Since I slammed Biden and the Dems for turning a blind eye to sky high grocery prices, I suppose I should also congratulate them for getting 5 Americans freed from Iranian prisons. Anybody who has a problem in giving Iran back its own money to cut the deal, should imagine what it’s like to have a loved one held captive overseas for years one end, with no end in sight.
Biden is also creating a new Office for Gun Violence Prevention. Good for him. Good for his administration. After decades of talk somebody is finally doing something. More than 25-thousand Americans have died from gun violence so far this year in a country that refuses to outlaw assault weapons. Weapons with no purpose other than ending human life.
While all that was going on one major poll shows Trump’s support growing among Black and Latino voters. Apparently they have no memory of what happened during the Trump Administration? There was an attempted coup, remember? Remember who it was encouraging the mob to march over to the Capitol to try and overthrow the Republic? This was the same Donald J. Trump, who said there were “very fine people on both sides,” following neo-Nazis and other white nationalists, marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.
High grocery prices may be the Republican Party’s best friend right now. I have no idea how middle-income Americans are able to feed their families. A whole lot of Wonder Bread and spaghetti with watered-down ketchup for sauce, apparently. If they can afford to put gas in the car to drive to the market.
The situation with the Republican Party is seriously comedic, or it should be. A handful of separatist lunatics are controlling the entire House of Representatives, as just one vote from a MAGA Republican, can boot Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair. So the Speaker, third in line to the Presidency, must bend to the will of a few MAGA nutjobs, as they continue to support a candidate facing not one, not two, not three, but four criminal indictments. Topping it off, Vladimir Putin, is now voicing his support for DJT, as he spews condemnation of our democratic system.
Imagine that, Vladimir Putin, international terrorist and pariah, thinks we have a bad system. A man who leads a country people are exiting in droves with almost nobody wanting to get back in. When was the last time Russia, had a border crossing problem, with somebody trying to get in as opposed to getting out?
Then there’s Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach who lives in Florida but represents Alabama in the U.S. Senate, where he and he alone, is stopping our military from appointing new leadership to make a statement about abortion. He needs to get out of politics and go back to football. If a team will have him. Football is checkers. American politics is three-dimensional chess. Tuberville, is in over his head and our military readiness is being damaged in the process.
The Republicans are weakening our military and crippling the House with a threatened government shutdown, while they support a man who lead an attempted coup against the United States while cozying up to Putin and the Russians, who want nothing short of our destruction. It would be a massive comedy of Republican errors, were it not for the fact that millions upon millions of average Americans can’t afford groceries and gas, while the Democratic Party, continues to act like everything is just fine. If you listen to the President we’re more than fine, we’re great. Well, not really. Not everybody. And Mr. Biden’s position is that we have the strongest economy in the world? Maybe he needs some new advisors? Maybe a trip to the market to do a little shopping on a fixed income budget?
It’s way too easy for gougers to hide behind claims of the war in Ukraine disrupting international supply chains while our elected leaders look the other way. World food prices hit record highs in 2022, but the price of almost everything at your local market shot up, not just food and products impacted by international markets.
It’s so easy for those reaping huge rewards to argue that those of us without degrees in economics can’t begin to understand the implications of international trade, how the price of grain in the Middle East, impacts the cost of a jar of pickles or a pound of sugar in Omaha. There are credible charges that the gouging goes beyond the supermarkets, which have already hit record high prices, and into the military.
As for the impact of Covid, surely its impact on supply chains has had more than enough time to level out? Should we really be expected to pay $10 for one Covid test kit that costs pennies to produce?
Dem leaders need to be wary of turning their backs on consumer prices that are crushing average Americans, while the UAW appears poised to join SAG/AFTRA, the Writer’s Guild and custodial workers on the picket line.
The Writer’s Guild and then SAG/AFTRA were among the first to recognize that working people have reached an economic tipping point. A realization that Russia, isn’t the only country with a giant gap between its oligarchs and average working people, a gap that will surely grow with advancing AI and the ever-increasing march of automation threatening to make us all obsolete.
