This is not the only story like this, but apparently the entire town of Iraan is closed. They’ve shut down the schools and apparently everything else because nearly half the town has COVID. It is reminiscent of the scene in “My Cousin Vinny” when an entire store caught the flu.

Yet, this kind of thing happens all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen towns totally shut down because half of the residents are sick. Oh wait, that’s never happened in our lifetimes. Never mind. Nothing to see here. Disperse. Go back to your homes and your regularly scheduled program.

Rick Perry has come out of hiding, and by gawd, that boy’s going to Austin!

I imagine the legal bills over the investigation into the Department of Energy have left the boy in need of some greenbacks.  I will bet you a fresh five dollar bill American cash money that he’s got an air filter that kills all known germs including the one that causes bad breath and heel spurs.

I suspect that most of you are familiar with Dan Crenshaw, the congressshiver from Texas.

Once a year, members of congress are required to file a sworn statement of their personal finances so we can see who has bought them.  They disclose large gifts, stocks, bonds, speaking fees, money made off of personal book sales, and other kickbacks.

They were due April 26th. Dan Crenshaw asked for a 90 day extension. And that deadline swooshed past 10 days ago.

Naturally, you gotta wonder what he’s trying to hide.

I think Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen might know.

Houston Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s bestselling new book, Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage, has been boosted by the National Republican Congressional Committee making a large bulk-order purchase.

The House GOP’s campaign arm recently spent nearly $400,000 to buy more than 25,000 copies of the freshman Republican’s tome.

So, the RNC comes in and places a large bulk order which helps to push Dan to the best seller list and Dan makes a personal kickback on every book.

Hummm … I guess he’s late with his filing because he lacks … what’s the word for it? Oh yeah, Fortitude.

Occasionally, you get the opportunity for a good extended metaphor. Those of us in the Gulf South know all too well what it is like to survive and recover from a storm. Most of us in the Gulf South can identify four stages of surviving a storm.

The first stage is the preparation stage. We know the storm is coming. So, from here we all make calculated decisions. Do we stay and mitigate or do we drive inland? Will we need to board up our windows? Do we have enough emergency supplies in case we lose power. You get the idea.

The second stage is the storm itself. If you are riding it out you just hunker down and do the best you can. If you’ve gone inland there is the worry that something bad will happen to your home or someone else you know. So far, everyone is in the same boat.

The third stage is the immediate aftermath. People are still fairly unified. Neighbors help neighbors and everyone pitches in. We clean up the damage. We make repairs. We deal with insurance adjusters, contractors, and the occasional con man trying to win one over during a crisis.

It is the fourth stage that is the problem. Some people get back to normal quickly. Some people never do. Talk to any charity and they will tell you the same thing. There is an initial enthusiasm that people have when giving that just goes away. People give around Christmas and then in January those charities dry up.

Most experts have said that it takes up to two years for most people to recover from a storm. Most of us just don’t have that kind of attention span. Amidst all of the political mumbo jumbo related to the pandemic, it is this fatigue that is costing us. Of course, one can’t avoid the other connection to a storm when we talk about the eye of the storm.

I vividly remember Hurricane Alicia as a kid. The eye passed over Galveston and Houston. Briefly everything seemed fine. Then the storm raged again. We knew it would back then, so we stayed hunkered down. Sadly, the eye of the storm of COVID came and went. We were told it was over. At every turn there has been an almost desperate need to put the virus behind us.

First, it was following the first lockdowns. People wanted to get out. Then, it was the warmer weather and the thought that viruses couldn’t survive in warmer weather. Then, it was an experimental round of drugs that were being peddled like snake oil at town square. Finally, we had a vaccine and the initial rush of most people getting the jab.

At each stage, the optimism was a fool’s errand. Weeks of progress were erased by super spreader events. Politicians desperate to save the almighty economy failed to uphold common sense safety measures. Some of them (cough Dan Patrick cough) even said they were willing to make an even swap. When that didn’t go over well he shifted his blame to Democrats and black people.

Storms come and go. They wreak their havoc, cause their damage, and leave some devastated. For a brief while, we all stand up and pitch in as much as we can. Then, we lose our focus. Life interrupts even the best of intentions. Even the most dedicated of people lose their focus. Obviously, some of us are not the best.

The virus is worse than a storm. If I hunker down and practice common sense measures I can keep myself and family safe during a storm. The virus doesn’t offer that kind of guarantee. The idiots ruin it for the rest of us. They clog up the hospitals. They infect those that are trying to be careful. They keep this thing going. Fatigue is real. So is being an idiot.

It used to be in Mississippi that people with Covid, but mild symptoms, would go and purposefully blow on your grandmother.  They are like that in Mississippi – perpetually 7 years old and mean as hell.  It got so bad that Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs issued an edict saying that once people found out they had Covid, they are required to isolated for 10 days or else.

The else?

None of these people have $5,000 so I’m going with the five years in prison.

It’s not going to take long until Thomas Dobbs is in the unemployment line.

This photo has been circulating on social media this last week:

This is the cover of the July 1983 Moral Majority Report, a newsletter conceived and published by Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, a Reagan era mouthpiece of what has now morphed into the American Taliban.  At that time, the HIV crisis was arising, and predictably, right-wingers were judgmental about the outbreak, but worse, even then they got the virology wrong, donning masks in an effort to scare the shit out of people about a virus that didn’t transmit through the air, but by bodily fluids.

Back then, the mask was used as a weapon against science and one of their targets, the gay community.  Today, once again masks are being used as a weapon against common sense and science, but in the opposite of the use in 1983.  Back then, right-wingers donned masks to push their message; today they accost people wearing masks and rail against mask mandates to push whatever their message is today. The obvious conclusion is that conservatives are not only totally corrupted; they have been corrupted for decades, moving facts around to fit their narrative.  Add the cancer of Donald Trump, and the corruption is complete, and political conservatism becomes a toxic soup of lies, distortions, disinformation, and cruelty for the pure sake of cruelty.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, but in the case of the American right wing, it gets worse.