Can Mediawingnuts warn the entire world of its coming demise in time ... at one posting per day?

2011 ... and it's only July so far ... !!!

Lessee ... Famine in Africa (worst ever, most likely) ... BP Oil Spill still has New Orleans in a quandary ... and just what is this U.S. debt ceiling that will collapse the world's economies? ... floods (everywhere from America to Europe to Asia) ... Harry Potter films ending (oh no!) ... earthquakes (along with nuclear meltdowns/melt-throughs) ... earth crust anomalies of record frequency and intensity in the Southern Hemisphere ... worst "tornado belt" ever ... heat records in both America and the Arctic ... sunspot activity reaching all-time intensity ... Rhode Island-sized ice chunks breaking off both poles ... double dip recession under way ... record droughts on three continents ... intensity of multiple murders on increase--everywhere! ... more wars in the Middle East since Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit ... nuclear weapons proliferation worldwide--including "rogue" nations ... most powerful man on the earth appears--and he can toss three-pointers with amazing ease, but cannot save the world economy ... The United States of America on the brink of a default on its debt ... gay and lesbian marriages on upswing worldwide--along with the murder of fetuses worldwide also ... Wisconsin joins the "dark side" ... record rainfall, snowstorms and UFO sightings worldwide ... deadly plagues in Africa--and spreading ... the list could continue forever ... and oh yes, the Seattle Mariners have broken their own record and lost seventeen straight games -- not to mention my sweet puppy breaking her left hind leg!

Rapture coming? Well Mediawingnuts plans on wearing clean underwear and reading the Good Book (and the Big Book) daily!

And now we discover that there's an asteroid just ahead of the earth in our orbit around the sun.

Harold Camping may have gotten the dates and times all screwed up, but as the song in West Side Story goes, "Something's coming; something big ..."

And we in America are stewing over a meaningless (we do it twice a year or so) debt ceiling!

Reunion Photo in Somalia

Famine once again stalks the Horn of Africa, threatening the lives of 10 million people in what the USAid-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net) describes as one of the world’s most severe food security emergencies.

Perhaps no country in the region is as badly affected as Somalia. The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) estimates that 2.85 million people — a third of the population — are now in humanitarian crisis and in need of urgent assistance, an increase of 42.5 per cent over the figure in December 2010. “We are no longer on the verge of a humanitarian disaster; we are in the middle of it now,” Isaq Ahmed, the chairman of the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation, a local NGO working in the south of the country, told IRIN on June 28. “It is happening and no one is helping.”

But goodness! What do Republicans say when someone with such a Muslim name speaks out like that? "That picture just above must be a bunch of Al-Quaeda terrorists!"

So, light cannot go faster than light?

Being a scientist who has been published (peer-reviewed articles), the fact that the team's study was published in the U.S. peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review Letters leaves me cold. From all that I can determine from all that I've read is that if the photon is regarded as macro matter, it (light as a particle) can't travel in the three dimensions of which we are familiar faster than itself travels. Huh??

But let's give Du Shengwang of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology credit for getting this "finding" out into the mainline media. Yeh, I get it now; light cannot travel faster than the fastest speed that light can travel. Must be a String Theory kinda thing ...

So matter (the photon) is the medium (not clearly defined), not the message (worldwide media). And if you study the medium long enough, you may eventually get the message.

What am I missing?

This cartoon in the weekend paper here gave me some insight as to what the "middle" road actually looks like in this Debt Ceiling debate ....

When Republicans and Democrats see eye to eye (as they seem to be in this Cartoon) we just may be closer to the Rapture--and Armageddon shortly thereafter. When I saw this Daryl Cagle cartoon in the weekend paper, my first thought was "get down on my knees and do what the Good Book says to do." This nutty Debt Ceiling debate is beyond humor at this stage and without discussing my personal budget situation (totally dependent on both the little Social Security check and my Medicare benefits), I keep wondering why I hear absolutely nothing about the "Nuclear Option"--which simply stated, is the legality a la the Fourteenth Amendment for the President to quietly raise the Debt Ceiling by about $4 trillion as an Executive Order in recognition of the dire straits that any other choice would leave both the country and the world.

Basically, it would be something akin to Armageddon if the World's economy melts down like half of our country melted last week and that seemingly silly movie, "2012," (or, for that matter, Harold Camping's ranting) was more real than Hollywood.

Get real, Mr. President, and simply say that you'll raise the Debt Ceiling on your own on August 1, 2011 if the politicians in Congress continue to act like politicians and less like members of the rest of humanity.

What value is having a ceiling on our National Debt anyway?

The Gross National Debt

Tune in on August 2, 2011 ...




Interestingly, I heard a snippet of news on my favorite XM station while driving home from work yesterday. Moody's Ratings agency just yesterday suggested the United States should eliminate its statutory limit on government debt to reduce uncertainty among bond holders.

With that one quick fix to the current crisis, we would stabilize the entire world's economy and likely maintain the US Dollar as the standard currency for world trade for as long as we maintained a growing Gross Domestic Product.

Specifically Moody's addressed the current silliness (but serious silliness) as follows (taken from an article extracted in part from CNN's News Bureau tab on its website):

"The United States is one of the few countries where Congress sets a ceiling on government debt, which creates "periodic uncertainty" over the government's ability to meet its obligations.

