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‘MAGA’ takes root in vernacular

When an acronym becomes a word is when you know that the term has become ingrained in our skulls, even the noggins of those who abhor the meaning of the word.

The term “MAGA” appears to be the latest such term to have been given a sort of new life. When you simpy say “MAGA,” the rest of us know about whom you are referring … it is the cadre of individuals who believe in Donald Trump’s vow to “Make America Great Again.”

I long have considered that to be a preposterous notion, as the United States has been the world’s pre-eminent power since the end of World War II.

We now refer to issues as “MAGA policy,” or “MAGA ideas,” or the “MAGA crowd.” No need to insert the explanation of what “MAGA” means. I need to state that Trump isn’t the first politician to vow to “make America great again.” Bill Clinton did so, too, while running for president in 1992. Clinton’s followers, though, weren’t fervent or rabid enough to keep repeating or even to form the words into an acronym.

Did you know that “TEA Party,” one of MAGA’s predecessors, is an acronym that also became a word? The “TEA” in the party stands for “Taxed Enough Already.” TEA Party faithful formed the coalition because they were tired of paying what they believe is too much in taxes to the federal government. Hence, TEA Party was born about 20 years ago.

I also capitalize “SCUBA” when referring to divers wearing on their backs what stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. I don’t know when the terms “SCUBA divers” or “SCUBA gear” became part of our language. It just did … a long time ago!

The language is full of such examples. Too many of them to delineate here. Because I’m a bit of a rhetorical perfectionist, I am going to continue to capitalize these acronomyical terms as a show of respect to their origins.

 

national news

Populism has been perverted

Let’s revisit a political philosophy that in this current age of perversion has been twisted and shaped into something that bears zero resemblance to what many of us have understood it to mean.

Populism! It has become a mantra repeated by the MAGA morons who now dominate the Republican Party. I decided to check what my dog-eared American Heritage Dictionary has to say about the term.

It states: “Populism: A political philosophy opposing the concentration of power in the hands of corporations, the government and the rich.”

I have to ask: Does that sound like what we’re getting from Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the MAGA numbskulls these days? Not to me.

Nope. Trump has done quite the opposite. He has scarfed up tremendous amounts of power for himself. He and Musk have summarily fired thousands of individuals from government service. He wants to bestow tax breaks for zillionaires, while slashing Medicare and Medicaid benefits from ordinary slobs like you and me. Trump has sicced the Justice Department on media outlets and anyone who has dared speak out against what he intends to do; he has taken DOJ “weaponization” to a level never before contemplated.

I don’t recall Trump ever saying a single word about any of this while campaigning twice for the presidency. Do you? I didn’t think so. He said he would look out for the little guy. He campaigned as a populist. You remember that, right?

Except that Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the term. I have just laid it out there for all of you. Maybe someone who reads this blog can let Trump know what one man’s dictionary says about the philosophy he has perverted into something unrecognizable.

Now, though, comes the big question: When in the name of fighting back against the deceit and lies will Republicans in power rise up to seize the power that this tinhorn dictator seeks for himself?

Is there any courage left in the halls of power? Populism … my ass!

entertainment news, national news, political news

The Boss speaks for many of us

Bruce Springsteen once was thought of as merely a musical icon, a man whose notes resonated with generations of Americans.

Suddenly, though,, he now has become — dare I say it — an iconic political commentator.

The Boss stopped a concert he was performing in Manchester, England, the other evening to offer a commentary on the country he loves and has sung about with great passion for more than 50 years. He doesn’t like what he’s seeing in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and said as much to his audience of thousands of admirers. Turns out his soliloquy reverberated far beyond the audience that heard it in person.

He spoke of the damage being done to the world’s greatest republic by Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk, the MAGA dipshits who are cheering them on and the Republican majority in Congress that lacks the courage to stand up to the machinations of a madman/would-be dictator.

To be sure, it can be argued — and I won’t do it here — that an American citizen shouldn’t take his message overseas to deliver what’s in his heart. Springsteen noted, though, that Americans here at home are being detained and jailed for doing the very thing he reminded the Brits in Manchester that our Constitution guarantees as a fundamental right of citizenship. This nation was founded by dissenters, those who spoke against the Crown and who finally went to war to free themselves of the oppression brought to them by their British masters.

So, there was a certain irony that Bruce Springsteen, the man who was “born in the USA,” would speak from the depths of his heart about the anguish he is feeling about the nation he loves.

He did so with remarkable eloquence.

media news

Public radio, TV under attack

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Right-wingers’ vendetta against public radio and television would be laughable … if the consequences of this battle weren’t so frightening.

