I've told this joke before. There are only two reasons the United States became the leader of the free world after the Second World War. The first is that the United States was one of only two major countries that were not partially or completely destroyed by the war. The second is that Canada didn't want the job.
Quite frankly, ascendancy by default is the only way that the U.S. could have become a superpower. The United States in 1945 was no different the the United States before 1945 - that is, it was still a country where literature was defined by dime-store novels, where not one college or university had have produced a great mind equal to that of Darwin of Freud, where prayer was still practiced in schools, where banning alcohol to strengthen morality had been tried only to lead to a violent crime wave, and where the teaching of science outside the urban Northeast and Great Lakes was still virtually nonexistent.
It is all good and fine to say that, for all of of the differences between Americans based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, our experiment in representative government is what unites us, but the real entity that brings is together is money. We all believe in the American Dream, the belief that we can get as far as out talents will take us, which usually means making lots of money. We always applaud the plucky immigrant who comes here with nothing and makes something of himself by making lots of money - even Elon Musk, who came here with lots of money already and ended up making lots more money. We celebrate pop stars and movie stars who come from nowhere with nothing and make lots of money - so what if their music or movies suck? So what if we've had few authors, composers, artists, or filmmakers who compare to those of more intellectually endowed nations? Especially when those few have never made a lot of money? As the Israeli-born American philosopher Chaim Witz - his childhood pals from Queens knew him as Eugene Klein - once said, no aesthetics exist aside from what people buy. You know him as heavy-metal star Gene Simmons.
A country that celebrates people known for making money - like Donald Trump - is not worthy of being a world leader. A country with creationist theories based on the idea that humans and dinosaurs co-existed like on "The Flintstones" is not worthy of being a world leader. A country that ranks 36th in literacy is not worthy of being a world leader. A country where speaking aggressively into a microphone to a computerized beat is considered music is not worthy of being a world leader. A country that celebrates James Patterson while real authors starve is not worthy of being a world leader. A country known for producing moves based on comic-book characters is not worthy of being a world leader. A country that lets its cities rot and fall apart and builds soulless, ugly, autocentric suburban sprawl in their place is not worthy of being a world leader. A country that values style over substance is not worthy of being a world leader. And a country that declares its values and worth by electing and then, after a four-year hiatus, re-electing Donald J. Trump as its President is definitely not worthy of being a world leader.
Like so many aspects of American history, World War II is badly taught in our schools, with many Americans coming away with the idea that this country saved Europe from itself and then assumed its rightful place as the world's most powerful nation because Europeans had fought each other into oblivion. World War II - at least the European theater, the Pacific theater being another issue entirely - was the result of a thousand years of bitter rivalries between the various nationalities and alliances based on religious affiliations and familial disagreements over scarce land and scarcer resources. Incidentally, all of this is what produced artists like Michelangelo, architecture like the Notre Dame Cathedral, philosophers like Descartes, and also the fairy-tale-reminiscent castles American tourists fall in love with and tightly knit villages and towns with streets as narrow as an office-building corridor that Americans find so charming. Americans didn't just parachute into Europe and take over everything; D-Day was a collaboration with the British, and the liberation of France - which was accomplished in part by the French themselves, through the Resistance and the Free French forces - was augmented by the Soviet Red Army advancing to and entering Berlin from the east. And even as the United States was able to fight a war without any attack on the homeland, the British had to deal with air raids and V-2 rockets against their home ground, while the Soviet Union suffered a greater loss of civilian lives and property than any other nation in the war.
It would have been for the benefit of the United States and the entire world if American GIs in Europe had returned home with some knowledge and understanding of the Old World they fought to help (help) save and had wiped the American slate clean and started over with European cultural assumptions, just as Western Europe started over with American democratic assumptions, but American cultural assumptions persisted in the decades following the war in the form of Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, Levittowns, a racial caste system, a suppression of socialistic ideas, and the hypocritical addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. The rise of evangelical politics and supply-side economics led to Ronald Reagan, Wall Street, neoliberalism, and materialism. The late 1960s and early 1970s were an exception - America under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon endured violence, anarchy, and anger toward the scandal that was the war in Vietnam. But that period also produced Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Simon, and Martin Scorsese. Bill Clinton presided over a period of peace and prosperity in the 1990s, and what did that produce? Hootie and the Blowfish.
