Tag Archives: Twitter

A real-life ‘Bozo’ hurls another epithet

January 14, 2019 kanelis2012

I suppose this was to be expected. Donald J. Trump would use Twitter to poke fun at another man’s name, which where I come from is one of those off-limits targets, right along with poking fun at someone’s appearance or their ethnic background.

The president has referred to Washington Post/Amazon owner Jeff Bezos as “Bozo.” He chides the zillionaire media mogul for being challenged by other media outlets and then, quite naturally, mentions Bezos’s divorce from his wife — and his relationship with another woman.

Wow! Kettle, meet pot . . . and vice versa!

Yep, he went there

Trump vowed he would become more “presidential” once he took office. He hasn’t. I’m going to remain silent on that aspect of this individual’s presidency.

However, for this serial philanderer whose own name has been butchered and bastardized by critics to say anything critical of another man, well, it’s the kind of thing only a Bozo would do.

International news

Border security? Agreed, Mr. President . . . but how?

January 14, 2019 kanelis2012

Donald J. Trump fired off this Twitter message today.

It reads: ... Border is eventually going to be militarized and defended or the United States, as we have known it, is going to cease to exist…And Americans will not go gentle into that good night. Patrick Buchanan. The great people of our Country demand proper Border Security NOW!

If you can get past the mangled syntax from the man who knows “the best words,” then more power to you. Someone will have to explain why the name “Patrick Buchanan” appears in the middle of this message.

I actually agree with the last part of the president’s tweet. The “great people of our Country” do demand secure borders.

In that context I consider myself a “great” person. So, thank you, Mr. President.

Where we differ is how you obtain “proper Border Security.” The Wall isn’t necessary. We have technology. We have Border Patrol agents. There are drones. Electronic surveillance. Cameras.

C’mon, Mr. President. Use what we have. Pay for more of it. No more money for The Wall. End the government shutdown! Put those American public servants back to work and pay those who have been working for free! This is nonsense.

media news

Whether to tweet or be ‘presidential’

January 1, 2019 kanelis2012

I’ll concede the obvious, which is that Donald John Trump has redefined the presidency of the United States.

He issues policy pronouncements via Twitter. He tweets his brains out, firing off messages conveyed normally through more, um, diplomatic channels. Part of me still wishes he would cease and desist.

However, another part of me — perhaps it’s the major part — actually wants him to keep it up. Keep using the medium to say things, to outrage us, to fire up your base, to give the rest of us reason to detest you.

A lengthy article in Politico talks about how Trump has overused Twitter. Remember when he promised (imagine that!) to cut off the tweets once he became president? That pledge had as much value as his promise to make Mexico pay for The Wall, that he wouldn’t have time to play golf and his pledge to be the “unity president.”

Read the Politico article here.

Trump has been unleashed on Twitter.

It’s given bloggers such as yours truly plenty of grist on which to comment. Keep it coming, Mr. President.

I’ll just add one caveat: Do not tweet out the nuclear codes or otherwise endanger national security any worse than you already have done through your careless remarks to Russians and other adversaries who visit you in the Oval Office.

The new year promises to be chock full of news, as if the year that just passed wasn’t full enough as it was.

With the “Stable Genius” at the helm, there’s never a dull moment.

national news

Facing an ‘IQ’ quandary

December 31, 2018 kanelis2012

I am troubled by a twin prospect related to the investigation of alleged “collusion” between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russian operatives who attacked our electoral process in 2016.

One is this: What will the president’s reaction be if special counsel Robert Mueller determines that the Trump campaign did something improper, if not illegal in winning the election?

The other is this: How might POTUS react if Mueller determines there’s no “there” there, that Trump is innocent of wrongdoing, that his campaign did not a single thing wrong?

My fear is this: The latter finding is going to detonate what I will call the president’s Insufferability Quotient, or IQ for short. If Mueller determines that his lengthy and expensive probe into the “Russia Thing” has taken him down a series of blind alleys, it is going to ignite the Mother of All Twitter Tirades from Donald “Stable Genius” Trump.

