This is an actual video, courtesy of Liz Skalka of the Toledo Blade, showing Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley reacting to seeing a tweet from Donald Trump that disparaged Whaley:
Trump showed blatant disrespect for Whaley during a very dark time for her city, and I don’t need to comment any further.
One of those expectations that the American people expect of the sitting President of the United States is to be able to comfort the American people in times of tragedy. Regardless of what you think of Barack Obama’s policies while in office, one thing Obama did exceptionally well was play the role of “comforter-in-chief” in times of crisis or when a famous person has passed away. Donald Trump, on the other hand, can’t comfort the American people without making an unbelievably embarrassing gaffe:
Donald Trump referred to “those who perished in Toledo”, even though the mass shooting referenced by Trump actually occurred in Dayton, Ohio, where, as of this writing, nine people were murdered in the Oregon Historic District of Dayton.
Trump has so thoroughly disgraced this country in seemingly every way imaginable, he should resign from office immediately.
As I promised earlier today, I’m going to write a very important blog post. This blog post is about why men who are, like me, supportive of the right of women to make their own reproductive health care decisions, need to speak up in opposition to extreme anti-abortion legislation that has been advanced in multiple states and effectively criminalizes women.
Just to give y’all one example of how barbaric the political agenda of the anti-abortion movement is in this country, Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp recently signed Georgia HB 481, which is one of the most extreme and barbaric anti-abortion measures ever considered in U.S. history, if not one of the most extreme anti-abortion measures in world history. This is how Slate magazine described HB 481:
The primary purpose of HB 481 is to prohibit doctors from terminating any pregnancy after they can detect “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity,” which typically occurs at six weeks’ gestation. But the bill does far more than that. In one sweeping provision, it declares that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct person” that deserves “full legal recognition.” Thus, Georgia law must “recognize unborn children as natural persons”—not just for the purposes of abortion, but as a legal rule.
[…]
But the most startling effect of HB 481 may be its criminalization of women who seek out unlawful abortions or terminate their own pregnancies. An earlier Georgia law imposing criminal penalties for illegal abortions does not apply to women who self-terminate; the new measure, by contrast, conspicuously lacks such a limitation. It can, and would, be used to prosecute women. Misoprostol, a drug that treats stomach ulcers but also induces abortions, is extremely easy to obtain on the internet, and American women routinely use it to self-terminate. It is highly effective in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Anti-abortion advocates generally insist that they do not want to punish women who undergo abortions. But HB 481 does exactly that. Once it takes effect, a woman who self-terminates will have, as a matter of law, killed a human—thereby committing murder. The penalty for that crime in Georgia is life imprisonment or capital punishment.
HB 481 would also have consequences for women who get abortions from doctors or miscarry. A woman who seeks out an illegal abortion from a health care provider would be a party to murder, subject to life in prison. And a woman who miscarries because of her own conduct—say, using drugs while pregnant—would be liable for second-degree murder, punishable by 10 to 30 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors may interrogate women who miscarry to determine whether they can be held responsible; if they find evidence of culpability, they may charge, detain, and try these women for the death of their fetuses.
Even women who seek lawful abortions out of state may not escape punishment. If a Georgia resident plans to travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion, she may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment. An individual who helps a woman plan her trip to get an out-of-state abortion, or transports her to the clinic, may also be charged with conspiracy. These individuals, after all, are “conspiring” to end of the life of a “person” with “full legal recognition” under Georgia law.
