Probable Cause

 It's not a secret if everyone knows it. 

While sitting around attempting to negotiate the release of the Trumpstein files as if they were hostages being held at the top floor of the Nakatomi Plaza, the rest of the world seems to have moved on. This includes one (checks notes) William Jefferson Clinton. 

You may remember Mister Clinton from an earlier iteration of the drama taking place in and around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He's the guy who once insisted, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!" And that was how the forty-second President of the United States got impeached. It's probably not a stretch to suggest that his Vice President missed out on a chance to be number forty-three because of all that hullaballoo. Instead, we got the very upright and moral Pinhead Painter of cute dogs. 

So this Clinton fellow had a spokesperson release this statement: "The Epstein Files Transparency Act imposes a clear legal duty on the U.S. Department of Justice to produce the full and complete record the public demands and deserves. However, what the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection.”

Let the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fly. The pitiable mass of redactions that the Department of "Justice" released at the last minute was hardly that full and complete record. Then they said that they weren't going to release them all because the Sharpies had all run out of ink. The King of England didn't need all that fuss to go ahead and kick his brother out of the line of succession. 

Or something like that. 

Meanwhile, this senile gaseous emission continues to prattle on about his wife's undergarments while his billionaire cronies attempt to clean up the messes he continues to make. Like his pal Bari Weiss who is busy creating state media our of what was once CBS news. Bari blocked a Sixty Minutes report about the treatment of deportees at the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador. 

Except the Sixty Minutes piece did manage to make the air in Canada. And some clever Canucks made it available online. For the world to see. Not unlike the Access Hollywood tape that should have been enough to disqualify the Orange Worst from the presidency in the first place, this piece let us in on what the rest of the galaxy already understood: this is most definitely not business as usual. Much in the same way that Jack Smith recently reminded us all that he has more than enough evidence to prove that the convicted felon currently vandalizing the White House is guilty of attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. 

Why does this continue? When Americans can be kidnapped by ICE goons and sent to foreign lands because of their choice of baseball caps, why can't we get rid of a "president" who falls asleep during cabinet meetings? 

Christmas Sells

  I learned as much about Christmas from watching animated specials on television as I did by reading the Bible. 

This might sound sacriligeous, and it probably is, but Linus Van Pelt is where I first heard the words from the Book of Luke. I did not know it at the time, but that little bit almost kept the Columbia Broadcasting System from airing it back in 1965, but then it went on to become a staple of my family's holiday viewing. "Too religious," they worried. 

Of course this doesn't mention the core message of that first Peanuts TV special is all about how commercialized Christmas has become. Sponsored by Coca-Cola. Keeping in mind that this half hour cartoon came in second place behind Bonanza with ratings that certified it as a hit, ensuring that it would be seen again and again for decades to come. 

Also ensuring that T-shirts and dolls and sheets and lunchboxes featuring the likenesses of Charlie Brown and the gang would sell and keep selling each time the viewing public was reminded of another holiday by Mister Schulz and his band of animators. The folks at Dolly Madison were extremely happy with the sales generated by their sponsorship of the "non-commercialization" broadcasts. 

A year after the initial airing of Charlie Brown learning the true meaning of Christmas, the incredible partnership of Chuck Jones, Boris Karloff and Dr. Seuss brought the story of the Grinch stealing Christmas into our living room. This special was also a great big hit, destined to be aired over and over again each December, and eventually remade into a feature motion picture starring Jim Carrey and directed by Opie Cunningham. It had all the manic energy of a Road Runner cartoon, but with the sublime message once again that "Christmas didn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas means a little bit more." 

All these wholesome messages don't come cheap. These days, if you want to enjoy the True Meaning of Christmas, you'll need to sign up for one of those streaming services to catch it. Sure, you won't have to sit through commercials for snack cakes, but you will be fortifying Apple and Peacock with your subscription. 

And isn't that what Christmas is all about? 

Menorah Memories

 Oh dear.

What you must think of me. 

Having spent all this time going on and on about "the holidays" without once making reference to the Festival of Lights celebrated each year around this time by our Jewish friends. Keeping in mind that sour old excuse of "I have lots of Jewish friends," I did find myself wondering just how I might have made this seemingly casual oversight. 

Except that I just checked and the only mention I can find in twenty plus years of writing this blog about Hanukkah are one from twelve years ago about a dust-up with a local PTA and "the war on Christmas" and another just a few days back that referenced the massacre at Bondi Beach.

Maybe that's because I have been programmed like so many public employees to steer clear of designating a particular holiday when encouraging folks to have happy ones. I seem to have unwittingly picked a side when it comes to the much ballyhooed War On Christmas.

And yet when I look back over the totality of my writing here on this bleeding heart's paradise, I can find dozens of references specifically to that "other December holiday," and I am not referring to Kwanza. Nope. I'm busy a couple times each year promoting memories and wishes about the yuletide season, even if I am not sure how it is that yule is influenced by the moon. 

I might like to pretend that I am merely a vessel of the predominant culture, capable of gushing about everyone's sacred days and respecting them equally. Which is kind of a sham since I have participated in just a few scattered nights of Hanukkah in my sixty-three years and have instead brashly assumed that those Jewish friends I recognize so freely would not mind dropping by to share in the wonders of a Christmas morning with all the tinsel and trimmings. 

