This Ain’t No CNN.

So Twitter was hacked today. As of this evening there has been no group or individual identified with the coordinated attack, however, numerous prominent accounts were compromised. These accounts were then used to urge users to deposit money into a Bitcoin account. At last tally about $118K in Bitcoin was deposited.

Twitter is being very tight-lipped as to what happened with the service. As I navigated the site on and off today I noticed that it was often unresponsive. Once word broke that accounts were being compromised I found myself unable to tweet. I figured because it was I had tweeted the “Fail Whale” graphic from the early days of Twitter over and over again. I’m a smart ass like that.

After being locked out of the service I’ve checked in a couple of times but haven’t tried to tweet. News services are talking about the global crisis this created; apparently people are relying on tweets from the National Weather Service to be notified of things like Tornado Warnings.

Sorry, but I find that rather idiotic.

Important events, alerts, and the like should be sent via more traditional means instead of by tweet. I know the City of Chicago likes to send messages to every cell phone, much like a notification from the Emergency Alert System. Having events like a tornado warning dependent on a social media site is just foolish, especially a service that is privately owned and not regulated in anyway.

Tweet about that.

We’ve been watching the documentary “Hillary” on Hulu. The documentary blends events from Hillary Clinton’s past with recorded events from her 2016 presidential election run. There are few restrictions around the direction of discussion or the comments made on any of the events shared.

At times it’s hard for me to watch.

I fully believe Secretary Clinton was the best choice for president in 2016, the majority of American voters felt the same way. I loathe to go through the 2020 election cycle because I have absolutely no faith in the American people doing the right thing. Trump is a disaster in every sense of the word. No self-respecting, intelligent centrist can honestly say with a straight face that he’s doing a great job.

We could have been in a better place today, right now, with Hillary Clinton in the White House. Unfortunately the electorate opted to take us into the dark, alternate reality.

2020 is exhausting. I’m very tired. And I really don’t need to see another picture of a coronavirus or whatever it is. Gross.

I’m not a fan of CNN. I liked CNN back in the days of Bobbie Battista but something went off the rails as time went on and CNN now feels like a big ball of hysteria.

But they do like their gadgets.

I’m fascinated with the touchscreen thing they use during Election Nights. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the board crash during a broadcast but I’m sure it has. I’m not that glued to the tube on Election Night. I’m too busy throwing out commentary on Twitter.

And speaking of which, you know what doesn’t change the world? Throwing out commentary on Twitter. Who know what can change the world? Getting out of your home and voting at each and every opportunity you have to vote. When Illinois’ Primary comes up in a couple of weeks I’ll be voting. Up until last weekend I knew who I was voting for. I am now reassessing my options. I know I’m not thrilled with the idea of another old white guy in the Oval Office. But at the very least I hope it’s someone I feel comfortable calling president.

So I read up on CNN’s Magic Board and from what I can figure out, it’s running Microsoft Surface “like” software and was originally designed for the military.

It’s better than the failed hologram experiment CNN carried out a few presidential elections ago.

I’m not impressed with the choices for “traditional” streaming services available for the American public. Instead of paying for cable TV, which is peppered with hundreds of channels we have no interest in watching, I went searching for a streaming package that would get us some news during this political season.

As an aside, every day has felt like political season since 2016.

Anyway, it would be nice if we could go to a CNN or MSNBC app and buy a stream of just that news. But it’s not possible. The only way one can get CNN (or another news service) is to get in as part of some sort of package. Luckily, AT&T offers AT&T Watch for $15 per month. There’s no contract, no minimum subscription required, so we are giving this a try.

AT&T Watch has quite a few Food Network like channels, a smattering of news, and a bunch of other “secondary” cable channels. I can rationalize $15 a month in the budget, especially since we decided to ditch CBS All Access when “Star Trek: Picard” turned out to be not our cup of tea.

I told my husband we’d probably keep AT&T Watch through the November elections. We can enjoy coverage of the end of the world through the presidential election, the end of the world through the Coronavirus, or the end of the world through an asteroid hit.

Stay tuned.

The Hallmark Channel is reversing its decision to pull commercials containing a same-sex couple kissing and is re-establishing the relationship with Zola, the advertiser.

Hallmark CEO's statement: "I am sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused… Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials… We will continue to look for ways to be more inclusive & celebrate our differences"

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 16, 2019

Hallmark CEO’s statement: “I am sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused… Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials… We will continue to look for ways to be more inclusive & celebrate our differences”

We had the impeachment hearings on all day today. Earl was sending text messages from the living room to my home office when the big stuff happened and if I wasn’t in a meeting I would run out to see what was going on, shake my head a bit, wonder why Trump is still in the White House, and then I’d go back to my office and do some more work while I had Twitter scrolling by on my iPad.

We now have the Democratic Debates running this evening. I’m getting pretty burned out on politics today. However, I can’t help but feel that I need to be tuned into what’s going on to make sensible choices in the upcoming votes coming along in the next year.

Look, I’ll admit that I don’t have a lot of confidence in the American people doing the right thing in 2020. The Democrats have to have such a incredibly solid candidate to beat Trump in 2020 and right now there’s so much uncertainty and ‘pie in the sky’ chatter. That is, of course, assuming Trump is the GOP candidate come next November.

I’m not a political strategist. Last time I voted I scanned my ballot into the wrong machine (we have two precincts voting in the same location here in the neighborhood). But I floated this idea around the thinking of the GOP: they admit Trump/Pence really are criminals and convince resignations. Pence resigns, Nikki Haley goes in as VP with a promise to pardon Trump, who resigns due to health issues (see the visit to Walter Reed last weekend), and boom, the GOP has given the United States of America their first female president by way of Nikki Haley.

Hey, at least it’s not Sarah Palin.

I believe this would energize the GOP base, even the middle of the road folks who feel disenfranchised by the current administration and it could swing some middle of the road Democrats who are not enjoying the promises of higher taxes and forced medical insurance plans. Likely to happen? Probably not. Plausible? Yes. But ultimate I don’t believe the GOP is that smart.

It’s going to be a very long year to the 2020 Presidential Election. As painful as it is, I feel a duty to pay attention to what’s going on.

Fasten your seat belts.