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Red State’s Caleb Howe Takes 1372 Words To Tell Roger Ebert He’s Sorry

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I don’t like Caleb Howe. But I love Twitter. And I use it all the time. To meet people, to form communities, to understand how people think. For me, Twitter is all about people. And every time I hit “enter,” I know every one of those 140-or-less-character messages I send is going to affect some of the 7000+ folks who are following my tweets. So I make sure that what I say has relevance, and even the tweets I send that attack people don’t attack people.

That’s one of my main issues with the thought process on the Right. Ad hominen attacks are how they go about their day. On Twitter, at Tea Parties, on Glenn Beck’s show, on RedState, the Right loves to attack you as a person. Not just your positions, your ideas, your beliefs, but you. And that’s where I draw the line.

I’ve made a lot of tough comments about, and too, a lot of people. But you’d be hard-pressed to find any tweet I’ve sent, or any blog post I’ve written, or anything I’ve verbalized, that attacked a person — how they look, their ethnic background, their orientation, who they are, as a person.

But back to Caleb Howe. As you probably know at this point, Caleb Howe blogs at RedState, one of the most right-wing blogs ever. Howe likes to get down-and-dirty, and, by his own admission, he likes to get down with the vodka, too. I’ll confess I didn’t know who he was until a few days ago, when I read how he had viciously attacked Roger Ebert via Twitter. You’ve read the piece over at Gawker, (or the other piece at Gawker,) or the one at Esquire, or the one at CNN… Yes, Caleb Howe knows how to make a name for himself. See, it was all a test. It was his “plan.”

Caleb Howe, on Saturday, decided to take on Roger Ebert by making fun of his cancer. Media Matters has screenshots of his actual tweets, but I’ll share a few of them here:

CalebHowe: I mean, honestly. How many pieces need to fall off @ebertchicago before he gets the hint to shut the fuck up?

CalebHowe: You know, @ebertchicago, I’m not as expert on flag etiquette as you. Tell me, which do I fly when you die of cancer?

I’ll leave it at that, though there are plenty more.

Caleb Howe represents the tea party movement, the right-wing radical movement, and the right-wing blogosphere perfectly. Don’t like someone’s stance on an issue? Call them a “goat fucking child molester.” What? Yup. That’s what Caleb Howe’s boss, Erick Erickson, who runs RedState but is also a CNN contributor, said on the news that David Souter was retiring from the Supreme Court. In fact, the entire sentence was, “The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter’s retirement.”

So, it should come as no shock that Howe would sink so low as to say of Ebert, “…he’ll be dead really really soon. So fuck him.”

I suppose, one could argue, that’s almost tame by comparison.

Anyway, it’s this type of rhetoric that serves as the daily fare by the RedState crowd.

Howe did, finally, apologize. In “I Don’t Like Roger Ebert,” Howe takes almost all of its 1372 words to actually apologize, saying that he “forgot about humanity.” Damned right he did.

But given the RedState culture of calling a Supreme Court justice a “goat fucking child molester,” of threatening to “pull out a shotgun on a census worker,” suggesting beating a politician “to a bloody pulp for being an idiot,” and demanding Americans “tell Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel,” what can you expect?

Howe decided to appear last night on “The Stage Right Show,” a podcast that promised, “some serious “half hour of hate.” Howe claimed his “plan” to attack Ebert was “How do I hurt him?” The host laughed when Howe recalled his tweets about Ebert dying of cancer. “You were purposely being provocative because you had an end-game.” So? Justified? No.

Howe, on the podcast, mumbled something about how “Twitter’s off the record.” It’s not. (He and Erick Erickson, his boss, certainly should realize that by now.) He claimed his plan was to expose hypocrisy by riling up Ebert’s Twitter followers, by saying terrible things. His plan was to “trap them in their hypocrisy.” And he added, “my bottom line is that everyone’s a douche.”

Evidently, one of those “everybodys” is Oliver Willis, a blogger for the media watchdog Media Matters, which Howe and the host attempted to skewer during the show.

Later, after his Saturday salvo, Howe tweeted to those who criticized his heinous attack on Ebert (including your truly,) saying, “Ahh irony,” and “lol. Irony.” Because those criticizing him, to his way of thinking, were equally guilty as he. Proportion and intent, in Howe’s mind, evidently don’t matter.

What Howe didn’t get, and maybe, maybe does now, is that there’s a difference between attacking someone’s political positions, and attacking them as a human being.

But I don’t hold much hope. Given one of Caleb Howe’s most-recent tweets, I’d say he’s back to his old ways…

Ah, irony.

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News

‘Lied Through His Teeth’: Senator Warns RFK Jr. Undermining Vaccine Will ‘Kill’ Kids

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May 16, 2025

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U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is accusing Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of lying during his Senate testimony this week, and warning that the HHS chief’s efforts to destroy faith in the measles vaccine will lead to children dying.

“It’s not a small thing that Trump’s Cabinet thinks Congress and the American people are so dumb that they can tell brazen lies over and over. We can’t normalize this,” Senator Murphy urged.

“The way in which Trump and Trump’s cabinet lie through their teeth, unapologetically and brazenly, to Congress and the American people, is outrageous,” Murphy said in video (below) he posted online Friday. “And I really worry that we risk normalizing it by not calling it out when it happens.”

