Tag Archives: social media

media news

GOP lawmaker is sorry … for this?

Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner apparently had a soul mate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Weiner, a Democrat, is now serving prison time for “sexting” underage girls. But lo and behold! Check out this item regarding Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Barton from right here in Texas.

According to The Hill:

Barton’s acknowledgement that he appears in the photo emphasizes that the women he was involved with in the past, one of whom may have shared the photo, were above the age of consent and willing participants.

“Each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I am sorry I did not use better judgment during those days. I am sorry that I let my constituents down,” he continued.

The photo in question is of Barton’s, um, penis. It has been distributed on the Internet.

Oh, Joe, Joe, Joe …

You know about Weiner. He used the nickname “Carlos Danger” while sharing pictures of himself via Twitter during an earlier scandal.

The most hilarious part of Barton’s mea culpa, though, is this: He references having affairs with “other mature adult women.”

Do you get why I think it’s funny? He said in a statement that he fooled around with “adult” women and not — as it has been alleged about GOP U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama — with underage girls, children.

Man, oh man. This social media stuff seems to get ’em all.

national news, political news

Trump shrinks a big office

I wish I had thought of this, but since I didn’t I’ll deliver appropriate credit to the source of this piece of wisdom.

It comes from U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who fired off this tweet today about Donald J. Trump Sr.:

“The President would have left American students in a foreign jail because their families didn’t lavish sufficient praise on him. How can someone in such a big office be so small?”

What a great question, even though it’s more or less a rhetorical inquiry. Here’s another twist on it: How can Trump shrink the high office he won a year ago in one of those most stunning political upsets in U.S. history? I think it shrunk the very moment he took the oath of office.

POTUS shrinks his office

The object of Schiff’s retort concerns the Twitter tussle that Trump entered with LaVar Ball, the father of one of three UCLA student/athletes who were charged with shoplifting at a high-end store in the People’s Republic of China.

Trump talked to Chinese leaders while visiting that country and reportedly persuaded them to release the young men instead of convicting them and sentencing them to potentially years-long prison sentences. LaVar Ball then tweeted that Trump didn’t do anything to obtain the release of his son and the other athletes.

Then the president decided to fire back at Ball — a man known for his big mouth and outsized public presence in the lives of his athletically gifted sons.

He said he “should have left them in jail” because LaVar Ball didn’t lavish enough praise on the president for his efforts.

That is one way a small man can occupy such a big office. Indeed, Trump is managing to shrink the office itself with his persistently petulant behavior.

Trump has turned this remarkable “skill” into an art form.

media news

One troll disappears, more to emerge

I have become “acquainted” with trolls.

They aren’t my favorite audience members. They seem to lurk out there, waiting for my posts to appear. Then they pounce with negative responses.

I don’t mind the negativity if it is based on principled arguments to substantiate their point. I do mind the pointed barbs that contribute nothing to current discourse.

I’ve been reluctant to comment on them because, well, because I don’t want to encourage other trolls.

Recently, I took the rare step of blocking one of them. He and I aren’t connected on any social medium. He just kept chirping about issues on which I would comment. Then he got into name-calling, challenging my intelligence while remarking about how my posts were a “waste” of his time, which I presume is of great value to him.

So I cut him off.

Recently, another frequent critic of High Plains Blogger apparently has decided to block me. Imagine that, will ya? This individual is a fervent supporter of Donald John Trump Sr. She took supreme offense at my constant carping against the president.

This individual — and I reluctantly use the term “troll” here — is an actual acquaintance of mine. But I guess I have to describe this person as a classic “troll” as it has been used to define certain Internet users.

I found this description via Wikipedia: In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion,[3] often for the troll’s amusement.

Yep. That describes the individual who blocked me. This person would engage in some heated back-and-forth with other readers of this blog, arguing just for the sake of arguing.

I won’t lose a wink of sleep over getting blocked by this person, because I am acutely aware that there will be others who’ll step up to take the place of any such “troll” who drops off this blog’s grid.

