And Throw Away the Key!

 

by Pa Rock

Law-Abiding Citizen

(Note:  I learned yesterday that the internet customers in my area who are stuck with the same service provider as me are all without wifi – and that it should be connected by 7:30 this evening.  Of course, the “offshore” fellow who told me that probably did not factor in the Biblical storms that are supposed to hit our area this afternoon.  It is probably for the best that I am literally unplugged from the rest of the world today!
 
The wifi went out just yesterday afternoon and for the rest of the day my news intake was severely limited.  The television, smart speakers, and home computer are all dependent on wifi.  I have one small clock radio that gets staticky reception on its good days, the car radio, and my phone – and I am truly a novice at accessing the internet with my phone.)

 
I knew that I was going to have to get more familiar with my phone when a friend from St. Louis texted the following yesterday at 4:40 p.m.:
 

“Do you have your phone on?  Indictment!”

Indictment!  What a beautiful word!  

As I began trying to figure out how to access the internet with the phone, it rang.  My friend was on the line and she gave me all of the details – which were skimpy at that time.  The grand jury in New York working on the Stormy Daniels’ hush money case had voted to indict Trump.   Kevin McCarthy was going to use his “power” to get even, and he was apparently blaming Biden.   Don Junior had given an incoherent statement invoking or blaming Pol Pot,  and Pappy Trump was being quiet as he tried to figure out how best to play the situation for maximum benefit to himself - the world's most persecuted victim!
 
And poor old Pa Rock was sitting in out in the woods in southern Missouri and missing all the fun.   (I finally did find a good article about the melodrama – via my phone – on the “Rolling Stone" website.)
 
I’m glad that Donald Trump was indicted.  The consummate grifter intentionally broke the law by spending money to influence his 2016 election and then didn’t report it, in clear violation of campaign finance laws.  He also tried to obfuscate the money trail.   If I break the law, I will go to jail – and so should Donald John Trump!  No one is above the law!
 
Trump has been using his position both as a former President as well as a current candidate for President to justify being above the law.  Being a former President and running for President make him a recognizable public personage, but those qualities acquired through the political process do not make him immune to state and national laws – nor should they!
 
Donald Trump’s vision of America is a place that grants him the power to pardon criminals like Joe Arpaio, honor bigots and misogynists like Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, keep a highly respected black woman like Harriett Tubman off of America’s currency, trash the Supreme Court with incompetent or marginal nominees, foment revolution, and pose for pictures with gun-toting, murderous  vigilantes - and to regard America as a place where he is a special person who is allowed to basically do as he pleases.
 
One thing is certain:  Joe Biden will not be pardoning Trump.  But perhaps Biden should award Stormy Daniels the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  She is far more deserving of the honor than Limbaugh!

And it will be one mighty cold day in hell when this law-abiding citizen feels any sympathy for Donald Trump.  To paraphrase retired Army General Michael Flynn:   "Lock him up!  Lock him up!"

And throw away the key!
 

Big Wind's A-Coming!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I managed to get my internet turned back on this past Monday after several nice visits with three individual representatives of my internet company who all seemed to be working phone banks in a large, very noisy building located somewhere on the Indian sub-continent.  The first was a very pleasant young lady who took all of my information and then said she was running some tests on my connection.  Soon she announced the standard first-level response - that I needed a new modern.  I told her that she was wrong, politely, of course, and asked for a second opinion.  I visited with the second person while she, too tested my connection.  As we talked I asked her where she was physically located.  She answered, quite honestly - I suspect - that she was "off-shore" but was forbidden to say exactly where.

When the second representative did not try to sell me an unnecessary modem, I thought we might be nearing some form of resolution.  I was soon transferred to a third person who told me that it was a connectivity problem and likely the company's issue.  He sent a repairman that day and he got me hooked back up from their box without ever even coming on my property.

New modem, indeed!

That was Monday, this is Thursday and I. am back in the McDonald's parking lot because  my internet service just went out again.  This outage is also probably weather related.  Storms are heading this way and a change in the atmosphere is already evident.  Tomorrow my town and much of the state is under a "wind advisory" from one p.m. until one a.m., and there are reports that tornadoes may be in the mix. It's going to be one of those days!  I have already cancelled a doctor's appointment in Springfield that had been scheduled for tomorrow, and today I will take a few provisions to the basement just in case.

If tomorrow's blog posting is very late it is probably because Rosie I are waiting on some Good Samaritan to come by and dig us out of our shelter!

It's springtime in the Ozarks!

One Indicator of the GOP Preferiti

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The Epoch Times is a right-wing trashcan liner posing as a newspaper that shows up free in my mailbox two or three times a year.   It is sent out free to entice people to subscribe, and the company probably assumes that since I am a septuagenarian living on a country road in the sixth reddest congressional district in America, I am not too bright and a Republican.  Well, they are wrong - at least about the Republican part!

I also receive three or four vocabulary builders in my email in-box each day, services that I enjoy and to which I subscribe.   This morning one of those vocabulary builders - Synonym of the Day by Thesarus.com - started off with a small ad from The Epoch Times.  The ad was an interactive poll listing four GOP extremists and asking "Who do you want the Republican nominee to be in 2024?"  The four choices were (in this order):  Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, and Ted Cruz.

It was obviously a lure to obtain email addresses and try to peddle their product - the newspaper, but I clicked on a name anyway just to observe the full scam.  I chose Glenn Youngkin out of pity because they had misspelled the governor of Virginia's name in the come-on as "Gleen" Youngkin.  Checking that name immediately took me to The Epoch Times website and the current on-line edition of the newspaper.  Then, a moment later, a nicer version of the poll appeared, this time with color photos of each of the candidates - including a clean-shaven Cruz.  Now, in order to vote and to receive a look at the poll results so far, participants had to include their email addresses.  Imagine that!  

I stopped at that point.

There are plenty of Republican hate-fueled politicians who would love to be president.   I suspect that The Epoch Times just provided the insider's view of the party's preferiti, not only in who they chose to include in this quick survey, but also in the order of placement.    

The message was:   here are four men who are acceptable as GOP presidential candidates to the people who finance and put out our newspaper -  please rank them for us.  The project automatically excluded Pence, Haley, Hawley, Sununu, Christie, and a host of others.  If the goal had actually been to learn what the people were thinking, they would have included more than four candidates - or a blank for writing in voter preferences, but the poll had at least as much to do with influencing voters as it did with actually learning their preferences.

After getting as far as seeing the actual ballot, I stopped.  I dislike The Epoch Times occasionally stuffing their clutter in my mailbox, and I damned sure don't want them taking advantage of free email and trashing up my email in-box as well.  Perhaps if their survey had included a blank line for my actual preference, I would have entered "Jon Stewart"or maybe even "Wanda Sykes," and then sat back and awaited divine intervention from one of their prayer circles. 

Or maybe even one of their crop circles!

