Sean Spicer’s second press conference (23 Jan) was considerably better than the first one. His tone was much more moderated and he seemed more in command of the proceedings. Oddly, he called on the New York Post first, which I understand in some circles is considered a newspaper. One rather obvious thing I noticed about Spicer’s second press conference: Everyone asked really good questions about Trump’s plans and policies … except the major television news networks. They all insisted on talking about the inauguration crowd and “alternative facts.” (Spicer walked back his comments from Saturday quite a bit, by the way, admitting that he had given incorrect facts regarding the Metro-you’d never know that by looking at Twitter.)

Kellyanne Conway said on Meet The Press Sunday morning that Spicer had provided “alternative facts” in his press briefing. I just watched the clip for the first time when I embedded it in this post. She is unbelievable. If I had a news show, I would never invite her back. Anyway, “alternative facts” became an Internet meme immediately. In that clip Chuck Todd responded that “alternative facts” were “falsehoods.”

Well Trump certainly knows how to set a tone, I’ll give him that. I specifically linked to CNN’s YouTube video because if Twitter is to be believed, they did not cover the briefing live, and I give them high marks for that. CNN did not carry @seanspicer’s White House briefing live. — Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) January 21, 2017 (Mike Grynbaum is a New York Times correspondent covering media, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt on accuracy.)

I was looking around for a good source of what Trump is actually doing in office, in terms of executive orders, bills he is signing, etc. It’s a little distressing to see that even though we know Trump has already signed an Executive Order, that page on WhiteHouse.gov is still very blank. Most of the government sources I would normally go to are still showing Obama stuff. But I found this on VICE:

I support today’s Women’s Marches completely. However I think the gravitas of protests are slightly undermined when all you see or hear about it are the funny signs. It makes it look more like a funny sign competition than a serious political statement. It would have more of a frightening effect if there were no signs at all. Either that or the signs should be, you know, frightening, not funny. I mean, the point of a protest march is the scare the crap out of the government, right? To overwhelm the police force through sheer numbers? To show you have the numbers to literally run over all obstructions, into the White House, to tear the president into little pieces with your bare hands? Julius Caesar style?

I’m really glad to see that “Nazi” is a word that isn’t being devalued. You know, those folks who were generally responsible for 60 million people dying in World War II. I think it’s cool that we now use that same word to describe random people who say dumb stuff. Nothing at all wrong with equating those two things. In a way, it really honors the sacrifice of those 60 million dead people, don’t you think? #satire #sarcasm #wordsdontmatteranymore

I’m going to start this thing where I highlight I tweet I saw going around and then explain why it’s bad to retweet it, highlighting the general misinformation that it carries. I can’t do this on Twitter because, you know, 140 characters. Twitter in Trump era: 1) Trump bans national parks from tweeting, even on safety 2) Twitter forces users to follow Trump, even if they block — Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) January 21, 2017

You may or may not know that in the days before the Inauguration, there was a big campaign on the Twitters to remind everyone to unfollow the @POTUS account. Personally I felt this was silly, and possibly the most ineffective form of government protest imaginable, not to mention irresponsible citizenship. “Hey, we have a frightening president now, let’s not look at anything he’s doing! That’ll keep us safe!” Anyway, roughly the time of the Inauguration, Twitter renamed the @POTUS account to @POTUS44 to keep an archive of Barack Obama’s tweets. It’s apparently run by the National Archives, which makes sense. That action meant that everyone effectively unfollowed Trump’s @POTUS automatically, rendering the whole unfollow campaign beforehand moot.

I didn’t watch the Inauguration, not for political reasons, but because I was at work. However I saw a lot of tweets related to it. For example, I saw a lot of tweets saying something along the lines of, “It’s only been X minutes and Y has been removed from the White House web site.” Speaking from some personal experience, I was amazed to see that any government staff could make a web site change at all on a Friday. To expect government staff to get such web site changes right on the first try is somewhat like expecting the moon to turn purple. My personal guess is that somebody was just deleting random files on the production web server hoping to get the right outcome, and over the coming weeks, what they actually intended to do will eventually occur as the project leaders return from their extended vacations. [Update: This is a joke. My point is that the government doesn’t have a great track record with web sites. Remember Healthcare.gov?]

I swear, looking at my Twitter feed tonight, the night before The Inauguration Of Donald Trump, is like staring at alcoholics chugging down mixed drinks. This is probably the closest I will ever come to understanding what it must be like to be a parent to a stubborn teenaged child. It’s soooooo haaaaaard not to intervene and point out factual mistakes, or philosophical mistakes, or logical mistakes, or historical mistakes, or cognitive-behavioral mistakes. (Closing your eyes and pretending that reality doesn’t exist is not a healthy attitude!!) I’m reminded again and again of “dancing mania” and the phenomenon of mass hysteria. It’s fascinating and scary and sickening and discouraging all at the same time.