Monday Wake Up Call – October 29, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Fisherman on the Housatonic River near Cornwall, CT – November, 2017 photo by Mike Jacquemin

The World Series is on, and it may actually be over by the time you read this. Wrongo lived in Brooklyn as a young boy, and got to go to Ebbets Field twice to see games. He grew up on Mays, Mantle, Berra, Koufax, Drysdale, Hodges and Snider, each were legends and heroes.

But in 2018? The only baseball Wrongo watches is the World Series, and that’s only with clicker in hand, vectoring to other entertainment. And he certainly doesn’t stay up until the game is over. Let this sink in: In 2018, for the first time in baseball history, there were more strikeouts than hits: 188 more to be exact.

So today, who watches these games from start to finish? It’s doubtful that those under the age of 30 do. Particularly if someone like Wrongo who was a baseball fan 60 years ago, is too disengaged to watch it in real time.

But the weekend’s news wasn’t dominated by sports, but by yet another mass shooting. This time, at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 mostly elderly people died at the hands of an anti-Semitic, hate-motivated gunman. He leaves behind waves of grief.

It’s a sorry commentary that this killing, along with the attempted bombings of 14 Democrats, obscured the hate killing of two African-Americans in Kentucky last Wednesday. Maybe it’s because only two Black murder victims at the hands of a white supremacist doesn’t garner attention anymore.

To those crying out after a wave of pipe bombs and another mass shooting, that this is not who we are, sorry, this is exactly who we have become as a people. The MAGA-bomber and the Synagogue murders are the tip of the spear: Alt-right fellow travelers blatantly acting out, seemingly without fear of reprisal, is the world we live in now.

And yet, at a time when America sorely needs moral leadership and unity, consistent reminders that we are one people, that we’re all in it together…we have Trump.

From James Fallows in the Atlantic:

Donald Trump has never once, in his life, spoken…as bearer of the whole nation’s grief, as champion of its faith and resolve–so there is no reason to expect that he could possibly do so now.

More from Fallows:

America has almost always had someone able to play that role….Harry Truman did so, after he unexpectedly became the leader of the post–World War II world. George W. Bush did, in his early remarks after 9/11. Even Lyndon B. Johnson, who fit no model of a natural orator, recognized what the country needed from him after history-changing assassinations: of the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobby, and of Martin Luther King Jr. Like his predecessors, he recognized what was expected of him, and he tried his best.

Donald Trump cannot and will not do any of this, and the absence of such a voice in national leadership is palpable.

We know that Trump has consistently stoked hatred. He has occasionally encouraged violence. This isn’t simply a personal moral failing, if he acts like a fellow traveler with alt-right types, racists, anti-Semites, and misogynists, the worst that our society has to offer.

Largely, he hates those who the alt-right hate; he also supports those who have no issue with using violence.

He draws angry crowds precisely because he reflects his followers’ inner darkness. So, when violence that is aimed at his enemies occurs, he can’t even fake compassion, much less accept that his words could have inspired the violence.

After dividing us and pandering to hatred for the past two years, what he says now is too little, too late.

America is about to find out what happens when morality and common decency are abandoned for political gain. If we don’t get Trump out of office, and bring the Republicans to heel, it’s frightening to think about what may happen, where we could be a few years.

So, it’s time to wake up America! The first step on our long road to national recovery begins on November 6th.

Get yourself to the polls, and take a neighbor or two with you.

To help you wake up, listen this morning to the main theme From “Schindler’s List“. John Williams composed the score for Schindler’s List, and played the main theme on piano. Following Spielberg’s suggestion, he hired Itzhak Perlman to perform it on the violin:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 28, 2018

Having a vanifesto doesn’t mean Trump had anything to do with it:

From the cartoonist Clay Jones:

This guy was at the rallies with you. He was standing among you chanting “lock her up,” and “build the wall.” He believes all the conspiracy theories Trump sells. He thinks the media is “fake news” and the “enemy of the American people.” He believes Mueller is on a witch hunt. He believes Trump got something from North Korea and Putin. He believes we’re winning the tariff war. He believes there were millions of illegal voters in 2016. He believes there’s an impending invasion from a caravan of refugee women and children that’s a national “emergency.”

