He's 20.

Rice Lake's Henry Ellenson is playing in the rotation for the Pistons:

“It’s huge, just going on the court and competing, getting better and learning from each opportunity and trying to make the most of it,” Ellenson said. “When it’s my chance to go, I’ll be ready and compete — that’s the biggest thing at this level. Your teammates are going to help you throughout the night, so it’s being ready and learning from each moment I get.”

His teammates have taken notice of how much work Ellenson has done. He’s not just getting minutes based on being a first-round pick or few alternatives being available on the bench. Van Gundy is struggling to trim the rotation to his desired nine or 10 players; Ellenson is jockeying for position with veteran Anthony Tolliver and Jon Leuer.

The versatility at the forward positions will let some of them switch to other positions, opening opportunities for Ellenson after he languished on the bench and in the development league for most of last season.

“Henry has put in the work each and every day for the past two years to be able to be prepared to play when his number is called,” center Andre Drummond said. “He’s a young professional and he’s playing great.”

1973 version.*

O mighty God, when I behold the wonder
Of nature's beauty, wrought by words of thine,
And how thou leadest all from realms up yonder,
Sustaining earthly life with love benign...

Refrain:
With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud,
O mighty God! O mighty God! (repeat)

When I behold the heavens in their vastness,
Where golden ships in azure issue forth,
Where sun and moon keep watch upon the fastness
Of changing seasons and of time on earth...
-------------------

* Did you know... 1973 is 4-corners BINGO on a keypad?
File under... learn something new everyday.

Happy Halloween.

It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness.

The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of... boys.

It was the afternoon of Halloween.
and all the houses shut against a cool wind.
The town was full of cold sunlight.
But suddenly, the day was gone...

Night came out from under each tree and spread.

~ Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree (not The October Country, though that's a great title too...)

----------------------------------

Sirens are screaming
and the fires are howling
way down in the valley tonight...

There's a man in the shadows with a gleam in his eye
And a blade shining oh so bright...

There's evil in the air and there's thunder in the sky,
and a killer's on the bloodshot streets.

Oh and down in the tunnels, where the deadly arise
you know I swear I saw a young boy down in the gutter;
He was starting to foam in the heat!

~ Meatloaf / Jim Steinman, Bat Out of Hell

---------------------------------


May you embrace the darkness tonight,
and understand what you're celebrating...

*It's not just about sugary treats and dressing up the dogs, you know...

Oh, baby you're the only thing in this whole world
That's pure and good and right
And wherever you are and wherever you go
There's always gonna be some light,
But I gotta get out, I gotta break out now
Before the final crack of dawn
So we gotta make the most of our one night together
When it's over, you know,
We'll both be so alone
Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes
When the night is over, like a bat out of hell, I'll be gone, gone, gone
Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes
But when the day is done
And the sun goes down
And the moonlight's shining through
Then like a sinner before the gates of Heaven
I'll come crawling home back to you...

~ Bat Out of Hell, again.

-------------------------------------------
ADDED: John Kelly can write, and he's a scholar:

Shelby Foote: It was because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government's founded on it. And, it failed.

Sam Houston: Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win southern independence, but I doubt it. The north is determined to preserve this union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates, but when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.

Don't be a sore loser.
Work to understand, so that we can prevent the bloodletting tragedy that was the Civil War from occurring on our soil again?  Yes we can.
(Violence should always be the last resort, not the go-to that some pundits today would seem to prefer...)  Seek to understand complexity, it counts!

How Great Thou Art...

So sings my soul...
My Savior ("God" to thee)
How Great Thou Art.
How Great Thou Art.
-----------

No, no, no. Not converting to Protestantism.
Just heard an excellent new version of that song heading to Wisconsin from Minnesota yesterday morning... never realized how many shades of orange there are until I saw them in yesterday's sunrise.

Hope your October was beautiful,
and November is good to you too!

Scandal, or Common History?

Ugh. In this overly dramatized, video-accompanied "top Sunday story" at the NYTimes, the American reader learns that in an impoverished land, children in the 1920s, 30s and 40s -- born into homes without fathers to help provide for them -- were often sent to institutions, where they suffered disproportionately from natural deaths including bronchitis, meningitis, tuberculosis, influenza, measles, whooping cough, and severe undernourishment...

And the women charged with caring for these children often did not themselves dig what we think of as "proper graves" and instead resorted to storing the bodies underground and out of the elements*, systematically providing for the bodies in the best way they could in those times. (Maybe they were more concerned with the care of those still living?)

I don't know what the purpose of this story is, other than to play up the new video capacities of the New York Times. Maybe it would have been better had these "illegitimate" children (the common term in use then) been aborted, in the new improved American way, nevermind the fact that many born into such poor circumstances indeed did survive and go on to lead productive lives?

Only in a land where people grow up playing tennis for a living, say, would we look back at hard times in history and posthumously condemn those who worked on behalf of and alongside the poorest of the poor who were unable to provide for their own -- and who accepted the deaths by natural illnesses prevalent at the time -- as dramatic fodder...

The Times really should hire some realists to their staff, Irish or not. Enough of the historical revisionists already. (I honestly wonder how many people even made it through Dan Barry's tortuous writing, here. The moving pictures are nice, if you are into that type of self-loathing, or finger-pointing, but I honestly do not think this is the successful journalism business model of the future, this attempt at looking back in horror...)

Let the poor dead rest in peace, already.
Surely there are more contemporary tales of suffering and woe here in our own country that better qualify as hard news and deserve the video attention now? I suppose it is easier to chase the shadows of dead children in a foreign land though, while overlooking those suffering poverty and illness here in America today.
---------------------------

Full disclosure: My father was the eldest of seven, born in 1932 to a married couple in Abbeyknockmoy. He, and his siblings, survived those times in pre-war, rural Ireland, and the survivor's mentality in us remains strong. No apologies, nor guilt, here.

Life's realities can be harsh:
the poor children born into fatherless homes no doubt had it worse, but nobody ever said life was easy. That's an American invention, it seems. People believe it today at their own peril.


* Read closely, and don't miss the key word "disused".

An Open Letter to George W. Bush.

A few weeks back, you said,

"The very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation. We need a renewed emphasis on civic learning in schools. And our young people need positive role models. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.

The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.

... the Call to Action calls on the major institutions of our democracy,
public and private*,
to consciously and urgently attend to the problem of declining trust."

I challenge you, and your family members, to live up to those words in setting a good example of positive role models for the generations still coming up...

You know your father's joke about David Cop-a-feel?

Why do you continue to let him pose next to pretty women, and why must people physically touch or hug in those photos?

Every family with aging elders experiences a moment where the parents cannot continue to drive, say. And it becomes the responsibility of the children to take the keys away, to protect innocent others.

Take the keys away from your father already. Sexual assault -- the unwelcoming touching of others -- is not a joke.

"Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is a rule children learn in grade school. "Do Unto Others as you'd have done to you and yours" is another.

Would you want some old man getting handsy with Jenna, or Barbara? Well why is it acceptable with other people's daughters?

"Our young people need positive role models..."

Talk with your father already. And your mother. His unwanted touchings will not be tolerated in this New America. It's not funny now, and it likely was not funny then...

Nevermind people like Andrea Mitchell:

NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell came to the defense of former President George H.W. Bush after he was accused of sexual assault on Wednesday.

"Mrs Bush was at his side. He is in a wheelchair with Parkinson's syndrome. Really? Someone should be ashamed and it isn't '41," tweeted Mitchell, who also hosts "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on MSNBC. Mitchell's husband, Alan Greenspan, served as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, including under Bush.

Mitchell is an apologist, trying to shame younger women. That won't fly today. Hypocrisy "in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry (and sexism!), and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them."

Andrea might have welcomed touchings from older men as she came up. (She is 70; her husband, 91.)

But not every woman consents to such. (Consent being the key word.)

There are many other reasons I dislike your father, some of them personal. But I also think you ought to reconsider parading him around publicly. To me, this is pitiful, if only for the extremely shortened distance the man gets for "thowing out the first pitch". Pitiful, don't you see it?

The man spends weeks in the hospital on the taxpayer's dime, again and again and again, and then weeks later, he is positioned feet from home plate to show his virility in pitching a ball a few feet? Please: keep him at home already, and let others step up to inspire the children of the next generation.

As a son, isn't that your duty?
Maybe stop lecturing the country, and take care of business at home?
----------------------

* I can think of no "major institution of our democracy" more important than that of the private Family...

(ie/ My father doesn't "cop-a-feel" when he takes pictures alongside younger, healthy women.**

Why should yours? There are no Free Passes for privilege anymore.)

** It's simply not in his Nature. He respects Women, and always has. No sit-down talk needed in his older age...

Do I Have This Straight?