As in 2016, this upcoming election is the Democrats to lose. Some, apparently, think that’s not even remotely possible. Could be the same bunch that thought it would be a slam-dunk for Hillary in 2016.
During the Vietnam War it was exposure to Agent Orange and any number of other defoliants and chemicals. In Afghanistan it was open-pit burning. Now it’s bad water at Camp Lejenune. Warfare is difficult enough without our soldiers falling ill due to a lack of oversight and expertise in the command structure. Congress and the military need to come up with a permanent oversight solution to our military poisoning its own people. So the pundits are now echoing Joe Biden’s big comeback after somehow pulling a fast one and getting coal millionaire Joe Manchin to go along with a package that will benefit the country even if most of the hard-core “party before country” Republicans don’t like it. The Dem’s will need each and every vote in the Senate to make this work so the big question now is will Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema buy into the program? We know Manchin’s family made millions in the coal brokerage business in West Virginia, so his normal pro-Republican Party agenda isn’t all that tough to understand. But what makes Sinema tick?
Is it the power of the adrenaline rush she feels, knowing everybody is giving her all that attention as a “DINO” – democrat in name only? Who is Kyrsten Sinema, really? And why does she do what she does? Maybe she’s just a flake? It’s possible, you know. Sometimes things are just that simple.
And finally in this morning rant, who are the Communist Chinese to tell a United States Congresswoman, much less the Speaker of the House, that she can’t visit a free country? This shouldn’t even be a question.
Do you ever get the feeling that there’s a disconnect in the United States between those among us who understand the difference and the history that separates Communist controlled countries that subjugate their people and Democracies whose people are free? Do you ever get the feeling that a great many Americans just don’t get it and take our freedom for granted, even with galloping Trumpist Fascism knocking on the door?
Putin, wants to make Ukraine part of his dictatorship. The Commie Chinese, want to do the same with free and democratic Taiwan just as they’ve re-taken and conquered Hong Kong. This is unacceptable on both counts.
Pelosi, needs to go to Taiwan, Putin needs to get his maniacal ass out of Ukraine and the United States needs to stop acting like it’s afraid of Communist China. What needs to be done to deal with MBS and the journalist-murdering Saudis, who, it appears, helped launch the attack on 9-11, is another question. Oh, they’ve bought us all right, along with so many of our professional golfers currently teeing-off at Trump’s LIV tournament in New Jersey. Question is, are we going to let them and their co-conspirators in the oil monopoly own us?
Is America truly for sale to the highest bidder, or are we about more than that?
And finally this morning, why is the media treating the Monkeypox outbreak like it’s a new Polio epidemic? They’re in near hysteria about Monkeypox, treating it like it’s the Bubonic Plague, even though nearly all of the cases are infecting gay or bi-sexual men and it usually goes away all by itself and is almost never fatal. There is also the fact that there’s a vaccine. A more thoughtful and contextual approach to reporting out this story would probably be much appreciated by everyone.
I know the newspaper industry is in trouble. I know their advertising base has been depleted by all the “new media” out there. I also know they are still needed if we are to survive as a free people. For years the “news” has been coming mostly from print reporters who went out and dug it up. What you see on television, is usually a follow-up to a story that originated with a newspaper or wire service. The great Walter Cronkite, famously, was uncomfortable putting anything on the air at CBS until it had appeared in the New York Times.
Consequently, I expect the Baltimore Sun to put the dysfunctionalism of the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, their inability to work together for the common good, under a microscope on a regular basis. With two past mayors and the current Baltimore State’s Attorney, all indicted, and street crime that continues to be out of control, they should be holding public officials accountable daily. With the indictments and the crime and the general governmental mess, Baltimore, should be a journalist’s Nirvana.
That said, what their editorial board just came up with, broadly condemning President Biden, left me thinking that the people who wrote the piece must have spent the past several years doing nothing but watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
I was fine with the editorial until it was coming to an end, with the accusation that Joe Biden hasn’t been “honest.” Really? When? And if that wasn’t enough, they then capped it off with, “For his second year in office, not being Donald Trump will not be enough.” They have got to be kidding. Not being Trump, will be more than enough. Except for those who have spent the past several years sequestered on an island eating coconuts with the Skipper and Mary Ann.
