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A texting Weiner and his estranged wife. Why is that news?

Journalism has been my chosen profession for 30 years, off and on. I worked full-time as a journalist for 15 years and have freelanced off and on for the past 10 years. For another five or so years I was a “budding” journalist. Why is that important?

I feel quite competent to testify that the so-called “news hole” has for years had a voracious appetite for news to go in that hole. While news hole is an old print journalism term for the amount of non-advertising space, it seems appropriate to use the term for all news. With 24-hour cable and internet, that hole for news is like a death-row prisoner at his last supper. Why is that important?

It is important to keep in mind on days such as today, when a impending divorce of a top aide to Hillary Clinton is the big story.

I speak of the long-needed split between disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. She is vice president of Clinton’s campaign for president. Abedin also served as the deputy chief of staff when Clinton served as Secretary of State.

Anthony Weiner, well he’s a piece of work. Because Weiner has become a serial “texter” with pictures of his, well, weiner, and the fact that his wife is a somewhat important politico, is why Abedin and Weiner find themselves into the top of today’s news hole. That is, at least, what news executives would tell you is the reason why this is such a big story. I happen to disagree.

Once again, the story of Weiner and Abedin, is big news. So big shot news honchos will tell you. But still, I find myself asking: Why is that important?

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Just another day in America. Right?

This has been one of those extraordinary days in America.

Two presidents — one white and former president and one black who is the president — spoke on the same page praising work of the five Dallas police officers killed in an ambush following a protest march on July 7.

A former Democratic party presidential candidate and the presumptive Democratic candidate embraced in a showing of party unity.

Hey there, take a look at my neck it's a lot like your's. That is if your neck looks anything like mine. (It actually is my MRI neck picture) MRI image. Copyright 2016. Dick at EFD
Old man take a look at my neck it’s a lot like your’s. That is if your neck looks anything like mine. (It actually is my MRI neck picture) MRI image. Copyright 2016. Dick at EFD. Oh, and Fair Use paraphrasing Neil Young’s “Old Man” which is a hell of a good song.

The U.S. attorney general was grilled by Republicans who demanded to know why she didn’t refer charges against the presumptive Democratic candidate in a politically-charged scandal over e-mails.

One of eight Supreme Court justices said she could not imagine a presidency under the presumptive Republican candidate.

All of this took place today as I sat in the Parkinson’s Disease clinic at the Houston VA waiting to see my neurologist. Oh, I don’t have Parkinson’s, at least I don’t think so.

I began reading an interesting article on one major problem I do have, that is maintaining balance. The article was in “Neurology Now,” a title I previously didn’t know. But this magazine had an attractive cover layout that pictured the former California first lady, who also was once an NBC television news correspondent, and a member of the famous Camelot clan from which came a murdered, young U.S. president. That lady shouldn’t be former anything and proves she isn’t by speaking out on Alzheimer’s Disease.

The article, which I have yet to finish, suggests Tai Chi and other methods can help older folks to maintain balance. You, the reader reading this blog, may read this article  before I do. I have had concerns over the last couple of years, since my balance had gone awry, that I might get stopped by police and asked me to perform a field sobriety test. I don’t drink and drive, anymore at least. Buy my balance is way out of whack and that would be the first thing I would tell police. Well, I would tell them right after saying: “No,” I would not perform any tests.

Before I finished the article my neurologist, a very nice lady who came from India to help veterans, gave me about 10 shots of Botox. The Botox shots — I have received about four or five sets — have been in my head, neck and face to attempt helping the great pain I suffer from my cervical spine and the osteoarthritis that has savaged my neck over the years.

The shots today were in the back of my neck in a peripheral area of my spine.

My neck felt better, for the first time since I have received the shots, although after the drive back from Houston the neck is back to its painful ways. My lower back has, in the interim, become much more painful among standing and walking. That has been attributed to the diagnosis I was given of a rare disease called “Arachnoiditis.” And as I must always point out, the disorder has nothing to do with spiders.

I will be checking in my self-examination mirror to determine if the Botox has made the back of my neck appear any younger. In the meantime, my doctor said she will say what, if anything, she will do about my lower back.

This was what happened in my day, another day in America.

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Clinton: No charges that we’ll hear about until infinity

Without a doubt I am likely missing a “talking-head fest” on CNN or other cable outlets right now. I could turn my television on in perhaps a flat two seconds, maybe a shorter period of time. But I ask myself, why?

One wouldn't want Hillary as your IT director. But she isn't going to jail, at least anytime soon. Government photo
One wouldn’t want Hillary as your IT director. But she isn’t going to jail, at least anytime soon. Government photo

Unless the President, who is on the campaign trail with presumed Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, made some serious gaffe or in a moment of excitement decided to expose himself “in front of God and everybody,” the topic will likely be Hillary.

FBI Director James Comey made a step-by-step statement this morning concerning what government investigators found in their long investigation over e-mails used and sent by former  Secretary Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But, said the FBI director — a Republican appointee of George W. “GW” Bush — there was nothing found in the investigation into Clinton’s e-mails other than carelessness. Certainly, nothing was found that would make a prosecutor want to proceed with criminal charges against the presidential candidate.

Of course, GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump cried foul six ways to Sunday. “The system is rigged,” whined Trump.

