May 23, 2022 3 min read

I have a confession to make. Even though I write for a newspaper, I don’t sit down in my recliner every day and pore over a physical copy of any newspaper. But I do peruse the news online. So I find out what’s happening not only locally, but nationally and worldwide. I’ve come a long way since 1972, when I was so aloof that I didn’t even know that then-President Richard Nixon had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War until someone told me, adding that “Nixon has lost his mind!”

As I suspect others do, I tend to skim news sites until I find something that interests me or that could affect me directly. And I am amazed that, even by simply skimming the news, I learn things that surprise, amaze or anger me. That’s as it should be. If you can read the news today and not be angered by something, you’re not really paying attention. I try to balance anger with amusement, although it is becoming harder to do so.

That said, here are some facts I found and opinions I formed after skimming the news last week. I don’t expect you to agree. As they say online: Remember! YMMV – Your Mileage May Vary.

n Race Replacement Theory doesn’t apply if you’re talking about a bunch of white Europeans coming to North America and driving indigenous people before them into the sea.

n If you’re a candidate who wins on the strength of mail-in ballots, mail-in ballots are just fine. If those mail-in ballots cause you to lose the election, the entire process is unconstitutional and tainted.

n Female athletes can be paid equally with male athletes only after they complain long and hard. And even then, the collective bargaining agreement that awards them back pay and wages equal to male athletes will run for only six years.

n If you’re accused in court of sending violent texts to your ex-wife, just say they were “meant in jest.”

n A “good guy with a gun” can’t stop a “bad guy with a gun” if the bad guy is wearing body armor.

nIf you claim in court testimony that you don’t recall making certain inflammatory statements, then you never made them … even if they were recorded on video at the time.

n If you’re a political candidate and win, the election wasn’t corrupt. If you lose, there was rampant fraud and voting by illegal immigrants and, perhaps, by farm animals.

n Money may not be able to buy you love but – more often than not – it can buy you a winning baseball team.

n If you remove controversial statements from your website, you never said them. Not even if they can still be found in an internet archive of your site.

n Attempting to take the U.S. Capitol by force is perfectly fine, but if people protest peacefully outside a SCOTUS justice’s home, it’s anarchy.

n If you repeatedly say stupid things to the media, you can say your quote was taken out of context. Or that you have “changed so much” since you made those statements. Or that you were just joking.

n 2+2 = whatever some TV news channels say it does.