How Fox News settled

A story about Socialism, Stand Your Ground Laws and 21st birthday parties...

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention: Dominion Voting Systems (they make electronic voting machines and tabulators) sued Fox News for approximately a bajillion dollars because they believed Fox injured their reputation by airing phony conspiracy theories that claimed their voting machines switched votes for Donald Trump to votes for Joe Biden.

Which is totally untrue because what actually switched Donald Trump votes to Joe Biden votes was Donald Trump’s track record in the White House.

Dominion set out to prove that Fox acted with malice by airing allegations they knew to be false and with “reckless disregard for the truth” which, now that I think about it, ought to be Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign slogan and would also look great on a T-shirt.

Dominion presented internal emails and text messages from Fox executives and personalities that said they believed the allegations were untrue, which didn’t stop those false allegations from being aired on Fox shows hosted by people like Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Joseph Goebbels.

So rather than go to trial and have people like Tucker Carlson get on the witness stand and embarrass the crap out of Fox News (and Tucker’s show proves that’s well within his skill set) Fox decided to settle with Dominion for $787.5 million.

Now here’s an article that makes the same point I made in the cartoon (Fox News wants to be seen as a legitimate news organization, but is actually a propaganda machine) although the article’s still worth reading because the author goes on to make the point that despite the settlement Fox hasn’t changed and never will and the rest of the media bear some responsibility for treating Fox like they are a news organization which is important to Fox because then they can present crazy-ass conspiracy theories as if they were reporting actual news:

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/20/fox-news-has-learned-nothing--the-mainstream-press-cant-let-them-forget/

Those internal emails and texts showed that people at Fox News thought the election fraud allegations were untrue, but gave them airtime anyway because they believed that’s what their audience wanted to hear and if Fox News wouldn’t lie to them, their viewers might find a news source that would, a series of revelations that led to the cartoon you just looked at.

Right here in Kansas City a 16-year-old Black kid named Ralph Yarl got shot by an 84-year-old White man named Andrew Lester because Ralph mistakenly rang his doorbell while looking for his twin brothers.

Also right here in Kansas City: it’s pretty easy to ring the wrong doorbell because we have a mystifying street-naming system which includes streets and terraces (the terraces come in-between the streets) and according to the Associated Press, Ralph was asked by his parents to pick up his brothers at an address on 115^th Terrace, but mistakenly went to 115^th Street (or maybe it’s the other way around, like I said, it’s confusing) and either way they’re one block apart.

This is only speculation, but the People in Charge of Naming Stuff in the Midwest seemed a bit short on creativity because you not only have 115^th Terrace and 115^th Street, you have Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas and North Kansas City and those are all completely different cities sitting side-by-side so it’s not uncommon for people to get confused and ask, “Where the fuck am I?” and in Ralph Yarl’s case the answer seems to be:

“Somewhere in the mid-19^th Century.”  

Missouri has a “Stand Your Ground” law which is part of the “Castle Doctrine” which sounds like some self-justifying bullshit thought up by the kind of people who can afford castles and can’t wait to use one of the guns they bought.

Basically, the law says you have no obligation to retreat and can use force if you feel threatened and I’m guessing a fair number of 84-year-old White men (and possibly White women) feel threatened when they see Dave Chappelle host Saturday Night Live.

Once again according to the Associated Press – which quoted a “probable cause statement” – no words were exchanged before the Old White Guy fired a warning shot into Ralph’s forehead and then shot him again in the forearm as he lay on the ground. So apparently Black men (or more accurately in this case, Black kids who play the bass clarinet) are still threatening after being shot in the head and falling down on the ground.

Now here’s a picture of honor student Ralph Yarl:

And here’s a picture of gun owner and Old White Guy, Andrew Lester:

If you went to answer your door at 10 o’clock at night, which one would seem more threatening?

According to the Kansas City Star, the Old White Guy was released and not immediately charged and the police said they couldn’t do that until they got a statement from Ralph, but defense attorneys immediately called bullshit and now that I think about it, if Ralph had died would the police say they couldn’t charge Lester because his victim hadn’t given a statement? 

So, plenty of racism to go around here in the Heart of America and I predict you haven’t heard the last of it because Andrew Lester has pleaded not guilty and claimed he was “scared to death” so now you’ll probably get the gun nuts saying Lester had the right to “stand his ground” which led me to depict the ground I believe those guys are standing on. 

https://apnews.com/article/ralph-yarl-shooting-updates

As I’ve pointed out before and no doubt will again, Republicans complain about too much government interference when they want to purchase an AR-15 or pollute the planet or take advantage of minimum-wage workers because the company CEO has his eye on a bigger yacht, but are totally fine with government interference if someone wants to read the wrong books, have gay sex or compete in sports as a transgender athlete.

