I’m going to light on a couple of issues this week. One is a certain loudmouth real estate developer / reality television start that has been in the news a lot lately. The other is a bunch of poorly acted television ads that had me scratching my head over the last week.
First, Trump. As someone who was once a contract employee of this individual (yes, he can say that I too took money from him at some point), I know this guy is more than just a cartoon show for our amusement. What he says and does can have real consequences for people who don’t ride in limos and private jets. So when he talks about forcing 11 million people to leave the country, understand that he is articulating a point of view that is held by a very vocal, substantial minority of Americans. There’s nothing ‘silent’ about this ‘majority’. They want ethnic cleansing.
Consider it for a moment. What would removing 11 million undocumented immigrants look like? It would involve massive police action, broad sweeps of poor neighborhoods, and mass incarceration. Trump would also have them bring along their American-born children, whose citizenship he also questions (claiming that some legal experts he plays golf with say the the 14th Amendment does not apply to American-born children of undocumented immigrant parents.) This effort would put Avigdor Lieberman to shame.
The man talks a blue streak, jumps from topic to topic, but always gets his pander-points out – and believe me, folks … he’s pandering hard. And the further he goes out on that political limb, the further his fellow presidential contenders will follow.
Fix this … fix. Have you seen those terribly acted ads about the nasty government trying to get between you and your retirement adviser? I got curious and stumbled upon a posting that linked to a Wall Street Journal article about the industry coalition behind them. Big surprise: financial advisers are not crazy about being forced by the administration to take fiduciary responsibility for the advice they give their clients. I’d heard about the regulation a few weeks ago, but didn’t connect it to these ads until now. Slimy mothers.
luv u,
jp
anti-Lincoln, our resident language history scholar, to find me a gloss on that. So far no luck.
Schumer’s gambit. Senator Schumer has defended his decision to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran by suggesting that a deal more favorable to the U.S. and Israel can be forced through extension and intensification of sanctions and – I suppose – more aggressive negotiations. In this respect, he is channeling Trump. What’s sad about this is that even the administration, in its defense of the pact, buys into the same imperial mindset that has defined our relationship with Iran since 1979.
What’s on deck for this month, besides this re-tread episode of Ned Trek? Well, we have a selection from 
This crowded clown car is such a stunning illustration of the extent to which the national Republican Party has lost control of their own electoral process. Either that or they have completely lost their minds. There was a day when the party could take someone aside and say, “No, no. Not this time. Next time, maybe,” and the ambitious pol would refrain from competing. Now the process is being driven from the outside; it’s being pushed by talk radio, conservative bloggers, and Fox News, as well as foundation-funded think tanks and 401(c)3’s and 4’s. If I were a Republican, I would be disgusted by this lack of discipline. There is no way to foster a meaningful televised debate between 10 egotistical people, let alone 17.
We’re thinking about stopping over to Pluto for a brief engagement, maybe four or five shows, back to back. Which sounds shorter than it is. See, if we play consecutive days, it will take something like a month, because each Plutonian day is worth more than 6 Earth days. (See … Mitch told me that, too. HE knows all aBOUT Pluto.) We’re going to try out a few of our Ned Trek songs and see if the Plutonians start throwing frozen methane at us. (Not much more to put your hands on out there, frankly.)
Living in a tiny little burg in upstate New York as we do, you tend to intellectualize big problems like climate change. Nothing makes it more concrete than an afternoon on the Garden State Parkway or the New Jersey Turnpike. Millions of vehicles in a mad crush, turning the road into a massive parking lot around the major exits, everyone struggling to get just one car length ahead of the next fucker. At one point in a particularly slow-moving traffic jam on a railroad overpass I was flanked by a tractor trailer carrying fuel while beneath us passed one of those amazingly long tanker trains. When no one’s moving, there’s little to do but think, and it’s moments like that when I start thinking … we have a little problem.
I know what some of you are probably thinking. I know because Mitch Macaphee has built a special mind-reading device that reveals the inner thoughts of anyone who so much as glances at this blog post. So … I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING … and aside from all of that stuff about Donald Trump’s white baseball cap, I totally agree with you. That said, some of you probably assume that the reason we do Ned Trek is just to provide a vehicle for distributing new songs. There’s some truth to that. We are not tremendously introspective here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, to be honest – a lot of the time, we’re just running on enzymes. Knee-jerk creatives, that’s us.