Oh, just so you know, I still love writing this blog.

media news

Twitter expands its format? Oh, boy … maybe

This just in: Twitter has expanded its social media format, doubling the number of characters one can use to communicate this and/or that musing.

I have no idea what it means for me. I use the medium in a fairly limited fashion. I use it to distribute posts on High Plains Blogger. I retweet others’ messages that I find interesting, provocative or entertaining. I also send out my own commentary on topics of the moment.

Since I signed up on Twitter about six years ago, I found the 140-character limit to be restrictive. I got used to it over time.

Now we get 280 characters to fire off whatever message we choose to send out.

It appears that the tweeter in chief — the guy who also serves as president of the United States — might really bask in this format. Knock yourself out, Mr. President.

I learned during my years in print journalism to “write tight.” Don’t take too much newsprint space to tell whatever story you are asked to tell. I’ve heard many editors scream at reporters for writing too much to fill an eight- or 10-inch hole on a given page.

To that end, Twitter has turned “tight writing” into an art form. I thought I was pretty good at expressing myself in just 140 characters. Now we’re going to double that amount.

I don’t know how to act.

media news, national news

How does Trump justify his media hatred?

The hate/hate relationship Donald John Trump has with the media has baffled me from the beginning of his presidency.

You see, the man ought to be thanking the media for the role they played in advancing his presidential candidacy. It hasn’t worked out that way. He has become the media’s Enemy No. 1. And how? Because he fired the first shot in the war.

The media’s making of a presidential candidacy became evident from the candidate’s first day on the campaign trail. He rode down that elevator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and a “love affair” was born.

Trump made outlandish statements from Day One. The media didn’t challenge him. The media seemed reluctant to call the candidate what he was: a liar.

When he announced his plan to ban Muslims from entering the country, he said he witnessed “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the Twin Towers; he didn’t witness any such thing. He said he lost “many friends” in the Twin Towers; he didn’t lose any friends.

Did the media challenge him in real time for the lies he told? No. They generally let them ride.

Prior to his running for the first public office he ever sought — the presidency — Trump loved the media exposure as long as it promoted his business ventures. He loved the media as well. He chummed around with media moguls.

Eventually, and it took a while, the media began to wise up to how the candidate was playing them. They started, um, doing their job.

It’s been said that the media should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s what they do. It’s part of their charge as professionals. Trump is among the more, uh, comfortable people in public life; he kept telling us how fabulously wealthy he is. And smart, too.

It’s gone downhill ever since. His election as president has turned the one-time media lover into a media hater. He labels the media as the “enemy of the American people.” His standard retort to anything he deems negative is to call it “fake news.” Trump commits the unconscionable act of singling out individual reporters and the news organizations they represent. He lies continually and the media keep calling him out.

It truly is an amazing turn of events. The president of the United States has declared war on the very institution he needs to inform the public of whatever message he wants to deliver.

Every single one of the president’s predecessors has experienced difficulty with the media during their time in the office Trump now occupies. They all understood something that Trump ignores: The media kept them accountable for their actions.

The media are doing now what they should have been doing from the very beginning of this guy’s campaign for the presidency.

media news

Trump Twitter account goes down … but not for good

Donald J. Trump was off the Twitter trail for 11 whole minutes.

Damn, anyway! Why couldn’t he have been taken off for keeps? Alas, it was not to be.

But the unplugging of Trump’s Twitter feed has raised serious questions that need some equally serious answers.

How did an individual get hold of Trump’s account to disable it if only for a few minutes?

What are the ramifications, particularly when the president tweets out actually federal government policy using that particular social medium?

Does this call into question the wisdom of the Leader of the Free World using this medium in such cavalier fashion?

Oh, the dangers of conducting policy by tweet.

The debate has turned ideological. Conservatives blame the takedown on a rogue Twitter employee who did it on his or her last day on the job. They also complain that Twitter is more tolerant of liberals than conservatives and believe the president’s Twitter account was targeted only because he espouses conservative policies.

