Month: February 2017

Recently, Fox News broadcast a Bill O’Reilly segment which featured an on-air interview with a supposed ex-Swedish military man and security expert named Nils Bildt. He proceeded to allege that large-scale immigration into Sweden had significantly increased general crime, rapes, and terrorist incidents. Within 24 hours, I believe, President Donald Trump was citing “what happened in Sweden last night” in support of his views on restricting immigration here in the United States.

The problem was that Nils Bildt was not who he claimed to be. Bildt (not even his real name) was actually an emigrant from Sweden with no Swedish military or security experience, a guy who had once attempted to run for public office in Sweden on an ultra conservative platform…and was rejected at the polls. He was just another talking head on Fox News, a set-up guy for conservative honk O’Reilly, who wanted more ammo to bash immigration, thereby promoting the Trump cause.

The President has thousands of FBI, CIA, NSA and State Department employees at his disposal to provide him with actual facts and analysis of current events. Instead of using this information, Mr. Trump tweets reactions to fake news that is provided to him by the Fox network and other dubious sources…and makes a fool of himself and our country. He has repeatedly done something like this ever since taking office in January, and doesn’t seem embarrassed when called on it.

As John Lilly once remarked, “In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.” Mr. Trump wants certain things to be true in order to validate his actions and campaign themes, and he apparently leaps to conclusions whenever favorable rumors, allegations, or gossip come his way. Our President definitely isn’t from Missouri, the “Show Me” state; there isn’t an ounce of skepticism in his body, at least when Fox News is broadcasting. That is because what he wants to become true has… become true…in his mind.

Sadly, our populist President is probably a reflection of a societal malaise when it comes to separating fact from fiction. It’s a problem that may, ultimately, be the death of us.

We are daily bombarded with information on the radio and television, at the movies, through newspapers and outdoor billboards, on our computers, through our smartphones, etc. Virtually all of it is focused on selling us a product or point of view. How do we sort through all of it to glean the nuggets of truth? And, what is truth?

What ever happened to “If it seems too good to be true, it is.”, or “For every problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”, or “Don’t believe everything you read.” In other words, news stories need to pass the smell test. Just because a story may reinforce one of your beliefs does not make the story factual (i.e. real, instead of phony).

Back in simpler times, we would read something in the Los Angeles Times or listen to Walter Cronkite broadcast The CBS Evening News and feel like we were fairly well-informed about what was happening in the world. You could flip the channel at the dinner hour and, pretty much, hear the same story on NBC and ABC, with different reporters. Similarly, the lead stories in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, particularly on breaking national or international news, would be the same. We trusted the information, to a great degree, because reputable journalists and news organizations stood behind the “news” that they were reporting. Clearinghouses such as the Associated Press and United Press International provided news reporting to smaller newspapers. There were professional standards and ethics; reputations mattered. Editorial comment, i.e. opinion about newsworthy events, was clearly identified as such in the Op-Ed Section of the newspaper. On television, you might tune to 60 Minutes to get facts mixed with opinion. But, you knew what you were getting.

The Information Age (of computers, really) has made the world smaller and has provided all of us with so much more data at our disposal. The news “hour” that we experienced as kids and young adults has morphed into 24-hour news, with entire networks (like CNN and Fox News) broadcasting continuously, typically repeating, on the hour, the same breaking stories with additional details. Since there is so much airtime to fill, typically that space is filled with so-called “experts” offering their take on the breaking news. This leads the viewer to the dilemma of separating actual facts from the opinions of the host and his guests.

Detecting real news is made harder because nowadays anyone can (seemingly) become a journalist by publishing a blog, like this one. The blogger’s “facts” or opinions provided are thrown out into the Internet, without editorial scrutiny, to compete with legitimately-derived actual news and facts. This week, President Trump relied on supposed facts supplied by the charlatan Nils Bildt, and made a fool out of himself.

