Suspect

 A gunshot is heard. Then, "Halt or I'll shoot!"

This grim little bit of Americana first found its way to me back in the 1980s from the mouth of Robin Williams. At that time, it was a pithy observation of imporoper police procedure. It was a bit of a throwaway since Officer Involved Shooting had yet to become the acronym in current use, OIS. 

Last week there were three separate incidents involving ICE goons shooting unarmed citizens. Two of these were murders of individuals not under warrant or investigation. They just happened to make the ill-advised reaction of running for their lives. Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo were not the subjects of any ongoing immigration investigation. They were the recipients of gunfire for the crime of identity. They were identified as targets by poorly ttrained, trigger happy monsters.

So maybe you're thinking that these ICE monsters were attempting to maintain security on our Southern border. Mister Salgado Araujo was killed in Houston, six hundred seventy miled from the border. I don't suppose I need to explain how ridiculous the distance that same border is from Maine, where Mister Duran Guerrero was killed. 

Then there was the little matter of the protester in Colorado who was shot in the foot by an off-duty ICE monster who was attempting to "de-escalate" a situation. By shooting the protester in the foot. Emma Landis was wounded after a verbal confrontation outside a detention center in Aurora. The name of the "officer" was not released because he was arrested and booked on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and other charges by local police. Local police who did not shoot at their suspect or arrest him without probable cause. We don't get to know the off duty ICE monster's name because he is part of an ongoing investigation. 

We do, however, get to know the name of the goon who killed Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero: David Brouillette. Mister Brouillette, it turns out, has a long history of violent behavior including threatening and assaulting the women in his life. According to one of his ex-wives, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child. The happy news in this case is that Mister Brouillette did not have a gun at that time. 

I can understand if you read all this and wonder how I can make snap judgements about a person who I have never met. 

Just like these ICE monsters do every day. 

Evidence

 In a speech carried by several media outlets including (checks notes) The Home Shopping Network, a convicted felon who incited insurrection five and a half years ago insisted that we should all live in fear of an election process that is being run by China. 

Bad news there, chum. If it were being run by China, it would be oppressive but it would be efficient. 

Some of you may have lost track of just how ridiculous things have become. This guy, who got to live in the White House a second time and then proceeded to tear it up, wants us all to know that the election was stolen. Not the one that put him in a position to destroy and defame our national monuments and trust, but the one that was held in 2020. You know, the one that the pillow guy went bankrupt trying to prove that extraterrestrials came down from the stars and put us all in a trance that allowed that guy (checks notes) Joseph Robinette Biden to break up the monopoly the Orange Worst had on the office. Or maybe it was the voting machines that were manipulated by the electric car guy whose rockets keep blowing up and whose trucks can't go through a car wash. 

It was more than just a touch embarrassing to hear the convicted felon remind us that even though we somehow managed to find our way out of the nightmare that was the First Trumpreich that the election where we were cheated of the "correct" outcome was the one that stuck a slumlord and adjudicated rapist back into the Oval Office. The guy who has lost a lot more lawsuits than he has elections would like us to believe that the system that put him back in office is broken. Former Vice President (checks notes) Kamala Harris who (checks notes again) has a history of winning lawsuits, chose not to contest the outcome of the 2024 election, even though the results have been proven to be nothing short of catastrophic to our country and its standing in the world. 

A cursory look at the "evidence" that suggests that the only way this twice-impeached former game show host could keep himself out of jail was to get himself elected again and begin using the powers that a conveniently sympathetic Supreme Court allowed him to get to cover up his serial misdeeds. The two broadcast networks who are not fully insinuated within the feedback loop instituted by the ministry of disinformation, ABC and NBC, chose not to use up their valuable time with this summer rerun. NBC chose to continue airing its documentary series titled, The Americas. ABC filled their time with a game show called Press Your Luck. 

I leave that last bit as a bit of irony that could not, unlike the tales of fraud spun by the convicted felon, be made up. 

Puzzled

 What are words for? This is the musical question that was asked by Missing Persons in a previous century. 

This is a question I find myself returning to frequently as I wander through this tired existence, but I would like to reflect briefly on my own experience: I feel that words are pieces of a puzzle. 

And now, as I am prone to do so very often, I digress. One of my daily rituals is to sit in front of my computer and push myself through the five daily challenges presented by Microsoft's Casual Games version of solitaire. Each of these challenges comes from a different variety of the game. Klondike, Spider, Free Cell, Pyramid and Tri Peaks. Depending on the day, one of these variations is labeled "hard" or "expert." These are the ones that capture my attention first, but I will plod through all five games each day in the effort to gain a month's rating of perfect. This requires that all five challenges be completed each day for the entire month. This is yet another example of my obsessive compulsive nature, and it is also a series of tests of my brain function. These are mildly difficult puzzles that all have a solution, I just need to place the virtual cards in their proper order and I am free to go about the rest of my day. 

