Lost In the Bushes

Paranoid? Or just delusional?

In a Washington Post article on Saturday, reporter Phillip Rucker quoted an unnamed high level Republican source close to the White House as worrying that Trump is "in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion." 

Arguably, millions of people had already reached that conclusion the moment Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of being rapists and drug dealers.

Particularly given the widely-respected Constitutional scholar and Harvard law professor law professor Laurence Tribe's op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday explaining why Trump needs to be impeached.

Let's be clear, even though I'm admittedly somewhat biased in the political sense, I'm not simply saying Trump needs to be impeached because I don't agree with his political views.

This guy has obstructed justice and continues to violate Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution due to the astonishing range of ways in which he continues to use the power and influence of his office to directly channel financial profit to himself and his family.

Late this afternoon WaPo reported that Trump revealed highly classified intel on a possible ISIS attack with (of all people) the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister during a meeting at the White House last week - the day AFTER he fired the FBI director leading the investigation into links between Russia and members of the Trump administration.

Part of the title of my previous blog, in which I used the term "car-wreck presidency" to describe the unmitigated chaos of the current presidential administration, it's a phrase borrowed from journalist Matt Taibbi's words from his April 6th Rolling Stone article, "Trump the Destroyer".

It's not my habit to assign homework or anything on this blog, but if you do have the time and haven't already done so, I would highly recommend you take some time to read it.

I've found it helpful to put Trump's publicly warning former-FBI Director James Comey about "leaking to the press" on Friday just days after firing him, into some kind of context.
  

Republican Senator Dean Heller

Trump's (latest) actions are so far outside the boundaries of normalcy and ethics that even some Republicans, including Nevada Senator Dean Heller, are now saying that an independent investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections and links between Russia and members of the Trump administration "should be on the table".  

The erratic POTUS is loosing popular support, even among his own base.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in the wake of Comey's firing puts Trump's approval rating at an anemic 29%.

According to a Newsweek article by Tim Marcin last Thursday, Trump is actually loosing significant support among the segment of white voters who elected him in November.      

Any newly-elected presidential administration is going to have it's fair share of missteps as a new commander-in-chief and the staff responsible for handling the herculean complexity of running the executive branch of the federal government learn how to operate the levers of power.

But the baffling jumble of policy announcements and executive orders, which are often contradicted by Trump's own nonsensical Tweets or statements, sew disorder and confusion.

The daily White House press briefings conducted by Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (the daughter of former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) are so rife with false statements and bogus facts that they're now being openly ridiculed by many in mainstream media

Spicey answering questions in near darkness Tuesday

For Pete's sake, on Tuesday night poor Spicey spent several minutes hiding in the bushes outside the White House in an attempt to avoid talking with reporters demanding answers about Trump firing the FBI Director.

Take a couple minutes to watch CNN's Don Lemon laugh at Spicer's attempts to justify the fact that Congress will not authorize billions for Trump to build the "beautiful wall" along the southern border with Mexico that he made a central theme of his campaign.

Each day it seems like this presidency gets more and more surreal.

At this point it's more of a horror show-circus than a presidential administration.

As Politico reported earlier today, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus scolded members of the senior staff for putting clips of fake news on Trump's desk.

Including the embattled former Fox News commentator Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland, who slipped POTUS a copy of a phony Time Magazine cover about climate change.

Seriously, what kind of White House is this when a Fox News opinionator can slip into the Oval Office and put a fake magazine cover that's been known as an Internet hoax for years on the desk of the president?

The Trump administration conducts itself like some kind of vindictive, punch-drunk boxer who ignores the rules of the ring, issuing right-hand hooks, sweeping jabs, sneaky upper cuts and body blows even after the bell rings - not just to win, but to try and pummel the opponent into submission.

That's just how Trump, who famously fawns over authoritarian leaders who trample human rights and jail or kill their political opponents, and considers Roy Cohn a mentor, operates.

Trump with Machiavellian mentor Roy Cohn

Cohn is the combative, Machiavellian attorney who served as the chief counsel to anti-Communist crusader Senator Joseph McCarthy during the controversial Senate hearings into wide-ranging Communist infiltration of the U.S. government in the 1950's.

He later represented notorious Mafia figures like "Fat Tony" Salerno and John Gotti and is widely considered the man who shaped Trump's propensity to respond to any disagreement with all out war.

To regard any critique as an insult and keep a lengthy enemies list.

Trump first hired Cohn to represent him in the early 1970's when the government accused the Trump organization of widespread discrimination against African-American applicants in Trump-managed apartment complexes in New York and Virginia.

Cohn died 31 years ago but his influence on the chaotic and combative 45's White House is very much alive today.

Given everything else going on in the world today, it's not easy for the average American citizen to keep up with everything White House Inc. is doing and what Trump's strategy for governing actually is.

