Tag Archives: NY Times

media news

Language might give away author’s ID

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell has posited an “educated guess” on who he thinks wrote the anonymously published op-ed column that talks about White House efforts to protect the nation against the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

O’Donnell thinks it’s Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who’s in his 70s and is occupying the final public service job in his career.

The more I think about it the more plausible O’Donnell’s guess appears to be.

Then I went back to the essay and found this passage: … United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior.

I zeroed in on a pair of terms: malign behavior.

I have heard that phrase used exactly once in my life. It was stated recently to discuss the Russian involvement in attacking our electoral system.

It came from, yep, DNI Dan Coats.

Coincidence that it appeared in this NY Times commentary? I think not. Read the essay here.

2016 election, Donald Trump

Get ready for a serious ‘witch hunt’

Donald John Trump has been calling a detailed investigation into possible collusion with Russian operatives seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election a “rigged witch hunt.”

Of course … special counsel Robert Mueller’s exhaustive and meticulous investigation is no such thing.

However, we might be getting ready to watch the real thing unfold. A serious witch hunt emanating from within the White House as an enraged president seeks to find the identity of the “senior White House official” who wrote an op-ed column published today in The New York Times.

Of course, I have no way of knowing this, but I strongly suspect that Trump has released the proverbial hounds to find the source of the essay. He or White House chief of staff John Kelly will confront everyone they can imagine who might have written such a thing; my money is on Kelly doing the heavy lift, given the president’s inability/unwillingness to confront someone directly.

However, I am quite sure we’re going to witness a serious “witch hunt” that seeks to reveal who has spoken a truth about the Trump administration that many of us have suspected all along.

national news

The author is no mid-level WH chump … bet on it!

I feel like sharing this tweet from a leading Washington, D.C., journalist.

So, here is what Karen Tumulty writes: My 2 cents: It is hard to imagine the NYT would have given anonymity on something like this to someone who was not at least as high as a cabinet secretary or assistant to the president.

Whoever wrote the essay that appeared today in The New York Times is no mid-level staffer. He or she very likely is someone with direct daily access to Donald John Trump.

I don’t yet know where all this is going. Much of it will depend on whether the president learns who it is. And what he’ll do about it. Does he fire the individual on the spot and thus, expose that person’s identity to the world?

Read the essay here.

I’ve read this op-ed column twice. I suspect it’s going to be an even better read the more I read it.

As for Tumulty’s belief about the NY Times’s decision to run this piece without attribution, a newspaper of such stature and standing doesn’t dare hand out this space without ironclad knowledge that the author knows of which he or she is writing.

media news

Anonymity produces courage

A mentor of mine, a fellow who gave me my first job in daily journalism, once said that newspaper readers have the right to judge what people said in opinion pieces against those who write them.

In other words, anonymity was a non-starter.

So, the New York Times today has just upset that norm. It has published an op-ed column by a “senior White House official” that declares that the White House staff’s first order of business is to protect the nation from Donald Trump’s more dangerous impulses.

Are we now going to dismiss this officials dire warning merely because he or she didn’t put a name on the piece that the NY Times has just published?

I’m not ready to do that.

Read the essay here.

Over the years I edited opinion pages in Oregon and in Texas, I rejected many requests for anonymity. Most people who wanted me to shield their identity was because they would be embarrassed by what they had to say. That wasn’t good enough. I usually didn’t hesitate telling them so. Yes, there are exceptions: rape or incest victims come to mind; I didn’t get any such requests during my nearly four decades in journalism.

The individual who has written this piece for the NYT appears to be motivated by a high calling. This individual doesn’t want to lose his or her job and believes that staying on the job is vital to continuing to protect the nation against the president’s nuttier notions.

Still, having said all that, I wish the individual who wrote essay this would have put a name on the essay. He or she would have lost a job, but there would be others at their respective posts who would remain faithful to the mission of protecting the United States against the president of the United States.

Think of how strange it is that we’re even having this discussion.

Weird.

Donald Trump, national news

Trump revives concept of ‘enemies list’

The sometimes-sinister spirit of Richard M. Nixon apparently has returned from the dead to whisper in the ear of Donald J. Trump.

