Tag: Donald Trump 2016

Lie to Me: It’s a Post-Truth World

Trump’s approach to lying is new, and it’s on a totally higher level. The essence is to undermine the concept of truth itself, to confuse and persuade and convince. From the Economist:

Mr. Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics − a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power.

When someone is for Trump, it doesn’t matter if he comes out with some outrageous statement because either a) the media is blowing it out of proportion or b) he’s just telling it like it is or c) he’s just being Trump. Below is a fact-checking by David Leonhardt of the NYT published the morning after the second debate:

He lied about a sex tape.

He lied about his lies about ‘birtherism.’

He lied about the growth rate of the American economy.

He lied about the state of the job market.

He lied about the trade deficit.

He lied about tax rates.

He lied about his own position on the Iraq War, again.

He lied about ISIS.

He lied about the Benghazi attack.

He lied about the war in Syria.

He lied about Syrian refugees.

He lied about Russia’s hacking.

He lied about the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

He lied about Hillary Clinton’s tax plan.

He lied about her health care plan.

He lied about her immigration plan.

He lied about her email deletion.

He lied about Obamacare, more than once.

He lied about the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

He lied about his history of groping women without their consent.

Dishonesty in politics is nothing new. Remember Nixon? Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, thus getting the country into a war in Vietnam. In 1986, Ronald Reagan insisted that his administration did not trade weapons for hostages with Iran, before having to admit a few months later that:

 My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not…

Reagan’s words point to what is different. Political lies used to imply that there was a truth. Evidence, consistency and scholarship had enough political power to make Nixon resign.

Today, many voters, a few politicians like Trump, and some pundits simply no longer care:

  • They deal in insinuation (“A lot of people are saying…” is one of Mr. Trump’s favorite phrases) and question the provenance, rather than accuracy, of anything that goes against them (“They would say that, wouldn’t they?”).
  • And when the distance between what “feels” true and what the facts say grows too great, it can always be bridged by trotting out a conspiracy theory.

But the manner (and frequency) of Trump’s lies, are different, and more worrisome. When you are a Trump-like chameleon, you can be all things to (most) people.

The magnitude of this information change is greater than any since Gutenberg started printing pamphlets. People who are bombarded with new information do not know what/who to trust. Old media that used to be trusted sources of information have been destroyed or forced to change by the new technology.

There is no source of authority which is not intensely disputed. As an example, there is hardly an article in the old media which a few commenters do not challenge, often calling into question the integrity of the writer, the editor, or the owners; this was not true in 2000. The net result is a lessening of trust, which has many serious implications.

We need a language/methodology for rebuttal. People have suggested real-time fact checking, but in a divided post-truth society, who can be a non-biased fact-checker? And in a divided society, some, like televangelists  Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell Jr. won’t even accept that the Pant Load committed sexual assault when there is video evidence. What is it that Donald Trump has to offer that these preachers will sell their souls and misquote scripture to support him?

It could take us a few generations to decide who to trust. In the meantime, a few populists will become leaders, a few wars may be started, more young people will be inspired to express their political beliefs through terrorism, and some young people will opt out of our political process.

It will remain very difficult to have a reasoned conversation with anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the same version of the truth as you do.

Donald Trump’s statements are only true or mostly true 15% of the time. He has largely rejected reality and entered a delusional realm where what “feels right” is fed to a portion of the public that wants to believe his lies.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call: Sex, Lies & Emails Post Debate Edition

Why do the debates have to conflict with Wrongo’s football team’s game? Anyway, watched the debate with Ms. Oh So Right, and desperately wanted to turn it off after about 45 minutes. It seemed clear that Trump was trying a form of the Rick Lazio stalking maneuver, or the way McCain stalked across the stage right up to Obama. Although they started without a handshake, possibly a first in presidential debates, there was a quick one at the end.

  • Trump’s denied that he assaulted anyone. He says “it’s just words, folks”. He’s now opened himself up to a major problem if a woman steps forward with allegations of assault/harassment.
  • The video clip is a result of investigative reporting by the WaPo. There is an element of payback in that Trump has attacked WaPo editor-in-chief Marty Baron personally, and has revoked the paper’s credentials for his rallies. Payback is a bitch, especially if you’re someone like Donald Trump, whose life doesn’t really bear much scrutiny.
  • Here is what Trump really meant about Muslims:

We will set up thought police, where Muslims will be required to report on their parents and children. If you see something, you MUST say something.

