Kelly Sedinger Archives - Page 3 of 21

June rambling: wealth to the top

Henry Johnson

The Republican budget shifts wealth to the top, with workers paying the price. A new congressional analysis reveals massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, while working families are expected to shoulder cuts, tariffs, and rising costs under GOP economic plans. ITEP analysis.

America is a scam

Peace through… by Sharp Little Pencil

The Rot Goes Deeper Than FOTUS: Just winning the next set of elections won’t fix the underlying problems.

West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate

DOJ keeps busy suing states for not being bigoted enough

If Blanche Were Here by Sharp Little Pencil

The Court fails transgender youth.

Hard Truths About Immigration by Adam Ragusea, a podcaster/content creator to whom folks usually look for tips on the best way to cook dinner

Congresswoman Kim Schrier (D-WA) questions our Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Asked to flag ‘negative’ National Park content, visitors gave their own 2 cents instead.

World of Ideas

Bill Moyers, the longtime PBS and CBS Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker, dies at 91. “He showed a generation of journalists, scholars, and public intellectuals what it means to speak truth to power.” I have his book World of Ideas and its sequel in my office, at arm’s length.

We Don’t Have To Give In To Smartphones. They haven’t defeated us. Yet. By Jonathan Haidt, Will Johnson, and Zach Rausch

That’s It, The F-Word Is Officially Boring

The unexpected package Mark Evanier received was probably brushing

I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial (possibly related: just this month, I filled out a survey to be on jury duty)

The Hollywood Blockbuster They Forgot To Copyright

Six Miles of Field Goals

Now I Know: The Earth’s Great Bear Coincidence and The Original Slush Fund and How to Watch Golf During a Basketball Game (Maybe) and The Girl With Twin Fathers and The Restaurant With A Rotating Grandma On The Menu

SCOTUS

The Supreme Court restricted the ability of federal judges to issue broad nationwide freezes on executive orders, a significant victory for FOTUS that opens the door for states to at least temporarily enforce his order ending birthright citizenship.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, in part. “The Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship…

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”

Justice Jackson adds, “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive branch to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

RENAME

From here and elsewhere: “Henry Johnson of Albany, N.Y., was a genuine war hero — recipient of the Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor, and the first American to receive France’s highest award for valor. President Theodore Roosevelt called him one of the ‘five bravest Americans’ to serve in World War I…

“This [month], news came that Johnson’s name will be stripped from the U.S. Army fort [in Louisiana] that was named for him, part of the Trump administration’s decision to revert to names that honor military leaders of the Confederate States of America who waged war against the United States.”

Technically, “according to a press release on the Army’s website, the renaming of Fort Johnson will now pay homage to a World War II colonel and Silver Star recipient, James H. Polk, as opposed to [Confederate General] Leonidas Polk.” But this is a sham.

46th District New York Senator Pat Fahy, a Democrat, says that the news “felt like a gut punch.” “It is shameless, and it is it’s, you have to call it what it is. This is clearly trying to whitewash the history, clearly a complete dishonor…

“To help re-stake claim to that legacy, Fahy, Assembly colleagues Gabriella Romero of the 109th and John McDonald of the 108th, along with Republican Senator Jake Ashby of the 43rd district, have introduced legislation that would rename the Patroon Island Bridge after Johnson.

MUSIC

Lalo Schifrin, Acclaimed Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ‘Mannix’ Themes, Dies at 93

Lou Christie, Lightnin’ Strikes and Rhapsody In the Rain Singer, Dies at 82

In honor of Dr. Demento: The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati

Bobby Sherman, Teen Idol and ‘Here Come the Brides’ Actor, Dies at 81

Best Albums of 2025 (First Half)

Caledonia – VOCES8

Coverville 1535: A Rick Derringer Tribute and Spandau Ballet Cover Story, and 1538: Cover Stories for Air Supply and The Zombies

The Joker – Lady Gaga

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING’s Standbys Sing ‘The Rainy Day We Met’; Hannah Kevitt and Christopher James Tamayo are the standbys for Claire and Oliver

Sour Times – Portishead

Peter Sprague Plays Hurricane Country and A Felicidade featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Big Spender – Sam Phillips

God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down – The Jubalaires –

6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps

The Longest Time by Billy Joel, Julien Neel, Dan Wright, Sam Robson, and COVID-era Zach Timson

Defying Gravity – Brittain Ashford

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, from the Disney film Fantasia 2000

God Only Knows – the Beach Boys

Heaven – Bryan Adams

Lassie 1959 Opening and Closing Theme (With the Lone Ranger Snippet)

Remembering James Horner (1953-2015)

Book: Daniel de Visé’s ‘The Blues Brothers’

May rambling: To Secure These Rights

Charles Strouse

To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. HARRY S. TRUMAN, The White House, December 5, 1946.

