Roger O Green

King Donald

Ted Cruz’s speech – including the absence of an explicit endorsement of Trump – was pre-cleared by both the RNC and Donald Trump.

Back in the 1980s, I had this working theory that Ronald Reaagan should not be President, that the day-to-day details were not in keeping with his personality. But I DID think there was a job for him: King.

Reagan could travel around like the actor he was, telling us it’s “morning in America,” while someone like Walter Mondale, who Reagan defeated in the 1984 election, would do the hands-on stuff.

I was reminded of this when I read this story about Donald Trump, originally in the New York Times:

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

I started thinking that maybe there WAS a place for King Donald in the process. I had been hearing for nearly a year that he was genuinely surprised by how well he was doing politically. All that detailed stuff such as coming up with coherent policy positions, or even sharing his tax returns are beneath him. He’s a Big Picture kind of guy.

But he doesn’t really fit into a Reaganesque mold as monarch. He enjoys the humiliation too much: Little Mario, Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, and other names more suited for a playground bully.

From RedState, July 20:

The stupid pledge that Trump fans are on about… was meaningless. Why? Because Donald Trump voided it. Donald Trump refused it. Then Donald Trump spit on it by spitting on Ted Cruz’s family. On his wife. On his father. Pledge? Really?

How could you respect him if he endorsed because of some pledge that Trump himself in no way took seriously? After all that transpired in the primary? Even Trump didn’t care about the dumb pledge.

There are bridges too far. It’s not a difficult concept…

Well, buddy, Donald Trump crossed this pledge’s boundary…to become null and void. It was null and void when Trump wouldn’t agree to it. Without everyone then it doesn’t apply to anyone. It was null and void when he mocked Ted’s wife. It was null and void when he claimed repeatedly that Cruz was a false Christian. It was null and void when Trump accused his dad of conspiring to kill President Kennedy.

Trump is very good at trying to cast doubts on other candidates’ religion, though he was outraged when the pontiff questioned his.

And he played the Ted Cruz speech Wednesday night perfectly, making Cruz the villain and himself the victim.

From RedState, July 21:
Let’s be clear about something…: Cruz’s speech – including the absence of an explicit endorsement of Trump – was pre-cleared by both the RNC and Trump. His speech, including the non-endorsement of Trump, was not a surprise to the RNC or Trump in any way. Even Donald Trump himself admitted this on Twitter, and for once Trump’s Twitter is not full of crap… He said he would congratulate Donald Trump, would avoid saying anything negative about Trump, and talk about the principles he stood for. The RNC and Trump both agreed to let him proceed with the speech as is. So the idea that Cruz sprung this on them as some sort of surprise is absolute BS.

Another piece of BS that has been circulated by the RNC to throw dirt on Ted Cruz is that he gave different remarks on stage than the prepared ones he submitted to the RNC for review. Unfortunately, the RNC screwed themselves on this score by sending to media organization prepared copies of Ted Cruz remarks which show that Cruz said exactly what his prepared remarks indicated.

In fact, in response to the news that Cruz was going to make a speech that did not explicitly endorse him, Trump intentionally chose to escalate the situation by leaking the news to friendly delegations and instructing them to boo Cruz to make this a bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. If Trump’s delegates had not booed and caused a ruckus, but instead had remained silent or applauded at Cruz’s exhortation to vote for down-ticket races, everyone today would be talking about Pence and his speech, and the discussion would be about positive things associated with Trump and Pence and how they are going to move forward after the convention to at least possible victory.

But that is not what Trump’s supporters are interested in. They are interested in having a constant object of hatred and scorn… This is the driving force behind their support for Trump, principles be damned. Trump knows it too, which is why he was perfectly happy to let Ted Cruz go on stage, as long as the signal was clearly sent to his supporters that Ted Cruz is supposed to be the new object of hate.

Trump’s supporters really and truly don’t understand how well he constantly plays them. He treats them exactly like he treats his reality TV audience, and he knows that the successful ingredient to any “reality” TV show is the character who everyone loves to hate… “Reality” TV understands that nothing keeps viewers coming back like someone they want to see get “kicked off,” preferably in some humiliating fashion.

