Conspiracy Theories

According to David Roberts, activist conservatives are “bending the political system to their will” not by scoring policy victories but by taking their cues from “fever dreams” (i.e., conspiracy theories). In a Thursday article, Roberts suggested two reasons why conservatives generally are more inclined than liberals to buy into CTs. One is that for conservatives, not trusting “the political…

I suppose it is both fitting and proper that on a night when liberal candidates reinforce the fact that they never, ever move on from anything that Fox’s Scream Queens would resurrect one of the most tired and lame liberal talking points of the early 2000s. In an episode titled “Pumpkin Patch,” Hester Ulrich (Lea Michele) explains to her nerdy friend how she plans to control and manipulate the “…

On the latest episode of Blindspot, the protagonists find out that every major disease outbreak of the past half-decade has been the result of an intentional security breakdown at the CDC. Ebola, SARS, MRSA, Typhoid fever: they were all delivered directly from a secret CDC lab to infect innocent populations around the world. For once, however, the culprit isn’t some heinous government plot.…

New York Times reporter Jada Smith celebrated "Justice or Else," an ominously named protest marking the 20th anniversary of the "Million Man March," led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the preacher notorious for his anti-Semitic and paranoid ravings: "Echoing Calls for Justice Of Million Man March, But Widening Audience." This year's version latched on to the harder-edged tone of the…

With college football games airing Saturday on ABC, CBS, and NBC, none of the three aired their evening newscasts for viewers in the eastern or central time zones, but the CBS Evening News was shown in the western U.S. and featured another segment hinting at a link between the Planned Parenthood baby parts video scandal and a string of recent fires at their facilities. 

When it comes to fake news stories, if anyone's an expert it's Dan Rather . . . The disgraced former CBS News anchor has a new twist on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Instead of plotting against poor innocents like Bill and Hillary, those conspiratorial conservatives are now creating phony feuds among themselves!  On Rachel Maddow's show tonight, Rather declared himself "suspicious" about the…

Eagerly clawing around for a wedge issue with which to split the Republican Party, the New York Times used the controversy over mandatory vaccinations to smear the GOP as opposed to "modern science" and "established science" in "Measles Proves Delicate Issue to G.O.P. Field," a front-page story Tuesday.

Sandwiched in between two domestic terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists in Canada during the past three days, USA Today ran a Tuesday op-ed which appeared in Wednesday's print edition by Mary Zeiss Stange called "Beware the Christian Extremists." With all due respect, ma'am, we've got bigger worries. But in Ms. Stange's world, Christian "religious extremism taken to potentially lethal ends"…

Remember all those books that the publishing houses rejected during the eight years before Dear Leader took office because they might get used by "the Left" to hurt George W. Bush? No you don't, because it didn't happen. But now, things are different. Fellow soldiers of released 5-year Taliban captive Bowe Bergdahl are trying to publish a book on their side of the "he was a deserter"…

This goes back to a week ago Saturday morning, but given the content and that it occurred on a weekend, it really needs more visibility. On June 28, Juan Williams put in an appearance on a Fox News "Cashin' In" show panel which discussed the IRS scandal. Host Eric Bolling discussed poll results revealing that three-quarters of Americans believe that the IRS deliberately destroyed emails, and…

Soon-to-be White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest took to the podium of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room for his last outing as deputy press secretary. He will move into the White House Press Secretary role next week as Jay Carney officially vacates the job. If we learned anything from his “test run” today, it’s that Earnest has learned the art of White House spin from his boss. When…

The seething anger at seeing the Obama administration being raked over the coals by critics of the Bowe Bergdahl exchange of five hardened terrorists for a soldier who left his post, including many Democrats and most prominently his fellow unit members, was apparently too much for the editorial board at the New York Times. On Thursday, they let loose with a poorly sourced and hastily drafted…

There seems to be a concentrated effort on MSNBC lately to dismiss certain legitimate concerns raised by Republican political figures as loony or unworthy of serious consideration. On Wednesday’s edition of PoliticsNation, Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune killed two birds with one stone by simultaneously linking concerns over Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s health to the “birther” conspiracy…

File this under "Pathetic" and "Predictable." On Alex Wagner's MSNBC show yesterday, Wagner set up Timothy Noah, an MSNBC.com columnist, with the latest and most desperate excuse for the UAW's failure to gain the ability to represent VW-Chattanooga workers in a plantwide election last week. She did so by referring to an American Prospect column earlier in the day by Harold Meyerson, who blamed…