Donald Trump, Asshole of the Day for September 12, 2014

In some ways, Donald Trump is like any other racist moron who still can’t accept that America has a black President. In others, he’s just like an average Fox News viewer--an uninformed dolt who refuses to give Obama any credit for turning the economy around following the Bush crash and the worst financial crisis in 80 years. But unlike your average dumb racist, Donald Trump also plays the role of “successful businessman” in an elaborate con game he’s been working on the less-educated members of the populace for years. His idiocy goes unchallenged when he appears on the fact-free morning show Fox & Friends. And many of his 2.7M Twitter followers seem to be under the illusion that he: a) may still decide to run for President; and b) would be good at it. More than anything else, Trump is a proud and opportunistic asshole. So when news outlets reported that a Trump-owned golf course had denied President Obama a tee time over Labor Day weekend so as not to inconvenience its members, Trump seized the opportunity to milk the story and, yes, be an even bigger—and more disrespectful—asshole than his club manager had already been. He tweeted:

If Obama resigns from office NOW, thereby doing a great service to the country—I will give him free lifetime golf at any one of my courses!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

September 10, 2014

Needless to say, both the “lamestream media” and the RWNJ birthersphere took the bait. Too few, though, have pointed out the fallacy at the center of his offer. Obama leaving office would not be “a great service to the country.” Calling Obama an economic failure, which Trump frequently does, is something only a moron who told Americans not to buy stocks after the crash in 2008 —right before the greatest five-year accumulation of wealth in America history was about to begin—would do. In fact, Forbes recently crunched the data, and declared that Obama has outperformed even St. Ronald Reagan in terms of jobs, growth and investing.

For saying he'd offer up one of his golf courses as an incentive for a President he's lied about and insulted for almost six years to quit his job, Trump is Asshole of the Day.

This is Trump’s sixth time as Asshole of the Day.

#asshole of the day #asshole #racist #moron #birther #Donald Trump #Trump #conman #President Obama #Obama #Obama Derangement Syndrome #golf #Twitter #Fox And Friends #Fox News

assholeofday

Is John Stossel Asshole of the Day?

Is John Stossel asshole of the day for saying people who give to the poor are "enablers"?

Donning a fake beard, Stossel sat on a New York City sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking people for help. “I just begged for an hour but I did well,” he said. “If I did this for an eight-hour day I would’ve made 90 bucks. Twenty-three thou for a year. Tax-free.”

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who recently purchased a $4 million home in Greenwich, gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year. Some people asking for money “are actually scammers,” Hasselbeck warned, seemingly unaware of the irony that the only panhandling “scammer” Fox News identified was Stossel.

Because he was able to successfully convince good-hearted pedestrians that he was poor, Stossel went on to chastise people who gave the homeless money because, in his view, “most are not…for real.”

He implored viewers to stop giving money to poor people because if you do, “you’re an enabler.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/21/2977711/john-stossel-poor-people/

What Would Jesus Do? Well, he probably wouldn't be out there trying to prove that a poor beggar is a fraud. But there you go, John Stossel, using your fame to dump on the poor.

It takes a lot of arrogance and general disregard for statistical significance to do something for an hour and then generalize it out to a year. In an hour he wasn't hassled by police, stolen from, spit on, or any of the other humiliations or hassles anyone who spends time on the street will endure. Stossel was a journalist at one point, so we'd hope that he knows that sort of speculation is invalid. But he probably doesn't care because his stunt has reinforced his belief that poor people are entirely responsible for their tough circumstances just as he is entirely responsible for his success. In any event people who go out of their way to mock the poor and accuse them of being cheats and frauds and moochers is an asshole in our book.

Also he post does a pretty good job of refuting the specific claims, including Stossel's history of bogus claims regarding panhandling and is worth a read.

Photo source: Stossel's Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/112120854994509668900/posts

#asshole #John Stossel #Fox News #begging #panhandling #Fox & Friends #Fox And Friends #poor

assholeofday

Is Brian Kilmeade Asshole of the Day?

Is Brian Kilmeade asshole of the day for complaining that Obama didn't go to Gettysburg for the anniversary when even Reagan didn't go? And in fact the last president to go to Gettysburg for the anniversary was Taft?

Fox News's Brian Kilmeade discussed with Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger whether it is "inappropriate for our president to bypass" the commemoration ceremony of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address during the November 19 edition of Fox & Friends. At one point Kilmeade asked whether Henninger thought Obama was refusing to attend because "after that address and after the Civil War we still weren't a perfect union? We still had to wait for the Civil Rights Act and so many -- the integration of schools, Brown vs. the Board of Education?" Henninger replied, "I think probably that President Obama does think the unfinished business remains unfinished in bringing the country and its races together."

