Palace Revolution

 Where are the Epstein Files?

Where is the peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia?

Where is the replacement for the Affordable Care Act?

Where is that cap on credit card interest rates?

Where are those tariff rebate checks?

Where is all that affordable housing?

Where is the reduction to the country's deficit? 

Instead of those things, we've been given a flurry of construction projects designed not to improve any of the infrastructure of this country, but to pad and glorify the boor who needs constant validation to prop up his fragile ego. We have another installment of war in the Middle East. We have the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. We have a real estate agent in charge of National Intelligence. 

Seventy-seven million Americans voted for a convicted felon to be their "president," to end the war in Ukraine in twenty-four hours and to Make America Great Again. They bought the red hats. They drank the Kool-Aid. Now they are waking up and discovering just like the Whos down in Whoville that no Christmas is coming. The Grinch has stolen Democracy, and even if they gather together hand in hand and sing along with Lee Greenwood at the top of their lungs, they aren't going to get what they were promised. 

Instead we get a daily dose of social media rants and threats. We get more footage of the former game show host falling asleep during his own meetings shortly before he wakes up long enough to berate a female reporter or two. 

We'll keep reading about those voters who cast their ballot for damaged goods in 2024 who now regret their decision, but that ship has sailed. If we want our Democracy back, we're going to have to take it back. 

Hey, think the time is right
For a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play
Is compromise solution

The Mass Of Media

 I am being asked to boycott the Columbia Broadcasting System and all its various media tentacles. This would mean that I would no longer be availed the opportunity to take in the pithy left-wing observations of Jon Stewart and those nutty kids from South Park. This is a conundrum for me since these voices are fundamental to the ongoing fermentation of my own particular world view. 

What message would eliminating these viewing choices from my menu? 

I suppose I would be saying that I do not approve of the corporate maneuvers that brought CBS and its aforementioned tentacles to this decidedly right-leaning position in the world. The cancellation of Stephen Colbert's Late Show is perhaps the most visible signpost on this road to ruin. The powers that be signaled the elimination of a thirty-three year late night television institution as "purely financial," but since that decision was made fast on the heels of Mister Colbert pointing out that his new corporate nannies had paid what amounted to a "big fat bribe" of sixteen million dollars to the big fat Orange Worst so they would be allowed to go ahead with their big fat merger, maybe there was some triggering. 

My bedtime has become a pretty standard nine thirty on weeknights, with the very rare exceptions for Bruce Springsteen concerts. The idea that I would be watching any of these programs live is a pretty amusing stretch. This includes the NFL broadcasts of my favorite team which can often be found on CBS, which I tend not to stare at not because they come on past my bedtime but rather because of my own ridiculous superstitions about fan rays. 

So what would I be missing? 

The relative freedom I tend to enjoy with all that content out there. Larry and David Ellison, the new father and son behind the controls of the Paramount Skydance Corporation have quite a laundry list of an Empire: Nickelodeon, Showtime, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, and the aforementioned CBS. Oh, and then there's the soon-to-be-finalized merger with Warner Brothers which will have the still further antagonizing effect of putting John Oliver and his wilderness voice crying out from under this seemingly endless corporate umbrella. 

No Loony Toons? No Turner Classic Movies? Will CNN be put through the same right-wing meat grinder that CBS News and Sixty Minutes has been? It makes the mighty Disney-ABC-ESPN empire look quaint by comparison. 

In the interest of transparency, I should let you know that Blogger, the platform upon which I mount the daily rant, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google and has been since before I set up shop here. Google owns FitBit and Nest and YouTube and maybe even the phone upon which you are reading this. They are the reason that you get all those clever suggestions for gifts and services that you don't even remembering searching for. They are one of the leading purveyors of AI. 

It's only a matter of time before you all will have to be boycotting me. 

Last Bell

 After a week with sporadic meetings and check-ins with school, I have reached the point in my career that my wife has observed is my "last summer vacation." 

This hits harder than I thought it might, considering I set this Wile E Coyote process of retirement in motion nearly two years ago, and I am still a year away from making it in any way official. There is a part of it that I recognize in that I have always started off June with a certain amount of anxiety. How can I possibly fit all the fun and relaxation that I need into two short months? The sound of a ticking clock is hard to ignore, and I wonder if I will ever fully silence it.

I am used to answering the bell. One of my jobs at school is to stand out on the playground on most recesses and remind kids that playtime is over and it's time to line up. In this way I am the de facto bell. Will I be able to find my own snooze button? 

At one of the meetings I attended over the past week, I had the opportunity to introduce myself to a few of my fellow educators. We were asked by the moderator to share our school site and years of experience in the classroom, and when it was my turn, I told my colleagues that I would be starting my thirtieth year. Lots of appreciation for that number, and even more when I mentioned that all of this educating had taken place at one site. "This makes me something of a unicorn in this district," I confided. 

Then one of them asked me, "How much longer will you keep going?"

When I answered, "One more year," the reaction I got was resigned acceptance.

"What will you do then?" inquired the five year veteran across from me.

Then there was that flinch. The one that I am now confronting more and more. What will I do? Moving up into the mountain vacation home is out of the question since I don't own a mountain vacation home. Spending more time with the grandkids is currently a hypothetical since the grandkids exist in the same plane as that mountain vacation home. 

The easiest thing to do would be to keep rolling. Stay at my school until they cart me out on a stretcher. This does not seem that appealing, especially against the backdrop of this past year when my friend and fifth grade teacher was unable to answer the bell coming back from Christmas. Not his choice, I assure you. 

I want to have a choice. I want some life left to live. 

Now I just have to figure out what that might be.  

