Today has been a long day for me, taking my mother to a specialist doctor's appointment. In July, she had botox injections for muscle spasticity as a result of dementia. I am happy to report that the shots have made a difference to her pain level and quality of life. The problem today . . . the doctor's office is on the third floor and there is only one elevator. Sometime after we arrived, the elevator broke down so anyone in a wheelchair is stuck waiting. There we waited for 2 hours. That set my day back. The good part . . . at least we weren't stuck IN the elevator!
Fantasy Football — I hope that this works out.
| Points | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Team | W-L-T | Pct | Stk | Waiver | For | Against |
| 1 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 10 | 118.24 | 116.10 | |
| 2 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 9 | 102.86 | 70.20 | |
| 3 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 8 | 98.12 | 89.62 | |
| 4 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 7 | 89.04 | 79.56 | |
| 5 | 1-0-0 | 1.000 | W1 | 6 | 83.24 | 80.94 | |
| 6 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 5 | 116.10 | 118.24 | |
| 7 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 4 | 89.62 | 98.12 | |
| 8 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 3 | 80.94 | 83.24 | |
| 9 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 2 | 79.56 | 89.04 | |
| 10 | 0-1-0 | .000 | L1 | 1 | 70.20 | 102.86 |
|
It would appear that TC and I are at the bottom of the league. He has an excuse. What's mine?
Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:44 (average 4:51). To do it click here. How did you do?
Rolling Stone — This is the present, and the future, of climate change. Our overheated world is amplifying drought and making megafire commonplace. This is happening even in the soggy Pacific Northwest, which has been hard-hit by what's been dubbed a "wet drought." Despite near-normal precipitation, warm winter temperatures brought rain instead of snow to the region's mountains. What little snow did hit the ground then melted early, leaving the Northwest dry — and ready to burn in the heat of summer.
The national data is as clear as it is troubling: "Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970," according to a Forest Service report published in August. In the past three decades, the annual area claimed by fire has doubled, and the agency's scientists predict that fires will likely "double again by midcentury."
The human imprint on the bone-dry conditions that lead to fire is real — and now measurable. According to a major new study by scientists at Columbia and NASA, man-made warming is increasing atmospheric evaporation — drawing water out of Western soil, shrubs and trees. In California alone, the epic drought is up to 25 percent more severe than it would have been, absent climate change. And this impact doesn't respect state borders. The study's lead author, Columbia scientist Park Williams, tells Rolling Stone, "There's the same effect in the Pacific Northwest."
Standing near fire lines in late August, Inslee vowed to extinguish the blazes in his state. But the governor also called on Americans to confront an enemy fiercer and more insidious than fire itself. He declared, "We've got to attack this at its source: carbon pollution."
The fiery future is upon us. Pervasive drought and record temperatures — July was the warmest month ever physically recorded on planet Earth — have turned forests from Fresno to Fairbanks into tinderboxes. In Alaska, more than 5 million acres burned — surpassing the 10-year average for the entire country. With months left in the fire season, the blazes of 2015 have already scorched more than 8 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center — a record pace, likely to top the 9.8 million acres that burned in 2006. "Some of these fires that are in these forested areas could burn until it snows," said NIFC spokeswoman Jessica Gardetto. …
For a glimpse of the future, look north, to Alaska and the Arctic — which President Obama, during a visit to Anchorage this summer, highlighted as "the leading edge of climate change." Soaring temperatures and an early-melting snowpack have brought raging wildfires to landscapes that have not been kissed by flame for millennia. "Climate change is no longer some far-off problem," Obama declared. "It is happening here. It is happening now."
The world is warming most toward the poles, and temperatures in Alaska have been increasing nearly twice as fast as the rest of the country in the past 60 years — up almost three degrees. And the state's average fire season has increased by more than a month — 35 days — since the 1950s. "We can detect the climate-change influence on fire," says Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, who points to three indicators all on the upswing: "the area burned, the severity of the burning and then the frequency."
Earlier today, I was thinking about all the wildfires in western Canada and the western US. Australia has also found itself with severe drought and wildfires. It seemed to me that it is one big "chicken and the egg" situation. Drought makes for tinder dry conditions; human activity and severe lightning storms bring wildfires; wildfires generate carbon pollution in the air which generates climate change . . . and the cycle rolls on. This is a long article but worth the read. We must break the cycle which means making fossil fuel decisions, and of course that means keeping Republicans out of the White House and Conservatives out of Parliament. Everyday people like you and I need to have a bigger say in the sustainability of the planet, not greedy corpoations.
Daily Kos — This is a short piece. An "Awesome cartoon about Bernie Sanders @ Liberty Univ".
Now that is a genuine WWJD! I think that would really confuse Kim Davis and the Republicans.
