Month: August 2017

When I lived in Florida, one learned to watch the Gulf very carefully.  I was a regular reader of Jeff Masters at the weather underground.  I can still remember his writing on Katrina.

Part of lving in Florida is learning to learn about the forecasts and the models.  The two best are the Euro and the GFS.

So consider below  60 inches of rain. It is unimaginable.  Cataclysmic.

Let me translate this: the most reliable hurricane model is projecting 60 inches of rain for Texas – an unimaginable number. https:/t.co/VGFep0vv40

— dcg1114 (@dcg1114) August 25, 2017

I always recomment following Jeff Masters, who is here.

He cites another piece that is worth reading.  Pro-publica did a piece on the effect of a hurricane hitting Houston.  This isn’t likely to be a direct hit on Houston, but the size of the hurricane and the amount of rain may make some of what is described possible.
https:/www.wunderground.com/cat6/hurricane-harvey-rapidly-intensifies-catastrophic-flooding-likely-
texas

I don’t know if Napoleon Bonaparte actually said it or, if he did, what the proper translation might be, but it’s become a maxim that it’s unwise to interfere with your enemy when they’re in the process of making a mistake. In a lot of ways, I think this wisdom explains why we don’t hear more from Democratic Party leaders. I saw that Nancy Pelosi chirped up yesterday and made a comment:

Republicans need to stop the chaos and sort themselves out in a hurry. The full faith & credit of the U.S. is on the line. #GOPdefault

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) August 24, 2017

But that didn’t really amount to anything more than an observation that the Republicans are making mistakes.

In fairness, the GOP is such a non-stop mess that it doesn’t seem like there is ever a good time for the Democrats to step in and demand that people pay attention to them. Interjecting themselves in this Shit Show just invites people to hold them responsible for it in some small measure, either as obstructionists or as simply unhelpful. As long as they’re not suffering legislative defeats, their base doesn’t have a whole lot to complain about, and as long as they get out of the way, independents will focus on the Republican personalities who are flailing about and sticking knives in each other.

There’s a cost to be being so invisible, though. For one thing, they seem irrelevant even if they’re not. For another, even when they present ideas, they don’t follow up on them enough to have much impact. You can’t rebrand if no one is paying attention to you.

I keep seeing quotes about the fact that no Republicans have reached out to the Democrats over the August recess to discuss the agenda for September. That’s kind of amazing considering that the Republican leadership and the White House will need Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling. But maybe the Dems are playing a little too pat with their winning hands. If nothing else, they’re letting a delusional mindset persist among Republican leadership and the rank-and-file. Getting the GOP to understand their true position is probably going to be a process that requires them to walk slowly through the stages of denial.

The job of doing this is going to fall mainly on Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. When John Boehner walked through this minefield, it cost him his job. Still, the Democrats might at least articulate a set of demands to reset the Overton Window a bit and introduce a little rational thinking.

Schumer recently suggested that Trump should disband his Election Integrity Commission, but that could become a demand or condition of support for Democratic votes on must-pass bills. They can demand that the budget reconciliation process for tax reform be abandoned, too. I can imagine many possibilities where the Democrats can insist that they will withhold their support if they don’t get concessions.

It’s true that this risks making them look like more a part of the problem. But they ought to flex their muscles a little more and make themselves known.

It’s possible to take Napoleon’s maxim too far.

I’ve written in depth about the Republicans’ plan for enacting tax reform a few times in the recent past. Maybe I am a masochist, because I can’t think of too many subjects less likely to stir the hearts of my progressive readership, and yet I keep coming back to this topic.

I have a couple of reasons for this. For one, it gives me an excellent opportunity to talk about congressional procedure in a way that is relevant and timely. For another, the desire for a tax reform bill is a huge factor in understanding the behavior of Republicans who aren’t fans or true allies of the president. The prospect of a big corporate and/or personal income tax cut is an adhesive that has been keeping the GOP from retreating from the president’s lines and risking a full-on rout. Were the prospects of tax reform to die completely, it’s likely Trump’s isolation would become fatal. Therefore, it’s in my interests as a patriotic and self-respecting American to speed that understanding along. Because the Republicans aren’t going to succeed in getting a tax reform bill passed.

