Headlines

Trump threatens to unleash gunfire on Minnesota protesters

Twitter flags Trump tweet on Minneapolis for ‘glorifying violence’

Trump vows to use military on ‘thugs’ ...

Report: Channel migrants ‘threaten to throw their children into water’

Trump says he would shut down Twitter if legally possible

Ted Cruz calls for criminal investigation of Twitter

Chinese state media troll Pompeo over MN ...

Mike Lee: You won’t like it if a Dem can regulate social media

UK to increase Hong Kong visa rights if China pushes security law

Coronavirus live updates: Prescriptions for Trump-touted drug surged, GM restarts most U.S. pickup truck production

War zone Minneapolis ... More chaos, more looting ... Unrest spreads in USA ...

Minneapolis mayor to protesters: Please social distance, wear masks

Discord

We are living in an age of discord. Everyone is at someone else’s throat. Why may this be true? I have a suggestion — the new media — the internet and social media. I realize that this is an easy answer for no other reason than these are coincident events. But one has to delve deeper.

The internet and social media have broken the lock that the old media had on information flows. Now, one can be one’s own reporter ... for better of worse ... and realize what these previous intermediaries did to shape our opinions ... and we resent it ... and them.

Through disintermediation you have become free to accept or reject the hundreds of “facts” that flow electronically onto your life. There no longer is an arbiter of truth other than yourself. You have been freed of the old groupthink ... only to be captured by one of many new ones.

Two absolutely opposing views can be backed by a myriad of supporting data that are, in turn, backed by the assurances of other internet trolls, media pundits and “famous” people ... famous because they are not shy about offering their brain droppings. (I include myself in this club.)

So, in the end, there are two positions that are diametrically opposite ...  and both can be justified to a fair-thee-well. A certain recipe for continued discord.

The Solution

The latest mass shooting in Midland and Odessa, Texas pulls the fresh scab off of the issue of guns and what needs to be done to stop such insanity. There are many sure-fie solutions (intended pun) that are proposed: complete background checks, limiting ammunition clips, banning “assault” rifles, restricting violent computer games, “red flag” laws, social media screenings, more “open carry” laws, compulsory gun buybacks, even repealing the Second Amendment ...some of these suggestions having already been tried and failed ... or been politically unpalatable. Most every politician has a “simple solution.”

But there is only one possible simple solution to this social scourge — and that is there is no simple solution. Unfortunately, like many manias of past times, this one will likely only go away with time. At some point ... possibly years hence ... we will look back and realize that these mass shootings have gone away. Why this has happened we will only learn by understanding how our society had evolved in the interim. I will not suggest what this will be ... because I do not know what it will be ... nor do you.

My only hope is that this solution is a change in our society and not an infringement of our freedoms.

Headlines

Donald Trump’s Nixon-to-China moment on guns

The yield curve everyone is worried about is flashing a recession signal

FBI seeks to scan social media for violent threats ...

ICE releases 300 of 680 illegal aliens arrested in MIS food plants

Biden defiantly defends remarks about Trump and white racism

China’s food prices jump 9.1% in July as the country battles African swine fever

Iran jamming ship GPS to get them to wander into waters?

Bill de Blasio: Abortion is a ‘sacred choice for women’

Trump swats at Macron for Iran diplomacy

Jeffery Epstein ‘misappropriated vast sums of money from me,’ Les Wexner says

Bio-warfare experts question why Canada sent lethal viruses to China

Fitton: Judicial Watch uncovers more Comey corruption

Headlines

‘These are our sisters’: House to condemn Trump’s racist tweets

Trade war to drag on as Trump says long way to go and China strikes hard-line tone

CNN, MSNBC say‘racist’ 636 times ...

Bedlam on House floor: Pelosi storms off amid boos from members

Planned Parenthood ousts head amid heightened attack on abortion rights

Big banks signal Fed rate cuts may not be so great for them

Schumer announces support for slavery reparations ...

McConnell: Everyone ‘tone down’ rhetoric, Trump ‘not a racist’

Pelosi ‘hopeful’ about reaching budget deal this month

Roger Stone avoids jail, banned from major social media after judge rules he breached gag order

Poll: Republican support RISES after racially-charged tweets ...

Study: Social media usage linked to teen depression

Diety Prayer

Please help me to ignore all the slope-heads vying for attention on social media  — all too many grand-standers peddling vacuous and malodorous vipertude.

Anonymity

One could make the case, as I will try to here, that social media has created our current caustic social climate. But it is not just the media that is the message, it is that a great deal of this discourse is anonymous. Thus, people can and do say vile things without the chance of recourse.

