Good-bye, Helen

 

by Pa Rock

Tired Old Typist

I never met Helen, but I considered her a dear friend.  She lived in Sandpoint, Idaho, one of the most beautiful small cities in America, and though I have visited Sandpoint on three occasions, our paths never crossed.

Helen was a very bright and articulate person, somewhere in my age range, who had been reading this blog for several years.  During that time she submitted comments on at least a dozen postings, always insightful and straight to the point.  Helen learned about the blog through one of her friends of many years, my cousin Joyce.    I was honored that she became a regular reader of my musings and rants.    

Helen submitted her last comment on this blog on April 15th of this year in response to a piece that Ranger Bob had written.  Sadly, she passed away unexpectedly last Friday.  I shall miss her.

Fly high, Helen, and go in peace!

Columbus Day Was Never Gone

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

In his mad rush to resurrect every fading vestige of racism in America, Trump has announced that he is officially bringing back Columbus Day as a holiday and will no longer recognize "Indigenous Peoples' Day."  The problems with that brash declaration are manifold.  

First, the holiday known as "Columbus Day" never went away.  It was a federal holiday, and still is a federal holiday - with or without Trump's loud assertion that he is bringing it back to life - something he does not have the power or authority to do even if the holiday had ceased to exist - which it hasn't.  President Biden officially recognized Columbus Day every year, but he also celebrated the same day as "Indigenous Peoples' Day."  Biden never declared a holiday for Indigenous Peoples, because he, like Trump, did not have the power to do so.

Only Congress can establish federal holidays, and only Congress can take them away.  Loud declarations to the contrary are just Foghorn Leghorn bullshit nonsense.  

Second, Christopher Columbus never actually set foot of the land that became the United States of America, but Trump's attempted rehabilitation of the Italian navigator seems to be implying a strong national and historical connection to Columbus.  (While he was bouncing around the Caribbean during his four voyages spreading disease and enslaving indigenous peoples, Columbus did briefly visit the large island that is today known as Puerto Rico, and it is currently a "territory" of the United States.  Trump has that in common with Columbus.  He, too, made a brief visit to Puerto Rico during his first term when he threw rolls of paper towels to some of the island's hurricane-ravaged peoples.)

But Trump, who is obviously no student of history - or at least not a very good one - fans the fires of nationalism by painting Christopher Columbus as the first European to wade ashore in what would become the good ol' USA.  There are some long-dead Vikings who would probably beg to differ, and also Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon who actually did visit Florida while Columbus was still puttering around the Caribbean.

Trump's aim, however, is not to teach anyone real history.  He is simply stirring the pot of culture wars and trying to incite racial tensions - much as he was doing during his social rehabilitation of Confederate Generals.  Regarding Columbus, Trump said:

"The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.  They tore down his Statues (sic), and put up nothing but 'WOKE,' or even worse, nothing at all!  Well, you'll be happy to know, Christopher Columbus is going to make a major comeback.  I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it had for all the many decades before!"

Hallelujah and pass the gravy!

And as for those brown-skinned Indigenous Peoples?  Well, they will no longer be officially celebrated on Columbus Day because Trump said so.

When you have nothing to show for your first three months in office, at least nothing of a positive nature designed to improve the lives of your fellow citizens - even the poor ones - resort to the culture wars and play that race card again, and again, and again.  It will give your base something to boast about while they are standing in line waiting to pay higher prices at Walmart because of your tariffs.

If I am still upright in October and haven't been shipped off to some exotic locale like Guantanamo or El Salvador, I will apply war paint to my face, pitch a wigwam in the backyard, build a campfire, roast a chicken, or maybe a goat, and sleep out under the stars to pay homage to the true adventurers and explorers who actually "discovered" America more that 20,000 year ago.   Those brave souls, indigenous tribes of people from Asia, walked across the land bridge where the Bering Strait currently is and slowly populated what is today regarded as two continents - North and South America.  They were the forebears of today's American indigenous peoples, and their descendants were here working and worshiping the land centuries before the arrival of Columbus and his ragtag bands of despoilers.

But celebrate what you will.  It's still a free country - for most of us.

Happy holidays!

Canadian Liberals Win Bigly!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

After just ninety-nine days of  Trump threats against the Canadian economy (through his highly erratic tariff's  program) and its sovereignty (through threats of annexation to the US), the people of Canada finally had their say yesterday, and it was, as many knew it would be, a big, one-fingered salute to Donald John Trump.

Trump, who just this week was quoted in an interview in The Atlantic with reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, as saying, after noting difficulties he encountered during his first term in office:   "And the second time, I run the country and the world."

Canada would beg to differ.

The leader of Canada, the Prime Minister, is elected by the parliament and based on a political party system.  The two major parties in Canada are the Conservatives and the Liberals, along with a few minor parties.  When a national election is held, people go to the polls to elect members to Parliament, and not the Prime Minister, and then whichever party wins the majority of the seats in parliament chooses its leader to be the Prime Minister.  If neither party has elected a majority to the parliament,  brokering ensues in which the leading parties try to align the support of the minor parties.

The last conservative Prime Minister of Canada was Steven Harper who left office in 2015.  His replacement, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, was serving his third term as Prime Minister when he announced his resignation earlier this year.  Trudeau resigned due to growing dissatisfaction among Canadian voters with the economy and with him personally, and he was replaced as leader of the party and as Prime Minister by a neophyte politician and former banker by the name of Mark Carney.  Carney called for a national election early on to solidify his position as the nation's leader.

Three months ago few thought that would happen.  Liberals were trailing in the polls by big numbers.  But with the unpopular Trudeau's resignation, followed by Donald Trump's big winds from south of the Canadian-US border, the Liberal Party suddenly began gaining ground.  Trump's on-again-off-again fluctuating tariffs left the Canadian economy in a state of flux and Canadian consumers (and voters) deeply unsettled toward the US.  But perhaps equally as damaging to Canadian and US relations were Trump's wild statements about wanting to annex Canada and make it our 51st state.  Trump's windbaggery did not sit well with our neighbors to the north.

Canadian tourism to the US has dropped significantly over the last couple of months, and at one point during the Canadian campaign, Prime Minister Carney described the United States as no longer being a "reliable partner."

The Conservatives had planned to win yesterday's election, and it looked that would happen.  But all the interference from the blowhard conservative south of the border soured Canadians on the conservative brand, and yesterday the Canadian Liberals won their fourth national contest in a row - and they absolutely have Donald Trump to thank for it.

US Representative Don Bacon, a Republican from the state of Nebraska, said of Trump after the Canadian election results had come in:  "He made Canadian Liberals great again."

Zing!

Scenes from a Funeral

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Pope Francis, the recently deceased spiritual leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, was eulogized and celebrated at an enormous funeral in Vatican City over the weekend and then laid to rest in a simple wooden coffin in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.  

The United States was represented at the international gathering by two Presidents.  Former President Biden and his wife, Jill, both dutiful Catholics, attended the solemn occasion dressed in black, in accordance with the Vatican dress code and standard etiquette at a funeral.   Melania Trump, the current First Lady of the United States also showed up appropriately attired for a funeral in a black dress and even wearing a black veil.  She almost had a Jackie Kennedy at JFK's funeral vibe about her.  But Don Trump, the current US chief executive, chose to go a different route.  He opted to wear a bright blue suit highlighted by a bright blue tie - where he would (and did) stand out from the crowd.

