'Will Somebody tell me What in sam he** is going On out there?! What!! I mean just look at this crazy “...FDA food police,” crap! Why in the world are they regulating what goes into Dog Food for cryin' out loud?! Dogs?? Dogs? How Stupid can they actually get?! We don't need no stupid Dog food regulations! Look at what they Eat anyway! They eat grass! They eat Dirt! They eat Deer Poop! They'll even eat their Own Poop! Who 'regulates' That? Who I ask you, Who? Are they gonna make some stupid 'law' that forbids dogs from eating Deer poop? I don't get it! I don't! 'Dear Sir or madam, your Dog is under arrest for eating deer poop'. This is just crazy! Crazy! Come On folks! Dogs don't need vitamins and nutritition in their food! Who does That? You have any idea how many Dogs there Are out there? Do You?! Well, I don't either, but so What if a few of them get a little poisoned, you can Always get another dog. You know what I'm gonna do when I'm elected President? Of Course you Don't. Nobody 'knows'. Me neither! But here's one for you to be Sure of, I'm gonna get rid of the FDA "food" police! Them, and their huge Swat teams and their big swat vans and their lab testing equipment, and all that stuff that makes it hard for farmers to grow safe foods, and for resturants like Mine to make and serve safe, and edible food. In fact, in 2012, my steakhouse in my beautiful, Sumptuous, gilded, Trump International Hotel in Vegas, was raided by the "food police" who handed out 51 bogus violations, and closed it down for silly things like expired yogurt, and month old caviar! How dare they trespass on my sacred land! The 'expiration' dates on stuff is just a 'suggestion', and as far as those fish eggs go, show me just One person that became Sick after eating it, and I'll give them so much money they'll be more than happy to go away. Hey, it was 'fresh' when it came out of that Fish! Fresh as a daisey! They pick on Me because I'm a wonderful guy. They don't like wonderful people! Stupid regulations! I bet they don't do this in China! They have more 'right's over there than we do Here! I Know they don't do it in Russia! I love that place! Lots of great fish eggs there! My BFF Putin wouldn't let "Food Police' ruin His lunch! If I'm elected, I'm moving to Russia!' :/ :/
Reuters
Like a Dog
Trump: Stop Regulating Poisoned Dog Food
Trump complained the ‘FDA food police’ dictates what’s in dog food—but that same FDA pulled 11 poisoned chow brands off the shelves in the last year.
Donald Trump often suggests that dogs can be fired. But who could have guessed that he would come out against safe food for all those unemployed canines?
In an official fact sheet that was pulled offline on Thursday afternoon—but not before The Hill reported its key points—the Trump campaign railed against the “FDA food police,” complaining that the agency “dictate[s] how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food.”
Dr. Douglas Powell, a former Kansas State University food safety professor who now publishes the popular Barfblog, says the FDA’s role is key.
“Just like we regulate the nutritional content of vitamins that we add to breakfast cereal or bread, dogs also need proper nutrition,” he told The Daily Beast. “We should use science to improve the lives of not only humans but our four-legged companions.”
Paring back dog food regulations wasn’t even the most outrageous suggestion in the now-deleted fact sheet. As The Hill reported, the “FDA food police” was listed as one of many “specific regulations to be eliminated” in Trump’s economic plan. The fact sheet depicted “farm and food production hygiene,” food temperature regulations, and “inspection overkill” as cumbersome and costly safety measures that must be reviewed and potentially “scrapped.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment on the “FDA Food Police” but, according to Dr. Powell, the use of the term is “patently ridiculous.”
“Regulations and the ‘food police’ are there to set minimal standards,” said Powell. “The best companies will go above and beyond those minimal standards.”
So tinkering with what are already basic preventative measures against foodborne illness, Powell says, is simply a bad idea. The FDA has already investigated ten foodborne illness outbreaks so far this year and, according to CDC estimates, every year 48 million Americans get sick from their food and 3,000 of them die. The annual figure for foodborne illness-related hospitalizations is a whopping 128,000.
Powell predicts that if Trump were to pare back FDA regulations, most providers would still be motivated to produce safe food under threat of litigation but “you would see more people trying to cut corners.”
“Every time we have an outbreak, once you delve into the details, what you find is that it wasn’t some act of God,” Powell explained. “It was a series of small mistakes, largely driven by economics, that add up and lead to catastrophe down the road. And people die.”
In fact, Trump’s own restaurants have benefited from “inspection overkill.” In 2012, as the Associated Press reported, the steakhouse in the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas received 51 violations “including month-old caviar and expired yogurt.” The hotel reportedly “made [adjustments] immediately” and reopened shortly thereafter.
And during an ungraded inspection of the Trump Cafe and Grill October 2015, the New York City health department found 45 violations. By the time the graded inspection came around two months later, the restaurant had reduced the number of violations to 12. Now, it serves delicious taco bowls.
Of course, as Powell explains, it is not usually the FDA itself that goes around looking for aging yogurt in Trump restaurants but rather local food inspectors who largely adhere to the FDA food code.
“[FDA food police] is a term that doesn’t mean anything but it resonates with, I guess, the people who would vote for Trump,” Powell speculated. “He’s just doing it as an anti-regulation thing. It’s not really about food safety. It’s just an easy target.”
