(NUNAL) (EYEBALL)

There is no shortage of excellent anti-Trump columns. They are especially useful when you can give them to someone who is still clueless about the threat Trump poses to our culture and political system (yes, some of those people are still around in surprisingly and depressingly large numbers).  T his one by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar  should be read and widely shared.

In the hearings today about Wells Fargo's fraud , she proves her fearlessness, mettle, and morality: "During the hearing, senator after senator expressed astonishment that the creation of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts by Wells Fargo employees could have gone on for so long without more assertive action by senior management. But Warren turned that line of questioning personal, suggesting the "cross-selling" strategy that prompted some employees to make the phony accounts enriched Stumpf's own stock portfolio. "While this scam was going on, you personally held an average of 6.75 million shares of Wells Fargo stock," Warren said. "The share price during this time went up by about $30, which comes out to more than $200 million in gains, all for you personally," Warren said. Warren's plain-language questions, context-setting remarks and call for tough penalties show why she has become such a feared figure among Wall Street ...

This weekend I was really happy to be invited to be part of the 3rd Annual Appalachian Food Summit in Berea, Kentucky, put on by  Grow Appalachia .  The whole program was very interesting . The AFS is a young and growing organization dedicated to sustainable food traditions in Appalachia, and it draws a very diverse group of academics, activists, organizers, farmers, and others. I talked about tacos in globalized and Latinized Appalachia. It's is a topic about which I am passionate, as you might guess, especially since it connects many of the areas of my research with a very basic love of tacos. And a research project for which I really sacrificed for by driving 1500 miles through Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina seeking out (and eating) the very best tacos available. The winner on this leg of the taco accounting in the mountains are these fine tacos from a taco truck in Toast, North Carolina My plan someday is to right the definitive guide to the...

Worthwhile article pointing out the numerous ways that Trump's outrageousness serves to insulate him from any rational or normal standard of accountability: Matthew Yglesias , Donald Trump gave an interview this morning that should be shocking — but we’re numb"A few observations about all this: "In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhand racist remark about a sitting US senator would be a big news story. In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhanded lie about the state of his personal finances would be a big news story. To be totally honest, even in a normal election cycle a candidate exhibiting total confusion about the mechanics and merits of monetary policy probably wouldn’t be that big of a news story but it would at least get some attention. Seriously. Stop. Take a breath. Now imagine if Mitt Romney had run exactly Mitt Romney’s campaign but then suddenly in mid-September went on television and called Elizabeth Warren Pocahont...

I was very happy to welcome Juan Tejeda to campus this week for a couple of presentations, which combined a lecture about the global situatedness of conjunto music and performance of a variety of styles on the button accordion. Juan is a professor and founder of the Mexican-American Studies program at Palo Alto College, the founder of the Tejano Conjunto festival en San Antonio 35 years ago, which is the largest and most significant festival for conjunto, and the author of Puro Conjunto .  Most of all, Juan is a force of change, inspiration, and leadership in conjunto culture and Chicano political action in Texas. I've written about Juan in some detail in my article “Voz de Pueblo Chicano: Sustainability, Teaching, and Intangible Cultural Transfer in Conjunto Music,” in the Journal of American Culture,  2011. His work and vision and his festival are a major focus of my book project on sustainability theory as applied to conjunto music and culture in Texas, which is...

Samantha Bee might be the only person who can save America. Or at least the best to lead the charge. We have had two guest lecturers to the school in the past two weeks, and both have toed the same line of "there is a choice, you have to make it." When, in fact, there is no choice whatsoever.

We are going to see a lot more of this, I am sure. ‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes