TRUMP DRINKING GAME

(I made this up in a hurry for tonight's speech. There may be a better one out there someplace.)

Rules

(1) Take one drink every time Trump says:

Win/winning, weak, smart/smarter, tough/tougher, dangerous, bad dudes, amazing, huge, tremendous, terrific, zero, disaster, mess, border, security, negotiate and deals.

(2) Take 2 drinks if he says "big beautiful wall. "

(3) Chug your drink if he says:

I will be the greatest ____ that God ever created.”

“I’m the most _____ person you’ve ever seen.”

“Nobody ______ better than me, believe me.”

“I would use the greatest _____.”

“I know all the best _____.”

“So hard your head would spin.”

"I'm hearing that ____"

"People are saying..."

(4) Make another booze run if he says "bigly" or "three Corinthians. "

(5) Hit yourself in the head with a bottle if he says "failing, "fake" or "phony."

Leakers provide advance copy of Trump’s address to Congress

[The following is a copy of Alternative President Donald Trump’s speech to Tuesday’s joint session of Congress, provided by one of the several hundred leakers now operating in the federal government.]

Will you look at this crowd! People are saying this is the largest crowd any president ever got for this speech. The media won’t show you, but they are packed in here, folks, I mean Packed. In. Here. And there are lines outside with tens of thousands of other people who couldn’t get tickets.

The media wants you to believe that this event draws the same number of people every year – just members of Congress and the Supreme Court – and they claim the people outside are protesters. That’s just more fake news from the failing New York Times and CNN, the enemy of the American people. I plan to bankrupt them both next week.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m hearing that the state of our union is strong. Very strong. Not weak. Strong. What else could it be with Trump as president? Trump is a winner. I win things. I won 306 Electoral College votes, the most ever in history, except for 45 other Republicans and Democrats, and I won the popular vote, too, when you throw out the illegals. Top of the world, ma!

Since I took office, I have done more work in one month than any other president did in 12 years. I have already offended the leaders of England, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Germany, North Korea, China, Mexico, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. You think that’s easy to do? It is not, but nobody offends world leaders better than me, this I will tell you.

I have also signed a very great number of fantastic orders that Steve Bannon handed me. I don’t know what any of them say, but they look very official and those leather binders they come in are first rate. I think they make them in China. I love holding them up for the camera because it makes me look very presidential. I’m the most presidential person you’ll ever meet. Believe me.

I ordered my health secretary to repeal and replace Obamacare and replace it with my plan, which I told you was finished some time ago. We’ll move forward with that just as soon as he tells me what my plan includes.

I froze all government regulations. I think that means I can do whatever I want whenever I want. After all, I have important tweeting to do, news shows to watch and tee times scheduled for every weekend from now on, so I don’t need bothersome regulations getting in my way.

I scrapped the TPP, which was the dumbest deal ever. Whoever thought we needed a trade policy for toilet paper? It was a disaster. So sad.

I kicked the Indians off their land out west so we can build a gas pipeline through the middle of their water supply. If they don’t like it, I’ll deport them to their country of origin.

(Aide hands him a note.) Wait! What? Are you telling me that this is their country of origin? Well, then we’ll send them all to Palestine. I hear there’s plenty of new housing going up over there.

I ordered Homeland Security to begin creating my border wall. It’s going to be a big beautiful wall with a big beautiful door so that big beautiful Mexican women can come through whenever they want. I love the Mexican women. I love to grab them by the… Sorry, they told me I shouldn’t say that again.  

Next, we’re going to begin creating the American taxpayer money that Mexico will use to pay for it.

I have authorized the hiring of 15,000 more immigration agents to patrol the wall and the purchase of 15,000 pairs of jackboots from my daughter Ivanka’s “Secret Mercenary and Paramilitary Camouflage Uniform Collection” so they can be properly attired when they start ripping Latino families apart and deporting all of our gardeners, fruit pickers, dish washers, babysitters, janitors, cab drivers, maids and other bad dudes.

I banned Muslims from seven countries from entering the United States. Now I notice there are some judges in the room, so for your benefit, it didn’t really apply to Muslins and it’s not really a ban and there’s no religious test and we have good reasons for doing it, although none of our attorneys know what those reasons are yet. But we’ll have the best reasons. I have a very good brain.

I issued a memo to the Defense Secretary to create a plan to defeat ISIS. I know the fake news said I already had a secret plan, but they just make stuff up. I never said that, regardless of what you think you saw on videotape. Trust me, you didn’t see any such videotape and even if you did, it was just a fake, a phony, a fake.

I did other stuff to clean up the mess I was given, but let me finish with just a few of the more important points:

* My ratings on “Apprentice” were much higher than Arnold’s.

* Saturday Night Live hasn’t been funny for years and Alec Baldwin looks nothing like me. Sad.

* Meryl Streep is highly over-rated and no longer relevant, so I’m banning her from winning any more awards.

* I don’t need A-list celebrities to like me. I’d much rather be liked by toothless, Confederate-flag-waving ATV-riding redneck KKK members from Mississippi who didn’t finish high school, can’t spell their own names and think the Affordable Care Act is different from Obamacare.

To prove that, I’ll be holding a number of campaign rallies with them in the coming weeks so they can hoot and holler and shoot off guns and yell racial epithets at any minority journalists who cover the events. We’ll schedule one any time things don’t go my way.

That’s all I have for now. If you’re a Democrat, you can get out now. Go ahead, get ‘em out. Get ‘em out of here. That’s it, get ‘em out. All except for Joe Manchin. He can stay.

Republicans are welcome to join me down at Mar-a-Lago this weekend so we can have an open-air strategy session on top-secret issues with all of the golfers, dinner guests, waiters and busboys who happen to be at the club.

Finally, I want to thank you for actually showing up tonight. That doesn’t always happen these days. So God bless you – at least some of you – and God bless the deep red states of America.

‘Deconstructing’ America may be harmful to your health

Most of us don’t know when we’re going to die, the obvious exceptions being assisted suicide or just plain killing ourselves.

If we did know, it would make financial planning so much easier. “This is how much money I have and I’m going to live this many years, so dividing the money by the years, I can afford to spend this much money every year.” See what I mean?

I’m 67 years old right now. My father lived to be 71, and most of his siblings lived similar life spans. My mother, on the other hand, died at 82, and her family all lived well into old age. Her mother was 88 and her brother died at 99 and missed by a few weeks making it to 100. So I don’t know where I’m likely to fall on the family death scale.

Not only do we not know when we’re going to die, we don’t know how. A lot of people get cancer, sadly, and I did smoke for 50 years before quitting, so there’s that possibility. So far, so good on that one, however. Others die suddenly in traffic accidents or shootings or simply drop dead of heart attacks that seemingly come out of the blue.

