Sometimes I pass over a story that I might normally be expected to tackle. First, I can only manage to write two posts a day, sometimes not even that. Second, I try to be sensitive and some topics just really ought to be left alone. Third, some topics get old after a few posts and one finds oneself being repetitious. There is, however, one topic that I will always tackle when I see it, and that is free press/free speech issues. Today, it is back on my radar.
Reporters were barred from recording video or audio footage during Monday afternoon’s White House press briefing. The reason for this aberration? Who knows? The excuse Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave was that Trump had already given a comment earlier in the day and would be making another comment later in the day, thus … “there are days that I’ll decide that the president’s voice should be the one that speaks and iterate his priorities.” Who knew that we are limited to two comments per day?
CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta said, “Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing. This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles. It just feels like we’re slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country where the President of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions.”
Even when cameras and recorders are allowed in, the press briefing has become a Cliff Notes version, yielding little, if any, useful information. Spicer’s briefing on Monday may have set a record for brevity — he took questions for less than 11 minutes. Among his responses to 22 questions, he cited previous presidential statements, deferred answering or said he didn’t know 11 times.
“One major change [from previous administrations] is the hostility emanating from the administration for certain members of the press,” said April Ryan, who has covered the White House since President Bill Clinton’s last term. Ryan said Mike McCurry, Clinton’s press secretary, once described the White House’s interactions with the media as “a friendly adversarial relationship. Nowadays the friendly has been dropped from that analogy.”
Larry Sabato
Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, whose opinion I generally respect, says that perhaps the daily press briefings no longer have value:
“Particularly in this administration, most of what you hear in a press secretary’s press conference, in that daily briefing, is misrepresentations, outright lies, and propaganda. And, on the whole, I think people would do better without that.”
I certainly agree with the first part of his statement, but disagree that we would do better without them. The press briefings are the chance to at least attempt to pin down the administration, to hold them accountable. Martha Kumar, a professor who studies White House communications, also disagrees with Sabato, saying …
“The briefing is an opportunity to hold people accountable, and just knowing that reporters are going to ask questions, that becomes part of policy thoughts and discussions within an administration.”
The level of secrecy within the administration is unprecedented. According to a Washington Post article this evening, in addition to the secrecy surrounding the senate health care bill, numerous federal agencies are refusing to share internal documents with Congress, Trump is still refusing to release his tax returns, visitor logs are no longer released by the White House, and Trump even refuses to admit whether he played golf on the weekends. “More and more in the Trump era, business in Washington is happening behind closed doors. The federal government’s leaders are hiding from public scrutiny — and their penchant for secrecy represents a stark departure from the campaign promises of Trump and his fellow Republicans to usher in newfound transparency.”
Even outgoing Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz said, “I see a bureaucracy that doesn’t want documents and the truth out the door . . . and just flipping the middle finger at Congress.”
I already believe Trump and his White House staff are guilty of gross abuses of power, lies, secrecy and deflection. Can you imagine how much worse it could be if there were no oversight by the press? If nobody had to answer, or at least pretend to answer the tough questions? Once we take away oversight by the press, we have opened the door for far more corruption than currently exists. We have opened the door from which our democratic freedoms will exit.
The senate bill will likely, if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has his way, come for a vote very soon. If passed, it then goes to the House, then to Trump. If this bill is allowed to go all the way and become law, more people than ever in this country will die because they cannot obtain medical treatment. It is that simple, folks. All that is required is for three republican senators to find their conscience and vote against this bill … just THREE! What can we do? We can e-mail and call our unconscionable senators and make it very clear that if they vote for this bill, they will be out of a job next time they come up for re-election, either in 2018, 2020, or 2022. Tell them that we have longer memories than they believe and they will not receive our vote. If we do not use our voices, WE LOSE!
I hope you all enjoyed your weekend! It was hot here … hot and humid. Those of you who are fathers, I hope your family spoiled you with special love and treats yesterday … Happy Belated Father’s Day!
