CFPB thinks Contract with America still applies

Remember when Newtzi's Nazis enacted the Contract with America?

The media cheered it, but real Americans spit in its face.

Well, the Trump regime's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is 30 years behind normal people, and thinks the Contract with America is still valid.

Several states have laws that rightly make it illegal for medical debt to appear on consumers' credit reports. Now the CFPB is planning on barking down an order to invalidate these state laws. The CFPB argues that a federal law passed in 1996 - perhaps the height of Contract with America fascism - preempts the states' powers to protect consumers from medical debt. The agency notes that this federal provision was set to expire, but that in 2003, it was made permanent. However, that was again by a rogue Congress.

A few months ago, Trump's CFPB already gutted a federal regulation that said states could indeed protect the public from medical debt, and now the CFPB is trying to go further with its new order by explicitly saying the states can't do so.

For starters, it is questionable whether laws passed by Congress during the Contract with America or the several years that followed it are even real law. Those "elections" were stolen - with the help of the right-wing media. This is also a Tenth Amendment issue.

The states have an easy remedy - if they have the guts to carry it out. The states should continue to enforce laws that bar medical debt from appearing on credit reports. By contrast, the CFPB has no army. It has no navy, no air force, and no marines. Not even a space force. It has a few political hacks in D.C. who talk big with their shit-caked mouths, but that's it.

Remember, Congress under the Contract with America also tried to repeal IDEA - one of the most enduring and important education laws in the land. If they had repealed IDEA and said that states couldn't pass their own laws like IDEA, would we be calling that legitimate?

Bay Area bridge closes path just because

Fascism is on the march in the Bay Area, because of course it is.

For years, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge north of San Francisco has had a path for pedestrians and bicyclists. But now California highway officials are turning the path into a shoulder open only for automobile traffic - leaving it as a walking and cycling path on weekends only.

There is no other cycling or walking path across the bay for miles around.

This is actually far costlier than leaving it alone. Moving the barrier each weekend will cost $1 million per year.

It's the type of fiscal wastage bastage only the Tea Party could love. Naturally, this change was put in place at the urging of wealthy Marin County residents who opposed working-class people traveling into the county on bikes.

Reddit hermits are cheering.

Hawaii bans Banned Books Week

Move over, California and Fort Lauderdale. America has a new book-banning capital: Hawaii.

Right now, libraries all over America are observing Banned Books Week, in which they showcase books that have been banned or censored. But the Hawaii State Public Library System, which oversees all public libraries throughout the Aloha State, has nixed the event.

One local branch had featured the most widely censored books, along with informational materials from the American Library Association. But this libe was forced to censor this very display.

The statewide library system now prohibits use of the words censorship and banned to refer to books that have been censored or banned. ALA materials and props like caution tape are also forbidden. Stickers with the motto "Censorship is so 1984" were confiscated.

Why? State library officials say Banned Books Week is not "inclusive." Seriously, they said that.

Books are about ideas. Inclusiveness involves a collection of these ideas. Banned Books Week highlights this inclusiveness.

Hawaii's act of censorship sounds like yet another example of right-wing policy using more expansive branding. In other words, by attacking Banned Books Week as not being "inclusive", the state library system is practicing that 2020s phenomenon called wokewashing. This means they market themselves as champions of social justice even though their policies stand for the exact opposite.

Did the People's CDC take over the Hawaii library system when nobody was looking?

Beshear slashes KTAP

World Economic Forum canker sore Andy Beshear is at it again.

After Ant Farm Andy cut senior meals last month, he's now taking an axe to the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program. KTAP is a program that provides financial assistance to low-income families with children. Starting next month, these payments will be significantly reduced.

Beshear's complaint is that KTAP loses more money that it takes in. Uh, it doesn't lose money. It costs money, but it doesn't lose money. Nobody ever says the Department of Defense loses money. The Department of Defense is always spending money that the government doesn't have, as the government has been in debt for as long as anyone can remember. Besides that, Kentucky has enough discretionary funds to last for months.

This is like how Social Security is expected to run out and stop paying recipients, but somehow the Pentagon is never expected to run out.

Apple yanks ICE-tracking apps under pressure from Trump regime

Don't let the fact that America lets shell corporations that are fronts for foreign dictatorships own American land fool you. The Trump regime is often very hostile to immigrants and their families. While corporations and oppressive foreign governments are tolerated, people aren't.

The Biden regime pressured major websites into censoring factual information about COVID-19. Now the Trump thugocracy is coercing companies into yanking apps that let you track ICE agents.

Under pressure from embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi, Apple has pulled apps that enabled users to flag sightings of officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Joshua Aaron, who created ICEBlock - one of the banned apps - said Apple is "capitulating to an authoritarian regime."

The apps are being banned even though they are constitutionally protected and do not violate any laws. All ICEBlock does is show the whereabouts of ICE officers. It has been downloaded over a million times all over the country. However, ICEBlock is not available for the much more common Android system, as Aaron says Android tracks user data.

Back in July, Bondi made an outright threat against Aaron by saying, "We are looking at him, and he better watch out."

