Stephanie Ruhle[s]

As I may have mentioned previously . . . or was that on Twitter? Do I still have a Twitter account? I've been meaning to quit it, but I keep vacillating on that one. Hmm. I'll have to check. Post a link if it's still ticking. 

ANYway . . . I think Stephanie Ruhle is superdedooper sexy. And in the best way: it's her vibrancy and her style, not her willingness to show her cleavage (which, so far as I know, she doesn't do--making her one of the three female news anchors who don't participate in their own sexual exploitation on a regular--if not daily--basis. coughbrookebaldwincough. 

And MSNBC has become my GoTo news channel since I got fed up with CNN, so I am seeing Ms. Ruhle just about every day now. And I like her for her intelligence and her values and all of that, too. I'm superficial, but not THAT superficial. 

However.

A few minutes ago she did the same old Liberal Bullshit that keeps dropping onto my bike path lately. She was doing a segment on Scott Pruitt. It was the same thing I've been hearing for several days now. "He got cheap rent on a condo" is always the focus, which I think is kind of tragically funny. Do we really give a fuck about that when it's juxtaposed with the hideous damage this motherfucker is inflicting on our planet? Apparently so. 

There was a Token Republican on Stephanie's panel, and SR asked TR what she thought about the situation. The condo situation, that is. And TR said this and that about that, a little hem and haw, but mostly pointing towards He Shouldn't Oughtta Have Done That, then said, "But we should remember that Scott Pruitt is doing a good job."

Now, at this point, I believe the appropriate thing for a news person and interviewer to say would be, "What do you mean by that? In what way has he done a good job? What has he done that you consider to be a Good Job?"

But that's not how the Liberal Thing works. (And I hasten to point out, once again, that I am a Liberal, I have not succumbed to the pressure of old age which so often turns Democratic coal into Republican diamond; I am just really tired of Liberals who act like idiots. I got tired of conservatives who act like idiots four decades ago.)

So instead of probing, Stephanie went off on a little rant about how Scott Pruitt has done a good job if you deny climate change and are okay with corporations sticking their smokestacks up Mother Earth's ass. Now, I totally agree with Stephanie's perspective on that. There is no doubt in my mind that she is correct in her assessment of the Scott Pruitt situation. 

But I'm not a news anchor. 

(I'm more like a news plankton.) 

And that's all I have to say about that.

Almost. 

Because on SR's show and whatever show that follows it (which is blaring in the background even as we speak), they showed an excerpt from an interview which appeared on FOX News with the aforementioned Scott Pruitt. And I don't recognize the interviewer, but he is a FOXy guy, and he was just pinning Pruitt's ears to the wall and bitch slapping the old motherfucker. So yeah, there's a lot of shit on FOX, foe show, but . . . it's not all shit, man. And I think that's something to think about. There are so many people in my life who have decided what they think about things in advance and don't bother to assess the situation as it exists in front of them. And that is no way to get to heaven, children. If you want to get to heaven, you got to raise a little hell. As in hello. As in listen before you decide. And if you listen and the person is an asshole, then bitch slap them. Unless you're a news anchor. In which case, I am pretty sure that your job is to seek out the truth and present it to your viewers . . . not to tell them what to think. That's what assholes are for. 

But I still love Stephanie Ruhle.

Jet Shows Her Soccer Skills

A Win For Kentucky Teachers

From the JCTA website:

"JCTA and KEA have been actively engaging with our members and our legislators throughout the current legislative session. We have seen the passion and commitment from our teachers and the sacrifices they have made to ensure their voices were heard...by phone, emails, social media, and day after day at the Capitol Building...wearing red, holding signs, and chanting loudly as they lined the tunnel, the front steps, the corridors, and the galleries. 

"Through this activism, as you will see below, it appears that EVERY negative provision aimed at current teachers and retirees has been eliminated from the bill with the sole exception of a cap on the number of sick days that can be used to calculate retirement benefits."

(http://www.jcta.org)

If you raised your voice to sing, thank you. If you didn't think it was possible to fight back against the system and win, now you know it is.

To Roseanne or Not to Roseanne

I was surprised to hear that Roseanne was going to be back on the air. Mostly because of John Goodman. (I mean . . . it's not like the guy has been lacking high profile gigs. And I have huge respect for him. He's done some superb work over the past 35 years.) And you know, I wasn't exactly a gigantic fan of it the first time around, but I did watch and enjoy it. So I thought what the hell and tuned in to the first show.

I thought it was good. Surprisingly good, actually. There was a little bit of thinking "maybe you ARE too old for this," but not much. What I primarily noticed was that the writing was clever and that it made me laugh a couple of times, which is more than I can say for most of the contemporary sit-coms I've tried to sit-through.

To be honest, "Roseanne's" comment about supporting Trump barely registered on my Rectum Scale. For one thing, because it seemed very much in character for the character. I didn't know (then) anything about Roseanne Barr the Person's politics, but it wouldn't have made any difference to me if I had. What the fuck do I care about that? I'm watching for yucks, not yacks. For another thing, I didn't see what she said as being particularly in favor of Trump. I don't remember the exact words that she used, but it was something along the lines of she voted for Trump because she thought he offered the possibility of providing jobs for people who were in desperate need of them--something that Obama had failed to do. It was most certainly not a ringing endorsement. It was more of a "Nothing else was working and I didn't know what else to do, so I voted for him." It's not a sentiment I agree with, but it is not an argument without merit. (See Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat by Jan Zielonka and Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges for some eye-opening ideas about why so many people turned to Trump in 2016. I'm pretty sure that if Liberals had listened to some of that stuff we wouldn't be looking at The Orange Man every day.) For another thing, Roseanne's comments were immediately and forcefully countered by Jackie's comments against him.

Well, that's enough things. 

But I was watching 

the other night, and he was talking about the show. About how it was so Pro-Trump, about how Trump had called Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on it, about how Roseanne Barr was a big Trump supporter, allathat. And I suppose that's fine . . . though I don't suppose that it's news, and we'd be better served if the segment had appeared on Entertainment Tonight rather than CNN, but I guess that serves me right for tuning in to CNN again after I'd sworn off of them. And then it got worse. Smerconish announced that he was having a poll, which went something like this: Is Roseanne successful because of its politics or because of the quality of the show? Well . . . first off, polls of this kind are pretty fucking stupid. You can't expect to get any viable results by polling conducted in this way and in this venue. But aside from that, it's a stupid question. Why something is popular is a complex thing, and you can't reduce it to a binary process. But beyond that, the question itself has been framed atop a faulty assumption. The show was 21 minutes long. Maybe one minute . . . let's high ball it and say two    . . . dealt with politics. And as previously mentioned, "both sides" of this particular political point were represented. So to frame the question in this way exaggerates the prominence of the political element, and fails to acknowledge that those politics were not presented as facilely as the poll assumes.

And I'm sorry to say that this is the same kind of bullshit I keep seeing from my fellow Liberals . . . especially those who appear on television. And you know what? You don't win arguments by telling the other side how stupid they are. And you don't win any arguments by ignoring the complexity of an issue and exaggerating the parts that you don't agree with. Arguing in that way also forces the other side to attack back, and then your argument is caricatured and then the venom starts to flow, and pretty soon you're not even talking about the issue because you're too busy talking about what an idiot your "opponent" is. 

So fuck Smerconish, man. Even though I have been fond of him in the past. He's part of The Problem. And I don't think that Roseanne is. Besides . . . it's a lot funnier than CNN. Check this out:

Darlene's kid is complaining about how her life sucks, and Roseanne responds by saying,

"Hey, all our lives suck. That's why we put marshmallows on yams."

That's good stuff. I'm adding this show to my Library, man.

(Liberals, Death)

Just started reading Death of the Liberal Class

by Chris Hedges (thanks for the tip, Brother C.) and have been marking it so much that I might as well stop and just color every page yellow, but here's a bit that really leaped out and caught me by the throat.

Quoth #ChrisHedges: 

"The collapse of past constitutional states...was also presaged by the death of the liberal class. The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues. It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth." 

Published in 2010. He could SMELL what The #Trump was cooking, foe show!

Also, this passage (and the other yellow pages I've read so far) fits in perfectly with what I've read so far (in the Amazon sample--still haven't taken the $10 plunge to buy it) in Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat by Jan Zielonka . . . and with my own growing disdain for my Liberal "brethren." 

Oh, and speaking of Jan Zielonka, neither the public library nor either of "my" college libraries had a copy of Counter-Revolution, but I stopped at U of L today and did find this little gem:

Of course, it's not uncommon for me to check a book out, renew it until I can't renew it anymore, and then return it with its virginity intact, but if I manage to not do that this time around, I figure either my Jan Zielonka stomach will be full or I'll be more than willing to part with $10 to get a Kindle Copy of it.

Details as they happen.