Even now as I attempt to right this wrong, I have spent paragraphs going on about how challenged I am by this gaping hole in my otherwise open mind. There's a tricky little metaphor. 

So here goes: Blessings to all of you who celebrate the miracle of the oil and how the Maccabees were able to make that one night's worth last for eight. And I apologize that I seem to have had approximately ten times the interest in Hanukkah than I have on Black Friday. 

Just wait until next year...

Autopenned

 To me the question is whether it would be more disrespectful to simply not display portraits of the presidents with whom the Tangelo Terror disagrees instead of the path he has taken. In what's left of the White House, the convicted felon has mounted plaques beneath his predecessors. Two of them in the case of Joe Biden, who is depicted as an autopen, a saucy and somewhat hypocritical jab at the instrument used by chief executives all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. Forever picking at nits, the guy who was impeached exactly twice as many times as Joe Biden insists that his use of the machine during his first administration was for unimportant correspondence and birthday greetings to Jefferey Epstein. 

If you missed any of the attempts at comedy in the guise of "decoration," Biden's begins with the phrase,  “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History” and continues on a second plaque, “Nicknamed both ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked,’ Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers.” The sign below Obama's portrait refers to him as “one of the most divisive political figures in American history.” It also pointedly includes the forty-fourth president's middle name: Barack Hussein Obama.

All of this use of someone's Home Depot gift card rings just as tacky as the guy who made a point of putting a gold placard outside the Oval Office, probably to make sure that he could find the place with a head full of giraffes. I understand that he even had his staff put tiny gold labels on the backs of all his shoes that read TGIF. Toes Go In First.

Which brings us back around to the truly horrible part of all this: It defies satire. Each new pronouncement on "Truth" Social brings tears to the writing staff of Saturday Night Live. Their jobs are essentially now just transcribers of whatever terrible notions pop into that giraffe-filled brain. Like the "Patriot Games" he has declared to be a held as a celebration of The United States' Semiquincentennial in which high school athletes from each state and territory will compete. He went with "Patriot" Games because "Hunger" Games was already being used. Hopefully this won't obscure the opulence of the Ultimate Fighting Championship he plans to hold somewhere on the White House grounds not currently under piles of rubble to coincide with his birthday on June 14. That same day will now be observed across the country in the National Parks that remain open as a free day, which might limit the crowds in attendance for the spectacle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I would feel much better about myself and my capacity for political satire if I had made most of this stuff up. Instead, like the rest of you, I am anxiously awaiting the moment when the president of the United States is not simply shorthand for idiot.

Close To Home

 One of the most intelligent men I ever knew worked for The National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado. He is the guy who taught my mother to use computers when she decided decades ago to start her own bookkeeping business.  Not long after that he took me on as a pupil, and brought me kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. What you are currently reading is in large part due to his tutelage since prior to learning how to use Wordstar, all of my creative writing was done with a Bic pen and a spiral notebook. Eventually I would sit down in front of an electric typewriter and transcribe my scribbles and hand them to whatever professor hoped to measure my progress. Eventually I mastered a small set of skills and was sent on my way. As those skills grew and expanded, I eventually found my way into the computer lab at Horace Mann Elementary. 

Doug Mann was one of thousands of big brains that found their way to Boulder back in the sixties and seventies. The Bureau of Standards, a vast new IBM plant, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research were big draws for those who liked to think for a living. As a result, my hometown has regularly placed at or near the top of America's Smartest Cities. 

IBM has fallen on hard times, having missed the boat on personal computing. The Bureau of Standards continues to think really hard about a great many things under its new moniker, The National Institute of Standards and Technology. If you really want to know what time it is, check with them. 

And what of the NCAR? Well, the convicted felon and orange reminder of how far wrong the democratic process can go has decided to dismantle it. Apparently he feels that there is far too much thinking going on about Atmospheric Research in Boulder. His minion Russ "Thoughtless" Vought insists NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” 

You may be wondering how the Office of Management and Budget comes so quickly to his awareness of climate alarmism. 

I know I am. 

I also know that if Doug Mann were around, he would have truly enjoyed picking apart the current regime's "plan" to eliminate Atmospheric Research. They say they want to keep the supercomputing portion of the operation, no doubt to generate more clever memes depicting the Orange Worst in more flattering and masculine poses. The rest? We can just ignore that. 

In the end, it does not take a genius to tell how wrong this all is. But it sure would be nice. 

Grief Is The Price We Pay For Love

 I am not sure why we thought that the kids in Mister Lynch's fifth grade class would be able to withstand grief any more effectively than your standard adult. All week long I had mood swings and moments of emotion that threatened to spill over the professional dam I had believed was so firmly in place to avoid just such an emergency. 

A parent made a very insightful observation. Staff members had gone in, yours truly included, to try and straighten up the room as well as possible to try and mitigate the signs of their fifth grade teacher who would not be coming back. This mother pointed out that we had cleaned up and "removed his smell." Initially this seemed a little crude, but upon further reflection, it made critical sense. Trying to scrub all traces of the man who had been with them since the beginning of August was not the caring chore we had set out to do. 

How does one prepare to never see a person again? There are plenty of examples of fifth graders who, upon being promoted to middle school, never darken our doorstep again. This is definitely the exception. The number of kids who come back in those first couple years after leaving elementary school is substantial. Being able to tag off on those little chairs, those tiny bathrooms, and all those people that had helped them along the way to the adventures outside of Horace Mann: priceless. 

