Bloggin'


  • DA at keyboard

    "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". --A. J. Liebling (like I own this Blog, & Suckerberg doesn't) --DA

    "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." --Cyril Connolly

    "The most important political office is that of the private citizen."--Louis D. Brandeis

    "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

    “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”--Martin Luther King Jr.

Congress

Travel


  • "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Innocents Abroad -- Mark Twain

    "It liberates the vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction." - The American Abroad speech, 1868 - Mark Twain

    Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those. - Letter to W. D. Howells, 5/20/1891 - Mark Twain

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Texas: zero days without being a national embarrassment

 

"Reality Check: Seven Times Texas Leaders Misled the Public About Operation Lone Star

 

As they investigated Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border initiative, reporters repeatedly found situations where Abbott and DPS officials cited accomplishments that lacked crucial context or did not match reality. Here are a few examples." -- ProPublica

 

https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-greg-abbott-border-crisis-facts#

 

Texas-Come-For-Stay-For

Texas-Come-For-Stay-For

Texas-Come-For-Stay-For

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth

"Internal emails and interviews with key participants reveal for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the rigged election theory touted evidence they knew to be disproven, disputed or dismissed as dubious." - ProPublica & Frontline

 

Translation: It's a good read & insight into the extent that tRump and his fiefdom are bat guano crazy:

 

Building the “Big Lie”

 

Monday, April 25, 2022

Dumped Twitter tonight. Done & done

 

Dumped Facebook many moons ago. LinkedIn after that. Twitter tonight. Feels liberating. Social Media is not oxygen, no one "needs" it.

 

Screenshot from 2022-04-25 21-10-00

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

LinkedIn (Microsoft) Censors Critics. All Social Media is detrimental to Free Speech & Democracy.

 

The title of this post makes the case for maintaining an old-school, personal Blog.

 

Sure, a personal blog is never going to have the reach of the big, mainstream social media platforms, but then there is this:

 

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." --Cyril Connolly

 

I encourage any / everyone fed up with the BS on commercial social media platforms to return to speaking their mind on their own Blogs.

 

Escape the subjective, anti-free speech, anti-democracy restrictions imposed by some rich frat-boy punk whose lone concern is their personal profit & the greed of their conservative shareholders whose lone concern is the bottom line of quarterly reports.

 

Stop being the product that those social media platforms profit from and sell. Without you, they have little to nothing to contribute / hustle to advertisers. They don't 'produce' anything. YOU are the product that they sell.

 

One decent reference for both those new or experienced, is this book: "WordPress the missing manual" 3rd Edition by Matthew MacDonald

 

Register your own Domain (or not) too. Select a hosting service (carefully) or go full DIY by hosting it on either a rented server or roll your own. Use disparate resources (domain registrar, server farm, colocations, etc) or look for a turnkey resource.

 

I deleted my FB account sometime ago and have never missed it since. Two tier memberships have grown more common with large social media CORPORATIONS, typically a restricted freebie, and a paid account with a few perks beyond the freebie version. If you post something to a freebie account that a paid, typically more conservative member takes exception to some more liberal opinion you express, the CORPORATE social media provider will do the paid subscriber's bidding by targeting your account for restrictions. Be done with all that nonsense by posting to a personal blog platform instead, and thus rendering the social media platform impotent (& less profitable).

 

This particular blog has no paid advertisers, sponsors, branding, etc. If your intent is freedom of expression, rather than profits, then forgo monetizing your Blog. That way, you're more difficult to target by those who oppose your humble opinions, too (no advertisers to complain to). Here is a quote which relates a bit:

 

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one". --A. J. Liebling

 

I'm just sayin', own a Blog, speak your mind, tell detractors to, "suck it". ;-)

 

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Global: Facebook giving powerful users free rein to harass others, make false claims, and incite violence - Amnesty International

Facebook Blows 

Glad I deleted my FB account.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

High Meat Prices Are Helping Fuel Inflation, And A Few Big Companies Are Being Blamed - NPR

High Meat Prices Are Helping Fuel Inflation, And A Few Big Companies Are Being Blamed

"Between these recent price shocks in the pandemic and ongoing allegations of price-fixing, that [consumer welfare] argument for consolidation is falling apart," said Claire Kelloway, a researcher at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly think tank. "There's increasing evidence and suspicions that this market power has gone too far and is beginning to hurt consumers."

Beef prices up 14%,
Fresh Vegetable prices down .6%,
Glad to be Vegan ;-)

Higher grocery prices expected at retailers later this year

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Wars are not meant to be won, they are meant to be perpetual ... for profits.

Watch the video

https://www.tiktok.com/@normalnemo/video/7001520397258640645

 

2016-01-13_10-29-01

2016-07-08_23-24-24

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Patriotism & Dissent


  • "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
    -- Republican President Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt

    "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis

    "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -- James Madison

    "When the government fears the people it is a democracy....when the people fear their government it is tyranny..." -- Thomas Jefferson

    "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." – Herman Goering - Nazi

    "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." - Samuel Johnson

Electronic Frontier Foundation for Bloggers

Handbook from Reporters Without Borders

  • Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

War

  • "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."--John Murtha Congressman (D-PA) -------
    "War is a rackett"--Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps, 1881 - 1940, Double recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
    -------
    "Many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war. They come at it from an intellectual perspective, versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off."--Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska
    -------

More "Quotes"


  • Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.--Aristotle

  • A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.--Leonard Bernstein

  • The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.--John Kenneth Galbraith

  • The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.--Albert Einstein

  • The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.--Dante Alighieri

  • "Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized."--Albert Einstein

  • Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.--Plato

  • Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.--William E. Simon

  • Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.--Alexander Hamilton

  • They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Ben Franklin

  • "Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." --The Biggest Fool of 'em All

  • Regarding "Trickle-Down Economics: "If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows."--John Kenneth Galbraith

  • "This is not about who they are. This is about who we are. We are Americans and we hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct. And, no, the end does not justify the means. Not now. Not ever, when the means include torturing prisoners." --Republican Senator John McCain

  • "Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"--Franklin D. Roosevelt

  • "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. --Edmund Burke

Fair Use


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