Nathan

The Dynastic Question - New York Times: "In a presidential campaign that has involved battles over everything from Iraq to driver’s licenses, one sweeping topic has gone curiously unexamined: Does it diminish American democracy if we keep the presidency in the same two families that have held it since 1989?"

Amen and thank you. This is a great point to be making though honestly I haven't read through the whole piece yet. This simple reason is exactly why I would not vote for Hillary - because I hate the idea that our country is turning into a dynasty. That is not the American dream I know.

Hope all is well. I wanted to write in to respond to the individual who wrote in today to say that if the National Weather Service can’t measure rain then how can we trust there is in fact global warming? Funny point but unfortunately this is not a funny subject. Forget for a moment that us burning oil (fossilized trees), though we burn it cleanly by visible measures, is not unlike us having forest fires everyday in every town and forget that high concentrations of anything in a system is dangerous (including water or, for instance, CO2) the point to me is that we need to do our best to get our pollution levels down across the board. No effort should be spared in this respect. The time is now.

It has been a bit since I wrote a note to others warning of a coming black day(s) ahead... it has been since October since I sent that note actually so I am not sure if it still counts as a prediction but suffice it to say: what is now happening has been in the air for a while and it is sad that it is now on the ground and in our face.

To pull it back together though I will say this: that I am worried and frightened that it is only huge crisis that moves us. We are a smart species and should be smarter than to wait for the cold water to hit us in the face. What does this portend for our earth? Our home? Does this mean that even with all the indicators we have in the air, in the earth and all around us that we have to wait till a collapse of sorts? Do things have to become terribly disjointed before we bond together to do something about it? I hope not. I really pray that is not the case and we can wise up before mother nature has to play her hand as the financial markets have now. She holds all the trump cards.

Deadly freak tornadoes rake Midwest - Weather- msnbc.com: "The tornadoes came as record high winter temperatures were reported across wide areas of the country. Tornadoes were reported or suspected Monday in southwest Missouri, southeastern Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. Two people were killed in Missouri."

Despite this information, let's move the conversation though eh? I am not sure that we will ever be able to agree about the weather or the climate but can we agree that more needs to be done to cut pollution and perhaps even our population? This isn't a ridiculous idea right? That pumping a ton of shit into our environment or raping our lands should hopefully be on all our radars as something to do less of?