Thursday, October 10, 2013

SAR #13283


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Can You Hear Me Now? Close your eyes and remember back to the hottest year you've suffered through (in the US that's 2005). Now try to imagine a time when every year – year after year after year – will be hotter than that, hotter than any year in the preceding 150 years. No matter where you live, that day will come no later than 2047. If you live in Mexico City, it'll begin in 2031, Phoenix by 2043 and so on. And not long after that, the coldest year in a particular city or region will hotter than the hottest year in its past. Worse, this new report ends with the caveat it "may actually be presenting an overly rosy scenario ...”

Profits and Losses: While hikers in the Grand Canyon are getting ticketed for trespassing and our national beaches are somehow 'closed' (did they cancel their subscription to the ocean?) the despoilers of our national treasure, the loggers, the miners, and the drillers can go happily about their tasks.

Kicking 'em While They're Down: Don't the Republicans realize that they have won? Nevermind the Obamacare decoy, that's just a sideshow to appease the nuts back home. What really matters is the money, that's were the power is. And the far right has already won that battle – the continuing resolution is to continue starving the government at Ryan budget levels. Now the Dems area going to negotiate away more cuts. Expect to hear the word 'entitlements' more often in the coming days. Entitlements; you know, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The public may blame the Republicans, but they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Noted: Ninety percent of the nation's nuclear reactor inspectors are on furlough. What could go wrong?

And Another Thing: To the concern the rest of us have about health care, hunger in America, peak oil and global warming, we can now add our worry about the debt limit as another thing the far right simply doesn't believe in. At least that the latest guff they are spreading; the the debt ceiling is no big deal and not paying our bills in full and on time won't cause any great inconvenience. What do these people do when they encounter unavoidable reality, something like a toothache say, just wish it away?

Neat Trick: The received version of human occupation of the Americas holds that we first arrived in the new world about 12,000 years ago. So how is it we left behind paintings and other artifacts dating back 30,000 years? Okay, but who were they and were did they come from?

Piece In Our Time: The leader of the Taliban has invited the leaders of the Pakistani government for “serious talks”, presumably in a drone-free area if there is such a thing anywhere anymore.

Pot/Kettle: Some in the GOP are gleefully pointing out that Obama's approval rating has fallen to 37%. That the entire Congress only gets a 5% approval from the American voter is not one of their talking points. Cockroaches get better marks.

Noted: SAR is on the beach, thus postings will be erratic & (more importantly) without the blessings of First Reader, who wanted public indemnification against any deterioration in the quality of presentations over the next few days.   Content, he insists, is not his responsibility

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: Neat Trick -- it's all speculative. Could be 12,000 years on continuous habitation, 30,000 years of sporadic habitation. We tend to want to think that there's an unbroken chain linking us to the past inhabitants, but that is simply a perception.

Unknown said...

Hope the sea air does you well.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Anony 10.11 Makes a really good point - having been here (or there) doesn't mean we stayed - we could have come and gone, or come, stayed and died off.

tulsatime said...

Noted - If the nuke inspectors are as limited as the food inspectors, we could just as well fire them all. The problems all seem to come in the support equipment, not in the nuke parts.

Can You Hear Me- saw a couple of posts in the FB world that noticed how little press the freak blizzard in SD was getting. I guess 100K of dead cows is not news unless you are a farmer, or planning to go long on beef futures