The front that passed through and gave us a day and a half of sunshine and moved inland again, so we are back to the daily thunderstorms. I got a fully-dressed shower crossing a parking lot this afternoon. I could have waited, but had no idea how long it would be, and I don’t melt, so I got soaked. If it had looked threatening when I went in, I would have taken the umbrella in the car with me. That wouldn’t have helped because the wind was blowing so hard the rain was almost horizontal.

At least they retired the “Sunshine State” motto on the license plates a few years ago, so we don’t have to listen to the snide comments from the tourists.

Ol’ Sparkie is doing its thing – it is depositing the crispy remains at the bottom for disposal. It won’t be an instantaneous solution, but it appears it will be effective in the medium term.

The broadcast media is actually mentioning the fact that Ryan hasn’t run the numbers, so he claims he doesn’t know the specifics about his ‘budget’.

If you don’t “run the numbers”, you don’t have a budget, you have a collection of guesses. They have run the numbers and know what a piece of offal their proposal represents. If they admit that they have done the math, then they can’t make their wild claims without providing some justification.

This is the same kind of stall as not releasing tax returns – they don’t want facts that can be checked to be put on the record, because they know the facts “have a known liberal bias”.

One of the facts the media should be reporting is that Paul Ryan and the Republican Congress voted for the bills that created this massive deficit that they are having a hissy fit about. Bill Clinton showed everyone how to reduce the deficit, and how to pay off the national debt, but the Republicans, aided and abetted by Greenspan, claimed that paying off the debt was a terrible idea.

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” – Albert Einstein

Republicans, Ryan included, created this mess, so it isn’t logical to assume they know how to fix it.

Position: 31.3N 55.5W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [345°] near 17 mph [28 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1012 mb ↓.

Currently about 550 miles [ 885 km] East of Bermuda.

It is expected to become a tropical storm, but will soon be heading to the Northeast, possibly becoming a problem for the Azores next week.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]