A toxic recipe:

Trump’s iPhones aren’t secure, but there’s no irony:

When you need it scarier, think Mexicans:

MAGA men think of themselves as “tough” when maybe they’re not:

Mitch’s plan to gut social security and Medicare depends on winning the midterms:

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Consequences of Fear-Mongering: Bombs Sent To Dems

The Daily Escape:

Autumn in Maine -October 2018 photo by toph4er

The short version of Trump’s mid-term message is: “Be afraid”. Think about their messages: The Caravan. Terrorists crossing the southern border. Socialism. Democrat mobs. Soros.

The Daily Beast says why Republicans think the migrant caravan is a winner:

For Republicans, the sharp turn toward immigration fears, and those related to the caravan in particular, has been viewed a clear political winner, even as some acknowledge that the rhetoric from the president and others – including [that]….George Soros was funding the caravan – has been overblown.

The caravan is politically useful because it resonates with precisely the voters that the GOP needed to turnout in the next two weeks. The Republican worry has been turnout, and illegal immigrants motivate Trump’s base.

Trump supporters have seized on an image of Hondurans burning an American flag with a swastika drawn on it, calling them the “caravan protesters”, and implying that they were members of the caravan. In reality, those Hondurans were protesting in front of the US Embassy in Honduras.

For Democrats, the past few days have to be reminiscent of 2014. James Poniewozik in the NYT reviewed GOP scare tactics in the 2014 midterms:

In the fall of 2014, with the midterms approaching, Fox and other conservative media went in overdrive on the “border crisis” and ISIS — two issues that Republicans were using to suggest that the Obama administration was failing to protect America from teeming hordes.

According to the GOP, terrorist organizations were poised on the Mexican border to sneak into the US. Representative Duncan Hunter, (R-CA), claimed on Fox that 10 ISIS operatives had been apprehended crossing the border. On Oct. 8th 2014, Donald Trump amplified Hunter’s bogus claim, tweeting:

‘At least’ 10 ISIS have been caught crossing the Mexico border…

So, back to the future. We are weeks away from another midterm election, and immigration and terror are back in heavy rotation by the GOP. On Monday’s “Fox & Friends”, co-host Pete Hegseth said:

They caught over 100 ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan.

Hegseth was wrong. He mischaracterized a comment by president Morales of Guatemala about past terrorist apprehensions: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Morales told Guatemala’s Prensa Libre that his country had cooperated with the security forces of neighboring countries to halt the movement of terrorists. The individuals had been “intercepted, detained, processed and returned to their country of origin,” according to Guatemalan security officials. Some of these arrests, including the arrests of several Syrians, occurred in 2016.

Facts don’t support GOP fear-mongering on the border. From the NYT:

Of the more than 300,000 people apprehended at the southern border in the last fiscal year, 61, or 0.02 percent, were from countries the State Department deems the Middle East or Near East. Of those, 14 were citizens of the four Middle Eastern countries — Libya, Iran, Syria and Yemen — included in Mr. Trump’s travel ban.

What’s a political animal to do when you want to win, but you have very few ideas to sell? If you’re Trump, you sell what put you in the White House in 2016: Fear, lies, and apocalyptic visions of what America will become if Democrats win.

Selling fear is pathetic and morally vacant, but it works with casual news consumers. They simply hear “caravan” and “border” and “terrorism” and that creates a sense of looming danger.

Today, another fear-mongering Fox News segment about ‘left-wing mobs’ and ‘incivility’ toward Mitch McConnell was interrupted by breaking news coverage of a string of bombs sent to Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. A bomb treat was issued for the Time Warner building in NYC. An improvised explosive device was found at George Soros’s Westchester, NY home.

Other suspicious packages were sent to Sen. Kamala Harris’s state office, to Eric Holder, and to Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

There are consequences when the president and his party tout lies, embrace conspiracy theories, demonize political opponents, and applaud violence against reporters. They have been doing this since at least 2014.

We don’t know what impact these bomb threats will have on the mid-term election, who will be angered, and therefore more energized to turn out and vote.

We have no idea who is responsible for sending the bombs. Republicans will say it’s an attempt to make them look bad. But, it’s more likely that they were sent by someone who was radicalized by overheated right-wing rhetoric.

Rhetoric that has been pounded home by Trump.

Finally, we have no idea if there are any more bombs are out there. We can only hope that all will be intercepted.

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Saturday Soother – October 20, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Fall near Halifax, Nova Scotia – October 2018 photo by zenox

Trump visited Montana on Thursday, where he praised Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) for assaulting a reporter in his bid for Congress last year:

Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of – he’s my guy… By the way, never wrestle him…

He said that even though the US is hip-deep in the Jamal Khashoggi mess.

