So Many Rabbit Holes... #1

Apparently, I blinked and when I opened my eyes I saw that Elizabeth Warren had apologized for her insensitivity to Native Americans.  Let me just summarize this situation the way I see it:

When Elizabeth was a child, her mother told her she had some Native American blood.  I imagine it was a point of pride.  So when it came to indicating her heritage, Warren later included Native American.

Scott Brown, who is an idiot, had nothing else to run on against Warren in 2012, so his oppo researchers learned that she had included this detail when applying for a job at Harvard.  It was such a moronic attack, and given that Warren was running on intelligent and important issues, that she easily won.

Of course, idiot-in-chief Donald Trump, who can't resist the opportunity to mock a woman, began the highly insulting (to Native Americans) taunt of "Pocahontas" when referring to her.  Popular with his really ignorant base, who thought it was really clever and hilarious, the taunt became a standard line.

Circus showman Trump promised $1 million to charity if a DNA test "shows you're an Indian."  Sick of the taunts and knowing how hard it is for Trump to part with a penny, she took him up on it.  Which SHE WOULD NOT HAVE DONE IF SHE DID NOT BELIEVE SHE WAS PART NATIVE AMERICAN.

Now, the test found "strong evidence" that Warren has a Native American ancestor, which should have been solid enough proof that her claim was valid.  But not only did Trump turn it around to his ugly needs, but the Native American community joined in.

Elizabeth Warren has been a hero for working class Americans and minorities throughout her life and her political career.  Instead of recognizing this for the manipulative attack that it is, the argument became over whether she had the right to claim Indian heritage without the proper "blood quantum" amount.  Which term was brought into use by the federal government in the first place, and not by Native American tribes.  Into the weeds, and through to the rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, the media has taken this on, as though Hillary's emails had never led to the election of Donald Trump and mea culpas all around.  No more talking about raising the working poor by taxing the wealthy, or about regulating Wall Street.  Now she can count on at least one question by some imbicile about her heritage.

Shortly after the test results hit, I tuned in to a talk show on NPR.  The guests were Native American and they were all having a go at Warren, postulating about the meaning of "blood quantum" and whining about how Warren had insulted their heritage.  Then a caller -- a Native American woman -- said that Elizabeth Warren had been a strong and uncompromising voice for women and minorities, and this silly misstep wasn't going to make her less of a Warren supporter.  Before I could let out a cheer, the moderator asked the geniuses in the studio another question about tribes and blood quantum identity TOTALLY IGNORING THE CALLER'S COMMENTS.

Are we so gullible that we will continue to turn on our own, so desperate to be politically correct that we don't recognize the virus in the messaging?  Once again, republicans have been able to toss in the grenade and watch as Democrats jump in after it.

When I first heard the comment that Warren should not run for president because she had too much baggage, I thought my head would explode.  Baggage???  Warren is the most straightforward and honest person in politics.  Period.  The only baggage she has been carrying has been that thrust on her by the media, who once again is passing it on for the Fox News crowd.

We have got to stop this.  Tweet MSNBC and CNN whenever they start to wander toward those rabbit holes.  Remind them that their job is to talk about real issues, not rumors and questionable or false attacks.  Write letters to the editor and make phone calls.

We lost an amazing if imperfect candidate in 2016.  She would have been as good a president as Barack Obama, an amazing if imperfect president.  We have lost members of Congress and solid candidates because republicans know how to avoid the issues with really ugly oppo research and we continue to chase after it.

Meanwhile, there is a pussy grabber in the White House, one who openly mocks Native American dignity as he attacks a U.S. Senator, locks up children and lies about immigrants.  And waiting backstage is our former attorney general, also a former member of the KKK, who is contemplating a run to retake his Alabama Senate seat in 2020.

Let us not get distracted.  Not again.

Forgetting 2016

No, there wasn't a military parade this 4th of July.  But perhaps we Dems won't take back Congress in November, and that military parade will happen in 2019.

Meanwhile, Trump still has his rallies.  Taxpayer funded lunatic rants.  And each one is more rage fueled than the last.  Why not?  Each time he surrounds himself with his stupid and angry followers, he is guaranteed the same national attention he got before he won the presidency.