How Civil Rights Were Made—and Remade—By Black Communities In the Jim Crow South

In HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by the House of Representatives, Sec. 70302: “This section limits the ability of U.S. courts to enforce a citation for contempt for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order. Specifically, if no security was given when the injection or order was issued, the citation of contempt may not be enforced using appropriated funds. This limitation applies to injunctions or orders issued before, on, or after the date of enactment.”

The AKG Museum exhibit honoring the people killed in the shootings at Tops Market in Buffalo, 5-14-2022, including the poem Mourning Until Morning by Jillian Hanesworth

The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Uncensored Oral History of a Revolution

My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One. He was a Nazi hunter — and was killed in the Lockerbie bombing. What does it mean to seek justice for his death?

Wendy McMahon Resigns as Head of CBS News: “Company and I Do Not Agree on the Path Forward”

This Channel Is Biased

A business owner tested whether customers would pay more for American-made products. The results were ‘sobering.’

Revisiting Biden’s Decline

The Long, Strange Trip of the Titanic Victims Whose Remains Surfaced Hundreds of Miles Away, Weeks After the Ship Sank

And…

Baby Is Healed With the World’s First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment. The technique used on a 9½-month-old boy with a rare condition has the potential to help people with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases.

John shares some extremely good news six years into Nerdfighteria’s effort to improve maternal and child health in Sierra Leone.

No One Knows When They Don’t Die

Legendary comic book writer Peter David dies at age 68

James McEachin, Star of ‘Tenafly’ and Perry Mason Telefilms, Dies at 94

George Wendt, the Beer-Loving Norm on ‘Cheers,’ Dies at 77

Discover® is now part of Capital One as of May 18, 2025

June Squibb on Her Nonagenarian Career High

Why Teacher Jamal Roberts is the New American Idol

Autocephality is a fancy word for self-governance. It’s mainly used in the context of Eastern Orthodox Churches that independently govern their spiritual affairs without a higher ecclesiastical authority.

Now I Know: It’s Not Easy Being Clean and Why Purple is the Royal Color and The Secret Code of Central Park’s Lamp Post and It’s Not Easy Driving Green

On and on…

Yes, this is Project 2025 (ft. Liz Dye)

The Greatness Paradox: His notion of national greatness is stuck in the Napoleonic Era, which is causing him to destroy everything that makes America great today.

Harvard Derangement Syndrome

Him & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

His CFPB kills the data broker rule

When He Was the One Taking Land From Farmers and How His Embrace of Afrikaner “Refugees” Became a Joke in South Africa

She Devoted Her Life to Serving the U.S. Then DOGE Targeted Her. A veteran who returned from Iraq injured and transformed, Joy Marver is now facing a crisis at home.

We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S.

Why Eliminating the NEA Would Be a Disaster For Our Country

The New DEI — Discrimination, Exclusion, and Inequity

All Hail Our Rococo President!

Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives, about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (8 May 1884-26 December 1972)

Heather Cox Richardson, May 23 (in part)

After S.V. Date of HuffPost noted last week that the White House had published fewer than 20% of [his] speeches, the White House has stopped publishing a database of official transcripts of [his] announcements, appearances, and speeches altogether and has taken down those it had published. Instead, it will just post videos. And yet it is publishing just a few of the videos of the president’s term: so far, fewer than 50 videos of the first 120 days of his term, according to Brian Stelter of CNN.

A presidential administration traditionally publishes the president’s words promptly to establish a record. The White House, in contrast, says removing the transcripts will enable people to get a better sense of him by watching his videos. But it’s likely closer to the truth that his appearances since he took office have been erratic, and removing the transcripts will make it harder for people to read his nonsensical rambles.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The [FOTUS] White House is the most transparent in history,” but of course, it’s objectively not. White House officials have made it impossible to tell who is making decisions at the Department of Government Efficiency, for example, or who gave the order to render migrants to El Salvador. Now the president’s words, too, will be hidden.

