The trees are getting bare and the yards are getting full of leaves. I am hoping a kid will come along and rake my yard. There sure are a lot of leaves out there. I thought about getting out there with the leaf blower, and then thought again. The leaves always go every place but where you don’t want them to go.
The election is over, but it isn’t really. Is 2013 going to turn Virginia into hanging chad Florida?
Who has winterized their plants and house? My winterizing consisted of getting the winter pansies put in. Nothing cheers me up like winter pansies. Well…rosemary Christmas trees come pretty close.
More evidence that we’re headed towards global cooling, not global warming – the Sun which is the reeal driver in temperature appears to be diminishing. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304672404579183940409194498
Except the oceans are warmer, thus more cat 5 hurricanes and typhoons. I don’t know where any of it fits in.
Another headline that caught my eye – “The Hill” anouncing that comprehensive immigration reform is dead again. To the happiness of many Democvrats, who are exploiting the issue in elections, and the chagrin of Republicans, who aren’t. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/189917-how-immigration-died-—-part-1
The Oceans are warming – in relation to what, though? To see them getting warmer over a short period and then try to extrapolate that into a long-term trend would probably be a mistake. The same one that we did with temperature 10 – 20 years ago.
According to this article the Oceans are getting warmer, but are cooler than typical -http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/10000-year-study-finds-oceans-warming-fast-but-from-a-cool-baseline/?_r=0
On the whole poitical “global warming” debate, the evidence that CO2 traps heat in the atmopshere is outdated and most of the claims made by global warming theorists circa “Inconvenient Truth” are now known to be incorrect. Once you realize that the CO2 models were so flawed, and reevaluate evidence, it seems pretty obvious that current warming and cooling cycles are not likely affected to any great deal by pollution.
It’s all, or at least mostly, about the Sun’s cycles and about irregularities in our orbit. And it’s looking more and more like we would expect the Earth to get cooler going forward, not warmer.
Warmer than they used to be. Rising graph.
I can’t extrapolate much of anything ….not a climatologist.
However, most…not all, scientists believe that CO2 traps heat. How , what, when and where probably varies.
I am just not going to be led down the great denial trail.
Cooler isn’t such a great thing either. That would destroy the world crops pretty fast. That doesn’t seem like a good alternative. Maybe the two will cancel themselves out.
All I know is from observation over my life time and common sense. Man can’t make the changes he has made on earth, especially over the past couple of hundred years without an impact on the earth.
@Moon-howler
Actually, the number of typhoons and hurricanes have dropped.
Three cat 5 typhoons have hit the Philippines since 2010. It isn’t the number of hurricanes but the severity they are looking at.
I’m not sure there’s really a great “deniar trail”. That may be a bogeyman. I can assure you, no oil company is subsidizing my personal opinion. The science just doesn’t support hysteria. The earth is always warming and cooling.
“Man can’t make the changes he has made on earth, especially over the past couple of hundred years without an impact on the earth.”
There’s some effect of course, but less than that caused by the Sun and by orbital wobbles.
It has been a human trait throughout recorded history to believe that weather cycles were due to our actions. It was generally thought that draughts or storms were happening because the Gods were angry at us for one thing or another. Not really all that long ago, human and animal sacrifices were being made to Gods, in beliefe that it would affect weather cycles. So probably part of that human-centric tendancy is behind people believing that Mother Nature and God are going to punish us for burning fuel at greater rates than previous generations.
Maybe there is a happy medium. Not sure we really know much about it…the science is in neonatal stages. I do think there is something to climate change caused by humans. Those cars are dumping a lot of crap in the atmosphere. Volcanoes can cause climate change. Why can’t 5 billion cars daily dumping exhaust into the atmosphere have some effect?
Anybody want to talk about this Miami Dolphins “bullying” story that the media is feed-frenzying off of? IMO :
Jonathan Martin is just a weak guy who had a mental breakdown, and he doesn’t really want to play football (he wasn’t living up to expectations and to his salary), and his family is blaming “bullying” and “racial taunts”.
