Nice Massster!

They really know how to write a lede over at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, don't they?

President Trump tweeted soon after arriving to Saudi Arabia Saturday morning to kick off a nine-day international tour that will also take him to Israel and Europe.

“Great to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” he tweeted, his first on international soil as president. “Looking forward to the afternoon and evening ahead.”

Enough drama. Let's have some historical context:

Trump is the only American president to visit Saudi Arabia, or any Muslim-majority country. The decision comes as he looks to show respect to the region after months of harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric that has surrounded his administration.

Weird, isn't it? Even if no one covering the Most Awesomest State Visit in History had ever heard of FDR* or any president (except Truman) since, you'd think someone might have read ahead:

... Melania Trump wore a black pantsuit with a golden belt and did not cover her head for the arrival, consistent with custom for foreign dignitaries visiting Saudi Arabia. In 2015, her husband had, in a tweet, criticized former first lady Michelle Obama for not wearing a headscarf during a visit to the kingdom.

Hold that thought, because there's a lot more Obama in the works, and admire the rest of a nearly perfect Fox front page. George Soros is funding treason again! North Korea GAAAAAAAAH! Liberals have no respect for Massster! Could it possibly get any better? Fortunately, Fox was hard at work helping you understand the day's events:

"No Bending Over" is pretty easy to follow, though the deck -- "Unlike Obama, Trump shakes Saudi king's hand" -- is a little bizarre, given that the picture actually shows Obama shaking the king's hand. But the point is clear: America is great again!

Read more »

When porcupines attack

It's always a shame when the comments aren't enabled, because "brutal porcupine attack" could have set off a really good round of Fox Comments Bingo.* All we can do instead is wonder how this tale managed to get around the world so fast and so -- OK, did you guys look at the picture (below) over at the highly reliable Daily Mail? Which suggests that most porcupine attacks were written by Monty Python in their prime and begin with something like "Hold still while I back into you"?

Here's the Fox lede, appropriated from Sky News, which wasn't even the first UK outlet on the scene:

Three Canadian dogs are recovering after being spiked by a porcupine, as their owner receives support from the public to help cover the vet bill.

At a glance, the story appears to have originated from a GoFundMe post last week (where the attack was a "nasty encounter"), then languished in the local media until it sprang to life on Tuesday at the Star ("a brutal brawl," if you count being jumped on by a pit bull as a "brawl") and the Huffington Post ("an attack by a porcupine") before crossing the Atlantic to the Mail ("attacked by a porcupine and stabbed with barbs all over"). It reached the quality press** ("Porcupine attacks three dogs in Canada") and ITV (my personal favorite hed, "Dog narrowly survives lethal spiking from porcupine") before migrating back our shores, and the rest had better be history, because it ain't zoology.

Fox isn't the only US outlet to blame the victim for the mugging here, and certainly not the only one to confuse "after" and "during." But one could fairly wonder exactly what associations are going on in the editorial mind when the only "brutal attack" to make the frontpage is, you know, an angry porcupine in Saskatchewan.

* BENGHAZI !!!!!!! is the free space in the center, so basically, if you have Sharia, Chicago, Al Sharpton and Moochelle's lunch menu, you've got bingo.
** OK, the Torygraph

Patient Zero

This just in: Researchers may have just nailed down the chain of transmission for "Michelle O's lunch rules," which appears to have reached Planet Fox about 20 minutes ago (as of this writing).

"Michelle O menu" and similar terms have been surfacing on Drudge with some frequency lately, mostly linking to EagNews.org, website of a Michigan-based outfit that appears to base its existence around the excess of gummint in our schools. Well, that and Common Core and the Lady Macbeth of the White House vegetable garden:

Read more »

Yes, they really do think like that

What does the No. 4 story at Sunday night's Fair 'n' Balanced homepage have to do with Friday's offlede at the Washington Times? A fairly good bit, as it turns out. They're from the same beat.

Todd Starnes, in case you don't keep up with the doings of the Fox empire, covers the culture wars -- basically, anything the Kenyan usurper is doing to destroy all the things you held dear when you got up in the morning:

One of the great moments in history came when an unsuspecting camper sandwiched a marshmallow and a piece of chocolate between two graham crackers -- creating an American masterpiece -- the s’more.

But now the Obama administration is attempting to modify the third sacrament in camping’s holy trinity.

Uh, do tell!

The U.S. Forest Service wants Americans to make healthier S’mores by replacing the chocolate with fruit, according to a blog post meant to commemorate National Roasted Marshmallow Day (apparently there is such a thing, it was observed on August 30 this year).

