With Scottish, English and Irish blood in me - you'd think I'd be a regular tea drinker. Nope. Just once. Age three. DISGUSTING! I look at my great-grandmother's tea set the way most look at a toxic waste dump.

America was founded with the "ideal" of free, universal public education. But. Responsibility for fulfilling that ideal has been a local matter - usually through some version of “home rule”. Maybe. What’s good for a state? Is good for the republic?

Our fate was sealed the moment we wiggled ashore. Did we deserve it? In a word - yes. And. I’ve made peace with that. Let’s hope in a billion years our fossils serve as a warning for the next species to give it a try.

Corruption? I know a thing. Or three. A lesson from history. The 1900 "re-election" for President McKinley was a massive conspiracy between Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller to bury trust-busting Teddy's ambitions – in what-was-then a political career's dead-end. A man, a plan, Denali ... HaHaHa.