Wise words in the winter (spring, summer and fall) of our discontent

William Shakespeare never met Donald Trump. Of this I am certain, although reading some of the bard’s most famous quotations makes me wonder if he might have, in his own way, foretold the coming of our current faux-president and the national embarrassment he has caused.

For example, when Cassius spoke in Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar,” he could have been talking about the unlikely election results from November 2016:

“Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

That’s a much more creative way of saying “elections have consequences,” wouldn’t you agree?

Likewise, in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Puck could have been describing the typical Trump voter when he said, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Or Claudio in “Measure for Measure,” who suggested, “The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.” I would argue that hope in empty promises is no hope at all, but that’s just me, so moving on…

Regarding Trump’s history with women, Balthazar summed that up nicely in “Much Ado About Nothing.”

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,” he said. “Men were deceivers ever; one foot in sea, and one on shore, to one thing constant never.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

On the subject of greed, Shakespeare had Trump down to a “T” when he wrote, “All that glitters is not gold” in “The Merchant of Venice.” He also spoke to Trump’s narcissism and arrogance in “King Lear:”  

“Have more than thou showest. Speak less than thou knowest. Lend less than thou owest. Ride more than thou goest. Learn more than thou trowest, and set less than thou throwest.”

As for Trump’s reality-show vision of the presidency, I offer this from “As You Like It:”

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”  

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion rolls on, I harken back to this quote from Cordelia in “King Lear:”

“Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides. Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.”

One can only hope.

And this from Hamlet regarding Trump’s world view:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Or, from “Julius Caesar:”

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

And, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

Nothing describes Donald Trump and his tweets, his rallies and his word-salad speeches better than my favorite Shakespeare quotation that comes from “MacBeth:”

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

But take heart, my friends, Shakespeare also predicted the public outcry, the refusal by many to accept Trump’s new normal and the organized resistance to his presidency in Act 3, Scene 1 of  “The Merchant of Venice,” when he wrote this:

  

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

The answers to those questions are “yes,” “yes,” “yes”…and “oh hell yes.”

And thereby hangs a tale.

‘That’s My Bush’ (or is it Trump?)

A couple of presidents ago there was a TV series on, I don’t know, maybe Comedy Central, called “That’s My Bush,” in which Timothy Bottoms portrayed George W. Bush, mocking the man we thought was the worst, dumbest president we had ever had.

After reading Donald Trump’s off-the-rails commencement speech at the Naval Academy this week, a thought occurred to me. Back in 2016, instead of actually running for president, Trump should have approached his buddies at NBC about doing another network series – starring himself – in which a pompous, arrogant, narcissistic president with long red ties and zero qualifications goes around the country and the world saying and doing really stupid things.

This TV president could make a series of speeches at pep rallies that attract white supremacists and other poorly educated overweight white people from mostly poor states, where he would shout inane slogans about his opponents and encourage his minions to attack members of the media who write negative stories about him. Fans could even arrive strapped with AR-15s and wearing white Klan hoods.

What a hoot!

He could fill his cabinet with corrupt and/or incompetent public officials who hate the agencies they are hired to represent. It would be even better if, while the attorney general of a state, one of them had filed a series of lawsuits against, say, the EPA, which he was now going to direct.

I tell you, this would be comedy gold.

Faux-president Trump could hold hands with foreign leaders who have military parades and wives who “look fit.” He could send letters to other leaders who possess nuclear weapons…letters that sound like they were written by a high school freshman who got stood up by her prom date...threatening annihilation unless the leader agrees to de-weaponize himself and surrender his defense against his enemies.

This “president” would refuse to show up at traditional events like the Kennedy Center Honors and the Correspondents’ Dinner because he is afraid someone there won’t like him or kiss his ring.

He would continue to campaign for office and spew the same stump speeches two years after winning the job.

He could show up to speak at major events, throw his prepared text into the air and ramble on for 45 minutes about his Electoral College numbers, the crowd at his inauguration, his “record-breaking” number of bills passed (which is actually, like, one) and how regardless of the subject matter, “no one has ever seen anything like this before in the history of our country.”

He would use Twitter like a teenager to “get the truth out” to his followers and to convey his version of reality.

After firing his advisors, he would take advice from three talking heads on a morning TV talk show, and share pillow talk with another one every night before going to bed – alone.

And, of course, every word out of his mouth would be a lie.

If this was a TV show on, say, every Sunday night right after “60 Minutes,” the ratings would go through the roof, and we know how much Trump loves ratings. He would get to play the part of the president without any of the work, aggravation, stress and disappointment of actually having the job, and he could be paid much, much more than the $400,000 a year the real president gets.

The character Trump could invite an endless stream of porn stars and Playboy bunnies to the White House for golden showers parties while the real Trump could continue to sell and promote condos, hotels and casinos all over the world without breaking any laws. It would be, for Trump, the best of all worlds.

