--"He's from this country, Mexicans don't read him, so that's good enough for me."--Donald Trump
--"The one thing I didn't delete from my private server."--Hillary Clinton
--"Jimaschizzle!"--Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (aka Snoop Dogg)
Original humor, personal rants, nuggets and snippets from columnists and essayists, and other items for your edification and amusement.
By Jim Szantor
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations
about the absurdities of contemporary life
It’s time to show the real horror of mass shootings—in pictures!
Nothing will change until we let
people see the reality of the carnage
The old guard has to step aside
Pelosi, Biden, McConnell, Trump:
Time to hang up your cleats
Why do we swallow what Big Oil and the Green Movement tell us?
Their tired
shibboleths are hurting us economically, environmentally and geopolitically
A solution in search of a problem
Crypto is dropping like a rock.
Here’s why that’s a good thing
America may be broken beyond repair
In an ad
released last year, Blake Masters, a leading candidate in Arizona’s Republican
Senate primary, cradles a semiautomatic weapon. “This is a shortbarreled
rifle,” he said, ominous music playing in the background. “It wasn’t designed
for hunting. This is designed to kill people.”
For Masters, this isn’t an argument against
allowing such guns to proliferate. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment of why access
to these weapons is, for the right, a matter of existential importance. “The
Second Amendment is not about duck hunting,” said Masters. “It’s about
protecting your family and your country. What’s the first thing the Taliban did
when Joe Biden handed them Afghanistan? They took away people’s guns.”
Guns, in
this worldview, are a guarantor against government overreach. And government
overreach includes attempts to regulate guns. These days, it’s barely
remarkable when Republicans issue what sound like threats against those who’d
dare curtail their private arsenals.
“I have news
for the embarrassment that claims to be our president — try to take our guns
and you’ll learn why the Second Amendment was written in the first place,”
Randy Fine, a state representative in Florida, tweeted [recently].
It will be
impossible to do anything about guns in this country, at least at a national
level, as long as Democrats depend on the cooperation of a party that holds in
reserve the possibility of insurrection. The slaughter of children in Texas has
done little to alter this dynamic. Republicans have no intention of letting
Democrats pass even modest measures like strengthened background checks, and as
long as the Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refuse to amend
the filibuster, Republicans retain a veto over national policy.
Victims of our increasingly frequent mass
shootings are collateral damage in a cold civil war, though some Democrats
refuse to acknowledge it, let alone fight it. Fine’s words echoed Donald
Trump’s during the 2016 election, when he said that “Second Amendment people”
might be able to stop a President Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court
justices. What was once a barely concealed insinuation of violence has morphed,
especially since Jan. 6, into an even more forthright menace.
As
ProPublica has reported, dozens of members of the Oath Keepers militia were
arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, but that hasn’t stopped
the organization from “evolving into a force within the Republican Party.” In
Shasta County, a conservative part of rural Northern California, a militia-aligned
faction has secured a majority on the board of supervisors, in what members of
the movement see as a blueprint that can be deployed nationally.
Throughout the country, reported The New York
Times, “right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the
use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him” — meaning
Trump — “from power.” Expecting those same Republicans to collaborate with
Democrats on public safety is madness.
The
horrifying irony, the hideous ratchet, is that the more America is besieged by
senseless violence, the more the paramilitary wing of the American right is
strengthened. Gun sales tend to rise after mass shootings. Republicans
responded to the massacre in Uvalde by doubling down on calls to arm teachers
and “harden” schools. An article in The Federalist argued that parents must
home-school so that kids can learn “in a controlled environment where guns can
be safely carried for self-defense or locked away when not in use.” It’s a
vision of a society — if you can call it that — where every family is a
fortress.
Guns are now the leading cause of death for
American children. Many conservatives consider this a price worth paying for
their version of freedom. Our institutions give these conservatives
disproportionate power whether or not they win elections. The filibuster
renders the Senate largely impotent.
