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.

Have no fear, the July ish is here!

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...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2507.pdf

Men ran drug ring out of luxury apartments

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.

People beered at the pool

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.

Snack stand with broken card reader only accepts credit cards

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.

Here's the deal: Joe and Jill Biden look-alikes sighted

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!

Duke Energy fined for billing violations

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.

A person bunkerooed at Hoffman Park

Today, I went Roads Scholaring over in Northside. While I was resting at Hoffner Park, I heard the sound of an LAP bunker blast.

Have no fear, the June ish is here!

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...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2506.pdf

Gum for the holidays...At Kroger!

Today, I braved the rain to go to Kroger. While I was there, some woman was in such a Krogery mood that she bubbled.

A person bubbled and made a big issue out of it

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.

Don't be fash! Accept cash!

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).

Supremes split on religious charter school

The big story here isn't that a state planned to allow public funding of religious schools. This happens all the time through voucher schemes, even though it's unconstitutional. The real story is that the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on this case when it shouldn't have even been close.

Not long ago, Oklahoma planned to allow a religious charter school run by the state's Catholic dioceses. The constitutional problem with this was obvious: The school would have received public funding to sponsor religion. But even Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General didn't support this affront to separation of church and state, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled 6-2 against the dioceses.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court - with only 8 of its Justices on the case - has split 4-4 on the matter. This means that the lower court ruling stands, and that you can't have religious charter schools. The real shocker is that it was 4-4 instead of 8-0. Because of this deadlock, similar cases could be tried later.

In brief, religious charter schools are unlawful, as they constitute taxpayer sponsorship of religion. This is basic constitutional law. There is no wiggle room on this. Sometimes you can see how courts can disagree on how to interpret constitutional law - after all, that's a main reason we have courts - but this is a case where there is absolutely no ambiguity. Yet the Supreme Court has drifted so far from even the most basic legal principles that they ruled 4-4 instead of 8-0.

Pick up the Post...It's full of greed! (a blast from the past)

This has been backlogged on our hard drive for 19 years, and the culprit is a newspaper that's been out of business almost as long. But we can't let this go unanswered. (That's how The Last Word got its name.) I was attacked by the familiar suspects we all know and love for 35 years, and 19 pales in comparison.

Back in 2006, the right-wing Cincinnati Post ran a right-wing editorial demanding draconian sweeps against homeless encampments so nobody would have to see them during the Tall Stacks festival. This nonsense put out by the Post sounds like it's straight out of the Tea Party or the People's CDC...

"City officials, with ample notice, should clean out the camps, particularly those along the downtown riverfront. They need not feel guilty about it. If there's any guilt to assign, it involves the shortage of institutional housing alternatives for the mentally ill who constitute such a large portion of the homeless population."

In other words, the Post not only wanted to conduct brutal sweeps of encampments but also lock up the homeless in psychiatric "hospitals."

This frenzied screed from 19 years ago is still relevant now, because this right-wing mentality encouraged the increasingly violent responses that cities unleash against the homeless today.

Jet crashes into San Diego neighborhood

One of the most widely ignored stories is the likelihood of planes crashing into homes. It's been a national epidemic for decades, yet nothing is ever done about it.

Many years ago, a jet airliner struck a North Carolina neighborhood. Newspapers carried photos of debris strewn up and down the street, but this wake-up call went unheeded. A commercial jet crashed in a residential area near Buffalo. Not long after 9/11, a plane crashed in a Queens neighborhood where many firefighters who served in 9/11 lived. Many people on the ground or in their homes have died from planes hitting.

Now a private business jet has crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, burning over a dozen homes.

As long as planes are as prone to crashes as they have been lately, flight paths should at least be modified to avoid going over heavily populated neighborhoods. Other folks have been warning about this danger for years, so the FAA had to have known about it. A Queens-based watchdog group many years ago called Sane Aviation For Everyone had warned about this very thing, and the aforementioned Queens crash proved the group's warnings should have been heeded. SAFE stepped up its warnings after this tragedy, and a bill was introduced in Congress to reroute New York area flight paths. It's unclear if these paths were ever changed, and threats remain all over the country.

This is a national scandal, and - maddeningly - it's getting no attention at all.

Wozzin' on Wozzfozz

Last month, I went Roads Scholaring on Cincinnati's Wasson Way - or as I call it, Wozzfozz Way.

That event yielded 25 photos of a Scholaring sort.

As usual, peep and ye shall weep...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/cineast25.html

Ohio floats unconstitutional plan to limit crowdfunding

Criminal defendants have a right to a fair trial. That even includes those who we strongly suspect are guilty.

But some Ohio officials want to change all that. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, wants to make crowdfunding efforts for criminal suspects illegal. Remember, these are only suspects - not those who have actually been convicted.

Some of the crowdfunding campaigns that would be banned aren't just for legal costs but also the defendants' families.

A law against these crowdfunding campaigns would of course be unconstitutional. We've lamented the mollycoddling of known violent criminals, but a law like this shreds due process to unrecognizable scraps.

GoFundMe reportedly banned such campaigns for criminal defendants several years ago, following pressure by the media for stiff punishments for those who violated COVID lockdowns, but Ohio's new law would force all crowdfunding sites to have such a policy.

Ohio lawmakers are already working on a bill to do Yost's bidding.

Another bunker blast to make you laugh

Earlier this evening, I went to an important family gathering, and the scent of an SBD bunker blast was detected.

Belvin' in Bellevue!

"I was Belvin' in Bellevue...Belvin' on that Covert Run Pike they built..."

I just posted 12 new Roads Scholaring photos from a recent outing in Newport and Bellevue!

It was a brief event, since I had my usual medical issues to take care of, but you're gonna bip through 'em nonetheless...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/newbel25.html

Scholaring in Highland Heights!

Highland Heights, Kentucky! My hometown!

Before a big glob of mucus gobbles you up, it would be cool if you pept and bept a batch of Roads Scholaring photos I got last month around Highland Heights and Cold Spring. There's 18 items, and they rule!

So point your pooper here...

http://bunkerblast.info/roadpics/hhcs25.html

UC Berkeley received $220M from China

This item has been largely covered up, but it explains a lot.

It has been revealed that the University of California, Berkeley, received $220 million from the Chinese government - that is to say the Chinese Communist Party. Federal officials turned a blind eye to it for several years.

This isn't surprising, and we're sure other American universities - maybe even local school systems - have also accepted CCP dough. The difference with UC Berkeley is that this school eventually got caught.

The Trump administration now says it is investigating the university, but I'll believe that when I see it. In other words, I won't believe it, because it's unlikely that Trump is actually doing much. Biden didn't go after the school either.

This story is important because it shows how hostile our education system is to the values of liberal democracy. It is not indifferent but outright adversarial.