With Trump, it is always about him.

There were a couple of moments at the Pope's funeral which seemed to offer up subtle messages about the US President.  For one, there was applause when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky entered St. Peter's Square and took his seat, an obvious rebuff to Trump who got no such welcome.  The recognition of Zelensky by the international crowd certainly helped to balance out the intentional humiliation that Trump and Vance inflicted upon him at the White House in front of the press two months earlier.

Every dog has his day, an axiom bullies forget at their peril.

Also there was an interesting scene where President Macron of France walked right by Trump, ignoring the American's extended hand.  Whoopsie.

But the most memorable Trump moment of the funeral was when a photographer snapped a shot where the elderly politician in the bright blue suit appeared to be asleep.  It was an ironical situation for a man to be in  who used to routinely insult his predecessor as being "Sleepy Joe."  It was a moment of comeuppance which I found to be deeply satisfying - and  Sleepy Joe probably did, too.

"Drowsy Don," anyone?

Pure Naked Corruption

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I took part in an evening tour of the White House once, in 1999 during the Clinton presidency.  I was with a group of social work graduate students from the University of Missouri who spent several days in DC lobbying Missouri congressmen on various issues.  We were in the Capitol offices on a Friday when most of the congressmen were gone, but we were able to meet with their basically useless aides.

One member of our group had a cousin who was an officer in the Air Force and whose duty was being one of the pilots for Air Force Two, the aircraft used by Vice President Al Gore.  Through the pilot we were able to get an evening tour of the White house conducted by a couple of young military aides whose duty station was the White House.  One of those young men, whose name I have long since forgotten, was a celebrity of sorts in that he was the person who normally introduced President Clinton when he made appearances in the pressroom.  At our insistence, the young man, who was in civilian attire for the evening, collected himself, stood at attention, and said in a loud, crisp, and clear voice:  "Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States."  But Clinton did not appear.

(Clinton also did not appear later that evening when we again convinced the same young man to make the same announcement in a busy bar in downtown DC!)

Our tour, by virtue of being in the evening, let us visit places that are off limits to tourists during the daytime tours.  For instance, we stood in the doorway of the Oval Office (the room where it happens), and we visited the White House kitchen in the basement and saw old stone wall, the only part of the original White House that is still in existence after the building was burned to the ground by the British in the War of 1812.

So I have had my evening tour of the White House and I didn't have to buy something from the President or his family in order to do it.  But, that has been twenty-six years ago, and I would like to do it again.

Don Trump, the Big Kahuna himself, is offering an evening tour of the White House - as well as dinner at one of his fancy private golf clubs - to 220 people whose identities have yet to be determined.  But the group won't include me because there is a fluctuating and prohibitive buy-in for the privilege of being close to the President's elbow for an entire evening.   Only the 220 holders of the most $trump crypto currency (meme coins) will be invited.

Trump announced the day before he was sworn into his second term in office that he and his family were creating and selling a new crypto (digital) currency, a.k.a. "meme" coins, which are cleverly called $trump coins.  I am admittedly no crypto expert, but from what I understand there is no actual coin - one which a person could put in their pocket.   Rather, meme coins are digital (imaginary) coins much like his earlier hustle, the Trump trading cards, which were also digital (imaginary).

But, as PT Barnum famously said on many occasions, there's a sucker born every minute.

The value of digital currency (including meme coins) rises and falls every moment as people buy and sell that commodity, much like the stock market.  At the exact moment I am typing this sentence, a $trump meme coin is going for $14.66.  The price can fluctuate wildly if Trump suddenly gets on his own media platform, Truth Social, to promote it as he did one day recently.   Most of the $trump crypto is still owned by the Trump family, and when he publicly promotes it, Don is, in effect, shilling for his family business while serving as the President of the United States - using his position in government to make money for himself and his relatives.

But it's even worse than that.  By selling a publicly traded commodity, like meme coins, and then offering a classy reward for the 220 people who buy the most, Trump is selling access to himself, access to the President.  There are many people out there with money to invest who could benefit from access to the President.  For starters, anyone in need of a pardon or who has a relative or friend in need of a pardon for a federal crime would certainly have a reason to try and buy their way to the President's ear - the good one, not the one with the scratch.  Or anyone who had a business that creates a product or service they would like to sell to the government might also feel the need to rush out and buy their way into the top 220 investors in Trump's latest venture.  Foreign governments might also find that purchasing a large amount of $trump meme coins might make it easier to get into the Oval Office for a chat.

An elected official selling access to himself and his office - with the revenue from that sale going directly to himself or his family - smacks of corruption to this tired old typist.  But, then again, what do I know?

Hurry and get your $trump meme coins today before the Trump family dumps all of theirs and the market collapses.  There is a finite supply of just 999.99 million.  The price as of this very moment is:  $14.92.

Kelly Armstrong: A Fresh Breeze Across MAGA Land

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

North Dakota is a large, basically empty, Republican state with a Republican legislature, a Republican governor, and a distinct white, conservative view of the world.  Not much of that is likely to change, but  occasionally small fissures in any fortress may emerge.

The state's previous Republican governor, Doug Burgum, is a multimillionaire native of the state who some say bought his way into the office in 2016 and served two full terms through 2024.  Burgum had higher ambitions and entered the Republican primary race for President in 2024, but just being a multi-millionaire wasn't enough to win that prize.  Burgum quickly learned that the road to the White House was littered with billionaire enablers, and his campaign fizzled not long after its launch.  Running for higher office did provide Burgum with the opportunity to be noticed by Donald Trump, and when Trump was elected and finally began looking for someone to tend the nation's buffalo and figure out ways to further exploit the natural resources of America's public lands, he turned to Burgum to be his Secretary of the Interior.

Now that Doug Burgum is safely on the cocktail party circuit in DC,  North Dakota has elected itself a new Republican governor, one who presumably, like Burgum, would do nothing to interfere with the state's steady push into right-wing extremism.   Kelly Armstrong is a native of North Dakota who served as the state's lone member of the US House of Representatives before being elected governor of the state last year.  He is a former attorney and volunteer firefighter.

Kelly Armstrong has an obvious and sincere interest in the well-being of the youth in his state.  He played baseball in high school, and, as an adult, has coached boys' baseball and girls' softball. and he and his wife are parents of two teens, a girl and a boy.  In just a few months as governor, he has already made his mark on the state's educational system by signing a bill that prohibits student phones in school, a move which he contends will free students to concentrate on their academic work.  

This week, however, a piece of legislation involving children came to his desk which Governor Armstrong did not sign.  The Republican-controlled state legislature had coughed up a bill which tried to control the availability of certain books to minors, a decision which the governor felt was better left to families.

The bill that Armstrong blocked would have required public and school libraries to put books which reportedly featured explicit or obscene material in areas "not easily accessible" to minors.  The bill also called for the prosecution of librarians who did not comply.  This past Tuesday Governor Armstrong released a letter explaining hiss decision not to sign the bill.  In it he said:

"While I recognize the concerns that led to its introduction, Senate Bill 2307 represents a misguided attempt to legislate morality through overreach and censorship.  The bill imposes vague and punitive measures on professionals and opens the door to a host of unintended and damaging consequences for our communities.