A little over a month ago, I happened upon a Free Cell game that announced itself as "Expert." I have been hammering away at this arrangement of fifty-two cards in order to solve the problem they present to my sense of order. To no avail. So each morning I have returned to the game, finish off the day's challenges and then return to that one game that has me stuck. 

I could just let it go. That would be rational. No one would know. Except you now. 

And this is what keeps bringing me back to these words. Arranging them in a particular order in hopes of solving the puzzle that is communication. Each morning I sit down with the intent of sharing thoughts and ideas in the hopes of creating more understanding. Each morning I push away from the keyboard secure in the feeling that I have expressed myself and brought more meaning into this confused world. 

Except when I don't. A missing word or misspelling can cause all that effort to tumble into jumbled code that cannot be deciphered. Sometimes I even make the mistake of sharing ideas that only I find compelling. All those words stacked up just to confuse and confound my readers. 

Sorry for that. But I suppose that is what tomorrow is for: One more puzzle. 

Gender Affirming Care

 Hey folks, just a reminder that these United States are currently at war with Iran. 

To that end, the Secretary of War, "Pistol" Pete Hegseth has decreed that all service members over the age of thirty will be screened for testosterone deficiency. "As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting. It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness, and by addressing these health markers early, we're keeping you on the leading edge of lethality, and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation – the absolute best."

It's probably just me, but I'm thinking that keeping a group of human beings "on the leading edge of lethality" is pretty much what got us into this fracas in the first place. The eighty year old convicted felon lives on a lot of edges, dementia for one, but his bloodlust is not something that gets the attention it truly deserves. As for the rest of our enlisted "Warfighters" (Pistol Pete's term), if you fall below that killing level of testosterone, you are eligible for hormone replacement therapy to get us back to berserker levels. 

My guess is that the adjudicated rapist and former game show host would like his soldiers to be every bit as bloodthirsty as his secret police of ICE goons. We have become familiar with the arrest quota to which these goblins are charged, but l suspect there is probably a body count goal hidden just out of public view. 

Except we can see it. We have a much better window on the killing fields here in America than we do in Iran. After the initial casualties were announced, including the one hundred sixty-eight school girls were murdered at their school in Minab and the first wave of US military casualties, there hasn't been a lot to report in terms of human loss. 

All the more reason, it would seem, to get those soldiers in the field all juiced up for the purpose of taking lives. Maybe now would be a good time to bring up the other edicts made regarding our armed forces by the Second Trumpreich: No "Beardos," which includes no further exemptions for religious reasons or for medical conditions that make shaving difficult or painful. Interesting, since facial hair is one of the most significant signs of "proper" testosterone balance. And as far as hormone replacement therapy goes, the Orange Worst has declared that trans soldiers are no longer allowed in his army. Which seems to necessarily include those transitioning to male in hopes of living life on the leading edge of lethality. 

So I'll just toss this out there: A study published in the National Library of Medicine found that testosterone levels of your average rapist or child molester fell within the "normal limits." High levels of testosterone were found in inmates who were jailed for homicide. 

No mention of facial hair for any of those. 

Shazbot!

 What fresh outrage will the news bring me today?

How about the headline that threatens to blow the lid off "Why ABC Canceled Mork & Mindy After Just Four Seasons?"

If you have no memory of the spinoff series created by the appearance of the late Robin Williams on an episode of Happy Days, I wonder if you would call the era in which we are currently living as the Golden Age" of television. This might be especially true if you were to know that it was Happy Days, which ran for eleven seasons and was the progenitor of the phrase "Jumped The Shark." That particular episode was aired in the beginning of Happy Day's fifth season, making it all the more curious how that show hung on for another six years, in spite of having The Fonz literally jump a shark on water skis. 

To be clear, the shark was not on water skis. The Fonz was. 

But I digress. 

Mork, who had travelled to Earth previously and landed in Milwaukee where he battled tohis same "Fonz" character to a standstill, returned it our planet in what was then present day Boulder, Colorado. 

Yes, dear reader, you read that right: Boulder, Colorado. My home town. Each episode of Mork and Mindy began with a shot of Boulder Canyon and the University of Colorado, with Robin Williams cavorting with Pam Dawber in the city where I lived. What followed those credits was an explosion of comedic genius limited only by the format in which it was bound: prime time commercial sitcom. 

And here, I believe, I have answered the question posed by the headline. The rapid fire wit that was on display each Thursday night could not be contained in that half hour between commercials for Bufferin and Sanyo electronics. It was even more difficult when network executroids decided to shuffle the show around, moving it to Sunday nights. Is it any wonder that Robin Williams felt compelled to flee to Hollywood not long after those Milwaukee brewery gals Laverne and Shirley took their show there in an effort to shore up lagging ratings. Laverne and Shirley managed to run for eight seasons. Twice as many as Mork got. 