The glimpses we do get are genuinely horrifying.

On Friday Jessica Huseman of ProPublica reported that Trump is expecting to tap the conservative talk radio host from Iowa Sam Clovis as the undersecretary of the US Department of Agriculture; a position normally held by scientists with years of experience in research and economics.

Sam Clovis: Science? Who needs science?

So a guy with zero scientific knowledge or degree who's loyal to Trump and denies the existence of climate change, will likely head up the department that manages research for the USDA - a federal department with over 100,000 employees and a yearly budget of almost $140 billion.

That's the department responsible for creating the federal laws that govern forestry, farming, and food.


It also oversees the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) that provides poor and working class Americans with food stamp assistance.

What's going to happen to American kids and families who depend on SNAP with Sam Clovis at USDA is too scary to ponder.

To sit down and look at the totality of how this White House operates and what it's priorities are is to face the horror of this presidency; and the damage it's doing to America's reputation, political institutions and the people those institutions are supposed to serve.

Sean Spicer huddling in the bushes while trying to avoid answering questions from the press about why the president fired the director of the FBI is an apt metaphor for Donald Trump's presidency.

An administration huddling in the bushes of lies in a forest of secrecy to avoid the scrutiny of a free and open press - and the American people they're supposed to serve.

Is Trump truly "in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion" as Phillip Rucker says a Republican insider suggests?

Based on his decisions, actions and words in the past few weeks, sadly for America, it seems likely.

Devoid of Decency: Dishonoring the Gold Star

Memorial honoring Gold Star moms in Yonkers, NY

In the wake of his ongoing efforts to hurl insulting cheap shots at the Pakistani-born parents of a U.S. Army Captain who was killed in combat while trying to shield his men from harm, Donald Trump is on a downward spiral.

It's been six days since Khizr Khan called Trump out in front of a national television audience from the podium of the DNC in Philly, yet Trump seems determined to engage in a war of words with a couple still grieving the loss of their son.

Most presidential candidates would've simply apologized or better yet moved on to change the media narrative.

But instead Trump has stubbornly dug his heels in, refusing to yield.

Determined to characterize two Gold Star parents as enemies, rather than as heroes as depicted by the memorial pictured above by sculptor Richard Masloski.

What could possess Trump to attack loyal Americans who eloquently expressed an opinion (albeit in front of millions of people) that scorched Trump's paper-thin ego?

Trump is the same guy who received no less than five deferments starting in 1968 that kept him from serving in Vietnam, including one for a bone spur in his heel that later miraculously healed on it's own once the war ended.

Same guy who kicked off the first full week of the presidential campaign by joining his son Eric in making remarkably uninformed comments about sexual harassment of women in the workplace.

To top it all off, he further demeaned himself in the eyes of millions of current and former U.S. servicemen and women, as well as civilians, when he accepted a Purple Heart medal given to him by a military veteran / rabid supporter and then had the temerity to joke:

"I always wanted to get the Purple Heart; this was much easier." 

Did you really want one Donald? 

You went to military school in the 1960's where you distinguished yourself as a ladies man and an athlete, then when the draft was instituted you got your rich daddy to find a doctor who wrote you a note claiming a bone spur in your heel prevented you from serving in combat.  

According to a Snopes.com article, a reporter named Katy Tur claims the man who gave Trump the medal says it was actually a copy - whether it was or wasn't, the damage has been done.

Unfortunately for Trump's delusional sense of false grandeur, the fact that Purple Hearts are only awarded to those seriously injured in actual combat is no laughing matter, and former U.S. Marine Will Fischer quickly recorded a brief Youtube video response in which he explained the kind of horrific physical, mental and emotional injuries that warrant being awarded such a distinguished honor.  

Lately there are any number of political observers, news analysts and influential figures asking the question on the minds of many Americans these days; when is Donald Trump finally going to have his "Senator Joseph McCarthy" moment?

At a campaign event in Omaha, Nebraska for Hillary Clinton on Monday the world's third-richest man, Berkshire-Hathaway Chairman and investor Warren Buffet, posed that very question before tearing into the concocted myth of Trump's acumen as a businessman.

McCarthy, the junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin for whom the term "McCarthyism" was coined by political satirist Herb Block, was already growing increasingly unpopular with the American people for his obnoxious wide-ranging campaign to uncover the scores of Communists and homosexuals he alleged had infiltrated various branches of the U.S. government; including the Army and State Department.

Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch

The Army-McCarthy Senate hearings were convened in 1954, just one of 150 different hearings McCarthy held in a two-year period.

By that time, Americans, including some U.S. Senators, were loosing patience with McCarthy's toxic mix of false patriotism, grandstanding and innuendo.

30 days into the hearings the tide shifted forever in a testy exchange.