Richie Incognito is a fall guy who may not be blameless in this matter, but was offered up as a sacrifice by the team in a vain attempt to pretend the coaches and General Manager didn’t create this climate which was less than ideal, and that the team could be legally liable for.
The coach and GM, in the way they handled this matter – feigning ignorance and suspending Incognito – ar the real scumbags here.
End of the day the coach and GM get fired after the season, Martin won’t play football again, Incognito will. The league will put an end to rookie hazing at the grotesque level of $15,000 dinners and so forth. And the league will start to crack down on players acting out in public and ever dropping the n-word in public; they could take tips from the NBA, which has very successfully created a culture where its players stay in line, are held to a dress code, and get slapped down if they run around in bars screaming the n-word and so forth.
I think they are all defective human beings. The fact that there is a locker room culture speaks ill of the entire sport. The fact that coaches in middle school and high school can verbally abuse and use profanity but if the English teacher did it, he would be fire, speak ill of the entire sport.
The fact that the football team is far more important than the debate team in college speaks ill of our entire culture.
I am a bad person on this subject. I am trying to come to grips with CTE and I am trying to convince my brothers that its real. I think we are in the infancy stage of this finding out about the ravages of this horrible disease also. How is it really different than alzheimers?
Rick, I don’t approve of bullying under any conditions. I don’t think everyone is a wuss who objects to it. I do think Incognito is probably a bully. Perhaps Martin is a Wuss. I haven’t heard his side.
Bullying is really in the eyes of the person being bullied. I don’t think Incognito gets to decide if Martin felt bullied.
I am very much against bullying also, but I doubt tnat this case qualifies. Admittedly, we don’t know all the facts yet.
But the media, and the rest of us, took off with the story as it was originally framed by Martin’s lawyer. And I think that’s likely not a valid perspective. Martin (and his family) are looking for a payday. I doubt they’ll get it.
The media are handling this in their usual vapid, and I think patronizing manner. First they/we say, well the teammates would know what’s going on, if this was real bullying. Within a day or two, despite the team asking them not to talk, the teammates who know the two best come out and say well they seemed to be friends, I didn’t see a lot of bullying, and Richie’s pretty much a good guy.
Having been told this by a series of mostly African-American males, the media changes the story to, how can these poor misguided guys let Richie Incognito walk around saying the n-word? Or say it themselves. Surely they need to be reeducated. Let’s make them all watch “12 Years a Slave” and make them listen to 3 Cornel West lectures. Good god. Shut the f up, please. Listen instead of talking once in a while.
@Rick Bentley
How do you bully a 300+ muscular, aggressive football player again?
It’s possible. Particularly if you’ve got a REAL THUG in a locker room. An Aaron Hernandez. Someone crazy, with weapons.
But that doesn’t seem to be what happened here. Martin had a breakdown.
People don’t understand the story. The guy didn’t break because he was offended by language, or because they pulled the prank on him where they stood up from the lunch table.
The pressure that he couldn’t handle was the pressure of having to physically excel in a league of supermen, and justify an enormous salary, in front of a world of observers. The big guy isn’t cut out for the NFL. This is a common story. The idea of him trying to claim he was bullied so as to get at some of that lost salary is the new wrinkle here.
@Cargosquid
what does size have to do with bullying?? I know of several brawny males that are bullied by their petite wives. Myself included at times.
@Cargosquid
Bullying is not always physical. It can be emotional, or exclusionary also.
@Pat.Herve
Ha! Good one, Pat!
@Rick,
Let’s wait for the whole story. I expect your version is just one of the real stories going around.
Jonathon Martin could have completed his degree at Stanford obtained his BA in Classics no less and done just about anything else. Both parents graduated from Harvard law so discipline doesn’t appear to be lacking.
“Why can’t 5 billion cars daily dumping exhaust into the atmosphere have some effect?”
They have some, but not on the order of “An Inconvenient Truth” which is a false narrative that successfully defined the issue in many people’s minds.
Cows f*rting has more effect, the Sun’s cycles and the orbital wobbles have significantly more effect. The writing’s emerging on the wall that it’s likely to get colder, not warmer.
Not believing the cow part.
