Wondering on Wednesday 1/24/24

 

Ready... set... wonder!

If you've been paying attention to financial news lately, you're likely aware that the stock market is booming. The Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P have all hit or neared record highs,  sometimes on consecutive days. 

Remember how big a deal that was during the Trump administration? He talked about it all the time in interviews and on social media. I found over 140 tweets or retweets from him raving about how high the market was, how many records it hit, and how fabulous it was when he was president. For example, here's one from December 31, 2020.

That was then, but this is now, and with Joe Biden in the White House, Trump is no longer excited about the market's success. Rather, he's telling his supporters that "the stock market is making rich people richer" - as if that's ever been a bad thing for an alleged billionaire. 

So, I'm wondering, am I supposed to be happy with my 401(k) doing so well, or am I supposed to be mad about rich people? 

*** *** *** *** *** 

This week marked the fourteenth anniversary of Citizens United, the case in which the Supreme Court decided that there are no limits on how much money corporations, non-profits, unions, trade organizations, and the like can spend buying elections, because limiting their money limits their speech.

According to an article from The Hill, 

AdImpact, a political advertising tracking firm, anticipates $10.2 billion will be spent on political advertising across broadcast, cable, radio, satellite, digital and CTV during the 2024 cycle, which would make it the most expensive in history.

And, if the estimate proves true, that'd be over a billion dollars more than was spent during the 2020 cycle, the previous record (emphasis added). The article also notes that

Outside groups have dumped nearly $318 million into 2024 presidential and congressional elections as of Sunday, OpenSecrets reported.

And how does that compare to 2020? It's "more than six times" what was spent during the same time period in '20 (emphasis added).

I won't bother wondering what this does to the voices of regular folks like you and me; I mean, that's pretty obvious, right? We're not actually muzzled, but our voices are surely being drowned out. 

I do wonder, though, why the amount living, breathing people can spend is limited. After all, we're the ones who actually vote.

*** *** *** *** ***

An article from HuffPost informed us that Ron DeSantis ran a pretty expensive campaign.

The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down combined had roughly $150 million to work with. Much of that came in the form of an $82.5 million transfer from the Florida political committee that DeSantis used to run for governor in 2019 and 2023. It’s highly likely that money dried up in the waning days of his presidential campaign, as many of the governor’s donors had already maxed out their contributions while his donor base did not show signs of expanding.

I'm not surprised he dropped out of the race; many folks think he was really prepping for 2028 and a run against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). The two debated last November, which is when Newsom famously said, "Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024." 

As DeSantis half-heartedly endorsed the front-runner, Trump told us he would officially retire the 'Ron DeSanctimonious' nickname. I'm half-heartedly wondering if no longer having to hear the name is why DeSantis suspended his campaign - and if his donors, and their wallets, wish he had done it sooner.

*** *** *** *** ***

One more about politics, and then we'll move on - I promise. I've been talking about endorsements quite a bit lately, I know, but did you see this one?

Nikki Haley receives major endorsement from Judith Sheindlin ahead of New Hampshire primary

You may be wondering, as am I, how many people knew who Judith Sheindlin was without watching the video or googling her. And I can't help wondering how much influence Sheindlin has? I guess she's still on TV in syndication, but her show ended in July 2021. And finally, I wonder how on earth this can in any way be considered "a major endorsement."

*** *** *** *** ***

It's FAFSA season - that time when families with high school seniors sit down and try to figure out how they're going to fund further education for their kids. While there are reports of issues with the form, the lateness of it, and most importantly with the calculations, that's not what I'm wondering about. 

Rather, I'm thinking about what happens long before FAFSA - when parents fight their way through the challenge of finding available and affordable childcare - and long after, when the kids have been out of college for 10, 15, or 20+ years and still owe on their student loans. 

Here's what I'm wondering: why don't we hear the same complaints about childcare tax credits as we do about student loan forgiveness? If the argument against the former is that we shouldn't have to bail out people who can't afford college, I'd expect the same people to argue that we shouldn't have to bail out people who can't afford to raise their own children.

