The Daily Drift

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Wingnut Media Publishes Sexist Story Ogling Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby

Wingnut media is using Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby's gender against her by publishing demeaning and sexist stories.…

Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller news site ran a story on Friday written by their Sports Editor, Christian Datoc, that consisted of almost nothing but sexist tripe about how “smoking hot” the author thinks Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is. The piece, titled “Let’s Be Honest: The Baltimore State’s Attorney Is Kind Of A Smokeshow”, begins with two paragraphs of news, and then quickly dissolves into the author ogling Prosecutor Mosby.

Datoc fantasizes throughout his narrative, describing Mosby as “incredibly sexy” and flashing “crazy girl” eyes. He concludes his piece with the perverse line “I wouldn’t mind being unrestrained in the back of Ms. Mosby’s paddy wagon”.

With that perverse finishing touch, he not only emphasizes his sexism one final time, but he also draws a wildly inappropriate reference to Freddie Gray’s ultimately fatal last ride. Instead of reflecting upon Freddie Gray’s death, Datoc wants the reader to indulge in his erotic fantasy, dismissing Gray’s homicide as a mere afterthought. Datoc is more interested in imagining his own “joy ride” with the Baltimore prosecutor than he is in reporting the details surrounding Gray’s death.

Sexism seems to run rampant at The Daily Caller. In March, Tucker’s brother, Buckley Carlson, got into trouble when he inadvertently sent a “reply to all” e-mail to a Bill De Blasio spokeswoman where he called her a “self-righteous bitch”. His brother later defended Buckley by saying, ”I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.”

The Daily Caller is a wingnut website. For that reason, nobody should expect them to champion liberal causes like reproductive choice or equal pay for equal work. However, even political wingnuts should, at the very least, demand that the page refrain from overtly sexist stories like Datoc’s article. His demeaning essay treats Marilyn Mosby as nothing more than a piece of eye candy for his leering eyes.

If The Daily Caller’s columnists are unable to respect women as professionals, they have no business writing news. While I am sure Tucker Carlson will defend Christian Datoc’s piece by saying “he meant it in the nicest way,” there is nothing nice about objectifying women. Hopefully some day, Tucker Carlson and his colleagues will understand that.

Boehner Ignores Reality and Blames Liberals For The Baltimore Riots

Boehner tried to argue that liberals are to blame for the Baltimore riots and the poor people in the inner cities would benefit economically if the Koch brothers and other billionaires got a big tax cut.

Boehner said, “When you look at these schools in the inner cities, these families are trapped in bad schools that don’t provide a real education, and look what you get. Chuck, what we have here is fifty years of liberal policies that have not worked to help the very people that we want to help. It’s time to look at all of these programs to determine what’s working and what isn’t because until we start to find programs that actually work and provide opportunities, more opportunities, and a better education, we’re going to have more of the same.”

Chuck Todd pointed out that improving the schools in Baltimore takes government money. Boehner had no answer except to send poor kids to Boys and Girls Clubs. Boehner did use all of the buzzwords for cutting funding to public schools and giving parents vouchers for private schools. Boehner also argued that tax cuts for the wealthy would create economic opportunity in the inner cities.

The blaming of liberals for Baltimore riots is a blatant attempt by Republicans to push their failed economic agenda as a cure for a problem that was caused by their failed policies. During the recession, the Republican refusal to keep stimulus funding going harmed city and state government across the country. The Republicans triggered massive cuts in education budgets, and the ripple effect from the decisions in Boehner’s House are still being felt today.

It is beyond laughable that Boehner would blame liberals for the Baltimore riots or any other civil unrest. The current Republican budget would make life even worse for poor people in inner cities. Speaker Boehner also ignored the basic point that too many police officers around the country have targeted minorities. The Speaker is ignoring the real social and economic issues in order to argue that a tax cut for the Koch brothers would calm all domestic unrest.

John Boehner’s answer to the situation in Baltimore and around the country is to blame liberals while pushing policies that more away from the people who already have less. The only failed policies that were visible during this interview were the failed policies of Boehner and his Republican Party.

Republican Pretender Hopefuls Put Their Buffoonery on Display in South Carolina

Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz, got together and agreed to collectively sound like Elisabeth Hasselbeck…

Were I them, I’d cringe reading about the things they said at the 2015 South Carolina Republican Party State Convention on Saturday. Shouldn’t you save the really stupid stuff for where nobody can hear you?

