An Under the Radar Roundup

“You are like a really nice apartment over a meth lab,” Robin Williams told Canadians in 2013.

Since then, the meth lab has swelled with violence, chaos, confusion, and fear, all of it resisted and protested by mass demonstrations in the streets, statements in the press, lawsuits in the courts, prayers in houses of worship.

Last month America put it near Canada’s border with a paramilitary occupation of Minneapolis. Last week, a friend wondered if the city was chosen because of the state’s reputation for friendliness. “Minnesota Nice” may seem a corny expression, but there’s enough truth to it to adorn a t-shirt that’s been selling for at least 45 years since I wore one. Kelly green with print in a golden Comic Sans font. Those who saw Frances McDormand as Sheriff Margie in the 1996 film, Fargo, will know what it means.

Many have noted that “cruelty is the point” of an administration for which the only guiding principle appears to be “Might makes right.” If that’s the case, then it makes sense to terrorize the most peaceful, friendly, accommodating populations to impress the rest. And with crank declarations of turning Canada into our 51st state, it makes sense to put our Reign of Hate on Canada’s border.

Let’s see, what other states are on our northern border?

Buried under so much sensational news last week was a report of an agreement between Trump and Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

A deployment of ICE to Maine was announced and seemed to begin early last week. My cousin, who hails from the Lobster Coast, reported: “100 and counting arrested. 4 with records, all people of color.” It was a day or two later that Collins announced her “agreement.”

Omitted from her announcement was that she, a Republican, is up for reelection this year, and Mainiacs are as skeptical of Republicans as of Democrats. It’s other US senator is Angus King, an Independent. Subsequently, reports from up north tell us that Collins is already boasting that she is the candidate “who will keep ICE out of Maine.”

An agreement? While Minnesota has been the target of terror, Maine is now hostage to it. In effect, the Maine electorate being told to reelect this senator who will approve of ICE anywhere else Trump wants to send it–and, oh, by the way, keep the seat Republican–or he will inflict the Reign of Hate on Portland, Bangor, and any other city with sizable minority populations. That’s not an agreement. That’s a concession.

That the two had a phone call at all was surprising. Collins was one of the few Republican votes to convict during Trump’s second impeachment, perhaps thinking it meant redemption for voting to acquit the first time around. She explained that first vote with a chuckle: “Oh, I think he learned his lesson.”

Wrong again, Susan. He doesn’t learn lessons. He gives them. And you have no clue how well you “learned” the one he just gave you.

Next door in New Hampshire, an Episcopal bishop, in response to murders in Minnesota and the surge of ICE in New England, instructed the clergy to write their wills and get their affairs in order.

Speaking of clueless Republican officials, did you know that when Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she oversaw a state-wide anti-drug campaign. The slogan, which she liked to say with relish:

“Meth. We’re on it.”

Looks more like she’s on botox and lip-filler to me, but what do I know?

Further west and north of these “Lower 48” is another development buried in last week’s sensational news. For all the noise about making Canada the 51st state, envoys for America’s Reign of Hate trekked to Calgary for talks with leaders of a right-wing separatist movement in the Rocky Mountain Province of Alberta.

Most Canadians in the know say that it is a fringe movement that has no chance of winning provincial elections. But, as we’ve learned here in the States, there are other ways to undermine democracy. Asked about the meeting with Americans in Alberta, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed his belief that Trump would “respect Canadian sovereignty.”

What the expletive deleted! I know that the guy made a brave, noble, eloquent speech at the international conference in Davos, Switzerland, but how can he possibly think that Trump is even capable of respecting anything? Is he channeling Clueless Collins or Cowgirl Noem?

Coming back east and sharp-turning south, federal agents raided the Fulton County election offices in Atlanta. If that’s an injury to the US Constitution clause that leaves the administration of elections to the states, then the added insult was the presence of Secretary of the Dept. of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Reports of Gabbard’s travels and meetings over the last ten years have made many wonder if she was handpicked for Trump’s cabinet by Vladimir Putin, but news outlets are still wondering why the head of DNI would oversee a DoJ operation.

Remember the call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking for 11,780 votes? If you can’t get them, purge them!

Meanwhile, Att’y General Pam Bondi generously offered Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz a deal to withdraw ICE from Minneapolis. In return, Waltz would turn over the city’s voting registration lists to what, if we are to be honest, is now the Dept. of Injustice. Nor is it mere coincidence that, every four years since I started keeping track over 30 years ago, Minnesota has the highest percentage of eligible voters turning out for presidential elections.

Do you see the pattern here? Walz did. And so, like Raffensperger and unlike Collins, he said no.

Chances are it will come into full view following today’s expiration of “Temporary Protection Status” for Haitians living in the USA, many of whom are nurses or therapists working in health services, including home care for the elderly. What if TPS is used as leverage against other states to obtain voter rolls? Will Gov. Maura Healy risk the collapse of Massachusetts’ health services and say no?

