Monthly Archives: March 2017

MacTrump/Act IV

Politics

 

Act IV: A New Hope

Scene I: The Oval Chamber [Lady MacTrump enters with the castle budget.]

MacTrump

Thou anticipated my dread exploits.  The flighty purpose never is o’ertook unless the deed go with it.  From this moment, the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my tiny hands.

Lady MacTrump (Steve Bannon)

Yes, my lord.  And while thy most loyal supporters be those most punished by these cruel cuts, fear not.  For they are the uneducated thou so profusely claim to love.

MacTrump

Tis’ true, my lady.  But what of the mainstream heraldry?  Will not the sound of lying and swearing echo throughout the kingdom?

Lady MacTrump

Then the liars and swearers are fools.  Last night I had a dream in which the FOX did escape the hounds.  Is this not the new reality?  Be at peace, my lord, for the fifth day is upon us and the solace of Mar-a-Elsinore beckons.  By the dawn of a new week all will be forgotten. For sooth, the hounds have a shortness of attention.

Scene II: Bedchamber at Mar-a-Elsinore  [Enter three apparitions]

MacTrump

First the ghost of Banquo.  And now three spirits I know not who they be.  Is there not someone I could call to rid me of these specters?

Apparition I

MacTrump!  MacTrump!  MacTrump!  Beware MacDuff (John McCain)!  Beware the Thane of Phoenix.

Apparition II

Thrice did thou insult him.  Dishonored his service.  Questioned his support of the alliance among free nations.  Contested his doubts about the wisdom of the African campaign.

Apparition III

Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care.  MacTrump shall never vanquished be until the keepers of secret knowledge, the Lords of Langley and Meade, come to the Hill.  Seek to know no more.

Scene III: An Alehouse in Washingtonshire

MacDuff

Each new morn, new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face.

Ross (MacDuff’s cousin Lindsay Graham)

Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself.  It cannot be call’d our mother, but our grave, where nothing, but who knows nothing, is once seen to smile.

MacDuff

With each passing day, the King appears less stable.  He projects his own failings upon those he thinks be threats to his right to the throne.  He even claims the former king hath eavesdropped on MacTrump Tower.  If true it is a grievous crime, but lack of evidence suggests otherwise.  Hence, it smells of deception, a distraction to veil something more sinister.

Ross

We must be deliberate, cousin.  Rushin’ to a false indictment puts us all in danger.  MacTrump would welcome an excuse to further purge the land of any resistance. We must ‘put-in’ the time and effort to make sure the case against the King is strong.

MacDuff

Agreed.  Be off, my friend and kin.  There is much to do.

 

Fool Me Every Time

Media

 

FACT: Thomas Jefferson, not only owned slaves, he fathered children by at least one that we know of.

FACT: Ty Cobb was a racist and Babe Ruth once told his young fans, “It’s simple kids. If you drink and smoke and eat and screw as much as me.  Well, kiddos, someday you’ll be just as good at sports.”

FACT: Lance Armstrong doped his way to seven Tour de France titles.  His success was due more to over-sized needles than an over-sized heart as we were led to believe.

FACT: O.J. probably got away with murder and Bill Cosby is accused of sexually abusing 58 women.

FACT:  Meryl Streep is over-rated.  (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)

Hero worship isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Most idols have flaws.  After all, they’re human too.  But in the above cases, we had the luxury of celebrating their achievements for years, decades and in Jefferson’s case, centuries before learning of their criminal or moral failings.

Not so the case with Rachel Maddow.  Damn! Damn! Damn!  A mere two days ago I applauded the MSNBC reporter as a shining example of someone who understood and appreciated the gravity of journalistic excellence at a time when most of the fourth estate has abdicated its sacred responsibility of shedding light where there are only shadows.  Sadly, last night Ms. Maddow demonstrated such praise was premature.

A blind man could see she was being played by the Trump propaganda machine.  For days, Maddow had been connecting the dots between Trump, his family and his appointees and Russian officials and oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin.  And it appeared His Orangeness had finally overplayed his hand.  Accusing a former president of wiretapping his phones with no evidence had finally made a dent in some of Trump’s loyal apologists.  And that was just the start of a bad week.  First waffling and later embracing a health care plan which is about everything but health care added to the cacophony of criticisms from both ends of the political spectrum.

Just look at the headlines up until this morning.

  • House Intel Committee Dems Slam Trump Over Wiretap Claim (NY Post)
  • McCain to Trump: Provide Wiretap Evidence or Retract Claim (ABC News)
  • White House Back-Pedals on Claim Obama Wiretapped Trump’s Phones (Wall Street Journal)
  • Medical Providers Oppose Trump-Backed Health Plan (Reuters)
  • New Numbers:  Republican Health Care Plan Is Unaffordable (Time Magazine)
  • Trumpcare Could Send Seniors’ Insurance Rates Skyrocketing (The Motley Fool)
  • Health Care Bill Could Cost Oklahoma Millions (AP News)

If I were sitting in the oval office, I’d want to change the narrative.  And that’s exactly what happened.  And Rachel, you might as well have been driving the getaway car.  Yes, you tried to cover your involvement by questioning whether the White House was the source of the leaks.  Really?  You didn’t have to speculate.  ALL you had to do was practice good journalism.

