The Waste Of Time

It is time, once again, to restate my opinion of our President, Donald J. Trump.

Not a fan.

I wrote two posts, one in 2011 and one in 2015 stating he would never be the President of The United States.  Hey, even Jeanne Dixon would have missed that one.

At the start of the 2016 Republican primary, I was offended by Trump's comments on John McCain. Trump repeated a Chris Rock joke*, which was stupid when Chris Rock said it**, but it was double-stupid when it came out of Trump's mouth***.  A man who received five deferments for bone spurs should never mock the service of someone who was a POW.

That was the start of my total bewilderment with my fellow conservatives when it came to Trump. It would take all day to list all of the things Trump has said that are just plain weird.

For the first time in my life, I did not vote for the Republican nominee.

I voted for Gary Whatshisname, the former governor of New Mexico.****

I expected Trump to lose and I expected to be on the receiving end of the blame cast by the Trumpsters. But, as they say, God said HA!  Trump defeated Hillary Clinton because Trump ran the only game he could to win: win in the electorial college and not just the major cities.

Soon I was on the receiving end of the blame cast by The Resistance: those people who think life is a comic book. In one little scrum on Facebook, someone told me my vote for Gary Whatshisname caused Clinton to lose Wisconsin, which was a cute little trick considering I don't live in Wisconsin.

So for the past couple of years, if I said Trump did something good, I would be called just another one of those MAGA hat people who is probably a Nazi.  If I said Trump did something bad, I would be called another one of those snowflake Resistance people who scream at the sky.

Now is the time to give you my opinion about Special Counsel Mueller's report on Russian Collusion in the 2016 campaign.

It was a waste of time.

The idea that Donald J. Trump would "collude" with The Russians is laughable. Trump and his campaign team could barely collude with itself, much less a foreign government. Chris Christie compares Trump's campaign to a salesman whose office is in the trunk of his car.

Former FBI director Robert Mueller was selected as the Special Counsel to see if there was Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election. So far, all we've heard about was the special Facebook memes the Russians purchased  that have the power to turn Obama voters into Trump supporters.

While Mueller has indicted several Trump associates, they are for alleged crimes that are unrelated to Russian collusion.

So after almost two years, Mueller ended his investigation and there will be no further charges brought up by the Special Counsel.

Trump won again.

The problem with the Mueller investigation is that it was a witch hunt in this sense: the purpose of the investigation was to find something-almost anything-to impeach Trump over. After this came up bumpkis, the Democrats are left hoping for the Southern District of New York to do something,

Here's an idea. Instead of wasting all of that money on "investigations" how about the Democrats really think about why Donald Trump appeals to some voters. Here's a hint: it is not a good idea to insult them or make fun of them. 

* "He a war hero that got captured. There's a lot of guys in jail that got captured. I don't want to vote for nobody that got captured. I wanna vote for the [expletive] that got away"

** In fairness to Chris Rock, he wrote this when McCain died:  "R.I.P senator John McCain. Definitely a man of principle. Ran against Obama in 2008 and never made it racial . Took the high road the whole time . War hero served his country well. God bless."

*** “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” 

**** I know his name. It was Gary Johnson. He was the Republican party reptile that was really into the wacky tobakky.  He didn't know anything about Aleppo. That's okay, neither did I.  

Junior Varsity

"Teachers teach that knowledge waits can lead to a hundred-dollar plates" (Bob Dylan)

It is confession time. I must confess I gave the admission staff at Georgia Southern University a ten dollar Wal-Mart gift card in order that my son would be accepted into the school and taught how to drink Fireball Whiskey.

I 'm joking.  My son earned his way into Georgia Southern the old fashion way. He filled out a form online.

This was the week we found out that Felicity Hoffman was married to William H. Macy.  We also found out that Lori Laughlin apparently has a lot of disposable income because she paid somebody $500K to get her daughter into the University of Southern California. In true kid fashion, the daughter posted a YouTube video saying "I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know."

Laughlin would have been better off just handing the $500k to her daughter.

Yes, the college admission bribery scandal is here and it will not go away any time soon.

Why?  Because most middle-class people try to send their kids to college because we have bought, with good reason, that a college degree is your ticket for success. And it is, but it is not the only ticket for success. Hard work, doing a good job, and (the easiest) just showing up are all tickets for success.

True story. I was working a temp job one time. I was hired full time because they said: "you show up".

It is going to be an issue because nobody really knows what it takes to be admitted to college. I defy anyone to give me a clear explanation on how to be accepted into the class of 2023 at the University of Georgia. Good luck.

It is going to be an issue because admission to "elite colleges" are not on academic merit. If it were, Asian-Americans would be 43 percent of the student population at Harvard University (by Harvard's own estimate) instead of 18 percent.

No, admission is a smorgasbord with money, legacy, and yes, a student's race given "points" or "weights" to allow the university to create a utopia of a  "diverse" (racial, but not political) community of individuals. Heather McDonald in The City Journal says, "In fact, admissions officers are simply allocating a scarce resource based on their own prejudices and inclinations".

It is going to be an issue because it doesn't seem like the graduates of these "elite" colleges are all that "elite" if you catch my drift. Do I have to name all of the Ivy League graduates who act like they have never stepped inside of a classroom?

It is somewhat of a cliche but some of the brightest people I know didn't go to "elite" colleges. I have a friend that went to Oklahoma State and he's one of the smartest individuals I ever met.   I graduated from college, my wife never went. Guess who does the checkbook for the family.


We have this debate over the grades of various politicians over the years. We can't see Donald Trump's grades but we never saw Barack Obama's either. My question is why do we care what grade a 20-year-old made in Western Lit?   Personally, I don't care if Bernie Sanders made straight A's, I'm not going to ever vote for him.

It is going to be an issue because it confirms what we thought to begin with:  College is somewhat of a scam.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to become a Democrat.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to party.

It is not about "learning" unless you want to learn how to do the least amount of work for the maximum amount of profit, which I admit is a pretty good skill.

College is all about making money for the college. That's why they advertise.  That's why they don't pay their best marketers:  football and basketball players.  That's why it costs so much.  It costs $67,580.00 a year to send a student to Harvard.  If your family makes under $65,000.00 they will "allow" a student to attend for free.  If your family makes $66,000.00, too bad, Y'all have to pick up the full freight.

We are going to be talking about this for a long time because it is about gaming the system.

This is why Elizabeth Warren will never be President.  She wasn't going around yapping about her Native American background because it was an interesting fun fact about her. No, it helped in employment, pure and simple.

People know that a piece of paper showing you've graduated from a fancy-schmancy school ensures you have a leg up on your competition. A graduate from Harvard will have an easier time (theoretically) finding employment than someone from Kennesaw State.  That's just a fact.

College has to change from being "a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense".  

In 2007, seniors at Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Duke, and UC-Berkely scored lower on an easy test of  American history than they did when they took the same test as freshmen.  If that doesn't tell you why socialism is making a comeback, I don't know what will.

It all reminds me of something that happened to Ronald Reagan in the '60s.  He was in Washington, DC and some campus radicals recognized him and began to surround his car.  They started shouting: "WE ARE THE FUTURE".  Reagan asked an aide for a pen and paper. He wrote "I WILL SELL MY BONDS" and showed it to the radicals.

If this doesn't improve, we all might want to sell our bonds.

Come On Bill

I've watched Bill Maher, off and on, for about 24 years.

I used to watch his first show, "Politically Incorrect" when it was on Comedy Central.  Comedy Central was so awesome back then. "Mystery Science Theatre 3000"  was on three times a week and there was a great Dana Carvey stand up special they used to air a lot.

Maher is a practitioner of political humor, which is a little dicey comedy-wise. For one thing, it becomes almost immediately dated as soon as the joke leaves the comedian's mouth. Hey, what would happen if Eisenhower died and Nixon became President? What about that Midnight Basketball?  Newt Gingrich?  What type of name is that for a Speaker of The House?