So we’ve established that we can die at any time of a variety of causes, but we already knew that. What we didn’t know until recently was that we would elect an alternative president who would appoint a Cabinet of Deplorables that would tear down and discard all of the rules that were put in place to help us live longer and safer lives.

I don’t know about you, but if I died of cancer because I smoked too much for most of my life, I’d consider myself responsible for my own demise. However, if I died drinking water that was contaminated because coal companies were allowed to dump toxic debris into it, I’d be looking around for someone else to blame.

If a tree got struck by lightning and fell on my head, I’d call that fate and figure it was just my time to go. If a tree fell because global climate change caused years of severe drought and the tree just dried up and toppled over, Donald Trump and the climate science deniers would be hearing from my attorney.

If my wife or I contracted an incurable disease, and no one would be able to cure us, then we would die. However, if either of us contracted a treatable disease but we couldn’t get treatment because the government took away our health insurance, then our blood would be on somebody else’s hands.

And if a meteor broke loose from the Milky Way and crashed into my house, there’d be nothing I could do, but if the madman we put in the White House started a war with somebody and a nuclear warhead blew me apart, I’d be severely pissed off.

See where I’m going with this?

Steve Bannon, the Alt-POTUS’s anti-Semitic, Lenin-loving, white supremacist strategic advisor, is on a mission to “deconstruct the administrative state” of America as we know it. That sounds like total nutbag bullshit until you realize he’s actually talking about dismantling our system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts because they “infringe upon U.S. sovereignty.”

To carry out this mission, the White House has appointed:

* An EPA director who likes suing the EPA,

* An education secretary who hates public education,

* A HUD director who opposes fair housing rules,

* An energy secretary who wants to abolish the Department of Energy and

* An attorney general who opposes civil rights.

I could go on. There’s more…but the message is clear. Our lives are being put in danger by our own government and the narcissistic sociopath we put in charge of running it. After they throw out all of the regulations we could find ourselves eating tainted food and drinking tainted water inside our substandard housing while breathing toxic air outside and getting sick with no health care options or maybe even getting arrested because of our race, color, religion or creed and locked away for a very long time.

We still don’t know when or how we’re going to die, but the list of causes seems to be getting a whole lot longer under our current administration. Is that really what 62 million people voted for?

They used to say your chances of something really bad happening [fill in your own disaster] were less than your chance of being struck by lightning. I’m not sure that’s true any longer. If given a choice between dying painfully and slowly from some water-borne disease caused by government neglect or being struck by that lightning bolt, I think I’d go out and play in the rain.

I admit I don’t know what a “deconstructed” America would look like, but it’s not something I want to try, so if we can’t find enough rational, patriotic and clear-headed members of Congress to stop this crazy train before it completely jumps the tracks, I will volunteer to be deported.

I don’t know for sure what life is like in Ireland, but I’d rather die there of natural causes than be murdered in America by the foot soldiers of Donald Trump.

‘I say it here, it comes out there’

In the 1987 movie “Broadcast News,” the Albert Brooks character – a good reporter with the face for radio – is home on his couch, telling William Hurt’s pretty but stupid TV anchorman what to say by prompting him over the telephone.

He makes a statement to producer Holly Hunter who relays it to Hurt through his earpiece and Hurt repeats the comment on the air, causing Brooks to utter my favorite line, “I say it here, it comes out there.”

I’m not ashamed to say I have used that line several times myself when things I said to my wife or posted on my blog turned up later in the day on the news.

Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter and William Hurt
in a scene from 'Broadcast News'

Just yesterday, for example, I wrote an essay in which I compared the current administration’s media strategy to the way Richard Nixon had first criticized and later threatened the media, who dogged him after the break-in at the Watergate.

I wrote that from experience, having been hired as a brand new reporter in 1972 and working in the media through the Watergate scandal and beyond. I googled a few details just to be sure I remembered them correctly and then wrote an entry for my blog. After posting my essay, I scanned Facebook and some other sources and found several stories comparing Alternative President Donald Trump to Richard Nixon.

I say it here, it comes out there.

Also yesterday, I suggested only half-jokingly that the media should boycott the Correspondents’ Dinner, leaving no one in the audience but Breitbart and InfoWars. Again, after posting my blog, I read a Facebook story saying…wait for it…that media outlets were threatening to do just that.

I say it here…

The point is this: That’s what media people are supposed to do. They’re supposed to exhibit a constant curiosity about the people and things around them, apply their own experiences, read what others write, think about things that other people just accept as reality and wonder “what if this” and “what if that and “wonder why that thing happened.”

If they’re working journalists, they apply that curiosity to their work and they go out and get the answers to the “what ifs” and “wonder whys” and they never stop until they do. I wish there had been more of that during the Trump campaign instead of wall-to-wall coverage of every speech and rally in real time, which – to quote Bill Maher – made Trump “look like he was president before he was.”

I’ve often used the example of the media as Dr. Frankenstein, creating a monster and then acting shocked and surprised when it escaped and started roaming the countryside killing sheep. It’s an analogy that just never gets old for me.

Fast forward to today and the Trump monster has thrown down the gauntlet, basically challenging the media to catch him doing something he can’t pass off as “fake news” and then banning those outlets that persistently try.

As for retired journalists like me, there’s not much we can do to get in the game we love so much. We can sit back and complain about the world or we can find some small way to get involved in it, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do with my shieldWALL blog. I used to post really long political commentaries on Facebook until I figured out that most Facebook members don’t want to read 25 or 30 paragraphs at a time.

That’s when I decided to start a blog as a repository for my rants and raves and post only a link to them on Facebook. That way, anyone who’s interested can click the link and go off campus to read what I wrote, while everyone else can skip past it and go on to the cats and the grandkids and the photos of yesterday’s lunch.

Anyhow, I just wanted to come here today to brag a little bit about still having the right instincts to follow, comprehend and analyze the news and share my thoughts with people who might care. I also want to thank everybody who reads the shieldWALL and sincerely hope that you enjoy it.

I guess I’ll keep writing it as long as the ideas keep flowing and my “VIEWS COUNT” tells me that people are still reading, or at least until someone convinces me to stop. So, thanks for reading this far. If you did, I guess that counts for something.

The air must be getting thin inside the Trump team’s bubble

Picture, if you will, a church…

It’s a small church, out of the mainstream, with its own brand of religion and its own beliefs. A new minister arrives in town under dubious circumstances and takes over the pulpit every Sunday. He rails against dishonesty, unfairness, faithlessness and phony belief, and every Sunday the message is the same.

Over time, his congregation grows tired of the same old message and begins to complain about the new preacher in restaurants and cafes and on street corners throughout the town. They start looking into where he came from and what he did while he was there. The word spreads until one Sunday, when they show up for services as usual, they find themselves barred from entering the church. Only the choir is allowed to enter, and then the preacher begins the service.  

*   *   *

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press briefing at which certain news outlets were blocked from entering. Those friendly to Alternative President Donald J. Trump were allowed in, however, and Spicer presumably went about…well…preaching to the choir, as it were.

As a former news reporter, I have a lot of thoughts about this occurrence and none of them is good. I have strongly defended the First Amendment for most of my life and nothing has changed that now, even though I do get frustrated with the “infotainment” that passes for news these days thanks to the 24-hour news cycle.

Spicer’s “invitation only” gaggle of reporters brought to mind some past confrontations between the media and the White House, mostly during the Nixon years when I was a young reporter just beginning to earn my stripes.   

* There was Nixon directing Vice President Spiro Agnew to attack newspapers and TV networks as if they were rival political parties. Sound familiar? Agnew said the president was the victim of “a small and unelected elite” who controlled the media. Not quite “enemy of the people,” but close.

* Angew at one point issued this famous diatribe about the press: “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club – the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Closer still.

* The anti-media ravings of the Nixon administration turned into threats after Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler claimed that all of the TV networks were “anti-Nixon” and would “pay for that, sooner or later, one way or another.”

* Another top adviser, Charles Colson, told the head of CBS News that Nixon’s administration would “bring you to your knees” and “break your network.”

Nixon’s history with the press is well documented so I won’t repeat it all here. You can click this link to read more or google it for yourself.

Of course, Nixon’s battle with reporters didn’t end well for the president, who was brought down by The Washington Post and forced to resign after the Watergate scandal, but the blanket mistrust of the mainstream media that took root during Nixon’s administration grew branches and leaves in the intervening years and bore fruit last year when Donald Trump made it a cornerstone of his presidential campaign.

Now the ball has shifted to the media’s court, and I’m curious to see what they will do next. I have some radical suggestions:

* Stop covering Trump speeches and rallies in real time. Send a reporter and a camera and – assuming they let you in – record the event, but if he makes the same old speech and doesn’t generate any actual news, report that and move on to the next story.

* Do the same for next week’s address to Congress. Don’t broadcast it live. Trump desperately needs the press to spread his message of gloom, doom and hate, but he can’t do it if no one but his base is listening. The media needs to band together on this or it won't work. 

* Boycott the annual Correspondents’ Dinner but don’t announce it in advance. I have this image of Trump rolling in wearing a tuxedo with Melania dressed to the nines and he looks out at the audience and there’s no one there but Breitbart and that crazy guy from InfoWars.

I have to say I don’t see this media war ending well for the current White House, either. We know that 27% of the people in this country would lie down in front of a bus for Trump, and those same people may get the daily briefings from the news outlets that Trump approves, but that will not expand the Alternative President’s base of support.

While his message is bouncing around inside the Conservative bubble, he is alienating greater and greater segments of the population who are free to move around outside, and those people will not stop until they find out about Trump’s Russian connections, the possibility of collusion during the campaign, any illegal deals that were made and, of course, the tax returns.

After all, the media already found the two guys who handed out those Russian flags during the CPAC meeting today. What. A. Hoot.

Not to get too melodramatic here, but as Trump keeps narrowing his inner circle, I keep seeing this image of him and his cronies packed shoulder to shoulder inside a station wagon parked inside a garage with the windows rolled up tight and the motor running.

I think I know how that’s going to end.

Here we go again with this whole transgender thing

I wish the Republican Party was as concerned about Russian interference in our presidential election, collusion with the Russians by our presidential candidate, his worldwide conflicts of interest, use of the White House as a profit center and his secret tax returns as it is with the gender identity of people using public restrooms in America.

Click to enlarge

Yesterday I posted a composite photo of 14 people with the caption, “Can you spot the transgenders?” I made that composite myself by simply googling “transgender men” and “transgender women” and having their photos appear. I confirmed each one by clicking on the link “go to page” and reading about them.

I learned that 10 of the 14 people in the composite openly identify as transgender. I’m not going to tell you who they are, and I challenge anybody to get all 10 right. The other four photos were selected more or less at random after googling such things as “sexy woman” and “geeky man.”

I don’t know any of these people so for all I know, they could all be transgenders. As for the other four, I have no idea about their gender identity so they could be gay, straight, trans or any combination. The point is, I don’t care what they are and neither should anybody else.

I wrote about this issue back in December and I still don’t understand why it’s such a thing. The federal government issued guidance under President Obama that said transgender people could use the restroom that matched their gender identity, and now Alternative President Donald Trump wants to throw out that rule.

None if this makes sense to me, for these reasons:

(1) First off, look at the composite photo. Which of those people would you deny access based on gender? You can’t tell if they are transgender, gay or straight. Even if you could, who is standing guard at the bathroom door to enforce this rule, and if you can’t expect to enforce it, then what good is it?

(2) Next, one of the first things transgender people do is get new birth certificates that show their gender identity. I clicked here and checked every state. As of 2015, only Idaho, Kansas, Ohio and Tennessee will not reissue a birth certificate to reflect a change in gender identity. With the Trump administration pushing this issue down to the states, however, I think we can expect more of them to jump on board this bandwagon.   

(3) Third, making this a states’ rights issue doesn’t simplify the law, it makes it more complicated. We could soon have 50 different laws in all 50 states. This could become a big problem for transgender students who move from state to state.

(4) And finally, other than pandering to the religious right, I can’t see who benefits from this rule. North Carolina has already lost millions in revenue because it refuses to repeal its bathroom bill, and Texas may be next. Among those opposed to the law there are the NBA and the NFL. In order for this to be an issue worthy of the attention it’s getting, you’d think that transgender people would have to cause somebody harm.

Conservatives like to scare people about bathrooms by suggesting that when transgender people begin using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, men will disguise themselves as transgender women to sneak into women's bathrooms and sexually assault women.

Riddle me this, Batman: Why couldn’t they do that anyway? 

As I posted before, I’m willing to bet that most or maybe all of us have shared a restroom with a transgender person at one time or another and not even known it, and the other argument about child molestation is ridiculous. The idea that someone is going to pretend to be transgender so he or she can molest your children in a public toilet in broad daylight with other people around and you waiting right outside the door just doesn’t make sense.

Of course, now that Steve Bannon, Trump’s brain, wants to deconstruct America as we know it and transport us back to the days of the 13 independent colonies, maybe nothing will ever make sense again. That’s a subject for another day.

Trump wants to erase President Obama rule by rule by rule

Another day, another Obama-era regulation erased.

This time it’s federal guidance that says a transgender student in a public school should be able to use the restroom of his or her own gender identity and not what the religious right says he or she must pretend to be.