Banning ICEBlock is like banning OpenStreetMap because it gives the locations of Flock cameras - like the one the city of Bellevue placed outside my window in retaliation.

With Trump, Bondi, and a complicit Congress covering up the Jeffrey Epstein scandal - along with the regime's illegal censorship of ICE-tracking apps - I think Trump has again outranked Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the countdown of all-time worst Presidents. He might not be worse than George W. Bush, but probably the others.

Have no fear, the October ish is here!

It's gonna be an October to be unsober, which means it's time for the October issue of The Last Word!

This ish talks about a Pennsylvania trip, people putting their eyeglasses in the toilet at Oktoberfest, our new People's Land Bank, the hostile takeover of an Iowa radio station, weird shoplifting stories, a strange ad about smoking on airplanes, and more!

So point your pooper here...

https://www.scribd.com/document/924990703/The-Last-Word-10-2025

If that doesn't work, sneak on over here...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2510.pdf

A person bunkerooed at Circle K

Today, I walked past the gas pumps at Circle K, and some guy who was pumping gas ripped an LAP bunker blast.

Ant Farm Andy slashes senior meals

Back in 2019, I didn't know Kentucky was electing a Tea Party governor, but what a disaster Andy Beshear has been.

WKDZ radio reports that funding will "evaporate" for home delivered meals for the elderly across the state because of cuts by Beshear. In some parts of the state, over half its funding will be slashed.

Beshear said funding for vital programs like this will be cut at least until the next legislative session.

Yet he approved a handout for the wealthiest among us in the form of an income tax measure that continued to gut the state's progressive income tax - thus prolonging Matt Bevin's policy that drove economic turmoil and drained human potential from the state. You can't claim that you're tightening the belt for everyone when you're just giving more handouts to the rich.

It's always austerity and scraps for the 99%, but free money for the 1%.

Plop goes the glasses!

Yesterday, I goed to Oktoberfest in Cincinnati - or as I call it, Ploptoberfest. And - what a shock - it lived up to the name I gave it.

Someone put a broken pair of eyeglasses and a Pepsi bottle in the toilet.

I may have more details on this in the next issue of The Last Word. Along with the Alan Hale Jr. and George Michael look-alikes.

Fox News endorses murdering homeless

Somehow I don't think this is what the Communications Act of 1934 had in mind.

Yesterday, Brian Kilmeade - one of the nobodies who serves as a "reporter" on Fox News Channel - endorsed murdering the homeless. During a segment about homelessness, he advocated "involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill 'em."

One Twitter commenter said this "might be the most shocking thing any talking head has ever said on television."

This is yet another reason why the FCC needs to step in and restore ownership caps like it used to have and bring back the fairness doctrine.

Predictably, the Democrats are silent on this, because they'd rather attack some farmer in Montana for not wearing a mask at Circle K 5 years ago than go after Fox News.

IRS Scholaring photos were as certain as death and taxes

Time yet again to pay our Roads Scholaring dues, and this batch of road photos involves our June peepage of the new development at the old IRS site in Covington...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/irs25.html

As a bonus, I've included a small set from July showing the flooding rains we've been getting lately, so if you dare, you may want to glide on over here as well...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/rain25.html

Now more than ever, it's Sprite!

This evening, I smuggled Sprite into Rip-off-fest - continuing a proud tradition.

I didn't see any good temper tantrums at Rip-off-fest this year. Nothing like the time people got in a big argument over blankets. There was also nothing like the time a drunken woman rightly criticized George W. Bush for his fascism.

But I succeeded at my goal of soft drink smuggling.

Ba-de-ya! The September ish is here!

The September edition of The Last Word is now pub!

It's our back-to-school issue! This ish talks about a flatulence-filled Tennessee trip, Kentucky's war against homeschooling, our struggle with Verizon, psychiatric fascism in Illinois, an altercation in a school library, Steve Kroft blowing a bubble, the decline of NKU, assorted corporate scams, and more!

So point your pooper here...

https://www.scribd.com/document/908696489/The-Last-Word-9-2025

If that doesn't work, blow a bubble like Steve Kroft and fly on over here...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2509.pdf

Northside! West End! It's a great place to fart, I mean start!

Back in June, I partook in another Roads Scholaring in Cincinnati. The 20 photos it yielded were mostly on the north side of town and beam wildly at the world.

So peep them until your face flies off in public (as a wise man would say)...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/cinnorthb25.html

Kentucky county tries to take people's land for data center

Tyranny is on the march in Mason County.

Just northwest of Maysville, the county is trying to seize land from farmers and residents so a big electric utility can build a data center that would gobble up 5,000 acres - almost 8 square miles.

The data center would be run by East Kentucky Power Cooperative. EKPC is ostensibly a nonprofit utility, but the data center push sounds more like something from the most notorious proprietary companies.

The entire event has been wrapped in secrecy, as several county officials signed confidentiality agreements about the project. People who were approached about selling their land didn't even know what it was for until later.

