A list of books for and against Trump...

This isn't going to be some kind of political essay of the Trump Administration. It dawned on me one day that this President has had so many books written about him while being a sitting President that I decided to look up some of the book titles that have been released since January 2017...and some that have yet to surface. I'm not providing a definitive list...but to even say that should go a long way at explaining just how many books have been written about the President in a little over 3 years time. Obviously considering that Trump had been in the public eye for decades before running for President meant that most of the books that surfaced in 2017 were speculative...filled with information and often hearsay based on his past but had very little factual information on what a Trump Administration would look like.

Here's a list of books that have or will be released. Some of these books were written by Trump defenders, and for those books I'll feature the author's name, but the rest were written by what I call unhinged liberals on the attack who shall go anonymous. Search on-line stores for the books written by anti-Trump authors if you're interested in purchasing those. As a Trump supporter I find their books offensive which is why I'll provide the titles but not the author's name.

1. Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography (January 2017)

2. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (March 2019)

3. Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency (Andrew C. McCarthy; August 2019)

4. United States of Trump (Bill O'Reilly; September 2019)

5. Fear: Trump in the White House (September 2019)

6. The Plot Against the President (Lee Smith; October 2019)

7. Resistance at All Costs: How Trump Haters are Breaking America (Kimberly Strassel; October 2019)

8. Inside Trump's White House (November 2019)

9. Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Destroy Us (Donald Trump, Jr.; November 2019)

10. Revolution: Trump, Washington, and We The People (K.T. McFarland; February 2020)

11. The MAGA Doctrine (Charlie Kirk; March 2020)

12. The Case for Donald Trump (Victor Davis Hanson; March 2020)

13. Hiding in Plain Sight (April 2020)

14. Downfall: The Demise of a President and His Party (April 2020)

15. Donald Trump and His Assault on the Truth (June 2020)

16. The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump (June 2020)

17. The Room Where It Happened (June 2020)

18. Trump and the American Future (Newt Gingrich; June 2020)

19. How Trump Stole 2020 (July 2020)

20. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (July 2020)

21. Trump on Trial (August 2020)

22. Trump Women (September 2020; re-release of 2018 book, 'Golden Handcuffs')

23. Trump Century (Lou Dobbs; September 2020)

24. Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never Ending War on Trump (Byron York; September 2020)

I'll stop at 24!! That's just scratching the surface. The point of these books is to fight for or against the Trump Administration. I know there have been books published about presidents while they were in office and of course once they leave office but I don't know if any sitting President has ever been the subject of so many books from all sides of the political spectrum before!!

Newt Gingrich has written a couple of other books about Trump: "Trump vs. China: Facing America's Greatest Threat" (October 2019), "Trump's America: The Truth About Our Nation's Greatest Comeback" (June 2018), and "Understanding Trump" (June 2017).

Larry's Country Diner: Quarantine Version...

If you watch much of RFD-TV then you're familiar with the series, Larry's Country Diner. It's been on the air/in production for quite a long time. It's hosted by Larry Black and it features a regular cast of characters in a diner setting. Some of their episodes, prior to COVID-19, were taped inside the Ray Stevens CabaRay whereas most of their episodes are taped on a sound stage in Nashville in a diner setting. There's a small audience that the host and regular cast entertain with one liners and conversational jokes. The audience is served food and beverages. The show prides itself on it's realistic, live feel and each episode closes with the on-screen announcer, Keith Bilbrey, asking viewers to tune in next week "where the camera's keep rolling..." and then the cast, in unison, shouts out "...and we don't care!!". It's their way of saying that you'll see anything and everything, bloopers and all.

On an episode that aired not too long ago one of the guests happened to be Buddy Kalb. The episode was billed as the quarantine version due to Tennessee law prohibiting mass gatherings. The show featured all the cast members on tape from remote locations (most of them from their own house) and the guest, Buddy Kalb, was seated with a guitar inside the recording studio located inside the CabaRay. You can watch the episode HERE. The link takes you to the Facebook Watch-Live page. The show aired on-line and viewers left commentary throughout the episode by way of Country Road TV. I caught the episode when it aired on RFD-TV. Anyway, Buddy Kalb spoke about his career and sang several songs. He is part of the Ray Stevens Music group and has assisted Ray in many endeavors over the decades. He is first and foremost a writer...he either writes or co-writes with other collaborators...or writes songs himself and most of them are recorded by Ray Stevens. In music videos Buddy is often seen as the straight man or the comic foil depending on Ray's performance. Buddy plays the role of "The Blue Cyclone" in the music video of that song. In "Surfin' U.S.S.R." Buddy is seen as the cigar smoking woman from Moscow U.

