I long for a goose neck

August 2018

The Daily Press ran a story with concern to aluminum tariffs and beer cans. A nice one-sided article but left me thinking of my youth. As a republican rural raised child of the sixties, I remember my Mom packing up the soda bottles for a return to the market.  As I turned 18 and started drinking beer, there were the gooseneck beer bottles. Some might have called them long necks. I have to say there is no better beer, than a beer that comes from a gooseneck bottle. In my day we shunned aluminum cans as the beer just did not taste quite as good and, not as cold. Today, I will take a draft beer in a glass over a canned beer any day. I want to forget where that draft beer came from and that is another bigger can! Drinking canned beer is like eating canned meat. It's editable in a pinch, but certainly not fresh or better than a deer steak cut fresh from a week old kill, hanging in the cellar.

Yet, we are now a throwaway society. 

I think regional craft brewers should look at the use of returnables for their customers. After all, if a millennial is willing to pay $5.00 or more for a beer then what is another dollar to save the environment? Just a side note here but, I find very few craft beers made today, drinkable. 

Recyclable bottles may be an inconvenience but, this old idea helps the environment and my taste buds. Reducing our dependency on Chinese aluminum is needed today until we have free and fair trade with no tariffs on both sides. 

Today's Democrats et alii, use these tariffs to attack the POTUS. Trade imbalances be damned, intellectual property stolen and who cares as long as they can attack! Democrats and the liberal media conveniently forget the use of cheap labor in other countries to make cheap goods for American imports. They soon forget the drywall made with formaldehyde, sickening 100's of Americans. They soon forget the lead paint used in our children's toys, they forget dangerous tires, antifreeze in toothpaste, the list goes on but, hey as long as it is cheap right?  

Most may not remember but, The United States had banned trade with China up until the early 1970s. A historic visit by Nixon made it possible to be friends. China was actually an importer of American goods and we ran a surplus with China until the normalization of trade in 1979. Once the trade was normalized and China has given favorable trade status the flow of goods and technology, flowed to China and the trade deficit began. Factories began to close in the 1990s and by 2006 left thousands without jobs all across America. You can thank Bill Clinton for that my friends. 

POTUS is simply caring for problems created long ago and it was not like, we were not warned by billionaire Ross Perot. He said " You will hear a giant sucking sound of jobs out of America." and that is just what happens. George H.W. Bush brokered the NAFTA deal and Bill Clinton signed the death warrant of the midwest. America sought normalized relations with China to counter Russia's influence. In the end, we let China take advantage of us, and now, we have a POTUS willing to set the record straight. I like fighters for America. 

We will not be bullied

Ref: Daily Press 8-19-2018 opinion “We will not be bullied”

Ref: 8-17-2018 opinion Williamsburg Gazette, author Peggy Bellows

The Boston Globe offered the national media an opportunity to join them in POTUS bashing. I offer this discourse.

Two weeks into Donald Trumps presidency, The New York Times ran an article detailing how President Donald Trump in his bathrobe, wandered the halls, looking for light switches. This is the first of many attacks by the media on a president that a left leaning industry full of self-righteous started their relationship with the winner of the 2016 election. Please explain to me what this type of attack had to do with reporting other than to bully or hurt someone?

Traditionally, respect for the highest office in the land encourage restraint in reporting gossip or paparazzi style fake news. Traditionally reporters would have been shunned to use unnamed sources and offer their own opinions. This new form of coverage makes President Trump the most unjustly treated President in recent history.

Example: You quoted Thomas Jefferson and yet you did not tell a complete story so let me help you tell your customers the truth where you fail. “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. This was written when Thomas Jefferson was the U.S. Minister. During his Presidency, he became critical of the press for what he saw as the partisan nature of the press. I quote Thomas Jefferson “Nothing can not be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” This is a great example of how the media manipulates the truth; it is an example of your deceit.

You do perform a critical function of holding people accountable, but when you let your own agenda interfere with that function you become unreliable. The truth is you do not dig for the truth if, the truth does not fit the lefts narrative. Example: The POTUS offered balanced remarks on the Charlottesville race riots, when he commented on both sides at fault.  News media were quick to share pictures of illegal immigrant children in steel cages blaming the Trump administration, turns out those pictures were taken during the Obama reign. The media in its quest to offer a misrepresentation of what Trump has said and done is quite blatant in this writer’s opinion. One has to ask, does the media do this because of a mental disorder “trump derangement syndrome” to know that what they are saying is true or false, or are they simply lying? It doesn’t make much difference; the public’s trust of the media is at all-time lows of 32% and yet they double down with more deceit. The damage to the media’s credibility has been done and at their own hands.