Tag Archives: Twitter

Arguments produce ‘out-of-body experience’

June 1, 2017 kanelis2012

I am going to admit to having something akin to an out-of-body experience, thanks to this blog.

High Plains Blogger posts get distributed along several social media platforms. Twitter and Facebook are the most reliable of them.
I write these posts, then they are shared automatically through these and other social media.

What happens next produces the out-of-body feeling.

I have quite a few Facebook “friends.” Many of them are actual friends or, to be more precise, personal acquaintances with whom I have good relations. Some of them are close friends, some are members of my family. My longest-tenured friend goes back with me to the seventh grade in junior high school. Still others are just folks who are hooked up on Facebook with people I might know.

It’s a big networking deal, you know?

Quite often I will post something on Facebook that draws a sharp response. Someone then will read that response and then fire back at the individual who wrote the initial reaction. Person No. 1 fires back at No. 2. Then the back-and-forth commences.

I stay away from the fray most of the time. I will decline to say I stay “above” it all, because that sounds too self-serving.

I do enjoy the repartee, although I regret that at times the jousting gets too personal. Some folks hurl insults at each other. Even a few of them resort to profanity, which I personally dislike intensely. I don’t like cursing in public, although I’ll drop an occasional “hell” or “damn” in my blog.

The jousting is quite fun to watch. My own philosophy is that I like putting the thoughts out there … and then watching the fur and the fecal matter fly. I don’t have the stomach, the perseverance — or the time — to participate in long-running contests to see who gets the last word.

I leave all of that to others … most of the time.

Have at it, dear reader.

media news

45th POTUS keeps trying to rewrite the rules

April 3, 2017 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Listen up, Donald John “Smart Person” Trump.

You cannot tell major media organizations which news to cover and which to ignore. The U.S. Constitution — the document with which you are patently unfamiliar — simply doesn’t allow presidents of the United States to coerce a “free press.”

It’s in the First Amendment. The founders had crafted the Constitution with those articles, then they started to amend the government framework. So they started with 10 civil liberties they wanted to protect.

That First Amendment? It protects freedom to worship, freedom to assemble peaceably to protest the government and — yep! — the freedom of the press to report the news.

NBC News believes the Russian hacking story is important enough to cover fully and completely.

It doesn’t please you, Mr. President? That’s tough dookey, sir. It doesn’t matter whether you’re unhappy with the way the television network does its job.

And quit the tweeting, too

You keep blazing away on your Twitter feed with that juvenile nonsense. You act more like a teenager than the leader of the free world. And do you actually believe that NBC News or any media outlet is going to do what you want just because you’re the president and you can say whatever the hell you feel like saying?

That’s not how it works in this country.

Just so you know, I just watched a great PBS special on KLRU-TV, based out of Austin, Texas. It told us plenty about the presidency, the White House and the families who have occupied “the people’s house.”

One of your predecessors, President Lyndon Johnson, was ravaged by protesters during the Vietnam War. What do you suppose the president said at the time. He said he wanted to ensure that presidents always work to preserve the right to dissent, to disagree with decisions made in the Oval Office. “I know all about dissent,” LBJ said.

You are occupying the Oval Office now, Mr. President. The dissent? The disagreement? The occasional anger? Get used to it.

Oh, and quit trying to bully the media.

The Constitution protects them from people like you. Honest. It’s in there. In the First Amendment. You ought to read it.

national news, political news

GOP rising against Trump’s bogus wiretap claim

March 21, 2017 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Donald Trump needs to take it back. He didn’t mean what he said about Barack Obama allegedly wiretapping his successor as president of the United States.

That’s the word coming from a growing number of Republican members of Congress, both senators and House members. They are feeling shamed by the president’s recklessness, his utter disregard for propriety and his misunderstanding of due process.

Will the president do as his fellow Republicans are demanding? I am not holding my breath. I am not at all confident that the president will issue anything resembling a sincere mea culpa for what he has done.