How about the governor of Ohio where a sizable Haitian population already been accused by Trump of eating cats and dogs? A hotly contested race for a US Senate seat this year makes Ohio a prime target for anyone seeking voter registration roles. The governor is Republican.

And that’s the news from the Meth Lab called America where the chaos is such that we may need more room, and there’s a very nice apartment upstairs.

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Looks like I’m not alone with this theory.

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/meth-were-on-it-people-have-mixed-feelings-about-south-dakotas-new-anti-drug-campaign

Ode to a Mar-a-LaGhoul

Maybe it’s my Catholic up-bringing that makes the ever snarling White House Press Secretary so offensive, always wearing a cross suspended from a necklace as if those asking questions were vampires trying to distort truth rather than reveal it.

Maybe I’m just embarrassed that she graduated from the same Catholic high school, albeit 47 years after I did. As consolation, Central Catholic also gave us Jonathan Lemire, the reporter who in 2018 posed the question in Helsinki which led to Trump’s revelation that he found Vladimir Putin more credible than American intelligence sources.

Or maybe the before-and-after photos have made me snap. Why does anyone that young–and, frankly, that naturally attractive–pump up her face to resemble yet another Mar-a-LaGhoul? With Loomer, Noem, Bondi, Guilfoyle and Melania, Team Trump already had five faces filled with more plastic than a landfill.

Unable to discern any credible reason why or how Karoline Leavitt devolved into what she now is, I must doff my cap to her and pay tribute. And what better tribute is there than song? With apologies to Neil Diamond, here it is, set to the tune of “Sweet Caroline,” though it might be more in tune with the title “Song Sung Red”–everybody knows one:

Sour Karoline

Where it began
I can’t begin to know when
But then I heard it growin’ loud
Was it term one?
She may have still been in high school
Hoping to make her family proud

[Pre-Chorus]
Reeee…
…Publican
Striking out
Joining Truuuump, Fooling youuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)
I’ve been inclined
To believe lies were not good
But now I

[Verse 2]
Look at ICE
And it don’t seem so certain
That this is still the land of the free
But Karoline’s cross
Shows it’s all holly holy
Home of the brave, we must agree

[Pre-Chorus]
Threaten
Pointing weapons
Shove to the ground
Beat the craaaaaap out of youuuuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (Onward! Onward! Onward!)
Christian soldiers
Once believed lies were not good
But now it’s yes, yes

[Instrumental Break]

(Segue into National Anthem as played by Jimi Hendrix, then back into chorus)

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)

Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Christian soldiers march onward (Onward! Onward! Onward!)

[Fade]

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For the original lyrics, click this:

https://genius.com/Neil-diamond-sweet-caroline-lyrics

L2R: 2022 & 2025.
https://nbatitlechase.com/2025/04/02/photo-karoline-leavitt-before-and-after-getting-nose-job-at-plastic-surgeon/

Possible Oscars & a Docujoke

Quite a delightful surprise to see Kate Hudson nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.

I’ve seen very few of her films, but I am relieved to see Song Sung Blue gain at least one nod. The Academy tends to dismiss feel-good features when awarding its statues, and what could be more feel-good than “Sweet Caroline”? But there’s a lot more to Song Sung Blue than Neil Diamond. Listen to the lesser known songs–some tracked for the film’s most intimate scenes–and you’ll find there’s a lot more to Neil Diamond than “Neil Diamond.” Moreover, put Neil Diamond aside, and the film has a lot to say about musicians trying to make a living–in this case two who combined to form a tribute band and a few who joined it.

That may be a second reason I should recuse myself from making picks. I haven’t seen Sinners with its 16 nominations, most ever in the history of the awards. Nor have I seen four others nominated for best film, which makes for half the field of ten. Of the five I have seen, I could make a strong case for both Hamnet and Sentimental Value. Marty Supreme not so much, and Bugonia not at all.

Of the five, One Battle After Another is the one most relevant to 2026, the one with the most urgent message. A comedy so dark and undeniably real that it dares you to laugh, it’s the one I’m most inclined to favor. I would certainly like to hear acceptance speeches from those who made it, but for all I know, the others may be just as willing to speak against America’s current War against the Arts as Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Those two and Benicio del Toro all have nominations–DiCaprio and Penn were funny, but del Toro was beyond hilarious.

As for Kate Hudson’s chances, she’s contending with Jessie Buckley in Hamnet and Renata Reinsva in Sentimental Value. I could make strong cases for all three. Buckley has the advantage of being at the center of Hamnet‘s finale, which might make the Academy consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Scene. However, I haven’t seen If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and since I found Bugonia about as watchable as Fox “News,” I’ll neither pick nor predict a winner.

