Observations: The QandO Podcast

After a week's hiatus, we return to talk about how truly awful our political class is. Russians bribing officials, the GOP congress admitting they will never cut the budget, politicians becoming mysteriously wealthy, media concentration on Trump-related trivia for days on end...it's all there. Meanwhile, Michael thinks the US Army is organized into Gay Combat Teams. And baseball is still fun. For true Americans, anyway. Not the Communists who love the NFL.

Another mass shooting results in more calls for gun control...which won't solve the problem, even if confiscating 300 million guns wasn't a fantasy to begin with. Is the Left pushing the culture too far? Will the NFL exist in 10 years? Will the Astros win the World Series? Bo Bergdahl pled guilty. That's guilty! Guilty, guilty! When does the government money run dry, and we either pay off the debt and slash the government to the bone--resulting in a depression--or repudiate it and turn into Argentina--resulting in a Depression?

The NFL took a knee this past week to protest something or other. In response, the public seems, for now at least, to be shutting thier wallets. Your move, Mr. Goodell. 2Lt Spenser Rapone said many disrespectful things about SecDef, the VP, and POTUS. The US Military has a term for doing that: Court Martial Offense. 2Lt Rapone is currently on what is known as Administrative Leave. Let's hope he enjoys his free time...however much of it he has left. Puerto Rico, as it turns out, is an island that's fairly far away, making it difficult to get relief supplies in. Also, the infrastructure is trashed, and you can't airdrop in electricity. Tax reform--by which we mean nibbling at the edges of the tax code--is now on the way from Congress. Allegedly.

Donald Trump told the UN that America was fricking great, and North Korea and Iran kinda suck. The ambassador from Iran--a theocracy--said the speech was from medieval times. Who would know better about medieval culture than senior officials of a theocracy? Scientists announced this week that their climate models weren't as accurate as predicted, oh, and that Mr. Sun may affect the climate. Huh. And only last week the science was settled. It looks the Republican's latest attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare will fail. Of course, they've only had eight years to come up with a plan.

Kim Jong-Un seems to want to play games. Very, very dangerous games. Hillary Clinton has finally released her book, explaining whose fault it was that she lost the 2016 election. Spoiler: It wasn't her fault. Conservative Ben Shapiro gave a speech at UC Berkeley, and it only cost the university $600,000 in security, mainly to protect him from the "tolerant Left". ESPN needs to decide if they are going to broadcast sports or politics. A man said "boobs" on national television, and the women who have "slut marches" and wear "pussy hats" think that was not nice. But boobs are wonderful and magical.

Hurricane Irma is bearing down on Florida. Trump made a deal with the Democrats that gives them a 3-month extension on the debt-ceiling, in return for immediate disaster aid for Texas. Republicans didn't much like it, as if they weren't going to increase the debt ceiling anyway. Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, revoked the "Dear Colleague" letter from the Obama Administration that turned universities into sexual assault kangaroo courts. The usual suspects disliked that. Everything we've known about American politics is wrong, we're on the verge of something new. We don't know what it is, but the electorate's seeming displike of the political class seems to be putting us on the road to a political realignment that we haven't seen for decades.

Google is a corporation that holds vast monopolistic power over both for-profit and non-profit industries. What, if anything, should be done about their willingness to stifle speech they don't like? What good is free speech, if corporations or the general public--not the government--conspires to silence it? Hurricane Harvey was awful, but the response of Houstonians to it has been amazing. Maybe we don't all hate each other as much as it looks like on TV. Will Donald Trump run again in 2020? Will he even be president then? GOP leaders in congress say they want to replace DACA...with 'comprehensive immigration reform'. Is Trumps immigration policy dead? Will Republicans ever do anything they say they'll do?

Donald Trump gave a speech. The Political class in the US is the worst. Navy ships need to be made of the same stealth materials that are apparently used to build cargo ships. The Antifa crowd is a buch of commie, would-be dictators that are no better than the stupid Nazis. Hurricanes are bad. Nancy Pelosi reminded us that we can't yell 'wolf' in a crowded theater. Colin Kaepernick is a bad quarterback, but Michael wonders why we even sing the national anthem at sporting events in the first place.

The first 40 minutes of the podcast is missing from the recording. Which is sad, because it contained all the good stuff. Sure, there are a few nuggets in the remaining dregs, but all the really good stuff is gone. Honestly, I'd give this one a miss, if I were you.

A software engineer at Google accused the company of creating an ideological echo chamber that was hostile to dissenting views. So, Google fired him. I guess we know who won that argument. Meanwhile, Donald Trump showed Kim Jon-Un that insane, megalomaniacal national leaders aren't the only ones who can make crazy threats. I'll let you decide who the crazy one is in that battle. Which, by the way, if it comes to a battle, will end with the Norks getting stomped like Prius driver at a Hell's Angels rally. You know what happens when you stop teaching the foundational principles of your polity? Knowledge of them is lost. Michael started to tell us about a massage he got once, but no one wanted to hear about that.