Tag Archives: Facebook

local news, political news

MPEV debate has been robust; now … just vote

Close view of a collection of VOTE badges. 3D render with HDRI lighting and raytraced textures.

There really isn’t much more to say about the upcoming  Big Decision that awaits Amarillo voters on Tuesday.

The city’s downtown multipurpose event venue is up for grabs. Do we build it with a ballpark … or not? That’s the issue facing voters as they’ll decide on a non-binding municipal referendum.

I’m all in on the $32 million MPEV. I favor the current design. I favor its funding mechanism. I believe in the concept. I support the way it has been executed. I have faith in the promise it will deliver to the city’s downtown business district.

There. That’s how I feel about it.

I do want to acknowledge that the debate on this issue has been pretty vigorous. I’ve been glad to contribute some of it through this blog, which gets distributed various social media outlets.

It’s been an interesting journey so far. Quite a few of those who follow this blog on Facebook have challenged each other — and me — on the issues surrounding the MPEV. I’ve chosen to mainly avoid the give-and-take, although some of my Facebook “friends” and even some actual friends have sought to goad me into arguing out loud.

I generally don’t have the time or the patience or the stomach to engage in lengthy debates. I prefer instead to put my thoughts out there and let others have at it.

They have done so and, I am going to presume, their views have been shared along their own networks of friends/associates/acquaintances/loved ones.

Hey, I’m happy to play a part in this community discussion.

But after Tuesday, the discussion will enter a new phase — no matter how the vote turns out.

I plan to take part in that ongoing conversation as well.

Until then, though, get out and vote!

 

entertainment news

‘Friends’ can become ‘foes’ on Facebook

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facebook-banned

This is no big flash to most of you, I’m sure … but Facebook can be a pain in the backside.

Here’s what I mean.

I have a longtime friend who recently “unfriended” me from Facebook. I noticed his absence, so I asked him: Was it something I said?

No, not all, he responded. The issue, he said, was with some of my Facebook “friends.”

You see, my friend — and he’s a real friend, not a Facebook “friend” — and I have differing political slants. I tilt left, he tilts right. I distribute this blog through several social media outlets; Facebook is one of them.

My friend — who I’ve known for more than 20 years — occasionally would respond to my essays with a negative comment. I’m all wet, he would say. I don’t know what I’m talking about, he would declare. He’d lecture me on occasion about where I’m wrong and how he knows better.

That’s all well and good. Then some of my other friends and “friends” would challenge my pal. He’d respond to them. They’d fire back. He’d return another volley.

Back and forth they would go.

Finally, my friend said, he’d had enough. He said his inability to refrain from responding to the critics made him feel “like a crackhead.” He became addicted to the need to answer them all.

So, he quit cold turkey.

I have no answer for that.

Occasionally, I engage in exchanges with individuals who read this blog regularly. I appreciate their interest and I appreciate their passion in speaking out on issues that push their hot button.

However, some of ’em do get a little too personal for my taste — particularly when they go after each other. It doesn’t bother my sensibilities if they aim their fire at my direction. I’ve been taken down by the best. After spending most of my nearly 37 years in daily journalism writing opinions, well, you kind of get used to it.

It does make me feel badly, though, for my friends — namely my actual friends — who get run off by what they perceive to be rude behavior.

 

local news

‘Bought and paid for’? Why … I never

Amarillo_Downtown_Development28July_36_copy

Social media can be a lot of fun to use. I’ll admit to getting somewhat hooked on a couple of those media outlets.

However, it can be a bit distressing when someone you don’t know, have never met, wouldn’t know if he sat in your lap, makes assumptions about total strangers.

It’s happened to me on the issue of downtown revival and the fate of the proposed multipurpose event venue.

Someone named Cory Traves wrote this on a Facebook post: “Obviously this blogger has been bought and paid for by Advance Amarillo.”

“This blogger” is me. The source of this guy’s angst is a series of blog essays I’ve posted that favors the MPEV as it’s currently configured, including the ballpark aspect of it. He posted that comment on a recent blog item I posted regarding the MPEV.

