Oh my, the internet is on FIRE today.  Nasty political name calling is rampant.   It seems like we're on the verge of a coast-to-coast cage match.

From a slightly different perspective, let me ask you this:  Eventually Special Counsel Robert Mueller will come back with the findings of his year-long investigation.  If you're a PRO-Trumper, and the news comes back saying there WAS collusion between the Trump camp and Russia, will you accept the findings, after a trial by jury?  And if you're an ANTI-Trumper, and the news comes back saying there was NO collusion between the Trump camp and Russia, will you accept the findings?

Regardless of your preference, if you say you will NOT accept the findings of a thorough investigation (pending a proper trial if applicable) if it goes against your preferred outcome, then I contend you're an ANARCHIST.  You're not a patriot, or a loyal American, but a traitor to the principles our country was founded on. You're an ANARCHIST.  

Of course you can have an opinion, and you can bemoan a decision that goes against how you personally believe.  But if enough of you no longer care about democracy and the rule of law, then America is finished.   FINIS!  Turn out the lights....

So then what?  Is it every man for himself?  Do our AR-15's suddenly become useful for more than just "recreation"? And if the United States of America someday disintegrates, who's the big winner?  Who will be the world's BIG DOG still standing?  Think about that.

I say we'd best come back to reality, take a deep breath, and work together for the good of the country.  

Country over politics!

S

Life is easy again

My friend Joe Hagy recently posted an entry on his blog (you can read it here), the gest being that things that might have interested you when you were younger no longer seemed important when you got older.  Your grand plans when you were 25 become just meh when you're 65.

Joe, being a few years older than me, and therefore probably a few years wiser, really nailed it.  It's probably just human nature to aspire to have "more better" stuff.  First you buy a "starter" home, then a "move-up" home, and eventually a "luxury" home.  You buy your first new car, lets say a Chevy or Ford, then you move up to something with a more impressive nameplate (Caddy, etc) and finally to a Lexus or Mercedes or such.  Your Seiko might work just fine, but you have your eye on a Rolex or an Omega.  Then, speaking for myself, and apparently Joe, too, you reach an age where you realize all that is pretty much meaningless.

I had my first home when I was 23.  It was larger than I needed and had a HUGE yard.  I was suddenly a member of the landed gentry!  Then later, with a family of five, we moved into a larger, nicer home, on par with what our friends also had.  (Ahhh...the joys of peer pressure.)  Eventually I had an even larger home, still on a BIG city lot, but now just for the new Mrs and I.  (Have I mentioned how much I hate yard work?)  Eventually I hit that inflection point in my life when that big home seemed more a liability than an asset.  By then I didn't care about impressing anyone, I just knew I was tired of messing with it, so I sold it.  Now we have a small but comfortable maintenance-free apartment.  Life is easy again.

I once wanted a fancy sports car so much I lost sleep thinking about it.  A Porsche 911 to be specific.  I almost bought a new one in 1972 ($9,500 back then), but chickened out when I learned how much it cost to maintain.  Later, with three kiddlettes, I moved on to fancy American land yachts.  Now that I might (?) be able to afford the kind of car I dreamed of as a young man, I don't want one.  I couldn't enjoy going out for dinner or popping into Target for a few things without worrying what a$$hole was parking his klunker next to me and was right then banging his car door into mine.  *the horror!* Now I just drive my modest little Mazda to the car shows and take pictures of all those exotic cars other people are having to pamper and worry over.  Life is easy again.

I once wanted an expensive watch.  I worked my way up through Bulova's and Seiko's and got as far as a TAG Heuer when I learned a dirty little secret about luxury watches:  They don't keep very good time.  They make a great "statement", but they don't keep very good time.  Mine were always needing adjustment every few weeks because they had lost a few minutes.  To a punctual-aholic like me, that was tantamount to a Cardinal Sin.  And, as with my cars, I was always paranoid about bumping into something and scratching my precious "statement".  "Screw it" I finally said.  I still have that TAG in a drawer somewhere, but now I wear a cheap, solar powered Casio that receives a magic signal every day from an atomic clock in Colorado and is guaranteed accurate to within .00001 seconds per century*.  I can live with that.  *wink*  Life is easy again.

