My Picks for Top Tweets: 26 August 2017

by | Aug 26, 2017 | Tweets | 5 comments

Well, he’s done it again. Every time you think Trump can’t get any worse, he does. A couple of days ago in my Top Tweets post I wrote about Trump’s rally in Phoenix, Arizona. During his “speech” he floated the idea of pardoning a former sheriff from that state, Joe Arpaio. Well, the Washington Post is now reporting that he’s done it. Sheriff Joe has his pardon.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio was known for, among other things, the racist policies of his department. He was taken to court over them and told to change the way he operated. He didn’t and so a criminal contempt of court charge followed. Arpaio has since been voted out of office, but his legacy remains.

In normal circumstances, a presidential pardon for this man would be bad, but could be defended; to pardon him is completely within Trump’s right. However, to do it under current conditions shows that he cares nothing for the feelings of the vast majority of his people. As long as his base is happy, he’s happy. There’s nothing on Breitbart about this as I write, but I bet he’ll get their support for this decision.

To me this pardon shows, once again, that Trump is morally unfit for the job. It will further divide his country at a time when it needs to be united like never before in modern times. It’s another shout out to the Alt-Right too, giving them his support when he should be doing the opposite.

Trump has done this during what respected NBC meteorologist Brad Panovich is calling the “strongest looking hurricane on satellite I have ever seen” (as per Washington Post) that’s bearing down on the southern US . I suspect Trump hopes the weather will help deflect attention. What sort of a man is he – to take advantage of something that will likely see people die and many more have their lives ruined.

 

 

There’s good news amidst all the bad though. The dreadful Sebastian Gorka has gone from the White House. He says he resigned. Others say differently. Before he got his job at the Trump administration, he was a regular foreign affairs commentator on Fox News. Every time he was on I became extremely angry at his ignorance, simplistic arguments, and self-aggrandizement. I suspect that I’ll have to be putting up with that once again during my daily dose of Fox.

Just one more update, this time regarding my Charlottesville post and the revolting Chris Cantwell:


Let’s get onto some nice stuff …

 

Cat Tweets

And it doesn’t get nicer than this!

The best things really are at the end of the rainbow …


This is what boxes are for.

 

He’s effing huge!!!


This ad is for German-based Netto Marken-Discount grocery store. It’s been around for a while and many of you have probably seen it before. But it’s doing the rounds again and I adore it, so it’s going in!

Here’s the video about making the ad. I wish they’d told us the name of each cat. The names are there, but only one is in it’s chair.

 

Dog Tweets

Another lovely inter-species friendship. This time it’s a dog and a hedgehog, which is a cool combination.

 

This kid has got a great start to life!

 

And it looks like these two did the same thing!

 

Bird Tweets

Penguins are another of my favourites, and here are a couple being cute in a zoo.

 

Political Tweets

Orange is the new orange.

 

Stephen King is famously critical of Donald Trump on Twitter. Now Trump has blocked him. This is King’s retaliation. 😀

 

A(nother) good one from Ann German.

 

The US is supposed to be the beacon of free speech for the world. Many politicians certainly like to represent it that way. However, journalists are a lot less free to do their job there than in many countries around the world. The US is only 43rd (out of 180 countries) in the Reporters Without Borders 2017 World Press Freedom Index. That doesn’t even get them into the top grouping (“Free”), currently consisting of fifteen countries. I’m proud to say New Zealand is one of them. As you’d expect, most of northern Europe is in that group too. Of course, Trump has been putting press freedom at risk more and more. I wrote during the campaign that he would be a threat to press freedom, and unfortunately that’s proving to be accurate.
(Tweet via Ann German.)

 

This is a very interesting thread that Ann German brought to my attention. It’s from someone who analyzes Twitter traffic. He’s posted some data on some of the things he’s found about suspected Russian bots, trolls etc.

 

Scenic Tweets

More Belgian beauty. For a while I didn’t like the winter tweets as they made me feel cold. However, now that it’s warm here I can once again appreciate their beauty.

 

I think this is the first time Canada has made it into the scenic tweets. There’s so much gorgeous scenery there, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of that country in this section.

 

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know about them before this tweet – who says Twitter is a waste of time?

 

Waterfalls are one of my favourite things, but this one is just spectacular! Beautiful as it is though, it didn’t lead to a Francis Collins moment!

 

I haven’t had much of South America in this section. Time to correct that!

 

Architecture Tweets

Beautiful lines.

Entertainment Tweets

I love James Corben, so when Ann German sent me this I decided it was going in before I’d even watched all of it!

Weather Tweets

Ann German sent me this tweet too of a guy buying into the stereotype. 😀

 

Also from Ann German. Wow! Just wow!

 

We don’t get weather like this here. I hope everyone at risk is in a safe place.

 

Excellent! (Via Ann German.)

 

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5 Comments

  1. nicky
    nicky on 26th August 2017 at 6:57 pm

    The Forest de Soignes (‘Zonien-woud’) south east of Brussels is a predominantly beach forest. It is said the beeches were planted by the Austrians (!) when what is now Belgium was the Austrian Netherlands (inherited from Spain, Habsburgers).
    The curious thing is that the beach wood was used for the superstructure of the ships of the Austrian fleet. Yes, Austria had a fleet in the Mediterranean in those days (Trieste)!

    Reply
    • nicky
      nicky on 26th August 2017 at 7:00 pm

      Beech, not beach (spellchecker 🙁 )

      Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 27th August 2017 at 4:45 am

      Austria had an empire in those days! I didn’t know that about the beech trees though. I like hearing wee factuals like that. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Lee Knuth
    Lee Knuth on 27th August 2017 at 8:03 am

    My cat really perked up when I played the tweet of the cats in the supermarket.. Great tweets.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 27th August 2017 at 12:02 pm

      Ha ha! I’d love the have seen that! 😀

      Reply

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