Posts from — May 2016

This is a song contest that caused one Australian columnist to ask: “Why are we treating Eurovision like an irony-free America’s Cup, instead of a multinational karaoke competition designed by Liberace?”

Russian officials complain that the win by the Ukraine was ‘politics over art’, which would be more believable if Russia had been second, but they were third.

You can judge for yourself as the ABC has videos of the top five entries. The winner, Jamala, is a Crimean Tatar who wrote the winning song 1944 about Stalin’s mass resettlement of Tatars from the Crimea to the Far East which affected her family. She is a jazz singer and it shows.

Stalin used mass resettlements and redrawn borders as a method of controlling internal dissent. Russia apparently wants to own the Stalinist legacy which is a bit strange as he was a Georgian.

But it won’t be imitated in the US.

The CBC notes that $81 a month buys a healthier baby:

When pregnant women were trusted with $81 a month in prenatal benefits, no strings attached, their babies’ physical health did better, say Manitoba researchers, who would like similar income supplements to be offered across Canada.

The Healthy Baby Prenatal Benefit offers support to families with a net household income of less than $32,000, on a sliding scale.

They give the money to the expectant mothers and let them decide how to use it. In the US there are programs for low income women, like WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] but they are very specific as to what the benefits can buy, and none of them include soap or diapers. Canada has single payer health care, so the women have access to prenatal care, but the US would rather pay $100K/day for neonatal hospitalization than about $500 for the standard series of prenatal medical visits.

A opinion writer in Australia notices that We’re being sold the trickle-down economics con.

You remember “trickle down” where they told you that “a rising tide tide raises all boats”, ignoring the reality that it only helps people rich enough to own a boat and the poor people drown. The awe inspiring Revelation of the Cocktail Napkin of Laffer™ – as tax rates approach zero, tax revenues approach infinity. Back in the 1980 this was government policy and delivered none of benefits claimed.

Conservatives keep trying the same policies, and those policies keep providing the same results. When are people going to realize that conservatives want the results they get: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

This Saturday, May 14^th, is the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive of the Postal Workers. I participate every year by filling a bag with non-perishable food items and putting it on the mail box Friday night. The food pantries need the help, because they are serving an ever-increasing number of people.

If you don’t have a mail box, most post offices have a collection bin.

I had guests arrive on Thursday and have been away from the keyboard doing the tourist thing with them.

I should be back on Wednesday.

Wikipedia usually has to “lock” its Cinco de Mayo page. I suspect it may be related to the sudden appearance of sites opposing the celebration of this semi-holiday and others who have a hissy fit about any Mexican holiday being celebrated in the US. This year it is the rhetoric of Drumpf that has brought out the worse elements in American culture.

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo or Batalla de Puebla, is only a really big celebration in the state of Puebla, where the battle took place.

The Mexican army won the Batalla de Puebla on May the 5^th, 1862, but the French went on to Mexico City in 1863 after receiving reinforcements and installed Emperor Maximilian.

It has the status of St. Patrick’s Day in the US, an excuse to eat different food, and drink different booze, and be obnoxious show an interest in other cultures.

Margaritas, tacos, and the destruction of piñatas, that’s what it is really about.

There’s no end in sight for the Fort McMurray fire as the number of evacuees approaches 100K and a state of emergency is declared.

Kasich suspended his campaign after going nowhere in Indiana, a neighboring state, so the Republicans are stuck with Drumpf. Now we have to see if he can find anyone willing to be his Vice Presidential candidate.

In local news, I have no idea who, if anyone, is going to run for Congress in my district as the incumbent is running for Rubio’s open Senate seat.

May the fourth be with you on Star Wars day.

[I think that Mustang Bobby got a bit carried away 🙂 ]

The 60,000 inhabitants of Fort McMurray, Alberta Canada are under a mandatory evacuation order as the wild has driven a wildfire into the city. Houses have already been lost and the downtown is under serious threat. The CBC is live blogging the fire.

The fire season started early in Canada this year with Alberta and British Columbia seeing most of the fires.

Leicester City had never won a major and last came close in the late 1920s. At the start of the season they were a 5000 to 1 longshot. Even the Boston Red Sox has had more success in the World Series – they won twice in only 86 years.

Football is interesting again for a lot of people because there is hope that a local club with a limited budget can take home all the marbles. Maybe next year Alemannia Aachen will get back in the Bundesliga. If the Foxes can take the Premier League, why not?.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

The dynamic duo that mucked up the Pledge of Allegiance, Dwight Eisenhower and his Republican Congress, made May 1^st both Law Day and Loyalty Day so those Commie working people wouldn’t get any ideas about having rights.