[COMMENTARY] It's presidential improv as Trump surges on

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – It's what we've always wanted, isn't it? A totally unscripted White House race? No more predictable politics as usual?

If nothing else, Donald Trump has at least given us that.

He may not be the best person for the job, but Trump has saved us from the play-it-safe, poll-driven, stage-managed, social media-drenched tedium that passes for presidential politics. And in an era where White House campaign cycles have gotten longer and longer, and ever more vacuous, we can be thankful for that.

Even better: The political ruling elite can't stand it.

Trump, of course, was supposed to have been long gone by now. If you listened to the pundits, the Trump for President effort wasn't supposed to have gotten off the ground at all. Trump was a buffoon, a cartoon. A blowhard. A TV huckster. A soulless 1-percenter.

And that hair.

He wasn't even qualified to get in the ring.

But Trump not only ran, he became the favorite on the GOP side, and is gaining on Hillary in head-to-head polls. He has owned this presidential summer.

Along the way, he's had more lives than Rasputin.

Trump was supposed to be dead when he snarled about illegal Mexican immigrant rapists and thieves. But his poll numbers continued to rise.

He was supposed to be toast when he bashed Vietnam War hero John McCain. Nope. Trump went right on surging.

It was going to be a Waterloo when Trump took part in the first GOP presidential debate on Fox News. He would surely fold in the company of all those experienced pols and debaters.

But Trump was the star that night, the reason why many people tuned in. His ongoing battle with Fox host Megyn Kelly has done him no harm. And why should it? It's just one rich, well-coiffed TV celebrity going up against another.

The funnest part of all this has been watching Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and the rest trying to appropriate little pieces of Trump's damn-the-torpedoes, "straight talk" shtick while not tipping all the way over into Crazyland.

Hillary pokes fun at her email foibles by cracking wise about self-vaporizing messages on Snapchat. And Jeb has been out there shaking his finger at "anchor babies."

But they can't do it, because they've got too much to lose, they want the job too badly. Their whole lives have led up to this moment. They can't take too many chances.

Trump, meanwhile, has already won and has nothing to lose. If he's not elected president, he'll go back to his billions, however many he actually has. His presidential run will make for a great reality series. His brand will be more valuable than ever. New business opportunities are no doubt already raining down on him.

American culture and politics are all about money and celebrity, and Trump's got both.

Trump has also been a Great Unifier. He has the professional pundits and the career pols, on both sides of the aisle, making palaver with each other as they try to figure out how to stop Trump in his tracks while at the same time trying to divine the secrets of his political success.

Suddenly, the Beltway pols and the pundits have a lot in common: We can't let Trumpwin, can we? If nothing else, it's proven that they're all part of the same hypocrisy, Michael Corleone would say. They have been exposed. It's been particularly entertaining to watch.

There is no playbook here. Nobody planned on the Trump Factor, so there's no way to counter it. This isn't how Jeb and Hillary drew it up. The TV talking heads spent months telling each other that the Trump Surge wasn't happening, and now that Trump has legs, they have no Plan B, except to try and goad Joe Biden into the race.

Welcome to presidential improv.

Via: SI Live

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TV legend Norman Lear gives 6 strong opinions about American life

Legendary TV producer Norman Lear stopped by the Televisison Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills to promote an upcoming PBS documentary covering his career that’s set to debut next year. But what seemed to most impress reporters was the 93-year-old’s opinionated tangents, covering politics, TV, America and mindfullness. Below are six highlights from a press conference with the creator of hits like All in the Family, The Jeffersons and One Day at a Time:   

— On politics: “Everybody knows me to be a progressive or a liberal or lefty or whatever. I think of myself as a bleeding-heart conservative. You will not f— with my Bill of Rights, my Constitution, my guarantees of political justice for all. But does my heart bleed for those who need help and aren’t getting the justice that the country promises them and the equal opportunity the country promises? Yes. I’m a bleeding heart, but I think myself to be a total social conservative. The people who are running just don’t seem to have America on their minds, not the America I think about. When I was a kid we were in love with America. As early as I can remember, there was a civics class in my public school. And I was in love with those things that guaranteed freedom before I learned that there were people who hated me because I was Jewish. I had a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, those words out of the Declaration that protected me. And I knew about that because we had civics in class. We don’t have that much in the country anymore. So before World War II or shortly after, we were in love with America because we understood what it was about and that’s what we were in love with. I believe everybody’s patriotic today. Everybody loves America. But I don’t need their flag plans to prove it. I’d like to go back to civics lessons.”

—  On waking up: “I want to wake up feeling as I usually do, loving the day. The title of my book is Even This I Get to Experience, and that’s the way I basically look at life moment to moment. And now I’m looking out at you. I was 93 on Monday. So it took me 93 [years] and five days to get here. It took you every split second of each of your lives to get here for me. So I’m way ahead of you. It took all your lives to get here, so this moment is the moment. Even this we get to experience.”

