Rachel Maddow (annual salary $7m) is nuts or I am, pick one. With a ferocity and zeal like Dickens’s tricoteuse Madame Dafarge who gloated while royalist heads tumbled off the revolutionary guillotine, Rachel blindly pursues the great non story of our time, the “Russia connection”. What’s so evil about a sneaky line to the homicidal Putin? To save the planet Jack Kennedy did it with an off-his-rocker Khruschev in the Cuba missiles crisis, and in Paris newly president Macron is front and back channeling Putin over Syria and “matters arising”. Republican Devin Nunez, a Trump stooge and House Intelligence committee member, says Democrats are using the Russia investigation to justify Clinton's loss. 100% correct, Devin. The Russia probe is just another excuse for divided, disarrayed Democrats – passionate young Bernies vs. The Same Old Bunch - to switch the spotlight away from the tough BIG UGLY STORIES to a lazier TV scandal that eats up all the available time and our eyesight. OK, what are the ugly stories worth raising hell, headlines and prime time about? No, not the Paris pollution accord. Foremost, budget director Mick Mulvaney’s fierce hatred and contempt for any of us not a billionaire. Trump’s Mulvaney, a southern Tea Party hawk, means us great harm. With a bloody machete Mulvaney (life pension, generous congressional health plan) is in a war mode to cut, cut, cut everything from food stamps, to Meals on Wheels, access to contraception, disability benefits, lengthen already long waiting times for help, Medicaid, senior and child and pregnant woman assistance – any and all programs that we’ve built up for ourselves and others in trouble. The great thing about this money monster is his honesty. “We’re no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off those programs.” Sweet Jesus, this guy is Catholic condemned by the U.S. Conference of Bishops, as if he cares. Swish, lop, head drops into the basket. (Personal note: yes, mum and I were on govt programs called “relief” where you stood in line all day for handouts of farm-surplus lard, beans and anything else indigstible but welcome.) Damn Mulvaney to hell. Ugly Story #2. Easy to cover if you really want to. Trump-and-it-should-be-said-Obama inspired ICE immigration ‘rafles’ (roundups) of our own “Jews”, mainly Latino immigrants. ICE is bossed by Homeland Secy, Marine general John Kelly who lost a son to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan and, in revenge, sees our border crossers as just another Taliban. Newspapers occasionally pick up the ICE story, TV, which sponges off newsprint, hardly ever unless something photogenic erupts. But there’s nothing camera-worthy about ICEmen hanging around a courthouse, school or home itching to add to their bonus. From January through March in “Operation Cross Check” Trump’s out of control ICEmen arrested for deportation 21,000 immigrants, many of them with no record or with traffic violations. In New York they took a four year old kid from school. Here in Southern California we have daily mass raids on homes and sweatshops. God help you daring to go to a hospital or police station to report an assault or robbery. What’s the problem, Rachel? Wake up Anderson! Most TV anchors (CNN Anderson Cooper, $4m) and producers make a lot more money than the poor, vulnerable and poverty-stressed who are Mulvaney and Trump’s pigeons. Media folks hardly ever walk in our shoes, and it shows. Ugly Story #3. The lousy state of the Democratic party with the Pelosi-Schumer-Hillary ancien regime’s death grip, and the “sans culottes”, the young progressive rebels straining to break free. Stop futzing about, you prosperous TV girls and boys. # |
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