Allusions to The Third Man aside, it's worth noting that America is no more immune to the tragedies of humanity than other countries, but our shallowness, our venality, and our complete disdain for intellectualism and wisdom allow us collectively deny how tragic life is, and that is how a nation as intellectually impoverished and as morally bankrupt as ours is stumbling to the end of its first quarter millennium with no guarantee that we can make it through another 250 years. A nation with a major political party that denies climate change, after all, is not worthy of being a world leader. So, alas, it seems appropriate that Donald Trump should return to lead this nation once again, and likely lead it to its downfall. And yet we will still believe that America is great, if only because we're a topographically diverse, 3.8-million-square-mile land mass, a continent-sized nation of nation-sized states. A continental nation, but not a Continental nation.
As I said before, I can't leave America, but I don't have to. America left me.
His name is Merrick Garland.
But Biden chose Garland for an additional reason; President Obama had nominated Garland to a vacancy on the Supreme Court, only to see Mitch McConnell deny Garland a hearing and hold the seat open until a Republican - Trump - was elected to fill the seat. This was Biden's way of sticking it to Senate Republicans who had denied Judge Garland a seat on the Supreme Court five years earlier. No one - not even President Biden - could have known how badly he had misjudged his man. Having taken office so soon after the January 6 insurrection, Attorney General Garland began investigating the foot soldiers of the insurrection - the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other rabble-rousers on the verge of being pardoned. Ominously absent from Garland's cross-hairs was the Chief Insurrectionist himself, Donald J. Trump.
Garland explained his method as starting at the bottom and working his way up, but this obvious presumption of innocence toward Trump flew in the face of what Americans clearly saw and heard on their television screens on that day of congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election. Trump was clearly responsible for the insurrection, and the January 6 committee in the House clearly confirmed this in their hearings. But because Garland didn't seek to have Trump investigated for January 6, he took his sweet time and waited until the hearings concluded. Then all of those classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago.
Not until late 2022 did Garland finally move to appoint Jack Smith to investigate Trump for both the insurrection and the classified documents; by then, it was too late. Trump and his lawyers took advantage of every opportunity, no matter how contrived, to delay the January 6 case (Judge Aileen Cannon helped delay the classified-documents case before dismissing it altogether on a technicality) to the point where it (like the classified-documents case) would never, ever go to trial. All we get as a consolation prize is Smith's report on the insurrection case.
So Garland, by moving too slowly to prosecute Trump to avoid the appearance of being political and to restore the integrity of the Justice Department, let politics take precedence over the rule of law and set up the Justice Department for a further erosion of integrity. And President Biden was stuck with him. He couldn't fire Garland because it would look . . . political.
Especially when President Biden himself was investigated for having classified documents in his possession and when Hunter Biden was also investigated - both by Garland.
Meta, the parent company that started Facebook and bought Instagram (to eliminate competition), announced recently that it will no longer fact-check posts on its platforms.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that it was a move to simplify platform standards and foster free speech, or some sort of soda water like that, but everyone knows the real reason for his changed stance. It's to allow MAGA right-wingers to post whatever misinformation they want to no matter how dangerously misleading it is and not have to worry about anyone at Meta taking it down for fear of retribution by MAGA - or Donald Trump himself - against the company. Any responsibility to curb misinformation on Facebook or Instagram falls to users who report misleading content to the bots that run the damn platforms.