Speaking of the unwatchable, I wonder if it is mere coincidence that the so-called documentary, Melania, is released the very week that Oscar nominations are announced. Reviews make it sound like a worthy rival to Blair Witch Project for the most vacuous, pointless slop ever put on a screen, most all of them as brutal as Karoline Leavitt’s treatment of the White House press corps. Which reminds me that my next project will be a spoof of a Neil Diamond song I’ll rename: “Sour Karoline.” (…Lie! Lie! Lie! Lying never felt so good! So good! So good! So good!)

The predictions of failure at the box office, however, proved wrong, as the MAGA faithful packed cinemas, buying up tickets as willingly as they purchase $400 Trump sneakers, $200 Trump bibles, $99 Trump trading cards, and on and on. Can the MAGA crowd sustain these grosses for a film that the Hollywood Reporter calls “an unabashed, fly-on-the-gilded-wall fawn job”?

From what I’ve gleaned, the Epstein “associate”-turned-First Lady comes off about as warm and charming as her “I don’t care do U?” jacket and her Boris & Natasha hat. Even more damning are the memes proclaiming, “If syphilis was a movie…” or the mock–but very truthful–advertisements proclaiming: “She’s in the pedo-files!” Not only is she in the Epstein files, so too is a photo of Melania director Brett Ratner cozying up with one of Epstein’s trafficked girls. Bet you didn’t know that MAGA prefers movies over government files.

Not to worry, all may not be lost. My friend Kurt Kaletka in his history-rich and linguistically playful blog, “Truth or Better,” proposes that Melania might “have some worth” in the years ahead:

I can see Rocky Horror-type screenings of it, where the boys come dressed in suits and super-long red ties, blond wigs and orange makeup plastered almost entirely on their faces. The girls can show up with makeup and prosthetics to recreate the Mar-a-Lago Face phenomenon. You can go with other Trump White House characters, too! Use ghastly white face paint to copy Stephen Miller’s cadaverous look! Dress up like a Kristi Noem-style buckarette! Or copy the style of your favorite January 6 rioter!*

Kaletka obviously does not work in a cinema. Nor did I when Rocky Horror was released in 1975. But from the time I was hired in 1998, I did hear the Screening Room’s owners still bemoaning the mess they had to clean up every night of its run. After 23 years, they could laugh a bit, but the anger was still there.**

Let my friend make his appeal to the cineplexes with their high-powered cleaning machines. I’d rather watch Kate Hudson. Come to think of it, back in 2000 when still a new face, she had a moment in Dr. T and the Women that is as memorable as any I’ve ever seen. When her ringtone sounds during an exercise class, the annoyed instructor motions for her to leave the room. Hudson’s character holds up phone and announces, “It’s an emergency.” Far from any urgency, she says it as if talking about a napkin falling to the floor.

Yes, a three-word line, but at that moment I realized that cellphones had already turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of language. The Academy may also want to consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Word.

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*For Kurt Kaletka’s entire case for Melania Horror Picture Show, go to:

https://trueorbetter.blogspot.com/

**True story: About 2/3rds into a showing of Rocky Horror in Portland, Maine, some fifty years ago, a projectionist stopped the film to ask the audience to stop throwing things at the screen. Screens are delicate, easily stained, torturous to clean, and quite expensive to replace. He turned up the lights, but before he could get down from the booth and into the hall, the audience simply thought that the film was over. They were getting up, smiling, laughing, and ready to hit the nearby bars. He held his tongue and let them leave, which is exactly what I’d have done.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as “Lightning & Thunder” in *Song Sung Blue*:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30343021/

Treats of Minneapolis

Bruce Springsteen’s just released “Streets of Minnesota” appears to be galvanizing for most every friend I have. For me the song is nostalgic. In a previous life, Minneapolis was my weekend getaway of choice.

These were the Carter years when our vice-president was a low-key, affable Minnesotan, and when A Prairie Home Companion began airing every Saturday night across the river in St. Paul. I was across the state’s western border in Dakota–first South, then North, then South again–listening in, always eager to trek to the Twin Cities. Back then, hitchhiking was easy. All that flat farmland and everyone going some distance. Your thumb was an offer of someone to talk to. And I enjoyed making shaded cardboard signs with the “l” in “Mpls” turned into an arrow pointing ahead on US. 14.

Minneapolis was a cultural wonderland: As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, and an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at the Guthrie, Jean-Pierre Rampal and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, Jethro Tull in some civic arena, the Flamin Os with their South Dakota keyboardist who got us in as their roadies, Schmitt Music Company with a sheet for Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” blown up as a mural on its brick wall facing a parking lot, the Twins versus the White Sox at the old Metrodome, a speech at the university by Eugene McCarthy, and how many dinners and Hamm’s lagers at Estaban’s down on Nicollet, or was it Hennipen?