One can check the Internet for “trending” stories. The fact that 800,000 people may have viewed a post is impressive, but routine, nowadays. More importantly, though, is that the posted story may be incorrect, a hoax, or planted propaganda. It could be totally bogus, but will have been watched and passed along by hundreds of thousands of people, thereby giving it some sort of “approval” as news. And, of course, the social media is designed to enable participants to weigh-in on the posting, adding individual thoughts and opinions to the string. This is how “urban legends” begin, and how “everyone knows that…” wisdom comes into play…that can be diametrically opposed to the actual truth. The problem with the Internet is that one doesn’t really know who they’re listening to, or dealing with, on the other end, and what his motivations might be.

It now appears fairly certain that the Trump campaign for President was the beneficiary of fake news planted on the Internet by the Russians, with the intent to destabilize elections in the United States. Specifically, to discourage people from voting for Hillary Clinton or discourage them from voting at all. This gave an advantage to the very motivated Trump voting blocs. (An investigation is now underway in D.C. to get to the bottom of this story, but that is unlikely, as President Trump and the G.O.P.-controlled Congress don’t want to lift the lid off of this scandal. The mainstream press, on the other hand, smells blood in the water.)

It used to be that tabloid news (i.e. “yellow journalism”, sensational news, “scandal sheets”) was recognized as a diversion, entertainment, juicy gossip, etc., but certainly not legitimate news. There used to be a few of these tabloids at the grocery store, sporting salacious details about movie stars’ private lives, a miraculous image of Jesus on a burnt tortilla, Nazis in hiding, JFK’s real killer, etc. It was eyebrow-raising entertainment, fun to read and laugh at, and, for the most part, not mean-spirited. Since no reputable news organization had yet sniffed at these “scoops”, the accuracy and veracity of the stories was generally derided. Comedian Jay Leno used to do a once-a-week bit about these amazing stories, reminding viewers that the facts of the story (about some guy who had been abducted and probed by aliens, for example) had been “checked, double-checked, and then checked again”. For sure.

I’ve noticed that such sensational news is becoming more mainstream in our lives. At my local market, one must go through a guantlet of tabloid headlines in order to pay for your groceries.

This morning, by the time I had reached the checker, I had learned that (1) Hillary Clinton has plead guilty to a number of unspecified crimes; (2) Marilyn Monroe was carrying JFK’s unborn child when she died; (3) there is an incurable bug sweeping the world; (4) and, ex-President Obama is sabotaging President Trump’s administration. At least, it seems like I learned those things. Of course, in previous times at the grocery store, courtesy of these “newspapers”, I had learned that (1) Abraham Lincoln was a woman; (2) President Obama once appointed a Martian ambassador; (3) Hillary Clinton had gained 103 pounds; (4) a mini mermaid was found in a tuna sandwich; (5) Elvis is still alive; and, (6) some lucky woman married Bigfoot. It’s hard to believe, but if it’s written, it must be true, right?

There are tabloid TV shows now, like E!, that provide 24/7 gossip about celebrities. And, of course, a “celebrity” is anyone that the Internet is talking about, even if it is a deranged nutcase who’s on trial for murdering Black parishioners while in a church bible study. The murderer’s philosophy and crackpot ideas, as reprehensible as they are, get disseminated on the Net. It’s news, I guess, but is it truth?

I can imagine President Trump, sitting on the crapper at 5 a.m. in the morning, reading the National Enquirer, and then tweeting out a new policy directive based upon a tabloid story he had just read…and believed.

Recall that the Leader of the Free World began his Presidential campaign a number of years ago by proclaiming himself a born-again Birther (i.e. convinced that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen because he was born in Kenya). The birther movement was a creation of tabloid news (I forget now whether it was the National Enquirer, The Sun, The Globe, The National Examiner, or another one which came up with the “facts”), and then Fox News, radio personality Rush Limbaugh, and other political propagandists ran with the story. Trump championed the Birther Movement for several years, all the way into his Presidential campaign, despite the fact that Mr. Obama’s citizenship was proven beyond a doubt by a Hawaiian birth certificate. Trump believed the phony story because he wanted to believe it, it gave him traction with conservative and Bible Belt voters, support from the KKK, and, so, it had to be true. Except, that it wasn’t.

