Major Tom's Newest Friend

A Flash Gordon Weekend: I flew on the British Air Concorde once which is about as close to space travel as I ever plan to get so I don’t intend to get on line to buy one of those $200,000 Virgin Galactic tickets nor do I plan to enter Richard Branson’s lottery for two free trips.  However, despite my personal aversion to space travel unlike all those complaining about all the money that Branson and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have spent on their billionaire toys and battle for space, count me as one of those who admires their guts and aspirations even if I also wish they would pay more in taxes.  And who doesn’t understand why, given our overheated west, flooded out east, insane politics and, of course, COVID and all its variants, plenty of people would be happy to line up for an opportunity to leave planet Earth. Talking about COVID, the Delta variant is spreading rapidly particularly among the throngs of unvaccinated, even raising positivity rates in highly vaccinated areas.  Though virus guru Fauci spent some time on the Sunday morning talk shows reassuring folks that there is no certainty that a vaccine booster shot is in the immediate offing, largely because he hasn’t seen any data that shows we need one yet and because he wants to keep the focus on getting the unvaccinated jabbed, the Washington Post was the first to report that Pfizer is scheduled to meet with federal officials today to present the data that they say justifies their position that we, or at least some of the more vulnerable among us, should get another dose soon. To that end Israel is beginning to  offer third jabs to those with impaired immunity and may also offer the shot to some of the most vulnerable under twelve. 

FG Follies: While Richard Branson is now officially an astronaut and Jeff Bezos will likely be one very soon,  the Former Guy doesn’t appear to have any aspirations to join them or to go on an untethered spacewalk so at least for now we remain stuck with him.  He appeared as the keynote speaker at this weekend’s Dallas Conservative PAC group grope, a meet up that appeared to be chock full of QAnon nutsters, white supremacists, wannabee Nazis, basically what are now mainstream Republicans. He repeated his usual message, that he was cheated out of an election that he really won, that those marauding insurrectionists who beat the crap out of some Capitol officers and were seeking to do the same or worse to his VP Mike Pence, were really nice guys who were just expressing love of country and fury over the “stolen” election and the like while also targeting crime and critical race theory, another cudgel intended to promote white fear.  While this all sounds like nuts to most of us, the FG is the master at repeating bigly lies until enough people believe them so while it would be easy to dismiss his rantings as just crazy speech from an insane Florida retiree, don’t.  The FG also continued to tease that he’s running again in 2024, something that would make his base and the anti-Vax CPAC crowd, who ranks him at the very tip top of their candidate list with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis next in line but far behind, very happy. Though 2024 may seem far away, 2022 is just around the corner and among other things a seven point plan for reinstating the FG in the Oval office was handed out at CPAC.  The plan calls for him to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. As farfetched as that sounds, the FG for Speaker concept keeps getting lots of air time, another one of those things that when repeated enough starts to sound possible, at least to his fans.  Moreover it’s worth repeating that the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress and that some in the party fringe, including Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who may or may not be indicted or possibly even in jail by the time 2022 rolls around, say that they will nominate him if or more frighteningly when the Republicans retake the House which given historical mid-term trends and all that voter suppressive legislation getting passed around the country and on the table again in Texas is quite likely to happen despite the fact that those of us living in Democratic bubbles find it hard to imagine.  This might all sound very pie in the sky alarmist, but the FG is like the angry bear who has been repeatedly poked; he’ll do anything to regain power especially to ward off all those investigations into his and his families “alleged” crimes.

Politics As Usual: Back in the more normal world, to the extent that anything about politics is ever normal, Joe Biden is still trying to move his infrastructure plan forward, the filibuster is still being discussed and both VP Harris and Hunter Biden are again under the microscope.  Kamala Harris because who doesn’t like to attack women, particularly women of color?  And Hunter having something to do with his paintings possibly selling at astronomical prices.  Am I the only one who remembers when the highly respected and competent Senator Amy Klobuchar was trashed for eating salad with a comb or when the RNC spent donor funds buying up all of FG son Junior’s books? Focus folks, on getting out the vote and getting infrastructure done because if we don’t, paintings and VP office politics will be the least of our problems.