GOP Debate: Talking Tough and Saying Little

Trump hotel (Las Vegas) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lot has changed since Donald Trump and the other Republican presidential candidates last took the stage to debate the issues.  The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino happened.  National security became Topic A.  And Trump's lead in the polls just keeps getting bigger in spite of his desire to keep Muslims and Mexicans out of the country.  He is overshadowing every other candidate (even the Democrats) in media coverage.

The last GOP debate of the year was held Tuesday in Las Vegas.  It was broadcast on CNN, where 18 million of you chose to forsake "NCIS" and "The Voice" to watch nine people discuss national security and foreign policy.

Amid all the babble that was worthy of a Robert Altman film, we heard Trump defend his controversial plans while making faces at the cameras when others were speaking.  Former HP executive Carly Fiorina was implying that the use of technology since 9/11/01 has evolved past government's ability to keep up with it in fighting terrorism.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie sounded like he was saber-rattling with Russian president Vladimir Putin.  Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz mixed it up over modernizing the military and bombing the hell out of Islamic State.  Governor John Kasich continued to use his state of Ohio as a reference point.  Jeb Bush is still making strides in trying to convince folks that he really is a contender, despite having a familiar name and a really big campaign war chest.  Senator Rand Paul is still hanging in there despite reports that he might soon drop out.  And Dr. Ben Carson is probably still wondering what he's doing here.

Add to that the number of times we heard the candidates use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorists", blaming President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the ills of the world, and denouncing political correctness.  It's as if these guys want to be the next one to start a war, instead of finishing the ones we already have.

There are a few weeks remaining before the primary and caucus seasons begin.  Trump has again promised not to run as an independent if the GOP doesn't nominate him.  But that doesn't mean the party is any more comfortable with the lack of candidates that are mainstream enough to compete with Hillary Clinton.  Their new motto ought to be:  We might not win many votes, but we sure know how to scare the hell out of people.

Days of Infamy

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes destroyed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.  The next day, as President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war, he said the attack was "a day which will live in infamy".

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin's bullet on the streets of Dallas, Texas.

On December 8, 1980, singer-activist John Lennon was also killed by an assassin's bullet just outside his New York City apartment.

On December 2, 2015, fourteen people in a San Bernardino, California banquet hall died in what is now considered to be a terrorist attack, the worst in the United States since September 11, 2001.

All of the above involved weapons, political agendas, allegedly demented individuals, airplanes, or any kind of combination.

So how do you react to something like this?  Do you take up arms?  Do you demonize the enemy?  Or do you sit back and hope "this too shall pass"?

If you're President Barack Obama, you spend 15 minutes on a Sunday night between football games reassuring a frightened country that the U.S. is on the case in helping rid the world of the scourge called ISIL, but without providing specifics about how they're going to do that.  Given the President's failure to convince a gridlocked Congress to go along with his plans to get guns off the streets in the past, his chances are not good.

If you're Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, you call for all Muslims to be temporarily banned from entering the United States, even though it is realistically and constitutionally impractical.  Trump wants to hearken back to the days when, following Pearl Harbor, FDR ordered Americans of Japanese descent to be rounded up and sent to internment camps.  Just like Hitler sent six million Jewish people to their deaths in places like Auschwitz for no good reason other than he didn't like them.

Others might denounce Trump for suggesting something so drastic in the wake of a major tragedy, but he doesn't care.  Not as long as he leads every other GOP candidate by a wide margin in the polls, and could take those numbers into an independent campaign if he chooses to turn his back on a promise not to do so.  And that's what has the Republicans running scared.

If you're an ordinary citizen, you might be seriously contemplating buying a gun to protect you and your family. Even though the odds of getting killed in a terrorist attack or a mass shooting are rather small, and the crime rate is supposed to be down.  But if you watch enough TV news, listen to conservative talk radio and read questionable reports on the Internet, you'll believe that even a trip to the grocery store is fraught with danger unless you're packing heat.  And who pays any attention to those "guns are prohibited in this building" signs, anyway?

This is the American mentality we are living with as 2015 comes to a close.  The Wild West is alive and well because of determined assassins, hysterical politicians, sensationalized media, and a public that either doesn't know what to believe or is preparing for a real or imagined invasion.  If something doesn't change, it won't be long before there's another day of infamy.

Open Season

English: Downtown San Bernardino (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So here we are again.  At the start of the holiday season, people are shopping at the mall or online and celebrating with friends and loved ones.  This year, the one thing people would dearly love to have that doesn't have a "Star Wars" tie-in is this:  Relief from getting caught in the crossfire from those with guns and agendas, or having to watch it every time they turn on the TV.

• Fourteen killed at a center for developmentally-challenged adults in San Bernardino, California.
• Three are killed when a lone gunman opens fire on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• One hundred thirty died in attacks on several different Paris venues.  The finger is pointed at Islamic State.
• Four are charged with the shooting of five Black Lives Matter demonstrators (none seriously) outside a Minneapolis police station, where they have been protesting the death of a young African American man allegedly at the hands of a white police officer.