We all know that the Germans like their beer, right? What would a German festival be without beer? So, it’s never too early to start preparing for the Wacken Open Air (WOA) hard rock festival, which kicks off in northern Germany in August. Good planning is the key to a successful festival, and the Germans are on top of this one. They are building a 4-mile (7 km) pipeline that will deliver a glass of beer per second! While oil pipelines have been the topic of much controversy in recent years, I am betting this pipeline will have no naysayers!
The WOA festival runs August 3-5, in case any of you are interested in attending. This year’s festival will feature such bands as Megadeth, Alice Cooper and Trivium, and is expected to draw a crowd of 75,000. It is anticipated that each of those 75,000 will consume 5.1 litres (nine pints) of beer during the festival. Um … that’s a lot of beer!
He or she left the above hand-written sign on the window of the car, saying:
Turns out that Little Baby’s may not be the first to come up with the idea, however, as I found an article from 2015 reporting that: “Coolhaus—which has ice cream trucks in Southern California, New York, and Dallas, as well as two brick-and-mortar locations in the Los Angeles area—has up and decided to go there and interpret the salty, greasy wonder known as pizza into a frozen dessert.” Interestingly, I also learned that Coolhaus has ‘Whiskey Lucky Charms Ice Cream Sandwiches’.
I have been told that I do not have an adventurous palate, and it must be true, because neither the pizza-flavoured ice cream, nor the Whiskey Lucky Charms Ice Cream Sandwiches hold any appeal for my boring palate.
This sign was seen at a deli in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gotta wonder what happened that led to the need for this sign? Some humorous speculations:
There is not a woman alive who has ever held any executive type position who has not experienced this phenomenon of being interrupted, talked over by male co-workers while she was simply doing her job. There are literally hundreds of published articles out there in the real world, advising women how to navigate successfully under these set of circumstances.
Most women who have been watching the US Senate Intel Committee hearings within the first half of 2017, have noticed the former prosecutor, former attorney general and freshman Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), as she performs her expected role in a professional manner, by…
Who could NOT love Kermit the Frog? Remember seeing Kermit singing The Rainbow Connection in The Muppet Movie? WHAT??? You don’t remember Kermit the Frog??? Oh woe, woe, and thrice times woe! (Did I do it okay, Roger?) Well here … check out the original of Kermit singing the song in the movie, and then we can proceed.
Oskar Eustis, the director, chose to make his Caesar decidedly Trumpian, giving him a shock of hair, an overlong red tie and a wife with a recognizably Slovenian accent. As all Caesars are, he’s killed in the middle of the play — bloodily — by Brutus and his band of co-conspirators. And the fallout from right-wing dim-bulbs has been ridiculous!
A Public Theater spokeswoman said: “Our production of Julius Caesar in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare’s play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save.”
As tends to happen frequently these days, one thought sets my mind down a perilous path of many twists and turns, and the original article, about ‘food-ignorance’ led me to an ugly place. Sigh. But one must wonder, with the bulk of our population living in urban areas and never having grown so much as a scallion, what happens if … if there is an extended power outage, if through an act of aggression or a natural disaster, we are not able to run to our local supermarket and purchase veggies, cheese, milk and chicken?
Like an animal caught in a trap, Trump is lashing out at his critics. On Thursday, he again tweeted that he was the victim of a massive “witch hunt”. I know I am tired of hearing his “oh poor me” tweets of woe, but apparently even some of his own are tired of it. Republican Senator John Thune was asked on “Morning Joe” Thursday if Bob Mueller is a man of integrity and whether he had done anything so far in the conduct of the investigation that lead him (Thune) to believe Mueller is conducting a witch hunt. Thune’s response:
Crapo-backed Russia sanctions bill passes Senate 
Mr. Tillerson’s interests are due to Exxon potentially benefiting by lifting Russian sanctions: