Not even halfway through the week, but I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of brilliant people articulate what I could never express, so I thought I’d share some of their insights below.

Louis C.K. on the 2016 Election (& other important topics)

In the realm of things I thought possible, I never thought that Louis C.K. would give the most compelling insight into a Hillary Clinton presidency:

Everybody has both masculine and feminine sides, but Obama is feminine inside. There ain’t no femininity in Trump. There’s none in Bernie. These are both really emphatic guys saying, “We got to do this!” Hillary’s trying to say, “Guys, this is reality. These are complex issues.”

In Conversation: Louis C.K. by David Marchese, Vulture

Also, to showcase that this article has more worth than an commentary on this crazy election, here’s another quote about the creative process that I loved:

…when things get in your rearview mirror creatively you don’t care about them anymore.

Make sure to check out the rest of this article – it’s a great longread about comedy, the 2016 election, and new projects he’s working on.

Why we should focus on the victims of the Orlando shooting

And NOT the killer. On this alone I agree with Donald Trump – we should NOT speak the shooter’s name. I don’t want to remember the name of a non-human-being who murdered 49 people. I don’t want to speculate on why he did what he did.

The following article is on an unrelated topic, but it explains how stories about murder should focus on the victims, and the bloody gash it leaves on the lives of their loved ones.

More sadly, it is about how trauma can break a person, when it becomes too terrible to bare.

Crooks have less going on upstairs, not more, than honest people. Crooks are basically smash-and-grabbers. See what they want, grab it. Money, sex, power, vengeance. Not into long-range planning. They divorce themselves from empathy. They have less, not more, to think about.

The effect their crimes have on survivors, on the other hand, is immensely complex and almost infinitely profound. As regular, decent people battle their way through the challenges of a normal life, their ability to deal with catastrophe, after all, is not infinite.

Why Is Her Suicide Somehow Harder on Us Than His Death by Machete? by Jim Schutze, Dallas Observer

Jim Himes for President

I wish I could move to Connecticut just so I could vote for Representative Jim Himes (although, maybe he’ll run for President in 2020, assuming we’re all still here).

It’s an unpopular stance with many people, but Himes walked out on the House of Representative’s moment of silence today. Since then, he’s been defending his actions in cutting phrases. He’s got so many great lines in this article, I had to stop myself from copying and pasting all of them to convince you to read his thoughts. So I’ll leave you just one, and highly recommend you hear his pro-2nd amendment, common sense reasons to support gun control.

Let’s really talk about whether Jesus Christ thinks that the answer is a good guy with a gun. But we say this time and again. Change doesn’t come fast. If we’d given up on Civil Rights in 1964 where would we be?

Your Moment of Silence Won’t Fix Anything, by Luke O’Neil, Esquire

Bonus points: Rep. Jim Himes quoted in a Slate.com article:

“Thoughts and prayers” are three words that cost you nothing.

…

I would never denigrate prayer. It’s important to people; it’s important to their spirituality. It’s not enough. It’s not enough. Prayer did not stop Orlando. It did not stop Newtown. It did not stop Aurora. It did not stop San Bernardino. Clearly, more is called for from us.

And because I apparently can’t get enough of anything Himes says on the subject, here’s him quoted in the Washington Post:

…he said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting he thought about how the inevitable moment of silence for the Orlando victims would be about the dozenth time in recent memory he’d make that “dreary trudge” to the House floor because of “another mass slaughter.”

“And I got to thinking that this isn’t a town square. It’s not a church,” he told Maddow. “It’s 535 people who with a day and a half of work [could pass] some bills around policies, which by the way a vast majority of Americans support.”

Jim! Stop being so smart on complex issues! Here’s a direct statement from him, posted on the Washington Post’s opinion page:

I support Second Amendment rights. I enjoy recreational shooting. I even have a tattered musket in the garage. But like so many Americans, I recognize that there is no such thing as an absolute right, that your right to buy a military weapon without hindrance, delay or training cannot trump Daniel Barden’s right to see his eighth birthday.