Gianforte pleaded guilty to assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs during the final days of Gianforte’s special election race in May 2017. When Jacobs tried to interview him about the GOP health-care plan, Gianforte grabbed Jacobs, threw him to the ground and punched him. Gianforte won the special election, and later pleaded guilty, receiving a six-month deferred sentence.

There was way more Trumpiness at his rally in Missoula, Montana. Trump framed the midterms as:

An election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense. That’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be an election of those things: law and order, Kavanaugh, remember common sense and remember that it’s going to be an election of the caravan, you know what I’m talking about…

And Trump debuted a new campaign slogan:

Democrats create mobs. Republicans create jobs.

Then he pivoted to the caravan.

Facing a sharp increase in unauthorized immigration, President Trump on Thursday lashed out at Democrats and the leaders of Latin American nations, seeking to deflect blame and mitigate political damage by riling up his base just weeks before the midterm elections.

Trump signaled with zero proof, that Democrats are somehow behind the caravan of immigrants moving toward the US:

But a lot of money has been passing to people to come up and try and get to the border by Election Day, because they think that’s a negative for us. Number one, they’re being stopped. And number two, regardless, that’s our issue.

He has also tweeted that he might summon the military to guard the southern border, cut off aid to Central American nations and upend the new trade deal with Mexico if those governments fail to stop a caravan of migrants from Honduras making its way toward the US.

He wants to use the military to mow them down at the border.

Stop in the name of your sanity! It’s time for a Saturday Soothing. Fall is upon us, and yard work beckons, but let’s take a few minutes to unplug from the mid-terms and focus on…quiet.

Start by brewing up a tall cup of Esmeralda Estate Porton Geisha Natural ($75/8oz.) It’s expensive, but you donate more than that to candidates who have zero chance of winning two weeks from now. So why not treat yourself? It’s from Dragonfly Coffee, a Boulder, Colorado-based micro-roaster that also supports worthy causes.

Now, move outside with your coffee, put on a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and listen to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, played in the original version by the Dover Quartet. Barber finished the arrangement in 1936. In January 1938, Barber sent an orchestrated version of the Adagio for Strings to Arturo Toscanini. The conductor returned the score without comment, which annoyed Barber.

Toscanini later sent word that he was planning to perform the piece, and had returned it simply because he had already memorized it! It was performed for the first time by Toscanini in November, 1938. Here is the quartet version of “Adagio for Strings”:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Willfully Ignoring the President’s Orders

The Daily Escape:

Monument Basin, Canyonlands NP – 2018 photo by baffledsloth

The NYT published an anonymous op-ed from a senior Trump administration official who claims to be part of a group of senior officials that deliberately ignore Trump’s orders on certain decisions.

It means that a bunch of unelected Republican termites are running the country. It reaffirms what both the Bob Woodward book is saying, along with the many similar reports from staffers in the White House.

But what good does it do us to know this? And what are the motives of the anonymous writer?

He/she says they are telling us this because it’s in the national interest for us to know that a few Republican guardians are watching out for the country. Despite what they think, this shows Republicans at their absolute worst, trying to have it both ways. They’re happily getting items on the GOP domestic agenda through the Congress, but they say they are trying to protect us from the worst of Trump’s excesses.

The insiders are merrily going about implementing the hard-right policy choices that Trump supports — tax cuts for the wealthy, gutting regulations, ruining our health insurance, and packing the Supreme Court with a generation’s worth of ideologues. But they don’t like Trump’s temperament and occasionally off-the-rails instincts about the Constitution and foreign policy.

Wrongo thinks that the author has sacrificed country, honor and decency for tax cuts and a more robust military. And is writing this now simply a ploy? Scott Simon had the following take:

I think @potus may be happy to read this. The criticisms are nothing he hasn’t heard. But the article is no call to action. It says, if you like tax breaks & court picks, ‘we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction.’

OTOH, David Frum at The Atlantic, says:

This Is a Constitutional Crisis. If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand.

But while the conspirators thought about invoking the 25th Amendment, they did nothing about it.

The takeaway is that conservative conspirators inside the WH have chosen to disobey the orders of the President of the United States. This is an overt refusal to accept any boundaries and limits to their power. Justifying that by saying they are patriotic, should be terrifying.

