TGIF 9/21/19

Let's dive right in to the good week/bad week stuff, shall we?

How about the word 'shall', which according to our friends at Merriam-Webster, 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.

Now, admittedly only the whistleblower, the Inspector General for the intelligence community, the (Acting) Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, and if we believe his tweets, the president, know what was reported and why it was determined to be both urgent and credible, and whether it meets the standard outlined in the regulations. We, the public? Yeah, we don't get to know that.

Congress? Yeah, they don't get to know that either, even though they have oversight of the Executive. As I said, in this bizarro world, up is down and left is wrong and right is where the president always is - just ask him.  But when the Wall Street Journal reports that during one phone call in July, Trump asked the president of Ukraine eight times to investigate Joe Biden's son, this is a problem whether he offered them a payment or arms or money or oil or a dinner with Ivanka or anything else.

Of course, there's always the chance that the call to Ukraine's president is not the one that kicked off the whistleblower complaint -- except that the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani (a true match made in heaven if there ever was one) set himself on fire last night in an interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN.

It was one of those head-spinning things, in which Rudy claimed to have affidavits, but those are likely unnecessary because the proof is all over the Internet, but he wouldn't give the proof to Chris Cuomo anyway, because he's fake news and also that he (Rudy) both absolutely did and did not talk to Ukraine about investigating Joe Biden and China and Hillary and let me tell you, he's damn proud he did. Or didn't. Or something. Rudy had a good week and a bad week in a matter of mere seconds.

Finally, let's close with some business decisions recently made public:

• Walmart will stop selling e-cigarettes, the company announced today. Sure, the retail giant may be looking to save time, aggravation and money trying to implement the quickly changing regulations on a city-by-city, state-by-state basis, but this comes after they recently stopped selling ammunition used in so-called assault weapons. Earlier this year, they raised the age for tobacco purchases to 21. We can question their motives until the cows come home, but I appreciate the stands they've been taking.
• Colt Manufacturing is stopping civilian sales of AR-15s, one of the weapons of choice in mass shootings. Again, motivation can be questioned -- they're already experiencing poor sales of the weapon to regular folks, and they've gotten a tasty contract to provide the AR's fully automatic sibling to the military.

And I was reminded of this post from 2014 which included a mention of CVS stopping cigarette sales. There were least four vocal components complaining after that decision, about them going too far, or not far enough, or about the nanny state, or questioning the company's motivation.

Seems little has changed in the past five years, doesn't it? 

TGIF, everyone.