FOLLOWING THE SHINY OBJECT, JOURNALISM IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

What I wouldn't do to sit down with Walter Cronkite, Bud Benjamin, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Fred Friendly, Roger Mudd, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Tim Russert, Mike Wallace, Bob Schieffer, and a few others to discuss how the TV news outlets are covering this political season.

I think it borders on irresponsibility especially as TV journos consider themselves an indispensable column in the democratic coliseum. But it may be time to realize that what was once fine TV news reporting is now slithering from the Fourth Estate into the Fifth Estate.

Journalists and news outlets of all kinds ARE indispensable to a healthy democracy. However, there is much public sentiment that views TV news as utterly dispensable. Considering how much news is consumed over the airwaves, this is dangerous but may be deserved.

Day after day, there is uneven, lazy TV reporting on our presidential candidates, arguably the most important story in the world for all that it suggests about our place amongst nations. I watch the coverage day after day. I find myself talking to my TV set. I'm both disgusted and sad.

It's like watching an extremely accomplished, greatly respected individual, who once had gravitas, now living as a drug addict, on the street, family-less, home-less, fund-less, scrounging around, wondering how to get their next (ratings) fix.

* * *

First published in my local newspaper during the 2016-17 campaign season. Three years later I am able to say that journalism (especially newspapers) are again carrying their weight, restoring their mantle & leading the way.

February 15, 2020

TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS

YOU WILL KNOW GOP TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS IS WORKING WHEN YOU FEEL THE GOLDEN WARMTH RUNNING DOWN YOUR INNER THIGH.

GRAB 'EM BY THE PUSSY

DEC 12, 2017

I just heard two women say they worked ”under" a man during a newscast.

Investigate!

Yes, of course I was disgusted by the POTUS tweet directed at Kirsten Gillibrand.

"Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!"

It was a button pusher.

Sometimes letting a statement lie there like a lox speaks greater volumes then dissecting it all day which can actually dilute the real issue(s).

During the Vietnam war we reported the daily casualties. Then we started wondering if that wasn't numbing everyone to the horrors of that useless, politically motivated war.

The person who is temporarily occupying the Oval will get his soon enough. All his slithering won't help @ the end of the day. This shit will haunt him until he slides back into the swamp.

And he will live on in American history as the creature from the black lagoon.

THE REAL MAGA

Senator John McCain's remarks upon receiving the 2017 Liberty Medal:

[...] Some years ago, I was present at an event where an earlier Liberty Medal recipient spoke about America’s values and the sacrifices made for them. 

It was 1991, and I was attending the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The World War II veteran, estimable patriot and good man, President George H.W. Bush, gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona memorial. 

I remember it very well. His voice was thick with emotion as he neared the end of his address. I imagine he was thinking not only of the brave Americans who lost their lives on December 7, 1941, but of the friends he had served with and lost in the Pacific where he had been the Navy’s youngest aviator.

“Look at the water here, clear and quiet …” he directed, “One day, in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to a better world.”He could barely get out the last line, “May God bless them, and may God bless America, the most wondrous land on earth.”

The most wondrous land on earth, indeed. I’ve had the good fortune to spend sixty years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. 

But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.

What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our politics, we are blessed.

We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.

We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.

I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause?—?the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice?—?all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving. But among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight. I see now that I was part of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made the future better than the past.

And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.

May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve. [...]

GRAPHICS FOR OUR TIMES

IRIS

ENOUGH SAID.....ESPECIALLY NOW

POOR MIKE PENCE!

ZIGGY'S SPRING

FDA APPROVES IMPEACHARA!

MORE FOR THE 1%, LESS FOR YOU-KNOW-WHO

[...] conservative economics professor Peter Navarro, whom Trump has tapped to head his National Trade Council [...] recommend(s) the government allocate $137 billion in tax credits for private investors who underwrite infrastructure projects.

[...] the administration's preference for addressing the problem with private dollars is clear. [...]

[...] Infrastructure projects like roads and bridges are attractive to investors only if they have tolls or some other way of generating revenue. [...] but economists and transportation experts warn 

the government could end up rewarding investors in projects that would have been built even without credits.

ANOTHER WINDFALL FOR THE 1% Oh, yes, there would be construction jobs  ALONG WITH more permanent taxes for the middle class in the form of TOLLS.

THE ZIGSTER

LESSON #1: THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT A FAMILY BUSINESS.

GENERALLY SPEAKING

Generals (most often) have three main characteristics which make them ideal cabinet members for an authoritarian POTUS.

1. They accept civilian authority
2. They take orders
3. They are not idealogs

WORD PLAY w a serious subject

Retweeted Michele Smith (@mdfsmith1):

@RichardHaass Clearly the Trump admin has no experience with ethical operations. Swamping the drain.

1984 - BACK TO THE FUTURE

A BIT OF HUMOR ON A SAD DAY (FROM THE NEW YORKER)

POLITICAL SIGNAGE IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

RE-POSTED FROM A THOUGHTFUL FACEBOOK GROUP

QUESTION: Does anyone else find that they're having a hard time handling Trump's election on an emotional level?

JAN RIFKINSON: Yes. I'm disturbed & concerned on a national & personal level. 

On a national level, I'm very disturbed by all the anger. On a personal level, I detest braggadocio & un-truths.

I'm conflicted because I want to respect my POTUS and, at the moment, I am finding that to be a very difficult proposition. 

I hope this changes.

FACTS OR NOT, A PROBLEM FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?

Honestly, folks, here's a problem I have & I ask for your thoughts on the matter. 

DJT has made & continues to make statements that are FACTUALLY untrue when taken literally. 

The PETUS & his spokespeople have stated in multiple settings, multiple times, during the campaign and after the election, that what the PETUS states is not necessarily what he means. It may be a symbolic statement, not a factual statement. And the MSM takes his statements literally but "the people" understand what he really means. 

Does this mean that every time he makes a statement, I should interpret it instead of listening to it? Should I believe the PETUS's statements or not? So, for example, when he says "Stop It" looking into the camera on "60 Minutes", does he really mean STOP IT! or is it really a wink & a nod to proceed? 

What I'm trying to noodle out is how to weigh what the PETUS and soon-to-be POTUS says going forward. It strikes me is that if I'm constantly "interpreting" what he really means instead of listening to what he states, I could get into a lot of trouble intellectually. 

What's your take?