They want to defund National Public Radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service. Why? Because they contend erroneously that it’s all “fake,” that it’s biased against conservatives and that the right-wing cabal just won’t tolerate it any longer.

Good fu**ing grief!

In in the interest of full disclosure, I will say I have some experience working for both public media. I freelanced for Panhandle PBS and for High Plains Public Radio for a time after leaving print journalism in 2012. And I worked for a time for KETR-FM public radio in Commerce, Texas, for a while after my wife and I moved to the Metroplex.

I have seen their work up close and I can attest to the absolute professionalism I witnessed while working for them.

I long have held the view that bias rests in the hearts and minds of news consumers, not necessarily in those who deliver it.

I recall a conversation I had with an NPR news director once who explained to me the rules that the broadcast network places on those who deliver the news over the air. They must avoid terms, he said, that connote a point of view. One of those words, he explained, is “reform.”

When discussing legislation aimed at changing current public policy, NPR journalists were told to use the term “overhaul” policy, not “reform” it, as reformation means it would be an improvement.

My friend was quite adamant in telling me that public radio takes its responsibility to be fair, neutral and unbiased quite seriously.

What’s more, I have to point out that the founders protected a “free press” from government interference. They set those protections for the only industry functioning then  — and now — in the Constitution.

The right-wing cabal needs to get a grip and perhaps look inward to determine the source of the bias it seeks to eliminate.

national news, national security

Waltz is out … what about Hegseth?

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National security adviser Mike Waltz has been shown the door by Donald J. Trump for his role in the leak of sensitive material via a social media platform.

Hey, I’m good with it. Trump needed to get him the hell out of there.

But … wait a second. What about the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the clown Trump appointed to run the Pentagon and who also, by the way, is involved up to his armpits in the same matter that befell Waltz?

Trump has surrounded himself with ignorant boobs, buffoons and misfits. Chief among must be Hegseth, the former Fox talk show host who got elevated to run the world’s most lethal military operation. Watch him today, and you get the impression he still is pandering to a right-wing TV audience while discussing military policy matters … of which he knows not a damn thing.

Waltz got caught sending material out via a social media platform. It was highly classified material. The same kind of material that Hegseth blabbed about to his wife and other family members.

Trump once boasted in 2016 while forming the executive branch of government that he would hire “the best people.” It didn’t happen then and it hasn’t happened this time around. He hired an education secretery, Linda McMahon, who recently confused AI, shorthand for artificial intelligence, with “A-1,” a brand of steak sauce.

Robert Kennedy Jr., a premier conspiracy theorist and vaccine denier, now runs the Health and Human Services Department, and is threatening to endanger the lives of children and teenagers throughout the world.

Now, Trump has declared he “runs the government and the world.” Huh? Yeah. He said that. Except that he runs only one third of the federal government, the one lined out in the Constitution as the excutive branch.

I’m glad Mike Waltz is no longer providing national security advice to the Numbskull in Chief. He’s only one of many who need to go.

Donald Trump

What would Mom and Dad think?

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My late parents departed this Earth long before Donald J. Trump burst onto the nation’s political scene.

Dad was gone in 1980; Mom died four years later. Neither of them had the displeasure of suffering from the whims and machinations of this truly bizarre individual. Still, I think about them every day even without having to attach their names to what they might be thinking about what the current president is doing to our economy and to our standing in the world.

I’ll be candid on assessing their analytical skills. Dad wasn’t much of a critical thinker. He relied on his gut. A side of me actually thinks he might have been impressed by Trump’s phony bravado. Dad was a proud World War II veteran, though, and my hope is that he would be repulsed by Trump’s blatant disrespect for those of us who did don the uniform of our country.

Mom, however, was a much deeper thinker than Dad. I will presume that she would be aghast at Trump’s homophobia, his racism, lack of empathy and compassion, his boasting of business skills when he’s run every endeavor he’s ever touched into the ground.

Therefore, on these matters, I am much more my mother’s son than I am a part of Dad.

They’re no longer around and I shudder to think how they would respond to what is unfolding during this second Donald Trump turn as POTUS.

I shudder, indeed, at how Dad might be cheering the charlatan on as he lies through his teeth. More importantly, though, I shudder at how Mom would respond to this individual’s overall unfitness for the nation’s highest and most honored public office.

 

local news

Friendships come and go … forever

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Never in my advanced years on this good Earth have I experienced the loss of friendships in the manner I have done in recent times.

Yes, during the Age of Donald John Trump.

This novice politician has cost me friendships I thought for many years would be unbreakable. They might bend to the point of breaking. They would snap back like a sapling.

No longer.

Three quick examples come to mind of the relationships that been torn apart.