Before that it was the Interior Department’s clean streams rule that prevented mining companies from dumping coal waste into waterways that run down the mountains they are exploding to get at the coal.

Trump also wants to roll back “the fiduciary rule” that requires brokers to act in a client’s best interest, rather than seek the highest profits for themselves, when providing retirement advice. Word is his Staff of Deplorables is preparing two more executive orders that would wipe out Obama-era policies on climate change and water pollution.

There may have been others and there are bound to be more. The eraser dust is flying off Trump’s desk so fast it’s hard to keep track of it all.

The big one, of course, is Obamacare, which the GOP has been trying to repeal since before it was even signed into law, even though all of the great minds of the Republican Party, when wired together, still can’t generate a spark of a better idea.

That’s because the original concept of the Affordable Care Act was once promoted unsuccessfully by Richard Nixon, was reimagined by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and turned out to be such a good idea that Republican Governor Mitt Romney sold it to the people of Massachusetts.

Before many more days, weeks or months pass by, the administration of Alternative President Donald J. Trump is determined to wipe from the books any progress this country made during the eight years that Barack Obama was president.

I don’t know if Trump still believes Obama is a Kenyan, is still embarrassed by the public whipping he took from the president at the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner or is just too busy tweeting to prevent Steve Bannon and the boys from running roughshod over anything good that has happened since 2008.

Or (d) all of the above.

The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter why Trump is doing what he’s doing, because history tells us this is just what Republicans do – get into office every eight years or so and roll the country backward until we return to the primordial ooze.

Under Junior Bush, for example, we started trillion-dollar wars (off the books) for all the wrong reasons, our standing in the world took a major hit and terrorist recruiting flourished while at home, the economy tanked so badly we fell into a recession, hemorrhaged 80,000 jobs a month and everyday people like me lost 40% of our retirement income in a matter of weeks. Oh, sure, it came back again, eventually, but not until Obama had been elected and had enough time in office to scrape the Bush residue out of the nooks and crannies of the West Wing.

Once he got the country cleaned up, Obama led us to unprecedented gains in human rights, civil rights, religious rights, environmental protection, financial security and international prestige. He did it with a dignity that gained respect around the globe and against the overwhelming odds presented by the GOP (Greedy Obstructionist Party) that did its best to block anything he wanted to do.  

Now, with the Twittler in charge – so to speak – they’re going after everything they missed the first time around, and there’s little that can be done to stop them until 2018, when the Democrats get a chance to come back around and start the country rolling forward again.

Damage. Repair. Repeat.

It reminds me of dancing the box step – left, left, forward, right, right, back.

What if my parents had voted for Donald Trump?

I had another epiphany last week. It’s not one I’m proud of.

I was thinking about how politics is dividing friends and families these days and flashed back to my own family when it happened. You see, my father was a Republican and my mother was a Democrat, although I don’t remember them fighting much about politics, except for one thing: who started all of the wars?

My dad always said that Democrats were to blame and my mom always argued it was the Republicans. It turns out that Democrats were in office when both of the world wars started and Truman was commander-in-chief during Korea. Kennedy and Johnson escalated the Vietnam War that had started under Eisenhower, so if being in office meant you started the war, then I guess my dad won that argument – at least until the Bush family came along.

Other than that, we didn’t talk politics much in our household. I think both of my parents voted for Richard Nixon in 1972 because they considered George McGovern to be “too radical,” and they both loved Republican Governor Arch Moore, but for the most part, we just lived our lives and the politicians did what they did.

I registered as a Democrat when I became eligible to vote, mainly because a friend told me they offered more choices in West Virginia. Republicans didn’t even offer candidates for a lot of offices back then, so if you wanted to make decisions in a primary election, you had to be a Democrat. I don’t remember thinking of Republicans as the “bad” guys, just the “other” guys.

As I got older, my hair got longer and I learned more about the platforms of the two major political parties, I began to lean further and further to the left. I also began to wonder why my father could have ever embraced the Republican Party, which really never did a damn thing for him. He was a mail carrier and my mother worked on and off in retail, so we were probably lower middle class.

My parents owned one house during their entire lifetimes and they had to sell it when I was 13 for reasons I don’t want to discuss. After that, we moved from one rental house to another until I got married and left home for good.

My dad lived to be 71 and never owned a new car. My mother bought her first new car when she was almost 80. We didn’t own stocks or bonds. We had no savings accounts or 401(k). Trickle-down economics never trickled down far enough to reach my family.

All of that, and yet my parents were both conservative thinkers who routinely voted against their own self-interest. And then there were the social issues.

I never asked, but thinking back on it now, I don’t believe either of them would have been pro-choice. They were Baptists, after all. One mistake and it was straight to hell with you. They would not have embraced gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, transgender restrooms or legalized marijuana. They would have opposed women and gays in the military and talked against “don’t ask don’t tell.”

They wouldn't vote for Kennedy because he was a Catholic. I don't want to think about whether they would have voted for Obama.

My mother grew up in a house with a giant photo of Robert E. Lee over the fireplace, sitting on his horse “Traveler.” The fact that I even know that horse’s name frightens me a little bit. She had confederate flags around and taught me to play “Dixie” on the piano. She was born in Fairmont but her forebears came from Virginia, so she cultivated a southern accent until the day she died.

My dad was quieter, more introverted and harder to read. I never knew his parents, so there’s a blank there. Ironically, he might have espoused slightly more liberal views than my Democrat mother, which makes me think that politically they had been switched at birth.

If they were alive today, I don’t know what family gatherings would be like. Would there be arguments? Would we fight over politics the way so many people do today...or not? I don't know.

I don’t know if my mother would advocate for women’s rights and gender equality and pay equity or if she would be happy to be the dutiful southern wife.

I don’t know if my dad – the military veteran – would be put off by Hillary Clinton’s emails and liberal leanings and support the Republican agenda to make America strong and safe, or if he would espouse the freedoms that he fought for in the war.

In other words, I don’t know if either of my parents would have voted for Donald Trump – and that was my epiphany. My parents weren't stupid and they weren't deplorable, but politically, they were nothing like me, or, more to the point, I am nothing like them. Like a lot of children, I could have followed in their footsteps and accepted their reality, but I did not.

Today I’m a registered Independent but I still list mainly to the port side. Looking back at those early influences, before I began to really think for myself, I consider what could have been, and I feel lucky to have weathered the storm and guided my ship safely home.

Be careful what you vote for or you may get it

Back in 2014, West Virginians – spurred on by right-wing propaganda over President Obama’s supposed “war on coal” – went to the polls to give Republicans control over both houses of the Legislature. It was the first time Republicans controlled the House of Delegates in 83 years, something that was virtually unheard of in a state where Democrats hold a significant advantage in voter registration.