Apparently not, as the Fabulous Five, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz, got together and agreed to collectively sound like Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

To show you the kind of brain power we are talking about here, CNN reveals that Rick Perry “got perhaps the biggest applause of the day when he said ‘the best defense against crime is an armed citizen.'”

This is demonstrably untrue, but then the entire Republican agenda is based on things that are demonstrably untrue, but which they wish were true, so this is hardly surprising.

The audience loved it, of course. You would expect them to. “The dumber the better” seems to be the cry for 2016.

And Ted Cruz proved it. The guy who can’t be bothered to show up for his job, who has introduced only one piece of legislation and failed to vote on most others, said loftily:

2016 isn’t going to be an election about whoever’s got the loftiest rhetoric. Folks are going to look past at what people are saying and look at what you’ve done.

He better hope not, cause he’s done nothing except talk.

But it is Lindsey Graham who may have won the Hasselbeck Prize when he said that, “I see a Republican Party” – this is the same Republican Party whose policies are in large part responsible for the Baltimore riots – “giving people in Baltimore and nearly every other big city hope like they haven’t seen in past eight years.”

Rick Perry told the be-dumbed, “The great issue of our time is a battle between western values of freedom and this totalitarian world view of Islamic fanatics.” And Lindsey Graham said, “They want to purify their religion and they want to destroy ours.”

Wow, I could almost forget the Republican Party’s own purity drive. And wasn’t it Rick Santorum who said mainline protestants are actually serving Satan these days, and aren’t even really Christians?

Graham went after Islam. No doubt tired of hiding under his bed from ISL, he complained, “I’ve never seen so many threats to our homeland as I see today.”

There are more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, more capability, more weapons, more men, than hit us on any time before 9/11.

Ted Cruz, not to be outdone, said,

We need a president who’s not an apologist for radical Islamist terrorism, suggesting that it’s just like the Crusades and the Inquisition. We need a president who says ISIS is the face of evil and we will stop it.

But as Bloomberg pointed out, it was Santorum who “led the Republican charge in South Carolina on radical Islam.”

Santorum agreed to forget all about his own past in particular and the GOP’s obsession with the past in general:

You can’t defeat ISIS unless you define the enemy for who it is. This is an enemy that wants to bring back a version of Islam that was popular in the 7th Century, a radical idea about beheading and crucifixions.

Ready for the punchline?

“This is not a modern Islam. It’s a 7th century Islam. So I have a suggestion: Let’s bomb them back to the 7th century.”

Like whatever bastardized abortion of a religion they’re promoting is somehow a modern-day Christianity. These guys sound like the Christian monks who murdered female mathematician and philosopher Hypatia in fifth century Alexandria, Egypt, for standing up for actually thinking, rather than believing.

Her murder effectively replaced the questing spirit of Hellenistic philosophy and science with the “Do not ask questions, just believe,” paradigm, which last until the Renaissance.

If any group does not have the right to call another religion backward-looking, it is the Religious Right.

One resolution which came up at the convention was “Cold War Victory Day” which would replace “May Day” on May 1, because May Day is, you know, so Communist, even though it’s been a festival since before Christianity.

They had a whole bunch of resolutions to consider, like teaching the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in public schools (presumably until they auction the public schools off to the highest bidder), and then violating the Constitution by letting the Senate have a say in the president’s negotiations with Iran (you immediately see the need to teach the Constitution), and of course, pledging loyalty to Israel.

Kinda wish they’d pledge loyalty to the United States of America, but I suppose that would be too much to ask.

Bernie Sanders Unloads On The Kochs While Refusing To Play The Media’s Smear Hillary Game

During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) refused to play the media’s smear Hillary Clinton game, but he unloaded on the Koch brothers and other wingnut billionaires who are trying to buy the government.

Transcript via ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And let me ask you also, you sold — you told my colleague, Jon Karl, this week you have some concerns about the money raised by The Clinton Foundation.

What are those concerns exactly?

SANDERS: Well, it’s not just The Clinton Foundation. Here are my concerns, George, and it should be the concern of every American.

And this is, in a sense, what my campaign is about — can somebody who is not a billionaire who stands for working families actually win an election in which billionaires are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the election?

