5 Thoughts for March 30, 2017

1. Life Isn't Fair: George Clooney is showing that the world can be repopulated by a bunch of old men, even if it requires younger -- re non-menopausal -- women. I'm sorry to say, life isn't fair. While I am empathetic to women everywhere who want children but are too old, on the inside, there were three little cheers for Clooney and the continued support for the self-centered fantasy of being the last man on Earth.
2. Thoughts -- Streams of Consciousness: It probably goes without saying, the thoughts I post are effectively streams of consciousness. If something becomes more than a stream of consciousness then I'll break it out into a post on a single topic to dig deeper, at which point it's an examination of a thought. In the greater scheme of things, this entire effort of blogging is intended to serve as the annotated source of a future book -- it's a lot easier to track thoughts when you've written them down somewhere.
3. That's So Bush: According to the New York Magazine, at end of Donald's inauguration George W. Bush remarked, "That was some weird shit." It's so true to his character that you can practically hear him saying it. When GWB is calling your shit weird, what he's really saying is that your shit is fucked up, but that GWB's southern influence prevents him from calling it fucked up.
4. Cable News: After watching a couple of days of cable news -- CNN and MSNBC -- it feels as though they're completely dropping the ball. There are multiple shows but they cover the same topic -- Trump-Russia -- frequently reusing the same guests, and it's all "BREAKING NEWS". But when they talk about Trump-Russia, they're mostly failing to set up why the topic is being covered, what the jeopardy is for those involved, and how does this affect us? For instance, today's news centers around how Devin Nunes' sources were revealed, Nunes felt that they were whistleblowers, but by his own words, nothing they revealed has reflected illegal acts. So, the real story should be: Nunes violated the US Constitution's Separation of Powers -- the firewall between Congress and the Executive -- then misdirected his own intelligence leaks as the consequence of the actions of whistleblowers when in fact their actions are not protected by whistleblower laws -- two criminal violations and one constitutional crisis wrapped into one act that is supported by House Speaker Paul Ryan, highlighting that our government is arbitrarily ignoring laws, for political gain, reducing trust (and process participation) in the federal government. That's just one example. This is why Washington Week is critically important. Unlike cable news, WW digs down.
5. Republicans are Panicking: In a special election to replace Tom Price's House seat in a red seat in Georgia, Democrats have taken advantage of the anger directed at Donald, to boost the chances of a Democrat, Jon Ossoff, even as Republicans have split between candidates and appear to be turned off by Donald. This has put Republicans into a panic, pouring in millions to keep the seat red. In essence, it's the mirroring of the GOP infighting over Trumpcare -- a battle between the grassroots "populism" of culturally conservative communities and the establishment conservatives.