Sense a la Common

 The Florida Department of Health has warning about the risks of drinking raw, unpasteurized milk. Twenty-one people in the Sunshine State including six children under the age of ten, became ill from E. coli and campylobacter bacteria linked to raw milk from the same farm. Seven people have been hospitalized. Two of them have severe complications. 

There's a lot to unpack in that paragraph, but let's start with the location: Florida. The setting for so very many punchlines, this is the place that tends to ban books and insists that you have a license to skateboard. Of course this is also the state where it is illegal to feed alligators, which makes some mild sense, which makes it all the more curious why they would promote their version of "Alcatraz" by suggesting that anyone who escapes from this prison camp for immigration detainees might end up doing just that. 

Now let's explore that "unpasteurized" part. In 1882, German chemist Franz von Soxhlet first suggested using pasteurization for milk. In 1893, American physician Henry L. Koplik advocated for pasteurization to prevent milk-borne diseases. By the early twentieth century, many United States municipalities made pasteurization of milk mandatory.  It's a little bit of public health that fell into practice to keep human beings from getting sick from drinking milk from cows. Most of us aren't used to seeing Pasteurizing spelled with a capital P. Because there was a time when this French scientist who coincidentally was named Pasteur figured out that germs cause disease. Not only that, but germs could grow spontaneously in sealed containers. Killing those germs before they are consumed in food or beverages was considered a clever bit of scientific progress. 

Which is where this bus stalls, especially in Florida. Mostly because of that whole "science" thing. Climate Change, Evolution, we all live on a ball flying through space, these are ideas that might fly somewhere like New York City, but don't try to peddle that kind of nonsense to Floridians. They can see that kind of highfalutin nonsense a mile away. If they're not doubled over in pain from attempting to feed a carnivorous reptile or from drinking rotten milk. 

This is why I am happy to congratulate the Florida Department of Health for taking the somewhat limited stand for science, and health, since it's in the title. 

Just don't tell them that this Pasteur guy also promoted vaccines to keep us safe from things like rabies and anthrax. That might upset the whole apple cart. Then we'd have to try to explain how fruit rots in the sun. And they've got a lot of both of those down there In Florida. 

I Saw It On TV

 "I know it's true, oh, so true 'cause I saw it on TV." - John Fogerty

Before Billy Joel denied starting the fire, Mister Fogerty wrote a song about the decades of news and pop culture that he witnessed via what was colloquially known as "The Idiot Box." In the first verse, he confesses, "Though I saw them all, I can't recall which cartoon were real."

You may recall that recently the convicted felon currently ignoring the US Constitution lauded his acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration for her efforts to reduce the suffering of those affected by the floods in Texas because he "saw her on TV." Not that she was actively pursuing any sort of rescue or reclamation efforts, but because she appeared in her best "take charge" costume and gave the impression that she was, in fact, in charge. Couple this with the rumor that swirled around a few months ago about a reality TV show being in development centering on the efforts of immigrants attempting to achieve citizenship. Given the reality that we have all witnessed on our screens, television and otherwise, it was determined that now might not be the best time to unleash this kind of "non-scripted" entertainment. 

It is certainly true that the line between what appears on television and reality has always been a sticky bit. In a previous century, after MTV tired of showing those little promotional films for pop music, somebody pitched the idea for a show called The Real World. This was not the first time that "reality" was trotted out for us to watch at home, but this was perhaps the most confounding use of the word "real" in television history. It is perhaps notable that the third season of this long-running series introduced us to Rachel Campos, a conservative voice in a house filled with a bunch of liberal twenty-somethings who had an ax to grind about all manner of thins. When she grew up, she got a job on Fox News. 

Around that same time, somebody got the clever idea of making a showcase for America's worst boss, who spent the bulk of his time on screen bellowing, "You're fired." This buffoon never managed to have his own show on Fox, but he did manage to find his way into the Oval Office. Twice. Under the guise of being "president." This is the guy who set about hiring a great many of the "stars" of Fox News to sit on his cabinet. What better qualification could there be for this tiny-brained slumlord than to look for the best and brightest based on their appearances on "the idiot box?"

Most recently, this adjudicated rapist declared his appreciation for recently confirmed US Prosecutor for Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro: “Don’t forget, Jeanine Pirro was a great judge and a great prosecutor. Because she was so good, they drafted her into show business, and she did fantastic. You know, The Five was the number-one show, etc., etc.”

Never mind that Judge Jeanine's political career was cut short by a scandal that had her attempting to bug the boat of her philandering husband. 

I know all of this because I saw it on TV. 

God help us all. 

And don't forget to turn it off when you leave. 

And One

 Shouldn't the guy who has been ruthlessly cutting programs and jobs in the public sector be glad to hear that more people are out of work? Apparently not, since the Orange Buffoon decided to throw a hissy fit after the July jobs report suggested that economic growth had slowed significantly. His response? Firing the  the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer. 

The counterintuitive nature of this action is obvious to anyone who has spent any time at all in their life counting. If you're three years old, you pretty much expect to be four on your next birthday. You might also get a little flummoxed when it comes to numbers bigger than ten, but at least you comprehend the natural progression of things. This tangerine chucklehead has a history of misunderstanding these kinds of things. We give pictures of objects for Kindergartners to compare and ask them, "Which one has more?" Why would we expect a self-professed billionaire to be able to reckon on that level?

When things don't go his way, this convicted felon tends to make up numbers. Which it would seem is what he expects others will do. He insists that the July report numbers ""were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad." Well, let's take a look at some other numbers that seem to float around in the former game show host's tiny brain: He claimed that he would  drive down drug prices by as much as 1,500 percent. A magical precedent, since the most a price can actually go down would be one hundred percent. That would mean that the consumer would now pay nothing. Or perhaps you've been out driving around searching in vain for the $1.99 gasoline that existed in "five states." A little hint for you scam-watchers: If they don't mention which states, it probably isn't true. 

If yo're a student of recent history, you may recall a years-long baseless challenge to the vote tally of the 2020 election. This is a guy who bankrupted casinos. Not by winning at games of chance, but by running them into the ground. This very stable genius does have something on his side: He doesn't have to be good at math. He just has to be better than the pinheads who hang on his every utterance. 

MTPTFA! Make Two Plus Two Five Again.

Measure For Measure

 Football season is upon us. 

I know this because there was a news item about how the National Football League used their first preseason game to test out their "virtual first down system." For those of you who don't follow the game of American Football or are simply waiting for the games to count, you may have missed this event. 

After more than a century of using two sticks and a chain between them to determine just how far ten yards is, science has provided a way to do that same thing with some very fancy and expensive new cameras. You may have been thinking that the 4K TV you have in your living room is a pretty amazing piece of technology, but Sony has 8K which gives twice as many Ks as your TV. This allows the game to be monitored from above by machines that can pinpoint the placement of the ball on the field and allow the game to progress without those lengthy time-outs for measurement. Since games can be won or lost based on a few inches here or there, this comes as a boon to those of us who have held our breath while that chain has been stretched and then that far stick is somewhat ceremoniously put down to show once again just how far ten yards is. 

No kinks in the chain. No "friendly measurement." No excuses to nip out to the kitchen for more chips while the best union in the world continues to hold sway in the twenty-first century. 