I fell asleep during An Inconvenient Truth. Soemwhere in the middle lies the truth…or comes close to what is happening.
Jonathon Martin’s size has nothing to do with guys being able to bully him or not. I’ve known many ‘big’ guys who were just socially awkward. Those guys tend to be pretty powerless when picked on. The biggest guys in the world can be the weakest guys on the inside.
This is probably just a case of a really big dude that is just soft. After years of putting up with getting picked on, and pretending like it didn’t bother him, he just gave up.
Supposedly he has been suicidal in the past. I think he just couldn’t cope, and is trying to justify it. There are rumors of drug use, which if true would complicate the story further.
If you follow the story closely and read between the lines, the team’s center Pouncy is probably the source for whatever info the Dolphins got that caused them to suspend Incognito. For now Pouncy’s not talking to the media.
Or maybe not; I think that information was flawed. One would hope the Dolphins had SOME basis to suspend him more than what we’ve heard so far.
I saw this somewhere else and thought it was pretty funny. It’s a fill in the blank game:
More _____ have ______ than enrolled in Obamacare.
Republicans, beat their wives today
FOX News Anchors, pleasured themselves to the sound of Dick Cheney’s voice
snicker
@Carlos Danger
How about this one:
More people want to go on a ONE-WAY mission to Mars than have enrolled in Obamacare.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/09/tech/innovation/mars-one-applications/
WASHINGTON (AP) – AP Source: Obama will allow insurers to continue sale of canceled policies.
Hmmm…I wonder what authority gives the President the power to circumvent established law? Shouldn’t this have to go through Congress?
Screw Congress. They could never get around to considering it since it doesn’t destroy the original bill.
Selective law enforcement. Just as Bush and Obama have used to promote/enable illegal immigration.
To make the pro-Obama argument here, what he’s doing is trying to temporarily solve a real problem without having to run anything through Congress, who are incapable of legislating a path out of a wet paper bag.
Totally agree. 100%
I don’t even think there is a congress.
@Rick Bentley
Still illegal.
Oh bull crap. You act like the president is some sort of robot who has to wait until Congress tells him to get up in the morning. It isn’t illegal.
So what exactly is the reason that we can’t delay the individual mandate for a year? Because at this point it seems to be because it would make the GOP look good.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The ACA has major structural problems that can’t be fixed without a major rewrite. It needs to be made optional (as people who want it can sign up but no penalties for at least a year.) Here are just a few of the problems that need to be fixed:
#1: It does nothing to actually lower the cost of health care. It just shifts the costs around. That only works once and 2-3 years from now everybody’s health insurance will be going up by 10%+ a year again.
#2: Obamacare needs lots of healthy young people in it to make the numbers work but then allows people up to 26 years old to stay on their parent’s employer provided plan.
#3: Because of just plain stupidity, the law has created an economic incentive for employers to cap hours at less than 30. They’ve delayed enforcing that for another year and so the cuts in hours have stopped (for now) but when it comes back 29.5 hours is going to be the new normal for restaurant staff, retail and other low wage service jobs. Lots of people are going to be forced to take a second job to recoup their hours.
These aren’t little problems that can be tweeked to fix. If there is any hope of this thing working, it needs a major overhaul. That means you have to work with Congress. It will be ugly and there’s no way Obama will get everything he wants, but that’s what compromise is about. Ramming the thing through on technicalities was a risk and now it’s biting Obama.
He has to choose between swallowing his pride and going back to Congress to work on this (and having some parts of ACA killed in the process) or leave it as-is and ruin the 2014 elections for Democrats. And if you think working with the GOP is hard now, just imagine if they take the senate in 2014. They are going to be really close.
(And since you can’t say one bad word about Obama around here without everybody saying you are a tea party extremist, let me be clear that there are some good things in Obamacare too that I’d like to see stay. But if an apple is 50% rotten, it’s still a rotten apple.)
Maybe the Prez should have called you in, and in all your infinite wisdom, you could have written the law. Swoosh!!! No problem!
If I had a rotten apple and it was the only apple I had, I would cut the rotten part out.
