When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Kragujevac What a golden-egged goose Donald Trump has been to late night. In many ways, he is King Midas, imploring Dionysus for the golden touch, only to learn to be careful what you ask for.

And he has asked for a lot — to the delight of the comically-inclined left. A magic wall. Witch-hunt recognition. Media that fawns upon the mighty.

And last month, Space Force. Trump has been so excited in the sloganeering potential that he seems to get plumper and oranger each time he whips his base into rally froths, like a Jamba Juice on crack. Forget a purpose, let alone a reasoning or development plan; it’s chant-friendly. “Space Force!” is easy to remember and isn’t trademark-infringing (not to mention the fewer letters for your hats, on sale today!).

Comedians had their expected field day with the idea. And who could blame them? Trump’s tweets alone have turned a literal profit for comics: Comedy Central has the 15th most popular book on Amazon with its The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library hardbound collection of Trump’s furious, grammar-challenged missives.Space Force is just as tantalizing. As a viral video points out, Trump speaks of a sixth branch of the military like he’s auditioning for Shatner Shakespeare in the park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dj_gEfbysI

It’s a silly idea, yes. It will surely feature all the efficiency of Trump healthcare and all the malice of Trump tax cuts. Is it a stretch to picture him wanting to turn the moon into an investment venture?

Regardless, we should enact Space Force before he gets distracted by something else shiny.

The reason? Any state-mandated scientific research should be welcomed by the left as a rarity on the level of a gay Supreme Court nominee.

Don’t believe it? Look no further than Mike Pence, who has become the ironic poster boy for Space Force. Regardless of your politics, this is indisputable: The second most-powerful man in the free world does not believe in evolution, nor that the Earth is a day older than the Bible deigns. You could nearly see the discomfort in his face as he played dutiful wingman and praised Space Force, a higher power that wasn’t evangelicalism.

Pence has good reason to be concerned. Science, like life and spam, finds a way. If the GOP opens the Pandora’s Box of scientific research, it will find itself facing some seriously conflicted questions.

The administration has shown its hostility toward science and education in its treatment of global warming, the gutting of the EPA and the paltry funding of groups from NASA to the Center for Disease Control. And now Trump is offering to marry military spending with science research?

The left should recognize the errant gift its been dealt. It’s one thing to wage war over a book. It’s another to get into space with it. Even at its bureaucratic worst, a cosmology-based government branch would pose something truly terrifying to the right: empirical science. What Republican wants to be the politician who officially tells Christian conservatives that the Earth is billions of years old, not thousands?

All aboard the U.S.S. Midas!

Believe It Or Not!

I took my nephew to Hollywood for the first time. You know, for the ambiance and understated charm.

We went to Mann’s Chinese Theater, where he stepped in Donald Duck’s footsteps. Then we went to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum, where we found another daffy Donald.

It was a Madame Taussaud wax sculpture of Trump. Til I die I’ll believe that the initial rendering was the most sublime “fuck you” to a president ever created.Rafi gazed for a few minutes at the terrific floating faucet (why have they not marketed this into an overpriced magic trick?)

Then he wandered to the sculpture. “Do you know who this is is?” I asked. “Yep,” Rafi said with the confidence of an 8-year-old about to show an old man how out of touch he was. “That’s the president. He doesn’t like us.”

My mind raced, then reeled. How did he come to that conclusion? Grown-ups? The TV? Friends? Viral videos? And what do you tell a child who suspects something like that? The truth?

So I did what most parents likely do. I walked him back to the faucet. “Isn’t that cool? How do you think they do that”

We walked out, me dizzied by either the offhandedness of the comment, the heat, or both. We were met by a group of marchers, carrying hand-painted signs and shouting in Spanish. and bullhorns. I do not know what they were saying, but had a hunch. Police escorted them across the red light, a phalanx of signage, singing, searing. When they passed and the light allowed, we began to cross. By now, I’m literally afraid to let go his shoulder.

Without looking up, he says “What does ‘protest’ mean?” My clutch melted into a mini massage-squeeze, mini back scratch. Then just a hand on a shoulder.

It means we’re going home, kid, where truths can be discoveries, not realizations. To Rafi, the week’s Factslaps

Your mobile phone has more computing power than the computers used for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
The winner of the first modern Olympic Marathon stopped at a tavern mid-race for a glass of wine.
People buy more when they’re hungry, even when shopping for non-edible goods.
Despite being a relatively small and densely populated country, The Netherlands is the world’s second biggest exporter of food.
The original Pac-Man has a safe spot where the ghosts will never get you.
Ancient Romans running for office wore a distinctive toga called the “toga candida.” Hence the word “candidate.”
Leonardo DiCaprio’s haircut from Titanic was once outlawed by the Taliban.