Army legal representative Joseph Nye Welch, a plain spoken Harvard-educated defense attorney born in Iowa (pictured above), grew fed up with the unchecked absurdity of the hysteria-driven anti-Communist atmosphere fueled by McCarthy's excessively aggressive questioning and vilification of innocent people, he famously asked the now-disgraced Senator "Have you no decency, sir, at long last have you no sense of decency left?"

It was a long overdue moment, and one that effectively branded McCarthy for what he was and heralded the start of the end of the long dark nightmare of paranoid Communist witch hunt fervor that stained America's post-World War II reputation - and ruined the lives of so many decent citizens.

With each passing day, and the subsequent litany of verbal gaffes uttered by Trump, I keep wondering which one is going to finally put him over the edge and stamp him as the monumentally unqualified disaster of a presidential candidate that he is. 

After listening to his demented hate-filled fear mongering and paranoid delusional rambling at the Republican National Convention, I thought maybe that kind of exposure to the mainstream mass American audience might be the moment.

But it wasn't, where is the modern-day Joseph Nye Welch who can publicly denounce this obnoxious, intellectually vacant, preening faker?

Speaking of the horror show that was the RNC, reporter Matt Taibbi offered some pretty searing first-hand insight into the RNC and Trump's speech in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. 

As Taibbi observed of Trump's bloated closing night acceptance speech:

"When we finally pulled the lid off this guy, there was nothing there. Just a cheap fraud and TV huckster who got in way over his head, and will now lead his hoodwinked followers off the cliff of history."

It should now be perfectly clear The Donald has no decency left; if there was ever any to begin with.

The Verizon Factor, May Job Numbers & Toxic Donald

My local ACME in Hamilton, NJ

I'm feeling relieved this Friday night after a close call earlier this afternoon when I dropped my work cell phone while food shopping at my local ACME.

I was zipping through the aisles at a pretty quick pace as my plan was to grab a few essentials for the weekend since I have to work Saturday, and it looks like this Sunday is going to be a stormy washout weather-wise, so I probably won't want to go anywhere.

So I get back in the car with my groceries ready to run to the gym when a moment of panic overtook me.

I realized I didn't have my work cell phone; out of habit I always keep both of my cell phones in the exact same place at home, work or in the car so I know where to find them - so I knew I'd lost it.

I ran back into the store and carefully retraced my steps; no dice. I always use the self-checkout line and there's a pretty sharp kid who mans the self-checkout stations, so I gave him my business card and asked him to ring me if he found the phone.

Now it's less about the actual cell phone itself than all the data I have stored in it. I've carefully saved numbers and emails of the apartment tenants, township inspectors and vendors I deal with on a daily basis as an apartment leasing agent.

Plus I've got dozens of "Do Not Answer" numbers in my "DNA" file from the dozens of unsolicited sales and data-collection calls I get at work each day that I habitually screen - they keep calling, I keep screening, it's a thing we do like Road Runner and Wile Coyote in a never-ending cycle of chase-but-never-catch.

This time of year my work cell phone is indispensable during the busy rental season; when it's really busy and  I'm doing five things at once and two people are waiting in the office, it's critical to know who's calling at all times in order to prioritize.

Verizon workers during the recent 44-day strike

So I drove home, put the groceries away, got my personal cell phone and called Verizon customer service and after spending three minutes negotiating a touch-tone automatic menu, I finally got a nice woman on the line and I explained my problem and asked if they could possibly help me track the phone.

She puts me on hold for about three minutes then gets back on and suggests I access the Android Phone Manager through Google.

My work cell is a Galaxy S-4 that uses an Android operating system, so I could have done that myself, but, call me crazy, I figured a technology behemoth like Verizon would be able to walk me through a standard procedure for a lost cell phone, right?

No such luck. Seriously, I think she actually Googled my question while I was on hold. Now as some of you know I am a pro-labor guy, so I supported the striking Verizon workers during their six-week strike over job security and compensation; and it paid off as they did get significant concessions from Verizon.

The customer rep I spoke with was very nice as I said, but she seemed a bit befuddled by a relatively simple issue - so I'm guessing she was possibly a replacement worker handling a different job as a result of the strike; or she just wasn't part of the Verizon customer service "A-team" as a result of said-strike.

Over the past few weeks I've spoken with other tenants who've dealt with similar delays when dealing with Verizon; loosing the phone was my responsibility obviously, but today was my first experience dealing with Verizon customer service and I wasn't impressed.

The President discusses the April job report on May 6th

As you likely heard today, the Verizon strike also impacted the broader U.S. economy too as the sluggish May job numbers report released by the Department of Labor was a mixed bag that contributed to a lackluster end to the week for Wall Street.

As a CNN Money article reported, while the "official" unemployment rate dipped to 4.7%, the lowest it's been in nine years, the economy only created 38,000 new jobs.


