Be afraid. Be very afraid

Everyone on FOX "News" has their little pre-fab persona to act out. Sean Hannity is the swaggering faux-tough -guy, Tucker Carlson is the spoiled rich kid who ahs fame and fortune but is inexplicably angry All. The. Time. And Fox & Friends play the dual  role of the people who are so cartoonishly stupid that they make the other FOX personalities seem, well, not "smart," exactly but almost normal?
And they also play the part of the people who are scared to death about everything. What's got them peeing their pants in a blind chicken-little terror today? Why, it's none other than out favorite new member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

First they got into a tizzy because she did something truly frightening. She had the nefarious idea to pay members of her staff a *gasp* living wage!

  I have a request for Tocata and fugue in D-Minor. And a one and a two. . .

(via: IJR)

‘Fox & Friends’ Host Compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Staff Salaries to ‘Socialism and Communism’

       .

Sunday morning, the hosts took a shot at the lawmaker for choosing to pay her entry-level staffers an annual salary of $52,000.

Host Pete Hegseth explained that Ocasio-Cortez would be paying her Chief of Staff only $80,000 annually instead of “the actual market rate on Capitol Hill, which is closer to $150,000.” He added, “It’s actually socialism and communism on display.”

You know nothing of my work!

Now how is this communism and/or socialism? Well, see, each member of Congress gets a certain amount of money to hire staff and they have to decide how to spend that money, how many staffers to hire, how much to pay them, etc. And AOC, being a dirty commie, has decided to not pay her chief of staff as much as most members do so that she can pay a living wage to lower-level staffers, and that budgetary decision equals . . . um. . .  communism? I guess?
I mean, I guess if your chief of staff was already making $150k a year and the Congresswoman said "sorry, pal. I'm reducing your pay down to $80k so I can give a halfway decent salary to these other employees, that chief of staff might have a legitimate beef, but since that's not actually happening. . . um. . . COMMUNISM!!!


And it gets even stupider:

For some reason, I can't get the video to embed, but you can watch it here:
https://ijr.com/fox-friends-ocasio-cortez-aoc/

Suffice it to say that one of them has a problem with the fact that she is re-destributing money that came from the government, not her personal earnings, as if every single god damn member of Congress doesn't get exactly the same deal. One of them seems to think that she is literally robbing her chief of staff to pay her entry-level employees, and they all seem to agree that a situation in which the employer decides how much to play employees is the epitome of socialism/communism.

But that freak-out was just a warm-up for this latest fear frenzy:

(Via: C&L)

Fox And Friends Freaks Out: AOC's Vow Not To Have Children Will 'End Earth'

In an Instagram live video this week, Ocasio-Cortez said that it was understandable for young people to question whether to bring children into the world.

Okay, that seems perfectly reasonable -- oh wait, I mean "AAAAUUUGGGHHH!!!"

“Our planet is going to face disaster if we don’t turn this ship around,” she explained. “And so it’s basically like, there is a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult and it does lead, I think young people, to have a legitimate question. Ya know, should—is it okay to still have children?”

See,  now this is where it gets tricky being a FOX personality. How do you take a perfectly sensible statement about the perfectly valid trepidation the younger generation has about bringing children into the world and find a way to twist it into something Scaaaaaary?

On Tuesday, Fox News host Pete Hegseth accused Ocasio-Cortez of believing someone could be considered a “bad person” for birthing a child amid climate change.
“Because you’re going to ruin their lives and you’re going to ruin the planet,” Hegseth chided.

Yes. That's exactly what she said. She said having kids makes you a bad person. That's it exactly.

 

“Eventually, if people stop having children, guess what, none of us are going to be here,” co-host Jillian Mele warned.

Okay, wow. First of all - oooh, scary!!!
But also - We are already here. Whether or not the younger people choose to make babies or not has no effect on us being here. And within a half-century, none of us will probably be here anyway no matter how many babies they pop out, because that's how life works. You get old, you die, babies grow up to take your place and soon there is no one left with any memory of you.

“Eventually, if people stop having children, guess what, none of us are going to be here,” co-host Jillian Mele warned. “Like there’s not even going to be Earth anymore.”

Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but even if, somehow, every single person on Earth took what you're pretending is AOC's advice and stopped reproducing and eventually there was no more human race, the Earth would still exist. And it would still teem with life. Honestly, it would be better off without us. Without humans, the land would become re-forested, the rivers and streams would once again be clean and clear and beautiful creatures from butterflies to bears would frolic in the sunshine.

“I don’t want my daughter raised in a socialist environment,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt said of the effort to combat climate change. “I mean, look at Venezuela. That’s what’s bad for the kids.”

Amazing how they can bring everything back to the specter of "socialism" and via that specter, to the nightmare of their imagined version of Venezuela. It would almost be impressive if it weren't so ham-fisted.

I mean, what does socialism have to do with climate change? Who knows? But it's scary, right? "Socialism?" oooooohhhhh!!!

“And what’s unhealthy for society is when they can’t replace themselves,” Hegseth opined. “Demographics say 2.1 [children per household] is a healthy, growing country.”

Demographics say? It's demographics that say that? Is that right? That doesn't sound right to me, but I'm no fancy big-city demographer. If any of you readers are, maybe you could let me know. Because I don't think that's what demographics is. I mean, I know why a FOX Friend is concerned about demographics and population growth. Hint: it rhymes with "what if white people become the schminority?" And that is a scary thought for the rageaholic septuagenarians that make up the F&F audience.

One in particular.

“She said the world is going to end in 10 to 12 years, this is like World War II, this is her religion,” he added.

Um. . . what?
She absolutely did not say that the world would end in 10-12 years. She said, quite correctly, that scientists have determined that we have about 10-12 years to take serious action on climate change before the damage becomes irreversible. I don't know what she said about WWII, but this actually is pretty analogous to WWII, in that we are under a serious threat and need to respond quickly and drastically if we want to neutralize that threat. It will take a lot of money and effort, but so did fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at the same time and we managed to pull that off.

As to the religion part? "This is like World War II, this is her religion?" I'm a little mystified by that.I mean, I grew up a member of the Church of World War II (glory to Patton) and the minister never once spoke of climate change in his sermons.

Let us now read from the Book of Armaments.

“I just don’t like her saying, ‘I’m the boss,'” Mele concluded.

Wow, this became a trope on the right pretty quickly. This idea of AOC thinking she's "the boss."

from National Review:

AOC Is Not ‘the Boss’ for Coming Up with a Plan That Can’t Work

From Fox:

Tucker Carlson: How dumb, arrogant Ocasio-Cortez became the boss of the Democratic Party

from Radio.com:

Newell Normand. : AOC is the boss of the Democrats now, whether they like it or not. 


I guess it's not just the Fox Friends who are scared to death of this woman!