2017 Feb 7^th

The Texas Rangers are on the case! And what case is that you may ask? It is a truly awful crime and it has, if ever so briefly, dominated the Texas news: Someone has pinched Tom Brady’s jersey. For those of you not familiar with football trivia, Tom Brady is the hero of Super Bowl 51, the man who erased a nearly insurmountable deficit and brought the New England Patriots a very unexpected Super Bowl win.

On a more important topic; many on the snarky left are still talking about two skits from “Saturday Night Live” that aired the night before the Super Bowl and was more enjoyable than football. Melissa McCarthy did an impersonation of Sean Spicer, the Trump administration’s press secretary. Spicer is known for his substantial bias toward reporters from TV networks and newspapers friendly to the administration. Spicer is also known to move very quickly to the next reporter’s question lest the previous questioner ask an embarrassing follow up. Melissa McCarthy’s take off is hilarious and if you missed it just Google Melissa McCarthy and a You Tube replay will come up.

Spicer himself is said to have found the skit humorous. OK, what else could he say? Trump, on the other hand was not laughing. Trump had a problem with the fact that this impersonation was done very effectively by a WOMAN! Trump needs his flunkies to be seen as strong and some are suggesting that this impersonation could jeopardize Sean Spicer’s employment. That’s possible; you remember Trump was unhappy with Spicer’s first performance because (1) he didn’t wear a dark suit;(2) the suit he wore didn’t fit and (3) he didn’t defend Trump’s version of his inaugural crowds forcefully enough. It would be a shame to lose Spicer. He, unlike Kellyanne Conway and most of the other Trumpians, does seem aware that he is acting in a farce.

Then SNL moved to the main event. Steve Bannon made the cover of “Time,” eclipsing the boss at least for this week. Alec Baldwin and the SNLers were right there with a skit. This one had Trump confronting a death character, presumably Bannon. Then Baldwin, wig in place and slack-jawed, had Trump moving from his big desk in the oval office to let the Bannon “death” character sit there while Trump slid into a doll size desk next to Bannon’s.

Trump is a numbers guy: the number of people at his inaugural ceremony, the number of dollars he’s worth, the number of “Time” covers he’s been on. Now he can start counting the number of SNL skits for which he, or his administration, has provided the humor.

Now we wait to hear how the legal fight against his Muslim ban comes out. The order against implementing the ban is only temporary but at last count, eighteen attorneys general had joined the action, Then there are also one hundred high tech companies that have told the administration they aren’t happy about the ban either. This is only partly a humanitarian issue for them, it is also the inability to get the high tech workers they want from these prohibited countries. Is it possible that some companies will open branch factories overseas where they can get these workers? Is Trump’s ill-advised anti-Muslim immigration program going to drive jobs out of the country?