I’ve been careful to note that there are potential fallback positions available, at least in theory. It’s still possible that Trump could give up on a total rewrite of the tax code and settle for a less ambitious tax cut that would be acceptable to at least eight Democratic senators. Of course, it would have to be a truly bipartisan bill with buy-in from some of the more powerful and important Democrats on the tax-writing committees. That would require such a thorough rethink of strategy by the White House and by the congressional Republican leadership that it’s hard to imagine at the moment. But it could happen eventually, after all other avenues for getting a “win” are demonstrated to be dead ends. It wouldn’t be a very plausible “win,” but I guess it would be better than total failure.

Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, just moved the goalposts on tax reform by announcing that the White House doesn’t expect tax reform to be completed until the end of 2017. If you were paying attention, though, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that same thing in July after having earlier promised a signed bill before the August recess. The difference there is that Mnuchin also said in July that the White House would release a plan in early September. That has now changed.

The White House does not plan to release its own version of a tax reform plan and will instead leave that to the congressional leadership and the major tax-writing committees, a senior administration official said Thursday. The decision to hand off the specifics of tax reform comes after the administration promised earlier this summer to release a full tax plan when Congress returned from its August recess.

If you’ve been reading my pieces on this subject, you can’t be surprised about the delay. As I’ve said, a prerequisite for starting work on tax reform is passing a new budget with special reconciliation directives. There aren’t enough legislative days available in September for the Republicans to be diverted to a subject as time-consuming as tax reform. But it’s definitely news that the White House has given up on providing a framework bill for Congress to work with as a template.

My more conspiratorial mind suggests to me that this is a gambit by the White House to push off an admission of failure. By keeping the issue alive at least until the end of the year and giving Congress full ownership, they can prevent the adhesive from losing its stick.

But tax reform really is dead, and if we can somehow make this more broadly understood, it will hasten the point when Congress and many powerful Republican players lose their incentive for putting up with Trump’s antics and the peril he presents for our security.

As for Cohn, he’s basically asking to be fired and relieved of his duty by making it known that duty is the only reason he hasn’t resigned in the face of the president’s pro-Nazi position.

“I have come under enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position. … As a patriotic American, I am reluctant to leave my post … because I feel a duty to fulfill my commitment to work on behalf of the American people. But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks.”

…

“As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job,” he says. “I feel deep empathy for all who have been targeted by these hate groups. We must all unite together against them.”

But Cohn wasn’t really talking about neo-Nazis tempting him to quit; he was talking about the president doing that. And his comments amount to a pretty stunning rebuke of his boss.

We’ll see what his boss does about it, because we’re in pretty uncharted territory here. Does Trump tolerate his own aides publicly chastising him in this manner? It’s almost as if Cohn is daring Trump to fire him — and relieve him of his own conflicted feelings about serving this president.

If Cohn were to quit, he thinks he’d be giving the Nazis a win, and it certainly would be considered a win by Steve Bannon. But he’s set things up so that Trump has to either tolerate being called a Nazi appeaser by his chief economic adviser or prove Cohn’s point by doing the Nazis’ bidding and getting rid of him.

I have no idea how that will shake out, but it’s one more reason why you can rest assured that a comprehensive tax reform isn’t going anywhere.

Liberals, progressive and Democrats should think critically about the negative impacts of widespread media bias on American democracy.  There simply is no doubt that virtually all mainstream media regularly show their strong bias against president Trump and his administration.  These media have convinced themselves that they are working to save American democracy from an incompetent, corrupt and dangerous president.  And those on the left eat up the negative coverage, which means more money for the anti-Trump networks, newspapers and magazines.  Never mind that he was elected fairly and legally.

It seems that the leftist media would only be happy if Trump was driven out of office by any means.  Such a victory would confirm the undemocratic power of a free press that replaces a military coup with a media one..

Here is my point: More Americans should seriously consider the larger question of whether such a perversion of freedom of the press undermines our democracy.  Why?  Because instead of fairly presenting genuine news the opinion loaded negative coverage has the goal of bringing down Trump and overturning the election result.  The press establishment overwhelmingly filled with liberals and progressives wanted Hillary Clinton and refuse to accept defeat.  After all, despite a mighty effort, the media failed to elect Clinton.  It continues to seek retribution by bashing Trump and ignoring the many failings of the Clinton campaign.

The press probably feels some responsibility for Trump’s success during the primary season.  Coverage of Trump’s beating up of his Republican opponents was extreme.  Now the press is getting even.