It’s arguably ground for impeachment, I think when a President willfully picks and chooses which laws to enforce. But, Bush and Obama have been doing this for 13 years now on immigration issues – it’s increasingly the American way.
“Because of just plain stupidity, the law has created an economic incentive for employers to cap hours at less than 30. ”
Better 30 than 40. This is progress.
“It does nothing to actually lower the cost of health care. ”
Hopefully it’s setting up a framework where we can soon start getting cost down, from our 16% of GNP to the 10-11% other nations pay. We need to do this – failure to change is idiotic and crippling. So I’m sympathetic when someone says they want to change the system in this direction.
The painful reality is, both parties know it should be done, neither wants the pain involved in doing it, and they each fear the other on egetting the credit a few years down the road. Which is why no one even thinks about championing the issue except in the early part of a Presidency – because they know there’s no payoff for a few years.
@Moon-howler
It is illegal. He cannot arbitrarily change the law by executive fiat. The law states one thing. He cannot make it act differently. If he wants to change the law, he needs to get it amended through Congress. Period.
He is not a king, no matter how much you want him to change things by fiat. He has absolutely ZERO Constitutional authority to “allow” companies to return to the old way of doing business.
If you want to “cut the rotten part out” then you must go back to Congress.
How many of the Republican bills that were sent to the Senate during the shutdown will now be sent back from the Senate to the House to pass – er – fix the lie.
Oh dear God, he hasn’t changed the law.
If I were cutting out the rotten part, I would dissolve the House of Representatives.
Take off the three cornered hat for at least part of the day.
Congress couldn’t find its ass with both hands. They can’t do anything.
Not really, go listen to what he said.
@Moon-howler
No..he hasn’t changed the law. He’s ATTEMPTING to change the law.
I don’t know why you think I’m such a genius for pointing out what many people have been saying for three years…that there are fundamental flaws in ACA. It’s not about if you like the bill or not. It’s about the fact that it is going to be next to impossible for the bill to actually deliver on the promise of lowering health care costs.
Again “let me be clear”, I want health care costs to go down. My beef with Obamacare is that it doesn’t do it. “Setting up a framework” doesn’t cut costs. Shifting costs don’t reduce costs.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you want to make health care more affordable, you need to LOWER COSTS.
The New York Times is calling this Obama’s Hurricane Katrina. For the first time ever more people disaprove of him personally than approve of him. He is even with where George Bush was at this point in his term. Obama needs to get serious about fixing this bill. Put Biden in charge of getting some fixes through Congress. They’ll have to compromise with the GOP on some things but that’s the price you pay for living in a democracy.
And if you think the Obamacare news is bad now, there’s still at least one more shoe to drop. There is a legal challenge pending that will gut a large part of the law. Apparently the law as written says that subsidies can only go to people in state exchanges, not the federal exchange. The IRS just arbitrarily decided to include the federal exchanges too. That’s being challenged in court. I’m no lawyer but it’s going to be real hard for the IRS to directly go against the language in the law Congress passed. If subsidies for the federal exchange goes, then Obamacare falls apart for most of the country.
Obama needs to get serious about fixing this thing. It needs a lot more than his “administrative fix” yesterday. Otherwise, it’s going to be nothing but a train wreck for 2-3 years and it could ultimately be killed when he leaves office.
Anything is worth trying. The system as it stood was the worst in the world, and we should all be embarassed to have let it devolve into such, and to have sat and watched like sheep.
So as you’re saying, Furby, we should be working to fix it. Clearly, the GOP is not.
It seems obvious to me that we are collectively trying to move towards a system with lower costs, but that GOP obstructionism and sloganeering have slowed down the effort. Still, it moves forward.
I don’t foresee a train wreck for 2-3 years. Certainly the web site will become usable over the coming months. And after that, to be judged successful, all Obama needs is for the health care system in America to work better than it has been, during a time when it has been the most ineffective and wasteful system of any developed nation.
Can we compete with the rest of the world? Can we move past our lethargy, decadence, and collective stupity, and build a health care system that works as well as every other developed nation on Earth? “Yes we can”.
