9.6.2026 – one second left twice

one second left twice
not over ’til fat lady
reviews video

Some items without dispute from the Michigan – Western Michigan football game in Ann Arbor on September 5.

Western outplayed Michigan.

Western deserved to win.

Michigan earned the loss all on its own.

Michigan has a drug problem as Western drug Michigan up and down the field.

Bryce Underwood is not answer and may be the problem.

Michigan’s game plan over the last 50 years and multiple coaches of playing to not lose rather than playing to win produces unwatchable television and unnecessary hardship.

And …

On the next to last play of the game, a Western Michigan defender went out of bounds and returned to the field of play and touched a live ball, stopping the clock with one second left.

As reported in the New York Times, “A couple of hours after the Wolverines’ 13-12 win, the Big Ten released a statement explaining the decision, along with the video that replay officials reviewed and audio of them talking through the decision. The video, from an angle that was not shown during the broadcast, appeared to back up the decision that a defender — after he stepped out of bounds — touched the ball when there was a second left on the stadium clock.” )A couple of hours after the Wolverines’ 13-12 win, the Big Ten released a statement explaining the decision, along with the video that replay officials reviewed and audio of them talking through the decision. The video, from an angle that was not shown during the broadcast, appeared to back up the decision that a defender — after he stepped out of bounds — touched the ball when there was a second left on the stadium clock. (Why Michigan got 1 second put back on clock before controversial win vs. Western Michigan By Ralph D. Russo and Justin Williams – Sept. 5, 2026 Updated Sept. 6, 2026 8:08 am EDT).

Full disclosure, I did not watch.

Pretty much at the end of the line with Sport anyway, that first half with the latest edition of the Next Great Michigan Coach and the resurgence of the Next Great Michigan Quarterback had me shaking my head and turning the game off.

The wife and I watched our regular Saturday night Detective drama, Death in Paradise.

I admit I kept my phone handy and glanced at the score from time to time and the scoreboard showed 0:00 WMU 12 M 7 and I swiped the screen off.

Our show ends before 11 p.m. as it airs on PBS without commercial breaks so it lasts less than 1 hour and before I could stop her, the wife switches back to the game.

The screen shows an empty Michigan Stadium and the field packed with screaming fans.

I figured the visiting Western fans had rushed the field … but there were too many of them.

The fans were all in maize and blue.

What goes on here, I wondered.

After what seemed like a long time, the announcers found their voices and started to try and explain, as the New York Times put it, “Where exactly did that one second come from for Michigan?”

This morning every major news outlet is reporting that Western was robbed.

Then the BIG 10 officially announced that “As shown in the provided video of what was viewed during the replay process, a side-by-side view of the play and the game clock, using a direct shot of the game clock in the stadium, was used to determine the final ruling.”

So Michigan wins.

The video replay says so.

Boy Howdy!

It’s the sporting equivalent of when Senator Al Gore once stayed overnight at monastery back in the day and along the way accepted a large campaign donation and responded to questions saying, My lawyers say I did nothing wrong.

Not picking on Mr. Gore here, its the thought that counts.

But somehow this game and its outcome and how we arrive at this outcome, is just a microcosm of life in general on so many fronts.

Life is changing and for the worse all around it seems.

The new season is here.

Let the games be played.

And always remember that in this modern era, it’s not whether you win or lose, but how the video replay can be intrepreted.

It’s not over until the fat lady reviews the video.

Anyway, on that 2nd last play, Western should have been flagged for roughing the passer.

9.5.2026 – cloud to tumbling cloud

cloud to tumbling cloud
minute by minute they change
shadow on the stream

Adapted from the poem, Easter 1916 By William Butler Yeats as published in The Norton anthology of poetry by Alexander W. Allison (Norton: New York, 1983).

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

8.4.2026 – the dumbest tariff

the dumbest tariff
trade war in history got
dumber this weekend

I have said over and over that I wish I could stay away from political commentary and go back to what I wanted to this space for and that was to recognize interesting word play or use of words in the news.

Today I get to do both!

When the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal … just to write that, I picture caricatures of large men in dark suits and white shirts and ties who have faces that never smile, sitting around a board and looking in disapproval at everything … writes a headline that states: The Dumbest Trade War Revisited (WSJ: 8/24/2026), I had to take notice.

Dumbest?

Dumbest!

Grammatical breakdown:
dumb → adjective
dumber → comparative
dumbest → superlative

Even in being DUMB, that man currently in office reaches the superlative.

The Editorial Board wrote:

President Trump took exception last year when we called his tariffs against Canada and Mexico the dumbest trade war in history. It got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.

Prices for steel and aluminum mill products have surged 22.5% and 40.5%, respectively, over the past year. General Motors last month projected a $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion hit this year from tariffs. U.S. auto makers have been lobbying the Administration to reach a truce with Canada. Mr. Carney said Saturday that a major reason the deal blew up is that the Trump team refused to ease tariffs on heavy and medium duty trucks, including those made at Ford’s plant in Ontario. Why is Mr. Trump punishing Ford, America’s largest auto producer?

