Since it is cold, snowing, and my morning was taken up by other things, today I have just a few snippets that caught my eye in my daily ambling through muck and mire that we call news.

It’s not my fault …

Remember a few days ago when I wrote about U.S. representative from Pennsylvania, Patrick Meehan, who was on the House Ethics Committee, but who had sexually harassed an aide, settled with her for an undisclosed amount of money, and then paid her from his congressional fund?  Well, today he is back in the news, and guess what?  It isn’t his fault that he sexually harassed the aide!  Not his fault at all, folks.

Meehan admitted to having attempted a relationship with the aide, and admitted that when he found out she was in a relationship after rebuffing his advances,  he acted ‘selfishly’, but he doesn’t see it as sexual misconduct, and he has an excuse … Obamacare!  He says his behaviour was due to the stress he was under from constituents during the height of the debate over a repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare).

“Sometimes I have the tendency to lash out to others on the staff. And you go hardest on the ones that you care the most about.”

Meehan also confirmed that he plans to run in November.  Again, let’s hope Pennsylvanians have better sense than to vote for this jerk.

Trump can do no wrong …

Tony Perkins, president of the right-wing religious organization Family Research Council, was recently asked his opinion of the reports about Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, and his payout of $130,000 to her.  Perkins response?

“I would not say it’s not a problem, again, this election… evangelicals did not vote for Donald Trump based on his moral qualifications, but based upon what he said he was going to do, and who he surrounded himself with. We kind of gave him — ‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here”

Wow … how tolerant of him.  I wonder what he had to say back when Bill Clinton had a liason with Monica Lewinsky? There really does seem to be a partisan double standard here, don’t you think?

Monsters lurking in every … text?

Another republican member of Congress makes his way onto my radar today.  This time, it is Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who, I do believe, has either had too much to drink or has been spending too many late nights reading Vince Flynn novels.

If you recall, a month or so ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller re-assigned an FBI employee who had been assisting in his investigation into ties between the Russian election hacking and Donald Trump’s campaign staff.  The FBI employee, Peter Strzok, had sent texts to his girlfriend that were critical of Trump.  Mueller’s main reason for taking Strzok off the investigation was to preserve the integrity, so that nobody could claim Mueller’s team to be biased.

Now, however, not only is Senator Johnson claiming bias, but he has come up with an outright conspiracy theory and says that the FBI is plotting to overthrow Trump.  Offering no evidence to support his claim, Johnson said …

“What this is all about is further evidence of corruption — more than bias — but corruption of the highest levels of the FBI. Listen, the term secret society comes from Strzok and Page. I had heard of a group of people within the F.B.I. Holding secret offsite meetings. I was connecting the dots. And that secret society… we have an informant talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site. There is so much smoke here. There’s so much suspicion.”

Oh please, Mr. Johnson, go back to your vodka and your book.

The camels … they used botox???

Saudi Arabia holds an annual camel beauty contest.  Okay, a bit odd, but hey … I like camels, so I’m all for it.  But this year there is scandal among the contestants!  Twelve camels have been disqualified for using botox!!! Apparently the camel’s owners, lured by the prize money, decided to cheat and injected the camels with botulinum toxin injections to make their pouts look more alluring.

The key attributes in camel beauty are considered to be delicate ears and big nose. “They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of an Emirati camel breeder.

And just how much was this prize?  Pretty big, actually … £3.7 million, or $5.3 million USD.  Fawzan al-Madi, the show’s lead judge, said, “The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”

Poor camels … injections in the face, and all for nothing, not even a bit of a treat.

And so ends Filosofa’s Snippets for today.   You are now up-to-date and can return to cooking supper, shoveling snow, or playing ping-pong.