We had a primary vote yesterday. Three city districts had primaries for councilperson, and several other area towns had city elections. There were 91,000 eligible voters within those various districts. Granted, we had another 5-7" of snow overnight, Monday. It was difficult, but not impossible to get to the polls sometime within the 13 hour window that began at 6 in the morning and ended at 7 at night.

4.69% of elgible voters turned out to vote.

Democracy works best when citizens actively particpate. Voting is part of active participation, especially when it is incovenient.

Miss Dolly and I woke up at 2:35. She wanted me to play with her. We chased toy mice and then played ball. I decided to fetch the newspaper arounf 4 AM. It's is snowing - AGAIN!

Sam Brownback's popularity among Kansans is at 37%. That's way too high.

Some pissy folks are upset that Mrs. Obama participated in the Academy Awards. Laura Bush, Ronald Reagan ad Franklin Roosevelt have also participated, but people who don't like the president, or Democrats, or perhaps 'people of color' are trying to make a big deal out of nothing.

Waiting in the checkout line at the grocery, I noticed a tabloid claims George W. Bush is suffering from Alzheimers Disease. The tabloid is most likely not a reliable information source, but I would say that Bush has plenty he'd like to forget.

Yesterday, I had to re-set my password for on line banking with Bank of America. Today I got a message that the bank didn't recgnize my computer.

My camera broke. It is a year and a half old. I bought it new. Now I learn that the mi=odel I purchased is no longer being produced, and no longer being repaired by the factory. There isn't even any on lie factory support. I checked with a few local camera shops and two on line repair sources. They can each one consulted fix my problem - the cheapest quote is $ 42 though an on line source. So that cost, plus postage, and I'll have invested a significant portion of what a new camera, with warranty, will cost.

I'd like to be upset with American manufacturers, but I'm not certain if my camea was made in the good ol' U. S. of A. So few things are. Even American made cars are genrally 30 -  40% foreign. I think we still produce American babies in the United States, but I could be wrong about that.

Asimov was top dead center on this score.

The founding fathers, so-called, didn’t put sky fairies in the constitution. They recognized that there were religious believers -then put them in their place, which isn’t in the midst of the governance of this nation. They didn’t mention gay marriage, abortion, or a slew of other stuff that they surely would have known about. People in the 1780’s did have abortions, and gay people didn’t suddenly appear on the scene in the 1960’s to then become a political Hacky sack.

Science. You ask? The Constitution does mention science.

Article I, section 8: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

*****

Gotta love Christian, Conservative, Republican (and Tea Bag) people. One opinion in today’s paper stated: “I helped several people who had their cars stuck in the deep snow. If they had a Obama bumper sticker, I pushed their cars deeper into the snow.”

Another opinion suggested the new Monopoly game piece should be a assault rifle - something truly representative of America.

There‘s been a great deal of anti-Obama talk about Sequestering. That concept became a part of our laws in 1985, a year when we had that Grade B cowboy actor and a Republican congress. In fact,

The Academy Awards have come and gone. One actress dressed like Scarlet O'Hara wearing a hot air balloon that was being deflated. She tripped. Too bad, so sad. But if you wear a dress that is the size of Delaware, you have to expect there could be difficulties walking, climbing, sitting.

Kansas is preparing for more snow. The big snow that came last week, was called the Blizzard of Oz. Today's storm is being called  Blizzard of Oz II.

The Kansas legislature, mainly the House, is comprised of whacky Republicans. The locval paper endorsed many of these idiots, but now seems to be questioning their choices. As indicative of this, I present Sunday's editorial.

LAWMAKERS GONE WILD,

Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013

Rhonda Holman, for the Editorial Board

Though every session has its dumb bills, the current Kansas Legislature has set an exhausting new standard for the introduction of legislation that would flout the feds, trample on local control and judicial review, and serve as lawsuit bait.

It’s a further embarrassment that the push for some of these measures is coming from members of the Wichita-area delegation, and a mystery as to how some of the people introducing and voting for these bills can call themselves small-government conservatives.

Proposed legislation would tell courts to butt out of school funding, tell science teachers they have to spend class time on climate-change denial, and tell doctors they can’t ask patients whether they own guns and that they must tell women seeking abortions the fiction that abortion is linked to breast cancer. One measure would tell Transportation Security Administration screeners which passengers’ parts not to pat down in Kansas. Another bill would regulate dancing at strip clubs. There’s a measure requiring communities with fluoridated water to provide residents with the bogus warning “that the latest science confirms that ingested fluoride lowers the IQ in children.” Other bills would bar local governments from using public dollars to promote sustainable planning or to lobby the Legislature about anything.

The urge to meddle in public schools is especially egregious – bills would block use of the Common Core standards and require that slow readers repeat third grade, for example – given that Kansas already has a State Board of Education to make curriculum and policy decisions statewide and local school boards and superintendents to manage districts.

Of course, the poster child for bad bills may be the mandate that the University of Kansas and Kansas State University play Wichita State University annually in men’s basketball.

At least Rep. Steve Brunk, R-Wichita, who introduced the anti-fluoridation bill, told the Kansas Health Institute News Service that he didn’t expect it to advance and had no interest in it himself.

But other bills have strong support, unfortunately.

