I spoke too soon, last week, fingering gubernatorial candidate John James as the sole Republican to lash out at Canada for daring to have forest fires with border-crossing smoke. I wrote that early in the day on Thursday (because that’s when I had time), and by the end of the day and into Friday, any number of Michigan Republicans, and one Ohio senator, also a Republican, had issued statements of their towering outrage over the smoky-air situation.

It was eerie, how alike they all were, almost as if someone had sent a memo around, y’know?

They all mentioned “Canada’s failure to manage its forests,” thereby leading to these wildfires. Pretty cheeky, considering how many fires start on this side of the border, and rage with minimal containment. (Some of the dumber posts on the subject claimed uncontrolled U.S. fires only happen in the leftist hellscape of California.) And the Canadians lecture us about climate change! Yes they do, because they accept reality, whereas here we just pretend otherwise.

Anyway, it’s good to see all the self-taught epidemiologists who gained their knowledge during Covid have found new employment as forestry experts.

Also anyway, on Saturday the wind picked up and the air was clean again — or at least down in the low part of the Moderate range, which is about all I expect in an urban area — before climbing back a bit on Sunday. We’re currently at Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, which I can live with. But we’re keeping the a/c on.

All plans for this weekend fell through at the last-ish minute, which ended up being a gift. I finished one book (Lifeguard: A Love Story, by Janet Fash), started another (Outside Looking In, T.C. Boyle) and otherwise enjoyed having a clean-enough-for-company house and a stocked pantry. We did check out the Concert of Colors in hopes of catching the Don Was set, saw the line to get in was about an hour long, and noped out.

I did get to the market to re-up on eggs and blueberries, was thrilled to find the first corn of the season, and drove home in time to hear a fragment of an interview with Hunter Biden. It was…impressive. So much so that I looked up the whole interview online and read the transcript. (Bonus: Reading the transcript spares you having to listen to Scott Simon’s smarminess.) It’s worth a few minutes of your time:

SIMON: Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January 6 gang?

BIDEN: I think that that is an insane argument. Do I think that pardoning me opened the door for Donald Trump to pardon people that engaged in an insurrection, beat police officers, and then, since they’re pardoned, many of them have gone back to commit crimes, including sexually abusing children. I don’t think that the two are the same thing.

If my dad had won, he would have kept his word. He would not have pardoned me. And the reason that he would not have pardoned me is because I would have told him I have complete and utter faith in the fact that, No. 1, I think that I will win some of this on appeal. But, No. 2, as a first-time offender for a nonviolent crime without a victim, I’m not going to spend any time in jail. And I know that between the Department of Justice, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Probation, I have absolute faith in our system that I would be treated fairly like any other person that had been convicted.

When my dad woke up after Thanksgiving, after the election occurred, and he read that Donald Trump had just appointed Matt Gaetz to be the attorney general, I think that he made a decision then that Donald Trump had made a decision not to actually adhere to the Constitution, the rule of law, and that he intended to take out and mete justice through his own Department of Justice, in his Department of Corrections, in his department of probation.

Duh. Good for the Bidens, father and son.

With that, I’m back to my book, as well as pizza for dinner. Happy Monday, all.

On Wednesday, I was asked by a friend to do a favor that involved sitting in her house for a few hours. So I did. It was very hot outside, and she had robust a/c. When I arrived, the sky was clear and the sun, punishing. When I left around 6:30, the sky was overcast, not with clouds, but with smoke.

And now it’s Thursday morning, and Michigan has the worst air on the planet. Not the Midwest, not the entire country, the whole damn world. A quirk of the wind has swept wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota into our state, and the map footprint is eerie; of course there’s bleeding into other states, but the worst of it seems to stop at the state borders. Good news, Toledo! All the air-quality scales are pegged in the Hazardous zone. As bad as it is in Detroit, it seems to be even worse in the U.P. Here’s the Mackinac Bridge:

Another view:

We have our own a/c on, with the fan running constantly. Morning swim was cancelled. The lakefront park is closed. But never fear! John James, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for governor, the emptiest suit that ever did empty, the man whose whole campaign is, to steal a phrase from Jon Stewart, “a noun, a verb and a helicopter*,” had this to say:

As Governor, I’ll put Michigan first, demand answers, and push Canada to take real action.

As the quip goes, tell me you know nothing about wildfires without telling me you know nothing without wildfires.

