Articles of Distraction

[Angrboda]

Fox News employees expressed concerns network was intentionally aiding Trump, legal filings reveal

Fox News employees expressed concerns about the network’s editorial standards and the conduct of top hosts in an internal survey conducted in the summer and fall of 2020, with one going as far as to wonder if they had sold their “soul to the devil”, according to legal filings.

The employees’ statements were excerpted in a 771-page filing released last week, made public as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.

The comments come from an anonymous internal survey – the “Fox News 2020 Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey” – of 1,040 employees conducted between 24 August 2020 and 8 September 2020. Several employees expressed concerns that the network was intentionally aiding Donald Trump and the Republican party.

One anonymous employee said that Fox should “change the misogynist, racist, rightwing content”, adding: “Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican party NOT a news organization and should be acknowledged as such. It is embarrassing to tell people that I work here as even conservatives know [Fox News Channel] and [Fox Business Network] are biased information sources – not news.” While the employee called the work environment “great”, they said “the content is hateful and has made the world a more divided and angry place”.

“I sometimes go home fighting back tears,” an employee said. “This network made me question my morals. Have I sold my soul to the devil?”

An employee said the network should “get out of Trump’s pocket” and realize that its most prominent hosts – including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity – “are a total embarrassment, peddling BS and conspiracy theories”. “Many days I feel like I am part of the problem and FNC is contributing to hatred in this country,” the person said.

“This company aligns itself with the current administration and has lost its integrity,” an employee said. “I wish there was purpose for what we do other than pushing the brand, ideology and political will of [the president],” another comment read.

[Angrboda]

Trump’s Secret Police Shot a Citizen. Then Damning New Info Emerged.

As President Donald Trump’s consolidation of authoritarian power escalates, he and his allies have been employing undisguised state-sponsored propaganda to a degree unmatched by any president in modern times. This much, one hopes, is broadly understood—even if a startling number of Americans seem unperturbed by it. But here’s something that’s less discussed: This sort of industrial-scale deception would be far more difficult to pull off if Republicans hadn’t wholly crippled Congress’s oversight function on Trump’s behalf.

All this is driven home by an interesting new letter that Senator Chris Murphy sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about a horrifying incident that unfolded during Trump’s occupation of Chicago. A federal agent shot a woman multiple times after she allegedly menaced the agents with her car. Marimar Martinez, who didn’t have life-threatening injuries, is a U.S. citizen.

This incident has been subjected to a barrage of state-manufactured misinformation, and it turns out that MAGA influencer Laura Loomer also was involved in that effort. In response, Murphy’s letter calls on Noem to account for all these official deceptions, and to come clean on whether government information was improperly leaked to Loomer to assist in them.

In particular, just after the shooting, DHS put out a statement claiming that the agents in question had been “boxed in by 10 cars” and that Martinez’s vehicle “rammed” theirs. The statement also suggests she threatened the agents with a “semi-automatic weapon.” All this “forced” an agent to shoot Martinez, who then “drove herself to the hospital.” DHS added that she’d previously doxed agents online. In short, the shooting was wholly justified: The victim was the one doing the terrorizing—of law enforcement.

Yet these claims are undermined by the criminal complaint against Martinez. It only mentions two cars menacing the agents, not 10. It doesn’t mention her gun, let alone her threatening of the agents with one. It says she was taken to the hospital by ambulance. And as the Chicago Sun-Times reports, Martinez’s lawyer says body-cam footage even contradicts the claim that she directly threatened the officers with her vehicle and shows that the agent said, “Do something, bitch,” before opening fire.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I saw the walk-and-talk her lawyer did with the press, and he seems confident to the point of giddy about getting the body cam footage into evidence. 

I mean, how stupid did the agent have to be to NOT turn off his camera and later claim a malfunction? That's how secret policing is supposed to work.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Trump responds after Colombian leader accuses US of murder in strike on alleged drug boat

The U.S. has launched military strikes on seven alleged drug trafficking vessels since September, killing at least 32. The latest strike was announced Oct. 19 by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said it destroyed a boat "transporting substantial amounts of narcotics" and killed all three people on board. Legal experts and lawmakers from both parties have questioned the legality of the strikes.

Petro said one of the strikes killed a fisherman who "had no ties to the drug trade."

"The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure," Petro added in an Oct. 18 social media post. "We await explanations from the US government."

Trump responded the next day, lashing out at Petro as a "low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America."

The president said that the U.S. is cutting off financial assistance to Colombia and warned he could go further.

Referring to illegal drug production in Colombia, Trump wrote on social media Oct. 19 that Petro "better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely."

Petro continued to push back on Trump, saying he is "rude and ignorant toward Colombia."

Even as he feuds with Petro, Trump is sending a survivor of one of the military strikes on alleged drug vessels back to Colombia. Trump announced Oct. 18 that two people had survived a strike on a submarine heading toward the United States with illegal narcotics.

[Paraselene]

Halter-top-wearing Alexander Skarsgård steals the show at premiere of kinky biker movie Pillion



Pink

[Paraselene]

Queer comedian Margaret Cho says she hopes JK Rowling’s pubic hair turns to ‘steel wool’

Pink

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Well, that would certainly be a distraction. 🤣

Boru

[Angrboda]

Penis costume arrest raises constitutional concerns amid library dispute in Fairhope

[Paraselene]

He's just a gay cop wanting to play with another penis.

[Angrboda]

Americans’ views about religion in public life are shifting. From February 2024 to February 2025, there was a sharp rise in the share of U.S. adults who say religion is gaining influence in American life.

While this remains a minority view, it is increasingly held by adults across several demographic groups – with gains of at least 10 percentage points among Democrats and Republicans, adults in every age category and in most large religious groups.
Line chart showing that between 2024 and 2025, there was a sharp rise in the share of Americans who say religion is gaining influence

The new survey also finds that in recent years, a growing share of the public takes a positive view of religion’s role in society.

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To be sure, most Americans continue to say that religion’s role in society is declining. But the share who take this position fell sharply from 80% in 2024 to 68% in 2025.

(Pew Research Center)