Kelly Sedinger Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

November rambling: voter turnout

Thanksgiving pie

A Finnish study found that voters had a lower risk for all-cause death over 21 years of follow-up compared with non-voters. (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health)

Voter Turnout Highest in Half Century as Mamdani Phenomenon Galvanizes Electorate; More than 2 million New York voters cast ballots, the most in a mayoral race since 1969.

Why do the French eat healthier? The government helps.

Nancy Pelosi Plans to Retire in 2027 After 39 Years in Congress

What would a Republican healthcare plan look like

NTSB agents arrive in Louisville, KY, to investigate what caused the engine to fall off the UPS cargo plane and the left wing to catch fire

Charity Scandals of 2025

YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations

Police Chases and Felony Murder: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Amazon Ring’s upcoming facial recognition tool could violate the privacy rights of millions of people and result in Amazon breaking state biometric privacy laws.

Dick Cheney is dead

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral (MIT Technology Review)

The Casinoification of America: Gambling Is Killing Sports and Consuming the Country

This year’s anti-DST rant

The Man Who Held His Breath for 24 Minutes (not recommended)

10 Cities With the World’s Oldest Subway Systems

Crocs– Josh Johnson (thru 10:21)

Now I Know: Basketball’s Digital Problem and The Time Travel Trap and Prison Food You’ll Want to Eat and How the Civil War Decided What Pie You Eat on Thanksgiving

Metamucilini

His actions have raised a chilling question: Are We Losing Our Democracy?

Why He Can Do No Wrong

$230 Million: The Biggest, Most Blatantly Corrupt Political Thievery in U.S. History

His many lies on 60 Minutes; Jon Stewart takes him on

Could a Third Term Happen?

Violent innocence

Banquet of Greed: Ballroom Donors Feast on Federal Funds and Favors

A Two-Headed Coin That Always Comes Up FOTUS

Border czar admits ICE sees all immigrants as criminals

Listeria outbreak surfaces after CDC cuts key program

MUSIC

Big Phony Schmuck! – Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Losing My Mind – Imelda Staunton from Follies

My Cologne – Howl Owl Howl

I’ve Just Seen A Face (Take 3) – The Beatles (Anthology 4)

Lawyers, Guns, and Money – Warren Zevon

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life – Monty Python with orchestra

Water Music by George Frideric Handel on original instruments

The Rainbow Connection -Kermit the Frog with the Lincoln Center choir

The Isle of the Dead, Op.29 by Rachmaninoff, plus some spooky/moody/scary movie music

Danse Macabre, Op. 40 by Saint-Saëns – Leopold Stokowski

Superman March by John Williams, performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra

Goodnight Moon by Eric Whitacre

Riders on the Storm – The Doors

The Passenger – Iggy Pop

Short-Term Memory Loss Blues – Ray Jessel

Bohemian Rhapsody – Pentatonix

With A Little Help From My Friends – Joe Cocker

Building the Barn by Maurice Jarre, from the movie Witness

September – EW&F; Leonid & friends

Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper

Old Friends – Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez from Merrily We Roll Along

Where I Wanna Be – Jasmine Amy Rogers from BOOP! The Musical

Bad Company – Bad Company

One Short Day – Voctave from the musical Wicked

Beyond The Sea -Jonathan Groff and the Broadway company of Just In Time from the musical based on the career of Bobby Darin

The Twist – Chubber Checker

Sidestep – Charles Durning from the 1982 movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Omaha, Nebraska – Groucho Marx

The Lively Ones – Vic Damone

More music

J. Eric Smith’s Genre Delve: Americana and Prog

Slapstick Slops – the Slop Sisters, for Kelly, as is The James Bond Theme – Harvard Undergraduate Drummers playing on boonwhackers

Lord Vinheteiro plays familiar tunes whose names we don’t know while he stares accusingly at us.

So Rare & Flippin’ – The Haircuts (CAESAR’S HOUR, Apr 25 1955)

Coverville 1555: The Ellie Greenwich Cover Story, 1556: The David Ball Tribute and Soft Cell Cover Story, and 1557: The America Cover Story II

The Doobie Brothers: Tiny Desk Concert (NPR), Nov 5, 2025

Paul McCartney on the lost years after the Beatles

Grateful Dead singer Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay dies at 78; I saw her perform in the late 1970s

Is it ever acceptable for musicians to collectively refuse to perform a piece of music?