* James was a helicopter pilot during the Gulf War, or “Desert Storm,” as he patriotically calls it, every time. He brings it up…a lot.

In other news at this hour, while I was sitting at my buddy’s house yesterday, I did some rabbit-hole moseying, and came upon the latest from the Indiana Policy Review, which exists as a sinecure for the former opinion-page editor of my alma mater in Fort Wayne. He’s been there since roughly 1990, so that’s a pretty good sinecure. The fact the organization barely exists at all speaks more to the pity the wealthy founding families have for their pet mouthpiece, but never mind that.

This week’s column by him (the lower-case “tcl” at the end stands for T. Craig Ladwig) is remarkable for its naked bigotry and elevation of Indiana’s lieutenant governor, right-wing Christian scold Micah Beckwith, to something resembling relevancy. (It’s a quirk of Hoosier politics that the governor and lieutenant governor don’t necessarily run as a team, as they’re independently nominated by the party faithful. The gubernatorial candidate can make their wishes known, but the delegates don’t necessarily have to do their bidding. So in this case you get a more or less normal Republican serving with a lunatic wingnut like Beckwith.) Lately, Beckwith, a pastor of sorts, has been on about the Muslim Menace, and tcl is right there with him:

The need to confront the Muslim scourge in our cities is dividing the Republican Party — or so you would expect. In Indiana, however, only Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is speaking out while other GOP leaders sit silent for fear that Julia Carson’s grandson, Andre, will call them bigots.

Indeed, the governor upbraided Beckwith for not choosing his words more carefully, for not thinking before he speaks.

OK, if the governor wants a careful word choice, how about “seditious”? That’s when you demand that your religion exempts you from a society’s norms, mores, laws and core beliefs to the degree that you would overturn them to be replaced with your own.

Freedom of religion? Do you think the Founders had in mind someone like Genghis Khan, a devout follower of Tengrism, the shamanic religion that worships “the Eternal Blue Sky.” His armies killed as many as 40 million people, estimated to be 11 percent of the world’s population at the time.

It is terrifying to realize that the leading minds of our GOP are willing to abide an openly hostile, globally controlled Islam as a benign curiosity.

To use a not-that-great internet witticism twice in one blog, tell me you know nothing about American Muslims without, etc.

And no, I don’t know what Genghis Khan is doing in there. But I chuckled when, later in the column, he mentions “the unassimilable Muslim population.” I’d like to escort this elderly hayseed on a tour of Dearborn, Michigan. He’ll see some assimilated Muslims, oh yes he will. They make delicious hummus.

OK, gotta clean the house today. Company’s coming for the weekend.

Is it just me, or has it been an even crazier summer, news-wise, than we’ve seen before? So much for the dog days and boredom and lazy-hazy-crazy. Between the shenanigans in Washington and everywhere else, it seems like half the durn country has gone nuts. It’s hard to keep up, but we try.

I keep a list of books read throughout the year, and after noting how appallingly short it was this year, I resolved to double down. I normally read fiction, but found that nothing mid-list would satisfy; I abandoned a Andrea Barrett short-story collection before finding Jordan Harper’s “A Violent Masterpiece,” everything about the book summed up in the title. It’s as noir-y as noir gets, and my only problem now is, I have to find another one.

But never mind that! On to the day’s — not even the week’s — craziness. All links gift unless otherwise noted.

Here in the Macomb County exurb of Romeo, the school board’s gone buck-wild

When teachers in a southeastern Michigan school district decorate their classroom walls this fall, they will be limited to 32 preapproved phrases, part of an effort to “keep non-curricular ideologies and partisan politics out of the classroom,” officials said.

Classrooms can display messages including: “Everyone is welcome,” “You matter,” and “Choose kindness,” according to the list of acceptable statements. They must be printed in red or black ink, the school district’s colors, according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post.

Yes, it’s Moms for Liberty on the march up there in Romeo. A similar movement was active for a while in my own school district, but seems to have been soundly defeated in the last board election. However, a Pride parade got them up in their feelings again, and so I’m sure they’ll be back.

The near-death of Mitch McConnell — I’m not 100 percent sure he isn’t lying in a vat of green goo somewhere, illuminated by an eerie light accompanied by disturbing gurgling and hissing sounds — calls for some pre-obituary summing up of a truly smelly legacy:

The first key moment came when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Though Obama had won a sweeping victory and the country was in the midst of a catastrophic economic crisis, McConnell told his caucus they had a path back to power: Obstruct everything Obama tried to do, regardless of whether Republicans had any substantive objections to it. Only if they forced Obama to fail could they retake power.

