I am not a reader of “The National Enquirer,” but I do see the front page when I check out at the supermarket.
The headlines that caught my eye today said (with a bit of my paraphrase): “New Evidence Proves That Obama Was Not Born in America” and “Trump Already Restores Dignity to the White House.”
This is a rag that is published by a friend of Trump. During the elections, Trump quoted The National Enquirer as the source for his absurd claim that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane: What a way to start the new year. Sigh . . . .
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Remember the good old days when academics and policy makers would read Pravda and Izvestia to try to decipher something about the inner workings of the Kremlin? Now we may have to do the same with the National Enquirer. We don’t need no stinkin’ journalism.
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GregB,
Or read Trump tweets.
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Please, Diane, I don’t need to kill any more brain cells.
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This may be why Trump sticks to under 140 words in Tweets since longer sentences show what’s upstairs.
The press used to ‘clean up’ the sentences that George W. spoke. Who can make sense of something like this? (How great that Trump’s uncle had very good genes. Trump believes this runs in his family and also makes him superior.)
This is an actual Trump sentence taken from a video made a year ago:
“I saw this pop up in my Twitter feed and decided to share with the class.
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart
—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the
smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a
conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s
why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went
there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my
like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but
you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would
have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear
is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the
power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of
what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),
but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it
used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I
would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,
you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter
right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about
another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
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If I may make a minor correction to one of your statements:
“This may be why Trump sticks to under 140 words in Tweets since longer sentences show what’s NOT upstairs.”
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I don’t know what is worse this morning….reading about Trump in the National Enquirer OR looking at the mess that still remains in our living room from our very successful New Year’s Eve party.
I’m trying to think of a snack food that is the equivalent of the National Enquirer -you know, the kind of snack food that makes you feel sick after eating it.
Hmmm. Circus Peanuts…..Bugles….or Pizza Spins (they don’t make snack foods like THAT anymore…some of the 1970s chemicals in the “Pizza Spin” have got to be banned by now.) Or, how about the basic Cheese Doodle -in honor of His Orangeness.
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Happy New Year, btw, to everyone. May 2017 be happier and healthier for you.
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I’m horrified to read that Seems Verma is the person who set up Indiana’s Medicaid program. The state paid her $5 million. That amount of money could have been used in many better ways. Good for Arkansas for figuring out that this type of program ‘isn’t worth it.”.
NPR headline: The Future of Medicaid May Be Found in Indiana
…”To get a glimpse of where Medicaid may be headed after Donald Trump moves into the White House, it may be wise to look to Indiana.
That’s where Seema Verma, Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, comes from. And that’s where she put her stamp on the state’s health care program for the poor.
Verma is a private consultant who was hired by Indiana Gov. and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to design a Republican-friendly expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The state paid her almost $5 million over four years through 2017, according to the contracts.
She sees the federal Medicaid program as a bureaucratic nightmare that hamstrings states and encourages poor people to remain dependent.
“The Medicaid program has not kept pace with the modern health-care market,” she testified at a Congressional hearing in 2013. “Its rigid, complex rules designed to protect enrollees have also created an intractable program that does not foster efficiency, quality or personal responsibility.”
The plan she came up with for Indiana requires poor Medicaid recipients to make monthly payments for their insurance, or lose benefits….
Adam Mueller, a lawyer for Indiana Legal Services, says he’s happy more of his clients have health insurance. But he says the state’s notion that people will feel more invested in their care if they pay $1 a month just doesn’t play out in the real world.
“They don’t feel like they have skin in the game,” Mueller says. “One guy told me that it feels like Indiana is trying to take his last $12.”
Joe Thompson, CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, says it’s just hard to be poor.
“The social stresses of low-income individuals probably make most aspects of managing through the day more difficult than if you have more affluence and have more resources available to deploy,” he says.
Thompson, who’s a former Arkansas surgeon general, helped develop a Medicaid program in his state that had many of the same features as Indiana, including premium payments and health savings accounts.
In the end, Arkansas decided it just wasn’t worth it.”
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carolmalaysia writes about Seema Verma of Arkansas: “She sees the federal Medicaid program as a bureaucratic nightmare that hamstrings states and encourages poor people to remain dependent.’
Yes–because making $8 an hour removes “poor people” from their dependence on the government and enables them to pay, for instance, the dental bills for themselves and their children.
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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3ZkRJ8Q9vVUdldJZXZVZWt1OWs
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National Enquirer: For when Fox News is too classy for you.
I see that propaganda rag in a checkout line, I always stick a copy of People on top of it. Beautifying my surroundings.
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“People. . . Beautifying my surroundings.”
Really??