For decades now, people like me have wondered why there wasn't a chip placed in the ball with sensors on the field that could detect whether or not the line to gain had been reached. Still more adults across the globe have wondered why this matters so much. Meanwhile, those three guys with their orange vest and sticks have had job security more than anyone else in the league. These folks are getting paid the princely sum of seventy-five to one hundred fifty dollars per game. This feels like a pittance compared to the responsibility these stalwart keepers of the yards carry on their shoulders. My guess is that the Hawk-Eye camera system will be quite a bit more expensive to operate and maintain. 

And starts to meander in the direction of Artificial Intelligence. "Hey Google, was that a first down?"

"I'm sorry Dave. I don't think I can help you with that right now. Why don't you take a stress pill?"

Speaking of stress, you don't have to feel bad about those poles and vests and so forth. They will continue to show up for this season anyway. They'll be there to remind us just how important ten yards really is. 

Did You Miss Me?

 Go away for a few days and, well, things continue their downward spiral. 

My wife and I wandered off on a short trip to the Central Coast for a respite before the new school year springs to life with all its myriad complexity and challenge. In preparation, I wrote a series of blog posts that would fill the void for you, dear reader, while I was gone. 

This also allowed me to focus on anything but the "breaking news" that flows in torrents from our nation's capitol. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting its doors. Not a surprise exactly, but one that confirms the mission of Project 2025 continues apace. 

The convicted felon plans to spend two hundred million dollars building a grand ballroom as a part of his scheme to recreate his own personal Versailles. This regime will be different from Louis XVI's in that they won't even bother bringing up serving the peasants "cake." Gotta save the cake for washing down with Diet Coke. 

That same convicted felon is doing a favor for another convicted felon, Ghislaine Maxwell, who will be moved from a maximum security prison in Florida to a more relaxed setting in Texas: a prison "camp" in the Lone Star State. Here she will be hobnobbing with celebrity felons such as Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah. Here she will no doubt be awaiting her day in court or a pardon from the guy who claims to have little or no knowledge of anybody connected to (checks list) Jeffery Epstein. 

You may not remember Ms. Holmes or Ms. Shah, but you probably remember Mr. Epstein. He's the guy who may or may not have killed himself in jail. Subsequently, all the charges of sex trafficking against him were dropped, which turned the spotlight on his right hand trafficker, Ms. Maxwell. 

Meanwhile, the felon who is tearing up the White House just recalled that his relationship with Mr. Epstein fell apart after the sex trafficker "stole employees" from Mar-A-Lago. "He took people, I say 'don't do it anymore', you know they work for me... beyond that, he took some others. Once he did that, that was the end of him." One of these purloined employees was Virginia Giuffre, who had said she began working at Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2000, when she was sixteen. 

If the name Virginia Giuffre sounds familiar, it could be because you have heard the story about how she was procured for Prince Andrew by Mr. Epstein and later sought to bring charges against her traffickers, Maxwell and Epstein. You may also recall that Ms. Giuffre committed suicide back in April. 

And if you didn't remember all of this, please try and remember that the same guy who is wreaking havoc with our public media and the People's House is also the one who would like you to forget any and all of the details I have just laid out here. 

I should have stayed on vacation. 

First Day

 My son was just a few months old when I went to my first day of school as a teacher. To say that we have both grown up a lot over the course of the past twenty-eight years would be a massive understatement. When I first reported to Horace Mann Elementary, I was a brand new hire. I had been assured a position through the internship program the district was running in concert with Cal State Hayward. As the summer turned into fall, I waited for word, and with just a week or two left before the new school year was going to begin, I got the notice: I would be the prep teacher at this year-round school in east Oakland. 

Oh, and didn't you say that you knew "a lot" about computers? 

Back in those days, I was going to school in the evenings to learn how to be a teacher and then trying things out the following day. Each morning was an opportunity to start fresh. It was terrifying. I was learning to be a father at the same time, and there were certainly moments when I thought that maybe I was taking on too much. There was not, however, a pause button on my life at that point. I was, to quote the song, running to stand still. 

That was back in the twentieth century. Before the shootings at Columbine. Before 9/11. Before COVID. Before I had fully surrendered to the idea that this would be my career, my calling. Over the past three decades, there have been times when I thought there might be a place for me somewhere else. I considered becoming a middle school math teacher. At least the kids might get a few more of my very funny jokes. This was after I had sampled teaching a fourth grade class of my own for a few years. I liked the mildly autonomous feeling, but I missed being connected to every kid in the school. 

Now I've been doing this job for (checks watch) ever. I am headed in for the warmup week during which we all get together to talk about how we're going to do many things new, but some of them just the same. I get anxious around this time, just like I used to when I was a student. What fresh challenges await me when that front gate opens up for real a week from today? 

Will I be ready?

Well, it just so happens that I know the answer to that one: It doesn't matter. The gate will open and we will start this new year with the same mix of excitement and dread that we have all those years prior. My son will most likely reach out, having left behind those first day jitters once he graduated from college. He'll aske me how it went. And I'll tell him a story about how this year started. 

Keeping Track

 Sometimes when you work in an office like this one (gestures widely to the corner of the room in which his computer sits) you have to make tough editorial decisions. As many of you are aware, this blog is a wholly owned and run subsidiary of the right half of my brain. Which doesn't mean that the executive functions don't periodically interfere with the creative process. Quite the contrary. What you are reading currently was generated some days before, and kept under lock and key until the one just before it reaches the light of day. This explains why periodically  you might be reading along, amused to some degree, but thinking to yourself, "Didn't Jon Stewart cover this on Monday?"

I won't apologize for my OCD. This is how I can ensure that the steady stream of clever bits come out on a daily basis. Mister Stewart, for whom I have unending admiration, sits behind his desk once a week. And there's his podcast. And a myriad of other things I'm sure, but I'm just this one guy and a computer. I don't have guest hosts or a staff of writers. I don't have reruns, though I expect that some of you may wonder about that after you've read my umpteenth screed about mass shootings or that kid at school that I just can't seem to come around to my way of thinking. 

All of this is to say that there are times, like today, that I find myself with an editorial dilemma. Hooking up to Al Gore's Internet this afternoon, to my surprise, I discover two celebrity deaths are in the news. One after another. In no particular order, Chuck Mangione and Hulk Hogan. I am in the business of documenting such transitions in popular culture, so my first instinct was to connect these two with the passing of Ozzy Osbourne because conventional wisdom suggests that stars die in threes. Wags such as myself might wonder if it isn't tens or eights and we're just not able to absorb that kind of carnage, but no matter: Here we have two humans who existed on a similar plane of my consciousness and now it is my duty to report on them. 

Not my duty. My calling. 

Chuck Mangione was the sound of my first two years of high school. He was the softer sound of jazz that followed my introduction to bands like the one fronted by Maynard Ferguson. After reveling in Feels So Good, my high school band took on his next year's release Hill Where The Lord Hides as part of our halftime show. For those two years, this was the soundtrack of my life, albeit supplemented by Foghat and Boston and Blue Oyster Cult. Chuck's music is completely evocative of that moment in time for me. 