The Low Art of Winning News Cycles: A Nasty Business

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A friend forwarded an article from Newsweek this morning focusing on what appeared to be some contradictory positions held by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.  The congresswoman, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, had gone to Smyrna, Georgia, earlier this week with a few other members of Congress to observe (oversee) an Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco (ATF) inspection of what is billed as the "world's largest gun store."   While there she had apparently questioned (harassed?) the sixteen federal agents who were conducting the inspection, and then reported - via Twitter -  that they were from such faraway places as Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The unspoken message to her supporters was "here is big government raining down on your God-given right to own as many guns as you can fit in your trailer."   Then, after yesterday's awful school shooting in Nashville in which three nine-year-olds were murdered - along with three adults in their sixties - Greene, the staunch pro-gun advocate, was quick to blame President Biden for not protecting the school children.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Marge!

Contradiction and dangerous nonsense - but it was plenty to get me thinking about the controversial legislator.  I am not a fan, so my thoughts were not of a positive nature, but plenty of her supporters also read the same story - or variations - in the national press, and were impressed by her stagecraft and chutzpah.  Marge had communicated strength and resolve to the people who mattered to her.  She had spread her name and fame, and reinforced herself in right-wing America by winning that news cycle.

Then, with that awfulness still in my head, I stopped by MSNBC on the internet and came across an editorial by Jacques Berlinerblau who was writing about Trump's new political anthem - "Justice for All" - a political hodgepodge of propaganda that he debuted at his Waco Rally on Saturday.  The writer stressed the importance of not dismissing political gimmicks and stunts as unimportant or irrelevant, but to remember that they still warm the hearts of his supporters - and that they do serve as news diversions which the press runs to cover.   And by drawing massive amounts of attention, stunts and gimmicks win news cycles.

Some might argue that in America we have a limited tolerance of policy discussion and the more mundane aspects of governance, but lob a piece of red meat our way and we are all over it.  We don't want to be educated as much as we want to be entertained - and Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are entertaining while playing to humanity's basest instincts -  racism, homophobia, greed, and violence - and making their supporters feel good about their darker urges.  And with each stunt, gimmick, or spectacular lie that those political charlatans unleash on America, they capture another news cycle and spread their name and fame - while also spreading journalism's shame.

Trump's anthem, "Justice for All," referenced above, is credited to "Donald J. Trump and the J6 Choir."

I've not bothered to listen to it, but according to the MSNBC commentator, Jacques Berlinerblau, a group of supposed insurrectionists who are currently housed in the DC jail recorded the "Star-Spangled Banner" on a cell phone, and then the song was interspersed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  In commenting on the importance of not dismissing the piece of propaganda as just a low quality stunt, Mr. Berlinerblau offered this assessment:

"Is it art?  At this point it really doesn't matter.  Given the reach and pervasiveness of ultraconservative creative expression, it is extremely dangerous.   The MAGA juggernaut is built (and funded) to dominate every single news cycle.  The operation is structured to fling more outrageous content at the country in one day than it can possibly process in a year.  If 'the cruelty is the point,' then saturation is the delivery mechanism."

They keep flinging, we keep reacting, and before you know it the Oval Office is once again awash in Big Macs!

Winning news cycles is an art, albeit a damned low art, and Republicans are its master.  They fling crap, and the press grabs it up and flings it again.

It's a nasty business.

Another Update from the McDonald's Parking Lot

 

by Pa Rock

Struggling Blogger

I often use this space to comment on stories in the news that pique my interest.  I use the internet and news updates from National Public Radio (NPR) through Alexas to stay current on what is happening in the world and in my state and community.  When I returned home from Kansas City on Saturday I was predictably sad to find that my internet service was down, no wifi, not a damned drop of it!  No house internet, no television, and Alexa was caput.  My instant access to the world around me had been severed.

My son told me that it had all gone out late Friday evening during a serious thunder and lightening storm.  And it was a weekend (of course) when reaching thee company would be almost impossible.  I checked with my four neighbors.  Two, it turns out, do not have a home wifi connection, and the one that does said that his was fine - but that he had heard the awful lightening strike that had probably gotten mine.   Being apparently a singleton outage, I would have to call the provider myself.  

And who was the provider anyway?  My bill showed that there had been three different providers in the past year.  Today, Monday, a lot of energy will be consumed trying to figure out who to complain to - and then hope they have a local repair crew

So if these blogs are beginning to sound disjointed - or more disjointed than usual - at least now you know the rest of the story!  (I'll bet H.L. Mencken never had to type in his car!)

Governor Parson's Property Values Get an Uplift

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When I am out on the road on long drives, as I was two days this week, I like to keep track of oddities that I see along the way.  This week as I traveled to and from the Kansas City area, across a couple of hundred miles of Missouri, the thing that caught my attention was all of the state road crews out picking up trash along the roadways.   I counted six full crews of Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) personnel, all snuggled up in their reflective gear, walking next to the roads bagging trash - along with multiple MoDOT vehicles with each crew.

Two of the crews were within the city limits of Bolivar, Missouri, (population approximately 11,000) doing their environmentally friendly task on both sides and the median of four-lane Missouri Highway 13.  (Bolivar is about thirty miles due north of Springfield, the home of Southwest Baptist "University" - an institution once headed by Republican politician and lobbyist Ol' Roy Blunt - and the home of Missouri's current governor-by-default, Mike Parson.  Parson owns a farm somewhere nearby and I suspect it is a cattle operation because he is fluent in bull.)

The GOP majority Missouri state legislature prides itself on continually underfunding public education and social services in the state.   In order to do that in as mean-spirited of a manner as possible, they must find ways to divert much of the state's revenue to things they can tolerate - like finding creative ways to get state funds into the coffers of private and religious schools, giving tax breaks to the state's richest residents, and anything else that would have minimal benefit to most Missourians in need.

So let's go pick up trash, and, if in the process it benefits the governor and his coffee shop buddies with improved property values - well, that's just gravy!

I saw all of those road crews on Thursday as I was driving toward Kansas City.  Yesterday (Saturday) as I was driving home  to West Plains, I encountered one more item of relevance to that story.  I didn't see any road crews out picking up trash, perhaps MoDOT does not work on weekends, but I did see a roadside mess at exactly the same spot in Bolivar where I had observed state workers bagging trash two days earlier - and a couple of state highway patrolmen standing by the mess and looking very unhappy.

An old flatbed truck which had been jerry-rigged with what looked like plywood panels in order to carry trash, had lost one of its panels on the highway and scattered tufts of used pink fiberglass insulation for about a quarter-of-a-mile along the highway's grassy median. The pink fluff was everywhere, and it was going to be a bear-of-a-mess to clean up!

If Mike was in Bolivar this weekend, I'm sure he got an earful about it in the coffee shop!

(Political footnote:  One state Republican who is likely to run to replace Mike Parson when he terms out as governor next year is Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, son of John.  Jay lived and worked for awhile in West Plains and even married a West Plains girl.  Maybe if he gets elected it will be our turn at the state money trough!)

