(Being a compendium of random thoughts that don’t merit full bloggiation.)
Would someone, preferably one of the people Missourians have sent to the U. S. Senate or the U.S. House, enlighten us about why we have a federal debt limit if it can be increased at congressional will?
And, members of our Washington delegation, don’t get all puffy about how you oppose raising it when you and your colleagues previous DID raise it.
Please write a 500-word theme about how you will pay back this debt. If you expect to pass this course, do not give me the tiresome argument that if government reduces its ability to pay for its programs, the public will create more economic growth that will reduce the debt.
There will be no grading on the curve. This is strictly pass/fail.
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When it was announced a few days ago that the nation was averaging 1900 COVID deaths a day for the first time since last March and that 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, an ugly stroke of capitalist brilliance overwhelmed me.
Monogrammed body bags. There’s a big constituency for this product—the thousands of people who refuse to get vaccinated. Take your personal bag to the hospital with you so you can go out in style.
It would be the last status statement, a last chance to be SOMEBODY instead of just some body.
It will be a wonderful memento for your survivors and an inspirational symbol of your stalwart independence. Could become a family heirloom.
And there would be a good market for used ones. Run an ad on the internet, or maybe in the newspaper, or offer it on EBay: “Body bag, reasonably priced. Great savings if your initials are _____ (fill in appropriate letters).”
If ya don’t got it, flaunt it.
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The University of Missouri football team, a few days ago, held a charitable event for the athletic department of Southeast Missouri State University. The Tigers gave the Red Hawks $550,000 and all the team from Cape Girardeau had to do was get the snot beaten out of it again at Faurot Field.
Early in the season we see a lot of these games, usually routs. We’re not sure they should really count on the season’s record of either team but they do—-because they are two college football teams and they do play and somebody keeps score.
Smaller schools are willing to take on these challenges because—in this case $550,000—they get a relative ton of money for athletic programs that come nowhere near having the resources bigger schools have. If being a punching bag one Saturday afternoon makes sure there are volleyball and soccer and other minor games available for student-athletes in Cape Girardeau, the price is worth it.
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We are sure we are not the only ones to think, or to say when buying a new car, “This is probably the last gas-powered car I’ll ever own.” We’ve said it for the last two cars we’ve bought and the second one is coming up on eight years old. Will there be a third? Two developments in the past few days make it clear the future is silently roaring (if such thing is possible) our way.
New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, has signed a new law saying every new passenger car or truck sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Medium and heavy-duty trucks have a 2045 goal. This is a huge goal—electric vehicles constituted only two percent of sales last year. The new law is similar to an executive order issued by the governor of California earlier. Big difference: executive orders are not laws.
That’s plenty of time to develop EVS that don’t need to recharged on round trips to St. Louis or Kansas City.
In fact, one such car is coming over the horizon.
We’ve said that we’ll start to seriously look at an electric vehicle has a 500-mile battery. There is such a vehicle and the EPA says its range is 520 miles, topping Tesla’s best by more than 100 miles. The company is called Lucid and it plans to start deliveries of its cars before the end of the year. Lucid is a Silicon Valley-founded company that recently picked Casa Grande, Arizona as the site for its first purpose-built EV factory in North America. It will start by making 10,000 cars a year and plans expansion to produce more than 300,000 a year.
Prices are believed to start at about $77,000. They’re going to have to come down a few tens to be affordable to people such as I am.
Still…….
The future is coming.
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The big inaugural/bicentennial parade in Jefferson City on Saturday, September 18t, was a week premature. True, Missouri was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821. But people living out here in central Missouri didn’t know about it until September 25 when the proclamation was published by The Missouri intelligencer¸ in Franklin—Missouri’s first newspaper outside of St. Louis. Folks in St. Louis celebrated twenty days earlier when Missouri’s first newspaper, The Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser, published the proclamation. No big stories or headlines Just the proclamation. That’s the primitive reporting style of the day.