If it seemed like the parties were working together, he explained, Obama would get the credit; if all the public saw was gridlock and nasty infighting, the president would get the blame.

“If [Obama] was for it,” said former Ohio Sen. George Voinovich about McConnell’s strategy, “we had to be against it.” Every procedural tactic would be deployed, including turning the filibuster from an occasional tool used to stop major legislation to a weapon fired at almost any legislation the majority party proposed.

Ah yes, I remember it well. And eventually, Obama got tired of banging his head against the wall and started writing executive orders. Oh, how they howled about that. The president isn’t a king or a dictator! Times have changed.

Finally, a short essay getting lots of the wrong kind of attention, in my alma mater, the Columbus Dispatch. Behold, the miseries of the MAGA man:

I recently entered the online dating scene and have met nice women for Columbus-area lunches or dinners in the process. After I thanked one, I got a thanks back with an additional note:

“I never asked you about your political views. I have no problem with Republicans, but if you are a MAGA Republican, it would be difficult for us to develop a friendship.”

Wow. That comment threw me for a loop, but it made me reflect on the bitter divisions within the country. It is literally a civil war.

No, it is not. You’d think a writer identified as a “former college professor” would know what literally means, but I guess not. More:

…I guess I could ask a return question.

“I have no problem with Democrats, but would be difficult for me to develop a friendship with one who has blindly been to a No Kings rally, suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, uses the biased legacy media as their only source of ‘truth,’ wants Israel to be put in its place, requires unlimited immigration and voting without an ID, desperately aims to completely abolish ICE, allows biological males in women’s sports, and denigrates all MAGA as fascists or Nazis, without understanding the real meaning of those words.”

Dude, maybe volunteer to pass out leaflets for some candidate? You’d have better luck, but you must also accept that you look like Captain Kangaroo and unless you have a pile of money, you might have to settle for women your own age. WHICH IS FINE. Not all older men can be Jeff Bezos.

The heat wave is unrelenting. About to go out in it in a bit. Pray for me.

Well, OK, Lindsey Graham. Not on my bingo card, and not necessarily the obituary I most wanted to see this weekend, but I’ll take it. His legacy has already been well-pawed-over, and I don’t really have anything to add. I’m reminded of a line from a Martin Cruz Smith novel, describing two informers whose handler had died suddenly, something like, “Confused, they looked for a new hand on the leash.” Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic has written two excellent pieces with Graham at their center, this one, from 2020, about the nature of collaboration and his final obit, written Sunday, here.

Both should be gift links; I hope they work.

I won’t spend any time snarking about his obvious homosexuality and his refusal to acknowledge it; that’s between him and his…whoever. His God. His constituents. None of my business, except if perhaps some terrible kompromat was behind his cleaving to Trump. But honestly, I don’t think so. In pursuit of “relevance,” however he defined it, he wanted a hand on his leash. And he got it, and it destroyed him.

And speaking of the dead and near-dead, I see Mitch McConnell is claiming his lengthy absence from work is no biggie, that he suffered a fall and was “briefly unconscious,” blah blah blah. Eyewitnesses say he EMTs were doing CPR on him, and you don’t do CPR on the unconscious, but someone who has no pulse. He — or the people trying to pass this off as the truth — needs to take that bullshit elsewhere.

Let’s talk something else: The columns on the White House portico, which are now tarped off, allegedly for “restoration.” More bullshit, if you ask me. I think this story, filed back in March, is closer to the truth:

For nearly two centuries, the White House’s main entrance — framed by a row of graceful Ionic columns — has been a signature image of the seat of American power.

Now the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.

If you don’t know the difference between ionic and Corinthian columns, look it up. The latter are fancier, more pimp-style, and I have no doubt they’ll be gilded, too. Where are the British when you need them? Burn this sucker to the ground.

What a weekend of news. My head is reeling, but maybe that’s just the heat dome, approaching to blow out the rest of the week. Stay cool, y’all.

The other day was the anniversary of the first mainstream media mention of what we’d come to call AIDS. Forty-five years back, on July 3, 1981, the NYT ran a story headlined, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” It wouldn’t be long before editors at the Times and other media outlets would be having meetings on how, in a G- or maybe PG-rated way, to describe certain sexual practices and why they might be relevant to this new disease.