Amarillo voters are going to decide the fate of the MPEV’s current design on Nov. 3. I guess Cory Traves will vote “no” on the referendum, meaning he doesn’t like the ballpark element. I plan to vote “yes.” Our votes will cancel each other out.

Advance Amarillo is a political organization formed to support the downtown Amarillo revitalization plan as it’s been presented. I happen to agree with Advance Amarillo’s view of this downtown effort.

Have I been “bought and paid for” by this group? Umm. No. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

I haven’t a clue as to what drives those who oppose the MPEV, or the downtown effort in general. I will not pretend to assume anything about them.

My wish would be that those with whom I disagree on this issue would keep their assumptions about me — or anyone else on the “other side” — to themselves.

You’re entitled to think whatever you wish. You aren’t entitled to make assumptions — out loud and in public — about others.

Especially when you’re flat wrong.

 

Uncategorized

They may be right

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Mencken

Someone once told me years ago that the Bard of Baltimore, Henry Louis Mencken, used to end arguments by telling the other person, “You may be right.”

Then, I suppose, he and his foe would go on to something else.

Well, in this new age of social media, I think I’ve discovered a 21st-century version of that old dodge.

Every now and then — and it’s becoming quite a frequent occurrence these days — I get into these snits with Facebook “friends,” and actual friends with whom I have a relationship on the social medium.

I like using Facebook — along with Twitter, Google and LinkedIn — to share my blog posts. Some folks like getting these musings on Facebook. Others, I reckon, do not, to which I only would say: Don’t read ’em.

But the individuals with whom I argue on Facebook sometimes get pretty relentless in their attacks. They cling stubbornly to the idea that they must have the last word. I don’t mind ceding that honor to these folks. I generally don’t have the time, not to mention the patience or the intestinal fortitude, to keep going back and forth on a topic.

Quite often, we end up talking past each other, with the point of the initial post getting lost when folks take the discussion down some blind alley.

So, when that happens and I grow tired of engaging individuals on endless — and seemingly pointless — discussions, I simply hit the “Like” button on my Facebook news feed.

Look, I know I’m not going to change their minds. They won’t change mine.

What, then, is the point of continuing?

When I get tired of the back-and-forth, I’ll tell my “friend”/friend/foe that I “Like” what they’ve said.

Then I’ll move on.

Mr. Mencken, wherever you are, I hope to have made you proud.

national news, political news

Where have you gone, Capitol Hill collegiality?

A Facebook exchange with a friend today brought to mind a missing ingredient in today’s political recipe.

Collegiality is gone. Maybe forever, for all I know … although I hope it makes a comeback.

The exchange was precipitated by a blog I posted about President Reagan’s 11th commandment, which the late president decreed should prohibit Republicans from speaking ill of other Republicans.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/07/23/what-happened-to-the-gippers-11th-commandment/

My friend responded by saying the blog post reminded him of why he still missed The Gipper. He added that Reagan and the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill, the tough Boston Democrat, liked each other’s company, even though they agreed on virtually nothing.

This all brings to mind some other unusual political friendships on Capitol Hill: Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy; Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Daniel Inouye; Republican Barry Goldwater and Democrat George McGovern; Republican Everett Dirksen and Democrat Lyndon Johnson. (Indeed, the Dirksen-Johnson friendship carried over into LBJ’s presidency.)

Two of those friendships — Dole and Inouye, and Goldwater and McGovern — were forged by common experiences during World War II. Dole and Inouye suffered grievous injury fighting in Europe and spent time in rehab together, where they formed a friendship that would last a lifetime; Goldwater and McGovern both flew combat missions as Army Air Corps pilots and they carried that common bond with them into the Senate.

These are the kinds of relationships we don’t see these days.

What we see instead is a continuation of what then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich once admonished of his Republican troops in the House of Representatives. It was to treat Democrats as the “enemy of normal Americans.”

The enemy? Yes, that was the word he used.

The parties today seem to have carried that outlook well into the 21st century.