I, against my wife’s wishes, always use my full name when posting a blog ... or commenting on  another’s. Yes, I leave myself open to retaliation, but I strongly believe that, if I say something, I should be willing to stand behind it. I refuse to be a faceless Internet troll ... like many too many others.

Much of the dangerous and hateful conduct that takes place on the Internet or Dark Web exists behind a wall of pseudonyms or that annoying “Anonymous.” I even believe that many of the problems on our social media would disappear if it were decreed that every last bit of interaction could quickly and easily be attributed to a particular person at a particular URL location ... and covering up these matters could have consequences.

Maybe this is one, if even a partial solution, Congress should look at to rein in big tech? It is big tech, after all, that allows ... even encourages ... this anonymity to occur.

Headlines

'Ideological soundness': How a China skeptic sold Trump on a trade war

A potential Trump impeachment is a 'huge risk' for 2019, expert says

Pope calls for world love ...

2nd migrant child dies in U.S. custody, says Fed's

German president warns of polarization fueled by social media

Retail is on pace for worst December ever, but new year rally could be ahead

BOOM: Strongest holiday retail sales in years ...

McCaskill on Ocasio-Cortez: I'm a little confused why she's the thing

Trump invited to visit Turkey

Indonesia says avoid coast near volcano, fearing new tsunami

Debt up $1.37 billion since last year; $10,743 per household ...

Iraq makes Christmas a nation holiday

Headlines

The legal battle that could undermine law is at the center of the Mueller investigation

Market turmoil washes out Apple and Alphabet's gains for the year

Prosecutors say Trump directed illegal payments during campaign ...

Jerry Nadler vows to shut down House probe into DOJ-Democrat collusion

Trump leans on McConnell to bots on criminal justice reform

China's November export, import growth shrinks, showing weak demand

American entrepreneurs who flocked to China are returning home, disillusioned ...

Finland: Crackdown on criminal migrants because of 'evil' rape gangs

Paris police arrest hundreds in [yellow jacket] political protests again

If the Fed doesn't raise rates this month, the market could panic, Cramer says

Chinese police close down 1,100 social media accounts ...

... Police fight yellow vests at E.U. HQ as protests spread to Belgium, Netherlands

Headlines

Republicans used redistributing to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down

New York Democrats pick a fight with Amazon over HQ2 in Queens

NY taxpayers to pay $48,00 per job at Amazon's new HQ ...

Trump: NYT story on N. Korea missile bases 'more fake news'

CNN sues Trump to get Jim Acosta's press pass restored

John Kelly may leave after clashing with the First Lady Melania Trump: NBC News

Court orders buoy Abrams in Georgia ...

China bans 10,000 people from social media for 'harmful political information'

Successful passage of FAA legislation means safer U.S. skies

Why oil prices have gone from four-year high to bear market in just 6 weeks

More US children get paralyzing illness, cause still unknown ...

Trump taunts Macron: 'No country more nationalist than France'

Headlines

Behind Trump's obsession with social media suppression

Apple says Trump's China tariffs are going to hurt company

MAG: Why Trump's record trumps the media's spin ...

Serena Williams melts down during U.S. Open, claims sexism

[Corey] Booker handing to Iowa in October

Tesla accountant quit after concluding  Musk wasn't following go-private advice

Sweden swings right

Brooks: 'Democrats overwrought' over Kavanaugh docs

Forget about the 25th Amendment. It won't work.

Trump's battle against Silicon Valley may create an opening for China in artifice intelligence

STORM WATCH: Odds rising that Florence will strike East Coast ...

Judge orders Florida election officials to offer ballots printed in Spanish

Obvious Trith #15

"Keep your customers surly but not rebellious" -- Anon.

The more the American public (and Congress) is learning about Google, Favebook and Twitter, the more we are appreciating that these and other social-media companies have cut a huge slice out of our freedom and privacy cake. We, their customers, are moving from being surly into rebel territory. Such overreach by the Masters of the Universe needs correcting ... and fast. -- Anon.

Headlines

State Dept: Another US. diplomat in Cuba suffered from medical issues

Tesla is asking Model 3 reservation holders for an another $2,500 to order their cars ...

Update: Oil spikes to highest price in four years

Whoopi Goldberg to Trump's potential SCOTUS pick: 'Get out of my vagina!'

Shooting at newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland

The Red Hen restaurant that refused to serve Sarah Sanders was hit by a cyber attack

Judge: 'Even blind person' can see Mueller using Manafort to 'target" Trump ...

Poll: Majority of Americans believe social media sites censure political views

Sen. Lee: Kennedy's retirement might not mean the end of abortion rights

Amazon wipes out $17.5 billion from eight companies in one day

Gowdy tells Rosenstein: 'Finish the hell up!'