I’m talking oral sex, anal sex, PIV sex, the gamut. Believe me when I tell you people sat around conference tables discussing anal sex. I was in a few of those meetings, or heard about them afterward.

Then came Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. She performed oral sex on him in the Oval Office! (“Oral in the Oval” — did anyone write that headline? If not, they missed an opportunity.) And she did that thing with the cigar! More meetings, more letters to the editor from parents mad because they had to explain a blowjob to their middle-school children. And I’d bet anything the kids already knew about them, but enjoyed seeing their parents stammer through the explanation.

Years later, it was #MeToo, and stories about forced sex, bad sex, guilty sex, and erections. So many erections, young women pulled down onto the lap of some creep and his boner, or having it rubbed up against her at a drinking fountain, or wherever. I was largely out of the game by then, and the previous meetings had taken away some of the scandalousness of describing sexual orientations and practices in what we always called “a family newspaper.” But I’m sure there might have been a few more meetings.

This week I saw a headline and thought, my how things have changed:

File that one under Things That Make Me Feel Old. And Platner is out, so his future sex crimes will be between him, the women involved and law enforcement.

What else today? Here’s Bret Stephens and his problem with democratic socialists:

A would-be U.S. senator, the Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, offered an alternative take on Michelle Obama’s famous line about going high when your opponent goes low: “When they go low, we don’t go high,” he said. “We take them to the mud and choke them out.” (El-Sayed is a doctor.)

Heavens to Betsy, let me clutch my pearls! When will these comfortable opinion-havers figure out that this is exactly what Democrats want to hear, after two years of the Trump administration? They don’t want Chuck Schumer’s strongly worded letters, they want choking in the mud, because that’s what the administration has already done to the Constitution. I swear, these people.

OK, then. The week, it limps to a close and a pretty good weekend awaits. Enjoy yours.

I think I’ve briefed you all on the Gordie Howe Bridge, the new piece of infrastructure that is now officially finished and ready for its ribbon-cutting, but said ribbon-cutting hasn’t happened. Why? Because the president is a c*nt, that’s why.

Seriously. The opening ceremony was actually set, then cancelled, because the two sides — the Canadians and the Americans — couldn’t come to terms. The president is said to “want a better deal.” And I remind you, the deal that got the bridge built was about a good a deal as they come. The Canadians covered 100 percent of the costs, allowed the U.S. to do 50 percent of the labor, using American steel and materials. In return, they’ll take 100 percent of the tolls until the debt is repaid (which will, admittedly, take decades), at which point the split goes to 50-50.

It’s safe to say everybody wants the bridge to open except for one party — the Moroun family, which owns the existing Ambassador Bridge, and would certainly see its revenue slide, but that’s what happens when monopolies are challenged.

So we wait.

Meanwhile, today, a story dropped that quoted our “ambassador” to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, well, let him tell it:

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is calling claims that Canada paid for the Gordie Howe Bridge’s construction “a big myth,” even as the Canadian government insists it bore the full cost of building the span.

The former Michigan congressman appeared last week on “The Food Professor” podcast to discuss trade between the U.S. and Canada and food security.

The topic of the Gordie Howe Bridge came up. Hoekstra asked the hosts, Sylvain Charlebois and Michael LeBlanc, if they could tell him who paid for the new crossing between Detroit and Windsor, which still hasn’t opened.

…He explained that the Canadian government loaned the authority behind the bridge $4.5 billion to $5 billion.

“Canada is serving as the bank for the bridge,” the ambassador said. “The expectation is that over the years, as the bridge generates revenue, the bridge will be paid back. So the bridge will actually be paid for by the folks who are using the bridge. It will not be paid for by the Canadian government.”

What an asshole.

During the blast-furnace heat last week, I watched a few clips of this or that person in the administration, doing their part to fluff Tubby. And I wondered, do they think we have the memory of a single-celled organism? Do they think we won’t remember, oh, Usha Vance smirking through an interview with Trump about what he quote reads for fun unquote? Do they think that when the tide turns, they can just slither out onto the shore and wait for it to come back? Pete Hoekstra has always been a piece of crap. (Besties with Mark Souder, Hoosiers.) And he’s growing long in the tooth. But Caroline Leavitt, Natalie Harp? A lot of these folks are still young, and if there’s any justice, they’ll be in the wilderness for a long damn time, well after Tubby is finally planted.

