Random Thoughts for All Saints Day

I saw the ghost of Shelby Foote wandering around the streets of Washington near Ford's Theater looking for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to give her a piece of his mind. He was pissed that she misused his words so horribly from the podium of the White House.  He never found her, but vowed to haunt her for the rest of her short tenure as spokesperson to the President.

Vice News is reporting that the US Military is withdrawing troops from Puerto Rico.  This is bad news since the power is still not restored, the American Red Cross is not stepping up, FEMA has told Congress that they are overwhelmed with disasters, and the power authority is proven to be corrupt.  By the way, which came first "Make America Great Again" or the "unprecedented number of natural disasters to hit the United States in 70 days?" Are those two things related?  Need to wipe clean and start over? The military needs a surge not a withdraw.

I saw Donnie Jr.'s "lesson" that he taught his daughter by giving half her candy to some other kid to teach her the evils of socialism, but did not understand the joke.  What is his opinion of religion and the Golden Rule or the theme of giving to those who were not blessed with a golden spoon?  What is the harm in giving half your candy away if your daughter wants to do that?  Do you have to be cut throat capitalist at age 7?  If your daughter is as stupid as her father who takes a meeting with a Russian to get dirt on an American candidate for President then she probably did not understand what the hell Donnie was talking about.

I really like David Folkenflik of NPR.   When he started at NPR, I was not a fan.  He focused all of his attention on Faux News he even wrote a book about Jabba the Hutt of the media world.  Fox needed the additional scrutiny, but they are not really a news outlet, so they did not deserve the NPR publicity.  Fox News is really just the media outlet for the National Republican party pumping out propaganda for conservatives and the extreme right.  This week Folkenflik has the hardest job in the world: covering your own agency and their failings.  He has to be fair to both sides and has to have some detachment from the situation.  I think he has done a pretty good job of trying to cover this story, and bigger picture he has expanded his reporting to include other media outlets besides Faux News.  

Lindy West was on Fresh Air today on NPR.  She is a good writer covering social justice, cyber bullying, and especially Women's equality issues.   West had a great piece on This American Life when she confronted her bully and made him apologize for being a troll.  Anyway, she was interviewed by master interviewer Terry Gross and talked about leaving Twitter.  Her reason for leaving was logical, but I did not understand her staying on Facebook.  She claimed that she left Twitter because of Trump and his outrageous behavior on the platform.  West said that she did not want to support this kind of behavior, which I totally understand and support.  But what about Facebook?  In my opinion, Trump is only President because of Facebook.  Yes, he is a huge bully on Twitter and spews out hate everyday in 140 characters, but he would never be on the national stage without 150 million people seeing made up news on Facebook everyday of 2016.  I talked to so many people last year who believed the Pizzagate story and were convinced that Grandmotherly Hillary Clinton had in fact ordered the killing of her political opponents in Arkansas.  Facebook had an obligation to knock this stuff down or at least to disclose who was generating this content.  They are responsible for allowing a foreign power to interfere in our election and sow division in our country.  I would urge West to leave Facebook as well.

by Brian Davis