The World is Upside Down

Iowa is more liberal than California. The reasoning behind the ruling is very important, although currently limited (by design) to Iowa. From here on out, things get interesting.

Another shooting spree kills 13. This makes five in a little more than a month, with a total of 44 dead. We all know that the veneer of civilization is thin, and there is a lot of anger right now. But there are pieces that are not fitting in this story. I'm usually a big fan of Occam's Razor, but the simplistic story seems too pat in this case.

And yes, it's long, but if you want to understand how we got here and why we won't be leaving wherever "here" is any time soon, go read this. Here is the introduction:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

Whatever else you have to do can wait 15 minutes. Do yourself a favor and read it.

The wind almost literally turned our world upside down today. While I was trying to concentrate on school stuff, I could hear debris slamming into the apartment building all day. It even tried to snow, except it wasn't flakes; more like little miniature slush balls smacking into the car. I assume we got nicked by the big snow storm charging through the center of the country. It was all over in about 15 minutes, and it was too warm for it to stick to anything. When we got home, we saw the reason for the nasty weather; someone was moving into one of the empty apartments. Bad weather follows around moving vans the same way tornadoes are attracted to trailer parks. We have yet to do a pack and move that didn't involve some combination of rain, snow, sleet, hail, tornadoes, mudslides, plagues, and famine.

Off to bed; I'm going to try to actually sleep tonight.