BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  APR 13, 2018

This is an expanded and updated version of an article published in The Hill on 4/9/18.

The United Nations described it as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” the military offensive that led to the exodus of Rohingya Muslims in the Myanmar province of Rakhine. Almost a half-million men, women, and children have fled persecution or death in the region over the past year, crossing the border to Bangladesh or climbing into small boats for the trip to Thailand and Malaysia. One refugee called the slaughter in Rakhine “house-to-house killing.”

CBS brought the horrible situation back to center stage on Sunday, March 25, with a show focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, noting in particular the plight of children and the cries of the people facing gruesome government hostility. It is a newsworthy story, with so many aspects that could be reported on weekly, along with all other stories of global consequence.

Instead, the broadcast highlighted a classic problem with the U.S. news media. You see, the broadcast didn’t run on CBS News. It was a storyline on a CBS Entertainment series, “Madam Secretary.” Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 13, 2018

Congress was burning the midnight oil once again last week, rushing to pass a resolution extending federal spending for only another month. It was the fourth time legislators have had to do that in as many months.

In Washington, that’s good news. The alternative was to shutter some government agencies until the money could be restored. It is a shame, isn’t it? Dysfunction is the norm.

Taxpayers pay a heavy price for the dysfunction of their government. It runs into the billions upon billions of dollars, mind-numbing figures to average taxpayers who clip dollar-off coupons every Saturday. The most recent extended shutdown—there have been four in the last 10 years—was in 2013 and lasted 14 days, costing taxpayers an estimated $2 billion. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
DECEMBER 11, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

There is no other way to put this: The press frenzy to get Donald Trump is causing mistakes. Big mistakes.

Moreover, it is providing ammunition to the Trump family and friends that the press, as Don, Jr. Tweeted over the weekend, “couldn’t care less about the truth.”

As an example, on Friday, CNN spent the day breathlessly reporting that on September 4, 2016, “Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and others in the Trump Organization received an email…offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.” Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
OCTOBER 23, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Give me a day to get back up to speed with all the wonderful political news I have missed. There will be a regular MULLINGS tomorrow covering what you have been cringing about.

A number of you – a gratifying number of you – sent me emails over this past week wondering if I was ok.

There was no MULLINGS on Thursday, and my Tweets (and corresponding Facebook entries) dropped to near zero.

The reason is, I was elected to the Marietta College (Marietta, Ohio 45750) Board of Trustees. This is a very big deal to me. For those who have followed me for some time know that my checkered commercial career is a paragon of smooth sailing compared to my academic career. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
AUGUST 31, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

If you’ve never been in a flood, you have no idea of the devastation it brings with it.

A flood that makes its way into your house is not like the bathtub overflowing. It is like a swamp came into your house bringing with it the mud, the smells, sometimes the critters and it gets into every nook and cranny.

A minor flood only exists in newspapers and on TV. Any flood in your house is a major disruptive event.

Look around the first floor of your house and measure up two inches from the floor. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
JUNE 15, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

One of my many self-invented theories is this: Reaction to a news event diminishes, like sound, as a square of the distance between you and the source.

If there is an earthquake on the West Coast, we on the East Coast will feel empathy, but it will not have the same emotional zetz as it does for those of you whose dishes vibrated off the breakfast table.

If there is a major fire in the East, the same level of emotion will be experienced by TV viewers in the West.

My house is less than two miles from the baseball field and YMCA where people were shot Wednesday morning.

That, to my ears, was a very sharp, loud sound. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
MAY 11, 2017 | Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Donald Trump had every Constitutional right to fire James Comey if he thought he wasn’t doing a good job.

Comey himself said that in his resignation letter.

Trump had the right to fire him for any reason. He could fire him if he didn’t like the tie he wore to a Committee hearing. He could fire him for putting ketchup on a hot dog. He could fire him if he perceived he wasn’t loyal to him. Or he could fire him for incompetence.

Under the law, Donald Trump had the power to fire James Comey.

The question is not about the legality of the action. This firing has not sparked a Constitutional crisis. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
MAY 8, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

A Tweet of mine from May 4: Here’s what I know that I know: When everyone says THIS is going to happen … THAT happens. Healthcare vote today may prove that again.

You may have heard, seen, or read about the House voting on its version of “repeal and replace” last week. It passed by a vote of 217 – 213. No Ds voted for it. 20 Rs voted against it.

The popular press made a big deal about how the vote was soooooo close. Well, it was. It got one more vote than required for an absolute majority. Because of four vacancies in the House (Georgia 6, Montana At-Large, South Carolina 5 and California 34) Republicans needed 216 votes to assure a majority. Continue reading →

BY JOHN FEEHERY
APR 12, 2017 | Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, thinks he is being clever by linking action on tax reform/business tax relief to President Trump’s own tax returns.

Here is how the Washington Post reported it: “It’s going to make tax reform much harder” if Trump doesn’t release his returns, Schumer told reporters Tuesday. Anytime the president proposes something on tax reform, “the average American is going to say, ‘Oh, he’s not doing that because it’s good for me, he’s doing it because it’s good for him.’ So for his own good, he ought to make them public. And the big mystery is why he hasn’t.”