Trump, a
president who lost the popular vote, was able to appoint Supreme Court justices
who are poised to help overturn a New York state law restricting the carrying
of concealed weapons. It’s increasingly hard to see a path to small-d
democratic reform. And so among liberals, there’s an overwhelming feeling of
despair. Even as people learn the names of all those murdered children, the most
common sentiment is not “never again,” but a bitter acknowledgment that nothing
is going to change.
America is
too sick, too broken. It is perhaps beyond repair. Two years ago, David French,
an anti-Trump conservative, published a book, “Divided We Fall,” warning of the
possible crackup of the United States. It included two chapters imagining
scenarios for how the dissolution of the country might happen. One involved a
mass shooting at a school in California, to which the state’s people reacted
“with white-hot rage.” French envisioned furious state politicians defying the
Second Amendment, leading to a nullification crisis and blue-state secession.
He meant it as a cautionary tale, but rereading the chapter after Uvalde, it
feels less bleak than our reality. In French’s scenario, atrocity has the
effect of energizing people rather than immobilizing them. They are determined
to fight, not resigned to defeat. They have audacity and hope.
The real
nightmare is not that the repetition of nihilist terrorism brings American
politics to an inflection point, but that it doesn’t. The nightmare is that we
simply stumble on, helpless as things keep getting worse.
--Michelle
Goldberg, New York Times
The leaked draft Supreme Court opinion
suggesting a conservative majority will strike down Roe v. Wade this summer has
ignited debate over the future of the court. Is reform coming?
Lifetime
appointments have to go
With the Supreme Court poised to
overturn Roe v. Wade, says Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times, it's time
to discuss "how to rein in the court's extreme conservative slant."
There are a few widely discussed ways to address the problem. One that is
starting to catch on is "eliminating the justices' right to lifetime
appointments by imposing a term limit." Former President Donald Trump, by
the "luck of the draw," got to appoint three of the five conservative
justices in the majority that, according to a draft opinion leaked this week,
is going to strike down Roe, which established the constitutional right to
abortion and protected it for nearly 50 years. With lifetime appointments, this
hard-right tilt on the court will last decades, given life expectancies that
are now far beyond what the Founding Fathers could have imagined. Fixed terms
of 18 years, say, would "provide an opening every two years, or two every
presidential term," and make it harder for the right, or the left, to
dominate the bench.
Add more justices to even the bench
The hitch is that it's not clear the
Constitution gives Congress the power to impose Supreme Court term limits, say
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Michael Tabb at FiveThirtyEight. That leaves
Democrats with "one crazy, pull-the-fire-alarm solution: They could add
more justices to the court." The Constitution requires the United States
to have a Supreme Court, but leaves it to Congress to decide how many justices
it will have. It started out with six seats, briefly had 10 under President
Abraham Lincoln. For most of the nation's history, it has had nine. Four
progressive Democrats last year proposed increasing that to 13, but most
Democrats, including President Biden, gave the idea the cold shoulder.
Packing the court is a "terrible
idea," says The Economist. Which is why it's "currently a fringe
position in the Democratic Party." But if the court "swings hard to
the right" and the new 6-3 conservative majority "start tearing up
precedents that have stood for half a century, there will be growing political
pressure to remake the court." The high court could "save itself by
acting with restraint," and "bolster its own legitimacy" by
imposing an ethics code on itself, to disperse whiffs of partisanship like the
"angling" by Justice Clarence Thomas' wife to overturn Trump's 2020
election loss.
The liberal appetite for packing the
Supreme Court is no surprise, says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Nor
is "the return of fevered threats to break the Senate filibuster" to
give Democrats, with their narrow Senate majority, the power they crave to
remake the court. Watch, next they'll try to Impeach justices. "This fury
is intended to intimidate the justices and, if that doesn't work, use abortion
to change the election subject in November from Democratic policy
failures." The Supreme Court's "best response" is to
"ignore the political fallout and focus on the law." Chief Justice
John Roberts has rightly called for investigating the leak of the draft
opinion. "A statement from all nine Justices deploring the leak would be a
useful defense of the court as an institution, as the liberal Justices know
they may eventually be in the majority."
