Rants – Jay Thurber Show

You can be sure, it’s more B.S.

For the first time since the 1970s, you can buy a Westinghouse air conditioner or flat-screen TV or electric blanket, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the company that used to be headquartered in Pittsburgh and employ hundreds of thousands of people, including Betty Furness.

The “Westinghouse” logo is little more than a decoration now. Companies in China make the products and importers pay a license fee to stick on a Westinghouse trademark. None of them have any connection to any appliance, radio or other equipment once made in Pittsburgh, Ohio or New Jersey, where the old Westinghouse had factories. They’re trading on nostalgia and whatever good reputation the old Westinghouse company had.

Same thing for RCA. RCA, the company that brought radio, TV, color TV and videotape recorders to the masses and pioneered in computers and satellite technology, hasn’t existed in any meaningful way since 1987. There are products labeled “RCA” in stores that run the gamut from pretty good to absolute junk. Like Westinghouse, companies pay to use the RCA trademark.

General Electric, too. The old GE company no longer exists. Products labeled “GE” are made in China by a variety of firms. Craftsman is no longer made for Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Sears’ old rival, Montgomery Ward, is just a trademark used by the mail-order company that used to be known as Fingerhut.

I was thinking about this when I heard the news that Scott Pelley had been fired by CBS News after 37 years. Pelley was terminated after he stood up to a new hatchet-person sent to takeover “60 Minutes.” The new executive producer of “60 Minutes” has almost no experience in television news and very little experience in journalism at all, but he’s a reliable boot-licker for the new owners of CBS.

What’s happening at CBS is what’s happened to all of those famous U.S. brand names that are just historic trademarks slapped on junk. There is still a “CBS Network” and there will likely still be a “60 Minutes” but what’s inside won’t be the same.

“CBS” is no more than another piece of IP — intellectual property — to be monetized and stripped of all of its value. They did it to American manufacturing; now they’re doing it to journalism. They still publish “The Washington Post,” but it’s a weak imitation of what it was; it’s just another trademark.

Lots of folks are pointing to the ideological component of the changes at CBS, which has been purchased by the hyper-wealthy Ellison family, which is an ally of the Trump administration. I think there’s an ideological component, but don’t overlook the financial component.

The new owners of CBS are ripping the wiring out of the walls to sell the copper. They’re going to monetize whatever IP they can strip. They have 90 years of CBS archives to plunder and turn into cash, after all. What’s left on the air is going to be cheap. (Take the replacement of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” with paid programming provided by Byron Allen. Does it remove a thorn from Trump’s side? Yes. Does it also turn an expense into revenue? Also yes.)

Ideologically, once people like Scott Pelley are chased away, “60 Minutes” and other CBS News productions are going to become a kind of half-assed, Fox News imitation, because that’s what the people in charge want to watch. But almost as importantly, it will be very, very cheap.

Sending foreign correspondents around the world to bring back stories for “60 Minutes” is expensive. Putting a bunch of talking heads in a room to yell opinions at one another is cheap.

One other thing. Did you know who owned the trademarks for the old Westinghouse Electric Corp. between 1997 and 2021?

Well, back in 1995, Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse purchased New York-based CBS Corp. But within four years, all of the traditional Westinghouse businesses had been closed or sold, and the parent corporation renamed itself CBS Corp.

That’s right: For 25 years, all of the old Westinghouse trademarks were owned by CBS.

Maybe that’s where they’re getting the idea to transform CBS, the institution, into “CBS,” the trademark — just another hollowed-out brand name, coasting on its old reputation.

You can’t have CBS without B.S.

This may seem strange, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show.” I say it may seem strange, because he and I are closely aligned politically, and whenever I watched his monologues, I found myself agreeing with him virtually all the time.

And that was actually the problem. I wasn’t laughing. The jokes weren’t surprising me or challenging me. More often than not, he was just reciting a list of outrages and abuses by people in charge, and it made me angry, not happy.

