September 6, 2019

TGIF 9/6/19

Time for our weekly look at the good week/bad week ledger.

Let's start with Debra Messing, who had a bad week, if you ask me. Aside from her retweeting a racist post, something she clearly should have known better than to do, there was the whole kerfuffle about political donors.

Messing suggested (with others piling on in agreement) that the list of donors to the president's upcoming Hollywood fundraiser should be made public. But here's the thing: when she called for a list of Trump's donors, she didn't simultaneously release a list of the political contributions that she's made, nor did she demand that Democratic donors are similarly publicized. Shame on her - let's be all about transparency and equality and publish all of them. Or conversely.

Moving on to the great state of Alabama, rarely have so many been talking about a state - people who have about as much intention of visiting Alabama as, well, as Dorian did. I'd guess that more folks can now find Alabama on a map than at any other time in recent memory, maybe no.

The president is making a bad week worse by doubling down, having his Cabinet members double down, and literally making an ass of himself. He's acting like the proverbial four-year-old who picks up his toys and goes home when he doesn't get his way.  On the plus side, though, his Sharpie-doctored map has spawned a whole lot of creativity in the Twitterverse, with loads of drawings of all kinds of Trump-related stuff being hilariously marked up. Search the #SharpiePresident hash tag for some fun. FYI, there's some NSFW content there, so be careful.

We also learned which projects the Pentagon was going to ignore, instead misappropriating the money for Trump's Mexican-funded border wall, leading all of us to try once again to understand exactly how Mexico is paying for the darn thing. We're paying for it, of course - the military, and FEMA, so far, are having a bad week as money is pulled to help make sure that Trump gets 500 miles of wall built by the 2020 election. Because a political promise is more important than our three branches of government, dontcha know. Mexico is having a good week, I think.

James Comey had a mixed week. On the one hand, he's not being charged with any crimes, but on the other, he violated FBI policies in a couple of ways, we were told, including sharing his memos with a friend who shared them with the press. Rabid Trump fans are demanding he be jailed for life or longer, maybe jailed for life AND stoned in the public square and stuff, as if any company would to that to an employee. Heck, in some circles, he'd be considered a protected whistle blower.

Boris Johnson had a bad week, suffering embarrassing losses in his first couple of votes as the UK's Prime Minister. Worse than that, though, the 'British Donald Trump' lost the confidence of his little brother Jo, who resigned as a member of parliament and as a minister in his brother's government. In a tweet, he pointed to an "unresolvable tension" between loyalty to the family and the national interest.  Which leads me to declare that Ivanka Trump also had a bad week. Now that she knows it can be done, she can stop being complicit in her father's nonsense, and the longer it takes for her to do it, the worse her weeks become.

And finally, on a sadder note, the number of people suffering from serious lung illnesses stemming, it seems, from their vaping habits continues to grow, as does the number of deaths, with five reported. Some are calling for Ned Sharpless, the acting head of the FDA, to do something or resign.

I'm not sure there's anything he can do - or should do - to solve this problem, other than offer thoughts and prayers. You know, like we do with mass shootings. Good for the goose, and all.

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