Author: photog

Ho, Ho, Ho

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

I was trying to think what could be the most fortunate unexpected outcome from the Trump victory.  Well, we may have already seen some hints of what could be a larger reaction.  Comcast is laying off employees, reducing salaries and otherwise preparing MSNBC for its upcoming ejection from the corporation.  Rachel Maddow had her annual salary slashed by $5 million and there are several other senior staff who will either be let go or given a haircut.  And I have to imagine that Morning Schmoe’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago with Lycra Spandexy in tow had to be motivated by fear of the network deep-sixing them in the new environment of a dominant Trump presidency.  And think about it.  What are the chances that MSNBC (or whatever they’re going to call it) can survive on its own with its decimated viewership and falling advertising dollars?  Oh, think of the howling if it shuts its doors!

Rumblings at CNN’s parent company are also ominous and plenty of multimillion dollar salaries are most probably hanging in the balance as ratings have cratered and executives are at a loss as to how they can justify paying that much money to talking heads who are only talking to themselves.

And the same thing is going on at the network news front offices.  George Stephanopoulos just cost ABC (Disney) $16 million for calling Donald Trump a rapist.  I can’t imagine that’s endeared him to the bean counters who have to pay his huge salary.  And several other entities are currently wrestling with libel lawsuits from the incoming president.

So, with all this as the backdrop I had a wonderful holiday dream.  Imagine if during the New Year, or even in late December, all of these media conglomerates simultaneously dumped all of these partisan hacks on the unemployment line.  What a wonderful present it would be to the whole right-wing world.  Couldn’t you just see Anderson Cooper, Joe Scarborough, George Stephanopoulos, Chris Hayes and Jake Tapper meeting in the waiting room of NPR headquarters as they all interview for some rinky-dink position on public television?  They’d be glaring at each other and checking their makeup in the mirror of their man-purses.

But why stop there?  How about all the newspapers and on-line publications?  I’m sure the Bulwark must be running a little low on billionaire funding right about now and I know the LA Times is looking to balance out their staff with more conservatives so since they’re not making any money over there it would make perfect sense to lighten the ship a bit.  And the same goes for the Washington Post, Vox, Slate, Politico and a host of others.  Thinking of all those Never-Trumpers in knife fights with the other flavors of commies in order to get a spot at the fryolator in Mickey Dee’s just does my heart good.

Now you may think I’m out of line here.  Okay, maybe all of this won’t happen by New Year’s.  But all of the indications are that left-wing journalism is already going through an enormous contraction.  YouTube, TikTok and X are dominating the market for news and entertainment and after their horrendous performance handicapping the 2024 presidential election even the devotees of the lefty news sources feel like they’ve been had.  There is a real sense that they were lied to about the credibility of Kamala Harris’s chances of winning.  Even late into election night they made pathetic attempts at describing the race as “close.”  And as soon as the last glimmers of hope had been extinguished, the intrepid reporters immediately switched over to their flipside; “She ran a flawless campaign and lost because of racism and misogyny.”  Okay, everyone but the most hopeless losers could see that women and black men voting for Trump couldn’t be construed as misogyny and racism.  Saying it over and over just makes you sound nuts.

So, I’m pretty hopeful that over the next few months we’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of old friends from tv and print news.  And just like when we lost Fredo and Don Lemon it will bring back memories of exactly why we detest them so much.  Well, anyway that’s the present I want Santa to leave me under the tree.  Ho, ho, ho!

Let’s Pray for Their Success

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

What to write about tonight?  Well, how about thinking about, “How did we get here?”

I know all about the deep dives where everything traces back to the Enlightenment and the loss of faith.  Or there’s the Abolitionists and the Civil War enshrining social justice in our government.  But I don’t want to go back that far.  I’ll settle for Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the source of the runaway bureaucracy that Washington DC has become.  Sure, in between, there were others but I think Wilson set the stage with the WW I expansion and FDR metastasized the problem with the New Deal and the WW II expansions.

Now, I’m not denying that by creating the Leviathan FDR assured the defeat of Hitler and Japan.  He did.  And by funding the Manhattan Project he created the American Empire and eventually destroyed the Soviet Union.  But at what cost?  As one of his successors (Eisenhower) warned, the melding of the US war machine with corporate interests fueled by almost limitless investment from the Federal Reserve has swallowed up our democracy.  And with it, has enveloped us in a police state that dictates to us in a way that is in line with what the Stasi did in East Germany and what China does with its people today.

The final nail in the coffin was 9/11/2001.  The reaction to that attack assured that the Patriot Act and the FISA Courts could treat American citizens like Stalin’s victims that we read about in the Gulag Archipelago.  You can be arrested, convicted, sentenced and buried in the gulag for annoying the bureaucrats or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure and the right to an open and fair trial are all stripped away with the wave of a magic wand when the FISA Court and the Patriot Act declare that national security is threatened.  And all kinds of other atrocities are possible when the intelligence agencies can convince banks, airlines and social media companies that you are a dangerous person because you don’t agree with the bureaucracy’s priorities.