You reported that the truncated tax return was passed on to you by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist.  It would have been one thing if Johnston had told you, “A source handed it to me and I cannot reveal who that was.” Instead, Johnston admits the document just appeared out of nowhere.  If you were suspicious the return was leaked by the White House, you have to ask, “For what purpose?”

Rachel, I assume you’ve read All the President’s Men or seen the movie.  Weren’t you paying attention?  Consider the following exchange between Bob Woodward and Deep Throat.

Bob Woodward: The letter that destroyed the Muskie candidates… did that come from inside the White House?

Deep Throat: You’re missing the overall.

Bob Woodward: What overall?

Deep Throat: The people behind all of this were frightened of Muskie and that’s what got him destroyed. They wanted to run against McGovern. Look who they’re running against.

You, too, are missing the overall.  What if the White House was frightened you were getting too close to the truth?  Former Navy cryptologist and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance has said as much in several interviews.  Referring to Trump’s wiretap claims, Nance said, “This is the kind of behavior we see when a target is getting buggy. When he thinks he’s going to get caught.”

Not only did you let them change the narrative, you very likely carried their water.  Again, listen to Deep Throat when he chastises Bob Woodward for a single instance of sloppy reporting during the Watergate investigation.

You’ve done worse than let Trump (Haldeman in the original) slip away: you’ve got people feeling sorry for him. I didn’t think that was possible. In a conspiracy like this, you build from the outer edges and go step by step. If you shoot too high and miss, everybody feels more secure. You’ve put the investigation back months.

Woodward and Bernstein made up for their mistake.  Maybe Maddow can too.  But today, I’ve started looking for a new hero to carry the day.

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?  A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

 

A Failure to Communicate

Media

 

In the 1967 Paul Newman vehicle Cool Hand Luke, the unnamed “Captain” (Strother Martin), who oversees the prison in which Luke resides, delivers a line which the American Film Institute (AFI) ranks #11 among its list of top 100 quotations in American cinema.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

This sentence is most often employed by people who are talking past each other or, as in the case of Cool Hand Luke, one person fails to heed another’s advice or warning.  However, it is equally applicable in situations when one person or entity has access to information and opts not to share it.  Which brings us to today’s post and the failure by the corporate media of all political and ideological stripes to recognize an opportunity to disseminate unfiltered facts and objective analysis to their viewing audiences.

Let’s begin by examining the difference in viewership between cable news networks and the Sunday news shows.  It is no secret that Fox News Channel leads in the number of average daily viewers as demonstrated below for the week of February 27 thru March 5. (Source: TVNewser, March 7, 2017)

CABLE NEW NETWORK/AVERAGE DAILY AUDIENCE (in 000s)
Fox News Channel/3,474
MSNBC/1,569
CNN/1,372
HLN/285

In contrast, viewership for the Sunday network news shows on March 5 presents an entirely different picture. (Source: MediaLife Magazine, March 12, 2017)

SUNDAY NEWS SHOW/TOTAL AUDIENCE (in 000s)
NBC Meet the Press/4,128
CBS Face the Nation/3,483
ABC This Week/3,336
FOX News Sunday/1,663

Assuming viewership this past Sunday was in line with the previous week’s numbers, let’s see how the four networks chose to inform their audiences (~12.5 million Americans) about the top news story of the week, release of the Republican health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.  This is best done by reviewing the list of guests invited by each program to address the pros and cons of the American Health Care Act.

SUNDAY NEWS SHOW/GUESTS
ABC/White House Budget Director Michael Mulvaney & Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR)
CBS/ House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) & Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
FOX/Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) & White House economic adviser Gary Cohn
NBC//HHS Secretary Tom Price & Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio)

If you were looking for someone to objectively summarize the bill and how the various provisions might affect different segments of the population, sorry, you were out of luck.  Where was a representative from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has done perhaps the most exhaustive post mortem on the GOP proposal (http://kff.org/health-reform/)?  Or practicing physicians and hospital administrators who might share the potential impacts on their patients?

Maybe the news divisions of the four major networks honestly believe talking heads, not objective analysis, equals ratings.  But emerging evidence suggests otherwise.  One example is the Rachel Maddow Show.  This morning the Associated Press (AP) reported Maddow’s audience has doubled to 2.3 million viewers compared to February, 2016.  AP attributes this increase in popularity to the following.

Maddow has decided to cover the Trump administration like a silent movie, so the show could pay more attention to what is being done rather than what is being said.

Hopefully, other news programs will take note. To paraphrase #95 on the AFI top quotations, “Carpe Diem.  Seize the day, boys.  Make your NEWS (as opposed to LIVES in the origin) extraordinary.”  (Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society)

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

 

MacTrump/Act III

Culture, Politics

 

Act III: The Transition

Scene I: Castle Penthouse

MacTrump (Donald J. Trump)

With victory in hand, tis’ time to pivot.  Or have I in blood stepped so far that, should I wade no more, returning were so tedious as go o’er.