To dispel any doubt about the widespread perception of media bias, consider a June 2017 Rasmussen survey of likely American voters.  “Fifty percent (50%) think most reporters are biased against the president, up two points from January.  Just four percent (4%) think most reporters are biased in Trump’s favor.  Given the president’s testy relationship with the media, however, it’s not surprising that 76% of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major political party believe most reporters are biased against the president, a view shared by only 24% of Democrats.”  Perhaps the most important finding is that “Nearly 90% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job the president is doing think most reporters are biased against Trump and rate media coverage of him as poor.”

These results support the view that all the negative coverage may strengthen the Trump base, which largely have stopped reading and listening to what they think is fake news.  News based on reporting of facts has been replaced by opinion and a near total emphasis on what Trump says rather than on what he and his administration have does.  In other words, rhetoric preempts accomplishments, and those positive accomplishments from a conservative perspective are also viewed negatively by the leftist press.  Information about governance is purposely kept out of the media limelight to allow Trump rhetoric to get endless vicious criticism.

Often, such surveys are dismissed.  So consider the 2017 study prepared by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard.  It revealed what reasonable people would consider a disturbing level of media bias against president Trump.  Here are the fractions of negative news coverage towards Trump: CNN and NBC, 93%; CBS, 91%; New York Times, 87%; Washington Pose, 83%.  FOX had the most equal coverage, with 52% negative.

Those who like the biased anti-Trump media coverage should reflect on how all that coverage robs them of getting solid information on myriad local, state and world events.  In other words, the biased media dominance inevitably leads to a dumbing down of the public about what is really happening that merits news coverage as well as details about what is happening in the sphere of public policy.  Journalism itself has been degraded to such a degree that for much of the population no one believes anything coming from the opinion-loaded media.  Apologists for the left and right unload opinions rather than enlightening information and analysis.  Rational people do not trust the press.

The core issue is whether the press is giving itself too much credit for presenting the truth.  In fact, what is happening is the presentation of opinion not objective facts that reveal the truth.  Truth requires objectivity and a concerted emphasis on undisputed facts.  Instead, opinion, even in so-called news stories, is routinely presented.

Biased media hiding behind freedom of the press should disgust all Americans.  We all are being robbed of huge amounts of news and information.  Amazingly, for example, network CBS news used its whole hour broadcast to presenting anti-Trump laced coverage of the recent Charlottsville event.  That is virtually a nightly occurrence at CNN where only anti-Trump diatribes are presented in multiple shows.  The front pages of the main newspapers are the same.  Real news from all over the country and the world is not given to the public the way it used to be.

The credibility of the media has taken a lethal blow.  What they deem good for their business now will ultimately backfire as Americans for years to come seek and find alternative news sources or eliminate news from their lives.  A truly informed public is needed for a quality democracy, and we are losing that.

Yes, a free press is vital for democracy.  But a deeply biased press is not.

As to these crazy times, Ruben Navarrette Jr. summed them eloquently: “President Trump and the media deserve each other.  Both are driven by ego and take criticism personally. Both will twist the facts to defend themselves and push their agenda.  …Americans are fed precooked narratives by the Fourth Estate.  We’re told what’s important and what isn’t, what to focus on and what to ignore, and — above all — what to think.  …I sure miss journalism.”  So many of us do.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn was a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association; he has authored five nonfiction books, including Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government.]

An interesting read on Hullabaloo today,

How Libertarians are a gateway drug

Add it to this read on Lawyers, Guns, and Money,

Sanders/Trump voters

Very interesting indeed. To me it’s beyond doubt that Trumps main appeal from the beginning was racial animus. Everything else was just excuses. And it’s obvious to me that this animus is all he has left. This read by Charles Pierce sums it up, they are/were deplorable, and the excuses are no longer acceptable.

They love him because he hates the same people they hate.

And hate is all he ever had.

.

I recently took a ten day vacation which I spent traveling through the areas involved in Red Cloud’s War, the Great Sioux War and the wars between the Blackfeet and the early Montana and Wyoming settlers. It gave me plenty to think about and I hope to incorporate some of it somehow into my political blogging, although I am still not sure how best to do this. Before I left, I informed my readers at Booman Tribune that I was “worn down to a nub” by the grind of covering the Trump presidency and wasn’t sure if I should continue my line of work.