The new Administration is prone to running to the tune of alternative facts. President Trump’s key policy advisor is a guy named Steven Bannon, who is a right-wing conspiracy theorist of the first stripe. Many of the goofy ideas that the President is now championing come courtesy of Mr. Bannon (or, should we call him Rasputin?). It appears that Bannon will see some tabloid news that fits his agenda, pass it along to Trump, and then will come another bizarre Tweet or White House press release…that totally baffles everyone and pisses off Americans and allies, alike. The President will come off like a fool, he will be roundly and deservedly criticized and lampooned, and then he will lash out at his critics…the mainstream media…for having the nerve to call him out. “They are the Opposition!”, he will say. “They’re putting out fake news!”

How should we, as Americans, react to this Presidential bullshit? Our leader wants us to take whatever swill he is peddling, and pay no attention to outside observers who, correctly, point out that the Emperor wears no clothes.

I think I agree with Albert Einstein, a smarter cookie than Donald Trump, who said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” So, I will question things the President says, if I detect a fishy odor.

Also, I side with former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who observed that “The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.” Lame ideas should always be countered with better ideas based upon evidence.

And, finally, I’m with Voltaire, who warned that “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” The American public needs to be wary of this President and his Rasputin, who seem very nonchalant about provoking American citizens, our allies and enemies, alike. It would be easy to stumble into a civil war or WWIII…and, who can predict the outcome? We need to listen carefully to the message emanating from Washington D.C.

It is up to us to call “Bullshit!” on this President, when appropriate.  I support everyone in the media who has the guts to do so, and the whistleblowers within the government who leak the truth to said journalists.

We’re all in this together, and we’re all patriots, because we want facts, not fiction, to be the basis for American policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very momentous week for would-be Emperor Donald Trump, who held a press conference in which he barred reporters from many of the nation’s major news organizations, including the New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and also the BBC.

Trump’s issue with them: reporting what is actually happening in Mr. Trump’s administration, rather than regurgitating, as news, the lies that the new President and his cronies are generating each day.

The new President is determined to ramrod his version of reality down upon the American public, and part of his strategy is to diminish any whistleblowing and reporting of malfeasance by calling it “fake news”. He and his staff have repeatedly, and very publicly, labeled the mainstream press as “The Opposition”.

Interestingly, our Commander in Chief relies upon fake news on a daily basis to craft and support his policy initiatives. Recently, he used a bogus “Bowling Green Massacre” (no such thing!) and a bogus immigrant crime wave in Sweden (the Swedish Prime Minister said, “What has he been smoking?”) to support his discredited plan to bar travel to U.S. from 7 Muslim nations. The fact that he is using fake news to bolster his policy initiatives doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

Thus, if we are to believe the Leader of the Free World, it is he, and he alone, who will determine for us what is true and what is not. If he elects to lie about something, Fox News will trumpet is as the unvarnished truth, and it will be “real news”. If any of the traditional, mainstream news organizations have facts to counter his claims, then those should be considered…lies, un-patriotic propaganda, actual fake news. etc.

This is pretty scary stuff, my fellow Americans. As Walter Lippmann once said, “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies”. If we allow Donald Trump to not only run our government, but to also determine what “news” shall be available for public consumption, then we are sliding down the proverbial slippery slope, and accelerating toward Hell.  Even Richard Nixon couldn’t get away with this, and he tried.

A few weeks ago, when President Trump’s 7-nation travel ban was overturned by a Federal Judge, and later by a Federal Appeals Court, he lambasted both in unkind terms, and twitted, essentially, “How dare they!” The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t understand democracy or, worse, doesn’t support the idea. He feels as if he has been elected Emperor, as if the government of the United States is simply an extension of his family-owned business wherein he is not subject to the opinions of a Board of Directors or the stockholders. In this world, he makes the rules and everyone else either kowtows to him or is run over.

We have a problem, Houston.

It’s been cold (for late-February) recently here in Bear Creek. It was around freezing the past few mornings. The dogs have been wearing their cold weather coats.

Last night, our new puppy Baby got the urge to purge at around 4:45 a.m. I got her out of her crate, took her out to the garage, and she peed twice and then unloaded a huge (for her) turd. Yeah!!

Now we’re talking! But, Baby was now freezing/shaking when we went back to the bedroom, so I put her the bed with me to warm her up. After licking me for ten minutes, she finally settled down and started snoring. At about that time, JayJay, who sleeps in his own bed, decided that he was cold, too, so he hopped up onto the bed on Charlie’s side. That pissed off Booger, who sleeps there nestled up against my wife, so she snarled at him and told him to go to Hell. Eventually, he found a place between Charlie and I, got cozy and warm, and drifted off to sleep, snoring of course. By that time, I was fully awake, with Charlie, Booger, JayJay, and Baby nice and toasty, all of them making noises together. It sounds horrible, but it was our little nuclear family, all tucked into the sheets, enjoying each other. It was a…three dog night, just like the Eskimos.

Booger and JayJay have been busy training the new puppy. Here, they show her how to beg for food.

She’s a quick study.

Booger has been teaching her how to play ball, too.

We watched the Oscars last night. The show ran long; Baby snoozed off before the Best Picture announcement fiasco.

Baby really didn’t care who won; she was in LaLa Land.

 

In his book Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler coined the phrase, “The Big Lie”. It is a propaganda technique that appeals to the prejudices of listeners. As Hitler explained the technique, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” He added, “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” And, finally, “The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than a small one.”

A recent example of this might be the 2016 campaign claim by Donald Trump that news reports of the day chronicled “thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as the Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11”. Despite being informed that there was no evidence that this event ever happened, candidate Trump continued to use the lie regularly in his campaign speeches…in much the way he frequently raised the (discredited) claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. By the end of the campaign, polls showed that a surprising percentage of American adults believed these bogus claims.

Once he became President, Mr. Trump wasted no time in expanding the use of The Big Lie technique. He has loudly proclaimed that his electoral victory was one of the biggest ever (it wasn’t even close), he would have won the popular vote except for 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast for Hillary Clinton (no evidence of that), and that the crowd at his inauguration was much larger than that of Barack Obama, eight years earlier (aerial photos show Trump’s crowd to be half the size of Obama’s). A week hasn’t gone by when President Trump hasn’t revisited these Big Lies, and has loudly chastised the media for contradicting him.

It has become apparent, therefore, that we Americans may be dealing with someone who is worse than a simple liar (after all, most politicians are adept liars.) Unfortunately for us, we may have just hired a psychopathic bullshitter to run our country and lead the Free World.

As someone has noted, “A liar cares about concealing reality. A bullshitter, like the President, is totally indifferent to how things really are. At least with a liar, you can present evidence to the contrary.” Trump’s response to the media who have called him on bullshit…is to accuse them of bias, declaring them, not the Democrats, to be “The Opposition”.

And, finally, “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.”

Hence, you have President Trump denying climate change, describing his Administration “running like a finely-tuned machine”, and imposing a 7-nation travel ban because of terrorist atrocities like the “Bowling Green Massacre”.

He doesn’t seem to care whether the things he says describe reality correctly; he just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Our new President is having some trouble filling out his Administration, despite his confident announcements. Some of his high-level picks have not passed muster (resignation of National Security Advisor Flynn), could not be confirmed by the Senate (Army Secretary and Labor Secretary), and Trump’s replacement choice for NSA Chief publicly rejected the job due to interference from other White House insiders (he described the offered position a “shit sandwich”). It appears that the stench that surrounds the Oval Office is growing so strong that qualified individuals are avoiding it like the plague. Yet, as the President has said, his month-old Administration is purring along “like a finely-tuned machine”.

“Next question?”

I am beginning to worry about this Presidency. I was hoping that a different guy was going to emerge, once elected, a mature man, an intelligent leader, someone who would soften the rhetoric and attempt to bring people together so that he could actually achieve his stated goal: Make America Great Again.

However, what we seem to have foisted upon ourselves (and we have no one else to blame!) is an immature, limited-intelligence bullshitter who seems to be incapable of separating fact from fiction…if he even cared to do so. What he seems to be good at, if anything, is bullshitting the American public, and passing it off (in his mind) as effective governance.

