Too many times in the past years, the first blossoms of spring have ended up barely sticking out of snow or frosted with ice. Same seems to have been true for Pamida..now Shopko..getting in a bunch of cold-sensitive plants. I am hoping that the tulips in the photo below are true harbingers of nice spring weather and not omens of wet cold blizzard.
Very nice day in Winner, SD today. Not much wind and 66F degrees or so. Reliance weather radio is predicting rain and possible thunderstorms coming soon however. In any case, grass is growing and will soon have to be mowed.
It is a Sunday and sabbath gas bags are in full wind mode of course. Mostly what I am hearing is dispair over Trump and Trump Administration demonstrating dangerous ignorance and bravado in foreign affairs and promotion of truly idiotic economic policy which if enacted will greatly harm the very people who most strongly supported Trump in the last election. But, nothing much new in that. Some awareness from Democrats that they truly fowled up the last election....which has been obvious to many of us in the boondocks for months. Those on the coasts and flying the friendly skies have been a bit slower or more reluctant in that direction.
*** Stay tuned for whichever way the wind blows and how fast and how hot or cold---- Doug Wiken
This morning visibility was not good. Fog blanketed the area and apparently it was over enough of SD that transportation was interrupted. Some specialists did not make it into local hospital today. For some of the patients wuo made it to town, the video system apparently worked. I don't know any details at all about that, but weather was a factor for sure.
This evening, the setting sun is fiery red and haze is evident even if Wiley Field weather shows clear skies.
Meanwhile in the "news", The HARPERS magazine that came today has a couple pages of type analyzing if Trump is really a populist. The writer concludes that he is not even if he appeared to campaign as one. That what we really have with the Trump administration is plutocracy. Those who thought they were "forgotten" when they voted for Trump should already know that this Trump administration could care less about them and has not only failed to remember them, but also has forgotten everybody who isn't already obscenely rich and influential.
If we and the forgotten don't get a strong message to our congress critters, healthcare is threatened, education is threatened, world peace is threatened, and the economy will go bust, etc.
John Dean of the Nixon administration and Watergate testimony days, was on Charlie Rose a night or two ago. He said that Nixon and Trump share arrogance. Trump and Nixon differed in presenting it. Nixon was basically shy. Trump is not. Nixon did not make his arrogance grossly public, but it was apparent to his co-workers. Nixon was well informed and experienced. Trump flaunts his arrogance and ignorance. Dean and others have noted that Nixon could look you in the eye and lie and lie. Trump has been described by lawyers getting depositions from him as a liar..and a thief, a bully, and a crook. His business dealings reek of arrogance, deceptioon and dishonesty. Dean noted that Nixon's tendency to lie and not even regard it as a problem seems to be shared with Trump. Nixon's arrogance and too skillful lying got him and the country into serious trouble. Dean hopes that Trump will get his act cleaned up or the United States is in for another mess of trouble. And if we don't see Trump's income tax records, we will not know who he is actually representing. Congress is very remiss in not demanding those records immediately considering what appears to be a Russian connection to his election and administration members.
Trump is disgusting, but even more disgusting are the GOP) congress critters and voters who would criticize Obama and Clinton if they stepped on a sidewalk crack but are blindly supporting the Trump Administration as it stumbles from one lie and deception to another often with both BS-smeared feet in their mouths.. Their hypocrisy and willing blindness and deafness to problems, lies, and deception is even more disturbing in many ways than is Trump himself. By now they should know what he is and why he and his policies can be very dangerous both to the country and to the very Republicans supporting him as well.
*** Stay tuned for more "weather reports" on smoke and mirrors-- Doug Wiken
I happened to go past the 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 channels broadcasting SDPB-TV in central SD and found 3 new channels. 10.4 will be a new all children educational channel (as of Jan 16, 2017), 10.5 is audio only and carries same info as SDPB-Radio, 10.6 is a 24-hour per day classical music audio channel.
I am finding some of the new talk shows on SDPB-Radio somewhat interesting now and then, but also miss the classical music. It is good we can now get a dose of classical music on the new channel.
I don't know anything about HD radio, but perhaps it is time to learn a bit more about it rather than devote a TV to an audio signal only, but in the meantime....
Also, just found out the Kevin Woster has a new blog on SDPB website. On the Other Hand with Kevin Woster. Check it out. Post and sign up. One message is a bit confusing there. When it says something like "Send confirmation e-mail " click that and then check your email inbox for confirmation.
***Stay tuned, the year is yet young. More cold weather and political blizzard to come.--- Doug Wiken
We got a pile of mail today after yesterday's Veteran's Day holiday. Included was Time and Bloomberg News. I slogged through as much as I could stand while recovering from " stomach flu". Below are a few excerpts from TIME. Take time to find the actual magazines and read the whole stories. I will dig through Bloomberg again and take some notes for another post.