A similar sensation occurs in me when I hear the roar, "Whatcha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild on you?" Hulk Hogan, nee Terry Bollea, was such a breakthrough star in the first major wave of professional wrestling that he got himself a part in Rocky III. Hulk's heyday occurred just a few years after that of Chuck Mangione's, but they occupy disk space in a very similar file. I can't say that I was ever a Hulkamaniac, but I was impressed by the gusto with which the Hulkster approached his vocation. His was an outsize presence in a field full of outsized presences. 

And now they're both gone. I will say that they both, in their own way stomped on the Terra, though Chuck did so much more lightly than Hulk Hogan. And Mister Mangione had the good taste not to tarnish his image by showing up at last year's Republican National Convention and struggling a bit with his pre-ripped T-shirt. But they will both be missed by yours truly. 

Unless by some unforeseen circumstances they rise from the dead in the space of time it takes for us all to reach this post in the stack. In which case, my traditional farewell will work just as well as a greeting from beyond: Aloha.  

Low

 I played tuba for six years. Perhaps more to the point: I played Sousaphone for six years. It was only on rare occasions that I was afforded the mild novelty of playing an actual tuba. For those of you uninitiated, they are roughly comparable instruments in the noise that they create, but John Philip Sousa requested that a "marching version" of the low end of the brass family be generated such that it would wrap around the player rather than having to strap a concert tuba to a musician's chest and hope they didn't tip over. 

That distinction made, I can say that I embarked on my low brass career based on a pair of whims. The first of these was the story of my father who "played" tuba/sousaphone in high school band. The quotations are there to denote the fact that he didn't so much play as carry his instrument. He was recruited by a pal of his because it was necessary to have seven sousaphones to be able to spell out BOULDER on their bells. Presentation is everything. So my dad took the gig, and happily appeared in a number of parades and in the yearbook photo showcasing all the members of the Marching Panthers. 

I was a legacy, of sorts. 

The other anecdote that figures in here is the part where I went to a high school football game with my older brother while I was still in elementary school. I was struck by just how much fun the Pep Band was having at everyone's expense, including their own. This goofy behavior was most evident in the antics of the tuba players. Something about lugging that beast around and attempting the impossible feat of remaining discreet while wearing a great chunk of brass and fiberglass. It seemed like a pretty good time. 

Besides, as I mentioned, I was a legacy. 

The problem was that, unlike my older and younger brothers, I had not begun my formal instrumental music training in elementary school. I had years of piano lessons that allowed me to read music and understand just how easy most tuba parts were, but I had no idea how to blow in one end of one of those things to make noise come out of the other. Let alone music. 

So that summer I began my study of the bass clef and the mechanics of Embouchure. Those first few months under the tutelage of the high school band teacher who was in charge of both the marching band and the pep band, should I make it through playing in junior high first. 

Initially, it was suggested that I switch from tuba to baritone, a less cumbersome instrument. And not at all what I had in mind. After some false starts, we were able to find not one but two sousaphones tucked away in the back of the auditorium. I was allowed to keep one at home to save my father from the hassle of having to drive me and my instrument to and from school in order to practice. "You couldn't have chosen the piccolo, could you?" He once asked me on one of those occasions when transporting my choice was the only option. 

Eventually I made it to the big time: High school band. As a sophomore, I was one of only two tuba players who could actually play their instrument. Two others were primarily seat fillers, and when it came time to fill out the rest of the line to spell out BOULDER, ringers were brought in from other sections who were such clever musicians that playing tuba was easy. 

I tried not to take this personally. By the time I was a senior, I was designated Section Leader. And I was elected Pep Band president. Local tuba player makes good. Somewhere in there I harbored dreams of attending Stanford and playing with their infamous not-quite-marching band. That didn't happen. 

After I graduated high school, I hung up my tuba. Or rather I left it in the laundry room of my parents' house until one day it was suggested that I "do something" with it. A certain amount of shame kept me from toting it back to my junior high school from whence it came. Instead I carted it to a used music shop where they looked it over and figured they could use it. As a lamp. 

Sometimes I harbor fantasies about going back to my roots and getting my chops back into shape for one last blast. 

Just to say that I could. 

Lingering

 Did you ever wonder

what forever felt like?

Sometimes it's the line

at the DMV.

Others it feels like

Christmas Eve.

I'm not talking about 

that kind of forever. 

I'm talking about time

spent together. 

It could be in that line. 

It could be the night before.

I'm talking about the collection

of moments and stories.

All of the places where

we held hands. 

All of those moments that

we hold dear.

Walking, talking, sharing

and talking some more.

Wishes that have not come true,

at least not yet. 

Hoping to get more time

to spend with you. 

Forever. 

The Difference

 For a guy who was recently handed sixteen million dollars because two big media companies didn't want anything to interfere with their merger, the convicted felon certainly seems ungrateful. 

There's a clue there: convicted felon. A businessman who has run six of his projects into bankruptcy, most of those were gambling resorts. Someone once suggested to me that only really bad gamblers are in Gamblers Anonymous. If you're good at it, why quit? 

This same bad businessman was impeached not once but twice in his first term as "president." As much as he might have wanted us all to take his misdirection and follow his pointing finger at anyone and everything else aside from his own impotence, the facts remain the facts. 

Which is why his go-to strategy is to make stuff up. He might be a dream improv partner, but having him for a boss seems at best to be a short-term proposition. If you're going to march into battle for him, you can be assured that he will be in some safe location watching it all unfold on cable news. 

The real challenge seems to be one of projection: He can't distinguish between prosecution and persecution. When he gets left behind or chastised for being a failure, he will generate "what if" scenarios that put the spotlight on anyone else. To wit: "I’m looking at the large amount of money owed by the Democrats, after the Presidential Election, and the fact that they admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT (she never sang, not one note, and left the stage to a booing and angry audience!), Three Million Dollars for 'expenses,' to Oprah, Six Hundred Thousand Dollars to very low rated TV 'anchor,' Al Sharpton (a total lightweight!), and others to be named for doing, absolutely NOTHING! These ridiculous fees were incorrectly stated in the books and records. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR AN ENDORSEMENT. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL TO DO SO. Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them. All hell would break out! Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Thank you. Now shut up and sit down. The truth of the matter is that the only guy caught misusing campaign funds is the guy who was convicted on thirty-four counts of fraud for the way he bungled the payment of hush money to a porn star in hopes of keeping her quiet about their coupling while his wife was pregnant with his son.

If you're looking for a reliable reverse barometer, look no further than Mar-A-Lago. Next up, he's going to sue his old pal Rupert Murdoch for the story printed in The Wall Street Journal. The whiner-in-chief wants ten billion dollars for that one. Maybe if he wins that one he can buy himself a casino. Or a yogurt stand. Just get him out of politics.

Can You Tell Me How To Get Funded?

 Any cursory rummaging about our household would provide evidence that funding for broadcasting on NPR and PBS comes from us, the listeners/viewers. I am speaking about the tote bags, water bottles and baseball caps that have been sent to congratulate us for our largesse. Hanging on to these bits of swag make us feel as though we have contributed, at least in some small part, to the elevation of the discourse in this great land of ours. 

Of course it only occurs to me now that programming on Amazon Prime is made possible from donations from viewers like us as well. Hey Bezos! Where's my tote swag?

