http://www.thenation.com/article/why-todays-gop-crackup-is-the-final-unraveling-of-nixons-southern-strategy/


Fresh chatter among Washington insiders is not about whether the Republican Party will win in 2016 but whether it will survive. Donald Trump—the fear that he might actually become the GOP nominee—is the ultimate nightmare. Some gleeful Democrats are rooting (sotto voce) for the Donald, though many expect he will self-destruct.

Nevertheless, Republicans face a larger problem. The GOP finds itself trapped in a marriage that has not only gone bad but is coming apart in full public view. After five decades of shrewd strategy, the Republican coalition Richard Nixon put together in 1968—welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln—is now devouring itself in ugly, spiteful recriminations.

The abrupt resignation of House Speaker John Boehner was his capitulation to this new reality. His downfall was loudly cheered by many of his own troops—the angry right-wingers in the House who have turned upon the party establishment. Chaos followed. The discontented accuse party leaders of weakness and betraying their promises to the loyal rank and file.

At the heart of this intramural conflict is the fact that society has changed dramatically in recent decades, but the GOP has refused to change with it. Americans are rapidly shifting toward more tolerant understandings of personal behavior and social values, but the Republican Party sticks with retrograde social taboos and hard-edged prejudices about race, gender, sexual freedom, immigration, and religion. Plus, it wants to do away with big government (or so it claims).

I have to say that I haven't thought very much about these two together, but it seems to me that our war in Afghanistan is very much like the war with Viet Nam was back in the 60's and 70's.

The really similar part being that we came in after others had tried, and failed to win, or beat the enemy.

Armies went to both countries to die, and die they did. There were no victories for us or for the others who tried.

The reasons for both wars were different. We were (I guess seriously) worried about the spread of Communism in Viet Nam, but in Afghanistan, I think our reason might have more to do with oil.



What do you think?

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-el-nino-forecast-20151015-story.html

The National Weather Service now expects El Niño to bring greater-than-average rainfall to virtually all of California, forecasters said for the first time Thursday.

The new forecast is significant because it raises the chance that El Niño will send big storms not only to Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area — as has already been forecast — but also to the mountains that feed California’s most important reservoirs, which fuel water for much of the entire state. California’s largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, are in the northern edge of the state.

If patterns from previous strong El Niños repeat, “there will be a number of significant storms that will bring heavy rains. What that brings will be floods and mudslides,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. “We’re more confident we’re going to be seeing El Niño through this winter."

It seems that he has a friend at The Nation who asked him if he might have a caption for a cover picture. Turns out he did, and they used it on the cover.

Click the link to see:

http://www.thenation.com/article/hairs-to-the-throne/

Way to go, DFW!

The link: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-massive-el-nino-is-now-too-big-to-fail-scientist-says-20151009-story.html

By Rong-Gong Lin II

An El Niño that is among the strongest on record is gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean, and climate scientists say California is likely to face a wet winter.

“There’s no longer a possibility that El Niño wimps out at this point. It’s too big to fail,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

“And the winter over North America is definitely not going to be normal,” he said.


Just three weeks ago, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center raised the odds of California getting doused with a wetter-than-average winter. Southern California now has more than a 60% chance of a wet winter, a 33% chance of a normal winter and less than a 7% chance of a dry winter.


The importance of the El Niño storm of 1997-1998 is now coming into focus as scientists say the weather pattern is returning to Southern California with a vengeance.

The odds of a wet winter further north are increasing too. San Francisco has more than a 40% chance of a wet winter, 33% chance of a normal winter and less than a 27% chance of a dry winter.