Breakfast with Satan

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

This morning as Rosie and I were preparing to leave Roeland Park, Kansas, for the 277-mile drive back to our home in West Plains, Missouri, we pulled into the McDonald’s that is closest to my son’s home.  It was early, about 7:00 a.m., and there was only one other customer going through the drive-through.  I placed my order through the speaker:  one carton of white milk, one large, unsweet iced tea with extra ice, and one sausage-egg McMuffin.    I didn’t check the prices, but suspected from experience that a ten dollar bill should cover it, so I was pleased when the slow talking youth taking the order said “that will be six dollars . . .”

 

“Sweet,” I thought, anticipating four dollars in change to squander along the long road home.

 

And then the young man added, “and sixty-six cents.”

 

Whoa!   A $6.66 breakfast at the start of a road trip that would last almost five hours!   Should I modify the order and say something like “Make that two milks.”  Or  “Hey sir, please add an apple pie to that order.”  Or, should I just roll with it and stay extra vigilant on the scenic drive down into the Ozarks.

 

As I slowly drove up to the serving window, I made a very calculated decision not to change any of the order and just accept it as it was placed, along with whatever the fates had to offer.  Rosie didn’t seem to mind that she  didn’t get a vote in the matter, but she was appreciative of her share of the sandwich.

 

At the pick-up window I handed the young man behind the voice a ten dollar bill and commented that it was an “interesting total.”  He looked at the ticket and took a moment to figure out what I was talking about – and then he grinned and said, “Our food is good.  I promise.”

 

And it was.  We arrived home safely just minutes after noon.  Of course, within a few more minutes I learned that our internet has been down two days with no way to contact the provider until Monday - and I am as dependent on wifi as some people are with air and water!

Maybe I should have added that apple pie after all!

I blame Trump!

(Post note:  Last night as I sat down at my desk to record my steps for the day into my medical log, I was not the least bit surprised to see that I had walked a total of 8,666 steps that day!  But . . . I has survived the day from hell!)

Hamilton Does Kansas City!

 

by Pa Rock

Proud Grandpa

The Music Hall Theatre at the Kansas City Convention Center seats just north of 2,300 people, and as far as I could determine, the only two empty seats in the entire venue last night were the two just in front of my granddaughter, Olive, and myself, a fact which made our commanding aerial view of the stage even more stunning.  Kansas City turned out in full, joyous force to watch the traveling regional production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's marvelous hit musical, "Hamilton.," which is being staged at the Music Hall nightly from March 21 through April 2.  

The play, a historical retelling of the American Revolution and the daunting prospect of forming an actual functioning government after the war had been won, was viewed from the primary perspective of George Washington's most influential cabinet member, Alexander Hamilton, our country's first Secretary of the Treasury and the person who created the structure for financing the nation that was so refined and complex that when Thomas Jefferson became President he could not figure out a way to return the pursestrings to the states.

The beautifully staged work also featured perspectives on the infancy of the United States of America from Hamilton's wife and son, as well as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Aaron Burr, the Marquis de Lafayette, and even Britain's King George, III.  The play was based on the book, "Alexander Hamilton," by Ron Chernow. 

But "Hamilton" is so much more than just a recitation of history.  The music - clever rhymes and lyrics set to bold beats - raged through the audience like electric current loosed from freshly severed power lines, and provided the passion that brought the story to life.  The show was loud and so, too, were the people in every section of the enormous theatre - loud, exuberant, and at times almost raucous.

Years ago I saw Lin-Manuel Miranda's earlier hit Broadway musical, "In the Heights," on Broadway with the playwright and composer himself in the lead role.  It was a great play, but "Hamilton" is better.

There is not enough high praise floating through my my old gray head this morning to adequately describe this show, but suffice it to know that Olive loved it - and so did Pa Rock!

Seventy-Five and on the Fly!

 

by Pa Rock

Aging Citizen Journalist

Seventy-five years ago this morning my mother, a petite woman, was in the delivery room of Sale Memorial Hospital in Neosho, Missouri, struggling to rid her body of a nine-pound baby boy, her first child, me.  When that undoubtedly brutal feat had been accomplished, an orderly or a nurse wheeled her and me back to the patient room which we were sharing with Mom's younger sister, Betty Lou, and Aunt Betty's two-day-old son, Danny Joe.  I'm sure that all of us being crowded into the same small hospital room made it much easier for our many relatives to drop-in and introduce themselves!

And now, seventy-five years later, I am a fussy old man who is on the road to Kansas City with my little dog, Rosie, where tonight I will be in a box seat at the Kansas City Convention Center's Music Hall Theatre watching a traveling production of "Hamilton" with my granddaughter, Olive.  This birthday will be very special indeed!

See you soon, Olive!

The Perils of Overage Driving

by Pa Rock

Senior Citizen

(Acknowledgement:  I am close enough to being seventy-five that I could, at this point, probably stay awake until my birthday arrives!) 

I've mentioned age in this space numerous times, and often not in a flattering light.  We live in a society that has been encouraged to respect its elders and assume that with great age comes great wisdom, and yes, I have soaked up quite a bit of useful knowledge during my many years of riding around the sun.  But with all of that hard-earned seniority among the world's. population, I have forgotten where I stored some of that knowledge and now find that I can't access it as easily as I once did.  I also feel like the process of aging has left me less accepting of new knowledge, things that might make contemporary life easier if only I was more open-minded.  

I have also used this space repeatedly to bark on the subject of old politicians who refuse to get out of the way in order to allow the upcoming generations take their rightful place in leading us into the future - and each time I mention creaky and creepy old politicians, I catch hell from friend and foe alike who rage on about the value of experience and institutional knowledge, never mind that old people - like me -  may present today as Jeopardy champions and wake up tomorrow as denizens of Dementia Alley, a prospect that increases markedly with age.

Today I will leave the politicians out of it.  We all know who they are and we will all have to examine our own consciences as we step into the voting booths.

This time I want to talk about people who continue to drive when they are clearly too old - and what the hell is "too old" anyway? 

I got cranked up on this subject when I read an article on the internet this morning which said that actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke was treated by emergency personnel after lost control of his Lexus and drove it into the gate of a private property in Malibu, California, earlier this week.  The article also told of an earlier incident in which Mr. Van Dyke had been rescued from a Los Angeles freeway when his Jaguar had caught fire while he was driving.  After evaluating the situation and making an accident report, the police who responded to this latest incident also requested that the state "retest" the 97-year-old celebrity for the renewal of his driver's license.  Van Dyke received minor injuries in the incident, and fortunately no one else was hurt - this time.

In the United States were are quick to establish minimum ages, the time when young people my engage in certain activities - like smoking, driving, owning a gun, getting married, voting, and running for office - but many of those state-sanctioned permissions come without an end date.   As a general rule we seldom seem to create maximum age limits.  Some of those activities do require occasional renewals, points at which the state can intercede and run some cursory checks on abilities to perform certain functions - such as driving - but without hard and fast dates as to when a privilege granted by the state will end.

I still maintain and use - most days - the driving license that the state of Missouri granted to me when I was sixteen.  I have my eyes checked twice a year, and I visit my primary physician for general health check-ups at least twice a year to insure, among other things, that trained professionals see me as still alert and cognizant of the world around me, and able to perform specialized skills - like driving.   I compensate for aging by driving less than I used to - and by driving slower than I used to.  I am beginning to focus on finding a living arrangement convenient to services and where public transportation is readily available - because I realize that my days of being able to drive safely steadily decrease with age.

My father was still driving - though he was finally talking about giving it up - when he passed away at the age of eighty-five.    He should not have been driving that long - and he knew it - and his kids knew it.  I do not want to be trying to get myself to the grocery store and all of my medical appointments when I am eighty-five, so I must work diligently not to become my father.   I can do that by reorganizing my life now  - and by keeping issues like senior services - especially transportation and housing - in the forefront of political discourse.   Change is never easy, and often not even welcome, but as America ages, so too must its ability  to deal with the needs of the elderly - and getting them off of the roads will require planning and accommodation by every level of government.

I am sure that public buses run through places like Beverly Hills and Malibu, and I am reasonably certain that Dick Van Dyke can afford an Uber, but many of us live in places and situations where options for seniors are limited.   Old people do not need to be driving - but they do need reasonable ways to get around and to survive.    And as long as we are saddled with fossilized politicians, they ought to be trying to provide their contemporaries with accommodations to make our lives less stressful and more manageable.

Just sayin' . . . 

Arrest Day: Another Trump Lie

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I went out and fed the cat before daylight this morning, and then freed the guinea from his coop and fed him, too.   After Rosie explored the yard and did her business,  she and I had our breakfasts.  Next I caught up on the email, did a few necessary household chores, selected some appropriate music for Alexa to play later in the morning when the time was right, and got the popcorn ready to go into the microwave.  

Donald Trump had told America last week that he would be arrested today, and Pa Rock was ready to party!

But now, as the clock edges toward noon on the east coast, Trump apparently remains free.  

America has been lied to again!

That is so disappointing!

I guess I will have the popcorn for lunch!

Hawley Ain't No Woody Guthrie!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Woody Guthrie was not only a legendary folksinger and songwriter, he was also an environmentalist and social activist whose work encapsulated the struggles of the common man during the Great Depression and beyond.   Guthrie wrote a song in 1940 which told the American story in a way only someone as insightful and talented as he could tell it.  That song, "This Land Is Your Land," has evolved over the years into an American classic and what many regard as our second national anthem.

The song is so well known and revered that Missouri Senator Josh Hawley thought it would be a slick idea to link it to a piece of legislation that he had drafted.  The "This Land Is Our Land Act" (S. 684), would ban Chinese corporations and individuals associated with the Chinese Communist Party from owning United States agricultural land.

Hawley, no doubt, was pleased with himself for co-opting the spirit of Woody Guthrie to help promote his bill, but Guthrie's family was not happy that a politician like Josh Hawley would try to benefit by glomming onto their father's work.

Guthrie's daughter, Nora, issued a statement last Monday to Hawley's hometown newspaper, The Kansas City Star, in which she said that the late performer's family rejected Hawley's use of the song in his legislation. The daughter described hr father's song as a "vision of democracy," and said that it reiterates the concept of "by the people, for the people.."  She added:

"We do not consider Josh Hawley in any way a representative of Woody's values, therefore we would never endorse or approve of his reference to Woody's lyrics."

When told of the Guthrie family's objection to Hawley using their father's work to dress up his legislation, a Hawley spokesperson replied by attacking the Kansas City  Star with the tired old saw that it (the Star) is where "journalism goes to die."

Sadly Hawley and his staff are no better at name-calling than they are at stealing lyrics!

Don Gets his Con Going

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In a crass political move that was obviously designed to rile up his supporters, Donald Trump announced yesterday over social media that he expects to be indicted and arrested next Tuesday in New York on one of several significant legal proceedings against him that are currently working their way through the courts.  The particular case for which he expects to be (temporarily) arrested involves hush money payments that he allegedly made to a porn star to keep her from repeating stories of their sexual liaisons, stories which could have cost him conservative evangelical support during the 2016 presidential election.         

According to his own attorneys, Trump has received no official notice of impending indictment or arrest and is instead basing his claim on press reports.  He ended his social media announcement with a call for Americans to rally to his side and "PROTEST.  TAKE OUR NATION BACK."   At another point in his string of tweets on his own Truth Social, Trump expanded his call for public action to:  

"THEY'RE KILLING  OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH.   WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!   PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!"

The call-to-action sounded startlingly reminiscent of an earlier version more than two years ago when Trump and his enablers encouraged people to come to Washington, DC, and protest on January 6, 2021, the day that Congress certified the 2020 election results - a protest demonstration that resulted in multiple people being injured and even killed, serious threats to the safety of public officials, and significant damage to our nation's Capitol Building.

Many Republican politicians slithered forth yesterday to hiss their support of Trump's continuing martyrdom, with former vice-president Mike Pence talking of "political persecution," Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking of "communists" being involved in the legal effort to bring down Trump, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wailing about an "outrageous abuse of power" on the part of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney who is pressing this particular legal battle against Trump - one of many.

Barring an as yet unforeseen public disturbance with regard to an indictment and arrest of the former President, the process could - according to CNN - go something like this:

"Trump's US Secret Service detail would deliver him to the Manhattan district attorney's office for fingerprinting and then taking mugshots in offices of the district attorney's detective squad.  As is customary in cases where a defendant is allowed to voluntarily surrender after arrest processing, the former president would be brought directly to an arraignment before a judge where he would likely be released on his own recognizance."

Then Trump could rush straight home to Mar-a-Lago and spend the rest of the day posting appeals for public donations for his defense fund on social media.

Arrest Warrant Issued for Putin

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

If Russian President Vlad Putin has any plans for a spring get-away this year, they probably don't include a tour of the beautiful tulip fields of Holland.  In fact, Holland (the Netherlands) is just one of many countries that Putin is likely to never visit again.

Yesterday the International Criminal Court, which is located in the city of The Hague in Holland (the Netherlands) issued an arrest warrant for Putin charging him with the war crime of forcefully removing Ukrainian children from their home country and relocating them in the Russian Federation.  The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children's Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.  It is believed that over 16,000 children have been "deported" from Ukraine to Russia and placed in group homes or adopted by Russian families - a process that many regard as kidnapping.

Ukraine is not a member of the ICC global court, but its government has granted jurisdiction to the court over matters in Ukraine.   Russia, China, and the United States are also not members of the International Criminal Court, but President Biden has already sided with the ICC on its decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin.  The international court has no policing powers of its own, and it has to rely on enforcement by the 123 countries which are members - and if Putin were to visit one of those countries he could conceivably be arrested and turned over to the ICC in The Hague.  The International Criminal Court has the power to issue sentences of up to life in prison.

While the prospect that the Russian president will ever be cuffed, stuffed, and shipped off to The Hague to stand trial for the war crime of kidnapping children and using them as the spoils of war is exceedingly slim,  just the fact that a majority of the world's nations have stood tall and accused him of it is worth something. Putin's true character is coming into sharper focus, and its not a pretty sight!

Putin has been weighed, he has been measured, and he has been found lacking - in basic humanity.

The Perils of Horse Paste

 

by Pa Rock

Believer in Science

Over the past couple of years there have been so many cases of celebrities and other well known individuals who have garnered attention and notoriety by denying the existence or dangers of COVID - and who were then brought down by the deadly virus - that they hardly even merit a mention in the historical context of the pandemic.  They all seemed to know more than the rest of us, and they were so very much smarter than the researchers and the doctors - and so much more honest than politicians, governments, and international health organizations.

The COVID deniers who are now pushing up daisies have become so commonplace that they barely continue to qualify as examples of irony and are instead just part of a sad footnote to the pandemic.  

Earlier this month a promoter of a non-standard treatment for COVID appears to have fallen victim to his own controversial treatment.    Danny Lemoi, a self-described "ivermectin influencer" on Telegram,  died unexpectedly from a known side effect of taking veterinary grade ivermectin, a medicine whose most common usage is to rid large farm animals of parasites.    The "influencer" claimed had he been taking a daily dose of the version of ivermectin designed for animals since 2012 when he had been diagnosed with Lyme disease.  He also said that he quit all other treatments after five months of taking ivermectin because he believed that the veterinary medicine had "regenerated" his heart muscle.

Lemoi, a heavy equipment operator from Rhode Island, had been promoting the use of ivermectin for fighting COVID on his popular Telelgram channel, "Dirt Road Discussions," since 2021 as the use of the veterinary medicine was becoming popular as an unofficial treatment for COVID.   His Telegram channel, which has over 140,000 followers, even contained instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.

There is a version of ivermectin designed for human use that treats some seriousness illnesses such as river blindness, but it has been repeatedly shown not to be effective in fighting COVID.  The Missouri Poison Center warns that ingesting large doses of veterinary grade ivermectin  has a long list of side effects including seizures, coma,  lung issues, and heart problems.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that high doses of ivermectin that is concentrated for use in large animals can be toxic in humans. 

Just before 7:00 a.m. on March 3rd Danny Lemoi posted the following on his Telegram channel:

"HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS!!!"

Little did he realize that would be his final message to his followers.  Lemoi died a few hours later of what the administrators on his channel referred to as "heart problems," which, as mentioned above, is a known side effect of taking veterinary grade ivermectin.

Texas Amps Up Its War on Women

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

For those Americans who are female, fertile, and of child-bearing age, Texas is probably a good state to avoid, especially if you feel some entitlement to be involved in your own reproductive health care decisions.

One of the many pieces of anti-abortion legislation which quickly passed in state legislatures after the Supreme Court threw out Roe v Wade last summer was a statute from the Lone Star state entitled "Texas Senate Bill 8."  Not only does that statute make most abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, it also says that a person who assists a pregnant woman in committing a self-managed abortion has committed the crime of murder and can be sued for wrongful death.  Interestingly, the pregnant woman herself, the one whose fetus is aborted, is not liable under the state law.

Last week there was a civil filing in a Texas county court in which a divorced Texas male brought suit against three females whom he alleges assisted his ex-wife in obtaining abortion drugs and terminating a pregnancy in which he was the father of the fetus.  The man, whose attorneys include a current GOP member of the Texas House of Representatives and a former GOP Solicitor General for Texas, is seeking damages from the three defendants in excess of one million dollars for the wrongful death of the fetus.

The lawsuit alleges that the man's wife discovered she was pregnant in 2022 after the passage of Texas Senate Bill 8 and at a time they were still married, and that she discussed, through text messages, obtaining pills to terminate the pregnancy with two friends.  It further alleges that the third defendant actually obtained the pills and got them to the man's wife.  The couple were officially divorced last month.

The ex-husband who is bringing the suit is apparently also planning on suing the medications' manufacturer in order to learn what pills were used to bring about the abortion.

So now pregnant women in the state of Texas who are distraught over being pregnant have one less avenue for solace and must be extremely vigilant and guarded in any conversations with friends - and personal injury lawyers have one more ambulance to chase!

DeSantis Tells Tucker What He Wants to Hear about Ukraine

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In addition to being a general apologist for Russian President Vlad Putin, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is also relatively open about his position of support for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.  Last week in what some are seeing as an attempt to bring GOP presidential candidates into the pro-Russia camp in regard to that invasion, Carlson sent around a questionnaire to solicit the views of GOP candidates on a variety of issues.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is not yet an official presidential candidate, received the survey and commented.  DeSantis said, in part, "While the US has many vital national interests . . . becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them."

The DeSantis reply to the questionnaire, in which he deftly re-characterized a murderous invasion of one sovereign nation by another as a "territorial dispute," seems to align him not only with Tucker Carlson's view, but also with that of certain Republican politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.   Congresswoman Greene raised lots of eyebrows last week with her characterization of Putin's invasion of Ukraine as being "This war against Russia in Ukraine."  (The former CrossFit gym operator really had to stretch to come up with that one!)

But Carlson's attempt to shape GOP foreign policy to fit his own view of the world and align it with Russian military objectives - and DeSantis's attempt to give the Fox commentator what he wanted to hear, may have backfired, at least with some prominent Republicans in the US Senate - the place where a lot of US foreign policy is ultimately given shape and purpose.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former Air Force JAG officer and an outspoken proponent of  the US military, quickly hit back at the DeSantis assertion that support for Ukraine was not a "vital" US interest by noting that attitude was tantamount to. saying that war crimes don't matter.   Senator Graham added that Putin's aggression will ultimately go beyond Ukraine, and he warned that "if you don't get that, you'r not listening to what he is saying."

But Graham wasn't the only Republican senator who chose to pile on to the DeSantis view of what is happening in Ukraine.   Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, noted that DeSantis has served in the US military and said that he regarded the Florida governor as a "smart guy," but said that he could not understand why DeSantis would say that Ukraine is not important to the United States.

The Republican whip in the Senate, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, also expressed disagreement with DeSantis's negative position on US support of Ukraine in its war for survival against Russia.

But Republican criticism of the DeSantis's view on US involvement in Ukraine was not limited to out-of-state sharpshooters.   Marco Rubio, one of Florida's two Republican senators, was also quick to point out that the situation in Ukraine was not a "territorial dispute" as his governor had described it.  Senator Rubio, who serves on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and is the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the following in response to the way in which DeSantis had described the on-going war:

"It's not a territorial dispute in the sense that any more than it would be a territorial dispute if the United States decided that it wanted to invade Canada or take over the Bahamas.  Just because someone claims something doesn't mean it belongs to them. . . There is a national security interest in Ukraine.  It's not the number one security interest the United States has, but it's an important one."

Common sense from Marco Rubio - who knew?  It's comforting to know that if Ron DeSantis ever wants to really know what is going on in the world around him, there are people close by whom he should be able to trust and who will give hime more honest information than he will get from Fox!

