1. Fox News. Fox News has been a shameful apologist in its responses to the Trump Administration’s inhumane immigration policies on the Mexican border. With Americans being exposed to images of small children being stripped from their parents and held in caged-in detention centers, Fox has been steadfast in downplaying the cruelty and blaming, of course, Democrats for the inhumanity.
As we approach the new year, here’s a brief round-up of the more callous, hateful, embarrassing and downright jaw-dropping moments the entire Fox line-up has shoved to viewers throughout the year. Buckle up and ride this embarrassing wave until the end.
Fox has been consistent in contending that the children aren’t really being kept in cages. You see, they “are merely chain-link walls” to create rooms. Small rooms, but hey! Definitely not cages! Back in June, Tucker Carlson summed it up:
"No matter what they tell you, this isn't about helping children. A lot of people yelling at you on TV don't even have kids, so don't for a second let them take moral high ground. Their goal is to change your country forever."
And with no irony detected whatsoever, Carlson’s guest, acting ICE Director Thomas Homan said the comparison to Nazis is unfair because “they are simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress.”
But, nothing, and I mean NOTHING could top The Ingraham Angle with host Laura Ingraham and special guest, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. First up, Laura Ingraham laughed off the suggestion that tearing kids, including babies, from their parents and sticking them in cages inside a former Walmart amounted to child abuse. Ingraham wanted her audience to know, these child prisons are “essentially summer camps!”
What the hell kind of summer camp does Laura Ingraham send her kids to? We have one working as a summer camp counselor right now and you know what they are doing? Zip lining, learning how to care for animals, doing craft projects, creating variety show skits and making s’mores over a campfire.
But, my God, nothing could prepare us for what came next on Ingraham’s show. Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined Ingraham to beat back the growing, legitimate comparisons between the concentration camps of Germany and these border facilities and the indefinite lock-up of migrants. Hitler whipped up nationalism using many of these same techniques, scapegoating Jewish people and immigrants. So, how did Sessions bat down these comparisons? By claiming they are nothing like the Nazis because Hitler wouldn’t let the Jews leave Germany.
In the last week of December, Fox excused ICE’s anti-immigrant actions when it featured New York’s jackass Representative Peter King saying:
“They’ve had hundreds of thousands of people that they had custody of over the years and I think these are the only two children that have died in recent memory.”
That’s right, he thinks it’s ONLY two dead kids. And, they weren’t even white kids. And besides, King points out, it “does happen in housing projects across the country” all the time. Which also sounds like dog whistle for “other kids who aren’t white, so who cares?”
What is wrong with these people? Where were they radicalized to be so cruel and inhumane? Every action they take is more deplorable than the last. It is past time for Congress to start acting as the check and balance they were intended to be. The need to find their spines. If they don’t, let’s hope American voters send them to the unemployment lines. In the meantime, pick up the phone and call your elected representatives today to demand this policy end and these children are reunited with their parents.
2. Trump’s Plutocratic Inner Circle. Leave it to Trump’s inner circle plutocrats to bludgeon us with just how little they give a shit about the plight the 800,00 federal workers affected by the government shutdown, or, for that matter, the everyday struggles of ordinary Americans. Empathy is certainly not their game. Here’s a few recent examples.
From the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: From the Department of You Can’t Make This Crap Up, the Trump Administration has an idea for federal workers getting screwed out of a paycheck during Trump’s government shutdown:
A furloughed employee might offer to trade maintenance services such as painting or carpentry work in exchange for a reduction in rent.
Okay then, problem solved. But in case you can’t paint or do carpentry work, or if your landlord or mortgage company insists on getting paid with actual money, fear not, because you can just show them the handy letter the Department of Homeland Security has circulated, thanking your creditors “for your patience and compassion towards our employees during this time.”
But if the bartering system or the letter doesn’t keep a roof over your head, the OPM has another suggestion:
If you need legal advice, please consult with your personal attorney.
Well, sure. Stop beating yourself up for skipping shop class in high school and just ring up your personal attorney. Doesn’t everyone living paycheck to paycheck have someone from Dewey, Cheatum & Howe on retainer?
From Kevin Hassett, Chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers: When asked how he feels about the plight of federal workers who are not being paid, Hassett had this advice: don’t fret, he thinks workers are actually “better off,” because they’re getting time off without having to use any of their vacation days.