Lady MacBeth (Steve Bannon)

A shift in manner may come later, as there remains still those who doubt your legitimate ascension to the throne–enemies of the people and deep-state saboteurs.  We’ve scorched the snake, not killed it.  Things bad begun make themselves strong by ill.

Banquo (Kellyanne Conway)

Be calm, my lord. Thou hast it now: king, commander-in-chief, head of party, all.  As the weird women predicted.

MacTrump

Then why hath sleep and peace become a stranger to me.  Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends, I have a strange infirmity which is nothing to those that know me.

Lady MacTrump

Worry not, the blood of your battles are on the hands of others and shall remain so.  To bed, my lord.  I shall assure everything be alt-right. (Aside:  Doth I repeat myself?  Hath the bard run short of clever paraphrases to express such sentiments?)

Scene II: Royal Bedchamber (the following night)

ghost-of-banquoGhost of Banquo

My lord’s body sleeps but not his soul.  Otherwise, he would not have exiled me to the land of Fox.  Does he not honor my loyalty?  Does he fear I will reveal all I have witnessed and been part of?  Did he conclude I am the traitor of whom the witches spoke?

MacTrump

What spirit invades my dreams?  Ah, Banquo.  Returned so soon?

Ghost of Banquo

Not yet, my lord.  I come to seek thy forgiveness.  My slips of tongue were unfortunate and unintentional.  It is not I you should fear.  MacDuff, Thane of Scottsdale (John McCain), as if some holy angel, hath flown to the court of Merkel to unfold his message.

He claims the castle is in disarray. He challenges your 140 character missives.

Did not the witches warn of one insulted?  I fear he will become more than a minor ‘hanoi-ance.”  [Vanishes]

Lady MacTrump

My lord, your ashen complexion doth betray you.

MacTrump

Twas’ Banquo, though I know it could not be.  My fate is cast.  Come, we’ll to sleep.  My strange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use.  We are yet young in deed.

Lady MacTrump

(Aside: The force is strong with this one.  And now his training is complete.  If he only knew the power of the dark side.)

[Author’s Note:  I know, I know.  Lady MacTrump’s last words may be outside the time/space continuum, but certainly not out of character.  Stay tuned for the next episode, MacTrump/Act IV: A New Hope.]

 

How Joe Biden Got It Wrong

Politics

 

During a January 5, 2017 interview with Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour,  outgoing vice-president Joe Biden implored the so-called president-elect, “Grow up, Donald, Grow up.  Time to be an adult.”  To drive home this point, an anonymous Tweeter using the handle @MatureTrumpTwts, began posting alternative presidential messages “so they appear to be written by an adult.” (Source: Cosmopolitan, January 8, 2017)

This morning I checked out “Presidential Trump @MatureTrumpTwts.” Talk about a road map for acting presidential.  Here is just one example where the author takes an actual Donald Trump tweet and presents a more mature alternative.

Am I missing something? North Korean is testing missiles which they claim could reach U.S bases in Japan.  Congress is considering legislation which might deprive millions of Americans of their health insurance.  OMB is gutting the social safety net to pay for a wall which will likely never get built.  The Russians and WikiLeaks are undermining the nation’s intelligence capacity.  And the individual responsible for addressing these situations is preoccupied with his image rather than the nation’s well-being.

Which brings us back to Joe Biden’s comments.  Asking Trump to act like an adult assumes he has gone through the behavioral socialization most humans experience prior to reaching the age of majority.  Training which includes lessons such as “lying has consequences,” something most parents reinforce through punishment or withholding privileges.  Or “touching a hot stove will get you burned.”  No parent needed.  The act, in and of itself, promotes modified behavior.

What we have witnessed over the past two years is NOT an adult who refuses to act like one.  Instead, we have observed an individual re-living his childhood.  Like any toddler or adolescent he appears to be testing what is acceptable and unacceptable conduct. Unfortunately, all of his surrogate parents have abdicated their responsibility to ensure bad behavior does not go unchecked.

Trump dishonors an American prisoner-of-war who later endorses him.  He accuses Ted Cruz’s father of aiding a presidential assassin.  Yet, the Texas Senator also endorsed him after a brief brush with conscience at the Republican National Convention.  Ted, good parenting requires consistency and perseverance. Trump re-tweets an anti-Semitic meme and his Orthodox Jewish daughter and son-in-law look the other way.  He mocks a disabled journalist and his supporters accept his claim to be imitating  “groveling,” not a physical malady.

Joe, I think the world of you, but this time you’re wrong.  Trump is not an adult who is making a choice BETWEEN right and wrong.  He is still a child trying to figure out WHAT is right and wrong.  And those best suited to help him through this arrested phase of his personal development are failing.

Where is Dr. Spock when we really need him?

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP