Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Archives for December 2018

TRUMP TRAIN LEAVES RAILS

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Difficult to ignore the fact that our President* is fiddling while the White House burns. Well, actually  he does not even know what a fiddle is, let alone how to play it. But the walls are closing in on El Pradre El Mar-a-Lago and he is incapable of doing anything beyond shouting at reporters as he runs or stumbles  to the marine helicopters to take him away. Away , anywhere captain, just take me away.

Special prosecutor Mueller and his staff may have enough to put Trump and his crime family away for centuries IF he had not been “elected” by the electoral college. So what we have is a President* with innate insecurities and a major case of unjustified narcissism combined with serious criminal bahviors struggling to find the magic move that will save him and his children from their just desserts.

It will play out but I believe that we are witnessing the beginning of the end. Trump’s former lawyer and staff have or are all pleading guilty to various felonies and Trump’s children have all been stained and are vulnerable. His son-in-law is existentially complicit int he murder of Washington Post columnist Jamai Khashoggi and Mueller is now looking at the money. This last is Trump’s so-called redline. Ha! It’s always been about the money and that is where the truth will lead the investigation.

Trump’s most likely play is to fire Mueller – either by the seriously weird and tainted Mathew Whitaker or his likely successor William Barr, who two years ago wrote a lengthy memo describing his view that Mueller was getting into inappropriate areas.

So, two more government officials will possibly sacrifice their personal honor and integrity (recognizing that Whitaker has very little honor or integrity) such as it is – on the altar of Trump’s insatiable, undeserving ego.

The Threat of Seasonal Mental Illness

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So here we are entering the holiday season while President* Trump is not-so-slowly going insane in front of our eyes. He wants his Wall or his Steel Slats, or Beaded Curtain, or maybe Shower Curtain, and if he doesn’t get it he has decided to punish the entire country. He’s like the senile old nuns who used to punish the whole class when someone wrote “Sister Mary Grace has Bad Habits” on the blackboard.

But while the seriousness of the offenses are similar, there is a significant difference between putting your head down on the desk for an hour and watching savings disappear because some fruitcake wants a useless Wall that he already said would be built by the Mexicans. But, an anxious nation waits while a shell of a man who is not enjoying especially good mental health tries to make himself feel better by screwing the entire country he was elected (sic) to serve.

CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP. SAD!

Bully Trump Meets Speaker Pelosi

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”It’s like a manhood thing for him,. As if manhood could be associated with him. This wall thing.” Nancy Pelosi

We have gotten used to Arrested Development Teen Trump calling people silly names, claiming sexual rights without permission, bullying Republican wimps, and bragging about things that never happened. But today is a new day with the soon to be Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, setting the table for a future of the House of Representatives pushing back – at long last. Two years of a Republican Congress putting up with the most degrading presidency in my history is moving to an and Trump is not going to get his wall- boo Hoo, Boo Hoo.

Trump’s “art of the deal” has always been one of bullying people, not paying people, lying to people, and just claiming bankruptcy every time things went south for him. Well, here we are and it is now time for him to go to Mexico and get there money for his ridiculous wall or shut up. Instead he is promising to shut down the U.S. government, an act of political craziness, economic risk and – alas – a certain level of black humor.

Today’s meeting of Trump, Schumer and Pelosi (VP Pence was there in body only) was political theater bound to garner some cheeers in the beer halls of Trump’s useful idiots, but things are closing in on him and he is losing what little he ever had. Watch the video linked from the front page of the Washington Post – it is priceless.

THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM

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Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. — Hunter S. Thompson


Just what the fk is “objective” journalism? For Judy Woodward on the PBS Newshour it is to have two more or less equally brainless Congresscritters tell us what we know — which is that we have been complicit in electing brainless egotists to represent us in Congress. For CNN it means paying former Senator and unreconstructed soulless quasi-catholic Rick Santorum to give us the “other side” on issues on which they absolutely KNOW that he is batshit crazy. Of course that also ensures that the real dicks of the world get represented on the news cycle.

Recently MSNBC declined the opportunity to televise a Sarah Huckster Sanders press conference and I felt a brief breeze of sanity. Why continue to send overpaid journalists to listen to a blatant liar consecrated in the Church of Trump-Pence? Bad management at best, stupid adherence to a myth at worst. When a national network wheels out Congressman Nunez to defend sort-of-President Trump does anyone think for a moment that he in any way represents a true attempt at “objectivity”? If so, let’s imagine the dual interview of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler on the practicality of euthanizing 6 million Jews in the 1940s. Oh yes. Let’s hear from both sides because they both have a point….

It is possible that the American press simply needs to grow some courage to present itself as a real arbiter of the truth. Sure, Fox News will continue to find it’s “truth” as will MSNBC. But the more we take charlatans and whores like Rich Santorum and most of the Congress off the air the sooner we might begin to dream of the fantasy of a press that is objective in the sense of really seeking the truth. And while a significant portion of America will buy into Fox News myths, the news outlets with both brains and integrity can possibly win in the long run. And, if not, then America is in the dire straits that I have thought. And that will be dire in disastrous way. Time is short.

Trump, Mueller, Tariffs: Is Push Coming to Shove?

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Lots of activity last week with Mueller going to court for cases on both Trump ‘s former lawyer Michael Cohen and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Trump has sort of responded with a tweet that says he and his lawyers are preparing a response to the Mueller report – which of course he has not seen.

Simultaneously, Trump, having declared himself in a tweet to be The Tariff Man is holding strong to his tariff war strategy that has created havoc in the stock markets, caused American farmers to lose millions on lost sales, increased costs for many small businesses relying on foreign steel, and increased the cost of much that Americans buy. There is no observable upside to his strategy and the main question seems to be whether Trump can find it in the deep recesses of his narcissism to back off his self-created crisis and admit – at least by implication – that his tariff strategy has been and remains a disaster.

The next few weeks could be critical to his presidency and to the future of the U.S. . Given his record to date I am reluctant to be optimistic.

Reinventing the blog: Politicsandpress

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The election of Trump to the presidency put the blog into a temporary coma – actually almost a two year coma which finally broke today. The blog will recommence in future postings with a greater emphasis on the interface of politics with the press, and more somber postings on the place of America in the world as globalization becomes less real and more of a fantasy.