*** *** *** *** ***

I'll close with a silly observation. I follow a couple of 'old house' pages on social media, which share photos of houses built as far back as the late 1600s, with most being around 100 years newer than that.

Followers of the page are very passionate; for people who complain, and for those who love what they see, everything is fair game:  windows, walls, floors, and ceilings; rugs, art, and collectibles, and where they are displayed;  and most especially, the kitchens and bathrooms. The most common complaints about those two rooms are that everything is too modern, the wrong material, in the wrong spot, or just plain ugly.

I haven't officially commented on this yet, but I wonder why no one ever complains about the houses having indoor plumbing and electricity in the first place?

*** *** *** *** ***

What's on your wondering mind today?

Wondering on Wednesday (v209)

Ready... Set... Wonder!

It's a busy slate of wonderment tonight, so let's dive right in.

Apparently much of Twitter was wondering what inspired Senator Lindsey Graham (R-White House) to dye his hair blonde... a suspiciously Trumpian shade of blonde. Photos are included in the Raw Story article I've linked here, just so you know.

Most folks know that the president had a couple of tweets flagged with a 'fact-check' marker, which drove Trump nuts, and then had a racist, dog-whistling, violence-promoting tweet  tucked behind a 'click-to-view' button. And, I learned, there's a Twitter account,  @SuspendThePres, that was re-tweeting everything the president tweeted and that account was temporarily suspended, after less than three days of 'Trumping.' And the tweet that did them in? Yeah, that racist, dog-whistling, violence-promoting one.

Trump's original tweet is still up, albeit hidden behind a warning, and he remains active on Twitter. In contrast, SuspendThePres' account was suspended for posting the same statement, rendering them unable to tweet, retweet, follow other accounts, or like any posts.  

So - if you're wondering - the president, who is clamping down on social media companies like Twitter, violates social medial platform standards, but is not suspended. But if you or I tweet exactly the same thing as Trump, we will be suspended.

A lot of people have been wondering what happened to the coronavirus pandemic, since no one's talking about it anymore. It' been pushed off the front page by protests, but have no fear - it's still a 'thing' and it's still a risk. According to the Worldometers coronavirus info page, as of 8:32 PM my time (12:32 AM GMT), there have been 6,566,476 cases and 387,878 deaths worldwide. And yesterday, in the US, we added 20,578 new cases and 1,083 deaths.

And one more thing on that: the president repeatedly says we have done more tests than any other country, but he normally bases that the sheer number we've done, which of course does not allow for comparing us and other countries. And, in case you're wondering, there are many countries that are doing (or have done) more tests per million people than us, which is something that he doesn't like and chooses to ignore.  Among them? Russia. Spain. Denmark. United Arab Emirates. Ireland. The UK. Israel. Latvia. Estonia. Australia...

What else is going on?  Well, of course, we had the response from the DC Episcopal bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde ,to the presidents bizarre photo op at St. John's, and the DC Catholic Bishop, Wilton Gregory, for Trump's visit to the St. John Paul II National Shrine. Those were, shall we say, less than positive.

And maybe you were wondering, where are the president's supporters on this? Have no fear - there are a couple of folks willing to defend him. For example, one-time presidential candidate and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said that it was "Hard to imagine any other president walking out of the White House like" Trump did, with his entourage, police in riot gear, and protesters moved out of the way. And there was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was even more effusive in her former boss's defense.  She said, in part,

The president, standing up in front of the country, holding a Bible, standing before a church, that's a sign of courageous leadership. And that's the type of leadership that we need. 

Meanwhile, for what it's worth, Joe Biden met with protesters in Delaware,  met with black faith leaders, spoke with local leaders in Philadelphia, and reminded us this election is "a battle for the soul of our nation."

Others speaking out? Lots of military types. 

