normally give up the princely sum of $787 million dollars to settle with someone they believe to be unworthy of the money, it appears that the Murdochs are falling on their sword here to create the very public impression that they were unable to press forward with the Dominion lawsuit. Because, you know, the 2020 election “was soooo secure” and “sooooo clean.” Because in truth it was not, but such is the Murdoch family’s collective hatred for President Trump that they will deliberately pop a sacrifice fly ball or throw the fight in order to help the other side win, even at such a great financial and credibility cost to themselves.
And here is the thing the Murdoch family members don’t realize about this crazy expensive gesture of theirs: Normal people are already hip to the crazy shit that super rich people like the Murdochs do, and this throwing of the fight with Dominion looks like just more crazy rich people shit.
And given how corrupt all the Never Trumper people have been, all the lies they have told and unethical things they have done to try to stop President Trump, who is to say that this “settlement” isn’t just an even bigger charade, where Dominion quietly signs the money back over to FOX News? These people, Dominion and FOX News and the Murdochs, have very little credibility with most Americans, because it already looks like they will sell their grandmas for ten bucks to try to hurt Trump, again.
Long Live King President Donald John Trump, mofos. Nice try, but We, The People are going to run the table next year and coronate our guy, our hero, our savior.
UPDATE: FOX News has terminated its employment relationship with host Tucker Carlson, one of the very few journalists remaining at FOX News who was trusted by at least half of America (conservatives). This is yet another act by establishment elites (Murdoch family) to limit the accurate information available to American citizens. Yes, the Murdochs are damaging their Fox News business by behaving this way, but they care more about getting control of you than they care about money. They already have a lot of money, and that has whetted their appetite for getting something even better…control of you. And they can most easily achieve this by limiting the information available to you and then shaping your opinions with the fake news and misinformation they dole out. Bye bye Fox News!
Fox News played its self-defeating last-ditch card, the so-called suicide king
Mueller impeaches Mueller
Did you watch any of the Robert Mueller testimony before Congress?
I just had to watch it, as boring as it was, because there has not been a richer opportunity for someone in DC to go meaningfully rogue than Robert Mueller could have today. As slowly as his testimony went, I kept thinking “OK, here it is, here is the moment he just says whatever he wants to say, for political gain, to hell with the report he authored that found no evidence of anything against the US president.”
But Mueller did not go rogue, he went to sleep. And he only woke up when members of one political party questioned him with loaded opportunities to score political points against the president.
When questioned aggressively by the disbelieving, incredulous members of the other political party, Mueller seemed very tired, worn out, confused, disoriented, unsure. He either has early dementia, or as journalist Matt Drudge speculated, he is taking heavy drugs. It was simply a bizarre performance by a man whose reputation has been said to be so perfectly perfect forever and ever.
But the real icing on this weird day was when Mueller repeatedly mis-remembered and mis-stated a lot of answers to basic questions about the “investigation” he conducted and the report he wrote about it. Mueller was either perjuring himself right and left, or he has dementia, which is no excuse for lying but it could give him an out. The net result is that Mueller blew up his own credibility today, and apparently set himself up for a dose of his own medicine. Few would be surprised if Mueller is now rightly investigated for having overseen an illegal political witch hunt based on falsified evidence, in which he repeatedly obstructed justice to protect his allies, and where he also filed false charges against innocent people and hid and purposefully destroyed exculpatory evidence that American law says these victims are entitled to have.
Mueller’s vague responses to important questions about how disgraced FBI agent Peter Stzrok’s official FBI cell phone was scrubbed of all texts and emails by Mueller’s (all Democrat) staff before being turned over to the DOJ Inspector General was spectacular: “Umm, I really don’t know how the most important piece of evidence in this entire fake Russia collusion hoax fiasco was mishandled. I Just don’t know.” [more or less this was his answer]
If Mueller was perceived by some in Washington, DC, as a clean, smart, honest, credible professional yesterday, that would now be a thing of the past after his sad performance today. His media allies have done a great job of covering up Mueller’s many criminal misdeeds over the years, but today’s performance is out there for all to see. You get to watch one slow-motion, low energy lie after another on video, yourself. With no intervening allies to spin or hide Mueller’s frail performance.
If any impeachment was going to happen in DC, it just happened today, as Robert Mueller impeached himself, his credibility, and the fake “Russia collusion” investigation and fake-fake-fake report he wrote about it.
The next step is an investigation of perjurer Mueller and his team, notably Andrew Weissman, who, like Mueller, has a long record of abusing his investigatory powers and putting innocent people in jail.
Now can we please please please just get back to the business of running the country? No more fake outrages, no more fake breathless “Gotcha!” moments by the media, no more partisan rumors-as-news. Stop already. Let things settle down, the country has suffered enough from this one man’s indecency.
NPR’s alternative facts undermine media credibility
Seasoned NPR employee Mara Liasson asked a question at a White House press briefing the other day, and it has taken me days to accept the brazenness of her bald-faced lie.
Asking Trump Admin spokesman Sean Spicer about allegations of voter fraud, Liasson asserted that Trump had claimed the number of fraudulent votes in the November 2016 election were between three and five million.
Unfortunately, Spicer is new and did not challenge Liasson’s lie. Trump never claimed that number. He did say he believed between one and two million of the votes for Hillary Clinton were fraudulent. How Liasson arrived at five million votes is something only she knows.
