In Case You Missed It (v3)

I know you want to read me every day, right? But sometimes you can't?

It's OK - not only do I forgive you, but I'm even handing you a cheat sheet to this week's posts. Take a look.

On our Sunday School stroll through the halls of punditry this week, we heard from Mayor Pete on Afghanistan, particularly a misinterpreted comment during the debate about how the war started. Some in the media thought (or pretended they thought) that he said the US started that war. Buttigieg, on the anniversary of his coming home from that war, clarified

 I did not say that the US started the war; what I'm saying is the lesson is that wars are difficult to end...

And we heard from Andrew Yang on a number of subjects, including his announcement during the debate that he'd offer $1000 per month to ten families who got on his website and told him why they needed the money. And, he raised attention to the issue of money in politics, noting that if he

"gave a million dollars to a media company or consultants or hired a small army of canvassers, no one would blink an eye, but if we give the money directly to the American people, somehow that's problematic. So, it just speaks directly to how messed up our system is..."

In Monday's We Don't Need to Take People's Guns Away I disagreed with Beto O'Rourke's plan to do exactly that.

Don't get me wrong -- I think these guns are unnecessary, and have no purpose other than inflicting a great deal of harm in a very short period of time. But the mandatory buyback - confiscation with pay, if you will - is wrong. And I don't think most Democrats, or most Americans, believe it's right, or constitutional, even though O'Rourke says it can be done using the Commerce Clause without stepping on the Second Amendment.

This is exactly the kind of position that will make it much harder to get Donald Trump out of office next year. 

My sense that most Americans don't agree with O'Rourke on this was illustrated in Wednesday's Poll Watch  which summarized a recent Quinnipiac survey or registered voters.  But more interesting than our opinions on guns, and on climate change, another of the survey's topics, were the opinions on prejudice. For example,

By political party, the percentages of people saying prejudice is at least a somewhat serious problem falls where you'd expect it to, but the percentages were a little more extreme than I anticipated. 

We were Wondering on Wednesday afternoon about Republican presidential primaries being cancelled, angry Bernie Sanders voters, impeaching Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and about Trump's new National Security Advisor. On Kavanaugh, I wondered if we'd return to any sense of normalcy.

More important, though - under even the weakest of normal circumstances, the nomination of a potential SCOTUS justice with even a hint of what he's accused of never would have seen the light of day. And I wonder if we'll ever be close to that kind of normal again.

In Thursday's visit to the Update Desk, we looked at email activity from the top ten Democrats. Both the volume of emails, and the percentage of them asking for money, increased this week. What didn't change? What the candidates are talking about (money) and not talking about (issues).

Only Booker and Yang dedicated an email to the UAW strike, which surprised me given the candidates are all actively seeking the coveted union endorsements. Mayor Pete talked about Medicare For All Who Want It, his health insurance plan, and Cory Booker released an economic plan, so that was worth one email. And that was it - nothing solely related to immigration, foreign policy, education, and climate change. 

And finally, it was the last day of the work week and time for our TGIF feature, which looked at not just people (Rudy Giuliani, for one) but at a word. That's right - a word. Can a word have a good week or a bad week? Well, it seems it can. Or, sometimes, it 'shall', which

has this particularly relevant meaning, under 3(b): --used in laws, regulations, or directives to express what is mandatory.

Hmm.. mandatory? You mean like when a whistleblower complaint has been investigated and determined to be credible and urgent, and therefore it shall be turned over to Congress?  I would have thought this would be a good week for 'shall' but in our bizarro world, 'shall' and 'shall not' are synonyms, not antonyms.

So - there's this week in a nutshell. Next week, we'll have our regular features, as well as updates on whatever hot topics shall arise.