He is likely to explode with “I told you there was no collusion!” tweets and various and sundry pronouncements. He’ll keep going and going and going . . . seemingly forever!

Both options are capable of producing this kind of reaction from Trump. The first one, which might include some indictments of individuals exceedingly close to the president, well could send POTUS into a frenzy the likes of which we’ve never seen . . . not even from this guy. It might provoke Trump into doing some truly foolish and foolhardy things, such as firing off blanket pardons to protect individuals from prosecution from the Justice Department.

That’s when we get a serious, true-blue, rock-solid constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. Strangely, that I can handle emotionally.

What might prove a bit more problematic would be if Mueller comes up empty and hands the president enough ammo to fire off until the next presidential election in 2020 and far beyond.

The man’s IQ will be off the charts.

Therefore, and it pains me to say this, I am hoping that Mueller produces some tangible evidence of wrongdoing — if only to protect myself and many millions of other Americans from the incessant barrage of in-your-face reaction from Trump.

He’s already shown himself to be insufferable in the extreme. I don’t believe I can bear the sight and sound of Trump’s Insufferability Quotient skyrocketing into outer space.

media news, national news

Trump on a rush to publish worst tweet of the year

December 29, 2018 kanelis2012

“Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two …”

I have no need to include the rest of this Twitter message. Yep, it comes from Donald John Trump, the “stable genius” who appears to be on a mad rush to publish the most disgusting tweet of 2018.

This one has to rank up there with the best, er, worst of ’em.

Two small children have died while they are in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. They came here illegally from Central America.

Now the president of the United States is blaming Democrats for those people trekking from repression en route to the United States. He blames Democrats because the children reportedly didn’t get the medical care they needed to prevent them from dying.

Words escape me. I have none to describe the depths of despicability that this man, the president, has sunk.

Is this the worst he can do? Probably not. I mean, we have a couple more days before the end of the year approaches. I’m quite certain this individual, Trump, will sink even lower.

national news

What ‘policy change’ could Trump enact? Let me think

December 26, 2018 kanelis2012

A fellow I do not know, but someone who reads this blog, has posed an interesting question that I have chosen to answer with a blog post.

He asks: (High Plains Blogger), other than stepping down, what policy could Trump enact to change your mind about him?

Fair question, right? You bet it is. It deserves an answer. So, here goes.

The president can surrender his effort to build The Wall. He can stop insisting that Mexico pay for it. He surely must know he cannot order another sovereign government to do his bidding. He should recognize that The Wall won’t solve anything. He should simply ask Congress to spend more money to enhance existing methods to curb illegal immigration.

Trump can stop demonizing refugees, implying that those seeking asylum comprise gang members, terrorists and assorted felons intent on murder, rape, human trafficking, drug dealing . . . you name it.

The president can acknowledge publicly that Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical adversary and that Russian operatives sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Along those lines, he can demand the immediate extradition to the United States of the dozen or so Russians indicted for criminal activity related to that effort.

Trump can apologize for demonizing his foes. He can atone for the hideous insults he has hurled at the media, at members of his own Republican Party. One place to start would be to publicly apologize to the family of the late Sen. John McCain, the Republican who stood at the gates of hell while he was imprisoned during the Vietnam War. Trump’s statement that McCain was a “hero only because he was captured” was hideous in the extreme.

Donald Trump can learn to act like the president of the United States of America. He can behave with decorum and dignity. He can stop his ceaseless Twitter tirades. He can learn how to treat Cabinet officials with respect, and stop informing them of their departure through those petulant tweets.

Sure, a resignation would be my preferred solution to ending the Trump Era in modern presidential politics. Donald Trump need not exercise that option as the only way out. A close second-best option would be to see him denied the GOP nomination in 2020; absent that, for him to be defeated in the 2020 general election.

However, having laid out these notions, I do not expect the president to change his mind, enact any new executive policies that would make me or other critics better of him.

