Republican Senator Jeff Flake compares Trump to Stalin

January 17, 2018 / / No Comments

Republican Senator Jeff Flake forcefully condemned Trump on the floor of the Senate today, comparing the president’s attacks on the news media with Joseph Stalin’s.

“No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions,” Flake said in his speech. “An American president who cannot take criticism — who must constantly deflect and distort and distract — who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the President adds to the danger.”

He criticized the President for calling the news media the “enemy of the people,” calling it “an assault as unprecedented as it is unwarranted.”

“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own President uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies,” he said. “It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ‘annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader.”

It’s easy for Flake to denounce the president in such direct language in a Senate speech because he is not seeking another term. However, depending on how this plays, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Flake is considering a primary challenge to Trump in 2020.

Game of Trek

January 16, 2018 / / No Comments

A few years back, I wished for a return of Star Trek to the small screen where it belongs, but rather than just another iteration of every series that came before, I wanted something different. I imagined Trek going to HBO, but with a Game of Thrones-level of storytelling and production value.

I got my wish with Star Trek: Discovery. Okay, so it’s not on HBO, it’s another pay service, but that doesn’t change the fact that Discovery gives me GoT-level twists and turns, sumptuous visuals, and something DIFFERENT in the world of Trek while still maintaining the Trek worldview that’s missing from the current movie franchise.

Discovery has gotten better and better with each outing, and last week’s installment was terrific. I didn’t fall in love with the characters off the bat, but then, neither did I when Game of Thrones started.

DSC (as the franchise-masters refer to it, rather than an unfortunate STD) started slow but picked up speed as it leaned into its serialized storytelling. The writers introduced characters judiciously and built their backgrounds, sometimes twisting them off into unexpected directions, sometimes unexpectedly killing them off altogether, just like that dragon-specific show on Home Box Office.

I’m looking forward to next week’s episode and hope CBS All Access doesn’t make me wait too long for season 2. If you’re still asking yourself if it’s worth the money to pay for a subscription to CBS’s streaming service, my answer is yes, absolutely. And I say that not just because I used to be an employee of CBS (but not anymore, as the CBS Radio division was recently spun off to Entercom), but because I firmly believe it.

Get it. Enjoy it from the beginning. It’s worth the ride.

Oprah for president? Hang on just a minute.

January 9, 2018 / / No Comments

I don’t rule out the possibility of Oprah Winfrey running for and winning the presidency. And yes, it would be a smart move for Democrats to recruit her, if only because it would represent an excellent chance for a win. Nor do I even rule out the possibility that Oprah could unite disparate political factions in our country and provide inspiration to dispirited people. Those aren’t bad things.

The poison pill, however, is that it would represent a disturbing trend in America: Someone with a lot of knowledge and experience for the job is dismissed for those very reasons, and we require only that our leader be a “celebrity,” which we now view as a more important qualification than experience.

Apply that thinking to other things and let’s see how it would work out. Your child is very sick and needs help. But you think doctors are condescending because of all the learning they’ve acquired, so you instead take her to an actor who plays a doctor on a favorite TV show for treatment. Or maybe a famous comedian who’s told lots of doctor jokes. Think that will work out?

This idea in America that learning, knowledge, experience, and intelligence are things to be frowned upon, and that celebrity, comic timing, or loudmouth “populist” pronouncements are much more important than actually knowing how to do something, is a very troubling sign for our country.

But perhaps it’s inevitable, given our penchant for portraying intelligence and education as “boring” and the spunky outsider with no experience as the real hero of every situation. How many TV shows or movies turn that plot around? Just about none.

Don’t blame NBC News for the Oprah tweet.

January 8, 2018 / / No Comments

This morning I heard a radio talk show host griping about “NBC News” tweeting an “endorsement” of Oprah Winfrey for president.

That is incorrect. It was NOT NBC News that tweeted it, it was NBC, the network.

The third-party live tweeter working for NBC during the telecast was wrong to not include context referencing Seth Meyer’s joke. And the network was right to delete and apologize for the misunderstanding. But it was NOT NBC News‘ tweet.

That’s how fake news really works: slipping in that it was the news division, and then going on a hellfire and brimstone crusade against “the news media” over it.

I realize we’re living in a fact-free world now, but it still matters.

The publisher of “Fire and Fury” issues a stirring defense of free speech

January 8, 2018 / / No Comments

When lawyers for Donald Trump sent the publisher of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House a cease-and-desist demand, the CEO of Macmillan sent a memo to employees explaining why he decided to not only resist the intimidation but move up the publishing date. It is a stirring defense of free speech.

We cannot stand silent. We will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our Constitution precludes him or her from achieving in court. We need to respond strongly for Michael Wolff and his book, but also for all authors and all their books, now and in the future. And as citizens we must demand that President Trump understand and abide by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

Read the full text of the memo below the fold.

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Stephen Miller attacks “Fire and Fury” with fire and fury

January 7, 2018 / / No Comments

Stephen Miller defended his boss, President Trump, Sunday morning from claims made in the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff. Miller is, as you’d imagine, full of invective against the tell-all.

But Miller may also be smarting from the description Wolff offers of him in the book:

Miller, a fifty-five-year-old trapped in a thirty-two-year-old’s body, was a former Jeff Sessions staffer brought on to the Trump campaign for his political experience. Except, other than being a dedicated far-right conservative, it was unclear what particular abilities accompanied Miller’s political views. He was supposed to be a speechwriter, but if so, he seemed restricted to bullet points and unable to construct sentences. He was supposed to be a policy adviser but knew little about policy. He was supposed to be the house intellectual but was militantly unread. He was supposed to be a communications specialist, but he antagonized almost everyone.

— Wolff, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (pp. 64-65). Henry Holt and Co. Kindle Edition.

CNN’s Jake Tapper got fed up with Miller’s refusal to directly answer or even address the questions he was asked in their interview: