TGIF 1/26/18

Well, we made it through another week -- yay us!  Here's some of what happened while we were busy living our lives.

The president went to Davos, a town somewhere in the Swiss Alps, to talk about #MAGA and #AmericaFirst and other stuff to a bunch of world leaders and an equally interested bunch of billionaires.

Word is he stuck to the script very closely, and managed to keep the off-the-cuff remarks, well, on his cuff, I guess.

After he was done with the official speech, he did manage to get in a few 'fake news' comments when he was questioned about an article in the NY Times saying he wanted to fire Robert Mueller last summer. The story is that he backed off when one of his lawyers threatened to quit. Typical fake news from the NY Times, he said, or something along those lines.

Fake news was in the news for a whole nother reason this week -- that being the arrest of a Michigan man who threatened CNN. Some of his 22 messages are below.

Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down.

I'm smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours.

I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f---ing gun every single last one of you. 

Proving, once again, that words matter -- including those repeated over and over and over by the president.

Other words mattered, too. Those of the more than 150 survivors, or their representatives, who spoke at the trial of disgraced and incredibly insulting Dr. Larry Nassar. Those of the judge in the case, even the inflammatory ones she used, such as suggesting that a lifetime of what Nassar did to his victims would be OK with her, if not for the Constitution and all. Those of the USOC, which issued an ultimatum to the board of USA Gymnastics: resign, or be decertified. Even the words of USA Gymnastics, when they severed ties with the Karoly Ranch, one of the places where Nassar apparently gave the athletes 'treatments' with impunity. But mostly, the words of the survivors, who spoke with amazing, and sometimes alarming passion, courage, and clarity.

Let's end on a 'better them than us' note, shall we?  It seems New Orleans needed to clean out the city's storm drains. City workers didn't find a 'fatberg' like they find in the UK -- but they did find 93,000  pounds -- 46 and half tons - of Mardi Gras beads in a five-block stretch.

Here in my neck of the woods, the DPW worries about getting the leaves picked up before a major snowfall comes and the leaves end up in our storm drains. Sort of puts us on Easy Street, compared to the Big Easy.

TGIF, everyone.