TRUMP TV: A DISAPPOINTMENT

The expected circus of announcing a Supreme Court nominee during prime time before a national TV audience did not materialize. The event lacked the histrionics we have come to expect from Donald John Trump. Hope he's not losing his touch so soon. There was no ranting and raving about unrelated matters, no ludicrous fabrications, just the introduction of a seemingly intelligent but far-right individual.

What was needed was some input from the Stephen twins, Bannon and Miller. Hope those boys haven't permanently ostracized themselves with the refugee ban fiasco.

TRUMP TV: WATCH OR ELSE

Doubt that your new President is first and foremost a performer? Well, when was the last time a President scheduled a prime time television appearance to announce a Supreme Court nominee? Such appearances are usually limited to occasions of national disaster, significant military operations, and the like.

An interesting thing will be how the TV networks respond. The mainly news ones--Fox and MSNBC--will most likely succumb to temptation, but how about CBS, ABC, and NBC? Will they interrupt their prime time schedules (8 pm, Tuesday, January 31, 2017) just because His Highness wants some air time?

Chances are very good that not only will a Supreme Court nominee be announced, but that much else will be discussed. Such as, Inauguration crowd size, voter fraud, the excellently orchestrated abrupt tightening of entrance by refugees and visa holders into these United States, the indisputable qualifications of a certain new addition to the National Security Council, and so on.

The only thing missing is an Executive Order requiring all Americans to watch or listen to the latest episode of Presidential Apprentice Tuesday evening. But such an order is likely just moments away.

DRAMA QUEEN PRESIDENT

Considerable commentary has focused on Donald Trump’s chaotic management style. Observers speculate and pontificate on how much of the behavior might be the product of a severely flawed individual, and how much might be surreptitiously purposeful. Is the President just plain nuts, or is he a managerial phenom with an extraordinary talent for achieving his goals?

Well, maybe the analysts are missing what is really at The Donald’s center. Maybe first and foremost he is a performer, a performer of the first magnitude who has attained the ultimate stage and is taking full advantage of the theatrical opportunity. That might explain why he has expended energy, and political capital, creating issues from such inconsequential matters as crowd sizes. Or why he insists against practically all evidence that millions of instances of voter fraud tainted the recent election. Or why he engages in twitter wars of such considerable magnitude.

For performers, avocation—what one loves to do—and profession—what one does for a living—often coincide, perhaps much more so than in other fields. In short, many performers truly love to perform. It satisfies inner needs. It confirms their existence. As for The Donald, he seems unable to resist any opportunity, no matter how inappropriate, to jump into his act. And if an opportunity is not available at the moment, he creates it. Saying he is merely a member of the drama queen club would not be doing him justice. He is the King Kong of drama queens.

But here’s the problem with a performer as President. We citizens become part of the show, whether we want to be or not. We are unable to leave the theater, unable to switch channels or turn off the TV, unable to avoid the spectacle. We are an integral component of the drama. The star does and says outlandish stuff, and our many and varied reactions are part of the entertainment.

We are the proverbial captive audience. And absent something extraordinary, the show has four years to run.

Perhaps commercials during the show could provide us with occasional respites. Wait, here comes one now: “The preceding episode about Donald and his Mexican Wall has been brought to you by Trump International Hotel. Make us your home when you visit the Nation’s Capital. And tune in tomorrow (yes, we’re on every day) when Donald determines that illegal Canadian immigrants are the source of the White House’s rodent infestation problem.”

Oh, well. Pass the popcorn.

AMERICAN CARNAGE

There he stood. Overweight. Orange Hair. Fleshy checks. Rambling and ranting. American Carnage personified.

He was the grumpy old uncle, come to Thanksgiving dinner. The country's going to hell. It needs to be beaten back into shape. It needs a really firm hand.

Only he's not leaving after dinner. He's staying four years.

EDICTS TO REPLACE PRESIDENTIAL ORDERS

Trumperian Spokesman Sean Spicer, one of a few Republican residents of Alexandria, Virginia, has said that the first order of business for the new President will be the repeal of many Presidential Orders issued by the departing President.

Other sources indicate that the new President will not be issuing Presidential Orders. Instead, he will be promulgating Edicts, as is the practice in the more authoritarian nations he is fond of.

A PRESIDENT FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

President-elect Donald J. Trump at an impromptu session with reporters on Wednesday, Dec. 28:

"I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on."

January 20th, we can hardly wait.

FAITHLESS ELECTORS

Where're those faithless electors when you need 'em? Now come mid-January we're almost certainly gonna have President Donald J. Trump. He got less votes from citizens than his opponent, he squeaked by in the Electoral College, and he just may be a stooge for Vladimir Putin of Russia.

His followers, and some of his staff, are false news fans. His analytical skills appear limited to the real estate, hotel, and casino businesses. His disdain for the middle and lower classes of society are evident from his many very wealthy potential appointees. And his understanding of complex subjects is limited to what will fit in a Tweet.

Prepare for a rocky ride, folks. The road ahead is not looking good.

TRUMP'S SOCIAL MEDIA THUGS

Remember when social media first burst on the scene? When it was seemingly innocent and built around the high-schoolish idea of "liking" someone or something?

Well, we've certainly come a long way. Yes, there's still some harmlessness involved with social media, but a nasty, sometimes violent, component has become more and more evident.

And in the tiny hands of some practitioners, social media has become downright dangerous. One of those practitioners is now President-elect of these United States. And he is a big fan of the social media tool titter.

In fact, tweeting was one of his main means of communicating during the recent campaign. His tweets involved little nuance; they were blatant, often non-factual, assaults on individuals and institutions.

He had been in the tweeting business for a number of years. Most recipients and others who saw his tweets apparently found them amusing. But now that he is to be the next President, some are finding his tweets to be calls to action. He criticizes a labor leader, and a few of his more troubled followers perceive an instruction to harass, or worse, that labor leader.

Thus the President-elect has stumbled upon a substitute for old-fashion strong-arming thugs. He has discovered social media thugs. And they don't even cost anything!

WHO BECOMES THE VOICE OF REASON?

For a good number of decades, the United States has been the world's major voice of reason. It has for the most part resisted the harsh and threatening, and often childish, language of a number of other nations, many of which were, and are, in the autocratic category.

But indications are that the next four years just might be different. The United States could be about to significantly curtail care, precision, and restraint in its verbal relations with the rest of the world. Replacing those attributes could well be bombast, insults, and so's-your-muthas.

Might another nation step forward to fill the void? Surprisingly, the People's Republic of China, a long-time practitioner of verbal overspeak, has in recent days displayed, in response to a bit of verbal stick-poking, uncharacteristic calmness.

THOSE CRAZY FLYNNS

Retired three-star General Michael Flynn has been named by President-elect Donald as his National Security Adviser. Michael Flynn Jr. has a .gov email address and is reportedly an adviser to his Dad. And what are the Flynns' qualifications?

One qualification seems to be an addiction to false news. Flynn Jr. has apparently been an enthusiastic booster of a cockamamie story about Hillary Clinton being involved in a sex-trafficking operation based in a pizza joint in the nation's capital. Called, Pizzagate, the conspiracy entered the world of real news this past Sunday when a North Carolina patriot showed up at the pizza joint with an AR-15 and fired off a round.

As for Flynn senior, he has not been reluctant to pass on questionable reports regarding Hillary and company. A November 2 tweet is an example: "U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc. . ."

But perhaps a yen for false news is what is needed in the President's National Security Adviser. You want someone who can think outside the box, and you can't get much further outside the box than false news.

THE FIRST TRUMP WAR?

On Sunday, December 4, 2016, President-elect Donald J. Trump issued the following tweet:

"Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!”

So, everybody got their bunkers stocked with food, water, and ammo? The Donald might get us into a shooting war even before he becomes President. At this rate, the Apocalypse don't seem very far off.

I mean, seriously, is this the "Presidential" he promised us? We're gonna be lucky to make it to January before Nuclear Armageddon. With those itchy fingers Bannon and Flynn egging him on, The Donald and his tweets are dangerously close to something really nasty.

Have all you folks fulfilled your life's bucket lists? The window of opportunity might be fast closing.

Hope this is not "Adios Amigos."  

DONALD AND CHINA

Donald, Donald, Donald. Not even four weeks into being President-elect and already you're driving us nuts. Tweets, pep rallies with all their nastiness, attacking the First Amendment. You've even managed to get Sarah Palin on your case.

And now China. Let me try to explain China. It is a monstrous country on the other side of the Pacific Office. The Pacific Ocean is on the west side of the United States. The Ocean on the east side is the Atlantic.

Anyway, the United States has long had a contentious relationship with China, which by the way has about a gazillion people, many more than the United States even if you count all our illegal immigrants. Someone at the U.S. Department of State, which is just a few blocks from your soon-to-be home, can probably give you some background.