It’s not just Hillary. It is the Koch Brothers. It is Sheldon Adelson.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: — with them.

SANDERS: What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this become a battle between billionaires.

I believe in one person, one vote; I believe we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And let me say this: on our first day, first day that we were out, we asked people to get involved in our campaign, 100,000 people signed up; 35,000 people made donations to berniesanders.com and we raised on that first day $1.5 million — and you know what the average contribution was?

STEPHANOPOULOS: What was it?

SANDERS: $43.

George Stephanopoulos asked the obvious question to Sen. Sanders about The Clinton Foundation and the senator from Vermont turned it around and focused on the bigger issue of the attempt by billionaires to rig the electoral process in order to buy the government. Any media types who intend to use Bernie Sanders to attack Hillary Clinton are going to be very disappointed.

Sanders has made it clear that he is not going to run negative ads against Clinton, and he despises personal attack politics. In his first 24 hours as a candidate, Bernie Sanders raised more money than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul. Unlike the Republicans, Sen. Sanders doesn’t have a billionaire sugar daddy writing big checks for a shadowy super PAC. Bernie Sanders is being powered by the people.

Instead of being the tip of the political spear against former Sec. of State Clinton, Sanders is the voice of the people’s movement against the Koch organized and funded attempt to buy the United States government.

The movement is growing against the Citizens United enabled Koch brothers. The American people will not yield to a hostile billionaire takeover.

Republican’s Bright Idea: Let’s Pass A Bunch Of Terrible Bills So Obama Looks Bad For Vetoing Them

Good: Republican finally admits impeaching Obama isn’t going to happen.
Bad: So he wants Congress to spend the next two years destroying Obama’s legacy, instead.

Read more 

Wingnuts Remarkably Quiet About Freddie Gray’s 2nd Amendment Rights Being Violated

You’d think “right to bear arms” wingnuts would be outraged over the arrest of Freddie Gray… but they’re not. — Why?

Read more 

The Republican Cabal’s Racist, Privileged Image Proves Problematic For Cleveland Ahead Of Convention

Cleveland is playing host to the 2016 Republican National convention, and their strategy for it is, “Don’t be Baltimore.” Or Ferguson....

Republicans: Racist, Privileged

Silicon Valley rejects Carly Fiorina prestender run

“She put herself ahead of the interests of the company and I fear she would do the same as president,” said Jason Burnett, a grandson of the late HP co-founder David Packard and a member of the Packard Foundation board of trustees. “I don’t want her to do harm to this country.”

She takes ‘it’s OK to fail a tad too literally’

O'Malley Rips Boehner For Refusing To Address Structural Problems In Our Economy

Former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley let John Boehner have it for trying to blame the economic woes in our cities on "liberal economic" policies.

O'Malley Rips Boehner

Gohmert: 'It's A Real Shame' That People Want To End Mass Incarceration Of Non-Violent Offenders

Louie Gohmert (R-TX) over the weekend lashed out at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for calling to end mass incarceration in the United States.

Gohmert Is Insane

Big Dangers for the Next Election

by Elizabeth Drew

While people are wasting their time speculating about who will win the presidency more than a year from now—Can Hillary beat Jeb? Can anybody beat Hillary? Is the GOP nominee going to be Jeb or Walker?—growing dangers to a democratic election, ones that could decide the outcome, are being essentially overlooked. The three dangers are voting restrictions, redistricting, and loose rules on large amounts of money being spent to influence voters. In recent years, we’ve been moving further and further away from a truly democratic election system.

More

Republican Senators Voted To Sell Off Your National Forests

In case you missed it, almost every Republican Senator just voted to sell our public lands — including National Forests, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas —  to the highest bidder.
This is just downright wrong. As Ronald Reagan once said, “The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destrutctive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us.”

