'Sponsored by Sharpie': Fox News brutally mocked as the network prepares to debut new weather channel

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021

CNN screenshot

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Fox News is moving ahead with plans to produce its own dedicated weather channel.

"Later this year, Rupert Murdoch is set to debut Fox Weather, a 24-hour streaming channel that promises to do for 7-day forecasts what Fox has done for American politics, financial news and sports," reported Michael Grynbaum. "Amid a waning appetite for political news in the post-Trump era, media executives are realizing that demand for weather updates is ubiquitous — and for an increasing swath of the country, a matter of urgent concern. In the past week alone, temperatures in the Pacific Northwest broke records, wildfires burned in Colorado, and Tropical Storm Elsa strengthened into a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean."

The news was greeted with mockery from commenters on social media, many of whom anticipated that Fox Weather could carry the signature right-wing bias of national Fox networks. Some noted the irony given Fox has long spread climate denial, and others wondered whether the network would support political alterations of the weather, like when former President Donald Trump infamously changed a hurricane map with a Sharpie

.

'Get the hell out of our great country': Marjorie Taylor Greene says she speaks 

for all of (WHITE) America in rage-filled rant

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
July 06, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Screen Grab)

In an Independence Holiday Monday evening rant Georgia Republican QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, an anti-Semitic, conspiracy-theory promoting, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, anti-science, anti-LGBTQ, "Big Lie" pusher and white supremacy-purveyor served up a lengthy diatribe in which she claimed to speak for the American people in "a message from America to the Swamp."

Green kicks off her rant by attacking the mainstream media, including Fox News, saying, "People have stopped watching the news [because] they are sick & tired of the fake news media, including Fox News. People feel like the mainstream media is the most destructive dividing force in our country. They know the media only reports what they want you to see. It's sad."

She parrots recent news stories saying Republicans will attack Democrats on crime, defunding the police, and the border – most of which are essentially right wing media click bait that bear, for the most part, little resemblance to reality.

According to Greene, racism is over:

Clearly, homophobia and transphobia are not only not over, she is encouraging anti-LGBTQ hate:

While she accuses Democrats of hating America because we are working to help America live up to its ideals and because we don't all drive around with American flags on our cars.

Doing Donald Trump's dirty work Greene again suggests the 2020 election was stolen, and appears to invoke a Rasmussen poll that claims 51% of all voters think there was sufficient fraud to move the election to Joe Biden – despite countless studies and lawsuits and reports from the Trump administration definitively finding there was no significant fraud.

Many Republican voters want the 2020 election "fixed before '22 & even democrat voters admit there was fraud with absentee ballots," she claims.

But possibly the most dangerous part of her diatribe is this anti-mask, anti-vaxx science denying support of herd immunity – which could lead to yet another pandemic wave in some parts of the country – primarily the parts she draws her support from.

Greene goes on to attack U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in yet another disturbing look into her AOC obsession. She also goes after Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Ilhan Omar and "the Progressive Squad aka Communists":

Here's how Greene concluded her rant:

And here's a video she posted on July 4th. Notice anything?

  

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AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM

Trump's 'big lie' was enabled by years of Americans being 'force fed' ​lies from religion: columnist​

Matthew Chapman
July 06, 2021

www.rawstory.com
On Tuesday, writing for The Daily Beast, columnist David Rothkopf outlined how American culture, and in particular religion, primed Trump supporters from birth to embrace the former president's "big lie" that the election was stolen from them.

"One of the key reasons we buy into so many small lies is that we have been force fed so many big ones. I mean really big ones. I mean ones that make the current Big Lie look like one of those low-calorie snacks that is actually a high-calorie treat shrunk to a smaller size and repackaged," wrote Rothkopf. "Many of these lies were created out of necessity. Life is finite. (OK, I'm sorry. It is. Take a deep breath if you need to and then continue reading.) ... According to a 2011 poll from the Associated Press, nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe in the existence of angels and a 2015 poll showed 72 percent of Americans believe in Heaven and 58 percent believe in the existence of Hell."

Large swathes of the population appear to be abandoning organized religion, but it remains a highly influential force in American politics. At this point, even faith leaders are having a hard time trying to properly educate their congregants against falsehoods like QAnon and anti-vaccine propaganda.
Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?

Making the problem worse, noted Rothkopf, is that lies both religious and secular are enforced by social structures that make it difficult to push back on them.