I tend to experience this from the position of the curb out in front of the school when one of our former students comes bopping along. "Hey, Mister Caven! You're still here?" And I take that as a badge of honor. 

Yes I am. I'm still here. The list of folks who have gone to that big teachers' lounge in the sky continues to grow. Don't think for a second that this hasn't caused me to imagine the day when a passing teen asks for Mister Caven. And someone will have to tell them that he doesn't work here anymore. 

I don't know why I couldn't have imagined how complex the grief for everyone concerned would be. I still miss my dog. 

I probably always will. 

Take That To The Bank

 iRobot is headed into bankruptcy. This may not seem like a big deal to anyone who doesn't own a Roomba, but if you happen to have a machine that vacuums your house while you're away it seems like an unnecessary tragedy. 

Okay. Given the past week or two, this may be overstating the facts, but this comes fast on the heels of the announcement that Tivo will no longer be making or servicing hardware. We were one of the first to own the first commercially available digital video recorders. My wife heard that this company was having an essay contest, and the winners would receive a fancy new DVR that would eventually give us a new verb: Tivo, ias in "Are you going to Tivo that show, or watch it live?" 

That piece of writing is not currently available online, but I can tell you that it was very persuasive, which is how we got our box that would watch TV for us. My wife correctly predicted that it would make her a better wife and mother, allowing her to indulge her fixations of things other than TV until the time was right, and raising a son who was able to pause a program to wash his hands before sitting down to yet another episode of Bob The Builder. 

We liked it so much, we bought another, for the bedroom TV. This allowed us to record up to six different shows at the same time, allowing us to amass a library of movies and sitcoms and special events that would eventually be deleted because we could not remember what moved us to save them in the first place. We were also able to cause a fuss with Comcast, who desperately wanted us to rent their DVR along with our monthly service. "No thank you, but will you please come out and hook up our Tivos?"

There is a similar curve to the ownership of a Roomba. It's a great labor saving device. Until it eats a power cord. Or gets its brushes tangled around the stray cat toy. Then the labor is spent not by our robot overlord but by the ones being lorded over. Untangling the mess, or searching the house to find the wayward droid whose batteries ran out before it could return to Toschi station for a recharge. 

We call our robot vacuum Noo-Noo, after the sentient cleaning apparatus from the world of Teletubbies. We had several episodes of Teletubbies on our Tivo which makes the whole deal one great big circular mess. 

Back when we got our first DVR, we purchased a lifetime subscription to their service. When the original machine gave up the host, the folks at Tivo were happy to apply that contract to the new machine we bought. Imagining that machines would eventually rule the world, we didn't imagine that lifetime would be less a hardware matter, not an issue for the banks to settle. 

I guess the true story of Skynet would end when Cyberdyne went into Chapter 11. 

Early Retirement

 Into this mix I drop this little twist: Last week I went and stood on a corner somewhere between my school and my house and yelled at traffic. 

It's not the first time I did this. And not the first time I stood on that particular corner to shout at passing cars. 

I should point out that I was not alone. 

I was with a few of my co-workers. And a whole passel of other Oakland educators who had arrived at the appointed hour to shout at traffic alongside me. The powers-that-be in my union call this "The Hour Of Power." Gathering together with bullhorns and signs and our collective voice is a tactic used to show how unified we are. 

Just like we were in April of last year. It's how we put our point across. By yelling at traffic. 

Many of the cars passing by honk their horns, whether in solidarity or frustration it's difficult to tell, but we tend to see it as affirmation of our cause.

And just what is that cause? A fair contract, of course. While we're on that subject, it is probably worth noting that in my nearly thirty years of service to the city, county and state, I have only been working under a current and settled contract for a handful of those years. This is because the process of negotiation takes such an unbearably long time, by the time one contract has been resolved, it's time to start haggling over the next one. 

Back in April, I started wondering aloud to anyone who would listen if I might retire before I was required to go stand on a corner and yell at traffic one more time. 

Didn't make that cut, and the current landscape doesn't seem like there will be a lot of wiggle room for teachers in Oakland to have their new contract before I finish filling out my retirement paperwork. 

Which is what sets off the alarm in my head as I try to rationalize a universe that chose to take my fifth grade colleague, who was six years younger than me, before he ever had a chance to ride off into the elementary school sunset. 

Maybe while they're negotiating the next contract, they can figure out how that's fair. 

Reminders

 Congratulations!

If you are reading this, you are a survivor. No one has voted you off the island!

Yet. 

Rob Reiner and his wife were not so lucky. Nor were the two students at Brown University. Nor were the fifteen people celebrating Hannukah on a beach in Australia. And my colleague of so many years who taught fifth grade. 

Blue Oyster Cult would like to remind us not to fear the reaper, but the friends and families of one hundred fifty thousand souls who depart this earth each day might beg to differ. The marks we leave aren't always apparent until we go. 

Some of us leave behind a filmography. Work that will be seen in perpetuity. Some of us have extended family who will keep the story of our lives being told. Tales from our childhood. Legends of near misses and almost was. 

This is the job of the survivors. Like Mia Tretta, a junior at Brown University who had been shot in the abdomen during the 2019 mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two of her classmates died that day. Two more of her college classmates were killed this past weekend. 