MUSIC

Charles Strouse, Tony-winning composer of Annie, Applause, and Bye Bye Birdie, dies at 96. He’s known for such songs as “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “Put on a Happy Face,” and the ‘All in the Family’ theme song, “Those Were the Days.” He also wrote scores for motion pictures, including The Night They Raided Minsky’s

That’s Trump Derangement! – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Pamela Bondi – Marsh Family parody of The One and Only sung by Chesney Hawkes (by Nik Kershaw)

Wasted Love – JJ

New Day Will Rise – Yuval Raphael

Rick Derringer, a Zelig-like rocker, the guitarist, singer, and songwriter, dies at 77. Hang On Sloopy – The McCoys. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer. Eat It – Weird Al Yankovic (Rick plays lead guitar; he produced six of Al’s albums)

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)-The New Edition, featuring Kenny Rogers

Somewhere Over Laredo – Lainey Wilson

On an American Spiritual by David R. Holsinger

Leucadia Uncompromised – Peter Sprague

The Firebird suite by Igor Stravinsky

Coverville 1534: Brothers in Arms Album Cover and Devo Cover Story

Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)‎ ‎- Taylor Swift ‎ ‎

Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds

Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck covering Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready

Crazy For You – Madonna

Harry Truman – Chicago

May rambling: We Cannot Remain Silent

When the U.S. Is No Longer the Good Guy

We Cannot Remain Silent: A Statement on the National Moment from Albany Presbytery, PCUSA (May 1, 2025)

Who broke the internet?

Cardinal Robert Prevost Becomes First American Pope, Will Take the Name Leo XIV; he plays Wordle!

David H. Souter, Republican Justice Who Allied With Court’s Liberal Wing, Dies at 85. He left conservatives bitterly disappointed with his migration from right to left, leading to the cry of “no more Souters.” I saw him speak in 2013. “A demand for saving art, keeping music, teaching civics in the schools is not asking for favors. Rather, it is vital for the stability, even the very survival of the United States, which is hampered by a voting citizenry that is grossly unaware about how the government of the country is supposed to work.”

This month, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding! It is a national landmark and world-renowned research center located in the heart of Harlem.

John Green – “Everything Is Tuberculosis” | The Daily Show

The Remote Work Paradox: Higher Engagement, Lower Wellbeing

Pulitzer Prize for a distinguished portfolio of editorial cartoons or other illustrated work (still, animated, or both) characterized by political insight, editorial effectiveness, or public service value: Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post: “For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years. The Cartoonist Who Crushed the Oligarchs: An Interview with Ann Telnaes.

What was food like before the FDA? Formaldehyde, brick dust, lead, and borax once made grocery shopping a minefield.

Measles Cases Top 1,000: A Crisis of Complacency— This situation is an avoidable public health failure

Baloney

How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?

We Have To Deal with Presidential Power

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. “-Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (8 May 1884-1972)

FOTUS family crypto firm raises concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Crypto landscape is like a ‘Walking Dead, post-apocalyptic anarchy. Tell Congress: Ban Government Officials From Issuing Cryptocurrencies

The firing of the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, is the latest move in the upheaval of U.S. cultural institutions.

MAGA news network OAN to take over venerable government-funded outlet, Voice of America

Bill Gates says Elon Musk is ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

The battle is here: GOP health care cuts and tax giveaways to the rich

What Happens to Hollywood When the U.S. Is No Longer the Good Guy? For decades, the studios have churned out movies that celebrated truth, justice, and the American way. Now, as FOTUS attacks allies, tears down democratic institutions, and cozies up to dictators, U.S. exceptionalism is a hard sell onscreen.

100% Tariff on Movies: 8 Key Questions the Industry Is Now Pondering and Dreading

PBS President Says Executive Order to End Funding Is “Blatantly Unlawful”

New Oklahoma Curriculum Requires Students To Learn 2020 Election Fraud Conspiracies

Sherman Tanks have no use for Elon Musk

Plus

Anne Frank: The Exhibition: Opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2025, to mark the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. It has been extended until October 31, 2025. It’s at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY (between 5th and 6th Avenues).

EFF How to Fix the Internet Podcast Episode: Digital Autonomy for Bodily Autonomy

Little Bosses Everywhere review: Pyramid schemes are as American as apple pie.

The Diabolical World of Phone Scams

Family-Vlogger Documentary Trend Magnifies a Serious Societal Problem

A scientist was urged not to take a risky cosmic image. He didn’t listen.

Ruth Buzzi, the Lady With the Handbag on ‘Laugh-In,’ Dies at 88

Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It’s hilarious, but is it in any way accurate? Answered for us by classicist Honor Cargill-Martin

Pentasyllabic is a word that both means and is five syllables long.

Do The Spike Thing — The Defiant Director on Reuniting With Denzel, Bad Money and Resisting

Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery

Why the Laugh Track Won’t Die

Why the U.S. Government Really Wants Some People To Take Vacations and The Phone Calls That Cost €220 Million a Minute (for Life) and How Jibberish Beat a Prison Sentence and The Rain of Fish

MUSIC

Never Let Me Go – Andy Bey; Smooth Sailing -Andy & The Bey Sisters; In Memoriam: Andy Bey, 1939-2025

Jill Sobule, “I Kissed A Girl” and “Supermodel” Singer, Dies at 66. Singer Vance Gilbert wrote on Facebook (May 3): “Backstage, Jill and I bonded with the idea of someday doing an album of the saddest songs we could think of. When we were last hanging out, the list looked like this: Ballad Of The Sad Young Men; Sweet Bitter Love; Do What You Gotta Do; Train Off The Track.

“While we were waiting to go on, I’d play one of these songs, and Jill and I would cry, and then try to put on some kind of game face while laughing for the set. Just last year, I had signed with a new agency, Black Oak Artists, and Jill and I shared an agent, and there were plans for sending us out together to do shows.

“Tomorrow really is never guaranteed. I will forever feel the loss of not having that future time together.”

Incompetent! – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Ablassen by Gottfried Reiche

From -Bon Iver

Coverville 1532: The Foreigner Cover Story II and 1533: Tribute to Mike Peters and Captain & Tennille Cover Story

Never Enough – Turnstile

Here – Pavement

Who is Broken Peach?

offa me -davido feat victoria monet

Gentle On My Mind – The Band Perry

Yesterday Was Just The Beginning Of My Life – Mark Williams

Star Wars – The Throne Room and End Title

Husky – Jimmie Nicol, a Beatle for two weeks

April rambling: humanity in motion

Metonymy and metalepsis

To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First. New estimates based on location data from Meta reveal a picture of humanity in motion.

‘60 Minutes’ Calls Out Paramount for Executive Producer’s Exit in Rare On-Air Rebuke; Has ’60 Minutes’ Run Out of Time? Shari Redstone’s Big Decision. The Paramount mogul is stuck in the middle of an impossible choice. Fight djt and blow up her $8 billion Skydance deal, or cave to the president and torch the most valuable news property in her media empire. Tick, tick, tick…

RFK Jr. & HHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Fraserherman: Why, yes, diversity is a plus.

In April in years ending in 5

1775: Ride Paul Ride – The 2025 Showdown between Patriots and Loyalists

1865: Lincoln assassination, end of the American Civil War

1925: The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was published, and Art Deco hit the international stage

1945: Hitler dies

1975: On April 30, “the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was taken by the army of North Vietnam, ending the conflict that had grown out of the Vietnamese war for independence from France and a proxy war for the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.”

1995: The bombing in Oklahoma City on April 19 killed 168 people. There was a woman I knew who worked for an SBDC in OKC. Her building was right across the street from the Murrah Building. She suffered severe injuries from flying glass and other items that acted as shrapnel. She wrote a very moving story about her recovery the following year, which I published in a newsletter. Another aftermath story, about forgiveness, I wrote about here.

The usual weird stuff

Three R’s: Resist. Rebel. Rebuild.

The US intensifies its crackdown on peaceful protests. Forty-one anti-protest bills in 22 states have been introduced since the start of 2025, according to the law tracker.