If an insider thinks that Trump is unfit for office, he/she should testify before Congress. But that won’t happen, because Trump is about to get them everything they’ve ever dreamed of. Progressives and Democrats know that Trump is an egomaniacal monster. Republicans: Please, don’t tell us that you know that too, and that we ought to work with you to stop him.

You created this monster, you stop him. But, they have no intention of doing that. It wasn’t the purpose of the op-ed. Chris Hayes had it right when he tweeted:

The op-ed is an attempt to take out an insurance policy for the GOP and conservatism if and when things get much, much worse. It’s a very public hedge meant to preserve the reputation of the GOP’s entire political and governing class.

Now, for the NYT: There isn’t any argument that would explain publishing this op-ed. It doesn’t serve the country. In fact, it’s entirely self-serving for the author and the Times. It tells us that Republicans in the administration are orchestrating a slow-rolling coup, but that’s ok, because the GOP is patriotically watching out for us.

The NYT op-ed has done nothing to advance our thinking about Trump, or about the people around him.

At the same time, if Trump is too distracted to know that his orders aren’t being followed, is it really a coup? Trump could do more than just request that his orders be carried out. He could follow-up and see what is being done. Apparently, he doesn’t. It seems clear to all that Trump wasn’t capable of doing this, and/or he doesn’t give a fuck.

What is clear, besides Trump being incapable of performing duties of president, is the NYT is failing the country in our current moment of need.

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Monday Wake Up Call – August 13, 2018

(Wrongo will be taking the next few days off. He has blog fatigue, and also needs to work on some deferred maintenance here on the fields of Wrong. He’ll be back later this week, unless events require him to jump back in sooner.)

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned house, Wasco, OR – 2018 photo by Shaun Peterson.

We wake up today to Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece’s, review of “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World” by Adam Tooze posted in The Guardian. Tooze is an economic historian at Columbia University in NYC.

This isn’t a review of Tooze’s book, which sounds fascinating. Rather, it’s a meditation on one of Varoufakis’s ideas in his review of the book. Varoufakis says: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Every so often, humanity manages genuinely to surprise itself. Events to which we had previously assigned zero probability push us into what the ancient Greeks referred to as aporia: intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The financial crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly the world ceased to make sense in terms of what, a few weeks before, passed as conventional wisdom – even McDonald’s, for goodness sake, could not secure an overdraft from Bank of America!

Tooze focuses on the causes of the Great Recession in 2008, and the implications for our 10-year long economic recovery. He observes that neoliberalism’s mantra about markets had to be shelved to save the US economy: (emphasis by Wrongo)

Whereas since the 1970s the incessant mantra of the spokespeople of the financial industry had been free markets and light touch regulation, what they were now demanding was the mobilization of all of the resources of the state to save society’s financial infrastructure from a threat of systemic implosion, a threat they likened to a military emergency.

We have no idea where the current aporia will take us, particularly since this “moment” has already lasted 10 years, and the hard-won economic progress may be easily reversed. Varoufakis continues:

Moments of aporia produce collective efforts to respond to our bewilderment. In the late 18th century, the pains of the Industrial Revolution begat free-market economics. The crisis of 1848 brought us the Marxist tradition. The great depression produced both Keynes’s General Theory and Friedman’s monetarism.

We are clearly at a point of intense bewilderment. What direction is correct for our economy and our society? The concept of aporia may explain why no real solutions have emerged in the past 10 years.

Tooze thinks that the world economy today is at a similar point to where it was in 1914. That is, we’re headed to a global war based on the competition of the advanced economies for resources (this time, it’s markets, water and energy), while the Middle East is at war, competing to determine which variant of Islam will be transcendent.

Varoufakis thinks we are more likely to be where we were in 1930, just after the crash. Since 2008, like back then, income inequality has continued to grow, and we have a potential fascist movement in the wings. Varoufakis asks if today’s politicians have the vision, or the ability, to corral corporatist power on one side, and the emerging nationalist movement on the other.

We’re into the post-2008 world, one in which the owners of society, the largest corporations along with the international capitalists, portray austerity as our only answer. They stress the need for continued globalization and the upward transfer of wealth via tax cuts as the best chance to survive and prosper after the 2008 crash.

This is global capitalism at work: Continuing to extract all the wealth that it can in every economy with a compliant government.

