April 10--rain again, with possible interludes of sun

I am already irritated by the new. The three stories dominating are the Gaetz mess, the Chauvin trial, and Prince Philip's passing. I am utterly sick of the puerile shenanigans of Former Guy's sycophants. I don't need a blow by blow account of the latest sensational trial on police violence. And we wondered how long Prince Philip would last after his last hospital stay. So the amount of time is a waste. We have already turned off the cable and gone to our stock of DVDs.

Something else that irritates me is the political gridlock in Washington. David Kaiser has an interesting take with a dismal forecast for the possibilities for Biden's program. The sad part of the stand off is that most of the program gets high approval numbers according to polls, even among Republicans. Kaiser's comparison of the situation leading up to the Civil War and through the rest of the 19th century is one I have read often of late. But there is another instructive piece of history--Poland when it was a kingdom before being partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The King had little power and was elected by the nobility. Legislation had to pass an assembly of nobles in which each individual could block any measure--a librum veto. Given the close divide in the Senate now each Democrat has what amounts to a librum veto. Joe Biden's search for bipartisanship in the Senate is chasing a ghost of past Senates so he has continued the pursuit by appealing to the polls. I don't think that will work either.

Several articles including this from the Miami Herald report that NOAA has predicted another "well above normal" hurricane season with a possible 17 named storms and 8 hurricanes of which 4 will be major.

This Gizmodo article reports on new information from Antarctica's Thwaites (a.k.a., Doomsday) Glacier. Not good news for forecasts of sea level rise.

France has had a major frost that is going to impact all of their agriculture. This will reverberate throughout the EU and UK.

I found this interesting piece this morning which I haven't seen on any of the mainstream media. I have seen a few stories about western fires already but hadn't realized that the midwest is having a spate of fires also. The strange winter that didn't provide much snow cover which melted very quickly. January, February, and March were all had above normal (if that has any meaning anymore) temperatures. April is shaping up the same.