The current president mirrored the former president’s enemies list by revoking the top security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan. In a remarkable fit of petulance, pique and piggishness, the president did this to punish Brennan for what he called “erratic behavior.”

Did the former CIA boss reveal any national security secrets? Did he blab classified information to enemy states? Did he in any way compromise our ability to defend ourselves against foreign foes?

No to all of the above.

Brennan’s “sin” is to criticize the president.

What is wrong with that? Oh, nothing at all. It’s protected speech, according to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But you see, Donald Trump just won’t have any of that. He just cannot stomach the idea of a former CIA director, a man with immense national security chops — who could be of invaluable assistance to the president’s national security team — speaking negatively about administration policy.

The New York Times reported: In a tweet this week, Mr. Brennan criticized Mr. Trump for the language that the president used to attack Omarosa Manigault Newman, his former top aide, who he called a “dog.”

Mr. Brennan wrote, “It’s astounding how often you fail to live up to minimum standards of decency, civility, & probity. Seems like you will never understand what it means to be president, nor what it takes to be a good, decent, & honest person. So disheartening, so dangerous for our Nation.”

Years ago, President Nixon developed an enemies list comprising members of the Democratic Party, radical left-wing protest groups, certain members of the media and, frankly, damn near any prominent American who spoke ill of him in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Nearly five decades later, his most recent presidential descendant has resurrected that notion by revoking the security clearance of a dedicated public servant and a man with tremendous knowledge of all things relating to protecting this great nation.

Shameful.

Donald Trump

Read this column about Trump

I want to use this brief blog post to ask you to read a column by a noted columnist for the New York Times.

Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a man with a smart and reasoned head on his shoulders, thinks the media need to provide Donald Trump with blanket coverage of his campaign rallies.

Read Friedman’s column here.

Friedman’s essay is a beaut. He suggests that the more Americans watch Trump fly off the rails at these campaign rallies, the more they might understand what many of us have known all along: that he is unfit for the office to which he won election in 2016.

His insults. His histrionic behavior. His utterly undignified and unpresidential demeanor. His mocking of foes. His idiotic lies.

They all come to the fore at these rallies.

Friedman dismisses the calls by some anti-Trump folks who want the media to ignore Trump’s rallies. He says quite the opposite.

He wants “blanket coverage.” The public needs to watch this individual in action. Just maybe enough Americans will start to get the picture. Donald Trump is not fit for the high office he occupies.

As Friedman writes: “I just know that the G.O.P. Congress and Fox News are too compromised to ever tell Trump, ‘Enough.’ But there are decent Republican moderates who, while they may never pull the lever for a Democrat, just might get too disgusted to vote. It’s the best hope. So let’s keep them fully informed about our president.”

media news

Trump lacks any semblance of decency

When a conservative columnist writes that Donald John Trump will have blood on his hands if more harm comes to journalists, then you might be able to start thinking that the president is on the verge of losing his mind.

Bret Stephens writes for the New York Times. He states: “Donald Trump’s more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says. But not all of the president’s defenders are quite as sophisticated. Some of them didn’t get the memo about taking Trump seriously but not literally. A few hear the phrase ‘enemy of the people’ and are prepared to take the words to their logical conclusion.”

Read Stephens’s column here

Let’s ponder something for just a moment.

Trump stood before a rally in Pennsylvania this week and hollered hysterically yet again about the “fake, disgusting” media.

I don’t believe the 70-something president suffers from short-term memory loss or dementia. Surely he must remember the recent massacre that killed five people at the Annapolis, Md., newspaper. Certainly he must recall that he sent his “thoughts and prayers” to the victims’ families.

Can he not connect the dots that tie his fiery anti-media rhetoric to the actions of the shooter in Maryland? Sure, the shooter had a specific beef with the Capital Gazette. Would he have acted so violently without the kind of vitriol that’s been flying out of the president’s mouth for the past couple of years? I’m just wondering out loud, man.