Mass shootings in Australia are extremely rare thanks to a series of common sense gun laws. But that didn't keep horrible people from doing horrible things this past Sunday in Sydney. Hanukkah will now be forever a day of remembrance for those who knew the victims of that massacre. 

And then there are the ones that get no press coverage. The passing of a fifth grade teacher in Oakland, for example. Not a crime. Not a story for the media to pore over. But a story nonetheless. 

As story for survivors. 

Like you. 

Closing

 Over the weekend, the world experienced a lot of needless death. 

But none of them hit as close to home as Joe Lynch. 

Joe was the fifth grade teacher at my school. I worked with him for nearly twenty years. He came to us after teaching in middle school and took up residence in a third grade portable. Eventually he moved inside, downstairs to the classroom where I once taught fourth grade. There he held down the fort and prepared our students for the scary realities of middle school. 

He was uniquely prepared for this position, having been once upon a time a student at Horace Mann Elementary. He had returned to his alma mater to help kids find their way from his old neighborhood to that next plateau. He was that port for pre-teens in the storm of approaching adolescence. 

In troubled times, he was a reassuring voice. Our Principal remembers her first year, walking through the hallways after school with a head full of the worries every new adminstrator has, and Joe would be the one to meet her with this assurance: "Everything's going to be alright."

For years, he was exactly right. Over the past year we have made gains and shifted our focus away from simply managing to academic growth. Joe helped lead that charge. 

He also watched his own son prepare to leave for college, a process the two of us reflected on as my wife and I became empty-nesters as well. 

Now that fifth grade nest is empty. We will have a generation of students, many of them who have gone on to become parents of students, some of whom are now without their fifth grade teacher. To say that this will be a shock is an understatement as large as the loss we all will now have to bear. 

We will feel his absence, but we will always be grateful for his presence. We will share our grief with his wife and his son as we all begin to find our way into that uncertain future, middle school and beyond. 

Joseph Lynch stomped on the Terra. He made my job easier and the lives of countless families better for his commitment. He will be missed. 

Whydunnit?

 I believe I have mentioned this before, but it would seem it bears repeating. 

The Epstein Files are no longer the core concern we should have regarding the convicted felon in the wreckage of what used to be known as "the People's House." The evidence that may or may not be found in the accounts and lists and documentation regarding one of the most notorious sex traffickers of all time is all just a part of the problem of having elected, as previously introduced, a convicted felon. 

The most recent release of pictures from the estate of Jeffery Epstein show such luminaries as the former Prince Andrew and former President Bill hobnobbing on the private island where so much ugliness took place. The current "president" can be seen in a number of photos as well, including one of his face on a package of souvenir condoms, available in the gift shop for the low low price of just four dollars and fifty cents. One can only estimate the value of such a prize what with inflation and all. 

If you catch my meaning. 

So my concern is that no matter how many timess we go to this well, impeach him twice, convict him for thirty-four felonies, catch him lying on a daily basis, we seem to live in a world that refuses to be through with him. Those die-hard supporters who obviously need him to continue to stuff their bank accounts are one thing, but the idjits who can no longer afford the red baseball caps they used to wear because of the tariffs imposed on them who cling to him as if they believed every salacious and/or ridiculous thing that slithered from the gaping maw beneath his nose. 

"I wasn't there." 

"I never knew him." 

"I stopped eight wars."

"My economy is the greatest the world has ever seen."

And yet, here we sit. Expectantly watching for the release of a bunch of information that has most certainly been scrubbed of all its worth and meaning. Waiting. For someone else to die in custody. For victims to be re-traumatized by the "alleged" stories of abuse. For the tanks to roll into our streets. 

In many ways, it's too late. Our standards have been systematically and ridiculously lowered to such an extent that the rest of the world has pretty much given up on us. "America? Oh, they used to be great." The longer this ugly facade is maintained, the longer it will take to build our country back to what it once was: A nation full of contradictions and disagreements. 

Time he was put out of our misery. 

Kids These Days

 I confess that as I grow older and therefore further from my mostly examined youth, I find it a challenge to understand what is going on in the heads of the kids I teach. "What's the matter with kids these days?" I fret. 

Then I remind myself that I lived in a world of rather distinct privilege. When I asked for things from Santa Claus, I expected that they would be there under the tree on Christmas morn. This privilege ran so deep that I was willing to sprinkle in words like "morn" in my affected holiday speech. 

There were family dinners around the kitchen table, hot and ready made for us by my mother and occasionally my father. In the summers, as the legend has it, we lived off the grid in a mountain cabin that allowed us to immerse ourselves in the ethos that would eventually be ascribed to John Denver. We were free to return to the base camp, our suburban family home, down in town to do a load or two of laundry and fill up on supplies. Things like bread, water, and Otter Pops. 

I was free from the worries that plague so many of the kids I teach these days. I knew from whence my next meal would come. I even had a sense of what "whence" meant. My parents were my primary caregivers, and my mother managed to serve alternately between her three sons as room mother for the kids in our elementary school classrooms. Later they threw themselves with a fever into the business of being band parents, running concession stands and sewing giant flags for presentation at NFL games to which we were invited. 

