In The Marketplace Of Ideas

Media Matters For America:

We now have further confirmation that Fox News’ role as a mouthpiece for Donald Trump is affecting the network’s bottom line.

According to a report by Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair, the network is struggling to sell ad space on their 9 and 10 PM respective programs.

While Fox News dominated the ratings in May—a fact Trump bragged about on Saturday—the network is having new difficulties monetizing its most pro-Trump programming. According to three sources briefed on the numbers, advertising revenues for Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are down in recent months. “The pro-Trump thing isn’t working. We can’t monetize DACA and the wall and that right-wing shit,” one staffer said. “Despite all the hype on Hannity, they can’t sell it,” another insider told me. (Tucker Carlson’s show is faring better, sources said).

But until some management imposes real standards and consequences at Fox News, it’s up to activists and advertisers to shoulder the burden. As Media Matters president Angelo Carusone wrote in October:

Mostly driven by concerns around digital advertising, companies are becoming increasingly mindful about brand safety and intentionality in that advertising. And that mindfulness is starting to influence other advertising decisions as well, like television sponsorships.

Companies do not want their advertising to be associated with rank partisanship, bigotry, or deceit. They recognize that it’s bad for business. But Fox News continues to offer all three in spades, and as a result, I suspect it is beginning to have a downward effect on the network’s commercial viability as a whole.

Bottom line is this: Fox News’ ad revenue plummeted. It’s likely largely attributable to Hannity’s growing advertiser losses. And it also appears to reflect a deeper vulnerability in Fox News’ business model of bigotry, deceit, and partisanship.

Sam Bee-ing Awesome

Samantha Bee - TBS, Wednesday nights @10:30 EDT:

Why, WaPo?

I think I'll label this one "Glibertarian Bullshit".

David Von Drahle:

I’ve tried everything to avoid thinking about the next election — family travel, yard work, crossword puzzles. But now it’s only five months away, barely longer than the gestation period of a North American beaver, or the Stanley Cup playoffs. November can’t be avoided any longer.

In this climate of political frenzy, anyone who tries to predict the outcome must be either deluded or clairvoyant. Yet we’re close enough, perhaps, to see some key features of the battlefield.

For instance: There will be no Trump collapse.

From the moment late in 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s formless, themeless, listless campaign handed the White House to Donald Trump (assisted by Comrade Putin), Democrats have been counting on the reckless, heedless, careless novice to return the favor. Rather than melt down, though, President Trump is gaining strength.

After a rocky start, the president has cut himself loose from the highly unpopular Congress to create a clear account of his unusual reign, which he repeats with unflagging discipline. He’s a rulebreaker who gets results, and the enemies of change are conspiring to stop him. This is a polarizing message, indeed. But Trump appears to understand that popularity and unpopularity aren’t necessarily opposites. They can be partners: Emotion runs both ways.

Coupla things:

1) I'm really not in the mood for any more of this kinda derpy crap - where it's just a game, and guys like Von Drehle pretend they're above it all, and gee golly it's fun to watch these Republican jerks as they take away people's healthcare; their rights as both workers and American citizens; as they deliver more power to themselves and their wealthy patrons. Yeah, boy, that's entertainment alright.
2) Saying "the Democrats don't have a message" is old and trite, deliberately ignorant of the current state of politics, and totally disrespectful of the majority of Americans who aren't dumb enough to believe that the real answers to real policy questions can be boiled down to fit on some stoopid bumper sticker. You might as well go on trying to convince us that the GOP is the party of Family Values and the Rule of Law when it's obviously made up of crooks and thieves being mindlessly supported by rubes and bigots.
Please - try just a bit harder to get your crown chakra out of your root chakra.

Some Homework For Ya

From The Atlantic via Soundcloud:



Don't be surprised by anything that happens to (or because of) Paul Manafort.

The List

Amy Siskind has put the list in podcast form for us.

Week 81:



Some highlights:

5. Advocates also note that in the era of Trump, ICE makes arrests of parents picking up children at school, and in some cases, school disciplinarianshave helped to build ICE cases against students.

6. Houston Chronicle reported on a leaked photo image which shows dozens of immigrants in orange jumpsuits with their hands and feet shackled, undergoing a “mass trial” in Pecos, Texas.

7. The mass trial comes as the Trump regime implements its zero-tolerance policy announced by Jeff Sessions which orders prosecutors to criminally charge 100 percent of immigrants entering the country illegally.

8. VICE reported, as the Trump regime ramps up separating parents from children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has quietly informed organizations it is cutting a federal program in place for decades that helps at least 1,000 immigrant minors each year.

9. ORR will no longer fund organizations representing unaccompanied minors in immigration court. In the past two weeks alone, 658 kids were divided from their mothers and fathers as they crossed the border.

15. The New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard study on mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, estimating 4,645 may have died, many from delayed medical care. The official death count is 64.

17. Researchers from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions who conducted the study for a cost of about $50,000 said the territory’s government refused to provide data to them.

18. The Harvard numbers make Hurricane Maria the single most deadly natural disaster in modern America. NPR noted the federal government had three times as many people on the ground in Texas (Harvey), and twice as many in Florida (Irma).