October rambling: wrackful

A Whole Lotta Fibbin’ Going On

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 23: An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on October 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. The demolition is part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a multimillion-dollar ballroom on the eastern side of the White House. (Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images)

Wrackful. Meaning – adjective: Ruinous. In Sonnet 65, Shakespeare laments time’s “the wrackful siege of battering days.” You can almost hear the timbers groan and the sigh of loss.

AWS outage spotlights the global economy’s fragile foundations

The AI that we’ll have after AI

How a Fringe Movement of Gun Nuts, Backwoodsmen, and Free Marketers Paved the Way for Autocracy

American e-waste is causing a ‘hidden tsunami’ of junk in Southeast Asia

The World Is Running Out of Fresh Water. What Happens If We Do? The pace of freshwater depletion is staggering. An area twice the size of California is drying up annually.

Does Brazil have an app that can upend digital finance?

One of 20 Million in the US With Long COVID. RFK Pulled the Rug From Under Us.

Americans remain pessimistic about the country’s direction and the state of the country.

Why So Many Gen Z-ers Are Drawn to Conservative Christianity

A Whole Lotta Fibbin’ Going On

The Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex” —The result will be a lopsided, enforcement-only machine that will be hard to dismantle.

“Divisive”? (BHO)

The shrinking future of Ph. D.s

Medicare Advantage: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Response

The Resistance Stiffens and “No Kings” — Loving America

Labor Unions, EFF Sue Administration to Stop Ideological Surveillance of Free Speech Online

John Dickerson: What Hamilton warned in the Federalist Papers #1

June Lockhart obituary: American stage and screen actor who enjoyed huge success on the television shows Lassie, Lost in Space, and Petticoat Junction.

Baseball Obituary: Mike Greenwell (1963-2025)

The Jewish Prisoners Who Escaped From a Nazi Death Camp

Ernest Shackleton’s journey was most likely doomed before it began

Why Paris Designed Its Peculiarly Popular Grand Graveyards to Evoke a Celebration of Life Amid All the Death

In honor of the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Erie Canal, History of the canal system of the State of New York together with brief histories of the canals of the United States and Canada / by Noble E. Whitford v.1 (1906)

These Airport Codes Make No Sense

Now I Know: Where the Other Two Musketeers Went and Hackers, Pre-Internet Edition and The $10,000 Blade of Grass (Dali and Ono) and The “Baseball versus Beer” Loophole and Our Anti-Photographic Memories?

The dog that was twenty times smarter than Lassie

Wrecking crew

The East Wing of the White House has been demolished. Here’s a look at its history

Demolition Seen as Potent Metaphor for His Destructive Presidency

Daily Kos: “Normal people looked at the demolition… and asked, ‘Hey, shouldn’t an official body, like the National Capital Planning Commission, have to sign off on the demolition?’

“No, you sweet summer child. According to him and his allies on the NCPC, the planning commission need only sign off on the construction of buildings, not their demolition.

“What kind of person who heads a planning commission charged with the overall planning of the nation’s capital would agree to this?

“Oh, that would be Will Scharf. Scharf is the White House staff secretary, and he is also now the head of the NCPC. Does Scharf have any experience in urban planning or architecture, or anything really?

“Nope. You all get one guess as to why Scharf has not one, but two high-level government jobs? Yes, he was one of his former criminal defense attorneys.”

Borowitz: FOTUS “would continue his father’s proud tradition of gleeful destruction [Steeplechase Park] when he demolished the Bonwit Teller Building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to clear the site for his Tower. After saying he’d try to preserve the building’s priceless Art Deco friezes so that they could be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he discovered that it would cost $32,000 to remove them intact. As a clever solution to his problem, he had his workmen smash them to bits.”

