The final frontier is not about the space outside us, it is about the space within us:  The ability to believe in ourselves, to get out of our own way, to get to that sweet point in any project where we step back and say, Wow -- how did we do that, anyway?

The first frontiers are down here, on Earth, of course, trying to make sense of any of our lives, trying to find perspective to lend meaning to what can increasingly be seen as randomized, cascading bursts and bubbles of reason and insanity, with reason riding a pendulum that's swung way out of orbit, no idea when it could be back.

It's been one wimpering bellow and simpering cacophony after another with these guys, all this empty and voidful claptrap called the GOP candidacy, or coronation, or whatever half-baked appellation you'd care to make of this clammy, hammy, clambake.  Now, to steal a dribble from basketball, welcome to Super Tuesday -- March Madness, Republican Style!  This is a most appropriate banner to stretch over these four lame and leftover horsemen of the GOP Apocalypse, all saddled up on their pygmy ponies, ready to joust with feather pillows.

In the English language, it's a shame we aren't allowed to add exponents to some descriptors, can't add a "power" sign at the end. We could not create this in current grammar:  "Newt is a liar, cheat, and a sneak thief ^ 56," which would be saying Newt's to the power of 56 in terms of liar-cheat-sneak-thief-iness times itself -- 56 times in all.  Just as five-squared means five times five, Newt to the 56th power would mean, well, a wet cleanup on aisles 5 through 9,472, at the least.

Once again, Republican party opinion leader Rush Limbaugh leads the way for all who lend him their ears -- you'd have to, of course.  He's deaf from all the drugs that he took.  To get back at us for his lapse in judgment, his slow-catching-on, he's been lashing our ears all along, trying to blow them out on us, too.  He's been showing the party faithful how to be virtuous, how to be courageous, how to verbally lash a young woman.  Finally, he hit an uncallused part of our ears, got a reaction -- we are suddenly surprised.

Ol' Rush has been banking fortunes out of shoveling crap into our ears for some time.  We give him permission to do so every time we turn on the radio, invite him in for a while.  He's at home money-grubbing, spewing lies, and whipping out racist slurs, but Rush is flexible. He's added a new skill:  Skinning a young woman alive, using only sharpened words.  Quite a demonic resume you have there, Rush.  Happy with your list of achievements?  He laughs us off, of course, all the way to the bank.

A battle over Irish agrarian tenants' rights 132 years ago, in 1880, contributed a valuable concept to the world, adding a noble word into the language, from an ignoble affair: Boycott.  It would surface again, 90 years later, strongly so, with Cesar Chavez in the 1970s, in nonviolent protests once galvanizing and unifying farm workers.

Chavez's birthday is coming up, by the way, March 31st, and is celebrated and observed in a handful of states.  It is one more good and fine day worthy of keeping alive in the hearts of everyday working people.  But, as you know, we have no need of more superficial treatments of giants who have walked once in our land, no more special, red-lettered holidays to be fluttered and fizzled about, no more days to be frittered away selling us more merch, or more kitsch, without any of us ever knowing why it's This-or-That Day.