DEI Programs Are Lawful Under Federal Civil Rights Laws and Supreme Court Precedent

Pope Francis shames the crap out of JD Vance in final acts on earth; Pope dies at 88

A whistleblower’s disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

Team That Investigates Line-of-Duty Fire Deaths slashed; cuts will also halt a first-of-its-kind study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.

US FDA suspends milk quality tests amid workforce cuts

Law Firms Made Deals. Now He Wants More From Them

Environmental rollbacks would boost pollution and endanger lives

Congress’s Biggest Financial Priority Is “Stablecoin.” What the Hell Is That? Instead of tackling crashing markets, Congress is pushing a crypto sector in which FOTUS’ family is financially involved.

FOTUS Demands Investigations Into Negative Approval Rating Polls

Hegseth blames the ‘deep state’ for his being so bad at his job

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY. IMPEACH. HIM. AGAIN.

FOTUS, dementia, and the duty to warn

Also

Space Monsters #1 Kickstarter: “An all-new horror/sci-fi/fantasy magazine in a cool new format! The initial 200 copies will be serial numbered on the back cover.” by FantaCo Enterprises LLC

A collection of Street Academy of Albany / Harriet Gibbons High School yearbooks

From the Books: John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all memoir about her years running global policy for Facebook

My Mother, the Hollywood Scab

Wink Martindale, Prolific Game Show Host, Dies at 91

Will Hutchins, Star of ABC’s ‘Sugarfoot,’ Dies at 94

Jane Fonda is Far from Finished with Fitness or Activism

Oscars: Film Academy Establishes Stunt Design Award

Metonymy and metalepsis are two concepts that explain how we use substitutions in our speech.

Why are people never smiling in old photos?

The Oatmeal: Believe

Now I Know: Ben Franklin’s One Simple Trick to Save Sailors from Drowning and Maybe There Is an “I” in “Team” and The Childhood Terror That Turned Kind Of Nice and The Fashion Accessory That Prevents False Alarms and The Church of the World’s Oldest Tennis Ball

MUSIC

Lawyers, Guns, and Money – Warren Zevon

Traficano Rap – J Noa, LOWLIGHT

Streets of London by Ralph McTell

Tubthumping -Chumbawamba

Coverville 1530 The ABBA Cover Story V and 1531: The Buzzcocks Cover Story

Love In Real Life – Lizzo

Pump It Up -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Annabel Lee – Sarah Jarosz

Purple Haze – The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Party at Ground Zero – Fishbone

A garden of flourishing paths by Jeffrey Mumford

We Are The World -USA for Africa

Eine kleine nachtmusik

How ‘Star Wars’ Is Changing Its Tune

April rambling: Beat the Broligarchs

Rod Serling documentary

Catbird: “When I viewed it again, it looked like a heart that had been run over by a tire, which reflected my yet-unrealized reaction to what DOGE had just started. My conscious mind didn’t know yet, but my hand did. What a revelation!”

Patriotic Millionaires challenge oligarch power with sweeping economic plan: How to Beat the Broligarchs

EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE will go forward. ”Sweeping and uncontrolled access by DOGE agents who were not properly vetted or trained.”

Did you hear Canadians are wearing MAGA hats? There, they mean Make
America Go Away

Working to Preserve .Gov Websites. “Web archiving is more than just preserving history—it’s about ensuring access to information for future generations. “

Tuberculosis Is Back in the Spotlight. Does the U.S. Even Care?

Buster Keaton made a silent film AND a talkie … in 1965

Lucille Ball – ‘America Alive!’ 1978 [Interview]. from that, a viral clip: When Lucy said, “Take your hands off her, David.”

Val Kilmer, An Unclassifiable Heartthrob Who Always Had an Edge

Jay North, Child Star of ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73. He was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on a sitcom that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963, which I watched.

Goodbye Park City: Sundance Film Festival Heading to Colorado

Does ginger ale really taste better on a plane?

When You’re Better Off Skipping a Court Date and The Cat That Inherited Millions and The Man Who Takes Apostrophes Very Seriously

Until then…

Appeals Court Orders Thousands of Voters to Verify Information in Contested N.C. Election. The ruling was a win for the Republican who narrowly lost a State Supreme Court race in November. The case has tested the boundaries of post-election litigation.

His order on voter policy could disenfranchise millions, but multiple lawsuits have already sprung up to challenge it.