In the end, I was left with my memories and my rainbow suspenders. Yes, I really had rainbow suspenders. I watched as Mister Williams went on to bigger and better things, but I still missed those anarchic Thursday half hours where he stretched the bounds of TV comedy, and frightened network censors and executroids. 

I miss him today. 

Yard Sold

 Someone once said that "parting is such sweet sorrow," but I'm guessing he wasn't talking about having a Yard Sale. 

My family had put off having this suburban ritual for quite a while and when it came time to drag everything that we had carefully selected to be done with, we filled several tables and spread what would be our former belongings out for all to see. 

After more than fifty years of hanging on to Spider Man comics, I chose to make these available to anyone who found their way through our front gate. Initial perusals of this collection by early arrivals found one gentlemen select twenty-five of what he considered the best and the brightest. For him. This made only the tiniest dent. This is when my son, who was there to watch his childhood treasures find new homes and to assist his parents in that task, hopped up and began taking a few quick photos of what was left of the comic display. I had just begun to dread the piecemeal dissemination of my youth to those who might continue this pick and sneer process. That is when my son asked if I would take one hundred fifty dollars for the lot of them. It seems that he has sent along those digital photos he was taking to a friend of his who he knew collected such things, and without pawing through individual issues, he was going to pay us for whatever was left. 

I let them go. We put them in my son's car as a wave of relief swept over me. A couple hours later, a gentlemen strolled into the yard, He asked if we had any comics left for sale. My son, still fresh off his nominal sales triumph told him no, they were already gone. This brought on a series of offers that eventually stopped at three hundred seventy-five dollars. To my considerable relief, my son did not waver. He had made his deal and he wasn't going back. When the gentlemen finally shrugged and went on his way, we both breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't about the money as much as it was about finding a home for the treasures I had hauled around with me for half a century. 

Contrasting mightily to this exchange was the fellow who initially wandered past our front gate, but was lured in by the curious display of what was once our lives. We kept a banter up as he wandered through the tables, finally stopping at a set of plastic drawers. "There's a clown suit in there," I suggested. our j

"Really?" he asked as he pulled out one of the drawers, revealing the purple polka dot clown suit I knew was there. He held it up to admire its gaudy glory. "My son's going to clown camp next week."

"Really?" I returned. "How about a dollar for the clown suit?"

He faltered for a moment. "I don't have any money on me. I just stopped by to look," and he trailed off.

"I'll tell you what," I offered, "How about you just take the clown suit?"

His face lit up. "Really?"

"Really." 

He left with effusive thanks and we once again felt the joy of releasing our past into the wild again. It wasn't about the money. It was about spreading the joy. 

What Did He Say?

 "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."

There are a lot of epitaphs that might be suitable for Lindsey Graham's memorial.

Of course there are other moments, like the speech Senator Graham made after his 2026 primary win: “I want to start with a bunch of thank yous. I want to thank the big guy, God. Trump comes later. Mr. President, you're not far behind God, but we’re gonna start with him.”

The fact that there are ten years between these two quotes may tell us a lot about what happened in that decade. Remember that it was ten years ago that a Jesse Dalrymple Vance once wrote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler.”

Things change. The passing of Lindsey Graham leaves convicted felon who started and has maintained an illegal war to distract and cover up his ties to the world's most notorious underage sex trafficker has lost what became one of his most sycophantic supporters. Like this gem from just a few months ago: "Donald Trump is resetting the world in a way nobody could've dreamed of a year ago, he is the greatest commander in chief of all time, our military is the best of all time, Iran is going down, and Cuba is next,"

Lindsey Graham was first elected to the United States Senate from South Carolina back in 2003. That was back when he was propping up another regime changer with another plan to "fix things." On the occasion of his passing, it might be fitting to suggest that he "stomped on the Terra," but not exactly the way he may have intended. 

Aloha, Lindsey Graham. The ultimate "team player." 

Who Watches The Watchmen?

 From the get-go, let me say that I have a certain amount of respect ingrained in me for all law enforcement, having watched my older brother serve and protect the county in which we grew up for some thirty-five years. That being said, I also live in a world that finds law enforcement regularly in the news not for its competence, but for callous disregard for the communities they are supposed to protect and serve. The challenges of maintaining law and order in a city such as Los Angeles highlight this struggle. 

Recently, LAPD responded to a wellness call in Canoga Park where neighbors had expressed concern about the shouting heard coming from a nearby apartment. More than fourteen of them showed up to respond to what turned out to be a woman celebrating the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship. Somewhere in all the excitement, an officer shot and killed her family dog, who was wearing a Knicks jersey. The body cam footage was released by LAPD and it's difficult to come away feeling as though the officer, whose name has yet to be released, was protecting or serving. 