"All these lies are aided and abetted by the fact that simply believing in what you are told to believe is much easier than actually figuring out the truth," wrote Rothkopf. "What is more, if your family and friends believe in a lie, challenging that lie might make you an outcast, might alienate those with whom you have or wish to have a bond. With the advent of social media, where like-minded friends become 'editors' and select the news their followers see, lies spread among audiences inclined to believe and thereby endorse them. We live in an age of media 'echo-systems', ecosystems that reinforce disinformation spreading it from dubious sources like QAnon to Facebook to TV propaganda networks to you."

You can read more here.

PAYWALL

Fox News is just as much to blame for the Jan. 6 insurrection as Trump: columnist

Travis Gettys
July 06, 2021

DonaldTrump and Lou Dobbs

Former president Donald Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection with his election lies, but none of that could have happened without Fox News.

The ex-president started stoking the violence to come hours after polls closed Nov. 3, when he complained that any early leads that evaporated as more votes were counted could only be explained by fraud -- and both Trump and his allies pushed that false narrative on Fox News and later in losing court battles, reported the Washington Post.

"Trump could have come out that night and offered a cautious wait-and-see to the results, but he chose not to," wrote Post columnist Philip Bump. "Two months and three days later, his supporters, animated by that decision, stormed the Capitol and sought to confront legislators or Vice President Mike Pence."

But Fox News shares much of the blame for that violent assault by repeatedly promoting the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the Capitol breach, and by inviting guests on to repeatedly push Trump's lies about his election loss and even coordinating with them to push the dishonest claims.

"NPR obtained a memo delineating an appearance by Republican Party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, including how the pair would discuss the fraud claims that McDaniel and the GOP were elevating on Trump's behalf," Bump wrote. "Fox aired anonymous claims about explicit voter fraud, claims that were never substantiated in any credible way. Host Tucker Carlson raised claims about dead people voting — only to have to backtrack when a local news station spoke with several of the 'dead' voters. Host Maria Bartiromo offered extensive airtime for Trump to spread dishonest claims, offering only nods of her head in response."

Trump got impeached and Fox News has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems over the election lies it broadcast.

"Fox — and in particular Fox Business host Lou Dobbs — earned their place among Dominion's targets," Bump wrote. "On Nov. 21, Dobbs claimed that what had occurred a few weeks prior was 'a cyberattack on our election, those voting machines and software,' an obviously indefensible claim. It was also one of his last; the network axed him in early February."

Before he was shown the door, Dobbs was among the Fox News and Fox Business personalities who urged viewers to descend on the Capitol to pressure lawmakers not to certify Joe Biden's electoral win right up until the night before the insurrection.

"Trump planted the seed, but a lot of people had or developed a vested interest in its germination," Bump wrote. "It would have been far simpler to tell the truth about the election, even if it was not easier to do so and even if the payoff would have been far smaller. But for varying reasons, a lot of folks — Trump, Republicans, Fox News, others on the right — invested heavily in the idea that some wrong had occurred that demanded a correction. Jan. 6 was the result."

Fascists March In, Get Chased Out Of Philadelphia
Screenshot/Twitter,@mgouldwartofsky
By Matt Shuham
TPM
July 5, 2021 

Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched in Philadelphia Saturday night, leading to scuffles with bystanders and, at one point, a quick retreat into rental box trucks.

Patriot Front is known for these sorts of events: Members mask up, scurry into town, set off some smoke bombs, wave flags bearing fascist symbols and then scurry away.

But theirs plans in Philadelphia were interrupted by heckling and the occasional shove from residents.

Photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer showed the group being confronted by locals and retreating to two rental box trucks, and separately exiting the trucks with their hands up after being stopped, and then briefly detained, by police. (Penske, the rental truck company the white supremacists were seen using, was none too happy about the situation.) The Inquirer reported that the men were searched by police and then released.

Law enforcement told ABC affiliate WPVI that none of the group were from Philadelphia.

“An NBC10 photographer had his cellphone taken from him by members of the group, before recovering it,” Local NBC affiliate WCAU reported.

“They started engaging with citizens of Philadelphia, who were none too happy about some of the things they were saying,” Philadelphia Police Office Michael Crum told WPVI. “Apparently, these males felt threatened, and at one point, somebody in their crowd threw a type of what we believe is a smoke bomb, to cover their retreat, and they literally ran away from the people of Philadelphia.”

Pictures and video from the scene showed the group receiving a warm welcome from the City of Brotherly Love.

