You recently told Larry Wilmore that you now find yourself regretful about your role in pushing a "false equivalence" between Hillary Clinton's actions and those of Donald Trump during Big Media's coverage of the 2016 US presidential race.
Fine.
There's just one thing:
You're too freakin' late!
The whole problem is that you, your buddies at CNN, and counterparts at America's other newsgathering television networks pushed this "false equivalence" to begin with.
After all, Jeffrey, you work for Jeff Zucker...the same man who, when he headed up NBC Entertainment, helped Trump's The Apprentice get on the air in the first place.
You people were so smitten over the prospect of one of your medium's biggest stars landing the most talked-about job in politics that you failed to see the danger signs...such as his studying Adolf Hitler's speeches for ideas on how to handle things.
By telling your viewers that Clinton- one of the most politically-experienced major-party nominees in a long, long time- is just as wretched as Trump, you helped usher in a period where, when Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, and Co. are through doing their damage to this country's government, we won't have a constitutional republic anymore...let alone a shot at a real democracy.
You helped usher in a time where America's now the laughingstock of Planet Earth.
ARE YOU SATISFIED??
Instead of going for truth, you folks in Big Media wasted the 6-15-2015/11-8-2016 period going strictly for ratings...and you consistently think the way to get those good-looking Nielsen numbers is to portray every US political campaign as a horse race.
The way I see it, we stopped having presidencies on 1-20-2017.
Instead, we've got an emperor/king/dictator/premier/generalissimo.
I hope you're happy, Jeffrey.
Like millions of other Americans, I'm still smarting over what happened three Tuesdays ago.
That's right...unless at least 41 electors get some spine and decide to vote their conscience when they and the remaining 497 electors meet on 12-19-2016 (or unless the current recount effort in four states bears real fruit), the United States will official go under a fascist government as early as 1-20-2017.
Inauguration Day.
Think about it...if you haven't been doing so already.
Then think back to 12-26-1991 (if you were around back then).
That day happened to be the one in which the Soviet Union officially broke up (after all fifteen of its old socialist republics, one by one, declared their independence).
What if some regions of the United States declared their own independence?
After all, it's now estimated that on 11-8-2016, 62 million US voters- whether they thought so or not, knew it or not, liked it or not- decided they'd rather live under fascist rule.
What if they had their own country...the old Confederacy plus some states in the Northwest and Midwest?
Due to the geographical implications, the states to the west of this new Confederacy would be an entirely different nation...hopefully, one run as the republic America was supposedly set up to be.
And the same thing would go for the new country north of this revived CSA.
Oh, well...it's just a thought.
What do YOU think?
Is splitting these fifty states three ways the only answer to satisfy Trump supporters, Clinton fans, and everybody else?
This date, too, will live in infamy.
That's because yesterday, hatred and bigotry won out.
That's all there is to it.
Yesterday, American voters- as a whole- chose to replace Barack Obama with a PROVEN racist/sexist/misogynist/homophobe/Islamophobe who's studied Adolf Hitler's speeches.
And they were aided and abetted by the reporters, producers, and executives from the nation's biggest media companies...as well as by FBI director James Comey.
Many claim they never saw this coming. But they might have forgotten about how, in 2010, voters joined with those Democrats who chose to stay home in giving the US House of Representatives back to the Republicans...and, four years later, repeated the process with this country's Senate.
Handing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue back to the Elephants was the next step.
Those who decided to go with Donald Trump just spat on the graves of all those American veterans who died during World War 2- people who gave up their lives in an effort to keep German/Italian/Japanese totalitarian rule from reaching America's shores.
So now, as early as 1-20-2017, Trump could call a fascist government.
I wouldn't put it past him, knowing his supersized ego.
It isn't as if we weren't warned, what with years of evidence that DJT doesn't give a hoot about rank-and-file citizens.