People are getting near a breaking point. They want a better life, and they want to regain political control. The challenge for capitalists and their politicians is: Can they continue to distract the base, keeping them compliant with corporatism and the financialization of our capital markets?

Capitalism ought to fear nationalism, because a nationalist movement could easily rally the poor and the middle class against Wall Street and corporate America. But, for the moment, capitalism seems to be stirring the nationalist pot. To what end?

Whether a fight against Wall Street and Corporatism will emerge, whether it will evolve into a fascist-style rallying cry remains to be seen.

We’re too early in this iteration of aporia to know or to see where we are going clearly. We need an alternative to today’s global capitalism because the track we’re on could easily turn the world into a gigantic Easter Island-like landscape.

What alternative to today’s capitalism (if any) will develop? Will ordinary people have some say in the alternative?

Stay tuned.

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Monday Wake Up Call – Cape Cod Edition

The Daily Escape:

Cape Cod morning – 1950 painting by Edward Hopper

(Today, Wrongo and Ms. Right are on our way to Cape Cod for a few days of bonfires, bicycling, surfcasting, and hanging with kids and grandkids. Blogging will be infrequent, but you can expect a Saturday Soother on, well, Saturday.)

This morning, Wrongo feels the need to bore you with a concept from historian Peter Turchin, taken from his book Ages of Discord, which provides some insight into where America is today. Turchin posits that historical eras are either integrative periods when people find reasons to cooperate, and join forces, or disintegrative periods, when reasons to split apart become dominant.

Turchin identifies three key factors that can create the disintegrative periods:

  • Competition and conflict among an expanding population of elites
  • Declining real wage for an expanding population of workers
  • State financial collapse (unpayable debt)

Does any of that sound familiar? Turchin’s theory is that history experiences cycles which, in non-industrialized economies, tend to last between 200-300 years. In America, the cycles from start to finish are much shorter, about 150 years, due to a faster pace of change.

His demonstrates his theory about a positive phase (the integrative phase) and a negative phase (the disintegrative phase) in the first of two American cycles, from 1780 to 1920. The positive phase lasted from about 1780 to about 1840, while the negative phase lasted from about 1840 to about 1920. Turchin contends that the second American cycle began in 1920, and is not yet complete. The positive phase lasted from 1920 to around 1970, and the negative stage has lasted from 1970 to the present.

He contends that the best parts of positive eras typically last only a generation or two, such as 1810 – 1840, and 1940 – 1970 in the US, before elite individuals and groups abandon consensus politics to pursue ever harsher exploitation and competition to enrich themselves.

A cycle begins with an undersupply of labor, such as happened after the American Revolution. This shortage of labor caused a rise in real wages and general economic progress. This positive phase peaked around 1820. It was a time that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.

But the division between the industrial North and the slaveholding, agrarian South continued, creating rivalry among the elites, along with political polarization, culminating in the Civil War. The negative phase of the cycle continued afterward, with massive strikes, many of them violent, in the late 19th Century. Meanwhile, income inequality peaked during the Gilded Age as elites profited from low worker’s wages and poor working conditions.

In modern America, we are largely governed by religious, geographic (local, state and federal), and economic institutions. And many compete with each other for resources, and the separation of powers among them is becoming hazy. Today, our “economic” government is the corporation.

If you think about it, our current political struggles are between geographic governments and both the religious and economic ones. Republicans, and many Democrats, support the efforts of both to increase their influence over the lives of the people, often through the geographic governments.

And this isn’t simply a minor change in who is doing the governing, they threaten our democracy.

We’re blowing up our institutions, but it’s not in reaction to any looming danger. It’s because we’ve been conned into thinking that September 11 was the same as Pearl Harbor. And the threat of immigrants today is the same as the threat of a Japanese invasion was in 1941. And that modern social policies threaten the religions of some people.

Time to wake up America! We cannot surrender to fear, to corporatism, or to forever war. We have entered a disintegrative phase, but there is time to pull out of it.

If you care.

To help you wake up, here is Pink Floyd with “Ordinary Men” from their classic album, “Dark Side of the Moon”:

 Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

 

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Saturday Soother – Jeff Sessions Bible Study Edition

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned schoolhouse, Colombia Hills, WA – 2018 photo by Sean Peterson

Trump and Kim dominated the news this week. So many hot takes on the one-page agreement: Who won, who lost, it will take some time to digest. Today, it seems that there is less risk of another war on the Korean peninsula than we thought last fall, but let’s not celebrate just yet. We have a long way to go before there is peace in Korea. Kim still has his nukes, and his cannons are still pointed toward Seoul. Trump seems to have cancelled the joint military exercises, but that could change on his whim. Kim or Trump could decide to blow up their agreement, like Trump did with Iran.

