Tag Archives: Twitter

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Social media produce schizophrenia

I made this discovery a while ago, but it’s worth sharing today. It is that social media have created a form of schizophrenia among those who are active on the various platforms provided by these outlets.

How does it present itself? Well, I have plenty of acquaintances around the world with whom I have had good interpersonal relations. That is, when we meet face to face we are cordial, even friendly when we interact.

Then when they sit behind a keyboard and send messages — even to me — they take on a different sort of personality. The Internet version of these individuals bears no resemblance to the person I have met and interacted with in the flesh.

Why is that? I suppose the physical distance gives them license to say things they otherwise wouldn’t say if we’re sitting across from each other over a meal.

Politics drives this sort of multi-personality trait I recognize.

I have friends who, to cite one notable example, are seriously avid fans of Donald J. Trump. I am an equally serious foe of Donald J. Trump. These friends and I have wonderful interpersonal relationships when we see each other. Then they choose on occasion to challenge my regular diatribes against the president. They write the most unusual things on various social media platforms, notably on Twitter and Facebook.

One friend actually decided to sever our relationship some years ago over a spat he got into with a member of my family; I believe Donald Trump was at the core of their dispute. They exchanged nasty rejoinders on Facebook. I took up for my family member. My friend didn’t like what I said. So … he “unfriended” me with an angry note that said, in effect, I could go straight to hell. 

He sort of proves my point. He never would have said such a thing to me in person. Indeed, I long thought we were pretty good friends, as we would meet on occasion for lunch in the Texas Panhandle. Then it was over. I think it was a schizophrenic response that took over his brain in the moment. Sadly, we haven’t revived our friendship. I fear it’s deader than dead.

It’s all part of what goes with the territory in this world of blogging … which I continue to enjoy greatly.

Oh, and just so you know, I try to avoid falling into the schizophrenia trap. I’ll let others be the judge on whether I have succeeded.

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POTUS exhibits extreme envy of a former POTUS

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Critics of this blog are going to accuse me of engaging in psychobabble, but I am going to post these brief thoughts anyway.

Donald John Trump, to my way of thinking, is exhibiting extreme envy of his immediate predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama.

That seems to me to be the only reason he keeps trying to run down the former president’s accomplishments. For instance, Trump threw this little gem out today on Twitter: Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S. was poorly handled. Ask MSDNC & lightweight Washington failure @RonaldKlain, who was the President then?

See? There you go. He keeps trying to suggest that President Obama’s two terms — to which he was elected both times with healthy majorities — just didn’t cut it.

Well, Trump is lying … which is no surprise to anyone with half a brain.

Why, though, does he keep insisting that Barack Obama was such a failure? Let me take a brief stab at it.

I believe he envies Obama. He looks at the way President Obama handled himself in public. He is jealous of the way the public responded to Obama’s grace, his calm, his class, his dignity. Can you imagine Donald Trump ever leading a grief-stricken church congregation in the wake of a massacre in South Carolina in a rendition of “Amazing Grace”? Try picturing Trump shedding a tear when talking about children and their teachers being murdered in a school as Obama did when mourning the shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn.

The public still yearns for that kind of presidential compassion and empathy. It finds none of it in No. 45.

And so when his Twitter fingers get itchy, he lashes out with nonsense. He directs his anger and his envy at the man he succeeded as president, at the man who continues to engender more admiration and outright love from a public that for the most part disdains Donald Trump.

The current president simply sickens me.

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Just go ahead and quit, Mr. AG

The word is out via the Washington Post that Attorney General William Barr is so fed up with Donald Trump that he is considering taking a hike from his post.

He is tired of POTUS’s tweets about current cases and is tired of Trump’s attempts to undermine the legal pros who work for Barr at the Department of Justice. Or so it is being reported.

The quit-now chorus is growing in Washington, for those reasons and for others relating to the work he has done as attorney general, namely his seeming loyalty first to the president and his apparent rejection of the oath he took to defend and protect the Constitution.

I am generally in the latter camp. I am greatly disappointed in the job Barr has done. He has acted far more like Donald Trump’s personal lawyer than a man who took a sacred oath to protect the nation’s governing document.