There have been mad, tyrannical leaders on the world stage in the past.  Who could forget Qaddafi's ninety minute bizarro rant at the United Nations in 2009?

The UN is a favorite stage for the lunatic leader.  Ahmadinahad's 2011 assaults on reality and the world were so offensive that there was a walkout by US and European delegations.

And now we have Trump.  Yes, after the election, the media reflected shamefully that maybe they should not have given him so much coverage.  But the ratings!  Who could take their eyes off this train-wreck in motion?  And yet, the end result was an electorate that had not heard a single Clinton speech while being fed the full blown ugliness of Trump's assaults day after day after day.

What we learned -- what I thought we had learned -- from the election coverage, was that Trump feeds on that coverage.  He may be stupid, but he knows how to play to the crowd.  And he knows that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

He is also batshit crazy.

Put that all together and we have the Trump rally.  He personally hates people.  But he adores his adoring crowds.  And surrounded by people cheering him on, there is nothing he can say that is too unhinged.  And surrounded by TV cameras, he cannot be happier.  Unless, of course, that he knew that those TV networks were going to be playing his insane attacks, name calling and lies, on a regular loop, all damn day.

They even call it "Trump's greatest hits."

Have we learned nothing???

I have been weaning myself from MSNBC and CNN.  Honestly, there isn't that much news being covered.  You can hear the headlines of Trump's daily obscenities in the first five minutes of any hour.  Yes, it is important to keep us informed about what is happening in Puerto Rico, a country neglected by Trump, still not recovered from last year's hurricanes as they anticipate the next one.  And we need to keep hearing about the horrendous abuses to immigrants and families seeking asylum, a humanitarian disaster caused by Trump and his gleeful attorney general.  Jobs being lost, prices going up, wages stagnating as Trump acts out his decades long fantasies about economic power.

We need to keep hearing about how our allies are now needing to defend themselves against our mad leader.  And what happens now that North Korea is doing what it has always done, lies as it pursues its plans to threaten and eventually dominate the Korean peninsula?  And then there is Putin, Trump's favorite dictator.  With no adults in the room to provide an honest reporting, we can be assured that Putin will be leading Trump around by his dick, I mean, promises of wealth and power (or at least a Trump hotel in Moscow).

We have some amazing investigative journalists, who have been uncovering scandal after larceny after lie after outrage.  It has been exhausting for those who worry about our democracy to keep up with the tragedies and the cons.  The last thing we need is for our news organizations to run Donald Trump's rallies on a never-ending loop.  We don't need to see them.

After one of the all-too-many mass shootings, some of the media decided that it was wrong to continue to use the shooter's name.  That kind of notoriety could only exacerbate the problem by encouraging other disturbed potential attackers.

It is not much different with putting a camera on Trump.

I was sickened yesterday when I began hearing the rants from his latest rally.  And then heard them again.  And again.  This morning I posted to @MSNBC to stop playing those vile and violent videos.  I won't watch them.  When he starts to screech and rage, call names and tell lies, I will turn off the television.

We should have insisted on more responsible reporting in 2016, but we didn't know any better.  Today we do.  I hope you will help me by telling your news outlets to stop promoting the goals of this disturbed and powerful dictator.  Tell them to stay on message, keep us informed, and treat the rallies and tweets as the fake news that they are.

The Truthless Presidency

The first time I heard Donald Trump speak as a candidate, he said that Obamacare was so bad that even if you got hit by a truck you wouldn't be covered.  At that time I had been covered by the ACA for over a year and found that it wasn't just really "affordable," but it was the best coverage I had ever had.  The alarms went off in my head and haven't stopped since.

The man is a liar.  What we do with that is what truly concerns me.  We have never had a pathological liar as president, or even as far as I can recall, as a candidate.  I believe that, without both his celebrity and wealth, his apparent lies would have discredited and disqualified him from his first trip down that escalator.  When, by the way, he paid $50 per head for extras in the crowd.

But those who support Trump don't just support him, they crave him.  They feel about Trump pretty much the way I felt about Paul McCartney when I was 14 years old.  They would believe anything he said and follow him off any cliff, assuming he was fully aware of what he was doing and knew better than anyone else that it was the right thing to do.