The GOP thanked our hard-working, blue-collar voters by advancing an agenda that was anti-worker, anti-union, anti-education, anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-LGBT and anti-health.

Key among their actions were:

(1) Passage of right-to-work legislation that says employees of unionized companies aren’t required to pay union dues, even though unions are still required to represent them, and

(2) Repeal of the prevailing wage law which had guaranteed that all workers engaged in the construction of public improvement projects would be paid a decent wage. This, in effect, takes money away from working people and gives it back to their employers.

Collectively, these new laws were supposed to bring jobs pouring into the state from employers who were put off by a strong labor presence. So far, I haven't seen that happening. Meanwhile, the working men and women of the state got screwed over by the Republicans they elected into office in 2014. So what did they do about it?

Two years later, last November, they went out to the polls and voted them all back in again.

Now, I read that the West Virginia Senate is considering a bill that would prohibit individuals put out of work temporarily because of a strike from receiving unemployment benefits. If passed, this would be another blow to working people and just one more anti-labor effort from our pro-business Republican legislature.

(Pro-union forces think there may be many more pieces of anti-labor legislation yet to come.)

Under current law, if a worker is on strike and the company he or she works for stops production, the worker does not receive unemployment benefits, but otherwise, if the company brings in temporary workers, management or someone else to do the striking worker’s job, then that worker can get unemployment. Workers who are not working due to a lockout can also receive unemployment checks.

If the Senate bill is enacted, workers would not be able to get unemployment benefits if they are out on strike, regardless of the production status of the company.

Critics argue that the bill will create an uneven playing field during contract negotiations, forcing unions to come to agreement on issues more quickly than they want to because their workers are striking without pay. The bill would also take away any incentive businesses might have to negotiate in good faith, they say.

Lead sponsor of the bill, Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, says the bill does not impede collective bargaining and is in the best interest of taxpayers. He says it would save the state about $175,000 a year in unemployment benefit costs, although I don’t know how anyone can accurately predict the frequency and duration of strikes that may not even happen.

On the other hand, Mike Caputo, vice president of United Mine Workers District 31 and himself a state delegate, called the bill “another Republican Party attack on working families.”  Both Caputo and fellow delegate Roman Prezioso think the Legislature should be trying to solve the state’s $500 million budget deficit instead of nitpicking over labor rights that save very little (if any) money.

The takeaway here is simple. Sometimes you do get what you deserve.

Just like in Washington, where Alternative President Trump and his Cabinet of Deplorables are running roughshod over civil rights, religious rights, freedom of the press, environmental protection, financial security and anything else they can steal from the public, the people we sent to Charleston are going to extremes to take away anything that isn’t nailed down just to feed their individual and corporate greed, leaving the people of the state floating face down in their wake.

Congratulations, West Virginia. You got what you voted for.

Congress and White House in hand, Conservatives are buying the Judiciary, too

Last night I saw a TV commercial promoting the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the 30-second spot, a former Obama administration attorney called Jane Nitze endorses Gorsuch, saying, “I don't think folks on the Left should be concerned about Judge Gorsuch becoming a Supreme Court justice.... He will approach each case the same regardless of the issue or the parties before him. And he will have a great deal of respect for folks on all sides of the ideological spectrum.”

I found this very odd, for a couple of reasons:

(1) I’ve never seen an ad like this before, attempting to sell me a Supreme Court justice. It made me wonder who would pay for such an advertising campaign (wink wink, nod nod).

(2) I’m not in the U.S. Senate and I don’t get a vote, so I’m not the best audience for this type of promotion. Or am I?

I wound it back and paused the TV to get a better look. Down near the bottom, in hard-to-read, tightly condensed, pale white type were the words, “Paid for by the Judicial Crisis Network.” A little research and my questions were answered.

I was not surprised.

The $2 million worth of cable advertising featuring Jane Nitze is part of a larger, $10 million campaign to confirm Alternative-President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) is targeting states where Senate Democrats are vulnerable in 2018, particularly those where Trump won by large margins. (They’re looking at you, Joe Manchin, even though you’re more Republican than Democrat.)

So I’m supposed to join my fellow West Virginians and pressure DINO Joe to support the Gorsuch nomination or else we’re going to vote him out of office next election. Right.  

The JCN is the same group whose “Let the People Decide” campaign helped keep Obama nominee Merrick Garland off the bench. “We are preparing to launch the most robust campaign for a Supreme Court nominee in history and we will force vulnerable Senators up for re-election in 2018…to decide between keeping their Senate seats or following Chuck Schumer’s liberal, obstructionist agenda,” said Carrie Severino, Chief Counsel and Policy Director of the JCN.

It will come as no surprise that a big chunk of JCN’s funding comes from the Koch Brothers, the oil billionaires and political donors who apparently aren’t satisfied buying Congress and the White House but now want to buy the third and final branch of government – the Judiciary – as well. According to Conservative Transparency, the Koch-founded Wellspring Committee contributed more than $3.6 million to JCN from 2010–2012 to pay for ads urging the Senate to block any Obama Supreme Court nomination.

Click here to read more.

The Daily Beast reports that JCN was originally established as the Judicial Confirmation Network, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group that didn’t disclose its donors while “drumming up support for Bush Supreme Court nominees John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr.—eventual allies for Antonin Scalia on the Court’s right flank.”

When President Obama was elected, JCN changed the “C” in its name to “Crisis” and spent millions to block Obama’s nominees to the high court and “to sway state judicial elections and attorneys general races, helping to uphold state laws backed by conservatives, nurture like-minded talent in the states and advance pro-business, limited-government legal agendas aligned with its donors’ leanings.”

Click here to read more.

The Daily Kos calls JCN “a pipeline for secret money to other, better-known dark money groups…which in turn have spent big bucks in state Supreme Court and AG races. It has spent millions in the states to get the conservative outcomes it wants from the courts.”

Click here to read more.

Now I don’t want to keep beating a dead horse – or maybe I do – but this is what you really vote for when you vote the top of a ticket. This is what you get when you’re a one-issue voter who ignores all of the other issues. You may support Donald Trump because you oppose abortion or you hate Mexicans or you want your coal mining job back, but what you’re actually voting for is a political party with secret donors who will easily spend millions of dollars to radically transform American government and society.

They're committed to taking away your health insurance, your Social Security, your Medicare, your minimum wage, your clean air and water, your right to choose, your right to freedom of religion, your gay and transgender rights, your civil rights and even your right to vote.

In the end, unless you’re a member of the wealthy donor class or your name is Koch, you’re the ones left paying the bill for your own destruction. You’ll pay plenty, my friends, and this is what you’ll get.

Oh, look, Martha, it’s those pesky Russians again!

Last night, National Security Adviser Mike Flynn was forced to resign over allegations he colluded with a top Russian official concerning matters of state before Alternative President Trump was even in the White House.

It’s the latest chapter in a chilling narrative that finds the Trump administration acting more in line with our sworn international enemy than with the American people he is supposed to serve.  

Flynn resigned four days after The Washington Post and The New York Times – citing nearly a dozen current and former officials – reported that Flynn had spoken with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S., about sanctions placed on Russia for hacking during the recent election. Flynn had repeatedly denied the accusation and supposedly lied to VP Mike Pence about the series of telephone calls.

What’s worse, the White House was apparently briefed on the content of these calls on January 23, when Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general — backed by the Department of Justice, the FBI and the director of national intelligence — reportedly warned the president that Flynn could be blackmailed by the Kremlin, which knew about the secret conversations.

(Note the reference to “blackmail.”  You’ll be seeing it again shortly.)

The Flynn story is still developing today and you can find out more on any of a number of news sites so I won’t repeat it all here, but it adds a new wrinkle to an essay I wrote last month under the title, “If it walks like a Russian and hacks like a Russian….”

It went like this:

January 11, 2017

I can’t get past this whole Russia business.

I mean, it’s not bad enough that every U.S. intelligence agency says the Russians interfered in our presidential election, but now it comes out that the Russians have been dangling blackmail-ready info over Trump’s head while communicating with Trump’s team of advisers.

CNN, among others, reported yesterday that both President Obama and alt-President Trump have been briefed on this damaging new report, but like everything else involving Russia, Trump refuses to acknowledge that any of it is true.

First he sent out his designated truth manipulator Kellyanne Conjob to claim that Trump “was not aware of” the latest briefings. What that means is anybody’s guess. Did he get the briefing but sleep through it? Did he ignore it because he was too busy tweeting about Meryl Streep? Or was he unable to read it because was he blinded by the glare from all of those gold furnishings inside the Tower of Trump?

Later, he shot out a tweet claiming he was the victim of a political witch hunt, and then today during his fake news conference he admitted he DID get the briefing but it was all fake news. To make matters worse, his confirmation of this fake-ness came from…wait for it…the Russians themselves.

“Vat? You tink dat vee interfereski in ‘lexshun? Nyet!” 

First off, he can’t have it both ways. Either Trump got the briefing or he didn’t. If he really didn’t get it then he can’t really comment on it, can he? If he did get it, he should explain how everybody in the world can see what’s going on except for him and his 62 million closest friends.

That may sound funny but it’s no joke. As loyal, patriotic, tax-paying American citizens we have a right to know why the alt-president of the United States – just nine days from his inauguration – refuses to believe what his own intelligence agencies are telling him but absolutely believes what he hears from a known U.S. adversary that has no obligation or motivation to tell him the truth.

Seriously, he has been given a mountain of evidence that Russia is the perpetrator of this crime. Did he really expect them to come out today and admit what they’ve done to help get him elected? When did Vladimir Putin become the teller of truth?

And as for Trump himself, well, he hasn’t told the truth since the day he descended the golden escalator. I didn’t believe him then and I don’t believe him now. I don’t know how long his presidency will last, but frankly, two hours will be too long for me.

I’m not in the intelligence business, but I know one thing: If it looks like a Russian and hacks like a Russian, it’s probably a Russian. I’d suggest to Trump that he either get ahead of this now with some “true truth” or get out while he can. This is likely to get worse before it gets better, and I don’t think it will end well for him. 

Edit: And now we know it is getting worse.

Who's represented by 'representative government?'

Ten days ago, I sent this email to my three elected representatives:

“From all indications, Steve Bannon is the brains behind Donald Trump and is serving as the de facto president of the United States. There is also substantial evidence that he is a Leninist, an anti-Semite and a white supremacist. I implore you and your colleagues to use whatever means possible to remove this dangerous man from a position of power in the U.S. government. Thank you.”

To date I have received the following responses:

Rep. David McKinley (R-WV, 1^st District) sent me an email letter explaining how cabinet members are appointed. It included this paragraph:

Every President, regardless of party, should be given the chance to select a cabinet of his or her choosing. While the House of Representative does not play a direct role in the confirmation process and I do not have the opportunity to vote on cabinet appointees, thank you for expressing your concerns. I will be happy to pass them along to my colleagues in the Senate.

Please excuse my arrogance, Mr. McKinley, but even I know that Steve Bannon is a special assistant and chief strategist to the president and is not a cabinet appointee, so nothing in your response addresses my email in any way, shape or form. Thanks for nothing. Now please go away.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) emailed a copy of his newsletter. It did not address my comment or anything else that I might care about.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) did not respond until yesterday, when she emailed her “Big 3” list of accomplishments for the week. Needless to say, none of them involved booting Steve Bannon out of the West Wing.  

So, I’m not stupid. I’m neither shocked nor surprised that none of my elected representatives could be bothered to respond to my inquiry in any meaningful way. As a former newspaper reporter, I have experience covering legislative bodies and I know how politics works.

I am concerned, however, that none of these three supposed public servants appears to be the least bit bothered by the Fascist leanings of our newly elected administration and especially Mr. Bannon. I rarely if ever agree with any of them on any issue and I wouldn’t vote for them on a bet, but I apparently gave them too much credit by believing that at least one of them might be interested in the future of America.

It’s also troubling that the whole concept of representative government seems to have been abandoned by those who depend on us for our votes. If I can’t contact them with a question, problem or suggestion and expect some kind of appropriate reply – even if it came from one of their staff people – then they surely do not represent me, and if they don’t represent me then I guess nobody does.

If I’m not going to be represented by my government, then maybe I should stop paying taxes to it. Better yet, maybe I should round up a few of my friends and go dump some tea into the Monongahela River, all the while shouting, “No taxation without representation.” 

That’s about all I’ve got, at least until the next election when I can vote against any of the three of these sycophants whose name appears on my ballot. If my calls and letters are going to be ignored, that’s the only weapon I have left.

If you really want to speed up baseball…

Baseball season will be here before you know it. I like baseball because it’s the only sport I was able to play with any reasonable amount of skill, and it is America’s pastime, after all. There’s nothing quite like a night out at the ball yard with a warm $8 beer, a cold $6 hot dog and the company of family and friends.

I read with some amusement recently that Major League Baseball is once again looking for ways to speed up the game. This, because the average time of a nine-inning contest is now up to three full hours – an increase of four whole minutes over 2015. One playoff game, it was noted, took more than 4 1/2 hours to play.

(I don’t suppose time outs for TV commercials had anything to do with that.)

I haven’t played baseball for a very long time but I did play slow-pitch softball well into my 40s. We could complete a 7-inning game with the score of 21-19 in a little over an hour, so I know you could find ways to play a nine-inning baseball game in two hours or less if you’d just think outside the box and institute a few simple rules.

For example:

* If I were in charge, I’d electrify the batter’s box, using something like invisible pet fencing. Once a batter stepped into the box, he couldn’t step out again without getting an electrical shock (unless he hit the ball and had to run to first base). The voltage would be increased each time he stepped out until it reached a lethal dose. If he stepped out and fell over dead, he’d be called “out.”

* Institute a shot clock for pitchers with 15 seconds per pitch. If you didn’t get it off in time, it would be a pitch clock violation and the umpire would call “ball one, ball two,” etc.

* Stop using a new ball every time one touches the dirt. As long as the ball is white enough to see and still has a cover on it, it should be good enough to use. If that didn’t work, go to orange or yellow balls that would camouflage the dirt.

* Require manufacturers to make batting gloves that were custom fit for every player or else attach them to the batters’ hands with duct tape. Nothing slows down the game more than batters adjusting and readjusting their batting gloves after every pitch. If a guy adjusted them more than once, he’d automatically be called out. Next batter, please.

* Along the same lines, make it illegal to change your batting gloves for a different pair after you got on base. If you can’t run the bases wearing the same gloves you used to bat, you’re much too neurotic to play baseball, which is supposed to be a game played for fun. See a qualified psychologist for professional help.

* Penalize all throws to first base that don’t pick off a runner. If you throw over once and don’t get the guy out, he gets second base automatically. Same for any other base.

* Give a manager one trip to the mound per game. The rest of the time, he could just yell out what he wants or use those goofy signals they use for everything else. Need a new pitcher? Call the bullpen on the phone and then signal the old pitcher to leave the mound. “Hey, Jake, you suck. GTFO” should work.

* Adopt the softball rule. Any foul ball after two strikes is an out.

* Get rid of umpires and install lasers to indicate balls, strikes, fair and foul balls, safe/out calls and home runs. This would cut down on arguments, improve the accuracy of calls and lead to my next suggestion…

* Instant replay has to go. Period.

Any serious discussion about speeding up the game of baseball has got to start with getting rid of a rule that allows umpires to take 2-3 minutes or longer watching a video replay of a foot touching or not touching a base, shot from one or more awkward and dubious camera angles and reviewed by a guy in a private booth that could be 300 to 3,000 miles away.

While we’re at it, here are three other rules changes I’d like to see:

(1) If a batter gets hit by a pitch, he gets one free shot to throw a ball back at the pitcher, who must stand still and take it. He can cover up his face or his crotch, but not both.

(2) Institute a penalty for every time a player grabs his crotch. If it’s a batter, he gets a strike called. If it’s a fielder, everybody moves up one base.

(3) Shorten the baseball season to 12 games and increase football season to 162 games.

Yeah, that should do it. Play ball!

Some advice for my fellow West Virginians

When Amway DeVos closes your kids' public school and gives you a voucher for a charter school, but there aren't any charter schools anywhere close to where you live...

And your drinking water is yellow, catches fire and smells like shit, and the air is choking you but there is no more EPA…

And the fracking companies have bought up your neighbor's land and are burying radioactive waste in your garden, but Rick Perry is too busy lobbying for more oil wells to notice...

And they’ve taken away your health insurance and cut your Medicare and Social Security…

And the Labor Secretary cut the minimum wage in half and installed robots to take your kid’s after-school job…

And your friendly neighborhood bank has been taken over by Megabank International and they want to renegotiate your mortgage...

And your same-sex marriage has been annulled and your transgender child can't use the rest room...

And you can't vote any more because you're black or Latino and you don't have the correct ID...

And your wife makes half as much as the guy next to her doing the exact same job...

And you still haven't gotten your job back...

Just remember how proud and happy you were on Election Day when you voted to make America great again.

And by the way...

Facebook always asks, "What's on your mind?"

Today, what's on my mind is this:

We have a gutless, soulless, greedy Congress and an alternative president elected by uninformed voters who are now in line to get screwed by the people they put in office, and who are possibly too stupid to even know it. To them, I say, "Congratulations. You're going to get what you deserved."

To everyone who voted for third-party candidates who had absolutely no chance of winning and those who didn't bother to vote at all, I say, "Shame on you for allowing this to happen. This cluster fuck is on you."

At least we don't have a president who doesn't understand email. Do we?

Broadcasters need to implement the 30-second 'liar’s delay'

Television and radio stations often use what’s called a “seven-second delay” to intentionally hold back the broadcast of live material. A short delay alerts them to such things as profanity, bloopers or other undesirable material before it can get on the air.

If, for example, somebody swears on camera, the station can mute the sound or “bleep” that portion of the interview so the public doesn’t hear it. In an extreme case, the station could go to commercial or otherwise cut away from the live interview to keep viewers from seeing or hearing something unsatisfactory.

With that in mind, I have some suggestions for the news media going forward in their coverage of the Trump administration. I offer them here, free of charge. You can thank me later.

First, automatically implement a 30-second delay on any interview involving Trump, a Trump spokesperson or a Trump surrogate. Call it the “pathological liars’ delay.” When any of them begin to lie, which is inevitable, mute the audio until they have finished lying. We’ll see their mouths move but no sound will be coming out. That way, the misinformation won’t reach the eyes and ears of the viewing public.

That leads to my second suggestion. When live interviews include so many lies they are nothing more than audible on-air questions and silent dead-air answers, the stations or networks should follow CNN’s lead and simply stop inviting these liars to go on TV. I don’t see the point in having Kellyanne Conjob go on the air, tell a bunch of lies or “alternative facts,” get called on it immediately and spend the rest of the news cycle walking back and re-explaining what she really meant to say.

That doesn’t benefit anybody except Facebook posters, Saturday Night Live and the people who create internet memes. Hopefully, the public will get the message that no one in the administration ever tells the truth and they can’t be trusted to deliver any real, meaningful information. (Yeah, right. I can’t believe I actually typed that.)

Third, continue to cover Sean Spicenut’s daily press briefings but don’t broadcast them live. Record them live and then review the recording afterward to see if there is any actual “news” to be reported. If so, edit it into a news segment and put it on the air. If not, simply report that “nothing important (or true) came from today’s briefing” and move on to another story. This will also rob SNL of source material but will protect the viewers/listeners from another barrage of lies.

And finally – and most importantly – when covering a live event, as soon as the Alternative President or one of his lackeys begins to talk about the “dishonest media” and its “fake news,” quickly and quietly turn off your cameras, walk up to the podium to retrieve your microphones and file quietly out of the room. If you all leave, Trump will be left with a room full of guests but no reporters to tell the world what he did or said. He’ll have to do it himself later – 140 characters at a time.