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In effect, Georgia HB 481 grants fetuses legal recognition as people, legally regards abortion as murder, criminalizes Georgia women who seek to terminate a pregnancy in Georgia or any other jurisdiction, criminalizes Georgia women who miscarry, and provides a maximum sentence of the death penalty for abortion. While HB 481 is in flagrant violation of current U.S. Supreme Court precedent, including Roe v. Wade, HB 481 was enacted with the intent of convincing the current U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 5-4 ultra-conservative majority, of overturning Roe v. Wade, which would allow HB 481 to go into effect, which would have a far-reaching and destructive legal effect in Georgia. According to Aphra Behn, Georgia HB 481 and comparable measures are completely unprecedented in English-speaking North American legal code:
What is even scarier is that Georgia is not the only state where anti-abortion politicians have proposed downright barbaric anti-abortion legislation. In Alabama, the Alabama Senate delayed a final vote on a bill, similar to, although not completely identical to, Georgia’s HB 481, after the bill was amended to make it even worse than it already was by removing exceptions to the provisions of the legislation for rape and incest. The Alabama bill, as amended, would have the legal effect of criminalizing abortion, even if the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest. That is wrong. In Ohio, a Republican member of the Ohio House of Representatives proposed legislation that would legally require embryos that implant themselves in the Fallopian tube or in another part of a woman’s body other than the uterus, which results in an ectopic pregnancy, be reimplanted in the woman’s uterus. That is medically impossible, and it is wrong to legally mandate a medical procedure that is medically impossible.
Let me make several very important points inherently clear:
Often times, the politicians who support anti-abortion legislation like Georgia’s HB 481 will claim to do so in the name of men. Anti-abortion legislation does not benefit men in any way whatsoever, anti-abortion legislation harms women, and, as a pro-choice man, I find it downright offensive when an anti-abortion politician claims to support anti-abortion policies in the name of men. I am not a physician or a lawyer, but I will NOT stand for politicians supporting anti-abortion legislation in my name or in the name of men, and I believe it is vital that pro-choice men stand with pro-choice women in opposition to disgusting legislation like Georgia’s HB 481 and fully supporting the right of women to make their own reproductive health care decisions.
If you watch television via any of AT&T’s television services, which include DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, or U-Verse, and you live in an area of the country where one or more of the local stations that those AT&T-owned services would normally provide is owned or otherwise operated by a company called Block Communications, those stations have been blacked out since late last week on DirecTV, DirectTV Now, and U-Verse because of an ongoing carriage dispute between AT&T and Block.
The stations affected include, in alphabetical order by state of license, then city of license, then call letters:
The Lima, Ohio DMA is considerably smaller than the other two DMAs, as it is anchored by a relatively small city, and, being situated between larger media markets in the Dayton, Ohio DMA and the Toledo, Ohio DMA, the Lima DMA covers a relatively small area in Ohio. The Champaign-Decatur-Springfield, Illinois DMA is anchored by three urban areas, Champaign/Urbana, Decatur, and Springfield, with a few hundred thousand residents combined, and the DMA covers much of central and east-central Illinois. The Louisville, Kentucky DMA is anchored by an urban area, Louisville, with roughly a million residents, and the DMA covers much of north-central and central Kentucky, as well as much of south-central Indiana.
I am directly affected by this issue, since I live near the eastern end of the Champaign-Decatur-Springfield media market, and I live in a household that is a DirecTV customer, so, with the main WAND over-the-air transmitter being in northeastern Macon County, one potential workaround, receiving the main WAND over-the-air signal to get NBC programming, would be virtually impossible. There is a low-power translator (i.e., broadcast relay station or broadcast repeater station) of WAND, W23EQ-D, with its transmitter located in my home county, and the coverage area of the translator would appear to make reception of the station easy for my household. However, as the house that I live in has metal siding, receiving any kind of broadcast television signal over-the-air is extremely difficult, and an outdoor antenna assembly would probably cost more than one month of DirecTV service. On a related note, and for people in the Jacksonville, Illinois area, there is a translator of WAND, W29ES-D, serving that area of Illinois over-the-air.
Keep in mind that most local television stations in this country, even those affiliated with a major English-language network (these are CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and The CW; MyNetworkTV is officially considered a syndication service by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)), are owned by companies other than the network(s) they are affiliated with, and this is virtually universal in medium-sized and small markets. When a pay television provider (such as a cable company, the satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network, or another type of pay television provider) refuses to pay the owner of a local television station for the rights for the particular provider to carry the station, that results in the station affected being blacked out on the provider until and unless an agreement is reached by the parties in question, in this particular case, AT&T and Block Communications. Since AT&T and Block Communications have refused to come to an agreement for Block-owned stations to be carried on AT&T’s pay television services (DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse), that results in not only local programming (such as local newscasts) and syndicated programming that is carried by the station, but also the network programming that is carried by the station as well, since the owner of the station effectively has broadcast rights to the network(s) they are affiliated with within their DMA.
