January 17, 2019

AOC: two million Twitter followers and growing

I'm not on Twitter (heck, I'm not on any social media), but I do believe this number will grow by leaps and bounds. Her recent clips looking for Mitch, showing us a member of Congress inside the Capitol, have gone viral even outside of Twitter. That's as close as you can get to a government official talking directly to the American people without filtering by the media.

Criticize her for it? Hey, POTUS legitimized using Twitter a couple of years ago, so it must be okay.

January 16, 2019

So, are the shutdown and the wall just a distraction

from T's wanting to pull out of NATO? I don't watch Rachel (or any of them), but just took a peek at a clip and it seems senior officials are raising a red flag.

Stage magicians call this sort of thing "misdirection." I wonder if T and his team have been taking lessons in magic.

January 16, 2019

My letter to Sen. Harris re: Barr's comment about maybe not revealing the report

His comment about "maybe" not making the report available to the public really got under my skin. Here's my letter to Harris et al regarding this. Feel free to copy and send to your own MoCs.

Dear Senator Harris,

You may or may not be aware of this, but you and a few other Democratic MoCs have been getting rave reviews at Democratic Underground (www.democraticunderground.com), a chat room for Democrats who care deeply about what’s going on in our country. There’s a lot of support there for you.

One of the topics that just came up was Bill Barr’s comment that he might consider not making Bob Mueller’s full report open to the public. In my opinion, and that of many others, this would be a disgrace and a slap in the face to the American public, who have a right to know if the person holding the office of President of the United States colluded with a foreign power to attain that office. And it would deal a serious blow to the trust and faith we the people have – and want to have – in our government and on the people we elected to represent us.

Personally, I don’t care what the investigation reveals, and I also believe that many others don’t either. If he colluded with Russia, it’s a matter for Congress and for the courts. If he didn’t, then he didn’t. And if it’s somewhere in the middle, then who knows. But we’re paying for this investigation, and we’re sick and tired of hearing about it for two years, of reading about it, and of listening to those highly-paid “TV pundits,” (i.e., entertainers) who are making millions by inciting the American public to anger for the sake of TV ratings. I, and many others, want to get this over with. And keeping the report secret won’t help dissipate the anger that’s palpable all over the country: it’ll just increase it.

On the other hand, we all know it won’t be concealed forever anyway. It can’t be, not in this day and age. At some point, someone with the integrity and conscience of a Daniel Ellsberg will come forward, and someone with the integrity and conscience of a Bob Woodward or a Carl Bernstein will publish it. Using the phrase “national security” to keep the report secret is baloney and we all know it. If names need to be redacted to protect our intelligence assets, then fine, redact them. Nobody will care. But the gist of the report -- whether the person holding the office of President of the United States colluded with a foreign power -- needs to be revealed to the American public. We have a right to know that.

I strongly urge you to take all necessary steps to insure that this report is made available to the public. It’ll make some people happy and some others angry, but we’re already there anyway. We want this to go away.

Keep up the good work; we really appreciate it.

Best regards,

January 16, 2019

Does anyone even read posts here anymore?

Been noticing it more and more... more and more new posts keep appearing and keep getting pushed down the page. So many of them have only a few replies because they don't stick around long enough to get read.

And then there are the duplicate posts: the same subject matter, on the same page, covered in posts by different people.

Are we just that much into writing, or are we being hacked?

January 16, 2019

I think a lot of people in this country want to be pissed off and look for reasons or excuses

to do it. And the media knows it and exploits it.

Someone here mentioned shutting off some of the pundits on Fox, and I said the best way to do that is to ignore them and let the ratings drop. Personally, I don't need to watch commentators (entertainers making fortunes) just so I can get pissed off. I don't have a pressing need to place my hand on the stove just so I can get burned, and I've felt a helluva lot better since I stopped watching some of these people. I don't even watch Colbert, Meyers, and other comedians any more, even though I used to love doing so. I just check several news outlets a day and stick to pieces that appear to be objective; it's much easier on my blood pressure. I can't wait until some genius at a network starts making political or partisan comments about earthquakes and storms.

I'm old enough to remember when news programs just reported the news, and I remember when Kronkite made a personal comment about the Viet Nam war and people were shocked that he did so. Now, apparently some guy on Fox suggested disbanding the FBI. Another talking point by an entertainer -- another comment designed to get people pissed off and talking and sticking around to watch the commercials.

The media is telling us what to think and we're falling for it. And they're making fortunes out of it.

January 13, 2019

If Congress weren't getting paid, the shutdown would be over by now.

And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it had been the Republicans who pushed T to end it. But of course, our dear dear elected representatives live in a different world, and by different rules, than the rest of us.

Sorry to be blunt, but I've been around the block a few too many times to not recognize horseshit when I smell it.

January 11, 2019

This isn't about the wall or about illegal immigration.

All the recent rhetoric makes it very clear. And the threat to declare a national emergency makes it even more clear.

This is about a guy (or people) who are deathly afraid of the consequences if he/they fail to go through with something they committed to. The desperation is blatantly visible to anyone who cares to look. We need to wake up and see what's there.

January 11, 2019

On wheels and walls (re: T's comment).

Just had a weird thought -- Sunday cartoon weird. One of the tweets responding to T's comment said that the first wheel we know of was a pottery wheel, and that wheels weren't used for tranportation for another 300 years.

So what if the person who made that pottery wheel hadn't rounded it off? Would all our wheels be square? That would make for some uncomfortable rides, even in The Beast.

Some days I just can't believe what I see in the news.

January 10, 2019

Kamala Harris on AOC and Rashida Tlaib

I decided many years ago that I can't handle listening to politicians, and for the most part I've avoided it. But this morning I decided to take a chance on seeing what Harris had to say about AOC and Tlaib.

First impression was that it was a setup by the program. They were basically asking, are you on their side or not? Is there drama in the future? No problem with that (it IS a TV talk show about politics), but I think a lot of people probably missed it. But I found Kamala's answers interesting considering who she is and where she works.

Her comment about Tlaib's cussing in public was right on the button: Rashida is not the first, and won't be the last, politician to swear in public. She did not mention T by name, which I thought was canny, but, from the laughter in the audience, I think most people caught her drift.

And I thought her comments on AOC were good: she's challenging the status quo and that's a good thing. Challenging the status quo has been going on for millennia: even whoever invented the wheel was saying, hey, why not? Some ideas have worked and some have been shot down, but at least they were considered when people weren't afraid to consider them.

Which leads right into fear of change or resistance to change, which equate to being afraid of the unknown. I'm not a shrink (far from it; I even took a psych class in college and hated it), but it's so obvious that it happens all the time aside from politics. Guys who don't want to commit? Ha! Fear of change or of the unknown. People at work afraid of a new boss or a new co-worker? Fear of change or of the unknown. People who stay married long after they should? Fear of change or of the unknown.

A non-white president? OMG! The galaxy will stop spinning!!! A female president right after a non-white president??? Double OMG!!! The whole local galaxy cluster will collapse.

January 8, 2019

Networks to air Dems' reponse to speech

From HuffPost:

Television networks airing President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night Oval Office speech on his proposed border wall and the partial government shutdown have also committed to airing the Democratic response to the president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer say they will make the case themselves. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox broadcasting, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and MSNBC all said they would air the rebuttal.

So the networks feel that they have to give the other side equal time (so to speak). Ok, I'm for it.