This isn’t the first time that the FDA has been the “easy target” of an anti-regulation message. In the early 1990s, in what the New York Times editorial board would later call “an industry-financed scare campaign,” advertisements helped convince Americans to restrict the FDA’s ability to regulate vitamin and supplement labelling. The result was the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which set up a separate set of standards for dietary supplements than for other food.
One particularly memorable 1993 TV commercial in that “scare campaign,” as Powell recalls, featured Mel Gibson’s house being raided for vitamins by a SWAT team meant to represent the FDA.
“If you don’t want to lose your vitamins, make the FDA stop,” Gibson implores at the end of the ad.
But the Trump campaign may already be rethinking its own anti-FDA stance. As The Hill reported early Thursday evening, the anti-regulation fact sheet has already been replaced with one that doesn’t specifically target the FDA. Humans and dogs everywhere can rest a little easier tonight.
'Ok, Ok, let me get it 'clear' here, just so I don't get behind the Eight-Ball again. So, I'm running, and I use that term loosely, I can't even Walk fast, for President of the United States..., and it 'looks like' I've got it in the bag, so to speak. No problem! Got it! Now of course I wanna be the Commander-In-Chief as well. Hey, who wouldn't! Gotta be! That's just Me! I get what I want! So....to be Commander-In-Chief, do I have to 'Run' all over again to get That position? I mean, look, I wanna 'command' people, you Know, just like I do in all my Other businesses. My BFF Vlad gets to command all sorts of stuff. That's what I wanna do! Hey You! Do This, do That, get over here, gimmie two push-ups, brush my Hair! The first, or second, well...maybe the third or fourth thing I'm gonna do is fire a bunch of 'rubblized' top brass at the Hexagon, or Pentagram...er...ahhh..Penta...Something or other. You Know, that big building where the army people hang out wasting taxpayer money..That place. My Other BFF that runs Turkey did it recently and boy did he ever do a great job. My BFF Vlad does it All the time! He Really knows how to 'govern' a country! When He talks, they listen or they cease to exist! Disappear! He's a much better ruler than Obama could ever Hope to be. Nobody pays attention to Obama! Who's afraid of Him?? Vlad's gonna teach me how to be a proper dictator, I mean a leader of Men, and belittler of women. You see, even though I've never, ever, been in the military, I've always wanted to get a 'Purple Heart', well...you know, without actually having to get wounded of course. I know more about the military than lying Hillary will Ever know! I have so many more ex-military brass on my side I could almost call'em an 'Army'! Lots of'em! They love me! I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me. I say stuff they Love to hear, you know, words like airplane, boats, tanks, guns, pay raises, stuff like that. And you know What? They just shiver in their skivies at the thought of me being their boss. A lot of'em will join back up! And there'll be room for them because like I 'said', I'm gonna fire a lot of brass that are just simply tarnished with stupidity. And you what else? I'm gonna reveal my 'secret' as to how I'm gonna defeat ISIS. But not right now. Don't wanna give away my stuff too soon. But I Can say This, "We're going to convene my top generals and they will have 30 days to submit a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS". And when I tell them to torture a 'Bad guy', you better believe they will do it! Those ISIS guys are listening to Everything I say, and all of'em are planning their escape. But I'm gonna get'em! They can run, but they can't hide from Me! Can't do it! And you know what Else? I'm gonna take away all their Oil! All of it! Down to the last quart! Bush should'a done it! That Other Bush should'a done it! Obama should'a done it Too! But they were afraid to! Not me folks! I talk softly and carry a Big Siphon Hose! I'll take all their oil, sell it back to them, and use that money to build our Own military bigger than life! Big! Huge! Bigger than...those Other big ones out there. Man, I'm gonna be Great! Just wait and see! Wonderful! Smart! My BFF Vlad agrees with That one! What a 'team' we're gonna make! He'll have his own little office in the White House so that we can be near one another, although I'm not actually going to Live in the White House. I have my Own 'palace' that makes the White House look like a doll house for little children. Remember to vote for me! I know every woman in America will! Lots of men too. And especially those south of the border folks who can vote, and lots, and lots of black people because I went to church with them. I have absolutly no clue what they were singing about though. Loud! My ears are Still ringing! I had to draw the line though when they wanted to dunk me in a big tub of water. This is a three thousand dollar Suit! Crazy! Who Does That?? Great folks though. Love'em. Great voters. Remember, a wasted Vote is one you'll see for the next Four, long, miserable years.' :/ :/
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump answered questions on national security and foreign policy Sept. 7 during a "commander-in-chief forum" on NBC News. (Video: NBC News/Photos: Melina Mara/Post, Mike Segar/Reuters)
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump answered questions on national security and foreign policy Sept. 7 during a “commander-in-chief forum” on NBC News.Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump answer questions on national security and foreign policy on NBC News. (Video: NBC News/Photos: Melina Mara/Post, Mike Segar/Reuters)
There was a very weird thread worth picking out of Donald Trump's comments during NBC's "Commander-in-Chief Forum" on Wednesday night. Over the course of a brief back-and-forth with moderator Matt Lauer, Trump shrugged at a past comment that he knew more about the Islamic State than America's generals, disparaged those generals by saying they'd been "reduced to rubble," suggested that his plan to defeat the Islamic State — long something he said was a secret — would instead be formulated with help from top generals and, ultimately, casually indicated that he might just fire most of the generals anyway.
