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Somebody Sez

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To begin with, I am not a great lover of the news media. In fact, I believe that if somebody wants to have a good night’s sleep, they should not watch or listen to the news after dinner. And certainly not the eleven o’clock news just before bedtime. It’s just not healthy, because those news outlets are peddling fear or outrage as their primary product.

One example is what I call the “Somebody Sez” news story. Just to give you an example, here are a number of headlines I just gleaned from the Cable News Network (CNN) website tonight:

  • Biden could face obstacle getting on Ohio’s ballot, secretary of state’s office says
  • Retired judge says statute cited in Trump’s motion raises concerns about NY judge
  • Republican lawmaker says Russian propaganda has ‘infected a good chunk’ of GOP base
  • Retired US general predicts Israel’s withdrawal won’t prevent an invasion
  • Republican strategist says Trump has made a critical mistake in the campaign

CNN apparently relies on an army of “experts” who “say” certain things or “predict” certain outcomes. It is possible that none of these things come true, but they can certainly succeed in riling up the consumers of the news.

Let’s take a more biased news medium, the Salon.Com website. Its readership obviously does not wish Trump well. (Neither do I, for that matter.) But its page today bristles with chatty “experts”:

  • “Punk”: Don Winslow on Donald Trump
  • “This is a big deal”: Experts say Judge Cannon’s order signals “bad news” for fate of Trump case
  • “Things just got very real”: Legal experts say Jack Smith appeal threat “puts Cannon on notice”
  • “Trump is running scared”: Legal experts slam “harebrained” scheme to get NY judge to recuse
  • Profs: Trump ruling unlocks key evidence
  • Experts “very worried” at Cannon’s order

People, it’s not news until it actually happens.

It is possible for editors to avoid this type of rampant supposition. For example, I could find no examples of blabbing experts in the NBC or CBS news sites. Apparently, they are more interested in reporting the news rather than creating it.

What a Coincidence!

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I’m Sure Orange Jesus Knew This

I was watching the National Geographic Channel last night when suddenly I sat bolt upright. On her show entitled “Trafficked,” Mariana van Zeller investigates a man who flew to Mozambique to claim an inheritance, only to find himself in jail for attempting to travel with heroin in his luggage—heroin disguised as candy that was given to him by a man from South Africa to give to someone in Nigeria.

Nigeria? Oh oh! Can anything legitimate have anything to do with Nigeria? Apparently, there is a term in Nigerian Pidgin describing the types who are so imprudent as to turn up in Africa for their “inheritance”: that term is maga, which means “easily fooled idiot.” On the show, Van Zeller interviews a masked Nigerian baddy (no doubt a Prince) who points out that the man imprisoned in Mozambique is nothing more than a maga for actually showing up to claim his non-existent inheritance.

Ha ha, it is to laugh!

So when all those flyover country chuckleheads show up at Trump rallies wearing their MAGA hats, is it merely a case of self-identification? “I’m an easily fooled idiot. Lie to me!”

Which Path?

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Aaron Rogers: Quarterback, Trumper, Anti-Vaxxer, and All-Around Dickhead

I had a choice of two ways to go for today’s blog. Instead I took a third way. The first way was to continue writing about poet and printmaker William Blake, one of my all-time favorites. Then I was thinking about Aaron Rogers implying of ESPN that late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel was a pederast in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle of sexual deviants.

The third way turned out to analyze why I am triggered by the bad behavior of Trump and his followers. To the very core of my being, I despise what Trump and the Trumpites are doing to this country. But my political opinions are of no great interest to anyone. So many Americans, so many raw wounds that won’t heal, that keep on being re-infected!

It strikes me that my blogs about things that interest me make for better reading than blogs about my political opinions, especially when they involve the culture wars of the 21st century.

So tomorrow I return to writing about William Blake, a great artist and poet. Tomorrow, I’ll post some of his poetry. If you’d rather read about Aaron Rogers, trust me: It’s just too depressing for words. Even when I write them.