Rationalization knows no better friend than the Trump supporter.  The proof of that has been over the past couple of weeks, as his past promises and claims have fallen by the wayside.

The most oft-repeated of course is that he would lock Hillary up.  In a cross between a WWF chant and one delivered at a Third Reich rally, the crowd couldn't wait for the moment they could start to yell, "Lock her up."  It had been a proud moment during the convention, and several speakers, some of whom are now in the Trump cabinet, ran with the cry.  In the true promotional spirit of the event, t-shirts had already been printed with the chilling slogan, along with Hillary behind bars and other similarly ugly and extremely un-American and undemocratic sentiments.

I would like to say that this was a new low in politics, but the Obama presidency was what truly set the animals free of their restraints.  Hitler mustaches on Obama's face along with obscene references to his ancestry have just become the norm for the supremacist lover of free speech over the past eight years.

And Donald Trump may not be "like smart," but he has an uncanny sense of what brings the crowds to the carnival -- and what shocks and intimidates his opponents.  So he caught a whiff of that mob mentality and harnessed the power.  It worked, too.  While the crowd went wild, the media spent a year and a half silenced while Trump ran rampant over the truth.  And while they lacked the spirit to defend the truth, they still, like deer in the headlights, kept the cameras on while the abominations grew.

If Donald Trump is a stupid man, and he is, his followers are mindless and devoted believers.  When he tells a lie, they believe it.  When it is proven to be utterly false, they still believe it.  When Trump and his minions finally admit the lie, the believers know that he had a good reason for telling it.

And he is happy to confirm it.  Trump, these days, has been inoculating his followers by simply explaining what he was thinking and that now he's changed his mind.  "Lock her up:"  "that plays great before the election -- now we don't care, right?"  And while the first reaction may be that of disorientation, it doesn't take long for his fans to get it:  he just said it to get elected, what a great idea.

Except that that may also be a lie.  When Trump starts to actually take heat for his ideas exploding in his face, I have no doubt "Lock her up" will resurface.  That herd of sycophants that comprises our republican Congress have already shown us that there is no expiration date on hating Hillary; it's been working for them for decades, with the enthusiastic help of the media.  Except that this time Trump will turn on Congress the instant it becomes expedient; a few days ago he called Paul Ryan "genius" and added, "now if he ever goes against me I'm not going to say that."

And so, having a presidential candidate prove that the brazen lie is the path to power, and do it more brazenly than the congress critters, has sealed the fate of this republic.  And our society.  The president can now ignore laws with the blessing of a congress that will accept, just as do his followers, whatever he tells us today.  And taking it from the Trump playbook, who got it from Putin, it doesn't matter if the rules change, wrong is now right and after all, might is right.

And, have I said, he is a stupid man?  So what he says today not only won't make sense today, but may change tomorrow, to something that equally makes no sense.  And the media will chase it like a dog chasing a bus.  Or, every now and then, by chance, he may say something that does make sense.  And then the media will marvel at the possibility that he may be beginning to figure things out.  Except that won't be the case at all.  Unlike W., who did begin to figure some things out, and was guided by some kind of moral imperative, Trump is guided by no such thing.  Trump is guided by ego.  And money.  Period.

The "liberal media", while doing mea culpas about the mistakes they made by giving him exposure during the election season, yesterday spent hours slicing and dicing and analyzing his 74 second "interview" in his own hall of power.  When I turned the TV on this morning, they were still talking about it.  Yes, they were snarky, but as Donald Trump knows, a camera is a camera, and they always work in his favor.  And he will continue to use the media, because he knows how to make news, and the media has hours to fill.

Once again, I end by urging caution.  And cynicism.  We can all get caught up in this era of truthlessness.  It took only days for the Trump minions, after the media uncovered "fake news" and its influence on the election, to start to call anything questioning Trump -- you got it -- "fake news."  It didn't start this year, or even with the internet.  George Orwell called it "newspeak" and we have heard it with every invented right-wing word or phrase that has been created to curb our critical thinking skills with emotional rhetoric.

With Donald trump as the figurehead, and white supremacists making their way to the White House, with a greedy and insecure republican Congress and fearful Democrats rewriting the election to urge us all to listen to the neglected white men, we are about to take a step backward that will cause us to topple off that cliff.

