Month: May 2013

An interesting debate has opened up over the proper strategy for the Senate to take on the immigration reform bill. One camp thinks that they should have a goal of winning at least seventy votes. Harry Reid thinks that two or three Democrats are going to vote against the bill no matter what is in it. But he thinks he has 52 solid votes in his caucus and he thinks there are at least 8 Republicans who will be willing to support the bill. In other words, there appear to be enough votes to pass the 60 vote barrier created by the filibuster. However, that doesn’t mean that the current bill has a prayer of passing the House. If only eight Republican senators support reform that means that 37 will have opposed it. That’s not the kind of ratio that will make it okay for most House Republicans to support the bill. A ratio of 18:27 is far better.

Pro-immigration groups seem to think that the best strategy is to pass the best possible bill in the Senate and use it as a negotiating ploy against whatever the House produces. But that assumes that the House will produce something rather than nothing at all. Perhaps the only way that the House can pass something is if the Senate Republicans are basically split on the merits rather than more than 4-to-1 opposed.

John Boehner would clearly like to see the Senate pass a bill with broad Republican support. He knows that he will probably have to violate the Hastert Rule at least once and perhaps twice to turn immigration reform into law. And he doesn’t want to have to do it without significant support within his caucus and significant cover from helpful Republican senators.

The Hastert Rule is named after former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois. He would not allow votes on bills that did not have the support of the majority of the Republican Caucus. Boehner has largely adhered to that standard, but he has broken the Hastert Rule a couple of times already this year, and there’s a limit to how many times he can get away with doing it.

In the case of immigration reform, it’s possible that the House will pass a bill that has the support of the majority of Republicans, but once that bill is melded with the Senate version, it is unlikely that a majority of House Republicans will still support it. So, it would appear at a minimum that Boehner will have to break the rule to assure final passage.

Making concessions to reach 70 Senate votes will improve the odds that the House will produce a bill and it will make Boehner’s life much easier and his job more secure. But there’s a point at which the compromises will cost Democratic support and the support of pro-immigration groups.

Part of this debate is really about whether it is better to make concessions now or to make them later. But anyone who knows anything about the House Republicans should realize that they are insane and incompetent and ill-willed and contemptible. There is no right answer. Making concessions to terrorists just encourages more bad behavior, but we need them to produce something, anything, to keep the process moving forward.

What to do?

Paul Krugman is pissed off that the Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee are looking to slash spending on food stamps. But, as Steven points out, food assistance is one of those things that conservatives and libertarians really hate. They can’t stand anyone getting a meal for free. It’s the principle of the thing. They don’t care that food stamps prevent malnutrition in children or that food stamps are calculated by both governmental and independent analysts to be one the most efficient forms of stimulus for the economy. Giving people food assistance in a down economy actually creates jobs and helps end recessions. Even if preventing people from starving or suffering from malnutrition were not the right thing to do, it would still be a good idea to do it.

One of the problems with conservative thinking is that it cannot account for nuance or complexity. They think that giving a starving person some free food will disincentivize them to go find work. They’ll become complacent moochers, happy with their lot in life. But to whatever pitifully small degree that is true, we’re making a good financial decision when we allow some of our tax dollars to go to these moochers. They will be less sick, their children will do better in school and then in life, paying more money in taxes into the system. The money they spend now will help create jobs in agriculture and throughout the food distribution system.

Plus, if Romney really lost because 47% of the people are just looking for handouts, then picking on moochers seems like a bad strategy.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the gothic Cape May house.  The photo that I will be using is seen directly below.  I will be using my usual acrylics on an 8×10 canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

My efforts have been directed at the lawn and right side of the painting.  There are a number of changes.  Note that the flag is now complete.  Below, the flagpole now casts a long shadow on the lawn along with the conically shaped bush to its left.  Accordingly, that bush has its lit section to the left.  Across the path, the tree has its trunk and somewhat more detail above.  Beyond the tree is a lit section of lawn far to the rear of the yard.  The painting is now done.

The current and final state of the painting is seen directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

British man and American woman killed in Syria, reports say

(The Guardian) – A British man named as Ali Almanasfi has been killed while fighting in Syria, together with two other foreigners including an American woman, Syrian TV has reported.

