The Enid Event Center downtown is haunted by 2 dead businesses + "retreat" edition UPDATE at bottom.

Once upon a time, what seems to be like forever ago, Enid had its own non-government TV station that was actually broadcasting on actual broadcast air (not cable).  Those who remember the ghost of its deceased owner, Rex Faulkner, will also remember  how the station was before the station was sold off.  Yeah--in the name of desperate fund raising, it presumed to go into competition with an east side business, now also deceased: Walls Bargain Center.  And Walls was an inventory liquidation sale outlet, one of a major chain of stores, that eventually decided that the business of that genre wasn't significant enough in Enid to warrant staying open, and so it permanently closed.  The chain still has successful stores elsewhere in Oklahoma--just not in Enid anymore.

Liquidation sales was the essence of the Walls business model; it was not the business model of KXOK and what KXOK did was out of fund-raising desperation. Fast forward to 2016, and we get to see both ghosts of businesses past on cable now, in this form:

Like I said--the Enid Event Center is haunted, and not by just one ghost.

That's Enid for ya--keeping it classy. Perish the thought that Enid should EVER be too classy to be your friendly neighborhood junk peddler.

Successful Walls business locations across Oklahoma:

They're just not successful in Enid.  I wonder why.
Seriously ponder why Eskimo Joe's doesn't want to come to Enid except around Christmas time, why the New China buffet closed and Pizza Hut moved AWAY from Owen K. Garriott (Route 412). We don't have a Denny's anymore, and there's a reason for that, too. Still wanna hide behind the "Enid's growing" declaration that you got suckered into for purposes of passing that Enid Public Schools bond while you're too scared to notice that Enid claims to be growing while it's losing sales tax money hand over fist at the same time?

How does a community grow into more people buying stuff, and lose sales tax money at the same time, people?  Do the math.  Oh--that's right: the only math Enid Public Schools ever taught was the math it also claimed you'd never use in your life after you graduate.  That's why no one on the City Commission knows how to draw a line from Point A in Grant County to Point B in Kingfisher County across Garfield County--that would be Euclidean Geometry.

The failure of Enid Public Schools to value, let alone teach, mathematics is costing the City of Enid actual big money, people.  I don't mean the Vanhooser Basic Arithmetic, folks--I mean the mathematics from which analytical skills come.  The City of Enid is looking at a list of word problems it has no clue how to figure out because it was taught that what you learn in math class is stuff you'll never use after you graduate.  Those youngsters you think are going to learn coding by osmosis or something aren't going to be able to cut it in coding without analytical skills and yes--mathematics.  You know that Right To Farm bill contemplated by the Oklahoma Congress, the one that DEMANDS that farming be based on science?  You need math skills for that, even to be a farmer...so...the kids you're sending to Enid Public Schools won't even qualify for a farmer's job when they graduate.  Picking produce next to an illegal immigrant, maybe, but not farming.

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In other news, my milkweed kids are coming along quite nicely in their waterbottle containers, as you can see by this Ferry Morse Butterfly Weed seedling:

I'll be posting others on my 2016 Monarch blog page.

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Saturday UPDATE, City of Enid's 5-grand "retreat" edition: ....but first....on the portion of this post where I address how much Enid Public Schools is actually costing the City by failing to put importance on mathematics as distinguished from arithmetic...I was doing some research on the origins of Common Core, despised by conservatives who USED TO be the ones complaining about how the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch in the car market in the 1990s, how they were taking over the American auto market.  The talkingpoint line used back then was "American children have computer games--Japanese kids have homework".  It seems that Oklahoma conservatives in particular have a short attention span when it comes to being "pro business" at a time when corporations found American students sub-standard compared to the students elsewhere across the globe.  

