Where we are right now, weatherwise

Florida has been in the 80's and very humid.

Southwest Missouri is far under the average for rainfall this year, to date.

New Mexico is extremely dry, still in drought conditions.

California has been in the low to mid- 80 degree weather range.    Most all Winter.

Meanwhile, Australia is burning and drying up, in severe, prolonged drought conditions.



You tell me.

I'm so old...

I remember when no YouTube video ever had advertising before a video.


That old.

American history?

Link:  History: Get Me Rewrite!

Entertainment overnight

Things that will change--greatly--with the next generations

I've noticed a few things about the preferences of the next, younger generations, that are different--vastly different--from the way America and Americans are now. There will be big changes with the coming younger people. Whole economies will be turned upside down, if not eliminated entirely:

First thing I noticed is that they have vastly, vastly different preferences for ways to spend their time. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to computers and television.

The younger the person, the less likely they are to watch TV, period. At least, they don't watch it on a television set.  Instead, they spend far more of their time--frequently all their spare time--on their computers.

That's a big change in and of itself.

A second part of that is that they don't need or want "cable TV." They wouldn't even think of paying for a TV subscription, let alone what it costs at present.

Those factors alone will bode hugely in change and changes for TV providers like Cox, Time Warner Cable®, Comcast, AT&T® and the like. They will have to transform themselves greatly in just a few short years. Big changes are going to come.

Second, or, in a way, thirdly, a big change is that younger people want and own fewer cars. As in none, in many cases. That will mean huge changes in transportation for our country, certainly.  Maybe more car poolers?  Mass transportation?  It seems likely.

Third, not only will entire industries be racked by change, with some, lots, maybe, even likely, entire cities and towns will also be racked by change. One city right now is going through such a change, with no optimistic outcome in sight.

That city is Branson, Missouri.

Formerly, millions of dollars were made, rather famously, on the idea of people driving or busing into that city in order to see the various shows, performers, singers and other acts at this Northwest Arkansas hamlet.

No longer.

Last Summer, the again famous "Shepherd of the Hills" show closed after decades of performances.

Branson seems to be next.

The senior citizens that formerly used to stream through the city have either seen enough of the shows or, worse, they're literally dying. From what I understand, the theaters down there are quietly for sale, behind the scenes. It seems they can be bought for fractions of what they were once worth. It stands to reason. The younger people don't want to and will not be going there for their entertainment. It's in no way their style entertainment.

Side note:  If the Walton family, of the Walmart fortune, know what's good for them and Northwest Arkansas, they would step up, pony in some big money---they can easily and well afford---and try to get set up an artist's colony-type arrangement in the town and area, much like Asheville, North Carolina has now. I think it could help the burg and that area transition to a better, newer, functioning, surviving, even thriving area and economy. If they don't or someone doesn't, I'd look for Branson, one day, and possibly, very likely one day very soon, to be a rather hollowed-out, sad and run down place of yesteryear unless they or someone very like them--Tyson Foods? someone--steps in.

We shall see, of course, on all.

Quote of the day -- on the direction of one political party

Entertainment overnight

Rocket scientist goes into a bar... in Kansas

A headline from an online rag really gave Kansans a lot to proud of a couple days ago:

Kansas man in a bar with concealed carry permit accidentally sho

True.

Wichita, Kansas:

A Kansas man accidentally Second Amendmented himself in the thigh and shot another person on Saturday morning at a bar called  – wait for it — the Shot Time II in Wichita, Kansas. The other man was described as a victim of aggravated battery.

That's not enough stupid, no. People in the state of Georgia are taking it further:

Georgia House votes to allow weapons in bars,churches

Which begs the question, what would Jesus carry?

Entertainment overnight

Entertainment overnight

Republicans, voting again, to keep tax cuts for already-wealthy corporations

Quote of the day -- true then, still true

Entertainment overnight

Quote of the day -- on living and being and all the possibilities

"That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been.  Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s.  Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly."   