More on this budgetary amendment from indefinitelywild

“SA 838 is a budgetary amendment which backs support for and funding of state efforts to take over federal land. It was part of a larger debate over the 2016 fiscal year federal budget.
Introducing the amendment, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) stated, “When we have an opportunity to consider this amendment, a vote for it is really a vote in support of — as a priority of this Congress — comprehensive approaches to land policies to facilitate economic development, empower States and improve our conservation systems.”
The back story is that there’s ongoing, and potentially unconstitutional efforts taking place in Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Alaska and Idaho to see those states take possession of public land from the federal government, then allow the exploitation of their resources by private industry.
AmericanProgress.org calls it “…a losing battle that amounts to little more than political grandstanding to rally their extreme conservative base and feed an antigovernment narrative. Such bills contradict the majority of public opinion in these states, as well as economic realities and constitutional precedent dating back to the mid-19th century.”
The senate’s budgetary amendment to support this privatization carries no legal weight — it’s not a law — but does signify a troubling level of support for the privatization of public land. And make no mistake, this is about privatization and resource exploitation.
Efforts to “reclaim” public land are financially support by special interest groups like ALEC and Americans For Prosperity. ALEC is primarily funded by ExxonMobil while Americans For Prosperity was founded by David and Charles Koch.
SA 838 passed 51-49. Democrats unanimously opposed it, while all but three Republicans voted for it. The holdouts were Corey Gardner of Colorado, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
If it’s not a law (yet!), then why worry about it? “If you let a bad idea fester long enough, it sounds less and less like a bad idea,” states Steve Kline, of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The fear is that this success in the senate could encourage future efforts to pass similar language as actual legislation.” – indefinitelywild

Here is what you can do

If you prefer not to see our public lands sold to private industry sign this petition from The Wilderness Society.
You could also write or call your local senator in opposition to the amendment.

After A Steady Diet Of Demonizing Baltimore Mayor, Fox Plays The Victim When She Won’t Talk To Them

They're just too used to living in their own bubble.

Won’t Talk To Fox

10 Really Good Reasons To Not Vote Republican In 2016

The obvious reasons are of course policy related.  Republicans are opposed to anything sensible that would help the working poor, the middle class, those in need of help, the environment or anything else that doesn’t increase the bottom lines of their campaign donors.These ten reasons are far more specific.

10.) Marco Rubio

“The Hispanic community understands the American dream and have not forgotten what they were promised”

The Senator loves to champion the cause of Latinos.  Unfortunately he may be the most out of touch Hispanic man of all time.

9.) Bobby Jindal

“It’s time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education.”

The quote is of course all about privatization.  Jindal wants to hand money to private schools run by campaign donors while at the same time slashing higher education funds to give tax breaks to the wealthy.

8.) Chris Christie

“I don’t compromise my principles for politics”

Christie has proven time and time again that he has no principles to compromise.  Electing this man to anything ever again would make the Republican Party the laughing-stock of the world.

7.) Rick Santorum

“I love it when the left and when the president say, ‘Don’t try to impose your values on us, you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling to your guns.’ They have values too. Our values are based on religion, based on life. Their values are based on a religion of self.”

Santorum’s values are based on cash.  His “Christian values” have nothing to do with Christianity.  Holding your bible in one hand and your gun in the other, as he puts it, proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt.

6.) Donald Trump

“Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.”

Let’s go with “hate him.”  First off, speaking of yourself in the third-person shows just what a narcissist you are, and secondly, your idiotic and extremely sexist comment about women makes any realistic run at the highest office in the land nothing but a really bad joke.

5.) Rick Perry

“The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we inhabit are not only critical elements in the quality of life we enjoy – they are a reflection of the majesty of our Creator.”

In Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas he allowed fracking and oil production to consume the landscape, saw unmitigated destruction of public park lands and had zero to say on environmental issues other than to tout the modest improvement in Texas air quality, which was caused by federal mandates, not his.  Sit back down, Rick.  We like our planet.

4.) Scott Walker

“What makes America amazing is that there have always been men and women of courage who were willing to think more about the future of their children and grandchildren than they did about their own political careers.”

That’s why Walker slashed education to give tax breaks to the wealthy and destroyed the unions in Wisconsin to make his campaign donors happy, leading to the utter destruction of his state’s economy.  It was all for the children.

3.) Rand Paul

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so.”

This kind of idiotic thinking is exactly why we can’t afford someone like Rand Paul.  Article III section II of the constitution grants judicial authority to the Supreme Court in “all cases in law and equity” under the document.  Your statement may be the dumbest thing anyone who claims to be a “constitutional conservative” has ever said.

2.) Ted Cruz

“Is it true that the American people are war-weary? Absolutely. We are tired of sending our sons and daughters to distant lands year after year after year, to give their lives trying to transform foreign nations.”