Of the many ways in which Trump contradicted himself or betrayed a misunderstanding of how things work, this rapid evolution was hardly the most egregious example. There was, for example, his return to the idea that America should have purloined Iraq's oil after ousting Saddam Hussein. He once suggested this should have happened to provide revenue to wounded soldiers; he now argues it would have blocked the rise of the Islamic State (or ISIS, as he calls the group).
"If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil," Trump told Lauer. How would we take it? "Just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil," he replied. One might wonder if we couldn't just, you know, guard the oil on behalf of the Iraqis to curtail the Islamic State, if we're putting people around the oil anyway? Well: "It used to be to the victor belong the spoils," Trump said. But lest you think that implies that we — meaning advocates of the conflict like Hillary Clinton — were somehow victorious in Iraq, we weren't. "Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor," Trump said. "But I always said: Take the oil." So it's not "to the victor belong the spoils," then, but "take the spoils of a sovereign nation for reasons that may vary over time."
But, again: Let's set that aside. Let's focus on the generals.
The way the promotional structure of the United States military works is not complicated. Generals are not selected by being hired from the private sector thanks to their thorough LinkedIn profiles. Instead, they slowly rise through the ranks. Here is an interesting thread outlining what it takes to be promoted to general in various branches of the Armed Forces. The short version is that it's the culmination of a flawless decades-long career within one branch that rides heavily on personal and professional chance. The long version is longer than that.
Trump offered his views on America's top generals to Lauer over the course of a few questions.
"'I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me,'" Lauer quoted Trump as saying, then asked: "Was that the truth?"
"Well, the generals under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have not been successful," Trump replied. "I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country."
"Have you lost faith in the military commanders?" Lauer pressed a bit later.
"I have great faith in the military. I have great faith in certain of the commanders, certainly," he said. "But I have no faith in Hillary Clinton or the leadership."
An audience member asked Trump for details on his promise to rapidly defeat the Islamic State. This is where Trump started talking about the oil, so Lauer brought it back to the terrorist group. "You very often say, I'm not going to give you the details because I want to be unpredictable," he said. "But yesterday, you actually told us a little bit about your plan in your speech. You said this. Quote: 'We're going to convene my top generals and they will have 30 days to submit a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.' So is the plan you've been hiding this whole time asking someone else for their plan?"
"No," he replied. "But when I do come up with a plan that I like and that perhaps agrees with mine, or maybe doesn't — I may love what the generals come back with."
"If I win, I don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is," Trump added. "And let me tell you, if I like maybe a combination of my plan and the generals' plan, or the generals' plan, if I like their plan, Matt, I'm not going to call you up and say, 'Matt, we have a great plan.' "
"But you're going to convene a panel of generals, and you've already said you know more about ISIS than those generals do," Lauer rebutted.
"Well, they'll probably be different generals, to be honest with you," Trump replied, then boasting of having the endorsement of 88 former military leaders. (As Lauer noted, that's a number that is a bit lower than what Clinton claims.)
Trump offered that line about "different generals" casually, but it's not an insignificant claim. As president, Trump's ability to overhaul the leaders of the military is limited. As commander in chief, he can remove generals from positions but he "doesn't enjoy Donald Trump-like powers to summarily fire service members," as Brian Palmer explained for Slate back in 2010 (clearly when "The Apprentice" was still on the air). When President Obama relieved Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his command in 2010 after McChrystal gave some ill-advised comments to a reporter, McChrystal retained his rank as a four-star general, until he decided to retire. Trump could seek the counsel of other members of the military's leadership, but he can't simply clean house or bring in people from the outside.
politics
It's not clear that Trump recognizes such nuances, though. He has in the past seen the line between the military and the commander in chief as blurrier than it is in reality. During a debate in March, Trump was asked by Fox News's Bret Baier what he would do if the military refused to carry out his orders to commit acts of torture or target civilians.
"They won't refuse," Trump replied. "They're not going to refuse me. Believe me."
Buried in all of this are competing instincts: Trump's disinterest in being wrong and his great interest in being the boss. He threatens to oust top leaders of the military for little other reason than they were in positions of authority under Obama. While his prepared comments from Tuesday suggested that he would seek the counsel of service members who'd committed decades to protecting America's interests, he tossed that to the side in favor of not being embarrassed by Matt Lauer, insisting that he still did have his own secret plan. Probably one that involves oil.
Bear in mind, the president's role as commander in chief was the primary focus of the town hall. It's what Trump was there to talk about. And, for good or bad, he talked about it.