Can a major American newspaper really be that blind to the threat Trump and his Russian-backed cabal pose to the survival of our democracy? Apparently so. Can they be blind to the possibility that this current situation with Trumpist Republicans blocking any forward motion in the Senate, causing a federal logjam and general discontent throughout the land, and the pressure that puts on the White House – wouldn’t that be the perfect time for Putin, to threaten to send his troops into the Ukraine?
Oh, but that’s a stretch, isn’t it? Or should we be asking ourselves, “Who still supports Democracy, and who stands against it?” Maybe Joe Biden not being Donald Trump, is enough after all.
According to David Corn in Mother Jones, Joe Manchin, is making noises about quitting the Democratic Party and declaring himself to be an Independent.
So Manchin is “thinking” about leaving the Dems and becoming an Independent, because his constituents are so badly misinformed and disinformed that they actually believe it’s in their best interest to have him support that which is in their worst interest by defeating Biden’s infrastructure plan which West Virginia badly needs – the State got a “D” on the Infrastructure Report Card – and if he tells them the truth he’ll be primaried out by the Trumpists, who care only about keeping their jobs? Isn’t that about it?
Somebody needs to convince me that this isn’t all a KGB plot to destroy the country. I’m being facetious, of course, but just a little, as the KGB no longer exists and the Russians would never come up with something this screwy, and the last thing I want is to be considered a conspiracy nut.
If that were the case, if I didn’t care about my reputation, I’d tell everybody that I’ve been watching the political stage for decades and almost without fail, gas prices at the pump shoot way up when the Dems seize control, and then drop way down again, once the Republicans get back in. They really can’t blame the Arabs anymore, since we now export more oil than we import.
It’s almost like we’re being punished for supporting the Democratic Party? Nah, that would be crazy. As crazy as Russian intel gaining control of a U.S. President and half the Congress, in an effort to destroy our democracy with a big assist from Russian and American oligarch billionaires, interested only in the accumulation of personal wealth. Absolutely crazy. Like a confluence of evil without any real conspiracy. Just greed and the need for power that goes with it.
Whatever the truth might be, you can be sure to get a diversity of opinion from the American media, with only six companies controlling as much as 90% of the information coming into your home. According to Wikipedia, its now down to just five. Business Insider reports that in 1983, there were fifty.
Be it the consolidation of companies resulting in an absence of free market competition started by the Reagan Revolution and its push for deregulation and tax cuts, or the ease with which unknown sources can now pump money into America’s political system following the Supreme Court’s unconscionable ruling in the “Citizens United” case, pretty much everything comes down to one thing. The necessity for campaign finance reform.
Until that happens, until unknown parties, be they American, Russian or from somewhere else can no longer pay off our politicians, none of it is going to work.
Back when I was still working for others, as a member of the “mainstream media,” it always amazed me that there was a pervasive view of what we were doing as a targeted attack on somebody or some idea, when all we were trying to do was present the facts while being fair to all sides involved by keeping our personal opinions out of it. Now, here I am, thirteen years away from the business, and it appears to me that the mainstream is launching an attack on Joe Biden. An attack that is unbalanced, without context and therefore, unfair.
Biden, went from being in the hotseat for pulling the country out of Afghanistan, to being the guy whose popularity plummeted as he attempted to manage “multiple crises,” for which, it was made to appear, he was somehow responsible. It was pack-journalism “multiple-crises” time. I don’t know who started it but before long it was pervasive. Let’s take them one by one.
With regard to Afghanistan, it’s too early following the pullout to condemn anybody for anything. The point, I think, is that a great many Americans are just happy to be out of that unholy mess. War without end, amen. You can have it. It could be that years from now, Biden will be seen as the one president who finally had the courage to get us out of there and that going into Iraq, was a mistake from the beginning. A Republican mistake.
Then there is Covid. Biden didn’t start that one, either, but it could be argued he is managing it as best anybody could under the circumstances, and certainly a thousand times better than Trump and the Republican anti-vaxers did.