Cruz signed the letter to Iran letting them know he in no way wants peace with them or any agreements that may end in our NOT bombing them.  He is a warmonger who supports putting boots on the ground wherever and whenever possible, because war is good for business.

1.) Jeb Bush

“It’s been painful to see the people that you love be attacked when you know it’s not fair or true.”

Not fair or true?  Your brother came perilously close to destroying our economy permanently.  His actions and lies sent thousands of Americans to their death in a war based on deceit.  Had President Obama lost in 2008 and John McCain continued his policies, which is a certainty, we would right now be renaming the Great Depression “not so bad if you compare it to this.”
No.  Just no.  No more Bushes.  No more.  None.  Be gone, we’re done with you.

---

This list certainly doesn’t cover all of the ineptitude the Republican Party has to offer.  With jerks like Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and…gulp…Sarah Palin still out there making fools of themselves this list could go on virtually forever.
The only positive thing about the Republican primary will be watching these fools tear each other to shreds, forcing them to flip-flop their positions as the political wind blows, as usual.

Here’s How The Nation’s Two Largest States Plan To Crack Down On Predatory Lending

Predatory lenders thrive in Texas, where regulations are scarce on stores that offer payday advance loans and allow borrowers to put their cars up as collateral for high-cost, short-term credit. But a trio of bills being considered in the legislature would update state law to make it harder for desperate borrowers to wind up trapped in endless loan-renewal cycles when they turn to payday and auto title loans.
The bills would put a length limit on what lenders can offer, prohibiting unpaid loans from being rolled over more than three times. The industry’s profits depend upon borrowers who get stuck in much longer chains of loan renewals that drive the overall interest rate on the borrowing up over 400 percent APR, according to federal data.
Along with the duration cap on re-lending, companies would have to ensure that a customer pays down the principal amount by at least 25 percent each time they refinance a loan. The two provisions together would help tie loan terms to a borrower’s real income and timely ability to repay.
Such rules are unenforceable without having comprehensive data on who is borrowing what from whom. One of the Texas bills would create a state database to track lending. Payday lenders have fought hard against databases in other states like Alabama, lobbying lawmakers and filing suit to enlist judges in their efforts.
The bills have the backing of the local chapter of the AARP. A fifth of all customers at Texas payday and auto title lending shops are over the age of 50, according to the group, which has also published polls showing that three-quarters of Texans older than 45 say they strongly support tighter rules for the loans.
If the Texas laws pass, the two largest states in the country would likely be building payday loan databases at the same time. California regulators are introducing a new slate of rules for policing high-cost lending, including a database provision that would help the state to better enforce the rules that are already on the books.
“California limits you to one payday loan at a time, but there’s no way to enforce that because there isn’t a database,” Pew Charitable Trusts small-dollar lending expert Alex Horowitz told ThinkProgress, stressing that even a loan that complies with California law is still more expensive than should be allowed. “Databases have acted as a backstop in some states. But they’re not sufficient as regulation. Even with a database and with this proposal, most borrowers cannot afford to repay $300 in two weeks. For an average payday borrower, that’s a quarter of their gross income.”
While Texas’ proposed database is part of a crackdown on brick-and-mortar loan shops, the new California consumer protections are tailored to the digital age. The state wants to prohibit payday lenders from gaining access to borrowers’ bank accounts – a move that could drive internet-only lenders out of business, and decrease the price that low-income borrowers pay for desperation loans – and force them to rely on traditional paper checks as collateral. The regulators are also partnering with Google and Microsoft to make it harder for unscrupulous internet lenders to promote their products to California web users.
Pushing online lenders out of business should make for a less-abusive overall market for resource-starved families who need quick cash. “Interest rates online are generally higher than they are at storefront lenders,” Horowitz said.
Compared to the dozen-plus states that have made payday lending impossible in their borders, California’s current approach is moderate. Storefront lenders that register with the state have “loan sizes capped at $255, and fees capped at $45,” Horowitz said. Interest rates on such loans are still quite high, but far lower than the roughly 400 percent annual interest that lenders charge on average in less-regulated states.
Reform proposals for storefront lending in Texas and online lending in California illustrate the diversity of regulatory approaches that states pursue in the absence of national rules for lending that targets the poor. As the industry siphons billions of dollars per year out of low-income communities, federal neglect has turned efforts to protect consumers into a game of whack-a-mole in which lenders successfully lobby against most regulations. But all that will soon change, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is preparing the first-ever national regulations to link lenders’ offerings to borrowers’ actual ability to repay the loans.
With its new regulations, the agency seeks to balance genuine consumer demand for emergency loans with the public interest in preventing the most predatory and abusive features of the traditional business model. While states like Connecticut and New York have sought to prohibit payday lenders from operating in any form, most Americans live in states like California and Texas that allow the businesses to exist while trying to legislate against their most abusive habits.
The forthcoming federal rules will attempt to replicate the most successful elements of those hybrid regulatory approaches, and impose new underwriting standards on lenders to prevent them from knowingly signing someone up for a loan they can’t afford to repay on time. The final rules are years away, but they will likely be modeled on the approach that states like Colorado take: limit the cost of these loans, prohibit the most egregious fine-print tricks lenders use, but make sure this lending remains economically viable so that desperate low-income people have somewhere to turn.

