This is what researchers from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the Associated Press—NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago set out to better understand. Their nationally representative poll found that 43% of Americans were unwilling to pay an additional $1 per month in their electricity bill to combat climate change—and a large majority were unwilling to pay $10 per month. That’s despite the fact that a whopping 77% said they think climate change is happening and 65% think it is a problem the government should do something about. Support plummets as the amount of the fee increases.’
This is an upside-down result. The best available science tells us that Americans should be willing to pay considerably more, because the damages from climate change are so great—including to them personally. If we use the federal government’s estimate of the combined social cost of carbon pollution and apply it to the typical U.S. household’s electricity consumption on today’s national grid mix, the average household faces damages of almost $20 per month. Yet just 29% of respondents said they would be willing to pay at least that much.
Brick Heck, the youngest child on ABC’s “The Middle,” isn’t someone most kids would want to emulate. He’s socially inept, has several odd behavioral traits and makes the library his favorite destination.
Since I’m far removed from childhood — gaining a little wisdom along the way — and past the social anxiety of trying to fit in, I’m rooting for him. I realize he is just a fictional character, but popular culture does influence our society.
The appeal of Brick isn’t just because his favorite activity is reading, a necessary skill for our audience in the newspaper business. I also admire his infatuation with fonts.
Discussion on fonts has slipped into several episodes of the television series. In a very early show, he had a plan — that involved fonts, of all things — for winning over a girl. When, to everyone’s surprise, she showed up at his door, he chimed “Would you like to come in and I’ll show you my favorite fonts?”
Another time, he discovers that the rides at Disney World are “way more fun than I thought” because they have signs, and the words on them are in different fonts.
During the Super Bowl, he surprises his father by telling him a newspaper story on a star football running back is fascinating. The excitement of his son finally appreciating football turned to disappointment when Mike Heck discovered the fascination for Brick wasn’t with the content of the story, but the Copperplate Gothic font used in the story.
I think you're right about taxpayer-funded crisis jobs...more specifically, it's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. Various leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA: "Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible."
Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”
Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."
Every time I see alarmist stuff like this, all I can think of is this:
Hypothesis and Disproof
“2006: Expect Another Big Hurricane Year Says NOAA”—headline, MongaBay.com, May 22, 2006 “NOAA Predicts Above Normal 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration press release, May 23, 2007 “NOAA Increases Expectancy for Above-Normal 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, gCaptain.com, Aug. 7, 2008 “Forecasters: 2009 to Bring ‘Above Average’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CNN, Dec. 10, 2008 “NOAA: 2010 Hurricane Season May Set Records”—headline, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), May 28, 2010 “NOAA Predicts Increased Storm Activity in 2011 Hurricane Season”—headline, BDO Consulting press release, Aug. 18, 2011 “2012 Hurricane Forecast Update: More Storms Expected”—headline, LiveScience, Aug. 9, 2012 “NOAA Predicts Active 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, NOAApress release, May 23, 2013 “A Space-Based View of 2015’s ‘Hyperactive’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CityLab.com, June 19, 2015 “The 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Might Be the Strongest in Years”—headline, CBSNews, Aug. 11, 2016 “NOAA: U.S. Completes Record 11 Straight Years Without Major Hurricane Strike”—headline, CNSNews, Oct. 24, 2016 NOTE: the NOAA is The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scientific agency within the Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere.
For more “Best of the Web” from The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto
I'm sure that *EVENTUALLY* they'll get one right...2016 was the "strongest in years" but was still pretty much meh, except for Matthew's impact on Haiti.
Actual activity in 2016: 15 named storms, 7 hurricanes, 4 CAT3+
Average (1981–2010[1]) 12.1, 6.4, 2.7 Record high activity 28, 15, 7
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time. Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar! Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime
Short story the song was based on...The story, "A Nice Morning Drive," by Richard S. Foster, first appeared in the November 1973 issue of Road and Track.