These days, when the biggest liars claim to be calling out liars, we need to search for our moral compass.  Black people are being killed by cops, and white people are yelling for more guns.  Despite Dylann Roof and PizzaGate, radical right-wing Christians are calling for Muslims to be registered and tracked.  Gun deaths in the US far outnumber those in other major countries, yet legislators dog-whistle abortion and curtail women's reproductive rights in order to detract from gun deaths as well as death caused by poverty.

There is truth out there, and we can track it down.  But we need to ask the right questions.  If something doesn't make sense, it often only takes a minute to track down the source on this amazing internet.  A headline sounds incredible?  Shocking?  Too good/bad to be true?  Track it to the publisher.  Some jackass gets an award -- or gets promoted for a cabinet position?  Find out what organization is giving the award, or how the promoter connects with the nominee.

And then share the information.  We all need to be fighting for truth these days.  We'll be getting our lies straight from the leader of this currently free country soon, and the media is as vulnerable as the next person, so it is up to us to question, to learn, to inform, and, yes, to keep our media honest.

1984 comes late, but we have been warned about the normalization of Donald Trump, and we don't have to let it happen here.

Trying to Be CNN

If you'd like to know, the only important thing that has gone on this week is the tragic derailment of the Amtrak train between New York and Pennsylvania.

I know because I get my news from MSNBC, and the best and brightest on their evening lineup have been filling their entire broadcast with that event.  Either it is the only news worth covering, or MSNBC has changed their format from covering several important and newsworthy events per one hour news show to wall-to-wall coverage of one single event.

I don't intend to seem callous.  The derailment is important news, and not just for the tragic deaths.  The day after the accident Congress, not to be "derailed" by reality, cut funding for Amtrak.  You can't make this stuff up.  And, to be fair, MSNBC covered the budget cut.  But you can only get away with calling their coverage of one event over the course of one hour, much less several hours running, "breaking news" for so long.  Jon Stewart has had many hours of fun (not consecutively however) mocking CNN for doing exactly that.

I'm not sure when this nonsense began, but after the shooting in Ferguson, Chris Hayes was out there night after night interviewing people on the street.  He did the same thing after the shooting in North Charleston and ditto in Baltimore.  He tends to get excited over these admittedly horrendous events, and it seemed at times that he was actually enflaming the crowd.  A newsworthy event, but it stopped being news after the first fifteen minutes of each broadcast.

Anyway, I had assumed this was because of the importance of the gun issue, and the point was in fact that police violence toward African Americans was a constant presence in America, one we had been ignoring throughout our history.

But two nights after the Amtrak crash, there was Chris Hayes, interviewing, well, anyone that was there.

I've gotten to the point where I can tell in minutes whether MSNBC has got their teeth into a news story that is going to go 24/7, and of course, after a short time, it is no longer news.  And then I wonder, what about all the other important things that are going on in the country?  Do people really want to hear from every single person on the street, and how many times can you re-air somebody-or-other's official statement, and how many different ways can you analyze it?  Larry Wilmore interviewed gang members in a Baltimore diner and was able to be more relevant and newsworthy in eight minutes than MSNBC had been throughout their whole coverage.

During those entire weeks of wasted airtime, I hunger for other news.  For that matter, I also get impatient when Rachel Maddow takes twenty minutes repeating the same comment over and over to make one important point.  If she only said the same thing once or twice, her program would be fifteen minutes long.  But boy would it be powerful.  Or, she could cover that many more stories.

I hate that MSNBC has dulled their news reporting, made it as trite as that of CNN.  Their repetitions and redundancies, their hundreds of on-the-street interviews, have watered down the important headlines and analyses that I had come to expect from them.  While we heard over and over and over again that the engineer on the Amtrak train was in the hospital and had amnesia for the crash, Congress was voting on important budget matters, attempting once again to prohibit the right of women to seek abortions, fighting over Obama's fast-track trade deal, and who only knows what else, because it wasn't being covered on MSNBC.