Now, Trump might whine about how Carrier and other businesses took American jobs overseas, but it's overseas where corporations find competent workers, and that's the same reason we have special visas for foreigners to come to the U.S. to work at U.S. jobs, and (voila!) businesses that contemplate moving to Enid also insist on the construction of apartment complexes so that they can import qualified staff instead of hiring unqualified locals.  High quality jobs demand high levels of competency and a near-exclusive fine arts focus of Enid Public Schools just won't cut that mustard, folks.

Oklahoma hates Common Core because it knows it can't possibly measure up to international competency standards while it continues to whine about how America needs to be great again thinking that mathematic illiteracy is great.  The City of Enid had to hire an expert from Tulsa because there's no such thing as an Enid-grown expert.  Dwell on that, folks.  And now we have a City Commission that has "retreats" far afield from Enid because even in the City Commission's own view, Enid isn't good enough to stay in.

Dwell on that, folks. Dwell on that a long, long time. It might eventually dawn on you that Enid can't afford to permit ANY of the current City Commission to run for re-election unchallenged.

Here we go yet again--the audience is invoked to call the shots for Dish, NBC Universal re: MSNBC

Media moguls at Dish and Comcast don't agree on Comcast's fee hike for MSNBC and  now both run ads aimed at the audience to care whether or not Dish should pay the higher fee to continue to carry MSNBC.  And as was the case in Viacom vs Suddenlink, both sides overestimate their value to their audiences.  There's a bit of a spin on that, and that is Comcast's muscle over MSNBC and its trend to be a liberal-leaning media entity; Comcast doesn't care for MSNBC's leanings, seeking to overhaul it instead and could actually use the artificially dwindled audience/ratings numbers as a good excuse to outright kill off the entity if it sees fit.

And so both are running ads on MSNBC encouraging the audience to either fight Dish in favor of the rate hike or fight Comcast's rate hike.  Here's the deal, though--Fox has always crowed about how it always beats MSNBC in ratings on any given day, any given quarter, any given year and the truth of this is based on the fact that Fox is always provided to every cable viewer in every state of the union as part of the basic cable package.  MSNBC is part of a basic cable package only in some states but not all of them--ratings comparisons are not legit in the first place because of this. What's going to happen if Dish drops MSNBC is that it gives Comcast a bigger reason to gut the thing.  But given the quirks of availability in basic cable, that's not going to work well either.

We're going to see more of these rate hike disputes, declares the Wall Street Journal.  As long as web TV makes further inroads into the broader audience eyeball count, both Dish and cable are going to see declines in revenues from their audiences making cost-cutting necessary; this may very well lead to the eventual extinction of both types of entities with universal access to content would be the world wide web.

Bottom line: the audience is who determines the bottom line in all cases.  All major corporations remain at the mercy of the audiences, as well they should.

Denver Business Journal's other article on new Dish vs NBCUniversal lawsuit.

From Deadline Hollywood

Enid City Commission, famous for not thinking things through

Yeah, I know that tonight I repeated to the Commission what I'd said earlier, and now Brownlee wants to change the Agenda rules, but nothing proved what I said before more solidly than the crap they were throwing around tonight.

If homeowners think that the Commission has waged war against them, it's because they have and after that homeowner got up to speak tonight, it was well worth repeating.

The Study Session opined that lots of pavement painting stating NO TRUCKS is going to curtail the need for downtown businesses to get their delivery by trucks--specifically Conrady Electric which routinely gets supplied by semi trucks and Galaxy Mattress is always going to need some kind of mattress truck to deliver its inventory...it was a mattress truck that the newspaper reported getting stuck under there a few months ago.

Well, now they perceive a revenue stream problem and what do they do?  They throw money at it--they've hired a Tulsa expert now to do the thinking they were supposed to be smart enough to do.  Repeating myself in explaining Point A Point B basic highschool Euclidean geometry again is called for because they're all products of the science-and-math-be-damned Enid Public Schools system.