“That’s My Bush” was pretty funny, as I recall, and recently I found the episodes that I had recorded onto on VHS tape. I’ll be transferring them to DVD today. “That’s My Trump” (or whatever it would be called) had the potential to be even funnier, I suspect. Hell, I might even have watched the show if I hadn’t been poisoned by the real person behind it. I mean, this level of stupidity -- if acted out for TV -- could be highly entertaining.  

Unfortunately, the star of my imagined TV show actually did run for president in 2016 and was elected with the help of the Russian government, a corrupt family and a bunch of fake social media accounts that swayed voters away from his opponent. He is now running the country the way his TV counterpart would have done it, and there is nothing funny about that.

Nothing. Funny. At all.

As Trump continues to rape the Constitution, why isn’t someone doing something?

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from restricting free speech while also guaranteeing freedom of the press…except, apparently, when it doesn’t.

The President of the United States is required to brief the bipartisan Congress – and not just a couple of his Republican cronies – on classified matters and issues of national importance…except, apparently, when he isn’t.

From the day he assumes the office, the president is sworn to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution and he is not above the law of the land…except, apparently, when he is.

This week alone, these tenets of American democracy have been bent, broken or shattered four times by the Trump Administration, and it’s only Thursday. Every time something like this happens, we scream, we cry, we complain and we comment on various social media, but we’re preaching to the choir and to ourselves. The real question is, when is somebody going to do something about this authoritarian president and his reality show version of the world?

In chronological order:

Tuesday

Early in the day, Scott Pruitt, director of the Environmental Protection Agency, banned three news organizations from attending a national summit on harmful water contaminants by claiming that the meeting room was full. Apparently, the safety of our nation’s water supply is not appropriate subject matter for our free and unfettered press.

The Associated Press, CNN and E&E News were prevented from attending the first half of the meeting, with security guards grabbing the AP reporter by the shoulders and "forcibly" shoving her out of the building.

“The Environmental Protection Agency's selective barring of news organizations, including the AP, from covering today's meeting is alarming and a direct threat to the public's right to know about what is happening inside their government,” said AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee. “It is particularly distressing that any journalist trying to cover an event in the public interest would be forcibly removed.”

Later Tuesday

Faux-president Trump allowed reporters to ask questions in the Oval Office during a press event following a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, but Trump himself decided which questions the media was entitled to present. When he was asked several questions about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Trump said, “Excuse me. I have the president of South Korea here. OK?  He doesn't want to hear these questions, if you don't mind.”

There’s that pesky press freedom thing getting in the way once again.

Wednesday

The next day, the owners of the National Football League gave in to the president’s forced patriotism policy by announcing that players will no longer be allowed to kneel during the national anthem to peaceably protest racial discrimination. Violators will be subject to punishment or their teams will face financial penalties – or both. Something tells me that any owner who has to pay a fine will take a chunk out of the players who cost him money.

For his part, Trump made the insanely stupid observation that taking a knee during the national anthem should “maybe” be a deportable offense. Deported to where, one has to wonder? Texas? Florida? Omaha, Nebraska?

Then he said this to his board of advisors, also known as Fox and Friends: “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem, or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.” Freedom of speech? We don’t have that, either. Not in Trump’s America, unless of course you agree with the lies that fall out every time he opens his mouth.

Thursday

Finally, on Thursday, the administration backed off a plan to brief only a handful of Republican lapdogs on confidential intelligence involved in the Russia investigation and agreed instead to hold back-to-back meetings – one for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy and another immediately after for a bipartisan gathering of House and Senate members.

That compromise didn’t come about, however, until someone pointed out that holding secret talks with one political party on highly classified intelligence material is probably against the law. Damn that law, anyway. That’s not the way they do things on Trump’s reality shows, that’s for sure.

Checks and balances

So here’s the problem. In this country we’re supposed to have a system of checks and balances so that one branch of the government – in this case, the executive – cannot make unilateral decisions that violate the Constitution while doing harm to one or more segments of the population. Congress and the courts are supposed to check and balance the president, and even the Attorney General is supposed to step in when the president skirts (or tramples) the law.

In Trumplandia, however, the Republican Party controls the federal courts and both houses of Congress, and leaders of both legislative bodies lack the backbone to stand up to their rogue chief executive. And the attorney general? Are you kidding? The last time Jeff Sessions stood up for anything was when he took his oath of office. Since then, Trump has used him like his personal attorney and not the attorney for the people.

So who’s going to do something about this, and when are they going to do it? We’ve got Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating Trump, but his report may be months if not years away, and half the country won’t believe it, whatever it should find. We don’t get to vote again until November, and even a blue wave may not wash Trump out of Washington.

So right now, the answer is this: I don’t know who is going to do something or what they’re going to do or when they’re going to do it…but I sure hope something happens soon, because Donald Trump is damaging this country a little bit every day, chipping away at all that is good and leaving swamp muck behind him in his wake.

And who knows what tomorrow will bring? There is still one more "work day" left before weekend golfing begins.

Trump is doing plenty for West Virginia, but none of it is good

[Click the highlighted links for source information.]

The hits just keep on coming. The administration of faux-president Donald J. Trump continues to sign bills and executive orders and issue directives that have a direct bearing on the people of West Virginia. The problem is, none of these actions appear to be doing us any good. Here are just a few examples of West Virginia under Trumpian rule:

CHIP program

A story out last week indicates that the Trump administration wants to cut funding from the Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, as part of its request to Congress for major cuts to the federal budget. CHIP provides health coverage to eligible children through both Medicaid and separate CHIP programs. It is administered by states according to federal requirements and funded jointly by states and the federal government.

According to CNN, Trump proposes to cut $7 billion from the popular program, claiming the cuts would come from “untapped leftover funds” and “wouldn't affect operations at CHIP” or in other health care areas. “This is money that was never going to be spent,” one official said.

First off, I’m not sure why it’s a bad thing for an account that benefits children’s health to carry a surplus from time to time, or how Trump and his swamp creatures know that the funds would never be spent, but here’s what’s important: In February of this year, West Virginia had 549,651 individuals enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, according to Medicaid.gov. That’s almost one-third of the entire state population. There is no way these proposed cuts will be good for the people of our state.

Health care

The CHIP report coincides with a new Gallup survey that shows the rate of West Virginians without health insurance rose significantly during the first year of Trump’s reign. Gallup attributes the dramatic increase in the number of uninsured West Virginians to Republicans’ repeal-plunder-and-rape campaign against the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.

“Health care advocates warned President Trump and Congressional Republicans that their repeated attacks on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid would cause West Virginians to lose health coverage and face higher costs – and today’s numbers confirm it,” said Lynette Maselli of Protect Our Care, West Virginia. “Republicans’ war on health care has had a fast and dramatic negative impact on West Virginians, and things will continue to get worse until we stop these attacks on our care.”

This is a far cry from Trump’s campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare with “something terrific” that would offer better health insurance options at a lower cost for all Americans – a pledge that fell apart immediately after Trump took office and it was revealed that he had nothing resembling a plan to do just that.

Mining jobs

At a pre-election rally in Charleston, W.Va., surrounded by men in hard hats waving signs that read “Trump Digs Coal,” the candidate said this: “I'll tell you what folks, you're amazing people. If I win, we're going to bring those miners back.”

In the past few weeks I have queried coal industry lobbyists and union representatives and no one seems to know exactly how many mining jobs have been filled since Trump was elected. A best guess is a few hundred, but everyone agrees it is nowhere near the 80,000 jobs that have been lost in the last 10 years, when, in fact, coal mine employment has actually been in decline since the 1980s and beyond.

According to the coal industry trade group the National Mining Association, “Coal mining employment peaked in 1984 at approximately 178,000 jobs, and has steadily declined since.” In Appalachia, statistics show, mine employment “fared far worse under the Reagan, Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations than under (former President Barack) Obama…despite all the rage over Obama's environmental agenda,” the National Journal reported.

Meanwhile, utility companies continue to shutter and dismantle coal-fired power plants – a major customer for coking coal – in favor of cheaper, cleaner natural gas and even a renewed interest in environmentally friendly energy sources including solar and wind.

Even the West Virginia Coal Association – while continuing to bash Obama – acknowledges that coal production is up in the state but the actual number of coal miners needed to produce it is either down, flat or up only slightly in the past two years.

“West Virginia coal production year-to-date is up 20 percent over the same period last year,” the association says. “Our mines are once again producing (and) we are beginning to rehire miners after eight long, hard years of fighting to just stay in business. Even so, we remain a long way from the 170 million tons we produced in 2008…and we may never get back to those levels, because most of those 400 coal-fired power generation units Obama shut down with his regulatory assault have been torn down, left to rust or converted to natural gas.”

Environment

Finally, you can’t talk about coal without talking about the environment. Whether you work in an underground coal mine, teach school, drive a truck or sit in an accounting office, you breathe the same West Virginia air and drink the same West Virginia water. Thanks to the Trump administration, neither your air nor your water may be as clean as it was before he started “draining the swamp.”

It took less than one month in office for Trump to sign a resolution overturning the so-called Stream Protection Rule, effectively allowing coal mine operators to dump mine waste into streams and waterways in the state. The effect of this rollback on our drinking water – if any – may not be known for some time.

