Tag Archives: Twitter

International news

Respond to Iran threats? Yes, but do so the right way

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani issued a threat to the United States.

The U.S. president took it seriously. So seriously that he employed his favorite forum to respond: Twitter. He fired off an all-cap response that says Iran had better think twice about issuing threats.

Hey, I no longer am surprised by Donald Trump’s Twitter fetish. He’s got it bad, man.

I just long ago grew tired of reading these tweets when he decides to issue policy pronouncements or when he articulates some sort of threat to a foreign adversary.

I don’t have a particular problem with Trump responding to Iran’s bluster. My concern is the forum the president keeps using. He blathers these counter-threats for all the world to hear.

I wonder if it ever occurs to Trump to just pick up the telephone in the Oval Office and phoning some intermediary nation (since we have no diplomatic relations with Iran) and offering a warning to Iran to pipe down with the tough talk.

It’s called back-channel diplomacy.

Donald Trump, though, knows nothing of how these matters ought to be resolved. None of that is a surprise, given the utter absence of any understanding of government in Trump’s background.

He goes with his gut, his instinct, his penchant for showmanship.

Dangerous.

media news

Social media etiquette gives way to threat of war

Get a load of a tweet that came from the fingers — reportedly — of the president of the United States.

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

Isn’t that amazing?

Rouhani made some kind of threat to launch the “mother of all wars” against the United States.

Donald J. Trump answered with this message via Twitter.

I’m a frequent Twitter user myself. Trust me on this: I am not an expert on social media etiquette, not that having good manners is necessarily a requirement at all times. I do know, though, that typing something in all caps denotes an anger that some could construe borders on instability. Is that the message that Donald Trump seeks to convey to the Iranian president?

Yes, he did the same thing with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He threatened him with total destruction. He spoke of the threat of “fire and fury.” Kim and Trump did meet in Singapore. The jury is out on what was accomplished. This much appears to be certain: The world remains under threat of a nuclear North Korea, no matter what the president has said.

So, what’s the deal with this all-cap Twitter message? If the president intends to convey the message that he is so angry that he’s out of control, well, millions of Americans have harbored those thoughts already.

national news

‘Your favorite President did nothing wrong’?

I cannot let this Twitter message pass without a brief rejoinder.

Donald John Trump wrote this: Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) – almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client – totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!

It’s the final sentence that is worth a comment.

“Your favorite President did nothing wrong,” Trump writes.

By golly, he’s right. Barack Obama didn’t shame himself in front of the world while kowtowing to Vladimir Putin. Nor did he refuse to acknowledge the Russian attack on our electoral system. Or denigrate the U.S. intelligence agencies’ capabilities. Or try to take it all back with a clumsy and inarticulate reference to “double negatives.”

My “favorite president” is doing just fine, thank you very much.

As for the current president, well, I’m anxiously awaiting the findings of the special counsel to settle matters.

media news

Let’s hear it for Twitter!

OK, I’ve made fun of Twitter. I have criticized the president of the United States for his Twitter fetish.

I want to say a good word about it.

I recently posted my 19,000th message via Twitter. I don’t like using the verb “tweet,” given that it reminds me of Tweetie Bird, the Looney Tunes character whose voice came from the late Mel Blanc.

Whatever. I use Twitter extensively. It is one of the social media platforms I use to distribute this blog. I don’t have a gigantic Twitter audience. It hovers at just a bit less than 950 at the moment. I haven’t yet been able to crack the 1,000-follower threshold. I hope to get there someday. Maybe soon.

I do enjoy the tweets I get from those I do follow. Yes, I follow @realDonaldTrump, whose tweets show up continually on my Twitter feed. Do I “enjoy” the president’s blatherings? Not really. But they are instructive, to say the least.

My preference for using Twitter is to retweet items I see and then add a pithy comment along with the item that I am sending back out there.

Almost daily I do offer my own comments via Twitter. I also like sending earlier posts from High Plains Blogger back into cyberspace via that platform.

All of this brief post is to tell you that I have adopted this social medium for my own purposes. I am not in a position to use it to make public policy pronouncements. I do like to use it to comment on others who do use it for that purpose.

I’ll use this post to make another request. If you get these musings via Twitter, feel free to share them. I am not too high-falutin’ to ask for help in distributing these blog posts.