And now Trump is reportedly launching super-PACs to attack Cruz and Kasich for failing to support him at the convention. This is petty, vindictive, and a waste of money.

I actually watched the first night of the Republican National Convention – I asked for prayers on Facebook – but just couldn’t get through anything but the summaries of the last three evenings. Still, I continue to believe that
Donald Trump will win in November against Hillary Clinton, despite, or maybe because of, his bigotry.

Expect that Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, will be a major player in the Trump administration, due to their shared “Grandiosity and Misogyny.”

And speaking of misogyny, some of the digs at Melania Trump over her Monday night RNC speech, such as this one from Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, was OK. But a lot of the comments directed towards her were distressing and embarrassingly wrong.

At least, on Thursday night, Donald Trump succeeded in delivering a speech NO ONE will want to plagiarize, it was so dark and dreary. The same is true of many of his surrogates, notably Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie.

The slogan “make America great again” is pure Reagan, even if it’s code for going back to more exclusionary times. But how can he do the King Donald thing, being such a malevolent downer?

Yet, if history is useful, mere calls for unity are not enough. The Washington Post noted: “He, until now a Republican problem, this week became a challenge the nation must confront and overcome. The real estate tycoon is uniquely unqualified to serve as president, in experience and temperament. He is mounting a campaign of snarl and sneer, not substance. To the extent he has views, they are wrong in their diagnosis of America’s problems and dangerous in their proposed solutions. Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together. His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew…”

As Sojourner notes, God Has Not Given Us a Spirit of Fear. “How DO We Lift Up Love Over Hate in This Angry Election Season?”

Hi-yo, Silver!

She got very good at keeping her mouth closed around these miscreants.

Most of the time, the middle child and I got along famously well. But occasionally, she’d bug me unrelentingly when I just wanted to be left alone. Usually, catastrophe ensued.

One time, we were about 10 and 11, give or take a year. We were still in our pajamas. I was reading in our house, probably in the living room, and she was harassing me somehow, teasing and/or poking. After ignoring her several times, and giving my Marlene Dietrich plea, I finally gave chase.

At some point, I stepped onto the back of her bathrobe, and she fell straight down. I don’t recall that she hurt her arms or legs, but she chipped one of her front teeth.

She went to the dentist, and she had some sort of cap on the tooth that was quite noticeable because it was silver in color. And she had it for a couple of years, if I recall correctly.

Some of her classmates teased her mercilessly. “Hi-yo, Silver,” a few of the kids would say, which is what the Lone Ranger said to his horse when we watched it on TV. She got very good at keeping her mouth closed around these miscreants.

Eventually, the situation was remedied, and her tooth was back to its normal shade.

As I recall, I never got into trouble for this. I got spanked for stuff I ought not to have, as a child. But her well-known harassment of me, and my slowness to anger served me well in this situation.

What she did not recall, until I mentioned it only within the past two years, was that I was responsible for her chipped tooth. She had misremembered the incident and had attributed it to our baby sister, who was not involved.

My wife has admitted that she too harassed her late brother John when they were kids, and like me, he was not allowed to “hit a girl.”

Happy birthday to the middle child. No more Hi-yo, Silver! I shall NOT conclude this post with the last section of the William Tell Overture by Rossini.

Music Throwback Saturday: Baby, Now That I’ve Found You

Alison Krauss is one of my wife’s “K girls,”

The Foundations, as described in the Joel Whitburn books about the US Billboard charts, was an “interracial R&B-pop group formed in England.” The group had two US Top 20 hits before it disbanded in 1970.

Build Me Up Buttercup was a “gold” single in 1969, getting to #3 in 1969. Their earlier hit was Baby, Now That I’ve Found You, which charted in late 1967, reaching #11 in 1968; it also reached #33 on the R&B charts.

Alison Krauss, a country singer/songwriter/bluegrass fiddler born in 1971, had enough albums in her early twenties to put out a retrospective of the first part of her career, including songs from her solo albums, albums by Alison Krauss & Union Station, and Alison Krauss & the Cox Family. She also added a few new songs.