At some point in your life, if you're like me at least, you might realize that living easy is more important than living large.  If people aren't impressed with me, living in an apartment, driving a Mazda, showing up on time thanks to my cheap Casio watch, dressed in my retirement wardrobe (jeans and a T-shirt), then I don't need 'em.  My dog seems to like our lifestyle just fine, and he's more important to me than those people are anyway.  :)

S

*slight exaggeration

Jeeves, call and have them gas up the jet....

Today let's look into the world of mega-real estate developers.  Their's is a capital (cash) intensive business if there ever was one, with projects regularly requiring BILLIONS of dollars.  Unlike you and I, commercial developers don't go online to Lendingtree to see their four best offers.  These wheeler dealers are constantly on the lookout for new financing as, unlike our 30-year mortgages, they usually can only borrow money for five years at a time.  After five years their bankers can either renew their loans for another five years or demand their loans be paid back in full.  *Yikes!*  Hence developers are always networking, hoping to have new lenders at the ready if need be.

This is the world Donald Trump the developer dealt with every day.  That world nearly crashed and burned back in 1991 when his Atlantic City Taj Mahal casino failed, putting him $4B in debt.  After that debacle the major Wall Street banks declared Donald Trump persona non grata and declined to finance him any longer.  Enter billionaire financier Wilbur Ross, then an investment banker working for Rothschild, Inc.  He negotiated a deal that saved Trump, and the two have remained good friends to this day.  (Wilbur Ross is currently President Trump's Secretary of Commerce.)

In 2014, Ross, who personally made billions buying failing companies, turning them around, and then selling them for a handsome profit, turned his interests to the troubled Bank of Cyprus, on the small island nation in the eastern Mediterranean.  Injecting $400M, he became the bank's Co-Vice Chairman, along with Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and President Vladimir Putin ally.  (The bank had long been a favorite depository for Russian oligarch wealth.)

One of Ross’s first big decisions at the bank was the appointment of former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann as chairman.  Ackermann’s ties to Russia were especially strong, including a warm relationship with President Putin.  Cyprus was one of the places the Obama administration was worried about because it was seen as a place that could help Russian entities evade US sanctions imposed after its seizure of the Crimea.  

The FBI has since requested from the Central Bank of Cyprus information connected to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks.

It was with Deutsche Bank that Donald Trump began borrowing in 1998, and who he (his company) owes $360M+/-.  In 2016 Deutsche Bank was under investigation by the Justice Department for both its role in a "mirror trading" scheme with Russian oligarchs that allowed them to launder cash out of Russia in the face of US sanctions, and for its mortgage practices amid the financial crisis, for which regulators sought a $14B fine.   (They settled for a $7.2B fine.)  Deutsche Bank is also a major lender to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's family business.

In July 2016, it was reported US banking regulators as well as special counsel Robert Mueller were reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans Deutsche Bank made to Trump over the past two decades. 

Besides building and owning properties, the Trump organization also "brands" projects, meaning he puts his prestigious name on buildings owned by others in exchange for an equity interest.  One of those was the Trump Soho in NYC.  It seems the building was owned by Bayrock, which was sued by former Bayrock partner Jody Kriss with it alleged that "for most of its existence Bayrock was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated," engaging "in a pattern of continuous, related crimes, including mail, wire, and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering; conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement."  

One of Bayrock's founders was Russian-born Felix Sater, a two-time convicted felon.  When publicly exposed, Trump de-branded the project saying he caught none of this while doing his "due diligence".  Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking at this, too.

Whew....this is dizzying!  Anyway, now Donald Trump is President, now Mr. Mueller is investigating, and we're here wondering what, if anything, is going on.  It might possibly come out that the election of 2016 wasn't Donald Trump's first time to receive help from the Russians.  Who knows?

Oh yeah, the LifeSTYLE of The Rich And Famous:

It's pretty sweet!

