July 8

 Sunny this morning but possible thunderstorms this afternoon. I won't complain since rain from the sky means I won't have to water from the faucet.

I don't know what I will find to comment on. 

The search and Rescue/Recovery in Texas continues along with the questions about what wasn't done but should have been and what should be done going forward. I was curious that the fact that Kerr County (pop. 53,000) and the town of Kerrville didn't have warning sirens and voted down the measure to install such a system. The system they considered would have cost $50k and the consensus was it was too expensive. For a largely rural it might have been a bit of a stretch. That made me wonder what the flooding history of the area is. This year's flood is the THIRD highest behind a 1936 flood and a 1987 flood. There have been other more modest floods but those are the ones that equal the magnitude of this one. The county voted down the siren system in 2017--thirty years after the 1987 flood. And the state refused to fund rural flood warning systems though the issue has been put on the agenda for the special legislative session. Whether it will still be there after the news spotlight moves on is questionable. 

I read somewhere a good while ago that humans are hard wired to look for short term risks. The carnivore skulking in the tall grass nearby is a threat now but one a mile away is may be a threat but not now. A flood a year ago, two years ago, or sometime in the past only grandpa remembers doesn't mean there is a threat now. Expending resources on a future threats that might not happen might leave you short dealing with an emergency or a chronic problem here and now,

The Contrarian has a new article on the Make America Healthy Again program of RFK, Jr. The administration's actions are more designed to do just the opposite. That is well beyond half-assed.

A couple of songs from my youth, one by Joni Mitchell and one by Cinderella, make the point that "you don't know what you got til its gone." This post on NON-ZERO NEWS LETTER makes the same about the notion (and structures) of international law: we're going to miss it when it is gone.

NZZ (a Swiss site) has this analysis of the "Big, Beautiful, Bill." It diverges greatly from the administration's view (inflation isn't a problem and probably in spite of the tariffs, the tariffs will be an economic windfall, nothing to see here) and considers the Democrat's to be unfocused and without a program. Sounds pretty right on to me.

THE NEW DEM DISPATCH posted a more comprehensive coverage of the Big Beautiful Bill. The author details a number of consequences that the Republican boosters tried to sweep under the what ever verbal rug they could find. And they also write about the very foreseeable secondary and tertiary effects. We will feel it all.