Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Quibbles and Bits, Catching Up Without Catching Hell Edition

More nuggets for your mental mastication.... 

>>T-Rumps's Parade:  I'm trying to discern just what T-Rump's "logic" is behind his request.   He sees France,  North Korea, and other countries parading their weapons packages, equipment, and other phallic-looking devices down the main drags of their respective capital cities, so why not here?  Other than stroking his ego to his satisfaction, the other net effects are all negative:  unnecessary expense, torn-up roads and other infrastructure, personnel diverted to provide security and operations for the industrial-sized stroking of T-Rump's ego, etc.   We don't need to parade anything about our military at this point – we already have enough nukes to reduce the Earth's crust to radioactive toast  many times over, and boy, does the rest of the world know THIS.    

>>Izvini Pajalusta: I'm not sure that anybody could have predicted two years ago, that we would see a return of McCarthyism – but this time, with the Democratic Party being the perpetrators of said political illness.   I still find the case against Russia incomplete at best, and suspect at worst.   Recall that in the book Shattered (pertaining to the 2016 presidential campaign), that less than 24 hours after Clinton's ignominious defeat, that plans were already afoot to roll out the anti-Russia narrative.   That, combined with all of the hearsay being repeated by Big Media about how this agency said this, and this person with a big-sounding title said that, leads me to the conclusion that nobody is right on this.   I don't know, honestly, who to believe.  

>>Internet Censorship: I have been a denizen of Facebook for the last couple of years, using it as my primary outlet for my political activism and commentary.   My newsfeed used be chock-a-block of postings from alternative news sites and lefty opinion groups, but now I'm seeing the number of posts drop considerably over the last several months.  I've also heard about sites like my personal favorites Truthdig and Truthout lose a considerable number of Google page hits (and thus, revenue) because of Google's change in search algorithm.  In seeing the countless other examples of "adjustments" in search algorithms, Ajit Pai's recent demolition of Obama's Net Neutrality regulations, and other factors, it's easy to draw a conclusion – however conspiracy-based it may be – that there is a concerted effort by the elites to re-gain control of the messaging that goes through the internet.   There would certainly be a vested interest in doing so:  Trump's election has been attributed, in part, to the political establishment losing control over the messaging.  Let's face it – Trump treated the entire campaign, at least initially, as a publicity campaign designed to further his brand and fill his coffers.   I doubt that he or any of his inner circle expected to get anywhere near the White House, let alone win it outright.   If the "machine" worked properly, Hillary Clinton would be our president – she had the entire media machine behind her, she had Hollywood, she even had noted Republicans behind her.   But she was up against a master of media manipulation: Trump plays the media and the press like a Stradivarius.    

More later, including the recent Florida school shooting.    



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