But I obviously was in the minority — during President Trump’s first term, Colbert became one of his sharpest and most perceptive critics, and his ratings soared. For most of the past 10 years, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has dominated late-night TV; over the same period, I’ve also enjoyed watching the evolution of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” — parenthood has turned the former radio shock-jock into a real mensch. (The less I say about “The Tonight Show,” in my opinion, the better; every so often, I remember that Jimmy Fallon holds that historic job previously held by such legends as Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, and I think, “Oh, something has gone terribly wrong; there must have been some kind of accident.”)

Anyway, like most people, I’ve been watching Colbert the past few weeks, and again the show has made me angry, but this time, I’ve been angry on his behalf.

Colbert is an immensely talented, smart, funny guy, and by every account I’ve seen or read, he’s more or less beloved by his staff. He’s got the Number 1 rated network late night show. He interviewed amazing guests — people at the tops of their fields in entertainment, the arts, science and politics.

There was a time, not long ago, that all of this would have spelled nothing but success. That time is past. The craven clowns who run CBS Television have kicked him to the curb. It’s enough to gag a buzzard.

CBS claims the decision is strictly financial; most observers think CBS is cowering to pressure from the Trump Administration, and especially the Trump lap-dog who chairs the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. As I’ve noted before, Carr wears a lapel pin not in the shape of the American flag, but in the shape of President Trump’s face.

Although the FCC does not regulate television networks directly, it does regulate television station licenses, and CBS owns nearly 30 TV stations — including KDKA and WPKD in Pittsburgh. Carr has openly threatened to use the FCC to challenge the broadcast licenses of any networks that criticize the President. David Letterman called it mobster-style behavior and it should embarrass and outrage any American, conservative or liberal.

Colbert himself has noted that CBS paid the President $16 million to drop a frivolous lawsuit he filed against “60 Minutes.” Practically every lawyer — including CBS’s — thought the lawsuit would be laughed out of court. But CBS was in the process of merging with a company called Skydance Media, and it needed federal government approval, so the company paid a “settlement.” Less kind people than me might call it a “bribe.”

Literally days later, Colbert was informed that his show would not be renewed.

But I suspect CBS is not entirely lying when it says that cancelling “The Late Show” was a business decision. The program will be replaced by paid programming — essentially, an infomercial. In this case, the “paid programs” are Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” a syndicated panel talk-show about comedians, and another show called “Funny You Should Ask.”

Allen will pay CBS for the use of their network; Allen then will sell his own commercials during the shows.

This is the same model, incidentally, used on suburban Pittsburgh radio stations when you hear polkas or other ethnic programming. It’s also called “brokered content.” The host pays for the time and then sells their own commercials. The station cashes the checks and has very little risk or expense.

In other words, the CBS Television Network — many years ago, called the “Tiffany Network” for the quality of its programming — has fallen to the level of doing business like “Slappy and Happy’s Polka Jamboree” on a 1,000-watt AM radio station in Potter County, and that’s pretty damn depressing.

Over the weekend, a friend asked me, “Who the hell is going to watch Byron Allen and ‘Comics Unleashed’?”

I said, “Compared to Stephen Colbert? No one.”

He said, “Then why are they doing it?”

Here’s what I told him:

CBS claims that “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was losing $40 million per year. Colbert and his team dispute that.

“The Late Show” averaged 2.7 million viewers per night.

Let’s say Byron Allen’s shows will only get 200,000 viewers. (“ABC World News Now,” the all-night news service carried by some ABC TV stations, gets 200,000 to 400,000 viewers, so I feel safe saying “Comics Unleashed” will get at least that many people tuning in.)

My friend said, “So they’re losing 90 percent of their audience.”

That’s correct.

Now, Byron Allen claims he’s going to pay “tens of millions of dollars” to CBS to use the time slot.

For the sake of an argument, we’ll say Allen is only paying $1 million per year, and that the “The Late Show” wasn’t losing $40 million per year, it was breaking even.

Under that scenario, CBS is suddenly turning a $1 million profit with no effort at all.

But what if “The Late Show” was actually losing money? Just to keep the math easy, we’ll say “The Late Show” was losing $1 million per year.

Suddenly, using my math, CBS’s income has gone up $2 million. You see my point; the actual numbers are likely much higher. CBS has turned a break-even proposition into a tidy profit.

CBS also can now, if they want to, liquidate the Ed Sullivan Theater and the attached office building. New York City assesses the property at $17 million; the real value is obviously more. Another asset to be monetized!

