and then crab apples, and you don't have any sugar, you ain't making lemonade. My power went out at 1:30 yesterday and didn't come back on until 2:30 today. Being unable to charge my devices, I deprived you all of the blog posts you so desperately wanted. I had two very important phone meetings and some other business so I hoarded my batteries. Didn't really have anything to eat to speak of the whole time and had to spend my evening reading by flashlight.
Oh, boo hoo, poor man. I'm not sick, nobody I know has gotten sick from this, and Windham County has so far largely been spared. The power outages are indeed becoming more frequent and that will get worse. The Gulf of Mexico is the warmest it's ever been and that's why we had a storm of tropical storm intensity over a vast area that spawned tornadoes that killed people and knocked down trees that took out power across much of the country east of the Mississippi. It will keep happening. But we're rich and we can put the wires back up.
But, as The Editorial Board points out, we have yet to hear from the refugee camps, the failed states, the regions of civil conflict, the poor nations with minimal health care infrastructure, the slums of Mumbai. This has actually puzzled me. I'm pretty sure the numbers coming out of Iran are bogus, and Iraq has a barely functioning government and public health infrastructure but reports cases and deaths by the single digits. It seems that can't be true, but a widespread outbreak ought to be very hard to hide. A tell is that the numbers coming out of Iraqi Kurdistan, which does have a functioning government, are higher, but they also had a substantial response. I expect we'll be hearing more of the truth from Iraq and Syria, Turkey and Russia, very soon.
This is very disturbing but keep in mind that unlike the medieval Europeans who were decimated by the Black Death, we understand what's happening and we know what to do about it. We can come out of this with a better world, despite the terrible losses, but only if the people and leaders can exercise wisdom that has been sorely lacking so far.
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5 comments:
A good start will be removing Donald the Insane from any semblance of power, as soon as possible, by any means required. May he be placed on an island he can't escape from forever with nothing but cat food to eat. We can't afford to have a malignant shithead in the White House, especially at this time.
The narrative that these storms are getting more and more frequent is simply not true. The records don't support it.
The bar charts below from NOAA indicate there has been little trend in the frequency of tornadoes over the past 55 years.
https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF1-EF5.png
https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
I said this storm spawned some tornadoes. I didn't say tornadoes have become more frequent, but flooding rainstorms have. The extensive power outages in the area affected by the storm, including where I live, were caused by high winds, not tornadoes.
It does appear to be the case that the area most affected by tornadoes has moved.
Specifically: "A new study finds that over the past four decades, tornado frequency has increased over a large swath of the Midwest and Southeast and decreased in portions of the central and southern Great Plains, a region traditionally associated with Tornado Alley."
This is concerning because the areas increasingly affected are more populous. Reliable data on the frequency of tornadoes in the U.S. has only been available since 1976; it seems to show an approximately decadal oscillation but it's too soon to say if there is a long-term secular trend.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, where I live:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands-converge-protest-michigan-governors-191743463.html
And in Washington, where the president is a deranged outlaw (no need for Congress to show up to work anyway, right?):
"From Yahoo News: President Trump said Wednesday that he was considering taking the unprecedented step of adjourning both houses of Congress in order to make recess appointments to fill government posts, citing the emergency created by the coronavirus outbreak.
'If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress,' Trump said at a Rose Garden briefing of the coronavirus task force. 'The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do.'
The world's most breathtaking narcissist/con man/rapist/bigot talks about "others' dereliction of duty" and others' "scams."
He's never been able to take responsibility for one thing in his pitiful goddamned life.
What a total failure, what a reprehensible pile of toxic shit he is. Get him out. Now! It doesn't matter how it's done. Just GET HIM OUT! We can't afford to have a bogus, media-driven personality cult in this country, especially now. Especially when it's around the 1 American who needs to be kicked out. Let him go back to father Russia.
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