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Water Rites

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      See if this makes sense to you.  You live in the desert --as in 118 degree heat-- and you farm water-intensive crops such as cabbage and other leafy produce, as well as corn and alfalfa.  Your water comes from a dam that diverts nearly 7 million gallons of water from the Colorado River, which doesn't sound like much except that the amount is 7 million gallons each   minute !  420 million gallons each hour, or nearly 11 billion  gallons per day.  And how is this all legal when other areas are drying up or struggling to get their own dams full enough to run their turbines? (Lake Powell and Lake Mead are pretty much only surviving because the federal government ordered other reservoirs to release some of their water to keep both Mead and Powell from reaching deadpool status ; however, many stopped once their own water levels dropped to a 60% level).  Welcome to the world of  "grandfathered" water rights, pacts generated from ove...
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Bombs Away

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Editorial cartoon: Nick Anderson       First off, this post has nothing to do with war, regardless of how you're feeling about the high price of gas and how we're dangerously low on advanced weapons , even pulling them from South Korea and stopping further shipments to Ukraine.  A nd makeup artist, Pete Hegseth, not only caused another top military commander to resign , but brought his wife in to help with the new Department of War ...good choice of name because Hegseth has also ordered any soldier over the age of 30 to have a mandatory testosterone count check , but generously also offering free testosterone shots to those who may want them -- not women, of course, whom he is trying to diminish in numbers in the military (not "manly" enough).   And who's to blame when elderly Congress folk simply fail to show up, some even being discovered living in an assisted living facilty .  No worries since the Trumpster himself would simply pardon them, adding...
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Past Tense

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     There's a tee shirt that says "of course I live in the past -- have you seen the present lately?"  With an unpopular war in the Middle East, high fuel prices, rising inflation, and corruption of all sorts from those high in government, you'd think I was talking about the present.  But as the  NY Times  noted, it was nearly the same 20 years ago as midterms neared:  Back then, congressional Republicans faced the voters at the midpoint of President George W. Bush’s second term, with the public roiled by the war in Iraq, high fuel prices and a series of ugly accusations against members of the G.O.P. majority on Capitol Hill.   The dissatisfaction was large enough for voters to change the GOP control of Congress.  But don't worry, because even if I never pictured our country allowing an 80-year old child to revive the Klu Klux Klan side of our nation, as well as send shivers through so many members of Congress, this post wi...
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Pay Attention

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     Who among us doesn't remember that sharp rebuke from a school teacher as your young mind drifted off into some unknown place, any place, for at those times it seemed as if anything was more interesting that what the teacher was rambling on about (not the Norman conquest again!).  Besides, that cute guy or gal was the one drawing your attention.  You know, that alpha-guy or that alpha-gal.  Hmm, turns out that the stronger of the two turned out to be the alpha-gal, the one that can not only get you to stop eating red meat, but may actually kill you.  Doesn't that tick you off?  But those ticks are real, and so is the killing part, especially if you don't have the alpha-gal gene and then bite into a burger, something which you've done for years.  Wait, what the heck am I talking about?  And can you make out that image on the right?  Do you see it (big clue, there)?  Do I have your attention now?  But first... Photo:...
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