It gets worse. Meta is also getting rid of its "diversity, equity and inclusion" (DEI) program in the wake of other companies doing the same. Now, I've had my problems with programs that promote "diversity," because the very term suggests that differences are more important than common standards and qualifications, so why bother with any of that? But by adding equity and inclusion as goals, these programs have made standards and qualifications more integral in the effort to include more women and people of color in professional entities, be they colleges of corporations. DEI is far more comprehensive than "affirmative action," which was really neither. But after demonizing former future President Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire" - forget for a moment that Harris' standards and qualifications for executive office are just the sort of qualities that DEI seeks to inculcate - no one wants to offend MAGA leaders or Trump for fear of offending them to the point where Trump finds a way to undermine their businesses. For Meta, that means regulations the Sugar Mountain Man (again, that's what I call Zuckerberg, because his name means "sugar mountain" in German) would prefer not to deal with. For McDonald's, which also ended its DEI program, that means . . . what? That Trump orders his meals from Burger King?
In other words, companies will be run almost entirely by white men . . . which, as I already explained by pointing to rock and roll, inevitably means unmitigated disaster.
As a Jew with a Chinese-American wife, Zuckerberg should know better.
The other day, a couple of friends of mine invited me to as gathering at a local bar and grille, where they expected to be until about six or six-thirty in the evening. I couldn't leave my house until half past five, and I didn't get there until a quarter to six - and sure enough, I couldn't find a parking space. Eventually, I did find a place to park in a public lot and then rushed right in to the bar and grille nearby, figuring I could pay at the pay kiosk (there are no old-fashioned parking meters in this particular lot) later.
I had a good time with my friends, but when I came out and went to my car, I found a parking ticket on my windshield. I didn't get a ticket for parking without paying; I got a ticket for parking in an undesignated space. That is, I didn't park in a legitimate space; I invented one.
How much was my fine? $35.
I had to pay thirty-five bucks for parking illegally, and Trump gets an "unconditional discharge" without having to pay a cent for committing a felony.
Nevertheless, the fraud counts are still on his record. And instead of the first black female President taking the oath of office of President on January 20, the first convicted felon will do so.
Trump is appealing his conviction.
This country needs a colonic.
"Stay With Me" by the Faces (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
What's the difference between Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump? Hitler went to prison.
Of course, the voters sentenced Trump to four years of hard labor by electing him to another presidential term, but he'll just let his chief of staff Susie Wiles do the work for him while he luxuriates in the White House and Mar-a-Lago. She's probably the only thing that stands between Trump and an invasion of Canada and Greenland.
Even if Trump leaves office in January 2029 (note that I said "if") and the other three indictments against him should somehow be revived, Trump still won't do prison time, because he'll likely get clemency for his age. Trump won't serve any time in jail.
His opponents will. Well, the lucky ones, anyway.
Merchan will roar like a tiger when he sentences Trump, but his sentence will be like the bite of a kitten. But incoming FBI director Kash Patel, looking to prosecute anti-Trump politicians and media figures, not only has the roar of a tiger but the appetite of one. And he's ready to bear his claws.
I actually agree with Trump and other MAGA conservatives that some places should have their names changed back to what they were, and I don't mind being associated with such an opinion.
For example, I would prefer to see the name of Muhammad Ali Avenue in Newark changed back to Waverley Avenue because Ali had as much to do with Newark as my Uncle Huey, who grew up in Newark, has to do with Ali's hometown of Louisville. I have said this before on this blog.
I also would like to see the name of Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem changed back to Mount Morris Park because Garvey was a black nationalist who encouraged black Americans to emigrate to Africa. Why name a park in America after someone who tried to get people to leave America?
No, I don't think so.
Even renaming Fifth Avenue in Manhattan Donald Trump Boulevard is a better idea than that, or maybe I shouldn't give him any ideas!
It's going to be a long four years . . ..
On a recent podcast, political commentator Jennifer Rubin advised her listeners not to watch any more cable newscasts. Cable news, she said, is all about chasing the latest trendy story or click-bait tidbit, and it never gives us the real news - just a bunch of people talking about this and/or that.
Rubin can knock cable news easily, because she's a print journalist with her own column.
Unfortunately, that column is written for the Washington Post, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, has chilled reporters and columnists who might be inclined to criticize Donald Trump to the point where they're frozen solid.
Tomorrow is the day that Kamala Harris, as the president of the United States Senate, presides over the counting of the Electoral College ballots and the certification of her own presidential-election defeat, the fifth Vice President since 1836 to do so.