Block Communications is claiming that AT&T pulled their stations from its DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse lineups “without warning”:
“The satellite service provider and the television stations started working on a new contract several months ago, but DIRECTV took the aggressive action of pulling programming from both networks (DIRECTV and U-Verse) without warning on Friday morning,” WAND said.
Source
AT&T is claiming that Block Communications “is demanding a significant fee increase”, in reference to the fee, which is called a retransmission consent fee, that pay television providers have to pay to the owners of local television stations in order to be able to carry the stations:
Phil Hayes, AT&T Corporate Communications media relations liaison in Illinois, said the company wants to bring WAND back to the Champaign, Springfield and Decatur customers’ local lineups.
“We want to prevent our local customers from enduring any extended Block blackout and continue to work toward a new agreement,” he said in an email. “The station’s owner, Block Communications, is demanding a significant fee increase and has disconnected WAND’s most loyal viewers here before.”
Source
While the DMA that I live in has been negatively affected by the AT&T-Block Communications carriage dispute, the other two DMAs that are negatively affected have seen particularly embarrassing negative affects from the carriage dispute.
In the case of the Louisville, Kentucky DMA, the market’s CW affiliate, WBKI, is currently unavailable via the AT&T-owned DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse due to the carriage dispute. Keep in mind that the CW network is 50% owned by WarnerMedia, which is, like DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse, a subsidiary of AT&T, resulting in the bizarre situation of an affiliate of a network partially owned by AT&T not being available on AT&T-owned television services in one DMA, the Louisville, Kentucky DMA.
In the case of the Lima, Ohio DMA, the market’s ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and MyNetworkTV affiliates are all owned by Block Communications. This is because the market only has one full-power station (WLIO, the NBC, Fox, and MyNetworkTV affiliate for the Lima DMA), which is owned by Block, and the ABC and CBS affiliate for the Lima market is the low-powered WOHL-CD, which is operated by Block, and, due to the fact that low-power stations, like WOHL-CD, are not subject to what few concentration of ownership limits (i.e., ownership caps) the FCC still imposes on local TV station owners and operators, that is how Block is able to get away with owning the ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox affiliates in the same market. Lima’s CW affiliate appears to be a cable-only affiliate that is part of The CW Plus small-market service; if the CW affiliate for the Lima DMA is not carried on DirecTV in the Lima DMA, that would result in the situation of no local commercial television station being carried via DirecTV in the Lima DMA due to the carriage dispute between AT&T and Block.
While AT&T maintains that they don’t want a blackout of Block Communications-owned stations to continue for an extended duration of time, there is evidence pointing to a resolution to the dispute possibly not occurring in the near future.
In regards to the AT&T side of the dispute, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators from the Mountain West states is demanding that DirecTV carry the applicable local channels in a handful of small TV markets where DirecTV currently carries distant network affiliates:
Senators Jon Tester (D-MT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and John Barrasso (R-WY) wrote to AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan Thursday, expressing concern that 12 of America’s smallest media markets don’t have local-into-locals from DirecTV. Those include markets such as Helena, MT, and Grand Junction, CO.
“Despite technological advances that allow satellite companies to serve local channels into local markets in any location, the customers in these 12 media markets still receive limited or no access to locally broadcasted network stations through their subscriptions,” they wrote, noting that folks living in remote areas are often receiving distant signals from places like NYC or L.A. “We acknowledge that the distant signal provisions in current law allows this, however, we do not see why AT&T-DirecTV could not work to minimize the distance and provide local news from within the subscriber’s region.”
It’s probably no coincidence that this letter comes as Congress gets ready to review of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, which expires at the end of the year. Among other things, the expiring legislation grants a compulsory copyright license to DISH and DirecTV to retransmit distant broadcast signals. AT&T could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday.
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It’s pretty clear that DirecTV has a cavalier attitude towards airing the applicable local channels in every U.S. DMA, since there are still a handful of DMAs where DirecTV has refused to provide any local channels despite having repeatedly promised to do so, whereas DirecTV’s main competitor, DISH, provides the applicable local channels where DirecTV doesn’t, which is predominantly, if not entirely, in very small markets west of the Mississippi River.