Republican Steve King Is 'Campaigning' for Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, please take a moment to thank Rep. Steve King for his tremendously effective effort to assure your election in 2016. When it comes to rapidly ascendant American Latino and Asian-American voters, Steve King and his radical ideas are the equivalent of several, well-funded SuperPacs dumping money in Hillary Clinton's favor.

'Campaigning' for Hillary 

The truth about trailer parks ...

Sex offenders have been good for park owner Lee financially, with park occupancy running at “1,000%”. She rents trailer pad spots for about $325 a month. The trailers are either owned by the tenant or rented from a third party. Many trailers are divided into three bedrooms, for which tenants are charged $500 a month per room.

Poor forced to live among sex offenders and felons as owners cash in

Jesse Ventura: I question the sanity of anyone who watches Fox News

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura has a few words for Fox News and their views, and he's not being kind. The governor just doesn't appear to have patience anymore for the top rated cable news station in the United States.
Is he a deserter or a hero? Maybe it's something in between? These questions have surrounded Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who was released earlier this year after spending five years in captivity of the Taliban. President Obama made the call to arrange a swap of five Taliban prisoners who were being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, in exchange for the POW Bergdahl who was finally released on May 31, 2014. Reports have stated that when Bergdahl went missing, he had actually abandoned his post, putting fellow soldiers in jeopardy in the process. After this information leaked, the situation quickly became political. Republicans jumped on President Obama, accusing him of negotiating with terrorists and and giving up too much for an alleged "traitor" and "deserter." The Obama administration quickly defended their actions, stating that the United States leaves no solider behind.
The number one anti-Bergdahl voice was the right-wing safe haven, Fox News. Known for their constant attacks on the Obama administration, Fox News framed the story as one of a weak commander in chief in another attempt to slander President Obama. On his podcast "We the People with Jesse Ventura," released each Thursday, host Jesse Ventura came clean with his thoughts on Fox News and the people who rely on them for a "fair and balanced" approach to the news.

"Anyone that gives Fox News any shred of credibility is ridiculous. When I'm out in the world and I hear people tell me that they watch Fox News, right away I question that person's sanity to myself. That person can't be of solid mind because no one of solid mind will watch Fox News and take it seriously."

Fox News promotes their brand as one that delivers "fair and balanced" news coverage, but time and time again, show themselves to be a major branch of the right wing media. Jesse Ventura has had his run ins with Fox News over the years, from heated debates with Sean Hannity, to making Brian Kilmeade leave the Fox and Friends news set after questioning the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Fox “News”: Amend Constitution So Democrats Can’t Lie During Election