And all of this is because a bunch of rag tag Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners.  Well, as I’ve confessed innumerable times, I was one of the fools who agreed to this nonsense back in 2001.  I allowed myself to be swayed by anger to allow George W Bush and his geniuses to put in place the very laws that would plague Americans ever since.  All of us who agreed with these measures put on our chains voluntarily.  More the fool me.

Well now it’s time to start undoing all of this.  And I mean all of it.  First to go must be the FISA Courts and the Patriot Act.  Ending the ability of the CIA and FBI to target American citizens and sweep away their constitutional rights is the primary goal.  That must go.

But after that, the military industrial complex must be examined and the practices that allow it to bribe elected officials and collude with contractors to bleed the American taxpayers must be changed.  Sure, we need up to date weapons to assure the security of this country.  But we’re not even getting that anymore.  We have bloated weapons programs that produce expensive but unimpressive results.  Our state-of-the-art Abrams tanks are being decimated on the battlefields of Ukraine by $500 drones.  Our next-up super-fighter jet is a vaporware project that is so poorly defined that despite a price tag rumored to be close to a trillion dollars we don’t know why we should build it, other than it will enrich the contractors beyond their wildest dreams.

Getting this done will be a battle royale.  Both Democrats and Republicans will defend the military industrial complex with every fiber of their beings.  People like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have amassed huge fortunes and incredible influence by serving the interests of the defense contractors in everything they do in the Congress.  It’s not too much to say that Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees in the Department of Defense will be risking their lives when they defy the vested interests there.  There is probably no limit to what they might do to prevent reform of the present situation.

Let’s pray for their success.  Nothing less than the freedom and prosperity of our children hangs in the balance over the next few years.

A Modest Moratorium

photog Current Events, OCF, Reclaiming the Family, Trump , , ,

So tonight, Camera Girl was unleashed on the baking supplies she’s been assembling for the last week or so.  Tomorrow our daughters and our granddaughter will be showing up at noon or so for the tradition grandma-cookie baking ritual.  Grandma cookies are Camera Girl’s mom’s recipe for what some people in the family call white cookies.  These are lethally addictive.  With a large mug of coffee (or milk for the kids) it’s almost impossible not to binge on every cookie that’s left in harm’s way.  It’s hard to believe that the ingredients are only things like flour, eggs, butter, sugar and vanilla extract.  There must be some cocaine or opium in them somewhere.

Well, anyway, tonight she baked alone.  She baked all the other cookies for the holiday.  She made oatmeal, chocolate chip, M&M and sugar cookies.  And then just to make sure I won’t survive the year she made a big pan of baklava.  Oh, man.  Even Zorba the Greek after dancing for a week straight wouldn’t be able to finish off the portion she made.  Between the butter, honey and walnuts I can see myself in the local emergency room receiving last rites as the intern on duty calls for the crash cart and the body bag.

Tomorrow I’ll be on a road trip to northern New England; to Vermont.  I’m riding shotgun just as company.  It should be fun.  Meanwhile the womenfolk will be bonding in the kitchen and indoctrinating Princess Sack of Potatoes in the mysteries of family tradition of the female variety.  All very sacred proceedings.  So, the holidays are progressing satisfactorily.

But it’s not as if all is normal.  After her latest shopping trip for the holiday supplies, Camera Girl was horrified at the increase in the prices of such staples as eggs, butter, flour and coffee.  I felt very sad for her so I tried to cheer her up by saying that after the holidays the prices would come back down based on supply and demand.  I think she could tell I was making it up but she forced a smile and we moved on.

Trump will have his hands full trying to fix the economy and deporting ten million illegals.  Just doing those things would be hard enough but he’ll have to do it in the face of not only a hostile Deep State but also the Congress.  The House has a razor thin Republican majority and the Senate is packed with RINOs who want to please their corporate paymasters and don’t give a damn about making America great.  Yes, he’ll have his hands full.

But despite all this resistance, I am surprisingly optimistic.  I was very pleasantly surprised by his victory.  And because of it, I no longer assume that the Left will have everything its own way.  Trump has seen a lot of the worst that the powers that be can do against him.  If he’s half as smart as I hope he is, he’s going to eliminate a very large number of his enemies from the ranks of many of the the agencies that he controls, basically the whole executive branch of government.  Unless he’s crazy he knows he has to eliminate large chunks of the management of the FBI and the Justice Department.  Once that’s done, I expect he’ll have an easier time dictating terms to the rest of the departments.  And in fact, after he has loyalists in charge of the FBI I wouldn’t be surprised if the various RINO senators suddenly become much more cooperative.  All of these people must have files that are kept for just such an eventuality.

Now maybe my optimism is foolish.  But the holiday is upon us and I think optimism is better for my digestion during this season of overeating.  January is the time for resolutions and facing facts.  So, unless a planet killing asteroid is discovered approaching Earth or I see the incoming ICBMs over Dunwich between now and Christmas I’m declaring a moratorium on gloom and doom.

I’m going to eat way too many cookies and much too much roast beast and spoil my grandkids and watch way too many old movies.  I think that’s a plan.