While I was gone, I received an outpouring of support and encouragement, including dozens and dozens of donations and a lot of mail (electronic and traditional) explaining why my analysis is valued and I should continue. Looking over that mail correspondence, I was impressed that a recurring theme was that people like my wonkier pieces that explain congressional procedure or go into politics in some depth. This is what I would hope for, except that I have the benefit of looking at actual traffic patterns. And the traffic information tells almost the opposite story, which is that more people read (and, I guess, share) the articles that I write that are more polemical in nature. Overall, my best trafficked pieces this year have come from two categories. Anything I do on the Russia investigation does very well. Other than that, anything I do that adopts a tone of moral outrage and contempt for Republicans will get a reliably good response. Some of my least read articles are ones that took the most time and the most care because they were explaining very difficult concepts and the risk of getting something wrong was quite high.

I try not to be influenced by a chase after traffic, which has been noticed and served as the subject of much of the praise I received. But, honestly, it’s hard to ignore it when you write duds. It’s not too difficult to avoid going back to the well over and over to get easy winnings, but there’s a big disincentive to crafting time-consuming and challenging pieces when similar ones have failed in the past.

So, there’s a certain tension here. What people really value isn’t the same as what they share.

The Russia investigation is an interesting subject in this context. I wrote about it extensively in the winter and spring, but I did it in a pretty detailed and substantive way, so it kind of hit the sweet spot of being analytical and polemical at the same time. But, once Mueller took over the investigation, I basically lost interest in writing about it for a variety of reasons. Most obviously, my immediate goal had been achieved. Mueller either will or will not find prosecutable and/or impeachable offenses, but he won’t be persuaded by me. I also know that he knows infinitely more about the facts than I do, and I kind of reached the end of what I thought I can contribute. I could, of course, create threads for every minor update in the story, but I don’t like to create threads for threads’ sake. Yet, this decision of mine ignores that everything about the Russia investigation is reliable clickbait. People really want to read and talk about it, at least among my audiences.

Reporters and bloggers get a lot of criticism for what they don’t cover, and also for obsessing about certain things and blowing them out of proportion. They take abuse for focusing on the trivial, too. But we all respond to traffic numbers, or in many cases have to justify our jobs and our salaries by our ability to attract eyeballs and advertising revenue. When we spend a lot of time doing something difficult and it just makes us look like we’re bad at our job, then that makes it less attractive to do it again.

Human nature is human nature, and people are going to flock to the prurient and the polemical. They’ll consume the quick and easy more readily than the dense and difficult. But then, many of them will still send donations and letters of praise to the writers who focus more on nutrition than fast food.

I think, one lesson from this for myself is that I need to continue to strike a balance. But for the consumers of news and blogs, I think you have to find a way to let writers and editors and publishers know that brand loyalty can’t be measured just by traffic. Some publications need your financial support which is easy to forget when you’re used to getting what you want for free. But the writers you like most might not be getting the best traffic, and they could benefit from an occasional letter telling their bosses that you like what they do and come to the site to see what they have to say.

The bottom line is that people say that they like oatmeal much more than they actually do. But you know oatmeal is good for you and you want to make sure people keep making it. Substantive political journalism of the kind we aim to produce at the Washington Monthly isn’t lucrative and it shouldn’t be taken for granted.

After taking a break and digesting all the positive feedback I received, it’s more clear to me than ever that if I have a real purpose in doing what I do, it’s definitely not in creating more chaff than wheat. The challenge is to keep true to that without doing a lousy job of attracting an audience.

Goldman Sachs is now telling their investors that the chances of a government shutdown are fifty-fifty, which is their way of warning that a sharp downturn in the markets could be right over the horizon. But a possible stock market collapse due to a temporarily shuttered government is a fairly small risk compared to the likely result of a default on our sovereign debt if the debt ceiling isn’t raised before the end of September. Another distinction between the two is that there are fallback options if Congress can’t come to a deal on spending. They can pass a continuing resolution that keeps the government operating at current levels and give themselves more time. But they have to raise the borrowing limit or else we won’t be able to pay our bills.