Trump Demanding Release of Jan 6 Insurrectionists

SARASOTA, FL - JULY 03: Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves after a rally on July 3, 2021 in Sarasota, Florida. Co-sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida, the rally marks Trump's further support of the MAGA

By Josh Marshal

TPM
July 6, 2021 

Yesterday I noted ex-President Trump’s vainglorious recital of events at his two recent rallies in Ohio and Florida. But there were a string of comments he made at his Sarasota, Florida rally that I only learned about after the fact. They are highly important going forward and particularly in the context of the 2022 election. The comments aren’t terribly surprising coming from Trump. They’re perhaps implicit in things he’s said before. But they represent something new. In short, he now seems to be demanding the release of the various insurrectionists facing charges for storming the Capitol on January 6th. “How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6?” he asked the crowd.

He also went further and began to suggest or demand (the ambiguity is a central feature of all Trump incitement) the lynching of the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt.

“By the way, who shot Ashli Babbitt? Who shot Ashli Babbitt? We all saw the hand. We saw the gun … Now they don’t want to give the name, but people know the name. People know where he came from. Now if that were on the other side, the person who did the shooting would be strung up and hung. Now they don’t want to give the name. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? It’s got to be released.”

Making a martyr of Babbitt, who was shot trying to rush the Speaker’s Lobby while members of Congress were being evacuated, has become a staple on the far-right since January 6th. Rep. Paul Gosar, who has become notorious for his work with various white supremacist advocates, claimed Babbitt had been “executed” by an officer who had been “lying in wait” for her while questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Trump says all sorts of wild things. Given the response he got, it seems highly likely this will become a staple of his rally speeches going forward. But what we can see from these comments is that he is focusing on the release of arrested insurrectionists and retribution against the unnamed shooter as leverage points to organize and maintain his hold on the GOP.

Total and explicit fealty to Donald Trump remains a sine qua non for participation in GOP politics, as JD Vance’s abject apology over the weekend makes clear. But there’s a different contest for control going beneath this unity. Republican leaders want to fight what we might call a “traditional” culture war campaign for the mid-term elections — BLM, the crime spike, the “border crisis,” Critical Race Theory along with spending, taxes and debt cued up in case the economy is weak in the fall of 2022. This overlaps with Trump’s rhetoric and vice versa.

Certainly grassroots Republicans and new candidates running for office as Republicans are solidly behind the Big Lie. But there’s an important difference in emphasis. Trump wants to re-litigate the 2020 election and get payback to the various forces and persons he feels betrayed him. That means among other things constant attacks on “RINOs,” the GOP in general, Mitch McConnell and various others who have been insufficiently loyal. Needless to say this isn’t welcome ground for McConnell or the various Republicans on Trump’s enemies list. But more generally it is at best divisive in the context of GOP politics. The whole point of off year or midterm elections is that the out party gets united and pumped because whatever their divisions they can all agree that they hate what the governing party is doing. In a sense it becomes a replay of the 2020/21 Georgia Senate races in which litigating the Big Lie and Trump’s grievances against fellow Republicans pushed to the center of the story and possibly led to twin GOP defeats.

More broadly Trump is leading the way in the slow, creeping GOP embrace of the January 6th insurrection. Last week Kevin McCarthy threatened to revoke the committee assignments of any Republican member who agreed to sit on the Jan 6th investigative committee. Mainstream Republicans aren’t yet endorsing the insurrection. And they are quick to take the safe harbor of insisting that those who committed specific crimes should certainly be prosecuted. They generally portray it as not ideal but the kind of things your over-eager friends do. Not ideal but certainly understandable and a product of a salutary enthusiasm. Trump wants to go further. He clearly wants the insurrectionists vindicated. He wants their prosecutions to stop. He rightly sees that their actions cannot be separated from the Big Lie. And that’s what he wants the 2022 election to be about.

Six Months After Jan. 6, Paul Gosar Demands Charges Against Cop Who Shot Ashli Babbitt

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) attends a House Oversight and Reform Committee business meeting on January 29, 2019. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

By Josh Kovensky
TPM
July 6, 2021 1:0

Days after former president Trump demanded to know the name of the police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the Capitol insurrection, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) cheered and welcomed the support for the far-right cause célèbre.

“Six months ago today, Ashli Babbitt, a 110-pound woman with nothing in her hands, not a rock, not a stick or a bat, was shot dead by a still unknown Capitol Hill police officer,” reads a press release issued by Gosar’s office. “And now President Trump has joined me in seeking the truth.”

