April 2025 – education and deconstruction.com

Fifty Ways to Make You Suffer – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

It’s business as usual in TrumpWorld, with numerous ongoing legal battles, factional infighting, turnover of personnel, and financial markets in turmoil. Trump revels in his power to cause all this chaos. Occasionally, there is a big announcement of good news timed for maximum ratings and distraction (from the fact that the president is senile, and from really serious political issues), that gets analyzed to death. There might even be some later this week, as the religious holidays are over, and May is a “sweep” month. But today, we suffer.

FIFTY WAYS TO MAKE YOU SUFFER

sung to the tune of “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” with apologies to Paul Simon and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s a dictator whose likeness has been evolving for centuries.
He’s given his name undying fame in posterity.
He hinders you in your struggle to be free.

He’s got fifty ways to make you suffer.

It’s really his habit to be unsavory.
Fox’s overpaid noisemakers are beholden to his slavery.
His crimes feed on themselves with no risk, no wavering. He gets off scot-free.

Fifty ways to make you suffer. Fifty ways to make you suffer.

Supreme Court he did pack, Jack.
Imposed the GOP’s plan, Stan.
The world’s his toy, Roy.
No one gets themselves free.

His mouthpieces convey his fuss, Gus.
His undue influence is too much.
But his senility is key, Lee.
From his grip, we’ll soon be free.

Supreme Court he did pack, Jack.
Imposed the GOP’s plan, Stan.
The world’s his toy, Roy.
Shame on GOP.

His mouthpieces convey his fuss, Gus.
His undue influence is too much.
But his senility is key, Lee.
From his grip, we’ll soon be free.

Talking heads teasing you again and again.
Ignoring the mean phonies, will help you keep your head.
Though it is excruciating,
the way Trump’s act, is tolerated fifty ways.

GOP sends its claques, flacks, and sycophants with quips.
Reagan’s Morning in America to Bush’s Read My Lips.
Then MAGA dissed it.
With a boatload of ugly clips.

He’s got fifty ways to make you suffer. Fifty ways to make you suffer.

Supreme Court he did pack, Jack.
Imposed the GOP’s plan, Stan.
The world’s his toy, Roy.
No one gets themselves free.

His mouthpieces convey his fuss, Gus.
His undue influence is too much.
But his senility is key, Lee.
From his grip, we’ll soon be free.

Supreme Court he did pack, Jack.
Imposed the GOP’s plan, Stan.
The world’s his toy, Roy.
Shame on GOP.

His mouthpieces convey his fuss, Gus.
His undue influence is too much.
But his senility is key, Lee.
From his grip, we’ll soon be free.

No Way But to Fight

The Book of the Week is “No Way But to Fight, George Foreman and the Business of Boxing” by Andrew R.M. Smith, published in 2020.

Born in 1949 in the Houston, Texas area, Foreman grew up in poverty in a large family. His future looked dim, as his schooling had been scant and his leisure activity had consisted of mugging people on the streets in the middle of the night.

Beginning in the mid-1960’s, president LBJ’s federal job-training program, called the Job Corps, arguably saved Foreman’s life. Various mentors who had acquired diverse life experiences- military veterans, counselors, coaches and teachers– supervised about two thousand troubled teens. Foreman learned about boxing, and won the first tournament he fought, in January 1967.

Foreman’s coach got him excused from the military draft for an undisclosed reason. As is well known, rival boxer Muhammad Ali became religious and resisted the draft. Through the decades, compulsory military service hindered plenty of careers of professional athletes, but they (Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Louis and Roger Staubach, to name four) didn’t make a public issue of it. The government wanted to punish Ali on behalf of those athletes– regardless of his ethnicity– because it was unfair to them, that Ali could continue to develop his career while their lives were disrupted or put at risk.

Ali obviously turned this into a civil rights issue, but other people considered him to be “cheating” as he was getting an unfair advantage over his competition. It is interesting to see how, through the decades, the conversation has shifted on how some Americans define “cheating” in professional sports.

Performance-enhancing drugs (regulated in international competitions but not terribly strictly in American professional sports) have quietly disappeared from the discussion in the United States, as a million conspirators have pushed gender-issues to the forefront– as the next form of cheating. That just shows how easily human beings can be brainwashed by propaganda!

Anyway, yet another turning point in Foreman’s career, occurred at the dawn of the 1970’s, when he met Dick Sadler. The boxing promoter was a rare bird– did business on a handshake and wasn’t as greedy as his competition.

Boxing through the 1970’s was a complicated business, considering all the stakeholders involved: the fighters themselves, their entourages, event-venues, event-broadcasting outlets, the various professional groups that organized the matches, and the political entities that regulated and taxed the aforementioned.

