TGIF 5/3/19

Yay -- it's Friday!  Time to see who had a good week and who had one that was, well, less than stellar.

On the latter, can you say Bill Barr? The poor guy - he goes to the Senate, tries to tell his story, gets hammered by a bunch of Angry Democrats, refers to a letter from Robert Mueller as a bit snitty, and then, being more than a bit snitty himself, refuses to sit before a House committee because they wanted to have staff attorneys question him, and not only that - they called him chicken! And one of them brought a plastic chicken to the hearing. And ate Kentucky Fried Chicken...

Now, there's no doubt that was childish and ridiculous, but so is pretty much everything the president has been saying about the investigation since he announced his total exoneration, even though the Mueller report did not exonerate him.

In fact today the president tried to ruin what should have been a good day - another good jobs report, and another drop in the unemployment rate - but then he had a conversation with Papa Vlad and even he agreed with Trump there was no collusion... and so, back down the hill he slides. I swear, he's incapable of not making a mess of things.

Trump also had some less than stellar news this week:  an emoluments case can proceed against him; there was more news that he's continuing to make money off of his presidency, in terms of the money that we're paying for his frequent visits to Trump properties for things like Secret Service golf cart rental, and hotel rooms for staff, and some headache-causing interactions between his lovely staff at Mar-a-Lago and the State Department.

On the truly good news front, there was the soldier who fell into an active volcano after stepping over the railing to get a better look. He was rescued, fortunately and hopefully has learned his lesson about going where he's not supposed to.

And there was the deaf man who adopted a deaf dog. The dog is learning sign language to communicate with his new owner, which is pretty cool.

But my favorite story this week was about Mikah Meyer, the 33 year old who has now visited all 419 National Park Service sites - which took him three years. He's not the only one to have done it, either. There are 61 others who have made this journey, and one of them was with Meyer when he finished his 'ultimate American road trip' at the Lincoln Memorial. 

So, what do you do when you've spent three years on the road, visiting parks and historic sites and monuments, doing LGBT outreach, fundraising as a gay Christian at churches, and so on? You don't go to Disney World or Disneyland - you move to Minneapolis, of course. Here's Meyer explaining how that came to be.

This is going to sound cheesy, but what this trip to all of America's most beautiful places has taught me is that they really don't mean a darn thing if you don't have someone to share them with. And so as I have spent three years as a nomad, I've learned that I really want to focus on  my personal life now, and having one again. And the people I've met in Minnesota and the experiences I had there made me believe that's the best place for me, because of the people. 

Because, in the end, it is all about the people, right? And surrounding yourself with good ones, honest ones, the kind you can trust and love and admire and who will do the same with you?

Yeah, that's what it's all about.

TGIF, everyone.