They thought I'd backed down. They were wrong.

Just because I helped scare the northern Kentucky Republican machine into backing down from their pet causes for the Time Being, don't think I've let my guard down now.

As you know, I'm the Tom Petty of northern Kentucky progressive populism: I won't back down.

I'm working on what might as well be called the Graphic Street Guide for local progressive populist activism. I plan to start unveiling parts of this project in the coming weeks. With the events going on in other cities lately, this is fine timing, and I'm prepared for the fight.

It's not a fight I chose, but if Team Tyranny had cooled their commodes a long time ago, I wouldn't have to fight them now.

Have a holly jolly isthmus...

A couple weeks ago, I goed to the amazing roadmeet in Madison, Wisconsin! I included a walking tour of Chicago on the way up, and the outing yielded 77 Scholarin' photos.

You're gonna peep every single one of these photos until your face falls off...

http://www.bunkerblast.info/roadpics/mad15a.html
http://www.bunkerblast.info/roadpics/mad15b.html
http://www.bunkerblast.info/roadpics/mad15c.html
http://www.bunkerblast.info/roadpics/mad15d.html

Comcast/Time Warner merger dead

For once, our side actually fought for something. And we won!

Comcast - the hated cable TV and Internet giant known for its right-wing bias and shitty service - had planned to take over Time Warner, creating an impenetrable media monolith controlling two-thirds of America's Internet traffic.

Usually, corporate mergers are rubber-stamped, because they say that not doing so would violate their True Free Speach Now (tm). Nobody did shit to stop the Delta/Northwest merger, for example, or Clear Channel's engulfage of almost the entire radio industry. The states sure didn't do a damn thing. Fifty states, no action. But Comcast/Time Warner was diff. People actually fought back.

Comcast officials now say the merger is dead. Even the FCC refused to back the merger.

This follows the FCC establishing new rules to protect 'Net neutrality - which our side also fought for.

See, we actually win when we fight for stuff. I don't give a shit how many people get skeered by it. We are at war, and I will fight.

Hey mystery illness...Can I spend the night with you...

An entire Wednesday was spoiled by a mystery illness, and the timing couldn't have been funnier.

On Tuesday evening, I started feeling like I was run over by a toilet. It ruined the entirety of the following day, and no definitive diagnosis could be made.

Was it a repeat of the great gallbladder infection of 2011? Some aspects were quite similar, but others not so much. Was it merely exhaustion from walking 10 miles across the city of Madison, Wisconsin, on Sunday while wearing a backpack? If poo. Was it (shudder!) a common cold? My peroxide miracle cure didn't kill it within the day - but the mystery disease didn't last much longer than a day after I poured peroxide in my ears, so there's some suspicion it may have been a stalled respiratory infection. Usually, a cold lays hulk to many days, and this illness resembled the beginning and end stages of a cold, without the sheer torture that always lurks between. Given the average incubation period of a cold, odds are I caught it when I was entering the Madison library and frantically marching towards the drinking fountain to refresh my dehydrated bod.

If it was anything contagious, at least it likely immunizes me for my next fact-finding mission, which is coming up in the painfully near future.

Tim scares Far Right

Once upon a time - more specifically, about a month ago - a man in northern Kentucky posted on Facebook that he was tired of local Republican officials trampling everyone's rights, so he was going to bring down the hammer in late April. The GOP got skeered and backed down. The end.

Never call someone's bluff when they're not bluffing.

Madison roadmeet rundown!

As today is the 25th anniversary of my expulsion from high school, what better way to celebrate it than with another hilarious roadmeet?

I returned home from the roadmeet in Madison, Wisconsin, this morning, and it was a spectacular one! I plan to publish a detailed account of it in the next Last Word, and let me say, it's gonna go down in history in the annals of Roads Scholaring lore!

More than one instance of flatulence was detected, and the trip home included some good old-fashioned upchuckin'! Even Megabus didn't have any delays of more than 50 minutes or so, which is better than I can say for Greyhound's shocking behavior following the St. Louis meet. But the hotel on this trip was among the most miserable I've ever experienced.

Also, I saw a Jared the Subway Guy look-alike!

Since I know you're gonna ask, when I was at the bus stop to leave Madison, a young woman walking down the street bubbled.

A toast to success! Blublublublublub!

Magoffin County rejects "right-to-work"

After Marshall County, Kentucky, passed a resolution rejecting unconstitutional "right-to-work" laws, Magoffin County has now followed in its footsteps.

But The Media wants to keep that a secret, so as not to encourage other counties.

Have no fear, the April ish is here!

There was a bit of a delay, but the April issue of The Last Word is finally pub-a-roo! Aren't you excited?! If poo.

This edition talks about the following things...

• How not to squander $30 at fancy restaurants.

• How to squander it on a buggy GPS receiver instead.

• CBS losing money in a hilarious way.

• OpenStreetMap uproariousness.

• A person pooping on a plane and stinking it up.

• More Greyhound stupidity.

• Personal responsibility!

You're gonna peep, you're gonna weep, and you're gonna oggle-beep! So point your pooper here...

https://www.scribd.com/doc/261493714/The-Last-Word-4-2015

Ben Waide convicted

Remember Ben Waide, the once-powerful far-right Kentucky legislator who actually got caught breaking the law?

Now he's been found guilty of illegal campaign contributions and unlawful campaign expenditures. Both counts are felonies.

As part of the plea deal, Waide had to agree never to seek elected office again.

Bye, Ben.

Scott Walker says something about roads

Adding another Interstate in a land that's already paved over must be really important to embattled Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Walker's office has just announced that the Badger State has received another major 2-digit Interstate highway spanning the state. The massively unpopular governor has declared that the US 41 freeway from Milwaukee to Green Bay via Appleton is now (drum roll, please) Interstate 41.

Anything to save Walker's failed administration, I guess.

(Source: http://fox11online.com/2015/04/09/hwy-41-officially-becomes-an-interstate)

'SNL' star Gary Kroeger runs for Congress

I could be writing about something funny - like the Irene Cara and Colin Hay look-alikes I saw at the Opening Day parade on Monday - but instead I'm writing about something that seems funny but is actually very important.

Remember Gary Kroeger, who was a Saturday Night Live cast member in the '80s? Now he's running for Congress in Iowa. The comedic actor says he's running in the 2016 Democratic primary in Iowa's 1st District and is actually very serious about it. The Cedar Falls native says he wants to champion progressive policies.

If Scott Walker can be taken seriously as a presidential candidate, then certainly Gary Kroeger can be taken seriously for just about anything. If Kroeger was a Tea Party guy instead of a progressive advocate, The Media would already be anointing him as the frontrunner.

(Source: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/07/gary-kroeger-snl-congress/25417237)

NorthKey busted for bad food

For years, one of my top goals has been to bring about the closure of a gulag in Covington called NorthKey Community Care Children's Intensive Services - formerly Children's Psychiatric Hospital of Northern Kentucky. It appears that only the name has changed, and it's just the same old shit in a different package.

Now I have access to an official log of complaints that have been lodged against the facility. The log only covers the past few years, because older complaints are conveniently discarded, but it's a rather interesting document.

This log shows there have been several formal complaints against NorthKey just in the past few years. The nature of most of these complaints is unspecified. In some cases, "The allegation was substantiated." In other words, these allegations were confirmed, verified, proven.

This log has much more detail about NorthKey serving possibly spoiled food earlier this year. The document says NorthKey "failed to ensure implementation of a policy addressing safe practices for food handling." Among other things, food was improperly stored or not labeled. It appears as if the facility didn't even bother to tell an employee it had to be labeled - and served quickly after being removed from the refrigerator. NorthKey's food handling practices constituted a significant risk of spoilage.

The log goes into great detail about food preparation staff not wearing proper hair coverings. This is particularly ironic because the facility is known for making such a big deal about "clients" wearing the "wrong" kind of pants, saying it was because they "might" pull down their pants and expose themselves - even though there's no evidence that they did. NorthKey appointed themselves as pants police, but wouldn't provide hair coverings for food staff?

Granted, NorthKey is accredited by the Joint Commission - but the Joint Commission has been in trouble itself for not enforcing safety standards or patient rights.

Don't think the log is real? Here's the log...

http://www.heal-online.org/cphcomplaints.pdf

People bunkerooed on Easter

Spring is the season of hope. I hoped there'd be bunker blasts at an important family gathering today, and there were.

This evening, an LAP backdoor breeze was detected - providing much amusement. But it wasn't nearly as uproarious as the SBD air biscuit that wafted later. As we were getting ready to leave, that telltale stench began to hover, and those now-familiar gasps of frustration were heard. Why, it was a bunker blast!

Cries of accusation sprang up throughout the room, but no suspects could be indicted for the looming stinker.

Far Right says getting paid for working is "free money"

Hang on to your faces, because Team Tyranny is pushing a new argument against better wages. The biggest danger to America posed by this meme is that right-wing talking points like this always seem to be quickly treated as incontrovertible truths by The Media.

Recently, a woman was fired from her job at a Days Inn hotel in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, because she dared to express support for a minimum wage increase in a Washington Post interview.

In the Post's initial article, the woman's boss - the inn's manager Herry Patel - blasted Arkansas's wage increase (which was approved in November by 66% of voters). Patel was quoted as saying, "Everybody wants free money in Pine Bluff."

He thinks workers being paid 25 cents more per hour is "free money"?

The Far Right's new talking point is that being paid for actual work is a form of welfare. I'm reminded of Jeanine Pirro lecturing a litigant to get a job when she already had a job. True to form, the class warriors who spend their days posting on newspaper comment sections have attacked the minimum wage worker in this story under the assumption that she also gets welfare. If her boss would have paid her enough, she wouldn't need welfare. Understand?!

It's a downright miracle for the 1% that there isn't a nationwide general strike going on because of the economic tyranny of low pay. A lot is wrong in America today, and much of it has been rightly exposed. For example, Indiana's disastrous new antigay law has created such a backlash that it threatens to upend the entire Republican Party - and the Republican Right deserves every bit of criticism they've gotten for this law. But the economic leg of the progressive 3-legged stool is still underpowered - which is all the more surprising when you consider that America's working poor is such a huge constituency.