I will chalk this up to a difficult situation being compounded by bad training and poor judgement, but it will not bring Jameson, the family dog, back. Furthermore, it would be ridiculous to isolate this incident as illustrative of the conduct of all of the nearly nine thousand members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The nominal good news here is that an investigation is ongoing based on the footage mandated by the use of body cams by all uniformed officers. 

Which is why I find it so interesting that just recently the LAPD chose to end its contract with Flock Security cameras, a company that specializes in recording license plate information from vehicles across the vast maze of streets and highways in the city. The footage from these cameras is audited and kept for seven to thirty days before it is deleted. Recent concerns about how this footage is being disseminated, particularly in immigration cases by agencies outside of the city governance. In yet another twist to this tale, the Los Angeles Police Department does not own these cameras. They are owned by homeowners associations and other groups, and there remains some question about whether they will continue to watch the streets of LA once the contract expires. Could the be used by ICE goons to track citizens? Or perhaps used to monitor police presence and conduct throughout the city?

Or maybe we should all start serving and protecting each other. 

Had It

 It would be a whole lot easier to take if ICE goon's mission did not include killing people they were supposed to deport. 

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was murdered by the Department of Homeland Security this past Tuesday morning. The "agents" who killed Lorenzo did not have their body cams on, but there was plenty of documentation in the form of witnesses and their cell phones in addition to security cams located throughout the area. 

The white van that Mister Araujo was driving was chased, pulled over and the goons chose to shoot and kill him because he ran away. In the most morbid Keystone Cops tradition, it turns out that Lorenzo was not the suspect they were looking for. He just happened to be driving a white van that looked similar to the one that these poorly trained imbeciles were supposed to be trailing. 

Who are these trigger-happy idiots who seem bent on enforcing their vision of an immigration policy? The idiots in charge were quick to point out that Lorenzo was in our country illegally, but I cannot find a section of any statute that suggests that being in the country illegally is grounds for execution. The story we are being fed by DHS is that Lorenzo rammed the officers' vehicle and they fired on him "in self defense." If this refrain sounds familiar, you might be remembering when Renee Good was accused of trying to run down on the streets of Minneapolis. As was the case back in January, all available footage suggests otherwise. The goons chose to use deadly force rather than deescalate the situation. 

This is not what they are trained to do. I am using the term "trained" here with a great deal of latitude. They are carrying out orders from a xenophobic racists who are attempting to blame our nation's problems on immigrants who came here just a little after they did. Their murdering rampage has totalled, by government accounts, "at least ten people." This does not include the number of those who were detained and died "in custody." 

This isn't an immigration policy. It's genocide. 

Resigned To It

 Graham Platner has suspended his race for the Senate seat in Maine. 

Eric Swalwell will not be governor of California anytime soon. 

Al Franken resigned his Minnesota Senate seat way back in 2018. 

These are politicians whose careers came to an abrupt halt because of their treatment of women. Harassment. Abuse. Unwanted attention. The underlying reason it seems to me is that if you are willing to torment people that make up more than half of the population, then you probably shouldn't have a job that serves any people. 

Another feature that all those former politicians have in common is their party: They are all Democrats. Following in the grand tradition of Gary Hart, these are men who have yet to figure out boundaries. Fidelity. What the word "no" means. Consider the other Democratic stalwarts such as Bill Clinton, JFK and FDR. These were men hoisted high on the totem pole only to have sullied their own legacy with infidelity and less than, shall we say, "presidential behavior." 

Or maybe this mistreatment of women and the sanctity of marriage is just part of the package when you find yourself in a position that allows a certain measure of power over others. To be fair, a certain number of Republicans have also been shown the door as a consequence for their behavior.

But this guy who calls women reporters "Piggy," and seems to have endless fascinconation with the physical attributes of the women who are unfortunate enough to find themselves drawn into his orbit, seems to have no such limits placed on his conduct. He is a rapist, certified as such by the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court that I feel that I should point out has its share of misogynistic behavior in its record. Clarence and Brett, I'm looking directly at you. 

What I'm suggesting here is that party affiliation or the number of zeroes in your bank account should not be the litmus for whether or not a person should be allowed to hold any office. 

Anywhere. 

Corroboration

 Evidence. It is the stuff that Perry Mason would get to somewhere around the forty-five minute mark out of fifty-two. Perry wasn't alone in this. Most TV detectives or attorneys would eventually get around to presenting some sort of physical proof of just exactly how a crime was committed. As I understand it, this is kind of a bedrock element of our justice system. We even have a fancy Latin term for this: Habeas corpus.