S

Now hiring...no interview necessary...just show up

I have an honest question for you, a question that I don't have the answer to.  I'm hoping you do.

Thankfully our economy is flying high.  Our official unemployment rate is around 4%, which I've always heard was considered "full employment".  Those final 4% who weren't employed (and perhaps that many more who weren't even looking) were often said to prefer welfare to a minimum wage job, couldn't pass a drug test, had a violent criminal history, etc, which made them "unemployable".

In my area (Dallas) there are "help wanted" signs everywhere you turn, especially in food service and retail.  In the construction field additional plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc, are desperately needed.  The same goes for the health care industry, too.

Now Congress has passed and the President has signed a tax cut bill hoping that many companies will plan major expansions and create millions of new jobs.  So far there have already been announcements by Intel, Apple, Amazon, and many more that they are now hiring.  Right now Amazon is looking for a location to build a second headquarters (what exactly is a second headquarters?) promising 50,000 jobs to the winning city....on and on.

The Trump administration is threatening to deport the "dreamers", kids who were brought here by their parents who entered the US illegally.  They say there are 800,000 dreamers who are here now in school, in the military, and working.  If those who are now employed are deported, that will mean even more job vacancies.

My question is now obvious.  Where are we going to find quality candidates to fill all the positions we already have, plus the new jobs being created, plus the vacancies created by dreamers (and others) leaving, plus normal job attrition?  

It sounds like we're already scraping the bottom of the employment pool barrel right now.  Isn't this likely to mean a wild bidding spree by employers, driving up wages and salaries for those willing to change jobs?  Good for employees, sure, but won't that also create serious inflationary pressures?

This reminds me of the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for."  It's truly a blessing to have this "problem", but please tell me, where are all these new workers going to come from?

S

Just the facts, ma'am

There was a popular cops-and-robbers TV show back in the fifties, Dragnet, where Sgt. Joe Friday was famous for saying,  "...the facts ma'am.  Just the facts."  He wasn't interested in hearing opinions or innuendo, just the facts.

Fast forward 60 years and we seem to have forgotten Sgt. Joe's mantra.  Today President Trump has made "fake news" his mantra.  He implies that everything that comes out of the news media, especially ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post...virtually everyone except his favorite, FOX News...is "fake", not true, a lie.  Dismissing the press en masse like this is dangerous.

The true problem lies between our own ears.  We hear factual news and the accompanying editorial and believe it all or not at all.  We have become such shallow thinkers we don't know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.  And to make things worse, most of us only read/listen to whatever reinforces what we want to believe.  Opposing views are not tolerated.

For example, the news might report that John Smith was caught on surveillance video robbing a convenience store and is now in custody.   The police have video and the eyewitness account of the clerk who was robbed, and the perp is indeed behind bars.  So far, this is a fact.   But then a conservative news outlet might add "...and now this vicious predator is off the streets" while a liberal outlet might say "...he looked to be homeless and hungry".  

If you've ever been on a jury panel you'll remember the judge asking if you've seen news coverage of the alleged crime and have a pre-conceived opinion of guilt or innocence.  This is how our inability to separate fact from opinion can skew justice.

The truth is, most serious investigative journalism today seems to originate from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and just a few others.  The facts they uncover and print or put on the air must be corroborated or else they're setting themselves up for a massive libel suit.  Unless their facts can be credibly refuted with real, conflicting evidence, they should be believed.  What they write on their editorial page is just for entertainment value.  

If we can't learn this difference, our long-term democracy is in jeopardy.  Wise up people, or get run over!

S

Why yes, I always carry my pet snake around my neck. Doesn't everybody?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to accompany the Mrs to an anti-Trump rally in downtown Dallas.  The first thing I noticed when we arrived was how flamboyant many of the protesters were.   For example, there were a few holding signs that said "F___TRUMP!", and a contingent from the LGBT community wearing rainbow flags as capes and dressed in attire hoping to get themselves on the 6 PM news.  It seemed to me they were appealing to those already on their side. 

