Tuesday Open Thread

Sports comments, since I'm a bit tired of politics:

Congrats to Ken Griffey Jr. for hitting homerun number 600 last night!

Chicago Cubs currently have the best record in the majors. Could this be the year?

Will the Celtics be able to pull off a couple of wins on the road and wrap up the championship?

(Personally, I'd love to see both those questions answered in the affirmative!)

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We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki

Fed chief: Risk of major downturn 'diminished' - I hope so... I am weary of a serious recession.

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"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR

to the right nav bar to highlight notable content, either news or essays or diaries or comments, here or elsewhere.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson

a spaceship.

Ever get to eat in the Senate dining hall(s)? The workers ae lushly paid 37,000/yr+pension (as opposed to what those awful private businesses pay their workers).

Oh, by the way: the Senate is moving to privatize its food service:

WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate has approved a measure to privatize its money-losing, publicly subsidized network of restaurants.

The financial condition prompted the move to take the chain of publicly subsidized Senate Restaurants, as the network is officially known, private-- or face seeking a $250,000 taxpayer subsidy to meet July's payroll, The Washington Post reported Monday.

I know what you're thinking: WHY does the Senate have it's own chain

of government-run restaurants? Could you imagine how long it would take to get your food? Here are some of the wonderful attributes of this fantastic business:

Senate Restaurants has been profitable seven of its 44 years in business, a Government Accounting Office report said.

According to auditors, the chain of restaurants run by the Senate food service, including the snooty Senate Dining Room, has almost never been in the black. It's lost more than $18 million since 1993 and dropped about $2 million last year alone.

By comparison, here is what the House has done:

The House of Representatives made the switch (to private vendors) in the 1980s, and its food service is now better. And profitable: the House has made $1.2 million in commissions since 2003.

Man, I can wait for these guys to get their hands on health care. It's going to be great.

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http://wealthweekly.blogspot.com
Wii FC:2805-8311-8040-2678
Brawl: 2277-7051-2186

I've been hacked! (Though the previous comment was indeed mine). I had a black bar and was like "what's going on?"

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http://wealthweekly.blogspot.com
Wii FC:2805-8311-8040-2678
Brawl: 2277-7051-2186

(yes, I know that is their true goal ... but still ...)

Mandated ethonol production and subsidies are already driving up food prices all over the world. Now the climate alarmists want major reductions in CO2 emissions. Here is an interesting piece on some of the potential implications of such a policy:

In praise of CO2

With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green.

Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.

GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere -- the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe's production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries.

[...]

The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."

[...]

Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.

If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed. The second order effects could be dire, too. To bolster food production, humans will likely turn to energy intensive manufactured fertilizers, depleting our store of non-renewable resources. Techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere also sound alarms. Carbon sequestration, a darling of many who would mitigate climate change, could become a top inducer of earthquakes, according to Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Because the carbon sequestration schemes tend to be located near cities, he notes, carbon-sequestration-caused earthquakes could exact an unusually high toll.

[More at the link above...]

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Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree

It all makes sense.

McCain promises to give something to all dehydrated babies:

And how does he expect to pay for this venture? You guessed it: by taking away our beer!

I'm not the best public speaker, but does anyone sense that we have another Bush on our hands in more ways than just policy? :-)

What happened to the open threads? Apparently I need to come back right quick! :-)

I hope everyone's doing well.

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I didn't break the law; I am the law! -- George W. Bush Judge Dredd
I'm listening to...

Could you pretty please, with peaches and whipped cream, write a brief dairy on your stats, that I only remember vaguely, on how tax cuts function in terms of making the govt larger or smaller.

I really liked your comment on that but can't seem to find it.

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It is the economy, stupid.

Last thing I want is for my beer to be vetoed.

Ronnie had alzenheimers the last several years in office. We don't need to see that again.

I'd love to get that image as a stand alone.