Hoorah for the fun

 I wish I had something to contribute to the five million additional words that will be added to the JFK assassination archive today, but my memories are the same as everyone else's -- chiefly the discovery that television could go four days without a single commercial.  The funeral procession, the riderless horse, the world leaders walking out of the church like any other Sunday parishioners -- could never happen today -- Jackie lighting the Eternal Flame, all in glorious black and white.  I was twelve.  Steve Rose in the Guardian does a good job of linking that day with our fractured, fractious present.

Life goes on.  I guess I have to watch tomorrow's Macy's parade now that the Moms for Liberty have proclaimed it "a nonbinary and transgender extravaganza."  They don't consider this a good thing.  Just watching LGBTQ performers outdoors and from a distance can apparently "groom" children to demand gender therapy and Cher's early albums for Christmas, which they will suddenly start calling "the holidays."  The thing is, I don't like parades, I don't like big dumb balloons and I never had a good time at Macy's.  Once a year I guess I can take one for the team.

The employees at Macy's stores in Washington state don't like it either, and four hundred of them plan to strike on the sacred retailing holiday of Black Friday unless they get a new union contract.  A spokeswoman said, "Macy's CEO gets $11 million per year while a lot of his workers rely on food banks, and some can't even afford to see doctors because of the low wages and the expensive health care."  Minimum wage in Washington rises to $16.28 an hour in January.  Macy's profits amount to at least a billion dollars a year.  Employees at the New York store are expected to work the parade for free. It's considered a privilege to lug Bullwinkle down Broadway in a high wind.

Things are tough all over.  On HBO's Real Sports Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, said that he was stopped for DUI in 2014 (he pleaded guilty) because "I am prejudiced against because I'm a rich white billionaire.  If I'm the average guy down the block they're not pulling me in, of course not."   And what is the Southern Poverty Law Center doing to address bias against rich billionaires?  Not enough.  

The St. Charles County (Missouri) library system is taking a middle ground on the inflammatory question of book-banning.  They plan to remove Bang Like a Porn Star:  Sex Tips from the Pros from the shelves but only after it has been read by the twenty people on the waiting list as of yesterday.  Their CEO says it was purchased five years ago because "it was the only item readily available at the time about sexuality and sexual health for gay men."  So much for the excuse of wanting to "protect the children" by gutting school libraries, where this book certainly was not.

If all goes well we can expect a four-day cease-fire in Gaza tomorrow morning, followed by the exchange of fifty Hamas hostages for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.  (In 2011 Israel freed 1,027 prisoners for Gilad Shalit, a single IDF soldier.)  Israel promises to extend the cease-fire by a day for each ten additional hostages released.

Gun control:  Have we turned a corner?  Connor Sturgeon killed five people at a Louisville bank in April to call attention to gun laws he considered too lax.  "These people did not deserve to die, but because I was depressed and able to buy [guns], they are gone.  Perhaps this is the impact for change -- upper class white people dying," he wrote a week before the shooting.  Or maybe take your Prozac and join the Brady Campaign or the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.  Run for office.  Talk to David Hogg.  You didn't think this through, Connor.

Not content with threatening a lawsuit against Media Matters for writing about the increasingly noisy antisemitism of Xitter, the Musk has decided to link MM founder David Brock to "Pizzagate," the bonkers conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton and pedophilia in the non-existent basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington.  Before he saw the light, Brock was a right-wing journalist who wrote the hit job The Real Anita Hill after Professor Hill tried to warn us about the character of Clarence Thomas.  He also promoted the story about Arkansas state troopers providing women for Governor Bill Clinton.  What goes around...

I may take tomorrow off.  I haven't decided.  Enjoy whatever you enjoy and be glad you're not Pete Buttigieg, who is about to be blamed for the weather, the cancelled flights, and the airports and train stations made extra jittery by the Buffalo bombing.  Eat too much -- it's the American way.

A car bomb exploded today at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing between the US and Canada.  All four crossings are currently closed.  No idea what's going on.