And then there was the time that three rather young women mistook me for Cat Stevens in a lounge at the Minneapolis Airport as I awaited a connection to home to Bismarck. Back then, I had long black hair, a pony tail, and I traveled with a dulcimer which, in its case, seen at certain angles, is easily mistaken for a guitar. Next day I would learn that he played Orchestra Hall that very night. Since then, I’ve spent four decades wishing I told them that I was instead of that I wasn’t.

Leaving a performance of Measure for Measure, a busload of South Dakota State English majors, grad students, and faculty walked past the Post Office building that filled a block. Past 11:00 pm, postal workers were in the streets to receive tax filings from motorists needing to beat the deadline. Handed out the car windows, no need to park, just keep the line moving.

Leaving Orchestra Hall after hearing Rampal, two of us–and I think everyone else–could sense that something had gone wrong while we were all mesmerized by one of history’s finest flautists–a man who 40 years earlier was part of the French resistance. We heard it as we stepped out into the January night: Hubert Humphrey had died after a long bout with cancer in a hospital just around the corner. The feeling was palpable. Even the few cars that rolled by seemed to be in the sorrowful pace of a funeral.

Humphrey was actually a native of Huron, South Dakota, but he attended the U. of Minnesota and made an impression on the Democrat Farm Labor Party. Not long out of college, he was Minneapolis’ mayor who gained a national reputation when he sided with Civil Rights leaders against landlords and businesses that preferred segregation. While other American cities suffered unrest from Black soldiers returning from Europe, Minneapolis became a model of fairness. That propelled Humphrey into the senate, the vice-presidency, and to a presidential nomination.

No one knew it the time, nor would it be known for another 15 years, but also at that hospital to spend an afternoon reminiscing with Humphrey was Richard Nixon who flew in from California when he heard his former rival had taken a turn for the worse. Their battles were over. It was a time to heal, a time to die. No mention of it in the 48-page pull-out section of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune that I bought as a souvenir for my father the next day, but they had prepared in advance, just as the city had prepared in advance.

Minneapolis was then as it is now, unified.

In a life even more previous, I was a student at Salem State eager to attend every anti-war demonstration, including Mayday in 1971 in DC where I was one of 14,000 protesters arrested for blocking traffic. These were the Johnson and Nixon years when protests were almost exclusively attended by young people fueled, not by any lust for confrontation, but by music.

Several songs served as anthems, starting with The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today” and the Young Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free,” as diverse as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers,” and as piercing as Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” What a field day for the heat…

Most compelling of all was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” often called by the last line of the chorus that is repeated as a one-line refrain as the song fades out, “Four dead in Ohio.” The reference is to the National Guard shootings at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

Difference between this and the other songs I just mentioned is that it dramatizes a specific incident. So, too, is “Streets of Minneapolis” a response to state-sponsored murder. From CSNY’s “tin soldiers and Nixon” to “King Trump’s private army,” from “Soldiers are cutting us down” to “Here in our home, they killed and and roamed,” Springsteen has given us a full-blooded anthem, combining defiance with hope and turning the tables of patriotism away from those who only mouth the words of our National Anthem toward those willing to give it life:

Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night

All he needed to counter the glaring lie of “domestic terrorist” was to state the glaring truth of “federal thugs.” And as always from Springsteen, an irresistible beat gives it an attitude that could not be more potent.

Personally, I could thank The Boss for this trip down memory lane. (Or is it LaSalle Ave?) Best of all, his anthem reassures me that Minneapolis is now as it was then, unified.

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https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3FX0_Schmitt_Music_Mural_Minneapolis_MN

E Pluribus Resistance

Earlier today I received an email from the fellow who organizes events in Ipswich, including the No Kings rallies which I often attend on Saturdays. He added an item that struck a chord:

WBZ-CBS is airing commercials for ICE, threatening immigrants. I saw this while watching the news tonight and immediately contacted a friend who had worked at the station.They said to contact the Station Manager, Chris Ruggeri to complain. His email is cpruggeri@cbs.com. Phone 617-746-7140.

I’ve been seeing these for weeks during football games, college and pro, on various stations. I even mused at the idea of joining, grabbing the $50K signing bonus, then quitting to use that bonus to help defeat Republican candidates for the US House and Senate. Turns out, as my friend Woonsocket let me know, those bonuses are to given only after five years of terrorizing service, by which time, the gig will be up, and the masked suckers who joined will go empty-handed.

Then came the double-homicide in Minneapolis, soon followed by a name, a position, and an edress. Within seconds I zapped off this under the subject line, “In the Service of Hate”:

To Station Manager Chris Ruggeri: What is it like to profit from a terror campaign that has just murdered two people in cold blood? Will you show the videos of those murders with the commercials? What’s it like to be in the service of hate? Jack Garvey Plum Island

In just as little if not less time, my inbox had this:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and share your feedback.

We understand that viewers sometimes have questions or concerns about national CBS News programming. While we value hearing from our audience, our local station does not produce or control the editorial content of CBS News’ national broadcasts.

