Before you run outside Whooping for Joy... the hiatus is only "temporary"

I just about spit coffee into my keyboard a few minutes ago when I read a headline saying that Joy Behar accidentally let slip the news about The View's going on hiatus starting after Friday's gabfest.

Sadly, the headline was just click-bait. The story turned out to be much less exciting. What the fragrant Ms Behar said at the top of today's epissode was, "Before we go on hiatus, we only have one more show after this, I’m allowed to say that, right?"

To that, Alyssa Farah Griffin [Who she? Ed.] laughingly responded, "Too late now!" A producer chimed in from the background to add, "Doesn’t really matter."

In fact, the witches of The View take a "summer hiatus" every year about this time, and so far they have always returned after Labour Day. This year's break comes a little earlier than usual, but the producers and the network say that's all there is to the story. 

It's interesting, though, that the ladies are going to wherever they go so quickly after Pam Bondi said that the alleged show could be pulled off the air. Many on antisocial media are wondering whether the break will become permanent if the show gets the same treatment as Stephen Colbert's late night show, recently canceled by CBS. We can only hope!

VIDEO: Bill Reilly reviews the View's love-fest with Senile Joe

I am told that President Brandon re-emerged from the basement this morning and appeared on The View. I couldn't watch it, as the harpies of that alleged entertainment programme make me physically ill. Bill O'Reilly watched it though, and has posted these thoughts about the hour-long love-fest.

How does ABC get away with their constant stream of anti-Trump BS? What happened to the principle of equal time? Does the Federal Communications Commission even exist any more? Oh. Yeah. Federal! That explains it.

The Babylon Bee aces it again!

Ed. here. We (Walt and I) hope you realize how hard it is for us to refrain from reposting all of the hyugely funny satirical pieces which appear on the Babylon Bee. The Bee is a must-read for us, especially on days when America seems headed in the wrong direction... which is like today and yesterday and the day before... you get the picture. 

To be fair to the Bee (and out of respect for the laws of copyright) we content ourselves with posting headlines or excerpts from pieces which are just too good not to share. Here's one.

Trump Polling At 100% After Hosts Warn 

He Would Cancel 'The View'

According to pollsters, Trump now holds a one hundred point lead in every single state since the news broke. "We now project Trump winning literally every single vote in Seattle and San Francisco," said pollster Mark Allen. "Despite millions of voters maintaining strong disagreement with Trump about policy issues, the chance to get The View off the air is simply too good to pass up. It has turned every person in America into a single-issue voter."

That's just the third paragraph, of five. To read the rest, click here.

The next time you feel dumb...

EXCLUSIVE: Kamala Harris speaks her mind

There has been a lot of talk, in the last few weeks, of moves by Democratic Party insiders to push Kamala Harris out of the Vice-Presidency, to make room for a woman who would be a suitable replacement for President Brandon for the 2024 election, or sooner, if his "retirement" can be conveniently and decently arranged.

Some of the rats in Ms Harris' office have already jumped ship. It was announced last week that Symone Sanders, the Veep's chief spokesthingy, would soon depart. Peter Velz, her director of press operations, and Vince Evans, the deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs [Seriously? That's his title? Ed.] are also said to be looking for the exit door.

What was originally inside-the-Beltway chatter about the competence of the first Indo-Jamaican-American Vice-President has spilled into view, threatening to chip away at Democratic morale. It is rumoured that Ms Harris would refuse to analyze briefing materials set forth by employees, but then scold them if she appeared unprepared. 

One senior staffer allegedly told WaPo, "It's clear that you're not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work. With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you're constantly sort of propping up a bully and it's not really clear why." 

As is well known, Walt is a champion of fairness and justice for all. Audi alteram partem! That's my motto! [It means: My other car's an Audi. Ed.] So, as a public service, I persuaded Ms Harris to sit down for a little heart-to-heart. Here's her side of the story.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm in this rat race. It's not for the money, believe me. My husband is the money-maker in the family. You start in politics because you've got ideas. You want to try them out, to help people. 

At first, you're gratified by the response you get. If you win, you're deliriously happy. Then the honeymoon is over. After that, it's "gimme, gimme, gimme." Nobody's really interested in you or your program, especially if you're a woman, especially a woman of colour, especially a woman of two colours!

When I was campaigning for the Democratic nomination, I finally realized that the game wasn't worth it. I grew to hate all those people who lined up to meet me in city after city. It was all a fake. Fake enthusiasm drummed up by the back-room men. 

