The Blaisdell Blog

They may be firing up that Zamboni machine in Hell, but Trump has done something I agree with.  He is telling people to get off of disability.  Here is why I agree with him.        Omar Gonzalez had spent the last year telling friends that the government was trying to spy on him.   He was sure people were trying to break into his home.   He put his cell phone in a microwave.   Gonzalez would have been just one more increasingly crazy street person, until September 19 , 2014 when he decided he had to tell President Obama that the atmosphere was collapsing.   At that point, Omar became the luckiest man in America.   I can imagine no other explanation for why he is not dead.   Mr. Gonzalez, armed with a knife, leaped over the fence at the White House.   Despite the presence of Secret Service personnel, trained guard dogs, locks, barriers, and snipers all evidently on stand down because—well—force is so…so…Republ...

Since professional football is heating up with its predictable "protest" drama, I thought I would shed a little light (complete with numbers from the justice department) on what these divas are not talking about.  This is a repeat of a column I wrote when Kaepernick first reared his cowardly head.      When asked why he decided to remain seated for the national anthem, San Francisco’s resident baby said "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.   To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."             Well, he certainly isn’t wrong about that.   While I could go to Chicago for a set of crime statistics that would drop your teeth, I thought I would, instead, go to Kaepernick’s b...

My husband is giving birth.   It has been a long gestation and a hard labor.     I remind him to breath and there is the constant “push, push, push…” of buttons on the computer.   I bring him ice chips (bathed in bourbon) to keep up his strength but we are both tiring.   The cursing and cries of despair are more than I can take.   I am just hoping for his water to break and the inevitable crowning that will mark the beginning of the end.   It should be soon.   I can’t take much more.   He can’t take much more.   This eclipse can’t get here too soon.   Tom has planned on viewing this eclipse for the quarter century I have known him.   He is an amateur astronomer and this is the eclipse always knew we could share with family and friends.   This is the big one. Fourteen states will be on the line of totality for this eclipse.   Indeed, no one in North America will be left out.   If you are in Inuvik, in t...