Several of the speakers, based on their manner of presentation (not necessarily their agenda) were obviously, to me at least, in need of medication.  Their common stated goal was to see President Trump out of office and a Democratic majority in power.  I don't see how they could think their behavior and inflamed, angry rhetoric would help their cause.  (On the other side, literally and figuratively, and with police in between, were the white supremacists dressed in all black spewing their venom.)

Politically speaking, a poll taken late last year showed 24% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, 31% identify themselves as Democrats,  BUT 42% IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AS INDEPENDENTS.  It will always be these independent voters who will push one party or the other over the top into power.

I remember decades ago during the Vietnam war when Senator Eugene McCarthy was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.  His campaign appealed to many youths (read: hippies) who were tired of the establishment.  They were often a rather unwashed looking group, so McCarthy implored his kids to "Be Clean For Gene".  He didn't ask them to give up their anti-war message, but to come across as thoughtful, respectful citizens not likely to repulse the independents whose votes they were courting.  A shallow charade?  Ummm, yes, but a smart charade if they expected to woo Main Street Americans.  (I guess they weren't clean enough as McCarthy didn't get the nomination.)

I see the Democrats in a similar position today.  By all means they should hold their rallies, carry their signs, make their speeches, and ask for volunteers and support.  But it seems to me they would have better success getting their school teacher neighbor, their plumber, their HR director at work, etc, to vote for their cause if they came across as more disciplined and less flamboyant.  Yes, shallow or not, image matters.

Just my opinion....

S

EDIT:  My wife has taken exception to my phrase, "there was a 'contingent'...."  There were not dozens, if that's your definition of "contingent", but there were three wearing flags as capes, one guy wearing a plaid skirt (I don't think it was a kilt), one guy wearing Ragged Ann-style makeup, and a dozen +/- signs saying "F___". 

If there comes a time when an opposition party sends a cameraman there, rest assured those are the ones they will put front and center on their campaign literature to use as scare tactics.  I say why give them any ammunition.

Again, just my opinion....

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. (Albert Einstein)

France, after losing 1.7 million of their citizens in World War I, finally emerged victorious but traumatized.  They were scared to death the Germans would some day re-militarize and attack again.  To prepare for this eventuality they built a 450-mile-long, 15-mile deep series of interconnected fortifications, known as the Maginot Line, with its fixed-in-place guns pointed toward Germany.  It stopped short of the Ardennes forest as that was considered an impenetrable natural obstacle.  Their only unguarded eastern border was with Belgium, where the French planned to mass their forces if the Germans were to ever attack via that route.  They were feeling pretty secure.

While the Maginot Line looked formidable, a few enlightened military leaders of the time, among them Charles de Gaulle, thought differently.  They preferred a more mobile defense centered around tanks and airplanes.  They knew if the Germans should break through at any one point, they could react and respond quickly.  Their view did not prevail.

On May 10, 1940 France's worst fear came true, in spades.  The Germans attacked, but not directly toward the Maginot Line, which the French were prepared for, or through Belgium, where the French had troops poised to defend, but through the supposedly natural barrier of the Ardennes forest.  The Germans punched through, then swung north to outflank the French and British Expeditionary Force (did you see the movie Dunkirk?), and south where they came in BEHIND the Maginot Line with its immovable guns pointed in the wrong direction.  Game, set, match.  The French defenses folded like a card table. 

Fast forward 78 years and now it's the United States concerned about its southern border, and rightly so.  Drug smugglers, gun runners, human traffickers, and others have their eyes on us.  They want in.  The border security system we have now is only marginally effective.  Those who say we need something more are completely correct.  But as history should have taught us, those who say we need a massive, enormously expensive, fixed-in-place structure are completely wrong.

The Maginot Line didn't work for the French in 1940, and a Trump Wall won't work for the US in 2018.  What we need is security that is maneuverable, strong, and fast reacting.  Imagine, for example, a sizeable fleet of small manned patrol aircraft, and many more drones than we have now, too, backed up with the ability to very rapidly bring in overwhelming manpower anywhere along our border to deal with any intruders.  

Our adversaries are smart.  State-of-the-art security measures that might work today will likely prove to be laughable just a few years from now. That's how fast technology is changing.  The Maginot Line became a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.  Let's not make that same mistake all over again with a tall, low-tech wall.  Let's be smart for once.

S

And the beat goes on....

Before I ever heard the term "sociology" I was fascinated by the subject.  Why did our society develop the way it did?  Why do we live the way we do?

Sometimes we're too close to the forest to see the trees.  Things are changing dramatically before our eyes, but I sometimes think we're too busy to truly recognize how revolutionary this change has been.  Here's what I've seen in just my 67 years walking upright:

My family did their weekly grocery shopping at Wyatt's.  When we went out for dinner (which was often in my house) we usually went to Plaza Cafeteria or Harris Restaurant or CreMel's.  To get our prescriptions filled we went to Payne's Drug Store, which was just a block away from our other local pharmacy, McKnights.  Our theater was the Plaza in downtown Garland.

For a good hamburger we went to Scott's Cafe.  (I was named after the Scott family.  It must have been a damn fine hamburger!)  Payne's Drug Store's soda fountain was our go-to place for ice cream, too.  Our sporting goods store was on Garland Road near Duck Creek (I can't remember its name).  We bought furniture from Rick's Furniture, and appliances from Hollingshead's.  We bought cars from Ken Pruitt Buick, R O Evans Pontiac, Freeman Oldsmobile, or Jackson's Chevrolet.  Mr Thedford was our mechanic.

For a new bicycle or lawnmower or anything hardware we went to see Mr Lloyd at Plaza Hardware.  (There were a lot of businesses named "Plaza" in our town.  Wonder why?)  Our news came from one of the two Dallas newspapers (and 30 minutes a day from Walter Cronkite).  Homes were built by local builders.  I remember ours was built by a Mr Satterwhite. 

The best barbecue came from Moore's, the best donuts came from the Asian family whose name I can't recall, and our tamales were made by the Hispanic man that sold them from a push cart on the town square.  Mom bought her clothes from Stern's, and dad and I went to Jim Holland's Men's Wear or Ken's Man's Shoppe.  Our bank was the First National.

Did you notice a common theme here?  Every business I mentioned was locally owned by one of our neighbors.  Today these have all been replaced by national chain stores, run by people we'll never meet, often from a thousand miles away.  Home Depot put Plaza Hardware out of business.  Pharmacies are now monopolized by CVS or Walgreens.  Restaurants are now most likely to be named Chili's or Applebee's or McDonald's or Red Lobster.  Most people get their groceries from Walmart or Target or Kroger.  Whether you realize it or not almost all car dealers are now part of giant dealership conglomerates.  24/7/365 cable news now dominates how (and what) we learn what's going on in the world.  On and on....

Now this second generation of retail businesses are themselves fighting for their lives.  Thousands are closing every year, and it's estimated that 20% of America's malls will close within five years.  Retailers are calling this time absolutely apocalyptic.  

Today we're entering the Age-of-Cyber-Everything, and the prototype is without doubt Amazon.  (Thank you Mr Bezos, or curse your Mr Bezos....TBD.)  Millions of hometown businesses were replaced by a few thousand national chains, and now those are well on their way to being replaced by...what...ultimately just a few hundred MEGA players?

I find this fascinating, and somewhat frightening, too.  Wonder what's next?  Interesting times....

S

So tell us...have you stopped beating your wife?

Donald Trump's worst enemy is without doubt his own mouth, and it has his lawyers sweating...umm...bullets.

Yesterday I heard several legal experts who were asked if Donald Trump has to speak to Robert Mueller's investigators under oath.  Their unanimous answer:  yes he does.  Some Supreme Court decision awhile back (Nixon...Clinton?) said if subpoenaed, the President must appear and answer questions.  Trump's lawyers can indeed try to negotiate favorable terms for him, but Mueller is in the drivers seat.  "I don't remember" will likely backfire as these slick gubment prosecutors can ask seemingly innocent, unrelated questions that are all really leading up to the same answer, one they already know the answer to.  