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) picked up the tab for the secret investigation into Trump's alleged ties with Russia, after a prominent Republican who first hired private investigators to dig up dirt and produce a dossier on Trump dropped out. (Bush?)

The dossier that was paid for (the one that included outlandish charges of then-Mr. Trump allegedly paying Russian hookers to soil a hotel bed that the President and Mrs. Obama allegedly had slept on) was convincing enough to the then-leaders of America's intelligence agencies that the United States government then justified wiretapping Team Trump's phone calls, which turned up innocuous calls to Russian diplomats in the late days of 2016 -- as is perfectly legal for an incoming president to reach out to other world leaders. (Namely, to reassure the Russians that President Obama's actions post-election in removing Russian diplomats from our country would not necessarily be the policy once the new crew was installed in January.)

No one expected Hillary Clinton or the Democrats to lose, so they did not cover their tracks very well, and now we all are being told that the whole COSTLY Trump-Russia investigation is built on whole lot of nothing. The DNC paid for people to tell us that the Russians were allegedly interfering in our election, even if the Trump voters continually denied they were misled by Russian ad buys and duped into supporting ... Comrade Drumpf (insert your favorite namecall here, if you're part of the angry 50% of the country who bought into the myth that Donald Trump is somehow an illegitimate president.)

We're not sure, at this point, if James Comey or Robert Mueller -- both formerly with the FBI; Mueller under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Comey under Obama and then Trump -- were "in" on anything, or just honestly misled into thinking the secret Russian contacts story were legitimate and worth pursuing.

Timeout for a Taxpayer Question:
How much have these ongoing investigations to date cost us? Can we pull the plug already, or will they continue investigating further the DNC contacts with creating this story out of whole cloth, by paying for what they wanted to hear with private donations?

The real cost to our country, of course, must factor in the internal divisions in our citizens, our families, and our nation as a whole, which is now more divided that ever after being fed a steady diet of what is turning out to be untruths, that unfortunately, too many believed...

(If I don't have this straight, forgive me. Like so many others, I am still digesting the news of late, and wondering how long it will take to drain a swampland the size of Washington D.C.)


OVERHEARD: "So, Trump didn't pay people to pee on a bed, but it turns out big-DNC donor Harvey Weinstein really did jerk off in front of that lady into a potted plant?? Do you think that's where the roots of the Russian hooker story the Clinton's allegedly paid for took hold -- 'Make it a BED, not just a plant. Oh, and say that the Obama's had once slept in it, hence Trump's secret delight... That'll really disgust 'em, the fools in the Heartland.' "

#DrainThatSwamp.
#ImpeachHim?No.JailHer!
#WeWere8YearsInPower.WhatHappened?

Say What You Will... the Man Can Write.

John F. Kelly:

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads, I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

I think it helps the writing, if you really get it...
Nothing faked here.

Non-PC, but beautiful nonetheless:

Yale was a dirt-poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle-class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

Nasty Boy Payback.

“If a half of what has been reported is accurate, then, I think, you can’t ask for support from people you’ve worked with over the years— just out of loyalty.”

“I think you have to be able to say, ‘You know what? Somebody who has talent is not entitled to be a misogynist, is not entitled to cause emotional or physical pain.’”

“If you’ve been given a pass for a long time, then there is payback. And sometimes payback is nasty.”

~ Judge Judy Sheindlin* on Harvey Weinstein's travails.
-------------------
* author of "Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining" and "Beauty Fades, Dumb Is Forever"

Weinstein's Wife Packs It In.

She's no Huma or Hillary, standing by her man initially when the charges came out.

Harvey Weinstein’s wife, Georgina Chapman, is leaving him — as more women continue to step forward to accuse the movie mogul of decades of sexual harassment and assault.

Weinstein, 65, and Chapman, 41, married in 2007 and have two children together — India Pearl, 7, and Dashiell Max Robert, 4.

“My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time,” Chapman says in a statement to PEOPLE.

Harvey thought he had had bought her loyalty, but she has children to think of:

In the wake of the first allegations by multiple women in a New York Times report, Weinstein, who has denied allegations of nonconsensual sex, initially said Chapman was standing behind him.

“She stands 100 percent behind me. Georgina and I have talked about this at length,” Weinstein told the New York Post, adding that Chapman was helping him become “a better human” and to “apologize to people for my bad behavior, to say I’m sorry, and to absolutely mean it.”

For years, he took risks and won. But when you risk big, you lose big too.

