Category: Blogging

Sarah Sanders continues her “I Know You Are but What Am I?” Press strategy

Sarah Sanders continues with her “I know you are but what am I” press strategy that resonates so well with Trump’s stalwarts.

Sarah Sanders presents the official White House policy: The media is the enemy of the people — Amber Phillips, The Washington Post

When President Trump derides the media as the enemy of the people — as he’s doing more frequently — he’s not just spouting off his momentary frustration. He’s stating official White House policy.

The White House just made that abundantly clear. Four times in two days, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was offered the opportunity by reporters to clarify whether the president really thinks journalists are the enemy of Americans, or that it’s wrong for people to harass journalists doing their job. It wouldn’t be the first time an official White House statement contradicted something the president said or tweeted.

But four times in two days, Sanders refused to say that the media is not the enemy of the people or to condemn people who heckled a CNN reporter Tuesday in Tampa, to the point where he feared someone was going to get hurt.

Instead, the White House press secretary ticked off a list of sometimes-inaccurate and sometimes-unrelated grievances about how these hyperpartisan times have affected her life and the president’s life, and why they blame journalists for that.

via Sarah Sanders presents the official White House policy: The media is the enemy of the people

Gerrymander Much Michigan? New Emails reveal GOP segregating districts by party and race

Demonstrating once more that the GOP only cares about power.

Republicans in the state have denied that they sought partisan gain when they drew new legislative boundaries in 2011. But a federal lawsuit, which argues the maps are unconstitutional, has unearthed records showing Republicans intent on drawing boundaries that would help their party.

The emails, disclosed in a filing on Monday, boast of concentrating “Dem garbage” into four of the five southeast Michigan districts that Democrats now control, and of packing African-Americans into a metropolitan Detroit House district. One email likened a fingerlike extension they created in one Democratic district map to an obscene gesture toward its congressman, Representative Sander M. Levin.

“Perfect. It’s giving the finger to Sandy Levin,” the author of the message wrote. “I love it.”

via New Emails Show Michigan Republicans Plotting to Gerrymander Maps – The New York Times

White House on banning CNN reporter from event

until they ask us a tough question, or unless we are at a campaign rally inciting our audience against them, or unless we are tearing down objective reporting in general by claiming “Fake NEWS!”

Let me translate humorously:

“We support a free press (until they ask us a tough question, or unless we are at a campaign rally inciting our audience against them, or unless we are tearing down objective reporting in general by claiming “Fake NEWS!”, and finally unless we are just in a mood to serially lie to them and the American public.)

The White House on Wednesday pushed back on reports that it banned CNN from a press event, saying it supports “a free press.”

According to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House banned a specific reporter because it expects “everyone to be respectful of the presidency and guests at the White House.”

“At the conclusion of a press event in the Oval Office a reporter shouted questions and refused to leave despite repeatedly being asked to do so,” Sanders said in a statement.

via White House on banning CNN reporter from event: ‘We support a free press’

CNN’s Response:

 

Appropriating Morality

Here is one of my favorite YouTube commentators, Theremin Trees,  regarding the tendency of religions to claim credit and co-opt works, ideas, and philosophies that originated outside of religion. Before either Christianity or Judaism existed practices and concepts such as Democracy, Republic, Human Rights, and laws against murder, theft, and violence were extant in Greece.

via appropriating morality [cc] – YouTube

You Can’t Step Twice

To everyone it’s apparent that rivers are always ever changing, so Heraclitus (or Plato as some would have it,) stating that you ‘can’t step twice in the same river’ is not as philosophically pithy and profound a statement about the nature of our universe as it might initially seem. Instead, it’s one of those master of the obvious things like Cyndi Lauper proclaiming that “until it ends there is no end…” in “All Through the Night;” or Yogi Berra proclaiming that no matter where you go, well there you are, which was later borrowed by Buckaroo Bonzai and the Pig Farmer in “Beyond Thunderdome.”

8 Years Ago

I was on a metal table, with my rib cage cut open and spread by an ingenious tool resembling a Medieval torture device. People with long retracter rods held my flesh open as well, and I have those bruises to this day.  However it was successful and here I am preparing to binge watch the Netflix Marvel series again in preparation for the upcoming Defenders 1st season.

This morning I walked the dogs at the lake, and since I walk briskly some looked at me as a challenge, and they worked hard to pass me by,  but later were huffing and puffing beside the path as I went by them a half mile later. What I didn’t tell them is that if they have to work hard to pass a 62 year old quintuple bypass survivor with a pacemaker, then they should probably see a doctor. Life’s not a sprint, but rather a progressive steady journey, take it at a reasonable pace and you will do better. While I still struggle at times when I bend over and I’m getting cataracts, I’m otherwise healthy for my age.

Bending my midsection  is rough at times – hopping in the car seat can put me out of breathe, at the verge of urination, and choked up all at once. It’s just like a solar plexus punch panic attack when the spiral wiring that ties my rib cage together stimulates  my vagal nerve.

Growing old is not for wusses, and I tell my friends and anyone else who listens that in the race of life I intend to finish dead last.

Future Islands — Ran

Future Islands has a new album dropping in April, here’s the traditional pre release tune for your enjoyment

Future Islands has a new album dropping in April, here’s the traditional pre release tune for your enjoyment:

Purchase at Itunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-far-field/id1195221378

 

No, Surrender … but Never Surrender.

If you are terminally cynical, aka suicidal, do not click the play button to this music video. Justin Currie wrote this after hearing the UK was entering yet another war, and it’s full of bitter cutting cynicism. If however you have the spine, the spiritual fortitude, and the plain old moxie to pull yourself out of despair, click play, wallow in it, then cry, have a beer, stand up, shake it off and Stand again.

Currie’s lyrics are masterfully written, they construct an accurate picture that portrays most of what is wrong in our times, and this poem will certainly last the ages. It’s especially fitting in these times. So listen but don’t let the bitter take you, don’t be that paranoid and hopeless one. Never surrender.