6.9.2026 – lacks transparency

lacks transparency
accountability and
proper oversight

Adapted from the opinion piece, Science Should Not Be Subject to Loyalty Tests by Melissa L. Finucane, a professor of social and behavioral science at Stony Brook University where Dr. Finucan writes:

The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.

Such a revision is necessary, the agency said, because there is a “lack of transparency, accountability and proper oversight” in the way federal funds are dispersed.

It IS 2026 correct?

I am in the United States of America correct?

The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change …

that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded …

and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding …

for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.

Way back when I was lucky enough to attend one the world’s great universities (just ask them).

I was also lucky enough on my first day as a student to be assigned to a Professor who had to look over my course choices and ‘advise me’ on my choices.

He looked over my proposed class list and in a somewhat heated way told me that I was indeed at one of the world’s great universities and that I had better take advantage of that and take a variety of classes in different fields so that I experience what the university had to offer.

Which is why I ended up taking freshman Astronomy as a Junior.

I mean I wasn’t stupid.

I wasn’t going to take some 400 level survey course on fast breeding nuclear reactors.

So there I was, with 300 freshman in a very steep lecture hall, learning how to identify the constellations.

The Professor was this guy right out of central casting for an Astronomy Professor.

He was of indiscriminate age, shaggy black hair, glasses, about 5 ft tall, flannel shirts and some old as dirt pants, hiking boots and something that may have been a calculator hanging from his belt.

He would stand there and lecture like he was talking to you rather than teaching you.

And he loved the stars and the science of the stars and science in general.

He loved science so much that at least once a week he would some point about science in the news and then add a comment about ‘so long as those church goers don’t get involved’ or even “which ought to get those Christian’s worked up.”

After a while I waited after one lecture until the hall ended up and I walked up to the Professor, introduced myself, told him how much I enjoy his class but I had to ask, what was driving this, as I would later learn to call it, suspect animus about Christians?

I identified myself as a fundamental evangelical Christian and said I certainly was concerned about anything I was learning in Ann Arbor, in fact, I said I found the challenges I came across as reaffirming for my faith and I could still accept all that I was learning.

He looked at me for a bit and decided I wasn’t a threat or trying to trap him and he explained that he was aware of too many situations where science was stopped by political decisions and he was dismayed (this was during the Reagan era) about the growing influence of the Moral Majority.

“Whole fields of study are not allowed in the Soviet Union and it could happen here,” I remember him saying.

We ended up chatting for about 20 minutes and ever after that when he came into the lecture hall he would catch my eye and nod but he continued with his comments.

I enjoyed the class a lot and learned how to navigate the heavens for one semester at least but I think of that encounter whenever I hear of situations where restrictions for learning for any reason are put in place.

This latest is just one of so many straws being piled on that poor camel.

Too word out to be angry I guess I am just sad.

Science controlled by presidential priorities (not wanting to imagine the priorities of that man currently in office).

It’s been tried before.

There was this one country where physics was considered a Jewish Science deemed inconsistent with governmental priorities and a lot of science was abandoned and left to others to explore.

Sometimes these things work out.

6.9.2026 – still … fundamentals

still … fundamentals
matter but fiction outruns
our reality

Adapted from the opinion piece, Our Stock Market Is Broken (June 8, 2026) by Aaron Zamost, a tech communications consultant and a former executive at Square, where Mr. Zamost writes:

As part of its pitch to sell shares on the stock market, Elon Musk’s aerospace and technology company says it will capture over $28 trillion of the A.I. market (nearly the size of the entire United States economy).

To understand what’s going on, you have to see the game for what it is. Whether it makes sense or not, the market has heavily rewarded Mr. Musk’s utterances for some time. There are parallels to the meme stock phenomenon, in which a company’s shares soar primarily on the strength of viral social media hype.

In Silicon Valley, the result right now is a merry-go-round of profit and consequence-free failure as the same insular coterie of investors, entrepreneurs and banks continually fund one another’s next moves.