A dozen years ago things had begun changing. First there were a few modest safety and emission improvements required on new cars; gradually these became more comprehensive. The governmental requirements reached an adequate level, but they didn't stop; they continued and became more and more stringent. Now there were very few of the older models left, through natural deterioration and... other reasons.
The safety crusade had been well done at first. The few harebrained schemes were quickly ruled out and a sense of rationality developed. But in the late Seventies, with no major wars, cancer cured and social welfare straightened out. the politicians needed a new cause and once again they turned toward the automobile. The regulations concerning safety became tougher. Cars became larger, heavier, less efficient. They consumed gasoline so voraciously that the United States had had to become a major ally with the Arabian countries. The new cars were hard to stop or maneuver quickly. but they would save your life (usually) in a 50-mph crash. With 200 million cars on the road, however, few people ever drove that fast anymore.
Despite the extent of the safety program, it was essentially a good idea. But unforeseen complications had arisen. People became accustomed to cars which went undamaged in 10-mph collisions. They gave even less thought than before to the possibility of being injured in a crash. As a result, they tended to worry less about clearances and rights-of-way, so that the accident rate went up a steady six percent every year. But the damages and injuries actually decreased, so the government was happy, the insurance industry was happy and most of the car owners were happy. Most of the car owners, the owners of the non-MSV cars, were kept busy dodging the less careful MSV drivers, and the result of this mismatch left very few of the older cars in existence. If they weren't crushed between two 6000-pound sleds on the highway they were quietly priced into the junkyard by the insurance peddlers. And worst of all, they became targets...
It hadn't taken long for the less responsible element among drivers to discover that their new MSVs could inflict great damage on an older car and go unscathed themselves. As a result some drivers would go looking for the older cars in secluded areas, bounce them off the road or into a bridge abutment, and then speed off undamaged, relieved of whatever frustrations caused this kind of behavior. Police seldom patrolled these out-of-the-way places, their attentions being required more urgently elsewhere, and so it became a great sport for some drivers.
Herr Zeller: Perhaps those who would warn you that the Anschluss is coming - and it is coming, Captain - perhaps they would get further with you by setting their words to music.
Captain von Trapp: If the Nazis take over Austria, I have no doubt, Herr Zeller, that you will be the entire trumpet section.
Herr Zeller: You flatter me, Captain.
Captain von Trapp: Oh, how clumsy of me - I meant to accuse you.
According to the Washington Post/ABC News survey...nearly 100 percent of voters who backed Trump and voted for him in last year’s presidential election say they do not regret their vote. Of those reached by the polling agency, 96 percent said they don’t regret their vote, while only 2 percent said they do.
On the other hand, only 85 percent said the same of Clinton. Of those who regret their vote, very few say they would switch their vote to the other candidate. Instead, they would vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all.
In the Georgia 6th District race--and this data is from *before* the jungle primary held a few weeks ago...
"Jon Ossoff on Wednesday announced record haul in the race for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a stunning figure for the previously unknown Democrat.
"Ossoff’s raised more than $8.3 million in advance of April 18’s special election, a number 17 times greater than his nearest competitors in the multi-party election and an apparent record for a congressional candidate in a single quarter.
"For context, that’s more than former 6th District Congressman Tom Price raised in his last three campaigns spanning six years.
"But nearly all of that money has come thanks to a progressive non-profit named ActBlue. They offer “simple, intuitive tools” to help “Democratic campaigns get more donations”. The left-leaning web site Daily Kos has set up an online ActBlue portal to donate to Ossoff. [Daily Kos is a for-profit media conglomerate, clearly engaging in open a flagrant campaigning and finance spending].
"So far, of Ossoff’s $8.3 million raised, ActBlue donations make up $7.7 million.
"just 6 percent of Ossoff’s donors live in Georgia. He had more donations from California, New York, and Massachusetts than from Georgia.
If Ossoff win's I will be shocked if I hear a single word about the disparities in money, even from all the people at Public Citizen who cry every day about corporations and big money corrupting elections (and especially cry about Citizen's United).