"In the last ten years The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Kite Runner, 1984, and To Kill a Mockingbird have all been targeted by obscenity laws.  I don't pretend to know what the next literary masterpiece is going to be.  But I want it available in the library.  And if a parent doesn't think it is age-appropriate for their child, then that is a parenting decision.  It doesn't require a whole-of-government approach and $1.1 million of taxpayer money."

Wow.  With a thoughtful and reasoned attitude like that, Kelly Armstrong's time as governor of North Dakota may be short-lived, but he will not soon be forgotten.   The enlightened politician is a fresh breeze across MAGA Land, one that has been sorely needed for a long time.

Salute, governor!

Sackets Harbor, a Beacon of Hope in a Cruel World

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Sackets Harbor, New York, is a small town (pop. 1,364) near the shores of Lake Ontario, the kind of place where many of us of a certain age grew up, or at least our parents did.  People in rural American towns like Sackets Harbor tend to be sincere in their practice of religion, conservative in their values and politics, and basically good neighbors who look out for one another.

Thomas Homan, the former man in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the first Trump administration and now the US "Border Czar" with even more power to wreck families and deport people than he previously had, grew up in Sackets Harbor.   Today he has a vacation home there.  A few weeks ago the cruelty involved in Homan's job collided with the serenity of his summer retreat.

According to a press release by the New York Civil Liberties Union:

"On March 27 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted a raid near North Harbor Dairy Farms in Sackets Harbor, New York.   While agents were conducting a raid on the farm, they entered another home on the property without a judicial warrant and detained a mother and three children, aged 9, 15, and 18.   The family was subsequently transferred thousands of miles away, to a detention facility in Texas."

The kids who were removed were all students at the local public school which goes from pre-K through grade 12.  One was a 3rd grader in elementary school, and the other two were in high school, a sophomore and a junior.   The three were all experiencing success in school and were well liked by their classmates.  Strong community, state, and national support quickly sprang up for the family, due in large part to a letter written by the school's principal and posted on Facebook.  Here is the letter from principal Jamie Cook:

"Message from Sackets Harbor Principal:

"Our three students who were taken by ICE were doing everything right.  They had declared themselves to immigration judges, attended court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process.

"They are not criminals.  They have no ties to criminal activity.  They are loved in their classrooms.  Their family has worked at the nearby "Old McDonald's" petting zoo and dairy farm for 15 years.  

"They lived in a house on the same road as a home ICE had a warrant for.  The fact that ICE went door to door is unfathomable.   The fact that our students were handcuffed and put into the same van as the criminal from down the street is unconscionable.

"When I think of my third grader's experience, my stomach twists and it is hard to breathe.  We are in shock - and it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students' release.  

"We are in direct communication with our students.  Let me be clear:  They are not "being medically evaluated."  They are not "being questioned as potential victims."

"Calling a detention center by any other name does not change what it is."

"We deserve better than spin and misinformation.  My teachers and my students are already hurting.

"Please think about how long every hour feels to a third grader in a detention center.

"The wait had already been too long a week ago.

"I have no other agenda.  Please release my students and their mother back to our community."

Wow!  America, there is your school principal of the year for 2025!

The family was released by ICE a few days after that letter was posted, and following a large demonstration that included elected officials from both political parties.    They were allowed to go home, back into the welcoming arms of their community.

Sackets Harbor stood up to the bully, in this case their own national government, and got their friends returned to the only community that those children had basically ever known.  Those kids aren't tattooed gang members who eat dogs and cats, they are simple, decent human beings who are loved by their friends and neighbors - as are most of the strangers who come to our country from other lands.

The people of Sackets Harbor stood fast against the cruelties of the government and showed the world what it means to really be a community, a place where everyone tries to be a good neighbor to everyone else.

Thomas Homan should try to spend more time at his summer home in Sackets Harbor.   He could use a refresher course in basic humanity.

A Mean and Ugly Presidency

by Pa Rock

Homegrown Public Nuisance

(Note:  Today is the 94th day of Donald Trump's second term in the White House, and next Wednesday, April 30th will mark his 100th day in office, the traditional day on which journalists, politicians, and other public nuisances formally assess the start of a presidency.  Being a professional public nuisance myself with time on my hands today, I wanted to get a jump on the others and offer my assessment early.  It follows.)

Donald Trump entered office for the second time with four primary goals:  

1. Destroying government from the inside by cutting hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and eliminating any programs that did not appear to be of direct benefit to Trump or his wealthy friends - and settling as many personal scores as he could in the process;
2. Cutting taxes - again - for the wealthiest Americans - with an extension of the tax cuts for the rich that Congress enacted during Trump's first term; 
3. Increasing US dominance in the world by claiming new territories, and imposing a global tariff structure to pay for his massive tax cuts for the rich;  and
4. Terrorizing brown-and-black-skinned immigrants to keep his political base slobbering its approval.

During his first 94 days in office, Trump's staff has been laser-focused on achieving those goals as rapidly and forcefully as possible, with many missteps along the way.  (Trump himself has been busy golfing and banging out threats and insults on Truth Social.)

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has cut jobs, programs, and funding so quickly that it has been forced in many instances to quickly rehire individuals for programs that were actually critical to the operation of the government or the general health and safety of the American people.  To the surprise of many in Trump's administration, Americans by-and-large did not want the world's richest man and his band of merry adolescents sniffing around in their tax records, social security records, underwear drawers, or any other aspect of their personal lives, and a great many of us actually appreciate a government that serves the public.

Trump and his GOP foot-soldiers in Congress continue to misrepresent his tax cut for the rich as being about tax relief for the middle class - with a wink and a nod - when the truth is that it's about benefiting them, not us.  The Biden administration agreed to the hiring of 87,000  new IRS agents by 2031 with the goal of finally getting the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, but very few of those new agents had actually been hired by the time Trump took office, and many of the ones that had been hired were used to replace workers who had left the agency or retired.   The Trump administration quit hiring new IRS agents employees and began firing others with claims that the purpose of hiring more employees had been to fleece the "middle class."  With Trump, it's always about protecting privilege - and especially his own advantages

This presidential administration has coughed up a modern version of "manifest destiny," arguing that we have to acquire new lands as a defense measure.  Instead of taking care of the territories we already control - places like Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Washington, DC - and make them proper parts of the nation with statehood and full rights of citizenship, Trump wants to grow the land mass with the additions of Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, and now even the Gaza Strip - as well as to change the name of the "Gulf of Mexico," which it has been for over four centuries, to the "Gulf of America," something he has no authority to do.  

In his quest for an empire, Trump has harmed our relationship with all of the areas he would like to annex, as well as the country of Denmark.  Trump's on-again/off-again tariff policies have also frayed many of our former close international alliances.  The new prime minister of Canada, our closest and staunchest ally, has gone so far as to state that the United States is no longer a reliable partner.   