Where Bill Clinton's Rhodes Scholar mind carefully considered the question before he answered "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is", Trump will just blurt out whatever first comes into his mind.  He doesn't understand the concept of "the powerful pause" before answering.  Proof?  See yesterday's "shithole African countries" comment.

They said if President Trump's lawyers can't negotiate a deal whereby he can answer written questions with written answers carefully crafted by them, they'll likely advise the President to just pardon everyone remotely involved and then resign.

Interesting times.

S

Why have Republicans gone all weak-kneed?

Back in the bad old Cold War days the terms "Russia" and "Communist" and "Soviet Union" were commonly interchanged.  By the time the Soviet Union officially collapsed in 1991, communism as a social movement had long since died.  Even the Soviet leaders knew communism was a failed economic philosophy, even though they couldn't say it out loud.  At the end they were just trying desperately to hold on to power, and they couldn't.

Russia's current President, ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin, has never forgotten the power the old Soviet Union once wielded, and is obsessed with seeing Russia regain its lost prestige in the world.  Today Russia is essentially a vast organized crime family.  Putin is the "Don", and he enables Russia's rich oligarchs, and they in turn support him. They're old school thugs.

Back in the Cold War days America's preeminent anti-communists were Republicans.  They were the hard-line hawks and the Democrats were considered the doves.  Any time "Russia" was uttered, Republicans sat up straight and clenched their fists.  They were itching for a fight, looking for an excuse to slap down the despised Russians.

So what happened?  Republicans have gone soft.  Today all our intelligence agencies, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, 100% agree the Russians are doing everything they can to weaken the cohesiveness and the will of the west.  They've pulled out all the stops in their effort to harm us, short of a hot war.  They use our social media to clandestinely foment social unrest here.  We've caught them red handed doing it.  

We know for a fact they have at least tried to reach out to candidate Donald Trump's campaign in 2016, hoping to influence our election.  Yet today's Republicans are showing no teeth, no backbone, no willingness to stand up to Russia.  Yes, Republicans voted for more sanctions against Russia, and President Trump signed it under protest....and then never implemented it.  They all just say, "Nope...nope...no Russians in here.  There's no story.  Everyone go home."  And if anyone calls them out, they threaten them with a lawsuit.  Republicans seem more concerned about punishing who said it than pursuing what they said.


Why are Republicans, our former hawks, our most vicious protectors of American democracy, now so willing to look the other way at Putin's shenanigans?  I don't get it.

S

Better late than never

While it might be five or six years too late, it looks like the FBI is finally going to look into a possible "pay-to-play" scheme involving Obama's Sec State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.  I wrote a blog post about this 18 months ago.

Here's the suspicion:  Any application that had to go through the State Department for review and approval could have been expedited or slow walked (or worse) at the "suggestion" of Sec Clinton.  Simultaneously, private citizen Bill Clinton was accepting substantial contributions on behalf of the Clinton Foundation and/or being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give speeches by entities who had applications pending before said State Dept.  Your two-bit oil-infested country might get State Dept approval to buy a dozen F-22's if you contributed, or sent home empty handed if you didn't.  Did this actually happen?  I have no idea.  But the opportunity was certainly there for the taking. 

The press has been skating around this issue for years, I guess too timid or too star-struck by the Clinton's to make an issue out of it.  I once heard a reporter ask Bill if there was any truth to the suggestion, and he just answered with a straight face, "No, how could there be?  I'm a private citizen now.  I have nothing to do with making those sorts of decisions."  And the reporter just skipped off, happy as a lark.

Trouble is, a scam such as this would be extremely hard to prove.  The Clinton's are no dummies.  Surely they would never have said anything out loud or put anything in writing that would have connected the dots. But imagine the private dinner conversation at the Clinton's house as they were sharing some Sloppy Joe's and a Big Red:

BILL:  Say sweetheart, guess who stopped by the Foundation today with a nice donation?

HILLARY:  Why, I have no idea.  Who?

BILL:  That nice Crown Prince boy from Saudi Arabia.