Gosar has taken a lead role in stoking rage on the right-wing fringe about Babbitt’s death. A Capitol police officer shot and and killed Babbitt on Jan. 6 as she, backed up by a mob of rioters, climbed through a doorway into the House Speaker’s Gallery, where members of Congress were evacuating.

A DOJ inquiry did not find evidence to support charges against the officer; Babbitt’s family have sued D.C. for records on the officer.

But Gosar, who has ties to the far-right, has taken a lead role in pushing the idea that the federal government “executed” Babbitt. When DOJ officials have come before the House Oversight Committee, on which Gosar sits, to testify about Jan. 6, Gosar has used it as an opportunity to ask who “executed” Babbitt.

In the statement, Gosar restated his mantra of the past few months, demanding to know the identity of the officer who killed Babbitt while claiming the existence of a shadowy “effort to cover up the full circumstances of this homicide and the American people won’t stand for it.”

He once again referred to Babbitt’s death as an “execution,” saying that “we do not allow the execution of citizens by street ‘justice’ in our country.”

He went on to ask in the statement “why have no charges been brought against the shooter for negligent homicide or more?”

Study details how Trump unleashed 'outright slaughter' of wolves in Wisconsin

#STOPWOLFHUNTING

Common Dreams
July 06, 2021


FILE PHOTO: Service. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

A new study published Monday estimates Wisconsin lost as much as a third of its gray wolf population after the Trump administration stripped federal protections for the animals and the state allowed for a public wolf hunt widely decried as being "divorced from science and ethical norms."

The February hunt, panned (pdf) by wildlife advocates as "an outright slaughter," killed 218 wolves—already far past the quota the state had set. But over 100 additional wolf deaths were the result of "cryptic poaching," University of Wisconsin–Madison environmental studies scientists found, referring to illegal killings in which hunters hide evidence of their activities.

The majority of those surplus deaths, the researchers estimate, occurred after the Trump administration announced on November 3, 2020 the lifting of endangered species protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 states. That shift became effective in January 2021.?

According to the study, published in the journal Peerj, between 98 and 105 wolves died since November 2020 "that would have been alive had delisting not occurred."

An optimistic scenario puts the state wolf numbers for April 2021 at between 695 and 751 wolves. That's down from at least 1,034 wolves last year, representing a decrease of 27–33% in one year.

That decline, the researchers said, is at clear odds with Wisconsin's stated goal of the hunt "to allow for a sustainable harvest that neither increases nor decreases the state's wolf population."

"Although the [Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources] is aiming for a stable population, we estimate the population actually dropped significantly," said co-author Adrian Treves, a professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and director of the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at UW–Madison, in a statement.

Cancellation of the state's next hunt, set for November, could allow for the wolf population to rebound in one or two years. Standing in the way of that is Wisconsin's mandate for a wolf hunt in the absence of federal protections, and kill allowances set on shaky scientific ground, according to the researchers.

"Quite simply put, post-delisting, too many wolves are being killed and there is absolutely no justification for it."

Also troublesome is the fact that the state didn't mandate the collection of wolf carcasses for assessing data of wolf ages or detection of alpha females.

Co-author Francisco Santiago-Ávila said the results suggest the lifting of federal protections gave a subtle green light for more killings.

"During these periods, we see an effect on poaching, both reported and cryptic," he said. "Those wolves disappear and you never find them again."

"Additional deaths are caused simply by the policy signal," he said, "and the wolf hunt adds to that."

Citing "the importance of predators in restoring ecosystem health and function," the researchers offer recommendations including, at the federal level, a "protected non-game" classification for wolves. At the state level, authorities "should prove themselves capable of reducing poaching to a stringent minimum for a 5-year post-delisting monitoring period," the study said.

Wildlife advocates have already expressed concern that the wolf population hit seen in Wisconsin could be a harbinger of the fate of wolves in other states unless the Biden administration quickly restores federal protections for the iconic animals.

According to Samantha Bruegger, wildlife coexistence campaigner at WildEarth Guardians, "Quite simply put, post-delisting, too many wolves are being killed and there is absolutely no justification for it. No scientific justification. No ethical justification. No public safety justification. No economic justification."

WildEarth Guardians is among a handful of conservation organizations last month that released guides for laypeople as well as state agency wildlife policymakers to show how to best prioritize "wolf stewardship and a broader vision for conserving species in the face of global climate change and mass extinctions."