I might have taken notice that my family was the exception even back in the 1970s. My brothers and I were constantly bringing home strays, latchkey kids or children of divorce. We fed them. We shared our Atari 2600 and the feeling that we were only looking forward to the next chance for a trip to Mexico. Or a family road trip that would make Clark Griswold blush. 

It is then, that upon reflection, I understand what is troubling the youth of today. If I were these kids, I would be angry too. What happened to their shiny future? What happened to their family dinners? 

I would be angry too. 

Written On The Wind

 I have written here a few times about how each day comes to you fresh from the brain-farm of one David C. Caven. I am the author of the contents of this blog and though I sometimes quote others extensively, and refer to research I have conducted on behalf of you, dear readers, this is all a reflection of what's going on in my mind each day as I sit in front of the keyboard. Waiting for inspiration. 

Sometimes I wait for a good long time. 

But eventually I manage to scrape enough gray matter off the sides of my skull to bring you something that approximates infotainment. 

Which is why I flinched when I saw that TIME magazine has declared that this year, 2025, is the year of "The Architects of AI." 

Let's start from the beginning of my complaints and work out to the place where most people live.

Firstly, TIME magazine is still being published? Magazines exist? I remember my dear mother's coffee table straining under the weight of copies of The New Yorker and TIME that she had not gotten around to finishing while waiting anxiously for her mailbox to fill up with the next weekly issue. My wife, who is a lover of writing and does her fair share of it herself continues to pick up a New Yorker occasionally to see what is being published out there, and to peek at the cartoons. 

TIME magazine? Not so much. If I really want to find out what the few remaining writers have to say about any particular topic I can find it online. 

And what do I imagine the articles I find there will be? Artificial Intelligence's best guess at what might be going on in the world. 

How do you suppose the "editors" at TIME came to pick the architects of AI to grace the cover of the current issue, an honor bestowed twice to (checks notes) a convicted felon who has been impeached twice and is currently tearing down the White House as his minions take Sharpies to the Epstein files before they see the light of day. 

I, as the sole author of this piece, am here to tell you: You can't make stuff like this up. 

Why would you want to? 

Grounded

 Australia, a nation supposedly inhabited by the offspring of convicts, takes another in a series of progressive moves forward. 

You might be familiar with the land down under's rapid shift away from fossil fuels. They call this plan Net Zero. There are those who might dismiss it as crazy talk, but they're serious. 

Social justice in housing, employment and across the country are vital parts of Australia living up to the high standards they have set for themselves. They got there by looking in the mirror first. 

Integrity has been re-inserted into political life in the land called Oz. Whistleblower protection, anti-corruption measures, and reducing private money in politics are the aims of the government. 

And now that new surprise I promised: The past Wednesday, Australia became the first country to ban social media for children under sixteen. 

You read that right. 

If you're like me, and why wouldn't you want to be, you might be wondering who aside from those under sixteen use social media. Prime Minister ‌Anthony Albanese called it "a proud day" for families and cast the law as proof that policymakers can curb online harms that have outpaced traditional safeguards.

He went on to suggest children to "start a new sport, new instrument, or read that book that has been sitting there for some time on your shelf."

Some of the kids affected by this ban were resigned. "#seeyouwhenim16," posted one youth. Another was more impassioned: "No more social media ... no more contact with the rest of the world." And then there was the inevitable, "It's just kind of pointless, we're just going to create new ways to get on these platforms, so what's the point?"

I would say if they can do it without using fossil fuels, they'll be fine. 

Model Behavior

 I get it. There are plenty of folks "in the media" for whom I do not hold a deep and abiding affection. 

However, it does occur to me that if they happened to be in a position to carry my message out to a vast audience, and heaven forbid have nice things to say about it, 

If, for example, I was the star of a major motion picture, I would probably take it upon myself to show up on time to press junkets and be marginally polite to the assembled print and video journalists who had assembled to transcribe all the witty things I had to say about the product I was there to promote. 

It would be part of the job.

That said, I guess I can understand how the current resident of what's left of the White House finds himself in the unenviable position of being underwater on every issue according to polls. Polls that are generated by, alas, the media. 

He's not nice. He calls them, especially women, "stupid, nasty, and mean." Not content to simply berate reporters for the job they are doing, he feels compelled at times to berate them for their physical appearance. All of which can be summed up with the schoolyard comeback, "Look in the mirror much?"

One of the more recent moments of the convicted felon throwing a hissy fit with the press was when Rachel Scott asked him about his promise to release the video of the second strike on the alleged drug boat last September. The part where the survivors, clinging to wreckage, were killed by the U.S. Military. His hissyness insisted,  "I didn’t say that … this is ABC fake news," to which Ms. Scott responded, "You said that. You said that you would have no problem releasing the full video.” 

Because he did. Just a few days before he doubled down on his change of mind by calling Ms. Scott "obnoxious." 

Don't be surprised if the current trend of media attention tanks the next major motion picture released from MAGA Studios. 

Lack Of Progress Report 12/11/25

 He is sleeping when he should be paying attention.

He bullies others.

He does not get along with his peers. 

He has trouble working in groups. 

He calls people mean names. 

He has trouble focusing.

He lies more often than he tells "his version" of the truth.

He spends more time on his phone than he does with his peers.

He claims to have "aced" a simple test, but lacks simple levels of comprehension.

He lacks an understanding of basic math.

He openly mocks those he feels are beneath him.

He destroys public property. 