In the "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" music video, a song Buddy and his wife, Carlene, wrote, Buddy can be seen as Harv Newland. I'd read where his wife, Carlene, is playing the role of Sister Bertha but I thought it was the late Janice Copeland who appeared as Sister Bertha. Buddy appears in the music video for "It's Me Again, Margaret". He's playing the policeman with the binoculars. Buddy's sidekick in that scene is Ray's late brother, John. The woman playing Margaret looks like Sister Bertha...some sources say it's Carlene Kalb but I could swear it's Janice Copeland playing those two roles. Buddy's name on songwriter credits is C.W. Kalb, Jr. One of the recent Ray Stevens music videos featuring Buddy is "The Skies Just Ain't Friendly Anymore"...he plays the TSA agent.

Let's Slowly Re-Open the Economy...

I've been participating more than usual in on-line forums. I'm in-between jobs at the moment and so it's given me a lot of time to actively participate in those on-line news articles. If you're not familiar with what I'm referring to I'll explain: If you happen to have Yahoo as your home page then you'll see articles show up about COVID-19 and if you have the news/politics section open then you're going to see a lot of articles posted on Yahoo that originated, mostly, from left-wing blog sites. There's always a comment section where liberals dominate the conversation...and a lot of this liberal domination stems from the fact that the articles themselves have a liberal slant and therefore it welcomes liberal commentary to reinforce whatever narrative the article is pushing. Since Yahoo is my home page I'm only familiar with the news/political articles that are posted there. I'm sure other internet companies are heavily into the practice of promoting liberal viewpoints, too. Anyway, since I've had the free time, I've been actively commenting about the content/quality of the articles I'm reading and replying to other people's comments...way more than I usually would. The news articles that are shared on Yahoo come from a wide variety of liberal and often socialist blog sites. Once in a great while there will be an article posted on Yahoo originating from a conservative blog page but that's definitely a rarity and not the norm. One of the articles posted on Yahoo that I recently read and commented on comes from the liberal organization, The Guardian. The name of the article is: 'Operation reopen America: Are We About to Witness a second Historic Failure of leadership from Trump?'. If you call those organizations out on their liberal bias they deny any political bias yet with the title of an article being so one-sided you can easily see why the organization is accused of promoting liberal viewpoints. The Daily Beast, The New York Times, and The Huff Post - all heavily liberal in their coverage - are a couple of other outlets from which Yahoo routinely gathers their news articles from. The article I made mention of by The Guardian is where my most recent remark can be found. I was making the argument that liberals don't really want to see a slow re-open of the economy, and have it show any glimmer of success, for fear of how positive it could reflect on Trump. Liberals, more than likely, prefer to remain under house arrest and have limited movement in society...not because they're entirely concerned with the nation's health but because it's a negative they can attach to the President...here's my comment in it's entirety:

"It's dissolved into pure politics with the liberals...not that it wasn't about politics from the start...but they're nervous about a slow re-opening of the economy. It isn't because they're completely and totally concerned about the nation's health...it's because if there's even a glimmer of an economical rebound and a broad showing across the country of COVID-19 hot spots diminishing it'll be a winner for the President in the eyes of a general public who are not entirely fixated on politics 24/7. If liberals can't control the conversation it's a lost cause for them. To back up my remark about liberals shifting into politics above everything else: when it comes to the virus, mark my words, for every economical re-bound that makes the news you're going to see liberal organizations and news outlets counter those positive images and show people that contracted the COVID-19 virus. In other words liberals will progress into the exploitation of COVID-19 patients for political benefit.".

In another tab/window I refreshed the Yahoo news article and seen that, as of this writing, my comment over there received 76 thumbs up ratings and 66 thumbs down ratings and there's 16 replies. I don't engage in on-line flame wars, though. I say how I feel, post the comment, and move on. I don't allow myself to get baited into arguments.

I'd never share links to those liberally slanted news articles for a number of reasons. The main reason is I don't want to provide a link to articles whose presentation and view go against my own viewpoints but I also don't want to provide a link containing flame wars of which I'm no fan of. However, you can read about the Federal plan, Opening Up America Again, when you click this LINK. The target date is set for May 1st. The image below is just an image. It isn't a link to a news story.

Trump Daily Briefing; April 2020

Earlier in the day I wrote a remark in an article posted on Yahoo called 'Trump is an epic troll whose Twitter use is dangerous amid Coronavirus, Kara Swisher says'. The article was written by a guy named Max Zahn. The article features the author's interview with a liberal businesswoman and it's filled with so many predictable comments. She was making the argument that it's unfair that Trump has nearly 80 million Twitter followers. Her reasoning that it's "dangerous" is based on his ability to successfully reach millions upon millions of people on social media...when a lot of the liberal news outlets have resorted to not airing his daily COVID-19 briefings. The liberal news outlets, more or less, stopped airing the briefings entirely or they only air bits and pieces of them, because they see the briefings as campaign speeches. Imagine if news outlets that are seen as conservative would have done that when it came to Obama's speeches. You'd have Obama supporters crying 'racism' and all kinds of other things if a news network dared to skip anything Obama was holding a press conference about. 