Alternet — “Richard is sentenced to death because he’s poor,” Glossip’s new attorney Donald Knight told the Guardian. “Not very many people can afford a death penalty defense. That should scare everyone.”
With 60 more days, his attorneys say they could gather more evidence to present a petition allowing them to litigate in a court that could grant a new trial or a clemency review.
In my book, the death penalty is never OK. It is state sanctioned murder. I think we all know where TC stands on this.
My Universe — This is how I feel about TC's shoes!
Damn, they are soooooooooooooooooooooooo big!
22 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 15/09/2015”
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Please, keep TC in your thoughts and/or prayers.
A special thank you to Nameless who taught me how to do hyper links with his excellent instructions. I also figured out how to get the links to open in a new tab. Dude, you have created a monster!
YIPPEE!!!!! No more cut and paste for the links to stories.
Fantasy Football? I know football but never tried my hand at fantasy football.
Rolling Stone: I read that …I do not recall this many fires and the drought as well. I normally do very good with water but just lately my county was instructed to limit water usage.
Actually I thought Bernie did a great job at Liberty. Very impressive.
Rough day for you it sounds like. Happy to hear you and other friends have found out T.C. and his status.
Of course he is my thoughts and prayers.
You are doing a phenomenal job!! Kudos to you and Namelessfor getting this out here.
Any news on TC, at all? He is on my mind, and I hope and pray that all is okay with him, and for his recovery.
Thank you for this.
Lynn's doing all the heavy lifting.
And will probably have to until I can get a new computer – which will probably be a bit as I have relatives and then friends coming for \visits. And I'm going to have my carpets cleaned, so I want to put as much stuff away as possible. When I moved 11 years ago (after living in the same place for 25 years) I swore a person should either move every ten years – or act like they're going to move. I'm a year behind – but it's sort & purge time!
Waiting for the elevator to get fixed for two long hours must have been quite demanding, Lynn, but as you say, you and your mother were lucky you weren't in it during that time. Good to hear too that there's still some Botox left for remedies it was developed for.
Rolling Stone: It's beyond me that there are still Climate Change deniers that are pulling the strings while study after study tells us how bad it's effects already are. "Climate change has led to fire seasons that are now on average 78 days longer than in 1970," that's something you can't ignore and "fires will likely "double again by midcentury."" should get those politicians not only thinking but acting! Unless they think there won't be anything left to burn by then because of deforestation and previous wildfires. It seems the way the Abbott/Turnbull government is thinking in Australia.
And if this isn't bad enough, a lot of wildfires, that is almost all of those in Indonesia are intentionally lit by humans. For the second time Sumatra has been hit by wildfires that have gotten out of hand when local farmers, but mostly palm oil plantation owners start fires to clear land for cultivation. Sumatra has more than a thousand hotspots now and the smoke is forcing people to flee thearea and is now threatening neighboring countries for the second time: Indonesian fires send smog over Singapore, Malaysia These manmade fires will have additional adverse affects on Climate Change, all for the sake of greedy corporations and corrupt politicians.
Daily Kos: Brilliant cartoon!
Alternet: Of course Richard Glossip is going to die on Wednesday because he's poor. The right-wing justice system in the US is bigoted and inhumane except for the 1% who literally get away with murder. But the death penalty can never be part of a humane justice system, no matter how fair it is.
My Universe: Yes, they are huge shoes to fill, Lynn, but you're doing a terrific job.
Lynn – you are doing an absolutely STELLAR job! It is most appreciated!
And you can never go wrong by ending w/ a good dose of SQUEE!
Kudos Lynn! I'll be brief since I have to handle something first thing this morning I didn't expect. Thanks for helping people better understand how huge our fires are. Last year I shared links to aerial maps with the smoke and these can be seen from space. Mother Jones has a video of what it's like to drive through one of the two here in No. CA in populated areas I saw. Irony is that CA got ahead of the curve for air quality addressing smog creators to now have all of this.
Fantasy Football: Your excuse is that you may be doing more than what you normally do with the addition of TC's Politics Plus News. You are doing an awesome job!
Rolling Stone: Corporate controlled politicians and corporations simply do not care about climate change and won't lift a finger to help. They re only interested in greed, profit and the bottom line. The ice caps are melting. Trees are dying. Polar Bears are starving, forest fires all over the world, record high temperature heat waves where people are dying, unusual weather patterns – all are early indicators of global warming.
KOS: Bernie's cartoon at: https://twitter.com/AndyMarlette/status/643471639724879872/photo/1
Alternet: The death penalty needs to be abolished. How many innocent people have been executed? One too many! Oklahoma Republican Gov. Mary Fallin does not give a s**t. Fallin is a gung-ho executioner, botched or not.