I think it’s time I resurrect the time-honored question: Have you no sense of decency, Mr. President?

media news

NY Times boss tells Trump what he needs to hear

Getting an earful of what one needs to hear often differs from what one wants to hear. A recent meeting between the president of the United States and the publisher of the New York Times offers a clear example of such a circumstance.

Donald J. Trump met with A.G. Sulzberger and got a snootful from the publisher about the president’s harmful and dangerous labeling of media as purveyors of “fake news.”

Are you listening — for once! — Mr. President.

Not surprisingly, the two men reported the meeting in dramatically different tones. Trump wrote this via Twitter: “Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times,” Trump wrote. “Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

Sulzberger’s take was different. I think I’ll go with the publisher’s account of what transpired.

He issued a statement that declared, in part: “I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” Sulzberger said.

“I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

“Throughout the conversation I emphasized that if President Trump, like previous presidents, was upset with coverage of his administration he was of course free to tell the world. I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair. Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country,” he continued.

Donald Trump is guilty as charged of lying about the media, just as he lies about damn everything else that flies out of his mouth. And the NY Times publisher has laid it on the line, that the attacks on the media thrust reporters and editors who are merely doing their job into harm’s way.

These attacks cannot stand.

national news, political news

It wasn’t mere ‘meddling,’ it was an attack

I have just made a command decision as the publisher of High Plains Blogger.

No longer will I refer to the Russian attack on our electoral system, on our democratic process merely as an act of “meddling.”

It was a full-frontal assault on our electoral process. It was an attack on our way of life.

I got the idea from a letter to the editor I saw this morning on Twitter. I think the letter was from the New York Times. The writer compared “meddling” to the butting in by nosy relatives on the business of family members.

I thought, “Wow! I get that.” Not the nosy relatives thing, but the notion that “meddling” is far too mild a term to describe what the Russians did during our 2016 presidential election.

Thus, I made the decision to henceforth refer to that act using terminology that more aptly describes its impact.

Am I going to assert that the Russian attack actually produced a Donald Trump victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton? I won’t go there. At least not just yet. I will await the results from Robert Mueller’s exhaustive probe into potential “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian goons ordered by Vladimir Putin to launch their attack on our system.

In the future, though, do not look for the word “meddling” from this blog to describe what I consider to be damn near an act of war on our democratic process by a hostile nation.

business news

Trade wars aren’t ‘good,’ really, they aren’t

I believe it was the character Gordon Gekko, portrayed by Michael Douglas, who said in the film “Wall Street” that “Greed … is good.”

That was about three decades ago. These days, we have another character, who happens to be the president of the United States, who is saying that “trade wars are good.”

Well, greed isn’t necessarily good. Trade wars aren’t good, either.

Yet the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has now officially gone to “war” with China, the world’s second-leading economic powerhouse.

Ladies and gents, we’re all going to pay for this.

Trump has imposed tariffs on Chinese imports. As the New York Times has reported: On Thursday, President Trump showed no signs of backing down from his fight, saying aboard Air Force One that the first wave of tariffs on $34 billion in goods would quickly be followed by levies on another $16 billion of Chinese products. And Mr. Trump continued to threaten Beijing with escalating tariffs on as much as $450 billion worth of Chinese goods.

How are the Chinese going to respond? That remains the open question. According to the Times: “At the moment, I don’t see how this ends,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “This is very much in the president’s hands because he’s got advisers that seem divided, some substantively, some tactically. I just don’t think we’ve had any clear signs of the resolution he wants.”

Trump’s war against our traditional allies and trading partners has reached around the world. He’s imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, on the European Union and on Great Britain.

Tariff is another word for “tax,” meaning that the tax will add to the cost of producing the goods being shipped. If we’re going to impose these taxes on imported products, then the nation from which they come will respond with tariffs/taxes of their own on the goods that come from the United States.

Think, too, for a moment about the U.S. Labor Department’s report today that non-farm payrolls grew by 213,000 jobs in June. Good news, yes? Of course it is!

Will we continue to experience this continuing job growth if manufacturers no longer can afford to do business in this world of growing tariffs and taxes?

That’s my fear.

Trade wars aren’t good.