News

Hi, I'm back after a day off. Wanted to make sure all the links from Friday's show got posted. Hope your weekend is awesome!

The heat wave in the east has abated somewhat although the long-range forecast for this week includes lots more heat so no putting away those fans yet. A study by Stanford University climate scientists says that exceptionally long heat waves could become the norm in the near future. As the mercury rises outdoors, it's a fitting time to consider the effects of summertime droughts and global warming on ecosystems.

Rachel helps put the current state of affairs in Afghanistan in some perspective. I'm one of those who has a hard time envisioning what success there will look like and yet she manages to make me feel some optimism.

There are days when I get so angry with the current state of the economy, with people like Steve Moore whom Paddy over at the Political Carnival linked to earlier advocating increased taxes on the poor in the US - the lack of readily available and decent paying jobs that have helped to shrink the middle-class over the past 30 years or so - that I sometimes joke on the radio program that I'm looking forward to a time when "Eat the rich," is no longer a bit of graffiti scrawled on a wall but a menu option. I'm gonna' sit down and order me one extra-large republican braised over a spit for two or three days in a tangy lemon-ginger sauce.

Remember that story I blogged earlier about the corporatist Police State that we're now all inhabitants of (yeah, that includes Canada)? well, today over at ProPublica.org there's a story of a photographer who was followed and detained by BP security and the Police for taking innocuous photographs of signs in and around a BP refinery in Texas City.

I was reading a post over at Climate Progress about vanishing sea ice in the Arctic, and how in June it was at its' lowest extent and had gone through the fastest rate of decline in the satellite record and was thinking, "What does it matter?" The deniers will either claim it's not happening, or it's a one-off, or it's all part of some master plan to sandbag us all and they'll be loud enough and strident enough to continue to prevent real action from being taken. "Who the hell would these idiots listen to?" was the question that came to mind. Other than Jeebus, I mean.