It’s depressing, thinking of the recovery ahead, assuming it can even happen.

What else? The victory of the Belgian soccer team was sweet, coming as it did after you-know-what. And now we’re back at it with Iran, so expect a nice stock market hit today. Happy goddamn Wednesday.

Well, it’s winding down now, huh? The nation’s gala 250th birthday, that is, which was spectacular in places and an utter shitshow in the capital, where Big Daddy tried to make it all about him, except where he allowed his rotating staff of toadies and incompetents to screw things up independently.

Granted, it was 102 degrees for much of it. Alan was reading passages from the WashPost to me Saturday night, laughing uproariously:

But a little before 7 p.m., attendees were ordered to leave the grounds because of approaching violent storms and seek shelter in nearby museums and government buildings. Many on the Mall balked at the order, and some yelled at U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement agents who directed them to leave as skies darkened above them.

As the Mall was being cleared, other people continued to arrive, only to be turned away.

On Pennsylvania Avenue NW, just steps from the White House, authorities were shepherding attendees from the event perimeter.

Crowds streamed in all directions, in search of shelter or a restaurant or their hotels. Officers blew whistles and shouted for everyone to clear the area. But hundreds of people, some in star-spangled outfits or Trump-themed gear, stayed nearby hoping to be let back in.

John Kile, who flew in from Dublin just for the event, fumed at having been turned away. He said he tried to gain access at several checkpoints, spending hours waiting in line.

“We came all the way here for the Fourth of July event, got an expensive hotel, and we can’t get in,” said Kile, 29. “And it’s … 100 degrees, so, yeah, definitely a letdown.”

“It doesn’t seem to be well-orchestrated to be honest,” he added.

Ya think? I can hear the world’s tiniest violin:

A dejected Michala Herbster and her grandparents, Carl and Debbie Herbster, sat on a ledge near the Wilson Building, not far from the Mall. The trio waited in line for over two hours in the “unbearable” heat, in hopes of getting a good spot for the fireworks show — and, more importantly, Trump’s speech.

After being evacuated from the Mall, all the family wanted to do was to get back to their hotel. Michala, 23, traveled from Ringgold, Louisiana, for the holiday, while her grandparents came in from Indianapolis. “Very expensive trips,” Debbie groused. Unable to call an Uber to get back to their hotel, they headed to the Federal Triangle metro stop, heads bowed slightly as rain continued to fall.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Trump Steaks of holidays.

I don’t want to dwell, though. We did nothing much on the holiday, and things were fine. We were fortunate to have electricity, after a fierce storm moved through Friday afternoon, toppling trees and leaving wide swaths of the service area dark. Kate’s block is browned out, so Alan took our generator over to keep their refrigerator going at the very least. We’ve learned through bitter experience that when power goes out around here, it can stay out for days, and indeed it has; most are not predicted to get juice again for another 24 hours.

At least it’s not 97 degrees anymore. So: Small blessings.

It does seem as though the country is falling apart, despite all the Lee Greenwood blather over the weekend. The open corruption — even extending to the World Cup — gets more blatant every week. The crypto scam is particularly galling, but not at all surprising. Again, a tiny violin, but this could have been your grandparents:

The odds were always in his favor. Mr. Trump profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down. He collected returns whenever anyone traded the tokens, as he repeatedly pushed his followers to do, using his Truth Social account to promote the coin.

OK, enough. After a delightful half-day of rain, the sun is out again and the week ahead looks better than the one behind us. Onward to Monday.

When I lived in Ohio, and I don’t remember where I learned this, the poorest county in the state was always said to be Vinton, and sometimes Meigs, both in the southeast part of the state. Both rural, both coal country, both sad, sad Appalachia. If you grew up in either one, you either got out or you stayed and grew weed.

I’ve since learned that I’m wrong, that the poorest counties are Adams, Pike, Scioto and yes, Meigs. You can look at this data in either map or table form, but I prefer the map. You can see where it concentrates — along the Ohio River and in the Mahoning Valley, up in what used to be steel country.

Anyway, long way around to a story that may have crossed your radar, probably fated to go wide based on heinousness alone, a case of 16 abused children found in a single squalid Vinton County house, attended by four adults. I’m sure every editor found the mugshots irresistible:

I’m paywalled out of the Columbus Dispatch, so I have to rely on shitty TV-newsroom coverage, but here we are:

All of the children, who range in age from 1.5 to 18 years old, are being medically evaluated. Wilson said several of the children are in serious condition and two had to be flown to hospitals due to the severity of their conditions. Seven of the children were taken to hospitals in Columbus.

“This is pure evil,” Wilson said during the press conference.

He added that they were living in “deplorable conditions” and that it was one of the worst environments he has seen in his career. During an update on Wednesday, Cain said the county keeps its livestock in better living conditions than what the children were living in. He said there was a high presence of bacteria and human feces.

Cain said the kids were living in what he believes was a 12×12 area of the residence.

Wilson said the children are all safe now, but one was placed in an intensive care unit and intubated at one point. Wilson said he believes that if authorities waited another 24 hours, there may have been multiple deaths.

Wilson is the new acting attorney general, and he’s got the patter down, for sure. “Pure evil” is prosecutor talk, but it’s hard — for me, anyway — to look at those four faces and see evil. They are said to be the parents and grandparents of the brood, but more details are hard to come by. Evidently the younger woman birthed 16 actual children, or maybe she didn’t, before anyone noticed. Noticed anything. How does this happen? The family had moved several times, but they’d been in Vinton County for four years. At least two of the children were younger than four.

I don’t see evil. I see mental illness, probably some dementia issues and certainly poverty. Poverty, the fertile ground from which ignorance grows, although I’ve known some whip-smart poor people in my time. Generational poverty, that’s the real killer. I cannot look at the woman on the far right and not think: IQ of 90, tops, probably abused as a child, certainly abused by her husband, man hands on misery to man, that’s the way the world goes.

I recall a line I ran across in a news story once: “pity house,” a social worker’s term for places like this. Pity houses become horror houses. I’m sure Jeff Gill has some thoughts about it. Also, the grandma? She’s a year younger than me.

So, moving on. What’s ICE up to these days? Snatching nuns, in their habits, off the street, that’s what. She was freed after the usual “bipartisan outrage,” but still. “The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about her immigration status.” You don’t say.

Finally, I don’t know how I missed this earlier, a piece on the generation gap around location-sharing. I do not share location, except perhaps when trying to find someone in a crowded environment, like a street festival. I’m amazed at how younger people think it’s no biggie, but then again, I am Old.

OK, then. Time to head into the weekend. Enjoy yours. Let’s hope it cools down a bit for our nation’s big 2-5-0.

Confession: I can’t stop looking — and laughing — at takedowns of the Great American State Fair, another Trump-a-palooza shitshow happening in Washington D.C.

And of course, it’s reminding me of my first state fair, my ur-state fair, the Ohio State Fair. IYKYK, as the kids say. It was the one I grew up going to, and it was magnificent. Maybe it still is. Michigan’s barely exists anymore, so lord only knows what Republicans have managed to do, now that they control Ohio.

On the other hand, it was a Republican governor who made the OSF what it was. Big Jim Rhodes was a country boy, and loved anything that celebrated other country boys and girls. (College students he had little use for, as any Kent State grad of his era can tell you.) I can’t think of many things Rhodes did that I approved of, but as a child and teen, the state fair was A-OK with me.

There are certain things that should be found at every state fair, no matter where it is: Funnel cakes and fair food of all kinds. Blue-ribbon produce and pies. Rides operated by greasy carneys. Freak shows, admittedly something that’s likely gone away, and no one should miss, but I enjoyed them. Farm animals, and competitions between farm animals. Farm kids sleeping on cots in the next stall, with a huge fan blowing the heat and flies away. A grandstand, with nightly entertainment. (This is one area where the Michigan State Fair could stand alone, as they had all the Motown artists for years. It always tickled me that the celebration of all things rural was held in the state’s most urban area. The fairgrounds were on 8 Mile Road, for crying out loud.) Finally, there were the commercial buildings, with exhibits for chambers of commerce, farm-implement dealers, politicians and others. You could wander through a commercial building or two and pick up all kinds of free loot — keychains and bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets and nail files and pocket calendars.

The fair lasted about two weeks, as I recall. If you played your cards right as a kid, you could go at least twice, maybe more times.

So with all of this in my memory, I looked at the layout for the Great American State Fair and came away…not just disappointed, but contemptuous of these losers, to call this collection of slapdash crap a fair at all, let alone a great one. The scale replica of the Trump victory arch alone is shame-inducing, or should be.