And when many of this country's Trump supporters find out he really doesn't give a crap about them, they'll express remorse over giving control of the US government to the one-time host of TV's The Apprentice...instead of letting one of the most qualified presidential nominees in history take the reins.
Those Trump supporters' eventual tears and sadness will prove useless and meaningless.
What's more, media personalities such as CNN's Dana Bash and NBC's Matt Lauer might privately express grief over allowing this con artist to become this year's Republican nominee, let alone the leader of the American people. And Bash's boss, Jeff Zucker (the same man who, when he was president of NBC Entertainment, got The Apprentice on the air), might eventually start expressing sadness...if only in private.
Me, I stopped watching corporate news programs the night of 11-4-2014. After all, news is news, not entertainment...contrary to what Zucker and CBS CEO Les Moonves teach.
But now, I'm going to stop watching ANYTHING the Big Media companies have to offer, now that this has happened.
They have to pay for their part in bringing eventual (if not immediate) full-fledged fascist rule to the United States...just as those voters who thought Trump would be better than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton must pay for their decision.
If you're just as worked up about what just took place at the polls as I am (and yes, I voted yesterday), then you're welcome to join me in this boycott of CBS', Comcast's, Disney's, News Corporation's, and Time Warner's shows.
Yesterday, America threw it all away.
With the whole world watching.
I took a look at the opinion page in this past Sunday's Omaha World-Herald...and was stunned out of my wits.
Then a smile crept onto my face.
The paper's editorial staff decided to go ahead and endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton to be America's 45th president.
I don't know how long Nebraska's largest newspaper has made presidential endorsements, but I do know this: It's only the second time since the Great Depression began this month in 1929 that the World-Herald thought a Democrat would be better off calling the shots from the Oval Office than a Republican.
In fact, the fact that Wall Street laid that egg on 10-29-1929 led the OWH's then editors to tell their readers that it was time to kick Republican Herbert Hoover out of the White House and put Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in there for 1932. (Hoover- who died on this very date in 1964- was America's commerce secretary from 1921 to 1928; some historians feel he was the best chief this country's Commerce Department ever had.)
In the intervening 84 years- with one exception- the World-Herald went strictly with GOP nominees. (The paper's editors didn't endorse a presidential nominee in 1964.)
When it came to 2016, editor-in-chief Terry Kroeger joined the rest of the editorial staff in biting their fingernails over Endorsement Time.
They could've decided to sit out Endorsement Time.
Instead, Kroeger and his people made Clinton their choice...albeit with some trepidation. Sunday's editorial cited the fact that many Americans are still ticked off about Clinton's private email server from her days (2009-13) in charge of this country's State Department, all those deleted emails, and her handling of the 9-11-2012 attack at the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.
Kroeger and Co. even cited some Americans' anxiety over HRC stumping for a single-payer health-care system, American style.
The 10-16-2016 editorial, nevertheless, said that giving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to Donald Trump just wouldn't cut it.
Trump's alienated too many people (especially those who aren't male, Caucasian, professing Christian, heterosexual, and/or wealthy), failed to show a real grasp of current events, and repeatedly shown a bent for lashing out whenever he's attacked.
Et cetera.
The World-Herald top brass gave Clinton the nod over her vast governmental and political experience...from her days as Arkansas' first lady all the way to her 2016 US presidential bid (her second one ever, of course).
And the paper's editors thought that kind of experience would make the difference in a world whose most closely-watched land (yep, this one) has a debt of nearly $20 billion and whose Middle East region is once again a ticking time bomb.
To sum it all up, Kroeger and his staff said that the first lady-turned-US senator from New York-turned US secretary of state needs to show she's a uniter once she gets the job that her husband Bill once had (1993-2001).
I think she'll do it...as long as we help out.
And I congratulate the OWH staff for endorsing HRC instead of DJT.
First of all, she wants to get America's multimillionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share to invest in the country they loudly proclaim they love. (Her solution: A "Fair Share Surcharge" on their taxes.)
She wants to use the proceeds from that surcharge to fund the nation's ambitious investments.
She wants to simplify and cut taxes for small businesses so that those firms can hire and grow.
She'd like to launch a $7.5 billion fund for new federal-and-state partnerships so that local leaders can cook up programs to treat and prevent drug addiction...whether the drug is alcohol, meth, cocaine, marijuana, or anything in between.
She's got a 100-days jobs plan that emphasizes repairing America's infrastructure, bringing more manufacturing jobs to these shores, aiding small businesses, propping up research and technology, and making clean energy more of a reality for these fifty states.
Speaking of clean energy...she's proposed a $60 billion program to not only promote clean energy, but also to cut carbon pollution.
She wants 500 million new solar panels up and in use by 1-20-2021.
She's out to give America's college students a debt-free experience.
What's more, she wants to make that college experience a safer one...by giving this country's institutions of higher learning more of the tools they'll need to end campus sexual assault.
She wants $2 billion invested annually for research to prevent, treat, and- by 2025- find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease.
She vows to end the heinous 2010 Corporations United (oops, I mean Citizens United) decision...and to get dark money out of US politics once and for all.
She'll vow to help the coalition air campaign against the Islamic State, increase support for local Arab and Kurdish forces, and use diplomacy to end Syria's civil war.
She'll also work hand in hand with European intelligence officials to spot and stop those groups and individuals who've been funding and enabling terrorism.
She wants a meaningful, healthy dialog with America's Muslims...a far cry from the stance taken by her biggest rival for the top spot in America's government.
On top of that, she thinks it's a great idea to let the FBI stop gun sales to suspected terrorists...and she thinks it's cool to give the country's first responders all the help they need to fight terrorism on these shores.
There's a lot more where this came from (including said nominee's Website).
I'm going with the nominee who's got more government experience than the other three nominees out there for 2016 combined.
Take it from a man who started 2016 going for US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as the Democrats' presidential nominee.
America's much better off going with Hillary Jane Rodham Clinton as the replacement for fellow Democrat Barack Obama.
Don't believe all the lies you've heard about the former first lady/US senator/US secretary of state.
He's disparaged Mexicans, labeling them as murderers, rapists, and drug runners.
He's called African-American people lazy...and said "they can't help it."
He's talked about banning (or at least curtailing) immigration to America, and he doesn't want Muslims to travel to these United States "until we can figure out what to do with them."
He still wants to build that wall along the US-Mexico border.
His weapons of first choice: Nuclear bombs.
He's made dirty, rotten, filthy remarks about women of all colors. To say he's got utter contempt for women is an understatement.
He poked fun at a reporter (Serge Kovaleski of The New York Times) who's surviving cerebral palsy.
He's made it clear that if you disagree with him in any way, shape, or form (especially if you're a news reporter), you'll suffer dire consequences. (Just ask the folks at The Washington Post. They're not allowed to interview him anymore.)
He still insists Barack Obama (who's got the job our subject is after) wasn't even born here in the US...despite planeloads of evidence showing otherwise.
He's got a cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin...and thinks it's cool for the KGB to spy on Americans.
He's suggested that his chief 2016 US presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, should be murdered by Second Amendment advocates.
As a real-estate tycoon, he's filed for bankruptcy six times and been sued 3,000 times.
He's too darned chicken to disclose his income tax returns.
He's been known to shortchange his rank-and-file employees and to stiff his contractors. What's more, he wants to see the nation's minimum wage lowered.
All along the campaign trail, he's incited violence...time and time and tiresome time again.
He's got too enormous an ego to compromise, to delegate...to actually do the job he's seeking.
With his authoritarian bent, he isn't really running for the presidency. He's running to be the nation's first dictator.
He doesn't give a crap about the country's rank-and-file citizens. It's all about HIM, HIM, HIM.
His whole campaign has been built on bigotry.
