Too much news this weekend. These are by no means in order of importance…
Didn't watch the fight. I've never had much interest in any event that is basically two people hitting each other. Put Trump and Paul Ryan in the ring and maybe I'll tune in…but I couldn't gin up the slightest interest in whether McGregor beat Mayweather or Mayweather beat McGregor. The only thing I ever find intriguing about this kind of thing is that, for example in this case, McGregor is a guy who could probably beat the crap out of better than 99% of the people on this planet. On a different day or in a match-up, there's a good chance he would have even beaten Mayweather. But he's going home a "loser"…with only $75 million.
The pardon of Joe Arpaio is Trump pandering to the Alex Jones wing of his base, the ones who love it when laws are broken when they're broken in the name of white supremacy. While those guys love the officials who do everything they can within the law to smack down minorities, their super-heroes are the ones who are macho enough to break the laws and say, "Come and get me, punk." The pardon tells us a lot about how the Trump administration is going to roll for the rest of its existence and maybe it's for the good that it's now out in the open like that.
Former White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka is making the rounds to insist he resigned and was not fired. This probably means he was ordered to resign or he would be fired, which is about as vast a difference as the difference between brown onions and yellow onions. The White House has announced he will be replaced just as soon as someone there figures out what he did except to go on interview shows and lie a lot. If it turns out that's all he did, they have dozens of people who can take his place.
And then there's Hurricane Harvey…and oh, that's sad. It's not enough to say, "Those poor people" and you should remember that you can do something about this. As I just suggested in a Tweet, praying for them and keeping them in your thoughts are sweet notions but they don't rebuild a single building. There are some problems in this world about which we have to say, "I hope someone does something to help" because there's absolutely nothing we can do. And then there are those where we can do something. A donation of money — even if you can't afford much — will help someone in some way. In those matters, praying and "sending good thoughts their way" are kind of the dictionary definition of The Least You Can Do.
I just send some dough to Operation USA, which is a charity I know to do very good work. Only a tiny fraction of what you give them goes to administrative costs and staff salaries…and I'm not suggesting there aren't other charities where most of your donation dollars don't make it to the needy. But when I give to Operation USA, I know I'm not paying for its CEO's shag carpeting. Even the best government response to a tragedy like this doesn't repair everything and given who's running the government these days, I don't have a lot of confidence that private contributions won't be needed. If you were thinking of making a donation to thank me for this blog, please send it there instead.