A fun topic for everyone! Election results: Democrats take the House, Republicans gained significant ground in the Senate. So everyone is claiming victory this morning. No matter what your views are, you can find something in the election to celebrate, something to mock, and something to worry to about. To me, this reaffirms how divided the country is, and that there’s no sign it’s going to get better anytime soon. 2020 is likely to be a blood bath.

Guys! It’s time to really put our money where our mouth is and get out there and really vote to let everyone know because 2018 is going to be such a huge change year and … And… Okay, you caught me, I completely forgot about the Virginia primaries. Today, I thought, Oh yeah! I should start looking into that because I saw a few people mention voting on Twitter. Well, it turns out the Virginia primaries were on June 12, precisely two weeks ago today. Suffice it to say, I’m not following daily news anymore, nationally or locally, I’m not paying any attention to whatever the daily outrage is, I’m not on Facebook very much, I’m in my own world doing my own thing and it’s very stress-free.

Another post just to mark the event that three American hostages are being released from North Korea today: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/09/3-americans-detained-in-north-korea-in-good-health-and-on-their-way-back-to-us-trump-says.html https://abcnews.go.com/International/trump-americans-held-north-korea-back-us/story?id=54905339 I wondered a while back if these hostages had anything to do with North Korea’s sudden willingness to bargain. What has the U.S. given up to get these hostages back? Or did the U.S. deliver some kind of private ultimatum that forced North Korea to release the hostages and come to the table? Did the U.S. have anything at all to do with it? I don’t know, but I’ll be curious to find out the answers someday.

The huge news out of the Koreas this morning definitely deserves a mention for posterity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-and-south-korea-agree-to-work-toward-common-goal-of-denuclearization/2018/04/27/7dcb03d6-4981-11e8-8082-105a446d19b8_story.html https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/north-korea-south-korea-summit-intl/index.html http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/04/27/kim-jong-un-pens-message-peace-in-south-koreas-peace-house.html The first thing I thought was: Wow there is going to be a whole lot of cognitive dissonance happening on Twitter today, and a whole bunch of activists working overtime to spin this news for or against their favored elected officials. Even I am experiencing cognitive dissonance. There is no question this is a solid win for the Trump administration, and I have no idea how it could possibly have happened, given all the previous news.

It occurred to me that this shutdown is the Republicans’ best and probably only strategy for winning elections in 2018. Prior to the shutdown, there were only two accomplishments Republicans could campaign on: Neil Gorsuch and passing the Tax Bill, neither of which are particularly great for capturing undecided voters, even if there wasn’t a truckload of negative baggage attached to each of them. Of course, they could also campaign on “Look how great Trump is!” Um. Yeah. Probably not a great strategy for most areas of the country.

I’m still here but nothing much to say about current events. I’m just not interested right now. I don’t care a whit if the government shuts down or not. I don’t care a whit about the president saying curse words in private meetings. DACA and Dreamers are issues that I typically don’t think about and have little or no personal stake in. Watching the “hole versus house” followup war of narratives is more interesting to me: That is, the president’s team trying, successfully I might add, to shape the controversy as the “course language” he did or didn’t use and focusing on that, which completely derailed the more substantive policy discussion. The “why” he said it was completely lost amid the deluge of “what” he said, and that was a win for Team Trump. It’s yet another lesson in how easy it is to manipulate the mainstream media and drive the news cycle (see also: Trump wins election).

I’ve been largely ignoring the news here at the end of the year, so I don’t have much to say about whatever new controversy is going on right now. Or the other new one. I mean, let’s be honest, there has to be a new one literally every single day to keep driving traffic, right? But I did see one horrifying gaming-related news story that struck a nerve: Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in deadly Wichita police shooting

There is a never-ending supply of crazy retweeted in my timelines, and it all comes from the left. Every single day I could pick something like this to highlight. It is no longer enough to retake the House in 2018. It is no longer even enough to retake the Senate. We must wipe out the GOP so thoroughly and methodically that it will be a warning throughout history to any politician who ever does this to their constituents again.

Here is my standard disclaimer: I don’t know anything about economics and I don’t want to know anything about economics because it’s not science. I similarly don’t want to study the intricacies of homeopathy or astrology. In blunt terms, I couldn’t care less about taxes and this entire bill is about as interesting to me as paint drying. So here’s my opinion on this tax reform/tax cut/tax scam bill. Get ready. You might want to brace yourself. It will be a tremendous surprise when I reveal my centrist opinion on this tax bill.

I had an interesting thought the other day. There is almost no difference between a tweet from John Scalzi and a tweet from Donald Trump. The only difference is that Scalzi’s have better grammar. But the intent? Identical. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940930017365778432 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940567812053053441 Folks, if you roll up with "both sides are equally bad" these days, I'm gonna know you're a fucking idiot whose understanding of political issues is about as deep as a single baked potato crisp. I literally have no time for you, Pringle pal.