It has to be delivered evenly also.  Bob Hope used to joke about Democrats and Republicans alike. Unfortunately, "Saturday Night Live" seems to have forgotten this. Granted, President Orange gives them a HUGE target, but there's absolutely no joy in SNL's political work in the past few years.

Maher's "Politically Incorrect" has morphed into "Real Time With Bill Maher" on HBO which means Maher can use dirty words in his monologues and interviews.

The few times I've seen "Real Time", I've noticed it kind of mimics the host. Sometimes it is funny and clever. Sometimes it is mean and nasty. Sometimes it is right and sometimes it is wrong.

A few weeks ago, Maher had a segment on his show in which he was discussing Amazon HQ2 and its tabling of the moving half of HQ2 to Long Island City in Queens.  If you followed the story, the idea of bringing a lot of jobs to this part of Gotham somehow did not agree with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even though it was not a part of her district.  This caused Amazon to split from New York and now they are looking for another place to put HQ2.

Maher said Amazon shouldn't have tried to go to New York in the first place, but instead, should have tried to "turn Nebraska into the next Silicon Valley.”  Maher went on to say, “We have a problem in America called spacial-geographic inequality, which means that the most affluent and educated people are clustered in just a few cities."  My inference is that "few cities" are New York, LA, Chicago, and San Francisco. My guess is the "few cities" do not include Huntsville, Alabama which has the second largest research and technology park in the country. It is also ranked in the Top 25 of the most educated cities in the country. It probably doesn't rank with Mr. Maher 'cause they talk real funny down there.

Amazon's founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos is "worth $130 billion" so he should "take one for the team", and put the HQ2 in someplace that has been left behind.  If Amazon doesn't, the "red" states are "going to keep getting angrier and crazier”, says Maher.

Maher says  “There are two Americas. We have chef Wolfgang Puck, they have Chef Boyardee,” he continued. “Our roofs have solar panels, theirs have last year’s Christmas lights. We’ve got legal bud, they’ve got Bud. The flyover states have become the passed-over states. That’s why red state voters are so pissed off. They don’t hate us, they want to be us. They want to go to the party.”
  
This explains everything. We want to be like Bill Maher.


He said this would happen if West Virginia got HQ2: "People get better jobs that don’t give them black lung,”  From there on, the hillbillies meet people of different races, backgrounds, and sexual orientations. Soon, the wacky tobaccky is legal and they are teaching science again.  West Virginia turns in to California.

If only HQ2 had come to Georgia. We could have gotten those new-fangled things I've seen on the internets called shoes.  Maybe they would help my feet not to stink so much.

Let's be clear exactly who Maher is talking about: Trump voters. Everybody in a state that went for Trump is a mouth-breathing redneck that needs some infusion of that good ole Gospel liberalism.

Maher is the worst evangelist ever.

His basic point about HQ2 is correct.  Instead of trying to please the myriad of interest groups you have to please in New York, Amazon could have gone to Youngstown, Ohio and found a very hospitable welcome

But come on, Bill. The answer is not blowing in the wind because it is very simple. People in "the red states" are mad because people like Maher think they are "better" simply because they live in a different Zip Code
.
So, you can have Wolfgang Puck. We have Chick-fil-A.  There are three in a three-mile radius of my house.

Blow Up Your TV

We did it!

We finally upgraded from our old, out of date, obsolete, antiquated, ancient, antediluvian, antique, dated, dinosaur tube TV set to a brand spanking new Smart TV.

I remember the time when the TV set was an actual dumb piece of furniture and had to be delivered by two men. Some TV sets had stereos included!

It may come as a surprise to you that the humble Manis family had one of the first COLOR TV sets in Beverly Hills. (Our subdivision in East Cobb not the city in California.)

You would not believe what a big deal they made out of COLOR TVs. You could see "Gomer Pyle, USMC" in COLOR!  (Like it would have made a difference.)