 The women in this country are full of shit. If they liked me as much as they claimed, why didn't they all vote for me? Anyone with an ounce of brains could see I was a hell of a lot smarter than Biden -- he has Alzheimer's, for God's sake -- and that Jew Sanders or that fag Buttigeig. I mean really! 

They were all liars and hypocrites. It was all lip service to the women's movement until the chips were down, and then all the women just peed in their pants and left me flat.

I think most women are afraid to have a woman a heartbeat away from the presidency, let alone in the Oval Office. They think I would crack up in a crisis and cry. Or that I have cranky moods when I have my period. As far as I'm concerned, most women are small-minded, petty, insensitive and stupid, especially the "Squad" and those bitches on "The View". They are all shits, not worth a dime. All of them.

I'm going to jump ship just as soon as my appointment to the Supreme Court comes through. (As President of the Senate, I can vote for my own confirmation, you know!) Then let them appoint Mrs Bill Clinton or, God help us, the lovely Michelle. See what happens then!

VIDEO: The Nairobi Trio performs "Solfeggio"

Sixty years and three months ago, Newton Minow, then Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, that television was a  "vast wasteland". Things have gotten worse since then. Now, daytime TV offereings such as The View makes one pine for the bad old days when you could at least watch some shows (live and in glorious black-and-white) which were entertaining, without being political or (shudder) politically correct.

Every now and then, one could see real creativity and talent. Six years before Mr Minow spoke, I used to watch Ernest Edward Kovacs doing experimental and often spontaneous live comedy on the curiously-named Ernie Kovacs Show. [Shouldn't you have been in school? Ed.]

Yes, well... Mr Kovacs delighted his viewers with such characters as Matzoh Hepplewhite (a hapless magician), Percy Dovetonsils (a poet who may just have been "gay", although we used other words, in those days) and Mr Question Man, who inspired Johnny Carson's "Carnac the Magnificent".

My favourite recurring skit, however, didn't show Mr Kovacs' face at all. He was just one of three derby-hatted apes who made up the Nairobi Trio. The shtick was always the same, more or less. They mimed, mechanically and rhythmically, playing Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio". Try to watch this without laughing!

  

Ernie Kovacs has been credited as an influence by many individuals and shows, including Johnny Carson, as well as David Letterman, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Jim Henson and The Muppet Show, Conan O'Brien, Andy Kaufman, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Pee-wee's Playhouse.

Chevy Chase thanked Mr Kovacs during his acceptance speech for his Emmy award for SNL. While Ernie and his wife Edie Adams received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series during 1957, his talent was not recognized formally until after his death in a car accident in 1962. A short time later, he received a posthumous Emmy for Outstanding Electronic Camera Work, as well as an award from the Directors' Guild.

A quarter-century later, Mr Kovacs was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. The Pulitzer Prize–winning television critic, William Henry III, wrote "Kovacs was more than another wide-eyed, self-ingratiating clown. He was television's first significant video artist."

Ernie Kovacs' particular brand of insanity helps to keep us sane in an increasingly insane world. He's gone, but not forgotten!

VIDEO: Believe it or not, Canada has a conservativ(ish) news channel!

In North America, TV news and information programming -- on cable/satellite and over-the-air -- is pretty much the domain of the lamestream media. In the Excited States of America, if you want to listen to the news, you're pretty much in the thrall of the Big Three: NBC, CBS and ABC. On cable you get the additional "choices" of CNN (the Clinton News Network) and MSNBC (even worse). 

All of them, all of them broadcast "news" and opinions ranging across the political spectrum from left(ish) to far left to Rachel Maddow. We can include as well the talk shows populated by sufferers from TDS like The View's Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.

If you're an American of a conservative mind or political bent, and think the lamestream news outlets are full of shit, and would like an alternative, your only choice is Fox, but you'll have to wait until The Simpsons and Family Guy are over.

If you're one of the 30 million or so Canadians who live within 100 miles of the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM), you might be able to pull in some US stations over the air, and you can watch all of them on cable/satellite. But you won't find any Canadian news there unless someone makes an attempt on Hair Boy's life. [Would the lamestream media notice? Ed.]

If you can't or won't watch American TV, you still have the Canadian Broadcorping Castration (CBC), owned and operated by the Canadian Ministry of Truth. There are two other major networks -- CTV and Global -- which generally toe the Liberal party line. But wait! Suddenly a new news outlet has appeared in the ether, and... can you believe it... they seem to be at least somewhat conservative! Here's the trailer for The News Forum "where all voices matter".  

