This is the second one of these videos I’ve seen in the past week or so. Mom starts nodding off (from heroin, most likely) while her child goes unattended. The other video had a baby in the stroller – mom nodded off standing up). Oy.
http://youtu.be/LbQQjyeXyWQ
![Snowing on Second St [Explored]](https://i0.wp.com/farm8.staticflickr.com/7336/12675092405_487b455668.jpg?resize=500%2C333 "Snowing on Second St [Explored]")
Starting Sunday afternoon. Six to ten inches are estimated so far.
Please, God, let it be Opening Day soon….
It’s going up to 60, so we have lots of fog from the snow. A line of thunderstorms is coming through this afternoon and it looks like we’ll be under a tornado watch tonight. Yay.
This is about a half-mile from my house:
You’d think PA drivers would be better than North Carolina’s, but apparently not.
SEPTA just shut down buses in the city and suburbs. Trains and the Market St. El are still running.
So I gave up on going to the supermarket, because there was not a parking spot to be had. I drove to a Wawa superstore about a mile away, and picked up some basics there. But I still wanted to get some fruit and some chicken cutlets, so I went to what is commonly referred to in the neighborhood as “the Korean Polish store” — because it used to be a Polish grocery store (still is) but was bought by a Korean couple.
When I was spoke to the owner, he started complaining about the weather. He didn’t understand why it was changing. “Global warming,” I said, and mentioned it was in the 60s in Alaska. He started going off about Congress and rich people. “Where do they think they can hide?” he said. “Don’t they have children and grandchildren?” A man after my own heart.
Then he told me something I hadn’t heard. He said it was commonly believed in Japan (who knows? Not me) that the island is going to sink into the ocean in the next 40 years, and that this is why Japan is building up military power once again (that part is definitely true). He said they plan to eventually take over other islands and land in the region so they have a place to live and grow food.
“The Japanese government is renting land from Myanmar — “you know, Burma?” — to grow rice. “They have a hundred-year lease,” he said. “Because they don’t believe Japan will still be there.”
I’m seeing many news reports of municipalities all along the East Coast running out of salt — which means when they order it now, the cost goes ‘way up, and your taxes will go up as a result. (They gambled, they lost.) Yet another hidden cost of global warming!
I’m sure Bill DeBlasio will disappoint us at some point, but damn, I’m pretty happy about this:
The image is surreal. Newly elected New York mayor Bill de Blasio, wearing a broad and slightly goofy smile, dwarfs the infinitely vilified outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, who seems somewhat bemused himself.
For 12 years it was Mayor Bloomberg, standing at the forefront of a national education reform movement, who overshadowed Bill de Blasio and his progressive ilk. Bloomberg considered New York the “ poster child” of free-market education reform as he seized mayoral control of the district, closed nearly 200 “failing schools” and opened about that many charters.
But as de Blasio settles into office, his administration has already dealt major blows to one of Bloomberg’s sacred cows. Late last week, newly appointed schools chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that the Department of Education would redirect $210 million from charter schools and independent nonprofits to fund de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten initiative.
The surprise announcement reflects educational priorities in upheaval. The millions in question had been earmarked by the former administration to help clear space for new and expanding charter schools in the coming five years. Instead, Fariña plans to divert the funds to priorities like de Blasio’s flagship initiative, the pre-kindergarten programs sold largely as a remedy for inequality.
I had this black friend, and her father just loved me. (He used to call me his Polish princess.) When we’d watch the news, and someone would say something he thought was bullshit, he’d roll his eyes and say, “You know, Susan, white people are crazy.”
“Hey, come on, I’m sitting right here,” I’d protest.
“No, no, no, you’re not white. They are.”
And you know, I know what he means. Professional White People, people with power, people who don’t have a clue about the world the rest of us live in. People who make pronouncements when they get worked up about a perceived wrong, and have crazy ideas about how to right it.
CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield is all worked up about the death of the extraordinarily gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman. She’s so worked up, it’s almost as if someone took her favorite toy and she wants them to pay — with their lives.
Because he was “special.” He wasn’t “just” an addict.
The fact that heroin is such news to the white elite proves how completely out of touch they are. (In fact, I’ll bet they have at least one closet junkie in their workplaces.) Heroin (and the related prescription drug Oxycontin, also known as “hillbilly heroin”) has ruined, and continues to ruin, huge swaths of our nation.
Heroin and Oxy and prescription drugs got their foothold in my own section of white Philadelphia when the factories shut down. People started selling drugs to stay afloat. And while you may find that despicable, I find it pragmatic. Seriously: with no jobs, no money, and a threadbare safety net, how else do you stay alive?
Continue reading “News flash: CNN anchor discovers heroin can kill people she likes”
