Three Sides to Every Story

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Professor Taboo

My late father, who was an agnostic humanist and very well educated in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas – Austin, used to sometimes say to me when there was a controversial narrative being told, or seen on television, heard over FM radio, or inside the theater on the silver screen, that you can’t always believe what you see or hear. His quote that always stayed with me was “Son, there are always three sides to every story, sometimes more than three.” And I have found in today’s 21^st-century hyper-overloaded American tech-media-information market, Dad’s news mantra is never more true than right now. It can be argued that it began in 2000 and has easily grown 6-fold since then.

Did you know as of May 2021 that within the U.S. out of one hundred seventy-four (174) news companies/outlets only forty-seven (47) are non-profit organizations according to Harvard University. In other words, only 27% of all U.S. news media are typically more unbiased than private For Profit news corporations that must heed to private owners’ and/or shareholders’ and a board of directors’ special interests for profits, i.e. biased. And of those 47 non-profit news organizations many of them are under the umbrella of a parent company, such as Frontline PBS under the former CPB. What does all this mean for news consumers, rural and urban viewers inside the United States?

It means most all or a very large majority of our U.S. news is driven by individual owners and boards of directors’ personal interests and/or biases. To be more candid, most all of our news we Americans consume is slanted to some degree, if not to a large degree, and the integrity of our “journalism” is often tainted, polluted, or worse, distorted. How do we avoid the modern traps of (extreme?) biasness? How can we find a more neutral source of news and information?

There are two answers: 1) consume a more varied diverse spread of news agencies, media, and outlets, then compare and contrast all of it to unravel the more objective version of a story. Yes, this is an immensely time-consuming method and every day life gets in the way of such deciphering. But the more diverse the input/output, the better. Or 2) pare down your consumption of news to only the non-profit outlets and digital media platforms. Why is number two (2) a more attractive option? Less time spent is one reason. However, below are sixty (60) reasons why to favor non-profit news outlets because of the “donations” to a political candidate or campaign by GOP-dollars versus Democratic-dollars:

Media Owners/Execs Who Openly Donate

There is where all the biasness saturates our privately owned or publicly traded American news media. And this is why “Three Sides to Every Story” is so critical for U.S. consumers to remember to find fair, more factual, more integrity from their news sources. This is why I often watch Al Jazeera or utilize their website. And right now, with our unprovoked U.S. attack and war on Iran by our fake pretend Commander-in-Chief and his Secretary of War, and the massive ripple-effects it is causing for Americans back home at the gas pumps, grocery stores, utilities, as well as nations and their citizens around the world… we simply cannot rely on this administration’s press releases and conferences (or Truth social X) for any direction or understanding. Right now we cannot obtain or rely on the full truth of:

Why this war was started by him,
Was Iran really an imminent threat to the U.S. homeland,
What is the true status of the war right now, or
How and when will the war conclude.

*Department of War director Pete Hegseth (left) and U.S. President (right), Feb. 2026 explaining war.*

Our POTUS never consulted, brought forth or debated any of these crucial points with Congress (or for Americans) the merit of this Iranian War as our U.S. Constitution dictates he do, and he took a solemn vow again for the second time January 20, 2025, to uphold and abide by our Constitution! Our POTUS breaks this solemn vow, the law all the time while in the White House! How many times will this bogus, idiot Commander-in-Chief get away with so much un-Constitutional, illegal behavior?

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Nevertheless, if your own good conscience wants to have more of the facts and truth about today’s current U.S. administration and what is really happening domestically or around the world, then you have no choice but to take the above two news-consumption methods. If you only watch, browse, or listen to one source of news and (dis-)information, you are NOT getting all or more of the facts. Period. Because privately owned news media or publicly traded news media cannot be wholly trusted to share fairly all the facts and how events and their causes play out. Profits are their bottom-line, every single day.

As my father used to often say, “There is always three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the Sunday morning paper.” And that might not be all points-of-view on the controversy and much of one or two slanted stories might be highly falsified propaganda. Think about it.

One is entitled to their own personal opinion, but no one is exclusively entitled to the facts. The facts are always independent of the narrator(s), including our POTUS. Always.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always – Know Propaganda

King Adolfhit Mine-tRump

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Professor Taboo

After failing once again to “obliterate” the Iranian nuclear nuisance, King Adolfhit Mine-tRump wants more attacks and more self-aggrandizing glory and big history! For all of your viewing satire pleasure, I present tRump’s War Room by clicking the link below…

https://www.captiongenerator.com/v/2315594/king-adolfhit-mine-trump-attacks-again

*“Downfall,” the 2005 war-drama film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel*

Notice that our Supreme Leader, Highness, Führer, has banned YouTube from showing these captioned clips from “Downfall,” the 2005 war-drama film. But is that any surprise given our POTUS’ impulsive inclination for no freedom of the press?