And as multiple experts reported, those numbers reflect large numbers of people dropping out of active job searching.

Wages did grow 2.5% in May and that's good news for American workers, but relatively speaking that increase is a drop in the overall bucket as wages for most working and middle class folks have been stagnant for decades.

Speculators were quick to caution that the Fed may balk at raising interest rates, but the May job numbers should probably be taken with a grain of salt as those lackluster numbers were also a reflection of the fact that those 36,000 striking Verizon workers were out of work for six weeks.

The creation of 38,000 new jobs was treated like something of a bummer today by mainstream media, but remember the last few months of George W. Bush's presidency when the economy was bleeding over 200,000 jobs a month?

I do, a gain of 38,000 jobs would have been a Godsend back then, so take Friday's news in stride.

I've seen a lot of 'Help Wanted' signs around, and yesterday at my local bar I was talking with my friend Jeff who works for Bristol Myers-Squibb here in New Jersey, he'd just come a farewell party for a co-worker who took an offer from another pharmaceutical company.

He told me his department has lost a few people in the past couple months to other bio-tech, computer or other pharmaceutical companies that actively recruited them.

Those are signs of a healthy economy.

According to a recent article in the Burlington Free Press, the state of Vermont has gained 4,000 new jobs this year and the unemployment rate statewide is at 3.2 % - the lowest since May 2001.

Now I'm no economist, but June job numbers should pick up with the expected increases in hiring in construction that come with warmer weather and longer days, and various jobs related to retail summer hiring around the nation should pick up too.

And of course those 36,000 Verizon workers should be back on the job too - so maybe the next time I call Verizon customer service, I'll get someone a little more knowledgeable on the phone.

The good thing is I called ACME an hour later and they found my work cell phone, which I'm looking at now with a mixture of fond affection and profound relief as I type these words.

Working on a busy summer Saturday is tough enough, but having my work cell phone will make it go a lot smoother - so kudos to the employees of the ACME on route 33 in Hamilton, New Jersey.

The GOP convention might not be so rockin'

Speaking of kudos to large corporations, technology giants HP, Inc. and Microsoft are just two of the companies to announce that they will not be giving any sponsorship dollars to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this year due in large part to concerns over associating their brands with the overt racism, misogyny and divisive xenophobia of GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.


Trump may have sealed the Republican nomination for 2016, but a growing list of companies and organizations with national reputations have made moves to disassociate their brands with The Donald's hate-mongering; Coca-Cola also announced they would be cutting their sponsorship of the RNC event to a relatively low $75,000.

The activist group Color of Change is credited with an ongoing petition campaign to pressure companies like HP, Google, Xerox, CISCO, AT&T and Adobe to pull their financial sponsorship from the RNC event where Trump will most likely be crowned as the Republican presidential candidate.

It's not just companies scared of the toxic affect Trump might have on the perception of their products and services who are distancing themselves from him (as Joe Pesci's character remarked in Martin Scorcese's film 'Casino', "Always the dollars, always the dollars...").

As David Graham reported in an article in The Atlantic, Republican establishment figures like the Bush family and Mitt Romney have made clear they won't be supporting Trump's candidacy in the fall.

But a politically-odd mixture of both mainstream conservatives (Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Paul Ryan) and more right-wing extremist has-beens (Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal) will be reluctantly backing The Donald this fall - even if they hold their noses while they do it.

As the New York Times reported Thursday, there a number of Republican Senators facing re-election campaigns who are finding an array of excuses to not attend the coronation of Donald Trump in Cleveland so as to avoid being seen supporting him - Hell, Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich has indicated he may not even go - and the convention is in his own state.

Matt Taibbi

Anyway if you happen to find yourself stuck indoors this weekend with some time to read, do yourself a favor and check out Matt Taibbi's latest piece in Rolling Stone, entitled 'R.I.P. GOP', in which he lays out how Trump is killing the Republican party.

He eloquently eviscerates Republicans themselves for setting the stage for Trump's ascendency to the GOP candidacy for 2016 by turning the party into a political organization designed to serve the needs of billionaire corporatistas who fanned the flames of fictional issues ('American Exceptionalism'??) to rile up conservative voters into electing politicians who, in Taibbi's words:

"...went off to Washington and year after year did absolutely squat for their constituents. They were excellent at securing corporate tax holidays and tax cuts for the rich, but they almost never returned to voter country with jobs in hand. Instead, they brought an ever-increasing list of villains responsible for the lack of work: communists, bra-burning feminists, black "race hustlers", climate-change activists, Muslims, Hollywood, horned owls..."

The toxic Trump chicken has indeed come home to roost for the Republican party, and they've only got themselves to blame.

