It’s Official: Everybody Is Stressed By Election

by Katia Riddle National Public Radio    Seven out of 10 adults in the U.S. say the future of the nation is a significant source of stress. The concern crosses party lines.    Every year the American Psychological Association takes a look at the leading causes of stress in the U.S., and publishes an annual report. …

Violence-Ready Militia Hiding In Plain Sight

by Tim Dickinson Rolling Stone    There’s a new power player on America’s extremist scene. White nationalist “Active Clubs” are growing explosively, and filling a void created by the prosecutions that decimated the leadership of oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.    “The Active Clubs are who the Proud Boys thought they were,” says Jon Lewis, …

Racist Oklahoma Officials Caught On Tape

by Corky Siemaszko NBC News    (McCurtain County is in the Southeast corner of Oklahoma, bordering Texas and Arkansas.)      The governor of Oklahoma has called for the resignations of the sheriff and other top officials in a rural county after they were recorded talking about “beating, killing and burying” a father/son team of local …

OKC Bombing “Surreal” 28 Years Later

by Kevin Burton    A bomb blast that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City 28 years ago today, reverberates still.    My wife Jeannette worked at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building for the department of Housing and Urban Development for 5½ years from 1983 to 1989.  Six years after she relocated to Wichita, that …

Any Day, Anytime, Anyplace

by Kevin Burton    You pays your money, you takes your chances.    If we’re being honest, is that not a suitable tagline for the post-national United States?    Isn’t that phrase a lot more indicative of the American experience than say “land of the free, home of the brave?”    Now that phrase is …

A 1972 One-Hit, One-Rhyme Wonder

by Kevin Burton    Because mine is a songwriter’s household we have “what rhymes with’ as one of our buzzwords.   Buzzphrases I guess that should be.    Example: My granddaughter Willow is spoiled.  So it’s “Oh my goodness can’t believe how spoiled she is…what rhymes with spoiled?”    “Coiled, boiled, foiled..” and so on.  Got …