Who needs friends when you can have frenemies?

In a blog by Inside the USA, the author calls out some interesting assumptions regarding media and its biases towards those venues or political candidates that it opposes.

I particularly like my classmates view on the entire political venue as she equates it high school girls stabbing each other in the back. I really like this assumption as I can see it playing out as our party system really does act that way. They are super nice to each other faces during debates and campaigns if representatives are there and able to defend themselves against allegations, however if no one is around then the claws come out and the mud starts flying. I also find it interesting that both parties spread gossip and claim the other is lying another key trait of a group of freshman girls.

 I also find it interesting that our parties also choose to support each other or band against other parties that might try and come in and break up their level of control. It seems that their only main goal is to maintain their status at the top of the cheerleading pyramid that is our political system. They care who gets to the top, but only as much as that’s the one who gets to date the football captain for the next 4 years.

I enjoyed Stephanie’s quizzical look into our political system and its seemingly immature behavior. I do however slightly disagree with her though, I've been around the block enough times to realize that although both of these girls might be attractive, I've decided to go stag to the prom.

If I wanted to carry around bags I'd be a trashman

My previous editorial was on the armchair activism that is so rampart here in Austin, and this weeks will be a brief extension upon that in the realm of plastic bags.

One of the newest crazes sweeping our "go-green" city is the bag ban. I'm all for turning out the lights when you leave the room, not using DMT on bald eagles, and I even recycle, but this concept that these bags are better for the environment is something that our armchair activists locked onto, and got passed is ridiculous, and not to mention annoying.

According to some actual science and calculations that were done comparing reusable bags, plastic bags, and paper bags the following was found:

"There are also no environmental benefits to banning plastic bags — but there is potential harm. Compared to cloth bags, plastic bags require less energy to produce and less energy to recycle and produce less municipal waste. Plastic bags generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions and require less water to produce than paper bags. Cloth bags need to be used 104 times before there is any environmental advantage over plastic bags. But most cloth bags are used half that amount. Reusing cloth bags can also lead to cross-contamination and disease."

It is interesting to even see major news outlets such as Bloomberg , who stated:

"Seventy-five percent said they keep meat and vegetables in the same bag. When bags were stored in hot car trunks for two hours, the bacteria grew tenfold.That study also found, happily, that washing the bags eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria. It undercut even that good news, though, by finding that 97 percent of people reported that they never wash their bags."

While I know it might be too much to ask for tree hugging hippies to bathe themselves you would think that they would at least wash their bags, or use some common sense and place items such as meats in a different bag due to the cross contamination that could occur.

In addition to the food factor there is the convenience factor. I recently went to Hobby Lobby on to obtain some acrylic paint for mural we are doing at work. I was able to procure a cart and fill it with paint, brushes and glazing medium which was packed in enough trash plastic, saran wrap pressure packaging, and Styrofoam to fill a small sinkhole, upon checking out I was informed that I needed to cart these items out to my car or buy bags as they don't have plastic bags. /facepalm. If I wanted to carry around bags all day Id be homeless, just like if I wanted to check out m own groceries Id get a job as a checker, not stand next to a machine and scan my own stuff.

However at the game store right next door, as well as at Best buy loaded me up and double bagged. It isnt even enforced at ALL locations, its totally voluntary, which means that the term "bag ban" is just another political term fed by social media and consumed by the armchair activists.

Im deeply saddened when I read that the city of Austin is spending 150,000 dollars on buying 50,000 bags to give out to low income families. Why is it 3 dollars a bag when I could BUY them from HEB for .99 cents? GG government. I was even sadder to read  that our state government is spending almost 2 million dollars on education and marketing on this topic.

2 million dollars on bags that are worse for the environment than their predecessors all to secure votes and feed the flames. I guess that's one way to "Go Green", although with spending like that we will soon be in the red.