This isn't going to be a new column on politics. It's not even going to be a full column, really. I am scheduled to get my second vaccine shot this afternoon, therefore I didn't have the time for either one of those things, sorry.

After today, I've got a few more weeks of waiting and then I will feel (relatively) safe once again. I am not saying this to lord it over those who have not even gotten their first shot yet, because I know how bad "vaccine envy" can be. I say it positively instead, as an encouragement -- because you too will be here, very soon now. Take heart!

Not every state has thrown the doors wide open for anyone age 16 and up to get vaccinated. But we are fast approaching that point. California will do so in a few days' time, later this week. Other states have already hit this milestone, meaning it is now just a matter of getting an appointment for any adult. That's all good news. If your state isn't quite there yet, you won't have long to wait until it is at that point, when everyone who wants a "Fauci ouchie" shot can get one (or two, depending on the brand).

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Nothing illuminates the difference between the current United States president and the former one as much as how they respond to a misstatement. President Joe Biden, speaking recently about his dreams for American infrastructure improvements, said the following:

We're going to talk about commercial aircraft flying at subsonic speeds -- supersonic speeds. Be able to, figuratively, if you may -- if we decided to do it, traverse the world in about an hour, travel 21,000 miles an hour. So much is changing. We have got to lead it.

There's only one problem with this: physics. Because that is just way too fast, Joe. Divided out, 21,000 miles per hour is 5.8 miles per second, which is significantly faster (roughly ten times faster) than the fastest airplane ever built. The supersonic Concorde only managed Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound), or a little under 1,400 miles per hour. The record-holder is the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, which flew at Mach 3.5, or a top speed of almost 2,200 miles per hour (although there is evidence it may have flown a lot faster, in emergencies). Whatever the actual numbers are, though, Biden plainly misspoke.

So far, the White House has not corrected the number Biden gave yesterday. But you know what? We are fully confident they will do so, by soon issuing a clarification. Because they not only believe in science, they also believe in telling the truth.

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Program Note: I was unable to write today due to external commitments, sorry. Instead, I am running a column from almost exactly a year ago, just because not much has changed. This should help to remind everyone that this is not some brand-new problem that was a result of Donald Trump trying to overturn a fair and free election. That all just fed into something that had been going on for quite some time, that's all. The column below is just as pertinent now as it was a year ago, because things have only intensified over time. Republicans still don't have much of an agenda, so they have moved all their voter-suppression ideas into overdrive. But, like I said, this is not exactly a new phenomenon. So again, apologies for the lack of new column today, new columns will return tomorrow for our regular Friday rundown, so I will see you back here for that then.

Originally published April 9, 2020

The Republican Party has now been reduced to being so deathly afraid of the unpopularity of their political agenda among the electorate at large that they are now openly admitting that the only way for them to win elections is to suppress as many votes as possible. This is the exact opposite of "having the courage of your convictions," folks. Republicans are quaking in fear of the efforts to expand voting to make it easier and (much more important) safer for everyone, because they think they'll lose if that happens.

This used to be the sort of thing that was left unsaid. It used to be just the murmuring from the smoke-filled rooms in the back, where Republicans felt free to talk among themselves. This is no longer true, since Donald Trump is now openly admitting what they've been fearing all along -- that mail-in voting would mean (as Trump put it): "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." And now that he's just coming right out and admitting it, this has freed up other Republicans to 'fess up to the real truth of their multi-decade attack on easy voting: it was never about "fraud," it has always been about suppressing Democratic votes, period.

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To be clear, that title is pugilistic in nature, not legalistic. Not a courtroom lawsuit, in other words, but a boxing match. Because corporate America and the Republican Party seem to be at least preparing to trade some major blows. So far, it's all been just shadow boxing, but that could be about to change. This is a fairly major development, considering the long and close history between the two. Whether it becomes a full-blown punching match or not is going to depend on how far both sides are willing to go and what price they're willing to pay.

Many factors have led to this moment. The Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter both showed the power of having a righteous position and having large multitudes who support it. Women and Black people stood up and said: "Enough!" and by doing so have changed the political and social dynamic of the country. It can be argued to what degree of success each of these movements has so far achieved, but what is irrefutable is that they have, in fact, started changing things.

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The irony in Washington is so thick on the ground right now, you could slice it up and sell it to the tourists as souvenirs. Seriously -- the hypocrisy currently emanating from the Republican Party is just stunning, since to believe any of it you would have to erase your mind of pretty much everything the party has ever said on the subject previously. And even then it would still be hypocritical and ironic.

I speak of the Republican reaction to Major League Baseball's decision to pull the All-Star Game from Georgia after they passed a law to suppress voting. The reaction has been ironic on so many levels it's tough to even identify them all.

First, Republicans fell back on their new favorite: decrying "cancel culture." They castigated M.L.B. for somehow "cancelling" Georgia and instead choosing Colorado to host their midsummer showpiece game. This, from the party that previously argued for bakers to have the right to refuse to make gay wedding cakes on moral grounds, I hasten to remind everyone. So what was Republicans' first reaction to this supposed outrage? To call for a boycott of baseball. To try to cancel baseball, in other words.

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As I am wont to do, I watched all the Sunday political chatfests this weekend (well... as many of them as I could stomach, at any rate...). I was mostly interested in hearing the Republicans' counterargument to the American Jobs Plan that President Joe Biden introduced last week, a massive $2.3 trillion investment in America. What I heard, however, was just laughably weak. Republicans apparently want to have a grand debate over the proper definition of the word "infrastructure," since they apparently have already figured out that talking about the specifics of Biden's plan doesn't exactly help their side. I mean, what is a respectable Republican politician supposed to do, when just about everything in Biden's plan sounds like a dandy idea to most of the public? So, rather than hold a debate about these popular specifics, Republicans instead prefer to play semantic games.