But we know why she did it: Mara Liasson is personally opposed to the Trump Administration.
Unfortunately, Mara Liasson is like the other NPR employees, she is a partisan political activist. Her personal politics shapes her professional behavior. Nothing that Mara Liasson does is news reporting, as in reporting of actual facts. Her brazen creation of alternative facts in this one instance resembles her many prior years of alternative facts creation and fake news aimed at her other political enemies.
In one public moment, Mara Liasson has re-opened the worm can of fake news and alternative facts, used to attack and undermine the mainstream media’s political enemies.
And NPR fans wonder why their credibility is so low, and why there are so many loud calls to defund NPR and strip it of the publicly owned intellectual property it manages, like its trademarks and logos.
UPDATE: Fifteen minutes after writing this, I read a New York Times article published today, written by Richard Fausset, another political activist who wears the credentials of a “news reporter.”
What catches my eye right away is the following statement by Activist Fausset:
“The scrambling of what’s real and what’s illusion began well before Mr. Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway offered the concept of “alternative facts” on Sunday when commenting on false statements by Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, and before Mr. Trump’s repeated false claims on Monday that millions of illegal voters cost him a popular vote majority.”
Voting for Hillary?
Voters who select Hillary Clinton now forever disqualify themselves from criticizing any future candidate. There has never been nor is there likely again to be a candidate as unqualified and as corrupt as Clinton.
Knowingly choosing Clinton means a voter forfeits their ability to credibly attack future candidates. If Clinton is worth your vote, then anyone is worth voting for, because a candidate cannot be worse than Hillary Clinton.
Sure, you could disagree on policy with a future candidate, but you could not fairly accuse that person of being flawed. If Hillary isn’t too flawed for you now, then no one can ever be flawed again.
Hold Hillary to the same standard you have for other candidates, or forget being taken seriously.
Hypocrosy corrodes credibility. Don’t be a hypocrite. Vote for Trump and hope he’s happy to leave after one term.
Natural resource envy
Being a conservationist, I’m on a bunch of email lists about conservation, natural resources, environmental protection.
Why and how groups send emails decrying natural resource companies, while happily using those same resources, like oil, coal, and natural gas, is beyond comprehension.
Oil and gas companies serve a demand by consumers who want their cars to run, their stoves to cook.
Coal powered electricity is ubiquitous. It runs hospitals and schools, as well as your home and place of business.
Somehow, in a twisted way, the companies supplying the power are “bad,” and the consumers are off the hook. As if these companies operate in a vacuum.
Credibility suffers when you’ve got two or more standards for the same behavior. It’s sad because environmental quality is important. My request to conservatives is to not dismissively abandon the field of battle, and don’t let the far left define or frame the issue, either. And don’t let the leftist groups get away with demonization of companies the world depends upon, unless those same groups are willing to generate their own power and transportation fuels.
Ukraine: Obama batting zero, his cheering section still loud
Math was not always my strongest interest (although I did self-learn calculus in graduate school), so disregard the headline here. Obama’s foreign policy is such a catastrophic failure that he is way in the negatives; he is not at zero. Being at Zero would actually be a success.
Here is a partial list of countries and peoples seeking freedom from tyranny who have had the rug of American promises pulled out from underneath them by Obama:
Poland (defensive missiles).
Georgia (South Ossetia, invaded by Russia).
Israel.
Iranian citizens.
Syrian citizens.
And now it’s Ukraine that has learned the hard lesson of Obama’s recklessness. Whatever promises were made to get Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, like protecting Ukraine from Russian imperialism, have been openly tossed out the window by an Obama administration bent on destroying America from within. Wrecking America’s international standing is one way to destroy America at home.
Allowing aggressive imperial powers like Russia, China, and Iran to willfully expand their spheres of influence and domination lets Obama off the “aggressor” hook. He can claim he’s no “warmonger.” But his inaction and failure to live up to his own red lines and promises of American protection have created a vacuum into which the aggressors, the real warmongers, have stepped.
Growing up in a pacifist household, I used to ask the hard questions that no one could answer, like Why should someone not actively oppose an Adolph Hitler and a Nazi Germany? Answers were hard to come by, because there are no substantive answers to these questions.
Pacifism is evil because it legitimizes evil. Pacifism equates doing nothing with active aggression, imperialism, domination, subjugation, tyranny and all the barbaric cruelty that goes along with them. By failing to act, by failing to confront evil in a meaningful way, pacifists lend credibility to the aggressors. If Russian imperialism in the form of subjugating Ukraine is not confronted and thwarted, then it must not be so bad. Such is the message from Obama and other pacifists, intended or unintended.
This unwillingness to act creates a vacuum, and this vacuum is seen correctly as weakness. It invites even more aggression. History is replete with examples, so an Obama would have to willfully ignore the obvious historical truth in order to do what he is doing (and not doing) now.
I know Obama has his cheering section. That is the greatest sadness of all, because those same people claim to be ethical, humane, loving. So strong is the messianic love for this charlatan among his believers, that they will forgive and forget his greatest deceptions, his greatest failures, the trail of destruction and misery in his wake. Other people, other families, then pay with their lives, at best to be the subjects of pity by groups like OxFam and Rotary, intent on picking up the few broken pieces later on.
For shame.