The Parts of 2023 I’d Gladly Jettison

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In the Biz Bag With Him and His Followers!

Looking back over the past year, there are a lot of persons, places, and phenomena I would gladly not have to confront in 2024—indeed, ever again.

First and foremost is America’s mumbling incompetent dictator-in-waiting. Currently, he is attempting to turn the death of a thousand cuts in court into victories. They aren’t and never will be. That goes for all his minions, those drooling red-hatted loons seated behind him at his rallies.

Mega-Billionaires, especially those in the tech sector, who want to enrich themselves by making everyone else miserable with their social media or artificial intelligence.

Time to shitcan crypto-currency once and for all. A form of anonymous, unregulated currency, it is of use only to evil dark web goons.

Quasi-celebrity influencers who foment flash mobs and twonky fashions. Like Paris Hilton, who in today’s issue of the Los Angeles Times is quoted as saying: “I also like butter and strawberry jelly on toast, then sometimes toasted bagels with strawberry cream cheese, which I’m like obsessed with.” If you come across something of that ilk in this blog, you are justified in disemboweling me.

And that’s only the beginning, but space is limited and I want to get to bed before midnight. I wish for you and yours a tolerable New Year. (Let’s not kid ourselves.)

America’s Love Affair With Billionaires

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Elon Musk

Why do Americans shower their billionaires with a level of adoration normally reserved for deities and saints? I think back to the Medicis and the Borgias during the Italian Renaissance. As J. H. Plumb wrote, “Commercial capitalism, struggling the the framework of feudalism, learned, through Italy, not only how to express itself in art and learning, but also how to make an art of life itself.”

Not so today, however! Donald Trump has given us golden toilet bowls, ornate golf courses, and tried to take away our democracy. Elon Musk managed to convince thousands of Americans that he was a genius—until he spent $44 billion buying Twitter and running it into the ground. After his latest anti-Semitic tirade, I think even most Tesla owners are rethinking their allegiances.

I cannot think of a billionaire today who has done anything but engage in self-aggrandizement. Instead of a Renaissance, we are now in a period that can only be described as Anti-Renaissance.

What ever happened to patronage of the arts? Oh, it still exists at the millionaire level; but not among the Trumps, Musks, and Bezoses of this world. The think the last billionaire to show any moves in this direction was Bill Gates of Microsoft fame.

Hiding from the Gazpacho Police

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The Infamous Mug Shot of a Notorious Felon

Donald J. Trump is not the only problem we face. Its not even the biggest problem we face. The voters who support the ex-president are the major problem. Over the last several decades, the American people have grown progressively more stupid, aided and abetted by the lies of social media content providers. It’s gotten to the point that voters take a position (without thinking it through) and prepare to defend it against all comers, even if it’s as stupid as Jewish space lasers and the “gazpacho police.”

At present, the Republican Party controls the House of Representatives. I have no idea what is going to happen in 2024 with Congress. Will an increasing number of voters wake up after their drunken decades-long reactionary orgy and vote for representatives whose minds are not in the Asteroid Belt? Who knows?

I just know what I’m going to do. As always, I will vote for candidates whom I think will continue the American tradition of democracy. I have nothing in common with people who like to wave the flag at the same time they are ripping the guts out of what it stands for.

Not a Nice Guy

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Representative Jim Jordan (R, Ohio)

Ever since Donald Trump came down that escalator at the Trump Tower to announce his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, American politics has changed from bad to nightmarish. The ongoing travails of the House of Representative beginning with the ouster of Kevin McCarthy and the failed attempts by Jim Jordan to become Speaker of the House resemble nothing so much as the early days of Nazi Germany.

It seems the Republican Party is crawling with Brown Shirts Are we are heading toward some ghastly Night of the Long Knives in which the extreme MAGA Republicans with their totalitarian tendencies will be violently repudiated?

Jordan thought it a nifty idea to authorize threatening phone calls to the wives (?!) of Republican Congressmen who didn’t vote his way. It’s a long way from the America of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson or the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. At the same time we are sanctioning Venezuela, we are becoming more like them.

