Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/30/arizona-certifies-election-affirming-joe-bidens-victory-granting-him-states-11-electoral-votes.html
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Yes, but haven’t you heard about the totally legitimate blockbuster hearing where Republican officials have revealed that the election was stolen by a sinister cabal between the Bavarian Illuminati, UFOs, Gnomes of Zurich and lizard people!
They’re holding it at the Four Seasons!
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Meanwhile on Newsmax and OAN trump’s inauguration plans are almost finished…
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This booming business of straight-up lie/fantasy broadcasting has to be shutdown somehow. It started with Fox “News” and it’s been eroding the nation ever since.
I have zero ideas on how that can be legally accomplished, however.
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Out of an abundance of masochism, I checked in on some of the right-wing radio in the last couple of days, and it is unbelievable the extent to which they are living in a parallel reality. In their world, it is simply a given that everybody agrees that Dominion voting machines stole the election and there are piles of incontrovertible evidence that are just sitting there waiting for Trump to spring on his enemies in a final masterstroke.
Of course, because these people just engage in endless monologue, no one can ask them why none of this evidence has been provided to courts or any number of other perfectly obvious questions that topples the house of cards, but they’ve built it into such a self-reinforcing system that it’s producing an insane result.
They’ll never go away. There’s money to be made by grifting terrible people, and that won’t change. But once (jebus willing) they have been beaten at every political level and wield no national power of note, they’ll go back to being the carnival sideshows they were before.
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Did you know, in Arcore there’s a Four season pizzeria.
Arcore is where Berlusconi lives in Villa San Martino.
Maybe Giuliani could make the next conference in Italy…
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something something reinstate the fairness doctrine.
The fairness doctrine of the United States FCC, introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC’s view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in 1987 and removed the rule that implemented the policy from the Federal Register in August 2011.
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An expansion of the definition of the term “broadcast” would certainly be required.
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Hmmm…’eliminated in1987.’ Sorta lines up with some general shifts and trends, n’est pas?
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Yep. You nailed it.
Eliminated during Reagan’s last two years. But note not only the argument for the decision, not only the Appeals Court’s caveat to it’s support of the decision, but also who appointed the FCC board that made the decision. In the end, the political groundwork was laid for shit media like Fox News, as well as giving existing yellow journalism, like Washington Times, free reign. Conservatives, back then, equated the breadth of cable media with freedom of speech. Well, see what that got us now. And it was all to rationalize their own propaganda machine.
From Wikipedia:
On August 5, 1987, under FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick, the FCC abolished the doctrine by a 4–0 vote, in the Syracuse Peace Council decision,[27] which was upheld by a panel of the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in February 1989, though the Court stated in their decision that they made “that determination without reaching the constitutional issue.”[28] The FCC suggested in Syracuse Peace Council that because of the many media voices in the marketplace, the doctrine be deemed unconstitutional, stating that:
The intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of [the Fairness Doctrine] restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters … [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and the degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists.
At the 4–0 vote, Chairman Patrick said:
We seek to extend to the electronic press the same First Amendment guarantees that the print media have enjoyed since our country’s inception.[29]
Sitting commissioners at the time of the vote were:[30][31]
- Dennis R. Patrick, Chairman, Republican
(Named an FCC commissioner by Ronald Reagan in 1983) - Mimi Weyforth Dawson, Republican
(Named an FCC commissioner by Ronald Reagan in 1986) - Patricia Diaz Dennis, Democrat
(Named an FCC commissioner by Ronald Reagan in 1986) - James H. Quello, Democrat
(Named an FCC commissioner by Richard M. Nixon in 1974)
The FCC vote was opposed by members of Congress who said the FCC had tried to “flout the will of Congress” and the decision was “wrongheaded, misguided and illogical.”.[29] The decision drew political fire, and cooperation with Congress was one issue.[32] In June 1987, Congress attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine,[33] but the legislation was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Another attempt to revive the doctrine in 1991 was stopped when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.[34]
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Watch them show up, and between all the yammering insist on getting a couple of games in… with the gutter guards up, of course.
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Biden hasn’t been granted any electoral votes until the Electors actually cast their votes for him.
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