One of the ticklish matters in Chinese-American relations is the island of Taiwan, which is an independent nation just off the coast of China and long supported by the U.S., at considerable annoyance to China. Taiwan is where the last remnants of non-Communist Chinese ended up in the late 1940s after Communists took over China. Incidentally, your BBF Putin was once a Communist. Now he's apparently just a plain old autocrat.

You following so far? Well, let's cut to the chase. China and Taiwan are most certainly not BBFs. And your little phone call with the Taiwan leader was akin to poking a big nasty grizzle bear with a stick. If you were the only one likely to suffer the consequences, I'd say poke away. But it's all the people who voted for you (and the many more who voted against you) who are also in the line of fire.

So how about expanding your advisory team beyond that alt-right bunch who seem to have a love of violence, both individually and nationally? I know you have been bad-mouthing Washington bureaucrats for the last year and a half. But they might be able to prevent you from inadvertently (I hope it is not advertently) reducing the planet to a smoldering ember.   

TRUMP'S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Conflicts of interest between the President Elect's public duties and his various business ventures around the world are worrying many observers. Will his Presidential decisions be influenced by his businesses? Will he use the powers of his office to benefit his businesses? Is a wall between his office and his businesses even remotely possible?

But his businesses just might provide a solution to a most troublesome problem, which is the President Elect's obvious lack of talent and temperament for being the leader of the United States of America. If his staff can keep the President Elect's focus on his businesses and away from affairs of state, we just might be able to survive his time in office.

So instead of seeking to remove The Donald from his beloved enterprises, let's all encourage him to immerse himself in their operations. If he enriches himself, so be it. Better that than having him make decisions regarding the fate of the planet. Hopefully, Mike and company can keep things under control until the nation can correct its most egregious error in at least the last century. 

NO INTEL BRIEFINGS FOR TRUMP

The new President has apparently been skipping his intel briefings, and the usual media and Democratic busybodies are concerned. But perhaps they should not be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Keeping The Donald as far as possible away from serious matters of national security and international relations might just be the most desirable course to follow.

Let VP Mike Pence and others handle the hard stuff. Leave The Donald to focus on his titter wars and on brow-beating American businesses to stay home.

"Hey Mike, how's that dispute with Russia over Ukraine working out."

"We're handling it, Mr. President. No need for you to worry. Hey, didja' catch that last SNL bit on you? They're really having fun."

"Those cockroaches! Where's my twitter machine? I'm gonna smoke those lying unfair rats!"  

2017 TURKEY PARDONING, NOT

According to an inside source, President Trump will not be pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys. The source characterized the long-practiced tradition as "frivolous" and "not indicative of what made America great." The pardoning ceremony would also present logistical problems as President Trump intends to spend most of his time in New York City or Mar-A-Lago, avoiding the nation's capital as much as possible.

Instead of being pardoned, two turkeys will be publicly waterboarded and then dispatched by the President's big-game hunting sons, Eric and Don Jr. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will also participate.

IS THIS THE NEXT FOUR YEARS?

Is this the next four years? Whinny-boy, thin-skin Prez goes ballistic every few days and throws a tweet-storm; media react in mock horror and spend their few days analyzing the tweets as if they were Einstein's equations; and then we repeat?

If this is our future, a national nervous breakdown might be in the cards.

The whinny-boy, thin-skin Prez ain't likely to change. So the monkey is on the media's back to tone down the drama. And that's the main-stream media, the supposed grownups in the room. Ignore all those fringe outfits, such as Fox, Breibart News, and so on. They desire something akin to a national nervous breakdown. It's what gets them out of bed in the morning.

One thing the main-stream media should do is to only deal with Whinny-Boy on an arms-length, transparent basis. No off-the-record stuff. No opportunity for the he-said, she-said that infatuates the populace's lowest-common denominator. That just plays into Whinny-Boy's strong suite of putting his own spin on what happened in the back room.

As for reporting the tweet-storms, well, they are news. But they don't have to be front-page, the world-is-ending news. Just a little box at the bottom of page 2 or at the end of a newscast giving Whinny-Boy's tweets of the day. No need to analyze and dissect them. Twitter is just a toy, not a step forward in civilization's journey. 

ELECTION POSTMORTEM

People, at least a few anyway, often try to find the bright side of an appalling situation. Hence this effort to find a glimmer of light in recent dark events.

There is a possibility that the election of Donald Trump to the Office of President of these United States is a move toward the center of the political spectrum. Over the last decades, at least since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the extremes of the two major political parties—Democratic and Republican, most particularly the latter—have been on the ascendency.