One of the most notorious moments in terms of American Justice and the use of evidence was when Orenthal James Simpson was asked to try on a pair of gloves found at the scene of his wife's murder. One of his attorneys, Johnny Cochran exhorted the jury, along with the multitudes of those watching at home, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit." 

The glove, in a moment of dramatic revelation, did not fit and it was soon thereafter that Mister Simpson walked out of the courtroom a free man. Which, depending on how you see this process working, is how things should have wrapped up. 

We now live on a planet where surveillance by video is the norm. Very few portions of the globe do not have an eye on us all, making it difficult if not impossible not to leave some kind of trace behind for Columbo or Perry Mason or Johnny Cochran to pick up and utilize to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that crime that was committed had, in actual fact been committed.

We are currently being told, by a convicted felon, that the damage done to the Reflecting Pool was done by "vandals," including a former Olympic athlete who has been arrested for this crime. Of course there is "video evidence," if the blurry indistinct images of figures putting their hands in the goo that has replaced the water in the "newly renovated" pool can be considered "evidence" of anything other than bad judgement on the part of all the blurry indistinct figures seen putting their hands into the mess made by the convicted felon's attempt at giving his campaign donor a no-bid contract to Make America Green Again.

Of course, this is also the guy who exhorted his followers on January 6, 2021 to march up to the Capitol and "fight like hell" to overturn the results of an election he felt he shouldn't have lost. How do I know this? I've seen the evidence. 

I wonder what Perry Mason could do with that? 

Not Right Now

I got the news from my cousin from Kansas while he was out visiting after doing a cross-country road rally. He told me that he had stopped reading this blog because "of all that Trump stuff." After a few minutes he went on to echo many of the sentiments expressed here on a frequent basis, including the mess made in the Reflecting Pool and the illegal war in Iran. 

He didn't disagree with what I was saying. He had simply grown tired of reading my frequent if not daily rehash of events and how I didn't seem able to move off the point. That moved the conversation further down the path that had him confiding his surprise that there are "still folks who are behind this guy one hundred percent."

It was apparent to me that he was feeling the same or similar distress with the way the country was moving. I listened and considered, not for the first time, my own voice crying out in the wilderness. What was I doing aside from the obvious preaching to the choir? How could I not see myself as sitting on the other end of the seesaw that was still "behind this guy one hundred percent?"

I told him that I appreciated his commentary on my commentary, but I also politely suggested that without some sort of equal and opposite reaction from the other side, the outrage might continue and then I would never be able to get back to writing more frequently about kittens and funny things kids say. 

It continues to be a battle, and it pains me that I feel I have to give my hundred percent to poking holes in the directives coming out of Washington. 

Can't I think of anything else to talk about? 

Not right now. 

World Wide

 I consider myself a sports fan. Not unreasonable, but fixated on the outcome of certain games being played by grown men and women for which I have a "rooting interest." I don't gamble on the final score or any of the other mathematical or statistical threads that could become a concern. I do participate in a "friendly" fantasy football league whose prize at the end of the season is primarily bragging rights for the following year. 

This being said, I know that I do not appreciate sports, or rather a sport, like the football fans across the globe who are currently immersed in the contest we now embrace as The World Cup. Far from the somewhat ridiculous exclusivity of Major League Baseball's "World Series" which is comprised entirely of teams from North America, FIFA brings together a truly international group of competitors. This event is, according to John Oliver, the way that Americans learn about geography. Each one of these teams has its own fan base which instantly reveals my "passion" for certain franchises to be a passing fancy. 

I learned just how tepid my own concerns were last weekend when my wife began to notice the sounds emenating from up and down the houses and apartment buildings on our street. Mexico and England were locked in a tense match, and each shot on goal or offsides was met with a roar coming from inside and out of neighbors' homes. As we walked up the street for dinner, we took notice of how still the rest of the neighborhood was outside of these periodic eruptions. It made me think of Super Bowl Sundays when "everyone" was settled onto their couches, staring at the uniquely American "football" spectacle.

Or at least the commercials. 

I was reminded of the 1970s. Back when we in the United States began to tense and surrender for the adoption of the metric system. It was right about this time that initial rumblings began to occur about how we should also brace ourselves for the next big wave of international influence: Soccer. Boys and girls began to organize teams that allowed them to move the ball only with their feet. 

How could this be? 

Most of us are still waiting for this domination to usurp our use of the term "football." But as I made my way down my street in Oakland, I was reminded of the multiculture in which I teach. On any given day there is a basket ball game, or some American football being tossed around, but by far the most regular attraction on our playground is the soccer pitch. Boys and girls from five to twelve are all kicking and screaming to their hearts' content, fully aware of the rules of the game if not the subtle techniques of the players they have grown up idolizing. Seeing this throng of children playing a game with such fervor reminds me of the melting pot in which I live. It makes me understand the World just a little better. 

