TheCapeBlog

After a couple of days of rain, and warm-to-hot weather expected this weekend, the first cicadas are emerging in my yard.
Scully, my neighbor’s dog, is very good at spotting them. They are rotund, about an inch and a half long, and about the ugliest bug you can imagine.
I spotted about a dozen burrows 4-5 inches deep.
Nothing to be done about them, I guess.

The latest issue of Commonwealth reports that the average teacher salary in the city of Boston is over $71,000 a year.
That’s $71,000 a year for a part-time job – this doesn’t take into account earnings during the summer, for example.
And check out this article by Janice Revell, Money Magazine senior writer, who reports on the city of Vallejo, California’s decision to declare bankruptcy as a result of its staggering public pension debt.
As Ms. Revell reports, Massachusetts is one of the three highest profile examples of similar problems, South Carolina and Pennsylvania being the other two.

Video by actor/producer Lisa Ann Walter
Andrew Stephen in the New Statesman
Judith Warner, one of the few non-sexist writers at the NYT.
Black columnist Larry Elder’s refreshing take on the progress made by African Americans in the last forty years.

Over the last two days, the truck got an oil change, a new muffler plus additional exhaust system work and four brand new tires.
The difference in the drive is amazing.
The work had to get done for more than comfort and safety reasons: truck is due for a state inspection this month. Getting tires yesterday (Saturday) ate up a chunk of the afternoon, but since my original plan was to do this during the week, it was a half-full deal.

Finally, an answer to a question I’ve been asking for the last couple of months: the cicadas that are steadily emerging from their underground nests will be here for about a month.
Well, at least part of the summer will be bearable.

Thanks to Father Michael Pfleger, the latest lunatic clergyman in the Obama camp, Chicago, Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, acquired two new appellations this week: Race-Baiter and Woman-Hater.
You might have trouble finding any MSM coverage of Pfleger this morning; news.yahoo.com has taken the story off its home page, and it’s nowhere to be found on nytimes.com, cnn.com or washingtonpost.com. Try foxnews.com.
I’m wondering what this unapologetic, uncritical spewing of hate speech is doing to the relationships of Black and White workers – you know, ordinary people who don’t live in the posh neighborhoods where Democratic super delegates and owners of national news organizations roam.
I wonder how much more misery Black civil servants with a chip on their shoulder are going to bestow on the public now that at least two members of the clergy have made it acceptable to publicly vilify innocent White people, especially White women.
This whole Obama campaign has descended into a nightmare for everyone but self-hating, guilt-ridden rich White folks and middle-aged men who are looking for nookie with left-leaning coeds.
If it weren’t so ugly, it would almost be laughable.

It was reported this week in the NYT that Oprah Winfrey’s ratings and her magazine’s circulation are down by 7 and 10 percent, respectively, due perhaps to her endorsement of NObama.
Still the #1 daytime talk show host and one of the wealthiest human beings on planet Earth, Oprah is probably not overly worried about offending non-Democrats and Hillary Clinton supporters.
Meanwhile, Gallup, whose poll results made big “Clinton falls behind” headlines last week, show Hillary leading against McCain by 4% while Obama loses by 1%. The results are in the same direction for Rasmussen, 1% and -4%, respectively.
Naturally, no comment from the MSM about this turnaround.

Article from the TimesOnLine about how public social services in the UK waste resources on monitoring kids from good homes while failing to protect other children from abuse and neglect.