CSotD: Saturday Short Takes
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Bruce Plante expresses the most honest opinion of the Inspector General's Report, which is that both sides can find plenty to dislike in it.
Though, while he's certainly right, both sides are instead claiming victory, which generally suggests three things:
One is that the report is long and, while not extraordinarily complex, has found problems in how the probe into Hillary Clinton's emails were handled.
The second is that the people commenting on it have not actually read it.
And the third is that they know you won't read it either, so they can say anything they like about it, and their various fan bases will believe them.
In an era of alternative facts, that's really all you need and, if there is a place we could cut costs of government, it would be in conducting these investigations, because it no longer matters what they find. They could put out a booklet full of lorem ipsum and it would be just as valuable as a well-documented, well-reasoned report.
Anyway, here's the full text of the report and it basically says there was some sloppy work done but that there was no reason to prosecute Clinton.
I'd only add that I got to see a "work to rule" strike in action at the Canadian border, back in the pre-9/11, pre-panic days when they were our friends, and that doing everything exactly by the book was nearly as obstructive as actually going on strike and shutting down the crossing: They had vehicles backed up for hours.
There are things that various FBI agents — including Comey — did which were ill-advised, sloppy and not according to the book.
But I strongly, strongly suspect that you could go through nearly any complex governmental operation and find a lot of corners cut and things not done without having compromised the goal.
And that you'd be wasting your time, because we're divided enough that people would take from your report whatever they wanted to hear.
This is only one blip in a situation that cannot end well and that you could issue a report on the President's shooting of a person on Fifth Avenue and have no different outcome than we saw with this one.
Which conclusion is mirrored in Matt Wuerker's commentary on the US/Korean summit.
Remember when we laughed at the self-serving reports of "Baghdad Bob," and assumed that representatives of tyrannical places like North Korea or Iran were routinely lying?
Well, don't say so out loud or you may end up in a re-education camp.
Meanwhile, we'd like to have a war with Iran, so they're lying.
But we had a nice meeting with Kim and he promised to end his nuclear program probably sometime, so that situation is well in hand and so Little Rocket Man is now telling the truth.
Is everything gonna be all right? Yes! Everything is gonna be all right!
A problem that I can solve
Reply All brings up a workplace issue that makes me thrilled to work at home.
On one hand, I don't care if people wear yoga pants and flip-flops to the office, though I'd be damned surprised if people of the Y-chromosome variety did so.
We can take up that issue another day.
However, here's the way to solve the more immediate problem: We should install sunken rectangles at the doorways. In the winter, they would hold those bristly old-school door mats to take the snow, salt and assorted crud off your shoes.
In the summer, we'd remove the mats and fill the sunken area with rosin. Granted, the people who showed up for work in dress-for-success footwear would have white powder all over their shiny shoes.
But they'd accept it in return for not hearing the shlurp-slap-shlurp-slap of people with sweaty feet walking around in flip-flops.
Juxtaposition of the Day #1
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(Ben)
It's been a while since I've hit a fast food place with someone young in tow, but it's also been a while since I've seen a nice line-up on the counters of anything like the Star Wars glasses that Burger King was giving away in the early 80s.
And which are all over Ebay because people assumed they'd be valuable one day, not realizing that ephemera only becomes valuable because it is ephemeral.
Anyway, whatever they're giving away these days, they aren't proud enough of it to do much promotion. Not like back when I'd drive by BK and see a sign offering "Hunchback Kids Meals," which sounded like something out of Gahan Wilson.
However, I'm well aware that the toys are long gone from cereal boxes, and this dialogue should be between the kid and Ben, not Ben's daughter, who probably never got anything worth a damn from a cereal box either.
But is the right generation to be feeding her kid nutritious cardboard cereal, yes.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Good timing by Real Life Adventures, because while it is indeed not quite summer yet, I ate my first midge of the season yesterday, and I would add that getting one down your gullet is a whole lot better than accidentally inhaling one.
In any case, they're swarming and volunteering for ingestion and I'm also getting houseflies, thankyouverymuch.
Which takes some of the shine off Lio, who wouldn't need to go to such lengths this time of year.
However, he puts me in mind of my own very young youth, when I would get prank items like gum packages with little mousetraps in them or plastic ice cubes with imbedded flies, and I'm tempted to juxtapose him back up with the cereal and Happy Meal cartoons because I don't know if there are many stores that sell that stuff.
Though it looks like Lio is onto a technological breakthrough, which is great.
It was nearly impossible to prank anyone with plastic ice cubes that didn't float.
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