Signs Of Spring
Not only was this week one of my spring harbinger calendrical landmarks — baseball spring training began Tuesday and Wednesday in Arizona and Florida — but the Bruster’s ice cream stand near my house at SR446 is being gussied up in preparation for its seasonal re-opening. The owners of the the joint went all out this off-season, having the place freshly painted and popping for spanking new signage and awnings. Cars are parked outside the place meaning people are inside getting coolers and cash registers, cup stacks and cone dispensers, ready for opening day.
That day this year: March 1st, less than two weeks away. Wahoo!
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Absurdity
The More Flags At Half Staff, The Safer Kids Will Be!
I noticed the American flag at city hall was at half-staff yesterday, presumably for those 17 poor kids in Parkland, Florida.
As I passed the flagpole, I felt a rush of anger. I wanted to march inside and demand they put the flag back up to full staff. Displays like lowering the flag and other pointless gestures are doing nothing for the next batch of 17 0r 23 or even just eight or 10 kids in some town we’ve never heard of before but is destined to become indelibly etched into our memories.
I’ve noticed internet comments from 2nd Amendment fetishists crying out that we liberals want to snatch everybody’s guns away from them now. One guy even swore up and down that Hillary Clinton pledged to rescind their precious Amendment while she ran for pres. against the lunkhead that eventually won on a technicality.
We’re waging a debate against people who live in an hallucinatory world. Add that to the gun manufacturers and their squealing lobbyists, the NRA, spewing verbal and printed sludge, and the discussion has irretrievably devolved into troglodytic hollers.
Damn it all.
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Knucklehead
That fellow who brought a bullhorn into Mayor John Hamilton’s State of the City address the other day did Hizzoner, the members of the city council, and Bloomington police chief Mike Diekhoff a big favor. Suddenly, the focus is on his ridiculous act of shouting the mayor down and putting a premature end to Hamilton’s address rather than the damned armored vehicle our local leaders are buying.
Look, the man was a jackass. Add to his original idiocy the fact that the city now probably is going to start thinking about screening everybody who comes to the hall for meetings and such. Nevertheless, let’s not confuse his foolishness with the real argument.
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XX Representation
65 Democratic Women Were Sworn In To The US House In 2015.
Fortune mag ran a little thing a couple of weeks back on the numbers of women in various countries’ lower houses as of 2018. This holy land’s lower house, natch, is the House of Representatives. And wouldn’t you know it, Murrica ranks low in female representation therein.
A scant 19.4 percent of the members of the US House of Representatives are women. That’s a shade fewer than one of five. And that’s a scandal.
Much of the rest of the world is doing a hell of a lot better than this “beacon of democracy” in that particular gender ratio thing. For instance, Bolivia’s lower house is comprised of 53.1 percent women. Mexico, 42.6. Cuba, 48.9. And the champion in terms of female representation is Rwanda — Rwanda, for pity’s sake! — with 61.3.
When did America become so backward?
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Brusters.