• Former Joint Chiefs chair Adm. Mike Mullen (Ret.), who said, among other things, "our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so;" American cities "are not 'battle spaces' to be dominated, and must never become so;' and "This is not the time for stunts. This is the time for leadership."
• Adm. James Stavridis (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, who said, in part,  "Here in these United States, we built laws, customs, and traditions that focus on the appropriate use of the military outside the country. The idea of “boots on the ground” and “dominating the battlespace” in our American cities is anathema to America."
• Former Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Martin Dempsey (Ret.), who tweeted "America’s military, our sons and daughters, will place themselves at risk to protect their fellow citizens. Their job is unimaginably hard overseas; harder at home. Respect them, for they respect you. America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy. #BeBetter"

But the one that probably hurt Trump the most? Former Secretary of Defense Gen. Jim Mattis, one of Trump's Generals, the one with the cool nickname. Here's just a bit of what he said.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people - does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

That one would have had to hurt a normal person. Here's what it prompted in the president.

Please don't wonder for even a second whether Trump gave Mattis the 'Mad Dog' nickname  - he didn't.  It's a lie, and those we don't need to wonder about.

Sunday School 7/14/19

I didn't visit any of the classrooms today, because I saw all I needed to see on the president's Twitter feed.

Three of his tweets this morning collectively garnered at least 348,524 'likes' which, I guess, is better than the tweets themselves. I mean, with almost 62 million followers, most of which are actual people, not bots, that count could be a whole lot worse.

The tweets in question? Here they are.

I have never had a doubt that Trump is a racist. And the "Progressive" women he's talking about? Yeah, they're all people of color: AOC, and Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. Of the four, only Omar was born outside of the United States; she's a naturalized citizen.

And we know he is a sexist bastard, whether it's holding Theresa May's hand or grabbing someone by the pussy, or his strange affinity for his daughter, and of course he's told us that he has a 'type' when it comes to sexual assault.

We know that he does not like being challenged by anyone, but especially not by women in general, specifically women of color, and even more dreaded? Women who have ideals and principles, two things which this president sorely lacks.

His tweets today should have cleared up any misunderstandings regarding any of this.

See you around campus.

Trump in Transition (v39)

As you probably know, lots of people like to fact check the president, who, as you probably also know, plays fast and loose with the facts on a pretty regular basis - whether he needs to or not

In my opinion, he lies automatically, without any regard to anything. He lies when he has absolutely no reason to, as much as he does when he thinks he does have reason to lie.

The Washington Post does a lot of work on fact checking the president, and at some point they started counting his lies and misleading statements, probably when they realized that the volume of them was unprecedented.

Anyway - here's an update from the WaPo on the fact-checking.

It took president Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claim in The Fact Checker's database, an average of eight claims a day. 

But on April 26, must 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark - an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel's report on Russian interference in the presidential election.

Pretty impressive numbers - even more impressive than the reduction in the unemployment rate, the boost in the economy, or even the increase in military spending, for Pete's sake! These are historic numbers! The best ever! See how easy it is to be just like him?

The article notes that reaching the 10,000 milestone seemed "unlikely" back in the beginning when Trump was only making less than five false claims or lies a day - which means in a full four year term, he'd only end up with around 7,000.  But here we are -  and,

...the tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger.

Let's see what that tsunami looks like.

Trump in Transition (v37)

Ah yes - the man who knows more about everything than everybody strikes again.

The American president knows more than French firefighters and historians and experts on 850-year-old structures it seems, and has offered his unsolicited advice to Parisians who were fighting the fire at Notre Dame:

Was his advice helpful? Um, that's a big fat no. To the point where the experts in France took the time to tweet a response - in English, since the man who knows more about everything than everybody I guess doesn't know how to speak French.

But that's not all!  

A Good Guy With Bare Hands Gets A Phone Call

Finally!

The president, so quick to tweet 'recognition' to terrorists, law enforcement officers, good guys with guns, bad guys, and assorted other notables, FINALLY made a courtesy call to James Shaw Jr. on Monday.

Shaw, in case you don't remember, was the guy who grabbed the AR-15 Travis Reinking used to kill four people and injure others at a restaurant. Last month. You know, in April.

We learned about the phone call not from one of the president's tweets, but rather from Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah, at Monday's daily press briefing.