In some sense, we can consider everything optional except the debt ceiling. The Republicans would like to rewrite our tax laws and our health care laws. They have ideas for how to change how the FAA operates and how flood insurance is sold and regulated. They’d like to use the CHIP reauthorization bill to advance some of their agenda. They can, and most likely will, fail at all of these things without it doing much, if any, damage to the economy or the country. Likewise, they’d like to base government spending on their own priorities, not the priorities laid out in President Obama’s last year in office. But if they have to continue the old spending regime to keep the government operating, there’s no real harm in that. They need to reauthorize defense spending, too, and they have some important priorities to advance in that process, too. But they can punt on that if that have to. It’s only the debt ceiling that represents a heart attack-level of seriousness. They can’t fail on that effort.

President Trump is already pre-spinning failure, however.

I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2017

…didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2017

These would not be Trump tweets without lies attached, and it’s absurd to blame the Democrats for “holding up” debt ceiling approval. The Republicans are to blame for needing Democratic votes, but they have majorities and the vote on the debt ceiling cannot be filibustered. Since they do need Democratic votes, they can’t make demands. Even the Trump administration doesn’t think they should make demands. Trump’s problem is that too many Republican officeholders won’t listen to him.

Yet, the meat of Trump’s complaint here is that the Republican leaders didn’t follow his advice and have now created a mess. If this is an attempt to herd the congressional Republicans into passing a “clean” debt ceiling bill, it might make some sense. But it looks more like preemptive blame-shifting than savvy leadership. It might look better if Trump were offering an updated plan, but he isn’t.  And the ironic thing is that Trump is giving a pass to the people who are responsible for creating the mess. He blames the Democrats for obstructing and the GOP leadership for ignoring his strategy, which gives comfort to the rank-and-file Republican lawmakers who are the real problem.

As for the potential for a government shutdown, Trump is now the main culprit because he’s threatening to veto any spending deal that doesn’t have money (that the Mexicans are supposed to provide) for his border wall. The Republicans simply cannot pass such a bill because spending bills can be filibustered. So, Trump asks for the impossible. Worse, even a continuing resolution that keeps spending constant and buys more time would not meet his test. If he wants a fight right now over his wall, he’ll need to veto any continuing resolution and force a shutdown.

It appears to me that all the moves Trump is making are causing both a shutdown and a default to be somewhere between more likely and inevitable.

Nothing he’s doing even touches on children’s health or the FAA or flood insurance or defense spending, so leadership and a strategy on those must-pass bills is completely lacking. And the Republicans have about twelve legislative days in September to accomplish all of these things and supposedly to make progress on tax reform as well.

It’s getting close to the endgame now. The piper has arrived and he’s demanding payment.

Everything that has proceeded this moment was essentially fun and games. Now the shit hits the fan.

I have been relatively absent from this site for several weeks. Why? Because it has largely become just another unthinking arm of the neo-centrist media, that’s why. Now even Booman is beginning to see what is happening. He is still…ncessarily I suppose…on the fence regarding this problem. But carefully read his recent post What is Less Credible Than Trump? Everything for evidence of change of heart regarding the media.

–snip–

Kornacki…wonders whether the media is so hated that their relentless moral condemnations of Trump only served to make him more popular. And, likewise, maybe the near unanimity with which our celebrity culture condemned Trump and the contemptuous way they talked about him and his supporters made him look good by comparison. Kornacki doesn’t mention it, but it’s also true that Congress it almost unimaginably unpopular, which makes anyone who picks a fight with them the likely winner.

I suspect all of this played a part and can help us understand our political culture a little better. People are simply underestimating how much the American people dislike our politicians, our media, and the Democrats’ message and messengers, which makes us wrongly conclude that these groups have more credibility and appeal than they do.

–snip–

Relatedly, since no one is really any more popular than Trump, no one has the kind of credibility needed to make perceptions about Trump change for the worse and stick. Paul Ryan isn’t going to win a pissing match with the president, but neither apparently are the reporters at the Washington Post or the National Review.

–snip—

No matter how much people worry about the president, that doesn’t make them want to rush into the warm embrace of Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.

If this theory is correct, Donald Trump remains unpopular but more popular than pretty much anyone or anything else.

–snip–

What prompted me to post this article is something that I read this morning on Counterpunch. Read it. Think on it. More than a year of almost universal, ham-handed anti-Trump rhetoric in the mass media has had…has had what result, really? Forget the polls, forget the politicians, forget the propaganda, forget everything but the truth of the matter.

HE IS STILL IN POWER!!!