Obama promised that he "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."
One of President Obama's major campaign planks was making government more open and accountable. It's a reaction to a habit in Congress of rushing bills through the House and Senate without giving people much opportunity to know what the bills would do. Indeed, sometimes members of Congress don't even know what's in the bills.
So Obama pledged during the campaign to institute "sunlight before signing."
"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them," Obama's campaign Web site states . "As president, Obama will not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days."
But the first bill Obama signed into law as president — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — got no such vetting.
In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing.
The legislation was not posted to the White House Web site for comment in any way that we could find.
We see no way the bill could be deemed emergency legislation, even taking the broadest view. The bill overturns the effects of a Supreme Court decision that limited when workers could sue for pay discrimination. Most pertinently, the bill is retroactive to the time of the court decision — May 28, 2007. Obama earned a Promise Kept from us for signing the law. But it would have the same effect if had been signed a few days later, so it's clearly not an emergency.
We asked the White House about this and if they planned to begin posting laws to the Web site for comment soon, but we got no response.
Obama signed the measure at 10:20 a.m. About two hours later, the White House posted the bill on its Web site with a link that asks people to submit comments . But the bill was already signed at that point.
We recognize that Obama has been in office just a week, but he was very clear about his plan for a five-day comment period, and we can't see why this one needed to be rushed. It is somewhat ironic that with the same action, Obama both keeps and breaks a campaign promise. But there it is — his first one. Promise Broken.
"The individuals on these boards are appointed based on scientific expertise not politics."
No matter what your scientific position may be, few if any individuals on such a board are not political animals. Anyone in academia who *tries* to get onto university boards, etc. is more interested in the power (or perception of power) of such a position than in the science purportedly being done. They get there by virtue of knowing and kowtowing to someone else in political power.
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
And what I'm seeing is millions and millions of dollars being funneled into the Democrat's coffers from outside the district. Speaking of outside the district, he does not live int he district and so he's not eligible to vote in the district in which he is running. Some 95% of his campaign funding is coming from outside of Georgia, mostly New York and California. He outspent his opponents by multiple millions in the jungle primary (most of them had campaign spending of about $400K, he spent $8M+).
Almost all of his commercials and mailings fail to mention the word "Democrat", in a concerted effort to try to convince voters he is something other than a hand-picked minion of the Party. He inflates his resume to make it seem like he is a national security expert (he was an intern still in college for much of the time-span claimed) and anti-corruption (but he is supported by Nancy Pelosi).
If he wins, it will certainly be an example of a seat being bought by outside funding throwing piles of money into the campaign--ironically funded largely by people who despise Citizen's United ruling. Money can certainly make a difference.
The main reason he may actually win, though, is that his Republican opponent is Hillary-esque in her own negatives and there is about zero enthusiasm to get her elected.
For some reason my father had a Rolf Harris album and he played the hell out of it when I was a kid. I had a moment later in life when I saw some mention of "the wet" on some nature show, and flashed back to the song "In The Wet" and realize I had not known what it was about when I was a dumb kid.
The science isn't settled in just about every field, they're still arguing over sodium, theoretical physicists are still arguing over gravity! Apparently only the very best scientists work in climate science, they're the only ones where the science is settled.
It does make me wonder, if their science is settled, why are they still getting paid to do more climate science?
Too little water >> you die Too little sodium >> you die Around recommended amount >> good Double amount of recommended amount >> your body attempts to adjust itself to the situation by getting rid of water through, e.g. urinal, sweat, etc. Can cause overhydration, water retention, and hyponatremia (leading to, ironically in context, too little sodium in cells). Too much water >> you die
What should anyone care? Coal is done. Wind and solar are unstoppable. So Trump's deregulation will not impact anything at all, right? Maybe at worst a little bit more coal-related pollution until coal runs out and solar and wind in their inevitable supremacy wipe the need for coal, gas, oil, and nuclear right off the deck.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what researchers from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the Associated Press—NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago set out to better understand. Their nationally representative poll found that 43% of Americans were unwilling to pay an additional $1 per month in their electricity bill to combat climate change—and a large majority were unwilling to pay $10 per month. That’s despite the fact that a whopping 77% said they think climate change is happening and 65% think it is a problem the government should do something about. Support plummets as the amount of the fee increases.’
