BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 24, 2024) — Bitchfield’s beer-belly mayor has put DPW czar Ricky Rumpus in charge of three projects central to the city’s quality of life, matters that the council will rubber stamp into existence. You can guess what’s going to happen next. Forget […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY “Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend imbeciles” — Fyodor Dostoevsky. (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 22, 2024) — THE PLANET‘s not buying it. Not yet. We won’t until such time, if it ever comes, […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION APRIL 19-21, 2024) — Complicit in Pittsfield’s demise is the failure of the local mainstream media, “led” by the Berkshire Eagle, also known as the Boring Broadsheet. Without an aggressive, crusading daily newspaper or similar push from other media sans THE PLANET, […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, APRIL 17, 2024) — One of the most astounding pieces of faux fiction to grace the pages of the Boring Broadsheet has to be the recent letter to the editor in praise of … ya’ll sit-in’ down? … … bureaucrats. The Rev. Mike Denton, […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 15, 2024) — Welcome to Tax Day, wherein we Americans have the privilege of submitting in silence as Aunt Samantha picks our pocket and confiscates up to 50% of our hard-earned income. Of course, in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, the Kapanski’s […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION APRIL12-4, 2024) — Is the true meaning behind Bitchfield’s so-called “transformation specialists” (TS) actually to promote bizarre gender-affirming procedures for so-called transgender and “gender non-conforming” people? Sounds far-fetched, but it’s not, at least according to a fed-up manager/executive currently employed at […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 10, 2024) — THE PLANET ended Monday’s column with an invitation for any city official to meet with us in a public forum to debate the bloated FY25 budget. No conditions, no notes. We’re sure you will be shocked to learn that […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 8, 2024) — It used to be that citizens “enjoyed” (if that is the proper term) a reasonable separation of tripartite government levels. The Feds did their thing, the states did theirs, and the locals were more or less left alone. No […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION APRIL 5-7, 2024) — According to the Highway Safety Association (HSA), pedestrian traffic deaths rose from 4,600 in 2007, to 6,721 in 2020, to 7,485 in 2021. That number is expected to hit 10,000 this year. What gives? Many factors explain this […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 3, 2024) — Unlike what so many think, the identity of THE PLANET has not been shaped by ideology. We see ideology as a straight jacket that restricts independent thought. Our guide is common sense. Our destination, truth. Simple as that. We […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 1, 2024) — Urban doom. THE PLANET wishes the phrase was an April Fool’s joke, but no. It’s an adjective-noun combination describing what Loon-Liberals, a.k.a. Democrats, have done to an increasingly number of American cities, including the city once known as Pittsfield. […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION MARCH 29-31, 2024) — First off, THE PLANET hopes you enjoyed a happy Easter. It’s a wonderful celebration, both in its religious and seasonal messages, of spring’s return and with it, the reemergence of new life. The opposite impulse can be […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY MARCH 27, 2024) — Upcoming in The Weekend Edition, THE PLANET presents the latest folly of Bitchfield’s new Administration. It comes in the guise of the continual and continuous destruction of North Street via replacing for-profit private business with more tax-exempt social-service non-sequiturs. Folks, […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY MARCH 25, 2024) — Some 30 years ago, media critic Edward Herman and linguist Noam Chomsky coined the term “manufacturing consent.” It referred to the media’s ability to influence and impose “group think” (from Orwell’s 1984) on a lazy, unsuspecting, and increasingly dullard […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION MARCH 22-4, 2024) — Today THE PLANET discusses the happenings in Ukraine. They affect every person in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the East Coast, America, Europe and the world. Behind all of it, nukes. In a Wednesday speech to the Bundestag, German […]
BY DAN VALENTI PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY [ED. NOTE: The resemblance of anyone depicted in this column to any living, breathing human being is strictly coincidental owing to the fact that they all are politicians] (FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY MARCH 20, 2024) — Welcome to the second day of spring. We made it, gang. […]