The three are believed to have been killed in Idlib province in the north of Syria. Syrian TV broadcast footage of the dead Briton’s passport which appeared to identify him as 22-year-old Ali Almanasfi, born in London in June 1990. The Foreign Office could not confirm any details about the Briton and his identity could not immediately be verified.

Syrian TV also identified the dead American woman as Nicole Mansfield, 33, from Michigan. The American woman’s family said she had died while apparently fighting with the rebels against government forces. “I’m just devastated,” her aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman, told Reuters. “Evidently, she was fighting with opposition forces.” Speelman said the FBI had informed the family on Thursday afternoon.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the trio had been ambushed in Idlib province, which is largely controlled by Syria’s opposition. The Syrian government controls Idlib city. He told the Guardian: “These people got too close to some military bases near Idlib and were killed.”

Abdul-Rahman said he did not know the nationality of the third foreigner. He also said it was unclear if the group was affiliated with the moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) or a more radical opposition Islamist militia such as the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra.
Syrian militants al-Nusra Front to be added to UN sanctions list

• Outside Intervention or War by Any Means in Syria my diary July 2012
• Syrian Rebels Sidetracked by Scramble for Spoils of War – Dec. 28, 2012
• Kerry Distances Himself from Clinton on Syria

More below the fold …

Cross-posted from BooMan’s fp story – Know What You Are Getting Into

Always a Biased View

Why vilify the Shia religion and thereby the Iranian people? That’s the problem wilh all DC insiders, you can’t get over the defeat of the Shah and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Khomeiny had an uphill battle to earn the hearts and minds of the Iranians … until the Sunni led regime of Saddam Houssein invaded their territory and the brave Iranian people “resisted” the butcher from Baghdad. A short review of history would place the blame for agression with the Sunni religion. Same for Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, all Al-Qaeda affiliates, terror in the streets of Amsterdam-Paris-Madrid-London, north-African nations and the scourge of AQIM-AQAP-Boko Haram.

Just last night on Dutch television a discussion over the (Dutch) nationals traveling to Syria for Jihad. A spokesperson of salafimedia.nl particpated. Within 15 minutes you heard all the arguments of the Wahhabist-Salafist sects of Sunni religion. The decapacitated body of British soldier Lee Rigby wasn’t outright condemned because it’s the individual right of Sunni muslims te revenge the British murdering of Afghan and Iraqi Muslims. The soldier had Muslim blood on his hands. As far as going into Syria and killing fellow Muslims … that’s not so. The Alawites and Shia are heretics and worse than christians. There is only one true religion … haven’t we heard this so often? One gets a full recital from Koran scriptures why that is so and Jihad is the cleansing of one’s soul to get into paradise.

Dream on BooMan … don’t point your cruise missiles towards Teheran and Damascus. The real culprits of Al Qaeda come from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, to be specific the Wahhabist center in Najd.

Perhaps You Have Noticed … A turning Point In Syria

Sheikh Durihim had previously posted a tweet in which he said that the people of Najd [in central Saudi Arabia] were the “saved group”, meaning they alone were the only ones who would enter Paradise on Judgment Day among all humans, including other Muslims. Najd is the region of Saudi Arabia where Wahhabism originated.

Daraihim’s statements denouncing the Shiites as apostates — in accordance with Wahhabi Salafist doctrine — are not the first of their kind. Takfir (the idea of Muslims renouncing other Muslims as nonbelievers) goes back to fatwas issued by Sheikh Taqi ad-Din bin Taymiyyah, a Syrian sheikh from the Hanbali school of jurisprudence born in 1283 A.D. in Harran, a city near the Turkish-Syrian border.

Saudi Wahhabi Sheikh Calls On Iraq’s Jihadists to Kill Shiites

Re: Always a Biased View (4.00 / 6)

The problem is, as Oui pointed out, we chose sides in 1980. That’s why Rummy was hanging out with and helping to arm Saddam in the 1980s. Then the whole cabal of neo-cons seriously miscalculated in their obsession to take down Saddam. Don’t know what they expected but seriously doubt that it was to leave a Shia dominated government with religious ties to Iran behind.

by Marie2 on Wed May 29th, 2013 at 01:38:28 PM EST

True

From the developments in the Middle-East since 2001, the Syrian uprising wasn’t about the Assad regime, except perhaps the first few weeks. See this article from 2010. The push for regime change in Syria was part of Neocon policy, even senator Kerry was caught off-guard trying to persuade Assad for quicker reforms in his administration.