He is disrespectful. 

He is irresponsible. 

He is unsafe.

He will definitely lose petals from his courtesy daisy. 

You would think someone who is repeating the same grade would be doing better the second time around.

Retention is not recommended in this case. 

I suggest expulsion. 

As soon as possible.  

Holiday Magic

 I would hate to ruin anyone's Christmas, but forgive me if I speak of a certain carefully guarded secret to which so many of us have at one time or another held fast. If you are of a tender age or temperament, it might be best for you to revisit this post when you are sure you can handle the truth. 

I believe in Santa Claus. 

It surprises me every single time I run into someone who vehemently denies his jolly existence. Take a look around. At this time of year you can scarcely unwrap a candy cane without knocking into some bearded fellow in a red suit.

Santa is everywhere. 

This goes a long way toward explaining how he could be so attuned to your sleep habits, and just how naughty you may or may not have been this year. 

I can understand how many of you maintain your skepticism when you can wander from one mall to another and somehow Mister Claus just happens to have set up a photo op for you and yours just a few storefronts away from the last ersatz North Pole. The answer to this one is quite simple: Beyond all the magic that allows him to visit approximately three hundred million homes in one night, there is a much simpler explanation: Helpers. 

Santa has a legion of folks whom he affords the great honor and trust to carry out all of his many and varied duties over the course of the holiday season. I have made no secret of the fact that my father was one of those lucky enough to wear the beard and bells in service to his fellow man. And the child inside of him. Over the course of several winters, he donned the raiment of the owner of eight tiny reindeer, and set about spreading cheer and season's greetings wherever he appeared. I love my father for that. 

Which is why, when I was asked if I would like the chance to help out at my school by dressing up as Santa Claus, I balked. A large part of me felt the call, my father's voice egging me on. There was another equally insistent voice that worried that my appearance, even though I was told by our admin assistant that I "have the belly for it," might set off alarms among some of our more dubious youngsters. Being "made" by a five year old and becoming the reason for the magic to dissipate in any way left me feeling highly ambivalent about taking the gig. 

As luck or simply the way things work around this time of year, it turns out that Santa will be making an appearance at our school just before Winter Break. It won't be me. And you'll forgive me if I suggest that it could be the real deal showing up. Because I still believe. 

Didja Ever Notice...

 The current "president" of the United States doesn't seem to care for football. 

To be clear, I mean "football" in the American sense, the sport that we don't refer to as our national pastime but spend seven months fixated on it and another five anticipating the next iteration. 

Around the time the new NFL was starting up, the convicted felon who apparently had little else to do after having destroyed our economy and unleashing masked goons onto the streets of his own country to kidnap people, let this post fly on social media: "The NFL has to get rid of that ridiculous looking new Kickoff Rule. How can they make such a big and sweeping change so easily and quickly. It's at least as dangerous as the "normal" kickoff, and looks like he'll [sic]. The ball is moving, and the players are not, the exact opposite of what football is all about. "Sissy" football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! It's like wanting to 'roll back' the golf ball so it doesn't go (nearly!) as far. Fortunately, college football will remain the same, hopefully forever!!" 

Never mind that after years of attempting to make the sport safer for those who risk their limbs and livelihood each week was dismissed out of hand by a guy who can't pronounce Acetaminophen. All the research done by the National Football League was ignored by a guy who cheats at golf. In the meantime, this didn't keep him from showing up at the Commanders game against the Lions. The home crowd gave him the reception that one might expect from the least popular "president" since the invention of percentages. 

Just this past week as the twice-impeached pedophile was being presented with a previously unknows honor, The FIFA Peace Prize, he took the opportunity to babble on in his characteristic way about something the happened to pass between the remaining neurons in his skull: “When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, which is soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it (football) because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football. But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called … this is football, there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.”

This is just another lunatic ramble from a guy whose thoughts tend more often than not to resemble the world's worst Jerry Seinfeld routine. 

From the world's worst "president?"

Makes sense. 

Best Buy

 I have told this story before: Back when I was co-managing a book warehouse, some hippies from the great Northwest came by to tour our warehouse. They were hoping to pick up some tips on how to pack and ship books. At the time, we scoffed at their notion that books could be sold over this newfangled thing called Al Gore's Internet. A few years later, I did not scoff when I received an Amazon shipment shrink-wrapped to a carboard flat, just like we had showed them. At this point, our funky Berkeley-bred employee-owned book distributor had gone out of business. 

Another story I have told here before: In keeping with a tradition of April Fool's pranks on my mother I hacked into her Netflix queue and put a number of odd films in, including a couple in Russian. I waited a month or so before asking how she was enjoying her latest flurry of movies. She responded with a slightly agitated confession that she could not remember putting any of those titles on her list. We laughed at the funny joke I had played on her, or at least that's how I want to remember it. Then I helped her piece together the list she had before I started messing it up. 

All of this dropped me into the Crimson Permanent Assurance featurette at the beginning of Monty Python's Meaning of Life. An executive from the Very Big Corporation of America reminds his minions, "Which brings us once again to the urgent realization of just how much there is still left to own." This was my way of distilling my feelings regarding Netflix engulfing and devouring HBO and Warner Brothers. 

