It was a little strange this morning, waking up to the sounds of silence. No thunder, no pounding rain, not even the subliminal sound of water dripping from the eaves, seems very weird. I am sure it won’t last as the humidity is at 99% and the temperature is already pushing 80. According to the National Weather Service we are in a tapering off mode for rain, 50% chance today going down to 20% through the weekend…Anybody have a skiff I can borrow. Seems like almost every time the prognosticators start this tapering off bs we get flooded…Stay tuned.
Noon…as I was leaving the house this morning the thunder began to rumble. Watching the radar it appears the rain has been training across the house most of the day. The ditch out front is full again and there doen’t appear to be an end in sight at this time. Thunder still rumbles. I am about to head off for my treatment which means I get to drive right into the worst of today’s rains…Where’s that skiff?
Time for the coffee and the emails…
The Washington Post is reporting on another reason to contact your Congressmen about COOL – Country of Origin Listing, and to spend time reading labels…
Many of the “Southern-style” catfish fillets on U.S. grocery shelves these days are indeed from the south — of China.
The Chinese government’s own reports express alarm that many rivers in this region are so contaminated with heavy metals from industrial byproducts and pesticides, including DDT, that they are too dangerous to touch, much less raise fish in.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on China. They are where the US was 50 years ago in cleaning up our industrial mess. And it’s not just China, it’s all of the developing countries we are getting our cheap food from.
Even the Chinese government’s own reports are damning, describing how industrial and urban sewage forces farmers to use chemicals to keep the fish alive.
“Environmental change is a major factor” driving fish farmers to use drugs, said Wu Tingting, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.
All of this just points to another reason everyone in America should be taking an interest in this years Farm Bill. We can’t let the industrial agriculture and the Wal-Marts of this country set our food policies. Folks, get informed, get involved or get what you deserve…
Source: Farmed in China’s Foul Waters, Imported Fish Treated With Drugs
It looks like the Scooter Libby story is just gonna keep rolling along…Eugene Robinson’s piece, The Commuter in Chief, is particularly good today…
What led us to this point — when a lifestyle maven, a bling-bedecked rapper and a table-dancing celebrity are held more accountable than a powerful member of the White House inner circle who functioned as Dick Cheney’s right-hand man — was an abuse, or at least a misuse, of presidential power.
It’s true that the Libby affair pales beside other recent abuses of power — the war in Iraq, intrusive domestic surveillance, secret CIA prisons, Guantanamo, torture “lite” and whatever else Bush and Cheney have done to the Constitution that we don’t know about yet. But we can’t accept presidential rule-by-fiat as the norm. If we do, our way of life is threatened, and the terrorists have won.
I’m joking, but I’m serious.
Go read the whole thing…
E J Dionne is pretty PO’ed himself…Or as he calls it enraged. Go read An Unpardonable Act…
Yet when I learned that President Bush had commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence, I was enraged although not surprised. Rage should not be a standard response to political events (though avoiding it has gotten harder in recent years), so I had to ask if my anger was justified. Here’s the case for getting mad and staying mad.
The core point is that “equal justice under law” either means something or it doesn’t. In this case, all the facts we know tell us that Libby received far more than equal justice, as evidenced by the irregular way his commutation was handled.
I guess the main question I have is how much longer can these folks blame it all on Willy Jeff? Every time they get caught with there hand in the cookie jar they point at Bill Clinton. Now I know we all like to point out that George Bush acts like a little bully who never grew up in the real world, but, can’t they quit feeding the image?
Times up, coffees gone cold, gotta run…Later