This is going to be a very ugly time in American history, folks.

 

On Saturday, Charlie and I attended a birthday party for an old friend, Barbara Card, at her home in Bear Creek. We’ve known her for 29 years since Charlie first met her when she was a “pledge” with the Assistance League of Temecula Valley. Barbara later became President of ALTV, as did Charlie a few years later (in 1997).

For the most part, the attendees at this small party were Bear Creek old timers. We came to the new Jack Nicklaus’ master planned golf community in 1988. Not too many residents that are here today have been in Bear Creek longer than us. There were lots of old stories to revisit among the old timers at this birthday party, harkening all of us back to the “good old day” when we were all starting out the new adventure (the country club community) together. Oh, those were fun times!

Charlie is now fully-absorbed in her “tax season” mode. She hand-holds clients and puts out fires, as usual, but I do my best to keep her up-to-date on her regular bookkeeping chores so that she can tackle her tax work. She has (maybe) six dozen of them, so she will need to do a dozen a week for the foreseeable future.

She recently completed our tax submittal, subject to review by our accountant buddy, Jim Houle. I was amazed that Charlie earned $177K in bookkeeping fees this past year, which is considerably more than ever before, and way more than we need. She needs to divest some of this work to her son Jonathan and others so that we can drop a tax bracket or two. We had to fork over an extra $8,000 by the time she was done massaging our tax submittal. Ouch!

On Sunday, I took our little Boston Terrier puppy, “Baby”, to her first doggie obedience training session in Temecula. She did pretty good, once she figured out that she would be rewarded with a treat for good response to commands. I think she will be a quick learner, as she figured out (on her own) how to use the doggie door in six days (when she was just over 9 weeks old!), and I taught her how to “sit” in about 15 minutes earlier this week. It is imperative that we get her trained ASAP (both obedience and “potty”) so that we can relax when we throw her in the RV and hit the road in a few months. If she’s like Booger and JayJay, she will love life on the road.

Here she is sleeping with Booger:

Here she is pooped-out after obedience lessons:

Tuesday was Valentine’s Day. Charlie got flowers, ice cream, and 11 lipomas surgically removed from her arms and legs. Don’t ever accuse me of not being romantic! She’s pretty sore right now, but she should bounce back in a few days. And, she will have lost some weight, too.!

Donald Trump has been President of the United States for about two weeks now, and it appears that most Americans’ fears about him were correct. He’s way out of his league, doesn’t understand his job, doesn’t know how to behave as an adult, and is disrespecting democracy and the rule of law. Other than that, he looks nice in his ubiquitous blue suit and red tie.

President Trump has been a busy guy, firing off executive orders right and left, several of them of dubious constitutionality. He’s going to keep the courts busy for years. Of course, Mr. Trump has little regard for judges. Recall the nasty remarks he made about the “Mexican” federal judge who was handling the Trump University scam case…the one who turned out to have been born, raised, and educated in America? (By the way, Trump has since quietly settled that case out of court) The new President has recently insulted another judge, a Federal District Court Judge (!), who issued a stay against Trump’s executive order banning travel to U.S. by resident of seven Muslim countries. It is blatant religious discrimination, and has been loudly denounced by just about everyone (except the Christian Right). Nevertheless, President Trump raged about the stay issued by the “so-called judge”.

(It’s interesting that he used that phrase. Since he lost the popular vote (by about 3 million votes), and some 90 million of the Nation’s citizens eligible to vote did not vote at all, Mr. Trump garnered only about a 25 percent “approval rating” on Election Day. One might call him a so-called President.)

Trump has protested that he targeted those seven Middle Eastern countries because of potential terrorists coming into the U.S. from those specific countries. It was quickly pointed out that there is no evidence of any terrorist acts committed in America by any immigrants from those seven countries. On the other hand, the new President specifically omitted Saudi Arabia from his “enemies list”, which is curious, because most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis. And, many of the terrorist organizations in the Middle East are know to be funded by the Saudi royal family. What was he thinking? Or, was he?