Monuments

 Fifteen years ago, my family made a trip to Washington DC. It was kind of a make good on the trip that my son didn't go on when he was in middle school. We spent a few days getting to know our nation's capital, seeing the sights and soaking up the patriotism. We took public transit into the city from our friends' house where we were staying and when we came up into the Union Station stop, I took in the view that Jefferson Smith beheld upon his arrival in the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. My wife and I sometimes talk about my "Jimmy Stewart moments," those times when I am feeling especially earnest. This was one of those times. 

We were there ostensibly to fill in the void in my son's patriotism, but we ended up filling my red, white and blue bucket as well. Standing outside the gates of the White House, with the mild certainty that across that lawn inside was the man to whom I gave my vote twice to be President of the United States, gave me a satisfaction that I can barely describe. It felt right. 

As we meandered around the museums and monuments, I took full measure of the sights I was witnessing. I had made a similar trip when I was much younger with my brothers and parents, but my post-Watergate cynicism kept me from fully appreciating the grandeur I was seeing. After two terms of hope and change, I was ready to pay tribute. 

The following day, we set ourselves the task of the Smithsonian Institute, but first I declared that we needed to stop by the National Archives to see what all the fuss was about this Declaration of Independence. My wife and son and I spent the early afternoon of July 4 that year standing in line for just a quick glimpse. As the day wore on, we found ourselves walking out onto the National Mall just about dusk. We sat down on the grass and proceeded to watch a fireworks display like I can't recall ever seeing before or since, with the Washington Monument in the background. 

Which made me feel all the worse for those tourists who found themselves in a similar place this past weekend but came away with a much different experience. The magic that swept up Jimmy Stewart and yours truly wasn't available this Fourth of July, partly because of climate change and perhaps the gods anger with the way things are these days. 

I hope for all of our sakes that it is not gone forever. 

Lessons Learned

 Where did we go wrong? Did we, as a nation, take the metaphorical "left toin at Albequokie" that Bugs Bunny warned us about? Certainly my fellow travellers would agree with Bugs that this ain't Pismo Beach. No, I think we left the track toward the American Dream some time ago. 

Obviously any country that would elect a slumlord to the highest office in the land, we may have needed course correction, and certainly repeating that mistake eight years later suggests that we haven't learned our lesson. 

But I do not believe that the United States was completely well long before the election of 2016. Some might argue that somewhere around the time we began to embrace the currency issued by our Treasury more than the values printed on it. "Out of Many, One." "In God We Trust." Back in 1987, Oliver Stone directed a movie that offhandedly reminded us that "greed is good." I don't believe that Oliver was making an overt statement in Wall Street, but rather reminding us of the perils that awaited us all if we forgot the working class and embraced corporations as our gods. He certainly wouldn't be the first artist who unwittingly created a snuff film for those who viewed it more as an instructional video rather than the fable for which it was intended. 

Of course if we had already been lost in the woods, this story never would have been necessary. I can just skip past Watergate, since Richard Nixon assured us so very many times that he was not a crook. Instead, I will place the blame squarely at the feet of Lizzie Maggie. If that name doesn't ring a bell, you may have played her game: Monopoly. You know, where you buy up real estate and try to run all your friends and family out of business as you attempt to own everything. It even includes what was the precursor to the pardon, the Get Out Of Jail Free card. Not unlike Oliver Stone, Ms. Maggie was attempting, as she developed her game, to create something that would give us all a lesson in greed. 

All these years later, it would seem that the lesson she intended is not the one we learned. I don't know about you, but I can remember plenty of times when the kid down the street was caught cheating while we were playing Monopoly. 

I'm just a little surprised that he didn't go into politics. 

Mad Dogs And Englishmen

 If you're anything like me, and if you're not why the heck aren't you, then you probably spent a chunk of the past weekend trying to determine how you were going to spend your hard-earned fun coupons celebrating our nation's birthday. I was intrigued as ever by the nightly flurries of aerial shells with showers of sparks and loud reports in our neighborhood. The ones that began in mid-June and will continue to disrupt our quiet nights for the next couple of weeks are a mystery to me. 

It was a few years back when my wife and I traveled north to Oregon to celebrate the anticipation of our anniversary right around the Fourth of July. Crossing the border into a state where fireworks of all sorts were legal and available for sale, we pulled over to one of the many tents pitched by the side of the road and began inspecting all the possible ways that gunpowder and sulfur could be ignited and dispersed into the sky. Eventually we settled on one particular product with the intriguing sobriquet, Mad Dog. We also purchased a few odds and ends like sparklers and smoke bombs and glow worms with the notion that we might find someplace safe and sane that we could share those less than explosive ordnance. When our friendly fireworks salesperson tallied up our purchases, they came to just under fifty dollars, with the Mad Dog being by far the big ticket item. 