To ensure your comments are reviewed by the appropriate team, we encourage you to direct any feedback regarding national CBS News programming to the CBS News Ombudsman at the link below:

https://ombudsman.cbsnews.com/

Thank you again for reaching out and for watching CBS.

Sincerely, Your CBS Boston team

Passing the buck with a form letter! I may have been in triple digits on the Celsius Scale. Oh, I’ll contact the CBS ombudsman, but not without adding my response to the “CBS Boston team”:

Does the name Pontius Pilate ring a bell? Or are you playing Lady Macbeth? Speak now or plead for mercy at Nuremberg… Jack

This drew no response, automated or otherwise. Now that at least four hours have passed, I might even wonder if I’ve been reported to Trump’s heavily-financed-by-taxpayers goon squad as a domestic terrorist?

Surely, my two emails today were more combative and insulting than anything they heard from Renee Good or Alex Pretti. And, look, I have something in my hand that, when I click it, even before I click it, could accurately be called a threat, not just to ICE, but to the Reign of Hate that has unleashed it on us.

At least I hope it’s a threat. Why else would I spend any time with it?

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/02/ice-recruiting-signing-bonus-incentives-immigration-officers/85478464007/

For a Patriotic Super Bowl

Is it some kind of cosmic joke that the New England Patriots won the right to play in the Super Bowl just as the Republican Party’s Reign of Hate descends on New England.

While still trying to decide whether the interception or the blocked field goal attempt was “the play of the game,” I’m already hoping that the stunning and emphatic withdrawal of the Republican candidate from Minnesota’s gubernatorial race might be the play of this election year, showing other Republicans the need and the urgency to not just disavow but to openly oppose their national party’s employment of terrorism.

And then there’s the team name: Are we worthy of the name “Patriots,” or is the name no more than an article of clothing or an accessory like a flag pinned to a lapel or a cross suspended from a necklace?

On the night before the game, a relative from Biddeford, Maine, emailed to report that the state is “under siege. 100 and counting arrested. 4 with records, all people of color.” That prompted a blog that I posted the next morning which included this description playing on the word “ice”:

Along Commercial Street in Portland, tubs of (ice) surround you in fish markets as the clerks take fish atop them to weigh on scales, and then throw more fish on the tubs, straight off the docks just steps from their back doors.

When the Seattle Seahawks won the late game, sending themselves to the Super Bowl as the Patriots’ opponents, I was reminded of Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s satirical, point-by-point comparisons of two cities whenever a Boston team plays in a championship. Whimsical? When the Patriots were about to play the then-St. Louis Rams in the 2001 Super Bowl, he pitted toasted ravioli against clam chowdah. After each entry, he entered an “advantage.” In this case, “Advantage, Boston.”

But what is there that really needs to be said in a comparison of Seattle to Boston, or of the Pacific Northwest to New England, during America’s current Reign of Hate?

As for the Super Bowl, was my description of Portland’s waterfront a subconscious step into Shaughnessy’s device? Could I simply add: In Seattle’s Pike’s Market, fishmongers throw 20-lb. salmon across their stalls like laterals pitched by a quarterback to a man in motion.

Considering that far smaller haddock and cod are dumped out of trays held over the ice bins in Portland, New England’s fish markets resemble the traditional dump of Gatorade over the coach once victory has been secured. Advantage, New England.

But more than anything else, more than the outcome, more than the score, and even more than the quality of play, what the Super Bowl must deliver is a statement. The NFL has a spotted history with Trump, alternating rebuke with accommodation. But the state-sponsored-terrorism inflicted on Minneapolis is way beyond any previous objections or qualms.

This weekend, the NBA’s player association condemned it, one all-star calling it “murder.” NBA coaches and commentators have spoken out, and the Minnesota Timberwolves chaplain issued a statement as accusatory as Balwin’s Fire Next Time and as irrefutable as King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

All the signs we hold outside along streets and all our calls and letters to members of Congress are important and need to continue. Like fish being put on display in a market, it’s prep work. They still await the arrival of customers.

Democracy is now on display. Super Bowl LX, off to a promising start with Bad Bunny and Green Day in the halftime show, could deliver more customers than any.

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In keeping with my overall analogy, I’ll name this, the blocked field goal attempt, as the play of the game. Not sure what an interception of ICE would look like, but blocking it would be a good start. Photo by Lauren Leigh Bacho/Getty Images

A Winter Margaritaville

Stock up and hunker down was my plan from Sunday all the way to Wednesday if necessary. And so here I am watching the snowflakes fly every which way out my panoramic window overlooking the whiteness that blankets the marsh before it becomes one with a white sky over a distant horizon.

Barely an hour since the first flakes fell, so plows have yet to make their island rounds. Tire tracks left by a few brave or careless motorists are quickly covered. Honestly, I don’t care if the plows take today and tomorrow off. As for Tuesday, I’ll miss my weekly coffee klatch in Cafe Chococoa for a chance to tell my guitarist friends that Song Sung Blue is about much more than Neil Diamond and well worth seeing. Then again, I now have plenty of time to put that in an email.

