The Daily Delaney

It seems like there are two things the Guy in the White House really enjoys: 1: Being the Guy In The White House 2:Giving speeches Now, lately, he seems to be sheltering in place in the White House, and finally taking this mess seriously. So he can't stand in front of his helicopter and shout things. That only leaves one option ... daily serious speeches from the White House. We've had two in a row and nothing controls the news cycle like a somber president talking about serious stuff... but some things never change which means it's time for ... THE DONALD TRUMP DRINKING GAME The rules are simple (of course they are) Before he gives his next speech (you know one's coming), stock up the bar, load up the coffee table and get ready for a party! When the Guy in the White House says:                                          You:        "They said "S...

...but his given name is Burt. Burton Baker Delaney. For the last 12 years, he's been my little buddy. Well, not exactly little. He stands over 13 inches tall and  he's 30 inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. In his prime he weighed about15 lbs. He's so quiet you never hear him coming. You just turn around and he's there. And if he had a voice, I swear he'd sound just like Sean Connery. But despite looking like a small panther, I've never seen him use those fangs on anyone, human or feline. I met him at a low point. I'd just lost my tiny, feral rescue, Sweetness. I was miserable. Then, one day, St. Patrick's Day to be exact, I got a text picture of a magnificent black cat in a shamrock bandana from my friend, my teacher, my vet, Dr. Karri Meleo. I wrote back "Uh, who's that?" She wrote back "His name is Burt... and he's available". So you know I hightailed up Lake City Way to her office. getting...

There are so many other things I'd like to be writing about . Star Trek : Picard... really? Wow. Alfre Woodard in Luke Cage? Get off my porch. But i've got this moron in the White House and his entire party seems to have donated it's collective spine to medical research. I mean , when Mitt Romney is the only one who stands up for open discussion of the issues and then he folds like an origami crane on a party line vote, what the hell is wrong with these people? Someone needs to stand up. For the the Separation of Powers. For the Rule of Law. For the Idea of America.

I'm sorry. I can't keep up with this stuff anymore. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pulled the ripcord today (  https://crooksandliars.com/2019/04/breaking-news-dhs-secretary-kirstjen  ) and bailed out after a very short tenure, during which time she took a lot of heat for being the face of the Trump administration's border control policies. Stuff like family separations where children got lost in the system because no one bothered to make a connection between them and their parents who were either on their way home or to prison. Thousands of children separated from their families because the administration jumped into a policy with both feet before anyone thought through the implications or the simple logistics of it (sorry, the logistics were anything but simple). Unfortunately, the President stacked the deck in his favor, by either replacing his administrators with yes men and women, or not replacing them at all, adding more stress to a system that did...

Oh, this week... with everything else going on, did we have to lose this guy? Say what you will about all the convoluted history of Marvel Comics, and who did what, and what got "lost"(stolen) from people like Jack Kirby and others, there was never a better spokesman for the comics community than Stan Lee. Yes, he had a hand in creating some of the most iconic and enduring characters in popular fiction (that's what comic books are , by the way. You don't need to be three hundred pages by Philip Roth to be literature... you just need someone to actually read you. And, boy, did we read his stuff over the last forty-something years). He created superhuman characters that were sometimes all too human. A Spiderman who could save the city but had trouble paying his rent. An Iron Man who was as addicted to booze as he was to heroism. A Mister Fantastic who could solve any problem on a chalkboard but had trouble figuring out the heart of an Invisible Woman. A big, rock en...

It was a year ago today that the world lost my friend, student, training partner and, yes, teacher, Anwar Leonard. I had no idea that much time had passed. I think of him often and I feel his absence constantly so in a sense, that moment of loss is still present and ongoing.  It hit hard a couple of weeks ago when the news broke that Chris Cornell had taken his own life in Detroit. It wasn't so painful just because he was famous. It was painful because I am close to people who were close to him. One of the DJ's on KEXP that day described Seattle as not so much a small city as a big neighborhood and it's hard to go far without running into someone who has a great memory or story about Chris. That was so true about Anwar. His family took a couple of weeks to process as well as they could the loss of their son and then put one foot in front of the other and arranged a memorial. For the friends mostly... we needed to remember him out loud and we needed to let them know h...