Harvey Weinstein is a Big Loser now. Wait until he realizes how far he has fallen, and that his money can't buy him forgiveness. I'm not wishing it on him, but I suspect even with the cushioning, his final fall will be hard... Men like him aren't prepared for tough times as there is no inner strength to call on when reserves are needed.

He's not the first, and he won't be the last.

Dr. Seuss Books are Racist Now.

One of the books in my childhood library was "And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street".

It was a wonderful story about a little boy in the city venturing outside and all the sights he saw (or imagined seeing) on the diverse and active Mulberry Street.

I liked it especially, because every page you turned, there was more and more detail -- and excitement -- in the illustrations.

 Eventually, a marching band turned up, and if marching bands don't introduce a general chaos to the streets, what will?

(Also, unlike some of Seuss's later books, this was about a person -- a boy -- not a Sneech, a Who, or another furry non-human creature.)

As a first-generation American lapping up everything I could learn about this land, Mulberry Street was a fun find.

When I leave home to walk to school,
Dad always says to me,
"Marco, keep your eyelids up,
and see what you can see."

But when I tell him where I've been
and what I think I've seen,
he looks at me and sternly says,
"Your eyesight's much too keen..."

"Stop telling such outlandish tales.
Stop turning minnows into whales."

Now what can I say,
when I get home today?

Imagine my surprise to learn that the book is now considered racist, for some of the minor illustrations hidden on the pages...

Sad!

Mostly, I feel for the kids of today, who are learning to read and think with tie-in books to popular movies, or something a celebrity-woman-turned-children's-author has written. You can still ferret out good books, of course, but if we are going to diss Dr. Seuss, children are the losers.

Here were the early reviews:

Clifton Fadiman wrote a one-sentence review in The New Yorker, which Geisel (penname Dr. Seuss) could still quote near the end of his life:

"They say it's for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss' impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well."

The New York Times wrote, "Highly original and entertaining, Dr Seuss' picture book partakes of the better qualities of those peculiarly America institutions, the funny papers and the tall tale. It is a masterly interpretation of the mind of a child in the act of creating one of those stories with which children often amuse themselves and bolster up their self-respect."
...
English children's author Beatrix Potter wrote, "What an amusing picture book ... I think it the cleverest book I have met with for many years. The swing and merriment of the pictures and the natural truthful simplicity of the untruthfulness ... Too many story books for children are condescending, self-conscious inventions—and then some trivial oversight, some small incorrect detail gives the whole show away. Dr. Seuss does it thoroughly!"
...
A. O. Scott, in a 2000 article in The New York Times called the book "a hymn to the generative power of fantasy, a celebration of the sheer inventive pleasure of spinning an ordinary event into 'a story that no one can beat'."

Maybe that is why the reverse-racists see the need now to bring the book down? (Instead of competing by writing something better, it's easier scream racism, try to rewrite history, and erase our shared pasts....)

And then there's this:

Jonathan Cott noted that Mulberry Street is similar to "Der Erlkönig", a German poem by Goethe, "for both of them are about a father and a son and about the exigencies and power of the imagination."

When Cott told Geisel about this, Geisel responded by quoting the first two lines of the poem, in German. He also noted that he was raised in a German-speaking home, minored in German in college, and had memorized the poem while in high school.

I'll end here. It's bad enough to hear Dr. Seuss called a racist; I don't want him tarred as a Nazi too.
-----------------

TRIVIA: John Fogerty, frontman for the Creedence Clearwater Revival, has stated that the band's song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" was partly inspired by the book.

Bother me tomorrow, today, I'll buy no sorrows.
Doo doo doo lookin' out my back door.
Forward troubles Illinois, lock the front door oh boy!
Look at all the happy creatures dancing on the lawn.
Bother me tomorrow, today, I'll buy no sorrows.
Doo doo doo lookin' out my back door.

ADDED: I hope the First Lady, herself a newcomer to our land, continues donating books as she sees fit. We support your choice of materials, your generosity, and your belief that if you want to change the world, books are as good a place as anywhere to begin...

To celebrate “National Read a Book Day,” the first lady had sent out a collection of 10 Dr. Seuss books to one school in each state across the nation. The titles included: "The Cat in the Hat"; "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"; "Wacky Wednesday"; "Green Eggs and Ham"; and "Oh, the Places You’ll Go!"

She followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Michelle Obama, who often read Dr. Seuss books to children. Former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush also read to children at Dr. Seuss-themed educational events.

