Poor Mitch. It must be tough being the self-described grim reaper of the U.S. Senate. The ruler who, with a slash of his scythe, can deliver death to gun control, secure elections, criminal justice, Medicare for All and Green New Deal. Under Senate rules, he has sole discretion over of what comes before that body.

As the longest serving Senate Majority Leader in history, Mitch McConnell is one savvy politico. He has a reputation for pissing off both friends and foes, progressives and conservatives. A recent poll found him with an approval rating of just 36 percent in his home state of Kentucky. His prime motivator is said to be “electoral self-preservation … with no clear purpose.” In other words, it’s first about power, then about reelection.

You’d think this powerful politician would cheer the drug war rant and pander to prohibition. After all, a raft of reefer madness machinations kept cannabis off the Republican Party platform in 2016. Surprisingly, the opposite is true.

Artists Rise Up Los Angeles returned to the stage on August 27 at The Federal NoHo in order to raise consciousness and cash for a cause. The live performance also raised lots of laughter, as the show was co-presented by Minority Reportz, a comedy “consortium” that highlights mostly non-white, female comics who are often underrepresented by the “mainstream” comedy club scene.

ARULA founding executive producer and artistic director Sue Hamilton kicked off the fun- and fundraiser, taking the mic on the stage of the upstairs space within the North Hollywood eatery and nightclub to welcome the capacity crowd and introduce speakers and entertainers. The day after 2016’s presidential election, Hamilton, an L.A. theater director and acting teacher, resolved to “take our emotions and our art and put it onstage and to give the proceeds to” progressive groups. By January 31, 2017, ARULA was on the boards, raising hell and money.

TEGNA has taken over WBNS-TV from the Wolfe family. Get ready for big heads to roll.

Jerry Revish, the premier TV news anchor in the Columbus market, already announced his impending retirement.

TEGNA paid more than half a billion dollars for Channel 10, its two sister sports-talk radio stations and a TV station in Indianapolis.

The third largest television chain in the country did not get big by being sentimental toward its employees, like the Wolfe family was. It will relentlessly increase revenue and cut costs.

Several major air personalities are likely to depart because they do not fit in with TEGNA's hard-hitting investigative journalism and aggressive promotion of dynamic on-air personalities.

Yolanda Jackson, Revish's co-anchor, never really fit in at Channel 10 and likely will be let go. Jackson's peppy, tabloid style that led her to prominence at Channel 6 and fit that station's audience, but it turned off Channel 10's more refined viewers.

Scott Light, whose anchoring and Sunday public affairs work might be described as light weight, probably will not be around much longer.

Citizens Rally Over Offsite Contamination at the Portsmouth Nuclear Site

As schools start up across the nation, the Zahn’s Corners Middle School in Piketon, Ohio, remains closed. The reason? Neptunium, a highly radioactive element, was found by a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) air monitor outside the building. Not in a current broadcast, mind you, but hidden in a 2017 DOE report that was made public in January of 2019.

Dr. Michael Ketterer, an expert on radioactive isotopes who happened to be in Ohio in April, took samples from the school and from local streams and attics. His testing found unmistakable evidence of radioactive contamination coming from the Portsmouth Nuclear Site nearby – a 4,000-acre site that once housed a massive uranium enrichment operation. The site name of Portsmouth a misnomer, as it is actually just outside Piketon.

Two titans of rock face off these days with recent albums: Akron, Ohio's Black Keys and Detroit's Jack White and his mostly Cincinnati-based Raconteurs.

Gotta love that Ohio connection. Not only did Ohio generals win the Civil War, but most of the farm-boy regiments Sherman used to make Georgia howl were from Ohio (and Indiana).

We're as tough as turkey buzzards.

(By the way, I saw one strutting down West 1st Avenue in Grandview the other day, having pecked at some grisly pile of fur and guts in the road. Thing really did look like a big fat turkey. Its wingspread was enormous, taking off like a B-52.)

The two unequally fine albums make for a helluva death match. Let's get after it.

Their rock this time out is '70s heavy both in energy as well as nuanced period-piece production. Want a little AC/DC, Queen, ELO and even Stealers Wheel with your modern rock? Jack and Dan reach deep into their magic trick bags and the mix of styles are dang good for the most part and at times even colossal.