Anyway, here's my remark/comment about the Max Zahn article...my reaction is directed not at the author of the article but the subject of his interview, Swisher:

"Spare us your liberal whining and complaining. You're furious and enraged because Trump isn't afraid to speak his mind and the overall attitude if someone happens to be offended, so what. The author spends an entire article propping up liberal propaganda, griping about how Trump chooses to use social media, and because his Twitter account has nearly 80 million followers he's able to put his messages directly to the people without the blatant liberal editorializing that goes on whenever an on-line liberal organization or liberal cable TV channel airs something he's said. The liberal news outlets just can't stand it because his commentary and messages are reaching the people...those liberal television channels thought they were being clever when they stopped airing his press briefings in their entirety. The media conglomerates hadn't had the ability to control and shape a person's viewpoint since social media came along...Trump is more or less the only President that's actively used the tools of social media to his advantage and so his critics want to cry 'no fair'. Once you read further into the article, if you have the stomach for it, you'll see a rehashing of the story about those who mistakenly took fish aquarium cleaner due to it's name being similar to the anti-malaria drug. Also, you'll see Swisher's lavish praise of the far left radical nut Ocasio-Cortez. In Swisher's own words: "She's fantastic.". That statement is sickening enough but Swisher goes on to say: "She's a more call and response kind of person; she speaks internet — you know, she speaks Twitter."."

I could provide more of my comments but I only chose to share a couple of them. This is the kind of thing that goes on day to day in the age of the internet. A news article pops up on someone's news feed and from there, if so inclined, a person reads the story and posts their comment...and most begin a flame-war of personal insults that go back and fourth.

Joe Diffie: 1958-2020

The news broke earlier today that country music artist, Joe Diffie, has passed away at age 61 from the COVID-19 virus. He had released a statement just this past Friday (March 27th) that he had tested positive for the virus but this is the first case that I'm aware of where contraction of the virus resulted in death only several days later. It doesn't follow the pattern that's been happening around the country or around the world...and I'm hoping more news surfaces. It's puzzling, to me at least, how quick it happened from testing positive and then passing away days later. I'm also sure underlying issues played a factor...

I first heard of Joe by way of a quirky music video that used to play on The Nashville Network in the early 1990s. I loved the video...I've always had appreciation for songs that injected comedy or humor into their stories...and the music video for "If The Devil Danced in Empty Pockets" was certainly memorable. I wasn't aware that he'd released another hit prior to that one...but that's the song that introduced me to Joe Diffie's music. His first hit, "Home", arrived late in 1990 and it hit number one. He is one of the very few country music artists to have their major label debut single peak at the top of the chart. Joe co-wrote numerous songs and a number of them were released as singles during his career. His songwriting, in my opinion, was under-rated. I'm always finding out that he helped write songs that I'd heard for years. One of those happened to be the Holly Dunn smash hit in 1989, "There Goes My Heart Again". Joe was also a co-writer of "I'm the Only Thing I'll Hold Against You" which appeared on Conway Twitty's final studio album, Final Touches, in 1993.

In 1993 Joe Diffie became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Some could argue that 1993 was his peak year even though none of his releases that year hit number one. It's arguable because a couple of the singles he issued that year dominated 1990's country radio and could still be heard as re-currents well into the next decade: "Honky Tonk Attitude", "John Deere Green", the mega-hit "Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox", and in late 1993/early 1994 the ballad "In My Own Backyard". However, later on in 1994, Joe had his biggest hit single...the novelty "Pickup Man" which hit number one and remained there for four weeks. This was a follow-up to "Third Rock from the Sun" which had also hit number one. So, there you go, he had two back-to-back number one hits in 1994 and so it's arguable that 1994 was his commercial peak. In 1995 he had his last number one, "Bigger Than the Beatles".

In his career he sent 17 singles into the Top-10 of the Country charts during the years of 1990 through 2001; of those 17 singles 5 of them went to number one. In addition to those singles he also enjoyed 11 additional 'Top-40' Country hits for an overall total of 38 singles that reached that portion of the Country music chart. He sold millions of records. He had several other singles releases that peaked outside the Country Top-40 during their promotional stage and from unsolicited airplay. He was one of those artists that didn't stir the pot or rock the boat that much...controversy was really never part of his career.

His music was championed by a lot of country music fans of all age groups and even though country airplay playlists have gotten so tight over the decades, and the airplay hits dried up, Joe had a solid packed itinerary of tour dates scheduled for 2020....prior to the COVID-19 pandemic upending normalcy as we knew it causing nearly all entertainment venues to close down (the Grand Ole Opry remains open to the performers, announcers, and production assistants because of it being a weekly radio show but the public isn't allowed to attend the performances). There were so many concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down large gatherings of people and then the news broke on Friday that Joe tested positive for the virus...and now it's two days later and he's gone at 61.

Joe Diffie: 1958-2020