Category: Media

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I was laying in bed this morning thinking about what important issue I was going to tackle today in my blog. Yes, dear reader, this is how seriously I take my blogging. It is the first thing I think about in the morning. Any way, enough about me, I remembered seeing in the Huffington Post’s headlines a post about J.D. Vance’s Astrological Chart. See below. I also provide a link to the actual chart if you are so inclined to pursue this type of prognostication device to understand the future of our vice-president.

I do not however and it occurred to me that I have been scrolling by these posts without much thought.

Now, first, I have to confess I like a good astrological chart as much as the next guy but J.D. Vance’s seems like a big waste of space. I realize this is in the Life section of Huffpost, so media outlets have a lot of leeway about what goes in the section. It should be fun — advice columns, crossword puzzles, comics and general astrological predictions. So, for example, my astrological sign is Cancer. I would be perfectly fine with an astrological column saying something like “Cancers will wake up this morning with a startling realization about the media.” This is harmless fun. I could laugh about and say yes that’s what happened to me.

But J.D. Vance’s astrological chart isn’t really an appropriate Life posting. J.D. Vance is a major political figure in a position of power. Providing space for an astrologer to speculate about his future is waste of time and space. The reading is, as almost all astrological readings are, vague and could conceivably apply to any number of people sharing his astrological sign or not. And what have I learned about Vance — that his sun sign is Leo and he is a Leo rising is hardly worth troubling my eyes to pursue.

This is worse than a gossip column in that, at least with gossip, you may be getting the truth about a famous person. Yes I don’t have anything to do with this person, it will in no way help me in my life and is certainly a waste of my time — but it may be true. And there is something important about the truth. While an astrological chart is giving you ambiguous information that is relevant only to the person who’s chart the astrologer is reading. A chart, by the way, that this person will probably never read. Helpful right?

To further disappoint my expectations in the Huffington Post, they think this post is so important to actually highlight that they have an article about J.D. Vance’s astrological chart. Instead of hiding this post in a hard to find place so people won’t realize the bullshit they are posting, they are proudly highlighting it for everyone to see. They are actually wanting people to read it. Their shameless pandering knows no bounds. I am gobsmacked.

Finally, I am disappointed in myself because I’ve been seeing these astrological posts of current political figures for some time and hadn’t thought a thing about it. My obliviousness to bullshit now is remarkably high. Just more bullshit on the bullshit pile. I go to the next post without giving it a second thought. It took actual time for me to reach the bullshit conclusion which means how much bull shit am I missing?

This is truly scary.

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The Guardian headline reads: Most people arrested during Henry Nowak protests had been reported for domestic abuse.

Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man, murdered Henry Nowak, a White man, in Southampton. Some people in the UK believe the police’s behavior shows an anti-White bias among the British cops. As with any controversial issue, people used their right to peaceful assembly to make their position on the matter known. Thirty-seven people were arrested due to their violent behavior.

Unsurprisingly many of the people arrested also have a history of violent behavior. It makes sense to me that people who have had trouble in the past controlling their violent impulses might again lose control of themselves and behave badly. The Guardian article even admits as much “two out of every five arrested for participating in riots in 2024 had been the subject of a domestic abuse report before their involvement, with one in five subsequently being reported for domestic abuse.”

The phrase “participating in riots in 2024” is both interesting and vague. Does the Guardian mean only anti-immigrant rioters or all rioters? They don’t clarify who they mean by rioters. It could mean any violent behavior — say the anger from the losing fans of a football team. Although I don’t advise the Guardian doing this, a better use of their time (although not great) might be to compare the rioters from different groups say anti-Israel demonstrations, losing football fans and anti-immigrant demonstrations and stack them up against each other.

I am betting that past violent arrests might match up significantly for each group. But how is this helpful? The Guardian article leaves me with the impression that people who are concerned about Henry Nowak are actually prone to violence while providing absolutely no evidence about the rest of the crowd and thus pointless.

People prone to past violent behavior are more likely act violently when given an opportunity to do so again. This says nothing, though, about all the people who didn’t get arrested — which is a much better measurement of the character of the people who attended the demonstration.

So what was the point of this screaming headline? What an utter waste of time. The Guardian sent out reporters to find out the obvious — people with a violent past continue to behave badly? So what?

It is a surreptitious way of painting all of the Henry Nowak demonstrators as violent instead of the few who were actually arrested for violence. There is a difference which the Guardian failed utterly to point out.

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I have many complaints about Donald Trump. He is an asshole. He is corrupt. He is stupid. He is incompetent. I could go on but you get the point. I don’t like the man. But nothing illustrates the true badness of Donald Trump like the Reflecting Pool Fiasco. And, also, sadly his genius.