This morning, the President had a call with James Shaw Jr. to commend his heroic actions and quick thinking last month at a Waffle House in Tennessee. Mr. Shaw saved lives when he wrestled a gun from an active shooter who had opened fire. 

I find it interesting how the president has plenty of time to tweet about himself, but so little time to tweet about a regular American doing remarkable things for others. A paid law enforcement officer responding to a call is a 'hero' for doing their job, but a guy like Shaw? No comment, for days which turned into weeks.

For example, the day the president went off to Dallas for his campaign rally at the NRA meeting, he was able to tweet as soon as he made it back to the White House.
                             

Or, how he did find time to tweet about himself and #winning - because talking about a favorable article is better than thanking someone else for their courage and for saving lives of other regular Americans. 

I guess this being president of all Americans stuff is hard...

At any time since the shooting back on April 22nd, the president could have acknowledged and sent sympathies to the families of the victims, but he didn't.  At any time since the shooting, Shaw could have been recognized for visiting the other victims of the shooting in the hospital, or for starting a GoFundMe page to raise money to help pay their bills, in addition to being a "quick thinker." 

He could have been recognized for his incredible honesty, too, at any point over the past few weeks. For saying things like this:

It feels selfish (the recognition). I was just trying to get myself out. I saw the opportunity and pretty much took it.

I chose to react because I didn't want to die. I just wanted to live. I didn't really fight that man to save everyone else. That might not be a popular thing to say. 

Or this:

There's four families that are grieving right now. So much life was lost for no reason. I feel like it could be very selfish of me if I didn't point it out. And I apologize.

I get the sense that Shaw was not holding his breath waiting for the president to call, and that's OK too. The fact that he did have to wait this long is a darn shame.

We all (including the president) could learn something from Mr. Shaw, about humility, and kindness, and honesty, and what it means to be a good guy - even if all you have to defend yourself, and others, is your bare hands.

School Safety, Trump Tweets Style

Ah...  there it is.

It's so much fun when the Republicans slam gun-free zones, as if people who have their minds set on committing maximum mayhem actually wander around looking for a places that have the little "gun free zone" signs up, and pick those places to do the deed.

I'm not pulling an OJ hypothetical thing here or anything like that, and there's a chance I may be wrong. But for the most part, I think if you're bullied at school, or picked on at school, or thrown out of school, if you're mad and want to get back at the people who picked on you, and you've got mayhem on the brain, you're not going to go to go rob a bank - you're going to go not just to any school, but to your own school, the one in your neighborhood, the one where you know the lay of the land, and do what you think, for some sad, sad reason, you have to do.

Columbine. Sandy Hook. Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Red Lake Senior High. And more, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, community colleges, colleges, universities.

If "it's not the gun, it's the killer," why is the president no less blaming the sign? Is he honestly suggesting that "guns don't kill people, signs kill people?"

And if the president thinks it's the sign, how does he explain this? CPAC was a gun free zone, we're told. You know, CPAC where the president spoke? Where the NRA's Wayne LaPierre went into his dark place?

And let us not forget another dark, big-tent-Republican-and-Conservative gathering that was a gun-free zone?

RECOGNIZE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO OPEN CARRY

FIREARMS AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION AT THE

QUICKEN LOANS ARENA IN JULY 2016

That's right -- someone petitioned to have the Republican National Convention, the one that nominated Trump, be a gun-filled zone, for a whole host of reasons, including that Cleveland is a top ten most dangerous city, they said, and the RNC and the arena were "putting tens of thousands of people at risk both inside and outside the convention site." 

And ISIS. And evil-doers and criminals. And Barack HUSSEIN Obama... those were other reasons why guns were needed.

But here's the thing: the folks who petitioned weren't fighting the arena's gun-free policy as a matter of principle - it's not like they wanted it to be always and forever gun-free. They just wanted it to be gun-free when they were there. Because, well because I have no idea. Either a person at the Q is a sitting duck, or they're not. The pro-guns shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

And yes, I know the Administration did more today than just this idiotic tweet, but JeezPete (as a friend of my brother's used to say), why does he have to tweet this nonsense? 

