Here are my observations and opinions on selected items in the news.
FURTHER EVIDENCE of the media’s effort to keep the public from hearing good news about the economy under President Trump was revealed by the Media Research Center with its report that ABC, CBS and NBC all failed to tell viewers of the 2.2 GDP estimate.
BUT THEY WERE QUICK TO CRITICIZE the president when he departed protocol by hinting on Twitter more than an hour before the official announcement that positive data was coming, when he said, “looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.” OMG. That’s criminal!
EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES, however, couldn’t avoid the good news yesterday, reporting an increase of 223,000 jobs and unemployment falling to 3.8 percent, its lowest level since 2000. Average hourly earnings rose slightly, lifting the year-on-year gain to 2.7 percent.
The Times also noted that unemployment among blacks fell to 5.9 percent, the lowest since 1972.
IN AN OUTREACH TO BLACKS during an August 19, 2016 campaign stop in Dimondale, Michigan, this unscripted plea by Donald Trump made the news:
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed … what the hell have you got to lose?”
YOU MAY RECALL a comment I made here months ago relating to the hyphenating of America. In it I stated that I would no longer use the identity “African-Americans,” and instead would refer them to “blacks,” as I have done above. I feel the same way about the use of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans and other nationalities. After all, we are all Americans.
Christopher Harris of Unhyphenated America. (ac2news.com)
Much to my delight, this week I learned that there’s an organization, Unhyphenated America, during an interview with its Executive Director Christopher Harris. “Leftist politicians spend billions of dollars to divide us, put us in boxes, then daring us to try to escape,” says Harris,
“Cultural cohesion and connectedness are more important that have a “diversity” of skin color. Anyone can choose to be part of this culture, because the principles aren’t ethnically exclusive. We don’t believe in hyphenations, or anything that attempts to divide Americans along artificial lines,” the organization’s website states.
“America is essentially a set of ideals and principles captured in our Declaration of Independence, and then codified and enumerated in our Constitution. Part of the beauty of America is that these ideals are no respecter of persons. They’re not limited to people of a certain race, color, creed, or gender.
“Once you become an American, there is no need to ever add a hyphen, before or after your Americanness, simply being an American is all the national identity you will ever need for the rest of our life.”
TRUST is the subject of Peggy Noonan’s column in the Saturday-Sunday Wall Street Journal. She remarks that America’s trust in its leaders and institutions has been falling for four decades and trust in the federal government has never been lower.
I found it interesting that the she pointed to the year 1958, the year I began my career in writing, when PEW Research found that 73 percent of those surveyed trusted the government to do what is right “always” or “most of the time,” and comments that she thought that was quite healthy. Unfortunately, that number was 18 percent last year.
While she devoted several columns of type to her thoughts on the subject, its obvious she doesn’t have answer or a solution. “President Trump cannot help,” she writes, referring to his frequent statements that question trust. “His own government is embarked on a deep-state witch-hunt conspiracy, his agencies are incompetent, the press is fake news liars.”
Where would one begin to restore trust? It seems an insurmountable task.
JUST A THOUGHT – It has been reported that approximately $1 billion was spent on the 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton spent some $800 million on Facebook and Google. Yet we are supposed to be concerned with the social media purchases by the Russians that amounted to about $300 million.
THE ON-AGAIN, OFF-AGAIN RELEASE of the Department of Justice IG report is just that. It was supposed to released in March. Since then we have heard “next month,” “before Memorial Day,” “imminent,” and “hopefully not at 5:30 p.m. Friday.” I’m still hopeful the report will name names of those who failed to be accountable.
May God bless the United States of America.