"New wolf plans informed by science and ethics are needed now more than ever, as the disastrous winter wolf hunt in Wisconsin showed," said Amaroq Weiss, senior West Coast wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, expressing optimism the guides could be tools for "a more hopeful course in states' stewardship of these beloved animals."

THE NAZI'S LOVED BELARUS
Belarus leader: Jews caused the world ‘to kneel’ before them

LIKE THEY LOVED UKRAINE & ESTONIA
Authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko laments ‘Holocaust of the Belarusian people’ during Nazi occupation of country in WWII

By TOI STAFF

Today, 

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Mound of Glory war memorial marking Independence Day, on the outskirts of the capital Minsk, Belarus, on July 3, 2021. (Maxim Guchek/BelTA Pool Photo via AP)


Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that Jews caused the world “to kneel” to them.

The authoritarian leader made the remarks in a speech Saturday for Belarusian independence day, which marks Soviet forces’ liberation of the capital Minsk from the Nazis in 1944.

“The Jews succeeded in causing the entire world to kneel to them and no one will dare raise a voice and deny the Holocaust,” Lukashenko said, quoted by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

According to a separate translation Monday by the Ynet news site, Lukashenko said, “The Jews succeeded in proving to everyone that they went through the Holocaust and the entire world kneels before them.”

Referring to Nazi German actions during the occupation of the Eastern European territory during World War II, Lukashenko said there had been a “Holocaust of the Belarusian people.”

“We are so tolerant, so good, we did not want to offend anyone and we have thus come to being insulted,” he said, according to Ynet.

Kan had a different translation of that remark, which it quoted as coming immediately following Lukashenko’s remarks on Jews.

“On the other hand, the Belarusians, a tolerant nation, allowed their faces to be spit on,” he was reported as saying.

A senior adviser to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus last year after challenging Lukashenko in a presidential election widely seen as rigged, slammed the Belarusian leader for the comments.

“Lukashenko is demonstrating his incivility, pathological lies and overt antisemitism. This man is trying to nurture in Belarus all the evil that the world is fighting against in the 21st century,” Franak Viacorka told Kan.

The publication of Lukashenko’s comments came after President Reuven Rivlin sent a letter Saturday to congratulate him on Belarus’s national day, apparently becoming one of the few Western heads of state to congratulate the Belarusian leader, who is widely seen as a dictator.

Rivlin’s office said in response to social media criticism that the letter was sent in accordance with Foreign Ministry protocol for the national day of any country that Israel has diplomatic ties with.

Belarus has been shaken by protests fueled by Lukashenko’s reelection to a sixth term in an August 2020 election that was widely seen as rigged. Authorities responded to the demonstrations with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.

Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for 27 years, has repeatedly accused the West of fomenting the protests and harboring plots to oust him.

On Friday, Lukashenko claimed his government thwarted a series of purported Western-backed plots, following a set of new bruising sanctions the EU slapped on Belarus over an incident last month in which fighter planes forced a passenger jet to land in the country to arrest a dissident journalist.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 Director Spike Lee tells Cannes Black people still 'hunted down like animals'

Director Spike Lee on Tuesday denounced the state of race relations in the United States three decades after he first shook audiences in Cannes with films on bigotry and violence, drawing parallels with the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

Lee, the first Black person to head up the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, said little had progressed since 'Do The Right Thing' premiered on the French Riviera in 1989 - a Brooklyn-based tale of spiralling racial tensions and police brutality with a startling resonance now.

"When you see brother Eric Garner, when you see king George Floyd, murdered, lynched... you would think, you would hope that thirty-some  years later Black people would stop being hunted down like animals," Lee told a news conference in Cannes, where the world's biggest cinema showcase is due to kick off.

A judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22-1/2 years in prison in June for Floyd's murder during an arrest in May 2020.

Video of Chauvin kneeling on the neck of the handcuffed Floyd for more than nine minutes caused outrage around the world, and the verdict was widely seen as a landmark rebuke of the disproportionate use of police force against Black Americans.

Eric Garner was killed in a deadly chokehold by a white police officer during a 2014 arrest. His dying words, "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Lee's darkly funny 'Do The Right Thing' - in which tempers fray and led to a deadly outcome over the course of boiling hot day in Brooklyn - outraged some critics when it was first released, with some claiming it would encourage riots.--Reuters