Duke Energy Bought A State

We woke up this morning to get to church early. Coco and his 4th grade class were singing in church this morning and he was one of the three leads. He performed flawlessly and I was very proud. He received many kudos after the service.

Happy Dog Birthdays to Pete and Frank Puggle. Angela actually made them a cake. The official birthday portrait is posted below.

I've been watching a bit of curling lately. Actually, I only pay attention to it every four years in tandem with the winter games. It seems like an oversized Wisconsin bar game. Very similar to shuffleboard. It's believed that curling originated some 400 years ago in Scotland. Wisconsin does have a member of the women's curling team at the Sochi Games. Good luck to Erika Brown.

The Los Angeles Lakers are hosting the Chicago Bulls in NBA action this afternoon. At one time this would have been considered a mid-season glamour game. Injuries to stars Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose have made it just another regular season game. Hopefully both of them come back strong!

There has been another massive chemical spill this year. This time it happened in North Carolina and the culprit is Duke Energy. A coal ash dump malfunction poured 82,000 tons of coal ash with 27 million gallons of contaminated water into the Dan River. Coal ash contains large quantities of arsenic, mercury and lead. None of these will do a body good.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is a former Duke Energy employee of 28 years. The states Commerce Secretary is also a former employee as are many other of the governor's appointees. Three times environmental groups have sued Duke Energy to have the ash dumps cleaned up. All three times the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources have intervened and imposed modest fines on Duke Energy with no clean up requirements. People have been rushing to the Governor's defense and describing him as a pro-business Republican. For some strange reason, I always thought you could be pro-business without throwing arsenic in the rivers of North Carolina.

Later