1.17.2025 – God’s toes are buried

God’s toes are buried
deep in the earth He’s ready
to run but … but where?

The cost of flight is landing.
On this warm winter day in the southwest,
down here on the edge of the border I want
to go to France where we all came from
where the Occident was born near the ancient
caves near Lascaux. At home I’m only
sitting on the lip of this black hole, a well
that descends to the center of the earth.
With a big telescope aimed straight down
I see a red dot of fire and hear the beast howling.
My back is suppurating with disease,
the heart lurches left and right,
the brain sings its ditties.
Everywhere blank white movies wait to be seen.
The skylark dove within inches of the rocks
before it stopped and rose again.
God’s toes are buried deep in the earth.
He’s ready to run. But where?

The Present by Jim Harrison

1.16.2025 – losses piled up and

losses piled up and
critics piled on Lions stayed
the same old Lions

They mocked him in the beginning, convinced he was going to end up just like the rest, run out of town within a few years because nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed in Detroit. Then they ripped him during the climb for being too honest, for being too out there, for having the nerve to think some sort of miraculous turnaround was coming, even as the losses piled up and the critics piled on and the Lions stayed the same old Lions.

From The genius of Dan Campbell: ‘He’s the best leader I’ve ever been around’ by Zak Keefer in the New York Times on Jan 15, 2025

1.14.2025 – extend alien ban

extend alien ban
scandalous bootlegging of
aliens through seaports

WOULD EXTEND ALIEN BAN

Secretary Davis Will See Coolidge on Canada and Mexico Quotas

Special to the New York Times

Washington. Jan. 13 – The application of the quota provisions of the Immigration law of 1924 to Canada, Mexico and Central and South America, which are at present excepted from the restrictive features of the statute, will soon be discussed with President Coolidge by Secretary of Labor Davis a view to the extension of the act through legislat1on.

Secretary Davis insists that the quota principle be extended to Canada and Latin America to suppress the scandalous bootlegging of aliens through seaports and over the Southern and
Northern borders. He would admit labor when needed but would have the President authorized to limit or prohibit immigration whenever the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Commerce found that unemployment in this country made such suspension of the law desirable.

100 years ago today in the New York Times.

We certainly have come a long way since then.

President Coolidge was never arrested.

And the aliens weren’t from Mars but coming from the same old places … Mexico and Canada.

1.13.2024 – intellectual

intellectual
acuity invented
that does not exist

Some speculate that Trump is engaging in Richard Nixon’s deliberately staged “madman” theory of intimidating people into accepting his terms, whatever those might be. Still others wonder if it’s all performative to keep his masses entertained with the show. His grandiosity is certainly a constant expression of his malignant narcissism. Attributing his atavisms of imperialism and blunt-force tariffs to a thought through theoretical exercise to return to the 19th century invents an intellectual acuity that does not exist.

From the article, “Donald Trump isn’t even in office yet and silly season has already begun” by Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian.

Mr. Blumenthal’s mastery of multi syllable words must be saluted.

I also like the idea that adding Greenland and Canada will add multiple, more likely Democratic Party based, states with their Senators and Representatives to Congress.

Maybe once the GOP figures that out, they will be as excited about adding these new states as they are about adding the States of DC and Puerto Rico.

On the whole, how did this guy end up President.

As Mr. Mencken said in his book, In Defense of Women in 1918, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”