In the early years of his career as an amateur, Foreman was criticized for choosing to fight easy opponents. In March 1974, he was also labeled unpatriotic for scheduling a match outside the United States (in Venezuela), even after his tax-avoidance and financial-related divorce troubles had ended. The international media stories arising from that fight, smacked of the poor diplomatic relationship between America and Venezuela (for oil-related reasons).

Read the book to learn much more about the boxers of Foreman’s generation who began their careers in the 1960’s, the history of the industry through the 1990’s, and Foreman’s careers.

Retaliation – BONUS POST

Here’s a little song about what’s going on in the Trump camp.

RETALIATION

sung to the tune of “Fascination” with apologies to the Human League and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Impeachment a third TIME is needed. Arguments already made.
The plans of evil billionaires are heeded.
A powerless Vance, is dismayed.
Just looking to get rid of elections, in a modern, oppressive way.
The culmination of all-powerful connections, for profit and for play.

And so the opposition burns, and Trump’s enemies fall down.
And the propaganda churns, eveRY day.

Keep seeding retaliation, lashing-out, spinning, distractions all along.
Keep seeding retaliation, stiffing, menacing, moving on.

Well, truth has disappeared in the telling.
The story is so old.
And a golfing, senile Trump is raging.
Democracy’s on hold.

And so the opposition burns, and Trump’s enemies fall down.
And the propaganda churns, eveRY day.

Keep seeding retaliation, lashing-out, spinning, distractions all along.
Keep seeding retaliation, stiffing, menacing, moving on.

And so the opposition burns, and Trump’s enemies fall down.
And the propaganda churns, eveRY day.

Keep seeding retaliation, lashing-out, spinning, distractions all along.
Keep seeding retaliation, stiffing, menacing, moving on.

Keep seeding retaliation, lashing-out, spinning, distractions all along.
Keep seeding retaliation, stiffing, menacing, moving on…

Blind Spots

“The media clapped like seals congratulating the researchers. Reporters amplified the study’s conclusion, even thought they hadn’t yet seen the actual data… the media promoted whatever health authorities said, rarely challenging them or publishing quotes from dissenting experts.”

For decades now, such are the sound bites emanating from communications sources, telling people about alleged medical-research results or medical recommendations; information that is distorted at best, and is even harmful to the population.

The Book of the Week is “Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What it Means for Our Health” by Marty Makary, MD, published in 2024. This slightly sloppily edited volume contained anecdotes of wrongheaded messaging of medical “experts” that resulted in numerous needless deaths and ruined lives. Not to mention lawsuits.

In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) told Americans that an infant should not be fed any peanut butter or products with any peanuts– as the child would develop a peanut allergy. The AAP should have made the opposite recommendation, as their reasoning was backwards.

Makary saw that the AAP’s board of messengers were mostly dieticians and had little or no immunology knowledge! For fifteen years, many pediatricians blindly obeyed the AAP, and told their patients to avoid peanuts. Those patients developed extreme (life-threatening) peanut allergies that had to be treated with exorbitantly priced EpiPens. The experts with whom Makary spoke– who claimed to know what caused a peanut allergy, were later promoted and got awards in their respective careers.

The above happens frequently in the medical industry. For decades, arrogant medical authorities also told people that opioids aren’t addictive. To combat a myth such as this, the author and his colleagues started a website, “Sensible Medicine” but a drawback is that one of the types of people (a closed-minded, cocky medical professional) who could benefit from the site, won’t read it!

The author wrote that Big Pharma shies away from funding research that doesn’t involve intellectual property from which it can make big bucks. Thus, funding was stopped for a non-mRNA technology flu vaccine (one covering many flu strains)– because it wouldn’t have to be administered annually, and wouldn’t pay royalties to anyone.

Meanwhile, the media continue to spout their staged and scripted reality shows of political soap-operas whose issues affect a tiny percentage of ordinary Americans, while America’s broken healthcare system continues to cause the deaths of, and bankrupt numerous people every day.

Read the book to learn of many more healthcare abominations borne of greed, and dogma, and how healthy skepticism is a good thing.

Criminality – BONUS POST

It is interesting to note that the late president Richard Nixon has extremely few, if any entities (such as roadways, bridges, dams, tunnels, buildings, schools or research institutions) named after him. It appears that by imposing revenge-tariffs, Donald Trump is striving to be the anti-Richard-Nixon– trying to escape criminality-comparisons so that he won’t suffer the same fate.

Two differences between Nixon and Trump include: In 1972, Nixon initiated trade with China, and he was a heavy drinker. Trump revels in his absolute power to wreak havoc on the world’s financial markets! Don’t worry, there won’t be a Great Depression, because nowadays, America has insurance of financial institutions, and bailouts.

