Connelly: Fox's Kennedy derides Seattle as 'socialist hellhole' Soviet hammer-sickle flag in foreground, ex-MTV VJ derides Emerald City

.@KennedyNation: "Seattle used to be one of the most beautiful & livable cities in the world, but it has devolved into a Socialist hellhole" pic.twitter.com/B9nbwNKvfp — FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) July 12, 2017

Fox Business host Lisa "Kennedy" Montgomery has found a new phrase to describe America's fastest-growing city: "Socialist hellhole."

While the Emerald City has more construction cranes than anyplace else in America, Kennedy chose to decorate her show with a Soviet-style hammer-and-sickle flag superimposed in front of the Seattle skyline.

The Lenin statue in Fremont would be effusive, if only Vladimir Ilyich could talk.

The Fox News channel is normally so slanted that you need to watch it at a 45-degree angle. Several hosts, notably a blustering Bill O'Reilly, denounced this corner of what the Wall Street Journal editorial page calls the "Left Coast."

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Kennedy, pictured in happier times at Club USA in New York in 1995. Kennedy, pictured in happier times at Club USA in New York in 1995. Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Connelly: Fox's Kennedy derides Seattle as 'socialist hellhole' 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

Nobody has gone so far in the name-calling as Montgomery. Curiously, her on-air diatribe came during the same week that rival cable channel CNBC proclaimed Washington as America's best state in which to do business.

And Seattle is the Evergreen State's chief driving force.

Seattle is, of course, very liberal. Our City Council trashed Christopher Columbus. It passes all sorts of symbolic resolutions, sending Kshama Sawant's crowd home happy. Sawant is herself a member of the Socialist Alternative movement.

Still, 21st century capitalism flourishes in the Puget Sound area. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we are home to the three most prominent forces bent on world dominion -- Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon.

Not in the mind of Montgomery. She took one minute and 50 seconds to trash Seattle, keyed to the City Council's recent vote of a 2.2 percent income tax on the wealthy.

"It's just another example of how progressive laboratories halt progress by inviting the rich to leave, encouraging crime and hurting the poor they so disingenuously claim to help," the former MTV personality said.

She goes on to declare: "Save yourself the airfare for that trip to Caracas. Just head to Seattle instead, where freedom died along with every good singer from the 1990s."

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Huh? With our unemployment rate below 5 percent? With 100,000 people moving in during the past seven years? With every survey, from CNBC to Forbes, pegging Washington in the top five states to do business?

Caracas has food lines and food riots. My Seattle neighborhood has a lineup at Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream.

Ideology trumps reality. And Fox personalities rarely come out here to witness reality, although Rupert Murdoch and his latest wife do sail the Left Coast. O'Reilly has ranted about how we are an epicenter in the "War on Christmas," ignoring invites to witness the annual children's choirs concert at St. James Cathedral or do a quiet day at St. Mark's Cathedral.

The city's 2.25 percent tax applies only to income over $250,000, or $500,000 for couples filing joint returns.

Now, that's not soaking the rich. It's more like a light rinse job.

In LKM's world, however, "red geniuses" populate the Seattle City Council. By their action this week, they will send the rich fleeing to Bellevue "where Bill Gates lives."

Gates lives in Medina. Actually, having watched President Obama come here for big-ticket fundraisers, this writer could direct Montgomery to the homes of wealthy people on both sides of the lake. (I have been exiled from one such home due to writing critically about Hillary Clinton keeping company exclusively with the rich.)

LKM actually blames the city's gun tax, $25 on each firearm sold and five cents for every bullet, for the fact that shootings are "skyrocketing."

She ought to visit the trauma center at UW Medicine's Harborview Medical Center -- which other Fox hosts would de-fund with cuts in Medicaid -- and see the victims of gun carnage. Congress has forbid research into gun violence. Our tax seeks to make up that gap.

@KennedyNation backed LKM's rant with a tweet: "Seattle used to be one of the most beautiful and livable cities in the world, but it has devolved into a Socialist hellhole."

Nope, the hellholes of America are places where people watch Fox News or Fox Business and believe their offerings of distortions and outright lies. Montgomery, you are either mean-venal or massively misinformed.