Beau Elliot
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So, welcome back; we missed you. No, really. It turns out we really needed another 20,000 pairs of feet to efficiently stamp Iowa City’s unshoveled sidewalks into ice sheets.
Speaking of which, we’re sorry about the temperatures that greeted you upon your return. We petitioned the Canadians to ease up on the whole weather thing, but our post card went unheeded.
Probably has something to do with dark matter. So much does, not that we really understand dark matter. Flint, Michigan, drinking water filled with lead? Dark matter. Ben Carson doesn’t understand a whit about the Big Bang? Dark matter. Your iPad is in a funkity-funk stage? Dark matter.
Or as Brown University physicist Richard Gaitskell says:
“You’ve probably got a hundred million dark-matter particles going through your hand every second.”
Sounds a little creepy, I know. But at it least explains why you can hear political candidates, but you can’t feel them.
That sounds a little creepy, too, but I meant “feel” in the non-creepy, metaphorical way.
Which is kind of the way Donald Trump feels about the Des Moines Register. Apparently.
“The only poll I’m not leading in is the stupid Des Moines Register,” Trump said in mid-December. “It’s a stupid newspaper that’s going out of business.”
Well, you have to admit, Trump is an utter expert on stupidity. He looks in the mirror so often.
This is the same Trumpster who earlier this month kicked out a Muslim woman from one of his rallies because, well, she was a Muslim, dressed like one, and had the temerity to attend one of his rallies.
Apparently, it’s just not enough to ban Muslims from entering the country; they should be banned from public life until Trump can build enough camps to pen them in.
Pretty much, Trump is Col. Mustard in the library with the kettledrum. And a bazooka.
Which is not to say that the rest of the Republican characters are not in the game of Clue. Or Clueless, depending on your point of view and what you had for breakfast.
Take Sen. Marco Rubio, for instance.
When asked on “Meet the Press” if he would exchange Iranian prisoners for American hostages in Iran, Rubio was emphatic:
“When I become president of the United States, our adversaries around the world will know that America is no longer under the command of someone weak like Barack Obama. And it will be like Ronald Reagan where as soon as he took office, the hostages were released from Iran.”
Um, not exactly. Then-President Carter negotiated the release of the U.S. Embassy hostages, culminating in an agreement with Iran on his last full day in the West Wing, unfreezing Iranian assets in exchange for the hostages.
But Reagan got the hostages released is a favorite GOP fairy tale. Apparently, that crowd still believes in the tooth fairy.
Rubio should be especially careful when talking about “tough” Reagan not negotiating with Iran, because in the mid-80s, Reagan and his people famously (and secretly) negotiated with the Iranians, trading arms sales for American hostages, then sending the money to the Contras in Nicaragua, which the Reagan administration backed in that civil war. That latter was against U.S. law, by the way.
Speaking of tooth fairies. Not to mention dark matter.