On the Republican side, the rise of the extreme right has been steady. Some rhetoric at the beginning of the Administration of George W. Bush suggested a desire for inclusiveness, but the tone quickly faded. The strength of that Administration’s conservative leanings was evidenced by the adoption of significant tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the latter year of course being when major, hence expensive, military actions were underway against a foe called “Terroism.” Incidentally, though many conservatives will vehemently argue the contrary, those tax cuts likely contributed to the financial exuberance that culminated in the Great Recession of 2007-09.

The creep to extreme regions on the left by the Democratic Party has been more meandering. Democrats even pursued a somewhat centrist path during Bill Clinton’s two terms (1993-2000). And Democrats have not been in power enough to get too deep into the progressive swamp. Barack Obama had a mere two years of maneuvering room before he was largely corralled by the increasing power and belligerency of the Republicans. Nevertheless, the extreme left still preached a most progressive agenda, as witnessed by the calls in the recent election for free (meaning government paid-for) college education.

A result of these decades of political polarization, recognized by members of both parties, by the media, and by the public, has been political gridlock. The general feeling is that nothing is getting done. One major thing that is certainly not getting done is any progress toward controlling entitlement spending. As the population ages, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is capturing an ever greater, and unsustainable, share of the federal budget. Neither party has shown a willingness to confront the American people with the unattractive but necessary options for tackling this most serious threat to the nation’s financial well-being.

Thus there is a need for someone or some group unorthodox enough to assault the rigid political and ideological ramparts that are preventing Americans from doing what we think we are best at: solving problems. There is also a need for educating the American people on what is and is not possible. For example, promising an annual GDP (gross domestic product) growth of 5 or 6 percent if certain policies are adopted or abandoned is just not realistic.

But forget the second need for the time-being and focus on need number one: a significant reduction in the polarization that is preventing problem-solving. Just maybe that is what break-the-mold Donald Trump can accomplish. He may not achieve many, or any, of his concrete goals, but if he manages to get Democrats and Republicans, at least some of them, back toward the center of the political spectrum, he will have done a service.

Of course, this result depends on whether he can move from the rabble-rousing Donald Trump of the last year and a half to being a much more controlled and even-handed individual. The jury is very much out on that possibility.

HE NEVER CONCEDED

Thirty or so years ago, a fella Cranky knows, name of Frip Chissom, came in a distant third in a Congressional Democratic primary in Northern Virginia. Frip never conceded, and indeed he never accepted the results of the outcome. But guess what? Nobody cared. The world did not stop. The Supreme Court did not get involved. And to Frip's delight, his opponent went on to defeat in November's general election.

So Cranky, and his friend Frip, are a little perplexed by concerns about whether or not The Donald, and his supporters (who are those people, anyway?), will accept the results of a defeat on November 8. Commentators make the claim that all Presidential losers in the nation's history have accepted the election results. Maybe, but there certainly have been some very begrudging acceptances.

And fears that many of The Donald's supporters will not accept an unfavorable outcome might be overblown. So what if they don't? After all, a large proportion of the Republican Party never accepted Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. The result was divided, ineffective government, but it was still government.

The bottom line is that the legal result of an election is not dependent on happiness with or acceptance of that result by the losing side. Now if the losing side decides to take up arms about the result, as once occurred in the nation's history, the situation enters a different dimension. But until The Donald starts talking armed insurrection, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and consider his threat of not accepting the results as just another Trumpian bombastic pronouncement. 

STRONG LEADERS FOR THE DONALD

The Donald, his apologist Mr. Pence, and some of their supporters have expressed a bit of admiration for Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein regarding those two fellas' leadership abilities. Mr. Putin in particular has been characterized as a strong leader.

Well, if a portion of the Republican Party is going the strong leader route, here's a few other historical examples for them to praise:

) Hitler

) Stalin

) Mussolini

) Attila the Hun

Yeah, those boys were some sure 'nough strong leaders.

HE'S GOT REGRETS!!

Stop the Presses! The Donald's got regrets! After more than a year of no regrets, no apologizing, The Donald admitted in a speech on Thursday, August 18, in the year of Our Lord 2016, that he has regrets!

The pundits, commentators, and bovinators have gone nuts. Everything is changed. The race is competitive again. Hillary's in trouble.

Analyzing what The Donald meant, what the ultimate reaction will be, will go on for days. Lucky us.

One issue already surfacing is that The Donald didn't actually apologize to anyone or for any particular incident. He only expressed general regret. Is this enough? Will the polls suddenly start going The Donald's way?

Stay tuned, Folks. This election ain't over yet! Let's say it one more time, slowly:

The...Donald...has...expressed...regrets. Hallelujah!