The Scramble

It's not a stretch to say the best part of Sunday's Super Bowl LIII was SpongeBob's short, but sweet, appearance during the halftime show. Should it be a surprise that the game was boring, the halftime show was bland, and the ads were forgettable? The long shadow of Colin Kaepernick cast a cloud over this game and the NFL has yet to deal with the fallout.

What we each saw in the short video (since deleted) that went viral this weekend of a Covington Catholic High School student staring at a Native American protestor on the National Mall is open to interpretation. Photos and videos carry the authority of truth, yet the 'truth' reflected in a video can vary, depending on what's included, what's left out and how it's framed.

The reactions to Representative Rashida Tlaib's profanity and her calls for impeachment against the president have been mixed.

While most Republicans are in sync in their outrage over her comments, Democrats are further apart. 

It's been easy to overlook Trump Administration environmental policies that are contributing to the destruction of wildlife and habitats.

What did he know and when did he know it?

Prosecutors from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team and the Southern District of New York on Friday afternoon came closer to answering these questions as they relate to President Trump and his campaign's interference in the 2016 election.

The repeated incidents of mass shootings are shocking. Yet, they're sanitized and abstract for most of us who haven't been directly touched by gun violence.

The response to mass shootings has become predictable: anguished adults, candlelight vigils, and photos and remembrances of the victims in happier times. It's never about the carnage or the lingering impact on survivors or their families, communities,  medical doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who care for them. 

This weekend was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. World leaders convened in Paris and listened to French president Emmanuel Macron warn against reviving the "old demons" of nationalism that led to our first world war. 

Lewis Black is a funny guy. His expletive-laced RANTS and YELLING about whatever's on his (our) mind lends a rejuvenating catharsis for anyone who's thinking exactly what he's saying. 

It's almost over. One more day of lawn signs, robocalls, nasty mailers and deceptive commercials. Election Day is upon us and is shaping up to bring an unprecedented number of voters to the polls.  

After Naomi Osaka won the first set against Serena Williams during Saturday's U.S. Open Women's Final, chair umpire Carlos Ramos gave Williams a warning for receiving help from her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, who was sitting in the stands. She asked Ramos to take it back. She told him she doesn't cheat. Ramos didn't take it back. After that, it got ugly.

Former Trump official Steve Bannon was disinvited from the 19th annual "New Yorker Festival" Monday, after David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, first invited him for a "serious" and "combative" conversation in which Remnick promised to pose "difficult" questions to Bannon. 

Many of us hoped the white nationalist movement that instigated last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, would suffer a fatal blow. The majority of Americans condemned both the blatant bigotry displayed by the protesters and the president's failure to single out the nationalists as the perpetrators of the "hatred, bigotry and violence." He instead, said he saw that violence "on many sides."

That's not what happened.

The Washington Post, in The Fact Checker database they've kept since the 2016 election, notes an increase in the number of false or misleading claims the president has made in recent months while traveling the country to campaign for Republicans running in summer primaries.

George Packer wrote in The New Yorker this weekend that the only obstacle left to prevent President Trump's full consolidation of power is public opinion. We must vote.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year-old Democratic socialist from New York who beat the fourth-ranked Democrat in the U.S. House in an upset primary victory in June. She won by unapologetically supporting Medicare for all and free college tuition. 

We had planned ("planned") to do a show today about how we're getting too familiar with our sinking feelings.

And then that Trump-Putin press conference happened.

We enjoyed speaking with all of the people who called our show last Monday. We want to keep the conversation going. We want you to keep calling so that we can all talk or listen to one another - even when we disagree. Today, it's Colin and your calls. 

America has never been able to fully measure up to the ideals we embody. Yet, we could reasonably believe that we at least aspired to those ideals of equality, opportunity, and civility.  Today, we can no longer deny that those in power care little about the people they govern. 

Today, we have no guests. Just a conversation between you and Colin about Stephanie Wilkinson's request that Sarah Huckabee Sanders leave the Red Hen restaurant Friday night. Wilkinson owns the Red Hen, where Sanders and her party were dining Friday night.

Despite First Amendment protections separating the press from unchecked presidential power, President Trump is pushing limits beyond any president before him.

It's lonely at the top.

President Trump has a lot of acquaintances but not many close friends, according to those who know him best.