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ust when you thought the pro-Democrat “Blue Wave” ignited by President Donald Trump might bring real change, including a revolution in green power, some Democrats are rallying around the suicidal, obsolete technologies of atomic power and weapons.

The most recent absurdity comes from three Ohio Congressional Dems—Tim Ryan (Youngstown), Marcy Kaptur (Toledo) and Marcia Fudge (Warrensville Heights). They can claim a radioactive soulmate in New York’s “liberal” Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Rather than embrace the renewable revolution now remaking the global energy supply and the millions of jobs key to the future of a working-class constituency, these Democrats are pursuing the GOP wet-dream of atomic energy.

In particular, the three northern Ohio Democrats want to rescue four crumbling, unprofitable, increasingly dangerous atomic reactors. And in the process, they are defending the connection between nuclear weapons and commercial reactor waste.

Hard on the heels of Rogue Machine’s winning the Best Season Ovation Awards El Niño - the indie theatre company’s first offering of 2018 - has blown into The Met. Playwright Justin Tanner’s dramedy takes place inside a Highland Park home, where 48-year-old daughter Colleen (Emmy winner Maile Flanagan) has taken up residence on her parents’ living room couch. As her mom June (stage and big and little screen actress Danielle Kennedy) and dad Harvey (theatre thesp Nick Ullett, who has performed on Broadway) try to show her the door, Colleen comes across as a Minnie quality moocher worthy of a Cab Calloway croon.

(If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, the DNR and PCA Will Have no Rational Choice Other Than

Denying PolyMet’s Permit to Build an Experimental Tailings Lagoon in Water-Rich Northern Minnesota That Will Have 250 foot High, Soluble Earthen Dam Walls)

By Gary G. Kohls, MD - March 12, 2018

For Part I, go to: http://duluthreader.com/articles/2018/03/08/12656_what_entities_are_behind_the_reckless_endangerment

How ironic that Orpheus and Eurydice, an opera about hell, has one of the most exquisite expressions of paradise ever to grace the stage. According to The Victor Book of Operas by Louis Biancolli and Robert Bagar, O&E has “the classic, serene beauty that one associates with Grecian art.” That’s largely because composer Christoph Willibald von Gluck and librettist Pierre-Louis Moline derived the storyline for their 1774 opera from the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus’ (Russian tenor Maxim Mironov) descent into the Underworld to rescue his deceased beloved, Eurydice (Louisianan soprano Lisette Oropesa) and attempt to bring her back to life. Orpheus, but of course, was the son of Apollo and Calliope, the gods of music and poetry, and a chip off the ol’ Olympian block, he was antiquity’s peerless musician.

On March 1, 2018, I was very privileged to take part in a discussion of issues of racism, freedom of speech, patriotism, and war at Saint Mary’s Hall, a private high school in San Antonio “Military City USA” Texas.

Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don’t want people to hear.

“If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war,” he said in a statement released last week, “don't wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself…. Do what Katharine Gun did.”

If you don’t know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war system.

HELP WANTED: White House Aide(s)

The most accomplished administration in presidential history (especially one that’s done more in just one year than any other president) seeks bright, articulate aides offering varied opinions and perspectives that will most likely fall on deaf ears. No political experience necessary (in fact, the more unqualified you look on paper the better).

Applicants must be willing to be subjugated by a petty, belittling, mean-spirited, abusive boss and be stripped of their self-worth, dignity and pride (did we mention the merciless bullying yet?). Ideal candidates will be highly insecure with low self-esteem and and even lower expectations. Loyalty is a must. Irrational, blind, self-destructive loyalty.

The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan “no more Pearl Harbors.”

In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there have been some major intelligence failures in the past seventy years, starting with the inability to anticipate the breakout of the Korean War and including the embrace of false intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. But the most recent failure is perhaps more consequential than either Korea or Iraq.

When I found out Sacred Fools was mounting a play about Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin I immediately set out to review The Art Couple. Not only had I read about those Post-Impressionist painters and their cohabitation together in the so-called “Studio of the South”, I’d seen this depicted in films such as Vicente Minnelli’s 1956 Lust for Life starring Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin. In 2017 AFI Fest screened Robert Altman’s 1990 Vincent & Theo, with Tim Roth as Vincent and Wladimir Yordanoff playing Gauguin. (BTW, Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for portraying Gauguin - up to that point it was the briefest onscreen appearance to strike Oscar gold.)

Here is an incomplete list of some of the culprits:

      A) Foreign Mining Corporations (PolyMet, Glencore, Twin Metals, Antofagasta, etc);