Make them all go first!

From HIVE at VANITY FAIR:

America is just over a week into the White House’s “Slow the Spread” coronavirus initiative, which recommends citizens practice social distancing and refrain as much as possible from leaving their homes. But Donald Trump has spent the past few days whining about the struggling stock market and signaling a return to business as usual, despite warnings from his own medical experts that an additional several weeks are necessary to contain the still-growing pandemic. Sending the country back into full-time work mode would undermine efforts to curb the outbreak and will almost certainly lead to more Americans dying—one worst-case model found that 2.2 million people could die if the outbreak is allowed to spread unmitigated. Right-wing media outlets know this, but they’re still backing the White House’s ill-advised pivot in near unison.

In fact, the death cult speed-run to save the stock market already has its first round of volunteers. On Monday night, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick kicked things off by telling Tucker Carlson that he is ready “to take a chance on [my] survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves,” i.e. one in which business is booming. Carlson, who commended Patrick’s comments as a necessary “conversation,” discussed the proposal on Tuesday night with his colleague Brit Hume, who concluded that it is “an entirely reasonable viewpoint.”

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A New Hen for the Fox House

From SALON:

During her very first day at Fox News, former contributor for TheBlaze (and current Obamacare beneficiary) Tomi Lahren inadvertently suggested that she and the network are persistent in covering the Hillary Clinton email non-scandal perhaps cynical reasons.

During an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show last, Lahren justified the network’s continuous coverage of a scandal — one that has had no newsworthy developments and pertains to a political figure who has been out of the spotlight for almost a year — by depicting it as retribution for covering President Donald Trump’s potential collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.

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Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber

From the Atlantic wire:

The Players: Glenn Beck, a conservative provocateur who has a burgeoning news site called The Blaze ; Andrew Breitbart, a conservative provocateur who’s run his own news site Breitbart.com and conservative-slanted Big aggregation network.

The Opening Serve:  Glenn Beck hasn’t been shy about voicing his opinion on Newt Gingrich ever since the former Speaker of The House began to surge in the polls. We noted he played a little bit of gotcha journalism with Gingrich, but Beck took it a step further and went on Fox Business this past weekend to air his grievances:

If you have a big government progressive, or a big government progressive in Obama… ask yourself this, Tea Party: is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for [Newt Gingrich], it must be about race. I mean, what else is it? It’s the policies that matter.

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Misogyny: Good for What Ailes Ya

From am new york:

Get ready for a big surprise.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes did not hire Sarah Palin as an on-air commentator because of her lacerating wit or insight into domestic and foreign affairs.

“I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” Ailes, 71, said of the former vice presidential candidate in an interview with the Huffington Post published Wednesday.

Yeah, kids, I know what you’re saying–Roger Ailes is a misogynistic pig.  You might take that back, though, when you find out that he hired Glenn Beck for the same reasons!

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Blechhh got fired, so would anyone be surprised if Princess Sarah is next on the chopping block?

Huntsman and Huntsboy

From The New York Times:

SALT LAKE CITY — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. was 10 years old when his father packed up their growing family to move east in 1970, leaving behind his fledgling company to work for President Richard M. Nixon.

A driven businessman with deep roots in the Mormon Church, the elder Huntsman found little to like about his experience in the Nixon White House. It was poorly run, in his view — not at all like a business — and he felt terrorized by H. R. Haldeman, the mercurial chief of staff.

“You asked me what I took out,” he told an interviewer years later. “I didn’t take anything but fear out.”
Yet Mr. Huntsman did leave Washington with something that proved valuable when he resettled his family here: a thick Rolodex and a deep understanding of politics. In the years that followed, as he became a billionaire industrialist, a philanthropist, a campaign donor and one of Utah’s most powerful men, his connections and wealth proved critical in carving a path into politics for his namesake and eldest son.

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Herstory

Okay, so, the world started about 6,000 years ago when Jesus was ridin’ around on his dinosaur and shootin’ up moose, so’s he could make moose stew for himself and all his friends (not for all those poor people). Anyways, like I was sayin’, Jesus managed to do all that while also,too, startin’ up the NRA. Most people don’t know that, you betcha!

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Who says there are no manufacturing jobs left in America?

From Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone:

How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory

The onetime Nixon operative has created the most profitable propaganda machine in history. Inside America’s Unfair and Imbalanced Network

The key to decoding Fox News isn’t Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. It isn’t even News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. To understand what drives Fox News, and what its true purpose is, you must first understand Chairman [Roger] Ailes. “He is Fox News,” says Jane Hall, a decade-long Fox commentator who defected over Ailes’ embrace of the fear-mongering Glenn Beck. “It’s his vision. It’s a reflection of him.”

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Camping Out

From the Detroit Free Press:

Really? After billions of years, the end of the world has to land on a Saturday?

On a weekend in late spring, no less.

But math is what it is. Harold Camping’s math, anyway. The 89-year-old, deep-voiced Christian radio broadcaster based in California has used the wealth of his network to frantically spread the word that an earthquake “so powerful it will throw open all graves” will hit at 6 p.m. Pacific time (9 p.m. Detroit time) today.

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