Anyway, click the link above and read the Taibbi piece when you can, it's late and I've got to be up early Saturday for work, but I will go to bed thankful for having found my work cell phone, and for not having a degree from Trump University on my wall.

Disparities in School Discipline & Claudette Colvin's Legacy

Massachusetts student discipline by race 2014

On Wednesday, as American media headlines were abuzz with political analysis of the Super Tuesday presidential primary results, Motoko Rich published an interesting article in the New York Times about troubling findings from an analysis of wide disparities in school discipline in charter schools based on data collected by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

The report found that black charter school students are four times as likely to be disciplined as their white peers for the same offenses (disabled students are two to three times as likely to face discipline) and that these disparities begin as early as preschool.

The report offers insight not only into how student's race impacts the way teachers and administrators perceive, and interact with students of color, but how that perception can consciously or subconsciously skew the ways they decide to mete out disciplinary measures as well.

The OCR data reflects similar findings in American public schools as well, as reflected in a 2014 OCR analysis of the 97,000 public schools across the nation which showed disparities in school discipline based on race as well which, like the OCR data on charter schools shows, begin as early as preschool.

UCLA researchers from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies also analyzed federal data to do comparisons of out-of-school suspensions in elementary and secondary schools in districts across all 50 states in 2015 and found wide disparities based on student's race in states like Missouri, Florida and Wisconsin.

According to UCLA's data, Wisconsin, the home state of former Republican Presidential candidate Governor Scott Walker, suspended 34% of its black students, even though blacks only make up about 6.3% of the overall state population and whites make up about 86.2%.

2013 NYC student rally against disparities in discipline 

Back in the fall of 2014 a non-profit based in Boston, the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights School Discipline, issued a report based on data compiled by the Massachusetts Department of Education that found that black and Latino students were far more likely to face school discipline for non-criminal, non-violent and non-drug related offenses, and the discipline they received was more harsh than that meted out to their white classmates (see graphic above). 

The disparities in discipline were actually worse in Boston charter schools.

In an interview one of the authors of the LCCRSD report, Matt Cregor, told Boston public radio station WBUR:

"It could be disrespect, it could be dress code violations, it could be tardiness, whatever it is we know it's a harsh punishment that research has shown to predict school drop-out, grade retention and involvement in the juvenile justice system."

The last time I blogged about this issue was back in January in response to a reader named Katherine who sent me a link to a report entitled, "Separate and Unequal: School Funding in 'Post Racial' America" which examined how public school funding reinforces racial segregation in American schools - in the 21st century no less.

While I'm certainly not a qualified researcher, having blogged about this issue a few times in the past few years, I have to wonder if the gaps in discipline in U.S. public and charter schools are getting worse - or are researchers and institutions simply devoting more comprehensive analysis of the problem?

Civil rights icon Claudette Colvin

On Tuesday, Melinda Archer published a really insightful interview in The Atlantic with Monique W. Morris, author of "The Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools", an analysis of how long-festering stigmas based on race and sex have combined to disenfranchise, marginalize and exclude African-American girls in American schools.

A really interesting example of the impact of stereotypes on black American girls that Morris cites in her book is that of Claudette Colvin (pictured left), a black Montgomery, Alabama teenager who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus on March 2, 1955 - a full nine months before seamstress Rosa Parks did in December 1955.

Like Parks, Colvin, then 15-years-old, was sitting on a crowded bus after a long days work when the driver ordered her to give up a seat to one of the white passengers who boarded at a stop.


Colvin refused and she was arrested.

As the Website The Visibility Project notes in an article about Colvin's largely-unheralded contribution to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, local church and civil rights leaders at the time opted not to rally behind Colvin's arrest because they were concerned that because she was dark-skinned, several months pregnant and had been outwardly confrontational with with the policeman who arrested her, she was "not the right type" for mainstream civil rights leaders to get behind.

According to the Visibility project, Aurelia Browder was arrested in April, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, and Mary Louise Smith was arrested in October of the same year - so there were at least three other women arrested before Rosa Parks.

In fact it was actually Colvin, Browder, Smith and two other black Montgomery women who were the plaintiffs in the federal court case Browder v. Gayle that deemed the segregation on Montgomery buses a violation of the Constitution - a case which was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

As Morris noted in The Atlantic interview, Colvin was well-read, active in the civil rights movement and was a member of the local NAACP Youth Council, but her pregnancy and militant attitude left her largely forgotten in the history of the civil rights movement - but Rosa Parks is the one whose face is on a stamp.

Obviously that's not to minimize Park's courage or determination in any way, I just grew up with the knowledge that it was Park's refusal to give up her seat that sparked the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, when in fact Colvin, Browder and Smith all showed the same non-violent resistance months before Parks, yet I never heard their names before reading The Atlantic article  cited above.