Therein lies the beauty of Twitter.

media news

Twitter emerges as No. 1 purveyor of … everything?

Am I the only American who has become  astonished, amazed and somewhat aghast at how Twitter has become the No. 1 purveyor of public policy?

Or, for that matter, damn near everything else?

Probably not.

I don’t know precisely when it achieved its preeminence. I have o believe it began with the presidency of Donald John Trump Sr.

He began using Twitter to make pronouncements, to hurl insults, to foment his many lies. Then he got elected. He has continued to tweet these messages at a dizzying pace — even though he promised (if that’s the correct verb) to curtail his tweet storms once he took the presidential oath.

A day doesn’t go by now where I don’t read something on my various news outlets about this or that public official tweeting some statement. They respond to others’ statements — which also are tweeted; they make grand pronouncements of their own; they make snarky comments; they tell jokes.

Oh, but them we hear from entertainment celebrities and literary giants, also via Twitter. They all have thoughts — deep or shallow — to share with the rest of the world.

And, yes … I use Twitter as a platform to share musings from High Plains Blogger. I am not alone in that regard, either. Other bloggers seek to increase their audience by distributing their pearls of wisdom via Twitter. Good for them! We’re a social media community.

I suppose Twitter will retain its top ranking as a social media purveyor until something else comes along. I don’t know what that might be; I doubt you know what will emerge.

I do have difficulty using the verb “tweet,” however, to describe this method of communicating. The very sound of the word just kind of grates on me. I hear the word “tweet” and I think immediately of the Looney Tunes cartoon character Tweetie Bird.

Wherever he is, my guess is that the late Mel Blanc — Tweetie Bird’s voice — is laughing out loud.

I trust you get my drift.

Meanwhile, off we go, tweeting every single thought — big or small, profound or trivial — that pops into our noggin.

media news

Blog spurs tension among strangers

As much as l enjoy — even love — writing this blog, it produces at least one uncomfortable side effect.

I distribute High Plains Blogger’s contents along several social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, to name three. It’s the Facebook distribution that results in something that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Blog supporters and critics read my entries. They respond to statements that come from the blog. Then someone else will respond to the individual who is commenting on the contents of the blog.

It doesn’t matter who starts the exchange. It can come from someone on either side. When it commences, though, it occasionally gets personal.

It’s an intriguing aspect of this community “discussion.” Strangers who have never looked each other in the eye presume to know the other person’s motives. For that matter, I have total strangers who read this blog regularly who presume to know my own motivations and they respond with some sort of faux knowledge. But … that’s OK with me. I let it slide.

When individuals start yammering at each other in response to High Plains Blogger, I find myself feeling badly when someone ascribes nefariousness to someone else’s point of view. Or, they accuse someone of ignorance.

I don’t intend to dissuade commenters from speaking out freely and passionately. It’s an American thing to do. I like that individuals get worked up. However, it does make me a bit queasy when the commenters get personal with their newfound foes over each other’s comments.

None of this will deter me from using this blog to speak out. It’s what I do these days now that I no longer am a working stiff.

I’ll just have to suck it up when readers of this blog — be they friend or foe — decide to go after those on the other side of the gaping political divide.

Stay tuned. Keep reading. And by all means, feel free to offer your own perspective. It’s a great country, yes?

media news

Twitter overuse brings this kind of embarrassment

Donald Trump’s incessant use, overuse — and some of us have suggested misuse — of Twitter as a vehicle for his public statements produces moments such as what happened today.

The president sought to tweet a statement welcoming his wife home from the hospital after she underwent kidney surgery.

Except that he misspelled her name, referring to the first lady as “Melanie,” not Melania.

As a former Texas governor once said so (in)famously: Oops.

The president — or someone on his staff — deleted the mistake. Trump then issued the proper welcome with the proper spelling of the first lady’s name.

I have stopped criticizing Trump’s use of Twitter to make policy pronouncements, although his use of the social medium to fire Cabinet officials and others in his administration is troublesome, to say the very least.

I don’t even know if Trump himself is actually tweeting these messages or if it is being done by some intern. Whoever it is, Americans deserve at the very least to have their head of state, head of government and commander in chief being able to spell the name of his wife.

Arrgghhh!

national news, political news

What has become of the GOP?

