Come Heller high water … the May 11th edition

Come Heller high water…

• If you live in Flint, it’s hard to keep straight who’s giving what to the city’s recovery efforts. Aid is coming at the city from all angles. So this week’s news that philanthropic organizations headed by the C.S. Mott Foundation are giving the city $125 million probably didn’t sound as momentous as it really is. It’s going to fund everything from ongoing water testing and health initiatives for children to kick starting the economy through entrepreneurship, the arts and more. This is truly a wow moment in this whole dismal affair. People need to recognize that. These foundations aren’t doing it for the applause but they deserve some anyway.
• I mean, look at this who’s who list of benefactors: The C.S. Mott Foundation ($100 million), the Ruth Mott Foundation ($1 million), the Hagerman Foundation ($1 million), the FlintNOW Foundation $10 million), the W. K. Kellogg Foundation ($5 million), the Carnegie Corporation ($1 million), the Ford Foundation ($1 million), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($1 million) and the Skillman Foundation ($500,00-$1.5 million). Amazing.
• I think the people who think Trump has no chance in November don’t know politics very well. This is a 52-48, 51-49 country when it comes to the presidency. November will be close, with Trump’s mouth being the deciding factor. Caveat: If he doesn’t apologize to women – often and sincerely – he loses by 10 percentage points. Hell hath no fury like an entire gender annoyed.
• Budweiser is renaming its beer “America” until after the election. And if Trump wins, they’ll change name half their bottles to “Canada” for all the people suddenly moving there.
• By the way, does America really taste like thin, cheap beer? I like to think we’d taste like freedom fries or something like that.
• The weather report says it will snow in Michigan Saturday. Clearly, the only sensible reaction is to stop reading the weather report.
• Why is steak sauce so expensive? Seriously. Someone explain this to me.
• The Michigan Senate voted to ban communities from banning plastic bags this week, which is irritating enough. Banning plastic bags would, first and foremost, mean a cleaner Michigan. I see plastic bags hanging from power lines, trees, bushes etc. Disgusting. We switched to reusable cloth bags for the grocery store years ago and love them beyond all reason. Naturally, the Senate doesn’t agree. Would you expect anything different from them? Maybe we need to hang some from the trees outside the Capitol. But here are two reasons their action truly bugs me: 1) There are no communities actively seeking to ban plastic bags. None. And yet the Senate wants to squelch any such local insurrection, should it occur, probably because bag manufacturers are telling them to, and 2) Republicans keep telling us they’re all for local control and yet this takes away local control. What the? That two-faceness is really no surprise, though. This is the same party that says it wants government out of our private lives and yet misses no opportunity to stick their nose in it, especially when it comes to issues like abortion, marriage, transgender issues, school prayer, etc. Why aren’t they ever called on that?
• The Detroit Lions had the new rookies attend a history class about the team this week. Just a wild guess here but it probably didn’t include not going to or winning a Super Bowl, their best receiver (Calvin Johnson) quitting early, their best running back (Barry Sanders) quitting early, their historically bad draft performances, or the time they choice the wind over the ball in overtime, or the coach who went pants-less through a drive-thru. But if it didn’t include all that stuff, what did it cover? I wanna take that class.
• “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Soren Kierkegaard.

Image credit: ideowl