Oh wait - never mind. It must be to provide cover for the fact that his school safety plan doesn't include all the things he promised?  Yeah, that's probably it.

Trump in Transition (v24)

The president had the opportunity this week to lead the nation in its first big holiday since the inauguration. 

Oh sure, there was Valentine's Day, and Good Friday, and Memorial Day; Independence Day and Flag Day (his birthday, I think I read somewhere); Labor Day, and Columbus Day and even Veteran's Day - but this is the first bigly darn deal holiday for Donald Trump, and he has done everything in his power to rise to the occasion.  Take a look:

As we gather together with our families on Thanksgiving and give thanks for our many blessings, we are reminded of the national family to which we all belong as citizens of this incredible country. This Thursday, as we give thanks for our cherished loved ones, let us also renew our bonds of trust, loyalty and affection between our fellow citizens as members of a proud national family of Americans.

This is not the first time Trump has echoed the desire that we renew our affection for each other. For example, here's one set of his comments in response to Charlottesville:

And as I have said many times before: No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws, we all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans.

Here's another example, again from his Charlottesville comments:

...We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and true affection - really, I say this so strongly, true affection for each other. 

The problem is, no matter how hard he tells us that we have to have true affection for each other, he simply cannot find a way to do this himself. 

Ask Jeff Flake:

Or Al Franken:

Or Hillary Clinton:

There are more, of course - the examples come almost daily, sometimes more than once a day, from the president of the United States.

My Thanksgiving wish for him is that he find true affection, - I cannot state it strongly enough - true affection for his fellow man while he's at his Winter White House and that he come back refreshed and fully transitioned into presidential mode after his holiday.

Quick Takes (v23): Going Rogue (Updated 11/3/22)

Quick Takes

We all know that the Former Guy has been banned from Twitter since a couple of days after his insurrection in January 2021. 

Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, there's a lot of speculation on how long it'll be before FPOTUS is allowed back on the platform; given Musk wants to charge 'blue check' users a monthly subscription fee, he might never come back. 

This post, from November 3, 2017, is about the time - before he was banned - that Trump was shut out of his account for 11 blissful, dangerous minutes. 

====================================================

Don't be alarmed at the title - this post has nothing to do with the woman from Wasilla. I didn't mean to scare you, sorry about that.

No, this is all about that glorious, inexplicable feeling of calm that descended on the universe yesterday. I felt it. I'm sure you felt it too, right? Suddenly, things seemed 'right' for a brief period of time, but we didn't quite know why...

What caused that beautiful experience? Well, that's when president Trump's personal Twitter feed (and by personal, I mean the official presidential account) was down for the count, for 11 minutes.

Twitter initially said it was human error that caused the downtime, which inspired a host of tributes on the social media platform to accidentally wonderful acts. But as they investigated to see how it could have happened, it turned out that 'human error' had a name: Rogue Employee, who did this on his or her last day.

#JeSuisRogue #AllHailRogue #EmployeeoftheMonth #YoureHired

While some thought it was a pretty cool thing, and much fun was had on Twitter and other platforms, the reality is there's a certain danger here. I mean, can just anyone working at Twitter shut down the president whenever they want? Are there no protections on his account, or the other verified accounts? How are we all protected from employees like Rogue?

Alexei Oreskovic, writing at Business Insider, suggests there are some serious risks here (emphasis added).

Just think, what if the rogue support staffer on his last day decided to do something different. What if, instead of taking Trump's account offline, the staffer decided to fire off a tweet on Trump's account? Perhaps the staffer might have had Trump say something idiotic or embarrassing. Perhaps the staffer might have had Trump bash a company's stock, in hopes of trading ahead of it and make a quick buck.

And I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Because Trump does that kind of stuff, what, every other day? Every day? Multiple times a day?

Bash an ally? Check. Threaten free speech? Check. Denigrate our political and justice systems? Check. Threaten opponents? Check. Personally attack anyone who doesn't agree with him? Check. Encourage racism and division? Check. Make other idiotic and embarrassing comments?