This is what I would like.  I would like, in the first segment on each show, an update on any major event.  And then I would like to hear what else is going on in the country and in the world.  If you asked, you might find that I am not the only one that after the first few minutes of the same reprocessed news about the important event turns off the TV or walks out of the room.

So please, MSNBC, take a look at what you're doing.  Would YOU watch your show night after night to see the same piece of information presented over and over again?  Really, you are far, far better than that.

Thank you, and good night.

And Now For Something Completely Different

I am a great fan of Chris Hayes' All In on MSNBC.  While not as much so as when he was Up in the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday morning, his show tends to present more intelligent topics and discussions than others on MSNBC.

So imagine my surprise when he tackled the subject of childhood immunization and the measles outbreak in Texas, and not only lost any sense of reason, but presented a one-sided and snarky attack on those anti-immunization fiends (which include myself).

But wait!  I have found that since I became pregnant way back in 1987 and began to research the pros and cons of vaccination, this topic creates the most irrational, hysterical and enraged arguments by those who promote immunization for, well, everything.

I listened through the segment twice, and then wrote a letter to Mr. Hayes.  But it seems that MSNBC does not invite listeners to send emails.

So I am sending out my open letter to Chris Hayes here:

Dear Chris,

I was catching up on All In today, so I apologize for the fact that these comments come several days after the show.

As I listened to your article on immunization, my mouth dropped open. I have heard you be snarky before, I admit I have no qualms about snark when it is called for. But your tone during that piece can only be described as that of a new parent who is having a tantrum because the rest of parentdom is not complying with your need to keep your child safe. I was so astonished by the piece, that I watched it a second time.

You make the same hysterical comments about measles that have been repeated for decades. Presenting no statistics, you define the course of measles as “rash, all over, and pneumonia and in some cases even death.” First of all, the outcome of a case of measles depends very much on the family's health and nutrition. Secondly, measles in infants and children tend to be very mild, and happily result in a lifetime immunity. Whereas, those people going over to Europe and coming back infecting people no doubt were immunized as children, in which case the immunity doesn't last forever. This also endangers pregnant women who were immunized as children, rather than allowed to have measles run its course.

Let me also tell you that measles is not at all in the same category as whooping cough. Pertussis is an extremely dangerous illness at any age. Doctors should remind people to get re-immunized every ten years, and children should be immunized.

Chicken pox, for which immunizationon is also thrust upon unsuspecting parents, is on the other hand no more dangerous than a cold. My son caught chicken pox at about six months old, felt no pain or discomfort and now has a lifetime immunity.

You claimed that failing to have a child vaccinated “imperils the lives of those kids but also imperils the lives of newborns who are not fully vaccinated.” And then later, we “denialists” are “endangering infants and newborns all over the place.” If you really want to have an infant who is safe from disease, let me suggets that the mother give birth at home, as hospitals are far more dangerous than lack of immunization.  And of course, don't go to the pediatrician's office for all those immunizations; that's where the real germs lie.  And please explain to me, because I have yet to hear any rational argument, just how a person who chooses not to immunize their children endangers children who are immunized.

What I heard in this piece was the same kind of hysteria that led people to douse themselves and their children with so much anti-bacterial soap and lotion that they not only killed off needed bacteria but lowered the body's resistance to infection.

I was disappointed to hear you dismiss Jenny McCarthy's claims as just more “anti-vaccination nonsense.” How dare you dismiss a parent who has seen a healthy child become disabled after an immunization. In fact, there were so many lawsuits in New York State in the 1980's-90's, that the law requiring immunizations before entering school was changed to allow parents to opt out with their physician's written approval. We – neither you nor I – know whether the immunization caused the autism, but parents have every right to be involved in making the determination as to whether they will take that risk with their child.

The spurious arguments presented by your guests, who claim lots of scientific evidence but fail to discuss any, might have been countered by an expert on the other side. I can assure you, there are respected scientists on the other side.

Finally, I had to laugh when you said, “20-30 years ago, I don't think there was any pop-cultural misgivings about vaccinating your kid.” This argument has been going on for decades. When my daughter was born, in 1987, there was tremendous debate about the possible harmful effects of vaccination, so much so that, after reading both sides of the literature, I chose not to have her vaccinated until she was school-aged. Her brother, three-and-a-half years younger, was allowed to opt out, and, on our pediatrician's recommendation, had only a pertussis vaccine. Both were wonderfully healthy, and remain so. And if your child gets all her vaccinations, she won't have to worry about getting infected by the likes of those who are not immunized.