That's obviously not going to happen
for a long time, says Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect. The makeup of
the Electoral College and the Senate, our "primordial gerrymander"
giving Republicans power disproportionate to their numbers, have left the
United States under "minority rule," with an ever more
"right-wing judiciary" making the rules for a 21stcentury world it
just doesn't get. There are no "readily realizable" reforms that can
fix this, but remember: "Even in a democracy as flawed as ours, the
majority, if it turns out in sufficient numbers, can still assert its right to
rule.”
--Harold Maass, The Week
Ten more David Foster Wallace Quotes
1. “The really important kind of freedom
involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able
truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in
myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
2.
“There are no choices without personal freedom. It’s not us who are dead
inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us—these are just the
hazards of being free.
3.
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with
you.”
4.
“Logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.”
5.
“I’d like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of
having to go back in my head and enjoy them.”
6.
“Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”
7.
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they
are different from everyone else.”
8.
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when
you realize how seldom they do.”
9.
“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”
10. “The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.”
The foreign words English leans on
Everyone frequently uses “loan words,” foreign words adopted into another language without translation. Here are some examples to prove it.BY JIM SZANTOR
The chili could be
malicious and downright unforgiving. The
omelets sometimes look like yellow Play-Doh flecked with foreign bodies. The coffee isn’t strong enough to defend
itself, and the waitress puts the plates down with an offhand finality. Breakfast served any time. Eggs any style. The soup? It’s navy bean.
It’s easy to put down the greasy spoon, that
ubiquitous testament to the tacky and the Tums.
But by whatever name—luncheonette, diner, café, grill, coffee shop,
ptomaine parlor—it used to account for 40-50 percent of the eat-out dollar,
according to industry sources. Now? Not so much, as changing tastes and the sweep
of urban renewal have relegated it into a virtual museum piece--a slow-food
square peg in a round hole of a fast-food, instant-everything, drive-through
and highly hyphenated universe. Some things just sort of happen, with no grand
design or Machiavellian malice aforethought.
But the greasy spoon was a slice of Americana
that clung to the fork with nary a nod to fad or fashion. There were no vegetarian plates, as meat and
potatoes carried the day and the night and the mortgage. The Serv-Naps filed out of their countertop
compartments as the daily duet of eat-and-runs and lingerers played their way
through an unconducted arrangement. The
beef was “govt.-inspected”—but did it pass?
There was a counter-top jukebox selector, with some pop, some country,
some rock but definitely no Rachmaninoff.
You know the
place. Everyone, whether through
happenstance, resignation or momentary indifference has ended up at one of
these Edward Hopper-esque establishments, clutching a greasy knife or fork. How
the spoon, which generally just stirred the coffee, got left holding the bag is
a mysteryforever lost in the mists of time.
Whatever their
culinary merits, one could develop an irrational affection for the emporiums of
this genre. And they were more than
eating places. Sociologically they could
be an over-the-counter salve for the tattered psyches of the urban disenfranchised,
who hoped they wouldn’t close on Christmas and trap them in their cheap hotel
rooms. They were sort of halfway hash
house social clubs, with no membership list but plenty of dues, where the help
was as transient as the trade.
Some of these motley
establishments were actually respectable—sometimes good—and do not deserve to
be painted in such tawdry tones. Almost
always locally owned, they were probably more consistent at their level than
some tonier “destination dining” spots and had a more devoted clientele, who
prided themselves on being regulars, never had to state their orders and were
probably as good as the National Guard should someone get surly with the
waitress. Perhaps the key to their fate
is how many such places are opening these days, not how many are closing.