But to come back to my original point and wrap up, it's been remarkable to see how little the disparities in the American education system have been covered by mainstream media over the course of the presidential campaign season.

Sure we've seen the occasional run-of-the-mill political analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders' call for free college tuition or Hillary Clinton's call to cap student loan interest rates by the usual assortment of talking heads on cable and network television.

But for the most part, the state of American schools has been relegated to the proverbial side burner of political discussion.

Over the course of 2015 - 2016, mainstream American media (online, television, print and radio) has devoted an alarmingly large percentage of it's presidential campaign coverage to Donald Trump to the exclusion of far more important stories and issues affecting the global population.

As essayist / journalist Matt Taibbi observed in a revealing look at the state of Trump's candidacy in the March 10th issue of Rolling Stone, many journalists seem at once revolted and consumed with the divisive, toxic nature of the Republican front-runner's campaign - expressing alarm that such a controversial candidate has won so many primaries, even as they continually devote front-page coverage to his predictable insults and slights.

To the point that the collective media coverage of Trump replaces any need for him to spend anywhere near the level of money on campaign commercials as his competitors do.

According to a Buzzfeed article, an assortment of American journalists have begun to express "concern" over what is being deemed "wall-to-wall" coverage of Trump - which frankly strikes me as coming more than just a little too late in the political game.

So while it's a positive sign to see more comprehensive analysis of disparities in school discipline being reported in the media, the issue is far more critical to the future of America than Trump's latest tirade or comment.

Maybe if the media saw it that way, the issue would attract the level of attention and visibility it deserves from politicians, school administrators, academics and parents alike.

In the meantime, millions of students of color in elementary and secondary public and charter schools around the nation must overcome yet another barrier to a fair and substantive education based not on their capacity to learn or absorb knowledge, but on the color of their skin or ethnicity - and the way teachers and administrators view them.

All Trumped Out

Although the remarkably tepid Jeb Bush campaign finally going on the attack with a cleverly-edited televised attack ad aimed at Donald Trump does raise the pulse of an otherwise anemic Republican presidential race, at this point I'm too Trumped out to care.

From a strategic-messaging standpoint the video packs a pretty mean political wallop into one minute and twenty-two seconds.

Give it a watch if you haven't seen it, it's effective but I think poor Jeb! may have waited a little long to throw a punch back at the reigning Republican schoolyard bully.

But I can certainly sympathize with Bush, these days everywhere you look you see that hair; it's getting hard to escape the Donald.

Last week I came home and pulled the August 28th issue of The Hollywood Reporter out of my mailbox looking forward to my weekly dose of entertainment industry news, only to find Trump's face on the cover.

For a couple days I just read around the Q&A interview he did with Janice Min, between Trump's racist immigrant bashing and 19th century misogynistic rantings against women, I figured, What more do I really need to know about this guy?

But curiosity eventually got the better of me and I reluctantly read the seven page interview. While it did reveal Trump to be quite well-informed on the inner workings of the media industry and his own appeal to certain segments of the public, he still comes off as a conceited asshole who's completely intoxicated with the idea of himself.

In print, like he does on television, he's fond of making sweeping, pedantic generalizations without offering a shred of proof or fact to back his claims up; his arrogance simply makes the assumption that if he says it, people will take it as truth.

The ceaseless bragging about every celebrity under the sun being his "friend" gets tiresome too.

                              Trump's new BFF?       [Photo - Newsweek.com]

Mention virtually any celebrity or well-known business figure in Trump's presence and his inevitable reply is that said celebrity is "...a very good friend of mine." 

Which Trump said of Tom Brady during the recent THR interview after searching his desk and producing a Post-It note with "Tom Brady's New Cell#" written on it.

Case closed!

Fortunately Mike Taibbi brought a dose of reality to the current Trump phenomenon in an article on the August 27th edition of Rolling Stone appropriately titled 'Inside the GOP Clown Car'.

For his latest RS piece, Taibbi took to the road to visit Iowa to get up close and personal with some of the GOP presidential candidates trailing miserably in Trump's wake.

In excruciating detail he sheds light on the various ways in which everyone from Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry to Lindsey Graham have made complete jackasses of themselves by abandoning real policy debate in an effort to try and show voters their own version of what Perry calls "Trumpism".

As Taibbi observed, "There is nothing you can do to go too far, a fact proved, if not exactly understood, by the madman, Trump."
 
Remember Huckabee's "Oven" comment?

Or, as Taibbi pointed out, Graham at a campaign event assuring potential voters, "If I'm president, we're going back to Iraq."

But try as they might, none of the other members of the GOP Clown Car seem able to outdo Trump's totally off-the-reservation immigration plans.

Forensic experts near the scene near Parndorf, Austria

The Donald has already driven a wedge between Hispanic Americans and the Republican Party with his constant vilifying of illegal immigrants.

