There’s always news
July 7, 2010 (Wednesday)
Today’s news seems to center around two topics: the weather and the economy. Both topics are always able to give the average person something to talk about.
The Northeast is suffering from the heat, with a reading of 103 degrees yesterday. That’s a real 103, not a heat index (“feels like”) figure. One newspaper carries a photo of a construction worker with his own homemade shade device: a helmet with a brim made of a Fed Ex box. “People make fun of me, but it gives me shade,” he said. Power companies are chewing their nails in anticipation of a wide-spread power failure that may hit the entire section of the country. Small outages were recorded yesterday.
The other weather item concerns us along the Texas coast, as a broad area of stormy weather in the Gulf continues to edge closer. One newspaper says this morning that “deluge will follow deluge.” Survivors of the Allison floods know that this kind of weather can be disastrous. Let’s hope that does not happen.
The economy continues to spawn prophetic announcements by ad hoc “experts,” some of whom are predicting the worst downturn ever experienced. One wonders if their motive is to aid investors or to sell books. Not everyone “in the know” about such matters is so pessimistic. A few are even optimistic. We’ll see, won’t we?
One other item in the headlines: the lawsuit by the U.S.A. against Arizona over their immigration law. It comes at a time when we have been thinking about Independence Day and the debate of that era over the role of the Federal government in the new nation, and the balance of power between the central government and the states, a debate that will always be with us.