Courtney Subramanian of BBC News has said that the reason Harris lost to Trump was because that the former and future President "has proven that his message and style appeals to a huge cross-section of Americans," citing his gains among black men, white women and Hispanics. I don't buy it. People may have voted for Trump in part because of inflation and illegal immigration, but I doubt they voted for tariffs, tax cuts for the rich, trashing of the environmental laws, weaponization of the Justice Department, pardons for insurrectionists, jailing Liz Cheney and the two Adams, Kinzinger and Schiff, for investigating the Donald, or executing Mark Milley for treason.
But they likely did vote against Harris because she's a woman.
I think it's time that we accept the idea that this is a patriarchal country where a Margaret Chase Smith cannot get elected President, as opposed to Great Britain, where a Margaret Thatcher can become prime minister. Americans still can't get used to a woman in charge of the country's defense and national security, and they can't imagine a woman making the call on whether or not to use force and when to pivot to the complexities of diplomacy. Chris Matthews recently suggested that maybe a center-left female leader isn't right for this country and that a woman like Thatcher, who leans more to the right, would have a better chance of winning the White House. When I heard him say that, I thought he was possibly trying out a new career as a stand-up comic. As the right-leaning party in the American-leaning two-party system, the Republican Party has less than zero interest in putting a woman at the top of its presidential ticket, as the failed candidacies, of Elizabeth Dole, Carly Fiorina, and the aforementioned Margaret Chase Smith (who ran for President in 1964) proved. And even if a woman did win the Republican presidential nomination, feminist voters would not support her, mainly because they would see her conservative policy proposals as anti-woman, but also anti-poor, anti-middle class, and pro-business.
The clearest evidence that Americans aren't ready for a female President and never will be is the fact that there have only been two female presidential nominees of major political parties - Harris and Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump defeated both of them.
In other words, nominating Gretchen Whitmer for President in 2028 is the surest way the Democrats can hand the Presidency over to one James David Vance. That, of course, is assuming there even is a presidential election in 2028 that has more than one candidate. And if there is only one candidate, it won't be Vance.
As for tomorrow's electoral-vote certification, it promises to go much more smoothly with a lot less drama than last time.
"It Doesn't Matter" by Stephen Stills and Manassas (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
With Trump set to return to the White House two weeks from Monday, the United States will likely be out of the Paris Agreement again two weeks from Tuesday. And this time, to quote former future President Kamala Harris, we're not going back.
A few years ago, President Biden's then-climate envoy John Kerry said that Biden's successor - likely assuming at the time that it wouldn't be Biden's predecessor - would not be able to pull the U.S. out of the climate agreement because it would be bad for American business. There's money to be made in alternative energy sources and in green-energy-generated electricity, Kerry said, and not even a die-hard Trumpist would want to get in the way of profits for companies dedicated to these new business opportunities, especially when the Chinese are hoping to dominate the green-energy field.
Anyone who thinks that any of that is going to satisfy Trump must also think that Steve Bannon - who also hates the Paris Agreement - is going to take a bath. Trump has already received a ton of cash from the fossil-fuel industry, and companies that invest in green energy might very well be asking from trouble with an administration that sees them as a threat to to Big Oil's and Big Coal's hegemony over the energy sector. Besides, I'm certain that companies investing in electric-vehicle chargers and solar panels have investments in other sectors to fall back on, and they wouldn't want to see those ventures get threatened, would they?
I want to make it clear that my take on why Trump would want to quit the Paris Agreement again is based mostly on conjecture and speculation. But given Trump's - and the conservative movement's - historically cozy relationships with the fossil-fuel industry, it does make a ton of sense.
I suppose it's possible that we stay in the climate accord nominally, at least to save face internationally, if only to avoid the appearance of going back and forth on it, which is what I imagine incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio would tell Trump. But Rex Tillerson made the argument to Trump that it was important to stay in and abide by the Paris Agreement when he was Secretary of State, and he was an oilman - and we know how that turned out. Also, I'd cite all of the other international agreements the United States has deliberately refused to be party to on the basis of preserving "national sovereignty," but I don't have enough bandwidth for that.