“I wanted to send you a special gift. Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! is a book my son and I have read over and over again, and one that we want to share with all of you,” the first lady wrote in her letter to students. “Please also remember that you are the future of America and that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.”

But despite the gesture, Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at a public school in Cambridge, wrote a letter to the first lady, which was then published on The Horn Book blog, notifying Mrs. Trump that her school would “not be keeping the titles” for their collection, explaining that her school didn’t have a “NEED” for the books, due to her school and library’s “award-winning” status.

“I work in a district that has plenty of resources, which contributes directly to ‘excellence,’” Soeiro wrote. “My students have access to a school library with over nine thousand volumes and a librarian with a graduate degree in library science.”

Soeiro went on to slam the White House and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for not gifting the books to “underfunded and underprivileged communities,” which she suggested “continue to be marginalized” by DeVos’ policies.

But Soeiro seemed to be the most offended by the books themselves.

“Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes,” Soeiro wrote, giving examples of "If I Ran a Zoo" and "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" as clear “racist mockery” in Seuss’ art.

Higher Education in California.

An angry college-aged woman steals a Make America Great Again hat off the head of a fellow student. That's grade-school stuff. What comes next, isn't...

“This is mine. You do not get to take other people’s property that is legally theirs in this county,” Matthew Vitale, a member of the school’s College Republicans club, sternly tells Edith Macias.

“Man, f--- your laws,” Macias snaps back.

“I have a freedom of speech to wear this hat,” Vitale later says.

“Your f---ing freedom of speech is genocide, homeboy! Is that what you are trying to represent?” she replies.

Vitale said in a video posted after the incident that he was attending an annual school-organized meeting where leaders of student groups listen to presentations about combating hazing and sexual harassment. A self-described Trump supporter, Vitale adds that he usually wears the “Make America Great Again” on campus and sometimes gets looks from other students, but was startled when Macias, whom he says he never met, yanked off his hat and sprinted out of the classroom.

The calm and collected staff at the school’s student life offices managed to take the hat away from Macias and return it to Vitale, but not before Macias is caught on video protesting their actions.

“F--- your f—-ing freedom of speech, boy,” Macias says to Vitale. “Your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there. That’s what it is. Because you’re out there wearing hats like these that promote laws and legislations that literally kill and murder in the masses, people of color.”

Macias says at one point in the exchange that she would like to burn the hat. In another heated moment, Vitale tells Macias to leave the country if she doesn’t like it.

“What do you mean? I was born here….where the f—- am I gonna go?” Macias says.

“Go to Mexico, go wherever the hell you want,” Vitale responds.

“You don’t know s—- about me! What do you mean Mexico?” Macias fires back.

A campus staff member then intervenes, trying to diffuse the situation and offering Macias a space where she can file her grievances to campus officials: “Let’s calm down a little bit, we can talk as a trio here."

The viral video ends after one of the employees gives the hat back to Vitale.

“Oh my God, you’re going to keep letting him wear it? That just shows how the f--- UCR is and the education system. It’s geared to benefit white people, white people, not me,” Macias says as she protests the move and accuses the staff of not being neutral.

“In the premises of the university I deal with microaggressions on the daily, as do other people of color and you have people out there wearing hats like those, y’all don’t say s—- about it,” she adds. “Make America Great Again? Really? Lynches, mass genocides, mass deportations. Constant killings, and y’all are just gonna shut the f—- up?”

“I don’t want to talk to none of y’all” Macias says as she's met at the door by men who appear to be campus police officers.

What happened next?

Now, Vitale is pressing charges. After campus police informed Vitale that Macias’ allegedly stealing his hat would constitute a felony theft charge because she took it off of his head, he decided to take a stand.

“I do want to send a message,” Vitale explained. “I am not vindictive, I am not vengeful, but people especially in my generation need to realize you can’t do things like this because you don’t like what someone is saying or wearing.”

Vitale, who stated in the video he is half-Nicaraguan, rejects Macias’ claims that wearing the hat amounts to a form of hate speech.

“Free speech is under attack on campus,” Vitale argued. “As cliche as it sounds, the facts of our laws and our Constitution … don’t care about what you feel. For millennials everywhere who believe their feelings give them the right to step on the rights of others — you are sadly misguided. That is not the real world.”

In response to Vitale’s video going viral, the university released a statement reaffirming their commitment to free speech. “Coequal to our dedication to mutual respect is our commitment to free speech and the free exchange of ideas,” the message read. “A university requires an environment where students and scholars can freely express ideas and pursue knowledge, while also promoting respectful dialogue among individuals or groups with opposing viewpoints.”