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I just started getting news from Africa on a site called Quartz.
Quartz: After Donald Trump’s win, Africans are disappointed in American democracy
http://qz.com/833125/election-2016-africa-responds-to-donald-trumps-win-with-disbelief-and-disappointment/
Johannesburg, South Africa
…”It started off as a joke. Comparing Donald Trump, with his campaign of divisiveness, accusations against the democratic system, and vengeful score.
“From jokes to actually becoming the president. We don’t understand how he won,” says Wesley Bios, 20, a student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In Africa, Trump’s win is especially jarring and sets a worrying example in countries where the American political system has long been held up as a paragon of democracy.
“It’s what we never imagined,” says Timothy Maunjiri, 34, a teacher from Malawi working in South Africa. “We expect a lot from [the US]. We expect leaders in the free world to set the pace. We hold the morals in America in high esteem.”
It’s no wonder that today many of the continent’s more questionable leaders rushed to congratulate an American president after their own heart.
They include John Magufuli, who has begun jailing Tanzanians for criticizing him on social media, Kenya’s president and vice president, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who have both faced charges of crimes against humanity, Paul Kagame who is changing Rwanda’s constitution to give himself another term, Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for the last 30 years, and more.
“Trump is tribal. He is no democrat. He promises authoritarian leadership,” writes John Stremlau, a visiting professor of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa…
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Seems that African college students are wiser than a large chunk of our electorate
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This is a program that I intend to watch: Trump, Frontline, Tuesday January 3, 2017, 10: pm Eastern–PBS.
http://www.wgby.org/articles/50494
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I think the content of such comments (as the National Inquirer’s headlines) cannot be take seriously–but their intent CAN. That is, I think such comments make us feel like we have been hit in the stomach (at least, that’s what I felt like when I read it), I think it’s meant to do just that–make readers feel like, no matter what you say or what the evidence tells us, there is just no getting through.
Then I realize again–we are SUPPOSED to feel that way and then to leave the field in disgust.
I’m beginning to see these things as verbal and written bombs being thrown on purpose into the territory of “civil and reasonable discourse” in order to cause just such disgust and confusion, to silence reasonable voices, and to “blow up” any hope that progress can be made.
The people who write such things, and who read and believe them, we must know by this time, are either
(1) imbecilic or clinically insane, especially if they write such things merely to sell newspapers–any recognition is good recognition, regardless of what damage it does; keep piling on the lies–the more disgusted we are, the happier they are.
(2) adolescent narcissistic trouble-makers, laughing, while sticking a finger in the eye of those whom they admire and despise at the same time, while being totally unaware or uncaring of the damage they are doing to themselves and to everyone around them;
(3) nihilistic ego-maniacs on a mission to destroy anything and everyone who differs from them in any way. These people are the same as religious zealots, only their god is themselves; and their existence depends on the power of death–of others.
People in the NE’s “newsroom” must sit around and entertain questions like: What will piss them off today? They are probably just happy to be mentioned on, for instance, Diane Ravitch’s blog–to hell with everything else–you know–the things that really matter? They, and now Trump and his mindless groupies, are the scourge we have to put up with in a free culture. Do you think the NE writers, or even Trump and his empty vessels really believe those headlines?
Let’s not let them drive us away from what we know to be the right side of history (pun intended). What those students in Africa recognize about what’s good about America (mentioned in another note here) is worth standing up for, or nothing is.
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Catherine, you are getting to the root of fake news. Challenging the belief in science, facts, evidence. Replacing verifiable fact with emotion and circus.
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Trump and The National Enquirer, perfect together. It figures the Trump would be friends with the owner of this rumor mongering garbage rag. I caught the incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, on the Sunday news shows. PHEW!! What a motor mouth, he just does not shut up, he spews out words like a gattling gun shots out bullets. He really doesn’t answer questions, he just buries you in verbiage.
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errors galore: the Trump should be that Trump, shots should be shoots.
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We must teach people that this rag is a PROPAGANDA SHEET FOR DONALD TRUMP. Unfortunately, his supporters have no clue as to what is propaganda and what is true journalism. When I ask one of his minions to present evidence to prove a tweet, they utter four letter words and walk away. His supporters have created a fantasy as to what he will do and what will happen in the next four years. Unfortunately, they really cannot even describe this fantasy America they believe he will create. On the other hand, several said to me that they will stop me from talking and writing so he will be free TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. When they utter such words, little do they realize that they are creating what will happen in the next four years–conflict!!!! They refuse to admit that his platitudes have no meaning. I ask again and again for them to tell me exactly how he plans to America great. The usual answer is this. We will kick your ass out of this country. I guess making America great is getting rid of all people who disagree with him.
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