I prefer to focus on the very notion of the president of the United States using this medium in the manner that he does. He ought simply to just back off and not get so intimately involved with Twitter. He says he uses it to speak directly to Americans. Hogwash!

If that is his goal, then he ought to issue daily policy statements through the White House communications office.

POTUS exposes himself to trouble

Donald Trump’s use of Twitter, to my mind, only illustrates how vulnerable he is to the kind of chicanery that someone conducted. It also illustrates the extreme danger of these social media messages getting into the wrong hands.

media news

Get a grip, Mr. POTUS; these guys are entertainers!

Now the president is going after late-night comedians, as if he wasn’t satisfied to vent his anger at pro football players and certain cable news networks.

Donald John Trump thinks he and his fellow Republicans deserve “equal time” because so many late-night comics are scorching the president and his policies.

In one tweet, Trump wrote — and forgive the sloppy grammar: Late Night host are dealing with the Democrats for their very “unfunny” & repetitive material, always anti-Trump! Should we get Equal Time?

Then, in another one, with another grammatical misstep: More and more people are suggesting that Republicans (and me) should be given Equal Time on T.V. when you look at the one-sided coverage?

Eek! Yikes! Aack!

Would this guy, the president, please stop this nonsense?

He’s not going to listen to a schmuck blogger from out here in Trump Country. Hell, he won’t even heed the advice of his White House chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps four-star general, who I am absolutely certain would prefer that the president cease the Twitter tirades.

He uses the tweeting device to cut Secretary of State Rex Tillerson off at the knees as he seeks a diplomatic solution to this North Korea missile-firing matter. Trump rakes fellow Republicans over the coals for their failure to approve any aspect of what passes for the president’s legislative agenda. He surprises his military high command with a Twitter-originated directive that bans transgender Americans from serving in the military. He bullies and blusters against news media outlets for their coverage of his administration, calling media reports he deems negative to be “fake news.” And, lest we forget, he defames former President Obama by alleging that he wiretapped the Trump campaign office in Trump Tower.

And he does all this while making a serious federal case — again via Twitter — out of a football-field protest by pro athletes over police tactics used against African-American citizens.

This is so very — and I’ll borrow a made up by none other than Donald Trump himself — “unpresidented.”

When will Trump start acting presidential? My best guess? Probably … never.

International news

‘Only one thing will work’? Really?

Donald J. Trump sounds like a man intent on leading the United States of America to war.

At any cost.

The tweeter in chief blasted out yet another warning to North Korea today, suggesting that 25 years of negotiation with the communist dictatorship has been so futile, so fraught with frustration that there’s no other diplomatic channel left to explore.

He tweeted this: Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid…… …hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

There you have it. The president of the United States, the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military machine has all but said that there’s no more talking to be done.

“Only one thing will work!” he said. One thing. What do you suppose that might be?

Let’s presume he means the “military option.” What happens when we strike North Korea’s missile launchers, but don’t get all of them? What happens when we hit their thousands of artillery pieces lined up and aimed straight at Seoul, South Korea — but don’t get them all? Does North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un make good on his threat to strike? Gosh, I would think he would do precisely that.

Then comes the consequence. Many thousands of deaths. Perhaps millions. Many of them will be civilians. And yes, we’ve got those 28,000 American troops sitting right in the middle of it all, along with tens of thousands more American civilians.

We are witnessing first hand the dangers of conducting foreign policy by Twitter. The president of the United States needs to weigh his words carefully, no matter how he delivers his message.

Then again, a president cast from the same mold of others would understand that. Not this guy, Donald Trump. He “tells it like it is.”

I believe Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s widely reported description of the president as a “moron” is looking more accurate with each passing day.

media news

Facebook becomes den of negativity

I am going to come clean on something that doesn’t fill me with much pride.

Facebook has become a negative place. I must admit to contributing to that negativity. I regret that, but I won’t apologize for it.