There are quite a few reasons, actually. The most obvious reason is the plethora of EV startups such as Lucid and Rivian, that are just as scrappy and hungry as Tesla once was and benefit from such tax breaks. Musk doesn't want the competition. Also, there's Tesla's long-accrued brand equity. Tesla has such a strong reputation with a growing sense of history and heritage that people would still buy a Tesla even without the tax credit. Also, Lucid and Rivian don't have as big an amount of cash reserves to get through periodic slumps in the auto market. As the world's richest man by a wide margin, Musk can lose tons of money on every vehicle he produces and still have gobs of dough left over.
Some states will continue to pursue environmentally friendly policies such as solar-generated or wind-generated power, and they'll likely strengthen regulations for sustainable construction of houses and buildings. But at the federal level . . . war's over, the polluters won. Even if a Democrat somehow gets elected President in 2028 - highly questionable at this point, especially given the possibility of Trump being the only candidate allowed next time - it will look really silly if we re-enter the Paris Agreement a second time, and given American inconsistency on the issue, the rest of the world probably won't want us back. Not that they're doing any better - the number of countries that made significant cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 can be counted on zero fingers.
If I were still on MySpace, I'd be telling people that I don't want kids. Because I don't. Not with the way this planet is going.
For a couple of brief, shining moments, it looked as if Kamala Harris would make history by being elected the first female President of the United States. It turns out that the woman who ends up achieving that distinction hasn't been born yet. Neither have her parents.
On the other hand, Mexico elected its first female president, and Claudia Sheinbaum is also Jewish and a climate scientist. But north of the Rio Grande, being a woman, a Jew, or a climate scientist - not two or all of the above, just one of the above - is a liability for one's presidential ambitions, and for climate scientists that goes double.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter just died, and even though he was a hundred years old, I'm still bummed over it. Not only was he a good and decent man, he voted for Harris hoping to see history be made and came up short. I mean, he literally lived to be a hundred, and even he didn't see a woman get elected President!
He didn't see high-speed rail in America, either.
Back in 2022, I said I was giving up on causes or social involvement, as well as personal fulfillment. Going forward, I am giving up on America completely. I don't even want to acknowledge my neighbors. As I said, I don't have to leave America; America left me. True, I appear to finally be closing in on one long-frustrated goal - traveling abroad - but I won't believe it until my plane touches down on foreign soil. And given how things look with the new old administration coming in, I wouldn't be surprised if the executive branch does issue a crackdown on Republikflucht.
Bearing all that in mind . . . I am not wishing anyone a happy new year. Not now, not next year, not until New Year's Ever 2028 - and maybe not even then, if Peter Thiel's puppet gets elected to succeed POTUS #47. There will be no happiness in These States or just about anywhere else in the world for the next four years. I can't wish anyone a happy new year; I have no heart to be deceitful.
And going into these next four years, don't expect to see me at Independence Day parades or cookouts or any other patriotic leisure activities, because not only am I timing my trip to Europe this coming summer to ensure that I'll be out of the country on July 4, I'm going to plan three more foreign trips at the same time of the year for the rest of this coming presidential term.
So many progressives want to do away with patriarchy. Why not do away with matriarchy as well?
We can start with Nancy Pelosi.
Former presidential candidate and shifty entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-chair of the mythical Department of Government Efficiency with noted robber baron Elon Musk, has, along with Musk, advocated for more H1B visas for foreign workers to take jobs in the tech sector. Many if not most of these workers would be South Asian like Ramaswamy himself.
I don't know enough about those sitcoms to comment on that observation - I rarely if ever watched them - but on the former point, I would have to say that Ramaswamy is absolutely right. High schools are supposed to prepare teenagers for adulthood and also help them succeed to the best of their intellectual ability, yet the students with the best brains and the most serious commitment to their studies are often ostracized and even ridiculed for their intellectual fortitude. High school culture values the most popular kids, the athletes over the mathletes - and this is just a microcosm of the general popular culture in America overall, where intellectuals are rejected in favor of "folksy" or "populist" figures. How far back do you want to go? The presidential election of 1828 was framed by supporters of Andrew Jackson as a contest between President John Quincy Adams, who could write, and Andrew Jackson, who could fight. We all know who won. (If you don't, you're part of the problem.)