It’s shameful in the extreme and it has resulted in the kind of gridlock that stalls the progress of worthwhile legislation. Democrats sought to throw roadblocks in front of Republican President George W. Bush and we’ve seen the payback in the form of even more intense opposition from congressional Republicans who seek to block everything that Democratic President Barack Obama pushes forward.

Each side is pulled away from the center by extremists. “Compromise” has become a four-letter word. Both sides ignore the basis of how legislation is conceived, created and completed.

Remember when Sen. Mitch McConnell declared in 2009 his “main goal” would be to make Barack Obama a “one-term president”?

There you have it. The Age of Collegiality has given way to the Age of Confrontation.

And they call this “good government.” Give me a break.

political news

Crowd size is overrated … trust me

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is blown away by the size of the crowds greeting Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders as he campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Here’s what Reich posted on Facebook: “What amazes me, frankly, are the crowds. Not since Robert F. Kennedy sought the Democratic nomination in 1968 has a candidate for the nomination of either party generated such large numbers of people eager to see and listen to him. None in living memory has summoned such crowds this early, before the nominating season even begins. Even Sanders’ advisers are amazed (I spoke with one this morning who said they never expected this kind of response).

“What’s the explanation? It’s not his sense of humor. It’s not his youth. He isn’t a demagogue, bashing immigrants or pandering to hatred and bigotry. It’s that he’s telling Americans the unvarnished truth about what has happened to our economy and our democracy, and he is posing real solutions. And it seems that America is ready to listen.”

I guess I need to remind Reich — who I’m sure is aware of a lot more than I am — about a reality.

It is that big crowds don’t translate necessarily into votes.

The late U.S. Sen. George McGovern drew big crowds as well when he ran for president in 1972. I stood among a throng of thousands of people in a plaza in downtown Portland, Ore., as McGovern fired up the masses. That crowd was big, boisterous, enthusiastic — and it mirrored many of the political rally crowds McGovern was drawing all across the nation.

Sen. McGovern lost the election that year by 23 percentage points, as President Nixon rang up a 49-state landslide victory.

Yes, Sanders is telling voters his version of the “unvarnished truth.” Indeed, RFK did much the same thing in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy’s message was different; it dealt more with issues of the heart, such as peace abroad and justice at home for all Americans.

Sanders’s crowds are impressive. Let’s remember, though, that he remains a still-distant second to the Democrats’ frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who’s got another all-important edge over the rest of her party’s primary field: money.

We now live in an era where money matters far more than massive crowds.

military news, national news, political news

Politics of ‘personal destruction’ bites the GOP

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This comes from Bill Press, a noted Democratic Party loyalist, TV commentator, author, pundit and partisan gadfly.

He posted this on his Facebook feed today.

“You might say: ‘What goes around, comes around.’

“In 2004, it was OK for Republicans to attack war hero John Kerry. But suddenly in 2015, it’s not OK for another Republican to attack war hero John McCain. I’m sorry. That doesn’t work. To murder yet another aphorism: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

“Don’t get me wrong. I think Donald Trump’s comments about John McCain are disgusting. I like McCain. I believe he’s the real thing: a genuine American war hero, who deserves the respect and gratitude of every American, no matter what you think of his politics.

“But Republicans can’t have it both ways. They can’t practice one kind of politics – and then whine and moan when somebody plays the same kind of politics against them.

“Two lessons to be learned here. First, the Republican Party should do what I suggested a month ago: Disown Donald Trump and throw him out of the party.

“Two, Republicans should stick to the issues and stop playing the politics of personal destruction. Because, eventually, it’ll turn around and bite you in the ass. It just did.”

I’ll add only this.

John Kerry and John McCain happen to be close friends. Their Vietnam War combat experience is their common bond. They worked together in the U.S. Senate to help establish diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam.

And Kerry, who’s now secretary of state, has strongly condemned the comments that Trump made about his friend.

media news

Blog totals climbing … rapidly

blog

I’ve had fun sharing the good news about the progress of this blog.