For all of his bluster and insults about the media, Donald J. Trump would be nothing without them and he knows it. That’s why he plays them the way he does. That’s why he spends his days looking at every newspaper, magazine and TV station that carries his image. The media made him president by covering his entire campaign in real time and doing it for free.

He knows that when he insults them or calls them out by name, they’ll carry it in real time, then race back to the newsroom to convene a panel to talk about it further for the rest of the day, which keeps the ratings high while allowing the Trump train to roll along its merry way. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, and it's time the media took back the news from the liars and con men who hijacked it last year and have been holding it for ransom every since.

Donald Trump Anti-Immigrant Extreme Vetting Questionnaire v. 2.0

Personal Information

1. What is your name?

2. In English, Mohammed. What is your name in English?

3. What country are you coming from?

4. Are you a terrorist?

5. If no, why not?

6. If yes, why are you admitting it? Are you an idiot?

7. Before you came here, did you move to Switzerland for a while and become a Presbyterian to try and confuse us?

8. If not, why didn’t you think of that? Are you an idiot?

9. How long do you plan to stay? Do you plan to live here forever, raise a family and join the Lions Club or will you only be here long enough to hijack an airplane or build a bomb in a pressure cooker?

10. Do you wear vests a lot?

American Values Section

1. Have you read our Constitution? If so, why? Most of us haven’t.

2. Do you believe in Sharia Law?

3. L.A. Law? 

4. Murphy’s Law?

5. The law of supply and demand?

6. Have you ever fought the law? Did the law win?

7. Do you believe in rock and roll and can music save your mortal soul?

8. And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

9. Who won the 1927 World Series?

10. Boxers or briefs?

11. Recite a Bible verse. Now do it in Arabic. A-ha! Caught you!

12. Who put the bomp in the bomp-she-bomp-she-bomp?

13. Name all of the white people on our money. (Quick, before that black woman gets on there.)

14. Where were you during the Bowling Green Massacre?

15. Are you coming here to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights? If yes, welcome to America, bro-heem!

BONUS QUESTION: Who would you have illegally voted for between Fabulously Wealthy and Handsome Donald Trump or Crooked Old Sickly Liar Hillary Clinton?

If you answered “Trump,” come on in and help make America great again.

If you answered “Clinton,” get your immigrant ass back on the boat and GTFO. We don’t need your kind ‘round here, no way, no how.

Mar-a-Lago (Sung to the tune of 'Desperado')

Mar-a-Lago, why don’t you come to your senses

You've been ranting about fences for too long now

Oh, you’re a mad man

Completely driven by vanity

Your type of insanity

Will hurt me somehow

Don’t insult the Queen of England, boy

She’ll ban you if she’s able

We know the Russian czar is always you best friend

Now it seems to me some bad guys

Have been seated ‘round your table

But they’re going to bring the good times to an end

Mar-a-Lago, oh you’ve got everyone buzzin’

Your hatred for Muslims is driving you nuts

And freedom, oh freedom has got protesters walking

So tired of your talking, no ifs ands or buts

 

Don't your head explode watching SNL

Don’t you hate that show from the depths of hell

It's hard to tell the Baldwin from the Trump

You're losin' all your marbles, Don

Ain't it funny how your ratings went away?

Mar-a-Lago, put out those flames you’ve been fannin’

Get rid of Steve Bannon, just show him the gate

You may have power, but there's a way we can reach you

You know we’ll have to impeach you, before it's too late

Please explain how polluting streams puts miners back to work

The U.S. House and Senate voted this week to overturn the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule, a regulation requiring coal companies to clean up waste from mountaintop mining so it doesn’t pollute the water in local streams. The resolution goes now to Alternative President Donald Trump, who is guaranteed to sign it.

I find this very disturbing. I’ve seen what mine discharges can do to rivers and streams in West Virginia. Over the course of my 67 years, I have watched as the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Protection waged an uphill battle against wealthy coal mine owners in their attempts to clean up the air and water in this state.

Sadly, it took only 13 days for the Trump regime to undo part of that environmental progress.

I’m also disturbed because all three of our Representatives – Jenkins, McKinley and Mooney – and both Senators Manchin and Capito voted to throw out the regulation and open the door for more orange and yellow streams pouring off mountaintop strip mines in the West Virginia hills. It’s bad enough that coal companies are blasting away the tops of our mountains but now they will be able to pollute our streams with impunity.

Welcome to wild, wonderful, third-world West Virginia.

That the House members and Capito voted as they did was no surprise. They are all Republicans, after all, and Capito is the daughter of former Governor Arch Moore, famous for extorting money from coal companies and for allowing the Pittston Coal Group to escape paying the cost of the Buffalo Creek disaster.

[In case you’ve forgotten, in 1972 a coal slurry dam owned by Pittston burst during a period of heavy rainfall and flooded 16 coal towns along Buffalo Creek in Logan County, killing 125 people, injuring 1,100 more and leaving 4,000 others homeless.

At the close of his last term in 1977, Moore accepted a $1 million payment from Pittston to settle up for Buffalo Creek – a mere pittance compared with the $100 million the state had sued for and far less than the $9.5 million cleanup costs paid by the federal government.]

Manchin is another story. Joe is a DINO (a Democrat In Name Only) who routinely votes with the Republicans now that West Virginia is a deep red state. No doubt he’ll be out today or tomorrow promoting his “yea” vote on this issue as a way to get the miners back to work, and the miners will be shouting back, “Way to go, Joe.”

The problem is, someone’s got to show me how rolling back this environmental regulation will put one single miner back on the payroll or do anything to restore lost wages, insurance or pension benefits because it has nothing to do with actually mining coal. What it does do is fatten the pocketbooks of the coal mine owners who no longer will have to pay the price for environmentally responsible mining.

  

Coal operators argued that this regulation placed such a substantial financial burden on them that it killed mining jobs in Appalachia. Seriously? The cost of wastewater treatment is your biggest problem? Bigger than dwindling markets, cheaper natural gas and played out mines? Besides, the clean streams regulation wasn't even implemented until December, and those jobs had already been lost.

On the other hand, environmentalists, public health advocates and Democrats broadly supported the rule, saying it would protect waterways and prevent health risks for people living in coal-heavy areas. They see it more as a cost of doing business in a manner that respects the environment.

“If you (really) want to help miners,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, during floor debate, “then come address their health and safety and their pension program.”

Instead, Congress is loosening an environmental regulation that is not likely to increase the state’s coal severance tax revenue or payroll taxes or any other measure of economic prosperity in West Virginia, despite what your elected representatives will probably tell you. It is a victory for the coal industry and the coal industry alone, and that’s just sad. It’s just one more example of West Virginia selling out to (mostly) out-of-state coal companies under the guise of protecting the state’s economy.

How’s that been working out so far?