I use that social medium to distribute posts on High Plains Blogger, along with Twitter, LinkedIn and Google. I seek maximum exposure for these musings/spewage. It’s improving. Indeed, I just passed the total number of page views and unique visitors year to date that I garnered in all of 2016, and we still have nearly three months to go in the current year.

I’m proud of that growth in readership.

However, I am not proud of the negativity that erupts on Facebook occasionally as a result.

Here’s what I witness with distressing regularity: I’ll post something on the blog; it goes to Facebook; my network of friends and acquaintances read this stuff; some of them comment. Then the back-and-forth commences.

I have an out-of-body experience of sorts reading these jabs and snipes and insults tossed among people who, for the most part, are total strangers. I have friends in the Hill Country who take umbrage at a comment from someone in the Panhandle. Some of my West Coast friends get riled up at something said by someone on the East Coast. One of my Gulf Coast peeps fires off a critique of a comment from someone in, oh, the Pacific Northwest. One friend who lives in Germany got involved in a mini-snit recently with one of my fellow Americans over gun violence.

The more they exchange barbs, the more heated it gets. It devolves into actual name-calling.

And what is the cause of all this nastiness? Something that came from little ol’ me. I choose to stay out of these disputes, unless someone misinterprets something I posted in the blog that precipitates the fight. Short of that, I feel like an intruder.

Arguably the most fascinating aspect of this involves individuals with whom I am not connected via Facebook or any other social media. They, too, get involved in some of this name-calling. It’s all quite strange, man.

A part of me wishes I could curtail this negativity. Another part of me welcomes the give and take, although I’d prefer to see a bit more “give” than “take” in some of these exchanges.

Now that I’ve come clean on my contribution to the Facebook negativity, I want to declare my intention to keep doing what I’m doing. The blog posts will continue to go out along my Facebook network.

If those who take serious offense at something that someone else says about whatever, well, that’s on you.

Enjoy.

national news

‘New low’ for Trump? Yes, but only for now

James Fallows, a journalist of some renown, says Donald J. Trump’s tweet tirades relating to the criticism he’s taking over the government’s response to Hurricane Maria have taken the president to a “new low.”

I agree. I’ll add this caveat, though. It’s a bad news/worse news scenario. The bad news is that Trump’s criticism of local Puerto Rico officials does constitute a “new low” for the president; the worse news is that he quite likely is capable of taking this presidential petulance to an even lower level.

Fallows wrote this in The Atlantic: But his Twitter outburst this morning — as he has left Washington on another trip to one of his golf courses, as millions of U.S. citizens are without water or electricity after the historic devastation of Hurricane Maria, as by chance it is also Yom Kippur — deserves note. It is a significant step downward for him, and perhaps the first thing he has done in office that, in its coarseness, has actually surprised me.

Donald Trump has taken his presidency to a level none of us has ever seen. He’s dragged it to a point that absolutely nothing this guy says or does publicly henceforth would surprise me. Nothing.

He once boasted that he could “shoot someone” and his voters would still support him. I don’t believe he actually would do such a thing, but he’s demonstrating an astonishing knack for doing anything short of that while still engendering support among his Republican voter “base.”

Hurricane Maria has all but destroyed Puerto Rico. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz criticized the president and the federal government’s response to the island’s pleas for help. What does Trump do? He fires off tweets over the weekend — while hobnobbing at his posh New Jersey resort. Let that sink in for a moment: 3.5 million U.S. citizens are without food, potable water and other supplies and the president criticizes Puerto Ricans for wanting the feds “to do everything for them.”

His Twitter tirades have become a virtual staple of the president’s daily activities.

As Fallows writes: I can think of no other example of a president publicly demeaning American officials in the middle of coping with disaster. There were nasty “God’s punishment!” remarks about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, but they did not come from the White House or George W. Bush.

I wish I could believe that there’s no way this president can drag his conduct any farther downward. I am left to wait for the next “new low” to slap us in the face.