He called the exchange he had with RFK Jr. “maddening” and “heartbreaking,” and said the HHS Secretary “essentially says that he’s no longer recommending that families get the measles vaccine. That’s going to kill hundreds, if not thousands of kids in this country.”

Murphy then played a clip from Kennedy’s testimony (which NCRM covered earlier this week), and, he said, caught Kennedy in a lie.

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“By the way,” Kennedy told Murphy, “I said at the [House] hearing this morning that I was recommending the measles vaccine,” and told him to “look at the transcript.”

“So guess what I did?” Murphy says. “I went and checked the House transcript. It’s hours of testimony. I and my staff watched all of it, and guess what? Nowhere, nowhere in that transcript does he say he recommends the measles vaccine.”

“He lied through his teeth, and he did it because all of these MAGA sycophants have gotten used to lying. Donald Trump does it all the time, so they think they can do it as well. But we can’t normalize this because you can’t run a country if your leaders are lying to you every single day,” the Connecticut Democrat warned.

“RFK Jr. doesn’t support the measles vaccine, and he shouldn’t pretend that he does. He undermines the vaccine on a daily basis and whether we like his conspiracy theory positions or not, he should just be honest with the American people. They should all be honest with the American people, and none of us should normalize or get used to this amount of lying.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘It Meant Assassination’: Trump Blasts ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey for ‘8647’

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‘It Meant Assassination’: Trump Blasts ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey for ‘8647’

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May 16, 2025

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President Donald Trump is attacking the FBI Director he fired, Jim Comey, who is reportedly under investigation  over a photo of sea shells formed into the numbers 8647. Top Trump law enforcement and intelligence officials claim it is a call for the assassination of the 47th President, although “86” is generally understood to mean “reject” or “eject,” and, since the 1930s, in restaurant parlance, has meant a menu item is unavailable.

“He knew exactly what that meant,” President Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that will air Friday evening. “A child knows what that meant.”

“If you’re the FBI Director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination.’ And it says it loud and clear,” Trump alleged.

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“Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant, and he did it for a reason, and he was hit so hard because people like me, and they like what’s happening with our country. Our country’s become respected again,” the President claimed. “And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.”

Baier interjected, saying: “Obviously, he apologized and said he —”

“Well, he apologized because he was hit,” Trump also claimed. “Look, he’s a very bad —”

When asked what he wants to see happen to the former Director of the FBI, Trump said he did not want to weigh in, and would let his Attorney General handle it.

“I don’t want to take a position on it because that’s gonna be up to Pam [Bondi] and all of the great people, but I will say this. I think it’s a terrible thing. And when you add his history to that, if he had a clean history, he doesn’t.”

“He’s a dirty cop. He’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency. But I’m going to let them make that decision.”

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Trump Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News on Thursday night she thinks Comey should go to prison for posting the “8647” photo.

Asked, “Do you believe Comey should be in jail?” Gabbard replied, “I do.”

“Any other person with the position of influence that he has,” she added, “people who take very seriously what what a guy of his stature, his experience, and what the propaganda media has built him up to be?”

“I’m very concerned for the president’s life. We’ve already seen assassination attempts,” she continued. “I’m very concerned for his life, and James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.”

But others commenting via social media were quick to point to a number of “86” posts apparently made by right wing influencers and even a former member of Congress, as well as T-shirts for sale during the Biden years.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Image via Reuters

 

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‘Mad King’: Trump Teases ‘Fourth’ Term to U.S. Troops Overseas

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2 days ago

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May 15, 2025

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During a rally-style appearance before uniformed U.S. troops in Qatar on Thursday, President Donald Trump—serving as their Commander-in-Chief—floated the idea of a “fourth” term and falsely claimed victory in the 2020 election he lost. The appearance drew swift criticism for blurring the line between military service and political theater.

“As you know, we won three elections, okay?” Trump told the largely silent troops (video below). “And some people want us to do a fourth. I don’t know—I’ll have to think about that.”

“You saw the new, the new hat. The hottest hat is, it says, ‘Trump 2028: We’re driving the left crazy.'”

“When you see that. We didn’t need that hat, but, uh, it was it’s been an amazing period of time,” he concluded.

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Noting that Trump was speaking “at the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East,” CNN reported that the President “thanked the U.S. troops for political support.”

“There’s – nobody been stronger than the military in terms of backing us, nobody,” Trump said. “So, I just want to thank you all very much. Great honor. Thank you very much.”

CBS News national security coordinating producer Jim LaPorta, who has reported extensively on the military, wrote: “If this was a rally, the president’s remarks would be fine. But in front of service members who are expected to be apolitical, many Defense Department officials would find these remarks inappropriate.”

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The Bulwark’s Sam Stein observed: “Treating the troops like they’re at a campaign rally and sowing doubt about the past and future of American elections — all in one soundbite.”

Democratic pollster and strategist Luke Martin called it “especially jarring to see Trump flirting with blowing a hole in the Constitution in front of an entire crowd of people who literally swore an oath to protect it with their life.”

Independent journalist Mike Rothschild noted: “Making a statement like this in front of active duty troops would have generated months of scandal, hearings, and resignations in years gone by. Now it’s just another Thursday with the Mad King.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: GOP Plan Redefines Dependent Child as ‘Under 7’—But Adds Loophole for Married Couples

 

Image via Reuters

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