Nancy Gibbs, TIME editor, wrote about covering this election: What challenged reporters in the field who were dealing with a race "that had as its substance 'efforts to undermine the democratic norms and institutions of our country--from the Republican nominee, who prided himself on breaking rules, to a Democratic nominee who often campaigned from a distant cocoon. This forced us to rethink how we do things.....". She also noted that both Democratic and Republican parties are fragmented. The Republicans appear to have a party which is fed up with its rank and file and vice versa. The Democratic Party is badly in need of new ideas, new messengers, and new messages.
A column by Eddie B. Glaude, Jr. concludes that despite the Trump victory, the US is in the death throes of the idea of a White America and what happened in the November 8 election was that White America made its last stand, and it is not going to be an easy death.
TIME also quotes Elise Jordon of NBC News MSNBC. "Republican elites attempted to shove former Florida Governor Jeb Bush down the primary voters' throats, but Trump prevailed. Democratic elites actually succeeded in forcing Clinton on their electorate, and that is why she ultimately lost."
A Frank Luntz column suggests that the pollsters were wrong because millions of Americans felt looked down upon and left behind. Their vote was their voice. These voters weren't lying to pollsters, They refused to be polled because they viewed polls as rigged against them. He also noted the wide spread between Democrats and Independents with Republicans on the fixing of government-- by either compromise or support for bold leaders even if ideas may be dangerous. The results were almost opposite with Democrats and Independents supporting compromise by about 69% to 31% for "bold". Republicans preferred boldness 65% to 35%. Nearly 70% of voters believe that when government increases spending, generally more is wasted. 72% believe they pay more for government than they receive. He concludes, "voters have made it clear, they want a shakeup."
I think we should save these post election magazines and look at them a year from now and see which were on the right track and which were de-railed.
*** Stay tuned. We are doomed to interesting times---especially if our political parties can't figure out good compromise.--- Doug Wiken
Last night was kind of a roller coaster. I started off thinking Hillary Clinton was nearly a sure winner even if I was less that enthused about her as a candidate and was and am not at all certain a win by her would cause her election promises to disappear in a flash. A Republican who did not support Trump was part of the PBS-TV discussion last night. When the results started coming in showing that Republicans, men and women, were voting for Trump at usual GOP levels, he said that with all Trump's personal follies and egregious political positions, the GOP voters went tribal and voted for Trump simply because he had an (R) after his name. See my post about "Lame, Blind, deaf, castrated yellow dog on life support below."
Pollsters and other pundit "experts", missed the Trump express from start to finish. Months ago, I said Trump should not be underestimated. His positions on building a wall against Mexico and deporting illegal aliens had and would get a lot of support. I think pollsters did not get honest answers about this in a politically correct world and did not consider how it might over-ride many other issues and problems with Trump.
And there was just plain disgust with ineffective government. But, how some voters could go after that GOP-caused problem by voting for Republican Trump and Republican Senators and Representatives leaves me scratching my head. This Trump and GOP support is a bit like trying to put out a fire by pouring on more gasoline.
And then there is the screwed up Hillary campaign. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and think he would have been a better candidate, but I voted for Hillary in the election. The campaign idea of appealing to aliens, browns, reds, blacks, et al did not gain her as much support as Obama had gotten in the previous election. I think every time she gained a minority voter with her appeal, she lost a dozen white voters. Talking about the wonders of diversity and more immigration cost her a lot of votes. And toss in gleeful commentary that Whites are only 72% of the US population and that mixture is political nitro-glycerin. Telling men and women they should vote for her because she is a woman also may have gained her a few votes, but cost her dozens because women who worked for women did not view that as a legitimate reason to vote for a woman candidate and it also irritated a lot of males. Hillary's preference for secrecy also caused her to dilly-dally on responding to charges which then kept dangling around her neck. This was evidence of another problem, at least from my perspective, she does not seem to learn from mistakes or consequences of even innocent actions which blow up. After all the harassment she and Bill got with White Water, etc. she surely should have realized that her actions regarding e-mail server of her own might cost her dearly. She has also seemed to me to often have an initial position on many issues that is just plain wrong or wrong-headed which she only changes to a more rational position after getting her tits in a wringer.
Also, by now it should be obvious that relying on Harvard and Yale graduates and New Yorkers who have never been more than 2 blocks in any direction to run a national campaign from the center of New York City is not a good way to get a feeling for what is going on in those great spaces between the east and west coasts and the large coastal cities. Ignoring the greater midwest cost her the election.
But, as wildly off has been all the blather about the campaigns and almost all the polls have missed the mark this election, my comments here may be just as completely wrong.
I hope Trump does not lead us into a deadly dead-end abyss which leaves millions of us (even the loons who voted for Trump) without jobs, homes, and healthcare.
