The Weather Report

So the other day I wake up and it’s 17 below outside (with wind chill) and while some people (generally speaking, people who are someplace warmer) don’t count wind chill, when it’s that cold I want credit for every degree I’m suffering.

To be totally honest—almost always a bad idea—I had to look this up and it turns out: the wind makes it feel colder because humans give off body heat, which means we’re walking around in our own cocoon of warmer air, but the wind blows that warmer air away and if you’re like me, when it physically hurts to be outside, you fire up the Irish coffee and watch as many James Bond flics as possible.

And that’s because Netflix just made all 27 James Bond movies available and since this winter storm started (and I’m not making this up) I’ve watched 13 of them.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, which—generally speaking, has jackshit to do with me—unless a man’s gotta wrap himself in a blanket, sit on his couch, drink coffee with a generous amount of whiskey in it, while watching James Bond movies non-stop and not go outside until mid-June.

If it was up to me, we still would not have visited the North or South Pole and the only way I’d go to either of them is if the North Pole was in Waikiki and the South Pole was in Key West.

I grew up in California, but wound up in the Midwest and while there are places that are colder in the winter and hotter in the summer, for all-around shitty weather on both ends of the temperature/wind chill/humidity spectrum, you just can’t beat Kansas City, although St. Louis is no day at the beach either…unless the beach is somewhere deep in the Amazon rainforest and you visit in August.

Anyway…

This weather topic comes up because last week I drew a cartoon about our crappy weather, but then ICE started shooting protesters, so I wrote and drew about that instead and decided to do my weather whining in a separate post.

And here it is:

If you watch science fiction movies you already know scientists have a hard time persuading the rest of us dumbbells not to do moronic stuff like drill for oil next to a live volcano or bring back the dinosaurs and put them in a petting zoo or appoint RFK Jr. to be the head of Health and Inhuman Services.

Clearly, scientists suck at marketing which is why they failed to convince us to stop doing the shit we’re doing when they warned us about “global warming.” And that’s because we think what happens to us personally is what really matters.

If we met Adolf Hitler at a cocktail party and he complimented our outfit and let us pet his German Shepherd “Blondi” and then let us pet his girlfriend “Blondi” and got off a good joke about invading Russia in the wintertime and someone later told us “Y’know, Hitler’s an insane antisemitic megalomaniac intent on world domination” we’d probably respond:

“Well he was nice to me when I met him.”

And then repeat Adolf’s knee-slapper about invading Russia in the wintertime, which is what I feel like I’ve done every time I step outside.

Clearly, scientists screwed up when they warned us about “global warming” because that label allowed anyone who ever felt cold to say, “global warming, my freezing ass.”

So unlike the rest of us, having learned their lesson, the scientists have now started calling it “climate change” and just in case you were wondering (and I was), here’s how “climate change/global warming” can make it colder where you are:

Step 1: The arctic is warming up faster than the rest of the planet…

Step 2: Which reduces the difference in temperatures between the arctic and the mid-latitudes…

Step 3: And weakens the jet stream, a band of fast-moving air that keeps cold polar air up by Santa’s workshop where it belongs…

Step 4: The weakened jet stream is now more flexible and erratic, much like a Democrat trying to keep his job in Donald Trump’s Washington…

Step 5: And that allows the cold polar air to move south and forces me to wear two pair of gloves to shovel my driveway, which I did this past Sunday.

The cartoon you just looked at (which for some unknown reason never got posted anywhere) pokes fun of our tendency to think whatever happens to us personally is what’s important and fuck all the people we don’t know or care about (we also have the same policy when it comes to some of the people we know all too well) so bottom line:

If I’m cold there is no global warming.

Which is a lot like saying I’ve never been in one, so earthquakes don’t exist.

P.S. I’ve been in an earthquake (the El Centro Earthquake of 1979) and those things are freaky and once I figured out what it was—I was on the fifth floor of the San Diego Union office building at the time—my next thought was: “How long is this shit going to last?”

P.P.S. And if you’re wondering how long this weird weather shit it going to last, the answer is: until we start listening to the scientists.

And now to fill out this comparatively short essay…

Remember the Government Shutdown?

As you might remember, not so long ago the Democrats were getting criticized for refusing to vote for legislation to keep the government open, but since the Republicans needed some Democratic votes, that gave the Democrats leverage and they wanted to use that leverage to pass a renewal of the Obamacare subsidies that helped poor people pay for medical insurance.

But…

The Republicans argued that the Democrats should vote to keep the government open and they’d deal with the medical insurance subsidies later; cross their hearts, hope to die, stick a thousand needles in their eye.

Not being convinced of the Republicans’ sincerity…

The Democrats said if we vote to keep the government open, we’ll lose our leverage and then you Republicans will find reasons not to vote for future healthcare insurance subsidies, but then some Democrats panicked and voted the way the Republicans wanted them to.

THREE GUESSES WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT:

The House has voted to extend the subsidies, but the Republican-controlled Senate isn’t so hot about the idea and progress has stalled.

And if you’re a cynic (AKA: “well-informed”) you’ll find it easy to believe that politicians will vote for something that they know will ultimately fail because then they can claim “Well, I did the right thing” while knowing they can avoid the consequences of their vote. (Early in my newspaper career, that was explained to me by a veteran reporter who covered the California legislature.)

And just to make sure the situation remains chaotic and confusing (which would be a great name for Bjork album) Donald Trump has offered an alternate plan which would “send money directly to the American people.”

And you can look for that money about the same time you get your $2,000 tariff revenue check (another unfulfilled Trump promise) but don’t count on that either because it turns out Trump’s also promised to use the tariff revenue to:

• Reduce the deficits created by his tax cuts.

• Reduce the national debt (the deficit is what we overspend in one year; the national debt is all those deficits added up).

• Fund a nutrition program for low-income mothers and children.

• Aid farmers.

• Increase defense spending.

And…

• Give each and every one of us a magical unicorn that will grant us three wishes and if you’re reading this and thinking “Wait, that didn’t happen” you’re right, but only because Donald Trump didn’t think of it.

Unfortunately, the United States hasn’t collected enough tariff revenue to cover the tariff rebate checks, much less all the other imaginary benefits Trump’s talked about.

And while we’re in the broken-promise neighborhood, don’t forget Trump also promised letting Elon Musk and DOGE take a chainsaw to the federal government would reduce its cost and could result in rebate or dividend checks and we haven’t seen those checks either.

So lots of promises and very little action which describes about 73% of the dates I ever went on when I was single.

Today’s Lesson

In world where you can’t count on much, it’s good to know the Republicans will pretty much consistently fuck poor people when given the chance and generally speaking you shouldn’t believe them when they tell you something different.

Don’t forget the story of the frog and scorpion:

The scorpion wants the frog to carry him across the river and the frog says no way, you’re kind of a dick and you’ll sting me and the scorpion says I wouldn’t do that because then we’d both drown and the frog says OK, but halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway and as they both sink, the frog says why would you do that, now we’ll both die and the scorpion says:

“What did you expect, I voted for Donald Trump three times.”

I hope today’s post leaves you shaken and stirred.

Stay warm, everybody.

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