Tag Archives: Poltics
Facebook on Trial
Watching Mark Zuckerberg testify to Congress was a bit like watching someone explain the internet to their grandmother. At first, you see the Senators had some questions loaded to really kind of grill Zuckerberg on Facebook and privacy, but as soon as he starts explaining any facet of software, you can see the senators eyes just glaze over. I don’t want to blame it on the ages of the respective senators. I know plenty of older people who are more tech savvy than me. But you can tell that the current generation of senators are a few steps behind in understanding the basic business model of social media.
Preparing to Chat
So officials from South Korea, who had been in talks with the leadership in North Korea headed stateside to begin the process of facilitating talks. Now, if literally any other person were sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, (and I mean literally anyone else, like George W., definitely Obama, hell Nixon would probably knock it out of the park!) this might feel like hopeful news of a resolution that we might not have expected in our life time. As much as Trump has exacerbated tensions with North Korea, he’s not at fault for the precarious situation they’ve created. But it will be his fault when things go south with these talks, because I can’t bring myself to believe in the hope that Donald Trump will handle this situation with dignity and class. I just don’t have that level of optimism. I mean, he can’t seem to decide if the invitation he accepted to chat with North Korean leadership is a good idea.
Trump’s Secret Weapon
With the numbers finally out for Trump’s proposed budget, a lot of news agencies and senators on Twitter are again taking a look back at Trump’s campaign promises. He claimed that under him, the country would never run a $400 billion deficit. He claimed that he was the only GOP candidate who was saying absolutely no cuts to Medicaid. And yet we’re on course to over double the deficit number he complained about, and of course his proposed budget seeks to slash the numbers on Medicaid by a cool $250 billion. What I’m curious about was how much of those claims were lies that he knew he was telling at the time, or just claims made of sheer ignorance of how governments work. Because that’s the thing at this point; maliciousness and stupidity are both valid accusations to make. And if it is just sheer ignorance, one might wonder how that plays into things going forward…
Mind the Exit 