*My own rendition of the POTUS war room these last few days*

Bells for Robert Jordan

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Professor Taboo

**“Heresy is the foe of countenance.”**

During these days since January 20, 2025, four hundred and twelve days (412) to be exact, and counting, America and Americans have been living in a sort of Francisco Franco-esque regime of unprecedented turmoil, domestic and foreign aggression by tariffs, law-enforcement abuses, and foreign military actions, the most radical dismantling of federal government, arbitrarily lacerating the federal workforce, unilaterally demolishing agencies, not to mention the East Wing of the White House, and eradicating critical social, health, medical, and environmental federal programs and services. To say these 412-days have been nothing short of chaos would be a gross understatement.

*“Evacuation” by Helios Gómez, Spain 1939*

It must be pointed out that these last 412-days for Americans were caused by a unilateral antagonist and his following unorthodox agitators. And I realize I am being quite genteel with those terms, bordering on watered down to a fragrant gooey blob. Forgive me. There is some value with decorum and etiquette, yes? I confess, however, that I have vast contention with just how far We Americans and our government officials of all three branches have remained complicit while the nation slips further and further into the dark abyss lead by one single man and his anarchists. Have we forgotten what E Pluribus Unum means and how it applies? Have we turned our back on the virtues of helping and serving each other… not as substrates of one ideology, one brand, or one faction, but just as Americans without exclusion?

“No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.”

— John Donne

The Greatest Generation, coined by Tom Brokaw, showed all of us old enough to learn them and those of us today, young and old alike, to revere and model how it is done now, tomorrow, and beyond. It demands abandoning all preclusions of self-interest, while honoring worthy causes bigger than self, the immense obligatory sacrifices, the sanctity and dedication for the duty of E Pluribus Unum, and perhaps most of all, profound humility.

Have we seen any of these qualities, behaviors, or virtues exhibited these last 412-days in any abundance or degree? Pffft, unequivocally… no. In many ways we’ve seen the opposite done:

Unprecedented efforts to consolidate authoritarian power to one man, one branch, one office — Our POTUS signed more than 140 executive orders in the first 100 days, more than any other president in the same period. Of those, more than 25 were directed at remaking the federal government.
The removal of government watchdogs — Our POTUS fired 17 presidentially-appointed inspectors general, leaving more than 75% of such positions vacant. Historically, inspectors general serve across administrations regardless of when or by which president they were appointed. They play a crucial, independent role to investigate, prevent and eliminate fraud. In 2024, inspectors general saved the government over $70 billion. The removal of these key positions undercut important guardrails that were specifically created to prevent government waste and abuse.
The firing of Senate-confirmed appointees at independent agencies — Appointees to these independent agencies often serve multiple administrations and are generally selected based on their experience and knowledge rather than partisan concerns. Our POTUS’ administrative control of these agencies will undermine their ability to make truly independent recommendations, and instead serve as political tools for the White House to accumulate power and sway decision-making.
Unprecedented Cuts led by the Department of Government Efficiency — Many of the first management priorities of the new administration were ideas originally proposed by Project 2025, a policy document constructed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank published in April 2023 for all Americans to read about the coming storm. These included significant reductions to segments of the federal workforce and the expansion of presidential powers.
Sweeping cuts to federal personnel — Our POTUS’ administration reduced the federal workforce by tens of thousands of employees—often in sudden and haphazard ways. The administration is still slashing today. The most critical cuts to American’s safety was 28k personnel from the Army, 24k from DHS, 23k from the Navy, 23k from the Air Force, 22k from Defense, 19k from HHS, and shockingly 50k from Veterans Affairs.
The federal government is less transparent and accountable — Can anyone say, “Epstein Files”? That’s just one prolific example. Need I say more?
Federal Appointees No Longer Need Merited Experience, Credentials, or be Highly Qualified — I won’t list all the many people our POTUS has recklessly hired and/or fired, but I will say one name that sums up the sheer chaos in Washington D.C., “Kristi Noem.”

For more extensive breakdowns, examination and factual data go to the Partnership for Public Service.

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There is a lot to be learned and taken to heart by Ernest Hemingway’s acclaimed novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Much of his story and Robert Jordan’s experiences are already playing out again, not in published literature, but in reality at home and abroad.

“What do you want? Everything. I want everything and I will take whatever I get.”

— Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1939–1940

Can the obese Tasmanian Shrew in Mar-a-Lago ever be satisfied? Will his prey remain paralyzed, docile, and blind?

We were warned in the fall of 2016 to January 2021 this treachery could return. We were gifted and warned in April 2023 of the exact blueprint of how this expanded treachery would happen. We were handed the opportunity to stop it in Oct/Nov 2024. Woefully America was naive, complicit, negligent, and utterly lazy in all those repeated alarm bells, or to be more apropos… the repeated Hemingway funeral tolling.