One involves a fellow I knew when I worked in Amarillo. He hails from Pampa. We met for lunch on occasion. We didn’t talk politics when we shared a meal, but we sure did when we sat behind our keyboards. We got into a snit one time and my pal cut me off. He was gone.

Another was a former colleague of mine at the Amarillo Globe-News. I left the paper in August 2012, he stayed on. We argued over this and that Trump policy. We became ex-friends. We stayed that way until he suffered a stroke and died a few years ago.

Yet another was a friend with whom I worked in Beaumont. We maintained our friendship even though he hailed from Arkansas and detested Bill and Hillary Clinton; I felt differently about them than he did, but our friendship survived. Along came Trump and my friend severed our relationship. It remained that way for the rest of his life.

I have struggled to understand why now do political differences get in the way of friendships. I have concluded this must be the nature of the politician who is the common denominator. Trump destroys friendships by turning on men and women on whom he depends. When they cross him, he cuts them off, sends them adrift.

Therefore, it seems to me, the same “logic” follows among those who adhere to the Trumpian blathering and those who oppose it … and him.

I am uncomfortable functioning in this environment. It’s not that I count many acquaintances as “friends.” I have few actual friends in this world. The rest of them are acquaintances, many of them do evolve into actual relationships.

I am happy to report that the few lifelong friendships I have forged over many decades are surviving this tempestuous time. However, we aren’t yet past this tumult.

military news, national security

Hegseth: an unqualified disaster!

Manning a post that puts someone in charge of the finest miliatary organization in world history requires an individual with immense talent and knowledge of the intricacies of geopolitics.

What did Donald Trump get when he selected Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense? He got a buffoon who has spilled the beans hither and yon about deeply classified military intelligence. Now we hear that Hegseth, the former Fox talking head, has let his phone number be known around the world.

This clown is a threat to the 1.5 million men and women who wear the uniform of this great country.

Hegseth’s top staff is bailing on him. The Pentagon has turned into a clown show. Think about that for a moment: the Pentagon has become a laughingstock!

And why? Because the president of the United States needed a blind loyalist to lead the world’s most lethal military force. He didin’t look for anyone with any smarts, any organizational skill, any sense of the gravity of the information he possessed.

Instead, he hired a dipshit.

And a dangerous one, too!

I guess we can set aside all the crap about his alleged mistreatment of women, or his alleged heavy drinking on the job. Now we need to worry that this moron is blabbing to anyone who will listen about top-secret military matters.

Get him the hell out of there!

national news

Trump’s ‘ratings’ are, um, tanking

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Donald J. Trump’s political career has been a testimony to his “ratings,” as he has said himself countless times.

Dude was a reality TV celebrity before becoming a politician, who he knows about ratings. He would boast that his political “ratings” were the best in human history … or words to that effect. He would chide his foes for their “failed ratings.”

We’re now 80-some days into the second term of Trump’s time in office. Know what? Man’s ratings are taking a header off the proverbial cliff.

Makes me wonder: Why is the Dumbass in Chief being so silent about them? No need to answer. I know that the charlatan cares only about news he deems favorable to him. Everything else is “fake,” or is a conspiracy of some sort.

This is what happens when a politician simply doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Meaning that Trump just doesn’t know, for example, that his tariff tantrum is going to result in a national tax increase for every living American.

He and his sidekick, Elon Musk, have set about cutting inspectors general loose, slashing the ranks of national park personnel, Social Security staffers, limiting veterans benefits, slashing foreign aid to countries that need assistance to fend off disease. Oh, and turning this country’s back on an ally in the middle of a ground war with Russia.

I don’t recall Trump ever boasting that he would do all these things while he campaigned for office in 2024. Do you?

Of course not. It’s because the Ignoramus in Chief doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

national news, political news

Chaos is back in form

There once was a time when Republican politicians seeking to keep the party’s presidential nomination away from the guy who would win it spoke truthfully about the numbskull.

All of them who eventually became MAGA minions blindly loyal to Donald Trump would rant, rave and rail against him.

I harken back to the statement that came from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who called Trump the “chaos candidate.” He predicted in 2016 that Trump would govern in a boiling sea of chaos. That prediction looms quite large for me know as the world watches the way Trump is seeking to make his imprint on a second term as president.

Chaos is back. Bigger and more worrisome than ever!

The worrisome aspect comes from the observation of many that Trump’s team actually is more organized, which I translate to mean that it wants to foment chaos, they do it on purpose. They want to keep Americans and our nation’s allies off balance. They prefer for Trump to act when the spirit moves him. No plan. No strategy. No thought given to the consequences of decisions.

If that doesn’t alarm you, then you’re a MAGA moron. The rest of us, though, have reason to be alarmed beyond measure at the chaos that has made its return to the West Wing.