***Stay tuned. We will be living in interesting times--- Doug Wiken
Note of August 21, 2016: I received a comment yesterday that the program would be on Sunday AM. I thought I had posted that comment, but apparently TypePad puked out on that. This AM, the program was on. I have it recorded and will look at it later. What I saw of it reminded me of the first days of the program. The panel members at the start were John Mclaughlin, Pat Buchanan,Robert Novak, Morton Kondracke, and Jack Germond. (links are to Wikipedia). What I saw of it was a good reminder of the past issues that Sabbath gasbags focused on years ago and still waste too much time on. A neighbor refers to the media that chases a wisp trying to convert it into a major issue as hyenas. Too often that seems too appropriate. Perhaps that is the legacy of the McLaughlin show, but I think it is unfair to blame too much on the program or the panels. Right now, I am wondering what PBS will do to replace the show.
Coming up in about 15 minutes on SDPB-TV at 8PM CDT and 7PM MDT is a special on John McLaughlin who died a few days ago. I suspect this might be interesting and worth watching. Check it yourself. For all I know, it may be rebroadcast very late tonight or Saturday AM or Sunday. If anything interesting turns up, I will complete this post later.
Well, not much turned up. Technical difficulties apparently. A few minutes of an old show. I remembered the image of the press building and the old faces on the panel. I called SDPB, but answering service had no clue if or when the whole program might be broadcast. Suggested I might call back during regular business hours on Monday.
So, the real news right now is that the local Winner temperature dropped from 97F yesterday afternoon to around 65F when rain started around 6PM. The north wind worked as predicted. We got just shy of 1.2 inches. Some places near here got less and some two or three times as much. It was a good and needed rain. At 9PM on Friday the temperature is around 55F . Almost chilly out there.
*** Stay tuned even if I won't put a McLaughlin video on here--- Doug Wiken
Note of August 19, 2016-- PBS will have a special on John McLaughlin starting at 8PM CDT and 7PM MDT.
I have watched the Sabbath gasbags for many years. John McLaughlin was rebroadcast on Sundays and originally on Friday evening at SDPB-TV. The show was often both entertaining and informative. Usually the only real new information came from the liberals he had on his panel. I seldom agreed much with him, but tried not to miss his blasts anyway. He will be missed despite his blustery character....and I do wonder what PBS will find to replace his show. Maybe Charlie Rose can get off CBS with morning celebrity tripe and token "news" and stick to PBS nightly. Actually, there must be a few others who could do a combative panel show better than he. I guess we will soon see...maybe.
John McLaughlin, a former Roman Catholic priest who became an aide to Richard M. Nixon in the White House and parlayed his fierce defense of the president into a television career as host of “The McLaughlin Group,” the long-running Sunday morning program of combative political punditry, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 89. Source NY Times
Lots more history and information on life and loves of John Mclaughlin at the site. Google did not immediately turn up any info from PBS however.
Hard to even listen to some of the GOP convention clowns let alone actually look at them. Rudy Giuliani is making a few good points in a pile of the usual GOP crap. He is pointing out the mistake President Obama makes by refusing to use the term similar to "radical Islamic terrorism". Not using it for actual terrorists, but using a more general term which effectively labels all Muslims as terrorism. That however is only a few words out of a pile of flaming crap that make any sense. Giuliiani's voice is really, really irritating...more so than even Hillary's.
The crap is rolling off the screen with the usual trickle-down economic foolishness, and blaming Obama for nearly every problem the GOP retrogrades have produced.
I am recording this from PBS. I guess it is just a waste of a 30 cent DVD. I suspect I will waste a buck or two altogether on this.
***Stay tuned, but don't miss the alternate view of reality and of the world and politics presented by the GOP---Doug Wiken
By now, you have like me have probably watched dozens of news and opinion programs on Orlando terrorism, Trump, Hillary, Obama, and radical Islam as you want to see and also discovered that the more you see, the more you realize there isn't much new to hear. The same video with flashing lights, the same overhead shot of the Plush or whatever and the same warmed over wordy nothings, again and again.
First, our government is pushing the "home-grown terrorist" meme, the self-radicalized meme, the sex confusion meme, and the last thing we want to say is Islamic terrorism meme, and following that is the terms won't change anything meme. so they can escape any blame for ignoring this terrorist until he had killed 50 people and wounded or maimed another 50 or so people.
Even "home-grown terrorists" have roots in terrorism or religious fanaticism. Political correctness over-rides common sense when everything but real description of reality is covered up with politically correct wishy washy double talk wordage. Part of Trump's appeal is his resistance to using double-talk and preference for plain talk (which unfortunately might also be plain wrong). That is just part of his appeal however.