Is it any wonder that 67 percent of Americans believe the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and the powerful?

The real question is whether this party will end. Dr. Seru, like many finance experts, says it will. “Eventually, fundamentals still matter,” he noted. But who knows when that might happen? From birtherism to A.I. deepfakes, fiction has outrun reality for years now.

Years and years ago, mostly by accident, I became a webmaster of a publishing company and was accorded all the rights and privileges of being an expert on the subject, not that I was an expert, but that knew more about than most of the other people in the company.

There was one feller who had a title like COO or CFO or something but he was in charge of looking after the companies’ money and he read and accepted all the reports that led to something called the Web Bubble of the late 1990’s.

I was invited to attend his presentation to the board on the ‘Capitalization of the Corporate Website‘ where he presented data and charts that showed, beyond any reasonable doubt, that in 5 years, the corporate website would be worth 50 (not kidding) times the current valuation of the company.

He finished and the room went quiet.

Then the CEO said, “Mike? What do you think?”

I felt all those board members swivel their chairs to look at me.

I knew what I should say but I just couldn’t help myself.

I started by saying that it was a great presentation.

I said that web world was new and full of possibility.

Then said I was no economist but mentioned I had taken basic economics classes in college, like most of them I presumed, and I remembered something called the ‘zero sum theory’ and while I wasn’t sure if it applied, but what came to me when listening to this presentation and thinking of all the other same such stories in the news about other companies, was … where was all this new capital coming from?

There was a long silence and a clearing of thoughts and such.

I think the CFO wanted to strangle me but he nodded.

There was more quiet.

Then the CEO thanked me and thanked the CFO for the presentation and moved the meeting along to other non web topics and I was dismissed.

Later the CEO found me and told me I had said the quiet part out loud.

I said I hoped I didn’t cause any problems.

He told me not to worry and that sometimes someone needed to say the quiet part out loud.

Later when some folks came down the road talking about the next big thing in web world and offering the company a chance at getting in on the ground floor for several millions of dollars, that same CEO confidently said no.

Soon after that I played my ‘expertise’ into a job in online news where I stayed for 20 years.

According to Wikipedia, The dot-com bubble burst on March 10, 2000, which is the exact day the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index reached its all-time high of 5,048.62 before starting a steep, multi-year decline.

Sorry to that fiction has outrun reality for years now.

6.8.2026 – not a transaction …

not a transaction …
a values test – what would you
pay that money for …

Based on the article, The insanity of ticket prices is matched only by our own by Mitch Albom where Mr. Albom writes:

Even the nosebleed seats at the Garden are selling for thousands of dollars. The lower-level good seats are reportedly asking in the $40,000-$100,000 range. Some premium seats have been listed at above $200,000.

All of which makes ticket buying today not a transaction, but a values test. What would you pay that kind of money for?

I can safely say I have never paid anywhere near $1,000 a ticket for any event, of any kind, and I can only think of one thing that would tempt me to go that high, and that would be if all four Beatles reunited (mostly because, at this point, I’d want to ask George and John how they did it).

I live in a resort community.

The type of community where folks own million dollar homes that they use for a week or two out of the year.

The owners fly in on their private jets and are met by their valet driven rental cars.

I see them in their cars and I say, couldn’t afford the car insurance.

Insurance?

I couldn’t afford their gas.

I see the ladies with their styled hair and I say, I couldn’t afford their hair cut.

$200,000 for a ticket to a basketball game?

What would I spend $200,000 on if I had an extra $200,000 laying around?

What would I spend $100,000 on if I had an extra $100,000 laying around?

What would I spend $10,000 on if I had an extra $10,000 laying around?

What would I spend $1,000 on if I had an extra $1,000 laying around?

What would I spend $100 on if I had an extra $100 laying around?

What would I spend $10 on if I had an extra $10 laying around?

I think I have $20 in my wallet but I am afraid to look as I like thinking I got $20 in my wallet and I would feel bad if I found out I didn’t.