This is an unprecedented win for him. In living memory, no one of national import…Nixon included…has ever been attacked on this level by a unified mass media. And what has been the result?

I repeat:

HE IS STILL IN POWER.

His little hands are is still inches away from the nuke button.

Would the generals stop him?

Could they?

Maybe.

You want a military government?

I thought not.

Read on. Think on. Please!!!

And as a little teaser, reread this sentence from the article that I reference above.:

No matter how much people worry about the president, that doesn’t make them want to rush into the warm embrace of Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.

Bet on it.

Read on:

AUGUST 24, 2017:Media Bias Just as Threatening as President Trump by Joel S. Hirschorn

Liberals, progressive and Democrats should think critically about the negative impacts of widespread media bias on American democracy.  There simply is no doubt that virtually all mainstream media regularly show their strong bias against president Trump and his administration.  These media have convinced themselves that they are working to save American democracy from an incompetent, corrupt and dangerous president.  And those on the left eat up the negative coverage, which means more money for the anti-Trump networks, newspapers and magazines.  Never mind that he was elected fairly and legally.

It seems that the leftist media would only be happy if Trump was driven out of office by any means.  Such a victory would confirm the undemocratic power of a free press that replaces a military coup with a media one.

Here is my point: More Americans should seriously consider the larger question of whether such a perversion of freedom of the press undermines our democracy.  Why?  Because instead of fairly presenting genuine news the opinion loaded negative coverage has the goal of bringing down Trump and overturning the election result.  The press establishment overwhelmingly filled with liberals and progressives wanted Hillary Clinton and refuse to accept defeat.  After all, despite a mighty effort, the media failed to elect Clinton.  It continues to seek retribution by bashing Trump and ignoring the many failings of the Clinton campaign.

–snip–

To dispel any doubt about the widespread perception of media bias, consider a June 2017 Rasmussen survey of likely American voters.  “Fifty percent (50%) think most reporters are biased against the president, up two points from January.  Just four percent (4%) think most reporters are biased in Trump’s favor.  Given the president’s testy relationship with the media, however, it’s not surprising that 76% of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major political party believe most reporters are biased against the president, a view shared by only 24% of Democrats.”  Perhaps the most important finding is that “Nearly 90% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job the president is doing think most reporters are biased against Trump and rate media coverage of him as poor.”

These results support the view that all the negative coverage may strengthen the Trump base, which largely have stopped reading and listening to what they think is fake news.  News based on reporting of facts has been replaced by opinion and a near total emphasis on what Trump says rather than on what he and his administration does.  In other words, rhetoric preempts accomplishments, and those positive accomplishments from a conservative perspective are also viewed negatively by the leftist press. 

Information about governance is purposely kept out of the media…–snip–

…consider the 2017 study prepared by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard.  It revealed what reasonable people would consider a disturbing level of media bias against president Trump.  Here are the fractions of negative news coverage towards Trump: CNN and NBC, 93%; CBS, 91%; New York Times, 87%; Washington Pose, 83%.  FOX had the most equal coverage, with 52% negative.

Those who like the biased anti-Trump media coverage should reflect on how all that coverage robs them of getting solid information on myriad local, state and world events.  In other words, the biased media dominance inevitably leads to a dumbing down of the public about what is really happening that merits news coverage as well as details about what is happening in the sphere of public policy.  Journalism itself has been degraded to such a degree that for much of the population no one believes anything coming from the opinion-loaded media.  Apologists for the left and right unload opinions rather than enlightening information and analysis.  Rational people do not trust the press.

–snip–

Biased media hiding behind freedom of the press should disgust all Americans.  We all are being robbed of huge amounts of news and information.  Amazingly, for example, network CBS news used its whole hour broadcast to presenting anti-Trump laced coverage of the recent Charlottsville event.  That is virtually a nightly occurrence at CNN where only anti-Trump diatribes are presented in multiple shows.  The front pages of the main newspapers are the same.  Real news from all over the country and the world is not given to the public the way it used to be.

The credibility of the media has taken a lethal blow.  What they deem good for their business now will ultimately backfire as Americans for years to come seek and find alternative news sources or eliminate news from their lives.  A truly informed public is needed for a quality democracy, and we are losing that.