From Trump Mouthpiece and Motivator, Sean Hannity: Hannity hates taxes on the rich, not because of the usual conservative diatribe that they damage the economy by disincentivizing wealthy people from pursuing investment opportunities that would spur economic growth, hence creating jobs, but, as he put it, because “rich people won’t be buying boats that they like recreationally,” and “they’re not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore.”
Bartering for rent, free vacation time, buying yachts? Conservatives are not supposed to say such things. They’re supposed to hold to the fiction that what’s good for the rich is good for everyone, and they’ve done a pretty good job of convincing millions of Americans of this nonsense.
From Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: Ross, who loves to put his wealth ostentatiously on public display, is confused about why furloughed federal workers were visiting food banks.
“I don’t really understand why” the food bank visits were happening," Ross said on CNBC. Some banks were offering interest-free loans, he said, and because the workers would eventually get their back pay, “there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it.”
From Lara Trump, the President’s Daughter-in-Law: In an interview, Lara said the shutdown amounted to “a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country.”
Trump’s inner circle is so out of touch with ordinary Americans, including most of Trump’s base, they don’t even know how to pretend to care about the Middle Class. This isn’t surprising. People who spend their lives living in a cocoon of wealth, oblivious to outside ideas, concerns and ways of speaking, can’t help but being clueless, even contemptuous, about ordinary working Americans.
But still, one has to wonder why successful, well-educated people would make such fools of themselves defending Trump’s heartless policies. The answer is that those who serve Trump are not all that smart, self-controlled, and competent—the stream of indictments and guilty pleas, conspicuous consumption, unethical behavior and foot-in-mouth statements attest to this fact. With fond memories of David Halberstam, let’s call Trump’s people “the worst and the dumbest.”
3. Conservative Columnist Kurt Schlichter. There have been few more heart-wrenching stories recently than the news about the death of a Yemini mother's two-year-old son a couple of days after she was finally allowed to enter the U.S. (after 17 months) to be with her dying son. While the boy and his father, Ali Hassan, are both American citizens, the mother is a Yemini national who had been prevented from entering the country under the Trump travel ban.
Schlichter, a Fox News favorite, once again displayed his total lack of compassion when above a CBS News report on the boy’s passing, he tweeted: “I don’t care.”
This only confirms what I’ve suspected for a long time: Schlichter is a sociopath. A perfect fit for Fox News.
4. Representative Steve King (R-Iowa). I hesitated to once again include a King ignominy but decided that sunlight is the best disinfectant for views that have deeply influenced Trumpism and our current debased national discourse. King may be among the most despicable human being in America, second only to Donald Trump. In his latest racist regurgitation, the unabashed neo-Nazi is angry because white nationalism is considered offensive. In his words:
“White nationalist, white supremacist, western civilization—how did that language become offensive? King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
I’ll say this for King, he is an equal opportunity bigot who has demeaned and vilified immigrants and Latinos (remember the “calves as big as cantaloupes” comment?) as well as people of color. He has championed various Trump conspiracy theories, including the claim that terrorists and other undesirables are slipping through our porous southern border. He’s clearly Trump’s kind of guy--or vice versa.
The proliferation of rights movements must be causing King a great deal of indigestion. When the new Congress was sworn in, King sat on his side of a chamber sharply delineated by demographics. The Democratic majority included record numbers of women and African-Americans, including the first Native American and the first Muslim woman. King’s side was mostly people who looked like him.
“You could look over there and think the Democratic party is no country for white men,” he said.
The latest King salvo appears to have crossed the GOP’s Maginot line for unacceptable speech, a bar so low that even Hitler might have been given a pass. Claiming outrage, Republican legislators stripped the unapologetic, ignominious King of his seats on the House Judiciary and Agriculture committees. Where was this outrage previously when King’s racism shown itself? And, why didn’t they mandate a stiffer punishment? Worse of all, why haven’t Republicans rebuked President Trump for his many offensive comments and racially inflammatory remarks.
It’s pretty obvious the GOP’s current lashing out at King does not reflect any sudden moral outrage. No, it’s pure politics; King has given them an opportunity to condemn racism without attacking the president.
_____________________________
And the January winner is:
For their ignominious “let them eat cake” attitude, the January IGGY goes to the millionaires and billionaires who inhabit Donald Trump’s inner circle.
Hard to argue with this one. We expect King to be a bigot, so nothing to see there. I was a mildly surprised Trump's inner circle couldn't at least feign some empathy for political purposes, so they have to get the IGGY.
ReplyDelete