This is an upside-down result. The best available science tells us that Americans should be willing to pay considerably more, because the damages from climate change are so great—including to them personally. If we use the federal government’s estimate of the combined social cost of carbon pollution and apply it to the typical U.S. household’s electricity consumption on today’s national grid mix, the average household faces damages of almost $20 per month. Yet just 29% of respondents said they would be willing to pay at least that much.
https://blogs.wsj.com/experts/...
I thought "gloat" was the collective word for "people who will never make it". Like a "pod of whales" or a "pride of lions" or a "lounge of lizards".
http://www.hometown-pages.com/...
Brick Heck, the youngest child on ABC’s “The Middle,” isn’t someone most kids would want to emulate. He’s socially inept, has several odd behavioral traits and makes the library his favorite destination.
Since I’m far removed from childhood — gaining a little wisdom along the way — and past the social anxiety of trying to fit in, I’m rooting for him. I realize he is just a fictional character, but popular culture does influence our society.
The appeal of Brick isn’t just because his favorite activity is reading, a necessary skill for our audience in the newspaper business. I also admire his infatuation with fonts.
Discussion on fonts has slipped into several episodes of the television series. In a very early show, he had a plan — that involved fonts, of all things — for winning over a girl. When, to everyone’s surprise, she showed up at his door, he chimed “Would you like to come in and I’ll show you my favorite fonts?”
Another time, he discovers that the rides at Disney World are “way more fun than I thought” because they have signs, and the words on them are in different fonts.
During the Super Bowl, he surprises his father by telling him a newspaper story on a star football running back is fascinating. The excitement of his son finally appreciating football turned to disappointment when Mike Heck discovered the fascination for Brick wasn’t with the content of the story, but the Copperplate Gothic font used in the story.
They've been saying fusion power plants are only 20 years away for about 50 years it seems.
I think you're right about taxpayer-funded crisis jobs...more specifically, it's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. Various leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Gus Hall, former leader of the Communist Party USA: "Human society cannot basically stop the destruction of the environment under capitalism. Socialism is the only structure that makes it possible."
Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”
Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."
Haven't we heard something like this before?
Every time I see alarmist stuff like this, all I can think of is this:
Hypothesis and Disproof
“2006: Expect Another Big Hurricane Year Says NOAA”—headline, MongaBay .com, May 22, 2006 .com, Aug. 7, 2008 .com, June 19, 2015
“NOAA Predicts Above Normal 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration press release, May 23, 2007
“NOAA Increases Expectancy for Above-Normal 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, gCaptain
“Forecasters: 2009 to Bring ‘Above Average’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CNN, Dec. 10, 2008
“NOAA: 2010 Hurricane Season May Set Records”—headline, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), May 28, 2010
“NOAA Predicts Increased Storm Activity in 2011 Hurricane Season”—headline, BDO Consulting press release, Aug. 18, 2011
“2012 Hurricane Forecast Update: More Storms Expected”—headline, LiveScience, Aug. 9, 2012
“NOAA Predicts Active 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, NOAApress release, May 23, 2013
“A Space-Based View of 2015’s ‘Hyperactive’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CityLab
“The 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Might Be the Strongest in Years”—headline, CBSNews, Aug. 11, 2016
“NOAA: U.S. Completes Record 11 Straight Years Without Major Hurricane Strike”—headline, CNSNews, Oct. 24, 2016
NOTE: the NOAA is The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scientific agency within the Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere.
For more “Best of the Web” from The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto
I'm sure that *EVENTUALLY* they'll get one right...2016 was the "strongest in years" but was still pretty much meh, except for Matthew's impact on Haiti.