HILLARY:  Awww, how sweet.

And three weeks later the Saudi's request to buy jet fighters and gold-plated Humvees is approved.  How convenient.

Yes, I know the Clinton Foundation spread a lot of cash around to legitimately deserving causes, but sources say the mafia is a major sponsor of neighborhood Little League baseball teams, too.  So what?

And take it step further:  What's to prevent the wife or daughter or son or brother, etc, of a major political figure....think House Speaker or Senate Majority Leader or even a major committee chair....from setting up their own "charitable foundation", too?  The opportunities for arms-length corruption are off the charts!

But here to me is the best part....now maybe the Republicans will have to stop using Billary's possible grand larceny as a distraction.

   "There's no Russian collusion.  There's no Russian collusion.  But...but...what about Crooked Hillary, huh?  What about her?  Lock her up!"  

Oh puh-leeze.  I say investigate the Clinton's and the Trump's both, and let the chips fall where they may.

S

Mom....the other kidz call me dum. Make 'em stop, mom.

The dumbing down of America

Where did we go wrong?  When I think back to my youth I don't remember us being a nation of mouth breathers who couldn't find their way back home from the mailbox.  I suspect this is the reason Google maps was invented.  So why....how....did we lose our ability to think?

I'm guessing it was the advent of cable news and shortly thereafter the invention of the internet that caused our gray matter to atrophy.  Today we're what I call "smart-dumb".  We seem to know a lot of things, but we just take what we're told at face value, no questions asked.  (Snopes exists for a reason!)

We used to read newspapers.  Reporters reported at length on fairly intricate matters, yet we could comprehend it all and form intelligent opinions.  Even back in elementary school "My Weekly Reader" was required reading, which exposed us little kids to current events and critical thinking.  Remember Time and Newsweek magazines?  I think only Time survives today, and it's barely big enough to line a bird cage.  Every newspaper had a team of investigative reporters who could smell out bullshit a mile away.  Today all we have are FOX News or MSNBC to tell us everything they think we need to know, and we just go "yuck, yuck" and question nothing.

It was 24-hour cable news that introduced us to the 30-second sound bite.  They apparently figured out 30 seconds was the outside limit of our attention span.  If an issue was too complicated to be boiled down to a 30 second explanation, we didn't need to know about it.  Then the internet just killed off what was left of newspapers and reporting.  Anybody could say anything on the internet and it was considered The Gospel.  If Hannity or Limbaugh or O'Reilly or their counterparts on the left said it, you could take it to the bank.  Nobody today has enough sense to recognize their concept of "alternative facts". 

Newspapers went online to keep readers, and in the process lost their advertisers.  To pare down payroll to match their new fiscal reality, reporters were pink-slipped.  News stories were often just pinched from the AP or UPI wire.  Only a few old-school newspapers held firm, such as The New York Times and the Washington Post.  I find it comical that many people today slam those papers, confusing their "news" sections and their editorial pages.  Most don't realize the stories they read in their local papers are most likely written by staff writers of the NYT or the WP....check the "byline" at the end of an article and see for yourself.

Just a decade or so after I graduated from college most institutions of higher learning reduced their requirements for a Bachelor's Degree to 120 semester hours from the 128 I had to bullshit my way through master.  Today I'm shocked when I read papers by college graduates who can't write a complete sentence.  How the hell did they get past freshman English and not learn that?  Are the inmates now in charge of the asylum?

Which brings us to....yes....politics.  I've never seen a more inept bunch of candidates than what our two parties give us to choose from every few years.  The few smart ones are corrupt to the core, and the others are just there for the free liquor and panty grabbing.  I don't think as a nation we could smell their bullshit if we were standing knee-deep in it.  The result is we have a President who conducts state business on Twitter and doesn't read the issue papers or daily intelligence briefs he's provided, but seems to have plenty of time to wuff down four Big Macs and a 12-pack of diet Coke every day.  *sigh*

So there you have it, my short narrative of where we are today and how we got here.  Did you enjoy this?  If so, can I get a yuck yuck?

S