MUSIC

Take Me Down To Stewy’s – Jackson Simpson (feat. Azel & Grey Mizzy), a tribute to the many Stewart’s Shops, a chain of convenience stores located in Upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Last Time (I Seen the Sun) – Alice Smith and Miles Caton

That Thing You Do! – The Wonders

I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow – The Soggy Bottom Boys with Dan Tyminski

La Academia – Peter Sprague

Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-sharp minor, Moonlight, by Ludwig van Beethoven

That Song In Every Musical That No One Likes – Sarah Smallwood Parsons

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Take 27) – The Beatles [Anthology 2025]

Bonehemian Rhapsody– 28-Trombone collaboration

Coverville 1553: The Bruno Mars Cover Story and 1554: The Tom Petty Cover Story V

New Moon in the Old Moon’s Arms by Michael Kamen

Over, Under, Sideways, Down -The Yardbirds

How Lucky Can You Get -Jason Graae, the voice of the Leprechaun in the Lucky Charms commercials for several years

Take On Me– a-ha

You’ll Be Back (from Hamilton) – Primer (Barbershop Quartet)

Theme to Top Cat – Hoyt Curtin

On Your Shore -Enya

Theme from Jurassic Park – John Williams

Oh Sheila – Ready for the World

J. Eric Smith’s blog, Genre Delve #4: Gospel, with links to the intro, Jazz, and Africa

What Makes Surf Rock Sound Instantly Recognizable?

September rambling: Tohubohu

a dangerous assault on democratic oversight

Word of the Day: Tohubohu – A state of chaos; utter confusion.

Threatening Vulnerable People Is No Way to Mourn Someone Who Was Murdered. Those who had nothing to do with the violence against Charlie Kirk are being menaced—just like always.

Big Tech Data Centers Compound Decades of Environmental Racism in the South

Scholars’ group cites mass civilian killings, starvation, and official incitement as evidence, while Israel and the United States reject the genocide label.

Pentagon press clampdown sparks First Amendment alarm. Journalists and free press advocates warn that new restrictions requiring pre-approval of even unclassified information represent a dangerous assault on democratic oversight.

Robert Reich on FOTUS’ Calamitous Crypto Corruption

Cartoon: The road to fascism

FOTUS to U.N.: ‘Your Countries Are Going to Hell.’ Read his full address at the U.N. General Assembly.

Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez lays out what she found about the degree to which every New Yorker is being tracked, the harms that tracking is already inflicting, and the reasons to fear that things might get much worse, here and across the nation.

Modern dogs now occupy roles historically reserved for close human relationships and often receive greater moral concern than people.

RFK Jr., HHS secretary, “is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the causes,” the psychiatrist Allen Frances writes in The Times Opinion. “I should know, because I am partly responsible for the explosion in rates.”

FOTUS Has ‘Strong Feelings’ About Autism; the Issue Is Personal

Rural Health Clinics Begin to Fall Under Crushing Weight of Big, Ugly Bill

Nanoplastics are not just in seafood; a new study finds small plastic particles penetrate crops

Potential Trouble for Retirees: A Wealth Adviser’s Guide to the OBBB’s Impact on Retirement

History

In October, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine will reach an extraordinary milestone: 1 trillion webpages preserved. Record a video answering the question: “Why is the Wayback Machine important to you?”

The last look at American poverty? New data shows 41% of Americans are poor or low-income, revealing deep racial and regional disparities ahead of sweeping federal cuts.

Netanyahu: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Thieves Steal and Destroy Solid Silver Statue of Abraham Lincoln Created by Mount Rushmore Sculptor Gutzon Borglum

American Hindenburg -“the worst air disaster you’ve never heard of”

Jordan Klepper’s The Daily Show interview of John Fugelsang talking about his book Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. There is a lovely George Harrison reference as well.

10 of the Oldest Cities in the U.S.

Why Romania Excels in International Olympiads

Internet Archive Designated as a Federal Depository Library

The Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation Settlement Administrator has sent me $38.36 USD. I’m RICH!

John Masius, St. Elsewhere, Emmy-winning writer, and Touched By An Angel creator, dies at 75

‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Ben Scripps Dies at 52 After Losing Battle With Cancer

Baseball’s Davey Johnson (1943-2025)

Now I Know: Why The Dot Got Dashed

Jimmy Kimmel

The Death of Free Speech – Legal Eagle

The FCC: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

He is Back!