Rounding out the tri-fecta of media crisis condemnation is Hurricane Ida. Again, this is not Biden’s fault and he and the Feds responded to it in a timely fashion. No, he wasn’t out throwing paper towels at the peasants like the idiot Donald was, and his response was again a thousand times better than either Trump or Bush.
Biden got us out of an endless war he did not start. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, did. Biden, is also doing a better job of handling the Covid situation and problems associated with Hurricane Ida, than any of his Republican predecessors, particularly Trump, whose stalling and denial in the beginning only made matters worse with Covid, and George W. Bush, who pretty much just ignored Katrina until it became so embarrassing that he was forced to leave his birthday party and go do something.
But these facts, this perspective, is seldom or never mentioned by the mainstream media, which seems intent upon condemning Joe Biden, making it look like they are trying to take him down, rather than pursuing an accurate contextual accounting with regard for historical perspective. You know, balanced journalism, without continuing to pretend the developing fascism of the right should be treated with the same credibility and validity as those who believe in and continue to support democracy.
It is past time to stop pretending this is about anything less than the central question of the expanding fascism of the right taking on the patriotism of those in the center and on the left who are being pilloried for their alleged liberalism. Or, simply put, Neo-Nazism on one side and the supporters of American democracy on the other.
This is not opinion. To any reasonable, rational, informed person, it is fact. And it is time for the mainstream to get down to business and begin reporting out the facts regardless of the backlash, because our country, our very liberty, is at stake. Business as usual, pretending both sides have equal validity, no longer works. Not when one side is Neo-Nazi, and cares nothing for the truth. It is time for the mainstream to get out of the hair and makeup infotainment business and back in the journalism first business, no matter how much it hurts.
It almost feels like the mainstream is afraid of telling it like it is with regard to how badly the Republican Party has abused and misused the power it has been granted by the American people over the past several decades as Republicans continue to shift from the party of Reagan, to a Neo-Fascist mob.
A gang of liars who fear the truth will expose them for who they are. Women-hating, gun-toting, science-deniers, who attempted a coup de’tat against the country and failed. The mainstream media needs to get on that instead of attacking Joe Biden, who so far, has done a pretty damn good job as President, without inciting a riot or encouraging anyone to stage a coup.
The farther away from Trump we get, the better I feel.
It started yesterday, when the man who would be dictator finally gave the GSA permission to begin the official transition to the Biden Administration, providing an office and financing from the federal government to get it done. I don’t know why Trump finally caved, maybe because of all the Republicans admitting that our Constitutional Republic is worth saving and pressuring him to do so. Maybe the ghost of Washington, paid him a midnight visit. All I know is that for the first time in nearly four years I was able to take a deep breath.
Today, things improved even more, as my wife and I watched Joe Biden introduce his first cabinet picks to the country. The contrast between what we’ve been putting up with for the past four years and the people Biden is bringing in is almost beyond belief, a comparison between a political clown car threatening chaos on a daily basis on one side and a group of qualified professionals who promise intelligence and stability on the other.
I must admit to being moved by what I saw. Watching adults re-enter the room after such a lengthy absence was a somewhat emotional experience. It got to my wife as well. I noticed her wiping away a tear or two. Later, it was gratifying to know that a hard-bitten journalist friend, a former network correspondent, had the same reaction.
I decided to fly our flag, something I do only on special days. Today felt special. It felt like we were really and truly getting our country back.
It felt somehow appropriate that all of this would be followed by Donald Trump pardoning a turkey. The universe finally handing him something he was qualified to do.
Happy Thanksgiving. Wear a mask. It’s been one helluva ride, but we’re almost there. We’ve almost gotten our country back.
While our politicos debate what should be done about kids slaughtering other kids in our schools with assault weapons, we now have a former Vice President and our current President threatening each other with assault. They’re talking about taking it out behind the barn and slugging it out. Wonderful.
Bad enough we have to juggle Donald’s illicit love affairs with his love for Putin. Now he’s talking about taking it out behind the barn.
Out in the real world, boy wonder, 33 year-old Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t seem to grasp the enormity of his website providing more than half of America with their news. Think about that. More than half of Americans 50 or older, presumably think that what they are reading on Facebook, is news. That it’s valid.