And because Stephen Colbert is no longer making jokes about people in the news, CBS has drastically lowered its legal risk of being sued. Standards & Practices no longer needs to closely review each show before broadcast. CBS’s corporate parent also no longer has to worry about the Tweeter-in-Chief becoming offended by one of Colbert’s jokes and attacking the company (possibly hurting its stock price) or sending the FCC out to challenge one of its owned-and-operated TV stations. Byron Allen isn’t going to offend anyone.

If you’re in charge of late-night programming, by cancelling Stephen Colbert, not only have you turned a small deficit into a modest profit, you’ve wiped a lot of other potential expenses off of your books.

Are you tanking your audience? Yes.

Are you hurting the network’s reputation? Yes.

Do you care about your audience or your reputation? No. You care about profits and share prices for the next quarter. In all fairness, network television is already in decline in the United States; you’re just accelerating the process in order to maximize your own revenue before CBS collapses and is worthless.

It’s as if you bought a historic building. You could fix it up and charge your tenants more rent. Or, you could wait until a tenant moves out, and then rip the copper and fixtures out and sell them for scrap. Eventually, all of the tenants will be gone and the building will be ruined, but you’re banking on the fact that you can cause a little bit of a damage over time and still make a profit without spending any of your own money. When the building is worthless, you can walk away, and it will be someone else’s problem. Probably your investors, the city taxpayers, and any banks that loaned you money.

At the same time that CBS is pulling the plug on its late-night show, it’s also killing the CBS Radio Network. Years ago, CBS Radio still had some talk shows and sports coverage; for the last few years, CBS Radio has only been a news service providing hourly updates. Still, the decision affects more than 700 radio stations, including KDKA in Pittsburgh and WMBS in Uniontown, which has been a CBS affiliate since 1941.

In announcing the decision to close the radio network, CBS cited “a shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities.” Does that mean CBS News was actually losing money on providing hourly newscasts (that seems doubtful, given that they were mostly repackaging audio already gathered by CBS News TV correspondents) or they simply don’t care?

I think it’s the latter; it’s just some more copper wiring in the walls that they can sell off. Reportedly, 26 unionized news reporters are being laid off. Just like eliminating Colbert’s show, that looks good in the quarterly and annual reports. If killing the CBS Radio Network makes the CBS News brand even less prominent, that’s too bad, but it’s not a current problem; it’s going to be someone else’s problem several years from now.

I mentioned the FCC. There was a time when radio and TV stations were required to run a certain minimum amount of news and public-service programming. There also was a time when radio and TV stations could only program a certain number of commercials per hour.

The federal government’s position was that the airwaves belonged to the American people, not to private companies. That’s why companies get a license to broadcast on AM, FM or TV; it’s like when you get a license to drive — you get permission to use the road, but you don’t own the road. Because the airwaves were owned by everyone, stations were required to broadcast in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

With broadcast deregulation in the 1990s under President Clinton, public-service and news requirements were scrapped and radio and TV stations were told “anything goes” as far as advertising content. That led directly to hour-long commercials and stations that broadcast nothing but paid programming, all day long.

Is anyone listening or watching? Not really, but there are always suckers willing to write a check to hear or see their message. Byron Allen will no doubt find more than enough advertisers willing to take a flyer on reaching 200,000 or 300,000 viewers in Colbert’s old time slot.

(In the Pittsburgh area, the worst offender may be WWCS Radio in Canonsburg, which currently runs 24-hour programming from “The Overcomer Ministry,” which was headed for decades by a preacher named Brother Stair. Brother Stair was a convicted rapist who died in 2021. I don’t know who is still donating to Brother Stair and who is paying the radio station, but he continues to drone into the atmosphere every day on 540 AM. And it’s all perfectly legal.)

All this is so much venting, and what’s the point? Nothing is going to change any time soon.

But I hope it goes some way toward explaining why Colbert is being replaced and the CBS Radio Network is being murdered after 99 years. It’s the usual suspects — a federal government that has given up on regulation and rapacious capitalism run amok. These are the same forces that have ruined your favorite stores and restaurants for the past two decades. A bunch of greasy weasels buy something and strip it down for parts, and then let the bankruptcy courts clean up the messes.

