Despite confessing faith, Enid Commission members don't know right from wrong

Quite a headline in the Monday newspaper, huh:

This is the second article on this subject, though; Sunday's article merited not only front page headline but inside, a full page spread.  So where was the newspaper months earlier, hm?  Like I said--it's more a lapdog than a watchdog, and this particular issue isn't one that the newspaper can ignore anymore.  I will have more commentary on this at a later date, but for now I'll say that my regular readers already know that I was on to this corrupt bunch a long long LONG time ago, a time when the newspaper provided cover for this rotten bunch, and now they've been reported by the paper to opine that they need ethics guidelines, not their respective churches, to tell them what's right and what's wrong.  The longer they talk, the more of a disgrace each Commissioner is to the respective churches they attend; they are, after all, the same people who voted to approve a rule that evangelicals should be required to pay for a vendor's permit in order to set up downtown on a First Friday despite First Amendment protections in that regard.  Watch this space.

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July 8 UPDATE: Those of you who watched the City Commission yesterday already know the move I made on this. For those of you who didn't, here's the gist: I opened my comments to the Commission with a continuation of the comment I made on curious City economics, how even the new Walmart  neighborhood market store didn't make a difference in the millions in retail sale revenues that were lost, and all the current construction going on proceeds without any visible means of (financial) support, while Kingfisher consistently gains each tax period...and there's something that's just cockeyed about that.  I then pointed out that anyone who needs ethics guidelines to inform them what's right and what's wrong is a disgrace to the church they go to, as messing around with somebody's spouse is just plain ole wrong.

What's worse, though, is that the Commissioner in question enlisted the service of the City Attorney to execute a warrant to the Police Department on a personal matter, and I said that this was a clear abuse of office.  The City Attorney should have known better than to use HER office to execute ANY action regarding a personal matter that is NOT City business.  The news I'm going to break with this UPDATE is that I'm going to file an OBA complaint on this attorney.  She should have known better but didn't and participated in her own unethical conduct and facilitated the conduct of the Commissioner.  There exists NO excuse or mitigating circumstance for the conduct of either person. The conduct of the City attorney was just as unethical as that of the Commissioner.

Enid News & Eagle's anti-farmer position is clear in biased publication

First, under the guise of reporting news, the Enid News-Ain't-Got-Nothin'-To-Do-With-It & Eagle takes an anti-Right-To-Farm position, siding with the liberal position on that, and then it endorses Ross Vanhooser instead of his farmer opponent (Roland Pederson), as if we don't need more farmers in government. There's far more to it than that, though--it's corrupt, which also explains why it's a lapdog instead of a watchdog: it was the paper that predicted the victory of Mayor Vanhooser, in the form of Ross' brother.  Proclaims that Chautauqua is a marvelous event but won't publish an ETN schedule to inform its readers as to when one can tune in to ETN to watch it on teh tee vee.  In short, the Enid Beagle is a Vanhooser lapdog, specifically--it awarded mayoral loser David Vanhooser the Readers' Choice Award for Best Commissioner.  That says all you need to know about how impotent as a news org the Enid Beagle actually is.

www.rolandforsenate.com

Orlando: It's time for the NRA to step up to do proper duty

I've heard the rumblings: I'm not commenting about the Orlando shooting because it's likely I'll run for office again and I dare not step on those particular Oklahoma power toes and I'm reluctant to speak out against Islam because I have Muslim friends.  Au contraire.

Partisan politics these days take left-right extremes and are themselves run by right-left extremists.  I've always been an independent who doesn't fit in the pigeonhole labeled "moderate" and I don't believe any voter owes allegiance to the success of either party, and that voting is NOT an entitlement program for either party.  Dems howl because of the alleged "pro-NRA" position I have in agreeing with Sanders that holding manufacturers responsible for the dead people directly resulting from the use of their products is "a bridge too far" and Reps howl that I agree with a Socialist on something.  Both howlers are extremists in MY book.

However, the NRA position that we already have too many gun laws is bogus considering all the loopholes their lobbyists put in aforementioned gun laws before passage, and while they've been very good at howling about an absolute interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, they've also been very good at telling lawmakers what they can NOT do but very short on proposing what they CAN do, and it's high time they step up to be part of the solution.

Come on, NRA--propose legislation yourself that:
1) is capable of differentiating who is a good guy and who is a bad guy before either of them buy guns;

2) is capable of better product tracking than you thusfar have approved of because tracking of any sort does NOT infringe on the 2nd Amendment.

3) establish exactly the type of Due Process you whine about not being there when the Constitution approves of Probable Cause as being proper Due Process prior to formal charges and a formal trial.

4) be better at being constructive about what our proper options could be, that we CAN do, than whining about what we all can't do for a change.

Coming up with a plan THAT WORKS is 100% ON YOU.

Your whining without offering a solution is a part of the problem, which thusfar precluded your being any kind of solution.  That must change. You've regarded the 2nd Amendment as more sacrosanct than the 1st Amendment, which does have reasonable regulation attached, such as outlawing libel, slander, and fraud as NOT protected speech (compared to regarding ALL speech as protected).  The 2nd Amendment is an AMENDMENT, not a Commandment.

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June 19 UPDATE: You guessed it--I attended another time traveler convention. Just canNOT beat Bartlesville OK at this time of year.

You know it.

There's nothing more inevitable than the predictable.

Yeah, if Team Hillary would have breathed the word "inevitable", they might have jinxed things--so they didn't.  But we saw this one coming several miles away, though, didn't we. Oh, for the sake of the party, they must unify...and we saw that effort coming too, didn't we. Trouble is, it won't wash with Sanders supporters who weren't Democrat to begin with...or...were Dem but were disaffected and, to be quite frank, were in the mood for a political revolution, which is what Sanders was selling, and which they bought into.  No amount of "for the sake of the party" is going to hold water, and we saw that coming, too.

And so it has transpired that Sanders talked amicably with the POTUS, and, apparently on the phone with the presumptive Dem nominee, and word went out from the Dems that things would work out just fine, and then Sanders continued to DC to continue to fight the Dem establishment. Well, well, well. Only one side is singing Kumbaya.

When running for office, Sanders amassed quite a support base, even if he's on the short end of the arithmetic stick, and Sanders supporters aren't chopped liver. This is the sort of realization that has been dawning on the City of Enid Commission of late, too: a person who runs for office but loses still has supporters, and those supporters aren't chopped liver either, and the candidate, win or lose, still has an obligation of sorts to deliver what's been pledged to the people who pledged their support.  Those are the people who, given their druthers, wouldn't even think of voting for the person who won if the alternative was to be had.

And Sanders have a lot of supporters, none of whom are chopped liver, Dem loyalists, or supporters of the presumptive, so there's nothing to unify here, folks--the Dems who are Dems are already unified with their Ms. Inevitable, whom they've spent years grooming for the job. Nobody else has enjoyed the level of grooming for the job than Ms. Inevitable.  So we saw this one coming several miles away, didn't we--it was so predictable, wasn't it.

The big surprise was the GOP, who were the biggest whiners about Dem superdelegates but given the rise of Trump, are starting to come around to the Dem way of thinking on that.  Who'd-a thunk it?

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In Enid Monarch news, the butterfly weed (Asclepias Tuberosa) seedlings I started in February, now turned loose in the yard, not only have acquired an inch or so of additional height but two of them have developed very small flower buds.  Still no sign of monarchs yet, but they are still congregated in the upper northern tier of the U.S. and lower regions of Canada--still too early for them to drop south.  They typically show up in Enid in late July/early August, and it's in the first week of August that Monarch Watch starts shipping its monarch tagging kits to track their journey south.  Last weekend I spent some quality time in Alva for their arts festival and did the Auto Tour of the Great Salt Plains Reserve, examined their milkweeds (mainly Showy Milkweed) and found them to be as untouched by either aphid or monarch as mine were. No sign of the Stem Weevil up there, though, and I have plenty of those attacking my Honeyvine.

Still very short for a first-year youngster, it's nonetheless putting on flower buds on the right-hand branch, and developing that classic orange tinge of Butterfly Weed blossoms.

Another Butterfly Weed seedling started this February is quite a bit taller than the one in the previous pic, but it, too, is putting on flower buds in the tip of this one spire--but they're all still green.

As I've pointed out so many times before, mainly what's available around here by way of wild milkweeds isn't even in the Asclepias family at all--it's Cynanchum Laeve, aka Honeyvine, and in the process of trying to maintain a properly urban mowed lawn, I discovered something else I could do with those because they're by far more flexible to work with than woody-stemmed milkweeds of the Asclepias family.  I'll be posting more about that at the bottom of my separate Monarch Project blog page later.