The 2016 election.

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   And Moon Jae-In won in South Korea and the North apparently decided another nuclear test was a bad move and just tested a mid-range missile without overshooting Japan, attacked the ocean, then chilled out. The North is pretty predictable with a lot of loud noises and fireworks every spring, right around when we do Foal Eagle with the ROK. They also love to test new presidents of both the US and ROK and love to do it big for anniversaries in multiples of 5's and 10's. This was bound to get weird this time. It gives us a chance to check out whatever new hardware they come up with. It's as predictable as the tides, this was kind of a super-tide. 
Either way the South Koreans managed to make democracy shine. They had a weirdo throwback to the glory days president who was corrupt, but not even in the typical way they're used to, it was just illogical and dumb this time, and after focusing a bunch of effort on things that seemed intrusive, occasionally offensive and usually toothless. The mini-skirt ban in early 2013 immediately comes to mind, coming into office with help from social-media astro-turfing bots on Kakao Talk that were run by the national intelligence agency didn't help at all. She completely blew the response to a tragic, criminal, and preventable at multiple levels accident, resulting in the deaths of hundreds children, more than a few of whom I had in a few classes. I'm pretty happy with the results of this election, the ROK has its share of problems and has been content to kick the can down the road on the hard stuff and settle for superficial fixes and distractions while the chaebols and politicians screw them, while blowing smoke to obscure their inaction so long as they're making out ok. I'm glad Ban Ki Moon stayed out of it and avoided getting raked through the coals. His career can end with a decent capstone. 

As for the Comey firing and recent hearings, I recently had a good conversation with the son of an attorney who defended John Mitchell on the Watergate thing and he found a lot of these recent actions to be absolutely asinine. Comey was in a bad position and didn't handle it well, but to not know how to even basically CYA when dismissing him is embarrassing. It's not even good for Trump, the true believes dislike the acting director over his wife's political donors and activities, and the POTUS would look horrible if fired him too. Oh, and the FBI raided a Republican consulting firm in Maryland, McCabe went to Congress with a solid security detail in an emergency meeting, Rosenstein backed away from his writings being used to justify the firing, and the Russians apparently think this whole thing is hilarious. Even asking Russian nationals I know who are fairly political, they basically remember Yeltsin the incompetent drunk, laugh, and tell us it will be fine and that we deserve this. I'm not exactly sold on the collusion idea, but the Russians almost certainly and predictably tried to throw a wrench in the works, are probably trying to play up their involvement or successes. Someone asked me who I thought was winning in the Yates testimony, my honest answer was "Russia". 

Yates was impressive and sounded like she was seriously trying to be competent instead of the nonstop disingenuous spin I'm becoming too used to. She pretty much stuffed Ted Cruz in a locker and farted into the vents. I'm not sure how we're going to get through the crumbling of civic values we're experiencing, we're not adapting to information saturation well. I'm getting as sick of it as fidget spinners. 