A major breakthrough came when Maliki was elected to run the government in Baghdad, Iraq and divison with the Sunni population and the Kurds became evident. Saudi Arabia would not accept the new axis Teheran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut and joined the old colonial powers, Israel, Turkey and the US to overthrow Assad once the “uprising” took place. A bad choice, but it was a choice the Obama administration ran away with. Bullying of Russia and China in the UNSC failed miserably and there was never a united opposition front.

Reality has come to John Kerry and hopefully the parties involved in the conflict can come together for a political solution of transition to presidential and parliamentary elections by 2014.

• Stirrings In Syria – 2 Years On
• Perhaps You Have Noticed … A turning Point In Syria
• EU failure in arms embargo, Moscow says delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missiles may help restrain warmongers

(Photograph of non-starving woman and children during the Great Depression, courtesy of blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu) and Dorothea Lange, documentary photographer employed by the Federal Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration from 1935 – 1939)

John Stossel has said some pretty ridiculous crap over the years, but this might take the prize for the most insensitive, moronic thing that has ever come out of his piehole:

Fox Business host John Stossel on Thursday declared that government programs should be cut based on the false assertion that “no one” died of starvation in the Great Depression before the modern “welfare state.” […]

“And when people are needy you want them [to get] help,” Stossel agreed. “But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one.”

“Right, good point,” Doocy agreed.

Really John? No one starved to death during the Great Depression? That’s not how a lot of people remember those years.

In the Pennsylvania coal fields, three or four families crowded together in one-room shacks and lived on wild weeds. In Arkansas, families were found inhabiting caves. In Oakland, California, whole families lived in sewer pipes.

President Herbert Hoover declared, “Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than they have ever been.” But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.

We will never know how many people died as a result of starvation or illness related to malnutrition during the years of the Great Depression because there were no official Federal Government statistics for that era. However, there is enough anecdotal evidence that people did starve during the Great Depression, and that contrary to what Mr Stosssel asserts now, and President Hoover asserted then, people did in fact die from lack of adequate food intake, otherwise known as death by starvation. We certainly have a photographic record of people who look very thin and malnourished as evidence that starvation was a reality for many people during the Depression:

(cont.)

We also know that food riots broke out in many states. Well fed people, or even adequately fed people do not riot over food. Hungry, starving people on the other hand do:

Feb. 1931

“Food riots” begin to break out in parts of the U.S. In Minneapolis, several hundred men and women smashed the windows of a grocery market and made off with fruit, canned goods, bacon, and ham. One of the store’s owners pulled out a gun to stop the looters, but was leapt upon and had his arm broken. The “riot” was brought under control by 100 policemen. Seven people were arrested.

And another Food riot incident, this time in Oklahoma:

From the New York Times, January 31, 1931.

Food Rioters Raid Oklahoma City Store; 500 Dispersed by the Police With Tear Gas

OKLAHOMA CITY. Jan. 20 (AP)-A crowd of men and women, shouting that they were hungry and jobless, raided a grocery store near the City Hall today. Twenty-six of the men were arrested. Scores loitered near the city jail following the arrests, but kept well out of range of fire hoses made ready for use in case of another disturbance.

The police tonight broke up a second meeting of about one hundred unemployed men and arrested Francis Owens, alleged head of the “Oklahoma City Unemployed Council,” who was accused of instigating the raid.

People starved Mr. Stossel. They went hungry. Some of them, we don’t know how many, died. And guess what? More people would be dying today if we didn’t have social welfare programs such as SNAP (i.e., food stamps) to prevent poor people, and the unemployed from going without food. Yet you want to eliminate these programs. In fact you stated that you wanted to eliminate the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Education, among others.

You cut whole departments,” the Fox Business host explained. “Why do we have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens! Agriculture, farmers do that! You don’t need bureaucrats.”

He added that the Department of Education was also unnecessary.

“Isn’t that part of what the government does in a lot of people minds?” Fox News host Steve Doocy asked. “They need to help people rather than let people help themselves?”

