Raser's Edge:  Pssst… Hey Don we already have three!

In his ongoing battle with the press in general and CNN in particular Trump recently tweeted:  “Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”

Our embarrassing president never passes up an opportunity to show just how dumb he is. He obviously does not know the United States already has worldwide networks, three in fact: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and The Armed Forces Network.

As a public service to Trump and his minions who are probably just as dumb about this matter as he is, here is a description of the three.  (My favorite is RFE which was operating when I was a newspaper correspondent in Paris covering NATO.  We all knew it was an arm of the CIA.) 

Voice of America (VOA) is a U.S. government-funded international radio broadcast source which serves as the United States federal government's official institution for non-military, external broadcasting, the largest U.S. international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content in more than 40 languages which it distributes to affiliate stations around the globe. It is primarily viewed by foreign audiences, so VOA programming has an influence on public opinion abroad regarding the United States and its leaders.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government-funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East where it says that "the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed". RFE/RL is a 501(c)(3) corporation supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency overseeing all U.S. federal government international broadcasting services.

During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was broadcast to Soviet satellite countries and Radio Liberty (RL) targeted the Soviet Union. RFE was founded as an anti-communist propaganda source in 1949 by the National Committee for a Free Europe. RL was founded two years later and the two organizations merged in 1976. Communist governments frequently sent agents to infiltrate RFE's headquarters, and the KGB regularly jammed its signals. RFE/RL received funds covertly from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until 1972. During RFE's earliest years of existence, the CIA and U.S. Department of State issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between them and RFE staff.

The American Forces Network (AFN) is the broadcast service operated by the United States Armed Forces' American Forces Radio and Television Service^[1] (AFRTS) for its entertainment and command internal information networks worldwide. The AFN worldwide radio and television broadcast network serves American service members, Department of Defense and other U.S. government civilians and their families stationed at bases overseas, as well as U.S. Navy ships at sea. AFN broadcasts popular American radio and television programs from the major U.S. networks

Raser’s Edge: Compassion anyone?

As everyone who has been awake over the last week knows, California has been hit with unbelievably devastating forest fires killing scores of people, destroying thousands of homes and tens of thousands of forest lands.

And in typical fashion, our boorish president, rather than extend sympathy and compassion to the thousands of Californians enduring this catastrophe, he tweets: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now or no more Fed payments!” In other words, because he hates California, he has to blame the state and make it a political, rather than compassionate response.
 

Now let’s pose a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I posted this: “On Wednesday, I have to go to Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville for another surgery to remove melanoma from my right lung. Just like the California wild fires, I keep getting these things and this is the third surgery to take another melanoma out of my lungs.” *

Now let’s say one of my Facebook friends (let’s call him Bozo) sent me this reply: “There is no reason for you to keep getting these recurring melanoma events. If you had had better sun exposure management in your youth instead of going to the beach every summer, and if you had not moved to Florida to retire and go to the beach where there is sun, and therefore grossly mismanaged your life, you would not have these problems. The remedy now is no more Fed payments for your Medicare.”

Hopefully, many of you will get my point. I doubt very much that my Trumpist Facebook friends will have any idea what I am talking about.

*This is actually true. I am having my third lung surgery this week.