"Son of a b****, I will swear at you." You, youuuuu..stupid American President! "Who does he think he Is? I am no American puppet. I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filippino people". Besides, I pull my Own strings! 'Yeah, that's my line and I'm stickin' to it! How dare that S.O.B. try and tell Me, the greatest dictator this country has ever had the horrible misfortune to be afflicted with, how to 'fight crime' in my very own personal country! Hey, he don't know nothing about fighting crime. "As a matter of fact, we inherited this problem from the United States. Why? Because they invaded this country and made us their subjugated people. Everybody has a terrible record of extra-judicial killing. Why make an issue about fighting crime?" That's Right! That's what I Said! Here's a little known 'history' lesson that nobody tells anymore. Well, except that I make sure that it's taught in all our schools so that our children will grow up hating Americans just liike I do. It's like this; waaaaaay back a long, long time ago, say about 75 years ago, right about when I, myself, was around One year old or so, our good friends the Japanese visited our little banana republic just before the United States decided to invade our country in order to subjugate our people. Why, I remember it like it was only yesterday! There must have been Millions of gringos all over this place, shooting, bombing, raping our women and donkeys, stealing lunch money from little innocent children, and Worst of all, attacking and murdering our 'peaceful' visitors from Japan, who had absolutely no choice but to arm themselves with sticks, and spears, and clubs and stuff like that, and defend themselves and the honor of the Philippines as well. Yes, my 'memory' is as clear as a yummy bottle of rice wine. Our brave soldiers along with our wonderfully peaceful Japanese friends fought against the overwhelming tide of American aggressors for four long years but our spears and rock clubs were no match for these filthy gringos who finally, after murdering all of our good friends from Japan, along with millions of our own innocent soldiers and citizens, were forced to fly the white flag of surrender. And Now they refuse to leave our country even though every man, woman, and child want them to get out, and Stay out. I think our new BFF China, will help us with this gringo problem. Just stay tuned for That one. These gringos brought these evil drugs, alcohol, and prostitution to our peaceful land, printed money that we had to use for, and made us live under their shadow, until Now. Before Them we had Absolutly No crime, No drugs, No prostitues, and not much money of course. Now, with Me as a great dictator who All of the Philippines adore and admire more than even Jesus Christ himself, have a great army, navy, and airforce and we will no longer be subjugated and ruled by these stinkin' Americans! Americans?! We don't need no stinkin' Americans! What'd they Ever do for Us?? And yes, it may be true that our great military is the result of these gringos providing the training and equipment, but let me be perfectly clear, Now we don't need no stinkin' gringos, we were just tricking them all along!! Stupid! We Especially don't need a gringo President trying to tell Me who I can murder and who I can't murder. You can be sure that I'm voting for my very good surragate Trump. We will learn a lot from one another. I get to decide who gets whacked! If it Looks like a drug dealer, Walks like a drug dealer, and Talks like a drug dealer, it's probably Not a Duck! It's a dead Goose! Besides, since I became the exalted Philippino Dictator, I 'think,' 'officially,' only around 2,000 people, that we have actually Counted, but Then who's actually keeping 'score', guilty or innocent, have been murdered by my faithful henchmen and volunteer murderers since May of this year. Hey, that's not so many! It Certainly does not compare to Chicago! I say to my police, military, and volunteer henchmen, "Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be. We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher, have surrendered or put behind bars -- or below the ground, if they so wish". This of course includes 'drug Users' as well. Kill, kill, kill, kill, murder'em dead, kill'em All, let Jesus sort them out! We don't have no time for the courts to figure out who's guily or who's not! Who does That??! Sometimes innocent people, yeah, Sure, maybe a Lot of'em, must die in order to weed out the 'guilty'. Such is life and death, well, mostly death. 'Death' cures drug addiction! That gringo President better not come Here and try to tell Me how to fix a drug problem! I know a 'problem' when I See one, that's why I have had all the mirrors removed from my fortress. American gringo Presidente', "Son of a b****, I will swear at you." :/:/
White House cancels Obama meeting with Philippines leader
After the president of the Philippines warned President Obama not to question him on extrajudicial killings or "son of a b---- I will swear at you,” the White House says that a meeting between the leaders has been called off.
Earlier today in China, Obama called Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte "a colorful guy" when asked about the comments in a press conference.
"President Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines this afternoon," National Security Council Spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. "Instead, he will meet with President Park of the Republic of Korea this afternoon."
Earlier, President Obama said: "If and when we have a meeting, this is something that's going to be brought up." He added that he would certainly address the need to approach the drug trafficking war in a "way that is consistent with basic international norms."
Duterte made the statement regarding his upcoming meeting with Obama after a reporter questioned how he would explain the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines' drug war if the U.S. President brings up the topic.
We can stick our heads in the water, and exclaim 'Oh, just a little foggy down here', and go on wishing that otherwise there's really no 'problem' , but it Is what it Is. Calling it by another name does not make it less so, ignoring the issues will Not make it go away. It may be that we have have passed the point of no, or near impossible return, and it's not as if we weren't forewarned.
I wrote a 'poem' 40 years ago warning of our excesses and mistreatment of our mother earth...and now here we are at the crossroads of our mistakes.
'HARVEST'
by buddyblack 1976
Beware, beware
I warn you well
It’s time we’ve broken
From this spell
That’s held us in
Its vice like grip.
It will not loosen
It will not slip,
As it has not all these years.
It holds us in its awful sway,
Through the night,
And through the day.
It has bound our mouths,
And plugged our ears,
And stopped our eyes
From shedding tears.
Pay heed!, pay heed!,
Don’t turn away
For you must hear
These words I say.
Take off those muffs,
And listen well
To this story that I must tell.
When we began
We were not many
In this world that flowed with plenty.
And we always 'thought'
That it would stay
As we plundered along our way.