  • We learned that tax policy was Hillary’s fault. According to the Pant Load, she wrote the tax code, ran the wars and passed health care. Hillary caused all the inner city problems. She has talked about all of these things for years, but she did nothing.
  • Trump’s message: Bill is more of a perv than me. Hillary can’t be trusted, she has been around for 30 years and things have gotten worse.
  • NO questions on immigrants and jobs, or outsourcing and trade.

Hillary got the better of Trump in laying out policy points, and won on the Trump video tape frat boy issue, but Trump got the better of Hillary with her (non) response on the email issue. Trump comes across as angry, and angry is not likable.

While the idea was for average people to ask questions directly of the candidates, they used each question as a way to swing at the other. There was a lot of Trump’s word salad, and he continually worked the referees. All of that wore thin very quickly. The Pant Load offered lots of red meat to his base, but it was hard to see him making many converts because of his performance tonight.

In a way, it was mean girl vs. the bully, but we are no longer in 7th grade. It’s truly a sad and pathetic commentary on the state of our election process.

We will have to wait until tomorrow to see the ratings that can tell us if and when people began to turn off the debate to watch something else.

To help those of you who stayed up to see the debate and maybe some of the punditry afterwards, you clearly are in need of a wakeup call this morning. There was a rock concert called Desert Trip in Indio CA over the weekend, where the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who performed. The affectionate name for the concert is “Oldchella”, since it involves ancient performers and is being held on the same site as the annual Coachella Rock festival.

It is usually a disappointment to see stars of yesteryear perform when they are in their 70s, and in reviewing many videos of the performances from the Desert Trip, Wrongo prefers to remember them at their best, which apparently, wasn’t on display at Indio this weekend.

Wrongo also has had many happy days at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, where the concert was held. We spent a week every January on the Polo grounds for 10 years, showing our dogs. It is a fabulous venue.

Here is “Rockin in the Free World” by Neil Young & Promise of the Real, recorded on October 8th. Neil is the best guy in the geriatric wing of the Rock Pantheon this weekend. He starts by telling the audience that they are going to play a 40 second version of the song, but they rock on for 8:28. We know you are busy, and probably late for work, but watch to the end.

Now, where are my mushrooms?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOh5ETyyKuE

FYI: Green Bay 23, Giants 16

Facebooklinkedinrss

Will The Candidates Discuss Syria?

Although it is Sunday, there will be no cartoons today. Sorry. Instead, time to eat our vegetables and prepare for tonight’s second Presidential Debate.

Wrongo thinks Syria should be a featured topic, since it lays bare our conflict with Russia, which has steadily grown since their annexation of Crimea. But, the debate is in a town hall format, with half of the questions coming from the audience, so it is difficult to say if Syria and Russia will make it to the table.

Certainly they should be discussed. On October 3, the Obama Administration walked away from the Geneva negotiations with Russia, aimed at ending the war in Syria. On October 5, the Principals Committee met at the White House to consider four options for Syria:

  1. Create a no-fly zone over Syria;
  2. Create safe zones along the Turkish and Jordanian borders inside Syrian territory;
  3. Bomb the entire Syrian Air Force;
  4. Arm the Syrian rebels (jihadists) with anti-aircraft weapons (MANPADS) as part of a prolonged insurgency directed against the Assad government, which are increasingly dominated by the very terrorist forces that the US and Russia were jointly targeting up until last week.

The first three options require the imposition of a no fly zone over Syria. There are big risks with a no fly zone, if the US imposes it without Russian cooperation. The Russians might refuse to respect it. If they defy the no fly zone and we shoot down Russian planes, it could lead to war. The Russians categorically oppose a Syrian no fly zone, because they believe it will weaken Assad.

Option four means the US aligns with our former jihadi terrorist enemies against Assad, in a semi-permanent war in the Middle East. So, consider these statements:

Any alternative approach must begin with grounding Mr. Assad’s air power…If Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk.

I would recommend our colleagues in Washington to thoroughly consider the possible consequences of the realization of such plans…

That’s the current geopolitical landscape. What do the candidates think?

The Pant Suit wants to remove Assad and defeat ISIS simultaneously. She supports a no-fly zone. Clinton does not support an American troop commitment. Instead, she wants to arm and supply Syrian and Kurdish rebel groups. Her plan is to replace both Assad and ISIS with another group to be named later. It’s a weak plan, but it appeals to Americans because Clinton’s plan doesn’t require more American troops on the ground.

