In Case You Missed It (v83)

Lots going on out there, right? In case you missed anything, here's a stroll through last week's posts. 

Sunday was the night Will Smith killed his career and won an Oscar, in that order. It was also the night I resurrected an old theme: the Dirty Snowpile Awards. Unlike the Oscars, there aren't any defined categories for the DSAs - it's whatever strikes me when I look at the filthy things. 

Here's one of this year's winners. 

 The My Snowpile's So Small It Fits on this T-shirt award goes to the thousands of politicians, their advisors, or whoever it is that decided we should have a government of the t-shirt, by the t-shirt and for the t-shirt. You know what I'm talking about, right? Policies and positions that fit on a t-shirt are great; anything else, we don't give a hoot about. And don't forget how those slogans get twisted and turned into opposition missiles, either.

I gave a few examples; My Body My Choice came immediately to mind (that'll make sense when you see one of other awards), and there were many others I'm sure would be familiar to you. And I would have been remiss had I not mentioned this last part. 

Sadly, one of the most important things with all this 'governing by slogan' stuff is that you buy the t-shirt, literally or figuratively.

Your Sunday School included highlights of a Fox News Sunday interview host John Roberts had with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida Man). One of the questions Roberts asked was why Scott included a requirement that all legislation sunset after five years in his 'plan to rescue America' during an election year.

Scott complained that Roberts was just dishing out "Democrat talking points," but that's not the case. Roberts said that was in the plan, he's right. Scott tried to deflect, saying 

Also in the plan, it says we ought to, every year, talk about exactly how we're going to fix Medicare and Social Security... No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what we're doing is we don't even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years. I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.

I added the emphasis to Scott's answer; find out why in the post.

It was nice to spend some Extra Credit time with Sen. Cory Booker (D-No One's Going to Steal My Joy!), who chatted with What's-his-name on Meet the Press. They talked about the #KBJ hearings, and about G-G-G-Ginni and The Texts. 

What's-his-name talked about former AG Loretta Lynch, who recused herself from involvement with any Hillary Clinton investigations after her meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton, and he asked Booker if Justice Thomas "should follow the Loretta Lynch precedent?" 

Booker ignored that example; instead, he offered a relevant one: Justice Elena Kagan.

Out of 70-some cases, she recused herself over 20 times... not necessarily because she was conflicted, but because she understood that even the appearance of impropriety would delegitimize the Court. And the Court needs that legitimacy in this nation. So clearly, Justice Thomas should have recused himself. That's not even at question here. (Emphasis added.)

I wonder why What's-his-name is still hosing the show, I really do.

Speaking of wondering, I did plenty of that on Wednesday, including some about the document-challenged Trump administration and the "bigly gap" in the phone logs on January 6th. 

How bigly, you're wondering? Here's what CBS News is reporting.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — on Jan. 6, 2021 means there is no record of the calls made by Trump as his supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol...

I also did some calculations to help you understand what the gap means in yoga pose terms, in case you wondered about that, like I did.

And almost before I realized it, it was TGIF time again. And surprisingly, I had Hillary Clinton in the second post of the week. Hard to believe, right? She

...had a teeny little bit of a bad week, after she was fined $8000 by the Federal Elections Commission for funding the Steele dossier back in 2016. The DNC was fined $105,000 as well. The fines resulted from a 2018 lawsuit filed by the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, a 501 (c)3 organization with the flimsiest website I've ever seen for this type of group. I'd be surprised if they could even pay for the filing fee for the lawsuit. 

Pretty sad when that's what the FEC is focused on these days. It would seem there's a whole lot more current stuff happening, but that's a story for another day.