Wondering on Wednesday (v154)

Mandel Ngan / AFP- Getty Images

Let's dive right in to the wonderful, shall we?

For starters, here's the picture of the members-elect of the House, none of whom were giving a Nazi salute, and it made me wonder what their photographer said to them that the photographer at Baraboo High School didn't say to the guys attending the prom, who do in fact appear to be giving said salute? 

It was reported the yesterday that the First Lady was unhappy with a particular employee of the West Wing. Actually, what was reported was a statement from the First Lady's office stating that the employee in question "no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House" and after a mistaken report that the employee, Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, had been walked out of the White House, today the official statement came that Ricardel would in fact be leaving to take another position in the administration.

I wondered about a couple of things here -- first of all, whoa! That's a pretty bold thing for the FLOTUS to do. And then, I thought about her interview with Tom Llamas on ABC,the part about having told POTUS that there were people working for him she didn't trust, and they there were still people working there that he shouldn't trust. So I wonder, can we expect more personnel statements from her as we move into the traditional post-midterm period of churn? Shall we we have an office pool on who's going to be next to go? And finally, is this Melania doing her best to #BeBest?

Votes are still being counted around the country, trying to determine who will go to Washington to represent their constituents in January.  We're familiar with the shenanigans going on in Florida and Georgia and even here in the NY-22, but one race I hadn't been paying that much attention to was for the Utah seat currently held by Mia Love. Love is behind her opponent, Ben McAdams, by around 900 votes or so after the latest count.  In addition to her fame as the first female black Republican ever elected to Congress, she's also known for the special recognition she got from the president the day after the midterms.

Speaking about Republicans who failed to properly embrace him, Trump said

On the other hand, yo had some that decided to "let's stay away." "Let's stay away." They did very poorly, I'm not sure that I should be happy  or sad, but I feel just fine about it.

Carlos Curbelo; Mike Coffman -- too bad, Mike: Mia Love. I saw Mia Love. She'd call me all the time to help her with a hostage situation. Being held hostage in Venezuela. But Mia Love gave me no long, and she lost. Too bad. Mia. 

If the ballot counting ends up going in her favor, I wonder what Trump will say then?  Anyone else willing to bet he'll take the credit?

Finally, there's a whole lot of wondering going on about the Amazon 2HQ2 announcement, not the least of which is why a trillion dollar company needs to get a couple of billion bucks in economic development deals and job credits and incentives from NY and Virginia taxpayers for the privilege of having them locate their new digs in Long Island City and Crystal City, respectively.

I think, from the outside looking in, one could be forgiven for wondering if we've lost our ever-loving minds.