Rock Concerts for Old Folks

 

by Pa Rock

Aging Citizen Journalist

Jamie Lee Curtis, a prolific Hollywood actress and former "scream queen" (so noted due to her work in "horror" and "slasher" films of a few decades ago) added some significant luster to her already  formidable film resume last Sunday night when she picked up the Oscar for Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in the hit film, "Everything Everywhere All at Once."   Curtis, the daughter of film legends Tony Curtis ("Some Like It Hot") and Janet Leigh ("Psycho"), is a face that is so ubiquitous in the world of entertainment, that she is generally regarded as readily recognizable, but her Oscar-winning role as a harried desk jockey for the IRS certainly broke new ground.  I was well into the movie before I sussed out who was playing that role.

But Sunday night's Academy Awards was not the only time this week that Jamie Leigh Curtis made the news.  She also received a flurry of press coverage over a suggestion which she has been encouraging fellow entertainers, and especially the musical mastodons of the mid-to-late 20th century, to act their age and hold their musical extravaganzas in the afternoons rather than after dark, a move that would get those of us of a certain age home in time for a full night's sleep.

In a recent interview  Curtis said that she wanted to see Cold Play at 1:00 p.m.  -  before adding, "I will come and hear your five-hour concert, Bruce (Springsteen) at two o'clock, and I'm gonna be home and in bed by 7:30."

Early next month I plan to be at a John Mellencamp concert in Kansas City.  The show starts at 8:00 p.m., and considering the price of the ticket, should last at least two hours.   I will be there and I will enjoy it, but I won't enjoy knowing that as the curtain is going up for the evening's performance, my 75-year-old body is telling me that I should be at home crawling into bed.  And the 71-year-old star up on the stage will probably be having similar thoughts as he starts his second late-night in a row of trying to entertain drowsy geriatrics in Kansas City.  

Buy a clue, John.  Many of your fans are now retired and have their days free - and some of us would pay the same money for an afternoon ticket and be just as happy with the purchase and the experience - maybe even more so.   And a matinee would probably suit you better as well!

If It looks Like a Bailout, and It Smells Like a Bailout, Chances are It's a Bailout!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Bank failures can be like cancer and show a quick tendency to spread.  That is why most sane people don't want to see any bank fail - whether they have money in the particular bank or not.   Sooner or later cascading bank failures will reach us all.

Last Friday the US government seized. control of Silicon Valley Bank, a California-based banking operation that helped to finance and manage the assets of tech start-ups and other companies related to the tech industry.    Silicon Valley Bank, the nation's 16th largest financial institution, was experiencing a "run" on its assets by depositors who were hearing stories about a potential bank failure and rushing to withdraw their money from that bank.  The bank, in order to  meet those sudden demands for cash, was, in turn, selling off securities, at big losses, and other assets to raise quick cash to pay off the nervous depositors.

Some news stories indicate that before the feds showed up with the padlocks on Friday, executives in the company were able to find enough emergency cash to pay themselves their anticipated bonuses for the year.   Praise Jesus for small mercies!

Then, yesterday, agents of the US government also seized control of Signature Bank out of New York State. ( I haven't seen any word yet on whether their executives managed to pocket their anticipated bonuses on the way out the door.)

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spent much of the weekend prattling on about how the federal government would not be "bailing out" the US banks as it had done during the financial crisis of 2008.  What she apparently meant by that was the  federal government would not be writing a check to cover that banks' losses as it had done fifteen years earlier, and would instead find another way to deal with the impending crisis.

Early today we are hearing about a rescue plan that is apparently being funded by the banks' insurers, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).   The FDIC  is funded by payments from member banks, and it already insures every deposit at both banks for up to $250,000.   But many of the current depositors in the affected banks have accounts with totals in excess of that amount.  Now, under the new plan, the FDIC will pay off all accounts in both banks - in full.  (I wish State Farm operated that way!)

It wasn't a bailout because the taxpayers did not have to write a check, but the plan will deplete with resources of the FDIC leaving it in the lurch when it comes to paying off accounts of the next set of failed banks - and eventually somebody will have to rescue the FDIC.   (Guess who?)

All of this could be short-circuited if Congress and the banking sector of the economy would hammer out some serious banking reforms, but American banks traditionally fight serious reforms tooth-and -nail, and the government always presents as too weak to extract serious concessions from America's major banks.  As an example, this current round of negotiations to save the operations of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank placed no limitations on the ability of officers of those banks to increase their own compensation.  Why should the bosses be exempt from the costs of the failures of their own leadership?

American taxpayers may not have written a check to cover the greed and bad banking practices of the two most recent failed banks - yet - but the story is still unfolding.   If it looks like a bailout, and smells like a bailout, chances are it is a bailout and we are all just waiting on the final bill!

Pence Kneecaps Trump; Praises Journalists

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

With almost two full years remaining before the next general election, Donald Trump has already charged out of the starting gate and is racing madly toward his cherished goal of winning four more years of general immunity as the next President of the United States.  It worked once before, giving Trump not only protections from the force of law but also a splendid platform from which to spit his racist, fascist, misogynistic; and flatulent nonsense - and now Trump is desperate to regain his protections and re-establish his place at the bully pulpit.

But this race is already promising to be far more challenging affair than the cakewalk which greeted him in 2016.  This time even people in his own party are already challenging his self-perceived "right" to a second term with stinging rebukes - and some are even going so far as to run, or threaten to run, against him.  They have declared war on the beast, and now there is no turning back.

Last night former Vice President Mike Pence drew and used his own knife in an attempt to slay the raging bull before he can stampede the rest of the GOP herd.  In a speech before the Gridiron Club  Dinner in Washington, DC, Pence, who was there to poke fun at other politicians, instead turned deadly serious when he began speaking of the January 6th insurrection, an American horror story which he laid squarely at the feet of his former boss, Donald John Trump.

Pence, who is currently fighting subpoenas to give his personal account of the events of January 6th, 2021,  to a federal grand jury, had no qualms at all about sharing his recollections of that terrible day with the journalists assembled at last night's dinner.

The former Republican Vice President, and Donald Trump's running mate in 2016 and 2020, had plenty to say.   He began by sharing some general jokes about other politicians, but quickly turned serious as he began recalling the events of January 6th, something he referred to as a "tragic day."   Trump had stirred the misfits, miscreants, and malcontents who were demonstrating outside of the Capitol with charges that Mike Pence, as Vice President, had the power to refuse to certify the election results and to stop the awarding of the office to Joe Biden.  Pence, in last night's dinner, denied any such Constitutional authority and said::

"President Trump was wrong.  I had no right to overturn the election, and his dangerous words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable."

But Vice President Pence did not stop with his public scolding of his former boss, he also went after Fox News host Tucker Carlson's efforts to turn the events of January 6th into some sort of misunderstood Capitol visit by ordinary American tourists, something he referred to as a "defense of the mob."   Pence noted:

"Tourists don't injure 140 police officers by sightseeing.  Tourists don't break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials."

Tourists also don't bring a homemade gallows to the grounds of the US Capitol and run around shouting about a desire to hang Mike Pence!

Pence called January 6th a "public disgrace,' and he said that it "mocks decency to portray it in any other way."

The former Vice President was also effusive in his praise of journalists in their coverage of the events of that fateful day.  ""We were able to stay at out posts in part, because you stayed at your post."  Pence told journalists at the dinner.  "The American people know what happened that day because you never stopped reporting."

It is expected that Donald Trump will make some sort of reply to the allegations of his former Vice President when he wakes up later this afternoon.

Medical Tourism: A Risky Business

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I have medical insurance, two substantial, full plans which should more than adequately cover all of my medical needs, yet there is seldom a month that goes by in which I do not find myself in serious deliberations with the billing department of one of my medical providers - usually the pharmacy.  It's almost a game in the United States for insurance companies to try and figure out ways to keep from paying for medical services.  I persist, but I wonder and worry about the more than 30 million Americans who have no medical insurance whatsoever.

It is no secret that millions of Americans with either no medical insurance or less-that-adequate medical insurance have taken to crossing international borders in search of health care, a parctice that is commonly referred to as "medical tourism."  There are always risks involved with turning your body over to someone else for medical care, but with care in the United States we assume some safeguards are built into the process - by the doctors' training and experience, as well as by legislation - whether they actually are or not.  But when a person crosses over into another country for medical care, those assumptions can go out the window.

In addition to medical standards and conditions not necessarily being equivalent to US standards, a medical tourist abroad is also enmeshed into a whole different culture, some of which can impact health care.

I am, of course, building up to what happened in the Mexican border town of Matamoros last week.  One US medical tourists and three fellow travelers from the state of North Carolina, crossed the border at Brownsville, Texas, on Friday, March 3rd, and entered Matamoros, Mexico.  One member of the group was traveling for cosmetic surgery.    What that person and the group found, however, was something quite different.   Gunmen, reportedly part of a Mexican drug cartel, opened fire on the North Carolina minivan.  Two of the travelers were killed by the gunmen and the other two were temporarily taken hostage.  The two bodies and the two kidnap victims were ultimately released back to the US government later in the week.

Two American citizens lost their lives essentially because medical care is not distributed in the United States in a fair and equitable manner.  One of them had chosen a riskier avenue for treatment because it was either cheaper or easier to access than the same treatment in the United States.  

And every day thousands of other Americans leave the United States for essentially the very same reasons.   They take risks by traveling out of the country for medical care, and sometimes they benefit from taking those risks, and sometimes they do not.  Just about the only sure winners in this sorry equation are the American businesses which control the delivery of health care within the borders of the United States.  Those big businesses don't gamble, they just pay their lawmakers and go right on banking obscene profits that are generated from dodgy business practices.    And if that corrupt system means that some people will not be able to get the medical treatment they need, well, they can always drive on down to Matamoros - or Juarez - or Nogales - or Tijuana, and take their chances.

Medical tourism is a multi-billion dollar business, one that is deeply rooted in home grown greed!

Tucker and Hawley Try to Whitewash History

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A couple of weeks ago House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he was giving more than 40,000 hours of official House security footage from the January 6th,  2021, insurrection at the US Capitol to Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, so that Carlson could sort through the material and use that footage to enlighten the public on what happened the United States Capitol on that fateful day.  Speaker McCarthy said that he was fulfilling a promise to make the film public, though he never said to whom he had made that promise or if it was part of the reported cache of promises that he made to right-wing extremists in Congress in order to secure enough votes to become Speaker.  He did indicate that even though he was providing the taxpayer-funded tapes to only one (very right-wing) news organization, he might give the same material to other outlets at a later time - might.

Carlson, upon receipt of the 40,000 hours of security footage, had a "large" team of workers review the material and then began airing what he deemed the public needed to see.  Not surprisingly, the material that Carlson shared with his viewers tended to support his long-standing contention that the people swarming the Capitol that day (some of whom entered through broken windows and doors which had been forcibly breached), were basically just tourists, curiosity-seekers, and out-of-towners enjoying a day of sightseeing.

Nine deaths, including a couple of subsequent law enforcement suicides, have been linked to the mayhem that engulfed the Capitol on January 6th, property damage and vandalism were extensive, and arrests have been in the hundreds.   The Capitol Police quickly objected to  Carlson's skewered view of the events of that day and his attempt to rewrite history by cherry-picking footage to mislead the public about the seriousness of the attack.  National politicians also began lining up to speak against Carlson's downplayed retelling of the day's events.  Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Carlson's version of events that day was 'bullshit,"  Republican senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were also critical of the way Carlson surmised and presented his findings, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, was also unhappy with the Fox take on the events of January 6th and announced he was standing by the Capitol Police and their personal observations about what had occurred.

One GOP senator who was not unhappy with Tucker's Carlson's reimagining of history, however, was Josh Hawley of Missouri.  Hawley, who had been outside of the Capitol on the morning of January 6th, 2021, egging on rioters by posing with his fist in the air, was caught on Capitol security footage a few hours later literally running from protestors.   In Carlson's "review" of the tapes he referred to the tape of Hawley running in the Capitol as the "coward tape," and said it was a "sham" because other senators had been running also.

Carlson's defense of Hawley, lame as it was, seems to have sealed the bromance between th two men because Hawley then began speaking in support of Carlson and said that "Sunshine is always the right answer. "   Hawley's hometown newspaper, Thee Kansas City Star,  had this to say about Hawley's "sunshine" remark.  

"Please.  It's not sunshine to furnish government videos to only one favored propagandist.   Real transparency would have meant making the footage widely available to all of the news outlets that asked for it."

The Kansas City Star also commented on the seriousness of the events of January 6th by noting that more that two dozens residents of Missouri, Hawley's purported home state, have been arrested or charged for their involvement in the insurrection - including at least one member of the Missouri National Guard.  The day was obviously very real and serious to those "tourists."

And the repudiations of Tucker Carlson's whitewashing of the insurrections just keep coming.  CNN's Anderson Cooper seemed to doubt Carlson's ability to accurately gauge the anger and hostility of the crowd when he made the following statement earlier this week:

"The idea of Tucker Carlson being in that mob that day and not wetting his pants is hard to imagine.  I find it hard to understand somebody who has never put himself in harm's way in any capacity for anyone else, or in reporting a story, yet has the audacity to rewrite history.   That's what this is, it is an attempt to rewrite history in what is certainly one of the biggest events in American democracy."

 
Trust fund babies will always be able to afford new pants, but rebuilding democracy would be a much more difficult affair.

Be vigilant, America.  If it comes from Speaker McCarthy and is filtered through Fox News, its best use would probably be as garden fertilizer.  Thom Tillis knows what he is talking about!

An Old Gag Survives for Another Telling

 

by Pa Rock

Corn Pone Comedian

A lady I know who ives in Los Angeles visited the Missouri Ozarks several years ago, and to this day her  most discussed memories of that brave adventure center on ticks and chiggers, very tiny insects that march brazenly across one's skin in search of good places to drill holes and suck blood.   Chiggers, especially, also cause an irritating itch that brings about a desire to scratch with something substantial, such ass a good wire brush!  Ticks and chiggers are commonplace in the Ozarks, and everyone suffers from them - regardless of social status

Even with the inconvenience of a broken arm, I somehow managed to drive myself to a small city in northern Arkansas for a doctor's appointment yesterday morning.   It was early and I was tired and very uncomfortable by the time I pulled into the doctor's parking lot more than fifty miles from my home.   

