devastation Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Thursday Morning News Roundup

devastation in Branson Missouri

The devastation throughout the Midwest turned out to be a lot worse than I realized. Turn away and don’t even think about saying that warm temperatures could have led to this. Don’t go there.

Conservative activist and blogger Andrew Breitbart is dead. According to the story on the Huffington Post, he died of natural causes. As a trauma surgeon, I can tell you that 43-year-old men do not die of natural causes. 83-year-old men can die of natural causes (not really). The fact that he was so out of control when we last saw him screaming at a Occupy Movement suggests that drugs and alcohol could’ve been involved. But who knows? In spite of the fact that I did not agree with almost anything that came out of this guy’s mouth and I did not agree with his tactics, I’m always saddened by the death of another human being. My prayers go out to his friends and family. (BTW, what the hell are natural causes? That’s not a diagnosis.)

Windows 8 is ready for preview. As for me, I’m ready to be underwhelmed.

Davy Jones, from the ’60s pop group the Monkees, is dead.

United States beat Italy in soccer. Clint Dempsey, from East Texas, scored the winning goal. This is the first time in 70 years that the USA has beaten a powerhouse like Italy. USA, USA!!!

Personal income increased in January.

Rick Santorum’s loss in Michigan, in my opinion, will make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to do anything significant for the rest of this Republican primary season. If you listen to his speeches over the last several weeks, they become more and more like sermons. As he belittles Obama and liberals, he’s talking more and more about family values and how to live your life and the ultimate path to happiness. His speeches are nice but they aren’t putting him on a path to the White House. He has yet to establish himself as an expert in anything other than conservative social issues. He has not established himself on foreign policy, energy independence, the economy, jobs creation or anything other than marriage and abortion. I admit that this is an oversimplification but in essence that’s what he is pushing. He is dead in the water. His candidacy is over.

Chief federal judge Richard Cebull sent a racist e-mail from his federal e-mail account. In spite of the fact that the e-mail suggests carnal acts between Obama’s mother and a dog, the federal judge insists that he’s not a racist. Maybe he thought that the e-mail was terribly funny. I laughed until I stopped.

The Koch brothers are suing the Cato Institute over mismanagement of their monies.

Olympia Snow has announced that she is not running for reelection. Democrats could use a good solid candidate in order to take that Republican-held seat.

The Blunt amendment is slowly making its way to the Senate. This amendment, in essence, will allow employers to cover whatever they want to cover under ObamaCare. Basically, employers do not have to cover contraception or anything else that they don’t really want to cover. It will gut ObamaCare. Now, more that ever, we need better healthcare coverage. We need the Full Monty. We don’t need hidden pitfalls.

From the Economic Policy Institute

By ecthompsonmd|2012-03-01T12:22:33-04:00March 1st, 2012|Domestic Issues, Elections, Party Politics|Comments Off

Tuesday Evening News Roundup

There seems to be some ATF fallout from a operation called Fast and Furious. I’m still not sure of all the details but the US attorney in Phoenix has resigned and the ATF director has been reassigned. There’s something fishy here.

There’s a nice article in the New York Times about how this recovery missed Main Street. I would add that the problem with our economy is that the last 10-15 years of economic growth have been largely been based on credit and the availability of credit. To quote that old Smith Barney commercial, we have to start making money the old-fashioned way – we have to earn it. America is slowly switching over from a credit-based society back to a cash-based society. This is going to take some time. In spite of this, I will stand up and say again that we need jobs and we need jobs NOW.

On Sunday, Colin Powell was on Face the Nation. In a very nice and diplomatic way he told former Vice President Dick Cheney to stuff it.

There have been several occasions in which Ron Paul has stepped out on the limb only to have the limb break and fall off. As everyone knows Ron Paul is an antigovernment crusader. In the wake of the terrible disaster which struck the East Coast and New England, Ron Paul thought it was wise to highlight that there is simply too much dependency on FEMA and the federal government.

Watch the Video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Once again, the mainstream media almost missed the story. On Sunday you could feel the mainstream media almost start to cry that Hurricane Irene was not more powerful and more destructive. They wanted to see devastation and suffering. On Sunday and Monday we began to see stories about how New York City was saved. Then, late Monday we began seeing stories of flooding in Connecticut. This was followed by more stories about devastating flooding in Vermont. This was followed by more stories of millions of people without power. All of a sudden, the mainstream media had the disaster that they were looking for. Although it would be easy for me to bash the mainstream media, I would like to focus on the millions of people who need help. This is a time when we need to quit bickering and help our fellow Americans. We need to pretend, at least for a while, that we paid attention in church/synagogue/temple. Currently the death toll sits at 43. Several cities in Vermont are completely cut off from surrounding communities because roads and bridges have washed away. It’s time for us to help these Americans now. We need to figure out how to pay for the help… Later.

Update: Glenn Beck is receiving mediocre ratings with his new network. What do you do if you have mediocre ratings? Instead of trying to be a better reporter/announcer/guru for conservatism just say outlandish stupid stuff.

The state of Nevada goes after Bank of America/Countrywide for deceptive practices and fraudulent loans. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

PG&E gets excoriated for being a large American corporation. Remember, large American corporations care about profits and nothing else. The explosion outside of San Francisco which killed eight people and damaged 38 homes was basically caused by negligence by PG&E. My question is how many more American homes and lives are at risk because of the large corporations have decided to cut costs at our expense?

Finally, over Nine million views of this video reminds me of how crazy we really are. Nine million views of Taylor Swift and her wardrobe “malfunction.”

By ecthompsonmd|2011-08-30T23:50:37-04:00August 30th, 2011|Domestic Issues, Economy, Environment, Party Politics, Rachel Maddow Show|Comments Off

Species are disappearing rapidly

It is Saturday so that means I’m talking about the climate. I’m going to work hard to stay on track. I think that this is important. So…

From CP:

A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Biological Science) — “Biological diversity in a changing world” — paints a bleak picture of what Homo ’sapiens’sapiens is doing to the other species on the planet.

Prior to this year, I wrote about extinction only occasionally — since the direct impact of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions on humanity seemed to me more than reason enough to act. But the mass extinctions we are causing will directly harm our children and grandchildren as much as sea level rise. In particular, I believe scientists have not been talking enough about the devastation we are causing to marine life (see “Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century”).

In 2007, the IPCC warned that “as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.” That is a temperature rise over pre-industrial levels of a bit more than 4.0°C. So the 5°C rise we are facing on our current emissions path would likely put extinctions beyond the high end of that range.

Given the irreversibility of mass extinction, and the multiple unintended consequences it engenders, it must be considered one of the most serious of the many catastrophic impacts we face if we don’t act soon.

The special issue contains 16 articles by leading scientists. The abstracts are all online as is the lead piece, also titled, “Biological diversity in a changing world,” by the two biologists who organized the Royal Society’s scientific “Discussion Meeting” and edited the issue. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2011-03-05T08:06:43-04:00March 5th, 2011|Environment|Comments Off