Oh, the Hypocrisy - It Burns

by Marc Belisle

As we all know, the august broadcasting institution known as Fox “News” is a bastion of “Fair and Balanced” reporting. They would never dream of cherry-picking out-of-context, twisted or simply invented “facts.” They would never aggressively peddle opinion as fact with slick packaging and arrogant bloviation to pursue a partisan agenda at the height of an election. Oh, no.
As enormous election year 2016 begins to take off, Fox wants to force everyone else to be just as honest as they are. So, it was a great public service that Fox “News” published a recent op-ed entitled, “Harry Reid is the poster child for why our Constitution must be changed.” Said op-ed argued that we need to remove the text from Article I of the Constitution which provides immunity from defamation lawsuits to members of Congress. At first blush, it might sound like a decent idea to force our elected officials to give it to us straight. Our politicians do lie a lot. But if you think our government is dysfunctional now, imagine how fun it will be when anyone in the world can sue anyone in Congress for lying. The article, by Fox shrieking head Gregg Jarret, is featured prominently on Fox’s opinions page as an “editor’s pick.”
The reason for Jarrett’s gripe is that, in 2012, when Mitt Romney was just about to glide into the White House, according to Jarrett, Harry Reid was mean to him, and then he lost. Sad face.

At the height of the heated campaign for President in August of 2012, then Majority Leader Harry Reid stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate and smeared Mitt Romney as a millionaire tax dodger. Reid claimed the Republican nominee paid no taxes for ten years.
It was an audacious and deceitful claim because Reid possessed no evidence. He presented not a scrap of proof…because none existed. He appeared to invent the accusation out of thin air in a brazen ploy to turn votes away from Romney in favor of Obama.

Harry Reid used a “brazen ploy” to help his own party win an election! How dare he? Jarrett continues that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined that someone in Congress would abuse the legal immunity given to protect debate in order to slander a private citizen running for the White House mere weeks from the election “and subvert the democratic process.” The problem is compounded, Jarrett writes, because Harry Reid is still not sorry about it.
It’s nice to hear a Fox shrieking head concerned about the “democratic process.” That’s refreshing. If we go along with Jarrett’s assertion that Reid went too far, Reid’s comment is pretty mild compared to the slander that the right has slung in Presidential elections in recent history. From Willie Horton to Swiftboating and the birth certificate, conservative politicians and media like Fox spin complex yarns of terrifying fiction every election cycle, in an attempt to see it stick to Democrats. It’s kind of a well-established tradition. The most recent example of this was in 2014, at the height of the midterms, when wingnuts peddled the idea that a devastating Ebola pandemic was imminent, despite experts explaining it was pretty much impossible to contract in a country with decent public health infrastructure. But based on the assumption that we were one sneeze away from The Stand, they argued that Obama was allowing America to be infected for his nefarious purposes. Funny enough, Gregg Jarrett was an eager participant in incubating this idea and infecting his readers with it. Is he sorry about that?
The Ebola story was quite a whopper. Wondering how Romney got rich? Meh. It’s worth remembering that in 2012, the whole country, including many nervous Republicans, were asking, “WHY?!” Romney was the only major Presidential nominee in modern history to refuse to show the nation his tax returns. It is a fact that he was hiding something. We may never know what he was hiding, but whatever it was, he calculated that it was worse than the weeks of speculation about the mystery that dogged him. He sold himself to the American people as the right man for the Presidency because he was a successful businessman, but then told the voters they didn’t need to know how he made all his money. That proved to be an untenable contradiction. Harry Reid did not sink Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney sank Mitt Romney, and President Obama’s high popularity after four years, relative to Presidents in recent history, bought him a second term.
Jarrett compares Reid’s comments about Mitt Romney to Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts. In the world of political attacks, this is a bit like comparing the bite marks of a mosquito to those of a Tyrannosaurus. Romney wanted to be President Ritchie Rich without answering any questions, and Reid grabbed him by his Achilles heel. McCarthy destroyed the careers and reputations of thousands of innocent people. His hearings have more in common with the actual Salem witch trials than an opportunistic political attack on a powerful figure trying to pull a fast one. McCarthy’s judgment may have been compromised by the fact that he was a major alcoholic. This is something that Gregg Jarrett ought to keep in mind as he returns to reporting for Fox “News,” after his arrest for being belligerently drunk in an airport last year.
Changing the Constitution is a complex, serious matter, and should not be taken lightly. Jarrett’s desire to amend something as fundamental to our republic as Article I, section 6’s “Speech or Debate Clause,” highlights the fact that today’s conservatives aren’t conserving anything, but are often radical in their quest to subvert the will of the people and the legitimate authority of the government to corporate privatization and imperialism. If we’re going to consider changing the Constitution, there are a number of potential amendments that would be well worth the effort, including the Equal Rights Amendment, and an Amendment to overturn Citizens United.