Category Archives: Scribbles

The Audacity of Trump

Posted on January 20, 2017 | Comments Off on The Audacity of Trump

The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll (in conjunction with the fake news leader NBC) showing Trump’s popularity underwater at just 38 percent is highly suspect. But they have a nice summary of all the things they hope he will be able to do, if he can work with Congress, as Barry Hussein could not.

“The new President will also have to reform a government that too few Americans trust, not least because of its indiscriminate intrusion into ever more of American life. This means fixing public services that people can see, such as an Internal Revenue Service that answers taxpayer questions, a veterans service that doesn’t kill veterans, and health insurance with more choices and lower premiums.”

But mainly they want and I expect most Americans who voted for Trump want a healthier, growing economy that brings more prosperity to more of us instead of just the Wall Street elite who kept Hussein rolling in the campaign dough and likewise took up what slack the Saudis didn’t provide the Hag of Benghazi.

“The White House should scrub every policy choice, first and foremost, against its impact on growth. Mr. Obama put his social and political preoccupations above growth, and the country and his Presidency suffered for it. The opening for Mr. Trump is that by removing Mr. Obama’s barriers to growth, he can unleash the business investment that has been so weak in this expansion.”

Do it, Donald. Keep the midnight Tweets, if you must, but get to work and Make America Great Again. Since you like to work more than you like to play golf, that shouldn’t be too hard for you. Show us what a man of action looks like.

Via WSJ

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Posted in Scribbles, The Culture, The Economy, Trump, Twitter

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Kicking out the “opposition party”

Posted on January 15, 2017 | 1 comment

I didn’t watch Trump’s news presser in which he called out CNN for fake news and scolded one of its correspondents, but I may start. A Republican who fights back against the Democrat news media? Amazing.

Now it seems future pressers will be held in a building adjacent to the White House instead of in it as the overpaid Democrat operatives are booted out.

That’s partly so Trump can expand the so-called press corps to include conservative bloggers and talk radio hosts. That will be a refreshing change. Finally we’ll see how much lying the Lame Stream Media does about these dog-n-pony shows. Of course they’re howling that the “people’s representatives” are being shown the door. Except they’re the only ones who think they represent us.

Indeed, “Are they representing us, the People, who, collectively, elected Trump, or are they representing the Democratic Party?” asks blogger Ann Althouse. “I don’t think the press — with respect to the Trump administration — represents the people. I think the statement ‘They are the opposition party’ is much more accurate. Too bad they did that to themselves. We could use a vigorous, professional press.”

During 35 years in the biz I long ago decided that a neutral news media probably is an impossibility but just integrating more conservatives in among the lefty-liberals of the big alphabet stations and the WaPo and NYSlimes would go a long way towards the goal. One Fox News, even one Breitbart, is not enough.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, The Culture, Trump

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More Game of Thrones

Posted on January 7, 2017 | 2 comments

The first book is much better than the show’s first season. It also has many scenes that the producers of the show either rewrote entirely or truncated almost beyond recognition. The show is fun to watch but confusing at times and a lot of the details of the book are simply glossed over.

No spoilers here. Read the book and you’ll see what I mean. The show is much more of a costume drama with lots of gratuitous nudity and violence. Some major characters seem nicer or nastier in the show than they are in the book, rather they are complex in the book but rather one-sided in the show. I like both, but if I had to choose only one, I’d take the book.

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Posted in Flickers, Scribbles

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Fake News on the Net

Posted on January 5, 2017 | 3 comments

Chew over this NYPost quote from a media blog startup CEO:

“The vast majority of articles, videos, and other ‘content’ we all consume on a daily basis is paid for–directly or indirectly–by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals.” [Medium boss Ev] Williams wrote. “And it is measured, amplified and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.”

So watch yourselves out there. There’s a war on for your mind, as some wise but oft-discredited person has said.

Via NYPost

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, Scribbles, The Culture

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Game of Thrones

Posted on December 30, 2016 | 4 comments

Okay, okay, I’m five years late to the party. I snubbed this television series back in 2011 as just another sword and sorcery epic unworthy of my time or attention.

I was wrong. I did a marathon watching of the Game of Thrones first season yesterday, streaming all ten of the videos via Amazon. It is gripping. The author of the books (I’m also reading the first one now) well deserves his wealth and his home in Santa Fe.

The best thing about the series, as the fellow who wrote the introduction to the first book puts it, is the way it proves that no one in their right mind would want to live in medieval times. Even the rich then barely lived above the level of our lower middle class. Their faces are always dirty because they never bathe. The usual Hollywood incongruity of all those impeccably straight white teeth looks even more ridiculous. And instead of focusing on the sorcery, the story shows the real evil to be the people of the times. The powerless as well as the powerful.

And as the first season ended, I couldn’t help noticing the resemblance of our jug-eared fool of a president to the petulant boy king of the story, ordering heads chopped and throats cut at whim. Barry is just more sophisticated about it, presumably, cutting throats by destroying the economy and diverting our attention from his failures by pushing the country towards war. At least the television series is leavened by a few genuinely honorable people amidst the devastation. Otherwise it could not be entertaining.

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Posted in Flickers, History, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Pop ups are getting out of hand

Posted on December 15, 2016 | Comments Off on Pop ups are getting out of hand

Like the Z Man says, the Web is becoming unreadable. Even the pop up blocker doesn’t work often enough to stop the onslaught of first one and then another, and then three more.

“Of course, it is not just ads or pop-ups. The proliferation of scripting has made many sites unreadable on a phone or tablet, unless you use something like ghostery. The Washington Times is a perfect example. It is more ad than content and the scripts never seem to load properly, so the site looks like a Picasso painting most of the time. I stopped going to the site entirely as it took too much effort to make it work. If I have to redesign my web browser to look at your site, I’m probably not going to bother visiting your site.”

Indeed. Sure they need money to operate, especially the Times which is second fiddle to the WaPo in ad revenue. But it’s a tossup. Blizzard me with ads (and auto video and audio I didn’t ask for) and I won’t stick around or come back.

Because anti-scripting programs are just ridiculous. I downloaded ScriptBlock for Chrome but it interfered with my WordPress administrative programs for this site. Had to cancel SB just to write this. Good grief!

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Scribbles, The Economy

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Trump is the new CEO

Posted on December 2, 2016 | Comments Off on Trump is the new CEO

One of the coolest, most loyal celebrity supporters of President-Elect Trump is Scott Adams, creator-cartoonist of the Dilbert series. Here’s his take on what Trump is up to now:

“Trump is attacking the job like a seasoned CEO, not like a politician. He knows that his entire four-year term will be judged by what happens before it even starts. What he does today will determine how much support and political capital he has for his entire term.

“So what does a Master Persuader do when he needs to create a good first impression to last for years? He looks around for any opportunity that is visible, memorable, newsworthy, true to his brand, and easy to change. Enter Ford. Enter Carrier.”

I only remember one incoming new executive editor who followed this practice in my 35 years in the news biz and he soon tired of it and went back to the old way of doing business. It became what I called the “Great Leap In Place.” The whole newsroom enjoyed the rarified air of change for about a month before coming back down to the old reality. But that was the hypocritical news biz which is now in financial disarray, both because of Internet competition and it’s sold-out-to-the-Democrats misdealing with, yep, the new ceo Trump.

Via Instapundit.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, The Culture, Trump

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