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.
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...
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)...
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!
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 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.
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...
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.
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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The July ish of The Last Word is pub, and you can bubble with it. Just joking! Actually, it is published, and this edition talks about a local mayor picking fights with residents, more Flock camera abuses, a 4th grade mischief contest, one state's plan to distribute cavity-fighting gum, and more!
So point your pooper here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/881882242/The-Last-Word-7-2025
If that doesn't work, glide on over here...
You're not going to hear much about this story, because it was a crime committed by rich residents of some luxury apartments. If a homeless person had committed this same crime, you'd never hear the end of it.
Two men - a father and son - have been convicted of running a drug ring out of their luxury apartments in Cincinnati. The drugs included fentanyl, crystal meth, and cocaine. The apartments were in the Pendleton and Mount Auburn neighborhoods. These luxury dwellings were gentrification projects that drove out many of the neighborhoods' previous low-income residents. One of the apartments cost $4,200 per month.
Federal court documents say the Pendleton apartment was "a major source of illegal narcotics in Cincinnati."
This is like how one of the richest streets in Southgate - a street where lots of right-wing politicians live - was known as the go-to place to buy heroin. The media of course never covered that.
Gentrification. Bringing drug lords to a neighborhood near you.
Today, to make use of the record heat, I went back to the pool at Ziegler Park in Cincinnati. Channel 5 was there! But if I got on the news at all, it was probably only briefly.
Also, some couple smuggled in beer - in stark violation of an Allowed Cloud. I also detected the smooth, airy vapors of a certain green herb.
The tradition of seeing celebrity look-alikes at this pool continued as I saw a Sinead O'Connor look-alike.
The far-right World Economic Forum agenda has crossed another threshold of stupid.
Some of you know that on the few days when we have suitable weather, I use the swimming pool at Ziegler Park in Cincinnati. A couple of times, people have pooped in it, causing it to be closed for a bit. Anyway, you used to be able to pay cash for admission and snacks. But a few years ago, this public pool began to accept only credit cards - for no apparent reason.
This was a problem today, because the card reader at the snack stand was broken, even though the stand only takes credit cards. So I had to walk all the way over to the entrance to pay for my chips.
This is idiotic beyond belief. If they accepted cash, we wouldn't have to worry about a broken card reader. Yet they will not accept cash, no matter how much everyone pleads. Cash is supposed to be legal tender, but that's lost on 3CDC, the WEF, and the right-wing media.
Why do so many venues - especially in close proximity to the far-right 3CDC - reject cash? It couldn't just be to exclude those who they want to exclude. Ever since apps and online retailers became popular, very few American adults today have no credit card, because it's impractical or impossible to pay cash for app or online purchases. That's different from paying in-person like at a public pool or a festival. Clearly, someone is using credit cards to collect data on customers. Otherwise, these in-person venues wouldn't require credit cards. Who knows who has our personal information and what they'll use it for?
Today's encounter was complicated by another factor. This isn't limited to young people who toil away at snack stands. It's afflicted almost everyone over the past 5 years. The problem is that everyone mumbles now. I could hardly hear a word they said at the snack stand today. How did everyone get in the habit of mumbling? What were people doing a few years ago that gave rise to this habit? Ponder, ponder. Again, this problem plagues all of society - not just a few people.
An otherwise fine pool is dampened by the expanding totalitarianism of 3CDC and the WEF. I may go back there in the very near future, so I'll be sure to bring my walking shoes so I can walk all the way over to the entrance when I pay for a snack.
On Tuesday, in front of a local restaurant, I saw an elderly couple who looked just like Joe and Jill Biden walking along the sidewalk!
The Kentucky division of Duke Energy - the powerful monopoly that controls utility service in greater Cincinnati and charges some of the most exorbitant electric rates in the nation - has been fined $120,000 by Kentucky's Public Service Commission. The commission found that Duke committed billing violations affecting almost 8,000 customers and that the violations were "willful", as they continued even after Duke was warned to stop.
"Willful" means deliberate and intentional. It was not an accident. It was not an oversight. They did it on purpose.
Anyone who still had a benign view of our major corporations and institutions can wipe the poo off their face now.
Today, I went Roads Scholaring over in Northside. While I was resting at Hoffner Park, I heard the sound of an LAP bunker blast.
The June issue of The Last Word is pub, and it's going to gobble you up when you least expect it!
This ish talks about our town installing Flock cameras to retaliate against dissidents, memories of carnival fights, people stupidly ruining records, a university's dumb rules on how to throw pies at people, a 21-and-up McDonald's, and more!
So poop your pointer here...
https://www.scribd.com/document/868675526/The-Last-Word-6-2025
If that doesn't work, glide on over here...
Today, I braved the rain to go to Kroger. While I was there, some woman was in such a Krogery mood that she bubbled.
This morning, I went to the parade down the street, and some kid kept bubbling in elders' faces and making a big deal out of it.
Earlier today, I went to Taste of Cincinnati - or as I call it, Baste of Cincinnati - and was it ever booorrrrring!
But there's lots of poologgery going on that must be confronted. There were ploppings too, but I'll get to those.
The main issue there was that most of the food stands that I patronized only accepted credit cards. No cash was accepted. You could wave George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in their face, and they wouldn't take it.
In my day, this was unthinkable. It was unthinkable even the last time I went to Baste of Cincinnati, not to mention the most recent Ploptoberfest, which was only 8 months ago. But the far-right World Economic Forum agenda is rapidly encroaching.
When I used the portable restroom, I did notice that several items had been plopped into the dumper. They included one of those plastic rings that holds together 6-packs of soda, small plastic bottle lids, and a pair of underpants someone wiped their ass with. So at least Baste of Cincinnati isn't a total loss.
But I'm not likely to ever return to Baste of Cincinnati unless their food stands start accepting cash again. There ought to be a law. Every currency note is printed with a notice that it's legal tender. I'm old enough to remember when that meant what it said (because I'm older than 5).
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