thependulumswings

What has 2020 had in store for us thus far?  An impeachment was followed by an all-time high on the stock market.  Shortly thereafter a killer virus caused a global pandemic and an American lockdown.  This caused the stock market to retreat beyond a third in the swiftest decent in its history.  As we emerged from our caves a very bad cop knelt on a black man’s neck in Minneapolis who died.  This lead to ten days and counting of “mostly peaceful” protests if you watch CNN, or deadly riots if you watch FOX News.

So what are we going to do for an encore?  Welp.  NASA is watching an asteroid this weekend estimated to be “the size of the Empire State building” that is hurtling towards earth.  While it’s not expected to come close enough to cause any harm we must write in full disclosure that it is 2020.

Freedom of speech has come front and center in the national dialogue (see what we did?) and that is unfortunate for two reasons.  One, it’s called freedom of speech for a reason, so why should we ever need to be concerned about it?  Two, the nation’s opportunity to discuss and debate the needed and proper outcry from the George Floyd death might get garbled by the shift.

The New York Times (the failing NYT if you ask Trump) took much heat for publishing  Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed piece.  In it, he suggested that Trump call out the military to suppress the oppressed.  An insurrection of its own occurred inside of the NYT.  Subscribers called to cancel as they were outraged at the conservative hit piece.  The NYT staff nearly revolted too.  The paper publically regretted the error and blamed it on a rushed editorial process.  Sure.

The overriding concern was that this gave oxygen to what could put black lives in danger.  That sounds like the opposite of Black Lives Matter.  And, that’s not good for a far left-leaning paper.

A day after Drew Brees spoke his mind he changed his mind.  Then, he apologized publically via Instagram and privately to his teammates in one of those lovely company-wide Zoom conferences.  It’s a shame that WOKE world whiffed at a chance to discuss versus hush.  Thankfully, even-keeled Tony Dungy came to his defense.

During an interview on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday, Dungy stood up for Brees’ freedom of speech.  “I don’t downgrade Drew for that. That’s what he said. He may not totally understand, it may have been not exactly how he wanted to express it, but he can’t be afraid to say that,” Dungy said.  We can’t just say anytime something happens that we don’t agree with, ‘I’m done with that, and I’m done with this person.’ That doesn’t make sense. We have to be better than that,” the former Indianapolis Colts coach said.  Ah, so nice to hear a fair and balanced voice of reason in this storm.

Speaking of storms, Baton Rouge and the lower LA coast is expecting flooding this weekend from tropical storm Cristobal slowly heading their way from deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, at least no one was killed in riots last evening.  The stock market has had another great week to date.  The asteroid will miss us, won’t it?

Hopefully, you’re on summer hours at work by this week, or better yet on vacation.  It’s never too early to  start drinking in 2020.  Bottoms up!