Three Intelligent Programs TV Needs to Bring Back

Herewith, 3 intelligent, entertaining programs TV studios should bring back, for our entertainment and their revenue. First up, an intelligent late night talk show. Please. Next up, a great song and dance program with great characters, writing and character development. Wouldn't that be nice? It also had a rather huge benefit and attraction of being really inclusive with And finally, they should bring back "Smash" or a version of it. Rather an adult form of "Glee" but again, with great characters, writing and character development. This adds the setting of New York City. Fantastic. By redoing these shows or doing versions of them, they'd be successful, very successful and gain viewers and so, revenue and we'd all have good things to watch again. Instead of "reality" shows. Ugh.

I Know I'm Not the Only One Who Misses Intelligent Presidents

I know I'm not.

I can't be.

Teddy Roosevelt.  A Republican, for God's sake.

FDR.

JFK.

Intelligent, eloquent Presidents.

How I miss them.

Healthcare Workers Appalled as Trump Says Nurses 'Running Into Death' to Treat Covid-19 Patients Is 'A Beautiful Thing to See'

'Obvious Our President Is Beyond Incompetent': Chorus of Ridicule After Trump Brags of New 'Super-Duper Missile'

Open Letter to PBS

Dear PBS,

Why, oh why do you not give us, America, Americans, an intelligent nighttime talk show along the lines of the old "Dick Cavett Show"?

It was intelligent and adult and calm and elucidating and different and erudite, frequently funny and dependably, reliably wonderful.

We could do it again.

You could do it. You could do it again.

Go, find a new, the new Dick Cavett of and for our age.

Someone intelligent and educated but not off-putting who can and would, night after night, have wonderful, insightful conversations with people from all kinds of backgrounds. A brilliant, witty person who also isn't a sycophant to or about his guests. Someone both sophisticated and folksy who can and would relate to the most educated and most common of us all, the way Mr. Cavett did, night after night.

No one is doing anything remotely like it. It would be one of a kind, for sure. The other, major networks certainly aren't going to do it. You'd be all by yourself.

Again, you can do this. And only you can or would do it. Please. It would be, like the original, wildly successful.

We'll beg, if we must.

The Trump Presidency and the End of Intelligence

There are two excellent, even important articles in today's New York Times it would be terrific if every voting age American would read today.

Here's the first.

The End of Intelligence

A bit from the article:

It is..."no accident that the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2016 was 'post-truth,' a condition where facts are less influential in shaping opinion than emotion and personal belief. To adopt post-truth thinking is to depart from Enlightenment ideas, dominant in the West since the 17th century, that value experience and expertise, the centrality of fact, humility in the face of complexity, the need for study and a respect for ideas.

President Trump both reflects and exploits this kind of thinking. It is fair to say that the Trump campaign normalized lying to an unprecedented degree. There was the candidate’s claim that legions of Arabs celebrated wildly in New Jersey as the World Trade Center collapsed. He defended his calls for the intentional killing of the Sept. 11 terrorists’ families because 'they knew what was happening' and had 'watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center,' something for which there is zero evidence. He insinuated that Senator Ted Cruz’s father had a hand in John F. Kennedy’s assassination and that the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had been murdered.

When pressed on specifics, the president has routinely denigrated those who questioned him, whether the 'fake' media, 'so called' judges, Washington insiders or the 'deep state.'”

The second article is on not President Trump but someone from his political party, Devin Nunes, the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chief.

How Devin Nunes Turned the House Intelligence Committee Inside Out

In inquiries on Benghazi and Russia and beyond, the California congressman has displayed a deep mistrust of the expert consensus on reality — a disposition that has helped him make friends in the current White House.

I submit that this is a truly twisted man we have as President of our United States presently, making these potentially dangerous times. I also submit that this is not an over-reaction, in any way.

This, third article is from last year, last July and is equally important and, again, even frightening on what has been happening to our State Department.

How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking 

the State Department

Finally, the "end of intelligence" is a double-entendre on my part. I mean it as both the end of some of our nation's intelligence communities, like the CIA and FBI and DoJ as well as the end of some human intelligence.

I hope people are reading.

Entertainment Overnight -- Cavett

Tbe apex of late night talk shows.

Number 44 to 45: The Handoff

I never feared a new administration in the White House before. Ever. I may have not liked what was coming but be it Reagan or George W. Bush, no matter how bad I ever thought the person would be there, I never feared for the nation, for us all.

Not in 6 decades. This catches it.

God help us.

A Letter To Santa From Trump's America (guest post)

I saw this yesterday and thought it very true and pretty darned complete.

