Opportunity.

When one sees it, one must capture it.

So it goes on the national political scene where an opportunity is rarely missed.  As Henny Youngman might say, “take last week, please!”

With so much cold air blowing down into Texas, the hot air emanating from all comers was coming from all corners.  Hot takes were aplenty on the existential threats that plague us so.  Climate change and coronavirus were topics 1 and 1a.

Al Gore invented the internet and became an authority on climate change.

Bill Gates one-upped him and gave us the programming language software to run the microchips that run the internet and now is following in Gore’s nonfossil footprints.

Gates weighed in Sunday on his latest endeavor.  “The changes in the wind patterns are allowing those cold fronts to come down from Canada more often,” Gates explained. “There’s a pattern of wind that, … as it gets warmer, that breaks down. There’s no doubt that we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere. There’s no doubt that that increases temperatures and that affects the weather. ”

So warmer winds made the colder winds blow in Texas.  Who knew?  Ted Cruz did.  Apparently, the wind change stopped at the border though as Cruz took a fossil-fueled jet down to Mexico to avoid the resultant freeze and snow if only for a day or so.

Gates continued, “You know, there’s no magic date that it’s all great until then, and it’s terrible once you cross that threshold. It’s pretty linear as far as we know. 2050 happens to be the soonest realistic date for the world to change all of these source emissions.

Luckily we have more time than some of those also-ran politicians that fell by the wayside told us we have left.  Remember when Liz Warren, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro one-upped each other with the time left to save our planet?  Eleven years said one, eight years said the other. Five years anyone?

Castro said it was already too late.  Dammit.

Thankfully Sheila Jackson Lee and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rushed down from Washington to help in the present while we debate the time left for this planet.  They handed out thousands of free lunches and warm blankets to those without in the deep south during the deep freeze. Fix the grid already and you don’t have to have to fill brown boxes.

How did they get from Washington DC to Texas so quickly?  Our guess is on a fossil fuel burning 737.

Say it slowly, pho-to op-por-tun-i-ty.  Where were you, Ted?

Meanwhile, an estimated 99,763 people in the U.S. have died due to complications from the coronavirus during Biden’s first month in the White House, according to statistics provided by Johns Hopkins University.

When he was campaigning he told us Trump had no plan to combat the virus, but that he (Biden) did.  Maybe that was a bit of hot air unto itself from now Prez 46?

“There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,” said Biden last month, after being sworn into office.

New Yorkers beg to differ. The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly launched an investigation into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (mis)handling of the state’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic.  This can’t be true, can it?   Cuomo wrote a book patting himself on the back about how he handled it so well.

NY City Mayor Bill de Blasio blew in to weigh in.  He thinks that Cuomo is bullying all of his lieutenants into toeing the company line about how well he handled the crisis.  “A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls,” continued de Blasio. “The bullying is nothing new.   No public servant, no person who’s telling the truth should be treated that way.”

We actually need to eliminate bulls to halt climate change, but we digress.

However, de Blasio might have a solution that the rest of us, including Dr. Fauci, overlooked.

“Of all the things that we’ve learned in this crisis, maybe the most profound is the power of a mask,” said de Blasio during a Thursday press briefing. “What we’re saying today is, time to double up.”

“Two masks are better than one,” the mayor added. “Make it a double.”

Who knew that the solution all along was right under (or over) our nose?

Meanwhile, it will be 70 degrees in Texas today.

Like in politics the hot winds are blowing again.