In Case You Missed It (v116)

The writing was easier last week, at least for a while. Here's your recap of what made it out of my head. 

I opened the week with a Sidebar driven by all the attention received by What's-his-name, the guy who hosts Meet the Press. He "did his job," fans say, by having another on-air argument with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). 

I'm no Johnson fan; I think he's a partisan hack. Even as I dislike him, I admit he's not wrong on everything. For example, he and I agree, the American people deserve to hear about the bad behavior of government officials, and Congress deserves the chance to provide 'oversight' of the government, even if no criminal statutes have been violated. 

WHN thinks that's ridiculous.

So, I guess the problem that I feel like you run into with that decision is what you're saying is if the Justice Department decides a crime wasn't committed, they're not going to prosecute a crime, it sounds like you still want the information out there because you want to politically damage the person that was investigated?

I suggested that maybe we want these bad actors to be held accountable, even if they're not 'officially' criminals, and it led to these questions.

Would WHN say that if the subject of the investigation was Clarence Thomas? Brett Kavanaugh? Marjorie Taylor Green? Matt Gaetz? Ron Johnson? Has he ever said that about any Donald Trump investigation?

We all know the answer to those questions, don't we?

Next up? A Quick Take inspired by the latest classified document finding - a "small number" of them, at the new home of former VP Mike Pence. I caught wind of that via a breaking news alert, and as often happens, my mind started racing. My former boss and co-workers would call out, "Oh, look - a squirrel!" when this happened in staff meetings. Here's a bit of that.

Shortly after seeing the headline, I had sketched out a perfect solution.

The houses, garages, car trunks, libraries, golf bags, duffel bags, diaper bags, bar carts, and sock drawers of every member of Congress, as well as every living president and vice president, must be searched for classified documents or other absconded-with items; the search must happen as soon as possible, to protect our national sanity, er, I mean, our national security.

And Ivanka's grave, too, must be searched - don't forget Ivanka's grave. I mean, who buries his ex-wife on his golf course while under investigation for missing documents?

Who does that? Donald Trump does, that's who.

If we need that kind of document-hunting effort, we'd need funding, which I figured out; and we'd need people to do the work. I had an answer for that, too.

Call up the Texas bounty hunters.

There's a reason they'd be perfect for the job - and it's in the post.  

I spent some time in the Sunday School classrooms, looking for discussions on the debt ceiling, which seems at least as important as worrying about which potential presidential candidate is hurt more by the politics of their document handling.  

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) had some thoughts on the debt, how we got where we are, and a possible solution, which he shared on CNN's State of the Union.

Everybody believes -- I mean, my goodness, when you have $31.4 trillion, and we have thrown caution to the wind, and to blame the Republicans, Republicans to blame the Democrats, who's at fault? Everybody's at fault. We don't have a process. I have been there 12 years, no budget.

He thinks the government needs to have "guardrails" on spending; having a budget, and trying to stick to it, is a good start.  And, while some have suggested forming a commission to develop recommendations, he's not a fan.

Can't you look and find out in government where you can be more efficient, more basically prudent with the taxpayers' money and quit wasting it, don't you think? And we all talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. That's an easy thing to do. But no one looks at it.

Hear, hear! 

It took me until Thursday morning to get the post out, but I did do some Wondering on Wednesday, on hypocrisy and indifference, among other things. Here's the hypocrisy wondering.

One thing I don't have to wonder about? Whether the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will be asking for Mike Pence's visitor logs. I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen - but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they asked for Jimmy Carter's. 

The indifference part? Mass shootings, and guns. There were three mass shootings in California in a matter of days. One was plastered all over the news; another was pretty widely covered. The other one?

You probably didn't hear much about the third one; it was likely gang- or drug-related, which means, you know, "it was their own damn fault" that young mom and her baby were executed along with several other family members. I wonder why the media doesn't talk about that kind of mass shooting so much? Is it because they wouldn't have time to tell us about storms headed for the I-95 corridor?

So, that's a wrap on last week; as always, feel free to drop a comment on any of the posts.