Lawmakers eager to pass the Second Amendment Protection Act, which supposedly could shield Kansas-made and -owned guns from federal restrictions, should heed Assistant Attorney General Charles Klebe. In written testimony, Klebe noted that “the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution cannot be waived by state law” and that barring physicians from asking patients whether they own guns raises First Amendment issues. His office also thinks the bill could cost the state $825,000 for lawsuits over the next three years – reason enough not to pass it.

Local officials and other constituencies must be alert and ready to respond to all these proposals with facts, as they did last week at the packed hearing that apparently beat back the fearmongering bill from state Sen. Michael O’Donnell, R-Wichita, that would have told local health departments they couldn’t pursue national accreditation.

But 28 days in, it’s hard not to be impatient for the final gavel on what the Legislature’s GOP leaders hope will be an 80-day session. While a bill’s introduction hardly assures passage, Kansans will only be safe from all the unneeded, unfounded and legally questionable legislation once lawmakers have called it a year.

More snow expected tomorrow, 5-8 more inches. This time I plan to park my car about 15' from the street, rather than 80'.

I was up several times during the night, purposefully. I have sevveral feral cats. They have a warm place on the shed, but I still get up to check on their water dish several times during the night. It was 8 degrees yesterday morning. Water tends to freeze up quickly in that kind of temperature.

The city streets are clear. Most parking lots are clear. Most of the city's churches are closed today. Christians shouldn't be inconvenienced for a little thing such as going to church on a cold morning just to worship the guy whom the say sacrificed his life for them. Church should be a confortable place - warm in winter, cool in summer, and certainly not the place to ruffles one's conscience or sensibilities.

The church next to my house cleaned their parking lot. They didn't clear the sidewalks, though. Heathens might use those sidewalks. No, the good Christian parking lot is cleared, and services cancelled. Well played, faithful neighbors. Well played! They will have to be open on Tuesday. There's a city primary vote on that day. Nothing proclaims the concept of separation of church and state as succinctly as voting in a christian church. 

I shoveled one neighbor's driveway on Weds. That was a 5" accumulation. He was off work on Thurs. He shoveled two more times. A snow plow came along and piled snow in his driveway near the street. I cleared that out for him while he was at work, yesterday.

This morning, I scooped snow behind my car, started my car, then drove it backward about ten feet. The sun is going to help melt the rest of the snow and ice off the car. Now I need to clear away an area of about 20' X 8'.  Most of the rest of the driveway - about 80', is passable.

We got 14'2 " and some places in the north country routinely get 25-30 of snow a year. Who am I to complain.

I will say that it was easier to shovel snow at 16.

Wichita got 14.2" of snow. This is the second largest snowfall since the city has been keeping records.First plac was over 15" in 1962.

I didn't un-bury my car. I didn't shovel my driveway. The newspaper carrier drove up my driveway to lave my paper on my front porch. My house sits 80 feet back from the street.

I applaud the police department, sherriff's department, city and county road crews, the EMT workers, the dispatcher and many other reprsentatives of Obama's socialist government, many of whom would like union and/or associational representation, but are denied that privilege.

I wonder why the rich folks don't fund these organizations. Why not have a private police force? it worked for Dubya in Iraq.

Plenty of snow outside. Probably Obama's fault. Could be the sky fairy being pissed about gay marriage, by more likely it is  something the president did or didn't do. I'll have to check Faux and fiends to get the "real" answer.

This is rush hour, but with most buinesses closed, I see about one car every 4 or 5 minutes.

In the game of Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey there is always the ass where the tail is to be affixed.

Welcome to Kansas, the proverbial ass end of the above mentioned game.

The Kansas legislature is going to tackle some very important issues. For one, they want to exempt from Federal laws, and guns manufacture red in Kansas. Yeah! State’s rights! The same old mentality that brought us the American Un-Civil War a mere 152 years ago.

Kansas wants a new abortion law that will make it illegal to have abortions for reasons of gender. ALA China, this is an essential fucking law to have. It will help us proclaim we are the stupidest state in the nation.

We also have a bill proposing that if we teach global warming in the classroom, that optional theories must also be taught. This is silly because we all know that global warming is caused by god farts. Every time god has a greasy repast, he gets indigestion, then farts, and the weather changes. I mean, why teach what we already know!

We have a governor who has gone to every corner of the state proclaiming is vision for improving the economy - a thing he failed to do here, thus far, and never did while in the U. S. Senate. We have since learned, earlier this month, that his financial figures have been based on a 2 billion dollar budget error. Oops. He has found someone in his administration to fall on that sword.

Nationally, the U. S. Senate plays brinkmanship with the predicament (and the nation), with their ideological B. S. trumping reality, and trumping the seriousness of matters at hand.

Is it impossible for American’s to find mature individuals to fill our senate? I’m not talking about age. Crap. Our senators are generally older than oatmeal and dinosaur eggs. I mean mentally mature individuals.

I’ve been waiting for someone to return an over-due item to the library. A conscientious library would perhaps keep track of over-due items, then contact the patron to urge the return of the errant item in as timely a manner as possible. But this is Kansas. Our library staff meets each morning, lays hands on the book shelves, and prays that missing items be returned. It’s the only Christian way to handle things in Bishop Brownback’s kingdom.

It is snowing outside my window. We should have 6-8 inches by tomorrow, maybe 12 + inches in other parts f the state. Snow is caused when polar bear farts encounter god’s hot beef and bean burrito farts converge somewhere in the north regions of Canada. (Who needs science?)