This comes after state lawmakers and the Beshear administration passed a measure to give massive tax breaks for data centers. In addition, the Trump regime granted exemptions for utilities to release pollutants like mercury, which would otherwise violate federal regulations. What's the point in having regulations if utility companies can receive exemptions just for the asking?

These data centers primarily serve AI platforms of huge corporations like Google and Facebook. This is while flawed AI models are being used to police online content and determine eligibility for government benefits such as Social Security Disability Insurance. The data centers use huge amounts of power, strain power grids, and drive up energy costs for everyone else. If the Mason County project is built, its power usage is expected to grow 20 times in its first 5 years.

The county now says it won't use eminent domain to take the land, but don't laugh too hard at the idea of the government confiscating land for a private company. Virginia already abused eminent domain to give land to the politically connected Dominion Energy to build transmission lines for a data center.

Meanwhile, electric utilities keep giving deep discounts to data centers while hiking rates for everyone else. More handouts for big corporations. Imagine that!

Knoxville enacts property requirement to vote

We were absolutely flabbergasted to discover this, as it ranks right up there with Delaware towns giving voting "rights" to corporations (which the Nazis also did).

The Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story recently noting that the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, now enforces a property requirement to vote in city elections. 

This unconstitutional rule allows those who own property in the city to vote even if they don't live there. This means almost 300 people may have been able to vote in Knoxville who do not live in the city, thus receiving special rights in violation of the "one person, one vote" principle. There are reportedly 2 other cities in Tennessee that practice similar discrimination. According to a Facebook post, one of the others is the small town of Lexington.

We're usually not big fans of "This time we mean it" laws, but we think it's time to amend the U.S. Constitution to reinforce the "one person, one vote" idea and bar people from voting in jurisdictions where they do not live. If that doesn't happen, the National Guard should be pressed into service to enforce fair voting rights. Barring that, the people should enforce the law and make citizen's arrests of election officials who participate in violating "one person, one vote."

Broward book bans

Broward County, Florida, may be emerging as America's book banning capital. Public schools in that county are yanking 55 books off library shelves ahead of the new school year.

The books include a Judy Blume novel, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and a novel about a victim of human trafficking.

This follows a similar ban in Hillsborough County, where the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "When our '25-26 school year starts, I want to be assured that there is absolutely zero, none, zero inappropriate material in our libraries."

Why are we bringing this up? It's because these are big, urban counties that everyone acts like are so sophisticated. They're not small Rust Belt burgs or Montana farming counties. Broward has more people than Hillsborough, and in most of recent history has probably been the more authoritarian of the two on most major issues. Naturally, Kamala Harris won Broward by 17%, which suggests that the Democrats have become as much of a right-wing authoritarian party as the Republicans.

Urban sophisticates claim to be so liberal, yet they're out there burning books.

Gentrification. Bringing book bans to a city near you.

April showers bring more May showers...and a Scholaring!

The year has been mostly a rainout, but on one of the few dry days of the year, I embarked on a Roads Scholaring in Latonia!

This event yielded 23 photos, and you can peep and weep here...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/lat25.html

Ant Farm Andy rakes in the corporate dough

Corporate America has had a love affair with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear ever since he hamstrung the state with COVID totalitarianism that kept worsening even almost a year after a vaccine was introduced. This affair continued when Beshear approved further gutting of the state tax code - thus hitting poor and working-class Kentuckians harder. Then Beshear spoke before the far-right World Economic Forum, proving he was a cutout of that secret society.

Even the Kentucky Lantern seems to have had their fill of this poo-poo. A Kentucky Lantern piece reveals that big corporations have been heavily bankrolling Beshear's superPAC, which seems to be an exploratory effort for a possible presidential bid. Among the top donors to this superPAC is a big real estate developer.

Another is utility giant Louisville Gas & Electric. LG&E has been the target of complaints from customers who found that the company overcharges for electricity by overestimating their electric usage. One customer reported receiving a bill for over $600. Another said LG&E's parent company cut off their service in retaliation for complaining to the Better Business Bureau about bad service.

The superPAC has spent a lot of money propping up professional political operatives and consulting firms. It doesn't even do much to advance policies or candidates. The massive flow of money is what inspired Beshear's own right-wing policies. He's less right-wing on issues where there's less money to encourage him to be more right-wing.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that corporations can now give unlimited amounts of money to superPAC's. This bottomless spigot needs to be shut off lickety-split.

A grouchy day in 5th grade

Last night, I had another funny dream. I dreamed I was back in 5th grade, and the teacher was out of the room all day. So someone wrote on the chalkboard, "I bet Oscar the Grouch's shit stinks from eating all that trash."

Have no fear, the August ish is here!

Summer is over, Grover, and it's time for the August edition of The Last Word, your road atlas to peace, equality, and liberty!

This ish talks about a costly sewer boondoggle, the growing graft and lies of both major parties, the difficulty of blowing bubbles at Candlestick Park, more people getting kicked out of amusement parks, cowboy hats getting ruined, my unofficial senior photo, and more!

So point your pooper here...

https://www.scribd.com/document/895515498/The-Last-Word-8-2025

If that doesn't work, bubble a bub and float on over here...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2508.pdf

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 companies 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.