Yes, they're new and (mostly) not broadcast professionals. Some of them still don't know which camera to look at. There are some, like Tony "Gazebo" Clement, Joe Oliver and their ole boss, Lyin' Brian Mulroney, who will be instantly disliked by Canadians who know their back stories. But then there's Tanya Granic Allen, for whom Agent 3 (who sent us the link to this video) has all the time in the world. Walt agrees and commends The News Forum to you, but not without reservation. See "Warning from Agent 3", below.

Ed. here. On reading V.1 of this post, Agent 3 called to warn us to restrain our enthusiasm for The News Forum. He says: Don't kid yourself (he adds) that you're going to see and hear truly conservative opinions there. The new medium is dominated by former and present Members of the Canadian Parliament who were elected as Conservatives, or, in the case of former Prime Minister Mulroney, Progressive Conservatives. Lyin' Brian actually appears in a promo spot saying that Canuckistan needs more immigrants! 

What you're going to hear on The News Forum is the centre-right (more centre than right) Conservative Party line, as enunciated by new leader Erin O'Tool, and MPs Pierre Poilievre and Dean Allison... but not Derek Sloan, the "Conservative Without Apology" who finished last in the CPC's recent leadership contest. 

And don't expect appearances by Maxime Bernier, Ezra Levant, Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, Gavin McInnes, Mark Steyn or Mike from Simcoe-Grey County-Clearview Township. As "Mad Max" said a few weeks ago in "Is there any hope for conservatives in Canada?", his People's Party of Canada is the only truly conservative party in the Great Not-so-white North.

From the inside: Matt Taibbi explains why the media want to keep Americans perpetually at war...

...with each other!

In fact, "Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another" is the subtitle of Matt Taibbi's latest book, Hate Inc. (OR Books, 2019), which I have just finished reading and recommend highly. Mr Taibbi's political views are quite different from mine, but I always enjoy reading his accounts of what's really happening in American politics. He is a worthy successor to Dr Hunter S. Thompson.

Hate Inc. is something of a confession, a mea culpa for the part Mr Taibbi played in creating and feeding Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), both before and after the revolution of November 2016. See Walt's review of Insane Clown President, WWW 10/8/17.

The author now admits having been deceived by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns, and having deceived himself into being part of the "groupthink", the "conventional wisdom" purveyed by the lamestream media, which held that someone as worthy as Hellery Clinton couldn't possibly lose to such a patent phony as the Donald. To his credit, Mr Taibbi gives numerous examples of where he went wrong, while at the same time pointing out that he wasn't the only one.

But Hate Inc. is not an apologia for the honest mistakes of the media, because very little of the "news" they fed us was "honest". Mr Taibbi argues that what they gave us, and are still giving us, is a twisted and highly hyped form of the kind of entertainment epitomized by a WWE wrestling match! It wasn't an election, he says, but the grand finale of Wrestlemania, complete with a "babyface" (Mrs Bill) and a "heel" (Mr Trump) straight out of a reality TV show.

The "face" was supposed to win, but somehow managed to defeat herself, and that's a story already told by Mr Taibbi and countless others. The real story of Hate Inc. is why the media did it, and how they are still doing it. The answer is simple. Anger and hatred attract more viewers/readers than sweetness and light. More viewers/readers means more advertising revenue. More advertising revenue means more profit! Especially when you don't have to pay for the content! In fact, election advertising is a hyuge revenue stream for the meeja. The more elections, the more hotly contested, the more money they make.

And you, fellow "news consumers", are swallowing every drop of vitriol, every morsel of loathing, and begging for second and third helpings. In Hate Inc. you will find countless examples of the media's most egregious manipulation of your ignorance, prejudices, and fears. They whipped you into a frenzy, gentle reader, and want to keep you there so you won't log off their websites or turn off your TV, even though "some viewers may find this disturbing!"

I would like to post some excerpts, but Ed. tells me I have gone on long enough and must find just one for the conclusion of this review. Here `tis:

News consumers on both sides today behave like cultists; self-isolating intellectually, kept that way with a steady diet of terrifying stories about fellow citizens. Red-staters are told liberals are terror-sympathizers, desperate, out of white guilt, to eviscerate American cultrure from within.

Blue-staters are peppered daily with stories of fellow travelers and traitors in their midst, an incredible example being NBC's effort to paint presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard as a tool of the Kremlin.... 

This deeply paranoid view of the human experience, telling all America it lives on a violent invisible influence battlefield, is the opposite of what the news used to be.... We are trying to keep your brain locked in conflict, not just for the grubby commerical reason that it keeps people tuned in, but because it prevents them from thinking about other things.

What other things? Read the book! If doing so causes you to stop reading WWW, I won't be offended, as long as you also stop watching The View and Rachel Maddow and [That's enough biased "news" sources! Ed.]

Footnotes:
Hate Inc. doesn't have an index (tsk, tsk) but it does have an appendix entitled "Why Rachel Maddow is on the cover of this book". Enough said?

A second appendix is an interview with Noam Chomsky, co-author (with Edward S. Herman) of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). Walt recommends reading this appendix first, before the book itself, to understand where Matt Taibbi is coming from. In the interview, he says to Prof. Chomsky: The main idea of Manufacturing Consent is...that it looks like we have a vigorous system of independent journalists, but the debate has been artificially narrowed. Why that is so is what Hate Inc. is all about.

There's gonna be riotin', by George!

Won't even say "And so it begins." [But you just did. Ed.] As surely as day follows night, rioting and looting follow any death of an African-American at the hands of a white American cop. As it did in Minneapolis yesterday, following the death of George Floyd, a black man who claimed he was having trouble breathing because a law enforcement officer was kneeling on his neck.

A bystander's video of the incident on the city's south side captured the man, who was handcuffed at the time, the officers "Please, I can't breathe!" as he is pinned to the ground. The cops involved in the incident have not been identified, but Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (Democrat) announced Tuesday afternoon that they had been "terminated". He didn't mean it in the sense that Mr Floyd was terminated, but rather that they were "no longer with the police department"... fired, ya know.

Enter Black Lives Matter, who hadn't been heard from in a while in spite of the violent deaths of 1000s of young black men across the USA and Canada, possibly because most of those deaths were at the hands of other YBM. Anyhoo, the usual "peaceful protests" broke out "spontaneously" yesterday, and quickly turned into a night of rioting and looting at a Target store and other businesses in the Lake St/Hiawatha Ave area. Fires sprang up as well, engulfing a mostly black housing complex nearby.

The reaction of local politicians has been as predictable as the rioting and looting. In a Tweet late last night, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (Democrat) said, "The situation near Lake Street and Hiawatha in Minneapolis has evolved into an extremely dangerous situation." Duh!
Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) weighted in with "I'm praying for peace and healing tonight in Minneapolis, as I hear sirens and explosions across our green city. Our community is in so much pain. Dr King said, 'I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.'"

Back to Mr Walz. The Gov added, "Our state watched George Floyd's humanity get erased. Our feelings of anger, anguish, and disillusionment are justified." He didn't actually identify the person(s) who might be the targets of the feelings of anger etc. He did go on the plead with othger unidentified persons, "If you plan to turn your pain into action by joining a public demonstration, please do so peacefully and safely to protect your own health and the health of the people around you." And remember to practise social distancing and wash your hands!

Finally, we go to state senators Jeff Hayden (D) and Patricia Torres Ray (D), who today issued a joint statement, as follows:
"We, along with our constituents, are deeply heartbroken and outraged by the injustice that occurred in the officer-involved death of George Floyd. As our community continues to grieve and grapple with this incredibly unjustifiable loss of life, we believe in their right to peacefully protest. We have grown increasingly concerned, for the safety of the City of Minneapolis and its residents, as the demonstration has escalated. More than ever, our community must come together during this hard time and in this work to fiercely advocate for the justice that is needed. We are eager to effectively partner with community organizers, leaders, activists, and advocates to prevent the loss of another life due to excessive use of force."

The "Reverend" Al Sharpton [Is he still alive? Ed.] is expected to jet into the Twin Cities today to add his voice of reason to the clamour. And the official anti-Trump line (for it's all his fault, you know) will be pronounced by Joy Behar and Whoopi Cushion on the View just before the noon news. Consult your local TV listings, as other viewing choices may be available.

Footnote: Walt's non-resident expert on American politics points out that the politicians named above (other than Tina Smith) are not actually Democrats, but members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, a political formation peculiar to Minnesota which is somehow different from the national Democratic Party, although you may need a microscope to see the difference.