Trump surrogates and mouth pieces lit into the decision that most likely means Clinton will unlikely face any charges into faulty e-mail practices. And probably into the next General Election will we hear all kinds of complaints about Clinton and the “damn  e-mails,” as Independent/Democrat U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said during his campaign against Clinton for the D nomination.

But we will continue to hear about the e-mails and Benghazi from now until who knows when.

Well, I have just enough time to do a quick edit on this before I turn on the local news to see if our local TV reporters are better today than they were yesterday in covering what’s happening in our area. There’s always hope. But hope doesn’t get ya ratings!!!

Boy, do I really need a life.

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Suffering political fatigue? Just think of “Fog.”

Someone, I think it was a journalist, on National Public Radio was speaking about an interview this morning by the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. The person speaking, it might have even been Capehart, told NPR that even if Hillary Clinton is elected presidents the Republicans will continue to hound her for the email scandal and the Benghazi attacks in which U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens along with Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA security contractors, were killed by terrorists.

That is unnerving, that should Clinton win the election over presumed GOP candidate Donald Trump, the Republican congressmen and other grudge-holding party hacks, will continue to spend millions of the taxpayers’ dollars for made-up scandals — Benghazi and e-mail — intended to hurt Clinton and the Democrats.

Lynch says she was speaking about her so-called chance encounter with former President Bill Clinton when he boarded her plane and they supposedly chatted about “their grandchildren” and matters that didn’t have anything to do with the Justice Department probe of Hillary or, as Bernie Sanders said, ” … her damn e-mail!”

Of course, if the American electorate has any sense, they will reject Trump by the highest margin ever, and perhaps send a solid majority of Democrats to the Senate. Maybe even a sufficient number of Democrats will make their way to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Even so, that is depressing news, for the non-Dem-hating public to be told to expect the same old bullshit over and over ad nauseam. Of course, if we have to endure such foolishness, it will be the voters’ fault. The people elected Billy Jeff Clinton, and may just elect Hillary R. Clinton. HRC is a much better choice than Donald Trump on any day. But I think Hillary barely edges Trump when it comes to likeability.

I am not so sure as whether all Democrats are so wild about Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as a vice presidential candidate to run with Clinton. I mean, politically, she is a firebrand and seems to be a progressive in the line of Bernie Sanders, the independent/Democrat, U.S. senator from Vermont. While that might be good for political unity among the Democrats, I just think the progressive wing of the party is going where they will just end up disappointed.

A hefty Democrat majority in Congress, both House and Senate, is a requirement for pushing measures forward such as a $15 per hour minimum wage or free public college tuition. Whether either Democrat wishes have a chance in hell, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in November. And, as well as likely beyond.

I feel a major case of campaign fatigue coming on. However, I expect I will let it come and go, to paraphrase Carl Sandburg, like fog on little cat feet.

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

— “Fog” by Carl Sandburg

 

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One day after Orlando. Release the sanctimonious hounds.

It is most likely that police and other authorities hadn’t cleared the Pulse nightclub of the remaining 40-something bodies before the two presumptive presidential nominees were clearly “making hay while the sun shined.”

Donald Trump, the likely GOP nominee, reiterated his call for excluding Muslims from entering the United States. Meanwhile, his counterpart Hillary rolled on an old familiar theme — gun control — while digging into a glimpse of her strategy to combat our terrorist foes such as ISIL.

Somehow the death toll from the early Sunday-morning shooting spree and hostage crisis in the Orlando gay club fell from 50 to 49. I have yet to hear how that happened, although it matters to history and in the hearts and minds of those who lost loved ones.

Both President Obama and Hillary Clinton talked on the increasing need for an assault weapon ban, a proposition that prompts the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to cackle Henny-Pennie-like that such measures will lead to the end of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. That is utter horse pucky. But the lies Trump is floating around seemingly know no boundaries.  Trump is even insinuating that Obama either  is incompetent or he is somehow involved. Perhaps Trump is re-living his glory days, when Trump was convinced the President was from the Muslim World. Yes, Barry Obama, Secret Asian Man, or African, or Hawaiian, I mean, it’s all the same to The Donald.

The president has been beaten up by the Republicans for not using the words “Radical Islamic terrorists.”

“Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism?” Trump tweeted as the president was speaking. “If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace.”

WTF? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! I mean I have seen some silly politicians with equally ludicrous ideas, but I mean this whole thing over Obama not calling the terrorists with the “radical Islamic” prelude. That right there sums up the silliness of the Republicans and that silly son-of-a-bitch  Donald Trump.

Politicians like Trump, Clinton and that idiot-assed Lt. Governor of Texas Dan Patrick all are  to blame for starting up the Circus, well, starting it up even more. I know that politicians in general, but Republicans specifically, have well-honed hypocrisy to a calling. People like Patrick saying on Twitter the gays brought this violence on themselves, then he states he had meant that Bible quote for several days prior.

So on this day, when so many parents and siblings are grieving for their losses while other pray for other relatives to pull through from horrible injuries, we are left with the sanctimonious perhaps Muslims shooting it out with gays as sort of a win-win.

Let the pious be pious. Just leave me the f**k alone if you are plan to side with the Donald Trumps and the Dan Patricks of the world.