TGIF 10/4/19

Good week? Bad week?  Why does it seem it's all one and the same?

Don't believe me? I have concrete evidence, things I've seen with my own two eyes on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or the Google.

Or heard first hand through my radio. Or saw on the news. Or watched unfold live.

Essentially, like a good whistleblower, I can check both of the boxes on the form, where the rules have not changed: "I have direct personal knowledge" and "I heard it from others."

So, you tell me: is this indicative of a good week, or a bad week?

• The folks at Merriam-Webster offered to had to help us with simple definitions: impeachment, treason, bribery, perjury, and maladministration - which is a great word, and fitting. 

• The president went before the press and asked China to interfere in our election. 

• Third-quarter fundraising totals are out for the Democratic candidates. Here's how it look, according to the campaigns: Sanders ($25.3M), Warren ($24.6M), Buttigieg ($19.1M), Biden ($15.2M), Harris ($11.6M), Yang ($10M) and Booker ($6M). Big losers? Biden, down $6.8M and Buttigieg, down $5.8M compared to last quarter's official FEC filings. Time to thin the herd, I think?  

• And, this happened: a journalist was made to 'confess' that he writes propaganda by a CBP agent at Dulles International Airport. If true, it follows a long string of similar harassment of reporters by CBP officials. The whole 'enemy of the people thing', I guess.

• A House Intelligence Committee staffer received outreach from the whistleblower looking for guidance on how to file a complaint. As was completely appropriate, the staffer advised the person to contact the Inspector General and to obtain legal counsel - and then the staffer told Committee Chair Adam Schiff that what had transpired. So then Adam Schiff goes on multiple talk shows and obfuscates and avoids and yes, lies, unless you can't tell whether when he used the word 'we' he was using the editorial we, as all politicians do, or if he was speaking specifically about the Committee as a whole. We (and by that I mean you and me and everyone else) still doesn't know the answer to that. And so Schiff, one of the leaders of the impeachment effort, earns four pinocchios from the WaPo fact checkers.  

And if you're experiencing some kind of 'gang that couldn't shoot straight' flashback, we're with you. Or, at least, I am.

Woe is we.

TGIF, everyone.