evolution

The Radical Centrist has the latest RINO Sightings.

THE MAN (the man)
THE MAN IN RED SWEATS
who protests at the 23rd st dillons
IS REALLY FREAKED OUT on acid

i once watched him (with a strange tendency to lose my bearings)
drop a king-size snickers bar (the big, black phallus as corporate symbol – FILLS YOU UP! [well, not me; because, you know, I ain't into that: suit yourself])
which he had stolen into a potted poinsettia (THE ROSY CROSS OF CHOCOLATE)
inspect it for dirt, and then
not really caring whether or not it had dirt on it,
ate it (DESTROYING THE DUSKY CHOCOLATE AND NOUGAT GOD OF LOVE)*

There’s no easy answer I can see for this:

The risk to life and limb, combined with low salaries paid to guards in the state prison system, is feeding a staffing crisis. The $23,600 starting wage for a prison guard is making it difficult for wardens to recruit enough qualified applicants. It also is a challenge to retain officers after they acquire work experience valued by law enforcement agencies and other employers.

With turnover rates approaching 25 percent this year at several state prisons, wardens are slicing off bigger pieces of the budget to pay overtime to guards. Despite guards working more than 40 hours each week, prison security is stretched to the point that inmates and staff are at greater risk of harm.

Another embarrassing detail here:

Sam Cline, warden of the Ellsworth Correctional Facility, said some inmates in Ellsworth’s work-release program were holding down welding jobs that paid $12.50 to $14 an hour. The starting wage for Ellsworth’s guards is less than $12, he said.

“That helps illustrate the point,” Cline said.

Any fix is going to have to incorporate things that will make absolutely no one happy, but it must be done, or the whole system could topple under its own weight. As I said, there are no easy answers.

… Kansas was admitted to the Union as the 34th state. History says that the first “official” shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, SC, but the original War Between the States started here years earlier, in the 1850s.

Thousands of schoolchildren were at the Capitol on Friday, along with several people in period costumes, some Native American dancers, and (I think) even a few Indian Army officers. Not sure what business they could possibly have in Topeka, but hey — glad to have you.

One beef, Governor Sebelius: I didn’t get any of the large sheet cake you presented to the crowd. Just so you know.

Dear Google:

Perhaps this is the wrong time in history for you to be putting a logo celebrating the Chinese New Year on your site.

I’m not a public relations expert; I’m, y’know, just saying.

Here are some other Google logos.

… although the Japanese agriculture minister didn’t set a date.

More on this saga from the evolution archive, which is also briefly recounted in the story.

Me either. I think it was in the 1940s sometime. Oh, and there was that thing with the burning things in New York. What was that again?

It’s time to start caring again.

I’ll simply point you to this editorial in the Arizona East Valley Tribune, quoting the first part of it:

With its restrictions on everything from foreign ownership of real estate to the carrying of sidearms by American drug agents assigned there, the government of Mexico has made its touchiness about its sovereignty clear time and again. But when it comes to the sovereignty of the United States of America, Mexican contempt seems to know few limits.

The latest example came at 3:15 p.m. Monday, as yet another standoff between armed Mexicans and American law-enforcement officers took place in Texas at the very spot where a similar standoff (described by Paul Green in a column on the Opinion 2 page of Monday’s Tribune) transpired Nov. 17. But instead of a fleeing dump truck full of dope pulled into Mexico by a bulldozer, Monday’s incident involved three vehicles heading southward at Neely’s Crossing — protected by the sudden appearance of at least one Humvee equipped with a heavy machine gun and manned by men in military-style uniforms.

Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office told the Ontario, Calif., Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, that the Mexicans deployed more than 200 yards inside the U.S. border to keep his deputies, Texas state troopers and U.S. Border Patrol agents at a distance. Their firepower again had the desired effect. Though one vehicle — a Cadillac Escalade reportedly stolen in El Paso — was captured with 1,477 pounds of dope inside, the rest made it back across, unmolested by the U.S. lawmen.

“It’s been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident that it’s been going on for years,” Doyal complained. “When you’re up against mounted machine guns, what can you do? Who wants to pull the trigger first?
Certainly not us.”