We tucked these items in with our luggage and continued on up to Portland. 

We never did find a time or place to make a lot of noise and smoke on our visit north. We retuned to Oakland with our contraband without having fired a single shot in anger or fun. It simply never seemed like the right time or place. 

New Years Eve came and went, and though we were sorely tempted to carry out our barrage, neither my wife nor I could get up the gumption to set fire to the sky. Not when we had so much help from all those houses up and down the streets surrounding us. 

Somewhere in there we decided to give up our Mad Dog. We handed it over to our son, who we figured would find a clever or subversive use for pyrotechnics. 

I remembered all those trips I used to make with my brother when we were young, across the border to Wyoming where they sold beer on Sundays and fireworks were the best reason to make that drive. On one of those excursions, I purchased enough pop bottle rockets that I was able to parse them out over the next several years, bringing some of them along with me when I moved to California. 

They're gone now, much to the chagrin of my son to whom I taught the simple rule: Light and run away. These days there isn't much good running will do. We are surrounded each summer for three to four weeks by things that go boom in the night. 

How can they afford it? 

Born At Or Near The USA

 The convicted felon and adjudicated rapist masquerading as a leader of the Free World is considering a ban on visitors to our country who happen to be pregnant. This was the somewhat ridiculous and draconian response he arrived at after the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was, in fact, already settled business. Section 1 reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Looking for the gray area? This is "birthright citizenship," and this is the reason for the Second Trumpreich to keep pregnant tourists from visiting the land of the free and home of the brave. Apparently we are currently experiencing a freedom and bravery deficit and we just don't want to run out. "Birth tourism" is a rare enough occurrence, but since we are having a particular challenge staying free and brave here in the moderately United States, 

A couple years ago, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist wanted us all to be afraid of the murderers and rapists being unleashed on our shores by other countries. 

Very afraid. 

Now we are being asked to be afraid of pregnant women who happen to find themselves within our borders, especially when they're obviously here simply to land a sponge here that will soak up all those glorious resources we offer all our rightly born American babies. Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller made his terror be known to Jesse "Holdyer" Watters on Faux News: "So, you have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home, and that baby gets Medicaid and that baby gets welfare and that baby gets cash assistance. They'll leave the baby with a cousin, a relative, whatever, then send welfare checks back home. You can support a whole family in the third world."

Since "birth tourism" is already illegal, the fright described by the undead minion of the convicted felon is already covered. And since it has been the policy of the Second Trumpreich to kick children and families off any and all kinds of assistance programs anyway, this just serves as one more egregious effort to make us all believe that the United States doesn't have enough money to take care of its children. 

Which may go a long way toward explaining how we ended up bombing that girls school in Iran. 

Happy News

 In the midst of all the ugly news that gets run past us on a daily basis, I figured that I should shine a light on the Supreme Court decision to uphold birthright citizenship. If you were born here, you're an American. 

And that's that. 

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.”

Who would have thought that the same court that outlawed transgender athletes in school sports would act so compassionately? Could it be that there was no big push for transgender rights during the framing of our Constitution? Are civil rights limited to those who conform to the very limited spectrum of pronouns that existed back in the eighteenth century? 

Whoops. Sorry. I was highlighting happy news: Birthright citizenship. Now the ICE goons can get busy setting free all those folks in detention camps that were born here. Presuming they can find them.

And that they're still alive. 

Oops. Did it again, didn't I? 

It's a little like the Supreme Court made it clear that the convicted felon is an adjudicated rapist, but that doesn't mean that he has to leave office. Or the country. Or stop defacing our nation's capital by hosting poorly attended spectacles at all of our expense. If the thought occurred to me to go to the big America 250 sale-a-bration in Washington, I would have to figure out how to finance the fuel it would take to get me there. 

Sorry: Birthright citizenship. It's a good thing. If you're born here, you get to stay here. Which currently doesn't seem quite like the cool deal it probably should. 

Yay

 Just a reminder as you're taping those red, white and blue streamers to your front porch and preparing to feast on the grilled hot dogs you could afford to buy instead of the steak that you wanted for the bit Fourth of July barbecue: The forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United State is an adjudicated rapist. 

Yay. 

This ruling was essentially upheld this past week when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the convicted felon's appeal to overturn the decision that said that he had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. Oh, and the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is a convicted felon, which I believe we covered just a moment ago. 

Perhaps I should also clarify that the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is the same "person." The same convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who says that he does not think about your financial situation. And he loves inflation. 

Same guy who threw a party for himself on the front lawn of the ruins of the White House. Same guy whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files. To give you just a little flavor for that last number, Jesus's name appears approximately one thousand two hundred times in the bible. 

