Today (Dec. 24) is Christmas Eve Day and I can at least count on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, a 5 a.m. start with a cup of instant coffee, prepared with one of the few things in life I can really count on: our old microwave oven.
I'll remind you I have an original song on YouTube about the "Morning Joe" program, entitled "I'm Watching Joe and Mika." The full names are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. I must always look up the precise spelling of Mika's last name, no matter how often I type it. Her late noteworthy father had a first name like that. I'd abbreviate Dad's first name to how it appeared in Doonesbury: "Zbiggy."
You may listen to my song with this link, and thanks so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L3sMJFPxBA
Scarborough is a lifelong Republican and conservative who today has a reputation like Jeff Flake. In other words, he's a wise and sensible person who does not follow the herd of dangerous Trump supporters - dangerous because of their ignorance and emotional, impulsive ways of arriving at opinions. I have assailed the "Hillary for prison" bumper stickers.
On brink of something really bad?
We learned in the past 24 hours that Steve Mnuchin was calling around to try to be certain that banks aren't on the verge of collapse. This very fear should be of concern to all Americans. We elect an administration that creates instability, with a "president" who gets influenced by loose cannon opinion mongers on cable news. We used to consider Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh on the fringe with their pronouncements. Such pronouncements might be deemed interesting to an extent, something to think about, but they didn't guide our nation's top leaders.
We are now going to find out the consequences of such sharp views. We are going to see if tariffs really do work out. We will see if the unyielding commitment to "the wall" with the resulting government shutdown, will be worth it. Trump promised "the wall" to his base. But he also promised most pointedly and repeatedly that "Mexico will pay for it."
Democrats are going to have to be assertive when they take over the House of Representatives. Based on evidence to date, Trump and the sycophants surrounding him will be unyielding in opposition to the Democrats. Trump has bragged that his base elected him to do certain things, e.g. "the wall." The new Democratic majority in the House was most certainly elected to accomplish priorities too. What will be the consequences of the severe schism?
Is Mnuchin on to something, perhaps a hint of something grave lying ahead? Are we all going to have to hunker down and start worrying about our basic survival? Will government begin to disintegrate because of a shutdown that goes on and on? Unlike Obama, the Trump crowd will try no doubt to patch things up with a piecemeal approach to government. They will decide that certain functions need to continue, like keeping certain national (patriotic) monuments open, by bypassing the normal systems by which they operate. What about protocols or even the law? Can Trump conceptualize that?
Whatever power is attainable?
He may eventually reach to a "strongman" type of power. In other words, he'll do certain things simply because he realizes he can - he has the power. He has this fake attorney general in place, Whitaker or whoever he is, not confirmed by the Senate. Senate confirmation is required for a reason. If a president can bypass this for reasons that could actually be self-serving or even nefarious, the "process" means nothing and heaven help us all.
A normal president, either Republican or Democrat, would have the stability to respect process. Morality and a sense of order would dictate it. Mitch McConnell won't even call a vote to simply ensure that the Mueller investigation can proceed unimpeded.
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| Alison Lundergan Grimes |
All the revelations coming out about Trump, his family and the crowd around him are sensational and dark. And yet, what happens? The media get ratings that are higher than ever. Is there a weird symbiotic bond between the Trump phenomenon and the media? We can't assume the media will fully strip Trump of his "force field," the way the likes of Woodward and Bernstein did with Nixon. It's a vastly different media landscape now. Nothing like Fox News existed in Nixon's time. Believe it or not there was no Internet. We take the Internet for granted today, so much so, the term itself - "Internet" - isn't heard so much - it's ubiquitous.
We expect the Internet to serve us with perfection and we complain if it doesn't. My, how could we have existed without it? Well, I'm 63 years old and I certainly remember how we existed without it. We just did. As a child I lived in a neighborhood that got only one TV channel: Alexandria's KCMT.
So it's Christmas Eve Day 2018. Thanks to Don's Cafe for being open at the usual time this morning.
A diminished Morris paper, vestigial?
I stopped by the library Saturday to glance through the very small Morris paper. There's a Christmas greeting edition that is quite small, seeming more like a flier than a section. I remember when I was at the Morris paper, we filled a considerable amount of space with "straight material" (non-ads) in the greeting thing, and I remember we used up a lot of my photos from the parade of lights.
I felt joy putting that issue out. I'm convinced the Morris paper is a joyless place now. They wouldn't know the meaning of the word.
I was exhausted going into Christmas back in the day. But it was a satisfying type of exhaustion.
Isn't there usually a newspaper staff photo as part of the greeting edition? I did not see one. I even checked the regular paper to see if it was in there. Nope. This used to be assumed, and one year I even arranged for our cartoonist Del Holdgrafer to do drawings of staff members. I remember driving to Donnelly to have breakfast with Delmar when I gave him the guide photos to use. All he asked was "enough money to fill my gas tank." What a refreshing throwback Mr. Holdgrafer was.
The Morris newspaper no longer has any distinct enterprise about what it does. It is minimal and almost vestigial compared to what it used to be. Speaking of cartoonists, didn't the paper have one (after I left) who exposed himself to kids? Did he spend time in jail for that? And doesn't the paper have a contributor now who is known for leaving urine where he sits around town? And to think Sue Dieter told the staff after I left that things would be "better" with me gone. I once risked my life getting the paper printed expeditiously during a blizzard. I had to spend overnight at the Starbuck motel because of a highway being closed.
The paper is sure "smaller" now. Its retrenchment has gone far beyond what might have been expected with the Internet's advance. It is of course a "chain paper" and that term should make you smirk. It is hanging on over the short term as the parent company harvests decent profit while waiting for the walls to cave in.
That parent company, Forum Communications, worked hard to try to get us Minnesotans to elect Jeff Johnson as governor. Johnson is a member of the Trump crowd. Forum Communications had its Minnesota properties publicly recommend voting for Johnson. Remember that the company is Fargo (ND)-based. It has a background of pushing Republicans in pivotal races. Amy Klobuchar's race was not pivotal. The Forum had nothing to lose endorsing her, but it dug in with trying to get Johnson elected over Tim Walz. Guess what? We thought for ourselves. We won and Forum Communications lost. Tina Smith prevailed. I miss Al Franken.
We can put up with Trump paying the likes of porn stars to hush up sexual encounters, but I guess Franken's issues were disqualifying. Sometimes these days I think we're in "Alice Through the Looking Glass." (The Johnny Depp movie version is considered one of the worst movies of all time.)
With due respect to Jason Kirwin
Trump says there should be "work requirements" for getting public assistance. Jason Kirwin, I know where you're coming from, and in an ideal world your ideas on such things would work. We do not live in an ideal world. "Getting a job" and (just an important) keeping it is no routine thing. Anyone who has worked in a small business knows that. Sometimes employees come along who simply "don't work out." It's not that they are bad people or didn't have a decent attitude. All kinds of issues can crop up.
Many businesses have dysfunctional aspects that make holding a job an untenable proposition. Sometimes personalities just grate on each other. There are losers in power struggles. People are shown the door where there is no boss saying "you're fired" in a way that Mr. Spacely (from "The Jetsons") would. Or, Mr. Dithers from "Dagwood." The real world isn't so cut and dried on such matters. The real world of today has become so disrupted by new technologies and the miracle of "friction-free" electronic communications. Old business models are dissolving. Many "common labor" jobs have disappeared.
I had to leave the Morris paper after an avalanche of unpleasantness, complications and enmity in my work environment. Much of this even seemed to contradict the principles in the Forum's employee manual. It wasn't enough that I simply "wanted a job," Mr. Kirwin. You see, this is how real life can be.
Religion becoming worrisome
It's Christmas Eve Day and I must strive to have thoughts of cheer. This is my first Christmas all alone. Like the late Glen Helberg, I have to fight some disconsolate thoughts with so much of the world turning quiet and placid around me. I hate it. I would so much rather we had our regular routine.
Christmas is totally religious-flavored. And, I hate so much of what religion has become. My late mother would try to disregard the negative elements of the Christian faith today, the sharp political tone it projects from various quarters, the fervent pro-Trump orientation promoted by the likes of Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham.
Shall I assume that the local Apostolic Christian Church, getting ever more influential or so it seems, votes 100 percent for Trump? Does anyone have knowledge to the contrary?
It grates on me to hear so many people say "Stevens County would dry up and be nothing" without the Apostolics. It's great to have this element of assuredly hard-working people, but why do they define themselves on such religious terms? I think the Apostolics are a cult or certainly borderline.
Are the other churches of Stevens County to be viewed as minor or secondary now? I don't understand the huge attraction of the Apostolic Christian Church.
The ELCA seems almost to stand alone as a middle of the road, maybe even progressive church. Federated has similar stripes. But are those of us in these churches becoming outliers?
Are the Apostolics just scared of their own sinful inclinations? Do they need the church as a buffer between them and sin?
First Lutheran's monthly publication recently had an article or essay asserting that man-caused climate change is a credible theory. This seems a reasonable science-based view. But we live in the age of Trump. ELCA Lutherans might be derided as "liberals." The Trump crowd does not buy climate change and sees the term as a flashpoint for conflict.
Based on all that I see, I think the wisest course would be that of my former boss at the Sun Tribune, Jim Morrison, who is a non-believer. I'm a believer in truth, science and humanity. I am not an anti-Semite like Martin Luther. Such are the scandals in the Catholic Church, we ought to consider outlawing it.
Visions of sugar plums are not dancing in my head. But I did enjoy my regular breakfast at Don's this morning. At least there is a shred of normality here and there. God bless Don's.
Addendum: A December 20 article in the Idaho Statesman, about the sentencing of a former Catholic priest, had to have this warning: "Some readers may find the details in this news story disturbing." The Rev. W. Thomas Faucher, a longtime priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, who pleaded guilty to five felony crimes, was sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole. He was accused of amassing thousands of child porn images and videos on his home computer. He shared some of those images online.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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