Which must be why the NRA has decided to, you know, take it to the streets:

The National Rifle Association has unleashed a multimillion-dollar TV advertising campaign that its longtime leader says is aimed at messaging beyond gun rights and reaching middle-class mothers, minorities and other Americans “who believe our country is off the rails.”

The gun lobby’s campaign, launched in the last 10 days, uncharacteristically delves into issues far beyond the Second Amendment to explore the IRS scandal, media elitism and security vulnerabilities, with a call to return “good guys” to power.

Do you see it all fitting together now?
Read more »

Today in the echo chamber

Hey, kids! Every wonder why some Fair 'n' Balanced stories let you wade right into the comments section and cut loose on the usurper:

This isnt negligence, this is intentional. We have a madman in the Oval Office and millions of liberal co-conspirators. Store up plenty of food and emergency supplies, its going to get real ugly real soon.

ANYONE that still considers this joke an American Potus deserves nothing more than a one way plane ticket straight to Africa! Hes done nothing more than put strain on American taxpayers while spending on his personal priorities=llegals-terrorist-career government dependent and supporting his homeland-AFRICA!!!

After their success in freeing the girls in Nigeria, Moochelle will dragout #Ebola to fight this Republican disease!

This so called President'''''''''should be skinned alive.

... while on others, comments are (hem) "currently closed" (kaff)? You'd think a tale of Pentagon skulduggery on this scale would be the ideal chance to call the minutemen to the streets:

American troops were exposed to chemical weapons multiple times in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, while the Pentagon kept their discoveries of the expired or degraded weapons secret from investigators, fellow soldiers, and military doctors, according to a published report. 

Yes, that'd be the deftly reported centerpiece in Wednesday's Times, which Fox manages to acknowledge, along with some numbers in the next graf:

The New York Times reported late Tuesday that American troops reported finding approximately 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, or aviation bombs in the years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On at least six occasions, soldiers were wounded by those weapons, which had been manufactured before 1991.

Not a bad summary of the nut graf, but the narrative seems somehow incomplete without the Times's subsequent graf:

The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.

Not to mention the details worked in later:
Read more »

No gurls allowed

The latest recycling of the Kids Hate Moochelle story makes sense in its own little Drudgean way, but what's with "IMF vixen"? Is that the Drudge Stylebook's preferred term for an IMF director who hasn't been "embroiled in a New York sex scandal"?

Two Minutes Hate

Today's quiz: How many times do you figure the Marie Antoinette of America's School Lunchrooms is mentioned in the "Wonkblog" post that Drudge links to?

a) 0
b) 1
c) 2
d) Well, we did do the lips nose

Reminder to our friends at the Washington Post: Even in your blogs, when you say "more scientists" do something, you really ought to provide some -- you know, evidence. But the point, as usual, is something larger: What makes Michelle Obama work so well for Drudge as a stock illustration of the pro-nutrition sins of the Nanny State?

It's an amusing coincidence, one supposes, that even as the first lady is being used as a proxy for the cramming-health-down-your-throat bureaucracy, the usurper himself is taking heat for, in essence, telling a bunch of toddlers to man up:

At the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll this weekend, a group of innocent children, there to ostensibly hang out with the President and dye colored eggs, were beset upon by a horde of White House bees.

Can I interrupt for a second? The point of an event called Easter Egg Roll* isn't to dye the eggs, and if it was, it's probably a good idea to dye the ones that aren't colored yet. But onward:

But though the children screamed in horror, their shrill voices piercing through the springtime air, President Bee-Rack OBeemer, reading aloud a copy of Where The Wild Things Are, seemed unfazed by them. “Bees are good,” he placidly said, telling them to hush. “You’re not supposed to be scared of bees when you’re a Wild Thing!”

"Bees are good" isn't quite the same thing as "we rode bicycles down the steps without helmets and ate raw hamburger meat and STILL won the Cold War," but you can see the same sort of general idea emerging: Lighten up and be a Wild Thing every now and then. No doubt some Fox commentator pointed out that he'd be sleeping on the couch if Moochelle found out.

You really do have to wonder what Drudge and Fox are going to come up with when they have to make do with scary white people again for their securitization needs.

* I have it on good authority that I was taken to one during Ike's second term, though apparently neither I nor anybody else in the family brought a reporter's notebook.

Theoretical Thursdays: Symbolic convergence

So, how many times do you figure the dusky harridan is mentioned in the 513-word EAGnews epic that Drudge links to here? If your first guess was "none," take the rest of the day off!

The usurper himself, of course, appears in the lede:

Meat dating to the year of President Obama’s first inauguration was served to students in some Hawkins County, Tennessee schools last week.

... but nowhere else in the text -- not that a few minor evidentiary details ought to get in the way. How do EAGnews readers talk about this story?

Read more »