The first song on the album was essentially the title song, a very different take of Baby, Now That I’ve Found You, which reached only #49 on the country charts in 1995. But it won the Grammy for Country Female Vocal.

The final song was the hit country single (#3 country, #53 pop) When You Say Nothing at All, which sold over two million copies, and was named the Single of the Year by the Country Music Association.

Alison Krauss is one of my wife’s favorite artists; we saw her play with Union Station in 2003. She’s one of my wife’s “K girls,” as she puts it, next to jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall in our record collection. Her rendition of Baby, Now That I’ve Found You is one of my favorite covers, ever.

LISTEN

Build Me Up Buttercup – The Foundations HERE or HERE

Baby, Now That I’ve Found You – the Foundations HERE or HERE

Baby, Now That I’ve Found You – Alison Krauss HERE or HERE

When You Say Nothing At All – Alison Krauss HERE or HERE

Sunshine Blogger Award!!!

Teresa Brewer knows what I mean.

Yeah, someone – OK, Jaquandor – dubbed me with the Sunshine Blogger Award, which is a “get to know the writer better” type of blogging exercise, with a couple of rules attached:

1. Answer all 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you.

2. Nominate eleven bloggers in return and write eleven (possibly fiendish) questions for them to answer.

As Jaquandor rightly notes:
“I’ve been blogging for so long that I remember when these types of blog-quiz awards were quite common. They’ve really fallen by the wayside with the rise of Facebook and Twitter and the like, but they’re still fun, so I’ll go ahead and answer these, pose my own, and nominate. Here we go!”

1. What do you value more in a story: dialog or plot?

The plot, in that dialogue can arguably be fixed, but a plot may have a flaw that’s fatal. I’m reminded of a story in the TV sitcom Modern Family where a couple of the characters meet their writing hero on a train, and they inadvertently let him know that his solution to the multi-book plot is in fact impossible. (The writer is devastated, but there’s a happy ending.)

2. Describe the home planet of Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Come on, that dude ain’t human.)

It is a nickelodeon. Teresa Brewer knows what I mean. I saw him interviewed on CBS News, and he knows almost all the lyrics to the vast collection of musicals his parents own. Plus his love of other forms makes him a human jukebox. (BTW, I LOVE that segment where he performs in front of the President back in 2009, which Jaquandor linked to recently.

3. If you enjoy watching any sports at all, which ones would you at least like to try just once?

Lacrosse. I would suck at it, but I find it utterly impressive. UAlbany has had a good team in recent years, even after three Native American brothers graduated.

4. Describe the most recent book to which you gave (or would have given) five stars.

The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg.

5. Do you finish bad books? Why or why not?

No, because life is too short.

6. How vexed are you when movies don’t match the books?

Not at all. Different media require different treatment. In fact, I’m more vexed when a book does not judiciously edit down too long prose.

7. Describe your perfect hot beverage. In detail. I’m talking roast of bean or variety of leaves, additives like spices or squirts of citrus, vessel from which the drink is sipped, where you are sitting as you sip it, who is next to you, what music is playing.

OK. it’s tea, Earl Grey, well seeped, with cream and one sugar (or a bit of honey), from a mug I got some years ago from a Mongolian couple that changes color depending on the temperature of the drink. I’m sitting the recliner that we no longer own, and I’m listening to Miles Davis’ Blue album. Or Joni Mitchell’s Blue album.

8. Do you watch cooking shows? If so, describe your favorite.

I do not. I find the chefs mean. The yelling makes me stressed. Don’t enjoy.

9. Name a place you’ve visited that you thought you’d hate but you didn’t.

Galveston, Texas, 1996 or 1997. Maybe it was an anti-Texas bias I started with, but I loved that somewhat worn-down old city. On the other hand, I hated Houston, as expected.

10. You know that hobby you had as a younger person that you miss dearly but you know you’ll never do it again? Describe it!

I collected postage stamps. My great aunt Deana had a book of old stamps from all over the world, which I still have, somewhere. So when my parents would get mail, I’d ask to take the stamps off. The hobby didn’t last more than a year, but I love looking at postage.

11. On January 20, 2017, the newly inaugurated President of the United States signs a law requiring all Americans to display a coffee-table book prominently in their home. Which one do you put out?

It has to be a Beatles book downstairs that I’m too lazy to get the citation.

Oh, tagging. I always hated tagging, because it felt as though I were obliging people. But I realize they could do a Nancy Reagan and Just Say No.

Arthur@AmeriNZ
Jason from DC
Lisa
Shooting Parrots
fillyjonk
Dustbury
Eddie, the Renaissance Geek
Chuck Miller
Leslie in Vancouver
Albany Weblog

Hey, don’t have 11. So be it. Which rhymes with Soviet.

The questions, borrowing heavily from the questions Jaquandor was asked, plus questions I asked SamuraiFrog:

1. What is your favorite song? Do you have a significant memory attached to a time you listened to it?

2. Where do you love to blog/write the most?

3. What can you hear right now? What would you prefer to be listening to?

4. What do you do when you feel you should be writing but are lacking in inspiration?

5. What is your greatest achievement?

6. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life what would it be?

7. Who is your favorite author and why?

8. What are your favorite (10? 50? 100?) songs of the 21st century?

9. What do you believe these days, spiritually/theologically?

10. What are some of the worst awards winners, where you wonder, “How did THAT happen?? (Movies, music, TV, whatever)

11. Will Donald Trump be President? And if so, why?

George Takei

I really like a good Second Act story, and the George Takei narrative is that.

Chris is mixing it up! “It’s not really a traditional style ‘Ask Roger Anything’ question, but can you do a post on George Takei?”

To be honest, when you asked the question, I didn’t have all that much to say. Subsequently, there’s been a bit more.

Let me start with the original Star Trek (1966-1969). I was not a big fan, but my father was. I suspect it was because it had a strong black character in Uhuru (Nichelle Nichols), just as Mission: Impossible had with Greg Morris’ Barney.

I did watch the reruns enough so that when The Next Generation started, I was primed. I saw the first five Star Trek movies, featuring Takei’s Sulu (hated #5, was bored by #1, but liked the middle three).

I vaguely remember that George Takei was politically active. When he was running for office in Southern California, the Fairness Doctrine (1949-2011, R.I.P.) was invoked, precluded local stations from showing Star Trek in syndication during the campaigns, lest the program provide him with an unfair advantage.

I didn’t think much about Takei until he came out as gay in 2005. That was obviously quite liberating, as he became more visible in the public eye. And when he joined Facebook in 2011, his wit engendered millions of followers. He became a TV pitchman, usually working his catchphrase, “Oh, MY!” into each ad.

More importantly, he spoke out for gay rights, and for those Japanese-Americans who, like himself as a child, had been interred in camps in the United States during World War II. I guess I really like a good Second Act story, and the George Takei narrative is that.

I don’t follow him on social media, but he’s often reposted, so I get to see his wisdom, and I’ve even shared them, usually in the fortnightly roundups. Sometimes it’s humor, often in a science fiction vein. Frequently he is pointing out political injustice. He was, this election cycle, a nag to Bernie Sanders supporters who weren’t switching to Hillary Clinton, and I found THAT annoying.

Recently, it was announced the Sulu persona in the Star Trek reboot is gay in honor of George Takei. Interestingly, Takei found the news “really unfortunate” because it is twisting of “Gene [Roddenberry’s] creation, to which he put in so much thought.” It’s not surprising that he is so protective of the integrity of the character he brought to life.

Apparently some Star Trek fans have gotten all bent out of shape over the storyline news. The late Gene Roddenberry did promise to include gay people in Star Trek, but the studio put the kibosh on it. George Takei’s opposition is to Sulu’s character being gay but would have embraced a different, not so well established character having a same-gender relationship.

Undoubtedly, there are many Trek fans who are gay and want to know that they can be represented on the Enterprise, which I’m sure George Takei, more than most, understands.
***
Bob Fletcher Dies at 101; helped interred Japanese-Americans

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