Nevertheless, speaking of criminality, here’s a list of presidents on whose ultimate authority rested,

post-WWII wrongdoing– NOT unethical behavior, but explicit law-breaking and crimes against humanity, which consists mostly of Cold War / CIA shenanigans, blood-for-oil, or both, secret weapons-research, war-related crimes (genocide and atrocities, in terms of deaths, destruction and devastation), which shall hereinafter be referred to as “classified crimes” if they have yet to be declassified; and other kinds of crimes, from MOST to LEAST [president: kinds of crimes]:

1) Nixon: war, political/election, financial
2) George W. Bush: classified, political/election, financial, treasonous (draft dodger)
3) LBJ: war, political
4) Truman: war– BUT arguably ended WWII sooner than otherwise via nuclear weapons, thus limiting the deaths and devastation; however, arguably unnecessarily wasted lives in Korea.

Due to lack of data on classified crimes, the rest of this list is debatable; plus, it is difficult, if not impossible to determine the number of deaths and amount of destruction and devastation DIRECTLY caused by all the other kinds of crimes. It stands to reason that the shorter a president’s time in office, the less likely he was to order the committing of classified crimes.

5: Reagan: war, treasonous, political
6: Eisenhower: war– at minimum, regime changes in Guatemala and other countries
7: Trump: classified, political/election (impeached twice), financial (adjudged guilty of 34 felony counts), more-likely-than-not sex crimes, treasonous (draft dodger)
8: George H.W. Bush: war
9: Bill Clinton: classified, treasonous (draft dodger and lied under oath about adultery), more-likely-than-not sex crimes
10: Barack Obama: classified, born in Hawaii and became president (but adjudged not guilty)
11: JFK: war
12: Biden: classified
13: Ford: war
14: Carter: ?

As can be seen, the above consists of seven Republicans and seven Democrats. Nonetheless, if one adds up the numbers of the rankings for each party (with the LOWER total signifying a HIGHER level of criminality) the Republicans total 42; the Democrats, 63. Hmm.

Anyway, now here’s a little ditty about the latest law-breaker in the White House.

ALWAYS UNWORTHY

sung to the tune of “She’s Always A Woman” with apologies to Billy Joel and to whomever else the rights may concern; Trump is unworthy of the temper tantrums, hissy fits and conniptions thrown by anyone who is wasting their time on him; this includes everyone who pays attention to him.

He rewrites history.
He inherited his rise.
He’s ruined-America’s fate with his countless lies.
He’s mesmerized his base with his demagoguery.
He behaves like a child,
and he’s always unworthy to me.

He thinks he’s tough.
In a second he’ll betray you.
His billionaires snoop while his media deceives.
His victims all quiver and he keeps criminals free.
Yeah, he’s caused so much grief, and he’s always unworthy to me.

Oh, he thinks only of himself.
He gets what he wants.
He’s led a life of crime.

Oh, history has borne out:
The best liars win.
We’ll reverse course in time.

He’ll promise from his actions you’ll get rich quick.
Then he’ll take away the carrot and give you the stick.
And he’ll hire loyalty over competence, ev’ry time.
He blames everyone else when his messes are all on your dime.

Oh, he thinks only of himself.
He gets what he wants.
He’s led a life of crime.

Oh, history has borne out:
The best liars win.
We’ll reverse course in time.

Oh, he’s losing his mind.
To his wannabes, he’s cool.
They’re eager to please him.
They’re all his fools.
And he can’t be convicted, he’s bought his degree.

And the most he will do is throw riches to his crew,
and he’s always unworthy to me.

No Better Time

The Book of the Week is “No Better Time– The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet” by Molly Knight Raskin, published in 2013. This short, slightly sloppily edited volume whose title exaggerates, described the brief life of a dot-com startup genius.

Danny Lewin was born in May 1970 in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. His family moved to Israel when he was fourteen. He enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, and then he moved back to the United States to attend school at MIT.

While in school, with a friend, Lewin helped develop a technological innovation within the big-picture innovation of the whole Internet. Initially, his dot-com business, named Akamai Technologies, provided the service of preventing of the crashing of the browser when: a video went viral or a website got overwhelmed with traffic, or a denial-of-service attack was launched against a website. Through algorithms, obviously, eventually, computer scientists discovered the required optimal number of servers communicating among themselves to maximize computing power to minimize latency and downtime.

In the second half of the 1990’s, worldwide usage of the Internet, a decentralized network of potentially infinite networks, was in its infancy. This meant, for ordinary users, downloading of data was extremely slow. Impatience was growing in leaps and bounds as time-saving devices (like office software) were, too; resulting in “irrational exuberance” over securities sold to the public that funded dot-com startups. The likely reason Akamai still exists today while so many other tech startups failed, is that there was an actual, valuable service behind it!

By spring 2000, after receiving ginormous funding from its IPO, Akamai’s customers’ servers collectively numbered more than 2,750 in more than one hundred fifty networks in forty-five nations. At the book’s writing, Akamai controlled between fifteen and thirty percent of the world’s Internet traffic.

Read the book to learn much more about Lewin, the people who helped him, and his startup.