It's Bird Flu! It's a Plane Crash! It's Super-Fascist!

I want to smash it up. I want to break it up. I want to f*k it up. I want to watch it come down. Maybe afraid of it let's discredit it, let's pick away at it - Nine Inch Nails, "March of the Pigs"

Aug 08, 2025

Blue Letter: In This Edition

💪 The Soundcheck Fund! - It’s Been Kicked Off!

👊 My Column - It Kicks Trump-Lover Dean Cain’s a**

Folks, The Number of New Paid Subscribers has Dramatically Slowed this Past Week. Without Them, We Can’t Continue to Expand The Soundcheck Fund—Just as Trump Kills the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Please Consider a Paid Subscription to Support the Growth of Independent Media

Cliff’s Note: My Column Comes Right After…

The Soundcheck Fund: A Mic for the Next Generation of Political Influencers

What if the next superstar’s trapped in anonymity by right-wing algorithms? Burning out at a 9-to-5 without the time to use skills to save our democracy? Worse, if institutions, donors, and those with big platforms refused to help, so we lost this generational talent to corporate PR…After all, we all must feed our families.

What if you could be the one to help them break through?

Welcome to the Soundcheck Fund—a Blue Amp initiative designed to discover, amplify, and support emerging voices. Think of it as a launchpad for political messaging—scrappy, independent, and built to amplify what corporate media ignores.

🎧 Why We Built This

The loudest voices in politics aren’t always the smartest—just the best-funded.

Sadly, it’s often not talent that wins attention anymore. It’s ad spends. Insider access. Algorithms attuned to outrage.

The result?

Authentic voices get drowned out.
Smart commentary is hidden.
New leaders never make it past the loading screen.

We’re here to change that.

The Premise Is Simple

We’re seeding a new generation of creators—those who speak with clarity, urgency, humor, and fire. Those who’d go viral if they had time, funding, and support.

With the Soundcheck Fund, we give talented independent media purveyors:

A platform.
A payment.
A push.

You don’t need to be polished—it’s often better if you’re not. You don’t need perfect lighting or expensive gear. You just need something real to say, and the guts to say it.

Who Should Apply?

If this hits home, we’re probably talking to you:

You’ve been ranting to your friends about politics for years.
You’ve got a take that makes sense—and nobody says it quite the way you do.
You’ve got an audience, or the bones of one, but no time/money to build it out.
You’ve never been invited to the table—but you’ve been building your own.

We’ll help you turn that into a micro-platform—fast.

You’ll publish your own content. We’ll feature your work. You’ll get a micro-grant. And we’ll send readers and allies your way.

Apply HERE!

💡 Who Should Fund This?

If you’ve ever said:

“Why don’t we have our own Joe Rogan, Theo Von, or Ben Shapiro?”
“Why are we always playing catch-up in the messaging war?”
“Where are the new voices who actually get it?”

…then this fund—which you can support with a paid Blue Amp subscription—is your answer.

Supporters of the Soundcheck Fund aren’t just donors—they’re talent scouts for a more democratic and better future. The ones who can say:

“Yeah, I backed them before anyone knew their name.”

You don’t need to bankroll a media empire. You just need to help one person speak up.

📣 First Cohort: Already Making Noise

We’ve already picked the first few recipients and given them their awards, and we’ll announce their names nexr week! They’ve been doing exactly what we hoped:

Calling out corporate candidates in plain language.
Writing essays that feel like a slap in the face (in a good way).
Podcasting with the urgency of people who know this moment matters.

They’re not polished. They’re real. And that’s exactly what this moment demands.

🫵 What You Can Do Right Now

Apply to join the next cohort → Right Here
Donate to fund the next voice → Right Here
Forward this to someone who needs to hear it.

The best voices in politics aren’t waiting for permission. They’re waiting for a mic.

This is that mic.

Let’s turn it on.

The Most MAGA Superman’s The Worst Human. Who Could’ve Guessed?

Dean Cain—who portrayed Superman on a tv show that lasted like three years and began its run before the existence of the Smartphone—took to his Instagram this past week.

No, it wasn’t for one of his usual gigs, like pushing faith-based gold—he peddles the Genesis Gold Group, not kidding—by scaring people that “China is targeting your bank account.” Or even reverse mortgages.

The oft-unnoticed, Trump-humping “actor,”—whom I can only guess from his God Gold really needs the money — announced he joined ICE to “protect his country.” With John Williams’ famous Superman theme music blaring in the background. Seriously.