Trump has no plan, but during the primaries, he said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

So, I don’t like Assad. Who’s going to like Assad? But, we have no idea who these people [Assad replacements], and what they’re going to be, and what they’re going to represent. They may be far worse than Assad. Look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Look at the mess we have after spending $2 trillion dollars, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over the place–we have nothing.

But during the VP debate, Pence adopted Clinton’s position. Pence said:

The United States of America needs to be prepared to work with our allies in the region to create a route for safe passage and then to protect people in those areas, including with a no-fly zone.

Obama has repeatedly refused to impose a no-fly zone.

Here is some context: Arming terrorists in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Bombing and attacking targets in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Establishing no fly zones without permission in a sovereign nation is an act of war. Stationing troops or Special Forces in a sovereign nation without permission is an act of war.

We have no UN mandate to be in Syria. Congress has not given its approval to be in Syria.

It’s a big fat mess, with no good solution in sight, made worse by the scale of the Syrian humanitarian crisis. And marked by Congress’ lack of courage.

It would be nice if at least ONE candidate would recall that during the Cold War, the number one goal was not to provoke a war between the US and Russia, but to find ways to de-escalate the situation.

Perhaps this is too much to expect, given the temperament of both candidates.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Trumped!

(This post is for Pat M, a long-time blog reader, who called, expressing outrage at the Pant Load)

From the mouth of Trump comes the ultimate “shorter” GOP:

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

This is Donald Trump admitting to sexually assaulting a woman.

This is why the GOP said yesterday, and will say today and tomorrow whatever they think they need to say to get by the latest insight into the true character of Donald Trump.

You see, racism, bigotry, misogyny were a part of the Republican Party long before Trump. The ugly truth is that the real problem has long been “moderate Republicans” who looked the other way and allowed that hatred to take root in order to garner political power, particularly in the last eight years.

Republicans voted for him in the primaries, the Party’s elite endorsed him. The Republican base still plans to vote for him for president, and NOW, the Party will look the other way as their elderly, frat boy pig of a candidate does it again.

And the best part is that Republicans now wish that Mike Pence was at the top of the ticket. Remember Mike Pence? The vile, bigoted, misogynist who signed a law making LGBTQ folks second-class citizens? The Republican governor who forced women to pay for funeral services for their aborted fetuses?

So Trump’s statement that “You can do anything” resonates with the core supporters of the Republican Party:

  • If you’re a Big Bank, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to Dodd-Frank)
  • If you’re Big Pharma, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices)
  • If you’re the NRA, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (See the GOPs opposition to even collecting data on gun deaths)

It’s the Leona Helmsley Principle: Rules are for the little people. Trump took her tax idea and made it better, showing us that he was smart, while the rest of us are chumps.

Remember Chris Christie shutting down the GW bridge, or Rick Snyder and the poisoning of Flint’s water.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

The Republicans won’t take Donald Trump off the ticket, he is one of their kind.

He is the logical conclusion of what it means to be a Republican in 2016.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Trump ≠ Change

Despite being the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump has positioned himself as the candidate of change in the 2016 election. During the first debate, he tried to hammer home his call for sweeping political change. From Reuters:

Some of Trump’s strongest moments at Monday’s debate were when he categorized Clinton, a former secretary of state and US senator as a “typical politician,” accusing her of achieving nothing in her years in Congress and government.

Polls show an electorate hungry for change, with a majority believing the country is on the wrong track. In fact, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that 64% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. That number includes 87% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats.

When Reuters asked voters to pick the first word that comes to mind when thinking about the country, the most popular choice was “frustration,” (49%) followed by “fear”(15%) and “anger”(13.8%).

With an electorate once again yearning for change, as they do every four years; who will they turn to in 2016? Many pundits have said that Hillary Clinton is the voice of the status-quo, while Donald Trump is the candidate of change, that she represents incrementalism, while he represents big ideas.

Bill Clinton ran and won on change. Barack Obama ran and won on “change you can believe in.”

But, as Jeff Jarvis says: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

I ended up voting for Barack Obama, but while he was in a [primary] race against Hillary Clinton his campaign slogan drove me to distraction. “Change we can believe in.” What change exactly?

Jarvis makes this point:

“Change” is an empty word, a vague promise. Obama promised “change” and it was a vessel into which his supporters poured their dreams…The proper word is not “change” but “progress.”

But the term “progress” has been devalued and given different meanings by both the left and the right, making it less useful to describe what is required in next stage in our political and social evolution.

Jarvis thinks the key word should be “improvement”: Based on her web site, Clinton will work to improve health care, college costs, infrastructure, criminal justice, mental health, national security, the environment, taxation, campaign finance, and the status of women and minorities.