Obviously, the alternate-right wing of MAGA doesn't like Ramaswamy's characterization of their nation and themselves as morons, and they feel betrayed by Ramaswamy's (and Musk's) support for increased immigration from places like India. The alternate right, after all, wants to keep America white and keep brown people out (although South Asians are actually members of the Caucasian race, George Carlin once having called them dark brown white people). The ensuing fight between the two factions had splintered MAGA and set the stage for a period of inaction come 2025, and liberals are enjoying the show, sitting back and eating popcorn as they watch.
Don't get too giddy over this internal MAGA feud, fellow anti-MAGA people. They're still basically united on making America a nation of toxically masculine virtues that persecutes anyone who has a problem with that.
And as proof that Ramaswamy is right about American intelligence . . . who won the presidential election last month?
"Ding Dong, Ding Dong" by George Harrison (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
Now that the Electoral College has voted, all that's left is to confirm Donald Trump's 312-226 vote victory over Kamala Harris, all that's left is for the Republican Congress, in the presence of Vice President Harris, by a ceremonial count of the votes.
And to those of you who are promoting false conspiracy theories about how MAGA stole the election by rigging the ballot count . . . just stop. Just . . . stop.
Trump has managed to violate the Constitution by running for government office as a proven insurrectionist, so it makes sense that he would do it again by allowing a foreign-born citizen to serve as President.
Musk is in a position to get whatever he wants in negotiations over the budget simply by telling Trump his demands and using his social-media platform to browbeat congressional Republicans. He can also direct foreign policy by using his influence for his own personal gain not just with Trump but with other foreign leaders - why else would he have sat in on a telephone conversation between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky?
This is why the Founders put all of those restrictions in the Constitution - the emoluments clause, the prohibition on foreign-born citizens in the Presidency, the check and balance on the executive branch by giving power to the legislative branch - and it's also why the location of the national capital was based on the approximate center of population (as it existed in 1787) and was placed as far away from business interests as possible. Technology and the westward centering of the population made Washington, D.C.'s location irrelevant, but Musk, through flattering Trump while flattening his own wallet, has managed to render the constitutional guardrails against his (Trump's) use of power ineffective as well.
Musk and Trump lost this round on the budget, but the outsize influence Musk exhibited means that more chaos is to come.
"Ring Out, Solstice Bells" by Jethro Tull (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
James Clyburn has to go.
I'm done with MSNBC.
I never did. In that time I was still recording (but not watching) MSNBC shows, I started contemplating how Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had told viewers how Trump was a fascist and then tried to make nice with him, how the prime-time hosts had conditioned viewers into expecting a Kamala Harris victory in November, how Lawrence O'Donnell had had Simon Rosenberg on repeatedly to mindlessly reassure us how Harris was winning - "I'd rather much be us than them" - how Michael Steele dismissed Bernie Sanders' call to get big money of of the Democratic Party as irrelevant, how David Frum was kicked off "Morning Joe" for his joke about Fox News, how the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network received contributions from the Harris campaign before conducting with Vice President Harris a softball interview that was less of an interview than a conversation, how MSNBC pundits who had been praising the Democrats for a great campaign the day before the election suddenly started excoriating the Democrats for a lousy campaign the day after the election, how Scarborough, after having said in the spring that President Biden was at the top of his game, then, after Biden's early-summer debate with Trump, decided that Biden was through . . . and then I remembered that Jen Psaki, President Biden's first White House press secretary, turned on her former boss after the debate and joined the decades-long Washington parlor game of always writing off Biden when he was at his low points instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt after he blew his debate with Trump.