Double ugh!

Jane, You Ignorant Slut!

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Saturday Night Live Had It Right Way Back Then

Early in the 1970s, CBS’ Sixty Minutes news show had a segment in which a liberal debated a conservative. I could just imagine that CBS News was all thrilled they they were being “fair and balanced.” Then, Saturday Night Live parodied the segment with Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, with Dan always opening with, “Jane, you ignorant slut ….”

That same genuflection to “fair and balanced” reporting results in segments where the political philosophy (?!) of QAnon is discussed with the same seriousness as the Federal budget. Attempts are made to mirror all sides of an issue, even when the one of the sides has (1) no merit, (2) no appreciable following, (3) dangerous repercussions to the nation. If you can’t find an articulate spokesman, there’s always of the more incendiary members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz. Hell, you can always find some bozo in a Missouri coffee shop whose word the media will treat as if they were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai.

The misguided attempt to treat all sides of an issue as having equal merit has resulted in the public not knowing where to turn. That was certainly the case in the days of the Tea Party a few years ago, and still an issue when some bonehead in or out of office says something flagrantly stupid that is picked up by the press and widely disseminated.

So many news stories are picked up from Twitter (or X or whatever) and splashed around because they sound likely to result in fear or outrage. Trump’s tweets were certainly in this category. And we all know that even if he had no idea of how to run the country, our former president certainly knew how to manipulate the media.

Nowadays I am not likely to give any credence to political farts from the right or left. I don’t care what some Texas congressman or Trumpian fellow traveler has to say. My life is too valuable to allow myself to be crassly manipulated by people I do not in any way respect.

You Are the Dirt Under My Fingernails

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Contrary to what some haters are saying, I am not only still the President of the United States, but also the best President this country has ever had. In fact, I am a better President than most of you deserve. You think you can convict me of a bunch of crimes the haters made up just to get even with me. It won’t work. I have been a perfect President, and everything I have done has been perfect.

Just look at my so-called mug shot. If you think you can have me convicted and put away, you are sadly mistaken. I will come for you: You are just the dirt under my fingernails!

So many weaklings who have worked with me have turned against me. Even my children, my wives, my lawyers, my political appointees, and women I supposedly raped. (Why would I have to rape any of them? They were attracted to me and gave their consent.) I am guilty of having been too perfect for the job.

Mess with me, and I will come for you. See who wins in the end, you pathetic losers! I have a 100% win record, and it will continue to be perfect.

There are millions of Americans who want to Make America Great Again (MAGA all the way!), and they will rise up rather than see me treated like dirt. See if it doesn’t happen!

I will bide my time and end up winning again. That’s what I’m all about. WINNING 100%

Is It Curtains for Trump?

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No, It’s Not Biden or the Justice Department This Time

It was during the 2016 presidential campaign at a stop in Sioux Center, Iowa, when Candidate Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? … It’s, like, incredible.” It was then that the Candidate began to believe in his own invincibility. All those rallies with adoring MAGA-hatted spectators must have further convinced him.

What Trump did not take into account were the people who did not like him. That number has been growing—slowly, perhaps—but steadily. So steadily that a grand jury delivered an indictment for 37 counts relating to the mishandling of archival materials that were stored at the ex-Prez’s compound at Mar-a-Lago.

Take note that it was not President Biden who indicted him, nor even the Department of Justice. It was a number of average citizens serving on a grand jury that were appalled by the Trumpster’s manipulative dealings with the National Archives, and by the fact that papers relating to the military strengths and weaknesses of the United States were being shown around to Mar-a-Lago visitors and members.

Was Trump showing any of these papers to his good friendsNorth Korean President Kim Jong Un? Recdcep Erdogan of Turkey? Xi Jinping of China? Vladimir Putin? Three of the above dictators may well be at war with us at some future date. Isn’t that espionage?

This could be bad news for the formerly thought-to-be-invincible former president. Am I surprised? No.