Mr. Trump’s latest round of border taxes will hit an array of consumer goods, construction materials and manufacturing components. Republicans are already getting pounded on the campaign trail over his tariffs and inflation. One reason for Mr. Trump’s frigid approval rating is that voters believe Mr. Trump is waging blunderbuss wars without a strategy, and on trade they’re right.

To repeat, Why is Mr. Trump punishing Ford, America’s largest auto producer?

Is this what that man’s followers voted for?

In his inaugural address, he said:

My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

What is his chosen avenue to reverse these horrible betrayals?

How does he stop his percieved decline?

Wage the dumbest trade war in history … with Canada.

Who knew Canada was at the root of our decline?

Wars without a strategy!

The dumbest trade war in history got dumber this weekend.

As Jim Hacker said in the TV show, Yes Minister, “When a country is going downhill, it is time for someone to get into the driving seat, and put his foot on the accelerator.”

9.3.2026 – extraordinary

extraordinary
becomes ordinary
through repetition

First off, yes I can count and there are 6 syllables in extraordinary.

My blog, my rules (anyone else remember the Australian TV show, The Librarians?) …. but I digress.

Today’s haiku is adapted from the passage in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Piece, The Art of the Self-Deal (download pdf of article) by one time Ronald Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan (which used to count as Republican Royalty) where Ms. Noonan writes about Trump-era corruption:

We’ll quickly posit what we mean by Trump-era corruption. I see two general areas, personal enrichment and the use of government to satisfy private goals.

The personal-enrichment part is suggested by recent and frequent reports showing that Mr. Trump’s net worth, and that of his family, has surged dramatically in his second term. This isn’t just wealthy folks seeing their stocks go up: Trump businesses have developed positions in industries over which the administration exercises power.

And there’s the sheer scale: The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition; scandals add up and become a blur, not a call to action. But the country pays a cost for all this. Institutionally, everything happening today sets a precedent. Every abuse we accept widens the range of possible misbehavior for the next administration.

As always, the whole world is watching. What it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formally (if grudgingly) held Americans. It embarrasses us before the world. It hurts our heart a little. We were the morally rectitudinous Doughboy GI Marshall Planning JFK and Ronnie People who made the wall come down. We did our best each generation to be equal to our reputation, or at least to have some class. There are foreign-policy implications to all this. Some day we’ll need friends and see only the satisﬁed spite of the previously jealous.

Nothing good comes from this. When corruption is allowed, it governs not today but tomorrow too.

The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition.

Nothing good comes from this.

When I think that we are already so worn out with all of this and there two years to go, the bearable, in the face the extraordinary becoming ordinary through repetition becomes un bearable.

I can no longer see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I cannot imagine a light at then end of the tunnel.

I cannot even see the tunnerl.

All I can see the end of the movie, The Planer of the Apes.

Charleton Heston character, Taylor, rides along the ocean to find what is left of the Statue of Liberty and he realizes that all the technology that was supposed to send him off into space and bring him back home worked.

Taylor was home.

But while Taylor was gone, the World went a little crazy and a destroyed itself as it once was.

The unthinkable had been become thinkable.

All Taylor could do was pound his fist on the sand in frustration.

And say, “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

I watch the news.

I read the news.

And I pound the sand.

And I say, You maniacs!

And I say, You blew it up!

And I say, Ah, damn you!

You knew what you were doing and you did it anyway.

Right now I that’s what I see when I look for any glimmer of light at the end of any tunnel.

9.2.2026 – on the assumption

on the assumption
president is rational …
admit have my doubts

We must therefore prepare for the following possibility: That Mark Carney was right, and this relationship will remain altered, regardless of who occupies the White House.

No one is coming to save us. Our response must take these facts into account if it is to be effective and sustainable in the long term. While it is entirely understandable that tempers are running high and that a majority of our fellow citizens are feeling a strong desire for revenge, a response based on retaliatory tariffs will not take long to rebound to our collective detriment.

Let us look at this purely objectively: This response assumes that Mr. Trump, when backed into a corner by any damage arising from countertariffs, will call off the tariff threat in order to save face before, or soon after, the midterm elections. In short, it is based on the assumption that the U.S. President is a rational actor – something I must admit I have my doubts about.

From the opinion piece, Canadians can’t assume the next U.S. president will drop tariffs by Daniel Dufort in the Toronto The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition) 2 Sep 2026.

In short, it is based on the assumption that the U.S. President is a rational actor

– something I must admit I have my doubts about.

One more time.

Something I must admit I have my doubts about.

What is the word I am thinking of here … what is that word?

Understatment?

I feel using the word understatement is an understatement.