Now we were not pretentious. We had a simple COLOR TV, not one of those monstrosities that had the stereo included which had to be delivered by a crane. Nope, we had a simple COLOR TV.

It came in handy when I made my television debut on "The Popeye Club" as "kid in white shirt sitting in the third row."

When it comes to children's television, I rank "The Popeye Club" as number one because:  it was a local Atlanta show and they didn't try to teach kids to become Democrats.  It was just a guy (Officer Don) and a dragon (Orville, who was green). Office Don would have the kids play some games like "The Ooey-Gooey Bag" and watch Popeye cartoons. It was great.

You actually had to "turn the channel" to find something to watch. In the Atlanta area, you had the choice of 2. 5, or 11. If you thought you were better than everyone else, you could turn the channel to channel 8, which was the "educational channel".

Having a color TVwas a big deal because in a few years you could watch "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In".  Kids today have no idea how big this show was and how much parents hated it.  It was dancing, corny jokes and catchphrases like "Here comes the judge", "Very interesting", and "Sock it to me"

It may surprise you that Marion and Inez (my parents) were not too keen on "Laugh-In".  Mom didn't like what she called "silliness".  My dad thought everybody associated with "Laugh-In" came from another planet, if not from another solar system.

So when "Laugh-In"  was on, the COLOR TV set was on the show God wanted us to watch: "Gunsmoke". That meant I had to watch "Laugh-In" on the old black and white set in my bedroom. I remember this one particular skit:

Ugly Lady (sitting on a park bench)

Dirty Old Man (walks up and sits next to the Ugly Lady):  "Say, do you believe in the hereafter?"

Ugly Lady: "I most certainly do"

Dirty Old Man:  "Good. Now you know what I'm here after."

Ugly Lady (hits Dirty Old Man repeatedly with her purse).

You can't imagine how funny that was in 1970.

All through the years, I have followed the changes in television.  First, it was cable. You went from five channels to four hundred, with half of them being either Spanish channels, Shopping channels, or preacher holding microphone channels.

Then it was VCR. You rented VCR tapes at a store, usually a Blockbuster. I can't tell you how many times I have yelled at a pimple faced kid about charging me a late fee for a return and having him remove the fee. For some reason, when I got home I would remember that I did return that movie late.

Time marches on and soon Blockbuster only rented DVDs and you had to buy a DVD player. which I did.

Then, God and his mercy provided something called On Demand for your cable package and you no longer had to go to Blockbuster to rent a DVD.

Now there is something called "streaming" and don't ask me to explain it. There are services like Netflix and Amazon Prime which streams movies, old TV shows, and original programs via a "Smart TV" which is the type of TV we bought.

We have already watched the two seasons of  "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" on Amazon Prime. It is about a young divorcee who stumbles into becoming a stand-up comic in the late '50s. It is a very funny show. It has several historical lapses, like having Bob Newhart becoming famous two years before he became famous and people dropping F-bomb like they were in a Martin Scorsese movie.

We have also finished the first season of "Stranger Things" on Netflix.  I know, 2016 called and it is looking for its Pokemon Go.

I can't describe what "Stranger Things" is about except it is about some kids on bicycles and monsters. It is sort of like "Twin Peaks" but without the dancing midgets. I liked "Stranger Things'.

I  paid to have the store where I bought the Smart TV to come out and install it in my house. I was pretty sure if I attempted it, I would somehow set the house on fire.

They sent only one man. He set it up in 30 minutes. He didn't even bring a crane.

The People Speak On Fast Food.

Last week, the topic was fast food joints.

This week, the topic is fast food joints.

Yes, a multi-week treatment on the same topic. Don't try this at home kids, I'm a professional. (Actually, I'm not, but people have paid me for my e-books, which by the way, are still for sale.).

I decided to do what all great media outlets do now: go to social media to see what "the people" think if by "people" you mean those that respond to questions on social media.

I placed this question on my Facebook page: "What’s your favorite fast food restaurant that’s not named Chick-fil-A? Please tell why. Also, your least favorite and why." 