Here’s the website. It contains lies; there aren’t exhibits and displays from “all 56 states and territories.” In fact, this whole paragraph is pretty much bunk: “…the Great American State Fair will showcase the very best of America through state pavilions, industry displays, family-friendly attractions, movie screenings, musical performances, military ensembles, spectacular flyovers, daily cultural programming, and an iconic Ferris wheel on the National Mall.”

Firsthand reports reveal a thinly attended, incredibly boring assemblage of slapped-together crap, the one redeeming feature of which is its ludicrous awfulness. Gene Weingarten:

One booth at this supposedly apolitical event is run by AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens, a far-right advocacy group that sells itself as a conservative alternative to the presumably communist-infiltrated AARP. The booth is distributing its glossy magazine, the cover story of which carries this headline:

THE GREAT AMERICAN COMEBACK – How Trump Is Setting the Stage for an Era of Historic Prosperity.

And:

At one booth, run by a group called Revival Ministries International, I was handed something called “The Gospel Soul-winning Script” which I am apparently supposed to carry with me at all times to proselytize the promise of eternal Salvation through Jesus Christ, the Lord. It’s about 300 words long and reads like a telemarketer’s cold-call script with “(fill in the name)” helpfully added at all appropriate points, as in the familiar spiel “Bruce, I am telling you, Bruce, this is how, you, Bruce, can find redemption between Jesus and yourself, Bruce…”

Wow, how fun. You should not be surprised that the food offerings are not funnel cakes and Tom Thumb Donuts, but overpriced burgers and Thai food. Today, July 1, is “Faith, Values, and Inspiration” day at the Great American State Fair. Bruce better steer clear.

Coming in August will be the Patriot Games, “…a premier national competition featuring outstanding high school students from across the nation. Male and female athletes will be selected to represent their home state or territory on a national stage as they compete in a series of high-intensity challenges designed to test strength, speed, agility, teamwork, resilience, and leadership.” No specific sports are named, only “challenges,” which I suspect will be something like American Ninja Warriors, only with teenagers.

I covered an open casting for American Ninja Warrior, in Fort Wayne. Interviewed a few Ninja Warriors, the permanent cast members. You never heard a more complaining, Tylenol-addicted bunch outside of a retirement community. In your life.

Anyway, this is what the Trump administration has on offer to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, and it makes me marvel that Trump only bankrupted two casinos, and not more.

In other news, Rep. Tom Kean, R-New Jersey, is back on the job and explaining his four-month absence from Congress. Diagnosis: Depression, severe enough to require hospitalization. How long? He didn’t say. There was a lot he didn’t say:

“Several months ago, due to health concerns, I entered the hospital for some testing,” he said in a short speech on the House floor during his first day on Capitol Hill since disappearing more than 100 days ago. “I was given the diagnosis of depression.”

…Before his brief speech and afterward, he was silent in the hallways of the Capitol, appearing wan and mute as reporters asked him where he had been, how he was feeling, why he had not been more transparent about his health condition and whether he was still fit to serve.

Inside the House chamber, Mr. Kean, who described himself as “a private person by nature” who had struggled to share his journey, delivered a deeply personal speech that left out some important details.

He did not say what had originally landed him in the hospital, but said his doctors had told him the fastest way to recover was to stay there.

I don’t doubt one detail of Kean’s diagnosis, nor of his pain or suffering. I’ll only note that hardly anyone gets a hospital stay for depression treatment, unless it’s a three-day hold for danger to self or others. Maybe he’ll remember this when the next time comes to vote on Medicaid coverage for the less fortunate.

If he survives his election, that is. Meanwhile, welcome to Wednesday. As I write this, it was the promised 96 degrees, and tomorrow, more of the same. Ugh.

And so we await the heat. I did a lot of complaining about the cold spring, but the last fortnight has been lovely, perfect June weather. Warm enough in the afternoon, but not too, which is to say perfectly comfortable without turning on the a/c. That won’t be the case starting tomorrow (high of 86) and continuing through the week, including a very unseasonal 99 on Wednesday. A legit heat dome. Things won’t start to moderate until a week from Tuesday.

Oh, joy.

We’ll make it through, of course. Providing the power doesn’t go down or some other emergency doesn’t strike. There are pools and fans and air-conditioning. Lucky us.