When will we listen and learn? Will we ever learn… before it is too late?

Reasons America Has Lost Its Way

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Professor Taboo

For most of my adult life I have had great respect and adoration for America’s elite historians. Some of the first that come to mind are Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Meacham, Annette Gordon-Reed, Douglas Bradburn, David McCullough, and several others. I follow most all of them and have read many of their published books. Sometimes another historian enters the limelight of American political history and/or journalism. One such historical journalist was recently a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His name? John Dickerson, a frequent guest on Colbert’s shows.

*The meaning of Separation of Powers as our Core Founding Fathers intended in the late 18th-century*

But sadly, this original design by our Founding Fathers (above image) no longer exists today. Try hard to find its current virtues, the applications, the execution and equal humble moderation. You won’t find it under this administration. They could care less about it.

Dickerson summed up superbly on the Colbert late show aired February 25, 2026, with exactly why the cogs and wheels of our federal government today are falling off, broken, and disintegrating… or “obliterated” to use an overkill abused White House word of late. And the prime example, the prime felon and demolisher—no pun intended on the East Wing of the White House—was made bare and obvious with the supposed State of the Union Lies and Address delivered February 24, 2026, to the American public. I highly recommend watching John Dickerson’s interview, answers, and explanations of just how monumentally President tRump and his MAGA cult followers are comprehensively missing the Venezuelan and American boat, so to speak:

If any of you cannot watch the interview on YouTube because of “location restrictions,” then try this option with some transcript reading:

The Daily Beast’s — “Ousted CBS Anchor Joins Colbert to Expose Trump’s Fatal Mistake“

Hopefully the second link works for you. 🙂

Leave your thoughts, comments, or personal opinions down below to spark some discussion and/or civil debate. I’d love to hear from all of you.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

A More Useful Savior

Posted on February 21, 2026 by Professor Taboo

In an earlier blog-post, A Cure is Here, I wrote with much hope and gratitude about Dr. Jim Allison’s breakthrough discoveries and treatment for cancerous tumors by freeing our body’s T-cells to attack and kill cancer cells. For this accomplishment Dr. Allison was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Now those same T-cells and Helper T-cells are known to target the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Regrettably and remarkably there is a large portion of the American population who refuse to acknowledge the benefits and progressive advancements in medical science. In many cases, their disdain is over most all the sciences such as Earth science, geology, astronomy, oceanography, meteorology or climatology, geophysics, and the list goes on and on with their flawed reasons. They simply don’t trust (or understand?) humanity’s science advancements. That portion of the U.S. population would much rather ~~delusionally~~ exist in the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Ancient History of mythology, legends, fairy-tales, and ancient Abrahamic traditions of religion and prayer while trying to follow a highly erroneous Greek Septuagint, or Holy Bible. These faith-followers would and do discount or discard humanity’s accomplished sciences that save millions of lives. Why? What scares religious followers so much when it comes to proven, scientific truths and facts, the sciences and their equitable and endless examination of life’s fluid laws?

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During the world pandemic of COVID-19 there surfaced a group of people (anti-vaxxers) who refused to get any vaccination or booster to combat the highly contagious COVID virus. They blindly believed the incomplete or completely bogus misinformation campaign over social media and then U.S. President Trump that one does not require the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to increase one’s odds of survival against COVID. In fact, the U.S. President even went so far as to claim that injecting Clorox bleach or disinfectant would eliminate the virus. Yes, I kid you not! 😧

Now for the actual scientific facts regarding the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations and follow-up boosters from real medical scientists and epidemiologists.

Vaccine Safety:

No increased all-cause mortality risk: Multiple studies, including a massive four-year French study of 28 million adults, found that vaccinated individuals were no more likely to die from any cause than unvaccinated individuals. In fact, vaccinated people had a lower overall mortality rate.
Specific adverse events are very rare: Rare cases of serious adverse events like myocarditis (heart inflammation) and anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction) have been observed, but most patients recover, and an increased risk of death from these conditions due to the vaccine has not been established in large studies.

Comparison to COVID-19 Risk:
The risk of death from the COVID-19 virus is vastly higher than any risk associated with the vaccine.

Studies show that people who received the COVID-19 vaccine were 74% less likely to die from severe COVID-19 compared to those who were unvaccinated.
One life was estimated to be averted for every 5,400 vaccine doses administered globally between December 2020 and October 2024.
In one Utah study, COVID-19 was the cause of death in 27.2% of unvaccinated deaths in 2021, compared to only 4.2% of deaths among the vaccinated population in the same year.