DOGE Is Not Cutting Government Spending

Judd Legum on Popular Information: “Musk has set a goal to cut $1 trillion annually from federal spending through DOGE. But his efforts have largely ignored the DoD, according to data compiled by the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker.”

HHS Job Cuts: Entire CDC Team Focused On Infertility And IVF Is ‘Gone’

Not to mention…

States Challenge Trump’s Effort to Dismantle Library Agency. In a lawsuit, 21 state attorneys general argued that the steep cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services violate the Constitution and other federal laws related to spending. Call on Congress to Protect Federal Library Funding

Smithsonian’s Chief in the Hot Seat. The executive order demanding change at the institution presents a perilous test for Lonnie G. Bunch III, its secretary, whom the White House calls a partisan Democrat.

‘It’s a shambles’: DOGE cuts bring chaos, long waits at Social Security for seniors. “Elderly and disabled people — and those who care for them — are encountering a knot of bureaucratic hurdles and service disruptions… ‘The system, it’s broken down,’ Veronica Sanchez, a 52-year-old medical practice manager in Canoga Park, said, after calling a Social Security hotline and waiting on hold for six hours.”

FOTUS Is Trying to Axe Collective Bargaining for 1 Million Federal Employees

LA Times: Regime “has issued an order demanding that all national parks remain open amid severe staffing shortages — an action that one conservation group called ‘reckless and out of touch’ as park personnel brace for millions of visitors this summer.

‘I was a British tourist trying to leave the US. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre’

Trans Athletes and Tasers & Excited Delirium: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Another rupture: Keystone pipeline shutdown threatens fuel prices and exposes pattern of failure

Critic’s Notebook: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and Trump, Reunited

How Actually Crazy is This Mess?

An Experiment in Recklessness: The global trading system is only one example of the administration tearing something apart, only to reveal that it has no plan for how to replace it.

Tariffs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

What to Learn (and not Learn) from Trump’s Tariff Blunders

Jon Stewart on The Botched Tariff Rollout & The Stock Market’s Meltdown | The Daily Show, especially from 15:35 to the end

He’s not very bright; Inside his dumb lifelong obsession with tariffs and trade deficits

Why Lutnick Displaced Musk As ‘Most Loathed’ Adviser. Lutnick: “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America.”

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.– Will Rogers

**Former President Harry S Truman appeared on Jack Benny’s television show in 1959, when the show was filmed from the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO.**

Was Binghamton unavailable?

Rhode Island plays a starring role in the forthcoming Rod Serling documentary:

“The state’s Film & Television Office… touted how the Ocean State is playing a starring role in a forthcoming documentary on the life of Rod Serling, the legendary mastermind and iconic narrator behind the pioneering, 1950s and ‘60s science-fiction television series, ‘The Twilight Zone.’

“The film, authorized by Serling’s two daughters, Jodi Serling and Anne Serling, is being produced by Verdi Productions, an East Greenwich, R.I.-based production company. State officials announced… that Leonardo DiCaprio’s company, Appian Way Productions, has also joined the production…

“Although Serling, who died in 1975 at the age of 50, hailed from upstate New York, the documentarians used locations in East Greenwich, Providence, and Wakefield — the village in South Kingstown, R.I. — to help recreate moments in Serling’s life, ‘mirroring the same cinematic black and white style’ of his signature show, officials said.”

MUSIC

My Spine Is The Bassline: Dave Allen (1955-2025)

Fees, Fees, Fees – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Everybody Plays The Fool – The Main Ingredient

Lonely -Justin Bieber & benny blanco

Locust Laced – Sleigh Bells

Manic Monday – Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day feat. Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles

The Lady of Shallot – Loreena McKennitt

Coverville 1528: The AC/DC Cover Story IV and 1529: The Pixies Cover Story III

Girl – Beck

The Parables by Bohuslav Martinů

We Got The Beat – The Go-Go’s

Chuck Mangione’s Land Of Make Believe

Fool In The Rain – Led Zeppelin

Sergei Rachmaninoff Vocalise

The Bank of Harmony with a medley of three Hanna-Barbera theme songs

All Day and All of the Night – The Kinks

One More Night – Phil Collins

What A Fool Believes – The Doobie Brothers

William Tell Overture – Rossini