Short Takes 3/23/2023

(2 minute read)

Line ‘em up

            The right wing is calling for executions to take place if Trump is indicted.[1]  I wonder if Al Capone had protestors show up when he was charged? 

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Facebook being sociable.

            Zuckerberg is being social again and in order to make the world a better place and facebook more efficient he’s laying off more people in order to be more sociably efficient.[2]  He’s laying off 10,000 this time.  Last November he laid off 11,000.  Does this mean that instead of getting 12 ads before I get a post of a meme from a friend it’ll drop down to 9?

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Flying old slaver.

            Ah Florida, the southernist of states!  A bill is introduced to prevent the flying of LGBTQIA flags on state property and government buildings but the Confederate flag is okay.[3]  Wouldn’t want to take a chance on upsetting the racists.  They’ll need their votes next go round.  After the blowback from the public the guy that introduced the bill decided that perhaps it wasn’t one of his better ideas and pulled it.

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Republicans promote Russian propaganda

            Russia continues using right media MAGA darlings to spread their outrageous anti-Ukraine messaging.[4] 

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Swastika flag time

            A racist old white guy in North Carolina succeeded in running off a black woman trying to start a business.[5]  He used a gun and racist flags like a swastika for intimidation.  Interestingly the picture used in the article is of a swastika flag used by Nazis in a demonstration in Riverside, California.

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Welp, time to bomb Mexico.

            Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks that the US should use military airstrikes in Mexico.[6]  No WWIII worry there.[7]  Trump has talked about invading Mexico like Putin did in Ukraine.[8]  It isn’t just Americans that MAGAs like to threaten.

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Girlfriend material?

            It’s kind of poetic that the author of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, former state representative Joseph Harding turns out to be yet another grifting MAGA criminal pleading guilty to several crimes related to obtaining Covid relief funds fraudulently.[9]  He’s looking at 30 years so he may get off with a hand slap.

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Not to be outdone.

            A former Connecticut Democrat state representative Michael DiMassa and his wife also pled guilty to stealing Covid relief funds.[10]  Here’s a list of members of congress that took Covid relief funds.  And here.  And we can’t leave out that Margorie Taylor Greene received some relief as well.[11] 

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[1] https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1637813682510917632

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-parent-meta-lay-off-10000-employees-second-round-job-cuts-2023-03-14/

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2023/03/14/florida-gop-proposal-would-ban-pride-flag-but-let-confederate-flag-fly-at-state-buildings/?sh=2ab320b060f2

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/16/russia-disinformation-us-far-right-republicans-ukraine

[5] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/north-carolina-man-put-swastikas-in-his-yard-after-black-businesswoman-set-up-shop-next-door-report/ar-AA18TyFb?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=a8abb30c0865470e830f006a8e4d8e27&ei=63

[6] https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-strike-cartels-mexico-kidnapping-1785851

[7] Esper commenting:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33UXU_YbeLc

[8] Trump comments:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNxvSxaGeDE

[9] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/florida-republican-behind-dont-say-gay-bill-pleads-guilty-to-covid-relief-fraud

[10] https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-lawmakers-wife-sentenced-theft-170239824.html

[11] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marjorie-taylor-greene-ppp-loan/

 

No perpin’

 

(1.5-minute read)

Unrealistic expectations.

            By and large I think that people have unrealistic expectations about what’s going to happen if former President Trump is indicted.  There won’t be a perp walk unless he wants one because he ever plays the victim card.[1]  He isn’t going to jail.  He won’t be handcuffed.  There will be a mug shot.  So, there’s that.

People are treating an indictment like it’s a guilty verdict.  It isn’t.  Although Trump has maintained otherwise, pleading the 5^th Amendment isn’t an admission of guilt either.[2]  (He has pled the fifth multiple times.[3] )  Now, he says that people are a fool if they don’t plead the fifth. 

What a difference an indictment can make.

Shades of Al!

            Notorious crime boss Al Capone was sent to prison on charges of tax evasion, not for all the other crimes that he had “allegedly” committed.[4]  BTW do you think that Capone died in prison?  Well, he didn’t.  He served 7 years and some change of an 11 year sentence and then went to Florida where he died 8 years later. 

            Now, Trump is certainly no Al Capone but the charges that might be made against him do have some potentially serious consequences.  Ask his former attorney, now informant Michael Cohen who did some time for committing the crime/s that Trump is accused of and might be indicted for.[5]  Cohen ended up in the pokey for a year. 

According to legal eagles the hush money payments are the least of all the crimes that Trump might be guilty of and where feds also might have the weakest case.  We really don’t know what evidence they have and how good it is.  We do know that it was good enough to convict Cohen. 

            I don’t think that it’s going to be as big a deal as people think it is.  Unless Trump pleads guilty.

That ain’t happenin!

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[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/perp-walk

[2] Trump, 5^th Amendment:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfDwx7tiLY

[3] Trump pleading 5^th:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPm2E4LRwg

[4] https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/al-capone

[5] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-22/michael-cohen-completes-prison-term-after-trump-related-crimes

Too many words.

 

(2.5 minute read.)

Change or be changed.

            Hello.  My name is Keith.  I use too many words.  I’m wordy.  Really wordy.

            And so begins the addicted to words meeting. 

            I’m a paper and pen guy living in a sound bite society.  I still hand write letters.  To make matters worse I write in calligraphy.  Over the years I have developed my own style.  There was a time when I had lots of people to write to.  Family.  Friends.  Not so much anymore.  I’m aging out of letter writing.

            Back in the day I was active in union politics.  I was part of a group that wanted to make the union more democratic and responsive to the rank and file.  We failed, but we did have to learn the nuts and bolts of politicking and producing our own work.  Those skills came in handy a time or two over the years.

            One of the things that we learned in regard to campaign material is that campaign material has a limited life span before it’s discarded.  The conventional wisdom was that if you handed someone something it would be disposed of in the first trash can that the person reached, if they even waited that long.  Technology hasn’t changed the campaign field all that much other than everything is available everywhere all at once. 

            The attention span of people hasn’t changed all that much either.  It’s just different.  I was reading an article where they had studied people using social media.  The average time spent after people clicked on something before clicking on something else was 10 seconds.  I suppose we can thank ads, memes, texting, reels and tik tok for that.  It was a matter of conditioning.  Like being in a fight.

Bob and weave!

Doing it again.

            I’ve already used too many words telling people that I use too many words.  If someone was surfing in off the internet and ran across this post I would already have lost them.  Too many words.  Too much text.  Too dense.  Not enough white space.  No pretty pictures or catchy phrases.  When I wrote an underground newsletter, I was often told that I was writing over people’s heads. 

            What brought this post about is that I wrote a piece about a post that was circulating on the internet concerning Bryan Cranston and a guy named Whitlock.  The post title was “The key word is again.”  The version that I posted was a 3.5-minute read.  However, the first version that I worked on was a 20-minute read and over 4,000 words long.  I may go ahead and post it anyway.  It’s title is “Better dead than red.”

            What does this mean?  Surely there’s a meaning for this post.  The meaning is that I appreciate the time that you took to read my stuff.  Time is a precious commodity.

Thank you.