Actual activity in 2016: 15 named storms, 7 hurricanes, 4 CAT3+
Average (1981–2010[1]) 12.1, 6.4, 2.7
Record high activity 28, 15, 7
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time. Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar! Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime
Short story the song was based on...The story, "A Nice Morning Drive," by Richard S. Foster, first appeared in the November 1973 issue of Road and Track.
http://oppositelock.kinja.com/...
A dozen years ago things had begun changing. First there were a few modest safety and emission improvements required on new cars; gradually these became more comprehensive. The governmental requirements reached an adequate level, but they didn't stop; they continued and became more and more stringent. Now there were very few of the older models left, through natural deterioration and... other reasons.
The safety crusade had been well done at first. The few harebrained schemes were quickly ruled out and a sense of rationality developed. But in the late Seventies, with no major wars, cancer cured and social welfare straightened out. the politicians needed a new cause and once again they turned toward the automobile. The regulations concerning safety became tougher. Cars became larger, heavier, less efficient. They consumed gasoline so voraciously that the United States had had to become a major ally with the Arabian countries. The new cars were hard to stop or maneuver quickly. but they would save your life (usually) in a 50-mph crash. With 200 million cars on the road, however, few people ever drove that fast anymore.
Despite the extent of the safety program, it was essentially a good idea. But unforeseen complications had arisen. People became accustomed to cars which went undamaged in 10-mph collisions. They gave even less thought than before to the possibility of being injured in a crash. As a result, they tended to worry less about clearances and rights-of-way, so that the accident rate went up a steady six percent every year. But the damages and injuries actually decreased, so the government was happy, the insurance industry was happy and most of the car owners were happy. Most of the car owners, the owners of the non-MSV cars, were kept busy dodging the less careful MSV drivers, and the result of this mismatch left very few of the older cars in existence. If they weren't crushed between two 6000-pound sleds on the highway they were quietly priced into the junkyard by the insurance peddlers. And worst of all, they became targets...
It hadn't taken long for the less responsible element among drivers to discover that their new MSVs could inflict great damage on an older car and go unscathed themselves. As a result some drivers would go looking for the older cars in secluded areas, bounce them off the road or into a bridge abutment, and then speed off undamaged, relieved of whatever frustrations caused this kind of behavior. Police seldom patrolled these out-of-the-way places, their attentions being required more urgently elsewhere, and so it became a great sport for some drivers.
Herr Zeller:
Perhaps those who would warn you that the Anschluss is coming - and it is coming, Captain - perhaps they would get further with you by setting their words to music.
Captain von Trapp:
If the Nazis take over Austria, I have no doubt, Herr Zeller, that you will be the entire trumpet section.
Herr Zeller:
You flatter me, Captain.
Captain von Trapp:
Oh, how clumsy of me - I meant to accuse you.
Sure they make some money from their users there, but is it worth entertaining Austrians while opening up to these sorts of demands?
Just shut down Austria, right now! And see if a) you miss the revenue vs overhead problems and/or b) they come to their senses?
According to the Washington Post/ABC News survey...nearly 100 percent of voters who backed Trump and voted for him in last year’s presidential election say they do not regret their vote. Of those reached by the polling agency, 96 percent said they don’t regret their vote, while only 2 percent said they do.
On the other hand, only 85 percent said the same of Clinton. Of those who regret their vote, very few say they would switch their vote to the other candidate. Instead, they would vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all.
In the Georgia 6th District race--and this data is from *before* the jungle primary held a few weeks ago...
"Jon Ossoff on Wednesday announced record haul in the race for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a stunning figure for the previously unknown Democrat.
"Ossoff’s raised more than $8.3 million in advance of April 18’s special election, a number 17 times greater than his nearest competitors in the multi-party election and an apparent record for a congressional candidate in a single quarter.
"For context, that’s more than former 6th District Congressman Tom Price raised in his last three campaigns spanning six years.
"But nearly all of that money has come thanks to a progressive non-profit named ActBlue. They offer “simple, intuitive tools” to help “Democratic campaigns get more donations”. The left-leaning web site Daily Kos has set up an online ActBlue portal to donate to Ossoff.