By wild coincidence, on a 2026 appointment calendar that is almost entirely blank, Tuesday is marked for an annual check-up with my dermatologist before the klatch, and a bi-annual check up with my primary care physician soon after it. Yesterday, I left messages on two phones that I wanted to “cancel as a precaution, but if I can get my car out of the driveway, I’ll show up anyway in case the time is still open.” The “precaution,” of course, is to avoid the fee one is charged for failing to show up.

For now, I sit awaiting the start of a football game in Denver where the forecast is sunny, at least at kickoff. With my modest flat-screen propped against that window, I look forward to a surrealistic combination of colorful picture in a massive dull frame. Picasso surrounded by, say, the architectural plans for almost any structure built in America these last 40 years…

Wait! What is this coming into view? Five of them, all with stocking caps pulled down and scarves wrapped around their face and tucked into thick parkas. If they had guns and were chasing Somali-Americans, I’d be watching more than one ice-storm. (A Somalian connection, you ask? Other than votes cast blue, just what else do you think Minnesota and Maine have in common?)

But I ingress… Kickoff is at 3:00. I’m tempted to wait until 3:15 to avoid the National Anthem. Used to be that I always tuned in early to hear it. Not only that, but I wrote letters of complaint to the Boston Red Sox, to WEEI, to one sponsor, and to both Boston dailies during a year when it was omitted from the radio broadcast. When that failed, I contacted the Massachusetts Attorney General on the grounds of false advertising, as WEEI returned from a commercial break saying, “the National Anthem was brought to you by…” even though they never aired it. At gatherings of friends and family to watch games, I’d ask for silence before it played.

Now, however, the Trump Administration has turned “land of the free” into a glaring lie. And the Republican Party has turned “home of the brave” into a sick joke. Why should I stand for that? On the other hand, it has been NFL–and NBA–players and coaches that have made the loudest statements against the rise of racist authoritarianism starting back in Trump’s first term. That includes the refusal of entire teams–the Golden State Warriors and the Philadelphia Eagles–to accept the traditional invitation to celebrate their championships with the president in the White House. Last night, the Minnesota Timberwolves postponed their game with the Warriors in honor of the nurse murdered by ICE that morning.

While I wouldn’t bet on any kind of statement being made this afternoon in Denver or tonight in Seattle, reports suggest that the Superbowl’s halftime show with Latino star Bad Bunny may yet prove that Colin Kaepernick did not lose his career in vain.

Whatever does or does not happen, and no matter who wins, both games will serve as consolation for what has not happened on social media today. No one is sending me any message hoping that I’m safe, telling me to stay safe, worrying for my safety, offering me safety on the mainland. For years, I’d receive at least a dozen such alarms, and at first, I simply reassured those who worried. But not long after the serial deluge began, I began making fun of them, and so, I just now realize, they have forgotten me.

As the concluding line puts it in what has to be the most popular summertime beach song ever sung, “It was my own damn fault!”

All the more reason to wrap this up, log out, tune in to the pre-game show, and find that lost shaker of salt.

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The Shoebox during Snowmageddon–as well as the Snowpocalypse and Snowzilla–of 2015. Photo by Kim O’Rourke

From a Broken Heartland

Well, it’s been a loud week in Minnesota, not far from where I once lived out there on the edge of the prairie.

In a previous life, I would have been snug in my trailer barely a dozen miles from the state’s border on a winter weekend. On an early Saturday evening, I’d have been tuning into Minnesota Public Radio to hear A Prairie Home Companion. Listened to it here in my coastal home for over three decades before it ran its course.

What would today’s “News from Lake Wobegon” sound like?

That question was on my mind when I left a No Kings rally in Ipswich, and I might try to answer it except that Garrison Keillor is about to begin a US tour on Jan. 31.* He can and will speak for himself. Quite a coincidence that the closest the tour comes to me will be on April 16 in Portsmouth N.H.–right across the Piscataqua River from Maine where ICE began its second state invasion just days ago.

Remember all those indignant Republican invocations of the 10th Amendment–a.k.a. “States Rights”–during the Obama years? No doubt a PHC show this week would include a skit on memory loss. Would Guy Noir try to find it?

One detail right up Keillor’s alley is the name that ICE has given its second Confederate attack on yet another state of the Union disdained by its authoritarian master: Operation Catch of the Day. So clever that we shouldn’t be surprised if someone with a sense of humor urges either Noem or Trump to claim the name is a sincere attempt to advertise Maine’s seafood industry.

