News Weakly - 3/18/2017

As Expected
So, we stop telling kids that ours is a great country and that they ought to be grateful and to honor our nation. Then we find out that "Millennials are making it difficult for the U.S. intelligence community to keep secrets." Huh. Who would have thought? General Hayden told the BBC, "This group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty, secrecy and transparency." Wait ... you mean to suggest that relativism in language, morality, and perception of reality has produced problems? How can that be? To which any thinking person would respond, "How could it not be?" In the vernacular of my day, "You gets what you pays for."

Just ... Odd
Republicans in Congress are working on a replacement for Obamacare that the CBO says will cause 24 million Americans to lose their health insurance. So how can that be if there are only "a total of 12.2 million Americans" enrolled in the plan? Obamacare forced people to be insured. Will this new plan force them not to be? It just seems odd.

Equal Opportunity
When "our guy" is blamed for events that occur, "we" will often say, "It's not his fault; it was the former administration" or something like it. When "their guy" gets credit for events that occur, "they" will often say, "That wasn't him; that was 'our guy'." So after an unexpectedly large increase in jobs in February, Trumps first month in office, will it be "our guy" did it or "their guy" did it? Will this be applied evenly? Or will it just turn out that no matter what happens good on Trump's watch, it will be bad. (Ironic, I think, that on the page where CNN Money had this article about improved job market and "Trump is on pace to fulfill that promise" to create 25 million jobs was a side story about how economic data is meaningless in the Trump era.)

WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is keeping us up to date, releasing big secrets telling us how we can't trust our government and all that because ... well, you know, they have the goods on us and WikiLeaks is reliable. That's the same WikiLeaks of Julian Assange who promised to turn himself in to the U.S. government if Obama released Chelsea Manning. Obama did; Assange has not. Reliable as the day is long. And, yet, Americans are all abuzz about what we can learn from self-identified liars.

Unbanned Again
Trump's second travel ban (and if you're going to call it a "Muslim ban", you're going to have to do it against the fact that it included only some Muslim countries, making it the most bizarre "Muslim ban" of all time since it, you know, didn't ban Muslims, only some Muslims) has fallen flat again. I am neither surprised nor particularly concerned. What was a little surprising was that "Trump called the ruling an 'unprecedented judicial overreach'." Apparently the president is unaware that the Supreme Court legalized the murder of babies in 1973 and redefined marriage for all Americans in 2015, just a couple of examples of genuine "unprecedented judicial overreach". You'll have to get in line to make that call, Mr. President.

It Must Be True
Archaeologists have discovered a fragment from the book of Acts that has confirmed that during Peter's sermon at Pentecost a guitarist quietly picked a riff while Peter called for belief and repentance. It has to be true; I saw it on the Internet.