As Sal Tessio says to Tom Hagen in “The Godfather,” it’s just business. But the Corleones had a lot more dignity and self-respect than anyone in charge at CBS these days.

There are four lights

It must be obvious by now, but just in case it isn’t: Everything the Trump Administration touches is going to be smeared with shit for the next three years.

The Kennedy Center, the Olympics — and now the Scouts.

Later this year, they’re going to smear July 4 with shit when they have a UFC championship on the White House lawn.

Instead of kids one day having fun memories of cartoons, fireworks and free concerts — like many Americans have of the Bicentennial in 1976 — the 250th Anniversary of the United States is going to be forever tainted by the specter of the shit-throwing madmen looming over it.

Nothing is going to be spared. But live your values and hold your line.

It’s literally the only thing you have control over — yourself, your self-respect and your integrity.

Hold the line for yourself, your family (including chosen family), and your friends.

Stay true to yourself. Have some self-respect. It’s the one thing these shit-stained Nazi morons can’t take away.

I mean, c’mon, my fellow Gen X nerds: We saw Capt. Picard overcome worse than this.

Was it over when Gul Madred tried to make Jean-Luc say there were five lights? Was it over when the Borg collective turned him into Locutus?

My God, those are the geekiest things I’ve ever written.

But no matter what these Nazi assholes say, THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS.

Be one of the lights.

People, people, we gotta get over before we go under

We got a funky president, and people, it’s bad

(This is political. If you’re tired of politics, skip to something else.)

I didn’t watch Kaiser von Shitzenpants’ address to the Reichstag last night, but from everything I’ve read — someone called it “probably the most divisive State of the Union in history” — I think I’ve got the flavor of it.

None of what’s currently happening is going to end well for us in the United States. The pathways from here are pretty grim.

To be clear: I think the side of justice will ultimately win.

The Kimmel mess

Disney/ABC is not the only Mickey Mouse operation in control of our national media apparatus

For those of you who missed Saturday’s show (Sept. 20), here’s a transcript of what I said about the Jimmy Kimmel situation. I don’t have a whole lot more to say because, frankly, the story’s been talked to death.

As always, opinions expressed on Radio 9 with Jay Thurber are those of the host, and not those of WRCT Radio Inc., Carnegie Mellon University, Tube City Online Radio, or Tube City Community Media.

I’ve been trying to decide if I wanted to say anything about this or not, but what the heck — until they drag me off the air, I might as well, right?

If anybody wants to try to get me fired from WRCT, by the way, the joke’s on you …. they don’t pay me anything! (It makes it difficult to fire someone who doesn’t make any money, doesn’t it?)

But if you wanna try to get my show taken off the air, the email address is info@wrct.org, or you can write to WRCT Radio, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh 15213. That goes for the chairman of the FCC, too, if he’s listening.

So, the chairman of the FCC threatened the licenses of TV stations that carry “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” And as a response, Nexstar — which I think owns 200 TV stations around the country — pulled Kimmel’s show.

This is one of the problems right now — there used to be a rule in this country that you could own “seven, seven and seven.” In other words, you could own seven AM radio stations, seven FM radio stations and seven TV stations. Then they increased it to 10, and then — thank you Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich — back in the 1990s, they eliminated basically all of the rules. Now, you essentially can own as many as you can get your grubby little booger-hooks into. So we have companies like Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns Channel 22 and Channel 53 here in Pittsburgh, and we have Nexstar, and a couple of these big conglomerates that have gobbled up all the local TV stations.

Well, Nexstar wants to merge with another big, giant company, and they need FCC approval.

As for Jimmy Kimmel — and I’m not a huge Jimmy Kimmel fan; I’m more of a Seth Meyers person — but Jimmy Kimmel has been going after the administration pretty hot and heavy this year. Obviously our greatest president — your favorite president — doesn’t like that.

So he put pressure on the FCC — the Friendly Candy Corporation, which also governs radio stations. The chairman of the FCC wears a picture of the president on his lapel, and I’m not making that up. He has a tiny gold pin — well, it’s not that tiny, probably an inch wide (that’s what she said) — that he wears on his lapel that is in the shape of President Trump’s face.