But soon we grew
As did our needs,
And give me more, I want much more
Was the nature of our pleas.
The pace was slow
But we thought fast,
And those leisure days
Were soon to pass.
Like dinosaurs
Those days of yore
soon became extinct.
Someone said
We’re much too good
For our feet to touch the ground,
And soon that rumor
Spread around,
And we've still not
Come back down.
Give me More, we cried,
I want much more, this world has plenty
And I’ll be rich before I’m twenty,
So give me more.
So we dug in with
Our cold steel hand,
We raped and ravaged virgin land,
And smelt the treasures
From the sand,
All for the wealth of man.
There’s plenty more we kept on crying,
But it was plain to see
That we were lying.
We fooled ourselves
but could not fool the land.
We could not replace
The ores we took.
We drilled, we probed
And mountains shook,
And tin, and copper
From these we took,
And logged it in our profit books.
We extracted evil
Bomb grade ores,
And covered earth with mighty sores.
Then sunk them deep
Beneath her shell,
And snuffed out the fires
That played in hell.
When we made a lot
Of these man made hells
We stored them in some concrete wells
And painted signs that
Read ‘for sale’,
So that other’s could share in our fun.
But when it became the rage
We saw our evil deed
And knew that this
Was not a 'need',
This product of that greedy seed.
We drank pristine waters
From our streams,
But when we slept
We had wild dreams
Of power the water there could breed.
Now sewage plants,
And factories
Sit astride those streams,
Where no life is found
And we can’t drink it now,
It all seems like a dream.
The air is thick
with the waste of progress.
But no matter we just cough on.
At first the sky seemed so immense
And now we’re wondering
In deep past tense,
Where could it all have gone.
Mother Earth
Cries out for vengence,
And soon Will call our hand,
And there'll be no place
For us to hide,
Neither in sea,
In air, nor land.
So ration the air,
And ration the water
And recycle the paper you read.
We’re wasting away our precious world
While caught up in
This spell
Called
Greed.
(just sayin')
Highway 80, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., in June. High tides are forcing the road to close several times a year.Credit Stephen B. Morton for The New York Times
NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.
Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.
And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.
For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.
Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.
Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.
These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.
In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country, like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions.
“Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.”
Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Miami Beach is leading the way, increasing local fees to finance a $400 million plan that includes raising streets, installing pumps and elevating sea walls.
In many of the worst-hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm.
“I’m a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising,” said Jason Buelterman, the mayor of tiny Tybee Island, one of the first Georgia communities to adopt a detailed climate plan.
But the local leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time.
Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.”
The gridlock in Washington means the United States lacks not only a broad national policy on sea-level rise, it has something close to the opposite: The federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars in ways that add to the risks, by subsidizing local governments and homeowners who build in imperiled locations along the coast.
As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century.
“It’s as if the country was being attacked along every border, simultaneously,” said Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Florida and one of the world’s leading experts on rising seas. “It’s a slow, gradual attack, but it threatens the safety and security of the United States.”
‘We’re Living It’
One night eight years ago, Karen Speights, a Norfolk resident, was sitting at the dinner table with her mother, eating crab legs dipped in butter and a tangy sauce. She felt a tingle.
Photo
Karen Speights is wondering how to get her mother out of the neighborhood in Norfolk, Va., before the water comes again.Credit Eliot Dudik for The New York Times
“Ma!” she cried. “My feet are wet!”
Her mother laughed, but then she felt it, too: a house that had not flooded since the family moved there in 1964 was soon awash in saltwater. Ms. Speights initially hoped that flood was a fluke. Instead, it turned out to be the first of three to hit their home in less than a decade.
Nowadays, Ms. Speights, an administrative worker at a utility company, is wondering how to get her and her mother out of the neighborhood before the water comes again, without taking too much of a financial hit. And she pays more attention to problems that once seemed remote, like warnings from scientists about the rising sea.
“I believe it because we’re living it,” Ms. Speights said as she sat on her sofa, nodding toward the nearby tidal marsh that sent water into her living room. “The water has to be rising if we never flooded, and all of a sudden we’ve flooded three times in eight years.”
Because the land is sinking as the ocean rises, Norfolk and the metropolitan region surrounding it, known as Hampton Roads, are among the worst-hit parts of the United States. That local factor means, in essence, that the region is a few decades ahead in feeling the effects of sea-level rise, and illustrates what people along the rest of the American coast can expect.
The biggest problems involve frequent flooding of homes and roads. As the sea rises, hundreds of tidal creeks and marshes that thread through the region are bringing saltwater to people’s doorsteps.
A house in Norfolk, Va., that has been repeatedly hit by tidal floods sat on temporary supports as workers prepared to elevate it permanently in June.Credit Eliot Dudik for The New York Times
This summer, on a driving tour of Norfolk and nearby towns, William A. Stiles Jr. pointed to the telltale signs that the ocean is gradually invading the region.
He spotted crusts of dried salt in the streets, and salt-loving marsh grasses that are taking over suburban yards. He pointed out trees killed by seawater. He stood next to one of the road signs that Norfolk has been forced to install in recent years, essentially huge vertical rulers so people know the depth of floodwaters at low-lying intersections.
