A Day Late and a Dollar Short

[cahwyguy]

It’s the last Sunday of the year, and so I think you deserve some Saturday news chum stew, a day late. That’s what prompted the title to this post. However, looking at the articles, they all seem to relate to that notion: they are either past their time, or they are situations where there might not be enough cash, or both:

• Lick It and Stick It. If you aren’t already aware, postage rates are going up, “temporarily” (yeah, right), to 49c for the first ounce, and 21c for each additional ounce (forever stamps are still whatever the current rate is, so buy them now). Postcards will go to 34c. A number of other rates will also increase. The rates will supposedly go back down in 24 months, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
• Bookstores Gone But Not Forgotten. Kevin over at LA Observed has posted his list of bookstores that have closed in Southern California. We lost some biggies this year, including Cliff’s in Pasadena (which I thought would be around forever). I regret not getting over to Cliff’s before it closed.
• Breaking Away. A bunch of Northern California counties want to secede from California because they have no say in the legislature. Actually, they do have the same say as every other voter in the state; it just happens that most of the other voters live in the big urban areas. They seem to believe that their votes will make it so. What they forget is that it has to be approved by both the state legislature and congress.  Further, they will need to pay for their share of the state-owned infrastructure and assume their share of the state’s debt… and being rural, they won’t generate enough taxes to pay for all of that plus the additional bureaucracy they will need for a new state’s government. Since the United States has been created, a state split has occurred only once, and that was during the Civil War (the Carolinas split before the revolution).
• Double-Chined Barbie. There is a meme going around Facebook encouraging production of a stereotypically obese Barbie with a double chin. While I certainly agree that having a Barbie with realistic proportions would be a good idea, and that having Barbies that look like real people (including skin colors and facial characteristics, as opposed to a colored-skin white Barbie), this mock-up is not the answer.

 

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