GOP piles on

What is that? He has essentially defamed his predecessor. He has accused the former president of committing a felony.

He said President Obama ordered a wiretap, which he cannot do under U.S. law. Who’s the authority on that? Oh, let’s see … the director of the FBI, James Comey, who on Monday shattered the president’s assertion about a wiretap that never occurred.

How does this president take it back? It would have to involve an actual apology, something Trump says he’s never done.

The wiretap allegation follows the pattern of lies, deceit and innuendo that Trump has demonstrated repeatedly since the moment he declared his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015.

Many of us expressed concern from the outset about Trump’s fitness for the presidency. I will submit yet again that the president is not fit for the office he occupies.

Even a retraction of the Twitter tantrum that ignited this firestorm will do little to assuage concerns about his moral fitness to be president.

If it comes — and if the president follows the advice of his fellow Republicans — he damn sure better do a better job of it than when he declared at the end of a lengthy statement about some hotel he had opened that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States.

Would a retraction end this discussion? It might end talk of the specific allegation Trump has made against Obama. As for the president’s continual use of Twitter to make ridiculous statements that articulate some form of U.S. policy, well … that’s another matter altogether.

media news

So many lies, so much damage

March 14, 2017 kanelis2012

The president of the United States has lied with such recklessness since entering the political world, it’s becoming difficult to single out which lie has done the most damage.

I believe I should look at one lie that on the surface seems the least consequential, but which has produced the most serious consequence.

It was his pledge to stop tweeting once he became president.

Yep, Donald J. Trump made that pledge. I cannot remember when he did, but he did. He said he would be more “presidential” once he actually took the oath, settled into the big chair in the Oval Office and started signing executive orders to do the things he promised to do.

Has he kept that pledge? Hah! No.

What has been the result? It’s been pretty far-reaching. I’ll start with the most recent tweet, which he fired off more than a week ago early on one morning. It was where he said Barack Obama “wiretapped” his office at Trump Tower. He said his predecessor did it, that he broke the law, that he committed a felony. He called it a “fact.”

Trump’s tweet has ignited a firestorm. I mean, it’s a serious conflict in Washington, D.C. He has generated bipartisan criticism, although the volume has been much louder among Democrats than Republicans.

Is this Twitter tempest ever going to end? Is this how he’s going to conduct foreign and domestic policy, through the use of a social medium in which he makes statements without consulting his senior staff?

Didn’t this clown say he would surround himself with the “smartest people” in the history of humankind? If that is what he has done, why aren’t they telling this idiot to cease and desist with the Twitter nonsense? Maybe they are … and he’s not listening.

The liar in chief is out of control.

You want any more examples of how dangerous this behavior can become in a world fraught with serious peril? We are witnessing it as it is happening.

International news, media news

Tweets diminish Trump’s ‘moral authority’

March 5, 2017 kanelis2012

Thomas Friedman is a journalist of considerable reputation.

He might, in the words of Donald J. Trump, be an “enemy of the people,” but the New York Times columnist has a well-established base of knowledge of world affairs.

Consider his take on the president’s use of Twitter as a primary form of communication.

Friedman appeared this morning on “Meet the Press” and he asserted that Trump’s “moral authority” is being damaged by his random rants that go out in the wee hours from wherever he happens to be at the moment.

He noted that the president is going to Europe soon to meet with other heads of government and heads of state. They are our allies. Our friends. Our partners.

How will the U.S. president respond to these meetings? What might he say about President So-and-So or about Prime Minister What’s-His-Name?

Does the president’s Twitter fetish diminish the trust that these world leaders have in the head of the greatest nation on Earth?

Friedman believes Trump’s use of this social medium ultimately could cause great damage to this country’s standing among other world leaders who depend on America to be the source of reason, strength and wisdom.

Trump’s demonstrated careless use of Twitter undermines all of it.

The president is playing a dangerous game.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience