Overuse of commas is, illegal.

Seen on a coffee cup recently:

"Let's eat, Timmy"  (acceptable at the dinner table).

"Let's eat Timmy"  (acceptable on a raft in the open ocean).

Each year my wife and I discuss our charitable contributions for the coming year; who and how much.

This year I am going to go about it differently.  We go out to eat quite a bit, and we travel as much as we can.  Everywhere we go we see hard working, friendly people that make very little money.  I usually tip these people rather generously already.  But instead of donating to organized charities this year, I am going to boost my tip amounts.  Many of those waiters, waitresses, FBO line guys, valets, etc are trying to raise kids and pay for education.  And while most of them are very hard working, they generally get very little respect.  I watched some asshole at a restaurant chew out the waitress for every little imagined failure or shortcoming until she was almost it tears and she was shaking when she came to my table.  I doubled my $20 tip to $40 on our $100 meal.  As we were leaving she followed us out to the car to offer it back as she was sure we made a mistake.  When I assured her it was for her, I could see the joy in her eyes.  It made both My wife and I as happy as it made her.

I'd much rather do this than give to the people standing on the street corner with cardboard signs asking for money while talking on their cell phones, or give to charities run by people driving a Mercedes.

I even give good tips to the rude service people (at least once or twice).  Who knows, maybe they are rude because they are broke and have just been stiffed, or they are late with their rent payment.

Try it; you'll like it!  And so will the hard working people that serve you.

Anytime! 

Get a room! 

Bringing in something very current - I read today that the freedom protesters in Iran are being attacked and some are being killed by the government forces.

How can they do this?  Because the people there aren't allowed to have guns.

The thing that most liberals forget is that the Constitution's context is as a document limiting the power of the State.  NOT a document that grants rights to the people.  The people have rights and the Constitution limits the power of the State to control those rights.  If the Constitution is read in that context then the intent of the Founders is much clearer.  The first part of the second amendment, "A well regulated militia..." is the focus of the Left.  The second part "...shall not be infringed" is the focus of the Right, is the context of the Constitution, and the limiting statement on the power of the State. 

Moving a few people off the planet and providing "new pastures" will not significantly reduce the current population, nor will it enhance our current ability to constantly improve the food source.

I think there must be an upper limit because ultimate the amount of plant material that the planet can support is limited by the available sunlight.  Regardless of what that limit is, if we ever fail at improving the food sources or fail at food distribution, then we unleash devastation and the amount of that devastation gets stronger each year.  Our society is actually rather brittle

None of which has to do with global warming...

The bolded parts: distribution is the real problem. My contract job involves looking at the freight logistics of some of our major food distributors. If Americans knew how few mega producers and distributors there are in charge of the majority of what they eat every day, and how much they rely on only two major infrastructure systems (rail and highway) which are too neglected and insufficiently secured, they'd worry about their next meal every day. A third distribution system is of course the seas for getting food from the big producers to countries all over the globe. ALL of these systems rely on fossil fuel with the irrelevant exception of one or two nuclear powered cargo ships.

Without fossil fuels there will be mass starvation in very short order. The continued production of fossil fuels is crucial to support this planet's human population. It would take time for local communities to ramp up heir own production again. The movement away from locally produced food and toward mass distribution has resulted in economies of scale but at the cost of becoming dependent on those very distribution systems.

We are perhaps decades or even centuries away from developing an alternative energy source for freight transportation. Electrified rail, hydrogen fuel cells, etc. all rely on fossil fuels or alternatives to produce and we are a long way away from having the non-fossil alternatives in place to support such schemes. Money and time it will take and in the meantime we are vulnerable to the delicate situation we're in now. Massive amounts of food rotting in one location while people starve elsewhere is a very possible outcome if we don't stay on top of continued fossil fuel production to bridge us to that future.

I enjoyed the cartoon at the beginning of the article.

Even if one accepts that man made climate change is real and is a significant problem, I don't see how declaring it a national security threat will do anything except take away money and resources from dealing with actual national security threats.

I'm actually interested in what Steingar has to say on this. I'd like to know what steps he thinks we should take by declaring it a national security threat.

Duh. The obvious solution is to raise a carbon tax or otherwise increase money coming into FedGov so they can just “Do SOMETHING!” about MMGW, such as paying money to good democrat donors’”green” companies. And that will get a pleasing nod by the UN MMGW propagandists too. Winning!

I doubt it will pass, and as it has mutated it probably shouldn't.  Not a reflection on Trump IMO, he did his bit, this is 100% owned by McConnell and Ryan who just continue to underwhelm and disappoint.  The establishment has the long knives out for Trump and will not give him any wins, whoever said McConnell would rather be Minority Leader was spot on, the Republicans are like battered wives.

The real problem here is Trump operates from a belief that like most businesses, people will not knowingly and willingly take decisions and actions that go against their own best interests - politicians and deep state wonks have demonstrated more clearly than ever over the last 2 years or so that they are only interested in their own power and they will not tolerate interlopers from the great unwashed masses getting into their business.

Truly a disappointment, but at least we are getting to see that it really is as Limbaugh has said, the ruling class vs. the rest of us.  Unfortunately, not much we can do about it shy of watering the tree of liberty.

'Gimp