It’s time for another installment of Cosmic Grab Bag, AAA’s catchall collection of smaller stories that were skipped in real time, but deserve honorable celestial mention. In this issue we deal with a royal “first” in religion, a World Series outcome, a royal demotion, and a Supreme Court hearing.
On the evening of 3 November 2025, former US Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney passed away at his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, of complications related to pneumonia and vascular disease. He was attended by Lynne, his wife of 61 years, their daughters Mary and Liz, and other family members.
Cheney’s career in politics spanned decades, from his early work in the late 1960s as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld, later Defense Secretary, to his stint as Chief-of-Staff for President Gerald Ford; U.S Representative for Wyoming; Defense Secretary for President George H. W. Bush; and Vice President for his son, George W. Bush. He made a brief foray into the private sector as CEO of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company, during the Clinton administration.
This year’s Halloween display is one for the books, for sure! I’m afraid I went way over budget, a sort of last hurrah as I turn 65 and am shifted from essentially free healthcare via Medicaid, to rather expensive Medicare. Before this milestone becomes a headstone, I made a final foray into seasonal tchotchke.
At a “No Kings” rally in Fairhope, Alabama on Saturday, 18 October 2025, a 61-year-old-woman in a huge inflatable penis costume, draped in an American flag, carrying a sign reading “No Dick-Tator,” was arrested by police, after refusing to remove the outfit, which authorities deemed “obscene.” Jeana Gamble was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after it took three policemen to wrestle her to the ground and apply the cockring. Errr, handcuffs. There is no reporting on whether pistols were pulled out and cocked. Bystanders suggested the cops had bitten off more than they could chew.
On the last weekend of September 2025, two mass shootings unfolded, within 13 hours of each other, on the East Coast and in the Heartland, both allegedly perpetrated by 40-year-old former marines, and both employing unorthodox means to enact their crimes. On Saturday, 27 September, at about 9:30 PM EDT, Nigel Max Edge approached a popular waterfront bar in Southport, North Carolina by boat, and fired indiscriminately into the business, killing 3 and wounding 5 more. The following morning at 10:25 AM EDT Thomas Jacob Sanford drove his truck, huge American flags waving, straight into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sanctuary in Grand Blanc, Michigan, leaping from the vehicle to spray the attendees with bullets, and tossing accelerant into the church, then lighting it, causing a massive fire. Four were killed, 10 injured.
Donald Trump’s 2025 Retribution Tour kicked into hyperdrive on September 25th, with the two-count indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent Trump critic whom the thin-skinned president blames for the “Russia hoax” investigations in 2017. Out on the stump in 2024, Trump was fond of stating that retribution would come in the form of his success in office. Perhaps, with Americans’ cost of living on the rise, his tariffs adding to consumer burdens, and his failure to end, or even ameliorate, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, he figures, ‘Screw it, I’ll just do payback.’