The mortality rate of deaths following the COVID-19 vaccinations was extremely minimal and rare, near non-existent among 8.2 million of the national population. The conclusion reached by the National Library of Medicine was “The benefits of COVID-19 vaccines far outweigh the potential risks in older frail populations, and our findings do not support actions to exclude older adults from being vaccinated.” And one must remember that there are far more other risks in daily life that claim lives, e.g. vehicular accidents, medical preconditions such as heart disease or cancer, combat in war zones, Alzheimer’s Disease, or diabetes or many other causes of death not related to COVID-19 infection. Fact. Truth. And yet…

Mandy Brown above was a Jesus-faith-based Children’s Hospital Dallas nurse who rapidly suffered and died from the COVID-19 virus after being diagnosed with it a 3-4 days earlier. She and her spouse and family did not believe in the very real effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations. This is also the case with many other viruses and diseases, all of which protect us from permanent impairment, disabilities, or death.

For Mandy Brown, out of her fear and religious “convictions,” died as a result of her “faith.” As a consequence by her ignorance the widowed husband and her family would not publicly admit their unfounded fears and why theologically Brown chose an anti-vaccination stance. But for the Browns the truth soon came out. She and her family attended an evangelical-fundamentalist church in east Texas that believed much more in prayer than medical science and survival. It begs the question, doesn’t God or Yahweh or Allah provide His dominion of medical advancement in epidemiology and medicine? After all, didn’t their Creator create their brains of intelligence to utilize medical sciences and vaccinations?

*Measles rash shown on a young boy’s arm, 2025*

After reaching a 30-year high in cases last year, measles is soaring again in 2026. In 2025, 2,267 measles cases were reported nationwide, the highest annual count in more than three decades. By February 19, 2026, already 982 confirmed measles cases were reported according to the CDC. Many of these confirmed cases this year stem from outbreaks in 2025. Why is a virus such as measles, that was once contained or near unheard of 20-25 years ago, returning with such high numbers and outbreaks?

Measles is a highly contagious virus, worse than COVID-19. UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA along with Dr. Sanchi Malhotra, M.D., medical director of pediatric infection prevention for UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and a professor in the division of pediatric infectious diseases, all report:

Like COVID-19, measles spreads through airborne particles. But measles is six times more contagious, she says. One person infected with measles can infect up to 18 others in an unvaccinated population. With COVID-19, that rate was one to three. Furthermore, when someone with measles leaves a room, the room remains infectious for two hours as airborne particles continue to circulate.

The best way to prevent measles is through vaccination. Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, an estimated 3 to 4 million people in the U.S. were infected each year, 48,000 were hospitalized annually and 400 to 500 people died, according to the CDC. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97% effective at preventing infection, it says.

“The measles vaccine is incredibly safe and effective,” Dr. Malhotra says.

And yet, medical science in virology and epidemiology had proven back in the late 1950’s and 1963 when the vaccine was widely available to infants and toddlers, that the measles vaccine was 97% effective at preventing infection—the 3% had further health and immunity complications making the infection worse and the measle vaccine less effective.

Knowing this proven virology and epidemiology research and the very effective, successful measles vaccine, why are their increasing spikes in measles cases and deaths of American children? Answer: anti-vaxxers, disinformation by anti-vaxx groups, most of them religious-based, i.e. Christian fundamentalists and energized evangelicals, and their unfounded distrust in proven science. For more factual information go to this PublicHealth.org website:

Vaccine Myths Debunked

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A final summation. Everything on Earth and every day here is to some degree a legitimate unknown risk. Life is messy. Mistakes are made. Many, many things about this existence is imperfect, sometimes grossly imperfect. And we can’t know what we genuinely do not know. We rarely know what the near future holds for each of us, much less the distant future, right?

*Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman in the PBS documentary, The Brain*

However, we can recognize and comprehend a day, a week or two in advance what will likely occur, or may not occur, in our immediate and extended social circles based on our learned accumulated experiences, our education levels (or lack thereof) both broad and specialized, and our environments or interactions with life on a macro level and micro level. This field is known as Agnotology. I wrote a 4-part blog-series on this field of study, “Games of Unknowledging,” or ignorance and excessive doubt. It is an enthralling field of science! If you have time I do recommend the series to better understand the depth, the intent of what I write here.

What is made clear from this scientific field is that our brains, perceptions, interpretations, extrapolations, interpolations, where we were born, where we were raised and by whom, and our belief system (religious or otherwise) are all quite biased. And they are biased like tunnel-vision or horse-blinders that we sometimes/often can’t realize it or acknowledge it. The good news is that we can reset this default mode so as not to be so ignorant and doubting, afraid of life that is in some/many ways paralyzes us mentally, emotionally, or physically.

Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman did a remarkable PBS documentary on this subject called “The Brain with David Eagleman” that examines and explores our most newest discoveries on how our brains grow and function from infant, to adolescence, to adult, and finally into our geriatric years. This PBS documentary I highly recommend watching as well.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,
it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen Hawking

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always