While waiting for the realization that I could be waiting for a very long time for my Prime tote bag to sink in, I would like to point you all in the direction of the Abominabill, the thing that creeped through Congress and tore up our nation's safety net in order to assure that (checks notes) Jeff Bezos gets a tax cut. Part of the wreckage strewn about in that furious butchering of programs that had been put in place over time to support those most vulnerable and in need was a billion dollars of support for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. 

It would seem that Republicans have all the baseball hats they need, thank you very much. 

And the reactionary right is doing everything in its power to keep any "woke ideology" for seeping into the households of this great land of ours. Like that Ken Burns fellow who insists that slavery was a bad thing. Why couldn't he just stick to baseball? 

Down on Sesame Street, things have been a struggle for some time now. HBO Tyrannous Maximus was airing new episodes on their streaming service and allowing PBS stations to show the old ones after they had been properly drained of their newness. When that contract expired, Netflix O Rama swooped in and agreed to pump money in to The Children's Television Workshop in order to keep Big Bird in his nest. It might be Elmo's World, but somebody's got to pay the rent. Oscar is going to be even grouchier than usual when he finds out that the Federal Government wants his trash can to go condo. 

I won't bore you with stories about how many people I know who learned to read thanks to Cookie Monster and got early math help from The Count. I won't tell you that Public Broadcasting isn't periodically ripe for satire. It is. But it's ours. 

And we need to keep it funded. And protected. 

Flying High Again

 I don't believe it is that difficult to understand the success of the latest iteration of DC comics biggest star. 

Superman, ideally, is for all of us. I have read in a number of different places about how the notion that Superman is "woke" is nothing new. This is the story of a foster kid who grew up believing in the inherent goodness of those around him. He became the walking, talking, flying safety net that we all need. 

What I am about to do is discuss plot points of a popular movie and if you are sensitive to the outcome of the fictional account of a "metahuman" whose basic information is probably better known than most characters in The Bible, then please feel free to come back to this post after you've given the movie a chance to work its magic on you. Then feel free to argue or agree. 

Or you can simply take my word for it: We need Superman right now. 

Here we go: Very early on in James Gunn's adaptation of this legend, we learn that Superman is under fire from the United States Government for intervening on behalf of a country that is being invaded by a strongarm dictator from a hostile neighbor. Just who is this clown who wears his underwear outside his tights and why is he inserting himself into the matters of diplomacy? In an interview that takes place between young lovers Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Clark insists on behalf of his later ego that the answer is simple: Because people were going to die. 

His response was not that of a dispassionate alien observer, but of a human being who chose to stop other human beings from suffering regardless of how it made him look. Public opinion causes Superman's popularity to plummet as politicians and oligarchs such as Lex Luthor (think hairless Elon Musk) seek to manage worldwide economic strategy without considering the lives of those in the way. 

At one point, Supes and his gal pal Lois sit and discuss the challenges of being "the good guy" while an alien invader keeps members of "The Justice Gang" busy just outside their window. The challenge of handling a glowing beast from another world is dismissed when Clark/Superman says, "Oh, they've got this." 

We need Superman for the really big messes. The ones that take a standup guy in a cape without any moral quandaries. Truly psychotic billionaires who seek to rule the planet by any means necessary who jail their political enemies in distant prisons without any sort of due process need to be dealt with by someone who truly understands truth, justice, and the American Way. The Human Way. 

It doesn't matter that he came here as an alien. An immigrant. Superman sees the potential for good and works tirelessly for those ideals. He won't be compromised. It sounds corny, and that may be why the past few versions of this story have skewed into darker territory, hoping to mine the frailties of this adopted Son of Krypton. 

It's not corny. 

It's Super. 

Badlands

 Last week I flippantly suggested that Tulsi Gabbard has evidence connecting Barack Obama to The Teapot Dome Scandal. I made this little jape at the expense of the Director of National Intelligence after she did her very best to obscure the train wreck her boss is currently experiencing in real time. Director Tulsi would like us all to believe that President Obama committed treason back in 2016. The challenge currently is just how much attention we should all give Tulsi's sideshow. Any sort of comment just gives more oxygen to a wildfire of falsehood.

One that should be extinguished on its own, but unfortunately there are far too many bitter and mistreated MAGAts who need fresh meat. So why not go ahead and dangle Teapot Dome in front of them to see who bites first?

If you're not up on your 1920's government corruption, it was a scandal that occurred during Warren G. Harding's administration. It seems that his Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, leased a number of oil reserves at very low rates without any sort of competitive bidding. Two of these locations were in California, but the third was in the nefariously named Wyoming locale of Teapot Dome. Investigated by the Senate, it turned out that Secretary Albert accepted bribes from the oil companies. Fall went to prison. Nobody who gave him the bribes was convicted of any crimes. 

It wasn't until Watergate that our country had anything like it to compare. In what might be considered a stroke of luck on his behalf, Warren G. Harding died before all of the evidence came to light. His successor, Calvin Coolidge managed to keep his nose clean of all this mess and went on to be elected to his own term as President. Calvin managed to squeak on out just ahead of the Crash of 1929. All the money Albert Fall had made was gone after serving a year in prison. Harding is the guy who gets all the blame for The Great Depression. 

All of these guys, it should be noted, were Republicans. 

Which is probably why Tulsi hasn't bothered to spread the rumor I helped create. Oh, and Watergate? That was theirs too. Interesting, since Tulsi wasn't always a Republican. She chose to move on over to the Dark Side. Director of Intelligence? That's kind of an ironic title, right? 

What's All This Then?

 Perspective, as I have mentioned here numerous times, is a powerful thing. 

Let's take, for example, the story of a couple whose relationship may have needed some spicing up. They decided that perhaps a way to bring new life to their bond was to engage in more than just a little necking on a cross-country flight. So prevalent is this notion that it has a name: The Mile High Club. It should be noted here for the sake of accuracy that your standard airliner cruises at a height substantially less than one mile above the earth.

It might also be noted here that engaging in extensive canoodling in a public place is generally most often the kind of hijinks you find in your racier television shows and movies. The shock and dismay experienced by even your casual onlooker would hardly prove to be worth the embarrassment for all parties involved. 

Which does not mean that such things do not happen in real life. Take the case of Christopher Arnold and Trista Reilly who decided, on a flight from New York to Sarasota, to give into temptation and enjoy the way-too-friendly skies. As is so often the case, several children and their mother observed the goings-on and reported them to the authorities. Beyond the story these two have to tell they will be facing charges of lewd and lascivious exhibition. 

Now the perspective part: It's that in the presence of a minor thing that makes things, if you'll pardon the expression, sticky. Now we have ourselves a very unpleasant reckoning. It is not unlike the moment where some guy follows a woman into the dressing room at some posh establishment and their interaction turns out to be less than consensual. Or having older men slavering after girls younger than the age of legal consent. These are crimes as well, and the perpetrators should be arrested and sent to jail. 

Or at least, as was the case for the Coldplay Cam Canoodlers, they could lose their jobs. Like, let's say, if you were The President Of The United States. 

Into The Black

 I never saw Ozzy Osbourne play live. Solo or with Black Sabbath. When I did finally get around to seeing Sabbath in 1982, Ozzy had gone off on his own and I watched Ronnie James Dio front what many believe is the masters of heavy metal. Or is that monsters? 

That show only convinced me of what I already knew: Ozzy was Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath was Ozzy. No disrespect to Mister Dio, who brought his own fire to the proceedings, but he was holding down a spot for the True Prince of Darkness. I wore my copy of Paranoid out. Besides the title cut, this album included gems like Iron Man, War Pigs, and Fairies Wear Boots. 

Across the hall from my freshman dorm room was my connection to what Ozzy had been doing since he left Black Sabbath. My pal Darren had been keeping up with his Ozzness with Diary of a Madman and Bark at the Moon. It was those two albums that got us up off the couch and into the arena to see the Ozzyless Sabbath. I tried not to mention what all this scary music might mean to the soul of an Oklahoma Baptist, since it all seemed like such good cartoon fun at the end of the day. 

Which is pretty much how I viewed Ozzy Osbourne. When he signed on to star in a reality TV show about his family life in 2002, this suspicion was confirmed. Perhaps my favorite moment came when cameras caught the Prince of Darkness taking out the trash. It stood in stark contrast to the legend of the demon who bit the head off a bat on stage and snorted a line of fire ants on a dare from Motley Crue's drummer, Tommy Lee. Whatever the case, this guy was one rock and roll icon who didn't need Spinal Tap for inspiration. 

One of the things Ozzy's later years did do was let us all know just exactly what can happen when you don't manage to burn out. Which doesn't mean he was content to fade away. Just a couple weeks ago, Black Sabbath reunited for what turned out to be their Farewell Concert. Lost of other bands have made a second career out of making their "final appearance," but Ozzy knew his time was short. So he and his mates put on one last show, with the Prince of Darkness singing from his throne, having given up stomping about as he filled the night with scary stories. Back in 2020 he gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he said, “I’m not dying from Parkinson’s. I’ve been working with it most of my life. I’ve cheated death so many times. If tomorrow you read ‘Ozzy Osbourne never woke up this morning,’ you wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, my God!’ You’d go, ‘Well, it finally caught up with him.’”

This past Tuesday, Ozzy boarded the Crazy Train one last time. He stomped on stages across the Globe, and made us all do the same. Raise a pair of devil's horns for Mister Osbourne. He will be missed. 

The Real Thing

 I suppose I could use this moment to be grateful. There was a time when I held one particular vice above all others: My addiction to Coca-Cola. Not just the idea of having a soda. Or any particular cola product. After I had given up adult beverages and other illicit substances, my drug of choice became The Real Thing. Happily for me, I had lived through the "New Coke" debacle of 1985 while consuming mass amounts of Lite Beer from Miller. I hardly noticed. 

Had the Coca-Cola company tried something like that just ten years later, I would have been at the gates in Atlanta, calling for someone's head. Happily enough for me, by the time I had become first and foremost A Coke Drinker exclusively, Old Coke had been restored as the rule. When I popped the tab on a can and poured it over ice, I knew what I was getting. 

Or did I?

In 1984, Coca-Cola had fully transitioned from making their traditional recipe with high fructose corn syrup instead of the more expensive alternative of sugar. As it turns out, I was living, or rather drinking, a lie. It wasn't until much later that I discovered that there were still ways to get The Real Real Thing. Mexican bottlers of Coke were still using sugar, and after some research so were certain bottlers in the United States during Passover. 

As it turns out. I wasn't quite the loyalist I had imagined myself to be. 

Now, decades later, a twice-impeached former game show host is having his way with the world's favorite soft drink. “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” the orange bloviator wrote in a social media post last week. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

While it pains me to agree even tangentially to anything the slides out of the slit below this man's nose, he may be on to something. I won't be finding out for a couple of reasons: Buying a Coke now would be surrender to the chief MAGAt. I would also be inviting my body to rebel by returning to an age when I used to generate kidney stones with a like clockwork due to the phosphoric acid and other poisons found in every bottle and can. 

This is yet another version of the unhealthy hyperbole that issues forth from a man who only consumes Diet Coke, sweetened with aspertame. This is the same guy who has recently insisted that the Cleveland Major League Baseball team and the Washington National Football League team go back to their "original names." The ones he says Native Americans are "clamoring for." Not really.  And he wants you to believe that he's the reason that Stephen Colbert lost his show. It's just more nonsense to obfuscate the reality of what is really happening outside our carefully managed media bubble. The guy whose brain was partially consumed by a worm who was put in charge of America's health would like us to believe that this switch to sugar will make us all healthier. 

Of course it will. 

Wars continue to rage on. ICE continues to kidnap people and send them to concentration camps. Prices continue to climb. 

Even on that six pack of Coke. 

Time to wake up, America. This is the real thing. 

Check In

 Mannie was promoted this past May. 

He's headed to middle school, a place where stronger spirits are forged and I hope we did all we could at Horace Mann to prepare him. It is a concern mirrored across the ages that I have taught, "Have we prepared this kid for the heightened realtiy that comes with the sixth grade?" 

Mannie certainly gave us every reason to believe that he would be capable of managing the transition, not simply because of what we had done for him at the elementary level. He has a very strong presence at home both as a son and as a big brother. He walked to school every day with them. Mom would make sure that both her boys were in their classrooms, ready to learn and would be there when the bell rang at the end of the day to make sure they got where they needed to be after school. This doesn't always denote success, but rather a parent who frets about the trajectory of their child's education. 

Mannie was not one of those. He is a good student, conscientious about his work and, lucky me, excelled in technology. As his computer teacher, this often led to him getting the added responsibility of helping his classmates get signed in, or navigating the interwebs to the assigned spot to begin the hour's work. His skills sometimes put us at odds, since he could find holes in the net I had prepared as a lesson. As a fifth grader, he found himself at times on the challenging end of the behavior spectrum, mostly because he was a fifth grader and needed to test some boundaries. 

But I never worried too much. Partly because we both knew that I would be seeing his mom sooner rather than later, but also because he had a quirky habit of finding those loose threads I have left in old lesson plans. Mannie would return to old Google links that I had used, as far back as first grade, to connect with his class during COVID distance learning. He would send "the class" messages, but after five years no one but he and I were reading them. 

Thus began our correspondence. Sometimes months would pass without a mention. Then I would receive the smallest update on his video game progress, or thoughts he had about some of his classmates. I would reply, often making a mental note to take down the ancient links to make room for new ones. But I didn't want Mannie to be cut off.

Over the summer, Mannie has reached out a couple of times. He wondered if he was the only one who was still connecting from his old first grade meta-classroom. I told him yes, he was the only one. Then he got a little wistful, wondering if he was feeling nostalgic for the "good old days." I suggested that he could now start referring to fifth grade as "the good old days." His reply: "I suppose so."

I went on to suggest that it was only a matter of time before he started to look back at middle school as "the good old days." His response was a very Mannie-like, "I guess."

I think I'll leave that cyber door open for just a little while longer. Just in case Mannie wants to check in with me one more time. 

PDA

 Depending on where you sit in the auditorium, those three letters PDA may mean something different. To many of our tech-savvy readers this three letter acronym may refer to your Personal Data Assistant. This would be especially true if you were still holding on tightly to your Blackberry. If you happen to be seated in our special psych section, you might be thinking of Pathological Demand Avoidance. Not that I'm into labeling or diagnosing or anything like that. 

The rest of you know. PDA stands for (say it with me!) Public Display of Affection. You know. Those moments in which we find ourselves watching uncomfortably close moments shared by two people who are in love and/or need to get a room. Most of us have at one time or another been on the receiving end of such a sight. And maybe you've even been on the transmitting side, swapping a little tongue swab or playing slap and tickle while waiting for the bus. Sometimes we all forget where we are. 

Andy Byron knows exactly where he is, now. He's out of a job. If that name doesn't ring a bell, you may have been away from all manner of media over the past week and a half. Andy was, up until recently, the Chief Executive Officer of Astronomer, a tech company that  specializes in data workflow management, particularly with Apache Airflow. Andy won't be reporting to work anytime soon because of PDA. And the way that some data got managed. 

Specifically the image of Andy at a July 16 Coldplay concert at which he was caught on a "kiss cam" and projected on a screen for thousands in attendance to see. The mildly intimate moment was cut short when Andy and his PDA partner ducked out of view. At this point, lead singer Chris Martin suggested, “Oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.”

Or both. Thanks to the ever-lengthening tentacles of social media, that moment went, as the kids say, "viral." The identity of the woman captured in that awkward moment turned out not to be Mrs. Andy but rather the head of his former company's Human Resources Department, Kristin "not Byron" Cabot. 

Oops. 

If you are unfamiliar with the "kiss cam" trend, before you head out to your next major sporting event or concert, you probably want to consider your options when the leering eye of social media comes calling. As for yours truly, I make a point of kissing my wife whenever she comes to visit me at my school. Nothing too salacious. Just enough to gross out the kids. And anyone else who might get it into their heads to post it on TikTok. 

How We Do Things Downtown

 It is a decidedly different landscape. 

This past weekend, a man who ran his car through a crowd of people waiting to enter a nightclub in Los Angeles. Thirty people were injured, but the driver was pulled from the car by the rest of the bystanders. And shot. 

Some might call it karma. Others might call it justice. Whatever you'd like to name it, the crime and punishment was meted out in rather abrupt and some might suggest efficient terms.

This kind of event sets an interesting counterpoint to the ongoing discussion of The Epstein List. It surprises me that the country seems to need some sort of documented proof that the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who paid hush money to a porn star to cover up his affair with her while his wife was pregnant with his child might be involved in the illicit goings on with one Jefferey Epstein. 

The hoops through which those seeking verification of illicit conduct on the part of this morally bankrupt individual seems ridiculous in the extreme. "Oh, those files? I know right where they are. On my desk. You'll have them in the morning."

When morning comes: "What files?"

None of the families of the underage victims of the Epstein client list are dragging the perps out into the street and shooting them. Or naming them. They continue to stand by and wait for the wheels to turn ever so slowly while consequences are meted out for much less egregious offenses at the hands of less famous, infamous, or rich defendants. 

698 out of every 100,000 Americans is currently incarcerated. Events like the one in Los Angeles last week probably won't move the needle very far one way or another. The courts won't be bogged down with a lot of pleas and motions since the punishment has already been handed down. What about this guy, wandering around the country, playing golf and dropping bombs on other countries with an extensive rap sheet? Why can't we find a cell for him?

Is it because we don't have the will to put a president, even a truly awful president, in jail? 

I think we should get over that. 

Soon. 

Not Pretty

 Remember just a few days back when I suggested that you might all be concerned about my well=being if one day you should stop by this corner of Al Gore's Internet and find it empty? At that time I was practicing a little technique called "hyperbole" in which a writer uses exaggerated statements not meant to be taken at their full face value. For those of you who don't "write," you may experience this in your everyday life when you are "just kidding." 

I am currently kidding just a little less about this becoming a blank corner of cyberspace. It comes about as Stephen Colbert, host of the Columbia Broadcasting System's program The Late Show, begins the slow ten month slide into oblivion. Previous iterations of this move has seen networks shuffle in fresh blood to the challenging apres-news slot on weeknights. This usually ends up with the cast and crew of the old guard being shown the door while some brash newcomer comes waltzing in to set up shop behind the desk with a brand new band and the opportunity for celebrities to explain their new movies, shows, books or failed relationships. 

There is a natural cycle to these things. 

That cycle ends as the "front office," as late night host David Letterman used to put it, is going scorched earth on The Late Show. No new host. No new desk. No new band. No more Late Show. The suits insisted this was, "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night." They called Colbert irreplaceable and said the show's ending was "not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount." 

"Other matters happening at Paramount." You mean like the merger with Skydance Media? The one that caused CBS to pay out sixteen million dollars to pay off a frivolous lawsuit brought by the former NBC employee who ended up winning the 2024 election in spite of the editing of an interview that took place on Sixty Minutes. Many felt this was Paraount, the owners of CBS, selling out Sixty Minutes and the First Amendment to grease the wheels at the FCC so that the merger could take place. The FCC that is controlled, as much as anything the former game show host controls, by the "president." 

This payout was referred to as "a big fat bribe" by Paramount employee (checks notes), one Stepehn Colbert. Just a couple of nights later, Mister Colbert got the call from "the home office." That was right about the time that Paramount employee (checks notes again) Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert's former boss at The Daily Show, began to ponder his own future as part of Skydance Media. The aforementioned "future" does not appear to be bright for a talk show host who has been even more openly critical of the former game show host than is protege. 

Which makes things back in South Park just as tenuous. The animated series about the periodically whimsical and sometimes scatological adventures of a bunch of kids in a moderately fictional town in Colorado is also under scrutiny as billions of dollars get shoveled around in order to turn one little company into one great big one. If you're part of that "home office," then you would rather that things were easy and compliant. 

That is not the best way to foster free speech. As a matter of fact, that's a really great way to shut it down. People are losing their jobs because of it. The Late Show, or as we may now refer to it, The late Late Show was the highest rated show in its time slot this past year. How many minutes before they come for Kimmel and Fallon? It seems likely that after being forcefed the news of the day, Americans will be subjected to infomercials for gold sneakers or perfume that smells like golf towels. The powers that be like to toss around the phrase, "changing demograpic." I believe this is mostly true if their target is the TV that never gets turned off at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

When comedy is outlawed, only outlaws will do their standup in the lounge by the airport. 

Get mad, America. 

Things Are Bad

  "I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it."

This was the speech that went through my mind just before I sat down to write today's episode of how bad things are. If you don't recognize them, it is the preamble of TV newsman Howard Beale. Fictional TV newsman Howard Beale, from the film Network. If you've never seen it, or perhaps you've seen it and have forgotten it, I can tell you that it was prescient. If you're not sure what "prescient" means, I'll give you a few minutes to do your research, but promise to come back here. 

I'll wait. Things probably won't be much worse by the time you come back. 

Okay. 

So if that movie was made back in 1976. Almost fifty years ago. It accurately predicted the coming of infotainment, reality TV and a world that seemed happy to do whatever their television told them to do. If anything, it might have come up a little short, not having the TV personality become President of the United States. 

Howard continued, way back when: "It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!"

Fifty years later, are you mad? There is a saying, often attributed to Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against The Machine, that goes, "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention." Tom quite likely is not  the original source of this sentiment, and it may predate the ravings of Howard Beale. But I agree with Howard and Tom. Now is not the time to sit quietly in your living rooms. It's time to get up and go to your window, open it up and stick your head out. 

