APRIL
…when the abandoned Chinese space station Tiangong-1, which has been anxiously watched by scientists as its orbit decayed, plunges back to earth and, in a worst-case outcome, fails to land on attorney Michael Avenatti, thus enabling him to continue appearing on CNN more often than the Geico Gecko.
Meanwhile President Trump, faced with — among other problems — a continuing immigration crisis, increased Russian aggression in Syria and a looming trade war with China, launches a barrage of assault tweets at what is clearly the biggest threat to the nation: Amazon. Trump is forced to back down when the retail giant threatens to suspend the White House’s Amazon Prime membership and cancel delivery of a large order placed by the Defense Department, including six nuclear submarines, two aircraft carriers and a missile-defense system with a five-star average review rating from other nations.
Responding to alleged Russian infiltration of Facebook and massive breaches of user data, the Senate Committee of Aging Senators Who Cannot Operate Their Own Cell Phones Without the Assistance of Minions holds a hearing intended to answer such probing questions as:
▪ What IS Facebook, anyway?
▪ Where does it go when you turn off the computer?
▪ Is there a print version?
▪ Is Facebook the one with the video of a cat riding on a dog?
▪ How the heck do you get a cat to do that, anyway?
Patiently attempting to answer these questions is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who wears a suit and tie and does a solid job of impersonating a regular human, except for not blinking and at one point having a tentacle emerge briefly from his left ear.
Abroad, the big news is a historic summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. In what observers see as a major breakthrough, Kim agrees to sign a letter of agreement explicitly acknowledging, for the first time, that he has exactly the same hairstyle as Bert, of Bert and Ernie.
In sports, Patrick Reed wins the Masters Tournament, prompting jubilant Eagles fans to celebrate by destroying what little is left of Philadelphia.
We laugh so we don’t cry.
I find most of the stuff people worried about this year to be rather amusing but I am dismayed about the ambivalence most people have for the rising technocracy and the corruption of media. TBH, I think a lot of the problems started back when our local paper stopped running Dave Berry.
I will believe that the Correct-Thinking people, of whom Mr. Barry is becoming less funny by sympathizing with in his view of President Trump, refuse to patronize Amazon for what it is doing to local Walmart stores and for refusing to place Whole Foods in poor neighborhoods.
Companies like Amazon need to be taxed accordingly and made to pay minimum wages. Otherwise they will continue to kill local retail entirely due to their unfair tax advantage. It is a race to the bottom. Every single time I read about an Amazon warehouse (they call them ‘fulfillment centers’ – how Orwellian) it is always a mess of people not getting paid decently, not having proper thermal and air conditioning in the building, people dropping out like flies from heatstroke with ambulances permanently parked outside, workers camping outside in tents while it’s snowing, workers getting crushed by machines, or some crap like that. Welcome to the gig economy. It is the XIXth century slum economy all over again. These people are our modern equivalents of the Gilded Age Robber Barons.
We have always had things like mail order catalogs but there are reasons why those businesses were never quite as successful as something like Amazon. A lot of online shops went belly up over the years. Amazon is only as successful as they are IMHO because of tax evasion.
So good on Trump for standing up to scumbags like Bezos.
Russian aggression in Syria? How laughable. A nation invited by the government of Syria to help them stop a foreign funded and supported civil war which is actually managing to do bring back peace to the region? That is aggression?
I hope Trump manages to exfiltrate the US from sinkholes like Syria and Afghanistan so the USA can preserve its resources for things that actually matter.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens when Trump loses Congress though. I think his stance on sanctions with regards to China is kinda commendable. Although I did call him the 2nd coming of Hoover before he was elected. I still think he’s commendable for trying it. But once the Democrats take over I don’t know what will happen to that.