Y’all, on top of everything else, there’s a bad storming tearing through the Gulf of Mexico and it looks like a booger. They’re saying it could make landfall as a Category Three or even Four. Hurricane Ida, it’s called, and it should make landfall Sunday at the earliest. However, it’s building up a head of steam and could come earlier. Regardless, this is one to be prepared for, friends and neighbors, so everyone between Galveston and Panama City start battening down the hatches as best you can. We all got enough to deal with already so don’t screw around.
Speaking of which, we’ve averaged over 150,000 new COVID cases in the past week. Here in Mississippi, we had just over 4,000 with 65 new deaths. A Florida judge threw out Governor Ron DeSantis’ order preventing individual schools from requiring masks. Since he’s running for the GOP presidential ticket in 2024, he’s been a right bastard about all this lately and apparently the Sunshine State’s finding his act tedious. They’re hard up for nurses and he’s dragging his feet deciding if they’ll take some volunteers ’cause he’s a rat bastard.
Having moved well over 100,000 American citizens and Afghan refugees out of the country and after a rocky start seems to be outdoing initial figures by quite a bit. The biggest bump in the road came in the form of a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport, killing over 100 people trying to get out and 13 U.S. Marines. One of ’em was a baby on 9/11. Ain’t that a hell of a note.
Naturally, the GOP has jumped on this with both feet and has spared no fake outrage in their calls for Joe Biden’s resignation and/or impeachment. There’s even been a number of calls to restart the conflict in revenge by soi-disant conservative intellectuals. Biden’s telling them to pound sand.
Again, it’s a bit naïve to think something like this would go off without a hitch and people outraged about that are bullshitting us. Polls overwhelming continue to support the withdrawal and Biden doesn’t seem to be concerned about whatever dent this might put in his political armor. Regardless, it’s still a lifetime away before the next round of elections. The blame for the attack has been owned by a group called Isis-K, who is apparently not connected to the Taliban. Sure.
Let’s end with some history. Sirhan Sirhan, the man responsible for the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, was granted parole today. This was his sixteenth shot, as he was serving a life sentence, and prosecutors weren’t inclined to challenge his release. He’s 77 and plans on living with his surviving brother in Los Angeles. A citizen of Jordan, he joined the Rosicrucians in 1966. I think that’s interesting if meaningless.
For anyone interested in American politics, particularly the development of both parties and the whole shebang would do well to study this moment. The shooting took place during the opening days of the 1968 Democratic primaries for the upcoming presidential election. Worn down by Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson had planned not to run again and no one was really hot for his vice-president, Hubert Humphries. On the Republican side, the winner was former vice-president and all-around shnook Richard Nixon. This was also the first time Ronald Reagan ran for president. Again, I think that’s interesting.
Kennedy was considered the fair-haired boy for the Democrats. Formerly the Attorney General for his brother, he was considered by many as an even better political bet. Big things were thought of him and the rest of the Democratic ticket didn’t do much to impress. George McGovern made a good start for his nomination in 1972, but that was about it.
That all changed with Sirhan’s bullet, though. The nomination went to Humpries, who was considered a bit of a limp noodle. This was also the year of the violent clashes in Chicago between the Old Guard and the young folks wanting some sort of change. It’s always a bit of a shock when the forces of government are telling the hoi polloi to sit down and shut up if they know what’s good for them. Even worse, this was the best run Alabama governor George Wallace would make, scoring pretty much the entire South.
The “Solid South” was still pissed off about the Civil War and remained fairly hardcore Democrat throughout the 20th century, but this was the last hump of the Great Change. Republicans had become increasingly conservative since Lincoln’s day and the youth vote and Black vote wasn’t having it. Unfortunately, the old ward heelers of the Democrats really didn’t want a bunch of kids and you-knows running the party. So Humpries got the nomination only to be stomped like a rabid dog by Nixon.
Thus the Black Iron Prison was raised and it’s all just gotten worse since. The Democrats were pretty much lost in the woods until Bill Clinton changed their tune. The GOP just got worse and worse, and Nixon would be considered a stone lefty by Fox News. And the guy who was as responsible for all that as anyone else gets out of prison today.
Hell of a thing.
Dear Y'all 