And yell. 

If you're not sure what to yell, I'll give you another couple of minutes to review. 

Let me know if you heard anyone else yelling. 

Never?

 Incredulous. 

That was the reaction I received from my wife. The woman who has known me since Ronald Reagan was president. A great portion of that time we have shared meals, bills, and lists of household repairs. How could it have slipped her notice that I do not have a passport?

Well, as it turns out, I am currently in the process of acquiring one. That didn't keep my wife from exclaiming at each juncture along the way, "How can this be?"

Never smoked a cigarette. Never had a cup of coffee. Never used Chapstick. You can go ahead and add having a passport to that list.

Then take it right off because all of that is about to change. The passport stuff, not the cigarettes, coffee or Chapstick. I have officially applied for a United States Passport. I made the appointment at my local post office. Or a nearby post office, since as it turns out part of the many hoops through which one must jump in order to attain that little blue book is to find a place that will assist in procuring this very important document. 

In the days leading up to my appointment, I kept pestering my wife about the location of my birth certificate, and if she wouldn't mind so very much taking a two inch by two inch photo of my head to past on the application. Each of these requests was met with a pause, and then an exasperated repeat of the phrase, "You don't already have a passport?"

Well, no. I have lived a rather full life safely within the boundaries of those places where I would not require additional documentation to go. When I went to Mexico, and I have been to Mexico, On four separate occasions. All of these excursions took place before 2008 when the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was put in place. The same can be said of the detour my brothers and I made with my dad on a road trip home from New York that found us spending a few chilly but amusing hours in Canada. 

No passport. 

Can you believe that? 

My wife, the seasoned and veteran traveler has smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of coffee and used Chapstick. She also has her very own passport. So much so that she found herself in need of getting hers renewed. Renewed to the tune of it having been expired. 

Can you believe that? 

So, a few weeks from now with the good graces of the U.S. State Department, we will find ourselves aligned once again. 

No Chapstick for me. 

Name That Tune

 Sooner or later, God'll cut you down

These are lyrics from a song that come from a traditional American Folk Song entitled "God's Gonna Cut You Down." It has been recorded in various versions by artists from Elvis to Moby. Into this mix, we toss Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who took Johnny Cash as their inspiration. And of course it might go without saying that all of these interpretations had their beginnings in The Bible. 

Which is probably how some clever media influencer working for the Department of Homeland Security decided to lift a verse from the Book of Isaiah: "Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I, send me.' " The audio was lifted from the 2014 film Fury, set in the war torn European theater of WWII. Behind the dialogue supplied by Shia LaBeouf the yingyangs in the DHS recruitment office chose the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's version of the aforementioned folk song. Then they put all that audio behind footage of  ICE agents patrolling a river, flying over the border wall, and looking through night vision goggles at "the enemy." With the ominous reminder, "God's gonna cut you down." 

No word yet from Shia, but like so very many artists have already done, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club asked the goons in charge to cease and desist. In part, their response: “It’s obvious that you don’t respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights, not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution. For the record, we hereby order @dhsgov to cease and desist the use of our recording and demand that you immediately pull down your video.“ Then they went ahead and gave them a suggestion about what they might do with their free time once they had deleted the video. 

The selection of Isaiah for the Trumpreich's self-righteous attempt to cloak the kidnapping and torture of immigrants as some sort of Holy Mission isn't a surprise. The Old Testament offers plenty of vengefulness and wrath. However, many theologians would disagree with ICE Barbie and her masked minions. Pastor JK Forateros wrote: "...ethnic nationalism was not the message God called Isaiah to deliver. As the Bible makes clear, God’s message delivered through Isaiah was one of impending judgment, precisely because the people of Judah ignored God’s calls for justice and instead were continuing to oppress people who were poor, widowed, orphaned, and refugees."

Yup, even the Old Testament God believed in social justice. And yes, sooner or later, God's gonna cut them down. 

Top Down

  Will the last one out of the Department of Education please turn off the lights. 

If, that is, the building has not been burned to the ground. 

Being away from my classroom for the past month and a half, I have been able to keep my mind on the other tragedies that are befalling our nation as Project 2025 begins to take hold. While it is true that the ongoing siege by masked thugs in our cities and on the farms of this great land of ours reminds me that the families that I have served for nearly thirty years are at risk of being torn apart, I find myself wondering what I will be allowed to do once I get back there.

I suppose it would be easy enough to surrender to the seemingly inevitable end of the United States Department of Education. The very Republican ideal of turning the reins of education policy over to individual states wouldn't affect me abruptly, living as I do in the People's Republic of California. Here in the Bay Area, land of the Black Panthers and all things LGBTQ+, I expect it would take some time for the wokeness to be turned back. Here in Oakland, our hearts bleed proudly and profoundly. 

Sometimes to distraction. 

There are times when our push to be progressive gets in the way of our ability to affect change in our students. It's a forest/trees problem. But I am grateful to be working in a place where my profession is not bogged down by the dogma of a bunch of uptight bureaucrats whose focus is on the way things used to be instead of how things should be. 

The Supreme Court ruled that the Executive Branch  has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies. This decision allowed The Trumpreich to cut staff in departments across the government. Nowhere is this more true than at the Department of Education, which is currently being razed in anticipation of the Secretary of Education doing exactly what her boss asked: To put herself out of a job.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the role of the Department of Education, this is the body that ensures equal access to education, and distributes federal funding for educational programs. It also works to enforce civil rights laws in schools and supports research to improve teaching and learning. More simply put, this keeps the playing field level across the aforementioned great land of ours. City to city. District to district. County to county. State to state. 

School to school. 

I would be lying if I said that I believed that public education in the United States does not need to be reformed. There has been a constant need for tweaking and revamping since the Boston Latin School opened in 1635. It continues to prepare students for college and the world beyond grades seven through twelve, and it's worth noting that it only became coed in 1972. The school where I work was opened in 1912. Things in Oakland were very different back then. What we teach has changed right along with who we teach. Over the past fifty years the additional federal funds have helped us continue to offer our best to the kids in our neighborhood. The money that came from the Department of Education. The Federal Government. 

The same Federal Government that just decided to double the budget of the Immigration And Customs Enforcement, just as they empty out the offices of the Department of Education. 

Something about that stinks. I take that back: All of that stinks. From the top down. 

For Whom The Bells Toll

 Blame, according to Texas governor Jim Abbott, is "the word choice of losers." This comment was buried somewhere in the midst of a football analogy he was constructing in the aftermath of the floods in Kerr County that killed more than one hundred people with one hundred seventy-one additional still missing. By Governor Jim's reckoning, only teams that lose have to look for blame. Since he's not interested in that, we can only assume that he feels like the loss of hundreds of lives in his state was "winning."

Meanwhile, everyone's favorite Puppy Killer and titular head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Kristi Noem was doing her own sideways shuffle to avoid any finger pointing. While debris and death was everywhere in Central Texas, Kristi was busy conducting an Instagram poll asking her followers to choose which portrait she should hang in the South Dakota State Capitol. This, along with personnel cuts within the agency she has been tasked to dismantle, was the reason why it took three days to get FEMA support to the flood victims.  