VIDEO: Song for the Democratic primaries

Voting is under way in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, and I don't know which way to bet. All I know is that whoever wins in NH, if he/she can carry the convention and become the candidate for the presidensity of the Excited States of America, is going to lose to Still-President Trump. I know that because I know there are millions of Americans who feel like Bryan Lewis, here, who sings about what it would take for him to vote Democrat again.

Annapolis mass murder not Trump's fault - media types disappointed

This is an update of Walt's bare-bones report on the mass murder at the offices of the Capital-Gazette, in Annapolis MD, first posted just after 1700. At that point the body count was 5 dead and 7 wounded, some seriously. Local cops were keeping shtum about the suspect they had taken into custody, supposedly because he had mutilated his fingertips making it difficult to identify him by fingerprints.

Similarly, nobody was saying anything about the shooter's possible motivation. I suggested three possibilities:

- Crazed Islamic terrorist protesting President Trump's "Muslim ban", upheld Tuesday by the Supreme Court. But there are no reports of shouts of "Allahu akbar!" being heard.

- Crazed anti-Trumper protesting President Trump's "Muslim ban" after hearing the ladies of The View denigrate the ban, the President, and SCOTUS, all in one breath.

- Crazed... something or somebody else... maybe an ex-employee who went postal. Who knows?

The (((controlled media))) were quick to jump to the first or second conclusion, leaning to the second when it was learned that the killer was a white man. All too typical was Rob Cox, Global Editor for Thomson Reuters' Breakingviews who tweeted (@rob1cox): "This is what happens when @realDonaldTrump calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul."

Imagine the consternation of Mr Cox (and all the other liberal meeja types who were writing their own similar messages) when the shooter was revealed, by the Baltimore Sun, the owners of the Capital-Gazette, to be 38-year-old "Jarrod W. Ramos, a man with a longstanding dispute with the newspaper." Mr Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper and one of its columnists in 2012.

Mr Cox has since deleted his tweet and acknowledges "jumping to a conclusion." Although Mr Ramos appears not to be an ex-employee of the newspaper, I think my third guess is close enough to raise my lifetime pct to .989. Keep that in mind any time you want to know what's really going on.

Hyuge victory for POTUS: SCOTUS upholds "Muslim ban"... AGAIN

The anti-Trump coalition of snowflakes, SJWs, eco-wienies, lawyers, gliberal activists and Democratic politicians didn't give up easily. When President Trump kept his election promise in January of 2017 by issuing an executive order banning travel from certain Muslim-majority countries, they followed the grand old American traditions of (a) yapping on The View, (b) demonstrating and (c) suing. See "Trump keeps his promises; panic ensues", WWW 29/1/17.

At first they enjoyed some success with (c), as various judges -- Democratic appointees all -- signalled their virtue by striking down the order on whatever grounds they could think of. Injunctions followed, requiring the administration to stop being Islamophobic and open the doors to nationals of such peaceful and stable shitholes as Iran, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Imagine the anti-Trumpers' consternation, then, when in December the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the injunctions and ruled that the principal case, Hawaii v. Trump, should be heard on its merits. See "Winning bigly: SCOTUS upholds POTUS travel ban", WWW 5/12/17.

In an unusual burst of energy and speed, SCOTUS proceeded immediately to hear argument in that case, and today handed down its verdict, ruling in favour of President Trump in a 5-4 decision. The Supremes said that permanent entry restrictions on citizens of various terror-prone (read: Islamic) nations (read: shitholes) codified in Presidential Proclamation 9645 are fully consistent with the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the Establishment Clause of the Constitution of the United States.

Citing an earlier case, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said that the admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a "fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government's political departments largely immune from judicial control", and that the President has extraordinarily broad discretion under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) to exclude aliens when he believes it is in the nation’s best interest so to do.

As for the argument that Presidential Proclamation 9645 is racist, Islamophobic, yada yada, and therefore contrary to the equal rights provisions of the Constitution and other equal rights legislation, SCOTUS ruled that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution permits POTUS' policy, because the Proclamation gives a "religion-neutral" explanation -- the policy is intended to better secure America's border and therefore the American people -- which, on its face, is legitimate. If you come from Iran, it doesn't matter if you're a Muslim or a Christian or a Zoroastrian (look it up). You're out!

The sounds you hear on The View and in places like Dearborn MI and Burbank CA (see "Where's Mohammed?" map below) are weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over an indisputable (literally) Trump victory, plus the frying of brains trying to think up ways of smuggling more followers of the Prophet -- all of them peace-loving, of course -- into the US of A. The Supreme Court has ruled, but the Islamic jihad against America is far from over.

VIDEO: Trump is still POTUS! Happy MAGA Day!

Walt and Ed. and even Poor Len Canayen wish all our readers
HAPPY MAGA DAY!

To all these anti-Trumpers (but especially the CBC's Keith Boag, MSNBC's Rachel Madcow and the wimmin at The View)... Donald Trump is still POTUS!



A year has passsed, and the gliberals, the chattering classes and the lamestream meeja are still in denial. They're still pissing and moaning, but they can't change that fact. Nor can all their talk of impeachment change the fact that Mr Trump will remain in the White House until January of 2021, and perhaps for another four years after that!

Not that the Trump-haters aren't trying to bring his administration to a premature end. The (((liberal media))) are still churning out the fake news, counting what they say are lies and pointing the finger of scorn at the President's supposed gaffes. The latest example of their anti-Trump hysteria is the Great Koi Feeding Scandal, which turned out to be nothing of the sort.

You've probably seen the video of President Trump dumping a large quantity of fish food into a pool full of loi -- the huge goldfish beloved of east Asians -- while on a state visit to Japan. In a headline since taken down, the British newspaper The Independent raged "Trump tramples Japanese koi carp ritual". We all know you're supposed to feed goldfish slowly, and only a little bit, right? Otherwise you'll find them belly up in the water the next morning. So what POTUS did was supposed to show his disregard for the fish, the environment, and Japanese customs.

The only problem is, he was only following the lead of his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had done the same thing only moments before. The whole thing was just a case of two world leaders doing a boring photo op. How did it become such a big, anti-Trump deal on all the lamestream networks? Because the so-called "journalists" and their (((masters))) wanted it so. Mr Trump may be... hell, he is the President of the USA, but the media bias against him is just as strong or stronger than it was a year ago.

The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust is in crisis around the world. People's trust in all four key institutions -- business, government, NGOs, and media -- has declined broadly, and rightly so. People no longer believe that the "system" is working for them. Their societal and economic concerns -- globalization, the pace of innovation, immigration and eroding social values -- have become fears, spurring the rise of populism now playing out in the USA and other Western democracies. It's that lack of trust that doomed Hellery Clinton's campaign and got The Donald elected!

Further reading: "Cry, Losers, Cry", by Jim Goad in Taki's Magazine, 30/10/17.

The portrait of Dorian Trump

Assiduous readers may have noticed Walt's pro-Trump bias. I was hoping for a Trump victory. I bet on it. I didn't look too closely at the man himself, supporting his candidacy chiefly for what he said he would do about the problems that bedevil America today: stalled economy, immigration, weak foreign policy, crime...and the list goes on. I was truly hopeful that he would MAGA.

Now Donald Trump is POTUS. He started his presidency -- notice I didn't say "reign" -- with a flurry of executive orders which, if issued by a king, would have been called "edicts". I'm reminded of the scene in Catch 22 where General Dreedle (played so well by Orson Welles) tells Colonel Cathcart to have another officer taken out and shot, only to be told by his son-in-law that he can't do that, to which Dreedle replies anrgily, "Why not?"

So it seems to be with President Trump's first four months in office. Mr Trump is right when he says that he has been maligned, insulted, denigrated etc in the lamestream meeja as has no other president in history. But he has only himself to blame. He is thrashing around like the proverbial bull in the china shop, issuing an order here, firing someone there, emitting Tweets by the score without making sure his brain is engaged, then back-pedaling, changing his mind, and reverting to Original Plan 2C.

It is all quite disappointing, kind of like looking at the picture of Dorian Gray. In the case of Dorian Gray, the beautiful painting of a handsome man fell away to reveal an ugly old man -- physically and morally -- underneath. I won't be that harsh on Mr Trump. Unlike the loony-leftish "ladies" of The View, I don't think POTUS is an evil genius. What we are learning, to our horror, as we watch the real Donald Trump in action, is that there is almost no substance beneath the brash, charismatic (?) exterior. Peel away the veneer and you see... nothing.

President Trump is in over his head, elevated, in accordance with the Peter Principle, to a position which is clearly beyond his competence. The question now is whether the USA can survive President Trump's period of on-the-job training. Walt (and his stockbroker) hope so.