Guess what you left off your list? The entire Department of Defense. Well hell’s bells, why do we need a wasteful military establishment when we have an armed militia available? Using your logic, our military forces are completely unnecessary, because individuals can take care of that themselves when it comes to national defense. Just like social welfare programs are unnecessary. Please let me know, from your libertarian perspective, why the largest Department in the Federal Government and the one whose elimination, or even significant down-sizing, would solve most of our debt issues going forward is left off your list. I’m dying to find out why you failed to mention it, though you have no problem with killing off social welfare programs that millions of your fellow citizens depend upon.

UPDATE: Further evidence of the effects of starvation among the poor in the United States during the Great Depression era and the years leading up to it (i.e., before the development of our current socialist hellhole welfare state) can be found at the Link (h/t to mollyd from the comments.

UPDATE 2: Stossel has issued a classic nopology:

This morning, on Fox and Friends, I said “no one” starved during the Depression. I was almost certainly wrong.

During the Depression, the governor of Pennsylvania wrote, “we know that starvation is widespread, but no one has enumerated the starving.” However, all other governors who wrote to Congress, 43 of them, sent letters saying that they knew of no starvation in their states. Historians Steven Mintz and Sara McNeil wrote that there were hundreds of deaths in NYC alone.

However, hunger was rare enough that health in America generally improved during the Depression, according to a National Academy of Sciences study […]

There’s no doubt that there was privation of all sorts in the 30’s – when America was much poorer. But today’s reduction in malnutrition is almost entirely a result of greater prosperity, thanks to our relatively free market.

Our unsustainable welfare state causes poverty (by rewarding dependency) as often as it relieves it. Stopping government handouts to people like ME won’t lead to starvation.

Stossel forgets to mention that part of that “improvement” was related to advances in medicine, and part only looked like improvement, since the 1918-1920 “Spanish Flu” epidemic which killed millions skewed the statistics by making the pre-Roaring Twenties look very deadly in comaparison. He also forgets that under FDR, federal funding for vaccinations increased significantly under FERA (the Federal Emergency Relief Administration) which in all likelihood led to better health outcomes and fewer childhood deaths.

A Quinnipiac poll shows that there has been an erosion in Hillary Clinton’s polling numbers over the last few months, which may indicate that the Benghazi obsession of the Republican Party is having an intended effect. On the other hand, Clinton still enjoys net-favorable numbers, while Joe Biden suffers with 37-44 net-unfavorable numbers. I really have no explanation for why Biden’s numbers are so bad. He isn’t associated with any scandal and he hasn’t been portrayed unfavorably in any news stories recently.

What’s your guess?

McCain: ‘Regrettable’ if photo was taken with Syrian rebel kidnappers

(The Hill) – A spokesman for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday that it would be “regrettable” if the lawmaker had posed for a photograph with Syrian rebels involved in kidnapping Lebanese Shiite pilgrims.

The spokesman cautioned, however, that no one had identified themselves by the alleged kidnappers’ names during McCain’s meetings with opposition forces in Syria over the weekend.

The Lebanon Daily Star reported Thursday that McCain took a photo with Mohammad Nour and Abu Ibrahim, who were identified by a freed captive as Syrian rebels who took part in the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims a year ago.

McCain, who tweeted a picture from his visit that allegedly included the kidnappers, was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria since the two-year civil war began.

 « click for @SenJohnMcCain
Important visit with brave fighters in #Syria who are risking their lives for freedom and need our help pic.twitter.com/tx4uX572ZP

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in a statement that none of the individuals McCain planned to meet were named Mohammad Nour or Abu Ibrahim.

More below the fold …

McCain seen with Lebanese pilgrims’ kidnappers during visit to Syria

(AlAkhbar) – The Obama administration said it knew in advance of a trip to Syria by John McCain, a visit that raised questions over whether the Republican senator met with the kidnappers of a group of Lebanese pilgrims held hostage for the past year. US officials had little to say about the trip by McCain, an outspoken advocate for US military aid to the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

McCain’s office said his visit was organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a non-profit group that backs the Syrian opposition and is based in the United States. The Republican senator crossed into northern Syria from the country’s border with Turkey on Monday and stayed there several hours in a surprise visit.

McCain saw General Salim Idris, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army coalition of rebel groups, as well as 18 commanders of Free Syrian Army battalions from all of Syria, the SETF website said.