Wrongo has followed with complete disapproval, the administration’s moves to separate children from their parents at the border, and to deny asylum to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. As we cruise into this weekend, we should remember the curious bible talk by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to a group of law enforcement officials in Indiana on Thursday:

I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.

Here’s the verse Sessions is talking about:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

This is from a senior person in the GOP, the party that SAYS their prime directive is to get the government out of people’s lives.

Splinter reports that Messiah College professor John Fea told WaPo that Session’s quoted verse has been used before in American history. The first time was by British colonists opposed to the War of Independence. The second time, per Fea:

…is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.

The verse was also used by German officials to help cement support among the country’s Christians for the Nazis.

It was also used by white religious leaders in South Africa to justify apartheid.

And, recently, Trump’s booster, Pastor Robert Jeffress cited the verse to support Trump’s threat to murder millions of North Koreans with “fire and fury” last year.

Sessions either didn’t know the verse’s racist and authoritarian history when he used it to justify tearing families apart, or he simply didn’t care. And what about Obamacare? Isn’t that also the law of the land? Shouldn’t Sessions agree that we respect, and obey it? But here is the GOP, once again cherry-picking the bible, this time to justify treating immigrants from south of the border as subhuman.

Let’s agree that Jeff Sessions is wrong. Separating families is wrong. Using the Bible to justify it is wrong.

Leave the final comment to long-time Sunday school teacher, Steven Colbert, who nailed Sessions:

But if he just read a little bit further into Romans 13:10, it says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.’ I’m not surprised Sessions didn’t read the whole thing. After all, Jesus said ‘Suffer the children to come unto me,’ but I’m pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words ‘children’ and ‘suffer’ and said ‘I’m on it!’”

Enough! Time to downshift, to disengage from the political world for a few hours. To help you get started, head to the kitchen and brew up a vente cup of Koffee Kult’s Dark Roast Coffee ($15.99/lb.), roasted by Koffee Kult Roasters of Hollywood, FL. Enjoy its heavy body, cinnamon notes, and bright, long finish.

Now sit outside. And listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott play “Romance for Cello and Piano” by English composer Frederick Delius, who died in 1934. This is from Ma’s 2015 album with Stott, “Songs from the Arc of Life”:

Ma and Stott met in the summer of 1978, when Kathryn Stott, then a student of classical piano, returned to her apartment after a holiday. She found a young Asian man practicing the cello inside the place she shared with violinist Nigel Kennedy. Stott recalls: “It seemed Nigel had sublet the apartment”.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Monday Wake Up Call – April 2, 2018

The Daily Escape:

Wildflowers in Carrizo Plain National Monument, near San Luis Obispo, CA – March 2017 photo by George Rose

Mother Jones reports:

You might know Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of local TV stations in the nation, from 2004, when it required its affiliates to air an anti-John Kerry propaganda film as a news segment and then fired one of its employees who spoke against it….Or from earlier this month, when CNN’s Brian Stelter discovered that it would be forcing its anchors to record “media bashing” promos that parallel President Donald Trump’s…complaints about the “fake news” media—”a promotional campaign,” as Stelter puts it, “that sounds like pro-Trump propaganda.”

In December, Jared Kushner admitted that the Trump campaign had struck a deal with Sinclair during the 2016 election in order to obtain more favorable coverage. Now, Sinclair is awaiting FCC approval on its proposed purchase of Tribune Media, which owns or operates 42 broadcast television stations in 33 markets. If the purchase is approved, Sinclair will be able to broadcast to at least 70% of American households.

Since the Clinton era, we thought of Fox News as the propaganda arm of the GOP. But in the Trump era, it isn’t a cable network, it’s your local network news affiliate. Lots of people (Wrongo included) never watch CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, but they watch local news to see the weather, and learn what’s going on in their communities.

This is where Sinclair comes in. Increasingly, local affiliates are part of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative far-right media conglomerate that has been buying up local affiliates of the networks, stations that you’ve watched for years.