The July/August 2016 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has an interesting opinion column deputy editor Benjamin Radford discussing how Donald Trump skillfully employs terms and attacks which appeal to various conspiracy theories and theorists. Just recently Trump did it by attacking the press credentials of the Washington Post for his meetings. The press whines about censorship, but it does not seem much like censorship to me. They can print whatever they want anyway. They just can't trespass on his meeting turf. Trump may loss a little coverage with this ploy, but he is really making an appeal to all the conservative conspiracy theorists who think there is a sinister liberal conspiracy to load all newspapers, TV, etc with extreme liberal propaganda. Trump gives them credibility with this attack. It is however just the latest yanking of the conspirator chains.
Trump uses terms that flirt with the fringe and conspiracy theorists who believe Obama has conspired to stage fake or real domestic shootings in order to confiscate American guns. He tosses out implications that Obama really wasn't born in the US despite a lot of evidence to the contrary that is all ignored by that kind of conspiracy theorists. He gives that kind of nonsense credibility in the minds of the conspiracy theorists.
Trump also endorses the discredited, anti-science conspiracy pushing the idea that childhood vaccines cause autism. That appeals to another conspiracy fringe. Trump has multiple avenues to make the conspiracy fringes believe they are in the know and are not like all the "sheeple".
I have read and seen a lot of wordy-words trying first to discredit the idea that Trump could ever get the nomination and then back-filling that with more wordy-wordiness that continues to explain nothing much at all. I think Benjamin Radford may have presented the best explanation. Trump appeals to those who like his flirting with their conspiracy theories and since they are true believers, attacks on Trump and his flirting are all believed by them to just be part of another conspiracy which can thus be ignored. Trump has a win-win cheap and effective strategy that is probably more clever than many realize.
That also makes him more dangerous than many realized or even now realize.
Meanwhile back in the massaging of the Orlando terrorism and tragedy, we have Hillary starting off a speech with "This is not a matter for politics". She follows that with requests for prayers or whatever. Less than a minute or few minutes later she launches into a partisan attack on Trump. I don't know if Hillary is just completely tone deaf, or believes we are all so stupid and ignorant we don't recognize her double-talk wordy-words.
Bill O'Reilly too often makes little sense, but his idea expressed a few nights ago on the Tonight Show that the Congress should declare war on ISIS and other Islamic terrorists might make sense. Then our so-called home-grown terrorists intent on helping ISIS and jihad could be charged with treason, etc. LINK to more information on O'Reilly.
Meanwhile as we listen to reporters and media gasbags trying to did out more about the terrorist, we should remember that our government dug out information on the terrorists who crashed airplanes into the towers. They utilized libraries and they haunted pizza joints. So we had our government inspectors and intelligence wizards doing surveillance on pizza joints and forcing librarians to reveal secretly what their clients were reading. Librarians were forbidden to tell anybody about this. I am not sure, but my guess is that none of the pizza chasing and book chasing turned up a single terrorist.
I am obviously no expert, but my guess is the only common characteristic these terrorists have is some perverse form of radical Islam.
Speaking of Islam. One of my farmer neighbors suggested that if we are to believe all the protestations from "moderate" Muslims of the love and peace in their religion, they better be pushing Islam to have a mass reformation that separates their religion from government and takes into formal consideration the nature of democratic government systems and the need for separation of church and state. This is not the same world that existed 2000 years or so ago. Women are not chattel and government has no business chopping heads of "infidels" and hands off thieves.
And, there is Obama who is all irate about being pushed to use the term "radical Islam". His preaching in effect gives the radical Islamicists the idea that if they are correctly labeled, that gives them some kind of justification for attacking the US and all other democratic government systems.
Well, that is enough BS on this. And no, I really don't want to hear anything from all the radical feminists who think that the real problem is actually lone wolf single white guys. Orlando has caused some real weird birds to fly out of the political hinterlands.
I hope we can hear some real thought on these issues instead of wordy-words from political scripts which too often are intent on covering up reality instead of making it obvious to all.
It appears that Donald Trump pretty well has the GOP presidential nomination sewed up. Here are a couple of words which may relate to his nailing down the nomination and his personna(s).
As for Democratic operatives reactions, the German "Schadenfreude" or "unseemly joy in the misfortune of others" or "to gloat" seems to fit their reaction. The last THE ECONOMIST had a Norwegian word which may relate to Trump and too many other of our "leaders". Apparently was applied to Henry Ford and his "ship of fools diplomacy attempts.."Stormannsgalskap" which means "madness of great men". It seems it might apply to Trump whether or not he qualifies as a great man.
So much for smoke and mirrors..incidentally, the air in Tripp County is blue with the smoke from the tragic Canadian fires. Irritates my eyes a bit, but as far as I know not much other danger around here. The switch to north wind triggered a few drops of rain prior to the smoke moving in.
**Stay tuned for more words not to live by---- Doug Wiken
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