Posts

Checks & Balances?

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     Many of my friends, even those my age or older, call me old school because I write checks, those old fashioned slips of paper that as a form of monetary tranfers, are on the verge of fading into the sunset, perhaps taking me along with them into that great recycler.  And yes, I've heard all the cautionary tales or how those paper checks contain all of your banking info (routing and account numbers), and how ball point ink can be washed off and the amount rewritten by unscrupulous and nefarious individuals (gel ink dodges this problem, but really, who even uses a pen these days?), and how checks can get lost in the mail.  Heck, even the IRS no longer issues paper checks (which I discovered this year, sending even more of my info to DOGE and who knows who else).  Even my trash company --the county one that picks up your trash bins for waste and recycling each week-- said no more checks: electronic bank transfers only (we paid in advance to avoid this for...
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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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