Tag Archives: politics

Getting In on the Bully Market

You may have missed this juicy little tidbit due to the incessant news coverage on what the Tsarnaev brothers’ aunt’s cousin’s wife’s step-daughter’s librarian’s nephew has to say, but the legislature here in Minnesota has been quietly introducing a bill that has people here realizing just how silly the word ‘tidbit’ really is.   The bill is about banning bullying in school and while I am not a fan of bullies mainly because I don’t have any rotating blades, a cursory perusal proves that this bill is almost as silly as the word ‘tidbit,’ but not quite.

Back in my day bullying was a simple form of economic exchange: I would hand over my lunch money and in return, said individual would refrain from lifting my whities over my head. Continue reading →

A Citizen and His Money Are Soon Parted

Ah, spring—the time of year known for its unbounded desire: desire for beauty, desire for romance, and desire for the IRS to insert their schedule B firmly into their line 43a.  Yep.  Tax time.  And unless you are clever enough to file for your automatic extension, you have just spent the last several weeks collecting receipts, scouring instructions, removing your hair in large clumps, and asking yourself age-old, soul-searching questions like, “If a tax man and a politician were both drowning and I could only save one, would I go get some coffee or check Facebook?”

Personally, I don’t mind this time of year so much because it reminds me that I am solidly entrenched in the middle class in that I am in the upper half of the population that actually pays taxes yet not so rich that I have to feel guilty about avoiding them entirely.  Yea for me. Continue reading →

Suspended Over a Pop-Tart? One Cannoli Hope

What with my big family vacation and then coming home to take down all my Cesar Chavez Easter decorations—not to mention getting geared up for National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month this month—I totally missed the story out of Maryland a while back in which a 7-year old boy was suspended from school after eating his Pop-Tart into a shape kind of maybe resembling a sort of handgun and then, in a fit of imagination imitating media inundation, going “bang bang.”

Supposedly, the second-grader’s intent was to shape the pastry into a mountain; kind of a three-dimensional monochrome post-impressionist landscape piece.  But a slight, rather amateurish design miscalculation resulted in the boy mistakenly creating a fearsome profile resembling a treacherous terroristic armament capable of dropping sprinkles all over the cafeteria floor at up to 9.8 meters per second per second. Continue reading →

The Maven

themovieblog.com

themovieblog.com

As he pondered weak and worried, up the platform steps he hurried
To declare his candidacy where Abe Lincoln had done before.
While seeking to be president and setting racial precedent
The cool Chicago resident offered promises galore.
Fundamental change was offered amongst promises galore.
“I’ll give you this, and much more.

“I’ll lower premiums for health and force the rich to share their wealth,
And the bills I’m about to sign will be online five days before. Continue reading →

Uninformed Because of Holiday Distractions? This May Help…

Here we are in mid-December—the time of year when, amidst our holiday bustle, we begin to pause and somberly reflect on why this is the only time of the year anybody ever uses the word ‘bustle.’  It is also the time of year when we don’t really pay much attention to what is going on in the world in terms of history-making and/or altering news stories because we here in the West are so reverently focused on the birth of the Christ child and all the frantic patriotic consumerism it affords.

Combine that with 93% of all US network coverage being about either Lindsay Lohan or a make-believe crisis wherein Democrats and Republicans are making an hubristic grab for money and power by pretending to be Thelma and Louise, and it creates The Perfect Storm of Notorious movie-title metaphors. Continue reading →