Papal Quote Of The Day

"I think the media have to be very clear, very transparent, and not fall into - no offence intended - the sickness of coprophilia, that is, always wanting to cover scandals, covering nasty things, even if they are true. And since people have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia, a lot of damage can be done." -- Pope Francis, in an interview with a Belgian Catholic weekly journal. Coprophilia is the psychological term for an abnormal fascination with feces; coprophagia is defined as the consumption of feces.

The Pontiff said that the media's spreading of disinformation ("fake news") was "the greatest damage that the media can do." He added that when the media pass on slanderous, false information, they are committing a sin.  Not that anyone in our profit-driven corporate political media gives a....copro.

Today's Video - Lies, Loons And Loose Cannons

Seth Meyers takes "A Closer Look" at neo- fascist nitwit Donald "Rump" Trump, the spreading of lies, his enabling sycophants, and Rump's being "over his head" in the role of presidentin'.

Morning Reading

Here's a sampling of worthwhile reads this morning (as always, go to the links for the full context).

-- Dana Milbank on the fallout from vicious right- wing lies being spread by neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump, members of his transition team and the crackpots they listen to:

There was a time when threats against journalists, like threats of any sort of political violence, were exceedingly rare. But in Trump’s America, such threats are neither rare nor idle. 

If you doubt that, consider the events in recent days at Comet Ping Pong, the family pizza place in Northwest Washington I’ve been frequenting with my daughter ever since she was a toddler a decade ago. Lately, the owner and staff at Comet — and those of other businesses on the block — have been getting death threats, spurred by radio host Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist with close ties to the president-elect. 

Jones has been whipping up a bogus and bizarre accusation that Comet is a front for a Hillary Clinton-affiliated pedophilia ring, and the resulting calls and messages threaten a “public lynching” of this nonexistent ring. “I pray someone comes to Comet pizza with automatic weapons and kills everyone inside,” wrote one. “I just may cut your throat. . . . I truly hope someone blows your brains all over Comet pizza.”

Milbank wonders if this is now the "new normal," to which we'd respond, "You did see the past 18 months of Rump and his rallies full of hateful, economically anxious knuckle- draggers, didn't you? Did you think they'd suddenly go away?"

-- A Texas Republican elector takes to the New York Effing Times to explain why he won't be casting his vote for Rump (albeit with some misguided plaudits for Dumbya and St. Ronnie of Hollywood):

The United States was set up as a republic. Alexander Hamilton provided a blueprint for states’ votes. Federalist 68 argued that an Electoral College should determine if candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence. Mr. Trump shows us again and again that he does not meet these standards. Given his own public statements, it isn’t clear how the Electoral College can ignore these issues, and so it should reject him.

None of this is going to get Hillary Clinton's electoral vote up, of course.  Rump will win the Electoral College but will decisively lose the popular vote... because Democracy!

-- Finally, from the "I hear the crowds cheering in my head" files, we have this early lead balloon for 2020:

Vice President Joe Biden told a small group of reporters Monday that he may run for president in 2020. 

"Yeah, I am. I am going to run in 2020," Biden said when asked if he would run for office again. When asked what role he would seek, the 74-year-old vice president responded: "For president. And also, you know so, what the hell man, anyway." 

The vice president said, however, he wasn't making a commitment to run when reporters asked if he was kidding. 

"I'm not committing not to run. I'm not committed to anything. I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening," he said. 

Biden would be 77 years old on Election Day in 2020.

We like Joe as much as anyone, but please.

Meet Your Dudebro Fake News Entrepreneurs

If you want to get an insight on what kind of bottom- dwelling slug produces the fake news that millions of low- information/ high- "economic anxiety" Americans take as The Truth, look no further than this profile of two 20- something dudebros in Long Beach, CA. Moral ciphers Paris Wade and Ben Goldman run a creepy site called LibertyWritersNews.com (please don't give them traffic!) that deals in the most hair afire, made up nonsense about progressives that you're likely to read (but, again, please don't). These two deplorables use social media platforms (notably Facebook) to generate revenue, and they don't much care how they do it because, well, it's so darn easy to fleece the rubes:

At a time of continuing discussion over the role that hyperpartisan websites, fake news and social media play in the divided America of 2016, LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process. Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they’re at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans. (our emphasis)

"... they don't want people to start asking for loans." Or the I.R.S. asking for income taxes perhaps?

What follows in the article are some odious examples of the fake news sewage these two young hucksters like to gin up, but this exchange boils down their business model:

“All successful journalism has shock value,” Goldman says as he and Wade sit at their computers later that day.  

“There was once a lot more competition among newspapers,” Wade says. “It was like a race to see who could write the craziest s---.” 

“And whoever wrote the craziest s--- won,” Goldman says. 

“There used to be a joke that every single day a new world war started,” Wade says. “Because that’s what sold papers.”

In their world of living for clicks and page views, they write their fake news to attract the biggest audience possible, searching for those who are already disposed to accept the Alex Jones/ National Enquirer world view and style of "communication."  Thus, in their own words, they're in competition with the likes of those termites in the foundation of democracy to "see who could write the craziest s---."  And that pretty much sums up the product of their enterprise.

The kicker?

Raised in liberal homes, they both voted for Obama twice, but as they struggled to find better jobs, they began to doubt those votes, their college education and the progressive values with which they were raised.

It's all Obama's fault!

We'd have to say they may have been raised with those "progressive values," but they sure didn't stick very long.

(Image:  Writer for LibertyWritersNews.com)