First take a tempest. Then take a teapot.

Then put the tempest in the teapot. Here’s what you get, according to the dictionary.

"A small or unimportant event that is over-reacted to, as if it were of considerably more consequence."

We have a lot of that going on in our world, both nationally and locally. Here’s a few of them that are resonating this summer. Take away the bull from these things, and you really aren’t left with anything that matters.

But is there enough toilet paper?

This is the issue of transgender students and where they get to go to the bathroom in school. With school about to start, we seem to be hearing more about this than we really need to hear. This whole thing is yet another example of adults baring their own hangups while most kids probably don’t give a hoot.

There are school districts, like Shorewood High School, that have adopted the most sensible policy without a whole bunch of controversy: If you are a transgender student in Shorewood, you can go to whatever bathroom you want. Amazing how mature kids can be.

But can he read it?

David Clarke, who you may recall is the sheriff in Milwaukee County, is writing a book. This is a big deal in some small circles. The title of the book is "Cop Under Fire: Against Hashtags of Race, Crime & Politics for a Better America."

Clarke, who has built a cottage industry as the most right wing and insulting black law enforcement officer in the country, seems to spend very little time actually being a cop, under fire or not. There is already rumbling from Clarke’s critics that he isn’t sheriffing as much as he should. The real point is, who cares about Clarke's book?

John vs. Verona

Nobody seems to really know who Verona Swanigan is. But she is going to be on the ballot next week as a candidate running for district attorney against the highly respected incumbent John Chisholm.

Swanigan is the anointed candidate backed by conservative activist Eric O’Keefe, and she has something other than a background that might lead one to believe she should be the DA. She spent most of her lawyer life acting as an agent for Elijah Mohammad Rashaed in over 300 eviction cases. On her website, Swanigan refers to herself in the third person and continually identifies herself as "Attorney Swanigan." Swanigan and her operatives are raising all kinds of absurd claims about Chisholm and are trying to get everybody stirred up. Tempest.

But we keep electing them

Incumbent lawmakers in Wisconsin continue to make huge deals about some stuff that, in the end, just costs taxpayers millions of dollars they really shouldn’t have to spend.

The first example is the $1 million check the city had to cut for Silk Exotic, the strip club that wants to open a branch Downtown. Our brain dead Common Council kept saying no, the club sued once, and it’s a cool $1 million from the city to the club owners.

Then, to prove that state officials can be even more stupid than local officials, we now find that Wisconsin taxpayers are going to have to pony up $1.8 million in fees for the attorneys of Planned Parenthood. Republicans passed a ridiculous anti-abortion law, Planned Parenthood fought it and the state lost in court. Now the state has to pay the lawyers for Planned Parenthood. Why don’t these lawmakers work on stuff that is actually important?