WHERE ARE THE PESOS?????

By InsightAnalytical-GRL

It’s a dreary day here and I have been watching Nicolle Wallace  on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, dozing off in the recliner…

Toward the end of of the show,  as Trump’s political impotence was discussed, the panel dissolved into hysterical laughter and I woke up…

Wallace went to Steve Schmidt and as he delivered one of his take downs of Trump, he asked the question, WHERE ARE THE PESOS?…the pesos that are supposed to pay for THE WALL.

Well, the in-studio panel disintegrated again into laughter and a couple of the folks picked up on that line as being a new meme…

So, here we go, possibly the first use in a blog post….

And, why not ask another question that’s been on my mind? When is Trump going to drop the idea of this stupid wall???   One might wish that Trump will

DROP  THE CHALUPA!*

*Editor’s Note: 2 Taco Belle Chihuahuas reside in my home…one soft, the other a bobble head.  The soft one is still talking…

Lawrence O’Donnell is Staying on the Air!!

By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Tonight, as he bid farewell to an intern who was leaving for a new job starting next week, Lawrence O’Donnell said that next week HE would be sitting right there covering the Comey testimony and would be covering everything “for the next couple of years.”

With his contract coming due around June 4th, we had heard nothing except that it seems O’Donnell and management were talking again.

So now we have the news…Lawrence O’Donnell will be giving us his great discussion and analysis for 2 more years for sure!!!!

A victory for all of us!!!

 

 

Is MSNBC Starting to Edge out Joy Reid? Her Sunday Schedule Pushed Back for a Soccer Game? UPDATE: 10/23/2017 …Happily, Joy is busier than ever!!!

Update:  Joy is subbing for practically everyone and in an interview she stated that she really enjoys seeing how all the shows work. She is appearing on Meet the Press occasionally, and recently went to the Virgin Islands to report on the hurricane disaster there. She continues to report on the Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
GO JOY!!!

By InsightAnalytical-GRL

OK, maybe I’m just being hypersensitive about how MSNBC is shoving out a lot of people who are deemed as being “too far left” for the taste of Andrew Lack.  (very interesting Lack bio at Comcast.com corporate:  Andrew Lack.) We are in the dark about the fate of Lawrence O’Donnell but the purge started a long while back when Melissa Harris Perry blew the whistle on the network. God forbid that a show is devoted to a serious round table dealing with current issues involving the issue of Black America. Rev. Al’s Politics Nation has been reduced to early A.M. on Sunday.  And the list goes on

Joy Reid had her own show during the afternoons that was axed around the time that Alex Wagner’s NOW , the Cycle, Ronan Farrow Daily and The Ed Show were cancelled in February 2015. The Reid Report was struggling with low ratings as was the whole lineup.

Reid stayed on with the network, filling in and covering the 2016 campaign and became more visible and a real stalwart.  She was rewarded with her weekend AM Joy program which is a top destination for thinking people.  (Of course, she COULD have been given the slot have Greta Van Susteren was given but…) Her show is delivering great ratings and Joy has been writing books and as well as essays at sites like the Daily Beast…so, she’s blossoming as a media star.  See her outdated MSNBC bio here: Joy Reid outdated biography MSNBC.

So, why is MSNBC shoving Joy’s show around as the Trump scandals heat up?  Joy has been a leader in questioning the whole lot of GOP lackeys, and has been ahead of the pack in questioning the role of VP Mike Pence and his knowledge of Gen. Mike Flynn’s lies.  She has been steadily calling out the entire bunch over at the Daily Beast,  Her latest scathing salvo dated May 20, 2017 is entitled Donald Trump Knows Just How Bad the Russia Investigation Can Get

My favorite quotation from this piece is classic Joy:

“(We are asked to believe Mike Pence, the head of the transition team, heard this confession and the warnings about Flynn from the then-acting attorney general with his index fingers stuck firmly in his little lamb ears.)”

BUT…as Joy Reid’s audience grows, could this be a bit too much for MSNBC?

Today, Joy’s show is being pushed back 2 hours because there is a Premier League soccer match that MUST be shown in her regular Sunday time slot. ?????

Now, checking the NBCSN schedule, I can see that, yes, other games are being dropped onto other NBC outlets. CNBC, Esquire, USA, Bravo, SyFy, E!, Oxygen,  Telemundo and NBC Universo are ALL showing games at the same time, 10 AM ET.  NBCSport.com/tv-lisings

Now, I’m a huge soccer fan…was one before it became more popular. I had season tickets for the Cosmos at the midfield line just behind the players’ family section at the old Giants Stadium, where I saw all the greats.  Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s I was writing letters and calling Don Imus to lobby for coverage because the media was blacking out most coverage. For example, while 34,000 of us were watching a game in the rain, the only news was that baseball had been rained out.  I can say that my letter to the New York Times was published and Imus reported the score of that game! So, my sports activism worked!

So, now, as someone more devoted to political activism, I have to call into question what’s going on at MSNBC…and today, specifically, the decision to push Joy Reid back 2 hours so a Hull-Tottenham match is aired instead of the best discussion of current politics.

Really, MSNBC????

*****

I’ll be revisiting the Lack influence at some point since his bio discusses his former life at Bloomberg…..