“While meeting with Senator McCain, General Idris and FSA commanders asked that the United States increase its aid to the Free Syrian Army in the form of heavy weapons, a no-fly zone, and air strikes on Hezbollah,” the SETF website said, referring to the Lebanese resistance group backing Assad.

Please no marijuana Doris Dukes.  Can we not repeat the history of tobacco with the monopoly American Tobacco Company that was later busted into the oligopoly comprised of American Tobacco Company, R. J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers, and Lorillard?  While few farmers earned a living wage.

The piecemeal approach to legalizing marijuana is going to lead to what few marijuana growers and advocates envision.  And one man is already moving in to make his killing  

Back in December, Jamen Shively announced his plans to build the first national marijuana company and at a news conference in Seattle on Thursday he said he’s made big progress.

Shively has visions of being to pot what Coke is to soft drinks.  Or Bud is to beer.  There are a few more dreamers out there:

Shively isn’t the first one to smell a huge business opportunity.  Silicon Valley venture capitalists, Privateer Holdings, have already launched a fund dedicated to pot startups.

This is so easily avoided.  Limit the annual yield of pot farmers.  Require farmer co-ops for processing and distribution with no more than 10% non-farmer ownership.  All profits distributed equitably among all workers.  If legal, there’s no real reason for dedicated marijuana dispensaries for retail sales.  Although no reason not to permit high-end boutique shops, but limit those to a single location per owner.  Regular stuff can be handled and sold just as liquor is regulated.        

Just decent earnings for decent people performing honest work to supply a product in demand.

I picked up on this story earlier in the day. Apparently, Republican donors are showing little interest in the Massachusetts special election to fill out John Kerry’s term. I found one explanation for this kind of interesting:

To one GOP insider, [Gabriel] Gomez’s problems with his own party stem from a larger problem: “So many Republicans thought we would win the presidency last year that they are now unable to believe that we can win anything.”

So, this is kind of a problem of Dick Morris’s making. Or Gallup. Or the skewed polls guy. Political analysis is what I do, and I can tell you honestly that I don’t know how anyone who thought Mitt Romney would win, or even could win, has enough brainpower to operate their lungs. The proper conclusion for those people should be to get better sources of information. Bigtime Republican donors must of have been successful at something. They can’t all be trustfund babies. When they made money in business, did they keep consultants and advisors on the payroll who were consistently and epically and catastrophically wrong?

People they trusted lied to them. They gave them false assurances. They took advantage of them. The takeaway from that should not be despondency and defeatism. It should be skepticism. Karl Rove lost everywhere and everything. He spent possibly as much as $160 million of rich Republican donors’ money, and he had nothing to show for it.

I think that that performance is the real problem here. It’s not that Republican donors are defeatist. It’s that the people asking them for donations no longer have any credibilty with them.

Everyone knows that the southwestern United States and much of the western and Great Plains states are in deep trouble because of severe drought conditions. Less well known is the effect drought has had on the Great Lakes region, where each of the five great Lakes – Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie and Ontario have seen reduced water levels, including the lowest water levels on record for Lake Superior Michigan and Huron.

Not surprisingly, the drought conditions in the Great Lakes region are causing both ecological and economic effects that threaten the region’s inhabitants, animal, vegetable and human.

The world’s largest freshwater system has shrunk before, but never so quickly. In Traverse City, Michigan, empty chaises at a resort—on what once was lake bottom—reflect how the Great Lakes tourist economy has slipped in sync with falling water levels. And the farther the waters recede, the higher anxiety rises. […]

This is not just a matter of inconvenience to a hundred thousand riparian landowners along U.S. and Canadian shores, though more than a few of them are being put to the expense of extending their docks. It is a matter of concern to the multitudinous cities and farms dependent on lake water, to the boating and fishing segments of the region’s multi billion-dollar tourism industry, and to the operators of deep-draft ships that ply these inland ports and waterways to hitch North America’s heartland to the markets of the world.

And right here the wide, weedy beaches and rocky shoals of the Old Mission Peninsula said it all: Another couple of years of climatic deprivation and the greatest of these lakes might well bottom out at levels lower than any recorded in historic times.

The impact is even being felt by America’s automotive industry. Why? Because ships and barges that carry iron ore and other raw materials to the automobile plants have had to lighten the amount they can deliver because of the lowered levels in the lakes or face running aground:

[A]s a consequence [of the drought], the big ships that carry iron ore to mills around the lakes are now being forced to lighten their loads – or risk running aground.