But we rarely hear his comments on the 71 immigrants found suffocated inside the back of a truck (pictured left) parked on the A4 highway near the border between Austria and Hungary.


Trump is all too eager to characterize Mexicans as 'rapists', but can you recall hearing him talk about any of the complex socioeconomic underlying causes that are driving thousands of people from the Mid-East, Africa, Central America and Asia to literally risk their lives to gain entry to Europe or the United States?

Trump's rationale for walls, mass deportations and anti-immigrant hysteria seem rooted in his unquenchable thirst for publicity and willingness to pander to what The Wire, Treme and Show Me a Hero creator / writer David Simon called "...a significant plurality who would prefer to have two separate Americas." in an interview in the August 27th edition of Rolling Stone.  

But I get the sense Trump's shtick is starting to wear thin.

My personal opinion is that the Republican establishment has been biding it's time with Donald Trump, letting him wander around unscripted with no filter; saying virtually anything that comes to mind.

Personally I think the GOP has a strategy in place to deal with Trump. If you think about it, why should they spend campaign resources answering every little soundbite that comes out of Trump's mouth over the course of a summer before 2016?

As we know, Jeb! has raised millions and if you notice, he waited until September to roll out his attack ad on Trump - click the link above and watch it a couple times.

It's almost as if the GOP has been quietly biding their time, letting Trump prattle on about his "policy positions", letting him get comfortable (and cocky) with his double-digit lead; which, from a political strategic perspective, is meaningless at this point in the 2016 presidential race.

The Bush attack ad is probably the first in what's going to be a carefully rolled-out media campaign designed to slowly cull Trump off from the Republican Party and isolate him out in the wasteland of quasi-Libertarian / extremist voters who are attending Trump campaign rallies.

At least the ones not being paid $50 by the Trump campaign to show up.

Watch what happens as Congress returns to Washington to start a critical fall session on Capitol Hill.

Watch how the tone of Republican political television ads start to change as the new fall TV and cable season as well as college and professional football, playoff baseball, the NBA and professional hockey start bringing more Americans back to their television sets as the days grow shorter and the temperatures cool.

Don't think the Koch brothers, the Sheldon Adelson's and the other wealthy conservative backers who've pledged billions to the GOP presidential races have been sitting around this summer doing nothing; they've got a plan to deal with the Donald.

The Bush attack ad is just the first of many, and I'm willing to bet the Republican presidential debate set for September 16th at the Reagan Library is going to be very different from the Fox debate; especially for Trump.

The real Republican establishment is actually on the same page as many Americans, including yours truly.

We're all Trumped out.

Eric Holder Cashes In

Eric Holder as Attorney General

When I read Michael Krieger's blog posted yesterday evening on LibertyBlitzkrieg.com about former Attorney General Eric Holder taking a lucrative position with his old law firm Covington & Burling, I can't say I was really surprised.

Given the current state of the corporate / 1% oligarchy that rules America and our political system, high-level officials and politicians stepping from government right into the corporate arena might as well be called the Washington Two-Step - but I was a little disappointed to hear about Holder.

After President Obama tapped him to serve as Attorney General of the United States back in 2008, like many I thought it seemed like a solid cabinet pick.

Holder came from a good family and was a gifted scholar at an early age who went on to graduate from Columbia Law School and later became a Superior Court Judge before being appointed Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno during Bill Clinton's administration - he seemed to have the right stuff.   

As the first African-American AG in American history, his appointment had an air of lofty historic significance and looking back, I think it was easy for liberal-leaning centrists like me to "root" for him.

In contrast to George W. Bush's AG Alberto Gonzales, who famously defended the use of torture, Holder seemed proactive and unafraid to use the authority of his office.

For a lot of Americans it was refreshing to see the head of the Department of Justice speak out eloquently and forcefully on issues like mass incarceration, unfair sentencing laws, disparities in sentencing laws for crack and cocaine, voting rights and systematic racial bias in American law enforcement; Holder also helped bring the weight of the federal government into the high-profile investigations of police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others.

But as progressive journalists like Matt Taibbi began pointing out as far back as August 15, 2012 in detailed exposes on the epic failure of the US government to indict even a single executive from the financial sector for the economic meltdown brought on by the mortgage securities crisis created by the nations largest banks, Holder seemed to distinguish himself as much for what he wasn't doing, as for what he was saying.

You'd think Holder would support an honest whistle blower with a first-hand insider's view into intentional and massive corporate malfeasance by JP Morgan - Chase right?

Not so much according to this disturbing article, 'The $9 Billion Witness', that appeared in the November 6, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone.

As Michael Krieger reported in his blog yesterday, Holder's return to the law firm of Covington & Burling raises some ethically troubling red flags given that "The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo."