Sure sure sure all easy to say.

Truth be told, those who got it, got it and can do with it what they want.

I am reminded of the great Orson Welles on a talk show being asked, “If some gave him an ungodly amount of money … what would he do with it?”

“Give it all away,” Mr. Welles shot back without needing a moment to think of response.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said in a very quiet voice, “Of course my answer would most likely be different should someone ever give me an ungodly amount of money.”

But still, oh come on.

Sure it’s exclusive and sure it’s not about seeing the game but a values test.

What do you value?

I am also reminded of something I said to my wife this weekend.

We were at the beach in our beach chairs looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, bright sunshine, fresh breeze and surf and for that moment no one walking in front of us.

It was just us and the ocean.

I said to my wife, doesn’t matter who you are or where you are but if this is your view right now, it’s just like mine.

And it might be good to remember WDJS or What Did Jesus Say?

He said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

If your treasure is in Madison Square Garden … well, so be it, but be warned .. there your heart is also.

6.7.2026 – want majority

want majority
to turn their backs, that is all
that’s necessary

In the New York Times opinion piece, The White House’s Latest Provocation Is ‘Grotesque and Terrifying and Juvenile’, opinion piece writer, M. Gessen writes that the White House’s Latest Provocation is:

… a White House web page, posted last Thursday. And the scary creatures in question aren’t extraterrestrials; they’re the other kind of aliens — the immigrant kind, the kind hunted by ICE.

With phrases like “They do not belong here” and “Deport them all,” the page struck me as an incitement for Americans to commit acts of violence against immigrants.

But Benjamin Valentino, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, thinks that the purpose of the page is not to get Americans to do anything:

It’s to get them to do nothing, while the government commits its campaign of cruelty against millions of people just trying to live in peace.

“They want a majority of the population to turn their backs,” he said. “That’s all that’s necessary.”

I started this bit of nonsense back in 2019 and what I wanted to do was showcase what I thought was use of words and word play worth mentioning both in current news writing and in literature.

I never intended to fall in political commentary and to tell you the truth, I would love to get out of that business and back to showcasing what use of words and word play worth mentioning both in current news writing and in literature.

But I cannot turn my back on what is happening when you read that the Department of Justice states in Federal Court, that in their opinion, the president of the United States, or at least that man currently in office, could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty if he wanted to.

I cannot turn my back.

Especially as, that’s what they want me to do.

6.6.2026 – society cannot

society cannot
help the many poor, cannot
save few who are rich

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required–not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.

Let’s rephrase that for today.

President Kennedy was looking around the world because in 1961, the status of the United States wasn’t questioned and he could confidently say, To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves.

Today, this nation has turned its back on those people in the huts and villages of half the globe.

But those people shouldn’t feel left out.

As this nation has turned it back on it’s own people.

For today we can say, To those people here at home, struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required–not because it’s woke (whatever that means) to be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

You might ask, why should we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves?

Mr. Kennedy had it right and that message doesn’t change.

Because it is right.

Geez oh Pete and BOY HOWDY.

So simple.

Because it is right.

On this nations moral compass with what is right pointing in one direction, we sure seem to be locked in to 180 degrees the other way.

That assumes, of course, anyone of those folks working so hard to take care for the few who are rich havn’t tossed their moral compass away.

And don’t forget the warning.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

I admit, that man currently in office and his administration seem to be doing okay for themselves right now as the work to save the few who are rich and turn their back on the many poor.

But as Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

And deep down, I have to believe, them folks working so hard to save the few who are rich, they know it too.

Mr. Milton did say , “To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n,” and maybe thinking that is what gets those folks working so hard to save the few who are rich, and maybe the rich themselves, thinking that, thinking that Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n is what gets them through their day.

Thinking that Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n lets them look at themselves in the mirror when they get up.

No disrespect to Mr. Milton but in response I point out something Garrison Keillor said when he talked about those folks who don’t learn anything new until the day they die.

Those folks?

They learn a whole lot of the stuff the next day.