Their argument can be boiled down quite simply: "But it's not infrastructure!"

That's it. That's all they've got. Defining the word infrastructure to mean "only roads and bridges" is the new GOP position. Note that this position doesn't say that all the other stuff that they don't consider to be infrastructure isn't worth doing, because (again), they really don't want to have that debate at all.

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So, let's see... Joe Biden has been in office for over two months, and the only scandal to emerge from the White House so far has been from First Dog Major Biden. While over in Republicanland, Representative Matt Gaetz reportedly not only had sex with a 17-year-old minor while using the illegal drug ecstasy, but he also paid her online (possibly through a setup on a "sugar daddy" dating site); and not only took nude photos of all his conquests (which apparently included a naked hula-hooping video), but actively shared them with other congressmen on the floor of the House of Representatives. He's now under federal investigation for possible sex trafficking. But he has retained his seat on all his House committees, since Republicans are now noticeably more in favor of "due process" than they are whenever Democrats are in trouble. So could someone please remind us, once again, exactly which party is supposed to be the "party of family values"? After all, they used to brag about it so loudly....

Salacious and criminal Republican behavior aside, however, there was some really good news this week, as President Joe Biden travelled once again to Pennsylvania (a key swing state) to unveil the first of two parts of his "Build Back Better" blueprint. The first initiative, the "American Jobs Plan" weighs in at $2.3 trillion, an eye-popping amount even by Washington standards. The next round will likely be almost as large (reports are the total package will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion). Biden will raise $3 trillion in additional taxes to at least partially pay for his ideas, with the first such increases proposed solely for the business community.

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There's going to be a big difference in Congress soon, one that will likely first impact the infrastructure package just unveiled by President Joe Biden. Because after many years in the wilderness, earmarks are back!

Earmarks, for those who either never knew about them in the first place or had forgotten all about them during their period of dormancy, refer to money for pet projects inserted into massive budget bills by individual members of Congress. You may know it better by the more colloquial (and porcine) expressions: "bringing home the bacon," or, to its detractors: "pork-barrel spending." No matter what part of the rhetorical pig you favor, though, it's all just individual congressional districts feeding at the federal money trough.

[Editorial note: Maybe I should have eaten before writing this, some hunger seems to have slipped into the narrative somehow....]

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During the presidency of Donald Trump, the term "infrastructure week" became a running joke. Team Trump would tee up some big infrastructure event or announcement (in the hopes of driving the media narrative), but then the team captain would just self-destruct in front of everyone, derailing any hope of actually achieving anything meaningful. The first time this happened -- although few now remember it as the first infrastructure week fiasco -- was at a press announcement event with Trump's secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao. There were a few dog-and-pony props set up, and Chao made her announcement, which mostly dealt with cutting what Republicans consider onerous rules and regulations, in order to move things like highway projects forward faster with less red tape. After her presentation was over, though, Trump took the podium and was soon asked by a journalist about the other big story of the day: the violent and deadly clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and people opposed to white supremacy. Few may remember the context, but everyone remembers what happened next -- Trump's: "very fine people on both sides" rant. That was the first infrastructure week under Trump.

Subsequent infrastructure week attempts were made, many of them featuring Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer treating Trump at the bargaining table like the small child he mentally is. Then Pelosi and Schumer would appear in front of the microphones on the White House lawn while Trump sulked inside. This is why the very phrase "infrastructure week" became such a joke -- because it almost always foreshadowed some Trumpian grand tantrum or meltdown to come.

Now, of course, we have an actual adult as president. And President Joe Biden just showed us all how infrastructure week should be done. There's no better way to put it than to say that Biden's infrastructure week is no joke. It is, in fact, the real deal.

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Every so often, a political issue rises to the fore and I just have to scratch my head and wonder at the sheer stupidity of it all. Not often -- usually even when an idea I don't agree with gains traction in the political debate, I can at least see the other side's reasoning. In other words, I may not agree with the proposed solution, but at least I can understand where the other side is coming from. But the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to more just flat-out stupid political fights than anything else in recent memory. Wearing a face mask is somehow a political statement? What a monumentally stupid idea! Last year, most of this came straight from the top, right out of the Oval Office. But Donald Trump is now just a sad shadow of his former political presence (he's taken to crashing weddings at his resort to whine about how put-upon he is politically, which is pretty sad indeed). So this time it's just free-floating Republican (or Libertarian) craziness.

I speak, of course, of the growing alarm in some of the more feverish right-wing fringes that some sort of "vaccine passport" is somehow going to be the Mark Of The Beast which will track everyone's movements everywhere and (as icing on the totalitarian cake) destroy capitalism forever with "corporate communism." I wish I were exaggerating, but sadly I am not. That "corporate communism" label is in quotation marks because it is a direct quote from the most deranged Republican to currently sit in the House of Representatives (I refuse to publicize her name, personally, so you'll have to figure it out on your own... sorry).

The fear is that some sort of smart phone app will be officially sanctioned somehow, and that once that's the case, businesses and other public venues will be able to instantly screen customers coming in so they can turn away those who have not been vaccinated. That's what's supposed to usher in the end of civilization as we know it. Nazi Germany (of course) has already been used by way of comparison. As has communism. Who knows what they'll say about it next?

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