It remains a big-time blast to share my world view with those who are good enough to read it. I even appreciate the disagreements that flare on occasion. I know as well as anyone that the world is full of opinions that differ from each other. As much as I would want the world to agree with my view, I know it won’t happen … not ever.

So, I want to share a bit of cheer regarding this blog.

Here it is, only the 12th day of the seventh month of 2015 and the page views logged on High Plains Blogger have surpassed all of 2014.

We’ve got more than five months to go before the year’s end. My sincere hope is that the blog traffic will continue to grow.

I owe this to the impact that social media have on vehicles such as this. Blog posts get shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google.

My heartfelt thanks go to those who take the time at least to open the links they see. I hope many of you will take even more time to read what’s in them.

Onward we shall go.

entertainment news

Trolls are lurking; they’re on the hunt

facebook-illustration

It’s time for another admission.

I’ve developed something of an addiction to Facebook. I’m on it quite often, looking for things my actual friends and Facebook “friends” are doing and saying.

But a curious thing keeps happening and I want to share it with you here.

These “friend requests” keep showing up on my news feed. Individuals want to become “friends” on Facebook. I’m a bit reluctant to accept many of them. I look first to see who their current “friends” might be. If some of them already are included in my “friends” roster, I might accept the request. But not always.

These days I’m getting even more selective.

You see, I’ve accepted “friend” requests from individuals and they’ve turned out to be, well, pesky.

They pester me with responses to things I post on the social medium.

I use Facebook to distribute my blog, on which I write frequently. This post is an example, yes?

That platform goes out to my friends and I encourage them to distribute my posts along their network of friends. Same thing goes for Twitter, which also receives my blog.

However, when I get these “friend requests,” I have to weigh whether the person requesting the Facebook relationship is in it for the right reason — or wants to become known as a “troll.”

A couple of those so-called “trolls” have joined my Facebook “friends” roster.

Why do they annoy me? They take liberties responding to my blog. These are people I do not know. Yet they talk to me as if we’re longtime acquaintances.

I am at least acquainted with the vast majority of those with whom I have a Facebook relationship. And I know many of those individuals fairly well.

What’s more, the tiny handful of my very best friends in the world also are included in this group. They know who they are. Indeed, I’ve long held the view that one can usually count on the fingers of one hand his true friends.

These trolls, though, drive me a little nuts.

I actually unfriended one of those guys about a year ago because of the filthy language he was posting on my timeline. I didn’t want to subject other actual friends to the filth that was coming from this guy — who sought to join my roster of Facebook “friends.” I accepted his request, and then regretted it.

I’m not inclined to take that drastic route with the others who annoy me.

At least not yet.

business news

Trump’s ‘brilliance’ questioned

I get a lot of Facebook posts from former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who’s teaching these days at the University of California, but who remains dialed in to what’s happening politically.

Here is his latest rant … about The Donald.

“This morning I heard an apologist for Donald Trump say ‘at least he’s a brilliant businessman.’

“Baloney. Trump companies have filed for corporate bankruptcy four separate times. If you or I went bankrupt, all our assets would be used to repay our debts. If you’re a former student who can’t pay your student debt, or an underwater homeowner who can’t make a mortgage payment, you can’t even file for bankruptcy. But Trump has used bankruptcy and corporate laws to shield his personal fortune, allowing him to amass huge debts with little or no downside risk while enjoying all the upside gains.

“Trump also made his fortune by squeezing employees. As Bloomberg Business reports today, Trump operates one of the stingiest 401(k) plans in America. You can’t even join it until you spend a year as an employee, and Trump’s contribution doesn’t kick in for six years – the slowest vesting schedule allowed under U.S. law. Between March 2009 and June 2012, Trump suspended all contributions.

“He’s no brilliant businessman. He typifies the modern corporate CEO who’s rigged the rules, reaped giant personal rewards, and left communities and employees stranded.”

I think in Reich’s view, Donald Trump is a legend in his own mind.

Come to think of it, that’s my view as well.