Me, I went through training Saturday to re-start my career as a precinct poll worker, a prospect that fills me with both anticipation and dread. The Michigan primary is in August, and no one expects any surprises. November is a different kettle of fish, of course. As I sat through two hours of stuff I mostly already knew, I tried to concentrate on the idealism of the people who signed up for this duty and not the nefariousness of the scoundrels already undermining the process by sowing doubt among the pigheaded idiots who still — still! — believe that the 2020 election was “rigged,” as the president says over and over. The people pulling their strings are going to keep up the propaganda until November and beyond, with repercussions yet unknown. In other words, it’s very likely going to be ugly.

I’ll just do my part. New wrinkles since the last time I did this job: As ballot-box inspector, the person who tends the tabulator, I have to stand 10 feet away when a voter is casting their ballot, i.e., feeding it into the machine, and only come closer if they’re having trouble and need my help. Also, we’re now doing curbside voting in Michigan, so that situation could come up. That’s about it.

It’s funny, working the polls. An efficiency expert could have a field day with how things run; you could easily get the job done with a third of the staff. But that would actually increase the chances of shenanigans. The beauty of this Soviet-style workforce is, no one has hands on a ballot for longer than a few seconds. When I worked the absentee counting boards, we had teams of six, and one person’s entire job was to smooth the ballots after they were taken from the envelope, so they’d feed into the tabulator without problems. Another person was charged with opening the envelope. It was ridiculous, but also genius.

And still, ignoramuses (ignorami?) claim it’s crooked. They wouldn’t last an hour at the job, having their preconceived notions smashed like china.

What else is going on this weekend? Oh, did you hear about this? A man, upset by the murder of Alex Pretti, wrote a letter to Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE. It read:

You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher.

The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall. Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness.

You will never know peace. You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself. But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.

Harsh moral condemnation? Absolutely. A threat? No. That didn’t stop federal agents from coming after the writer, a Rochester, NY man, at his home and then, later, at his hotel in NYC, where he was staying with his daughter. And all this came after they did the same to a woman who’d posted the name of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good, even though the name had been made public by the Minneapolis media. In the latter case, they pressured the woman to take the post down (she didn’t). In both, they informed the people involved that “they may be in violation of federal law.” (They aren’t.)

Guess what the woman who posted the ICE agent’s name was doing when they threatened her? Working the polls in last Tuesday’s primary in New York. In other words, being a good citizen.

Finally, although this is a long essay, it’s worth reading, if you have any interest in ’60s radicals. It’s a review of Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s memoir, as the son of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. But it goes far deeper, analyzing political violence in that era, and held my interest throughout:

In the past few years, the American Left has reformed once again, largely in protest of the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Like the Vietnam War a generation ago, those protesters have been aided by a central, clarifying conflict—there has been, relative to the DSA of yesteryear, a bit less getting sidetracked into pointless internecine conflicts over the progressive stack—and unlike the Weather Underground, they have been free of any organized Action Faction, of any real effort to cross from building occupation and protest into violence. Of course, this has not spared them the same accusations of pointlessness, unreasonableness, and bigotry for failing to adequately appreciate the glorious incineration of children by US taxpayer-funded bombs. Merely protesting outside of sites dedicated to the auctioning of violently seized land is treated as a kind of violence itself, met with the same yowls and fainting that would meet actual efforts to resist the flattening of Gaza City, the illegal settlement of the West Bank, or at least the United States’ insistence on providing political and material cover for the ethnic cleansing of a captive population. They are still called childish for believing that the world does not have to be this way.

But if it is childish, if any of this—the outrage, the horror, the belief that something must be done—is childish, it is only because a child could see it. It is only adults who find comfort in the reassuring sobriety of pessimism. I keep reading that these protesters—like us, like the left wing of the Weather Underground—have been seduced by anti-American propaganda, by the nefarious infiltration of subversive “ideology” into feeds and articles and schools. If you believe that, you must imagine 9/11 with a twist: hours after the towers fell, as FDNY and NYPD officers swarmed the scene looking for survivors, a second wave of al-Qaeda hijackers brought another plane held in reserve, crashing it into the smoldering ground to kill the rescue workers they had lured there with the first attack. This is ordinary business in Gaza and Lebanon. What dastardly “ideology” is required to find this fact appalling? What far more common ideology is required to shrug, to accept that this is the way the world must be?

OK, that’s enough. News from Hot City later this week, I hope. IF I SURVIVE…..