B.S. from SBS

This is serious, so wipe that smirk off your face.

You may know about Land of the Lost - my blog in which I profile old hit songs that are no longer played on the radio. One recent entry dealt with the 1985 chart hit "Talk To Me" by Fiona. This entry was used as a reason to describe in detail MTV Top 20 Video Countdown. I embedded a video from YouTube of that countdown show in which host Mark Goodman wore a ridiculous shirt. I didn't post that video on YouTube. It was from someone else's account.

But now that video has been blocked by Seoul Broadcasting System, which claims it contains their copyrighted material.

This is flat-out wrong. SBS is one of the biggest broadcasters in South Korea, and it has nothing to do with MTV. SBS didn't even go on the air until 1991 - 6 years after that countdown aired. So it's impossible for SBS to own that content. SBS had absolutely zero connection to anything in that clip.

Yet - inexplicably - YouTube accepted SBS's bogus copyright complaint.

What we need to do is start making companies that make phony copyright complaints pay the same penalties faced by those who actually violate copyright laws. Granted, this was an international complaint. But SBS would have a choice of either sending its lawyers to America to face the music in an American court, or losing the case by default and having to pay a penalty.

Ironically, SBS was itself accused of violating the International Olympic Committee's copyright in 2008 by broadcasting a show about the Olympic opening ceremony before it was authorized to do so. So I guess rules don't apply to SBS.

Hulk Hogan lives!

Today at the friendly neighborhood Krogie-Wogie, I saw a Hulk Hogan look-alike.

Singapore owns 5% of Upper Peninsula

This is a crisis that needs to be slapped down posthaste.

A recent report reveals that the government of Singapore - one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world - owns 5% of all land in the huge Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This totals over a half-million acres in forestland. In Gogebic County, Singapore owns one-sixth of the land.

The regime accomplishes this through shell corporations, so it was hard to find out who the real owner is. The government of Singapore is the biggest foreign owner of land in the whole state.

A bill in Michigan would bar entities from certain countries from owning land, but Singapore is not among those countries.

Why is a foreign government that cheats on trade deals and is one of the most oppressive regimes on the globe able to own land in the U.S.? Most countries don't even let individuals from friendly nations own land, but America lets a foreign government own land.

Here's an example of the rules most countries have regarding foreign ownership. In the early days of radio, John R. Brinkley was an American quack doctor who built a radio station in Kansas that he used to peddle his phony impotence cures. The Federal Radio Commission - the forerunner of the FCC - refused to renew Brinkley's broadcasting license, largely because of his deceitful ways. Then Brinkley started a station in Mexico that was beamed across the border for U.S. listeners. The station was so powerful that ranchers could hear it through metal fences. But then Mexico said foreign owners couldn't own radio stations, so they nationalized his station.

They weren't fooling around. Mexican soldiers appeared at the station's headquarters and forced Brinkley to shut down.

What should be done about the land owned by Singapore in Michigan? The county, state, or federal government should take that land. All of it. We shouldn't feel guilty about it. A shell corporation that serves as a front for a foreign dictatorship does not have rights - much less a right to own American land.

School district won't excuse absences for illness

Schools: "Let's close for 2 years over COVID."

Also schools: "Let's not excuse students for illness."

Ridiculousness is on the march in Lawrence County, Tennessee, as the local school district has announced that it will no longer excuse absences if a student is ill - even if they provide a doctor's note.

According to WSMV-TV, if a student misses 8 days in a school year due to illness, they will automatically be referred to juvenile court for truancy. The school district's director bellowed, "You can bring all the doctor's notes you want, but it is still unexcused." The district even sent a letter to doctors discouraging them from writing notes.

If a student shows up to school and is sent home by the nurse for being ill, they will be marked as tardy.

You can't make this up. They really said that.

In defense of public radio

While our previous entry touched on the right-wing World Economic Forum agenda taking over NPR and PBS, it's only fair to present the fact that not all public broadcasting is in such dire condition.

A public radio outlet in upstate New York once reported somewhat accurately and objectively on all the COVID totalitarianism. More specifically, it ran a story about a monstrous state regulation - which was not enacted until months after the vaccine came out - that forced toddlers in daycare to wear masks. This piece at least was fairer than the disgusting pieces that many commercial news outlets were putting out at the time. (Right now, we're glaring squarely at the ABC station in Chicago, but they weren't the only offender.)

Anything related to COVID still sticks in people's craw, but at least some public broadcasters came through in reporting it properly. By contrast, commercial media liked to coo and smirk as they defended every new act of COVID tyranny, even as many of their reporters failed to follow the rules they supported for everyone else.

I'd rather my tax dollars go to public broadcasters who do their jobs than to more bailouts for corporate media outlets that insert their intolerable nonsense into news stories.

NPR, PBS hurt their case

If PBS had gone off the air 50 years ago, it would have been an incalculable loss.

But NPR and PBS haven't done very much in the past few years to win our hearts and minds.

Let's get this out of the way: The government's current attempts to zero out PBS and NPR funding are illegal. Full stop. Yet that doesn't excuse the recent decline of these broadcasters.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 bars federal taxpayer financing of the broadcast of government propaganda. Yet NPR has aired exactly that. For example, NPR has repeatedly insisted that COVID-19 naturally leaped from animals to humans, while dismissing the lab leak theory. This is even after the lab leak theory was proven.

Why should NPR broadcast right-wing World Economic Forum propaganda and expect us to not at least rub our necks in frustration when asked to pony up?

Even Big Bird isn't safe. Sesame Street is unrecognizable these days, and in the past 5 years, it too has been a vehicle for totalitarian WEF propaganda. Nowadays, you can't tell Sesame Street from The Get Along Gang.

What we really need to do is start enforcing the Smith-Mundt Act. Perhaps the states should have some sort of committee to oversee its enforcement.

However, if PBS and NPR were defunded, we'd surely regret it. Already, an organization of right-wing religious broadcasters is gloating that these cuts may force many noncommercial radio stations off the air even if they only air a little bit of NPR programming. This will allow the checkbook clergy to swoop in and take over these stations' licenses. Many of these religious broadcasters do not offer any local programming at all and rely solely on right-wing nationwide networks - and NPR isn't one of them.

We want so badly to save NPR and PBS because of their historic reputation. But in the past few years, they've damaged their case, and it's probably too late.

Blocked flood warning systems not new

Austerity kills.

Recently, flooding in Kerr County, Texas, caused over 100 deaths. Officials say there were no flood warning sirens in place because Tea Party groups had pressured the county into not installing them. If there had been warning systems, these deaths could have been avoided.

Congress passed a law to provide a rescue package for communities all over the country afflicted by the COVID pandemic. This made Kerr County eligible for over $10 million in federal money, which it could have used for a flood warning system. But the county rejected a big chunk of this money because of hounding by the few Tea Party diehards who hadn't abandoned the movement by the 2020s.

But we have long memories, and we know this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

Something similar took place just before the deadly floods in northern Kentucky in 1997 (which were quickly forgotten by the media). A flood gauge had been deactivated by a right-wing Congress using the same excuses the Tea Party later used. If it hadn't been deactivated, a lot of lives could have been saved. We shouldn't have to bring it up now, but nothing was done about it when we talked about it back then, and we're not sure if anything ever was done later. Sadly, this isn't surprising, because nothing has ever been done about anything like this in the past 40 years. We offered fair warning about what would happen if this lazy attitude continued, but we were brushed off.

The entire philosophy of austerity is a fatal one. There is blood on the hands of the Republican Congress of the '90s. Those who refused to install flood sirens more recently are no better.

Also, the Koch network - which helped bankroll the Tea Party - supported the failed lockdowns during COVID. It published a bogus pro-lockdown report through a heavily politicized institute at the University of Kentucky. So they can't say they opposed the flood warning systems on the grounds of "limited government" - which would have been a ridiculous argument anyway.

Las Vegas cites people over legal fireworks

We have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that we have reports of people all over America setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July. These displays were patriotic and scenic. Yet some of it took place in locales where such fireworks are not only officially illegal but where authorities also vowed to actively crack down. The fact that people used fireworks in these places isn't the bad news though. We've never said fireworks should be completely unregulated, but we have no interest or desire to go after individuals who defy rules that clearly go too far.

In other words, our fight is against prohibition. It's no different for fireworks now as it was for alcohol 100 years ago. One thing that fueled our stance is the fact that - some 30 to 40 years ago - we were victims of violent crimes that repeatedly went unpunished because the perpetrators had clout with the system. If their repeated violence was tolerated, we have no business banning firecrackers and bottle rockets that are far less dangerous. Fair is fair.

Here's the bad news. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which covers all of Clark County, Nevada, spent the run-up to the Fourth going after people for legal fireworks. Police fanned out into neighboring counties and nearby Native American reservations and staked out fireworks shops for customers from Clark County. Some customers were caught and were ticketed. They each face fines of hundreds of dollars.

This is despite the fact that the fireworks they purchased were actually legal. Some of these customers even made a point of buying the tamest fireworks possible, just so they knew they were well within the law. They're being fined even though the fireworks were seized before they could even bring them into Clark County.

Officials in some of these communities demanded that Clark County stop sending its police outside their own county to harass buyers of legal products. It also turned out there were plainclothes police in the stores to entrap people into buying fireworks.

Now back to good news. Folks in Las Vegas say they saw plentiful fireworks in their neighborhoods despite the rogue crackdown. This was even as KLAS-TV urged viewers to report people for setting off fireworks. KLAS's crusade brings us back to bad news again. The KLAS piece even attacked the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians for selling fireworks. Real tolerant of you, Nexstar.

City closes dance class over "moral standards"

This is America in 2025. And cities are closing things down over "moral standards."

The city of Provo, Utah, has shut down a dance fitness class, claiming it didn't align with the city's "morals" and "values." The class had taken place in the city's recreation center for 3 years. The closure followed a complaint by one lone resident running his mouth. The class was closed despite the fact that even some city employees had taken part in the program.

People who support regulating "morals" in this manner are always the same folks who push for policies that hamstring valuable services for those who are most in need. At their very core, they actually have no interest in doing anything that's right for society. Their interest is only in shutting down things that personally displease them.

Since we're living in strange times, we're holding both major parties equally responsible - even though this story is from Utah. Some of the tyranny in other states lately is just as mind-blowing, as you know.