Can we survice Tea Party idiots trying to force America to crawl backwards up its own anus? Based on their endless idiotic aphorisms and lack of perspective on how the world actually works? “Yes, we can”.
Can we ever possibly get the budget back to where it was 13 freaking years ago? Well, we could, but I doubt that will happen. We the people don’t like to pay taxes; again and again we make the choice to rack up debt rather than pay taxes. So no “yes we can” on that one.
But can we provide medical care that’s not 60% more expensive than every other nation? “Yes, we can”.
It’s a pretty big stretch to say our health care system was the worst in the world. It delivers very good care very inefficiently but it’s far from the worst in the world.
We should be working to fix health care. But I don’t see how this is the sole fault of GOP obstructionism. The GOP had zero input into the ACA. Not by their choice, but by the Democrats. The Democrats in the House passed the ACA less than two days after it was introduced. And we all know the games that they played in the Senate to ram it through with 60 Democrats voting for it.
This was a huge mistake. The Democrats should have worked with some moderate Republicans like John McCain or the two women Senators from Maine (can’t remember the names) Republican opposition to Obamacare hardened only after it was rammed through Congress with no attempt to work with the GOP on it at all. What was Obama saying at the time: “I won” Well, if you want to play ball that way, don’t be shocked when it bites you later on. I doubt the ACA would have passed with a lot of GOP support, but even getting a handful of GOP votes would have made opposition to it milder and resulted in a better bill.
But now we are stuck with the bill we have and both the Democrats and GOP (notice here that there is blame for both parties) have poisoned the water so much it will be very hard to fix the ACA. Ultimately, this is Obama’s problem more than anybody else’s. Nobody is calling it GOPObstructionCare or TeaPartyCare. This is Obama’s signature piece of legislation and it’s got big problems. Problems that can’t be fixed without rewriting significant parts of it. I’m not talking about the web site. I’m talking about the kinds of problems I posted earlier. Obama needs to swallow some humble pie and see what it will take to get a handful of GOP votes on small bills targeted to fix specific problems with ACA. It won’t be pretty, but things like the 29 hour cap could get fixed.
But don’t expect the GOP to take the lead on fixing this problem. It’s like Colin Powell said about Iraq. “You broke it, you bought it.” Obama and the Democrats own the ACA. If you think its going to work, that’s good for them. But if you think there are problems with the ACA, that’s a bad thing.
Lastly, the Democrats need to move on this fast. This isn’t helping them in the 2014 elections, where they might lose control of the Senate. They need to make the best deal they can with the GOP now because whatever deal they make in 2015 is going to be worse.
It won’t be easy or pretty, but Obama can save Obamacare. But he can’t do it alone.
I grow extremely weary of hearing that the GOP had no input into the health care plans. How about those committees? There were NO repubicans? I find that hard to believe.
More importantly, George Bush was president for 8 years. Where was the health care plan then? This incessant whining when one side does NOTHING for 8 years and then the other guy finally does something is for the birds. I saw nothing but obstructionism or ineritia.
I believe I also heard Romeny was a RINO pinko communist for the Massachuetts plan. He probably would have won if he had pushed his accomplishments there rather than trying to be a wanna-be elitist tea partier. He lost because he tried to be something he wasn’t.
And by “pretty big stretch” he means “100% USDA Prime Bullshit.”
I didn’t say worst in the world – I did say it doesn’t work as well as those of every other “developed” nation on Earth. I think the facts support that interpretation.
We pay significantly more than other nations, while providing less care for less people –
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/10/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html
And it drives our debt – http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/02/09/the-u-s-does-not-have-a-debt-problem-it-has-a-health-care-cost-problem/
Furby, you and I don’t disagree on much about ACA or health care. I wouldn’t have argued with a word you’re saying a few months ago. I have though had a “naked lunch” moment where I saw the meat at the end of the fork for what it is. I think the GOP have had a wholly negative effect on the debate. And that the GOP, because of the lack of intellectualism in its leaders and in its voters, can and will never build anything of substance, or attack any real problem meaningfully.