“There’s just more and more visible impacts: water on the street, water that won’t clear from the ditch, these intense rain events, higher tides,” Mr. Stiles said.
“It’s beginning to catch the attention of citizens, restaurant owners, business people, politicians. There’s just much more of a conversation, and it’s not just in the politically safe places. It’s everywhere.”
Mr. Stiles, known as Skip, heads a local environmental group, Wetlands Watch. At his suggestion, students at two local universities began looking at the neighborhood where Ms. Speights lives, Chesterfield Heights. It has had little history of flooding, but that is starting to change as the water rises.
The plan the students developed has morphed into an ambitious program to safeguard the neighborhood, and another nearby, for decades. The Obama administration recently gave Virginia more than $100 million to carry the plan out. The administration has also enlisted one of the universities, Old Dominion in Norfolk, to spearhead a broad effort at better planning.
But the size of that grant illustrates the scope of the problem confronting the region, and the country: protecting a single neighborhood from rising water can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. Sea walls and streets may have to be raised, or movable gates built along waterways so they can be closed at times of high water.
While the Obama administration is trying to create a few showcase neighborhoods, there is no sign Congress is prepared to spend the money that cities and states say they need: tens of billions of dollars just to catch up to the current flooding problems, much less get ahead of them. Norfolk alone, a town of 250,000 people, has a wish list of $1.2 billion — or about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the city.
As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country’s defense at risk.
Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress.
That was the case this summer, when an effort by the Pentagon to appoint officers to take charge of climate resilience led to a House vote prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on the plan.
Andrea Dutton, a University of Florida climate scientist, beside an ancient coral reef in the Florida Keys, evidence that the sea level was once far higher than today.Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times
“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies” like the Islamic State, said Mr. Buck of Colorado, the Republican congressman who sponsored the measure. His amendment passed the House 216 to 205, though the Senate has yet to agree to it.
Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change.
The Obama administration has been pushing federal agencies, including the Pentagon, to take more aggressive steps. But without action in Congress, experts say these efforts fall far short of what is required.
“In the country, certainly in the Congress, it hasn’t really resonated — the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars that we would need to spend if we want to live on the coast like we’re living today,” said David W. Titley, a retired rear admiral who was the chief oceanographer of the Navy, and now heads a climate center at Pennsylvania State University.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that there is serious thought about this: What does a world of three, four, five feet of sea-level rise look like?”
Mounting Evidence
Deep in a thicket of trees on an out-of-the-way island in the Florida Keys, a diesel engine roared to life. Soon a drill bit was chewing through ancient limestone, pulling up evidence from the geological past that might shed light on the future of the planet.
On a sultry day in March, Dr. Dutton, the University of Florida scientist, stood watch over the drilling operation, inspecting her samples as they emerged from the ground. She spotted fossilized corals, proof that what is now the dry ground of Lignumvitae Key was once underwater.
With taxpayer funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Dutton is chasing what might be the most urgent question in climate science: How fast is the ocean going to rise?
“Is it going to happen in decades, or centuries, or a thousand years?” Dr. Dutton asked as she took a break to eat lunch on a tarpaulin spread under the trees. “This will give us an example to say, ‘Well, the last time this happened, here is how long it took.’”
The opponents of climate science in Congress, and the tiny group of climate researchers allied with them, have argued that the concerns of thousands of mainstream scientists about the future are based on unproven computer forecasts.
In reality, their concerns are based in large part on mounting evidence of what has happened in the past.
Photo
Water from a tidal stretch of the Potomac River flooded Old Town Alexandria in Virginia during high tides in early June.Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
Through decades of research, it has become clear that human civilization, roughly 6,000 years old, developed during an unusually stable period for global sea levels. But over longer spans, coastlines have been much more dynamic.
During ice ages, caused by wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, sea levels dropped more than 400 feet as ice piled up on land. But during periods slightly warmer than today, the sea may have risen 70 or more feet above the current level.
Dr. Dutton and other leading scientists are focused on the last sea-level high point, which occurred between the last two ice ages, about 125,000 years ago.
After years of surveying ancient shorelines around the world, scientists determined that the sea level rose by something like 20 to 30 feet in that era, compared with today. But how long did it take to make that jump? That is the question Dr. Dutton, using improved research techniques, wants to answer.
Large parts of the Florida Keys are simply ancient coral reefs that grew during the period of high seas, and were exposed when the levels fell. Trees, roads and houses now sit atop the old reefs. By recovering samples, Dr. Dutton hopes to date a sequence of corals as they grew along with the rising sea, potentially revealing the rate at which the water rose.
The research, likely to take years, may supply a figure for how quickly the ocean was able to rise under past conditions, but not necessarily a maximum rate for the coming decades. The release of greenhouse gases from human activity is causing the planet to warm rapidly, perhaps faster than at any other time in the Earth’s history. The ice sheets in both Greenland and West Antarctica are beginning to melt into the sea at an accelerating pace.
Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst-case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea-level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today.
In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities.
In essence, by revealing how sensitive the ice sheets have been to past warming, Dr. Dutton’s research may answer the question of whether such a rapid jump is possible.
Along those parts of the United States coast that are sinking at a brisk clip, including southern Louisiana and the entire Chesapeake Bay region, including Norfolk, the situation will be worse than average. On the Pacific Coast, a climate pattern that had pushed billions of gallons of water toward Asia is now ending, so that in coming decades the sea is likely to rise quickly off states like Oregon and California.