But while there’s
time, the eyes above the menu survey the scene and laugh and marvel at a few
things:
--The waitress
always looks like she is glad they sre out of whatever they are out of.
--The catsup bottle
says “restaurant pack,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
--The busboy is a
strong man--a bit too strong—but he didn’t shower up with Irish Spring.
--There’s a
fill-up-the-sugar-container fetish that is hard to fathom. Today’s two fingers’ worth on top of yesterday’s
two fingers’ worth. The sugar at the
bottom was refined in 1952.
--The “chef” has
more tattoos than specialties and thinks “Guide Michelin” plays for the
Montreal Canadiens.
--The cream pies and
such are kept at a tongue-numbing 33 degrees.
--The sandwich
plates are larger than they need to be, but the dinner plates. . . .
--The cashier/owner
always seems to be eating ice cream out of a coffee cup on a stool near the
cash register.
--They honor the
“law” that says coleslaw shall be served in flimsy paper or plastic cups and in
minute amounts.
--The spaghetti
always comes with “rich meat sauce.”
--The menu always
has an item or two that no one has ever ordered. Who orders Red Snapper in places like this?
--If you want
something to go, you have to stand in a special place, probably so they won’t
confuse you with people who prefer to eat standing up with their hands in their
pockets.
--The floor is
usually brown-and-yellow tile squares, in accordance with the Seedy Restaurant
Color Scheme Act of 1942.
--Some old guy
always comes in about 10 p.m. and orders a bowl of bran cereal.
---The menu is a
Sargasso Sea of misspelled names and fanciful if not fraudulent
descriptions. From the Broiler. From the Sea.
But never From the Freezer.
--The server never
fills in all those bureaucratic squares at the top of the “guest check” and writes
diagonally across the lined form. What’s
more, she has a Ph.D. in abbreviations.
--One of the
customers always looks like he is doing his income tax at one of the tables.
--Somebody always
walks by the window and waves in just before he disappears.
--You’re the only
one at the counter, and some guy walks in and sits right next to you.
--The french-fried
shrimp comes with enough cocktail sauce to cover about two pieces.
--The table’s wobble
is always half-corrected with a dirty folded napkin or three.
--The clock is
always stopped at something like 2:42.
--The Muzak is
always playing something like “Never on Sunday” or “Nom Domenticar.”
--The cook flip-slides the plates across the high stainless-steel
counter, and they always stop short, as if equipped with disk brakes.
--The cashier always
puts your change down on a spikey rubber thing that looks like an oversized
scalp massager.
****************************************************************************
In the early morning
lull, after the midnight rush hour subsides, the buzz of the fluorescent now
equals the sizzle of the grill as the beat cop walks in and sinks into the
house booth.
“Say,
where’s Sally? She off tonight?”
“Nah, she quit. Went back with her old man.”
“Oh . . . . Say, you
got any a that meat loaf left. Haven’t
eaten all day.”
“Nah, meat loaf’s
out. All’s I got left is thueringer.”
“Thueringer,
huh. Well . . . gimme a piece of that
blueberry.”
(Illustration: Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” 1942)
Forecast Follies (or . . . "Here's Jim with the Weather")
Mark Twain famously said, ”Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
And since reports of Mr. Twain’s death were not highly exaggerated, I’d like to fill in for him and address something we apparently can’t do anything about, either—the nonsensical, downright insulting barrage of verbiage issuing forth daily from what used to be called TV “weathermen” (and they were all of that gender back in the day) but are now known as “meteorologists,” as if space rocks were an omnipresent factor in our lives. As in, “60 percent chance of precipitation by daybreak, with 0.000001 percent chance of meteor collision.” (Meteor showers do occur, but usually are not perilous enough to cancel your picnic plans. They have yet to be seen in the Bus Stop Forecasts or the Car Wash Advisories that “humanize” these bloated segments.)