— On the Golden Age of television: “I think this is the Golden Age. I understand what the Golden Age was when I was coming into television, and it was those years of Playhouse 90 and Philco Playhouse. But there’s great drama and some great comedy on television today. I can’t see it all.”

— On excess: “Our greatest export in America is excess. We are so excessive. There is so much to watch, so much to buy, so much they’re selling. I wish they would sell the value of the country as hard as they sell the rest of it.”

— On living in the moment: “There are two words that are under-recognized: ‘over’ and ‘next.’ When something is over, it’s over. And we’re always on to ‘next.’ And the hammock, the imaginary hammock in the middle is what I think is meant by living in the moment. I’m living in the moment waiting for next.”

— On perspective: I’ve learned introspectively how much each of us matters and how little we understand how much we matter in the course of our day. I’m impressed with the way we all affect each other in small ways and the good we do in terms of relationships that would otherwise seem meaningless, or certainly easy to overlook, that we don’t take credit for, each of us, all of us. If I could make anything clear, it would be that. 

Via: Entertainment Weekly

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[CARTOON] Thanksgiving 2013

Via: California Political Review

Second-graders taught labor politics in Core Curriculum-aligned lesson plan

A textbook company contracted to produce materials under the Common Core State Standards is trying to teach students as young as second grade about economic fairness by praising unions, protests and labor leader Cesar Chavez, according to an education watchdog group.

Zaner-Bloser, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, is distributing a lesson plan aimed at teaching second-graders about “equality” by highlighting labor issues, according to Education Action Group Foundation, a non-partisan organization that looks to promote education reform.

As part of the plan, students spend a week reading “Harvesting Hope,” a book about Chavez written by children’s author Kathleen Krull, and then discuss what the lesson plan calls “scales of fairness,” which compare the living conditions of farm workers to that of land owners.

“Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced,” teachers are prompted to instruct the students. They are then supposed to ask the students whether both sides, as presented in the plan, are equal, providing a correct answer of “no” in the teachers’ guides.

“Why are we teaching organized labor lessons to young children?” asked Kyle Olson, the publisher of the group’s website. “Isn’t there a simpler way to teach about fairness, like saying it’s not fair if Johnny works all day and gets one piece of candy while Jimmy plays video games all day and gets the same piece of candy?”

Via: Fox News

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THE BIG FAIL: Putting The Pedal To The Metal

Geithner Takes The Wheel From Thelma And Louise In Flirting With Going Off The Fiscal Cliff

Today, Secretary Of The Treasury Tim Geithner Couldn’t Promise That Obama And The Democrats Wouldn’t Send The Nation Off The Fiscal Cliff. FOX’s CHRIS WALLACE: “Last question, can you promise that we will not go over the cliff?” TREASURY SECRETARY TIMOTHY GEITHNER: “No, I can’t promise that. That’s a decision that lies in the hands of the Republicans that are now opposing increases in tax rates. If they recognize the reality that we can’t afford to extend those tax rates, then we have the basis for an agreement that will be very good for the American people.
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” WALLACE: “And the president bears no responsibility? It’s all up to the Republicans?” GEITHNER: “Chris, ask yourself this question: why does it make sense for the country to force tax increases on all Americans because a small group of Republicans want to extend tax rates for two percent of Americans? Why does that make any sense? There’s no reason why that should happen. We can’t afford those tax rates. That’s like the deep tragic lesson of the last decade. We can’t afford them, so we’re not going to get through it – we’re not going to the end now without a recognition from Republicans of that basic reality. And that’s going to be the responsible thing to do. And my judgment is they are going to do it because there’s no alternative to that.” (Fox’s ” Fox News Sunday,” 12/2/12)

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Via: GOP.com

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2016: Obama's America' Filmmaker Calls White House Attack 'Clumsy,' 'Bizarre' (Exclusive Audio)

AP

'2016: Obama's America' Filmmaker Calls White House Attack 'Clumsy,' 'Bizarre'

by Paul Bond

Filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza has responded to a White House assertion that his documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, is packed with lies and conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama.

“Their original strategy was to lie low and hope this goes away, but now they’re launching a full-scale attack,” D’Souza told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday. “And this is one of the most bizarre, clumsy and ineffective attacks I have seen in politics. Half of the stuff they talk about isn’t even in the film, like the Lockerbie bomber. These guys are referencing a Columbia Journalism Review article that’s two years old and is about my book, not about the film.”

The president, through his Barack Obama.com campaign website, challenges D’Souza’s credibility by saying he has a “long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering and flat-out falsehoods.”

 Via: The Hollywood Reporter

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