I was genuinely interested in what my Facebook friends favorite fast food restaurants were and I am also convinced Chick-fil-A is the best fast food restaurant around. The reason is simple: their food is great and their help is good.  I've heard complaints about their "forced and insincere" response to thank you ("my pleasure"). I'll take a forced and insincere "my pleasure" over a sincere mumbled "no problem" any day.

I'm happy to say my nephew Robert was the first responder and one of the few that answered the question in full.  He said, "Cookout is my favorite fast food restaurant, because they have good bbq, burgers, and shakes. Least favorite would be McDonald's, I don't think I have to state why."

Cookout is a relatively new restaraunt and their hamburgers are very good. You also get a lot for your money. Which is probably the reason they seem to be around college towns.  The first time I heard of Cookout is when my son was in school at Georgia Southern University (School Motto:  "It is Five O'Clock somewhere")

My Son:  "Dad, there's a great place in Statesboro called Cookout."
Me:  "Why aren't you studying?"
My Son:  "I've graduated."

Scott Hardesty, who is one of the funniest people of Facebook said, "What-A-Burger (or as it's pronounced in Texas, "Waterburger") I always get a triple meat and cheese on a heart-healthy wheat bun."

 

I knew as soon as I posted my question, one of my Texas friends would mention Whataburger.  There is one Whataburger in Georgia. Thomasville.  Forty billion people in Atlanta and you put your only restaurant in the state in Thomasville, which is the second largest city in Southwest Georiga with a population of 18,515.  

As a heads up to the Cathy family, Randy "Tater" McArthur says this about Whataburger's breakfast menu: "The "Waterburger" chicken biscuit with honey butter melted on it is to die for. Just don't try to eat them driving. Will make you forget Chick fi la's name"  

 You ought to pay attention to Randy "Tater" McArthur when it comes to driving. He once drove a Chevelle halfway up "The Sky Slide", which was a big blue slide we had in Marietta, Georgia in the 60's.  Randy "Tater" McArthur will not confirm if alcohol was a factor in deciding to drive a Chevelle halfway up The Sky Slide.

Another not-in-Georgia restaurant is In-N-Out.  It must be something because I see people wearing their t-shirts all of the time. I hear people talking all of the time that it is the greatest hamburger of all time. The nearest In-N-Out is in Texas.  Does that seem fair to you? 

The fabulous John Spiller wrote: "What about the V? Cause we all need a dose of vitamin G! Better than most laxatives". Spiller (or as his friends call him, "Spiller") is talking about The Varsity, which now has several locations in the Atlanta area. The mother ship is in Upper Mid-Town Atlanta across the Interstate from Georgia Tech.

The "vitamin G" he mentions is grease, which all Varsity "o-rings" are drenched in. Besides being called "The V", The Varsity is also referred to as "The Greasy V".

All of this grease does terrible things to the insides of your tummy  I do not recommend long car trips (i.e.: any car trip longer than three miles from your favorite toilet) after eating at The Varsity.  I can confirm, however, that physicians are not using a Varsity Chili Dog and Onion Rings as a prep to clean patients out for a colonscopy.  At least not at the present time.  

Another friend, Jim "No Relation To Paul) McCartney mentions two Boston area fast food restaurants I had never heard of before:  Clover and BGood. As a part of my commitment to journalism, I took it upon myself to research these two restaurants.  In other words, I looked up their menus on Google.

BGood looks like a restaurant I would go into.  They serve "craft burgers" (what this means, I don't know, but I assume it is good for you). Their website says, "We want our food to be the roots that connect community and inspire goodness".  I must admit it is classier than the Varsity website which says, "We want our food to go through you very, very fast".

Clover is a true healthy fast food restaurant. They serve something called BBQ Seitan.  I have never heard of Seitan, much less BBQ Seitan.  Jim provided me with some information.  "Seitan is made when wheat flour dough is washed with water until all the starch is removed, leaving just insoluble gluten. This gluten is then cooked  and used as a meat substitute.  Yum.  You can get it with a side order of french fries with Rosemary. ($4.91)

It is not a place where you can order a Diablo sammich with a Dr. Pepper.


Next Week:  Can I squeeze out another blog post on this topic?

My Kind Of Place

My generation is called "The Baby Boomers".

It refers to those of us born from 1946 to 1964. The soldiers (and in my case, sailor) came home from World War II with one thing on their minds. They created a population explosion the country hadn't seen before and haven't seen since. That population came with mouths that had to be fed.

And so, the fast food restaurant was born.

One of my earliest memories is coming home from my Aunt Elizabeth's house. Aunt Elizabeth (or as we pronounced it "Lizbeth") had a 'beauty parlor" called "Elizabeth's Style Shop".   She was my mom's "stylist" and mom would have to take me with her when she went to "the beauty parlor" (Aunt Lizbeth's house) because I was too young to leave at home.

We always visited one place on the way back home. A small fast food joint located where Powers Ferry Road met Roswell Road called "Burger Chef". We'd get two burgers and two small bags of fries. The fries were always hot and salty. A love affair was born: me and hamburgers with an order of fries.

It looked like this

Some people are hot dog people. Some people are pizza people.  Some people like tacos. Put me down as a hamburger guy.  I can always eat a hamburger. A piece of meat between two buns.

It was at school I heard of a place that was even better than Burger Chef.  It was called McDonald's.

We had a McDonald's in Marietta, but it was on "The Four Lane" (US 41).  It wasn't that far away from us, but "The Four Lane" was a busy road and Mom didn't want to hassle with making a left-hand turn with a bunch of yard apes in the car.

I'm not sure of the exact date, but I'm pretty sure Nixon was President.  A McDonald's opened on Roswell Road. Soon Burger Chef became the second choice.

McDonald's was pretty nifty back then.

They had a song:  "McDonald's is my kind of place. A clean and snappy place"

McDonald's introduced a new hamburger, "The Big Mac" with a song too. "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun".  That came out in 1974.  45 freaking years ago.  I've had my cell phone number 21 years and still don't know my cell phone number.

You had other fast food joints by then.  Burger King, which lets you have it your way. This was a slap at McDonald's because McDonald's promised you real fast food if you wanted it the way McDonald's made it.

Wendy's came to town. You could actually watch them make your hamburger if you are into that sort of thing.

I liked them all. Burger King's Whopper was good, but their fries were just okay. Wendy's hamburgers were great but their fries were thick and crusty.  McDonald's got you with their fries.

McDonald's started going downhill, in my opinion, when they began to emulate Burger King and Wendy's and to try to satisfy every customer.

At one time, getting more than one pack of ketchup from McDonald's took a subpoena. Lord don't order a hamburger without a pickle. It may take you years to get that burger. Just get the burger as they made it and take the pickle off when you got to your seat. What are you, a Rockefeller?

Now, you can order a Big Mac without a pickle if you want to be a hipster heretic. You can even get iced coffee at McDonald's and it is way better (and cheaper) than at Starbucks.

I purposefully went to McDonald's the other day.  I admit it. Their advertising got me. The sons of Donald Draper hooked me line and sinker to try a Quarter Pounder with bacon.

As the nation gets more anal retentive it is nice to know that while bacon is not good for you, it sure is awesome.  I would say more, but I'm afraid Jim Gaffigan might have it copyrighted.

They also have a new treat: Bacon and Cheese Fries. You can't tell me there's not a God.

Well, my quick review: the Quarter Pounder with bacon was okay. Not as good as I thought it would be, but it wasn't bad. The Bacon and Cheese Fries was bacon bits with that melty cheese you put on nachos.  When you got the cheese and the bacon on the fries, it was pretty good. However, most of it was cheese fries and it is messy. Duh.

