Much as I like these big thunderstorms we’ve been getting lately, they are a dramatic reminder that climate change is really happening. At least in my part of the world, that means things are changing for the worse. Warmer and wetter weather is expected to increase over the coming years, making it easier for harmful insects and waterborne diseases to spread.

You might think that a heavily agricultural area would be glad of more rain and a longer growing season, but the rain in particular can cause serious problems. Since a lot of that heavy rainfall is happing in the spring, it’s much harder for farmers to get their equipment out into the fields. So even though it’s getting warm earlier, a lot of the planting is actually behind schedule. Late planting often means lower yields and less profits.

My part of the world may have a climate like the deep south by the end of the century. Flooding, severe storms, and heat waves all look to be part of our future. We could even see insect-borne diseases like malaria becoming common.

We’re resilient people, we’ll probably adjust. But things are not going to be as pleasant around here as we’re used to.

Something I’ve noticed about the hard-right contingent: they really hate being ignored. They’re fine with being called crazy, fanatical, even fascist. But call them irrelevant or, even worse, fail to mention them at all, and they go apeshit.

For example, I always felt Ann Coulter’s increasingly bizarre pronouncements last year were her way of railing against her decline into obscurity, the equivalent of a dog peeing on the carpet to reclaim her owner’s attention. But that attention was stolen away by a new, more wholesome-looking puppy from Alaska, and poor Ann has been left to stew in her own… juices.

Witness the grandiose Tea Party plan to storm the Capitol and presumably frighten our elected representatives into killing health care reform. Teabaggers got some attention last August by going around yelling at people at town hall meetings, but that didn’t prove to be a successful way of derailing health care reform. Since then they’ve been out of the spotlight. But now, thanks to the New Sarah Palin, they’re coming back to grab fifteen more minutes of fame. I’m sure they’ll get it too, much like Balloon Boy.

The thing is, that’s their whole plan: get attention. The have no real agenda other than earning media coverage. They hope that will translate into a popular uprising against the Democrats, but they don’t really know how. It’s a bit like appearing on a reality TV show in hopes of winning an Oscar. It sort of seems possible, but the actual sequence of  events necessary to make it happen is blurry.

Never mind! Take a whizz on the floor and the rest will follow!

Then I ran across this.

And really, despite my very best intentions, all I can think of to say is:

Wow. These people are unbelievable dumbasses.

Image by erin m, used under a Creative Commons License

But what none of the bloggers seemed willing to talk about was Obama’s stunning display of supernatural powers in the early minutes of the debate. With a mere wave of his hand, he was able to reduce his opponent to nearly a third of his original stature.

For the remainder of the debate, McCain hopped madly around the stage, his squeakily unpleasant voice grating on the nerves of the audience. Yet neither moderator Tom Brokaw nor any other commentator had the courage to make note of Obama’s sorcerer’s ways. Just more evidence of reality-based community’s unvarnished bias.