• Wow! Network news broadcasts really suck!

    I hate network news. The reporting is shallow. The “alleged journalists” focus on the trite instead of the important. And it’s amazing that anchors make a fortune being so bad at what they do. Look up the most popular program, and Fox News has the highest rating of all the shows. Watch the cable news…


  • Let’s look at bad newsletters

    Our locally misguided newspaper, the Courier Journal, distributed this newsletter this morning about one of the most important annual events in Kentucky politics. Can you spot what’s missing? Read in browserOn Kentucky PoliticsThu Aug 6 2026 Lucas Aulbach |  Chief Politics Reporter@LucasAulbach Let’s talk about Fancy FarmGet a little extra coffee, because Fancy Farm (and other Kentucky political…


  • The Bluegrass Blues Podcast: Episode 30

    Visiting our neighbor to the North. Where is our senior senator, and what are our government officials doing while we have limited representation? Was our MAGA U.S. Senate candidate behind a controversial billboard? The curse of Louisville’s “Can Opener.” The rise against data centers. And superheroes are just as depressed as the rest of us. …


  • Schrödinger’s senator

    Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s senior U.S. senator, is dead and alive at the same time, but: 2. The political columnist at our local rag has declared, “There’s nothing to see here! Move along!” This happened days after that same columnist wrote about what a scumbag Mitch has been. 3. MAGA mutants, like the ones in the…


  • I smell a ratfuck

    Ratfucking is an American slang term for behind the scenes (covert) political sabotage or dirty tricks, particularly pertaining to elections. It was brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men (1974), the book that chronicled their investigative reporting of the Watergate scandal.(Wikipedia) A few weeks ago, during my daily miles-long walk around my Louisville neighborhood, I came across…


  • Let’s put billionaire donations in perspective: the Ballmers

    One genre of news coverage I hate is the “generous billionaire” story. This one’s from Forbes: After an exceptionally tough year for public media, Connie Ballmer, billionaire philanthropist and wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, donated $80 million to support NPR’s future.  I don’t have to read any more than this, which is cool, because I don’t have…


  • The Bluegrass Blues Podcast: Episode 28

    Our primary election “autopsy” (GOP is evil, Dems are incompetent); a medical emergency portends sad future for Kentucky; get out and visit the state, and Shakespeare is back in Louisville (to like or not to like, with a dramatic reading from a galaxy far, far away). Attica Scott: Kentucky democrats need to reckon with a…


  • The Bluegrass Blues Podcast: Episode 27

    Election Day in Kentucky and its implications, IVF in the courts and we’re out of town at home and abroad. CORRECTION: The GOP senator who lost his primary was Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. We incorrectly said it was a North Carolina senator. In this podcast, we refer to: Republican fights to survive Trump’s wrath in…


  • The murals of Louisville

    We do a lot of walking through the streets of Louisville. As we noted in our last podcast, we also run across murals you won’t necessarily notice if you’re driving through the city, like the painting at the top of noted mid-20th century singer Rosemary Clooney, the aunt of actor George Clooney, located on a…


  • The Bluegrass Blues Podcast: Episode 25

    Self-care in trying times, the villainy of the ultrarich, Kentucky elections, national politics and why developers shouldn’t hold public office. In the podcast, we refer to: 1: Pete Hegseth, a moron, reads from the book of Samuel L. Jackson: The King James version of Ezekiel 25:17: And I will execute great vengeance upon them with…