With him in front of the Republican Party, the GOP continues to represent the biggest threat to any hope for democracy in these United States.
He's been treating his whole campaign as if it were another season of The Apprentice.
The bottom line:
We Americans have a moral obligation to make DOGGONE SURE Donald John Trump doesn't give the next inaugural address.
After all, the whole world is watching us.
Yesterday, for the second (and final) time in his life, Barack Obama took the oath of office as President of the United States. (I ended up making a DVD copy of the inauguration ceremonies, then watching C-SPAN's rerun of the ceremonies when I got home from work last night.)
And as much as I liked Obama's first inaugural address (1-20-2009), I liked his second one better.
One phrase kept sticking out as the nation's 44th chief executive gave what turned out to be a 14-minute speech: "We the People."
In addition, one other word stuck out: "Together."
The former US senator from Illinois talked about how it's on ALL of us to keep this undertaking called America going...by using solutions that are unique to OUR time, OUR day and age to deal with the problems that we're right now facing.
And, just as Ronald Reagan put the glow on the conservative point of view when he gave his first address as this country's president (1-20-1981), Obama put the halo on the liberal way of doing things in government. [Well, I like to think so! After all, take a look at what happened to the earning power and the buying power of rank-and-file Americans since the former host of TV's General Electric Theater assumed the biggest role he ever had. (They've gone down since 1981.)]
Last week (in fact, on 1-16-2013), this father of two daughters signed 23 executive orders into law. And it was all part of the most extensive gun-control plan since...well, since Reagan got in. (If not that, since an assault-weapon ban was signed into law in 1994 by none other than Bill Clinton.)
The new executive orders include more sharing of government data for background checks, better databases, and government research into why we've got gun violence here in the US. (Don't worry: Improved school safety and better mental-health services will be covered through the new directives.)
On top of that, I like how we're finally going to have a new chief at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
It'd been far too long since an ATFE chief was appointed.
The vacancy- and so many other appointments- would've been filled these last four years if it hadn't been for (let's not kid ourselves) all those Republicans in Congress.
One of those sticks in the mud (oops, I mean Republicans), US Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), wants to get legislation pushed through to block all 23 executive orders. (Paul the Younger thinks Obama's acting like a king.)
Then you've got US Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), who just got back the same seat he had in the mid-1990s, about the time Clinton signed the assault-weapon ban into law.
All Stockman wants is the impeachment of the newest lefthander to call the shots from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Stockman thinks the executive orders are a White House overreach.
No, it's just like Sasha's and Malia's dad said: "We're all in this together." (And what's to do when a Republican-led House simply won't act on one issue after another?)
The previous (112th) Congress passed the fewest bills of any such group since the Congresses Harry Truman had to deal with in the late 1940s: 68 of 'em. Instead of tackling the budget, the debt ceiling, America's infrastructure, and jobs (that last one was the issue all those new US reps who got elected in 2010 loudly proclaimed they'd deal with first and foremost), the House Republicans have, instead, gone on witch hunts...trying to take down not only Obama himself, but also Attorney General Eric Holder as well as the millions of women who use contraceptives.
I don't know if either Paul (Rand or his father Ron) showed up to the inaugural proceedings. Can't tell you if Stockman came to the Capitol to see the ceremonies. But I did see House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and US Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) walk across my TV screen (and millions of other people's TV screens).
And Ryan and Boehner might have been thinking: "What am I doing here?"
Speaking of Ryan, I like how BHO shot down both PDR's notion that we're a nation of takers and the whole idea that the three most successful government programs to come out these United States (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) have weakened the country.
Those three programs have actually helped Americans live longer than was the case in the 1930s.
To sum it all up, I like what Michelle's husband wants to do with the next four years...and I like his message that, regardless of what we look like, what we believe for a religion, where we were born, etc., etc., we've ALL got a stake in trying to improve the world's most talked-about, most envied, most closely-watched nation there is.
And I'm going to try my best to help. (How about you?)