My Universe: Cute. lol.
BERNIE SANDERS:
Tomorrow night, Sept. 17, 2015, on Rachel Maddow's Show, Bernie Sanders will be her guest on her show: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
4:33 Interestingly, the domestic cat yesterday looked much more threatening to me than these adorable angels.
Rolling Stone – Difficult decisions indeed. Living in a wildfire area myself, though we were lucky last year and so far this year, I can guarantee no matter how hard an area tries, there are always going to be stupid people who think rules don't apply to them, or are completely unable to understand that actions have consequences, or both. And we can't make No-Lightning Zones. Yes, we need to get Republicans and Conservatives out. But we also need to get money out of politics. While I am not one of those people who think there is no difference between parties – far from it – I do have to admit that big money taints everyone it touches. And it touches Democrats as well as Republicans.
Daily Kos – Yes, wonderful cartoon, which I bookmarked yesterday. I read the summary in The Nation, and was interested to see how many people didn't get it. I can't say disappointed because I expected that, but it is too bad.
Alternet – I signed a petition earlier this week on this. There is a link to a change.org in the article, but it is pretty far down and small print, so I'll repeat the link here:
https://www.change.org/p/mary-fallin-save-richard-glossip-s-life At the very end of the article there is a much larger Alternet petition. The one I signed earlier was by Faithful America:
http://act.faithfulamerica.org/sign/richard_glossip/?t=1&akid=677.240419.vdoxs0
Universe – Darned right TC's shoes are big. But I agree with everyone you are doing – well, "f***ing amazing"ly well.
Tom's shoes are big and difficult to fill, but if anyone can you can, Lynn, and you are doing wonderful so far…..
I agree!
will wait patiently for updates. hope its good news.
By the way, w/r the fires, I heard someone say that CA will forever be an ongoing "fire risk" not a fire season place if something doesn't change
Puzzle 3:26 ~ Big puddy-tats!
3:26 You get one. I'll take the other.
Great job keeping the blog going for TomCat! Maybe that's why your FF team did poorly. You weren't concentrating. This week it's you and me. Good luck.
Rolling Stone ~ All the evidence is there and the Rethugs continue to deny it and attempt to block any efforts to change it. How stupid can they be? Even Arnold Shwartzenager admits it's real and I thought he was pretty out there.
Daily Kos ~ That's really telling when a Jewish man has to teach "Christians" what Jesus said. Then again, Jesus was a Jew.
Alternet ~ I have signed several petitions t stay his execution. Susan Sarandon has made emotional pleas on several TV shows as has Sister Prejean. I believe it is all of no avail.
Very big shoes! You're filling them quite nicely though.
Glad to say that the case of Richard Glossip was taken out of our blood-thirsty governor's hands! The Court of Criminal Appeals has issued a STAY in the execution of Richard Glossip! His lawyers have a TWO WEEK STAY!
So NO EXECUTION TODAY! Glad they took it out of Mary 'Failin' Fallon's hands!!! She had nothing good to say about the new evidence that his lawyers had presented, so they took it to the courts and got a STAY!
I HOPE TC IS GETTING BETTER! I wish we had some new news on his condition!!! I wish I lived close enough to go to the hospital and ask to see him! I think I would have to find a way to get in to see him!
Lynn, you are doing a FANTASTIC job!
Lynn, you are doing marvellously!
RS- I was in Vancouver, two weeks ago, and the fountains at the aquarium were shut down, due to the drought!
The Bernie at Liberty U. cartoon is priceless. Too bad so many who think the school is legitimate will ignore the message.
In Vancouver and you didn't call?
Thanks, Lynn for the hard work you are doing for all of us and TC. You are doing a great job, Tc will be proud. Sorry for the day you had. If your Mom is like mine, she was very unhappy by the time you got home.
Rolling Stone: We all know there is climate change and the world is heating up, but apparently, our goverment leaders and corporations don't. The Republicans are still denying it, but of course, they have to protect the energy companies. This is a tough one for me since I live in coal country where, thanks to the coal companies and local governments, there are no other jobs. It is hard to watch your friends and neighbors lose their jobs. They still have bills to pay and families to raise. Tourism is almost out, even though we have our gorgeous mountains, because so many of those mountains have been gutted by mountain top removal.
Daily Kos: Love the cartoon, shared it on Facebook.
Alternet: I signed the petition, although it may be too late. I would like to see all capital punishment eliminated..it is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Cartoon: Those are mighty big shoes to fill, but you are doing a good job. Hope we hear something soon about TC.
Thanks everyone! Very tired. I have a hot date with my pillow and my feline pride!
Hope you got great sleep after a day of making a difference for other people.