[Daily Kos is a for-profit media conglomerate, clearly engaging in open a flagrant campaigning and finance spending].
"So far, of Ossoff’s $8.3 million raised, ActBlue donations make up $7.7 million.
"just 6 percent of Ossoff’s donors live in Georgia. He had more donations from California, New York, and Massachusetts than from Georgia.
If Ossoff win's I will be shocked if I hear a single word about the disparities in money, even from all the people at Public Citizen who cry every day about corporations and big money corrupting elections (and especially cry about Citizen's United).
Was to make himself a liar...
Obama promised that he "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."
One of President Obama's major campaign planks was making government more open and accountable. It's a reaction to a habit in Congress of rushing bills through the House and Senate without giving people much opportunity to know what the bills would do. Indeed, sometimes members of Congress don't even know what's in the bills.
So Obama pledged during the campaign to institute "sunlight before signing."
"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them," Obama's campaign Web site states . "As president, Obama will not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days."
But the first bill Obama signed into law as president — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — got no such vetting.
In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing.
The legislation was not posted to the White House Web site for comment in any way that we could find.
We see no way the bill could be deemed emergency legislation, even taking the broadest view. The bill overturns the effects of a Supreme Court decision that limited when workers could sue for pay discrimination. Most pertinently, the bill is retroactive to the time of the court decision — May 28, 2007. Obama earned a Promise Kept from us for signing the law. But it would have the same effect if had been signed a few days later, so it's clearly not an emergency.
We asked the White House about this and if they planned to begin posting laws to the Web site for comment soon, but we got no response.
Obama signed the measure at 10:20 a.m. About two hours later, the White House posted the bill on its Web site with a link that asks people to submit comments . But the bill was already signed at that point.
We recognize that Obama has been in office just a week, but he was very clear about his plan for a five-day comment period, and we can't see why this one needed to be rushed. It is somewhat ironic that with the same action, Obama both keeps and breaks a campaign promise. But there it is — his first one. Promise Broken.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Even the left-leaning "fact-checkers" marked him with multiple lies, even at least one "Lie of the Year"
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Seems like the prominent anti-vaccination folks are in that same group.
"The individuals on these boards are appointed based on scientific expertise not politics."
No matter what your scientific position may be, few if any individuals on such a board are not political animals. Anyone in academia who *tries* to get onto university boards, etc. is more interested in the power (or perception of power) of such a position than in the science purportedly being done. They get there by virtue of knowing and kowtowing to someone else in political power.
"If we were to give you free money, would you be ok with that?"
The poverty threshold, poverty limit or poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate to cover total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. In the US, this is presented as an income level based on household size (number of dependents). For a single person household, the poverty line is $12,060 (2017).
Perhaps worth noting is that a single person household working a full-time minimum-wage job exceeds the poverty line (50 weeks time 40 hours times $7.25 is $14,500), so by definition a full-time minimum wage worker is not living in poverty. But if that same person has a child, then both are living in poverty, as the poverty line for a two-person household is $16,240. In a very real albeit statistical sense, children cause poverty.
An assumption of a UBI is that it provides sufficient income to survive on, so let's use the poverty line as the basis for the UBI. That is, a single person household would receive a UBI of $12,060; A two-person household would receive a UBI of $16,240; and so on. Note that even this basic assumption leads to perverse outcomes (e.g. two adults living separately would get $12,060 each, but if they live together they "lose" $7,880 in UBI), so at least some will avoid getting married, or even living together (or lie about living together, thereby defrauding the system) just to maximize their free money.
Using census data, there are 124.5 million households. The average household size is 2.54 people. Let's interpolate the poverty table to get an average expected UBI of about $18,497. Multiplying that out we can get the tab for providing UBI based on these assumptions, a total of about $2.303 trillion.