First…dude. You haven’t played Superman since Princess Diana was alive and Kylie Jenner wasn’t. There really has to be a statute of limitations on these things, or should I add my stint as student body president in grad school back on my resume?

Second, before anyone even knew you were a right-wing clodpole, you were easily considered the sh*ttiest performer to ever don the cape. I mean, you made Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules seem like Shakespeare. Hell George Reeves, who played Kal-El, could do a better Superman than you right now and he’s been dead for 65 years.

Finally, yes, we know you need the $50,000 ICE bonus or you might have to add boner pills to your impressive God-Gold-pimping repertoire, but don’t you think that would’ve been less humiliating? How about porn?

I mean, what is it that attracted you to ICE? Was it the sickening violence against peaceful workers? The ripping families apart? The putting up a concentration camp in Florida to make Trump donors huge windfalls of cash? ICE agents throwing a teenage U.S. citizen to the ground and saying “sorry, you have no rights here, amigo?” Ripping a 4th grader out of her class to deport her?

Truth, justice and the American way! Am I right!?

So, ok, you want to join a racist Stasi run by Lyin’ Donald Trump. So I have a few questions I’d like to ask you about your—even for a Republican—incredible freakin hypocrisy.

Did you read enough of your scripts to know that Superman was an alien, you schmuck? Is the fact that this was a story about this alien coming to the heart of America, Kansas, and being taken in by regular folk and raised like their own…is that something that ever surfed along the river of cranial leakage your call a cerebrum?

Did you need to get attention that badly by going on Instagram and stealing the Superman music? Maybe there is a Genesis Platinum contract on the line?

Also, did you read your religious texts you claimed to revere when you went to the Wailing Wall and searched the streets of Israel “for the prophets?” Or when you moved away from Hollywood (totes not because nobody would hire you) “driven by your deepening faith in Jesus Christ?” And then Genesis Gold too! Huzzah!

We get it—you love Jesus!

But—and I don’t mean to steal from my friend and Amped Up guest, John Fuglesang, here—do you have a clue what Jesus, ya know, said? You ever check out the “Parable of the Stranger?” Because I have some news for you—brace yourself—Jesus wouldn't have donned a mask, no identification and thrown brown people to the ground just for the psychopathy of it.

He talked about taking in the stranger, helping the traveler on the road who needed lodging, food, etc. Not throwing them through a car window and then sending them to El Salvador. Just, ya know, in case that part was lost in translation. Also, Jesus wasn’t all into beating down on people—at all—so pulverizing an “amigo with no rights” wouldn’t have been his kink.

And let’s end this part of the Dean Cain is a dunderheaded arse show with one word: Tanaka. Yeah, your real name.

You've talked in the past about how members of your family were put in Japanese internment during World War II. Which is horrifying, and I’d offer my sympathies. But now this—and worse—is exactly what you’re bragging about wanting to do on Instagram while playing iconic music for justice?

So simple question here, big guy, and, no, it’s not about why Brenda ditched you for Dillon. Easy choice. He was a cool loner. You were a try-hard dork. But I’m sure you were just “acting,” yes?

What I’m getting at is: how many ways can one unemployed actor be a lie-spitting, Trump-snorting, ungodly, f*king hypocrite? You betray the spirit and purpose of the biggest role you played. You betray the religion and God you claim to cherish. You betray your family’s ethnic background and painful history.

Quite a threesome there, Dean. Or what your fellow Trump supporter, Kid Rock, would call “another night with the clap.”

So, in any case, Dean, maybe go somewhere else, where your bigotry, sophistry and douchery are more appreciated. Steven Seagal and David Duke have lived in Russia and love Putin. I gotta believe, with your record, you’d love Pootie-Poot too. Just sayin.

Or just jump on a SpaceX and see if you can make it to Krypton. If you do, you can play the Superman music all you want!

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from As Good As It Gets (from 1997! The last season of Lois & Clark…and your career!), a man who's obviously had to toil in the immense shadow of your thespianism for years: sell your crazy somewhere else, we’re all stocked up here in America.

THIS WEEK ON AMPED UP!

We talked with great ad man Will Robinson about how Dems need a whole new strategy to connect with people. Authentic connection, between neighbors, colleagues, friends and influencers they’ve know via two-way convos on social media.

Democrats need to deliver messages from those whom voters trust (which, speaking as a former ad guy, has been obvious for a long time!). Also, Dems must be much more aggressive. Much more in here, watch!

VIDEO ON DEMAND!