That was it. I not only deleted the backlog of MSNBC shows I'd already recorded, I canceled all future recordings. It also became apparent that I was not so much getting news from the cable news channel as I was getting commentary that was accurate in pointing out Trump's failings as a human being but dead wrong in conveying the progress of the 2024 presidential campaign and what the voters were concerned about. Though, I do recommend MSNBC as a new source if you want to get your mind off foreign events. In 2024, there was barely a mention of the strains in the British economy that led to the Tories' defeat in the elections in the U.K., no coverage of the issues in France that didn't involve Notre Dame Cathedral, and nothing about the economic struggles in Germany. I also have a feeling that part of the reason I was so surprised by the fall of Assad in Syria was because there hadn't been much talk about Syria on MSNBC.
I've since returned to watching BBC World News America, having sworn off American mainstream legacy media - even the PBS NewsHour, whose arts and culture stories always seem to be about hip-hop and whose Monday pundit panel of Amy Walter and Tamara Keith can't stop laughing and joking about everything - and I get my commentary from YouTube channels like The Bulwark and Status Coup News. I can't believe anything that American mainstream legacy media says - least of all MSNBC, which had me and others anticipating a politician (a politician that many in the Democratic Party didn't actually like!) making history in becoming the first black female President, only to see Trump become the first former President since Grover Cleveland and the first Republican former President ever to be returned to office . . . and anticipating a California Jew (Douglas Emhoff) becoming the first male presidential spouse to move into the White House only to see the likelihood of another California Jew (Adam Schiff) moving into the big house.
MSNBC can't be spun off from Comcast and wither away soon enough.
I have a health insurance policy managed by UnitedHealthcare, and for reasons too random and complicated to explain, I was already planning to leave the company and go with another provider before last Wednesday, when United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated by a disgruntled customer.
While I do not condone violence, I can understand why Thompson was killed, as his company has expanded exponentially over the years and has produced enormous profits by denying payment of claims at double the industry average, causing many policy holders to die from not being able to receive treatment or go broke from health care bills. As many as 68,000 Americans die annually from being unable to receive care or being unable to pay for care.
The Syrian Civil War had been going on so long since it started in 2011 that no one outside Syria noticed it was still going on . . . except for those who noticed it and saw that it was a stalemate at best with President Bashar al-Assad having the upper hand.
Then suddenly it flared up and the so-called experts said that it wouldn't affect Damascus. Until the rebels entered Damascus and forced Assad to flee to Moscow.
The Syrian people now have a chance to build the democratic republic that Iraq is still trying to be after twenty years. The Iranians have lost their base of influence on the Mediterranean Sea. And Vladimir Putin's sphere of influence, as of now, no longer includes countries that were not Soviet republics. Putin now needs Donald Trump more than Trump needs Putin.
Then again, Trump might need Putin in the near future - when he's driven out of office by his own people. I hope Vlad's dacha is big enough for two world ex-leaders!
Just when you thought the freefall of Joe Scarborough's and Mika Brzezinski's MSNBC morning show couldn't get worse, the couple got themselves in hotter water when they found themselves apologizing to a competitor news channel known for its friendly coverage of Donald Trump.
Conservative author David Frum joked that Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense and the weekend Fox News host with the spell-checker-unfriendly name, has been so drunk that he was too drunk even for Fox News' liking, which doesn't bode well for his fitness for leading the U.S. military. A producer told Frum through an earpiece that his commentary was no longer necessary, and Mika Brzezinski apologized to Fox News for Frum's flippant remark.
Since when does an MSNBC host feel a need to apologize to a rival network that's constantly ridiculing her own? Uhh, when she knows that the incoming President will have your head if she dares let someone bash his favorite "news" channel?
Frum, who's no dope, published a piece in The Atlantic suggesting that fear of retribution is driving editorial decisions at MSNBC these days, and he suggested that Brzezinski's apology was an extension of her and Scarborough's efforts to mend fences with Trump, which they did by going to Mar-a-Lago on November 15 to lick his boots out of fear. Scarborough got upset, claiming that he and Brzezinski went to Mar-a-Lago to get a "read" of Trump as he prepares to return to power.
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