There are two big meaningless issues in the news right now, both of which are reported on religiously, and neither of which are even remotely influence-able by the overwhelmingly vast majority of people who follow them.  One is the NFL labor negotiations and potential lockout, which is a battle between the millionaire players who want more money and the billionaire team owners who also want more money.  Secret negotiations are taking place everyday between lawyers and wizards (I guess), all in the hopes of giving the ~50 million football fans in America another chance to gaze at Tom Brady's lovely hair.  This issue is reported on as if any of these people had even the slightest say in the issue, which is obviously false.  It's not that it's not important or that people don't care; it's that we really only need to know the outcome. 

The other big meaningless issue is the raising of the debt ceiling, which actually isn't meaningless at all and in fact could cause the nation of America to stop operating, which is a bad thing.  That's serious stuff and all, but again, this is a negotiation between the president, the congress, some lawyers, and likely a few wizards, all behind closed doors and with no input from the ~300 million people who would be quite directly affected by the failure of their nation.  All the conservatives in my family would point out that, "Blah blah you have the chance to change Washington each time you vote blah blah," to which I say, "Great, tell me where I can go vote about this issue right now.  Oh wait, you mean things like this aren't voted on?  Oh and the people we voted into office in the mid-term elections or the last presidential election are a bunch of lying scumbags who said they'd do one thing but are now doing another?  Oh and certain issues like debt ceilings and financial bailouts and humanitarian bombing runs are things that couldn't possibly have been predicted when we voted these lying scumbags into office in the first place?  Oh."  Raising the debt ceiling is an important matter, but I can't think of anything that has less of an impact on my daily life than this. #politics