--from George Saunders's Advice to Graduates, 2013

Entertainment overnight

On raising the minimum wage

Quote of the day -- on age and life

"...as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish – how illogical, really.  We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality.  We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be.  We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now).  Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving.  I think this is true.  The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was 'mostly Love, now.'”

--George Saunders, from his essay "Advice to Graduates

Valentine's Day - fin

Valentine's Day IV

Valentines Day III

Happy Valentine's Day

Worth (well worth) a redux:

Valentine's Day II

Coinciding with Valentine's Day

“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. 

In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”

― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

Valentine's Day I

Governor Brownback and Brownbackistan in the NY Times today

Governor Sam "Shoot 'em Up" Brownback and his version of Kansas is covered fairly thoroughly today in The New York Times today:

Brownback Leads Kansas in Sharp Right Turn

And what are Kansans getting for all of the Guv's sharp right turn?  Glad you asked:

Mr. Brownback, 57, has overseen the largest income tax cuts in state history, an expansion of gun rights, restrictions on abortion, sharply reduced welfare rolls, increased voter-registration scrutiny and a paring of state government bureaucracy. To accomplish his goals, he helped push the Republican-majority Legislature further to the right by working to oust moderate Republicans, deepening a longstanding rift within the state’s G.O.P...

...while income taxes have been slashed, the poorest Kansans have seen their tax burdens increase with the elimination of tax credits...

Personal income and gross state product are growing at a slower rate than the national average. And the state’s nonpartisan legislative research department has projected that the budget will face a $213.6 million shortfall in fiscal 2017, in large part because of the deep tax cuts that are expected to cost the state about $3.9 billion over the next five years.

Social service supporters say the governor has failed to help poor Kansans. Under the theory that the best form of welfare is a job, the Brownback administration has made it more difficult for poor families to get welfare — the number of people receiving it has dropped by nearly 45 percent since he took office. But there is no evidence that those people are finding work. The childhood poverty rate has gone up slightly under his watch...

Mr. Brownback also entered office with a goal to increase fourth-grade reading proficiency. Although the state has remained among the top five in the nation, the share of Kansas’ black fourth graders reading below a basic level rose to 53 percent last year from 44 percent in 2009, before the governor took office.

But at least there's some good news, too, in the article, for Kansas and Kansans:

Those who know Mr. Brownback say that his concern for the poor can be easily overlooked. A convert to Catholicism, he often opens meetings with a prayer asking for wisdom. 

Here's hoping he gets that wisdom.

And soon.

Oh, and maybe a heart, while he's at it.

The very Christian Republicans in South Carolina

I can hardly believe what I've read.  They're stooping this low:

GOP-Controlled SC Charges Fees, Requires Permits to Feed ...Homeless

Being homeless in Columbia, South Carolina is so severe a crime that you can be jailed for it, so it’s no surprise that the city who hates the homeless is now making it impossible for good Samaritans to feed the homeless. The point is to make it uncomfortable for the homeless to be downtown so that the city can hold people in a “facility” on the outskirts of town. The homeless shelter only has room for one in six of the city’s homeless. 

Judith Turnipseed, founder of a group called “Food Not Bombs” has been feeding Columbia’s homeless for 12 years. Turnipseed says that she will now have to pay $120 dollars to feed the homeless because of an old-and-previously-not-enforced law that says you must pay a fee to be able to gather in the city’s parks if the number of people is over 25 

So not only do they want to punish people who try to do something as awful as feeding and/or housing the poor, they also want to use their "small government" to make it difficult to do so.

I mean, who'd do that, right?



Links:

The Tragic List of Elderly and Homeless People Freezing

Millionaire CEO Says Struggling Americans Need to Suck it Up Because They Aren't as Poor as People in China 

Missouri Republicans send back double barrel stupid

Not to be outdone by stupid moves by the Republican Right Wing in Kansas, Missouri Republicans send back not one but two volleys today, in their efforts to outdo Kansas' reactionaries.  First this one:

Unprecedented Attack On Evolution 'Indoctrination' Mounted In Missouri

It's bad enough they're trying to teach science--Science!--in Missouri schools and classrooms, at least with this, they can get religion back in there with the kids:

A Missouri lawmaker has proposed what ranks among the most anti-evolution legislation in recent years, which would require schools to notify parents if "the theory of evolution by natural selection" was being taught at their child's school and give them the opportunity to opt out of the class.