CheckCheckCheckCheckCheckCheckCheckCheck

There IS a security component here that Twitter needs to address - there's no question about that. But Oreskovic's comments about idiocy and embarrassment?

Yeah, that's not the concern from Rogue, that's a standing concern every time the president sits down at his keyboard.

Multiple Choice

Trump tweets (bottom up):

You Decide: 

a. asinine

b. bullying

c. childish

d. degrading

e. erratic

f. fixated

g. gross

h. horrific

i. insane

j. jackass

k. knucklehead

l. lowlife

m. manic

n. #notmypresident

o. obsessed

p. petulant

q. quarrelsome

r. repulsive

s. sick

t. tyrant

u. unhinged

v. venomous

w. #whatthesniff

x. Xanthippe

y. yahoo

z. zealot

Sunday School 6/4/2017

6/5/17 Note: the link for the president's artwork has been corrected. 

I really tried to watch the videos of the Sunday news shows, and I really tried to plow through the transcripts, but my heart simply was not in it today.

Maybe it's because I've been reading too much news of the world this past week; I was on vacation, after all.

Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time weeding my garden, and I don't have the energy to pull the weeds out of the comments of the people who defend Trump on the news shows.

Maybe I simply lost interest this week, after all of the absurd tweets sent by #NotNowNotEver #NotMyPresident Trump.

Or maybe, it's just covfefe.

One thing I do know is that, when it comes to school, it's important that we ensure a broad education, including focus on music, physical education, and the arts. So, to that end, instead of links to the news shows, here are links to some other educational videos.

The first is the president enjoying the national anthem at Arlington National Cemetery.

The second is the president enjoying golf, both talking about it, and playing it.

The third is a compilation of the president's artwork, courtesy of the @TrumpDraws Twitter account.

I hope you enjoy these distractions from our usual classroom discussions, and I encourage you to support public education in your school district.

See you around campus.

Fairly Unbelievable

"Fairly unbelievable" is how White House press secretary and Melissa McCarthy impersonator Sean Spicer described how the president would describe his relationship with Angela Merkel. Honest.

Q. Sean, where do you see the states of the US-German relationship right now? And how important is that relationship to the president and the American public?

A. I think the relationship that the president has had with Merkel he would describe as fairly unbelievable. They get along very well. He has a lot of respect for her. They continue to grow the bond that they had during their talks in the G7. 

Cool, huh?

Fairly unbelievable could also be used to describe a whole lot of other stuff in the news, coming from or about this administration.

For example, could the Department of Homeland Security be making public information on  domestic violence victims and children who have been trafficked? Fairly unbelievable, I know, but it seems to be true.  DHS, you recall, created the Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement (VOICE) office,  at the president's request and to further his efforts at casting illegal immigrants as the rapists, murderers and drug dealers he told us about as a candidate. To go along with VOICE, there was a database, called DHS-VINE (Victim Information and Notification Exchange) where people can track the cases of the bad hombres who are committing crimes against white Americans, above and beyond being in the country illegally.

Unfortunately, the database includes the names, addresses and other information of illegal immigrants who happen to be crime victims themselves, including domestic violence and trafficking victims - which means that it will allow their abusers to keep tabs on them, when they were released, and so on.

"We're concerned that DHS does not seem to be seriously considering the concerns of victims of crime," says Archi Pyati, chief of policy for the Tahirih Justice Center. The inclusion of survivors' information, she says, is a violation of federal law protecting the information of people applying for special visas or other protections for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking.  

DHS says it will remove the information, although pressure will be kept on them to make sure it happens.

Or, this example. Could it be possible that about half of president Trump's Twitter followers are fake? Fairly unbelievable, I know, but it appears to be true. There's this software called Twitter Audit, which allows an analysis of any Twitter user's followers to determine if they're real users (people who actually have profiles, and who tweet) or bots or otherwise added to pad the all-important bottom line. You can buy those, if you're so vain.  Anyway, Trump's analysis shows he has about 51% fake followers. According to this article,

This isn't the first time someone has pointed out that a good portion of Trump's Twitter following is fake, but what's interesting is that its fakeness seems to be increasing. In January, journalist Yashar Ali ran an audit on Trump's Twitter account and found that 68% of his then 20 million followers were real. Now he's at 30 million followers, but only 51% are real, which means of 10 million followers Trump has gained since January, about 8.3 million are fake. 