Comfortable

 Let's start with an easy one: Just about any sandwich someone makes for you. 

That's comfort food. 

Another seemingly universal component of this corner of the world's diet is the plate of crackers and ginger ale brought to you when you were sick in bed by your mother. 

A great deal of the food I was served by my mother qualified as comfort food. I grew up in a household where mom spent an hour or two each day in the kitchen, preparing a meal for my father, my brothers and me. It was a casserole-based menu that kept us boys running to the kitchen most nights, and I wish now that I had paid more attention to the recipes that passed by in front of us. 

I know that they were written down. I remember the tin box that served as her guide. Filled with three by five cards penned with her cramped but impeccably neat handwriting, the exact details of which were known primarily to herself and the occasional family friend who wanted to swap meal ideas for their hungry brood. 

I have never eaten a bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Not all by itself, but I know that the magic my mother performed in the kitchen on a regular basis had me ingesting gallons of the stuff through combinations of chicken and tuna and noodles and rice that made us come back for more. 

Most nights.

There were those dinners that turned out to be favored by one of my brothers, and I would patiently wade through those because I could expect with a solid degree of certainty that tomorrow night would be one of my favorites. 

Add to this steady stream of dinners the very unique and simple pleasure of buttery cinnamon toast on the occasional chilly morning. And the cakes. And the cookies. The output from my mother's kitchen would have had you believe that she was chained to the stove all day every day, but she managed to find time to escape to the living room on regular occasions to play piano and read books and magazines like they were the fire stoking the furnace of her mind. 

And occasionally, she might run across a recipe. 

And her legend grew. 

She also made a pretty amazing tuna fish sandwich. 

Art Schmart

 One of dozens of things that I find oppressively annoying is that this is the Bozo who put his face and name on a book called The Art of the Deal. 

I will not recommend this tripe to you, but I do think it's telling to take a peek at a few of the quotes from inside: “I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don’t care too much what things cost. It’s not their money.”

How about, “good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

Perhaps, “The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

Or, “The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals.”

Then there's, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”

So let's fast forward a few years, where all this business acumen will be brought to bear on the world stage, as the former game show host attempts to negotiate a settlement in the war he started in Iran. As things fell apart once again over the weekend, the dealmaker complained, “If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

But what about, “Leverage: don’t make deals without it?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that this sad individual would not know leverage if it fell on his head and pretended to be yet another hair treatment. And to all those Bozo fans out there who opined, "That's what we need: a guy who will run this country like a business." 

Remember the ugly disdain this adjudicated rapist had for John McCain? Well, to paraphrase the former game show host himself, I like dealmakers who don't go bankrupt. Or community organizers from Chicago. 

Building Resentment

 You'll forgive me if I feel like the removal of the convicted felon's name from the Kennedy Center from the Performing Arts is a pyrrhic victory. 

In the simplest terms, the outrage that accompanied this nominal usurpation of a national treasure left me tired and hopeless. I believed that this would be the new normal, with the former game show host marking his territory in the only way that he and stray dogs do. 

It would be nice to feel some of that zeal that we all felt when those Confederate statues started coming down a decade ago, but it's more complicated than that. Like when that statue of Saddam Hussein was lassoed and yanked to the ground back in 2003. It would have been such a relief to connect that moment to the notion of "Mission Accomplished." 

But we knew this was not the case. It would be another eight years of suffering and confusion before Americans were able to extricate ourselves from this misguided excursion into the Middle East. 

Scraping the letters off the Kennedy Center that were placed there in a fit of pique by the Orange Worst will not remove the stain that it will leave behind. If the Second Trumpreich were to end tomorrow, there will still be years of recovery and plastering over the holes he has driven into our country. 

He tore down one third of the White House, leaving a hole and caution tape with nothing more than a curious set of circumstances that allowed him to legitimize his party palace when crazy people somehow got close enough to take a shot at him. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe those crazy people wouldn't be shooting at him if he wasn't tearing holed in our country? 

So here we go: A UFC cage match will be held on the lawn of what used to be The People's House, along with the gaudy arena and lighting rigs that appear so inappropriate on what used to be a symbol of dignity and decorum. If we're lucky, maybe another judge will be able to step into the fray and be able to keep the Arc de Trump from being foisted upon us, dwarfing the monuments to real presidents whose reflecting pools have become sitcom versions of arguing with contractors. 

At the same time, he's having his attack dogs at the "Department of Justice" go after the woman he raped. 

And who is paying for all of this mess? 

I'll give you a hint: It's not King Pyrrhus. 

It's you and me. Hand me the paint remover. 

I Confess

 Confession Time:

I don't really believe that they asked only five dentists about Trident gum. I never bothered to chew it because it felt like a conspiracy of gigantic proportions. 

Not all things go better with Coke. Pepsi, for instance, does not go better with Coke. 

Happily ever after is a death sentence. Who really wants that kind of life? 

All that fuss about Malcolm Gladwell made about ten thousand hours isn't really that big a deal once you realize that adds up to just over a year. 

I forgot to water the plants last week. 

I thought the phrase was "for all intensive purposes" until I was over thirty. 

I have eaten tuna past its expiration date. On more than one occasion. 

There aren't enough days in the week.

Donating blood makes me feel superior. 

I have never blown the roof right off of this joint. Not once.

The Rolling Stones kind of creep me out. 

"Having it your way" at Burger King just feels like a lot of pressure to me. 

Don't wanna be an American Idiot. 

My sense of balance does not extend to my diet. 

If given a choice, I think I would prefer disorganized sports. 

I would be more likely to obey Stop signs if they asked nicely.