As a satirist, Keillor might have a hard time trying to make fun of an operation that appears to satirize itself. “Catch,” is here intended as a double-entendre: We catch “aliens” where you catch fish. And when you’re out in your little boat hauling in cod or lobster, you have to preserve them, and so what do you need for all the time it takes to bring them to market? Along Commercial Street in Portland, tubs of it surround you in fish markets as the clerks take fish atop them to weigh on scales, and then throw more fish on the tubs, straight off the docks just steps from their back doors.

ICE! The name must have seemed fitting enough in Minnesota. Don’t know about records in Wobegon or Minneapolis, or even Lake Benton where I went on dates, but I recall hearing a radio report of minus-35 temps in International Falls. Reports tell us that thousands of Minnesotans braved sub-zero wind chills yesterday to protest the cold-blooded murder of a 37-year-old mother–only to witness the cold-blooded murder of a 37-year-old nurse whose only crime was taking a video of what he saw.

Included in those numbers were 100 members of the Twin City’s clergy at the Minneapolis Airport as they tried to convince airlines to stop serving ICE. In Ipswich today, signs with the outline of the K-shaped state seemed to replace the Greenland flags of last week. When I mentioned this to a woman who asked what “Mpls” stood for, I added that I long ago met two Methodist ministers in Minneapolis and wondered if they were there. She looked around: “I wonder if any of them are here.”

What would be the sermon at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility if the young Father Wilmer delivered it? And would the semi-retired Father Emil approve? And what would the staid Lutheran Pastor Ingqvist say? Or the lively Pastor Liz? Or Max and Georgiana, lively characters as I recall, who both laughed when I told them, “There’s Methodism to your madness”?

What of the rest of us? Are we perpetually responsible? Are we responsible at all? Would those questions be considered at The Chatterbox Cafe, Cafe Boeuf, or The Sidetrack Tap? What would Harold Star opine in his Herald Star?

If Lake Wobegon was “a little town that time forgot,” time has caught up to it now. Today it is very much a part of a nation that appears determined to be one that “the decades cannot improve.” It’s as if we have forsaken The Enlightenment for the Dark Ages, a repudiation that was actually called for by a candidate for president in the Republican primaries of 2012. Her name was Michele Bachmann, and she was elected to the US House from 2007 to 2015 by the northern suburbs of, ah, um, yes, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And that’s the news from Lake America, where the land is no longer free, where people at home beg senators and representatives in DC to be brave, and where children are used as bait to bring adults with dark complexions within reach of masked goons eager to fill quotas that are as apparently open to murder as to deportation.

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A stencil on a wall in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

*About the Garrison Keillor Tour:

https://www.stubhub.com/garrison-keillor-tickets/performer/8288

Befitting a Witless Cult

Most reports will tell you that Special Counsel Jack Smith testified for five hours today.

Yes, the TV show disguised as a congressional committee meeting ran that long, but for just how many of those 300 minutes did Smith speak?

Very few, as the Republican members kept immediately interrupting his attempts to answer to recite their talking-point lines with performative anger and indignation for Fox Noise and for their own campaign videos to air this fall.

Democrats also unleashed a few speeches, but they let Smith give detailed answers to their questions–some of which were the very same asked by a Republican only to stop Smith before he could answer.

The trick is older than Machiavelli. Cast a complex question as if the answer is yes or no, and when the answer begins with anything but yes or no, pounce on it and interpret it as the answer you want–in this case, to imply wrong-doing–and repeat the premise of your question. Today, Republicans were repeating their own questions so they could repeat the whole process. All of it loud and bellicose.

This is why they had so many questions about Cassidy Hutchinson, the White House staffer who testified before the Jan. 6 investigative committee. She admitted that a single statement in her exhaustive testimony was second-hand. Forget all the first-hand testimony she gave, that was all they needed to label her a “liar.” Because Smith interviewed her, it was guilt by association. And who would change that verdict when, later, answering a Democrat who allowed for a thoughtful, thorough answer, Smith would reveal that Hutchinson’s testimony was not used in his charges?

Repetition may have been the biggest trick. As a trick constantly played by Trump every time he speaks or tweets, it is logical that his cult employs it. How many times did they decry the Jan. 6 Committee as “being appointed entirely by Nancy Pelosi” or for having no loyal Republicans on it? I don’t recall one Democrat objecting that Republicans themselves refused to participate. Do Democrats think that the American public remembers that? Or ever knew it?

More than one Republican also cited a timeline to accuse Smith of “a rush to judgment” to “interfere with the election.” Not once did a Democrat mention that Biden’s Justice Dept., thanks to the selection of a cadaver as Attorney General, dragged its feet for two years for fear of being charged with “politicizing the department.” Even in the face of death threats to local poll workers. Silence here may be more understandable, as Democrats would be faulting the administration of one of their own. But their fear of being charged with politicizing” has led directly to their being charged with, yes, “politicizing.”

At one point, Smith answered the charge with this gem: “It’s not incumbent on a prosecutor to wait until someone gets killed.”