The weather portions (there are usually two—a fairly brief “teaser” early on and later, the Big Production) of most TV newscasts are, first of all, way too long (and coupled with all those time-wasting teasers about “what’s coming up,” leave precious little time for what we actually tune in for—news). We don’t need to know where the Alberta Clipper fizzled, that an El Nino is in mid-formation or that a front in central Montana caused a “dusting” in northern Iowa. And as for those “pockets of snow” we were supposed to get last night, I looked in mine and, blessedly, found none. But the station has paid serious coin for all of the glitzy graphics and radar capabilities, and by God, they are going to be used, if even just to show us what the rainfall looks like in downtown Racine “right at this very moment.” Gripping.
And then
there is the universal, comically contrived “personalization” factor, apparently
de rigueur on all stations. It’s never “Thursday’s forecast,” it’s (ahem), “the
forecast for your Thursday . . . .”
One can only envision the rapturous glow viewers must feel when luxuriating
in the warmth of that gratuitous pronoun! (As if that forecast applies only to
you, no one else. Ah, exclusivity.)
If one were to awaken from a 30-year coma, he or she would probably be mystified not only by cellphones, laptops and GPS devices but also by the existence of a curious phenomenon known as The Weather Channel: All weather, all the time--a nonstop barrage of jargon, gaudy graphics and arcane factoids. How did we ever exist without it? When it’s a slow weather day (and in this day of acute climate change, there’s always a crisis on the front burner somewhere), footage of past calamities will fill the bill for weather junkies or the aficionados of disaster porn.
Those with (ahem) backgrounds as editors find the nightly weather segments to be cringefests in the extreme. Temps don’t just drop into the 20s, they “drop down,” as if “dropping up” were a physical possibility. Is snow or rain in the forecast? No, we’ll have “snow showers” or “rain showers.” And it’s never just “sun”; it’s “sunshine,” as if that extra syllable ramps up the warmth. These folks never pass up an opportunity to gild the lily, because we’re often told of the possibility of “rain events” or “snow events,” which leads me, at least, to wonder if I will need a ticket, if there will be guest speakers and if refreshments will be served. (Spotty Showers? That was my clown name back in the day, a story to be told when the Vernal Equinox rolls around. Which this year, in the Northern Hemisphere, will be at 10:33 a.m. CST on March 20. Mark your calendar.)
But my pique rises to fever pitch in winter, when we’re often told during our seven-month layered-look season to “bundle up,” as if we lifelong Midwesterners have no prior experience with winter weather--as if we had all just parachuted in from Jamaica in our underwear and had no idea on how to adorn ourselves in these brutal climes. We don’t need to be told how to dress when icicles form—we’ve been there, done that—and resent the insinuation. One of the local weather wordsmiths hails from San Diego, and he’s telling us what to wear? Outrageous. I’d like to send him back to sunny California on his surfboard or his skateboard, preferably when the barometric pressure equals the dew point and, optimally, on a jet stream.
More and more women are seen these days holding forth during TV weather segments, and they have proven themselves every bit the equal of the men—long-winded and grammatically challenged. Positive role models apparently are non-existent; the often-parodied “weather bunnies” are blessedly a thing of the past (their anatomical attributes far outweighed their academic credentials), and the first exemplary female trailblazer with any gravitas has yet to be found.
So please, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. Meteorologist, do us all a favor: Stop behaving as if you are getting paid by the word, spare me the details about weather phenomena that have no bearing on our locale and, most of all, stop insulting our intelligence. Chill out, stick to the weather and let us worry about our wardrobes. Failing that, my fondest wish is that I could take all of you, get you all bundled up and sent to the Sahara. There’s a 99.99 percent chance that you won’t need an umbrella or have to worry about a lake effect, a polar vortex or banal banter with the anchor desk.
And now here’s Al with the Sports.
--Jim Szantor
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Soloist Jim Szantor as lead alto David Bixler gives the cutoff on the final chord.
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Part of the evening's program.
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