–snip–

As to these crazy times, Ruben Navarrette Jr. summed them eloquently: “President Trump and the media deserve each other.  Both are driven by ego and take criticism personally. Both will twist the facts to defend themselves and push their agenda.  …Americans are fed precooked narratives by the Fourth Estate.  We’re told what’s important and what isn’t, what to focus on and what to ignore, and — above all — what to think.  …I sure miss journalism.” 

So many of us do.

Think on it.

This one trick pony media attack simply isn’t working.

Think on it.

Later…

AG

A bit over a decade ago, I saw the Wachowskis’ film V For Vendetta. As the closing credits rolled, this track caught my attention:

Another film that left an impression was Children of Men. The soundtrack was wonderful, but this gem in particular was worth seeking out (as an early effort at dubstep):

Both tracks have aged well. They don’t sound out of place if played currently, and the lyrical and sample content is quite timely still (a prospect I find a bit discouraging, as it means we’re still fighting the same battles over and over again).

On that somewhat less than optimistic note, enjoy some tunes.

The following is not new. It’s from an essay written by Rebecca Solnit and published back on May 30th: The Loneliness of Donald Trump: On the Corrosive Privilege of the Most Mocked Man in the World. It’s an erudite piece filled with some pretty keen psychological insights. It’s also a revenge piece, written, I suspect, in an effort at self-therapy.  If the Trump phenomenon is an unending insult that produces psychic and physical wounds, sometimes it’s healthy (or, at least it seems necessary) to punch back and be mean in return.  The value of the piece doesn’t lie in the satisfaction of that impulse. You should read it not for your sanity but because between all the counterpunching, there are opportunities to learn things of value.

The rich kids I met in college were flailing as though they wanted to find walls around them, leapt as though they wanted there to be gravity and to hit ground, even bottom, but parents and privilege kept throwing out safety nets and buffers, kept padding the walls and picking up the pieces, so that all their acts were meaningless, literally inconsequential. They floated like astronauts in outer space.

Equality keeps us honest. Our peers tell us who we are and how we are doing, providing that service in personal life that a free press does in a functioning society. Inequality creates liars and delusion. The powerless need to dissemble—that’s how slaves, servants, and women got the reputation of being liars—and the powerful grow stupid on the lies they require from their subordinates and on the lack of need to know about others who are nobody, who don’t count, who’ve been silenced or trained to please. This is why I always pair privilege with obliviousness; obliviousness is privilege’s form of deprivation.

You can be a successful and powerful person and fall into this kind of trap quite easily, and it doesn’t require that you’re a raging narcissist. If legitimate competition or simple paranoia causes you to lead with caprice and fear, your subordinates will cease being honest with you. If you’re a child of privilege who has always been shielded from the natural consequences of your excesses, mistakes, and failures, you may not realize that your floor is not sturdy. Your opinion of your capabilities and the defensibility of your position may be dangerously inflated without you needing to have any kind of clinical psychological disorder. Even a child who rose to the top strictly on hard work and merit, like Bill Clinton, can run aground when given too much power and too much deference.

Our current president, however, suffers from than more than the deprivation of sycophancy. He actually requires it.

There is a difference between succumbing to the trappings of power and failing to listen to those who might give you needed reality checks and being the kind of person who is so insecure that they can’t endure any criticism at all.

Our president gives us the worst of all worlds. His behavior cannot be corrected. It is not possible for him to get better advice. His pathologies feed on themselves. Thus:

The man in the white house sits, naked and obscene, a pustule of ego, in the harsh light, a man whose grasp exceeded his understanding, because his understanding was dulled by indulgence. He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too. One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.

Donald Trump wanted and got something he could not have. He can’t do this job and he knows it. He must now seek an exit, but he will want “safety nets and buffers.” He will seek padded walls and for someone to pick up the pieces. But there will be no one to do this for him, now.

In the recovery community, there’s a saying that the addict is like the eye of a hurricane. At the center, things seem calm and it is hard to understand why all this damage is being created all around them. The desire to drink or get high seems like such a small thing to satisfy, how could it cause all this carnage? If people didn’t complain about it so much, my addiction wouldn’t be such a big deal.

Well, addicts (for so long as they are in active addiction) are the most self-centered people in the universe. They are also the most cunning, manipulative and adept at creating padded walls for themselves. They will keep going until all avenues are blocked.

Narcissists are similar in every regard, and our president will have to have his way blocked soon by the people with the power to block him. In the meantime, we’re all living in his destructive vortex.