Then there's the head of the snake, everyone's favorite convicted felon, who insisted the Ms. Kristi had done a :"great job" handling the disaster because he saw her on TV. Never mind the carnage at Camp Mystic, Kristi showed up on the television, assuring us all that everything was fine. A few days later, The former game show host made his way down to the Lone Star State to make his own video presence felt. He brought along his posse, including severe weather expert (checks notes) Doctor Phil. 

When he returned to his coop in Washington, the head chicken sat down for a chat with his daughter-in-law Lara, who happens to have her own show on Faux News. She asked daddy-in-law, ”What is your message to the people who are suffering down there, to the parents of the young girls at the camp who were killed?”

To this, the self-professed "very stable genius" replied, ”There can be nothing worse than losing a child, and the way this happened… there was very early warning, they warned the day before, they warned even two days before, they warned four hours before.” Then he suggested, ”Maybe they should have had bells… or something, go off. But it’s pretty dangerous territory when you think of all the times they’ve had this problem.”

Except any sort of "bell system" was rejected by voters in Texas, even though the Guadalupe River had been the subject of great concern. 

Which brings us back to the top of the circle once again. No blame. Just needless death. 

Situation normal. 

Nice

 If one day you click on this link and you see a blank space it could very well be that the Gestapo has come for me. At last. After all these years and all these blog posts, I am certain that there is something in there for the Secret Police to find offense. There are, for better or worse, plenty of folks ahead of me for the MAGA Police to scoop up ahead of me, but regrettably it feels like the walls are closing in.

This past week the convicted felon who is currently making a mockery of our system of government and justice declared a new threat to his new society: Rosie O'Donnell. He referred to Ms. O'Donnell as "a threat to humanity" and said he was "seriously considering revoking her American citizenship. 

A couple of things here: First of all, I wasn't aware that Rosie O'Donnell was not American born and raised, not that this is something that would stand in the way of the former game show host's draconian measures for making America "great" again. I had forgotten that she had moved to Ireland shortly after the 2024 election. Because of the results of the 2024 election. She was born in New York, just a few months before I entered the world via Colorado. Her parents had emigrated to these shores from Ireland, so her path to Irish citizenship is a pretty straightforward one. 

The second bit is the sudden interest in revoking individual's citizenship by the (checks notes) President of the United States. To be certain, this is an individual who does not shy away from hyperbole, but "threat to humanity?" The woman that once proudly bore the nickname "Queen of Nice" while she hosted her own talk show in the late 1990s? 

Well, she wasn't always that nice to the former game show host. Back when he was still just a slumlord who got his own TV show, Rosie took issue with his "moral authority." This was back in 2006 when she was a regular on The View. Over the past two decades, these two have not had a chance to make any significant inroads in their relationship. To wit, Ms. O'Donnell responded to the adjudicated rapist upon hearing that he was considering revoking her citizenship:  “The president of the usa has always hated the fact that i see him for who he is – a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself – this is why i moved to ireland – he is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity- i stand in direct opposition all he represents- so do millions of others – u gonna deport all who stand against ur evil tendencies – ur a bad joke who cant form a coherent sentence.” The creative spelling and capitalization comes from the Instagram post she used to return volley. 

I confess that my personal feud with the Orange Oligarch does not go back as far as Rosie's, but now that I have put out reminders of just how little she thinks of him on top of my own firmly established disdain, I can only hope that the masked agents knock on the door before busting it down. 

Young Man's Game

 "Hope I die before I get old." 

I have quoted these words here in this spot more times than I can count. Which is probably connected to some sort of early onset memory decline on my part, but it points to the way that youth is wasted on the youth. When Roger Daltry first started singing those lyrics, he was twenty-one years of age. That's a pretty snarky bit of angry young man angst to be hurling about, but to be fair it they were written by a much younger man (checks notes), Pete Townshend. Pete was a mere twenty years old when he wrote My Generation. If I have done my math correctly, at least three more generations have piled up behind these gentlemen while they have staunchly refused to "f-f-f-fade away." 

I bring this up because the remaining half of the band that claimed they would not get fooled again continue to tour. The last time they performed the anthem in question was just a few months back, and they are setting about to tour "one more time." Without a trace of irony, they have named this "farewell tour" after yet another one of their hits: The Song Is Over. 

Now seems like as good a time as any to mention that the boys of Spinal Tap are preparing a sequel to their mockumentary, slated for release around the time Roger and Pete will be appearing on The Budweiser Stage in Ontario, Canada. All of which is fine with me, since the surviving members of DEVO and the B-52s will be taking that same stage a few days after the remaining members of The Who bring their show to the Great White North. 

All of this is fine with me as a fan of the somewhat overstuffed category called "classic rock," but I feel like it bears mention that the most recent iteration of the touring band called The Who will be going on the road without their replacement drummer. Zak Starkey, son of Classic Rock legend Ringo Starr, was fired not once but twice from The Who in recent months, bringing the total number of percussionists for the group to four, pending the hiring of a new drummer for this most recent jaunt across North America. Mister Starkey, a sprightly fifty-nine years old, was sacked for his "overplaying" at a pair of charity shows back in March. At the time, Roger complained to the crowd, “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”

Apparently this did not live up to the very high standards set for the group. Which must have been set sometime after Keith Moon's time behind the kit, since he once died during a gig in San Francisco back in 1973, and had to be replaced by a member of the audience to finish out the set. Keith was revived and managed to stick with the group for another five years before his chaotic life really did catch up to him. He was joined in rock and roll heaven by bassist John Entwhistle in 2002. Kudos to Pete and Roger for not buying the clue set out in front of them. 

In a time when the Piano Man Billy Joel is cancelling dates because of a brain disorder, and even The Cure can only muster up one original member to go on tour, who can blame the guys left in The Who for showing off their continued relative vitality? Though I do think the next Farewell Tour should be called The "You Kids Get Off Of My Lawn Tour." 

Did I mention Neil Young is on tour this summer? Irony can be so ironic sometimes. 

The Look

“A man who Photoshops his picture is a woman." - Jesse "Holdyer" Watters

Last Wednesday, Bill O'Reilly Lite used his post on Faux News to reference a picture of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that appeared to have been altered. Altered in such a way as to make it appear that Hakeem was taller, or his hips were thinner, or maybe it wasn't "fixed" in any way and he just happened to be leaning up against a peculiarly warped park bench. 

Please understand that I am not above ridiculing anyone for their vanity. This would include things like comb-overs and fake tans. Or someone who insists that they are six foot three inches tall and weigh two hundred twenty-four pounds when rumors of his booking information in New York City had him shorter and wider than that. Should we be judging a man by the size of his jeans or by the content of his character?

But what makes it all the more galling is that Jesse "Shallow" Watters seems quite comfortable in 2025 ascribing certain affectations to women and not to men. Understandably this comes from a "man" who works for a company that has made a practice of denigrating women, he probably feels he is simply upholding the standard set by his predecessors. Like so many of his male brethren, he has scars that are aggravated by his daily return to the makeup chair before he goes on the air, preforming a job that a whole host of women do without ever questioning outwardly his own masculinity. 

It's more than a little absurd that this denizen of the infotainment business feels so free to assign gender roles to situations that are so obviously native to his own livelihood. Image is everything, and appearing hale and hearty while lambasting others who seek to do the same is hypocritical in the extreme. Rules, it should be remembered, were made to be broken.