In this context, Trump ≠ change. He promises little improvement. In fact, his basic message is one of regression: Let’s return to an earlier time in America when many of his supporters feel they had more control over their lives. They say that they have lost their cultural and (possibly) their economic position due to changes they could not control, changes they resent, changes that broadened American opportunity, making it available to others, some of whom are outsiders. Trump is promising to stop these kinds of change.

Change can be of the revolutionary or evolutionary kind, but other than the American Revolution, are there examples of successful revolutionary change in the past 300 years? China, maybe? The French Revolution? Iran? All of these revolutions were accompanied by bloodshed. In our current environment, with instant global communication, evolutionary change is likely to be more successful.

And when you think about what evolutionary change involves: Understanding a problem, preparing and planning for the required change, building a supportive coalition, implementing and sustaining it in law and action, what about Donald Trump suggests to you that he could be an effective change agent?

Alternatively, Clinton presents a vision of a country headed basically in the right direction, but one that needs to address income and other forms of inequality. She is boxed into a position of running against “real” change, because of her career as a member of the establishment, and in part because she wants to run on Obama’s record. She would also like to bring his coalition along with her, but by temperament, she isn’t Bernie.

Still, she has cataloged the many tweaks and changes she hopes to make to policy. They are available online for those who have an attention span longer than it takes to read 140 characters.

This is in contrast to The Pant Load, who values tweets, conflict and personality over substance.

Three AM Tweet Storms are not change, they improve nothing. He promises nothing, and we are letting him get away with it.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 2, 2016

The nation’s cartoonists had many easy targets this week, what with the presidential debate aftermath, but most offerings were repetitive: Trump’s hair on fire, Hillary wrestling Trump, blah, blah.

Millennials are thinking about voting for Gary Johnson. Maybe they should examine the consequences of that decision:

cow-millenials-vote

There is no IPhone app for instant positive change. The challenge is to vote for representatives and referendums that forward the ideals we cherish (and do nothing that will retard change) – no matter how long it takes.

It is puzzling why so many young voters think Hillary is dishonest. The Clintons have released their tax returns for decades. They have released the tax returns of their foundation. Congress has spent years and millions investigating her and has not found anything illegal. Of course, the media has been furiously digging into both candidates, but most of what they have produced is about Trump’s malfeasance: They have found dozens of documented reports of dishonesty, pay for play, ugly comments about women and minorities. His two divorce degrees require confidentiality by the ex-wives to keep the support money coming.

He could be arrested for what he did in Cuba, if the statute of limitations had not run out, but a large segment of our younger voters dislikes Hillary enough to vote for Gary Johnson.

The debate lasted 90 minutes. Trump’s debate worked for about 30 minutes:

cow-alcohol

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As expected, he brought up “Stop and Frisk”:

cow-stop-and-frisk

Maybe this is a good time to remind The Pant Load about the Fourth Amendment, which says that this action is most likely illegal:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The VP debate on Tuesday probably won’t be must-see TV:

cow-vp-debate

 

Apparently, the Saudis couldn’t spend enough in DC to avoid the override of Obama’s veto:

cow-saudi-suits

 

 

 

Facebooklinkedinrss

Debate Night – Monday Wake Up Edition

The Presidential debate is tonight. Trump was reported to have invited former Bill Clinton paramour Gennifer Flowers to the debate, but now we hear from Mike Pence that it’s not so. This looks like is a case of “mind games forever”.

Millions of words have been written in advance of the debates, so no need to add to the hot steaming pile of punditry here, except to say that Hillary cannot win any news cycle. Even the one in which the NYT endorsed Hillary. Here is Tristero at Hullabaloo: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The NYT endorsed Clinton, but actually they’re heavily promoting Trump for president. How heavily? Literally by a 2:1 margin. Put another way, the Times [in their editorial] believes that what Trump says and does is twice as important as what his closest rival says and does…If you go…to the NY Times Web site and do a word search, you will come up with:

Trump: 16 mentions
Clinton: 8 mentions

2 Pictures of Trump
1 picture of Clinton

If you can’t win in THE PAPER THAT IS NOMINATING YOU, it’s hard to win overall.

Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate. Sadly, he seems to be the choice of quite a few Millennials over both Clinton and Trump. Kevin Drum noticed that polling shows there are a fairly significant number of Sanders voters saying they prefer Gary Johnson over Clinton.