My mother no longer receives envelopes with DVDs in them, whether by her own choosing or through machinations of her troublesome son. Amazon continues to sell books, but their shipping methods have evolved slightly since I gave them the heads-up. A world that once cast off the idea of giant monopolies is fast becoming one enormous corporation run by people ever further removed from the actual product that they provide. The goofy hippies who showed up at our warehouse not so very long ago are certainly now vested in the beast I unwittingly supported, and though I cancelled my Netflix subscription, I still have an account with HBO Max. Or not Max. I can't keep track.  

All I know is that one more hotel on Park Place and I won't be able to afford to watch TV or read a book anymore. 

The Pop Art Of War

 Famously, there was a sign that sat on President Harry Truman's desk. It read: The Buck Stops Here. In his farewell address, Harry addressed this historic decoration, reminding us that,  "The President, whoever he is, has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job."

This is coming from the man who decided to drop not one but two atomic weapons on Japanese cities to hasten the end of World War II. More than two hundred thousand people died as a result of this action. Most of these were civilians. Many still argue that if the United States had lost the war, Truman and his advisors would have been put on trial as war criminals. Even with the Potsdam Declaration, there was no way for Japan to have anticipated just how overwhelming the power of a nuclear weapon would be. J. Robert Oppenheimer did. Upon witnessing the first detonation of his invention, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita:  "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Until his death, Harry Truman defended his decision, as the sign on his desk suggested. Oppenheimer became a staunch advocate for the control of weapons calling for international transparency and oversight. 

That didn't happen. 

Eighty years later, the occupant of what is left of the White House does not have a sign on his desk suggesting that all his decisions are final. This would not allow him to swing and swerve to avoid committing to any one choice or plan. Instead, he has a button, which allows him to summon a Diet Coke whenever he so desires. When it comes to military decisions, he is quick to laud those moments that he feels expand his already inflated self-image. Or, as in the case of the second use of an air strike to finish off the survivors of an initial attack on a suspected drug running boat, he chose along with his Attack Dog to throw the blame on the Admiral who carried out the order. “I didn’t know about the second strike. I didn’t know anything about the people. I wasn’t involved, and I knew they took out a boat, but I would say this, they had a strike," declared the Diet Coke drinker. Initially, Pete the Pit Bull asserted, “I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat, we knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented.” That account has since been changed to,  “As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.” Leaving Navy Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley squarely in the path of the accountability bus. 

It should be noted that aside from the consumption of Diet Coke there is another stark contrast between these incidents: One occurred during a declared war. The operation that destroyed a suspected drug boat and the follow-up that killed the survivors clinging to the burning wreckage occurred during a distraction created to keep the public from noticing that the Epstein Files remain unreleased. 

Why the Buck is that? 

Wretched Refuse

 How about hydraulics? Maybe animal domestication? Lest we forget the use of cannons in warfare, or perhaps a rich tradition of oral poetry and storytelling. 

Don't tell me the Somalis never contributed anything to civilization. 

Harry Lime reminds us, “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Contrast this from the felon in chief: “And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries,’ I’m trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

So just for a moment, let's set aside the relative cultural achievements and focus on the reasons why people immigrate to another country. Chief among these would be oppression. You've heard of such a thing, right? Like when the pilgrims fled England because they felt they were being persecuted because of their religion? We just had a big meaty holiday to celebrate it. This notion was such a big hit that we started telling the world that we had this great big continent that we needed to fill up with, wait for it, Immigrants!

Try not to pay any attention to the genocide of native peoples necessary to achieve this end, since that spoils the image of that first Thanksgiving. 

Meanwhile, the French were so impressed by the way we were taking in huddled masses that they sent us a great big statue to put out on our front porch with a light to show the way. 

Don't get me wrong, I own a cuckoo clock. I really like it. But I also like hydraulics. And living in a melting pot. 

Connected

 A recent study suggested that children under the age of thirteen could face serious health risks if they have a "smart phone." They are at higher risk of lack of sleep, obesity and depression, according to a  study published this past Monday in the journal Pediatrics. 

Nobody asked me. All the kids I teach are under the age of thirteen. Can I say with clinical certainty that those who show up to school sleepy, depressed and have little or no interest in PE are that way because of their cell phones? No, I cannot. I do have plenty of anecdotal evidence, such as the conversations I have had with drowsy kids in my classroom who volunteer tidbits like, "I stayed up late last night on my phone." I have seen more than my share of kids sitting in tight huddles on our playground, staring at their phones, even though they are prohibited from doing so by a school-wide rule. 

And the depression thing? Let's just say that cyberbullying is a real thing. Lines of communication among our pre-teens are made even more confounding by text, TikTok and Instagram. Like their adult counterparts, they don't want to miss out on anything, even if the thing they might miss will bring them fear and sadness. 

How do we teach kids that cell phone use can be harmful? By centering so much of our own waking life around such devices. The staff at our school carry walkie talkies that we use for emergencies and requests for wet cleanups, but more often than not, we send a text. Many of our interactions become distilled into emojis or clever gifs. Rather than walking out to the playground to check on a colleague, I could just as easily send them a smiley face. 

Then there are the lessons we can learn from kids. Watch them play. See them resolve a conflict with rock, paper, scissors. Be amazed when the blood feud that started before the bell rang is over before lunch. That's not something the current occupant of what's left of the White House can do.  