Why on God’s Green Earth is the president of the United States so involved in such a trivial matter — particularly when the nation is at war. Isn’t this more of a First Lady or Parks Department issue? What a waste of the limited time of the most powerful man on the planet.

Other people can, and should, straighten out this mess but no Trump has to put his two cents in.

Furthermore, and much more irritating, why is the media so fixated on this bull shit. Again, I am sorry to have keep doing this, but it seems important to point this out — we are a nation at war. Yet what do we hear about in the news — how the Reflecting Pool, which was promised to be blue, is a murky algae green instead. Really.

And people are actually getting mad about it for some reason.

Donald Trump can create controversies with one hand tied behind his back and blind folded. He likes attention and he knows how to get it. He also, to the great advantage of the powers that be, knows how to distract the media from the issues that really matter. Just because Trump is talking about something doesn’t mean the press is obligated to report about it.

Think about the past few months — the Wrestling Match on the lawn, tearing down the East Wing of the White House, the Reflecting Pool — all, in the scheme of things, small potatoes — and distractions from more important issues. All Trump has to do to get the press dogs off of his ass is for him to pop off about something, make it juicy or controversial, and the press, who all seem to lack any sense of proportion, chases after this new controversy like dogs after frisbees.

Yes it is very interesting that the frisbee was caught but is it any surprise. This is what dogs do when frisbees are thrown. So what if they catch him making as ass of himself about the Reflecting Pool. It is meaningless. He seems to know this. I am afraid the press does not.

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I am sure there are more awful human beings than Alex Jones but, as far as I can see, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut to hide how awful they are. Unfortunately Alex Jones is an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut . So here is Alex Jones, even after losing law suits where he questions the shootings at the Sandy Hook School, spouting the same unsubstantiated garbage about it being a false flag operation from anti-gun rights organization. He is doing this even after changing his story in court and saying that Sandy Hook shootings did happen as the police claimed. Doesn’t this make him an admitted liar.

Never mind. Now, since he is losing his empire to pay the Sandy Hook parents for his lies, he is going back to spreading his lies about Sandy Hook. Yes, he is accusing 20 sets of parents of willingly sacrificing their first grader in order that their deaths would galvanize sympathy for anti-gun legislation. I don’t know about you but I don’t know of many, if any, parents who make such a bargain — much less 20 sets.

And it gets worse, because Alex Jones so passionately spread these vile lies, his listeners believed him and began to harass the grieving parents of these children in order to get at the truth. Parents who lost their children had to listen to people telling them that they are lying about how their child died. Who would encourage people to behave like that. Oh, that’s right, Alex Jones.

I only wished I believed in Hell because I would surely love to see him rotting there. If anyone deserves an eternity of the flaming fires of Hell, it is surely Alex Jones.

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I am torn between being amused or horrified by this Huffington Post article about whether you should engage in sexual intercourse in front of your dog. Wow. This is something I haven’t given much thought to.

I am mostly amused because the idea that your dog thinks about anything about your sex life is funny.

Why is Spot starring at us while we canoodle? What is Spot thinking? Is this causing Spot irreparable damage? Perhaps Spot views this like we view a nature film — so this is how they have sex, interesting.

On the other hand, it is so empty a subject that half of the space is taken up with discussion of dogs licking other dogs genitals. There is not much there there. The idea that Spot is so concerned with his owner that he has feelings regarding his owner’s sexual trysts is the height of narcissism. I must know what Spot is thinking while he watches me have sex. I suspect other than keep it down I am trying to sleep. Spot isn’t think much at all about you having sex.

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I saw the following post from Stephen Green on Instapundit, a Conservative/Libertarian Blog. A man asking why do women who write disparaging headlines about conservatives “always” look like this (see woman in circle). When you are reduced to commenting about somebody’s looks, it says an awful lot about your argument. You don’t have one. Scott Adams did make racist’s comments and lost most of the distribution for his highly successful cartoon. Disgraced seems like the appropriate word here. But then Green wasn’t saying there was anything wrong with the headline he was going after the woman’s looks.

Or was he? Green is just coy enough in his words to be able to shrug his shoulders and say you were the one assuming I was making a negative comment about the woman’s looks. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with the woman’s looks. I was just saying why do they always look like this and posting her picture for you to see. What an asshole.

I would prefer to link directly to the post but Instapundit doesn’t give me the ability to this. You will find this on the Instapundit blog for January 13 posts made after 2:40PM.