But Obama's decision not to attend the Gettysburg commemoration ceremony is typical for a sitting president. President Reagan did not attend the 125th commemoration of the Gettysburg Address - in fact, Reagan never visited Gettysburg during his tenure in office. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also never visited the battlefield as president, and President George W. Bush toured the site in 2008, but did not speak or attend a commemoration ceremony. In fact, according to Hanover, Pennsylvania's local paper, The Evening Sun, William Howard Taft was the only sitting president to ever visit the site on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/11/19/foxs-obama-derangement-syndrome-gettysburg-edit/196967

Never let the facts get in the way of smearing the president, Fox News!

Photo source: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/brian-kilmeade/bio/#s=h-l

#asshole #brian kilmeade #Fox News #Fox & Friends #Fox And Friends #Gettysburg Address #Obama Derangement Syndrome

assholeofday

Is Elisabeth Hasselbeck Asshole of the Day (again)? Or just an idiot?

Is Elisabeth Hasselbeck asshole of the day for saying Obamacare is hurting elderly pregnant women? Or just an idiot?

“That leaves hundreds of thousands of patients without the doctor that they’ve had for many many years,” Varney added. “We don’t know how many thousands have been dropped, but thousands have been dropped. What about their patients? What about the people who used to have this doctor who now no longer have this doctor? Broken promise.”

“And many of those people are women who are expecting babies and who may just have a real relationship with their physician and want to see the same doctor deliver possibly their second child,” Hasselbeck opined. “And they are now left in the dark in a time that they feeling quite vulnerable.”

“Most of them are elderly,” Varney pointed out.

Medicare Advantage is a type of Medicare offered by private companies to people over 65 years of age. Medicare Advantage covers traditional Medicare plus additional services, but customers must pay a premium.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/18/fox-news-hasselbeck-obamacare-is-hurting-many-elderly-pregnant-women/

Elderly women who are pregnant. Really.

Photo source: https://twitter.com/ehasselbeck

#asshole #Elisabeth Hasselbeck #Stuart Varney #Obamacare #elderly #pregnant women #medicare #Obama Derangement Syndrome #Fox News #Fox and Friends #Fox & Friends

assholeofday

Asshole of the Day, September 17, 2013: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

by TeaPartyCat

Elisabeth Hasselbeck has been Fox & Friends for two days, and already she's already repeating the breathtaking stupidity she was known for on The View.

When discussing the shooting at the Navy Shipyard, this morning she said:

“One thing that happens often in a situation as tragic as this is we start to spread blame where it possibly doesn’t belong, right?” Hasselbeck remarked. “I think we all know where the blame truly belongs, and that would be right in Alexis’ hands.”

“But you talk about this guy’s background, as we look into it,” Kilmeade continued. “He’s got a friend, who said, ‘Yeah, he had an obsession with video games, shooting video games. In fact, he would come over and he would be playing so long — these video games, these shooting games — we’d have to give him dinner, we’d have to feed him while he continued to stay on them.’”

“Are more people susceptible to playing video games?” Hasselbeck wondered. “Is there a link between a certain age group or [demographic] in 20- to 34-year-old men, perhaps, that are playing these video games and their violent actions?”

“What about frequency testing?” she added. “How often has this game been played? I’m not one to get in there and say, monitor everything, but if this, indeed, is a strong link, right, to mass killings then why aren’t we looking at frequency of purchases per person? And also, how often they’re playing and maybe they time out after a certain hour.”

This is what really does it-- she says “One thing that happens often in a situation as tragic as this is we start to spread blame where it possibly doesn’t belong, right?” and then moments later is blaming video games. Video games. There is no real evidence of a link between violence and video games-- at best it's disputed. But even so, the study that Fox News keeps citing claiming the link is real, and more compelling than the link between owning a gun and mass shootings, doesn't even say what they claim. The author of that study even said

"It is crucial to understand there is no single cause of a crime like [Sandy Hook shooter Adam] Lanza's, and no responsible scholar could claim that violent video games cause murder."

But there she is, claiming it would be wrong to blame the wrong thing in a moment of tragedy, and then blaming the wrong thing in the next breath. Welcome to Fox News, Ms. Hasselbeck, you're fitting right in.

Full story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/17/fox-news-hasselbeck-navy-yard-shooting-shows-need-for-video-game-registry-not-gun-control/

This is yet another Asshole of the Day win for Fox News (see all here). Two in a row as a matter of fact, with Todd Starnes insistence on a white, gun shooting Miss America winning yesterday.

#asshole of the day #Elisabeth Hasselbeck #Fox News #Fox and friends #Navy Shipyard #gun control #video games