Independence Day

Today we celebrate our nation's fight for freedom. Tomorrow we go back to giving our nation's freedom away.

Winter in America

Gil Scott-Heron died yesterday. One of my favorite artists, he gave me a little insight on how African-Americans view this country and their place in it. Considered to be one of the forefathers of Rap, he also was a great jazz artist and wordsmith. Although the peak of his career was decades ago, a lot of his songs still ring true, like this one.

Uprising

Tunisia? Egypt? Wisconsin?! The Middle East is not the only place they're taking to the streets. Teabagger Governor Scott Walker is attempting to cut the wages and break the union of Wisconsin's state employees. To make sure they don't strike, he's willing to bring in the National Guard to "prevent disruptions."

However, some teachers, along with their students, went to the capitol and staged a peaceful protest. How many? Estimates ranged from 13,000 to 30,000. Result? Now Walker and the Republicans are considering some changes.

As for the Middle East, it's interesting to note that people suffering under authoritarian regimes are rising up and toppling those regimes one after another with no involvement from us.

2nd amendment remedy

Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot point blank in the head by a gunman who then emptied his gun into the crowd, killing 5 people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. Giffords was on Sarah Palin's Target List with a crosshairs over her district. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law allowing the shooter to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

The shooter, Jared Loughner, has a Youtube channel apparently discussing mind control. Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment Remedy" in action.

Don't forget to vote

Just so you know.

Adventures in stupidity

If this was fiction, it would be edited out for being too stereotypical, but it's real:

I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!

GzeroP Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia.

Seriously, people? You want them back in power?

Nobody could have predicted....

We're having a cool summer here in Sonoma County. It's wonderful. I'm grateful to live here when I read about the muggy, sticky steam bath that the rest of the country is suffering in.

Those of you having to endure that, can take a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that others have it worse:

The extreme heat has led to the worst drought conditions in European Russia in a half-century, prompting the Russian government to suspend wheat exports. The drought has caused extreme fire danger over most of European Russia (Figure 3), and fires in Russia have killed at least 50 people in the past week and leveled thousands of homes. The fires are the worst since 1972, when massive forest and peat bog fires burned an area of 100,000 square km and killed at 104 people in the Moscow region alone. Smoke from the current fires spans a region over 3,000 km (1,860 miles) from east to west, approximately the distance from San Francisco to Chicago.

Stephen Andrew explains what this would be like here:

To put this in rough perspective -- and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring -- if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday, even the nightly low in the massive urban heat islands of New York and Chicago would be over 90°! The midwest grain belt and parts of the Pacific Northwest would not see a drop of rain for two months and pushing as high as 110° in places. The desert southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara.

A nightmare scenario that, sadly, we have been warned about for many years. Nobody wanted to hear it then, and people still don't, now. The problem with all of this is that these nightmare scenarios are now reality, and this reality will get worse. How much worse depends on what we do next.