Then, not to be finished there, yet another Republican had to fire his Right Wing, totally baseless salvo:

Republicans Now Trying To Impeach Missouri 

Governor

Because, you know, Liberty!

Two Republican lawmakers in Missouri have now filed articles of impeachment against the state's Democratic governor, Jay Nixon.

State Rep. Mike Moon (R) became the latest GOP legislator to join the effort to remove Nixon, after state Rep. Nick Marshall (R) put the wheels in motion earlier this month.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Moon's articles of impeachment cited Nixon's failure to call a special election to fill a vacant congressional seat in Missouri. Marshall, on the other hand, was driven to take action after Nixon issued an executive order last year permitting same-sex couples married in other states to file joint federal income tax returns.

Need REAL legislation done?

Naw....   Let's do this, instead. We seem to get in trouble, for some reason or another, for continually and repeatedly legislating on women's bodies and their reproductive rights so instead of that......IMPEACHMENT!!!

Missouri, you think you'll ever get Interstate 70 updated, widened and improved?

With these legislators?

FUGGEDABOUDIT!

Entertainment overnight

Missouri, our children, high school, privacy and the military, all in one

It seems the Gestapo Right Wing just can't get enough of their "small gubmint" and their ability to reach into people's lives.

How much more ironic and hypocritical is this?

It seems the state wants more and more of our children to be automatically tested for a career in the military while they're in high school:

Missouri Program Requires High School Students To Take Military Enlistment Test

Check this from Truthout earlier today:

The Missouri School Improvement Program, which is set to take effect beginning with the 2014-15 school year, establishes five standards of accountability used to rate school performance. The third standard calls on high schools to administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Career Exploration Program (ASVAB-CEP) to determine whether students are "College and Career Ready." 

The ASVAB is the entrance exam the military gives to recruits to determine their aptitude for various occupations. The test also is used as a recruiting tool in 11,700 high schools across the country. The ASVAB is the most important component of the Pentagon's school-recruiting program because it provides information on the cognitive abilities of students, something the Department of Defense cannot purchase or find online.

Participation in the ASVAB-CEP allows high schools to take advantage of the career exploration component of the testing regime while prohibiting the release of ASVAB results for recruiting purposes. ASVAB results include three hours of test data, sensitive personal demographic information on children and Social Security numbers. There are no privacy protections built into the Missouri School Improvement Program. ASVAB results are the only student information leaving Missouri's schools without providing for parental consent.

We can't just let our children go to school, we have to automatically have them tested for the military and share that information with that same military and the government.

Weimar Germany would have loved this.

First we'll have them join the Boy Scouts and wear their little brown shirts and get ranks and badges and such, then, once in high school, we'll automatically test them for the military.

Sure, that's perfect.

The tough reporting we need from our media

CBS TV program "60 Minutes" did this segment on their program years ago, 2007, shamefully, and it's an important piece:



And the thing is, now, neither CBS nor this program, "60 Minutes" no longer does this kind of honest, hard-hitting reporting on how our government is working and working against the people, against the common man and woman, the working class of our nation. They only do fluff pieces, "infortainment" on puppy dogs and skiers and sportspeople. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have the most expensive health care system in the world, and a lot of other systemic, endemic problems in our nation and society. The wealthy and corporations are having their way with us.

And we're letting them.  Lazily letting them--the media and so, our government and the corporations and wealthy--all get away with it and in a lot of ways, most all financial.

Notice, to my knowledge, CBS and this program has never once done a tough piece like this on the big banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the like, even though they famously brought us all, nationally and internationally, to the edge of a fiscal, financial cliff back in 2008,

I wonder why.

Link:  Under The Influence - CBS News