Along the East Coast, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that many communities have already, or will soon, pass a threshold where sunny-day flooding starts to happen much more often.
Photo
At the City Market in Charleston, S.C., one of the most popular spots in town, shoppers dodged seawater that bubbled up from storm drains during high tide in June.Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times
“When you look at the historical record, there’s no trend saying the flooding is going down,” said Dr. Sweet, the NOAA expert. “The trends are all very clear. They’re going up, and they’re going up in many of these areas in an accelerating fashion.”
Late last year, in Paris, nations reached a landmark global agreement to cut emissions. It is fragile, and might not survive if Donald J. Trump is elected president in November; he has pledged to scrap it.
But the air is already so full of greenhouse gases that most land ice on the planet has started to melt. So even if the deal survives, it will, at best, slow the rise of the sea and perhaps limit the ultimate increase. Many climate scientists, including Dr. Dutton, believe a rise of at least 15 or 20 feet has already become inevitable, over an unknown period.
Facing Hard Decisions
As Brad Tuckman walked the piece of land in Fort Lauderdale where he is building a grand new house, he pointed toward the canal that wraps around three sides of the property.
It is scenic, with yachts plying the water, yet as the sea has risen, street flooding in the area has become a recurring nuisance. So before starting construction, Mr. Tuckman said he spent nearly a half-million dollars to raise the sea wall and truck in dirt to elevate the land.
“The predictions of what’s going to happen over the next 20, 30, 40 years — it’s real,” said Mr. Tuckman, the founder of a company offering creative services to the retail industry.
In South Florida, among the worst-hit parts of the country for sunny-day flooding, people are not waiting for state or federal help. Those who can afford it are starting to act on their own. A company, Coastal Risk Consulting, has cropped up to advise them, and is offering its services nationally.
Cities and counties in the region have formed an alliance and enlisted professors to help them figure out what to do. They are hiring “chief resilience officers,” an idea pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, which is paying some of the salary cost.
In Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, as well as in older Northern cities like Boston and New York, tidal marshes and creeks were filled in a century or more ago to make new land, and it is in these areas — “back bays,” as some of these spots are called — where the flooding is happening first.
That is because they remain the lowest spots in the landscape, vulnerable to the rising water nearby. Old drain pipes empty into the tidal creeks, and at high tide the water can back up through these pipes, bubbling into the streets seemingly from nowhere.
In Miami Beach, the city engineer, Bruce A. Mowry, has come up with a plan for combating the flooding. He rips up problematic streets, raises them with extra dirt and repaves them, installing new drains and giant pumps that can push water back into the bay. The approach has already been shown to work in several neighborhoods.
Photo
A University of Florida scientific team approaching Lignumvitae Key as part of a study to determine how fast sea levels rose in the ancient past.Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times
A controversy has erupted about whether Miami Beach is polluting Biscayne Bay with the water, but the city is pushing ahead. Miami Beach plans to spend at least $400 million on its plan by 2018, raising the money through fees imposed on homes and businesses.
The huge county government for the region, Miami-Dade County, is developing its own resilience strategy, one likely to cost billions. It has committed to rebuilding some of its decaying infrastructure, like a sewage plant, in a way that safeguards against sea-level rise and storm surges.
“I don’t see doom and gloom here; I see opportunity,” said Harvey Ruvin, the clerk of courts for Miami-Dade County, who has been a leading voice on the environment in Florida for a half-century, and who recently led a county task force on sea-level rise. “We’re talking about the most robust possible jobs program you can think of, and one that can’t be outsourced.”
Many of the Republican mayors in the region are on the same page as Democrats in requesting national and state action on climate change, as well as pushing local steps. James C. Cason, the Republican mayor of Coral Gables, has convened informational sessions that draw hundreds of residents, and he has received no complaints for his stance.
“I hope in coming years when we have to spend a lot of money, the citizens will still support it,” Mr. Cason said in an interview.
Still, his city, and others in South Florida, have some hard decisions to make.
Some property owners cannot afford to raise their sea walls, putting their neighborhoods at increased risk of flooding. Will they be held legally responsible when floods do occur? A strict policy could force some people from their homes. Conversely, should public money be spent to do the work, even if it largely benefits private property?
Just for streets, storm drains and the like, South Florida governments will need to raise billions, and they have yet to figure out how. Moreover, if the rise of the sea accelerates as much as some scientists fear, it is doubtful the cities will be able to keep up.
The region has one mayor, Philip K. Stoddard of South Miami, who is a scientist himself — he studies animal communication at Florida International University — and has been a close reader of scientific papers about climate change since the 1990s.
“I remember lying in bed at night thinking, ‘I hope this isn’t real,’” Dr. Stoddard, a Democrat, recalled. “I hope other data comes in that contradicts it. It took me several years to get my head around it and say, ‘Oh, God, it is real.’”
Now he is focused on easing the pain for South Miami, with a $50 million system of sewer pipes to replace septic tanks threatened by the rising water table.
“You can play it really badly and let unpleasant things happen earlier,” he said. “Or you can push them off by doing some infrastructure repairs and some thoughtful planning.”
