An Interesting News Cycle

The last week and a half has spawned an interesting news cycle for journalists, current events lovers, and what should be the whole nation.

It began with former president and then presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump getting shot during a rally which rolled into the Republican National Convention (RNC) where he accepted the official nomination and named a running mate.

The Saturday shooting in Pennsylvania dominated the news cycle that weekend with that event seeing the loss of two lives and questioning of the break down in security by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI director has now resigned from that position.

I was out school shopping when Robyn texted me, in all caps, about the shooting.

I imagine any security issues had been dealt with and beefed up by the time the RNC began in Wisconsin just two days later. I found it interesting how just days after the alleged assassination, where the shooter went unnoticed for some time, that one of the biggest political events of the year was being held in an open carry state and some of the open public events were again being held outside. Could have been disastrous but thankfully no copy cat shooters were on the prowl.

Then the world, yes the world, wakes up to the IT outage that crippled business, governments and especially travelers. The outage came as cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike experienced a major disruption following an issue with a recent tech update.

I was out and about Friday and many places were not functioning normally, if it involved tech. I was trying to renew my vehicle registration and all three of possibilities were a no go—not online, not at the kiosk, and not at the tag office.

It seems those hit hardest were those in the airline industry. Flights were grounded, services were delayed and travelers paid the price, some still are, it seems. It reminded me of a series I watched years ago, Revolution, where the world went dark digitally and people were relegated to life before digital technology.

Along comes Sunday, after a beautiful less-wet Saturday, and I’m watching the news when juicy breaking news comes in. President Joe Biden was removing himself from the 2024 re-election campaign. Now I’m no brain surgeon but I do fancy myself as a bit of political strategist but shouldn’t that have been an issue visited a year ago at least, not some 100 days from the election?

That’s a whole campaign rewrite for all parties involved and is going to make for a more interesting election season than normal over the next three months. I’m looking forward to this week’s press conference from the president about such though I’ll likely be watching it on my phone, if there’s not another IT outage, as I will be at the Atlanta Zoo celebrating the close of the Grady Health Systems summer teen leadership program.

Ohhh Grady, boy do I have a story for you guys but that’s a tale for another week as I’m still in emotional recovery.

Nonetheless, I guess we will just keep on chugging along until more breaking news comes our way. This past week has been enough to make you head spin and your heart race.