Coincidentally, that is almost exactly the amount of money we currently spend on all social welfare benefits programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foodstamps, etc. A reasonable idea--indeed, this was put forward in a WSJ essay by Charles Murray--would be to eliminate all those programs in favor of the UBI. Of course, this ignores the howls that would arise from a populace deprived of their SS checks and foodstamps.
Exploring the notion of replacing the most basic welfare programs, e.g. foodstamps, section 8 housing, while not disrupting the SS and Medicare that the elderly view as an earned right. After all, the UBI based on poverty level should by definition cover those sorts of expenses. There will still be screams from people concerned about drug addicts not buying food for their kids and that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that the overhead of those programs, let alone the programs, would be completely done away with.
So it seems almost a certainty that a UBI would be adjacent to at least SS/Medicare. Those totaled about $1.473T of the welfare expenditures, so add the $2.303 to the SS/Medicare $1.473T for a total cost of $3.776T. Perhaps the UBI reduces SS income dollar-for-dollar in an either-or situation reduces this a bit.
A worst-case cost would be adding UBI on top of all the existing programs, for a total cost of about $5T. Or perhaps the UBI in lieu of all other programs can actually be rammed through so that the cost remains a minimum of $2.303T.
Total federal revenues collected from all sources (taxes, royalties, etc.) in 2014 (last year available) was $3.27 trillion. So UBI would consume somewhere north of 70% of all federal revenues. And the math here assumes that no one receive UBI drops out of the workforce or reduces their taxable income at all--i.e., that revenues stay constant.
And what I'm seeing is millions and millions of dollars being funneled into the Democrat's coffers from outside the district. Speaking of outside the district, he does not live int he district and so he's not eligible to vote in the district in which he is running. Some 95% of his campaign funding is coming from outside of Georgia, mostly New York and California. He outspent his opponents by multiple millions in the jungle primary (most of them had campaign spending of about $400K, he spent $8M+).
Almost all of his commercials and mailings fail to mention the word "Democrat", in a concerted effort to try to convince voters he is something other than a hand-picked minion of the Party. He inflates his resume to make it seem like he is a national security expert (he was an intern still in college for much of the time-span claimed) and anti-corruption (but he is supported by Nancy Pelosi).
If he wins, it will certainly be an example of a seat being bought by outside funding throwing piles of money into the campaign--ironically funded largely by people who despise Citizen's United ruling. Money can certainly make a difference.
The main reason he may actually win, though, is that his Republican opponent is Hillary-esque in her own negatives and there is about zero enthusiasm to get her elected.
I thought the whole point of Facebook was to give him access to that data.
Make movies and TV shows in Hollywood.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Atlanta
Ant-Man: Atlanta
Captain America: Civil War: Atlanta
The Walking Dead? Atlanta area, again.
For some reason my father had a Rolf Harris album and he played the hell out of it when I was a kid. I had a moment later in life when I saw some mention of "the wet" on some nature show, and flashed back to the song "In The Wet" and realize I had not known what it was about when I was a dumb kid.
Oh, suck on my chocolate salty balls Stick 'em in your mouth and suck 'em Suck on my chocolate salty balls.
The science isn't settled in just about every field, they're still arguing over sodium, theoretical physicists are still arguing over gravity! Apparently only the very best scientists work in climate science, they're the only ones where the science is settled.
It does make me wonder, if their science is settled, why are they still getting paid to do more climate science?
Too little water >> you die
Too little sodium >> you die
Around recommended amount >> good
Double amount of recommended amount >> your body attempts to adjust itself to the situation by getting rid of water through, e.g. urinal, sweat, etc. Can cause overhydration, water retention, and hyponatremia (leading to, ironically in context, too little sodium in cells).
Too much water >> you die
Everything should be done in a moderate way.
What should anyone care? Coal is done. Wind and solar are unstoppable. So Trump's deregulation will not impact anything at all, right? Maybe at worst a little bit more coal-related pollution until coal runs out and solar and wind in their inevitable supremacy wipe the need for coal, gas, oil, and nuclear right off the deck.