Lost in space

 If you paid to have yourself buried on the moon, you must be fuming right now.  Peregrine was launched this week but the software went blooey and now the remains of Gene Roddenberry, Arthur C. Clarke and others are "careening through the black, cold vacuum of space." 

 

I know how they feel.  Like Europeans in the fourteenth century I sometimes think the Trumplague will never end.  I can't turn on the computer or the television without seeing the Orange Death, swollen, engorged with hate, but somehow more sinister than a skull.  Make it stop.

Every day, every day it sifts down upon us like the millions of plastic beads that fell on Lake Tahoe, like the effluent of a thousand coal-fired engines.  Why do the people who could intervene fail to do so?  Yesterday Judge Arthur Engoron told Trump he could not deliver a "closing argument," so today he did it anyway.  "Mr. Kise, please control your client," the judge said, instead of "Bailiff, take the defendant to the cells and use the bear spray if necessary."  So Judge Engoron, whose day began with a bomb threat at his house, had to listen to a rant about how he and Attorney General James have "their own agendas" and how "I really have no rights," all the usual emesis.  I'll cut the judge a little slack and suggest he's probably exhausted.  I'm only surprised Trump didn't demand another delay because his mother-in-law just died.  And get it.

I clutch at the fact that Trump is his own worst enemy, or one of them -- it's a long list.  Last night he took a question from a forced-birther called Rebecca at some Iowa event and assured her that he personally got rid of Roe v. Wade and he's always being praised for "saving" millions of lives but he's only a fanatic in the Reagan model (save the life of the "mother" if you must) but Hillary Clinton ("I call her beautiful Hillary") wants to abort babies after they're born but he's "the most pro-life president ever" (always the superlatives), and on and on until Rebecca was probably good and confused.  Every poll shows Americans support reproductive rights by a huge margin, so trying to squat in the middle of the road here will not work.  Young women especially do not need Taylor Swift to get them to the polls.

There may be a repeat of last year's Speaker of the House shitshow, when Kevin McCarthy needed fifteen ballots to get the job and just one to lose it.  Apparently the Lord told Mike Johnson to compromise with Chuck Schumer on a spending bill to keep the government open, and Chips-a-Roy (R-TexasRepublic) says it's time for him to go.  As long as history is being made in goofy ways, we may find out what happens when the President arrives to give the State of the Union message on March 7 and the chair has been vacated.  "MISTAH SPEAKAH...uh, OK, who's in charge here?  Look, I'm just the Sergeant at Arms, this is way above my pay grade..."  Maybe each Repub could be speaker for a day, like towns that let a high school kid be the acting mayor.  They're not doing anything anyway.

On a personal note, I was up half the night trying to fathom why Escambia County, Florida, banned A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps Dickens's least salacious book.  (Oliver Twist and Esther in Bleak House were born out of wedlock and Ralph Nickleby uses his niece as bait for Lord Frederick Verisopht.)  I think I know.  Late in the book we learn why Dr. Manette was in the Bastille -- he cared for a girl who was raped by two aristocrats and refused to keep quiet about it.  If Florida children must be protected from reading about sex, slavery and racism, they certainly can't know about R-A-P-E, lest they ask mommy why Christian Ziegler is no longer chairman of the state Republican party.

Anyway, it seems there's another Mom for Liberty entangled with the law.  Keri Leigh Blair has resigned from the Collierville, Tennessee, School Board following her arrest for shoplifting.  She allegedly did her Christmas (not holiday) shopping by boosting $728.00 worth of merchandise from Target, the notoriously woke retailer that puts Pride stuff right out on shelves where the little ones can see it and demand to be taken to Drag Queen Story Hour.  I suppose that's her defense -- she was undermining them economically.  Pays for everything at Hobby Lobby.