Watching them march off the shutdown ledge like lemmings – an entirely irrational move, from any perspective, and a replay of what they did in 1996 – pushed me in that direction. They’re not capable. Of anything. Not even of looking out for their own interests – and as supporting evidence, look at the unelectable nominees they put forward in 2008 and 2012. They’re an entirely dysfunctional bunch. And they’re doing nothing good.
I don’t think option 1 is possible. Jeez, they just shut down the government and played with defaulting on debt over the issue. They’ve created an environment for themselves where they CAN’T work constructively; to do so would make them “vulnerable”. They almost need to start every sentence they utter with “I know Obamacare is an abomination …”
On option 2, I think the belief is that once people realize the sky isn’t falling, that the political pressure lessens and we then move forward.
Part of the calculation, on both sides, is that when the dust settles Obamacare will be popular. Once it is judged on its merits and how it affects people’s lives, rather than on PR campaigns.
Lets see. Repeal 45 votes in house. Fix – none. It is obvious what the R;s want to do.
@Moon-howler
“Where was the health care plan then?”
Why do you insist on thinking that the federal government, much less the GOP SHOULD have a health care plan? Its private business. The gov’t already HAS a health care plan. TWO of them. Medicare and Medicaid.
Medicare and Medicaid are NOTHING alike.
Why do I insist on thinking that government should have a health care plan? Why not? Most other western countries have excellent health care plans for their people. Not having one costs this country an arm and a leg.
Why do you insist on saying a national health plan isn’t needed? Obviously it is.
Health care is a private rip off business.
@Furby McPhee
I think that GOP needs to stay the hell away from it. There is no fixing this. It WILL crash and burn.
Upton’s plan will do NOTHING to stop prices from rising but WILL link Republicans to the problem.
As they said…..they broke it. They bought it.
@Rick Bentley
“Once it is judged on its merits and how it affects people’s lives,”
It IS being judged on its merits. It raises prices and deductibles while giving LESS insurance in many cases. The website is broken. The supervisors incompetent.
Millions have lost jobs, hours, money, and insurance.
Welcome to the planned result of Obamacare.
Planned result? What a totally nasty thing to say.
The website is getting better each day. The supervisors of what are incompetent? According to whom?
“Millions have lost jobs, money, and insurance.” Don’t be a drama queen. That is simply an unprovable, prejudicial, erroneous statement.
@Cargosquid
The Government has much more invested in healthcare than ‘just’ Medicare and Medicaid – Tricare, MHS, Indian Health Services, VA, shall I go on… as there is more, much more. And if they want to have a long term debt solution – it must include changing the rising costs of healthcare. It is a stealth tax on our whole economy.
The first part of containing cost is to get everyone participating in the system – currently those of us with insurance are paying for the risk taken by those, including the young with think they are healthy, without insurance.
Good points, Pat.
People are healthy, until they aren’t healthy. No one plans on getting sick, in accidents or disabled. I am tired of hearing about the healthy. The healthy are only one illness or accident away from being unhealthy.
What is amazing to me is the Republican support of all of these people who are all on individual insurance plans. This is one area of health insurance that is abused the most, as the individual plans are usually very restrictive, do not cover preexisting conditions, and are ripe for abuse. The individual market is where plans are often changed year to year, dropped on a regular basis and often lack in coverage and cost the most.
What you are not hearing is from the people who are benefiting from the changes as they are individual voices. Does the web site suck – yes, but that will be fixed.
Anybody here with a pre-existing condition or a child with a pre-existing condition – should be shouting from the rooftops that they can now get coverage. Insurance companies are not ones friend – anybody who has experienced a trajedy such as Sandy or Katrina can tell you that – and that is for a house.
My brother would join that chorus after his house fire. He couldn’t rebuild without dipping into his own money big time.
I am amazed at the support for the individual plans also. They are usually low quality plans that cost way too much. I doubt that those complaining have ever had to use theirs for much.
“It raises prices and deductibles”
The rate of cost incease for next year was less than average.
“while giving LESS insurance in many cases.”
Clearly not true.
The web site will be fixed at some point.
The complete dysfunction of the GOP, and the nihilism that lives inside most Republican voters, will be a tougher, longer-term problem for America.