Other than these lapses, Democrats did quite well. Raskin was inspiring as always, Swalwell the most damning by pointing out that Republicans, “including members of this panel,” trash Trump in private but do his bidding in public. (Speaking of charges that went unanswered!) Moscowitz of Florida deserves an Oscar for comic relief, most hilariously his exchange with Raskin ending with an incisive if sarcastic, “You mean, like Gore in 2000?”

Perversely, Republican Nehls of Texas could be considered hilarious with his bonkers claim that the Capitol Police leadership was to blame for the riot–but that’s unwitting, befitting a witless cult. He announced that he would be the chair of a committee that would prove it, which is also a sick joke. Nor was there anything funny about such a remark being directed at four Capitol police officers, who had been slurred and/or beaten on Jan. 6., sitting right behind Smith in the front row. Apparently, yet another part of Trump’s rewrite (i.e. cover up) of the event will be to make the higher ups of the police force responsible for their “lack of preparedness” that day.

When the show was over, cameras caught those four officers standing at the door to shake hands with Smith. Nothing funny about what all five of those men endured for those five hours, but the sight recalled Moscowitz’s gleeful mention that he would be on Nehls’ committee when he introduced himself to Smith.

Smith never laughed. He never smiled. He never raised his voice. And over five hours, I doubt he spoke fifty minutes.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/jan-6-cop-curses-at-republican-blaming-capitol-police-for-insurrection/vi-AA1ULzx4

A Call for Snap Elections

Tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:00 am Eastern, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith will testify before a Congressional committee that will air on CNN.

For the first time, the American public will hear the evidence that a Trump-appointed Florida judge blocked from view before the 2024 election.

Or, at least we’ll be able to hear it. By now it’s a safe bet that the MAGA crowd will denounce it as fake without hearing a single word much less a summary. Also that Fox and other propaganda outlets will omit what they cannot spin and emphasize the screeching denials of Republican committee members such as the rapid-fire-and-ramble-on Jim Jordan, and that the Republican Party will continue its goose-step to the Cult of Personality.

Will it make a difference?

Will more of us be calling for the 25th Amendment even though only the vice-president can invoke it? Seriously? J.D. Vance is a man willing to repeat the deranged claim that residents of Springfield, Ohio–his own constituents at the time–were eating cats and dogs.

That leaves Congress, a body in which the controlling party refuses to act. They get away with it, partly because most of the public pays only superficial attention at best. And partly because the public blames any and all failures of Congress on both parties. Not only that, but they ridicule the party that tries to tell them that action is possible–while rewarding the party that insists action is impossible.

Result? The firefighters are punished while the arsonists are rewarded. Just ask the police who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 against a violent mob that has been pardoned despite evidence, despite convictions, in some cases despite confessions–and is now being considered for financial compensation for their time in jail.

Finally occurs to me that the party controlling Congress really is “Republican in name only.” Pundits often note that they’re a far cry from the senators who told Nixon he had to resign. We should also note they are just as far from the senators and representatives who overrode Reagan’s veto of their attempt to sanction the Union of South Africa for Apartheid. Indeed, the current crew has unanimously signed on to Trump’s welcome mat for “persecuted white farmers” of South Africa who apparently now seek white supremacy here in another USA.

These are not Republicans. They are Cowards.

Can we make it from here to November with a president who threatens war with other countries, and orders military takeovers of American cities? Or is it states, first Minnesota, now Maine, next…? Can we make it with an anti-vax squad in charge of the National Institute for Health and another crank flank working to destroy the Dept. of Education from the inside? Can we make it with every environmental regulation since the creation of the EPA gutted? Ditto with labor laws and occupational safety? Ditto with the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe?

Coal is beautiful and clean if you subscribe to the Cult of Personality.

Will elections take place, or will we be under martial law? And if they are held, will a president who has already said he should have seized ballot boxes in 2020, and who keeps hinting at canceling elections try to rig it?

Sorry for so many questions, but I’m from the Eisenhower years, once immersed in beliefs such as “the greatest form of government in the world.” Our loss of any claim to peaceful transfers of power has already disabused me of the notion, but it raises a question that I have yet to hear:

Why is it impossible to rid ourselves of a leader so obviously dangerous and corrupt?

Canada and all European countries have a parliamentary procedure that allows for “snap elections”–also called a “confidence vote.” In 1980, in their haste to teach the liberal Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s dad) a lesson, Canadians elected one Joe Clark to be their prime minister. For far less damage and far fewer crimes than Trump, Clark was out of office in eleven months.

American journalists have the bad habit of calling these, “special elections.” That’s misleading, as there’s nothing “special” and something written into a Constitution.

For a moment, let’s put aside the parties, the personalities, and the cult of personality. Can we honestly continue to claim that we have the “best” form of government when we can be stuck with the mess we have for at least another year, if not three, if not indefinitely?

Go ahead and waste time calling for the 25th A. But please consider that there’s another Constitutional amendment for which this mess calls.

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