The article also notes that President Obama has both more followers in total than Trump (89 million to 30 million) and a much higher percentage of real ones (79% to 51%). Nothing unbelievable about that...

Or, how about this one? Could Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross really be as clueless as he sounded, talking about the reaction in Saudi Arabia when Trump was there?  Watch the video, or take a look below at a transcript of his interview with Becky Quick:

Ross: There's no question that they're liberalizing their society. And I think the other thing that was fascinating to me: There was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there. Not one guy with a bad placard. Instead...

Fairly unbelievable?  You betcha!  Ross doubled down:

Quick: But Secretary Ross, that may be not necessarily because they don't have those feelings there, but because they control people and don't allow them to come and express their feelings quite the same as we do here.

Ross: In theory, that could be true, but boy there was certainly no sign of it. There was not a single effort at any incursion. There wasn't anything. The mood was a genuinely good mood. And at the end of the trip, as I was getting back on the plane, the security guards from the Saudi side who'd been helping us over the weekend all wanted to pose for a big photo op, And then they gave me two gigantic bushels of dates as a present, as a think you for the trip that we had had. That was a pretty from the heart very genuine gesture and it really touched me.  

In theory? Seriously? Is he Secretary of Commerce, or Secretary of Comedy?

And finally, I leave you with these tweets, which nicely summarize our fairly unbelievable president.
Read the first series (they're in reverse sequence) to understand Trump's opinion on unnamed sources used in articles about him or his administration.

And then, of course, this retweet by the president two days later, speaks for itself.

Wondering on Wednesday (v73)

Was the "intelligence briefing" related to "Russian hacking" delayed, or was it not scheduled until Friday? Was it "Russian hacking" or some other kind of hacking?  What does the "President-elect" "know" and when did he "know" it?

I'm wondering about that stuff, this Wednesday.

I'm also wondering about Jackie Evancho's album sales skyrocketing after it was announced that she's sing the national anthem at the "President-elect's" inauguration, and the "movement" that people don't understand. Perhaps it's the normal movement of Christmas-related albums in the days before Christmas, or in the days after a person appears on a Christmas special?  Or maybe it's the normal movement of none of the teen singer's records in the top album charts?

I'm wondering about the 10,000 people who are going to "lose their jobs" at Macy's when another 60 some-odd stores are closed, and I'm wondering if those "American workers" are going to have their jobs "saved" by the "President-elect" like the automotive workers and the air conditioner workers? Or don't their jobs "count" as part of the "movement" we hear about?

Or, will they rise up in a "movement" against Trump who referred to Macy's as disloyal and called their huge stock drop in 2015 "another win for Trump!" in a tweet about a year ago?

I wonder, if it's true that Macy's would not be closing the stores and putting all of these American workers out of a job if they had kept selling Trump ties?

And, of course I'm wondering about those "many enemies" and "those" other people who fought so hard against the "President-elect" and lost so badly. Do they know what to do, I wonder? Or are they still flailing around out there, trapped in the swirling "movement?"

And I'm wondering why it is that the "President-elect" refers to the number of electoral votes needed to win the election as the fabled 270?  It is not celebrated, renowned, famed, famous, well-known, legendary, storied, noted, notable, acclaimed, esteemed, prestigious, of repute, of high standing, or mythical or imaginary. legendary, mythological, fabulous, folkloric or fairy-tale.  It is, in fact, the required number of votes needed.

I'm also wondering what it was about Hillary Clinton's "close ties" to Putin that deserved scrutiny back in October, but why your own close ties and those of you, your family, your business, your previous campaign staff, and your nominees don't?

And what it is you find so fascinating about Vlad and his gang and their antics in the first place?

Finally, I wonder how I'll be able to stand it until JANUARY ELEVENTH when you hold your general news conference in N.Y.C.