The FCC has the final say whether or not these giant companies are allowed to get even more ginormous; he doesn’t like Jimmy Kimmel; the stations feel threatened; so ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air on Wednesday, apparently with very little warning. Supposedly, they were literally getting ready to tape the show when the word came down from the network, “we’re gonna run Celebrity Family Feud instead.”

Something to know about the First Amendment: It’s not “censorship” if WRCT decides my show stinks — and my God, they’ve had 20 years, if they haven’t figured out this show stinks by now — but if the program director decides this show stinks and takes me off because no one is listening, that’s not censorship. That’s not a violation of the First Amendment.

But if the government tells the station to take me off for any reason, that is a violation of the First Amendment, and what we have here pretty clearly is the government putting pressure on the TV station owners; the TV station owners losing their minds, as you might expect, with the government threatening them; and ABC deciding “let’s put Jimmy Kimmel’s stuff in a wet paper box and throw it out on the curb.”

This comes about a month after CBS announced they were no longer renewing Stephen Colbert’s show. Now, Stephen Colbert has spent his whole career going after Donald Trump; but when they cancelled Colbert, they said “well, the show cost so much money,” and they said “we’re just gonna let his contract expire next year,” so there was some plausible deniability that OK, maybe they were just doing this to save money.

I don’t think there’s anybody thinks that what happened last week was anything other than the President of the United States got his feelings hurt, and the FCC is punishing him for it.

And this is where if you want to get my show taken off the air, by all means, email info@wrct.org, and tell them you were listening to Radio 9 on Saturday afternoon.

Here are the comments that Jimmy Kimmel made that were so outrageous that people lost their minds. Are you ready?

And I should say first of all, last week, after a lunatic shot Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, here’s what Jimmy Kimmel had to say:

“Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

OK. That’s what Jimmy Kimmel said last week; and here’s what he said on Tuesday that got his show canceled indefinitely:

“The MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered. Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, doing everything they can to score political points from it. And in-between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

Was that comment in bad taste? I guess that’s up to you. Was the comment offensive? Again, I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Was the comment factually wrong? Well, we don’t know yet the motives of this crazy person that shot Charlie Kirk; he hasn’t been cooperating the police.

But those those are the controversial comments they canceled Jimmy Kimmel for, indefinitely. And now the TV station owners — these two big companies that want to become even bigger companies — they’re demanding that Jimmy Kimmel apologize for this, and also make a donation to Charlie Kirk’s organization.

If you saw the chairman of the FCC talking about this, his comments could only be described as Tony Soprano-esque — about the revenge that they are looking for.

David Letterman was on a panel discussion this week sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and here’s what he had to say:

“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, everyone is going to be touched. For 30 years I did this for a living, so I see this happen of Colbert; that was inexcusable. The man deserves a great deal of credit. He’s in the hall of fame nine times and to be treated like that — all because the Ellison family didn’t want trouble with Donald Trump? With this move, they got rid of him, you’re not gonna have to worry about anything, Larry (Ellison); it’s all gone, fine, goodnight.

“And then my friend Jimmy. I just feel bad because you see where this going, correct? It’s managed media, it’s no good, it’s ridiculous, and you can’t go around firing somebody because you are fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office; that’s just not how this works.

“The FCC chairman — this guy, Brendan Carr — says ‘we can do things the easy way, or we can do things the hard way.’

“Who’s hiring these goons, Mario Puzo?

“For God’s sakes, when I was a kid, I was like 20 years old and I wanted to work at a radio station, so I went to Chicago to the FCC. You take a test, you pass the test, you have your third-phone radio broadcasting license; that’s what the FCC does. You’re a 50,000 watt clear-channel radio station, and once a year they come and check to make sure you’re not broadcasting at 55-thousand watts, and God forbid you are, then you get an $8 fine. That’s the FCC.

[…]

“The institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than worrying about a talk show. He really ought to be bigger than that … It would be hilarious it wasn’t something that we may never recover from.

“Here’s the thing that’s up my nose these days. People keep saying, ‘by God, we have get to work on those midterms.’ Well, I think the midterm elections will be elections in name only, I’m sorry. The Republicans have raised billions of dollars; the Democrats i think are staggering a bit behind in terms of fundraising.