It is easy to understand if you fail to look closely at Johnson’s policies: He favors legalization of marijuana. He’s good on civil liberties and wants to cut back on overseas military interventions. He’s moderate on immigration. He’s pro-choice and supports gay rights.

But he’s nothing more than a warmed-over Republican. Here is a Johnson quote from earlier this week:

fireshot-screen-capture-130-gary-johnson-page-001

Yes, he really did say that since the sun will burn up the planet someday, why should we care about climate change? BTW, it’s not likely to occur within the next 5 billion years, so this is an example of Libertarian long-range planning.

So, let’s just focus on making lots of money now. #Feel The Johnson

You still think there is lots to like about Gary Johnson? Perhaps you should review Drum’s listing of some of Johnson’s policy positions:

  • He supports TPP
  • He supports fracking
  • He opposes any federal policies to reduce student debt
  • He supports Citizens United
  • He wants to privatize Social Security
  • He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare
  • He opposes practically all forms of gun control
  • He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero
  • He wants to eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent flat tax

His position on choice is that it’s up to the states. So a woman’s “personal freedom” would be subject to whatever yahoos in the state capitol decide it is.

So it’s time for Millennials to both wake up and study up on the Libertarians. In honor of Gary Johnson, here is Little Feat with “Don’t Bogart that Joint”:

Little Feat made the song famous, but the song was written by the Fraternity of Man, an American blues rock group. The song was featured in the movie Easy Rider in 1969.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 25, 2016

So many stories competing for our attention this week. The bomber, the “driving while black” shootings, the upcoming debate.

Let’s start with Tulsa and Charlotte:

cow-aaa-b4-cops

And how many news reports do we hear about a stranded white motorist being shot, or a social worker lying on the ground with his hands in the air getting shot? The smart phone camera is the only disinfectant that may end this.

The Presidential candidates’ response to NYC and NJ bomber taught us quite a bit:

 

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

This shows the difference in the way Democrats and Republicans view the world. Democrats are trying to figure out why people are getting radicalized, who they are, and how to stop them. Republicans want to carpet bomb the place until the sands glow and let (their) god sort them out.

The Wells Fargo hearings gave us a rare moment of bi-partisan solidarity:

cow-shoot-wells

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrongo does not endorse killing anyone at Wells Fargo or any other bank or Wall Street firm. But is putting a few behind bars too much to ask?

The debate is tomorrow, but what on earth will they talk about?

cow-debate-topics

Facebooklinkedinrss

Hillary’s Challenge

Hillary’s campaign doesn’t dominate any news cycle, unless it’s a negative message about her emails, her health, or the deplorables.

She’s running lots of TV advertising, an idea that wasn’t completely effective even in 2012, and that probably hasn’t worked perfectly since the 1990s when Bill Clinton ran for president. As we pointed out in “Is Ignorance Bliss”:

Taken together, major network and cable TV accounts for 26.5 million viewers, or only 18.2% of registered voters.

Moreover, we said that more Americans are going elsewhere for information, specifically to mobile:

70% of those ages 18-29 either prefer, or only use mobile for getting their digital news, compared with 53% of those 30-49, 29% of those 50-64 and just 16% of those 65+.

Hillary was on a high right after the Democratic convention, largely because she articulated a positive vision for the country. But she was seduced by Trump’s gaffes about the Khan family who spoke at the convention, and went negative about the Pant Load for several weeks. After that, she seemed to go into a “run out the clock” strategy in August, interrupted by the “deplorables” comments and her lack of candor about her health.

Now it’s September, and she’s continuing to lose the news war, by not returning to promoting a positive vision that people can understand. She’s lost weeks, while ceding the floor to Trump and his spurious claims about her, and about the state of the country.

And she’s losing the millennials. Their attention spans aren’t attuned to the Clinton message, or to the medium that she uses to deliver it, while Trump is employing the number one axiom of celebrity: Stay in the picture, make noise, use mobile technology to deliver the word!

And Trump supporters understand that The Donald is a flawed messenger, but, like it or not, they hate Hillary, and what other people like Hillary stand for.

So that’s where we are with 50 days to go to the election. Hillary’s challenge is to reclaim her platform, and to speak about what will be different and better in America if she wins the election.

Playing down to the level of her opponent is likely to lead to a loss.

Here are a few links you might have missed:

After the bomb exploded in NYC, Uber customers discovered that Uber had doubled their fares. The Uber app said: “Fares have increased to get more Ubers on the road.” After complaints, they deactivated their surge pricing algorithm for the affected area in Chelsea. Uber was clearly following the advice of Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a crisis to go to waste.”

