Losing My Perspicacity, July 21, 2025

Good morning and Happy Monday! Thanks for being here today.

Let me start with a huge “thank you” for hanging in there with me all last week while I was violently ill and bargaining with God for some relief. Happy to report that I am now on the road to recovery and will likely become a germophobe in the hopes of avoiding ever being that sick again.

During the few moments that I came up for air last week, I saw that Dave Portnoy secured a huge deal with FOX Sports, Shane Gillis hosted the ESPYs, and Pat McAfee screamed in everyone’s faces ahead of the Home Run Derby. All that was missing was the return of The Man Show, and you could have convinced me that #MeToo and the last 20 years never happened. I’m surprised we didn’t get an R Kelly performance at halftime of the WNBA All-Star Game.

Everything “aimed at young men” is new again! Ugh.

I’ve been dipping in and out of the Trump-Epstein drama these past few weeks, because, as I’ve said before, we’ve known all of this about Trump for (clap) years (clap). What’s really devastating about the allegations is how little they mattered before the election. Twenty-seven women accused Donald Trump of some form of sexual misconduct. E. Jean Carroll successfully sued Trump for sexual abuse. Miss Universe contestants spoke about his predatory behavior around young women. His first wife accused him of rape in sworn court testimony. None of this was a secret.

Yet while women did their best to keep those stories about Trump front and center, the media moved on, to report on Joe Biden’s verbal slip-ups, the cost of Kamala Harris’ suits, Tim Walz’s “stolen valor.” None of those things ever held a candle to the bonfire of sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump, every single one of which was disqualifying for a man seeking the highest office in the country. If you want to know what “rape culture” looks like, it looks like that.

Now — with our democracy teetering on the edge of the proverbial cliff, Americans being disappeared off the streets, our allies gone, and the economy potentially headed for disaster — now the media wants to talk about Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s penchant for harming vulnerable women. I suppose it’s too simplistic to point out the amount of human suffering that could have been avoided, in the US and around the world, if the media and American electorate had just believed women in the first place. Or even seen rape as something that disqualifies a man for political office.

I’m not sure what kind of motivation went into not covering the allegations of Trump’s abuse of women 24/7 in the halls of the media elite, but wow, who could have predicted that a man who doesn’t care about things like consent and boundaries and the humanity of fifty percent of the population would turn out to be a cruel despot hellbent on turning America into the worst version of itself? I, too, am shocked.

This is precisely why I’m always yelling about sexual assault and domestic violence in sports. This stuff matters. There is a direct line between violence against women and cruelty on a grand scale, as nearly every mass shooter has proven.

Do you know who else has been accused of, at best, turning a blind eye to the suffering of women, and at worst, directly ordering it? Vladimir Putin. Josef Stalin. The Nazi regime. The Khmer Rouge. Slobodan Milosevic. Idi Amin. Augosto Pinochet. The list goes on and on, and women always get the worst end of evil men. Anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of fascism and world events knows this, and the media’s failure to make the connection is one that we’ll be explaining to our great-grandchildren someday.

I was watching the Poop Cruise documentary on Netflix this weekend — if you haven’t seen it, run, do not walk, to do so — and a not insignificant part of the tale is how CNN, needing a ratings bump and having a new president who needed to prove himself, went all-in on the Poop Cruise, covering it wall-to-wall, 24 hours a day, because they wanted to. One of the anchors discussed how they racked their brains to come up with new angles for the Poop Cruise and new analysts to weigh in on the Poop Cruise. Why do we see such dedication to a story about the Poop Cruise (as undeniably amazing as it was) and not a presidential candidate’s dozens of allegations of sexually abusing women? That’s a question the media elite need to look in the mirror and ask themselves. I’m certain history will.

So while the right wraps their head around the fact that they voted for a sex predator, tens of thousands of immigrant families have been torn apart, America has been complicit in human rights abuses at the hands of foreign nations, the Department of Justice has been turned into Trump’s vendetta machine, billions in funding have been taken away for crucial scientific research, women have lost their reproductive freedom, and countless other atrocities have taken place.

Gosh, if only we had listened to women.

Today: How cruel can America get? Journalist Mario Guevara is still fighting ICE; WNBA players hit the bargaining table; and The High Note.

Here we go.

Can America sink any lower?

They say that you can tell a lot about a country’s soul by the way it treats its animals. Clearly, that barometer assumes that a country is doing a pretty good job with children, adults, and the elderly, which is not exactly the US’s strong suit right now, so we won’t even get to the animal assessment.

The US is set to incinerate enough food to feed 30,000 starving children. That’s because it sat in a warehouse while Elon Musk and DOGE dismantled USAID. The food is now about to expire and will be burned.

That food cost taxpayers $800,000 to buy, and will cost $130,000 to burn. We couldn’t even give away the food as, like, a last gasp of humanity in America? We had to just let it rot?

Here’s the kicker: While burning, the food will bear a label that says “This product is a gift from the American people.” Chef’s kiss.

Free Mario Guevara

On the day of the #NoKings march, or maybe a day or two later, I mentioned the arrest and detainment of Atlanta-area reporter Mario Guevara. Guevara has been reporting for Spanish-speaking audiences in the US for decades, and is not afraid to ask difficult questions or speak truth to power. On the day of his arrest, the police forced him back into the street, then arrested him for being in the street. Those charges have since been dropped (of course), but Guevara, who fled to the US in 2004 after threats from a left-wing paramilitary group in El Salvador, has been in ICE custody ever since.

Guevara came to the United States legally in 2004 and applied for asylum, and has had a valid work permit ever since. A GoFundMe for Guevara sought a modest $10k, which has already been surpassed, but Guevara is currently fighting deportation, and I’m sure the family needs as much help as they can get.

The WNBA at the bargaining table

Last fall, the WNBA Players Association opted out of their contract with the league, betting that the W’s skyrocketing viewership and fanbase could get them a better deal than the one they had. The league’s first collective bargaining agreement, while groundbreaking at the time, quickly seemed underwhelming given the W’s increasing popularity and star power.

This weekend, at the WNBA All-Star Game, the players wore “Pay Us What You Owe Us” shirts during warmups, and fans chanted “Pay them!” while Commissioner Cathy Engelbert spoke.

Having been on my union’s bargaining committee for two separate CBAs and more rounds of bargaining than I can count, I can assure you that it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a time when you hear, from the horse’s mouth, exactly how little your efforts mean to those who make the big bucks, and it’s not a lot of fun. It sounds like that’s the experience the WNBAPA had with the league during their latest bargaining session.

Bargaining and organizing require a significant amount of time, effort, and energy; I can only imagine how challenging it is to do while trying to lead your team to the playoffs. I’m going to try to find ways to show love to the players of the WNBA this week, and I hope others do too.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Not everything is terrible! This is a beautiful, incredible story that proves that the good guys win if they fight hard enough for long enough.

The Klamath River was dammed by Pacificorp Power Company beginning in the early 1900s, laying waste to flora, fauna, and the way of life of the indigenous people who relied on the river for its salmon run and access to fresh waterways. After decades of fighting, Native American advocacy groups won the removal of the dams in 2022. Last fall, the last dam on the Klamath River was taken down.

Here are some of those advocates watching the last of four dams come down last September:

And here are dozens of indigenous youth leading the kayak “ride out” of the Klamath River, from “source to sea” for the first time in over a century, just a few days ago.

There are some amazing stories out there about how the Klamath River is coming back to life. They’re good for your soul. There’s also some very cool video of what it looks like when you kayak on a river that’s remaking itself, linked here.

Hey, survive and advance out there today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.