Yay. 

This convicted felon and adjudicated rapist whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files started a war with Iran, he says, because his son-in-law who is a real estate agent told him it would be a good idea. You know: location, location, location. 

Or distraction, distraction, distraction. 

In an effort to celebrate himself rather than the country for which he was nominally elected to lead he has painted things gold and blue and attempted to get anyone but himself to pay for it. Like the people who he was nominally elected to lead. He's going to have McDonald's for lunch on the Fourth of July because he doesn't have to pay for it. You're going to have to pay for it. Yours and his. 

Meanwhile the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist is committing war crimes and getting rich on insider trades while the rest of us are just trying to live out a sliver of the American Dream left to us: The part where we no longer have to worry about an adjudicated rapist in the White House. 

Yay. 

A Good Start

 Artificial Intelligence isn't something brand new. 

It used to be called "homage." Or in some corners, "plagiarism." 

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was under a deadline and grinding hard to get something that his wealthy Christian landowner cronies would sign. To do this, he "borrowed" from a number of texts that seemed to more or less coalesce his thoughts about freedom. 

There was some Aristotle tossed in there. Like the notion that government should provide a place for humans to flourish rather than dominate. It has a fancy name: eudaimonia, but maybe that was just a little too Greek for the colonists so he roughed it into more of an inalienable rights angle. 

John Locke might have been flattered to see his theory about "life, liberty and property" laid out for King George as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Except that he had been dead for seventy-two years by the time Tom got around to footnoting him. 

Except he didn't. 

Thomas Jefferson just scribbled all these great ideas into one document without annotating his sources. He didn't bother to mention George Mason, a fellow Virginian who was very much alive and whose Declaration of Rights offered up a very clear template for Tom to follow. Even though George's work hit the stands almost a whole month before Tom's did. George didn't even get to sign the July 4 version, as his health didn't allow him to make the trip all the way up to Philadelphia. 

He also failed to shout out his Scottish Enlightenment and its supporters, one of whom was sitting in that sweltering room in Philadelphia with Mister Jefferson: a Reverend John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey soon to be renamed Princeton. 

And maybe it should be pointed out that all that wild talk about all men being created equally, the document also stokes the fear of "merciless Indian Savages" as it seeks to rile up settlers against the indigenous people who were having their lands appropriated by this new nation. Probably just an oversigh on Tom's part. Kind of like the slaves he kept on his plantation. No Declaration of Independence for them. 

Still, two hundred fifty years later, this flawed bit of writing stands as a meaningful starting point for us all. We might all take a moment today to appreciate the cleverness of Thomas Jefferson for finding all these ideals and writing them down for us to consider as a beginning. 

Two and a half centuries later, we still have a long way to go. 

Centennial

 As you read this, Mel Brooks will be more than one hundred years old. Apparently Al Gore's Internet met with some confusion as to the actual date of Mel's birth, which as it turns out was this past Sunday, June 28. It speaks directly to the power of comedy that Clint Eastwood, four years Mel's junior, chose to retire from directing and acting this past year while Mel Brooks is overseeing the production of the sequel to his film Spaceballs, set to appear in theaters on April 23, 2027. 

It pleases me no end to be able to celebrate Mel Brooks while he is still a-live. There is no question as to whether or not he stomped on the Terra. On New Years Eve this past year, a group of us gathered together in our living room, and began searching various platforms for something to watch until midnight. Having worked in a video store in another incarnation, I understood that trying to find an entertainment for any group larger than one was made exponentially more difficult with each added human's taste and predilections. Our festive mood was darkening just as we ran across the DVD of Mel Brooks' The Producers. Murmurs of ascent, perhaps brought on by the thought of spending any more time trying to select something for which we were all in agreement. We put in the disc and hoped for the best. 

For the next eighty-six minutes, we laughed. Hard for most of it, and though we were all aware that we were yukking it up about a group of morally reprehensible people during a time when things were not "woke" by any means, we savored every frame and when all was said and done, most of us were humming Springtime For Hitler. We did this with full awareness of how important being able to laugh at fascists was a gift given to us by none other than Mister Mel Brooks. 

I could go on about the importance of my memoires of being taken to see Blazing Saddles while still a kid by my father, or how I selected the soundtrack of Young Frankenstein as my one souvenir of my family's trip to New York City. Or my wife's enduring affection for Madeline Khan's turn as Lili Von Shtupp singing "I'm Tired." 

I might even wax rhapsodic about listening to Mel and his great friend Carl Reiner's recording of the Two Thousand Year Old Man. 

But for now I will simply bow down and say, happy birthday, Mel Brooks. Who reminds us, “Humor is just another defense against the universe.” And hoo boy can we use that right now.