Therefore, the criticism from this forum will continue.

national news

Trump shows smallness with Christmas greeting

December 26, 2018 kanelis2012

Presidents of the United States routinely offer Christmas or other holiday greetings with an ample measure of good cheer and happiness. They wish us well, perhaps inject a little faith into their greetings. We feel good hearing from our head of state.

What did Donald J. Trump do today? He fired off a Twitter message that talks of the “disgrace” that infects our political world . . . but then offered a Merry Christmas greeting. It looked for all the world like a throwaway line.

He said: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in this country. But other than that I wish everyone a very merry Christmas.” Warm and fuzzy, yes?

I want to suggest that the tone and tenor of the president’s message today reflected a smallness, a bitterness and a pettiness in the man who holds the nation’s highest office, who commands the world’s greatest military and who (supposedly) represents the world’s most indispensable nation.

I wish he could have just — for once! — followed the norm set by all his predecessors. He could have simply offered his fellow Americans a heartfelt holiday wish and saved the political malarkey for another day; I’d even settle for him returning to the fight the day after Christmas.

He didn’t do that. He invoked the fight that has shut down part of the federal government. He suggested the “disgrace” is augmented by his fight with members of Congress over construction of The Wall he wants to erect along our southern border.

Oh, and then he tweeted this message on Christmas Eve: I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!

The more he claims to be a big man, the more he sounds like a small man. The larger the boast, the smaller he becomes.

Donald Trump is one strange dude.

national news

What if Obama had done all this?

December 25, 2018 kanelis2012

Someone put this out on Twitter — I don’t remember who it was — but I’ll offer it here just to get the discussion going.

What do you suppose would be the reaction from the evangelical Christian movement had Barack Hussein Obama had done the following:

Produced five children with three wives; cheated on all three of his wives; talked openly to a TV interviewer about being able to grab women by their private area; mocked a journalist with a physical disability; said a U.S. senator and former Vietnam War prisoner was a “war hero only because he got captured”?

They would be understandably enraged, yes? Of course they would.

Donald John Trump says and does all of that — and more, I reckon — and they’re silent. They stand with him. They pray for him and wish him success as he seeks to make America great again.

Go figure.

national news

Trump’s hysteria continues to mount

December 18, 2018 kanelis2012

My astonishment at the presidential hysteria mounting over the Russia probe and related matters is continuing to build.

It presents itself in stark contrast to the stone-cold silence coming from the office of the special counsel that Donald Trump is attacking multiple times daily.

Robert Mueller continues to insist on a veil of silence. He has instructed his team to keep its collective trap shut. No leaks are coming from the special counsel who is examining that “Russia thing” that prompted Trump to fire FBI director James Comey in May 2017.

Yet the president continues his frontal assault on Mueller’s reputation, on the reputation of his former friend Michael Cohen, on Comey, on the Department of Justice, on the FBI. His assault is inflicting some collateral damage, too, such as on the rule of law and on the notion that the U.S. Constitution stands as a bulwark against any abuses of power that might arise from any of the three branches of government.

It is my fervent hope that Mueller concludes his investigation sooner rather than later. I am growing weary of the Twitter tirades coming from the White House. I am tiring of the insistence from the president that Mueller has “no evidence of collusion”; in fact, we don’t know what Mueller has or doesn’t have, which is why I want the probe to reach its finish line.

As for the president, every time he yaps about “no collusion” or “no laws being broken,” he sounds all the more to me as if he’s trying to hide something from public purview. I refer to those tax returns that he has refused to release; or the mountain of documented evidence that Mueller has compiled that is bound to answer a lot of questions.

Donald Trump’s hysteria plays well with the base that is hanging with him to the end. Fine. It isn’t playing well with the rest of the country, the 60-some percent of us who disapprove of the manner that Trump seeks to lead the country.

Please, Mr. Special Counsel, wrap this thing up as soon as possible to spare us the frothing madness that pours out of the White House.

Oh, wait! It just occurs to me that the end of the Russia probe — no matter how it concludes — is going to produce another endless barrage from the president of the United States.

Dang it, man! We can’t win!

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