Any budget Springfield comes up with is going to be an exercise in can-kicking, anyway. It's not going to fix Illinois' budget problems, which are due to a couple eons of the Democrat policy of tax-and-borrow-and-spend-spend-spend-bec
The solution proposed is for Illinois to build a wall around Cook County and declare the contained area not to be part of Illinois any longer. It would be lovely if we could do that. There isn't any way to, of course; besides not being constitutional at any level, the Democrats would never allow it. Chicago is the reason they control Illinois; absent that huge population of Democrat voters, the state would vote Republican.
The state is screwed, and it's not going to miraculously become un-screwed; the state budget needs to go on a diet and our politicians need to disabuse themselves of the notion that the taxpayers can afford anything more than they're paying right now.
The solution to a budget shortfall is never cutting spending; the solution is always increasing taxes and maybe reducing the rate of growth of the budget, which is what government calls a "cut". ("We were going to raise that budget 10%, but we're only going to raise it by 3%, so we've cut 7%....")
At some point the whole thing comes crashing down, of course. Then you have Detroit. The Democrats in Chicago think they're smarter than the Democrats which were (and are) in charge of Detroit even as they do exactly the same things, because as deep as the hole is, they foolishly believe they can dig their way out.
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And Disney wonders why ESPN is losing viewers. You know what? Eat a dick, you SJW anus. If you want to compare Kaepernick to Ali, go ahead, because Muhammed Ali was a racist motherfucker who said things like "the so-called Negro is the original man and is superior to the white devil."
Men watch sports TV to hear about sports, not leftist politics. You people are idiots.
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Yesterday I was browsing at Barnes & Noble while waiting for my wife to shop for lingerie.
Walked through the manga section, saw nothing interesting to me. I'm starting to feel as if the world of anime and manga is leaving me behind--but considering that a drug addiction is cheaper than one to anime and manga, I suppose that's just as well. I still dabble, but the mainstream (at least as far as what a bookstore chain stocks) doesn't interest me very much. And since I don't really keep a toe in the water, so to speak, finding new series is also hit-or-miss.
They're doing Oshiete! Galko-chan as manga now. It follows the (very short) anime eps exactly, so there's nothing new about it; and worse, it's drawn with colored pencils, so the art is garish and hard to read. I enjoyed the anime enough that I would have picked up a book, but I couldn't stand to read it even in the store, so what's the point?
You can still find Evangelion manga, but there is no Haruhi Suzumiya anything to be found. WTF. Haruhi >> Evangelion, so why?
Well, I take that back. There were two volumes of Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, an obvious spinoff about the never-really-existing human version of Yuki that's not a bio-interface for the Overmind. It's "alternate timeline" stuff from Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, but the shy bespectacled normal girl Yuki Nagato is emphatically not the real Yuki Nagato, which is why I have absolutely no interest in that nonsense whatsoever.
No Kimi ni Todoke. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? manga has gone as far as volume 6, with no more available (at least not yet). None of the other manga I follow, or have followed.
The SF section was similarly bare. Two books by Heinlein. One book by Niven. Slim-to-nothing, in other words, by the all-time greats of SF. Butcher hasn't done a new Dresden Files book since Skin Game came out in 2014. A great many books that look like SJW horseshit, though that opinion is based only on the cover art and the writer's name.
John Scalzi has his own shelf, but I won't buy anything written by him. I noticed that Kim Stanley Robinson is still putting out books, but while he writes books about exploring space, he's one of those creeps who thinks we shouldn't try exploring space until we solve all the problems on Earth, so I stopped reading his nonsense after Red Mars because he's a hypocrite and a moron. Also because Red Mars was boring horseshit.
I probably should be more open to other writers, but here's my problem: every time I hazard a gander at something new, I end up disappointed by it. Books aren't cheap, and I get frustrated at the idiocy on display in many of them. Not just the idiocy, but the complete lack of doing. The Martian was a runaway best-seller because the main character was overcoming obstacles and doing interesting things to stay alive, not because he was environmentally conscious and checking his privilege.
This notion that SF has to be high art, that it has to examine deep issues--screw that shit! I want to be entertained.
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Last night I hauled trash down the driveway. Today, it is all gone, even the recycling. Most of it was junk from the garage, and it's gone. What a nice feeling.