HCR

Heather Cox Richardson, about the first of her Letters from an American newsletter six years ago: “In that first letter where I warned of rising authoritarianism, I wrote: ‘So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…

“If you are tired from the last six years, you have earned the right to be.

“And yet you are still here, reading, commenting, protesting, articulating a new future for the nation. And I am proud to be among you.

“I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.”

MUSIC

Freedom of Speech – Marsh Family parody of “Under the Sea” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”

Sonny Curtis, member of the Crickets who wrote the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” theme song, dies at 88; here he was on CBS Sunday Morning in 2022

Love Is All Around – Sonny Curtis; Mary Tyler Moore Show – Seasons 4-7 Intro & Theme

I Fought The Law – Bobby Fuller Four (1966), written by Sonny Curtis; I Fought The Law – the (post-Buddy Holly) Crickets (1959), featuring Curtis

Ouvertüre zum Lustspiel “Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, ein Abend in Wien” by Franz von Suppé

From – Bon Iver

Wuthering Heights score by Alfred Newman, composed for the 1939 film of the same book.

Makin’ Whoopee – Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks, September 9, 2025 – Radio Free Birdland #34

Need A Ride – Kathleen Edwards

Wuthering Heights suite from the 1939 film by Alfred Newman

Elegy by Mark Camphouse

Helter Skelter – The Beatles (Second Version, Take 17) [Anthology 2025]

K-Chuck Radio: Celebrating Earth, Wind & Fire Day

Ivonny Bonita – Karol G

Full Moon by Ludovico Einaudi

Sesame Street: Pentatonix Counts (and Sings) to Five

Flash Gordon – Queen

Coverville 1549: Interview with Jeff Kanan of The Keep Recording and 1550: Cover Stories for Fee Waybill of The Tubes and B.B. King

J. Eric Smith’s Best Albums of 2025 (Third Quarter)

St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) – John Parr

Protein Synthesis (1971)

Money For Nothing – Dire Straits

August rambling: America’s wombmate

NEW Rebecca Jade!

Big Brother Moves to Become America’s Wombmate -government access to medical data threatens patient rights.

Here’s a Map of What FOTUS-GOP Destruction of US Hospitals Looks Like

America First is America alone. Power-crazed he may be, but he fails to grasp soft power.

This is what extreme heat is doing to us: Policies to Make the Planet Hotter

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon Burned: The NPS Burns Too

The Founders of This New Arkansas Development Say You Must Be White to Live There

How Ireland’s ‘Mediocre’ Milk Powder Made it Big in West Africa

U.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds

How to champion libraries in Congress: a free virtual event on Tuesday, September 9 at 5 PM ET / 4 PM CT / 2 PM PT, where ALA policy experts and special guests will share updates, inspiring stories, and how you can pitch in at the start of this school year.

Mike Lindell & MyStore: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Kelly’s 2X4

Matt Damon & Ken Jennings on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Marvel v. DC: The 25-Cent War from Tales From My Spinner Rack! by Gary Sassaman

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and The Baseball Player With The Special ID, and He Bought His Freedom With Fake Money, and Why Some Movies Can’t Give it a Rest, and His Hometown Went to Pot? and Excel Has Bad Genes

ICE Raids and DC Occupation

Make democracy work part of ordinary life, not an add-on (ht/Paul Tonko). Lauren DesRosiers quoted Audre Lorde: “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name.”

DHS is using the Bible to promote ICE, claiming ‘righteous’ fight against immigrants. The agency refers to Scripture, including Micah 6:8, as it seeks to recruit agents.

New York State has seen a surge in ICE arrests, with totals four times the number seen during the same June-July period last year.

Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights

‘Go Home, Fascists’: Protesters Jeer Federal Agents in Streets of DC

Federal agents face protests after Trump orders unprecedented takeover of DC police

Five Ways to Fight FOTUS Fascism by Robert Reich

Tonko and Fahy

My Congressperson, US Rep. Paul Tonko: “I traveled to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia… This visit was even more urgent given the results of a report from ICE’s Office of the Inspector General from an unannounced facility inspection earlier this summer. The report found the facility and ICE staff were not in compliance with federal law and used excessive, inappropriate force, including striking detainees and spraying them with pepper spray.

