Celebrating Poetry Month, with “We, Haiku.”

In honor of National Poetry Month (April) and National Haiku Poetry Day (April 17) , Amazon.com is still offering our awarding winning digital, interactive Haiku Poetry book, “We, Haiku,” for the special price of $4.49! Not only can you enter your own Haiku into the book, but you can read original Haiku Poetry by Steve Villano, and see the beautiful, original line-drawings of Alysha Lang throughout the 40 page book.

Here are a few samples of the Haiku you’ll find:

Time stops, when with them.

Nothing else matters. Even the

Hummingbirds stop by.

——————–

I am my own strife.

Resistance to me, is me.

I am my own life.

——————–

If everybody

Were my child, my love their shield,

Then, mourning would end.

——————-

The Demon Beggar

Of Drumm Street. Gone. Death by cold.

One story; not told.

———————

I think in Haiku.

Awakened at night, I write.

Hai-jacked, I am.

CNN’s Jeff Zucker: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. TWICE.


(The New York Times Magazine, April 9, 2017, ran a cover story about how CNN’s head honcho Jeff Zucker, who headed NBC Entertainment when he greenlighted Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice,” has served as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, by foisting Trump upon the nation…TWICE. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/magazine/cnn-had-a-problem-donald-trump-solved-it.html?smid=fb-share.)

 
Fifteen months ago, before any of the GOP Presidential Primaries began, my analysis of the Frankenstein Trump monster created by Zucker, NBC’s Mark Burnett, and NBC/Comcast bosses Brian Roberts and Steve Burke was among the first to take Zucker & Company to task for creating that Reality-TV creature, for fun and profit. Now, Zucker is still laughing all the way to the bank, as CNN’s profits soar, and the last laugh is on us. Here’s my piece, updated once before for my “Radical Correspondence” Blog &  Medium:

 

 

(Thirteen months ago, almost to the day, I posted this blog criticizing NBC for creating the television career of the Vulgarian Trump, and paying him more than $200 million for aggrandizing his piggish, demeaning, sexist ways on a national TV network. In the immediate aftermath of the revelations of the Trump Sex Abuse Tapes, done in conjunction with another NBC employee, Billy Bush, I reposted my essay. That was two months ago. Now, NBC has decided to reclaim their evil spawn, by re-hiring him as Executive Producer of “The Apprentice.” Mark Burnett is not yet revealing how much they’ll be paying the Kleptocrat-in-Chief. Emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution anyone? Impeachment?)

 
Tom Brokaw’s two and one-half minute noble tsk-tsking of Donald Trump’s full-blown Fascism — coming at the tail end of a little-watched Tuesday night 6 pm newscast over a year ago — was far too little, way too late from the Broadcast network which made Trump an international TV star and helped launch his political career.

 
Now that Trump’s big, ugly Un-American backside has been bared for all to see, those wonderful folks who gave this monster a global platform to pedal his pernicious views, are beginning to have some second thoughts, but very few have anything to do with soul searching. NBC, for example did pay Donald Trump a total of $213, 606, 575 in salary to host 14 seasons of “The Apprentice” — an average of about $15 million per season, according to documents Trump’s campaign filed with the Federal Elections Commission.

 

 

 

Then, after they handed Trump the bully’s pulpit to pick on everyone from the disabled, to Mexicans, to Syrian Refugees, to wounded war veterans, to Muslims, NBC — no longer seeing profit in Trump’s pugnaciousness — fired the Towering Inferno after he insulted all Mexicans in late June, 2015, during his announcement for President. NBC’s Latino market was just too big for the network to fail. But now, that the NBC/Comcast stellar citizens see a chance to make almost as much money off a Trump presidency than the Kleptocrat-in-Chief himself, they’re inviting the pig back to the trough.

 
Financially, as well as cosmetically, NBC’s announcement to Dump Trump last year was good business. Following its’ first five years, “ The Apprentice” began to rapidly lose market share. NBC meanwhile, had become the NBC/Universal/Comcast monolith after 2009, rolling up big new profits in its cable, movie and amusement park businesses. But now, NBC’s high dudgeon over Trump’s filthy mouth, racist and sexist slurs, has disappeared: they’re clamoring to get back into the pocket of the Kleptocrat they created.

 
NBC and Burnett made Donald Trump — long viewed as another wannabe starlet in New York politics–richer, far more famous, and extraordinarily more powerful than he had ever been before. Trump’s little inheritance of his father’s real estate fortune — built with federal funds for constructing middle-income housing, and keeping Blacks out of that housing — and even a New York Daily News front page headline boasting of the “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had” with Marla Maples, weren’t enough to get him the kind of attention he craved. Before his stint at NBC, Trump looked like a silly little post-card painter without serious recognition of his talent.

 
Then along came Mark Burnett and NBC, and the inner Trump was let loose in the living rooms of millions of Americans through the mindlessness of Reality TV. Burnett, Trump’s co-producer on “Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice”, and a prime mover in bringing Reality TV to American television with his “Survivor” in 2000, and other programming such as “The Voice,” “Shark Tank,” “ Sarah Palin’s Alaska (yes, that too) and, the aptly named “Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?” boasts a net worth estimated at somewhere between $385 million to $450 million — a small fortune built on convincing Americans that eating bugs and spitting bile at people was entertainment. Trump spotted a winning formula for his brand of bragadaccio, and a malleable audience to swallow his hollow values and hateful views.