You know where all this leads, don't you?  Hysteria, panic, calls to close the borders, extra groping at the airport, etc.  And that just comes from the Republican presidential candidates.  The rest of us take to social media expressing our anger and sorrow, which makes reading the comments in Facebook and Twitter such a pleasant experience if you're a masochist.

The massacre in Paris hasn't helped the plight of those Syrians who are fleeing their country's ruinous civil war.  At least ten thousand of them are slated to enter the United States in the next couple of years, but only after they've gone through rigorous background checks.

Some governors, in a show of bravado, have pledged not to let the migrants into their states out of concern for public safety.  Though they can't legally do that, the (mostly GOP) governors do have a point.  Even though the vast majority of Syrians might pass through the stringent checks with flying colors, there's always the possibility that one or two of them might game the system and sneak in to commit jihad on American soil.  Is that really worth punishing the 99 percent of Syrians who aren't card-carrying members of the Islamic State, and who simply want a better chance at life?

Besides, foreigners with terrorist connections weren't responsible for the Thanksgiving-weekend carnage in Colorado.  What is clear is that, in the more than four decades since the Supreme Court decided on Roe v. Wade, we're still arguing over abortion rights.  Only now, it has gotten deadlier with restrictions on those rights in some states and doctors getting death threats for doing their jobs.

Racist, trigger-happy cops deserve our scorn for the mistrust African Americans have for police departments these days.  But when the victim allegedly had a history of domestic abuse, interfered with paramedics who tried to help his girlfriend, and a dispute rises over whether or not he was handcuffed at the time he was shot, you really have to wonder.

President Barack Obama, in the final year or so of his White House residency, can only shrug his shoulders and offer condolences after events like these.  Nothing the President has said or done has caused Congress to pass meaningful legislation on immigration reform, climate change, gun control or civil rights.  Instead, he will likely make another sobering speech about the events in San Bernardino while reassuring Americans that there are no credible terrorist threats during the holiday season.

Meanwhile, Open Season continues.  Happy Holidays, America.

Charlie Boone: Part of the Radio Neighborhood

English: WCCO Radio Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Charlie Boone, who died over the weekend at age 88, was part of an Upper Midwest radio powerhouse that had its best years from the 1960s to the 1980s.  No other station could match what WCCO-AM 830 was doing then with its mix of news, personalities and entertainment.

Boone came to WCCO in 1959 when it was transitioning out of its dependence on CBS Radio network programming, then retiring in 2010 as a Saturday-morning host on what became a CBS-owned news-talk station.  Thirty-seven of those years in between were spent in an on-air partnership with Roger Erickson.

As "Boone & Erickson", they spent many a morning interviewing guests, reading school closings during winter storms, and updating folks on whatever else was happening.  They were also well known for spoofing some of those personalities and events in segments such as "World Wide News", "Minnesota Hospital" and "Worst Jokes".  Boone often played the straight man to Erickson's characters, but sometimes contributed some of his own voices in the skits.  Boone also had a long-running late-afternoon feature called "Point of Law", in which he described the details of a court case and the sometimes-unusual verdicts.

The partnership extended onto the Old Log Theater stage in Excelsior, where they performed in Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple".

WCCO was the kind of station that mostly avoided rock and roll music in those days, so it might surprise some of you to learn that Boone was a Top 40 DJ in Fargo before moving to the Twin Cities.  As legend (and the Minneapolis Star Tribune) tells it, Boone was the one who enlisted a 15-year old Bobby Vee (then known as Robert Velline) and his band The Shadows to play a show on a February night in 1959.  Vee and The Shadows were the emergency replacement for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper.  They all perished when their plane crashed into a cornfield outside Clear Lake, Iowa.  From there, Vee went on to have a big music career of his own.

Morning radio in the Twin Cities and elsewhere has a harder edge now than it did when Boone and Erickson ruled the local airwaves, singing the closing line of the "Good Morning" song shortly after the 6 a.m. news to begin another day.  When they sang "it's grand to be on hand", they meant it.  This is why people in Minnesota and elsewhere have fond memories of the Good Neighbor to the Northwest.  And of Charlie Boone.

Politics 2016: After Paris, Des Moines.

The East Village in Des Moines, Iowa, a neighborhood west of the Iowa State Capitol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One night after Paris got hit with its second wave of terror attacks this year, the three Democratic presidential candidates--Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley--met in Des Moines, Iowa to debate the issues.  Once again, it was all about the front-running Clinton.

Understandably, in the wake of the attacks, the CBS-televised debate began with a moment of silence and some questions about foreign policy.  This is where Clinton is in a unique position to defend her qualifications, having previously been Secretary of State under President Barack Obama.  That she did.  But Sanders criticized her for past votes on terrorism as a fellow Senator, and for her slow response as Madam Secretary to threats posed by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

Otherwise, the three spent their alloted network time talking about immigration reform (which were mostly different from, let's say, Donald Trump), whether Clinton is too chummy with Wall Street to reform it (although she didn't help herself with her comment that 9/11 improved her relations with the bankers who contributed to her campaign), race relations and gun control.  This debate was a lot more substantial than the Republicans' November-fest in Milwaukee a few nights ago.