Then, in October, Trump proposed repealing the Clean Power Plan which would require power plants – the biggest carbon polluters in the U.S. – to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by roughly one-third between now and the year 2030. The Clean Power Plan has been tied up in courts and has never gone into effect, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, but that hasn’t stopped Trump’s EPA from trying to repeal the program before it even exists.

Summary

So there you have four key issues that affect West Virginia and which, by any legitimate measurement, have left us worse off than we were before Trump waddled into the White House. Other than the “middle class tax cut” which doesn’t really benefit the middle class, I can’t think of anything positive that has come from this administration in the past 15 months.

This, despite the fact that Trump won the state by 42 points in the 2016 election. We were his biggest win, percentage-wise, of all the states. I ask you, is this any way to say thanks?

"I told you I would drain the swamp."

More jailhouse rock

Photobomb

"Warden threw a party in the county jail..."

Blue wave

About these Top 10 album posts

With all due respect to my Facebook friends, there’s no way I could ever pick my 10 favorite albums of all time. I mean, such a list would almost depend on the time of day I wrote it or the day of the week or the particular mood I was in or the season of the year. For example, if I was feeling mellow and relaxed, it could be everything Paul Simon ever wrote, or Carole King or James Taylor. If I was jacked up and ready to rumble, I’d go for Steppenwolf or The Who or most of the Jethro Tull catalog.

And don’t even get me started on Van Morrison, Elton John or the Rolling Stones.

See what I mean?

And realistically, how could someone my age not just pick 10 Beatles albums and be done with it?

So I’ve been googling the covers of a small number of albums that have one thing in common: The first time I heard them, they completely knocked me out. I mean, there was a physical, mental and emotional reaction to the music I heard. It was both visceral and intellectual at the same time. These were albums I played more than once on the day I brought them home, replayed them again and again until they wore out and replaced them with one or more new copies – and now have them on both vinyl and compact disc.

Spoiler alert (since I haven’t posted all of them yet): They are also albums that for the most part were groundbreaking in their genre. When I first played “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” by Simon and Garfunkel it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. The same goes for “Aqualung” and “Moby Grape.” My reaction was, “Wow. This is something new…and I like it.”

Moving on, Carole King’s “Tapestry” of rich and royal hues was just exactly that. There wasn’t a bad song on the album and after a first listen, it was hard to pick a favorite tune.

Another favorite was Steppenwolf’s “The Second,” with “Magic Carpet Ride” followed by that kick-ass Side 2 medley of five songs “strained through a Leslie” and building to a climax before fading out like a rising and ebbing tide.  

“Super Session” – the famous rock and blues jam recorded by Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills – is notable for the musicians who played on it, the songs they choose, the beautiful Harvey Brooks composition “Harvey’s Tune” that closes it and for the curious sentences in the liner notes that say, “The music was performed spontaneously by the personnel as listed. The horns were added later as an afterthought.” I say it’s curious because the horns are such an integral part of the record.

Then there’s the first Chicago album, “CTA.” A neighbor who was also a co-worker bought it and invited me across the street one night, saying, “I’ve got something you’ll want to hear.” We played it over and over and the next day I bought my own copy. So tell the truth, did you ever think a hard rock band would succeed using trumpets and trombones to carry the tunes?

And then there are the Byrds. If the Beatles and Stones had never existed, the Byrds would have been my all-time favorite band by a long shot. The Byrds were a country-tinged band of folk musicians who took Bob Dylan songs and created a whole new category of music. I can still hear the opening notes of “Mr. Tambourine Man” echoing off the high stone walls of the 12^th Street municipal swimming pool the summer following my sophomore year in high school. When I hear that song today – more than 50 years later – I can still smell chlorine and taste wet Zagnut and Zero candy bars.

And on and on we go. The Allman Brothers’ “Brothers and Sisters” introduced me to a 7-minute instrumental that was so powerful that I named my younger daughter “Jessica.” I’ve learned the guitar chords to virtually all of the Creedence Clearwater songs and had a deep affection for the Eagles until they started having reunion tour after reunion tour and jacked up the price of concert tickets until I could no longer afford them.

Honorable mention has to go to Fleetwood Mac; the Beach Boys; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Gordon Lightfoot; the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; Gin Blossoms; Toad the Wet Sprocket; Atlanta Rhythm Section; and Pure Prairie League.

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell could easily find a way into the Top 10, and when it comes to groundbreaking albums, can anybody top “Jesus Christ Superstar?”

I’ve got my top albums selected for the Facebook challenge and there may be 12 or 15 before I’m finished. I’m going to include two that only locals will recognize but which definitely belong on my list: “Long Overdue” by Elderberry Jak and “Lost in America” by The Gathering Field. If you’ve never heard them, I suggest you try to find a copy and listen. I promise you won’t be disappointed.