It seems that we as Americans have noticed a change in some of our politicians in terms of their behavior and lack of a filter, it’s particularly evident when it is displayed on social media and news outlets.  I'm referring to mostly Republicans here, as in Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gaetz, Cawthorn, Boebert, Johnson, Cruz, the list is long but you get the gist of what I’m saying. This is a new norm that we've come to expect from elected Republican officials, a level of crazy not seen in decades. Just when one elected Republican is implicated in something deemed to be reprehensible one week another one pops immediately thereafter, raising the bar on crazy.

Well, in keeping with that Republican tradition, we faced and survived an attempted coup fomented by Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators, and now it appears another situation resembling a mini coup was underway courtesy of Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin.

An astounding number of Americans have come to the conclusion that President Biden is an illegitimate President of the United States and want to see Trump back in the office, even if it takes actionable violence on their part to see that happen.

In order for us to find out why this sentiment exists we need to go back to January 6th, after which a systematic analysis of the complete set of individuals arrested by the FBI and Washington DC police for offenses related to the storming of the US Capitol, it revealed that they weren’t your typical extremists, and why they became motivated and driven to become insurrectionists.

Thank you for joining me, in today’s episode I will take a look at the issue of abortion which once again has made national news.

If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ve heard that the GOP in Texas has decided to ramp up their assault on women’s rights to choose and passed new legislation which effectively bans abortion at six weeks and lets anyone file a lawsuit to enforce the law. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has signed a piece of anti-abortion legislation that effectively bans the abortion procedure at six weeks, which, oddly enough, is before many aren’t even aware that they are pregnant, and allows anyone to enforce the ban through lawsuits.

Welcome back listeners and viewers, the time consuming hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 vote has confirmed that President Joe Biden indeed won the 2016 Presidential election, and it further solidifies that the election was not “stolen” from former President Donald Trump as he claimed at every turn.

Are we not surprised? Were any of us expecting to find that 40 thousand or so ballots were laced with bamboo fibers imported from China, and somehow smuggled in and mixed in with the genuine ballots?

While the Delta variant is running its course all over the USA, particularly in places like Florida, Louisiana, and even here in Texas, where the cases of infected and the number of deaths is at an unprecedented all-time high, members of the GOP seemed to have launched a campaign of their own to derail all efforts to convince Americans to take the vaccines.

In places like Florida, you've got DeSantis proselytizing against the vaccines, and instead is pushing Regeneron treatment centers, while Congressman Rand Paul is still touting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as the drugs Americans should be taking and not the vaccines. Paul has politicized this situation so much that he has stated that ivermectin was an effective COVID-19 treatment but medical professionals are letting hatred of Trump override their duty to research further efficacy of these treatments.

The State of Florida has been the subject of much controversy lately, mostly because of the misguided actions, or should I say the lack of inaction on the part of Governor Ron Desantis to commit to any effort that ensures the well being and health of the citizens he serves, are addressed.

Sure, we one say that the number of hospitalizations of Covid infected is up all over the country but the numbers in Florida are staggering in comparison to everywhere else. This can be attributed to government overreach in which it is illegal to wear a face mask in the school setting, for both children and educators. The concern here is that the Delta variant is affecting more school-age children and some have died from the infection. We can also attribute the number of infected and now hospitalized because of antipathy towards getting vaccinated.

Texas is right behind Florida in terms of covid infections, hospitalizations, and deaths attributed to either Covid19 or the new variant, Delta. Gov. Greg Abbott announced new initiatives on Monday to fight the coronavirus pandemic as it rages again in Texas, including asking hospitals to again put off certain elective surgical procedures to free up available space for COVID-19 patients. Additionally, he also announced that he will have staffing agencies look for out-of-state medical personnel to help Texas hospitals deal with a surge in COVID cases. Sadly none of his initiatives have taken into consideration the effectiveness of the simplest protective measure one can do, as an educator and student, to lessen the chances of getting infected. Which is to wear a mask in the school environment without the risk of running afoul of the law as crazy as it sounds!

The Arizona Vote Recount isn’t going well for members of the Republican Party, particularly, for those individuals that are at the center of that auditing fiasco. As some of you may well know, Senate Republican from Arizona Senate President Karen Fann is the person who saw fit to sanction this audit, and in her infinite wisdom decided that a company owned by Doug Logan, called CyberNinjas, would be awarded one of the contracts to perform the audit. This despite the fact that this company had no prior experience in conducting any sort of election audits.

Mike Lindell is a high profile figure associated with spawning various conspiracy theories relating to the Presidential election in which Joe Biden won. Lindell has stated that he had financially backed a project that purportedly looked into the election and that the team he hired had turned up evidence that hackers in which from China had infiltrated the Arizona election via it’s network routers; he further asserts that data packets captured from these routers have revealed that such activity had in fact taken place and therefore Biden is not the legitimate President he wildly claims.

QAnon followers are growing restless — and could resort to violence, similarly as the Capitol Rioters, DHS officials have warned — as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell continues to push back a timeline for his conspiracy theory about former president Donald Trump's reinstatement to office.

Tourism is important to just about every town in America, it helps drive and sustain economies during tough times, and like every other place, Washington DC depends on tourists to fill its hotels, its restaurants, shops and create jobs for workers. In Washington, DC, pre-COVID-19, the nation’s capital welcomed some 24.6 million total visitors, with 22.8 million domestic visitors, and 1.8 million overseas visitors and supported 78,266 jobs across all sectors in Washington, DC, Tourism also generated $8.2 billion in visitor spending and $896 million in local tax revenue to the District.  

Unfortunately, the type of tourists I will be referring to in this episode are of a different ilk. I'm talking about the sort of tourists that visited the US Capitol building on January 6th, the so-called “peaceful patriots” who were there supposedly as normal tourist visitors.