Speaking of thinking, how can one explain President Trump’s actions to “drain the swamp” in Washington? During the campaign, the candidate relentlessly hammered Hillary Clinton for her “close ties to Wall Street”, implying that she was a stooge of Big Money, and repeatedly criticized her friendship with Goldman Sachs’  bigwigs. So, what does our new President do once in office? He appoints three Goldman Sachs’ guys to be his closest economic advisors and another Wall Street bigshot as Secretary of the Treasury. And, just to make sure that our foreign policy is not contaminated by Big Oil lobbyists, President Trump selected the current CEO of Exxon Mobil to be our new Secretary of State.

And, just so that no one can mistake what is going on in the new Republican administration, Mr. Trump quickly initiated efforts to repeal Dodd-Frank (the regulations designed to keep Wall Street from repeating the 2008 financial meltdown), and also throw out regulations prohibiting Wall Street from purposely giving clients information that might benefit the broker more than his client.

Meanwhile, the new President continues his barrage of Twitter tweets against any and all critics of his actions, whether they be foreign leaders, Democrats, entertainment celebrities (“Meryl Streep is over-rated”), or the media. In fact, he has declared the news media (with the exception of Fox New, of course) to be “The Opposition”. Reminds me of ex-President Nixon, somehow.

It’s scary to think of such a narcissistic, juvenile individual running The Greatest Nation on Earth.  As hard as it is to envision, Mr. Trump is probably going to make the George W. Bush presidency look good when everything is done and said. Unfortunately for Americans, the damage that this totally unqualified amateur could do in just four years may take decades to undo.

Our ancestors may look back to the first two weeks of the Trump presidency and say, “And, those were the good days…before everything went to shit.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve been busy here in Bear Creek, for sure.

Our Boston Terrier puppy, Baby, has been keeping us on our toes. She has had some vomiting issues to go along with the normal pee and poo “accidents” around the house. We’ve taken her to our great vet, Dr. Black, a couple of times just to make sure Baby wasn’t suffering from any major problem. Anyway, as we move well into our second week with the little darling, she seems to be doing better…fewer vomiting incidents. And, the 11 week-old dog has already mastered the doggie door and seems to be getting the idea that poo belongs outdoors.  We’re confident that her house training will be totally completed before we go on our road trip at the end of May.

Here’s Baby in her crib:

Here she is in Jay Jay’s bed (something he hates!):

Here she is with Momma Charlie:

Speaking of The Boss, her work on 2016 taxes is now under full steam. She has about five dozen tax clients that will have to be serviced before April 15th. Of course, that is in addition to her bookkeeping clients. So, she and I have instituted an “early morning” protocol wherein we both get up at (usually) 4 a.m. and do a couple of hours of bookkeeping work before the dogs get up and the phone begins to ring. Lots of fun.

However, on the positive side, this work allows us to live a pretty high life. So, “Count your blessings!” definitely applies to us.

We recently got our motor home back from Temecula Valley RV, where it had been residing since December. We decided way back then to bite the bullet and replace all of the 11 year-old flooring (tile and carpet). The new flooring is predominantly wood composite, with new beige colored carpet in those areas that demand it (slide areas). We also remodeled the living room TV cabinet and replaced the TV with a new 40 inch HD flat screen.

The only problem that we currently have with the motor home is that it is stored out in Moreno Valley, which is a long drive (in heavy traffic) from Murrieta.  We had to park it there after our 2016 road trip because none of the local RV storage properties had any 40′ spaces. Last week, my son Tim and I moved the rig out to the Moreno Valley site and, with an hour’s labor, put the cover over the vehicle. It was a chore which I wouldn’t want to do very often. Of course, Charlie is not happy that the rig is stored that far away, because she can’t get into it and stock it with trip goods. So, she started pestering me about moving it, and I tried once again to find a local RV storage property with space for us. Presto! Our old place, Storage, Etc. in Murrieta now has a couple of spaces. So, next week, Tim and I are going to move and re-cover The Beast. I can hardly wait.