We'd better figure out a way to confine such anger to California. Ms. Macias will not fare as well, I suspect, in the other law-abiding states in our nation.

If you can't assimilate and respect the American rules of law, you gotta go!

Weiner, Weinstein...

What is going on with those fellas in the homerooms at the end of the alphabet?!?

#DontAskDontTellLikeHell!

What a Mensch, What a Mighty Good Mensch *...

Say what you will about Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes not captured on videotape, at least he did not kill his victims afterward and dismember their bodies....

It's easy to avoid movies like "Inglorius Basterds" and "Sex, Lies..." or "Pulp Fiction". I don't find such violence entertaining, and I think it debases our culture. Contributes, indirectly, to the disrespect of life, morals and good healthy living. Some people lap that up -- Weinstein sold his soul, but made his money.

(I think it's fair to say his career is now dead as the Las Vegas killer, who turned his entertainment fantasies into realities himself.)

It's harder to avoid reading these sordid details though, when it switches over from the entertainment subculture into today's hard news. It will be interesting now, to hear what Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michelle Obama say about their former friend. They will speak out, it's unavoidable.

If you are going to represent yourselves as role models for women and little girls, other than your own, then you better have some answers of why wealthy liberal men get a pass on their crimes, sins and hypocrisies, while we publicly scorn conservative men who do the same.

Hey, at least he didn't kill them and dispose of their bodies in pieces afterwards. If you're struggling with a personal defense, there's your starting point...

------------------

* Added. Here's a Saturday morning wake-up video, if you don't catch the reference...

Cubs Win.

Holy Cow!

JOY in the inbox...

Time Flies... when you're under one!

Having fun in the playpen!

Pedantic Mutterings...

Can Rabbits Escape Roadkill?

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY

While they are speedy and can look in both directions, rabbits are not immune to highway death.

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Roadkill is a noun, not a verb.

"Can Rabbits Escape Being Roadkill?"

Answer:  Yes, all animals are capable of learning and expanding on their natural instincts.  (But you will see a rabbit ripped open on the road every now and then, either chased there by a predator or because, there's always a dumb bunny or two in the bunch.) Next...

"We Were 8 Years in Power"...

"What Happened?"

Coates is on the morning talk shows,
Clinton is closing out the late-nights.

They really should hook up and maximize their book sales with a joint book tour.  Same audience, right?

Coates: "I came from a black world. ... Being that there aren't too many people with this kind of audience I just feel like I got to represent that to the fullest and be really direct and clear about that. And push these people, man, because they need to be pushed. They need to be made uncomfortable, like we're uncomfortable. We got to make it hot, because it's hot for us."

For the record, I don't think he'll push her.
That's a ruse. It's just rhetoric, really.
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Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd works overtime trying to sell us on Idris Elba as a leading man for Kate Winslet, in a way the tabloids think they have to spin the Prince Harry and Megan Markle fairytale romance of star-crossed lovers...

Eh. Biracial romances are so yesterday they are barely worth mentioning, let alone analyzing the long-term cultural barriers.  If women don't find Elba attractive, it might be more for his backstory than his color.  Really.

(and one hopes that Harry really loves the gal, not the idea of being in love with a biracial beauty who would help him too, break barriers...  Once broken, how long until the heart wanders looking for something newer still?  I wish them well, but the way their story is being spun, one wonders...)

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/entertainment/celebrities/article176882636.html#storylink=cpy

LIVE -- Top of the First...

Twins up 3-0 over the Yankees.
(I'm not a fan, but I watch the scores.)
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Bottom of the first:  All tied up.
(The sun has gone to bed and so must I...)

How to End the Mass Killings.

Nevermind this:

Forget about the glamorous stories about a self-made millionaire playing $800 poker hands before he engaged in his own reality video game with 59 kills currently credited in the media.

No, show this.  (Don't click if you are squeamish and don't want to see a pre-Halloween picture of the killer, dead on his hotel room floor after having shot himself in the head.)

Guns and killings are only glamorous if you don't consider the carnage, the cleanup, or the people once living reduced to bloody corpses.  We can't show the victims -- the results of these mass killings.

But if you want to open your eyes to true evil, and see how a man rich in society but ultimately impoverished in spirit fares in the end, click that link.   That's what the media should be publicizing, so that no copycats even think of trying to beat his score.