What would Honest Abe, Teddy Roosevelt and Ike think of what’s become of the Republican Party? If only we could ask ’em.

Above is a tweet I posted two years ago wondering about the state of today’s GOP and how it was abducted by a form of “populism” that has no real resemblance to the movement that I had grown to understand.

Donald J. Trump got elected president on a pledge to do certain things, all of which he said at the time would be “easy.”

Build a wall along our southern border? Piece of cake.

Make Mexico pay for it? No sweat.

Negotiate the “best trade deals” in U.S. history? Done deal.

Craft a new health care program? Got it.

Cut taxes for everyone? Perfecto.

And so it went. How has he done? Not too well, by my way of looking at it.

As for the “populist” angle he pursued while running for office, the president hasn’t fulfilled that promise either. He continues to hobnob at his extravagant resorts. I haven’t seen him visiting housing projects, or tour squalid neighborhoods in Appalachia.

Indeed, Housing Secretary Ben Carson recently announced a desire to triple the rent paid by low-income residents of government housing. Dr. Carson then said his idea would “incentivize” residents to improve their lot in life and get them out of housing projects.

Man, that’s just so damn populist of him. Don’t you think?

Back to my Twitter message of two years ago. What, precisely, does the Republican Party stand for these days? Does it go along merely with what the president desires, even though this president had no history of political activism — let alone political experience of any kind — before he ran for the highest office in the land?

The party of Abe, TR and Ike is now the party of Trump.

President Lincoln stood for unifying the nation; President Theodore Roosevelt was an environmental champion; President Eisenhower sought to return the nation to a peace footing after so many years of open warfare in Europe, the Pacific and in Korea.

What does Trump believe? He touts his hatred of the media, he stiffs the opposing party at every turn, he is ravaged by an endless series of controversies — and a scandal or three — and he promises to “make America great again” by bullying our allies.

I’ll give him props for one potentially huge achievement, if he can pull it off: getting North Korea to back off its nuclear program.

However, a success there doesn’t erase the rest of the nastiness that has pervaded this man’s presidency.

Abe, TR and Ike are spinning in their graves.

International news

Stand firm, Mme. U.N. Ambassador

United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has laid down an important marker to Donald J. Trump.

Do not diss me in public; do not subject me to public humiliation; I will not take it quietly.

Haley, one of the few grownups in the Trump administration’s inner circle, spoke out recently in which she suggested the United States would impose additional sanctions on Russia as punishment for its complicity in the gassing of Syrian civilians.

Then she got her humiliation handed to her by Lawrence Kudlow, the president’s newly appointed national economics adviser. Kudlow suggested that Haley got “ahead of the curve” and might have suffered from some “confusion” over a policy that had been changed without her knowledge.

That is not tolerable to Haley. Nor should it be.

She has referred to Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election an “act of warfare.” She has clashed with other senior Trump Cabinet officials. She has stood her ground.

But now she has drawn her own “red line,” letting the president know that she won’t stand for being called out in the manner she was by Kudlow.

I happen to be in Haley’s corner on this matter.

As this nation’s ambassador to the United Nations, she needs to be kept in the loop at all times on all policies being pondered by the Policy Maker in Chief … the president. Then again, the president needs to show at the very least a sliver of discipline as he blunders through this and/or that crisis, or makes this and/or that policy pronouncement.

Whenever he tweets a policy statement, only to take some or all of it back, the president puts the precious few grownups he has brought on board in a serious diplomatic pickle. Heaven knows that the president has brought damn few competent individuals on board.

One of them, Nikki Haley, deserved far better than she got.

International news

Trump tweets us toward warfare?

Donald J. Trump’s use of Twitter to make policy proclamations has become more or less something of a new normal in Washington, D.C.

However, Trump’s tweeting of potential military action takes it to a new level of incredulity.

The president has alerted Russia that via Twitter that he might fire missiles at Syrian military installations. He put the Russians on notice. Indeed, he has alerted them to the point that the Russians say they might retaliate against any military strike against their allies, the Syrians.

Is this how the commander in chief is supposed to manage our strategic military operation?

Is this how we keep our secrets to ourselves? Is this how we now prepare for a military strike, by telling one of our major geopolitical adversaries what we intend to do?

Memo to The Donald: The Russians have nukes, too. A lot of them.

Twitter taunts ain’t the way to conduct matters of high statecraft.