Actually, the average American doesn’t really care about Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Throughout the campaign, the Democrats attempted to raise Trump’s tax returns as an issue. They also raised Trump’s connections to Vladimir Putin. They called him a racist, hinted that he was anti-Semitic, claimed he was homophobic, and launched all kinds of other charges. Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  APR 3, 2017

A couple of months ago, Reuters, NPR, ProPublica reported and a Washington Post correspondent tweeted about Donald Trump’s appearance at the DC Trump Hotel one Saturday, to attend a “pay-to-play” party hosted by Kuwait’s US Ambassador Salem al-Sabah.

Trump was there on Saturday, all right, but the party was the Wednesday before.

Several months ago a pizzeria in Washington DC was exposed as a secret location of a child sex trafficking ring affiliated with Hillary Clinton. It almost got people killed.

The media is still squeezing every bit of life out of an unverified dossier allegedly put together by Russian spies revealing nasty accusations about Donald Trump.

More news. Tom Selleck is dead. And so is Bill Murray. Melania Trump is getting a divorce.

It is all “fake news, or a variation of it.”     Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
MAR 27, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Ok. Enough.

Enough pointing, and jumping up and down, and sneering.

“Repeal and Replace” failed. Ignominiously.

Everybody gets some of the blame. Some of the blame goes to President Donald Trump. Less, though, than most people are assigning. His blame comes largely from the hubris borne of ignorance during the campaign when, according to the Liberal group “Think Progress” Trump promised 68 times to “Repeal and Replace.” The first time was on the first day his campaign.

But, when it came down to it, President Trump did everything he could with the limited knowledge of the way things work. And a limited knowledge of what was in the bill. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
MAR 20, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

Tough week for the arts.

One the one hand, President Donald Trump served up a budget which would starve them of the funds they need to help people find their artistic voices; to be able to teach children there is more to life than a new video game; that a song can move you to tears or to blessed laughter.

A writer who was an artist died this weekend. Jimmy Breslin.

Jimmy Breslin was a newspaper columnist. But, that is like saying H.L. Mencken was a newspaperman. Continue reading →

BY BETSY WRIGHT HAWKINGS
MAR 16, 2017 | Reprinted from the blog at DemocracyFund.org

Congressmen Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and Will Hurd (R-TX) might not agree on every aspect of education or trade policy. But they have experienced life on the highway – together.

Faced with travel delays caused by a winter storm, Reps. O’Rourke and Hurd made the practical decision to rent a car and head north, a choice anyone who knows the two men could understand. Rep. O’Rourke, who started his own small business, and Rep. Hurd, who served in the CIA during the War on Terror, are “get the job done” kinds of guys.

Their shared work ethic and commitment to serve their Texan constituents helped them connect during their long ride back to Washington. As they cruised along Route 81, these bipartisan road trippers drank coffee, stopped for snacks, and took questions from Facebook Live viewers tuned into their trip. Continue reading →

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAR 8, 2017

The Chamber of the US House of Representatives was practically empty. It was Monday.

The House was in session, however, for “special orders,” a time when Members are recognized to talk about anything on their mind and invite other members to join them. It was this procedure rebellious Republicans used a quarter century ago to turn deadly boredom into live political theater in their campaign to take control of the Congress from Democrats.

On this Monday, Congressman Darin LaHood of Illinois was hosting a special order to memorialize a predecessor, Bob Michel, who represented Central Illinois for 38 years before retiring in 1994.

Bob died on February 17, 2017. He was 93.

LaHood put a nice photo of Bob on an easel and recalled the Leader’s extraordinary life and career, from a wounded and decorated infantryman in World War II, to more than 40 years in Congress as a staffer, Member and leader; a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather. It was all there. Continue reading →

BY BETSY WRIGHT HAWKINGS
MAR 6, 2017 | Reprinted from the blog at DemocracyFund.org

The Freshman members of the 115th Congress know something we all know; the 2016 election was marked by some of the coarser political rhetoric of modern history, and not surprisingly left our country feeling more divided than ever.

More uniquely, they have taken an important first step toward doing something about it.

Recently, 28 Republican and 18 Democratic Freshman Members — representing red and blue states from coast to coast — signed a Commitment to Civility and spoke on the House floor about why they made this commitment, what their constituents had sent them to Washington to accomplish, and how civility is essential to working together across the aisle to achieve those goals. In all, 46 of the 52 new members signed the commitment, which urges productive dialogue and rejects the idea that political rivals are enemies. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
MAR 1, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

At 9:39 (about halfway into the speech) I Tweeted this:
I know it’s part of the deal to find fault with every syllable of this speech, but so far it’s very well written and very well delivered.

My Twitter feed, which is mostly national political reporters, was soggy with the tears of disappointment that President Donald Trump hadn’t put on a clown suit and gone completely off script.

While not officially the Constitutionally mandated “State of the Union” address, it had all the trappings and all of the elements. Continue reading →

BY RICH GALEN
FEB 27, 2017 | Reprinted from Mullings.com

By this morning you know two things: First, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences screwed up the presentation of the biggest award of its year. Second, President Donald Trump is at war with the Washington press corps.

I’d love to hear from you on which you care about more.

I don’t know much about the movies, so I’ll leave The La-La-Land/Moonlight fiasco to the real news outlets.

I’ll stick with what I actually do know a little about: The “Fake, phoney, fake” news outlets around which I’ve spent most of my life. Continue reading →