Think Progress reports that Sinclair has always produced “must-run” segments for its stations that are typically conservative commentary running alongside their regular news coverage. Sinclair is now forcing its reporters to air pre-scripted segments about fake news media, in an attempt to undermine non-Sinclair stations in the same markets:

Seattle-based ABC affiliate KOMO-TV says its owner, the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, is forcing its reporters to air pre-scripted segments about fake news media, in an attempt to undermine non-Sinclair stations.

In recent weeks, KOMO has begun throwing in mentions of “fake news.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reproduces the full script:

Hi, I’m (A) ____________, and I’m (B) _________________


(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our Northwest communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that KOMO News produces.

(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.

(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories
 stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first.

(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’
This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.

(B) At KOMO it’s our responsibility to pursue and report the truth. We understand Truth is neither politically ‘left nor right.’ Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility, now more than ever.

(A) But we are human and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair please reach out to us by going to KOMOnews.com and clicking on CONTENT CONCERNS. We value your comments. We will respond back to you.

(B) We work very hard to seek the truth and strive to be fair, balanced and factual
 We consider it our honor, our privilege to responsibly deliver the news every day.

(A) Thank you for watching and we appreciate your feedback.

Sinclair doesn’t say which mainstream news outlets are intentionally running false stories without first fact-checking, they just claim that certain journalists pose a threat to democracy. It should scare you that you could try to watch many different stations, and get only Sinclair’s viewpoint.

Welcome to the era of the Trump regime’s state-run media. You’re living in it, and odds are increasingly good that you and your family are getting their local news from it too.

You can only fight this by being aware it exists. If people start considering a message as propaganda, they will then start asking who it benefits.

That question is the start of getting real news back on our screens.

America’s got to wake up, or lose its democracy. To help all of us wake up here is “No News is Good News” by the punk group, New Found Glory, from their 2004 album Catalyst:

Sample Lyrics:

All along, we follow blindly,
Force-fed prime time, printed nightly,
Why would anybody leave the safety of their home?

And I can’t take much more of this,
We’re all so wrapped up, in it,
Nothing will change, but the channels,
So I turn it off.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 22, 2017

We have entered a new Dark Age. Wrongo is reminded of the famous quote from the movie, “Blade Runner” where the replicant Roy Batty says just before he dies: “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Is it all over for the America that walked on the Moon? That explored the planets, and funded basic science? That passed Social Security in 1935, and Medicare and the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s?

Elections have consequences. Trump gave his supporters “their country back,” and his idea of making America great again is a resurgence and normalization of base comments, ignorance, and hatred of the “other”. Think about what actually happened with the Trump/General Kelly grieving widow moment:

A soldier died in combat. His widow, stricken with grief, gets a call from the President. The call upsets her.

That’s what happened. It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, both Trump and Kelly should swallow their pride, and put the feelings of a war widow above their own. In Kelly’s talk in the White House Briefing Room, there was no apology to the wife, not an ounce of “we’re sorry she took it the wrong way, we of course meant to comfort her“. It’s all about: “That black congresswoman, what a fraud. Why was she there anyway”?

Wrongo served in the Army. He knows that generals are well-educated people, a part of whose job description causes other people to die. Kelly isn’t the worse person in the world; he had a kid killed in combat. That should lead him to take a hard look at what he did in the briefing room. He stood in front of the nation and told us all how sympathy for the next of kin has historically been done, how Trump did it correctly, and how unfair it is to criticize how Trump did it.

And that showed us EXACTLY what not to do.

And we didn’t need a lecture about how our professional military are the best people on earth. Kelly apparently believes that the professional military have higher citizenship status than citizens who haven’t served. Kelly stated the apparent orthodoxy among the top echelons of our military: That soldiers are the best part of America, and that they look down on the rest of us who are not soldiers.

Could anything be more depressing and scary?

Yes. It is WH Press Secretary Sarah Sanders telling the press corps: “Do not challenge the Generals” when it turned out that some of what Kelly said about Rep. Frederica S. Wilson was wrong. That theme will be repeated frequently during the Trump presidency.

Democracy has started its downward slide. It’s the start of our Dark Age. On to cartoons, assuming you feel you can smile today.

This is what the White House and Kelly are really telling us:

Maybe Next of Kin would rather just get a form letter instead of a call from the Donald-in-Chief:

Is this what we signed up for?

Kelly’s recruiting message isn’t real strong:

 

 

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