Periodically, news bubbles up here out of Texas that has even original Texans like me scratching our heads. Thus, I’m starting this new periodic series, “Texas: What the Hell?” to keep up with the absurdity— and keep it in check.

Listen now (2 min) | Your doctor is out and unable to see you now. Not out for lunch or out on vacation -- but out of medical practice. America’s perverse health care system, which sublimates care to the profiteering demands of Wall Street speculators who essentially own today’s system, has been driving out hordes of nurses, pharmacists… and now doctors. These practitioners take their Hippocratic Oath seriously: “First, do no harm.” Yet, again and again they see corporate managers of hospital chains, physician clinics, etc. doing severe harm, routinely slashing staffing levels, eliminating services, rejecting low-income patients… and raising prices. All to prop-up the profits of rich, absentee investors.

Listen now (2 min) | No one needs another outrage to worry about, but here’s one that could literally be your last worry. Our hospitals are killing us. Not that the staffers are going room to room snuffing our patients, of course, but hospital owners and top executives are nonetheless killing thousands of ill Americans entrusted to their care. They are doing by deliberately short-staffing their facilities and shortchanging sick and injured people they’re richly paid to serve.

Reader David S. writes: Hey Jim—wasn't there a gang of progressive legislators in TX in the '70s that called themselves the "Killer Bees"? Why that name?

Listen now (2 min) | There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco – that persistently do rotten things. Then there is the nursing home industry – where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life “experience” can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely

Listen now (2 min) | Please be my Valentine! That is not only a warm, sweet, sometimes romantic sentiment people express in mid-February on a frilly, red card. It’s also the name of a third-century saint who literally lost his head, a ninth-century pope whose reign lasted only 40 days, three Roman emperors, a very good Mexican hot sauce… and a tiny town in Texas.

Listen now (2 min) | Why would anyone believe anything that a big corporation tells us? Corporate powers use lies as a core element of their business strategy. I’m not even counting the tsunami of polished, poll-tested li…

☆ The first State of the Union was, delivered by Number 1, George Washington, was only 833 words, lasting under 10 minutes. Any bets on tonight's Biden performance? ☆ Two presidents gave no State of the Union addresses:

Listen now (2 min) | People are baffled by the surreal saga of George Santos, the bizarre Republican congress critter who is a bottomless sink hole of lies. How could he think that he, a highly visible public figure, cou…

Escucha ahora (2 min) | An old political saying notes that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. However, given the proliferation of today’s goofball culture wars and fanatical r…