SAR #14354

“Taking care not to leave permanent marks doesn't mean it's not torture, it just means you're trying to make sure you don't get caught.” Kevin Drum

Hum Along: “Where have all the profits gone? Gone to corporate buybacks, everyone...”

More Than The Temperature's Rising: NOAA says that perhaps 'proof positive' of climate change would be US coastal cities routinely seeing more than 30 days each year of the ocean flooding their streets. Annapolis; Wilmington, and Washington, D.C., are already there. Baltimore, Atlantic City and at least six others will experience that level by 2020. And by 2050 nearly every US coastal city will have such “routine” flooding. Not storm driven waves, but 30 or more days a year of 'alta acqua'. Long before the end of the century it will be every day in most of those cities, not just twice a month. 
 
Truth Will Out? British police view claims that (former?) Members of Parliament were part of a ring of pedophiles who raped and murdered young boys as “credible and true.” Maybe one of these days this investigation will gain some traction. And some public anger.

Front and Center: Reader/Commenter Blissex, noting that nearly every demographic group in the US is willing to accept torture as somehow justified/justifiable, suggests that as long as we the upright white citizens are not at risk of being tortured and the victims are people we do not care about – insignificant to our lives, disposable in terms of our economy, dark skinned, or believing in the wrong god, then torture is okay. Because “better safe than sorry”, “it might work”, “they made us do it”. And we also don't care about the innocents who die from “targeted drone attacks” and random air strikes. After all “you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs.” Our self respect is collateral damage. 
 
Appeasement: Both Romney and Obama say that Sony should have called the hackers' bluff and released 'The Interview'. Wonder what they would have said if a few theaters had been blown up?

Even More, Even Worse; The slaughter and disposal of the 43 Mexican students “was planned, executed, and supervised by Mexico’s federal police” to quash the political activism of students from Ayotozinapa's teacher training college. What are the odds that a US governmental agency was involved in some way?

Take That! A bill pending in Missouri will require women to get permission from the presumptive father before getting an abortion. 
 
Curveball: What if the concept of “the business cycle” is as ephemeral as the current recovery? Or rather, what if the so-called recovery portion of the current business cycle is proof that there's no such thing as a 'cycle'? What if the long undulating upward long-term growth trend was attributable to something other than karma? Like the consumption of cheap and accessible fossil fuels that are now neither quite so accessible and nor so cheap causing things to fall apart?