Bully Pulpit

 On the one hand, you've got the drunken pit-bull of a Secretary of War killing helpless survivors of the destruction of a boat suspected of carrying drugs. On the other hand, you've got a presidential pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández who is currently serving a forty-five year sentence for (check your own notes with me) drug trafficking. 

Both hands have blood on them. 

And it is certain that one hand has no idea what the other is doing. 

Because this is how America is being run these days. 

As we rattle our sabers and prepare for a renewed war on drugs, we are showing a determination to resist consistency. Hernández conspired with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than four hundred tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States. The leaders of the cartels that didn't offer bribes to him were extradited to the United States. 

If this business model seems familiar, it could be that we have all become immune to this kind of malfeasance given the current version, Trump 2.0. 

Meanwhile, the focus of one of the world's biggest militaries is bearing down on one of the world's smallest. This seems to be the kind of bully aggression that fits in well with an administration that regularly sends combat ready troops into the streets of its own cities to kidnap its people and terrorize the locals. 

We seem to have passed right by the notion that this was all a smokescreen for the Epstein Files and progressed into straight up nihilism, a scorched earth policy with an emphasis on the scorch rather than the earth. 

At this rate, I wonder who will be left to enjoy the sumptuous amenities offered at the new Epstein Ballroom. 

Madness

 Last year the city of Stockton, California had fifty-four homicides. Currently the total for 2025 stands at thirty-four. Civically, this feels like a victory. 

This isn't your standard "superheroes save the day" kind of victory. This is a pyrrhic victory, named for King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who won a battle against the Romans, but the cost of that victory came at such a cost that it was tantamount to a defeat. 

In Stockton, the four people killed at a children's birthday party this past Saturday evening would be counted among that cost. Eleven more were wounded. The dead were aged eight, nine, fourteen and twenty-one. The celebration of young life turned into a gaping hole of mourning. 

As is my custom, I find myself wondering once again about guns. As of this writing, there is no suspect and there is no motive. Just four dead kids. And another city full of people wondering why. 

Why won't there be a ninth birthday party?

Why won't there be a tenth?

A fifteenth? 

The indiscriminate certainty of a bullet entering a tiny body is something we are forced, once again, to confront. How compressed and black a form of evil could pull the trigger on a room full of children? What sort of derangement would make it possible for such a tragedy? 

Every time I write one of these posts, I feel like I am leaving my mark at one of those little shrines left at the site of the latest murder. Here is my candle. Here are my thoughts. Here are my prayers. 

Then I go home and wait for the next one. 

I'm running out of candles. 

Learning To Fly

 For a moment, I would like to pause and mention that with all the other things going on in the world, I only dreamed about one thing while I was on Thanksgivng break: school. 

More to the point, I dreamed about my job school and how it affects those around me. There were plenty of mornings that I woke up with great relief, realizing that I had not missed an important class or meeting. I was not late for any of my ancillary duties and the elementary education train in my dreams kept running. 

But what was I doing at work when I could have been in the tropics? Or chasing rainbows? Or standing in line for the newest ride at Disneyland? 

I believe it's because I have seriously damaged my imagination. All these years of waking up and rushing to school to make sure the day begins with unlocked doors and PE equipment ready for the children to grab on their way in, under the watchful eye of yours truly, has created a rut that keeps me from taking flying lessons in my dreams. 

I understand that I have only myself to blame. I am frequently encouraged by my principal to take a day off. Or two. At the same time, it is her voice along with many other staff and parents who ask me "What would we do without you?'

Well, here's the sneaky little truth waiting just over the hill: My retirement. A few years back I made an agreement with my principal that I would stick around until she retired. That day is coming soon. Not in weeks or even months, but soon. Soon on a scale that sits at the end of three decades of service for both of us. I have only now begun to imagine what mornings might be like when I didn't have to get up and be responsible for the boys and girls and their restrooms. There is no real exit strategy beyond the exit. 

Someday I won't be getting up and going to school like I have for the past twenty-nine years. And I hope that in a year or so after that, I can start dreaming about those flying lessons. 

Pre-Occupied

 I hope that you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. I hope that you had a chance to catch up with family and friends and focus on the things that really matter. 

I hope you missed this: "…Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will bepursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — "

This was how the convicted felon currently occupying what is left of the White House chose to greet the nation on its day of thanks. It came just a day after the shooting of two National Guard members who had been deployed to Washington D.C. to make it safe on the order of (checks notes) the author of the above screed. The same guy who only declared that "We haven't had a murder in six months" referring to his campaign to bring safety to our nation's capitol by imposing martial law. Besides the most recent death of the National Guard member, there have been sixty-two homicides in Washington D.C. since May 25 of this year.

Again, math has always been a challenge for the former game show host and leader of one of the world's most notorious gangs.

Meanwhile, the aggro response to each ugly development under his watch continues to be played off as anyone else's fault, resulting by far more draconian measures in an attempt to try and close the doors to a barn that has already burned down.

The murderer of twenty year old Sarah Beckstrom is a refugee from Afghanistan who had once worked with the CIA in his home country came to America to avoid retribution from the Taliban. His application for asylum was filed in 2024 and was granted in April of this year. Just about the time The twice-impeached "president" of this country started sending National Guard troops to (checks notes) Washington D.C.

In case you were still enjoying your tryptophan haze and missed all of that.

Welcome to month eleven of the occupation.