https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/pam-bondi-house-hearing-02-11-26
“The Trump administration has repealed an EPA rule that classified carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases as a threat to public health.”
Make America Gray Again
His rival had issued a rule
That carbon’s a dangerous fuel.
So this new EPA
Just kicks science away
Since Dissing Obama’s so cool!
–zumwalt (February 2026)
“‘She didn’t answer anything. She came here just ready to talk about the Dow Jones and the … NASDAQ. It sounds kind of crazy to me,’ the Republican told reporters.
“Asked about Bondi attacking him as a ‘hypocrite,’ Massie indicated he wasn’t surprised.
“‘I think that’s part of the culture of this administration. When they don’t have a good argument, they just go to name calling. That’s what her boss does to me, so I just let that roll off,’ Massie said.”
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/pam-bondi-house-hearing-02-11-26
REDACTION Reaction
I’m here today to do my very worst
With smears well practiced and rebukes rehearsed.
The victims? They are quite beside the point,
My only task: massage and then anoint.
I sit before this useless House today
With nothing real or meaningful to say;
I counter-punch and stubbornly evade,
Divert and stall this televised parade.
I cross out “Guilty,” “Sin,” and black out “Crime,”
To stall the clock and simply waste your time.
My purpose: taunt, attack, deflect, disrupt:
Who cares if Justice is ██████ corrupt?
— zumwalt (February 2026)
For Name’s Sake
A center that bore a great leader’s name,
A symbol of culture, of merit, of fame,
Now carries a brand that’s suspect and lame:
So artists avoid it, along with its shame.
Now our president posts it’s time to shut down;
“No one rejects ME,” he thinks with a frown.
“Time to remodel — I’ll teach this whole town,
I may not be nice, but I DO wear the crown!”
— zumwalt (February 2026)
“China wedding goes viral as twin brothers marry twin sisters and both sides have twin uncles.”
Relativity
Two sisters, identical twins,
Wed brothers with big matching grins.
The household now shares
Their uncles in pairs,
But that’s not where chaos begins.
— zumwalt (1/22/2026)
Concept of a Plan
Here is “The Great Healthcare Plan,”
The finest concept known to man.
No need to think of how this works
Or who this helps and who this hurts.
This policy is the greatest, most wonderful healthcare dream,
The biggest savings anyone has ever known or seen.
We’ll slash the drugs, making deals with forced consent,
By three hundred, four hundred — five hundred percent!
We can’t pay off the middle men,
That’s up to you to do, my friend.
If you need more to make you well,
Then just follow our plan,
straight to…
well…
straight to where I might one day dwell.
— zumwalt (January 2026)
News stories:
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/15/nx-s1-5678654/trump-great-healthcare-plan-video-announcement-aca-premiums https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/15/politics/trump-health-care-plan
A sure bet
The pick and roll is part of play,
And catch what coach has got to say.
But there’s a more important task:
Collecting bags of major cash.
You miss the shot, you miss the rim,
While placing bets outside the gym.
We take the bribe to slip and fall,
No cap, it’s part of basketball.
We fill the jerseys up with green,
The wildest flex you’ve ever seen.
We pray the Feds don’t watch the game,
Or we’ll get cooked and take the blame.
It’s great to hang with looks that slay,
To drive the whips and soak the rays.
To hit the clubs and play the field,
To party hard and never yield.
But danger lurks in losing games,
Not from the fans or public shame:
Don’t leave behind some mid-wit tell,
That turns your set-up into some
cringey,
grungy,
hoopless cell.
— zumwalt (January 2026)
New Story:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/15/sport/basketball-charges-gambling-scheme
With apologies to Emily and the DOJ
Release the files but just in part —
Deception’s Pathway lies
Too raw for Headline’s hungry Spark
The whole would scandalize
As Cards dealt from some hidden Deck
With watching eyes confined
The Truth must flame out gradually
To hide the Guilt entwined —
–zumwalt (2025)
News event: “At least 15 files that were released by the Justice Department Friday were no longer available on the department’s website on Saturday.”
Reference: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-least-15-newly-released-epstein-files-have-disappeared-from-justice-departments-website/
Updated Dump
They loaded files on Friday night,
Though not the total lot;
The press was vexed by partial truths
But that is what we got.
On Saturday fifteen were gone —
One noticed from before:
A president in gilded frame —
A photo in a drawer.
What this all means to common folk
Escapes my simple mind
When wealth can build a mighty wall
That shields them from their crime —
And if a few are put in jail
That does us little good
For those that still control the wealth
Will raise the price of food.
The message here is pretty clear
And one that fits my rhyme
That money spent judiciously
Protects —
even the damnedest —
most despicable —
devils of our time.
— zumwalt (2025)
In 1925, recording technology continued to improve with jazz bands across the USA making their first recordings, even if it was only one double-sided 78 record.
1925 was the year Armstrong transitioned from being the greatest 1920s jazz sideman to a leader of his own group. He began the year in New York with Fletcher Henderson and ended it in Chicago recording the first “Hot Five” tracks starting in November — some of my favorite jazz recordings of all time, and generally recognized as highly treasured musical landmarks.
Other notable names made recordings this year: the trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington with his group The Washingtonians, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters. The sides they recorded are still musical gems a hundred years later.
Lesser names recorded, of course. Some had big hits, including Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra’s original hit recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and Paul Whiteman’s symphonic jazz version of James P. Johnson’s “Charleston,” which became a popular representation of the vitality and character of the “Roaring Twenties.”
There were many lesser names with less known recordings that are worth checking out including the Original Crescent City Jazzers recording “Christine” and The Halfway House Orchestra’s “Pussy Cat Rag.” Yes, we still had rags being featured in both jazz and in written concert hall music, but ragtime was now a historical style, and most pieces titled rags in 1925 were jazz and not ragtime.
1925 was a diverse and productive year for concert hall music including George Gershwin‘s Piano Concerto in F, Edgard Varèse‘s Intégrales ,and Alban Berg‘s masterpiece, the opera Wozzeck.
Even rock fans will find 1925 abundant with gems that they would likely appreciate: “Cow Cow Blues” by Dora Carr and Cow Cow Davenport which is a blues recording enlivened with early elements of boogie woogie as well as Blind Lemon Jeffersons first recordings including “Black Horse Blues.” At the same time, many recordings of “pre-bluegrass” and “pre-country” music were recorded including Charlie Poole’s unrelenting, banjo-driven “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” with traditional fiddle and rhythmic acoustic guitar.
All in all, 1925 had a wealth of music that any music lover can spend a few weeks, if not a full year, exploring.
Released on 7 March 1975, The Rotter’s Club is one of the finest progressive rock albums , delivering a rich blend of humor, virtuosity, and intricate composition that captures the essence of the era while being identifiably distinct from any other album of its time. As the second studio album by British avant-garde and progressive rock band Hatfield and the North, it succeeded their self-titled debut (1973), which established them as a prominent figure in the Canterbury scene. But The Rotter’s Club marked a progression, both musically and conceptually, toward an even more refined and ambitious sound. It is a record that not only brings together various aspects of jazz, rock, and classical music but also emphasizes the playful and eccentric side of progressive rock, a nice contrast to the overly serious, often over-reaching and sometimes pretentious reputation ascribed to it by is staunchest critics.
With the release of Rubycon on March 21, 1975, Tangerine Dream delivered their fourth studio album, a fully realized version of their relentlessly driving “Krautrock” industrial, high-tech, space music. While Rubycon clearly evolves from their previous album, Phaedra, it represents a leap forward, much like the internet is to the stone tablet. Whether Tangerine Dream’s change in direction was influenced by considerations about what musical characteristics would work best for film soundtracks and greater audience engagement, or whether it was partly inspired by the success of Kraftwerk, Rubycon marks the undeniable establishment of a new genre of music — one distinct from anything that came before it. Tangerine Dream’s flirtations with Stockhausen and other electronic composers led them in a direction that was as different from the contemporary world of so-called “classical” and “serious” music as that music was from the tonally extended late Romantic music. What emerged was something accessible, mesmerizing, hypnotic, and directly relevant — an exciting departure from the avant-garde style that, for most of the listening public, had become irrelevant.
Rick Wakeman’s King Arthur, released March 27, 1975, is filled with interesting keyboard and instrumental passages that should interest most progressive rock fans. Though the vocal sections are not exactly comprised of tunes your likely to sing on your own or even along with — they functionally provide narrative, much like Baroque and Classical Era recitatives and, overall the album works well as a dramatic experience. An alternative to the original, with much better overall sound and additional musical content (which had to be left off the original single LP due to time constraints) is the 2012 two-CD version. If you haven’t hear either, best to go for the updated version with the extra material and superior production.
Released in March 1975, Soft Machine’s Bundles is successfully melds an electronic jazz-rock sound with compatible prog-rock elements. The addition of guitarist Allan Holdsworth. known for his fluid, virtuosic playing, injects the album with a fresh intensity, particularly notable in the multi-track Hazard Profile, a nineteen minute five-part suite that showcases Soft Machine’s new direction inclusive of Holdsworth’s soaring guitar work supported by a propulsive, energetic rhythm section. Side one concludes with Holdsworth’s acoustic and beautifully introspective “Gone Sailing.”
Side two is equally compelling with the first four tracks seamlessly blending into a a single experience. The next track, “Four Gongs Two Drums” provides a short percussive intermission, with hints of Indonesian Gamelan followed by the final track, “The Floating World”, a reflective, drifting, neo-Impressionistic composition that gently glides the listener through a bliss-invoking, peaceful and relaxing musical state, providing a fittingly tranquil, dreamlike-end to this excellent album.
Donald Fagan and Walter Becker follow up the classic Pretzel Logic album, with another strong album, rich with jazz-flavored chords, Katy Lied, released in March of 1975. Though not strictly a concept album, the album sounds musically unified and could be considered a song cycle of sorts, justifying the term “lied”, a German term applied to art songs, giving us an additional meaning underneath the mysterious reference to the “Katy tried” and “Katy lies” lyrics in the fifth and final track on the first side, “Dr. Wu.”
With his ninth studio album, released March 7, 1975, once again, Bowie takes off in another musical direction, extending the elements of soulfulness found in Diamond Dogs and in “Lady Grinning Soul” from the earlier Aladdin Sane, into an all-out exploratory, high-art treatment of American soul music. The arrangements are sophisticated, with Tony Visconti deserving similar praise as Bowie for his musical versatility and with strong contributions from Carlos Alomar and additional input from a twenty-three year-old Luthor Vandross. The strongest track, “Fame,” was initially based on an Alomar guitar riff, with John Lennon, who was visiting the New York Electric Ladyland studios, assisting David Bowie in the authoring of the song by providing his sarcastic, ironic, and pessimistic take on the vagaries of fame.