19. National Nurse United, the largest union for registered nurses, said the study confirmed what nurses who went to the island witnessed: residents “left to die” by a federal response that “failed its own American citizens.”

20. NBC News reported the mountain areas of Puerto Rico are still living in desperation, one sign reads, “We need light!” Puerto Ricans told NBC, “we are suffering here,” and “we feel like we’ve been forgotten.”

Today's Eternal Petulance

45* is a fucking child - with a live hand grenade.

KDKA - Pittsburgh:

Digging deeper into a culture war that he’s repeatedly stoked, President Donald Trump on Monday called off a visit by the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House Tuesday, citing the dispute over whether NFL players must stand during the playing of the national anthem.

Trump said in a statement that some members of the Super Bowl championship team “disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”

None of the Eagles took a knee during the anthem in 2017.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney replied with his own statement, saying that he is “equally proud of the Eagles’ activism off the field” and that the players “represent the diversity of our nation — a nation in which we are free to express our opinions.”

“Disinviting them from the White House only proves that our President is not a true patriot, but a fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size and afraid of the embarrassment of throwing a party to which no one wants to attend,” the statement continued.

Jim Kenney's got guts.

Today's GIF

For some reason, Cult45's legal team comes to mind.

Pardon My POTUS

45* continues to amp up the bullshit, which may or may not be bullshit. That's what keeps him going - we can't take him at his word, and we can't just dismiss it. 

We can't make a positive call on whether or not he's going to follow thru - on anything.

That's his game. He says something wild that gets as many people as possible as riled up as possible. Then he looks for an opportunity that either comes as a result of the chaos, or he uses it to cover some shit he already has in the works.

"We'll see".  Maybe this. Maybe that. We don't know. Maybe something else.

WaPo:

President Trump on Monday asserted an “absolute right” to pardon himself of any federal crimes but said he has no reason to do so because he has not engaged in any wrongdoing.

“As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” Trump wrote on Twitter.

- and -

Trump’s assessment of his pardon powers echoed that of his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who offered an expansive view of the president’s executive powers during interviews Sunday, arguing that Trump probably has the ability to pardon himself.

“He probably does,” Giuliani said Sunday, when asked on ABC News’s “This Week” whether Trump has the ability to pardon himself. “He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably — not to say he can’t.”

My default position on this pardon thing - as with everything else that clown phonies up is this:

• It's always at least 2/3 bluff and bluster

- but -

• He's been seeding the ground with all the shit about how everybody's always "treated so unfairly".

So we're right back to Wait-n-See.

The sooner he's gone, the better off we're likely to be.

SCOTUS Decides

WaPo:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple.

In an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that leaves many questions unanswered, the court held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had not adequately taken into account the religious beliefs of baker Jack Phillips.

In fact, Kennedy said, the commission had been hostile to the baker’s faith, denying him the neutral consideration he deserved. While the justices split in their reasoning, only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Kennedy wrote that the question of when religious beliefs must give way to anti-discrimination laws might be different in future cases. But in this case, he said, Phillips did not get the proper consideration.

The key point for me:

“The Court’s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws,” he wrote. “Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach. That requirement, however, was not met here.”


And of course, the nuance in Kennedy's writing will disappear completely.

Seems like they're trying to say that someone in the business of public accommodation is required to accommodate the public, but process still matters. So government has to be more careful in how it goes about administering the enforcement of the law.

Wouldn't it be nice if the MAGA rubes could grok that part of it?

Yeah, nice - but as always, the likelihood is low like the belly of a pregnant snake.

Today's Pix

Click a pic

Today's GIF

Or maybe it's the weather report.

Today's Tweet

There are many things I don't understand - especially about the law - but I think I know Obstruction Of Justice when I see it.

Jay Sekulow, 7/16/17: “The President was not involved in the drafting of the statement”

Sarah Sanders, 8/1/17: “He weighed in, offered suggestions like any father would do.”

Trump lawyers to NYT today: Trump dictated the statement, which they call “short but accurate” https://t.co/W9rcRxkZgo

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 2, 2018

The System

Politicians and political consultants all know this. The Russkies figured it out and applied it in order to put Cult45 in power.

Today's Tweet

I don't call 'em Press Poodles for nuthin', y'know.

Trump, Monday: THE SKY IS YELLOW!
Trump, Tuesday: THE SKY IS GREEN!
New York Times: Trump's Understanding Of Sky Evolves

— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich) June 2, 2018

One Last Bit On Roseanne

Buzz Burbank explains it all:



Now that ABC has come to its senses and shit-canned their efforts to gloss over the Trump Supporter Problem, can the rest of us now shit-can our own lingering attempts to believe the bullshit that 45* got elected because of deeply-felt economic anxiety, and that Hillary was just a really bad candidate because she failed to address these concerns?

45* got elected because the GOP and "conservative media" have spent 30 years paving the road to this hell with the bodies of "liberals" who've been trying to point out just how shitty the GOP was becoming.

And also too, the Russkies figured out how to do some really good Rat-Fucking to push Cult45 over the top.

(some of the Rat-Fucking looks mightily to have been illegal, but it was all definitely tied to the intent to do some very illegal shit by a lot of very criminal assholes)