90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, September 15, 2018

When You Harvest The Seeds You Have Sown

Move over fake news: Stupidity of TV hurricane coverage revealed in ‘fake weather’ live shot

The latest hilarious reveal of TV news fakery drives home the point that what the public sees on its TV screens is a show – entertainment designed to capture and hold an audience by playing to its fears and passions. President Trump, the master of “reality TV” understands this from the inside, which is why his denunciations of “fake news” have so much credibility with the public while driving crazy the insiders in the medium who recent his betrayal of their trade secrets.

Fake news has a fraternal twin brother in fake weather. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is the cliché that all-too accurately describes local TV news. The corollary for weather reporting is” “If it blows, it shows.” Even if the wind doesn’t do the job all on its own, as illustrated in this hilarious video, first picked up by global warming skeptic Anthony Watts’s site Wattsupwiththat:

This is far from the first time a network has been caught faking extreme weather for a live shot:

I am so old that I remember that Dan Rather’s national television career began when he was a local newsman at KHOU-TV and his live shot reporting of Hurricane Carla hitting Houston in 1961 was picked up by CBS News. It’s almost as if he is bringing the fake news/fake weather cycle full circle.

I no longer have any patirence for the live shots of TV newsmen and newswomen standing in an area designatied as dangerous and bringing us the "news" that the wind is blowing, the rain is failling, and there are consequences for people and structures. We know that already because it is a "hurricane" and now a "tropical storm."

I feel bad n paticular for the rookie correspondents, especially the women, who seem to get a hazing when they move up from lesser jobs to a gig at a national network. They seem to be the onces sent out to get soaked, blown, and used as a rag doll to illustrate the...

Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot.

He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter, moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing.

After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the boiled eggs out and placed them in a bowl.

He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup. Turning to her he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”

“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.

“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.

He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.

However, each one reacted differently.

The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.

The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.

However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.

“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? “

Moral:In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.

Which one are you?

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You can’t win with these people, and I’m not even sure why you would want to try.

People of good will can disagree about the role the federal government should play in all kinds of things, but I think most of us would agree the federal government has to play an major role in preparing for – and recovering from – major natural disasters. (You libertarians who want me to know you’re dissenting . . . you don’t count as people.)

We received a briefing this morning from the White House on all the things that have already been done to prepare for the worst if Florence turns out as bad as some have feared. Those fears seem to have abated in the past several hours as the storm has been downgraded, but there is obviously still a lot of potential for damage and risk to people’s lives. You want the federal government prepared, and by all accounts President Trump is working overtime to make sure it is.

He’s deploying resources. He’s reaching out to state and local officials. He’s getting everyone clear on their roles. This sounds like good leadership, does it not? The sort of thing you’d applaud. Even if you don’t like the guy himself, you can’t have a problem with him working hard to do a good job at something important to the country.

Can you?

Ha! Of course you can, sillies. If you’re the media, you can easily find a reason to portray Trump’s hard work and earnestness in a negative light. Behold the latest meanderings from The Daily Beast:

But no president has taken image-obsession to the level of Trump. The famously cable news-addicted president closely followed how his administration’s response to the past storms was graded and he’s taken steps to make sure he scores high on the upcoming one.

As Florence bears down on the American Southeast, Trump has hit the phones, calling up senators and governors and mayors to assure them that the federal government will make all necessary resources available to deal with and recover from what is expected to be a devastating natural disaster.

The phone calls began early this week—a spokesperson for Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam told The Daily Beast that he spoke with Trump on Monday—and they are vintage Trump storm prep activity, the former White House official said.

“He’s gonna start by talking to the political leaders because when they’re asked if they’ve talked to him he wants them to be able to say yes,” the source explained. “It’s one of the times that he is really dialed into federal government interaction with state and local leaders.”

During similar disasters in the past, the official added, Trump has called for regular updates in the Oval Office on what the federal government is doing in affected areas.

To a certain degree, coordinating between agencies and touching base with state and local officials is the role that all presidents play when hurricanes hit. “They’re kind of like the conductor,” said Alyssa Mastromonaco, President Barack Obama’s former deputy chief of staff. “The thing everyone forgets is presidents shouldn’t know every single thing to do but the people who work for him should.”

But for Trump, sources say, the briefings are rooted in large measure in fear over public perception. “He always wants to be able to say FEMA’s doing this and that.”

Now let’s say for the sake of argument that Trump cares nothing about the Carolinas or the people in them, and cares only about avoiding criticism, because he is narcissistic and thin-skinned and everything to him is about optics and his own personal image.

I personally think Trump cares very much about other people, and also cares very much about his image. I think he is both compassionate and thin-skinned to his own detriment. I think he has little patience with criticism that’s just petty and pointless, especially when it comes from people who do nothing all day long but aim petty and...