“I’m not exactly of full-minded understanding of what Jimmy said, or what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made, but this is something that was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert was walked off, so you’re telling me this isn’t premeditated at some level?”

That’s David Letterman at The Atlantic Festival on a panel discussion talking about free speech; you can find out more at The Atlantic website, or you can see the whole discussion there.

And I think that’s where my thoughts on this situation lie, and I’ve taken up enough time.

Bombs away

At least we have calm, clear-headed people in charge on both sides

Apologies to Country Joe McDonald:

Yeah, c’mon on all you big strong men
Don the Con needs your help again
He’s makin’ threats without a plan
Against the mullahs in Teheran
So put down your phones
And launch some drones
We’re gonna go to war with Iran

Chorus:

And it’s 1, 2, 3
What’re we fighting for?
Bibi’s in the commode
So we’ll watch Iran explode
And it’s 5, 6, 7
Let’s make America great
Well, it ain’t no use to wait ‘n see
Ayatollah, it’s tollin’ for thee

Now, onward, Christians, let’s move fast
Our big chance has come at last
We gotta go out and bomb some sand
‘Cause eschatology is at hand
And y’all know Jesus will return
When the Holy Land starts to burn

(Chorus)

Chevron and Exxon, don’t move slow
‘Cause Armageddon is a-go-go-go
Just wait for the signal from Mr. Trump
Then raise the prices at the pump
And even if the worst don’t come to pass
It’ll still be a real gas

(Chorus)

Well, MAGA voters have dissatisfaction
Better get the military into action
The orders came down from Donald Trump
We gotta get him out of his ratings slump
And so we’ll do the best we can
To bomb the shit out of Iran

It’s all going to pot

Optional soundtrack

I have no problem with marijuana; I think they ought to legalize it everywhere and sell it in drug stores and anywhere alcohol is available. The fact that people — mostly young Black men — are still being jailed for selling pot is insane to me, and it amazes me that more people aren’t offended.

If I can buy a 1.5L of Scotch at the state liquor store, you ought to be able to buy a bag of primo indica there, too. And then go home and roll up a fatty as big as a telephone pole and blaze away and see if I care.

But man, the constant smell of it everywhere is starting to get to me.

On the bus, in the supermarket — today, I was waiting for my wife to finish with a doctor’s appointment at a large Pittsburgh hospital, and someone walked past me just reeking of skunkweed.

Two weeks ago, while my buddy and I were in Dayton for the radio convention, our hotel room was unusable one night for the smell of marijuana. Our strong suspicion was that the employees were smoking it; although the front desk told us it was coming from outside, we saw a large piece of PVC pipe sticking out of a window in the employees-only area, as well as tell-tale signs of masking tape around smoke detectors (as if they’d been covering them up).

I filed a complaint with the hotel chain’s corporate office; they told me “well, recreational marijuana is legal in Ohio now.” I said, yes, but your hotel is non-smoking, and it shouldn’t matter if it’s tobacco or pot. Firepits are legal in Ohio, too — could I bring one of those into my hotel room and start a camp fire?

It reminds me of when I was a kid and everyone smoked tobacco, and didn’t realize how badly they reeked of cigarette smoke. I don’t miss those days at all, when you’d open the door of a bar or restaurant and a cloud of smog would roll out.

I’m not sure if the dank stank is better or worse than stale cigarettes, but it’s just as pervasive as nicotine stains were 40 years ago.

Joe versus the volcano

They said Joe wasn’t so, but he was, and the whole world is paying for their arrogance

I used to think that Joe Biden’s presidential library should be built on the lip of an active volcano.

To me, it would symbolize that he and his team knew that the return of Donald Trump to the White House was a constant threat to the future of the United States of America and the peace and stability of the free world, and yet they pretended nothing was happening, and did almost nothing to thwart it. That includes Attorney General Merrick Garland’s half-assed prosecution of Trump’s criminal cases. “Slow” doesn’t begin to describe Garland’s behavior; “stationary” is more like it. If the Justice Department had gone any slower in attempting to bring Trump’s crimes to light, they would have been going backwards.