He is, though, under no illusions about the long-term fate of the region he calls home.
“We’re putting enough heat in the ocean to send water over us, no question,” Dr. Stoddard said. “Ultimately, we give up and we leave. That’s how the story ends.”
'Look, it's written right here in black and white, well, actually in Red if Jesus 'said' it. But really, no matter What Colour, it's right here as 'living proof' that Jesus 'said' it...or at least Somebody, at Some point in history, 'said', or 'wrote' it. Look, no need to muddy the historical 'waters' here so lets not get off track. Ok, it's like This, waaaaay back 'when', you know, long before there were Micky-dees, and fast food joints, back when things were simplier, and people actually Worked for a living, the devil tricked a few merchants into cheating their employees by not paying them for the work they performed in the factories where they chisled wheels out of rocks, in the malls where merchandice was marked up 500%, and big box stores where everything was made in China, and especially Landowners who hired immigrants to work as happy go lucky indentured slaves on their farms. Pretty soon Jesus got wind of this trickery, and boy, was he ever pissed off! "I gotta write something prophetic that will put the brakes on this sort of conivery, And, so that a zillion years from now someone can interprute my words just about any ol' way he wants to", Jesus thought to no one in particular. And so he sharpened a stick and started scribbling these words in the sand;
"The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard"
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Now I'm not a Christian Historian for nothing you know. Sometimes you gotta read between the lines and see what was 'actually' going on here. Here's the way I, Jesus Historian extradinaire David Barton reads and interprets this little parable, and I'm betting that after reading this yourselves, you Too will agree with me;
Jesus says, "Is not my money to do with as I please? I’m the employer. Don’t I get to decide what I’m going to pay everyone in this thing?" No, no, no, the government has a minimum wage. No it didn’t. Jesus says, "My money is mine to do with as I please and, by the way, you made a contract with me." And then he tells the guy, "If you didn’t like the contract, you can go down the road to another vineyard and see if they’ll pay you two silver coins for what you did, but you agreed to work for me for that." So what you have here is Jesus says, "Hey, the government doesn’t tell me how much to spend, I get to choose my own wages. And two, if you choose to work for me for that, you have an agreement, we have a contract. And three is if you’ve got greater skill, you can sell it to somebody else for a higher price, you can go down the road."
And so what Jesus was 'really' 'saying' was, that he opposed the federal Wage Act. Plain and simple! In a nutshell! Jesus was way ahead of his time with This one! Talk about being able to see the future! Wow! Spot On! It sure pays to be a famous, and not least of all, a very intelligent and God fearing Christian Historian like myself, who can actually 'read' between the lines and 'see' things that the average person simply cannot ever hope to see.' ;) ;)
Christian Historian: Jesus Opposed Minimum Wage (Video)
ControversialChristian historianDavid Barton said on Aug. 25 that Jesus opposed the federal minimum wage (video below).
During his Wallbuilders radio show, Barton cited the Bible to support his assertion, noted Right Wing Watch, an organization that Barton lamented was listening to his broadcasts:
Every one of our programs gets listened to by those on the progressive secular left. Right Wing Watch listens to every program we do and they make fun of me because "Barton says that the Bible addresses the minimum wage." It is highly unlikely that they even know what’s in the Bible.
But they’re making fun, "Oh, the Bible doesn’t deal with." Yes, the Bible does deal with that. And the concept of a free market means free from government regulation. A minimum wage is the government telling you what minimum wages you have to pay to someone.
So let me take you to Matthew 20 for just a moment and look how the Bible is specific even on something like freedom of wages, the viability of employer-employee contracts.
While the Bible allows and endorses slavery, it never mentions any federal regulations regarding labor, including minimum wage.
Barton referred to Matthew 20: 1-16 where Jesus is telling a parable about a landowner hiring workers throughout the day and pays them all the same amount of money, which one worker objects to because he put in longer hours than others.
Barton went on to replace the landowner (third person) with Jesus (first person):
Jesus says, "Is not my money to do with as I please? I’m the employer. Don’t I get to decide what I’m going to pay everyone in this thing?" No, no, no, the government has a minimum wage. No it didn’t. Jesus says, "My money is mine to do with as I please and, by the way, you made a contract with me."
And then he tells the guy, "If you didn’t like the contract, you can go down the road to another vineyard and see if they’ll pay you two silver coins for what you did, but you agreed to work for me for that."
So what you have here is Jesus says, "Hey, the government doesn’t tell me how much to spend, I get to choose my own wages. And two, if you choose to work for me for that, you have an agreement, we have a contract. And three is if you’ve got greater skill, you can sell it to somebody else for a higher price, you can go down the road."
As a matter of Biblical record, Jesus never mentions the government, never says he's the employer, never mentions contracts, never mentions greater skills and never mentions selling one's labor for a higher price to another employer.
Christian psychologist and professor Warren Throckmorton noted Barton's comments on his blog, and asked five Bible teachers and pastors if this section of the Bible means that the government cannot set minimum wage; none of them said it did.
Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told Throckmorton: "The account in Matthew 20 is a parable, in which Jesus is teaching the kingdom of God and how it is entered. It has no more to do with setting economic policies for nations than Matthew 18:33-34 has in setting up debtors’ prisons."
