America No Longer Has A Viable Opposition Party To Conservative Ideology

In today’s American two-Party system, there is no active opposition party to Conservative ideology or an opposition party with a pro-active message (despite the Progressive movement within the Democratic Party and other parties that are not “officially” recognized).

I used to watch Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes on MSNBC. But I was so discouraged and disappointed – oftentimes shocked and outraged – by their behavior and what I saw as  irresponsible “reporting” ¹  (and both using the overwhelmingly biased and closed-minded Joy Reid ² as their replacement host) during the election, that I simply had to stop tuning in.

With her recent show devoted solely to “connecting the dots between Trump and Russia,” Rachel Maddow has burrowed in even deeper (and reduced her credibility to being little more than the Democratic Glenn Beck) by continuing to embrace fear-mongering through irresponsible and agenda-driven speculation. By amping up a fear that the Clinton Campaign used to divert attention from her own campaign dealings and mistakes, Maddow and others are fanning the flames of war and, simultaneously, taking a gamble that, if they lose, will greatly aid Donald Trump’s ability to further convince the public that neither the Democratic Party nor the media can be trusted.

I hate seeing the Democratic Party continue to be its own worst enemy. I hate seeing Democratic news hosts become Democratic apologists and outright fear-mongers. I hate seeing Democrats using the old Republican playbook as their guide and, in effect, becoming everything we used to fight against (McCarthyism, anyone?). The Democratic Party used to be a very real, very active and vocal alternative. We used to offer that desperately-needed balance. And hope.

When They Go Low, So Do We: The Final Presidential Debate

I came to this final presidential debate not looking for more proof that Trump was despicable. I came looking for more reasons to feel some measure of hope about voting for Hillary. And at the beginning of the debate, I got some of that. But it didn’t last long.

You see, this is where it all falls apart for me. It’s clear to most any liberal person that Trump is a liar, an egomaniac, a fascist-dictator wannabe, a misogynist, a racist, shockingly uninformed, and a serious threat. That’s what was obvious, has been, and continues to be. So for me it’s easy to post repeatedly about the horror-show that continues to be Donald Trump.

What seems more difficult and what I wish we would also see, are those same people posting about how Hillary wouldn’t answer the direct question placed to her about the contents of the Wikileaks emails. She turned the conversation, once again and without missing a breath, to the Russians. Forget for a moment that the new Cold War rhetoric being expressed recently is disturbing in its own right and needs to be watched closely. The truth of the matter is that these are two separate conversations. The question was about the content of the emails, not their origin. If you’re willing to overlook the content and her direct refusal to address it, that’s a problem for me. No one gets a free pass because Trump is despicable. And no one – and that includes Hillary’s most devoted supporters – should be okay with it. 

Double G & Hal Masonberg on Chet Hanley’s “JAZZ IN THE MODERN ERA”

New doc JAZZ NIGHTS: A CONFIDENTIAL JOURNEY’s sax player and composer extraordinaire, Geoff “Double G” Gallegos and JAZZ NIGHTS’ director Hal Masonberg were this week’s guests on Chet Hanley’s 3-hour TV show JAZZ IN THE MODERN ERA from April 5, 2016.

There’s a lot of music and extraordinary archival video to listen and watch on this episode. And weaving in and out of those, Chet Hanley interviews Double G and Hal Masonberg about both JAZZ NIGHTS and Gee about the saxophone and his lifelong influences.

Fear The Walking Dead Writers

You know things are off to a bad start when you can feel the writers’ fear more than the characters’.

I always thought the writing on THE WALKING DEAD was terribly inconsistent. Sometimes downright awful. But I love the zombie genre (saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in a movie theater at age 9 and it has been burned into my psyche ever since), and if there are some good visceral moments now and again, I find myself drawn back. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that the writing on THE WALKING DEAD improved in the last two seasons, it felt more consistent, more organic.

So when I read that there’d be a spinoff series, I hoped that the writers, creators and anyone else involved with the series had evolved in their storytelling sensibilities to offer something interesting, maybe even slightly provocative or, god-forbid, original. Instead, what I found was an hour of the kind of silly character reactions and scenarios I would expect from network TV at its most benign. Why is this?