Now, stories are starting to emerge about how Biden’s family and staff worked to cover up evidence of his physical and mental decline, until the disastrous June 2024 debate demonstrated that the president was falling apart:

In a new book, Joe Biden’s former White House chief of staff paints a devastating picture of the then US president’s mental and physical state before the debate with Donald Trump that sent his 2024 campaign into a tailspin, resulting in his relinquishing the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris.

According to Klain, it turned out that Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was”; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation”; and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job.” (The Guardian, UK)

I never much trusted Joe Biden. The first time I ever saw Joe Biden on TV, I was a little kid, and he was being interviewed on NBC’s “Today” Show about his presidential campaign. It would have had to have been 1987.

What I remember most clearly was that he said to the interviewer, “I will be the next president of the United States.”

Not, “when I am,” or “if I am elected.” I will be the next president of the United States.

Even as a grade-schooler, that struck me as a shocking thing to say.

Within a few weeks, his campaign imploded when it was revealed that he’d plagiarized his campaign speech from British politician Neil Kinnock.

As I got older and began to pay attention to politics, I heard stories about his temper, arrogance, and enormous ego. I watched him grill Anita Hill after Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court. I read stories about back-room deals that he cut on behalf of predatory banks and credit-card lenders (some people called him “the Senator from MBNA,” MBNA being a big Delaware-based credit-card company that sometimes doubled and tripled people’s interest rates without warning).

During his time as Obama’s vice president, he seemed to have mellowed. The Onion depicted him as an aging, hard-drinking surfer, waxing his Trans-Am in the White House driveway. Somehow, he morphed into America’s cool uncle. But I still didn’t trust him.

So when he ran for president again in 2020, he would have been my 12th or 13th favorite choice in the Democratic Party.

I was pleasantly surprised during his first year in office. It did, indeed, seem like a kinder, gentler Joe Biden — to quote another former president.

Then, during his second year, Biden seemed to revert to type — selfish, egotistical, and a little bit nasty and sarcastic.

That’s the guy I remembered. Not Cool Uncle Joe.

Of course, during his final two years in office, he seemed to disappear from public entirely. According to another new book, Biden was “a shell of himself” by 2023 (Vanity Fair), and everyone around him knew it.

Rumors about his decline were rampant; Republicans kept pointing out that Biden rarely spoke to reporters or held press conferences, implying that something was seriously wrong with him. Democrats replied that the Republicans were engaged in a dirty tricks campaign of character assassination; and certainly, that’s what it was, but it also apparently was more accurate than anyone knew.

His staff and family knew that he was in no shape to run for a second term. But they kept it from the public until it was too late.

And now, here we are, on the verge of an economic collapse, widespread civil unrest and the dissolution of worldwide alliances that have endured for more than 70 years.

Not only did Biden’s staff cover up his mental and physical decline, they actively worked to undermine Vice President Kamala Harris, so that when he finally dropped out of the race — much too late, everyone agrees — they had already fatally crippled her attempt to beat Trump.

Anyway, I no longer think Biden’s library should be built on the lip of an active volcano.

I now think it should be built over an active septic drainage field — a fitting monument to the hubris of a man whose shortsightedness has left the entire country sinking into the muck.

Editorial from the Clarksdale Press-Register

A judge in Clarksdale, Miss., has ordered the local newspaper not to publish this editorial after local city commission members found it “defamatory.”

It is the opinion of this blog that the local city commission in Clarksdale, Miss., is brain-damaged, and the city attorney is a jive-ass turkey.

Is that defamatory? Come at me, City of Clarksdale, Miss. I need the publicity.

EDITORIAL: Secrecy, deception erode public trust

By THE PRESS REGISTER
Sat,02/08/25-3:00AM, 1,189 Reads

Your Clarksdale Press Register will be the first to say that a sin tax that would pay police to fight crime in Clarksdale is a good idea.

So why did the City of Clarksdale fail to go to the public with details about this idea before it sent a resolution to the Mississippi Legislature seeking a two-percent tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco?

Mayor Chuck Espy has always touted how “open” and “transparent” he is and he is “not like previous administrations of the past 30 years.”

So why did Espy seek a Special Called Meeting of the Board of Mayor and Commissioners to finalize details of this move?

The notice was posted at city hall as required by law and said stated the city would “give appropriate notice thereof to the media.”

This newspaper was never notified. We know of no other media organization that was notified.

But back to what the city was trying to do.

Yes, there are deadlines for submitting legislation to Jackson. But this tax has been discussed in at least two meetings and has been reported in the pages of your Clarksdale Press Register.

Have commissioners or the mayor gotten kick-back from the community? Until Tuesday we had not heard of any. Maybe they just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea – at public expense.

As with all legislation, the devil is in the details and how legislation often morphs into something else that benefits somebody else.

An idea that sought to pay police higher wages for the toughest job in any community is admirable. But the way the resolution sought by the city of Clarksdale is now written gives us cause for concern.

The money – our money – can now be spent to “support and promote public safety, crime prevention and continued economic growth in the city.”

Does that mean the fire department, 911, Chamber of Commerce and their pet projects?

Does that promotion mean, giving away candy at Halloween, toy giveaways at Christmas and hosting events where politicians can hand out goody bags to votersin the name of safety?

This newspaper feels the original intent serves the purpose of all – putting police on the streets of Clarksdale.

More police will lead to more patrols, more patrols will lead to more arrests, more arrests will lead to less crime and less crime will make us all feel safer in our homes and neighborhoods.

Our Clarksdale Board of Mayor and Commissioners have stumped their toe on this one. They took a good idea, let their focus drift, and made us suspicious.

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Woof, woof

How much is that Democrat in the window? The one with his tail between his legs?

They say “it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

This appears to be most of the Democratic Party right now:

I know the administration seems chaotic. Watching it feels like “been there, done that” to me, and I’m surprised that other people are surprised — especially people in politics, who should have known what was coming.

I have been saying — not really joking — “a lot of you had stable childhoods, and it shows.”

Anyone who had an unstable parent or spouse has seen behavior like Trump’s before, and up close, and not just eight years ago, the last time he darkened the White House’s door.

First Trump acts nuts and does or says something crazy — Colombia tariffs, TikTok ban, threatening to invade Denmark. Then he gives it back, and we’re supposed to act grateful: “Oh, thank you, daddy/mommy, you’re so good to us.”

Like an abusive parent or spouse, he demands slavering obedience and fawning praise, even when he does something wrong (especially when he does something wrong). He causes the problem, and then offers to fix it.

It’s all designed to wear you down and break you. Pretty soon you learn to be watchful and censor yourself so you don’t anger Daddy Trump any more.

Oh, you may tell yourself you’re not stooping to their level, or you’re trying to keep the peace. (Or, if you’re a Democrat, “the voters sent me here to do a job, not to react to all of the noise.”) But it’s all a case of giving into the crazy person, in order to spare yourself some of their wrath.

And what I’ve learned after 40-mumble years of fighting bullies is that lots of people will talk a good game, but they don’t have your back.

After you risk your job (or your life, or your family, or your health) standing up to the bully, then your “allies” will come (privately) and pat you in the back: “Hey, you really fought back, good job.”

More and more, my response to that is, “thank you, but where were you when I needed you? Go f–k yourself.”

You can’t shame the bullies. Sometimes you can shame your allies into action. But you can’t shame the bullies. Pointing out their hypocrisy does no good; they don’t care.

And you can’t “work with” the bullies, either. You can submit and let them do whatever they want, or you can fight.

We may eventually shame some Democrats into action, but right now, it’s like trying to get a cowering, whimpering dog out from under the bed. The Republicans are a completely lost cause.

Ed Burmila, who blogs at Gin and Tacos, and who wrote the book “Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center,” said this week:

Things are different and there’s nothing to gain now from pretending the politics of 10 or 20 or 50 years ago apply to this moment. (The administration’s) goal is to fundamentally change the way our reality is structured and the opposition party’s plan is to refer to that as “noise” and talk about egg prices. We are not in danger, a word that implies some future calamity. The calamity is here.

The calamity is indeed here. You can hide and let it happen or you can speak up and fight back.

P.S.: Ed was a guest on my talk show when “Chaotic Neutral” came out. You can get the book here and listen to our conversation here: