Our cats have been adapting slowly to Connecticut since we moved here in February. The outdoors is much more fun than it was in Los Angeles, with many small furry creatures to chase and bring home as presents.

Rain still baffles them. While it did of course rain in L.A., it rains more here. Joey got caught in a cloudburst and came inside drenched. After Sue got him dry, he sat at a window and scowled at the rain.

Today he and Bandit insisted on going inside in a soaking storm then swiftly came running back inside. More scowling. Watching them run outside the first time during a blizzard when the deck is icy should be fun.

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Firefighters drained the Ramona reservoir to fight the fire. Now there’s no water left and little possibility, considering the ongoing serious drought, that it will be replenished any time soon. What happens to a town of thousands when there’s no water?

Another serious problem the fire burn areas will face once the fires are out and the rains return will be mudslides, as the denuded hillsides will have no vegetation left to hold the soil in place.

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The Roxylander in Flame, a financial blogger, doesn’t post often, but when he does, it’s worth paying attention to. Like yesterday’s post titled “Red Alert.”

Today we had a first grade panic in [two] credit default swaps and second grade panic in [another].

In the past two occasions that kind of panic was a very reliable indicator that the chain reaction will happen. The next thing to happen before the stock market starts moving down is the decline of junk bonds.

He sees the probability of stock market crash in the next 2-3 weeks as over 50%. That a crash or at least a major correction is coming soon seems unavoidable. The talking heads in D.C. and Wall Street put on a happy face as the subprime debacle metasticized. Now the rot is everywhere. The dollar is falling and billionaire investors are shorting it, which will only lead to a further fall. The wars have produced nothing but ruinous debt. The home equity ATM has been shut down so consumer spending, in turn, must slow. Oil may well hit $100 a barrel soon and stay there. The only thing propping up the market are a few absurdly valued tech stocks

Roughly 25%, or nearly 450 points, gained by the Nasdaq 100, a whopping 230 points, or over half the index’s rise, has come from just three issues: Apple (135 points), Research In Motion (60 points) and Google (35 points).

Those stocks are starting to wobble now too. Seems to me the stock market is running on fumes. Look out below.

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L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez nails it talking about class and how the government learned from their hideous response to Katrina and responded vastly better in San Diego.

“We’ve evacuated more people than were evacuated in Katrina,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said Wednesday.

Not only was that ridiculously untrue, but one might argue the evacuations in the San Diego area were made necessary by a lack of firefighting personnel and equipment in a region that shuns taxes and happily sticks outside agencies with the tab when the bill comes due.

Talk about being on the dole.

Also, as Lopez points out in his column and Lefti On The News did in our comments, San Diego still had an operational infrastructure and transportation system, and wasn’t underwater. This makes recovery just a tad easier.

Then, scathingly, he lays into those who said the San Diego repsonse was superior because “we have different classes of people.”

You’d think San Diego’s staunch defenders would be thanking New Orleans for making these improvements possible, rather than all but calling the recovering bayou city a jungle filled with savages who got what they deserved.

But we have different classes of people.

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Homeland Security apparently wants to require that all air passengers get their permission before flying anywhere. Yes, you read that correctly.

Has our nation gone crazy or what? The way to protect freedom is to eliminate it?

Logistically, it could never work, and I expect business will do what ever they need to to block this from happening. Imagine attempting to plan last-minute business trips while trying to get a quick ok from whatever ponderous, unworkable system HSA tries to impose.

Is all madness isn’t it? The sooner the Bushies are consigned to the trash can of history and their freedom-hating rules reversed, the better.

And maybe some of them will be indicted for war crimes too, the torture complaint against Rumsfeld in Paris being a good start.

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USA 2034

After an extended period of bewildering, painful and rewarding transition, the people of the USA finally feel that they have found their feet underneath them, with a clear and hopeful path to the future. Oil consumption is down to 6.6 million barrels/day, 30% of our 2007 peak oil use, and CO2 emissions are 26% of their 2011 peak, a matter of pride for most Americans.

Rapid reductions in world carbon emissions (almost as great as US reductions), plus some negative feedback loops, have kept Global Warming effects manageable. Persistent and prolonged droughts in the American Southwest have been the largest effect so far in the USA.

At long last the goal of “Not One Drop” of oil is being burned to transport people and freight over the nations railroads. All of the main and secondary lines are electrified with battery locomotives for some short spurs.

Read the whole thing, it’s a wonderful, hopeful view from 2034 of a planet that has not only successfully dealt with global warming, but became the better for doing it. Let’s make it happen.

Because the alternative is frightening.

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The NY Times, Boing Boing, and about a zillion other websites are reporting a Japanese “experimental fashion designer” has created a Coke Machine disguise for women can wear so as to avoid would-be assailants. Everyone is reporting this deadpan, as in, aren’t those Japanese zany.

Well yeah, but perhaps not in the way everyone thinks. Maybe this “experimental fashion designer” is now having a serious case of the giggles because her performance art stunt succeeded so brilliantly.

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