"We would reduce our assessment of event risk if the government changed its framework for managing government debt to lessen or eliminate that uncertainty," Moody's analyst Steven Hess wrote in the report.

The agency last week warned it would cut the United States' AAA credit rating if the government misses debt payments, increasing pressure on Republicans and the White House to come up with a budget agreement.

Moody's said it had always considered the risk of a U.S. debt default very low because Congress has regularly raised the debt ceiling during many decades, usually without controversy.

However, the current wide divisions between the House of Representatives and the Obama administration over the debt limit creates a high level of uncertainty and causes us to raise our assessment of event risk."

And they promptly proceeded to do just that ... only a shot across our bow for the moment, but our AAA rating is looking a bit shaky today.

What most European countries do to limit debt not owed to its own citizens (we owe about 40% of our current $14 trillion-plus debt to ourselves) is to periodically adjust the percent of the GDP that is permitted to comprise the National Debt. We squeezed under most such percentages utilized by almost all of the developed countries in the world today (between 60 and 80 percent) ... even during the Great Depression and World War II.

Whatever, it seems quite sensible to Mediawingnuts to disconnect the National Debt "Ceiling" from Government Spending and taxation (both controlled by a skittish and partisan U.S. Congress). I'd also suggest that the word "Ceiling" be replaced by the words, "Prudent Approximate Maximum Percentage of GDP Except for Times of Unusual Circumstances such as a Collision with a Moon-sized Asteroid or the Unexpected Rapture of Believing Christians into the Loving Arms of Jesus."

But then, why have a "Ceiling" of any kind?

Playing "Chicken" is only fun for the "chickens"

Our President and his opponent "chickens" enjoying their favorite game
The game of chicken that is currently being played out on Fox Cable Network and MSNBC Cable Network--and on Capitol Hill--could be the most irresponsible action taken by our highest elected officials in two and a half centuries.

It appears that Obama is saying "No!" to any deal that touches Social Security and/or Medicare spending and doesn't cover at least the next two and a half years. Basically, he is stating that he wants a "clean"* debt ceiling increase for a period to get us past the 2012 elections. On the other hand, the Republicans are stating that they will say "No!" to any increase in the debt ceiling that goes beyond about six months and/or includes a tax increase on ANYBODY! Even a one percent increase on the likes of Bill Gates' billions (or Rupert Murdoch's) is unacceptable.

Thus they both want a clean* [sic] bill; it's only a matter of the duration of the debt ceiling.

My personal thought is that they should make it twenty trillion dollar increase and not think about it until my grandchildren are having my great-grandchildren--and trust God to work out the details as regards spending and tax rates. God didn't take twenty years to part the Red Sea, so I believe twenty years to bring spending and tax rates into line to reduce the national debt to ZERO would be duck soup for Him.

* "Clean" is the new buzzword for no changes in spending or tax rates.
The rest of us "chickens" after the above "chickens" both win their game of "Chicken"

It surely appears that Mr. Boehmer and Mr. Obama are sticking to their guns to the point of ... well what would you call it?

Turn this PhotoShop art upside down and change the dollars into Believers and you might have an artists rendition of the Rapture. As it is here depicted though, it's no more than Federal spending helping to increase the gravity and density of a peculiar Black Hole.

I for one, although not entirely in Mr. Harold Camping's arena where a date can be pulled from one's left ear every other week for the 'end of the world' or even the rapture (which predates the end of the world by roughly 1007 years, according to the King James Version of the Good Book). That Rapture, BTW, is quite likely going to be sooner than we might imagine one of these unpredicted and unforeseen days in the near future.

At least all of the Biblical signs are in place for the Tribulation to begin, and that won't happen until Jesus has gathered His own (a.k.a., the Rapture) into the clouds (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18). The English word, "Rapture," comes not from either the Greek, Aramaic, or ancient Hebrew, BTW, but from the Latin word for being "caught up."

Aren't we Bible-thumpers an arrogant bunch?

But then, just look at the Biblical signs in just the past Century--and increasing by the day, it seems: rashes of tornadoes in America (and elsewhere), earthquakes together with devastating tsunamis, Global Warming--call it what you wish, but chunks of the ice shelf north of here are breaking off that are larger than some of our states--not to mentioning the increasing size of the hole in the Ozone Layer that protects us (to an extent), and has for billions of years, economic collapse of currencies and economic stability that we had always thought was bolstered by the US dollar (actually, they are Chinese dollars now, more or less), morality collapse worldwide--and so pervasive that not one of us can be unaware of it, if not having been a part of it at some time in our seemingly more and more tumultuous years, animal species going extinct right and left (are bedbugs, fleas and the mosquitoes on the Endangered Species list yet?) and then there's the most recent "Arab Spring" ... cum summer cum autumn cum winter of 2011.

I think I'd rather have even a Tea Party member as our President than an all-out Nuclear War. And that (a Nuclear War) is more likely now than ever in my lifetime, including the JFK-standoff with Russia in 1963. Consider that Israel, Pakistan and (soon, if not already) Iran ... have WMDs. (No point in mentioning North Korea; they will likely be our next Favored Trading Partner and debtor in US currency, if China wisens up too quickly.

Now, how did I wander from the silly debate(s) ongoing between the GOP and Democratic caucuses to the Rapture which will precede yet more turmoil a la the "Left Behind" series of movies that play periodically on the religious channels of our television sets?

A connection? Someone ask Harold Camping for me ... he's bound to have an answer.