A letter to Santa from Trump's America

Dear Santa,

We've been naughty. We elected a woman-degrading, racist-appeasing, megalomaniac to be President of the United States. There are many reasons this happened some understandable, some vile. I wouldn't blame you for removing the United States from your Christmas Eve flight plan altogether this year, but just in case you decide we are worthy of a few gifts I'm sending you a Christmas list because there are a few things we really need:

• the wisdom to rediscover those truths that once seemed self-evident but have proven not to be: that we are all equal and deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
• the courage to stand up for people who are mistreated because of their race, religion, gender, sexual-orientation, or country of origin;
• the confidence to stand up for ourselves when others wrong us;
• the foresight to nurture the foundations of our children's futures: education, the environment, and empathy;
• the strength to speak out against tyranny;
• the insight to discern fact from fiction;
• the self-awareness to admit what we do not know;
• the curiosity to never stop learning;
• the passion to make art or support those who do;
• the freedom to speak and write what is on our minds, including the freedom to rebut the statements of others no matter how powerful they may be;
• the humility to admit when we are wrong;
• safety in our homes and neighborhoods;
• protection from mass surveillance and other forms of oppression;
• food and shelter for those in need;
• health and longevity (particularly for Ruth Bader-Ginsburg);
• peace in our communities and around the world;

And if you are feeling really generous, a couple of tickets to Hamilton.

Sincerely,

An American who still believes

How Bizarre the Trump Pre-Presidency Already Is

Check this out.

Donald Trump isn't even president yet, isn't yet sworn in, he's still only president-elect and already, his presidency just keeps getting more and more bizarre.

Already, he's thrown a broadside at China--twice, and now this. The following is absolutely what has already taken place, in the last few days.



Really.

God help us, folks. God forgive his voters, his supporters and God and the Heavens above help the rest of us.



Link:  How 2016 is turning into George Orwell's '1984'

Quotes of the Day, Donald Trump Edition

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool." --William Shakespeare

"A wise man knows he knows nothing."    --Socrates

Donald Trump says he doesn't need intelligence briefings

The actual quote is that he says he doesn't need daily intelligence briefings because--his words--he's "...like, a smart guy."

Fact is, he's not even LIKE a smart guy.

If you're Vladimir Putin, wouldn't YOU want this guy as your opponent?

For a Little Window of Time There, America....

For a little window of time there, these past nearly full 8 years, we had intelligence and calm and lucidity and rationality and strength and a lot of things good and right in the country. Not perfect, no, not by a long shot. But we had it good and right.


The first of humanity to declare "Nothing lasts forever" had it so right.

It was great while it lasted.

Where We Are, Where We Could Be

What we're actually capable of, now.

If only we'd work together.

Imagine.

On this Veterans Day

For all the Veterans of all wars, let's remember this

and make sure we don't create any more.

Quote of the day -- Sunday edition

Like

Quote of the day -- On Modern Day Americans

Only on PBS

It occurred to me the other evening, while watching yet another PBS' News Hour, that only on PBS have I ever seen and would we ever see not just one but four different black men--specialists, all--discuss the current black experience and situation here in America:

After Trayvon, Renewed Conversation on Stigma Facing Black Men in America

Naturally, it was a terrific, insightful, intelligent, enlightening conversation unlike you get anywhere else on TV.

Kudos and thank you, PBS NewsHour and PBS.

Now, if only more people would watch.

And listen.

And learn.

Quote of the day--on life

Quote of the day--on good and evil

"All evil and all injustice should repel you and inspire you to create a world where it cannot occur in darkness. Be both a witness and a bright light that can be cast on these acts of cruelty. This applies to everyone, and it is the only way the world will change. The power resides within us."

--Tennessee Williams (1982)

Spain does it right on a big lottery

If nations must have lotteries--and apparently they must--it seems Spain does it a bit smarter:

Spain's 'El Nino' lottery hands out $1.1 billion

Sure, they handed out a load of money, but instead of just giving it to one winner, they distribute it:

MADRID (AP) — A lottery showered €840 million ($1.1 billion) on ticket holders in five regions of Spain on Sunday, in the midst of a deep recession and high unemployment.

 

The "El Nino" (The Child) lottery is held each Feast of the Epiphany — Jan. 6 — and the top prize tickets were sold in Alicante, Leon, Madrid, Murcia and Tenerife. The lottery's name refers to the baby Jesus, who according to tradition was visited this day by three kings of Orient bearing gifts.

 

The lottery tickets cost €20 ($26), and the most one can win is €200,000 ($260,240). But there's a catch. Thanks to new austerity measures aimed at reviving Spain's ailing economy, anyone who wins above 2,500 euros ($3,250) in the lottery has to pay 20 percent income tax on their windfall.

On Sunday, a cheering crowd gathered outside one ticket office in the southwestern Madrid suburb of Alcorcon where 200 of the winning numbers were sold, totaling €40 million ($52 million) in prize money.

I've written about this before, not that long ago.  Distributing lotteries, if we're going to have them, between more people could and should and would benefit from them, they would be far less likely to get or be really screwed up by such a large windfall of money and, finally, the benefit of the wins would be distributed across more economies, more towns, more cities, more counties and states.

It only makes sense.

Quote of the day

“America…is being lost through television. Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be that a seven- or eight-year old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don’t do that much anymore. The habit has been lost. Every seven to ten minutes, a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV> Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into. In consequence, they are no longer able to study as well. Their powers of concentration have been reduced by systematic interruption.”

―-Norman Mailer

Blow up the TV, indeed.

Quote of the day

A sad state of affairs, I think.

What have we become?

Let's change it.

For the better.

Starting today.