Keep On Keeping On

Not long ago I got a notification from my friend Abner Mality that was a big long rant about how congressional representatives and senators should only get their regular salary, no pension, no bonuses, etc. and how THIS PRESIDENT was going to lower the boom of them. I was skeptical, because of my deep-seated belief that the likelihood of finding someone in congress who would miss the $174,000 congressional salary they collect annually is roughly equivalent to Donald Trump’s chances of getting elected Emperor of Mexico, though granted stranger things have happened. Most of these people tip more than that at their country clubs every year. I don’t really imagine that they have any clue what it is like living from paycheck to paycheck. Remember, these are people who cashed in millions of dollars worth of stock when they got wind that something bad might be on the horizon (call it the crony virus), and then turned around and bought stock in companies that make it possible for people like us to work from home.

One person who will be working from home is Michael Cohen, who was released from prison recently after being sent back in what some thought was retribution for a book deal. The book, titled “Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Store of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump” will be released in a few weeks. Mr. Cohen will be released, from home-confinement anyway, in a couple of years. You might remember that he is the president’s former “fixer” who ran afoul of the law a while back. The law in question was called something like the Federal Election Campaign Act Law (FECAL) and it had to do with diverting campaign funds to be used as hush money. It seems there were some women who were threatening to go public with information that was by most accounts already common knowledge, mainly that Trump has questionable taste and character. Now Mr. Cohen is apparently going to work for some PAC that is working against the current administration. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

I am also working from home amid the pandemic, as they say, if you call banging away on a keyboard work. The way I have come up with to stay current on the news is to watch CNN one day and Fox News the next. It appears that fair and balanced isn’t even a thing anymore. All of these outlets thrive on telling their fan base what it wants to hear. I finally had to give it up for a while since I determined that the networks didn’t want to inform me, they wanted to indoctrinate me. You can tell a lot about what these networks think of their audience by the type of ads they run. The left-leaning outlets tend to go for the hipsters and pseudo-intellectuals, and the conservative ones are aimed at people who want to put all of their assets in gold or spend them on quaint and offbeat vacation destinations. Glenn Beck is big into the conspiracy theory realm. One of his favorite themes is to avoid digital assistants like Alexa and Google like the plague. Interesting that one of his long-time sponsors is a home security company that would likely be a great source of info gathering and privacy invasion. I won’t mention this security company by name, but the letters in its name could be rearranged to spell “spies a MILF.”

One thing is certain, CNN is the epicenter of Trump hate in the media. I have to give credit to the Washington Post for running a close second. Not that I have a dog in the fight one way or another. I like to think I am too intelligent to be a Republican and too wise to be a Democrat. One of the columnists I read fairly consistently in the Post is Catherine Rampell. She is a self-described millennial and brings her own unique perspective to her opinion pieces (the letters in Catherine Rampell could be rearranged to spell “hellcat repairmen”). Typically, these feature her all-consuming hatred for Republicans in general and Trump in particular. One question, if you are defined by what you hate, doesn’t that make you a hater? Seems like people of her ilk are always accusing conservatives of that. Just saying. Another person with strong opinions on the opposite side of the political spectrum is Ann Coulter. I haven’t seen much from her lately, so I will need to catch up, but in fairness, I will point out that the letters in her name could be rearranged to spell “unclean rot.” That is my best shot at fair and balanced, hope that’s enough for you.