Maybe I've outgrown McDonald's.  The best fast food place is Chick-fil-A, hands down. No question. They act like they want you there.  But McDonald's has always been there and will always be there because it is a hap, hap happy place even if the ice cream machine is broken.

Next Week:  The People Speak.

The Refs

Okay, Okay, New Orleans, we heard you the first time.

Y'all were robbed, ripped off, shafted, screwed, cheated and you had a Super Bowl stolen from you due to something called Spontaneous Blindness on the part of the referees

I'll let NOLA.Com, the New Orleans online news paper describe what happened.

"With 1 minute and 45 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and the game tied 20-20, the Saints faced third-and-10 at the Los Angeles 13. Quarterback Drew Brees threw a pass along the right sideline to wide receiver Tommylee Lewis, and Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman leveled Lewis before the ball arrived. However, none of the officials threw a flag."

It was textbook pass interference.  It wasn't a "judgment call". It was pass interference because Robey-Coleman did what he had to do to prevent a possible touchdown, just like he's been taught all of his life.


But, there was no flag. New Orleans lost the game to Los Angeles. And New Orleans went bonkers.

You have never seen bonkers like a New Orleans bonkers. Like everything New Orleans, it was way over the top involving law suits, speeches on the Senate floor and your basic whining. The good times stopped rolling in The Big Easy.

It would be easy to tell the good folks in New Orleans to get over it. But, they have a point. If a ref can't see that, what is he doing in the business?

It is sort of that way with the news media.

It is important to have a free and independent news media.They are the referees of society. They  are the ones to let us know what is going on at City Hall, the County Commission  and all the way up to the White House.  They are the ones entrusted with letting us know what all of those knuckle heads are really doing-not what they say they are doing.

By the way, I hate that quote from  "Mr. Dooley":  "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".

No, it is not. The job of the news media is to tell the story as accurately as possible. 


Two recent stories have revealed a new purpose of the news media.  The purpose of the news media is to somehow get rid of The How In The Hell Did He Get To Be President, President Trump.

Buzzfeed reported the latest blockbuster news that President Trump told his lawyer, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.  Lying to Congress is a clear impeachable offense. The problem: Buzzfeed said their source came from inside Robert Mueller's Independent Counsel's office.  Mueller's office issued a tweet stating that it was not true.  Buzzfeed stands by their story. Good luck with that guys.

The second story is the now all-too-familiar story of The Covington Catholic Kids at The Lincoln Memorial.  It had all of the elements of a great story  Race. Wise Indigenous "Elderly Man" (wait, he's only four years older than me). MAGA hats. Smirking.

I did not realize smirking was such a big crime in America. 

A lot of Blue Check Mark people of Twitter condemned these kids and one, in particular, that was pictured standing in front of the   "Elderly Man" beating a drum.  According to the Blue Check Mark people, this one kid was smirking.

That infuriated a lot of people.  How dare he smirk at an elderly man beating a drum in his face!

One journalist said this:

"And to all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go [expletive] yourselves".

Twitter was going on a couple of minutes of the tape. Other tapes show something different, which it wasn't this gigantic crime against humanity that the original story portrayed.  As late as Wednesday night, some in the news media were still trying to demonize these kids, who were just living their own personal Bonfire of The Vanities.

By the beginning of the week, we learned that the news media totally botched this story, basically making a mountain out of a molehill.  The first story in  The New York Times was titled: "Boys In 'Make America Great Again Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March.”.  The next story they ran, after the fog of baloney dissipated, was titled:  "Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students.”

This story was just too good to investigate.  It checked all of the boxes, particularly the new odd one that we have to fear roaming bands of Catholic School boys.

It all goes back as a reflection on Trump and how he "empowers" hate groups by making them wear red hats and smirking at elderly men

The problem is the news media for years have been picking the good guys and the bad guys. You can tell the good guys by their drums, the bad guys by their smirks.

When the press totally messes up a story like this one, it is like the refs missing a pass interference call in the football game.  It doesn't make you trust the refs.

Catlin Flanagn says this in The Atlantic:

"I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will casually harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory."