My observations on the latest news of the day.
MORNING JOE HOSTS Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are shamelessly claiming to be victims in their verbal battle with President Trump. Over the past couple of months, I have criticized the pair and their guests for their repeated insults of the president, concentrating on his mental instability. Now, with the president hitting back on Twitter, they are playing the victim card. Those in the know attribute their insult campaign of the president and his family as an effort to improve their ratings.
The pair began their attack on Trump during his campaign, insisting that he couldn’t win, but when he did, they began to question the legitimacy of his victory. Charges of collusion with the Russians and obstruction of justice followed and led to very personal insults.
As if Morning Joe’s disgusting vocabulary of insults wasn’t enough, Brzezinski recently intimated that if it wasn’t for Baron, Melania would leave the president. Despicable.
A regular guest on Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch, yesterday concluded his insult of the president with an immature challenge to fight him in the schoolyard. Deutsch had two cable shows cancelled due to lack of viewers, CNBC’s The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch, and The Point, which CNN cancelled after just one week as it attracted just 268,000 viewers.
The insults continue at MSNBC with Chris Mathews, who recently attacked the president for having his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, aboard as advisors, comparing them to the Romanovs of 1918 Russia.
Personally, I like the president’s use of Twitter to communicate, but I would advise him not to give the losers at MSNBC and CNN even one of the 140 characters permitted in a Tweet.
FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA PREDICTED that there would be a million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015, but as of December 2016, just 570,168 have been sold even with $7,500 federal tax credits. This week, the Salt River Project, an Arizona utility, announced that it had negotiated a group purchase agreement with Nissan that would rebate $10,000 on the purchase of a new Nissan Leaf during the month of July 2017. Combined with the $7,500 tax credit, a $31,000 Leaf can be purchased for about $14,000. The Leaf has a 107-mile range, hardly enough to drive across metropolitan Phoenix and back.
But not to worry. Each car comes with a charger with a retail price of $800, including installation, that plugs into a standard outlet. The SRP is also offering a special electricity rate plan that charges less at night when demand on the grid is low.
Care to guess who pays for the rebates and credits?
ANOTHER FEDERAL GIVEAWAY WE PAY FOR – The Federal Communications Commission has revealed that the program to provide free cell phones for low-income Americans, is rife with waste, fraud and abuse. If you have a cell phone subscription, as most of us do, you are paying for this program. Officially called Lifeline, it has become known as ObamaPhone.
Remember this news clip from the 2012 campaign? Click here to be amused, but it’s not a laughing matter.
The phones are not smart phones, but they do carry nearly all of the capabilities offered in standard contracts. While the law restricts one phone per household to those with an income below 135 percent of the poverty line, the FCC has learned that it is quite simple to obtain several phones and that 41 percent of subscribers were unable to prove their eligibility for the program.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF FAKE NEWS – During an interview with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg about “From the Ashes,” a coal industry documentary soon to be available through a number of sources online, CNN’s Anderson Cooper failed to ask him about his $80 million effort to shut down coal plants.
In addition, the Media Resource Center noted that during Cooper’s discussion with Bloomberg on the environment, global warming, the coal industry and politics, Cooper tried to goad Bloomberg into direct criticism of President Trump.
In his New York Times review of the documentary, Ken Jaworowski gave Michael Bonfiglio, the film’s director, kudos for his “concise overview of the issues,” and his “cleareyed look,” but criticized him saying, “an angry scowl would sometimes serve better,” adding that “no business executives are chased down and held to task here, and politicians are blamed but only a few are named.” Okay, Ken, but why didn’t you do a little journalistic digging for those executives and politicians? Lazy.
Questions not asked, facts not revealed, and persons not named equal fake news.
THOSE SLOW LEARNERS IN MINNEAPOLIS – With news of the failure of the $15 minimum wage in Seattle still fresh, we learn that the Minneapolis city council voted 11-1 in favor of a phased-in $15 minimum wage in that very liberal city.