When Republicans were attempting to crucify and vilify Holder (oh let me count the ways), I used my blog to defend him more than once; after all the GOP's undisguised hatred of Holder was clearly linked to his racial identity.

But looking back, considering how intelligent Holder is, I can't help but wonder if his vocal stances on mass incarceration or police bias were more smoke-screen than substance - was it merely 'Bread & Circuses' intended to distract the masses from the fact that the head of the Justice Department had absolutely no intention of using the power of his office to hold the big banks or financial firms accountable for wrecking the US economy?

Was his six year term as Attorney General intended to make sure that didn't happen?

According to an article posted on Monday in 'The Intercept' by Lee Fang, Holder worked for Covington & Burling right up until he was appointed Attorney General. Is his new seven or eight figure salary with Covington & Burling (and his corner office in their new 11-story headquarters in New York) a reward for his non-service?

Say it ain't so. 

Did CNN Give Itself Props for a June 25th Rolling Stone Story?

Mark Seliger's photo of Janis Adkins for Jeff Tietz's Rolling Stone Article

As much as any mainstream media brand, Rolling Stone Magazine has been unflinching and relentless when it comes hardcore journalism devoted to uncovering the myriad complex truths behind the economic collapse of 2008 and what greed is doing to the fabric our our nation.

Matt Taibbi's august 29th cover story exposing the real story behind Mitt Romney's troubling tenure at Bain Capital is just the latest in a series of hard-hitting exposes on the insatiable greed of Wall Street players and Big Banks that reveal how America's middle class had been systematically, intentionally and ruthlessly gutted with the help of complacent federal regulators like the SEC, soul-less Congressional legislators who represent a narrow-minded "Ayn Rand-ian" ideology rather than their constituents, and the billionaires bankrolling Romney's run for president.

While Taibbi's work is Pulitzer-worthy in my opinion, I was also particularly moved by a compelling human interest story in the June 25th issue of Rolling Stone by Jeff Tietz that looked closely at how some middle class Americans forced to live out of their vehicles were coping with the help of a program called Safe Parking that allows homeless people a safe lot where they can spend the night in their car, van or SUV; New Beginnings Counseling Center runs the program.

So I was kind of surprised when I saw a CNN report last Friday (September 7th) morning by reporter Kyung Lah that struck me as a more compact made-for-CNN retread of Tietz's Rolling Stone story, entitled "The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class". Don't get me wrong, I totally applaud CNN for devoting coverage to the plight of Americans displaced by the Great Recession and the realities of being homeless in the most prosperous nation in the world. But as a former television reporter myself, I felt like Ms. Lah should have at least given some kind of shout-out or recognition to Rolling Stone, or made some reference to the fact that Jeff Tietz had rolled up his sleeves and written an informative and emotionally wrenching piece 3 months before CNN ran their segment.

Watch the report for yourself. At different times last Friday both Ashleigh Banfield and Wolf Blitzer gave reporter Kyung Lah thanks from the anchor desk for her reporting. In fact, after the conclusion of the late morning segment, Ms. Banfield actually looked a little misty-eyed when she thanked Lah for the report in a subdued voice.

It's certainly not breaking news that CNN has been going through a series of personnel and programming shake-ups over the course of the last year as it's ratings have slipped to a 20-year low. Back in July, CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton (a 30-year CNN vet) announced his resignation effective at the end of the year to make room for "new thinking" in an effort to pump new life into the cable news channel started by media mogul Ted Turner.

I'm no media insider, but it seems to me if CNN wants to make it's product more relevant to a broader news audience, it needs to attract the kind of talent that can create that content. Parent company Time Warner is a media behemoth with deep pockets that can certainly afford to invest money in more cutting-edge content creators.

But trying to make your brand more like Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone (which has boosted it's own audience with hard-hitting coverage of how the economic collapse is affecting Americans) by using their content to develop CNN pieces for broadcast strikes me as rather unoriginal.

Look, I'm a blogger who writes about stuff I see in print or online - but I don't sell ad space on my little blog, it's just an outlet for me to practice my own version of "Citizen Journalism" and besides, I think I make a decent effort at crediting the writers and media sources who create the content that catches my eye.

Some CNN producer leafing through their June 25th copy of Rolling Stone then sending Kyung Lah out to California with a cameraman to do a piece that's clearly based on Jeff Tietz's work isn't plagiarism or anything; but it strikes me as lazy journalism given the scope of CNN's resources and their desire to make a genuine effort to recast their brand.

It's all about content creation, and you should either create it, credit it, or bring some kind of new or unique perspective to the story. While I'm still a CNN watcher, I just don't think Lah's CNN piece offered anything new and Jeff Tietz and Rolling Stone should've gotten credit somewhere rather than kind of making it seem like Lah had come up with the idea.

Just sayin'.