For some reason, the debate about immunization causes usually objective and rational people to go all Rush Limbaugh. You probably should read some of the history and science – both sides – of this argument.

Sincerely,

Agnes

If any of my readers know the magic formula to reaching Chris Hayes, please feel free to forward him my comments.

All In This Together

MSNBC is currently making a big deal out of the fact that Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has spared no praise for President Obama in his handling of Hurricane Sandy.  People like Christie for that reason; you can count on him to not be afraid to say what is obvious, regardless of possible political outcome.

I would hope that in a similar circumstance, Romney would act in much the same way.  But this is not what you might call "the takeaway" in all this.

The difference between the two is not what they might do in the midst of a disaster.  The critical factor is the groundwork that gets laid -- or destroyed -- prior to a disaster.

Romney and his cut taxes/cut the deficit bunch, Paul Ryan among the ringleaders, would leave us with slashed resources and a decentralized, disorganized disaster relief plan, made worse by privatization (for profit).  First you give over authority to the states.  Then you cut the Federal budget.  Then you cut the Federal staff.  Much as we have been forced to do in the Bush years with Medicaid and education.  The states, already struggling, would never get the same amount of aid if they had to individually create their own disaster relief program.

This morning, I heard one of the owners of the Coast Guard House in Rhode Island give kudos to the Weather Channel for calling this storm so accurately.

Wrong.  It was NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that does the research and provides the incredible and incredibly accurate storm data to the country. Weather Channel and other news centers feed off this free information, paid for by our tax dollars.

These are examples of things entrepreneurs did not build.  Without good centralized emergency management (FEMA) and good national weather forecasting (NOAA), Hurricane Sandy would have left many states fending off floods and blizzards much as the Bush administration left New Orleans during and in the aftermath of Katrina.

So, yes, Governor Christie, President Obama gave you the support you needed.  One could hope that Romney would do the same.  But only if he had the federal funding and well staffed federal programs that we are currently having to fight tooth-and-nail to preserve in the egocentric and short-sighted Congress.

There are some things we just can't do alone.

Privatizing the U.S.

When I hear our president speak about helping business do its work, I get chills.  When he refers to "small business" incentives, I wonder if he is talking about a mom-and-pop, or about a subsidiary of Blackwater – I mean Xe.

If you haven't read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine:  The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, run to your library, that is, if you still have a library, and check it out.  It's approaching Halloween season, and there is no better time for this scary read.

We have been lured and duped by the wealthy and powerful into hating the government for its incompetence and waste.  If we stopped to think at all about this, we would see just how absurd are both the premise and the argument.

The great waste and inefficiency of our federal government is due, not to federal workers and federal programs, but to the private industries, their lawyers and lobbyists, with which our government's representatives shares its bed.  And its dollars.

The secret to the success of the raping of this country is in scaring people too busy, undereducated, gullible and apathetic to understand that they are being duped.

They say things like, "It is regulation that is killing business", "Raising minimum wage will strangle the free market", "People need to be free of unions so that they can earn a living."

Absurdities.

But people who will never make a living wage without union or government intervention scream about those unionized workers who do, rage at the waste caused by the regulators (that try to keep the mercury out of our food and pharmaceuticals from killing us), and worry themselves about the minimum wage worker who is preventing them from getting that raise.

Nonsense.

But it works.  On MSNBC, during the recent republican debate, I saw an ad, featuring a young, handsome, quite sane looking and sounding individual talking calmly about illegal aliens, and ending in the punchline that we need to do something to stop LEGAL immigrants NOW.

And during that republican debate on MSNBC for gods' sake, where were the ads with the progressive messages?

I know: our side doesn't have the money and the incentive to fight as hard and as long.

So read The Shock Doctrine.  At least be educated as to the extent of this fight.  It didn't start with Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, and people like Barack Obama, in the name of compromise, are furthering the cause of disaster capitalism every time they speak of government aiding business rather than helping people.  And we need to understand it in order to stop it.