But it is in the area of immigration where the Trump administration has been its most vile and repugnant.  Illegal immigration was Trump's strongest campaign issue with his team managing to convince a large swath of the country that many in the immigrant community who came from south of our national border were dangerous, tattooed, drug-dealing criminals who routinely raped and murdered Americans and ate their cats and dogs.  One member of the Trump administration set a goal of quickly deporting one million of these supposedly "dangerous" and usually imaginary immigrants.  When Trump was sworn in, his gestapo hit the ground running and began terrifying and rounding up frightened immigrants, many of whom were in the country legally with no criminal records whatsoever - and they quickly started deporting those individuals without proof that they were criminals or were in the country illegally.

The deportees were denied "due process," their constitutionally guaranteed right to respond to the charges against them.  That denial of the right to know what they are being accused of and having an opportunity to tell their side of the story is a serious threat to the safety and freedom of all immigrants - legal and illegal - and also to every American.  If immigrants can be picked up off American streets, or in their places of work or worship, or in their schools, and shipped to foreign gulags without ever having a chance to rebut the charges against them, or speak with a lawyer, or even tell their families "good-bye," sooner or later masked government thugs agents may jump out of black SUVs with darkened windows and cart us off as well.

Attention Walmart shoppers:   that includes you, too.

Trump is already saying that he would like to begin sending naturalized Americans to those same foreign prisons, and he was overheard telling the president of El Salvador to begin building more prisons because he would soon start sending the "homegrowns."  Everyone in the United States has a right to "due process," including those of us who were born here, our friends and neighbors who received citizenship through "naturalization," and all immigrants to our shores including those who came here legally as well as those who arrived illegally.

(Presumably "good" immigrants, those who purchase a $5 million golden "Trump Card" for entry into the United States, will not be hassled.)

If Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or anyone claiming to be an agent of law enforcement or the government picks you up on the streets of America, or in your American residence, or place of work, or worship, or in the hallways of your school, you have a right to an attorney and a right to be heard - whether you are a fifth-generation American or arrived yesterday.

So far Donald Trump's first ninety-four days in office have been excessively mean and ugly, just the way he intended them to be.

Grade:  "F"

Noem Can't Secure her Handbag, Much Less the Country

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

It must be especially galling, if not totally appalling, for the Secretary of Homeland Security, a critical agency in the never-ending battle to keep Americans safe within the borders of their own country, to have her purse stolen, literally right from under her nose, in a posh Washington, DC, burger joint while she was enjoying an Easter dinner with her beloved family - minus, of course, the family dog, Cricket, who, sadly, is no longer with them.

But that is exactly what befell US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last Sunday evening while her Secret Service security detail sat nearby.  Security footage from Capital Burger, the restaurant where Noem and her family were dining, showed a white male, dressed in black and wearing a black baseball cap, and whose face was covered with an N-95 medical mask, situated himself a the table next to Noem's party and then managed to  scoot her Gucci handbag, which was on the floor, over to himself using his foot.  The man placed the bag under his jacket and left the restaurant.

A Gucci handbag?  That, by itself, would have been a fairly impressive haul for just a few minutes work - if it wasn't a knockoff.  But the thief's prize was even sweeter than that.  Noem reported that her walking-around money - $3,000, give or take -  in cash, as well as her checkbook, were in the purse.  She later felt obliged to offer some explanation for carrying an obscenely large amount of cash by saying it was for gifts and Easter dinner for her visiting family of children and grandchildren.

In addition to her checkbook and a wad of cash that would choke a South Dakota bison, Secretary Noem's designer handbag also included her driver's license, passport, medications, make-up bag, apartment keys, and her Homeland Security badge.

The Secret Service is investigating, however the local NBC News affiliate discovered through their own investigation that a similar crime happened in a nearby restaurant several days earlier, and that the thief, who bumped into a diner's chair and surreptitiously removed her purse which was hanging on the back of the chair, was dressed exactly like the man who days later stole Noem's handbag.

Hopefully the culprit can speak Spanish, because there is definitely an El Salvadoran prison in his future!

Kristi, there is a famous line in the movie, "The Graduate," where Mr. Robinson says to Benjamin, "I just want to say one word to you.  Plastics!"  Take that to heart and get yourself some damned credit cards, stuff them in a Dollar General wallet, and keep it in your pocket.  Remember your roots, and quit putting on airs!

Il Papa, the Good Shepherd has Gone On

 

by Pa Rock

I am not a religious person.  When I was a child our family could often be found in either a Methodist or Baptist Church - but  only on Easter and Christmas - and sometimes I would be dropped off for Sunday School on days when my parents, who both worked, needed to be doing other things and did not want me and my little sister underfoot.  Opportunistic baby-sitting.  I converted to Catholicism while in college and attended church fairly regularly during young adulthood, but fell away as I aged.  Religion was not an important part of my life, and I have no regrets about not being associated with it today.

I may have fallen, but religion in America, especially fundamentalist Christianity, has fallen further and harder.   Christian nationalism has become nothing more than a moldering cesspit constantly being heated and stirred by leaders whose gods are hate, bigotry, and greed.

But against that sorry backdrop, one Christian leader arose whose focus was truly on the needs of his people - and all people - and on the planet that was their home.  That man was Pope Francis, and he died yesterday in Rome.  The Pope passed away on what for him would have been a remarkably sweet spot on the calendar - the day between Easter and Earth Day.

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Italian parents who had immigrated to South America from Italy.  His family was wealthy, but the future Pope turned his back on wealth and dedicated himself to working among and for the poor, first as a priest, and later as a member of the Church hierarchy in Buenos Aires where he was known as the "Bishop of the Slums."  Later, after his elevation to Pope, some referred to Francis as the "Pope of the Slums."

The late Pope was a man of many firsts:  the first member of the Jesuit Order to ascend to the papacy, the first from Latin America, the first to be born south of the equator, and the first to assume the name "Francis," after St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order which was known for its emphasis on poverty and service.

Cardinal Bergoglio ascended to the Throne of St. Peter in 2013, the 266th person to rule over the Catholic Church.   He succeeded Pope Benedict XVI who resigned the papacy.  Pope Francis was seen as one of the Church's most progressive leaders with his interests in working with the poor and disadvantaged, immigrants and displaced peoples, and the LGBTQ population, as well as caring for the planet.  His liberal views on modern life were unpopular within some of the Church's conservative hierarchy, and Francis ruffled more than a few feathers for reassigning some of his critics to less prominent roles in the Church, or relieving them of duties altogether.    There were several important Catholic conservatives in the United States who were particularly vocal in their criticism of Pope Francis.  

And there were multitudes, including this befuddled old typist, who regarded Pope Francis as the best and most caring Pope of their lifetimes - the brightest light to shine in the Vatican in centuries.

Rest well, Il Papa.   You will be sorely missed by your flock - even the strays.

Harvard Talks of Killing Its Lab Animals

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Donald Trump, an elderly politician who is clearly not a fan of higher education and academic freedom, issued an a ultimatum to our nation's oldest an most distinguished university a week ago last Friday demanding that Harvard turn over admissions and hiring data to the federal government, abolish diversity programs, and comply with federal orders regarding foreign students.  Columbia University had already agreed to most of those bigotry-based demands, and the dominoes were beginning to fall.