And now we have a bunch of generally clueless old men (and depending on the subject matter, that description often includes me) getting involved in reproductive rights decisions that could best be made by a woman and her doctor and maybe the guy who got her pregnant, but until men figure out how to give birth and have a South of the Border orifice stretched wide enough to pass a honeydew melon, I believe we play an advisory role at best.

And now a word about government and the role it plays in our lives.

For the fifth or sixth year in a row – depending on what source of internet misinformation you prefer – Finland was named the Happiest County in the World according to the World Happiness Report which sounds like something that would be issued by Mr. Rogers and Ringo Starr even though Mr. Rogers is dead and I only included Ringo because one of my sons made the seemingly accurate observation that sometime in the 1960s Ringo achieved the right amount of high and has stayed there ever since.

In previous rants I’ve expressed skepticism about the accuracy of polls and that hasn’t changed, but I recently read an interesting article about Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway and why they’re happy countries even though they’re so close to the top of the globe you have to travel South to get to Santa’s Workshop. 

According to the following article, part of the reason Finland is way up there when it comes to happiness and the USA hasn’t cracked the top 10 in recent years is the Nordic countries supply their citizens with extensive benefits that help them with things like child care, education, health care, elderly care and worker’s compensation, but here in the Greatest Country in the World Americans are pretty much on their own.

The author (she’s Finnish) says Americans have the reputation for being obsessed with money and she goes on to say we pretty much have to be obsessed with money because our government does so little for us.

Plus the American system produces extremes in wealth which pisses people off when the citizens at the bottom can’t afford food and shelter while the citizens at the top have so much money they can afford to build rocket ships shaped like a dick and take their billionaire friends for rides into outer space.  

Anyway…

It’s an interesting observation and view of countries that lean toward Socialism on the political spectrum (Social Democracies are government systems that have elements of Socialism within a capitalist framework, but people still have a say in what the government does).

But if you google “are the Scandinavian countries socialist” you’ll be offered a wide variety of condescending articles from Conservatives sources like the Heritage Foundation, Foundation for Economic Education and the Competitive Enterprise Institute which will tell you in no uncertain terms that the Scandinavian countries definitely aren’t Socialist and anyone who thinks they are is a naïve nincompoop.

Maybe that’s because the Scandinavian countries seem to work better than ours and it’s interesting that Conservatives seem to be scared shitless of anyone thinking the Scandinavians are Socialists, but don’t hesitate to call any Americans who disagree with them Communists.

And now that I think about it, the people who tell us Socialism is horrible are mostly people who own Penis-Shaped Rockets and their lackeys who have done well in a Penis-Shaped Rocket Producing economic system.

They say the American economy is competitive, but it’s a competition they’ve rigged.

The Ringo-Starr-Evaluating son also said people here don’t want a Nanny State that tells them how many ounces their soft drinks can be or where they can smoke a cigarette or how many miles per gallon their car needs to get, but might feel differently about a government that paid for their college education and medical expenses. 

If you want to read the article for yourselves, here you go:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/opinions/finland-world-happiness-report-comparison-us-heinonen-ctrp/index.html

According to CNN the guy who leaked the documents that got everyone’s Fruit of the Looms in a twist was 21 years old – which means he’s barely out of high school – who had been given Top Secret clearance by the US government which would seem to indicate the US government has really lousy judgement or extremely low standards when it comes to handing out Top Secret status and possibly a combination of both.

When I was 21 I had pretty lousy judgment myself and all I remember about my 21^st birthday was being driven around to a variety of locations where people bought me way too many drinks and got me shitfaced and considering some of the bad decisions I made that night you really wouldn’t want me to have Top Secret defense information because after my 13th beer and four shots of tequila I’d probably try to impress everybody at the bar by yelling:

“Hey! Guess who we’re spying on!”

(On the other hand, you wouldn’t want me to have Top Secret information at 61 either and when I look ahead I also feel confident in my ability to make crappy decisions at 71.)

Anyway…

Here’s an article that says over a million people in the United States have Top Secret security clearances which is how you wind up with classified documents being stuffed in Donald Trump’s golf bag or sandwiched between issues of Joe Biden’s collection of Reader’s Digests from the 1960s and I just made both those examples up, but don’t tell anybody and it will be our secret.

Maybe not our top secret, but way up there.

OK, once again that’s it for today and have a nice weekend and if you know any really juicy secrets, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/classified-information-what-matters/index.html