Year: 2014

Florida Legislative Session Opens Today (Lord Help Us)

Buck Banks

60

Number of days the Florida state legislature is in session, beginning today. “Republicans are looking for a smooth session,” said Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville, as reported by Tampa Bay Times. “I believe they want to be able to walk out and say that we had kumbaya going downstream through this entire process.”

2013 Budget Deficit Drops Dramatically

Buck Banks

$680 billion

The fiscal year’s federal budget deficit, which fell more sharply than in any year since the end of World War II. The Treasury Department reported Thursday that the “deficit for 2013 dropped to $680 billion, from about $1.1 trillion the previous year,” the New York Times reports. “In nominal terms, that is the smallest deficit since 2008, and signals the end of a five-year stretch beginning with the onset of the recession when the country’s fiscal gap came in at more than $1 trillion each year. As a share of the nation’s economy, the budget deficit fell to about 4.1 percent, from a high of more than 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.”

We Have Seen the Sixth Extinction, and It Is Us!

Buck Banks

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

— Elizabeth Kolbert, from her book, The Sixth Extinction.

Why Gov. Moonbeam Opposes Pot Legalization

Buck Banks

And all of a sudden, if there’s advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world’s pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together.

— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by Huffington Post, on why he opposes legalizing marijuana.

There Goes McCain, Complaining About Obama Again

Buck Banks

I thought when he had a couple of dinners with Republican senators, we really had a good environment there. Because he is a very very articulate and attractive guy in a setting with eight or nine senators and him. Because he was smarter than the rest of us. But I don’t see that now. I don’t see any of that.

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in an interview with Time, on working with President Obama.