The particular doctor that I visited yesterday, a dermatologist, is a bit glib and unfiltered.    He had me remove my shirt and was busy examining my scalp, neck, and back - and freezing a few unwanted growths along the way - when he suddenly stopped his grand tour of my upper half and loudly proclaimed:   " And here it is, our first tick of the season!"

The doctor runs a very large clinic, so I proudly accepted his proclamation as an honor of sorts,   Of all of the hillbillies in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas who actually use the services of doctors, this particular hillbilly - me - who has been  basically been trapped close to home (or in the Kansas City area) with a broken arm for over a month, had somehow managed to score the first tick of the season!  The prestige was almost overwhelming!

(I would be laughing harder if it weren't for the fact that several years ago I had been hospitalized with a form of tick fever!)

But that was then and this was now, and here I sat in a large clinic as a medical provider pulled a tick off of the unreachable area between my shoulder blades.  (For you urban types, know that ticks always choose unreachable areas to do their business - it's in their nature!)

When the doctor had successfully removed the tick, he brought it around to my frontside for my viewing pleasure.  "Ah, yes," I said, "That is indeed a good one."  He then told his assistant, diplomatically, not to mention the tick in his treatment notes.  Then the doctor dropped the tiny bloodsucker into a rubber glove, tied it tightly, and deposited it into the exam room's waste can.  When his assistant looked at him quizzically, the physician told his that helper that he had dropped one straight into the can a few years prior and and then caught it a day or so later making it's way across the exam room floor.

As the tick tied in the glove landed in the trashcan, the doctor looked up and announced:  "If he gets out of that we'll name him Houdini!"

I didn't have the heart to tell the funny doctor that his gag was older than he was.  The first time I heard it was while I was in college in the 1960's.   The focus then was on a used condom being tightly tied and thrown out of the back window of a car at a drive-in theatre . . . but the punchline was the same!

Fascism: Forewarned Is Forearmed

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Fascism is generally seen as a far-right, authoritarian structuring of government under the control of a dictatorial leader.  It features a centralized autocracy that controls through an official force such as the military or police who suppress opposition to the government.   Fascist ideology is often propped up by group opposition to racial or other marginalized groups who are portrayed as enemies of the state.  Disagreement with those in control is not tolerated under fascist rule.
 
Generally speaking, a fascist government is a political setup where one person’s ideas prevail, and that leader does not react well to challenges to his policies or his rule.
 
There is, at present, a young man serving in Congress who is making quite a stir criticizing the governor of his home state and pointing out that many of the governor’s legislative aims appear to be fascist in nature.  The man stirring the pot is Maxwell Alejandro Frost.  Congressman Frost is a first term member of the US House of Representatives from Florida and a Democrat, who, at twenty-five, is the youngest member of the House.  The man whom Rep. Frost is accusing of having a fascist bent is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.  
 
This week in a televised interview with Jim Acosta of CNN, Rep. Frost talked about the steady “drumbeat” of proposed extremist legislation coming from the governor’s office which Frost sees as targeting Black, transgender, and LGBTQ people.  Congressman Frost notes that much of DeSantis’s legislative program is being pushed in the guise of improving education in the state, but Frost is arguing that the governor in not really focused on improving education, but rather has zeroed in on scapegoating vulnerable communities because of his own failures.
 
Over recent months DeSantis has sparked a major backlash of criticism by barring the teaching of Advanced Placement African American studies in the state’s school curriculum.  The controversial governor has also signed a bill eliminating discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in grades kindergarten through three, and is currently pushing legislation that would require teachers to use pronouns matching a student’s gender at the time of their birth.
 
In clicking through the list of legislation that Florida seems to be using to target specific groups – at the direction of the governor - Congressman Frost went straight for the “F” word.  He told Acosta:
 

“We have to call it for what it is.  He is abusing his power and using the state to target political opponents and political enemies.   And there’s a word for that, and it’s fascism, and we have o be honest about it.”

Congressman Frost noted that currently Ron DeSantis is primarily a Florida problem, but he also warned that DeSantis could soon become a problem for the entire nation.
 
Forewarned is forearmed – or at least it should be!

 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Revisited)

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

This morning I had planned to write a blog entry about Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Floridian who is currently serving, at the tender age of twenty-five, as the youngest member of Congress.  Congressman Frost has recently said some mean things about Florida's Republican governor which merit repeating far and wide.  However, before I could get that posting completed (or even started), it was derailed by a story about another famous American named "Frost," this time New England poet Robert Frost.

(Tomorrow I will try to get back to Maxwell Alejandro Frost.)

Robert Frost, the poet, died on January 29th, 1963, just barely two years after delivering a recitation of one of his poems - from memory - at John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration.   JFK followed the famed poet to the grave later that same year. Cleary Robert Frost was a giant among American literary figures.

This morning I saw a note in "The Writer's Almanac" which mentioned that one of Robert Frost's most memorable poems, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was first published in "The New Republic" magazine one hundred years ago today.  It's a lovely poem about a farmer who stops his wagon to enjoy a snowfall one winter's evening.  Robert Frost said the poem was his "best bid for remembrance," and over the years it has become an American classic.

On Monday, July 6th, 2009, while this blog was just in its second year of publication, I started a semi-regular feature called "Monday's Poetry" in which I presented and talked about a poem that had left an impression on me.  The first poem that I spotlighted in the new feature was Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."  Cleary a July posting was not the ideal time to post a poem about a New England snowfall, but it was a special poem to me, and I wanted to use it to inaugurate the blog's new emphasis on poetry.

In that posting I wrote about two sisters - Linda and Susan Merchant - with whom I had been friends when I was in high school.  Linda was my age and Susan was a year younger, and we would often walk several blocks to school together in the mornings.   Early in our senior year, our speech teacher, Jennibel Paul, came to school one day with a large tape recorder and announced a project that would require each student in the small class to make a voice tape of themselves reading a favorite poem, and then at the end of the year we would tape it again and compare the two renditions.   Hopefully some improvement over the course of the school year would be evident.  I don't remember what poem I chose, but I do remember Linda's - it was the aforementioned poem by Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Then, just a few weeks later, there was a horrible car crash in our little town that killed two sets of sisters, the Todd girls and the Merchant girls.  It was one of those awful events that rocked the entire community and which, nearly sixty years later, is still remembered and talked about by many people around town.    After the funerals had been held and things finally began to settle own, Mrs. Paul canceled that speech project and gave the tape to the Merchant family, something very tangible with which to remember their oldest daughter.  It was likely their only keepsake of her voice.

The poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" speaks to the ultimate reality of death with Frost's haunting refrain about having promises to keep - 'and miles to go before I sleep."

When Linda Merchant made her voice recording of that beautiful poem by Robert Frost, she had fewer miles to go than any of us realized.

Here is the very brief poem in its entirety:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods are these I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me topping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy false.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.