In regards to the Block Communications side of the dispute, remember that Block’s flagship property is not a television station, but rather the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper that serves the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, which has been the subject of a number of controversies in the past couple of years or so, including:
This is an unconfirmed observation based on circumstantial evidence, but, given that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coverage area is anchored by a strongly Democratic city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and that the Post-Gazette is no longer being published daily, among other controversies, it would not surprise me if the Post-Gazette was losing a significant number of subscribers (and, thus, losing money for Block Communications), although I have no way of verifying whether or not that is true. If Block is in financial trouble (again, I have no way of verifying whether or not that is true), that could explain why they’re demanding more money from AT&T/DirecTV.
UPDATE 3/23/2019 – As a result of a new carriage agreement being agreed to yesterday, Block Communications-owned television stations have been restored on DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse.
Jane Meyer, a journalist for The New Yorker magazine, recently wrote this piece outlining how Fox News has become an outlet for pro-Trump political propaganda, complete with a revolving door between Fox News and the Trump Administration.
In the early 1990’s, Fox acquired broadcast rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games on Sunday afternoons with games predominantly featuring teams from the National Football Conference (NFC), starting with the 1994 season (Fox, which initially built its sports division, Fox Sports, around the NFL, but has now acquired broadcast rights to many other sporting events, has held the rights to the NFC-heavy Sunday afternoon NFL broadcast rights package to this day). There was an underlying political motivation behind Fox acquiring NFL broadcast rights, to the point that one could argue that the rise of the modern far-right in American politics had its roots Fox acquiring NFL broadcast rights:
Murdoch could not have foreseen that Trump would become President, but he was a visionary about the niche audience that became Trump’s base. In 1994, Murdoch laid out an audacious plan to Reed Hundt, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President Bill Clinton. Murdoch, who had been a U.S. citizen for less than a decade, invited Hundt to his Benedict Canyon estate for dinner. After the meal, Murdoch led him outside to take in the glittering view of the Los Angeles Basin, and confided that he planned to launch a radical new television network. Unlike the three established networks, which vied for the same centrist viewers, his creation would follow the unapologetically lowbrow model of the tabloids that he published in Australia and England, and appeal to a narrow audience that would be entirely his. His core viewers, he said, would be football fans; with this aim in mind, he had just bought the rights to broadcast N.F.L. games. Hundt told me, “What he was really saying was that he was going after a working-class audience. He was going to carve out a base—what would become the Trump base.”
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Keep in mind that, prior to 1994, when Fox acquired NFL broadcast rights, Fox was a minor television network, much like the CW (which is jointly owned by CBS Corporation and AT&T’s Warner Media) is nowadays. Since 1994, Fox has expanded into cable television (with FX, FS1, FS2, the Big Ten Network, Fox Business Network, and Fox News Channel, among others), a large sports division with broadcast rights to major sporting events, and a cable “news” channel delivering far-right political propaganda 24 hours per day, every day. Fox is still, in some aspects, not as much of a player in regards to broadcast (i.e., over-the-air) television as the original Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). For example, Fox does not air much in the way of network news programming like the Big Three networks do, with Fox News Sunday, a Sunday morning political talk show, being the only news program of any kind on the Fox over-the-air network, with Fox News Channel being a far-right propaganda outlet masquerading as a cable news channel, and Fox, with rare exceptions for sports events (such as numerous matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup men’s soccer tournament), does not air any network programming in a morning or afternoon time slot on weekdays. However, if not for the Fox broadcast network gaining NFL broadcast rights in 1994, Fox would probably be a minor player in the television landscape today instead of the large and powerful media empire that is in real-life.
Meyer’s piece also mentions an instance where Fox News organized and aired a Republican presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio. Meyer described how Trump was given advance knowledge of some debate questions that were asked by Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News employee and one of the moderators of the debate, as well as how Trump bullied the late Fox News boss Roger Ailes into ordering Fox to give Trump favorable treatment:
Against this strained backdrop, at the debate in Cleveland, Kelly asked Trump a famously tough question. “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’ ” she said. Trump interrupted her with a snide quip: “Only Rosie O’Donnell!” The hall burst into laughter and applause.
