Crazy world out there.

New house committee members yuck it up.

Everybody is obviously entitled to like and support the candidates and parties of their choice. You just have to wonder how some of the more batshit crazy people ever get elected but they obviously do. From both sides.

I have many friendships across the political spectrum. Lately, I have been asking my Republican friends a very simple question; which GOP members out there do you like or admire?

The first person who answered me was J___ who responded with; Jim Jordan. I didn't attempt to rebut his choice, I appreciate his honesty. To me, Jim Jordan is a guy who looked the other way when college kids were getting sexually assaulted. Sworn affidavits from very close friends of Jordan said he had to know, it was an open secret that the doctor was a molesting the wrestlers. In addition, he appeared to be in the middle of the January sixth maelstrom and refused to comply with a congressional subpoena. 

But hey, on the other side, Jordan is a pugnacious fighter, as much as I disagree with him and I can see why my friend admires him. Takes no shit.

All of the rest of my respondents said Ron DeSantis. Now I don't personally like the governor of Florida anymore than I like Jordan, I have a hard time with many of his tactics and positions but I will admit that in a GOP lineup that contains the likes of Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, Gosar, Boebert, Biggs, Santos, Perry, Noem, Higgins, Zinke, Banks and Roy, he seems halfway normal. And it is gratifying to me that my friends on the right are leaning towards normalcy over the obvious alternatives out there.

But who is electing these other people? And why don't their supporters ever fess up and say so? Why don't I ever hear anybody at coffee, say "Boy that Matt Gaetz, he sure showed them damn Ukrainians who is boss?" Or "Marjorie Taylor Greene taught them liberals what will happen if they kill any more christian children at their pizza parlors and suck their blood."

Nobody wants to ever claim the wackadoodles. They just keep voting them into office. It's the craziest thing.

My friend called me and asked him about the job Biden was doing. I said that he seemed to be doing okay, he certainly stepped right in the middle of it with his document storage and that criticism was definitely warranted. I see very few Democrats, if any, covering for him. I think policy wise, I support the great majority of his decisions and give him credit for stabilizing the Presidency after the tumultuous Trump regime.

If you only were tuned into the Fox media machine, from day one, Joe Biden was a senile dotard who couldn't stay awake and wasn't capable of independent speech. Every headline was and is geared towards tearing him down. Ditto Kamela and Pelosi. Much like MSNBC went after Trump. That is politics today, unfortunately, pure trench warfare. We do our utmost to see our opponents in the worst possible light.

Biden could push the rock from the cave and ascend to heaven and Fox would find a way to critique his flying technique. 

I read a lot of news from left and right. I read Fox, National Review and Reason daily as well as the NYT, Washington Post and TPM. I don't do Breitbart anymore, can't stand it but I have in the past. My point is that you have to get your information from a variety of sources and then do your best to figure out what is real if you want to be an informed citizen.

Because there are very few if any objective news sources today that do not have a political slant to one side or the other. If you are only tuned in to your comfortable silo you are going to miss a lot. I think you have to mix it up. You also need to figure out why you are being fed the information you are getting and who it is ultimately serving?

Stay vigilant, use your critical thinking skills to the utmost of your abilities and make sure that your trusted news source passes the smell check. Don't be manipulated.