 
Forbes reported earlier this year that Trump’s entertainment-related income since 2004 — the first, and most successful year of “The Apprentice”– was approximately $500 million, from his books, speeches, beauty pageants and Reality-TV employment, the bulk of which, came from NBC, and was made possible by his ten-year run on the NBC aired reality show–including nearly $100 million in product-placement fees Trump and “Apprentice” co-producer Burnett got from shaking down program sponsors like Pepsi and Crest.

 
NBC can roll out all of the Tom Brokaw mea culpa commentaries it wants; pretend to be righteous by having Joe Scarborough cut off Trump after allowing the Quasimodo of Queens to rant on, or even continue to allow MSNBC to operate. The network conglomerate created this monster, and, with the willing leadership of programming ghouls like Mark Burnett and Jeff Zucker at the time (who went on to greater shame at CNN), NBC disarmed the audience of any analytical ability to recognize that its collective brain was being snatched, and now, it’s pockets being picked as well.

 
Sleep well,  CNN’s Jeff Zucker, and NBC & Comcast’s Brian Roberts and Steve Burke: you’ve enabled the raping and pillaging of the country, but, at least, you and the Kleptocrat-in-Chief are making money.

Orchestrating Poison Gas Deaths of “Children of God” to Benefit Trump & Putin?

I hate even entertaining these thoughts.

The chilling idea that there are such inhuman thugs as leaders of nations who could cause such questions to be raised is the stuff nightmares are made of.  However, the context of this week’s Sarin gas murders of 80 Syrians by Syrian & Russian leadership, and the “proportional” response by Donald Trump–an Assad cheerleader as recently as last week–makes the question necessary to ask:  Were the poison gas killings of innocent Syrians orchestrated by Putin and Assad , and the carefully choreographed response by Trump carried out to benefit Trump and Putin?

Here are a few things to consider:

  •  Trump’s virulent oppostion to US intervention in Syria in 2013 when 1400 hundred humans–and many more “children of God suffered such horrors,”  were slaughtered by Assad’s use of Sarin gas. Why did those deaths not matter four years ago, and now, these far fewer deaths do?

 

  • Trump’s hollow piety that “No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” has a very short shelf life, corresponding to his tanking poll numbers.  That standard didn’t apply as recently as last week, when he supported accepting Assad in power, with help from his pal Putin. Putin’s broken promise to rid Syria of its stockpile of poison gas–made to embarrass President Obama and the United States four years ago, and to secure a foothold in the Middle East for Russia–has never mattered to Trump.  Not even now, since he is still silent on it.

 

  •  Trump’s carefully scripted line of “No child of God should suffer such horror,” didn’t apply to thousands of Syrian refugee childen, and their parents, he campaigned to keep out of America, despite their fleeing from terrorist attacks from ISIS, the Russians and their own government.  He never expressed emotion when a dead Syrian child washed up on a beach, or when a bomb-shocked Syrian boy’s photograph became a worldwide symbol of such horrors.

 

  •  Assad’s latest poison gas attack on his own people was  targeted and constrained, compared to the one he carried out 4 years ago.  This limited atrocity raised more questions: Did Putin know about it ahead of time? Did he collaborate with Assad in conducting the limited Sarin gas attack as a way of giving Trump the opportunity to make a limited response and thus appear “tough” vs. Russia. Did Putin see it as a way to further his foothold in Syria and the Middle East?

 

  • With the FBI and US Senate investigations closing in on Trump’s team and possible collaboration with the Russians during the 2016 elections,  did Putin (with assistance from Assad, his client) stage these 80 murders, to give Trump the opportunity to: 1. look tough; 2. “stand up” to Russia; 3. Proclaim the moral high ground during a cynically named “Leadership Week”, and, 4. Prop up Trump’s sinking poll numbers?

 

  • Putin &  Russia clearly gain from this as well. With the US “proportional” attack, Putin can now pressure Assad that Syria needs Russia’s presence even more, to neutralize the involvement of the US. Russia’s largest airbase outside of mainland Russia is located in Syria.

 

  • Trump’s empty “No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” has never applied  to the other 500,000 Syrians slaughtered with conventional weapons during Assad’s reign of terror, especially since Russia’s physical and political presence in Syria began 4 years ago. Trump’s only interest in Syrian children up to this week was to keep them out of the United States as refugees, regardless of how horrible the terror at home.  Now, he sees that crusading on their corpses can bring him political gain.

 

  • Measure the responses of Russia and Syria over the coming days to ascertain whether this action was a pre-choreographed  piece to help BOTH Trump and Russia. Expect rhetorical condemnation from Putin and Assad, but little else. They will tacitly “accept,” the US’ “proportional” response–as if 80 humans exterminated like cockroaches by poison gas  can ever be equated with missile strikes at an empty air force base.  Proportional?

 

  • Everyone gains here, except the dead. Trump looks tougher with Russia, and changes the subject from the Trump/Russia investigations for a while; Putin gains further leverage inside of Syria, and extends his military presence in the Midldle East; and, Assad, has his hands slapped for slaughtering his own people, yet again.

 

  •  Trump’s defenders are already mouthing the disgusting minimization of the death of “God’s Children,” by pointing to the limited missile attacks on an empty air force base (that both Russia  & Syria were pre-warned to empty) as “evidence” that Trump cannot possibly be in bed with Putin.

For thugs like Putin, Assad and Trump, children suffering such horrors are merely the cost of doing business and clinging to power.