Sanders and O'Malley had their moments, whether it was the Vermont Senator advocating breaking up the banks a la "Trustbuster" President Theodore Roosevelt, or the former Maryland governor referring to Trump as a "carnival barker".  Given what's been happening in Paris in the previous 24 hours, however, both are hopelessly outmatched when compared to Clinton.

This debate was sponsored by CBS News, its affiliate KCCI in Des Moines and the Des Moines Register newspaper.  As the first of these to be shown on network television, there were more commercial breaks than usual for drug companies and financial services--the kind of entities the candidates say they want to reform.  It was also held on a Saturday night, and so will the next one in New Hampshire in December.  Obviously, the TV networks are quite willing to dump the debates on the least-watched night of the week--opposite football, no less.  It also benefits the Democratic National Committee, who have so far resisted the call for scheduling more debates, believing the less we hear from Hillary, Bernie and Martin, the better.

The fact that this exercise in American political discourse happened so soon after a major attack that killed over a hundred people in a beloved city halfway around the world, it should remind everyone how fragile our normal life is right now.  In France, it is anything but.

GOP Debate Didn't Make Milwaukee Famous

The Milwaukee Center on Milwaukee's RiverWalk (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Republican Rolling Candidates Revue stopped in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Tuesday night for the fourth of its presidential wannabe get-togethers.  Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and the whole gang ditched their tinfoil hats made of cheese to talk economic policy, as mandated by the sponsorship of the Wall Street Journal and something called the Fox Business Network.

When the candidates weren't plugging their websites, they were sparring over immigration reform (mainly Trump doubling down on his proposal to build a wall on the Mexican border and sending 11 million undocumented workers and their families behind it), the minimum wage (all are against raising it), tax reform and how terrible a President Hillary Clinton would be for the country.  You could set your watch by all this.

No knockout punches here, although Ohio Governor John Kasich did his best to man up and challenge Trump's immigration policies.  Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reminded folks that China is not part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, though all agreed it would be a TREMENDOUS DISASTER (as Trump would put it) for this country if it were actually passed.  And Carson, in his effervescent bedside manner (being a former neurosurgeon), said he had no problem being vetted about portions of his life story--just so long as the media doesn't lie about it.

This debate (unlike the last one) clocked in at around two hours with no opening statements, little name-calling, and fewer silly questions about such topics as fantasy football (even though this is Packers territory) that make Republicans wish they could dropkick journalists into a bottomless pit.  But then, the moderators chosen for this event were all employed by Rupert Murdoch-owned companies, so you could hardly expect them not to know on which side their bread is buttered.

Fox Business Network, not surprisingly, announced that the debate telecast was the highest-rated program they've ever had.  Viewers tuning into FBN for the first time may have been surprised to find that Maria Bartiromo, Neil Cavuto (two of the three moderators), Lou Dobbs, John Stossel, Trish Regan and Kennedy are still working in television.  Don Imus, however, is not.

The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary is several weeks away, and we still have 15 people running for the Republican nomination.  If any of these folks besides Trump and Carson want to be the next President, they should do a better job of distinguishing themselves to the voters who will decide their fates.  Otherwise, the Revue rolls on to the next town with no one the wiser.  And Hillary Clinton is waiting at the end of the line.

Patriotism For Sale

We've harped on this topic before, so feel free to tune out.

As America takes yet another holiday to salute those who fought and died in what turned out to be unnecessary wars that began after 1945, we've been wondering how it's impossible to turn on the TV or your favorite mobile device these days without images of Old Glory in your face.

It turns out that the Department of Defense has been spending millions of dollars over the past few years to partner with pro sports teams (mostly in the NFL) to produce lavish spectacles designed to show support for returning veterans, so-called "wounded warriors" and anyone else who happened to be wearing a uniform.  That's right.  It's all product placement to get more bang for the buck on both sides, so to speak.  Just as long as we don't see the ones who aren't returning.

This also extends to Corporate America, who also use high-buck advertising to convince us that those who served are just like you and me.  Only we don't go around shooting people on the government's dime on the other side of the world, for the sake of someone's ideas about freedom and democracy.  Oh, and we also don't get free meals and lifetime passes to sports events just because we've never worn a uniform.  But we can always find bargains for half off at the local mall.

It makes you wonder about all those "spontaneous" reunions of returning soldiers and their families that turn up on the evening news.  Were they bought and paid for with your tax dollars?

If the Pentagon is really concerned about "supporting the troops", they'd take better care of those they tricked into fighting in one military misadventure after another.  That includes so-called "wounded warriors", suicide victims and those who can't get ahead even with the GI Bill.

Those who have or are currently serving in the military deserve our support.  As long as it is made clear that you are there of your own free will, and that you are supposed to be defending America's borders, not someone else's.  And please don't lord over your military accomplishments as if we're supposed to be impressed.  We're not.

Old soldiers and certain politicians love to lecture the rest of us about how "freedom isn't free", as if they owned the patent on freedom and democracy.  But they are right in another sense.  Who knew that patriotism could be paid for with greenbacks instead of Army green?