But Harvard proved to be a tougher nut to crack than Columbia had been.  The President of Harvard, Alan Garber, responded to Trump in an open letter on Monday.  In that missive, President Garber wrote:

"No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of studies and inquiries they can pursue."

That terse response did not sit well with the man in the White House who is used to demanding and getting his own way.   Monday night Trump announced a decision to freeze $2.2 billion in funding intended for research at Harvard, and the next day, Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a "stop-work" order on government-funded medical research at Harvard.

All of that is, of course, headed into court, as is much of what Trump has tried to implement in the early months of his second term in office.

While the President of Harvard has given Trump a distinct "no thank-you" on his efforts to take over the school, medical research funded by the NIH has stopped, at least for the time being.   The projects that have been abruptly suspended include those studying radiation exposure, ALS diagnostics, and tuberculosis treatment.   Some of the research will be difficult to restart due to incomplete procedures needing to be re-initiated and researchers who will left in the interim in order to make a living elsewhere.

And there is also the question of what to do with the research animals.  A tuberculosis researcher at Harvard has been in the news this week saying that she fears some of the many animals involved in the medical research may have to be euthanized.   The animals in that project are macaque monkeys, and some of them have already started a treatment process.  The researcher feels that those monkeys, in particular, may have to be put down.

Harvard is currently seeking funds from outside of the federal government to keep its research programs functioning, and a few private donors have committed funds to help save the monkeys, but billions of dollars will not be generated by passing the hat, and the few Americans who do have the means to make a difference are busy snooping through government records and making things more efficient,  flying celebrities into space, and/or channeling their excess cash to Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians in the hopes of lessening their taxes and receiving other breaks and business opportunities from the government.

It's an ugly business all the way around:  trying to revive racist, homophobic, and misogynistic standards on American campuses, intentionally impeding research that could result in eliminating suffering and saving countless lives, and using innocent and sentient animals for medical research.  

The bad guy is obvious, and the good guys, the innocent monkeys, are, too.  It's the ones who are in the middle of this mess who are problematic.

No Longer Pissing in the Wind

 

by Pa Rock

Gnarly Old Typist

In November this blog will have been in existence  eighteen years.  I started it as a lark on a lonely evening in my apartment in Goodyear, Arizona, intending only to do a few postings in an effort to learn how to blog - and as a way of preserving various writings that I had done over the years.  But, that first posting, which ran on November 4, 2007,  wasn't a preservation project, it was a political piece where I declared my preference for the following year's Democratic presidential nomination.  It was titled "Obama, '08!"  One year later, to the day, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.

(I'm not trying to claim credit - Barack would have probably won without my endorsement!)

Over the ensuing years this space has featured fiction and poetry from my daft mind, political screeds, human interest stories, reviews, travel writing, family history, all manner of personal opinion laced with occasional outrage, and even guest editorials from old friends with time on their hands.   During the first few months I missed a few days, but once the obsession took hold I have pumped it out on a daily basis, and some days published multiple entries.  During the 6,378 days of which Pa Rock's Ramble has been in existence, today marks entry number 6,558.

(That does not count the one piece that Google pulled ten years after it had been posted - because someone had been offended.  If no one was ever offended, I've probably wasted my time.)

Let's explore a few more statistics and then I will (finally) get around to what today's column is about.  There is a counter on the blog's homepage which I installed a couple of years after The Ramble began.  It shows the amount of hits to the front (current) page - and over the years since its installation that counter has registered 137,712 hits.  But, with a blog featuring literally more than 6,000 separate documents, and on a platform run by Google, the world's busiest search engine, many of my older posts are viewed each day as well.  This morning, for instance, I have had only a handful of views of the current post - the one that went up yesterday, but Google says that on this day alone, 368 people have looked at something in The Ramble's archives.

And Google says that since the first date of publication back in 2007, 1,138,508 individuals have viewed a posting on Pa Rock's Ramble.   And I feel very good about that!

I used to promote the blog on Twitter, and would have fifty or so views on every posting on the day they went up.  But I left Twitter when Elon bought it and all of the Nazis came rushing back in.     At that point, without the help of social media, readership dropped to between ten and twenty for each new posting.  As I typed harder and harder, the results seemed more and more dismal.  I seriously considered abandoning the effort at that point, but my OCD wouldn't allow it.  I also considered renaming the blog (with apologies to the late Jerry Jeff Walker) "Pissing in the Wind," because that was increasingly what I felt about the declining effectiveness of the effort - and it was, and still is, an effort.

But, not being proud, I kept on typing - and then the new Twitteresque platform, Blue Sky, opened, and I found a new home there, a place to promote my tired old blog and hopefully draw in some new readers - and it is working amazingly well.  Now the blog's readership tops thirty almost every day, and it is back at the fifty level once every week or so.  A posting about my home town's old city dump caught fire last week (the posting, not the dump) and quickly reached more than ninety hits.

So the blues are abating and I am beginning to feel relevant again.

Then yesterday, and here comes the point of this whole damned meandering post, I received individual emails from a pair of old friends, and both of those communications had the heft and feel of very welcome paychecks.  A lady I went to school with from fifth grade through our senior year - and whom I was employed by at one point many years later - told me that she enjoyed my writing and that I have "good sense."

And a retired master teacher whom I taught with nearly fifty years ago said:

...god sakes i enjoy reading your stuff!! Your biting, dry humor. is a delight. Most times i tend to forget but then i do a binge read...and nod agreement and laugh and wish more would tune in. Keep on writin' Rock; 'tis important.

All of that praise was enough to fill my writing tank.    The feeling of pissing in the wind has blown on by, and now I am probably good for another ten years of tyrannical typing.

It humbles me to feel appreciated.

Patriotism Run Amok

 

by Pa Rock

Student of History

The Oklahoma City bombing in which a home-grown terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, parked a rental truck loaded with more than two tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and then set it off remotely, occurred thirty years ago today.    The blast which killed 168, several of whom were children, and injured 800 others, was, at the time, the deadliest act of terrorism on US soil in history.  Today Bill Clinton, who was President at the time, is in Oklahoma City attending a commemoration of the tragic event.

Timothy McVeigh was convicted in a federal trial on eleven counts of murder and was executed in 2001.  One of his co-conspirators, Terry Nichols, who helped McVeigh plan the bombing and later turned himself in to authorities, was convicted of conspiracy and eight counts of manslaughter and is currently serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison.

McVeigh tied the crime to the federal siege of a religious compound near Waco, Texas, which happened two years earlier - a siege in which the compound was surrounded by members of the FBI and Texas state law enforcement from February 28th through April 19th, 1993 (also during the Clinton presidency).  The group under siege, a religious assemblage calling itself the "Branch Davidians," and under the leadership of a man named David Koresh, had a massive store of supplies built up in the event of some catastrophe, such as an attack by the government.  On April 19th the FBI tired of waiting and pumped CS gas into the compound in order to drive the holdouts into the open, but a fire developed instead and 70 people died, including the leader, Koresh, and twenty to twenty-eight children.  While it looked as though the Branch Davidians had set the fire themselves, controversy remained.

By choosing April 19th as the date of his bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh was paying homage to the Waco tragedy which had occurred exactly two years earlier, as well as to the American Revolution against the British which had begun exactly 220 years earlier in Massachusetts.

