A Cry for Attention by The Weather Channel

Note: I will polish this article later but for now, dinner calls.

It is like meteorologists finally decided they needed to be taken more seriously all the time.  They want to matter, to be valid, to be noticed.

They say that it is for our good:

During the upcoming 2012-13 winter season The Weather Channel will name noteworthy winter storms. Our goal is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events. The fact is, a storm with a name is easier to follow, which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation.

Funny, I never found a storm so hard to follow that I needed a name put to it.  This sounds like justifying something that has no real justification at hand.

So a bunch of meteorologists got together and collectively decided that they would name every freaking storm, not just the big tropical ones.  Most tornadoes don’t even really get names, not like Hurricane Carol, Hurricane Katrina, or Hurricane Pasquale.  Tornadoes seem to mainly be named after the town that they most completely wiped off a map.

So, much like a teen announcing suddenly that she no longer wants to be called Marcia, now she is Annette, or Hubert suddenly wants to be called Throck Morton III, or any number of teens “quietly” come out with their disinterested angst and claim to be vegetarians and dress in black and brood a lot, now meteorologists need to name their snowstorms.

I find this to be sad.  As sad as the guy that breaks into a lingerie store and gets caught on tape molesting himself with “devices”.

I am sure this is going to put a little lead in the pencils of meteorologists everywhere, this newfound power to compete for naming rights of the latest atmospheric disturbance, but there’s going to be more excitement in the general population of a prison over the guy mentioned above than there is about storm naming.

So cut it out TWC and any other outfits that think this is a cool trend, because it is… sad.

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In order to bolster your strength for the stuff below, let me give you a kitten booster.  Demonic kitten, but a kitten, nonetheless.

The bipedal pic is not a photoshop, it has funky parts because the damn creature was doing her quantum cat act again.

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I listen to NPR because I want to know what the commies are up to.  Here’s the link to last Friday’s transcript of The Week in Politics, and here is the snippet that just steams my clams.

I think it’s an utterly artificial crisis. It’s really the ghost of the Tea Party haunting Washington because the whole sequester comes out of an effort to end the other utterly unnecessary crisis back in 2011 over the debt ceiling. And so they came up with a package they thought would be so bad that no one would buy it and they would come to a reasonable deal.

President Obama has come up with, I think, a very reasonable deal. Indeed, I think my friend David should be embracing the president because he’s doing what David has spent two years telling us we should do: a balance of tax – money raised through tax reform and some reasonable cuts, including by the way, cuts in Medicare spending.

I think the Republicans have an interest in this crisis going on as long as possible. They kind of like to run out the clock because the more time we spend on phony budget crises, the less time we spend on, oh, getting people back to work, investing in the future, easing inequality, promoting mobility.

So they just want to put more and more time between us and the last election, which Obama won. And right now, it’s looking like the public will blame the Republicans more than Obama, but Obama is stuck in a situation where he is losing time to do some of the things he’d like to do.

- E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post

Like in the kid’s Highlights magazine some of us grew up with way back when… how many things could you spot wrong in that picture?

David Brooks of the NYT:

BROOKS: You know, I do think that they gave a lot on tax increases and got zippo in response. And so I do think the next time around, we should do something that’s much more on the spending side. The president has done a little spending, what they call chain CPI in Social Security, to me not enough, and they’re still relying too much on tax increases by closing loopholes, which would undermine tax reform in the long run.

So I do think the Republicans have a point on that. But they’re just in a pretty weak position right now.

BLOCK: E.J.?

DIONNE: I don’t think they have a point at all. I mean, that was 642 billion in revenues. We’ve already done well over 2 trillion in cuts. Obama agreed to a lot of cuts in 2011, and he’s not asking nearly as much in tax increases as either Simpson-Bowles did or he once did. He’d settle for 400 or $500 billion in additional taxes.

You’d still have an enormous ratio in favor of cuts over tax increases if you agreed to Obama’s deal. And so, I think there’s something very disingenuous to say, well, we’ll pass this one – taxes one time only. Boehner himself said he’d be for more tax increases than he’s voted for.

So, you see, I actually risk my life in listening to NPR because I’m about a gnat’s ass away from having a stroke at any given moment.