Something a little different today, a look at some of the headlines from USA Today. I noticed the wide variety of topics. For a change, I thought I would share a few thoughts on each one.
First, and most notably, is my second sentence — “I noticed a wide variety of topics.” This is something new since 2016. Trump commanded the headlines for most of four years, every day. Then COVID shared the stage. Now, we see news as we should see the news — from all over the world.
On to said news.
Headline: After loss, emotional Naomi Osaka considers taking break from tennis ‘for a while’
Yes, Naomi Osaka lost yesterday at the U.S. Open. She was favored to win the whole deal but succumbed to an 18-year-old, unseeded Canadian named Leylah Fernandez.
Osaka cried outwardly. Clearly, she is not well and hasn’t been. She’s been under pressure, mostly from media and culture, putting the heavy weight of being number one on her shoulders. The same thing happened when they started calling Simone Biles the GOAT. Greatest Of All Time. You can say this about a person after they are dead, but don’t put those kinds of expectations on someone when they are about to compete.
Mostly, in all of this? We pay too much attention to the status of our athletes and pay them too much money. Teachers need more. Police need more. Nurses. And on.
Headline: ‘We lost pretty much everything’: Cleanup continues as Ida death toll rises in Northeast
Ida. Ida cleaned our clocks. They have called this a once in a 500-year storm. I call it the thing we will be seeing more in more in the next two decades until the planet becomes inhabitable. Wait and see. People will start moving inward on the continents. In the west, they will run from fire. In the east, from the hurricanes. The heat will kill the southwest.
Housing will become so short in the middle of the country that people will have to protect their own homes with guns. And since we have no guns laws in this nation, it will be a war zone everywhere we go. We are dicked. But we did this to our planet, so now we will pay the price.
Headline: Denver has a strict vaccine mandate for teachers, plus masks. It’s working.
Duh.
Duh.
Duh.
Vaccinating to end the pandemic. It works. Duh.
Headline: More than 122,000 people evacuated in historical Afghanistan airlift
Though it did not have any official name, the American air evacuation from Kabul, Afghanistan, was one of the largest operations of this kind in history. This accomplishment happened over the course of 16 flight days.
More than anything here, we are out of a war that no one wanted. We fought in Afghanistan needlessly for decades, and we, the U.S., were slaves to a misguided mission. Biden made good on his promise to get us out of there. Could he have done things better? I don’t know. None of the finger-pointers could know either because it didn’t play out that way. Leaving our troops there until the end could have resulted in numerous suicide bombings with thousands of casualties. We simply don’t know.
All we do know is that it is done. Over. Fin. Thankfully.
Final Headline for the day: Kaley Cuoco and Karl Cook split after 3 years of marriage: ‘There is no anger or animosity’
I don’t know who these celebrities are. I’m sorry they split, and all. But frankly, I don’t care. That’s their business, not mine.
Perhaps none of this is my business. But I came out of the womb with an opinion on everything. In fact, I started crying, first thing.
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“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank
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“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis
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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
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The news, the news. And what I think.