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Quentin Tarantino bad mouthing Paul Dano bothered me for some reason. Tarantino has every right to criticize someone’s work. It is part of the risk artist takes. Critical feedback is a gauge of how effective the artist is so I am not opposed to criticism per se. Tarantino’s criticism, however, was unnecessarily mean spirited. He sounded like he wanted to hurt Dano more than let a colleague know how to improve his work.

More worrisome is this has become the environment we live in. I disagree with you has become more than a difference in opinion or taste. If I didn’t like your performance, you didn’t get it wrong, you are a bad actor. Or a stupid person. Or an evil person. The press eggs this on because it loves a disagreement and have a gleeful willingness to spread the absolute worst thoughts that people have to their readers and viewers. So if a famous person burns another famous person, you can bet your house that there will be a reporter sticking a microphone into the burn victim’s face asking for his response. Retaliation is inevitable.

I wish I was above it all but, I have to confess, I am right in there slinging mud with the best of them. I try to be conscious about it but I fail. Almost all of the time, I fail. A simple a thing as a Trump supporter with a misspelled protest sign is enough for me to forward to Facebook and Instagram so everyone can see how Trump supporter’s are so dumb. I am laughing at one person’s mistake and implying that all Trump supporters are the same which means they all potentially are bad spellers. Uneducated and stupid, right?

The problem is that in a few minutes, I will receive a post from a someone showing a misspelled sign from a left winger. Am I supposed to make the same sweeping assumption about all left wingers based on the one left winger who can’t spell? Of course not. It is just one person’s mistake. The question, for me, then what was I hoping people would think when I sent the post about the bad spelling Trump supporters? It was unfair of me to provide this false depiction of Trump supporters.

Making fun of people is all a lot of fun when you are speaking with people who agree with you but, in the social media world we live in, we no longer have this luxury. Everyone, including the people we are making fun of, can read your thoughts and know what you really think of them. People rarely change their minds if you are calling them stupid. Yet we keep calling each other stupid. Quite loudly at that. How then can we expect people to listen?

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I love Bill Maher’s response to Karoline Leavitt’s defense of Trump calling a reporter piggy. Leavitt thinks it is good that Trump is so honest and frank with reporters. Maher took her up on her defense of being honest and frank and called her a bitch. Good for him.

Trump is nearly 80 year old man. He knows that he crossed a line when he called a woman he has a professional relationship piggy. Anyone, as Trump has been, involved in the business world of the last 50 years knows it. The woman deserves an apology but won’t get one because Trump, in that warped little mind of his, thinks that apologizing is some form of weakness and he is so worried about being perceived as weak that he will never deign to apologize to anyone.

This isn’t really the worst problem this little foot-in-mouth incident exposes. Getting an apology is between Trump and the reporter. What is troubling is that Leavitt and other Trump lackeys aren’t willing to call him out for it. No one is willing to remind him of the hard truths of living in the 21st century and how he should conduct himself in his professional relationships.

Yes, she wants to keep her job but this would seem like a good opportunity to help the boss out. An apology would end this relatively minor dust up. Now he looks like an asshole when he could look like less of asshole, sorry he will always be an asshole in my eyes, with a simple I’m sorry. Since Leavitt isn’t saying that an apology is order, it speaks volumes about Trump’s management style. You can’t speak honestly with him even when the stakes are low.

This is a terrible person to be in charge of a business and potentially disastrous person to be running a country. But hey ho at least those Commie Democrats aren’t in charge.

The good news is I think every reporter in the White House pool should feel free to address him as President Fatso. I mean just to be honest and frank with him. He clearly values that kind of honesty.

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The above question is the problem. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Compromise, or at least as I understand the word compromise, requires that both sides give a little and take a little. Both sides get something out of the deal. That’s why they call it compromise.

The nightly breathless reporting of who is winning and who is losing the shutdown makes compromising extremely difficult particularly in the present circumstances. Trump needs to look like a winner and the Democrats are trying to look like fighters. Neither wants to look like a loser so all pretense of looking for a compromise has been abandoned because there is a battle going on and somebody has to win.

American democracy, unlike most other democratic countries, depends greatly on compromise due to the cumbersome federal system our forefathers created. There has to be a general agreement across an executive, two legislature bodies (one of which requires a supra majority) and the Supreme Court. It is extremely difficult to get things done through this system even in the best of times. These are not the best of times.

It is clear that it isn’t in the best interest of the press for there to be a compromise between the two parties. Indeed compromise is decidedly boring and unlikely to engage the press who prefer mudslinging, name calling and they particularly like winners and losers. Because the press needs to have winners and losers, they are framing the present struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats in the most unhelpful way. The press wants one side to succumb to a more powerful winning side who will then stand on the loser’s lifeless body and gloat for even more good press. All anybody wants to know who is winning the shutdown

Well, sadly — no one.