Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi discuss many of the ways in which "the news" has changed for the worse over the past few decades. This is the type of discussion you don't see on most news outlets--news media fail to cover problems with news media.
Today I decided to play the album Chicago V while working. That album includes a two-part song called "Dialogue." I remember this song well, including all the lyrics. That's because I sing one of the lead voices of this song (along with Charles Glenn) with a band I formed with Charles Glenn back in the late 1970's. We were an 7-piece jazz-rock band that performed many types of music, including the music of Chicago, including "Dialogue."
"Ego" in 1975.: Tom O'Brien (bass), Tom Atkinson (woodwinds), Erich Vieth (guitar), Mike L'Ecuyer (keyboards), Sharon Schutte (vocalist), Charles Glenn (percussion and vocalist), Mark Harmon (trumpet), Ron Weaver (trumpet) and Mike Harty (trombone).
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As I heard this tune today, it very much brought me back to the happy times of playing with such an extraordinary group of good friends. It also struck me how little things have changed. It also haunts me that the vocal part of the song that I sang in our performances (sung by Terri Kath on the album) is an extraordinary challenge. I very much meant those opening words as an 18-year old young man and they resonate with me today.
How corrupt is the U.S.? This video by Represent US gives us the shocking result. We have the best government that money can buy.
There is so very much hypocrisy in the air and on the ground these days! One type that is prominent is the claim that Russia has interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If true, that is obviously a bad thing. But as this article from Mint News indicates, it is a rare news article that reminds its consumers that the United States has a long history of interfering with the elections in other countries:
Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.Check out the article for the details.
Aesop had a tale that is quite apropos right now: The Frogs Desiring a King (a.k.a "King Log and King Stork") is about a group clamoring for a strong handed leader, someone to declare moral rules and enforce them on the people. The Republicans (the party currently wanting to have government enforce ones personal morality, especially in the bedroom) chose Trump (as amoral an individual who ever took the proverbial throne) and somehow got him into power. Splash.
The Democrats, aghast at the dangerous ignorance and exemplary incompetence of this purported moral leader, strive to have him impeached; to oust this King Log. So who would be our King Stork?
Pence, a man who is neither uneducated nor incompetent. One who is actually a willing enforcer of a particular moral code, a one size fits all set of rules that most Americans don't actually live by, but some few vocal ones want to enforce it on everyone. This, despite the constitutional prohibition about the government enforcing the moral codes of a particular religion, is why he had the second seat next to the regularly bankrupt (both morally and financially) head of state.
So, from frying pan into fire?