The Past Week: July 19-25, 2009 (The Journalism School Named after Walter Cronkite; Poor Economy, Cash-Strapped Families = Unclaimed Bodies of Loved Ones)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

The passing of Walter Cronkite resulted in lots of solemn eulogies in TeeVee-land, and I have to say that woman I saw one afternoon on CNN exclaiming that he “wasn’t just a newsreader” made me chortle…she obviously thought SHE wasn’t a newsreader and spoke with some authority on the matter as she conversed with somebody who was reminiscing about Cronkite’s tremendous experience.  What a joke!  This young chippy chit-chatted her way through the “news” as if she were doing an infomercial…

Cronkite, of course, was the man everyone watched during the moon landing back in 1969.  And, I’m also old enough to remember his reporting on the Kennedy assassination (and Dan Rather, who was local in Dallas back then.) By accident, while noodling around the web during the moon landing anniversary, I came across the website of the Cronkite School New Media Academy | The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication which is at Arizona State University.

It produced Aaron Brown, among others. But who knows if it is really living up to the expectations espoused in the “Welcome” message. For example, the connection to ABC news doesn’t exactly inspire.  And where do really good journalism students go lately even IF they do get a decent education in journalism? (And that’s a big IF, to assume any really good journalists are coming out of journalism schools these days.)  Do they go MSBNC? CNN? NBC? FOX? etc., etc.

Don’t think so…

***

Signs of the times… From the Los Angeles Times:

More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs

According to the story, “The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones.”

The victims of homicide and suspicious deaths are being cremated at taxpayer expense because people can’t afford services, so are leaving bodies of loved ones unclaimed.

And the L.A. county  is so much busier that they are no longer accepting bodies from the coroner. That office is now contracting private crematories to handle the load.

Apparently the situation in L.A. isn’t unique:

Coroners and funeral directors around the country say they are seeing the same trend as cash-strapped families cope with funeral costs. Just claiming a body from the L.A. County coroner costs $200. Once a body is claimed, private cremations usually run close to $1,000, Smith said. Funeral homes charge an average of $7,300 to transport and bury a body in a simple grave, according to the National Funeral Home Directors Assn.

…Can’t even rest in peace these days…

THE PAST WEEK

*By KenoshaMarge

*VOTING IN LOCKSTEP IS NOW A GOOD THING? (Not According to SOME Democrats in Congress…)

Chicago Suburb Hosts Hizb ut-Tahrir Conference; Organization Aims to Re-Establish an International Islamic State (Caliphate), Supports Jihad

The Past Week: July 12-18, 2009 (Energy-Saving Porch Project; “Full Plates Full Lives” Food Campaign; JFK, Jr.)

IL State Treasurer/Obama Ally Giannoulias Planning to Challenge Roland Burris–Report from Our Chicago Correspondent; Medicare Musings

~~By InsightAnalytical–GRL & Chicago Correspondent Leslie

We’ve got a tidbit from Chicago Correspondent Leslie today and a bit of musing about Medicare today.  But since I’ve been swamped by the follow-up since my mother’s fall a few weeks ago, I haven’t been able to finish up the articles I’ve been researching. So, please consider this an OPEN THREAD today and post anything that’s on your mind or any news that has caught your eye!

From Chicago via Leslie:

I am sending you a story about Alexi Giannoulias, the IL State Treasurer, whose family-owned bank played a role in the samming of the woman who owned the Hologram Museum (I sent you the link to the Chicago Reader story a couple of weeks ago.)

When Obama was running for POTUS, he distanced himself from this guy, but now that Giannoulias is thinking about running for the seat now held (by a thread) by Roland Burris, it seems there may be something to the Obama-Giannoulias relationship.

Here is a quote from the article (linked below):

“. . . On Monday, Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias — who refers to Obama as his political mentor — announced that he will form an exploratory committee to determine whether he’ll be in that race.”

Editor’s note:  Guess what? The link Leslie provided for this story is no longer working.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29466902/

We cannot find the page you requested.

Error 404

The link you followed may be broken or expired. Please try your link again, or take a look at our homepage for today’s top news.  Below you can find today’s most e-mailed and most viewed stories.

I searched the MSNBC site and came up with zip.  That sure “expired” quickly…

Here’s an excerpt from the original information posted here about Giannoulias a couple of weeks ago:

Also from Leslie  and on a more sinister note is this story from the Chicago Reader by Ling Ma about the state treasurer of Illinois, who has ties to Obama.  As Leslie says, it captures the “heart and soul” of Chicago politics, where “They scratch each other’s back. Oh, but they care about the little guy…(snark)!”

Broadway Bank is owned by the family of Alexi Giannoulis, Illinois state treasurer and a political ally of Barack Obama. Giannoulis was the bank officer who approved the loan to Loren Billings.

The full story is fascinating  just on the basis of the story about holography and what is described as the last holography museum in the U.S.  But what really is disturbing is how this elderly woman was cajoled into taking out a loan by “friends” at Giannoulis’  Broadway Bank and how her life may be ruined. Obama’s friends in Chicago really know how to do this sort of thing well…

Leslie adds: Oh, BTW: The Tribune had a headline saying “Race Played a Role in the Senate” selection. All I can say is . . . “No sh*t” .

***

Since my mother got home from the hospital we’ve been visited by a nurse who took a blood test, a nurse to assess her case, a physical therapist and, today, an occupational therapist.  She’s going to have bathing assistance and several weeks of instruction by the therapists on what her limits are and some things she can do to keep up her strength.

It took awhile to kick in, as schedules are already in place.  The therapists who have done her initial assessments both have full-time jobs in the hospital, but come after work to do the initial interview.  Then, the full-time people take over.

These services in Medicare are very helpful and you would think that they would automatically be expanded under this “stimulus” package/health care reform spending. But, who knows?  Since we’ve already been warned that “expensive” older people are just going to have take their lumps, I bet these professionals will be hit as hard as the hospitals when it comes to payment.  They may even lose their jobs.  I’m just so cynical at this point about Obama and his arrogant crew that I can’t see them doing anything GOOD for anybody except his favored demographic groups and donors from the financial world…