During an interview with “Wired,” regarding Facebook’s information sharing issues, Zuckerberg said, “The good news here is that the big actions that we needed to take to prevent this from happening today we took three or four years ago. But had we taken them five or six years ago, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
What? Where? Who? And this guy’s in charge of America’s most potent opinion forming platform?
Pew Research reports, “For the first time in the Center’s surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older report getting news on social media sites.” Click here, to read the report, “News Across Social Media Platforms in 2017.”
While the pundits prattle on about Stormy Daniels and Joe Biden dreams to taking Trump out behind the gym (although Trump prefers “the barn”), the nation’s business is left undone – except for anything the Republicans can quietly pull off behind the huge political smokescreen that’s covering the nation’s capitol.
It’s at once both frightening and fatiguing. Feels like we could crash at any minute with the Republican Party at the wheel, as an uncontrolled Internet provides all the bogus and biased news either side cares to consume, some of it coming from Russian bot farms while Donald praises Vladimir Putin on his “electoral” win.
Where have all the adults gone? Is John McCain the last sane Republican standing? How is it even possible that this current batch of Republicans is so totally devoid of conscience and shame that they risk throwing over the country for a pot of gold? Can this even be happening?
Don’t be fooled. There is a difference between the two parties. Vote for Democrats in November. Throw these Republican bums out.
And to those who have recently charged me with being something less than a journalist because I state opinions, please try and understand that this is what I do. As it states on the front page of my website, what you are getting here is “news and opinion.” The difference between me and those other guys, is that I tell you up front that I’m writing opinion pieces. If you don’t like what you see here, then please feel free to stay away.
Interesting exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning, a program I generally do not watch because so many of its participants are suffering from “Beltway Fever” but am now watching occasionally as the presidential campaign moves forward.
I was encouraged and surprised by an admission from one among the group of inside-the-beltway pundits, that they have been wrong, and that it is no longer an impossibility that Donald Trump could actually turn out to be the Republican nominee. Still improbable? Yes? Impossible? No.
Wow. Always nice to see DC pundits admit that there’s a country out there beyond the Beltway, and that they may be out of touch with it. But there’s another problem with their punditry. Hahahaha. Hohoho. Guffaws, all around.
Within minutes of admitting their mistake about Donald Trump, they then turned on a political penny and raised the question of whether Joe Biden’s trip to meet with Elizabeth Warren is an indicator that Biden is getting serious about getting in the race against Hillary Clinton. Oh really? So you were wrong about Trump and now you continue to ignore Bernie Sanders?
Hopefully, within a few weeks they’ll be scratching their heads about the growing support for Sanders among younger Americans, and admitting they were wrong about him as well. This is what happens to pundits when their thread of common wisdom based upon politics as usual can no longer be depended upon.
Why is there absolutely no concern expressed about Trump’s tactic of using the politics of hate and fear to whip up his base? How would he deport 11-million Latinos? Would he follow Hitler’s example and load them onto boxcars, breaking up families in the process? What about Latinos who are politically connected? What about rioting in the streets? How would he repeal the 14th Amendment? By non-existent presidential decree? It’s insane.
And you might at least try and understand the groundswell of support for Sanders among young people facing crushing student loan debt as they are forced to live with their parents because the corporatocracy which has purchased the federal government has shipped millions of jobs overseas gutting middle America. Nothing much to discuss here, other than the abject failure of American Capitalism to support a majority of Americans.
If you want a younger audience for your programs, then try and speak to the issues that concern them, instead of ignoring the truth and carrying on with your ridiculous business as usual nonsense.
Are there still more than 400 days to the election? Yes. Will Trump probably not be the Republican nominee but nothing’s impossible? Yes. Should pundits and newscasters be allowing Bernie Sanders the same credibility they are now affording Trump? Yes. Will they, until they are forced to because they are making themselves look stupid? No. And not because they don’t want to. The problem is that they are beltway insiders, and Trump and Sanders are political outsiders challenging DC’s business as usual insider machine and the usual gang of suspects on the network shows don’t know how to handle it.