However, if he wants to quit and cite the president’s interference, well, that’s fine with me, too.

William Barr would be entitled to use whatever reason he chooses to use. Indeed, the apparent burgeoning tension between the president and the AG would seem to be reason enough for Barr to call it quits on the guy Trump reportedly wanted to be his “Roy Cohn.”

And, just who was Cohn? He was the infamous attorney who stood up for the equally infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy who launched the anti-commie tirade in the early 1950s. Cohn ended up getting disgraced and disbarred over the manner in which he conducted himself while McCarthy sought to ferret out communist infiltrators in our federal government.

In any event, William Barr likely needs to go. Count me as one American who’s all-in on the attorney general hitting the road.

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Hey, Mr. AG: POTUS isn’t going to stop tweeting; so just resign

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has laid down an important marker.

He said in an ABC News interview that Donald John Trump’s tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job.” He added that “I think it’s time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

Yep, the AG said that. He told ABC correspondent Pierre Thomas that very thing.

Trump has been tweeting about Justice Department recommendations that his pal Roger Stone should get a seven- to nine-year prison term for lying to Congress and for witness intimidation.

He also has been chiding the federal judge presiding over the case. The president has been interfering directly in the criminal justice process.

So, Barr says the president’s interference makes it “impossible” for him to continue as attorney general?

Here’s a thought, Mr. AG: You should grant yourself and the rest of us a profound public service … by resigning. 

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What do you mean, Mr. POTUS, about Schiff paying ‘a price’?

Donald John Trump’s Twitter digits are working overtime. Indeed, they have been doing so for, oh, the past three-plus years!

Now he says U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is serving as lead manager in the Senate impeachment trial of Trump, will “pay a price” for damaging the country.

Many folks are concerned about the chilling implication. “Pay a price?” What does that mean, Mr. President?

I guess he means voters in Schiff’s California congressional district will boot him out of office later this year. But he didn’t say what he meant specifically.

Others have suggested a potential “death threat.” Trump’s allies are defending him, saying no one should ascribe such dire consequence in something the president fires off on Twitter.

I am just one American who wishes — but long ago quit expecting — Donald Trump to cease the Twitter tantrums/tirades/tempests.

He is on trial in the Senate on allegations that he abused his power and obstructed Congress’s effort to get to the bottom of his abuse of power. It’s all about the Ukraine thing, asking that government for a political favor and withholding military aid until it delivered on the favor, which was an investigation into Joe Biden, a potential 2020 foe of Trump.

Schiff’s committee took the lead in investigating the allegation. Now he is leading the House managers in prosecuting that case in the Senate.

It’s all being done constitutionally, legally, according to custom.

However, Donald Trump is issuing a veiled threat? Via Twitter?

Knock … it … off!

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POTUS steps into the Twitter sewer … once again!

You know, as weird as Donald Trump’s retweet of an image involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer was, it seems to almost pale in comparison to the White House press flack’s lame defense of what Trump actually did.

Trump retweeted a doctored picture of Pelosi wearing a Muslim hijab and Schumer wearing a turban. They’re standing in front of an image depicting the Iranian flag. It is captioned “Democrats 2020.”

Trump sought to make some sort of statement about Democrats’ criticism of the air strike that killed Iranian terrorist leader Qassem Soleimani, suggesting that Democrats are soft on those who inflict terrorism on the rest of the world.

Well, of course that is a preposterous claim. Democrats, moreover, haven’t been “mourning” Soleimani’s death.

But then came White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham to defend Trump’s hideous behavior. According to CBS.com: “I think the president is making clear that Democrats have been parroting Iranian talking points, and almost taking the side of terrorists and those who were out to kill Americans … I think the president was making the point that Democrats seem to hate him so much that they’re willing to be on the side of countries and leadership of countries who want to kill Americans.”

Uh, no, Ms. Grisham. Democrats aren’t “on the side of countries” that want to “kill Americans.” They are questioning the intelligence and whether the White House gave enough thought to the consequences of such a significant act.

How about stopping the demagoguery, Ms. Grisham? As for the president, how about … oh, never mind. I’m wasting my time.

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How does POTUS find time to tweet like that … when he’s ‘working’?

Donald Trump visited on Christmas Day via laptop computer with troops overseas. He wished them a Merry Christmas and told ’em he was at Mar-a-Lago, the resort he owns in Florida.

He said he spends his time there “working.” Hmm. It got me thinking just a bit.

How does the president of the United States find time to fire off dozens of Twitter messages each day when he’s busy making America great again? Or solving the myriad problems he found on his desk when he took office? Or dealing with trouble spots around the world? Or looking for ways to put America first?

How in the world … ?

I guess perhaps the president mighta been, um, lying to the service personnel with whom he spoke when he said he was busy “working” at the glitzy resort where he spends a lot of his time.

You’ll recall, I’m sure, how he said he wouldn’t have time for golf once he became president. That turned out to be a false statement, too. His golf outings at various Trump-owned properties have totaled something on the order of $118 million; the cost covers security, transportation to and from the locations and assorted ancillary expenses.

Trump’s time working hasn’t interfered with his golf fetish. Understand something: I don’t begrudge the president playing golf as he is always “on the clock.” What is maddening is how he insisted repeatedly that he wouldn’t do such a thing. It’s the lying about it that I find so troubling.

So now he’s telling the troops in harm’s way he’s busy working at Mar-a-Lago, all the while firing Twitter rants about “evil Nancy” Pelosi, Democrats, the House that impeached him and the “hoax” investigations that have put many key aides in prison.

Weird.

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Trump’s Twitter rampages are expanding … imagine that

Donald John “Tweeter in Chief” Trump keeps setting unofficial records via the Twitter device that he must sleep with at night.

He reportedly launched 60 or so tweets in a three-hour span to complain about impeachment, Democrats, the “fake news,” Time’s teenage “Person of the Year,” and whatever else got under his orange-tinted skin.

Think about this for a moment. This is the president of the United States. He vows to “make America great again.” He says that “I, alone” can cure the ills of the nation.

How does someone with all that heavy-duty responsibility find the time to pound out misspelled, mangled-syntax, incoherent messages via Twitter?

Oh, I get it. He’s not actually working as president of the United States. That explains it.

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My sentiment … exactly

Truth be told, I couldn’t really say this any better. But I am going to weigh in nonetheless.

I get occasional comments from critics of this blog who suggest that I should respect the presidency more, that I should cease with my criticism of Donald Trump because, after all, he is the president of the United States.

I also want to disagree a bit with what this Twitter dude says. I do “refer” to Trump as “president.” What I cannot do it attach the words “President” and “Trump” together. Still, I don’t have a sufficient issue with referring to him as president.

He won the 2016 election the way you’re supposed to win it: He collected more Electoral College votes than his opponent and he won enough of them to be elected.

My problems with Trump — and they are many — deal with the way he has behaved while campaigning for president and while he has served as president.

The recent Twitter image that he sent out with his noggin photoshopped on Sylvester Stallone’s chiseled “Rocky III” body is just the latest case in point. I watch those campaign rallies where the president riffs incessantly about Hillary, the so-called “witch hunt,” Democrats in general, the so-called “fake news,” the media in general and, oh yes, impeachment. This kind of rhetoric is so very un-presidential.

That just peels the first layer of skin off the presidential onion.

The manner he uses to treat his Cabinet members, the insults he hurls at war heroes, a disabled reporter, the intelligence agencies, a Gold Star family. How does one respect the individual who behaves in such a manner?

That behavior, as I see it, doesn’t reflect negatively on the office of president. It does, however, reflect totally and exclusively on the individual who lacks any understanding of the decorum and dignity that the office requires of the individual who occupies it.

If I get pounded yet again for my statements about the president, well, bring it! “My deep respect for the nation’s highest office,” as the Twitter messenger known as @USMCLiberal notes, “is precisely the reason I show zero respect to #Trump.”

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Absolutely stunning!

Yep, this picture is a product of Donald John Trump’s Twitter account. I saw it and at first I could not believe it actually came from this individual. It did.

I have virtually nothing to say about this picture, other than to toss out a few pejoratives: such as revolting, repulsive, disgusting, bizarre in the extreme.

I am left only to ask once more: Is this the individual you want representing this great nation as its president, its head of state and as its commander in chief?

Unbelievable!