Catching up

I have been remiss in posting the usual rubbish here, so this is a quick catch up summary of the world, in and beyond Joseph Street.

• The goddam Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, one of our better examples of refusenik stonewalling on just about any issue you can name, is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming into admitting that, yes, Michigan does have a wild population of Cougars. Tracks, scat, multiple sightings, and now a blurry trap-camera photo from the UP make it increasingly clear that the big cats are back. Congratulations, Catamounts! With any luck, large predators will continue to repopulate the state, especially since housing costs have fallen to the point where even the average polar bear can get financing for a house in Bloomfield Hills.
  
• Not too long ago, President Obama made a comment about seeking expert opinion on issues, so that he'd know "whose ass to kick." Some people may have objected to the crude turn of phrase and others to the apparent ineffectiveness of any kickage so far meted out, but it does offer an opportunity to provide input. When he called me, I offered my short list:
  
  
  
  • Rupert Murdoch
    
  • Benjamin Netanyahu
    
  • South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts
    
  • The wonderful people who are calling the offshore drilling moratorium "worse" than the oil spill
    
  • Rod Blagojevich
    
  • Rupert Murdoch, again
    
  
  
• Burke Breathed, the now-retired creator of Bloom County et seq, once had a character say, "Today on Wall Street, they busted everybody but the wiener vendors." An apt description of Detroit, 2010, where the ex-Mayor is in jail; the former city council member, Monica Conyers, has been convicted and is awaiting jail (same goes for her former consultant and bag man;) the current school board president is under pressure to resign after allegedly "fondling himself" in front of a superintendent; the police are being fined $1000 a day for essentially ignoring a consent decree; and almost daily, it seems, somebody is arrested for shooting a child either by mistake or on purpose. There is a debate (if you can call it that) over what should be done with Detroit, with these suggestions running at the top of the list:
  
  
  
  • Shrink the city by demolishing abandoned buildings and relocating people
    
  • Just demolish the buildings
    
  • Demolish the people
    
  • Demolish the city council, school board, and police department
    
  • Use open land for urban farming
    
  • Use open land for opium farming
    
  • Create a sixth great lake, Lake Kwame, as a home for displaced Asian Carp
    
  
  

I think that's quite enough of this, for now.