130 Mexican political candidates assassinated in 10 months

Headlines

DOJ, House GOP lurch toward confrontation in document fight

Audi CEO arrested in Germany over diesel scandal

Beijing holding U.S. citizens 'hostage' in China ...

... Illegal crossers posing as family units up 315% in year

America's share of global travel market is shrinking

Four in 10 users have deleted a social media account in last year over privacy concerns

Border battle: USA taking in 250 kids per day

Schemer: I think what Trump is doing on China 'is right'

Giulia mi: Trump shouldn't issue pardons in Russian investigation

The UK army is at serious risk of being outgunned by Russia, lawmaker says

GALLUP: Satisfaction with US direction highest since '05 ...

NYT forced to backtrack on Scott Pruitt hot piece with 'important correction'

The Postcard Paradigm

Social media and e-mail "services" have fundamentally altered the paradigm of interpersonal communications ... some for the good, some for the bad. Yes, it is fast, more efficient and "free.." But it's as though our previous method, our mail service, opened, read, saved and exploited everything that was in our letters. It's also like our written interpersonal communication is now only on electronic postcards. This is an often unrealized trade-off and a fundamental violation of every citizen's right of privacy.

Our government must rein in this technology to the point of its providing an optional and absolute privacy shield against this intrusion ... equivalent to what it was when we mailed a sealed envelope.

Headlines

Trump administration freezes $200 million in funds for Syrian reconstruction

Visa seekers will have o disclose social media ...

Trump says Washington Post should register as Amazon 'lobbyist'

Ingraham to take 'Easter break' from show amid advertiser boycotts

Tesla Autopilot activated before fatal accident ...

Massive loans. Damaged credit. Nothing to save. How student loans make home ownership a pipe dream

Jimmy Carter rips Trump: America 'apparently wants a jerk' for president

Elizabeth Warren attacks Trump's Asia 'chaos' and ridicules his 'happy-faced' views toward China

Google staff organized to fight cyber bullying -- at Google ...

MIT researchers are tackling a major challenge for self-driving cars -- fog

Media apparently using Hamas-supplied casualty figures for Gaza rioting

Big Pharma's billion dollar scramble to invest in start-ups to fuel innovation

Pogo Stick

Opining on social media, particularly Twitter, is  akin to crossing a mine field on a pogo stick -- Anon.

Headlines

Trump meeting with Kim could signal major thaw in nuclear standoff

A $10,000 bet on Amazon at the market bottom 9 years ago would be worth $250,000 today

FACEBOOK DROPPING: 24% drop in user time spent ...

Boom: U.S. adds 313.000 jobs in February

Interior spent $139K on Zinke office doors

Tesla CEO Rlon Musk's 'unprecedented' $2.6 billion compensation too high, advisers say

Even millenials starting to hate social media ...

Study: American taxpayers gave $1.5 billion to abortion providers

Playbook scoop: [Liz] Warren goes after Kushner Companies loans

The last two times North Korea said it was giving up its nukes, it was lying

Obama goes Hollywood: To produce Netflix shows ...

Elon Musk sides with Trump on trade with China, citing 25% import duty on American cars

Founding Fathers' Wisdom

Our founding fathers realized that allowing children to set public policy was quite unwise. That is why, when writing our Constitution, they set the age requirement for our president at 35, senators at 30 and representatives at 25. It seems to me that this latter stricture should also be applied to voters. All the sophomoric nonsense now being championed at our universities does nothing but reinforce this notion. As does the fact that now social media has revealed how shallow and self-absorbed many of our current younger generation of snowflakes either are or will become.

Maturity doesn't always come with age ... but it helps.

School Shootings

The rash of school shooting of late and, in particular, the recent slaughter in Florida have everyone searching for a solution to this madness. The knee-jerk answer centers around guns and ammunition control. But this seems impractical given our American culture of guns. However, there is another common element that has been growing since 2007 along with the increase in gun and other forms of mayhem. And that is social media -- Facebook, Twitter,Yahoo chat rooms, Instagram, reddit, etc.

It would seem that if we made everyone get a license to use such social media ... and if there were a nation registry of such users and those who should be barred from using them ... and if there were a 30-day waiting period for new users to join such technologies ... and if we could ban any social media that had a scary name or appearance ... then we might begin to control this scourge of school violence.

Obviously, the above was partially tongue in cheek. But there really should be something we can do. It seems everyone was predicting that this nutjob in Florida might some day snap ... and he did. They knew this threat without even a background check. Why couldn't the authorities have taken action ahead of this slaughter ... as soon as he had threatened others? Confiscate his guns and ammunition? Closely monitor him and his social media postings? Even place him in protective custody? Maybe we should even stop sensationalizing these incidents in the national media to discourage copycats?

We are civilized. Let us find a civilized solution other than repealing the Second Amendment.