New Year Fireworks Cartoons

‘Black’ Activist Rachel Dolezal Dropped from MLK Event by North Carolina Town

Want to Be.

Really is.

A North Carolina town has nixed Rachel Dolezal from its Martin Luther King Jr. Dreamfest next month, saying her scheduled appearance would “take away from the goals” of the event.

Charming Cary, North Carolina, had originally booked Dolezal to speak on a panel about racial identity and race relations. The former president of the Spokane, WA NAACP chapter, Dolezal drew nationwide controversy after news broke that she was born to white parents. She says she identifies as black.

Dreamfest organizers originally said they had chosen Dolezal because she had “been depicted as a major villain through media because of her racial identity, yet she didn’t steal from anybody. She didn’t murder anybody. She didn’t rob anybody. She only had an affinity for a group of people, and she served her community well.”
But local backlash quickly built around Dolezal’s appearance, with eight clergy decrying her “sensationalized presence” in a letter and saying that her participation would “not honor the stories, voices, and experiences of the people for whom the Rev. King gave his life.”
The Dreamfest’s organizers quietly removed Dolezal from the scheduled panel in mid-December.
Doug McRainey, Cary’s parks, recreation and cultural resources director, told Heat Street the town supports this decision.
“While we were hopeful that her being part of a panel discussion of discrimination could be meaningful, we heard concerns from pastors and citizens that her presence would result in a negative notoriety that would overshadow all of the good Dreamfest is set to deliver – something no one wanted to see happen,” McRainey said.
Through her publicist, Dolezal declined to comment.(Shes got a publicist? :-))

Trump wishes 'Happy New Year' to all, including his 'many' rudderless 'enemies'

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday wished a “Happy New Year” to friends and enemies -- sort of.
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me,” Trump began on Twitter.
He ended the tweet by wishing everybody “Love,” but not before making sure that all those who “lost so badly” to him knew the New Year’s message was also intended for them.
“They just don't know what to do,” he wrote.
To whom Trump was speaking is unclear. But he and supporters have since Election Day argued that backers of defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and others continue to search for excuses and others to blame for her stunning defeat.
Trump tweeted again at midnight, wishing all Americans a "Happy New Year."
Trump has roughly 18 million Twitter followers and continues to use the social media site to bypass conventional media outlets like TV and newspapers to send unfiltered, sometime combative messages to Americans.
Trump spent his New Year's Eve at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Weed, guns and catfish: 2017 brings new laws, big changes

Just because Congress ground to a virtual halt in 2016 doesn’t mean the country stopped making new laws.
From taxes to minimum wage to gun control, a broad range of changes is coming at the state level as Americans ring in 2017. And, as has been the trend lately, the new year will bring far broader legalization of marijuana.
It’s what The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, in a letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence arguing against pot prohibitions, called an “unprecedented schism between state and federal law in regards to … cannabis statutes.” While that debate will play out anew as the Trump administration takes office with a law-and-order mandate, the “schism” grows wider in 2017.
Already, revelers in Massachusetts and California will have the legal option of pairing their New Year’s Eve champagne with a joint. Approved by voters in November, legal recreational pot use took effect on Dec. 15 in Massachusetts; legal personal use of the drug took effect in California shortly after voters approved it there, though retail sales are still months away from implementation.
Nevada legalized recreational pot on Jan. 1, and Maine will follow soon after.
Voters in the last election approved legalizing the drug for medical purposes in North Dakota, Montana, Florida and Arkansas. In Colorado, one of the first states to legalize pot, licensed medical marijuana growers will now be allowed to sell pot as well.
Colorado voters also backed an increase in the statewide minimum wage.
Starting Jan. 1, the wage increased from $8.31 to $9.30 per hour for non-tipped workers and will increase by $0.90 per hour every year until it reaches $12 an hour on Jan. 1, 2020.
Voters in Maine, Arizona and Washington also voted in favor of minimum wage hikes. An appeals court in Arizona recently rejected an effort by state businesses to delay the Jan. 1 implementation.
As wage hikes enter the pipeline, so have tax hikes:
In Portland, Ore., the city council passed a so-called CEO tax, a first-in-the-nation ordinance to put a tax surcharge on publicly traded companies whose CEOs earn 100 times more than the median wage of other company employees. According to the National Law Review, a surcharge of 10 percent of the base tax liability would be imposed on those companies beginning on Jan. 1.
Buying presents next Christmas or anything from Amazon also will be more expensive for Utah residents in 2017 thanks to a new law requiring online retailers to charge consumers a 4.7 state sales tax at the point of sale, rather than relying on the honor system.
On the tax relief side of the ledger, Illinois approved a measure tossing out a 6.25 percent “luxury” tax on tampons.
Illinois passed dozens of other laws, including changes so that starting Jan. 1 it will no longer be illegal to catch catfish using a pitchfork, speargun or bow and arrow. Critically, the term “public hunting ground for pheasants” will be replaced by “public hunting ground for game birds.”
On the West Coast, gun owners in California will face new restrictions after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning the purchase of semiautomatic rifles with so-called “evil features.”
The “evil features” include pistol grips, flash hiders and bullet-buttons that make it easier to remove and replace ammunition magazines. The Los Angeles Times reported an increase in gun purchases in the lead-up to the Jan. 1 implementation.
The gun measure is one of the few new California laws that do not have roots on the desk of state Sen. Jerry Hill, the sponsor of 17 bills taking effect in the new year. The laws run the gamut from how police store their weapons in their vehicles to tour bus safety to restrictions on water use.
While Congress itself largely was inactive over the past year, a new regulation stemming from the Affordable Care Act, and set to take effect Jan. 1, could have far-reaching implications across the country.
Under the change, states will have the option to seek so-called Section 1332 waivers to try to modify parts of ObamaCare for their residents. A number of states have sought to get that process started – though the incoming Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress want to repeal and replace the law as a whole next year.

Happy New Year or I'm so glad my idiot neighbor and their Idiot kids didn't burn my house down.

By Blls Bailey

If you are like me and live in a rural neighborhood you also had to go through a night with dumbass neighbors shooting off fireworks into the early morning hours supposedly bringing in the new year.  Don't get me wrong I'm all for expressing my happiness but in more constructive ways and one of them is not by setting fire to mine and my neighbor's house or running their livestock through the fences and scaring the hell out of all the pets. And what about the feeling of others like war veterans that have gone through hell in combat, how do you think they feel when the fireworks are so loud it seems to be in the room with you. Yep I'm all for celebrating but it's not by keeping little newborn babes awake crying, or someone with a ready awaiting water hose up all night worrying about some idiot next door setting fire to the countryside. Late night partying with fire crackers and loud music going into the wee hours of the morning is great, that is unless you're one of the people who was raised up in the country and know what it's like to have to get up at 4:00am in the morning to hunt up your lost livestock and care for them. Subdivisions and City people should come into the countryside to live with the understanding that they should leave the bright lights and noises of the city behind them or stay where they are. Yep Happy New Year America and here's to leaving the holidays behind us :-)