“Despite the pressing need for oversight and in violation of federal law that grants me and all Members of Congress access to these facilities, I was denied at the gate. The facility guards blocking my entry went so far as to confirm that they knew they were in violation of the law. If they are fine ignoring the legal rights of a Member of Congress, what does that mean for our own communities and individuals who are detained?”

You may or may not be able to read my state senator, Pat Fahy’s, newest op-ed in the Times Union, “about the paramilitary-type tactics taking over our streets.

“No visible identification, no judicial warrants, no due process – these are setting a dangerous precedent for Americans and normalizing paramilitary secret police style tactics on our streets. That’s why I introduced legislation to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks or face coverings during civil immigration enforcement in New York.

“Security and humanity can both exist, and instilling fear will not create the immigration reforms we need to enrich America and honor its legacy.”

Kudos to them both.

MUSIC

Not Me No Way – Rebecca Jade ℗ 2025 Ultimate Vibe Recordings, Released on: 2025-08-18

Join Ice – Jesse Welles

He Just Can’t Wait To Be King! – Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Coverville 1545: Cover Stories for Steve Martin and Modest Mouse and 1546: The Mamas & The Papas Cover Story

The Mamas & The Papas cover Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs: My Heart Stood Still (from One Dam’ Thing after Another, 1927); Glad To Be Unhappy (from On Your Toes, 1936); Sing For Your Supper (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938). They sang those three songs and Here In My Heart (from Dearest Enemy, 1925) for Rodgers and Hart Today, a salute to the composers, which aired March 2, 1967, on ABC TV, then reworked it as No Salt On Her Tail.

Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich

Gospel Plough – Robert Plant and Saving Grace

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You from the movie The Music Man

You’ll Be Back – Primer

On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe from the movie The Harvey Girls (1946), with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and many others

Theme to the movie Emma by Rachel Portman

The Cast of Oliver with Davy Jones perform I’d Do Anything on The Ed Sullivan Show, Feb 9, 1964

Peter Sprague Plays Waters of March featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Run On -Elvis Presley

I Love You Period – Dan Baird

Bernstein – Academic Festival Overture (Brahms)

Go Away, Little Girl – Donny Osmond

Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” for Mongkol, the Old Bull Elephant (ht/aal)

The hairpin: The Most Misunderstood Symbol in Music (ft. Seymour Bernstein) by Ben Lade

Thank You Art

like the rainbow door

thank you gift bag I consider Thank You Art to be the artistic collision of random things that happen in nature and/or within a structure, creating art/beauty/curiosity where you least expect it. One example is the nifty little rainbows I find on our house steps and hallway when the sun shines through the refracted view of the glass on our front door.

This one involves this bag that sits on my dresser, though unfortunately, you can’t view it. One morning around 6:30, my wife asks, “Do you see that on the bag?” And I do. It can’t be easily replicated because both of us are visually impaired enough that we can’t read the words ‘Thank You’ on the bag, which is only four or five feet away.

However, we can see a peculiar gold field that is disrupted by some flickering light. The dresser is to our left. On the ceiling above our heads is the ceiling fan, which creates an effect as the light from outside comes in with the new day.

It was wonderful, in large part because it was a random convergence of events that I wish I could have taped or photographed, but I couldn’t even replicate it. Nor should I want to, I think.

That said, what I do like about the photo is the uneven distribution of the light on the gold lettering and the shadow of the handle on the bag.

By the way, the bag itself was a giveaway at my niece, Markia’s, and her husband, Brandon’s, wedding on April 12th. It’s a nice bag and features some interesting writings to read.

Jaquandor

Kelly would understand. He noted, actually after I wrote the above, though I hadn’t posted it, “it was like the car in front of me was driving on rainbows.” He opined, “Light doesn’t just shine. It dances and bobs and weaves and flits and does all that kind of Carl Sandburg stuff.”