It's OK to be a celebrity look-alike. Being a celebrity look-alike can sometimes mean you're actually doing something worthwhile.

Earlier, I was told that a Bryan Cranston look-alike was sighted on a Caribbean vacation.

Also, I was told that some woman bubbled a blue bub.

States finally try to block broadcasting merger

It's only taken 30 years for them to figure this out.

When the far-right Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted ownership caps for TV and radio stations - which stifled dissent and killed jobs - it should have been swatted down right away by the FCC and antitrust regulators. Now Nexstar Media Group and Tegna, Inc. are proposing a $6 billion merger that would become the biggest owner of TV stations in the country. Both Tegna and Nexstar already own multiple stations in some cities - which wasn't allowed before 1996.

Now a group of 8 states - but only 8 - is suing to block the merger under antitrust laws. The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia. Many states that have Nexstar or Tegna stations are glaringly absent from that list.

The merger as proposed would even violate the lax ownership caps that exist now. It would give the new company stations covering 80% of the American population.

Antitrust enforcement. Let's bring it back!

Fox News uses old footage for racist story

Fox News has just been caught with its Underoos down around its ankles - again.

The channel posted a blurb on Twitter complaining about youths supposedly stampeding into a Washington, D.C., neighborhood and scaring all the gentrified yuppies there (who got tax breaks from the city to displace previous residents).

It turns out the clip they provided wasn't new footage at all. It was from an older incident, and they reused the footage to dramatize the story.

The FCC gives broadcasting licenses to outlets that distort news like this, and cable companies refuse to carry channels that offer a counterbalance. Fox News is the most infamous offender, but all the major so-called news channels on cable and all the major commercial networks practice similar distortion.

A person bubbled at Kroger (imagine that!)

Today at Kroger, some man bubbled.

Let's cut the crap about sewage backups

The national media is finally catching on to something I learned about the hard way almost 30 years ago.

After a sewer pipe dumped raw sewage into the Potomac River in January, other reports have emerged of raw sewage backing up into people's homes through bathroom drains and the like. This happened to me in 1997 because there were no limits on development, which strained local sewer systems and forced sewage up through the shower drain. It happened in other local neighborhoods later, especially along 19th Street in Covington, because there were no limits on luxury developments in nearby communities.

In all cases, the poorest residents bore the brunt of luxury development.

Now folks all over the country say the same is happening to them. People in Cahokia Heights, Illinois, said raw sewage backed up through their toilets and bathtubs. A settlement was reached with the city about it, but then the federal government tried to cancel the settlement, saying it was an unlawful DEI program. Residents of Lowndes County, Mississippi, suffered from hookworms because of sewage backups. And people in Baltimore have repeatedly found piles of feces backing up through their drains. It gets worse every time it rains or someone in the city flushes their toilet.

One Baltimore resident found strands of used toilet paper in his yard because of a sewage backup. He also had to replace his whole bathroom floor. For 20 years, the city has had a consent decree with government regulators to fix the problems, but the city now wants to extend the deadline another 20 years.

Perhaps the developers should be required to live in a dwelling where sewage backs up like this. The same goes for federal officials who try to cancel settlements stemming from these backups.

VA tries using AI to steal from wounded vets

Nothing good is coming from the artificial intelligence boom (other than a few funny pictures of Ronald Reagan or fictional stories about Harry Styles farting). People are paying higher utility bills, losing their jobs, and having their family farms confiscated just so AI can be used against them.

Now the Department of Veterans Affairs wants to use AI to scan millions of disability claims by wounded military veterans for "signs" of "fraud", and use these AI-generated suspicions to make them take a new medical exam and relitigate their claim. Some of these claims date back over 15 years. Any veteran who is currently receiving benefits and is flagged by AI will have to take a whole new exam and resubmit their claim from scratch.

Whoever is behind this plan isn't very patriotic. If they don't appreciate the sacrifices made by our fighting men and women, they should leave the country and move somewhere like China. Only fools who live in the past would relitigate 15-year-old disability claims like this.

The Social Security disability system has been gutted almost as badly. Recently, the Social Security Administration boasted that the agency significantly reduced the backlog in disability claims. But it turns out that this was probably accounted for almost entirely by rejecting claims, as the already-low rate of approval dropped by several percentage points during that timeframe. Plus, according to a leading disability attorney, the goal of the SSA is to start using AI to review every active disability case every single year.

Meanwhile, the VA is openly opposing a bill that would require the agency to notify veterans if they're targeted by the new AI effort and stop their benefits from being cut off unless a court convicts them of fraud.

Why are wounded vets being targeted now? Much of it appears to be because the Washington Post ran a piece accusing disabled vets of "swamping" the VA with fraudulent claims. There was no basis whatsoever for the accusation, and the article was full of debunked anecdotes. The piece also made light of veterans suffering from hemorrhoids and likened a very painful skin condition to mere acne. The Economist ran a similar screed attacking American war vets and assailed veterans' benefits for growing the national debt. How about not having so many wars? Wars grow the national debt more than anything else does. At the same time, the media is staunchly pro-war: The Washington Post recently said that opposition to the illegal war in Iran is anti-Semitic. The press is pro-war but anti-vet.

America languishes under a hostile punditocracy and bureaucracy that lives in the past and acts with malign intent.

Bip! Bop! Poop! Cincinnati! 21 new photos!

On Friday, I launched a Roads Scholaring on the east side of Cincinnati, and it excreted 21 new photos!

There's some stuff from Newtown, Plainville, and other outposts of biperoony, and it'll make your face spin.

So point your pooper here...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/cin260306.html

Send in the celebrity look-alikes...There ought to be celebrity look-alikes...

Today, I went Roads Scholaring around Newtown and Lunken Airport. On the way home, I saw a Judy Collins look-alike on the Purple People Bridge.

I had another funny dream

Last night, I had a funny dream where I found the men's restroom of a local restaurant completely trashed. I think it was New China Buffet, but it might have been Cancun or Golden Corral. I noticed that someone pooped on the floor, and some kid extracted an unidentified item out of a urinal and said he was taking it for "research purposes."