McVeigh and Nichols regarded themselves as "patriots" and members of a patriotic movement which saw the government as an enemy to individual liberty.  Execution for McVeigh and life incarceration for Nichols seems to have only intensified that cancer of faux or misguided patriotism that has festered and grown more dangerous to society and democracy with each passing year.

It is not random individuals with brown skin and accents whom we need to fear, but rather it is often the native-born Americans who spend their waking hours in front of televisions or computer screens absorbing and regurgitating hate that fits into their preconceived notions of how and why they have been treated so "unfairly" in life.  Mix all of that with the influence of people who know better but are in it for their own personal or political gain, and we have the equivalent of even more rental trucks filled with explosives.

Encouraging people to attack and destroy the institutions of government isn't patriotism - it is patriotism run amok - it is tyranny.  The Oklahoma City bombing should have taught us that.

The Old Tariff Guy

 

by Bob Randall

(Editor's Note:  The following is the text of an email that I received a few days ago from my good friend, Ranger Bob.  I found it to be so interesting and informative that I asked him if he would share it in this blog.  It's a history lesson about what happened the last time a Republican Congress and a Republican President tried to fix the economy with hundreds of import tariffs - and well worth a read.  Thanks, Ranger Bob, for sharing your insights with us. - Pa Rock)

Back about 1976 or 77, I was assigned to "inspect" an old home that was on the National Register of Historic Places.  The National Park Service website describes the registry as "the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation."  That web site further describes the registry as a "part of the public effort to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources."  That's a mouthful!  

The National Park Service maintains that registry (they don't maintain the property unless they own it), and the pride of being on that list is part of the encouragement for maintaining the properties in their historic state.  Every so often someone from the NPS inspects those properties just to verify that they haven't been modernized beyond their historic value.  I was a ranger at the nearest NPS asset at the time, the Timpanogos Cave National Monument.  I was guided through the home by Mrs. Smoot who was, I think, the granddaughter-in-law of the original owner himself.  It was indeed worthy of its place as a historic structure.

Now, that old house was built in 1892 in Provo, Utah, for the Senator and Mormon apostle Reed O. Smoot.  It was and still is a marvelous old home that you could call a museum piece.  It is still owned, maintained, and lived in by Reed's heirs.  (Sorry to go on so about the house, but the honor of getting to "officially inspect" such a grand old house is something I'll never forget.)

According to Wikipedia, "Senator Smoot is primarily remembered as the co-sponsor of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties.  Criticized at the time as having 'intensified nationalism all over the world' by Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Co., Smoot-Hawley is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the worsening Great Depression."  That same Wikipedia entry further states that "(President Herbert C.) Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders.  Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to US exports and global trade plummeting.  Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates."

Let me refer back to the title of this post, "The Old Tariff Guy."   The value of that and all my palaver is to point out that Trump is now our New Tariff Guy.  Of course, he takes his prompts from Peter Navarro who takes his prompts from an economics expert, Ron Vara.  Vara says that tariffs are good.  So take that all of you naysayers.  Trump has an expert on his side.  I have one on my side, too. Arnold Blab.  That's my name with the letters jumbled.  Ron Vara is an anagram of Peter Navarro's last name.  I use my alter ego name as a dumb joke.  Peter uses his to bolster his dumb ideas from a nonexistent "expert."  Nevertheless, I take my cues from Arnold - and Pete takes his from Ron - and Trump takes his from Pete.  

Nothing to see here, folks.  We're in good hands with our New Tariff Guy.

Painful Contractions: The Plural of Y'all

 

by Pa Rock

Wordsmith

I recently saw a posting somewhere on the internet, though I cannot remember where, which posed the question:  What is the plural of "y'all"?

My own question in response was "What sort of person has enough time on their hands to worry about crap like this?," but then I thought about all of the people who spend their wretched days watching soap operas or seeking companionship by going to Walmart - and decided the least I could do to make their pitiful lives a little brighter would be to show some respect for the things that matter to them.  So I chose to ponder their question as well.

The first thought that popped into my mind was "y'all" is already plural.  It is a contraction of "you all," with "all" being a clear indication that it is inclusive of more than one person.  But, in fairness, I have heard people use it in a singular sense:  "Y'all can't be chaining that bicycle up to this here streetlight."  Maybe it was like the word "deer" and could be both singular and plural.  

I checked the internet - Google's AI Overview - and found that, in essence, it concurred with my thinking on the matter:

"Y'all is a colloquial contraction of 'you all' functioning as a plural form of 'you' in southern American English.  It is used to address or refer to two or more people, similar to 'you guys' in other regions.  While 'y'all' is primarily understood as plural, it can also be used in a singular context when referring to a single person within an implied group." 

The person who posed the question originally could have taken the same route that I did and simply asked what George W. Bush used to (and possibly still does) refer to as "the Google," but that would have eliminated the human touch of kicking it around cyberspace with other depressed souls.

My next thought was that if the person wanted to make absolutely certain that the use of that contraction would be seen as plural by anyone other than one of the current White House staffers or occupants, he (or she) could expand it to "all y'all."  It would be  ding-damned difficult to confuse that with a reference to just one person.

I also mentally drifted back to my earliest childhood recollections while living in a remote corner of the Missouri Ozarks, and remembered that at one time the contraction "you'ens" was also fairly common, but I haven heard "you'ens" since Hector was a pup.  Have y'all?

Harvard Stands Tall

 

by Pa Rock

University Grad

I am a fan of higher education and have a fistful of university degrees to prove it.  Whenever I am in the vicinity of a major seat of higher learning, I try to find time to take a stroll around the campus to get some sense of what the students and their professors are experiencing by being there.  While I was living in Asia a little more than a decade ago, a friend and I had the opportunity to explore National Taiwan University for the better part of a day with an alum from that school, and on another trip we wandered the entire campus and roamed through of the buildings of the University of Guam.   Some friends and I also spent a beautiful spring morning at Oxford University in England where my curiosity led me into a couple of buildings that were off-limits to tourists.   

Here in the United States my campus experiences have been with state universities and one community college where I taught evening classes in social sciences and English for several years.  

So I have a fairly good feel for what college and university life is like.

One area of secondary education where I have had no experience whatsoever is with the the big "Ivy League' schools, the places where the financially-gifted send their spawn, and where many of America's future leaders are generated.  I do have a good friend who grew up in a working class family in the rural midwest, secured a scholarship to Harvard where he obtained his bachelor's degree, and went on to become a small town physician back in rural midwest - but he is a fortunate exception to the general rules of class and privilege in the United States.

But the purpose of today's posting is not to gnaw on the Ivy League schools for being elitist, it is rather to recognize Harvard for standing up to a bully.

Harvard University is a private institution, not under the direct control of either the state or federal government, though it is subject to the laws of both, and does receive various financial backings and incentives which are rooted in funding from the government.  Harvard, the oldest university in the United States, has amassed over the centuries the largest financial "endowment" (cash and property) of any university in the world, and its current holdings now total over $53 billion, a situation which gives it a bit more room to navigate the demands of a demanding government.

Over the past several weeks the Trump administration, which operates largely on revenge, has begun flexing its power with several entities that before had been fairly independent of government controls.  Though spurious lawsuits and denial of access to government activities, Trump has put his thumb on news organizations and placed limitations of press freedom to gather and disseminate news.  The administration has also threatened several major law firms with barring them from government work unless they cut special deals with the government to provide work "pro bono" on causes and cases that are of special interest to the administration.  And, the Trump administration has also targeted certain Ivy League schools where student protests erupted last spring.

The Trumpers do not like people protesting authority, whether they make their commotion on Harvard Yard or in the streets of Portland.  (But if it's goobers in red hats tearing the Capitol apart, well . . . that's a different story.)

The Trump administration is now attaching requirements to research funding and other government assistance that dictate policies they expect the universities to implement and enforce, policies which would, among other things, limit the student and faculty rights to free speech and expression.  These dictates from the federal government are cloaked in the guise of fighting anti-semitism and are in response to student and faculty protests of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza, protests which occurred on multiple US campuses last spring - some at "Ivy League" schools.

Generally the Trump administration wants major American universities to eliminate DEI programs, ban face coverings during protests, use "merit-based" hirings and admissions, and control activist faculty and administration structures.

Trump hit Columbia University in New York City with a freeze on $400 million in government funding last week, and that school quickly seemed to fall in line with his demands, including enforcing protest rules, banning masks, holding student groups accountable, and reviewing the university's Middle East studies curriculum.   Still, the President of the University pushed back saying that the school would reject any "heavy-handed" orchestration of what the school could teach, research, or who it hires.

Then the Trump administration took what was basically their win at Columbia, and marched on to Harvard,  But Harvard proved to be a tougher nut to crack.   Trump and company announced a freeze on more than $2 billion in grants and contracts after Harvard refused to comply with the government overreach into how the private university manages itself.  Now the Trump administration is looking at Harvard's "tax-exempt" status, a further threat.

Harvard stood tall and pushed back at a bully.  

Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, another Ivy League school that, like Harvard and Columbia, produces America's future leaders - and America's future - has announced that his school will "stand by Harvard."  Eisgruber said that Trump's actions were "the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950's."

If our public schools and our great universities are destroyed, what remains can more easily fall under the iron heel of authoritarian despot, and that is obviously the point.

America's schools, colleges, and universities have always been at the forefront of advancing civilization.  Their peril is our nation's peril, and threats to our institutions of learning directly endanger our nation's freedom and future.

Thank you, Harvard University for standing tall for all of us.  Salute!

Is Martyr the Correct Word?

by Bob Randall

(Editor's Note:  As my good friend, Ranger Bob, explains in this post, he has concerns regarding my use of the word "martyr" in reference to Luigi Mangione, the young man who shot on insurance company CEO to death on a busy street in Manhattan last December.  He sent his thoughts to me in a personal email, and  I respected what he had to say to the point that I asked him to resubmit it as a posting for this blog.  While I still feel that the federal government's response to this particular crime will serve to increase the shooter's notoriety and support among some members of the reading public, I agree with Ranger Bob in that "martyr" was not the ideal term.  "Folk hero" would have been a more accurate description of Luigi's rising status within the general public. 

The post to which my friend is responding is "Bondi Moves to Ensure Luigi's Martyrdom" which ran in this blog on April 5th.  Thanks for sending your critique along, Ranger Bob.  I always appreciate feedback and knowing that someone is taking the time to read what I have written!  -  Pa Rock)

 

Recently, Pa Rock posted about Luigi Mangeoni’s martyrdom. Remember him? Luigi, not Pa Rock.  Rock and I have exchanged emails concerning the use of the word “martyrdom.”   I told him that I disagree with that label. He asked me to make this post.

So what is a martyr? There is probably more than one way to define it. Google: “A martyr is someone who willingly … endures great suffering for a … cause.”   L is not a martyr because he is not suffering for his belief in a cause.  We can agree that he probably committed acts for his beliefs, but it is for his acts that he is being prosecuted.  If I believe that the American health insurance system is bad, I still do not have a right to murder anyone who is involved with that industry. BTW I do believe it is flawed. 

L is being prosecuted for his actions. He is an alleged murderer. Therefore, he is not a martyr in NY.  I think it is appropriate that he should be prosecuted for 1st degree murder in the state of NY’s courts under state charges. If he is adjudicated guilty, I suppose that a life sentence would be appropriate, but I’m not on the jury.  That wouldn’t make him a martyr. 

Is he a martyr because of the federal prosecution? Legally, he is a defendant in a federal murder charge (I’m not sure that is final yet) and that doesn’t make him a martyr.  Of course, the feds don't have to prosecute him, they could just leave it to the state. 

I had to look up the federal jurisdiction of the Brian Thompson murder. I can remember when murder was not a federal crime.  Remember the JFK assassination?  I found a couple of things that push it into fed law. I won’t look it up again but it says something like murder done while in violation of a federal law is a federal crime. It also says murder with a firearm is a federal crime. The double charges in state and federal courts are not double jeopardy since there are separate laws and jurisdictions involved. None of this makes L a martyr.

Is it the death penalty that makes him a martyr?  No, if the murder had taken place in Texas, he would still not be a martyr just because of the potential death penalty.  Whether you believe the death penalty is good or bad has no bearing on this point. Is it the way the death penalty is being applied that makes him a martyr? Well, people were calling him a martyr before the feds jumped in vowing to execute him. 

It does seem like the only reason the feds are pursuing it is to bring in the death penalty.  So, you might argue, as his attorneys are, that the feds didn’t follow certain protocols and violated Mangione’s due process rights. That is probably a valid argument but it doesn't make L a martyr. I read that AG Pam Bondi said it was because it was an act of political terrorism. I hate to agree with her but it fits into my definition of domestic political terrorism. Are they pursuing the case to make a political point of being tough on crime? I suspect that’s part of it.  I note here that neither the State of Texas nor the feds are pursuing the death penalty against the white supremacist mass murderer in a Texas Walmart. The Texas prosecutor said it was because the victims' families didn't want it. The feds haven't said why they weren't pursuing the death penalty.  There is a smell of Trumpian persecution of his perceived enemy, but it's only a smell unless you can prove it. 

There is no justification for Brian Thompson’s murder.  I cannot assign martyrdom to a murderer. I suggest a different label: L is a folk hero, albeit because of misplaced values. Martyrdom has too much of a positive association for his crimes. Folk heroes can be either positive or negative. L is more of a Jesse James than a Joan of Arc. 

There are plenty of reasons to argue that the Trump administration is a disaster, but don't try to bring Luigi up to a martyr status as a talking point.  Argue that the death penalty is unconscionable, argue that it isn't being applied evenly, argue that the commercialization of health care is flawed. You can do that without the hysterics of martyrdom. Bringing up a martyr and trying to justify it will just bring down the effectiveness of your arguments. The only people who will care will be those in the choir who are singing with you. The other side won't hear your argument, you will be handing them a straw man to diminish what you are trying to say.

I don't think I'm being picky.  I'm trying to moderate the perspective.

PS  I asked Google about it and it came up with an AI answer similar to mine. If the Secretary of Education is reading this, it is AI for artificial intelligence, not A-1, which is a sauce.