But then again, I don't expect mathematical basics will sink through thick skulls any better this time than it did when they were in high school. Yeah, it's like beating one's brains against a stupid immovable wall, but somebody's gotta do it.  The Commission's bright idea of "ensuring a revenue stream" is to spend Enid money in Tulsa--just as brilliant as spending Enid money at Roman Nose...all of which is an admission that the Commission itself is just too stupid to run a city properly.  After all, this Commission thought that Steve Kime was some kind of competent.

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Late Night Primary UPDATE: Ya, I'm just now getting caught up with what's been going on with the national scene, and it's amazing--it takes a Trump to shut Limbaugh up.  It takes a Trump to show the stark reality of how far off the conservatives have kidded themselves into thinking they represent The American People when they don't.  Both Trump and Cruz are just as anti-big corporation as Bernie Sanders is, and none of the pro-big-corporation candidates have gotten any traction.  It takes a foul mouthed Trump to attract sanctimonious evangelicals.

Yeah, it's totally amazing.  Totally.
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Speaking of the failure of "The Oklahoma Way" as an education philosophy: This just in via World Economic Forum:

Anyone complaining that what one learns in math class never gets used in real life is a blithering idiot.  It's people like that who cost the City of Enid megabucks because they lack analytic skills required to even recognize problems, let alone solve them--necessitating spending Enid money for non-Enid experts in the first place.  The focus of Enid Public Schools on "world class fine arts" starves the City of the ability to pay home grown analytic talent.  They instead prefer to discard mathematically talented kids as just so much rubbish, convinced that analysts from anywhere outside of Enid is necessarily more competent than any given Enid source.  There ya go, folks: Enid Public Schools' classic case of "the soft bigotry of low expectations".  If Enid Public Schools administration is anything, it's a bunch of bigots.
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To admit responsibility is to admit liabilty--the Trump riots

When it's Sunday, it's Meet the press' stupid questions, even on CNN's Reliable Sources.

Whatever else you might think of The Donald, one must admit that the man knows his media and his audience as well as how his audience translates into ratings and how the ratings break down into audience demographics. With that said, he's fully aware of how he gets free press coverage stepping around whatever remains of the Fairness Doctrine after Republicans have routinely gutted the thing.  Whether you think this is a mark of brilliance or the indelible mark of a weasel, that's up to you.

So when the analysts point out that fellow Republican candidates agree with liberal media presenters that schtuff happens only at Trump rallies therefore Trump is responsible and one presenter asks Trump point blank if he should admit responsibility, did the presenter seriously expect Trump to do exactly that? COME FRIGGIN ON ALREADY--GEEEEEEEEZZZ!!!
The question doesn't make Trump look bad--it makes the questioner look like a blithering idiot.

And there's this: both major parties engage in "dirty tricks" campaigns against each other and against their internal insurgents.  BOTH of them do this, and correctly predict what the press is going to do when schtuff happens.

Don't get me wrong--I think The Donald does in fact bring out the thusfar stifled violent racist elements that, when left to their own devices, would prefer to go back to the "good ole days" of lynching.  But I also think both parties aren't innocent in setting the stage for the purpose of painting that picture to force a conclusion among voters.  It's what they've done since time immemorial and it's what they spend money to do.  Just ask Ralph Nader.
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Quick Addendum:  Just as I hit the Publish button, some gal speaking at the Tucson book festival, just before Ari Beriman took to the mic, said that more people are registering as Independent voters because more people don't like either party.  Well, there ya go.  I'll buy that...but...they're 'way too late to head off this current train-wreck-in-progress.  Chalk this up to shoulda-woulda-coulda-if-only.
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Another Quick Addendum: Why do I rip into "liberal media" when, elsewhere on this blog, I've clearly stated that I'm a liberal registered Republican?  I've also stated that I'm an Eisenhower Republican and do take exception to Eisenhower's deportation thing, though, as I recognize that it's American businesses that have relied on people who came here illegally and mention in the same breath that the immigration system is broken and it's a broken system causing all the heartache...and do NOT think the Trump Wall is any kind of good idea.

It's like this, folks--Democrats consider me the enemy, and Republican conservatives share that view; what I've always been is someone who sees the pros and cons of both sides and I refuse to play party loyalty games, which is what all that partisan policy crap really boils down to.  This homey never played that. Ever.

Seriously, Republicans--didn't your so-called "conservative movement" involve voting on principles?  Where do you hide your principles when you take a loyalty oath to support the Republican candidate who wins the nomination no matter who it is, hm?  That's not voting on your principles when the nominee goes against those same principles, is it.

Trump disses Fox, and now he disses Murdoch's Wall Street Journal

I'm giving a listen to Trump's victory speech and he's just ripping everybody in what we used to know as "the conservative movement" and getting away with it.  He's definitely not Limbaugh's water boy, and Limbaugh's the Republican water boy.  This is like watching a slow train wreck in progress.  Wall Street Journal poll is a phony, he says, and gets applause.

WOW

He says he's growing the party and attracting Democrat/Independents and it was the Tea Party mission to purge RINOs.  Looks like the Tea Party AND the GOP establishment are on the outs at this point.
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How about that Dem race, huh? Conventional wisdom put Bernie in Florida early with Hillary anticipating a victory party in Michigan. With Trump bragging about how attractive he is to Dem liberals, thus growing the party, it's 11 pm Central time and Hillary hasn't brought out the balloons yet.  Adding insult to injury, Ted breathes down The Donald's neck by adopting one of Bernie's campaign planks coming out against corporate welfare.  Jury's in, folks: the left turned hard left and the right has turned hard left too.

 

Oklahoma GOP head-over-heels for anti-business Ted Cruz.

Thursday UPDATE, GOP Debate on Fox Edition: Ted Cruz wants a moratorium on foreign workers on H1B work visas...which is anti-business.  Am I right or am I right?  Okies can be such yuuuuuuge suckas for a pretty face...then again, though Mary Fallin declared that no Oklahoman would ever vote for a socialist, well, just look at the vote per county, then.  Mary, you lose.

Oh ha--good question just in:  who did I vote for?  I voted for the only grownup in the pack: Kasich.
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With all the tax breaks Oklahoma has given business in the name of being pro-business, the businessman that is Donald Trump didn't win; instead, the guy who has a problem with "corporate welfare" got the nod, and that's after anti-pork Tom Coburn endorsed Marco Rubio with Governor Fallin abstaining from any endorsement...but not before she made the statement to MSNBC that Oklahoma would never vote for a socialist...and then Oklahoma was won by Bernie Sanders.  How the hell did THAT happen?

Seriously--when it comes to corporations, Cruz sounds exactly like Sanders.

Inhofe has nothing but good things to say about Sanders -- Bloomberg

 Oklahoma likes to paint its surface with conservative paint, but underneath that thin skin, it's leftist as hell.  If you're an Okie who is against illegal immigration, then you're against agricultural business, and Oklahoma IS agricultural business...so...you're anti-Oklahoma.

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Monday mini-UPDATE, Post-Flint-Debate Edition: I typically make a point to catch the debates of both parties, even when it means catching the repeat broadcast--and so catching the repeat of the Dem debate in Flint, one thing in particular riveted my attention: when the moderator pointed out to Sanders that his anti-corporate-welfare position was the same as Ted Cruz'.  My blog regulars already know that I pointed this out right here on this blog, right here in this particular blog entry, except I didn't try to paint that position as conservative....because it is NOT.  It's a socialist position, to be expected of Sanders--it just looks weird when somebody claiming to be a conservative adopts the leftist position, and what's more peculiar still is how leftist the Tea Party has become while still claiming to be ultraconservative.

But the Tea Party as we now know it HAS been commandeered by somebody featured in yesterday's 60 Minutes show: Koch, and he's on record as saying that he's ultra liberal.  So there you have it, friends & neighbors--I CALLED IT FIRST.