In some US cities, police are collecting DNA from people not charged with, or suspected of, any particular crime. Police in Florida and other states are building up private DNA databases, by asking for, and collecting voluntary samples. If you are innocent, why not comply?

ISIS has reportedly banned women wearing the burka in northern Iraq after claiming that its fighters have been targeted by a veiled female. Seems ironic that ISIS and the French are now on the same side, banning the burka for the same reason.

Chinese companies are quietly acquiring businesses in Rust-belt states. Chinese companies are setting up shop in Ohio and Michigan, key voter battlegrounds in November, where traditional manufacturing has been hollowed out — in many cases, by trade…with China. Fuyao Glass took over a GM facility and got a $9.7 million tax credit from the (Republican-run) state of Ohio, which also kicked in a $1 million grant for road work.

314 Springsteen songs ranked from first to last. Caryn Rose, of New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, ranked every Bruce Springsteen song. She put the list together in four days in a NYC hotel room. You know that the #1 song was “Born to Run”.

Tuesday calls for bonus music: Here are Dave and Phil Alvin, who founded the roots-rock band The Blasters in 1979. After not working together for years, they recorded an album in 2013. Now they’re back with “World’s in a Bad Condition” from their 2015 album, “Lost Time”:

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

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – September 19, 2016

As everyone now knows, a bomb went off in NYC on Saturday. NY Governor Cuomo later said it was a terror attack. A second bomb was found and defused a few blocks away, while a third, also thought to be terror-related, went off in Seaside, NJ. A Saturday knife attack in St. Cloud Minnesota that wounded nine was declared a terrorist act.

These events all happened the day before the UN General Assembly meets for a week in New York, so the  bombings could have serious political meaning. But politicians are telling us these events are not linked. Just a coincidence, they say.

Meanwhile, this could be Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare, as Donald Trump says we are not strong enough in the face of terrorism, while Hillary has said that we are “winning” the war on terra. Trump told a crowd in Colorado Springs:

I must tell you that just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in New York. And nobody knows exactly what’s going on. But boy, we are living in a time — we better get very tough, folks. We better get very, very tough…

Because we’re not tough enough on terror just yet.

So today’s wake up is about America’s fear. 15 years after 9/11, it’s hard to remember what this country was like before: How the American spirit was so much stronger at the height of the Cold War than it is today.

Back then, we feared the USSR and dying (frying) in a preemptive nuclear war. We all believed we would have no more than 20 minutes to prepare for Nuclear Armageddon. There were municipal fallout shelters. Some had shelters in their homes. We practiced getting under our desks at schools, even though we knew that would be fruitless.

But there was a very different feel to America back then. People were far from paralyzed by fear; they controlled their sense of imminent danger. There was a military draft. We worked, took the kids to sporting events, and our kids went to school every day with far less concern for their safety than today.

Since 9/11, we do face very real threats from terrorism, by actors both foreign and domestic. But, the probability of instant death like we had for 40 years, from the 1950s until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed, doesn’t exist today.

Wrongo is not a student of mass psychosis, but asks, if the nature of today’s threat, while serious, does not lead to instant death for millions of Americans, why are we so paralyzed by fear?  No IED is going to end America as we know it, no gun or knife-toting terrorist is going to kill millions of Americans.

A zero domestic deaths from terrorism policy is doomed to failure.

For the past 15 years our last two presidents have said: “my first responsibility is to keep you safe.” But, haven’t we really needed leaders who would say: “my first responsibility is to defend your freedom and personal liberty?”

But no politician today would dare say that, because no one would vote for them. This is the nation we have become after 9/11, and we need to wake up before we surrender even more of the freedoms guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.

To help America wake up, here is “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, from their 2012 album, “Night Visions”. The song was Rolling Stone’s “Biggest Rock Hit of the Year” in 2013. This video has had almost 600 million views since it was posted:

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

Sample Lyrics:

I’m waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh,  I’m radioactive, radioactive
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, I’m radioactive, radioactive

I raise my flags, don my clothes
It’s a revolution, I suppose
We’re painted red to fit right in

I’m breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse

Welcome to the new age indeed!

People should learn about England and Ireland during the Sinn Fein bombing attacks that lasted from 1969 to 2001. Wrongo lived in London for part of that time, and while fear existed and the risk was real, people dusted themselves off, and soldiered on.

We should not let fear decide our Presidential election, or further vitiate the Constitution.

Let’s all WAKE UP!

Facebooklinkedinrss