I Ride an Old Paint

by Pa Rock

Music Appreciator

Back when I was in junior high school - a loose term covering grades seven and eight of a school that contained grades one through twelve - in the very early 1960's, we had a music class that was officially called "Glee Club."   Girls had Glee Club three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and boys met twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  On days when either gender was not in Glee Club, they were in Physical Education (PE), which meant the boys had PE one day a week more than the girls - every week.

Twenty years later when I became the principal of that same little school - and the same music teacher was still there, a very sweet lady named Mrs. Alexander - that same scheduling routine was still in effect.  But before classes began in the fall a woman who was new to the community came to my office wanting to look the school over for one of her children who would be attending there.  By that time the county high schools had consolidated, and what remained in our community was a K-8.

The visitor asked about the scheduling for junior high PE and Music, and I told her about the system that had been in effect for decades, probably since the little school first opened its doors.  She replied, very nicely, that that system would need to change.  Being fairly progressive myself, I understood her point, and beginning that year we went to a system whereby boys and girls alternated each week on which group got three sessions of which class.  Not too long after that I hired the woman who had pointed out the educational inequity as the girl's PE teacher and coach.

(Today we would probably both be fired based on some DEI complaint about prejudice against a well-established tradition of white male privilege.)

All of that was an unnecessary prelude into the topic I intend to discuss, which is the school's Boys Glee Club from the 1960's, but I wanted to provide some sense of the situation and the times.

The music curriculum had its own building where the marching band met and the various grades had their music (vocal) classes.  The main room had an old piano which was used by the teacher, and a couple of sets of wooden risers where the students sat.  The junior high used a set of ratty old song books that contained a hundred or so songs, most of which were old standards that lots of people knew.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the teacher would pound away on the piano while the boys had a good time bellowing out the tunes.

I just remember a few.  One was "Papa Tony" which had an "Omp-pa-pa" refrain that was kind of fun to sing - and made for some great noise, and a couple were well known cowboy songs.  One of those was Cole Porter's classic "Don't Fence Me In," a paean to the cowboy's independent lifestyle, and the other was an older cowboy song called "I Ride an Old Paint."  The words of both songs have stuck with me through the years, and it is not uncommon to occasionally hear updated versions of "Don't Fence Me In" over various media.

"I Ride an Old Paint," however is not so common, but this past week it was mentioned in a blog posting by entertainer Garrison Keillor, and that got this tired old typist to remembering Glee Club.  As I read Keillor's mention of using that song as a sing-along on one of his radio programs performed before a live audience, I realized that I remembered most of the words and could have sung along to it as well.  But who wrote it, and what was its history?

It was time to do a little research.  

A quick scroll through the internet revealed that "I Ride an Old Paint" was a "traditional" cowboy song with no specific author or composer, just something that cowboys had come up with and no doubt modified as they used it to calm their cattle and entertain themselves during the evenings on the long, dusty cattle drives.  But the most interesting thing about the song's history was that it had been "collected" and preserved by master American poet, Carl Sandburg, in his "American Songbag" in 1927.

For anyone who would like to sing their way through some genuine American history, here are the lyrics of the first verse and the chorus, the best know parts of a longer ballad.    There are no cattle that need calming, just a room full of boisterous adolescent boys, so sing loudly if you want to be heard!

I Ride an Old Paint

I ride an old paint

I lead an old Dan

I'm goin' to Montan'

For to throw the hoolihan

They feed in the coulees

They water in the draw

Their tails are all matted

Their backs are all raw

Ride around, little dogies

Ride around them slow

For the fiery and snuffy are a-rarin' to go

Class dismissed.

Bobby the Fabulist

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

When I was a child our sources for bedtime stories were generally limited to the ancient Greek, Aesop, who specialized in collecting fables, tales with morality lessons, and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.  That pool of available fiction should be much wider and deeper for coming generations of little people thanks to the growing body of work by America's pre-eminent medical fabulist, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

RFK, Jr, who seems to have been chosen for his current government gig based on his outlandish medical beliefs, is certainly delivering the goods that his political benefactor wanted, but he did experience a recent rough patch with regard to the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.  That situation, where at least two children and one adult, all unvaccinated, have died (so far) from the highly contagious disease, brought about an astounding admission from that HHS Secretary that the best defense against the measles virus is inoculation with the MMR vaccine.  

Kennedy, a long-term opponent of vaccinations, especially for children, undoubtedly went through some serious soul-searching in order to come up with that piece of highly practical advice.   But losing a battle does not mean that he has given up his war on modern medicine.

Last week the governor of Utah signed legislation which prevents cities and communities in his state from adding fluoride to the drinking water.  Secretary Kennedy, a long-standing opponent of public water fluoridation was in Utah this week to praise the state's bold action, a move that is opposed by dentists and national health organizations.  Kennedy, who has no power to remove fluoride anywhere, does have control over health recommendations which are promoted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and on Monday Kennedy announced, in Utah, that he plans to tell the CDC to stop recommending the fluoridation of water supplies in communities nationwide.

Kennedy's fluoride edict will have a greater negative impact on poor people - and their children - than it will on people who are able to make regular visits to the dentist.  Fluoride may be applied at a personal level through toothpaste and mouth wash, but the better treatments come from dentists, and people who aren't able to visit dentists sometimes lack the knowledge or means for proper dental care in the home.  A fluoridated water supply helps to correct that imbalance in dental health and protection - but now that will be disappearing.

Thanks for nothing, Bobby.

But that wasn't all.    Kennedy, who resembles Trump in some respects, and who likes to overwhelm his subjects  with a a more-or-less constant assault of outrages, announced a major effort this week to find the cause of autism.  Kennedy said that a group of highly qualified researchers from around the world will look at many factors and have an announcement five months from now - September 2025 - that will identify the causes of autism and help to prevent exposure to those factors.

Here are a few of the problems with Bobby's moon shot:  

• He has already overseen cuts in both budget and staffing to HHS, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health. Who is going to do this miracle research and how the hell are they going to pay for it?  Has anybody run this past Elon and Big Balls?
• The Secretary has a history of trying to link autism with childhood vaccinations, a theory that has been discredited by competent medical researchers.
• One person recently hired by RFK, Jr, to work in this research is a highly discredited individual who has a long history of trying to link autism to childhood vaccinations, and who was fined by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine without a license.
• The Secretary is not revealing details about how his research will be accomplished, how it will be funded, or how much it will cost.
• The major autism support organizations in America do not seem to be on board with Kennedy's effort.

Push on, Bobby.  Maybe you will be able to get autism under control before the big polio resurgence - and all of that "research" will undoubtedly help sell a few books once you leave office - which hopefully will not be too far in the future.

But back to fairy tales, where this screed began:   I am working on an idea for a modern fairy tale with a medical theme.  It involves a brain worm who dies in his human host but later regenerates, as worms sometimes do.  The worm decides that he wants to be a doctor and practice medicine, but, alas, he has grown too big to escape from his host's skull, so he goes with his second career option and decides to become a puppeteer, and he uses his puppet to practice medicine without a license - and lives happily ever after.

Okay, it needs some work!