The Genuineness of Bernie Sanders

I'm sure hundreds of millions of people are pulling for Bernie Sanders to come out of his medical procedure better and stronger than ever. (It's not only Americans who admire the man.)

One fact never to forget: Bernie Sanders declared only about two hundred thousands dollars of income from the years 2009 to 2015. It was only in 2016 and 2017 that he and his wife Jill surpassed (a mere) one million dollars in earnings. And that was largely due to book royalties and a few other incidentals.

The point is that those numbers show that Bernie Sanders has always lived his ideals. They demonstrate that he was not feeding at the trough, as he could so easily have done. They are the closest thing to a shining proof of his absolute integrity and honesty, and demonstrate his firmly-held core belief that a public servant should not be beholden to lobbyists or interests at cross-purposes to the people and their well-being. This is in contrast with virtually every other money-grabber in Washington. 

If we lose Bernie, Diogenes might as well skip Washington on his peregrinations with that lamp. 

Sanders is that rare, real deal who believed in you. He believed your struggle was real.

CNN and Monomania

I must be old, because I remember when CNN used to be in the business of all the news, all the time.

Now it's gotten to the point where the network has a few monomanias that dominate and replace the idea of "universal coverage" of world news. It's no longer news. It's now wholly advertising fodder, advertising pandering. 

I understand the upcoming American presidential election is crucial. But I still think the network has lost credibility by talking about Donald Trump fairly constantly. Doubtless this is what sells the most advertising. I really think the network has abdicated its original mission. Things are still happening in the world that matter very much and almost all of those things have absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. How many round tables of talking heads chattering away on Trump (many of them annoying repeat guests with only a few sound bites in their heads which they parrot constantly) do we really need in a twenty-four hour period?

It's only when a tragedy the size of the Orlando shooting occurs that the channel turns its attention away from Trump and its small handful of other monomanias.

I have to confess I have started watching OAN (One America News) to get fully-rounded news. I do not sympathize with the conservative ideology of this network at all, but I greatly appreciate that it disseminates up-to-the-minute domestic and world news. It's clearly a fledgling network with budget limitations and the young anchors are perhaps a tad green, but they get the job done and I learn what's going on in the world. I cringe every time they refer to Bernie Sanders as "the Marxist-socialist Bernie Sanders" (I kid you not, they never mention his name without affixing that inaccurate epithet) but I will still hang around to get the news.

One very annoying thing did appear on OAN today. At first, it appeared to be an ad spot Trump had taken out for himself. It began with a head shot of Trump and a voice-over narration of him speaking about national security. Then it went off into a really dim-witted sequence of clips attempting to show liberals (both Clintons and other Washington insiders) attempting to address the same issues. There was no context given for this weird (pro-Trump?) media thingie which went on for maybe two or three minutes. If anything alienates me from watching OAN, it will be weird crap like that. The network claims it intends to keep the conservative slant for its political programs and keep the news objective and clean. If they do that, maybe I will hang around. Please no more weird conceptual vids. The quality of that editing was embarrassing. Any pre-teen YouTuber could have done a much better job. Maybe you should hire one, OAN.