“When she came down with her cargo here – the last cargo in January – she was at the 25 mark. If she had been loaded to her full mark, she would have been up just an inch short of 28 feet,” said [Glen Nevaskil], vice president at the Lake Carriers Association – a trade group that represents shippers.

Last month CBS News went aboard the Stewart J. Cort in the Port of Milwaukee. As long as an aircraft carrier, the ship can carry 65,000 tons of ore.

“When this ship loaded its last cargo of the season, it had only 55,000 tons on board,” Nekvasil said.

If a ship is 10,000 tons of ore short, “that means a steel mill didn’t make about 6,700 tons of steel and that could have been turned into 8,400 cars. And 8,400 cars would keep a large auto plant working for 15 days,” he explained. “And you have to remember that’s on just one trip. These ships will make 45 to 50 trips during a season.”

The Great Lakes constitute the largest freshwater system on Earth, over 94,000 square miles, and includes enough fresh water in all the lakes tributary systems (rivers, streams, smaller lakes, etc.) to cover the entire surface of the continents of the Americas under two feet of dihydrogen oxide. It provides fresh drinking water for at least forty million people, and Fifty-Six Billion gallons of water per day for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses. Here are some other fun facts about the Great Lakes you ought to know:

Nearly 25 percent of Canadian agricultural production and 7 percent of American farm production are located in the Great Lakes basin. (Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).

About 65 million pounds of fish per year are harvested from the lakes, contributing more than $1 billion to the Great Lakes economy. (The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

The Great Lakes support a $4 billion sports fishery industry. (The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

More than 200 million tons of cargo — mainly iron ore, coal and grain — are shipped every year through the Great Lakes’ 1,270-mile route. (The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory) […]

[T]he Great Lakes contain roughly 21 percent of the world supply and 84 percent of North America’s supply [of fresh water]. Only the polar ice caps contain more fresh water. (Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) […]

More than 3,500 species of plants and animals inhabit the Great Lakes basin. (The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

Since the 1800s, more than 140 exotic aquatic organisms of all types (including plants, animals, algae and mollusks) have become established in the Great Lakes. (Source: Great Lakes Information Network)

Needless to say, the sharp decline in the Great Lakes’ water volume is a very serious matter. So what is causing the incredible shrinking of the great Lakes? It’s simple really. Higher temperatures plus less precipitation equals greater evaporation of what is rapidly becoming the the most important resource in the 21st Century – fresh water.

Evaporation seems to be winning. By most accounts six of the warmest years on record in this region occurred in the past decade. That not only increased the rate of evaporation in the summertime but also raised it in the winter by depriving the lakes of their normal ice cover. Ice inhibits evaporation. With the exception of Erie, the shallowest of the five, the Great Lakes rarely freeze shore to shore but often ice up in their bays and mid-lake areas. In recent years, however, ice cover did not occur in some places accustomed to freeze or, if it did occur, came in later and went out earlier than usual, which raises the question of global warming.

Shorter winters, higher annual temperatures and less precipitation are all factors driving the Great Lakes drought. Water that the region depends upon to sustain both a healthy environment, drinking water and economic activity. It may seem to some in other drought effected areas of the country that all the Great Lakes’ water will be available if needed for them to tap when their own water resources run dry. Unfortunately, as the current drought up here demonstrates, Great Lakes water may not be that silver bullet that California, Texas and other drought stricken states may be counting on in the future should the severe drought conditions there continue. What will likely result will be political conflicts over who can use that water, which will be fought in Congress and, because we share the resource with Canada, on the international stage.

As Peter Annin, author of The Great Lakes Water Wars has amply documented, fights over who within the region served by the Great Lakes will be allowed access to its fresh water resources has already created intra-state and international conflict that have only been temporarily suspended as a result of the 2006 Great Lakes Compact. Here’s a short video in which Annin discusses the issues related to past and likely future conflicts over access and usage of Great Lakes water.

As he notes, we are in the Century of Water. And when drought occurs in one of the most globally important sources of fresh water, it impacts all of us, and that impact will only increase as the whipsaw effects of climate change in North America help create less and less usable fresh water throughout our country in the years ahead.