Kelly kept pressing Trump: “You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect President?” But he’d already won over Republican viewers. (Fox received a flood of e-mails, almost all of them anti-Kelly.) The showdown helped shape Trump’s image as shamelessly unsinkable. It also kicked off a feud between Trump and Fox, in which Trump briefly boycotted the channel, hurting its ratings and forcing Ailes to grovel. Four days after the debate, Trump tweeted that Ailes had “just called” and “assures me that ‘Trump’ will be treated fairly.”
Trump has made the debate a point of pride. He recently boasted to the Times that he’d won it despite being a novice, and despite the “crazy Megyn Kelly question.” Fox, however, may have given Trump a little help. A pair of Fox insiders and a source close to Trump believe that Ailes informed the Trump campaign about Kelly’s question. Two of those sources say that they know of the tipoff from a purported eyewitness. In addition, a former Trump campaign aide says that a Fox contact gave him advance notice of a different debate question, which asked the candidates whether they would support the Republican nominee, regardless of who won. The former aide says that the heads-up was passed on to Trump, who was the only candidate who said that he wouldn’t automatically support the Party’s nominee—a position that burnished his image as an outsider.
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This is extremely hypocritical, given that Trump loudly complained about Donna Brazille, then a political commentator for CNN who later became acting chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 general election, giving Hillary Clinton, who won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 before losing the general election to Donald Trump despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote, advance knowledge of questions that were to be asked during a town hall event televised by CNN. Trump became a strong favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination by his debate performance in Cleveland, meaning that Fox News helped foment Trump’s political rise, something that a proper news organization should avoid doing in regards to any political figure at all costs.
I encourage everyone to read the entire Jane Meyer piece here, since the four paragraphs that I’ve quoted of it are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Fox News played a significant role in Donald Trump’s political rise, and Meyer’s piece also describes the revolving door between the Trump Administration and Fox News.
It is the opinion of the author of this blog post that the Fairness Doctrine, which would have effectively prohibited Fox News from becoming a pro-Trump propaganda outlet, should be reinstated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who is currently seeking the Democratic nomination for President, is reintroducing legislation that, if enacted, would not only legalize marijuana for recreational purposes nationwide, but would provide a path for the expungement of criminal convictions for possession of marijuana and create a “community reinvestment fund” to invest in communities that have been negatively impacted by the decades-long and ineffective War on Drugs:
Joined by four fellow candidates for the presidency, Sen. Cory Booker is reintroducing legislation that would legalize marijuana and expunge convictions for possessing the drug.
“It’s not enough to simply decriminalize marijuana,” Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement announcing the new version of his Marijuana Justice Act. “We must expunge the records of those who have served their time. The end we seek is not just legalization, it’s justice.”
[…]
Booker’s legislation goes further than legalization, though, and would create a “community reinvestment fund” to offer grants, job training, and transition from prison to community life for the people and places “most affected by the war on drugs.”
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The co-sponsors of Booker’s legislation include several of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, as well as a couple of Democratic U.S. Senators who are considering presidential bids:
Booker’s bill, which was first introduced in 2017 but never brought up for a vote, will be co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Ca.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
All of them had co-sponsored the 2017 bill, too, as had Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who is considering his own run for the presidency. Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who traveled to Iowa last week, is also co-sponsoring the new bill.
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As NPR reported, notable Democratic presidential contenders who are U.S. Senators but have not yet co-sponsored either the 2017 or 2019 versions of the Marijuana Justice Act include U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is considering a possible presidential bid.
This is a significant development within the Democratic Party. In 2016, marijuana policy didn’t get a ton of attention during the Democratic primary/caucus campaigns, but it is likely to get a lot more attention in 2020, with a lot of the Democratic presidential contenders on record as supporting comprehensive marijuana legalization legislation. Support of the Marijuana Justice Act by multiple Democratic presidential candidates is yet another example of how the Democratic Party is moving in a better and more progressive direction.
Apollo Corner 