Debt ceiling: still far from a compromise. Congress will stay in session over the weekend to try and work something out. Here’s the more important part, though: will the bff bracelets be torn off?

Tropical Storm Don: not as bad as meteorologists thought it might be.

Criminal suspects: this one is still suspected of doing many stupid/crappy things. He may be arrested soon.

Grieving Norwegians: standing tall at a shooting victim’s funeral.

Libya’s rebels: divided on many important issues; this element of the Libyan conflict has become more prominent with a general realization on the part of the mainstream media that rebel leaders do not always represent a unified front.

Suspected Fort Hood bomber: arrested under suspicion of trying to bomb the military base that was attacked by a gunman within the last two years.

Car fuel efficiency standards: will now be stricter, says President Obama.

Syrian demonstrators: still seem to be the victims of violence perpetrated by the Syrian government. Four protesters were killed in Damascus yesterday.

Better medical marijuana regulations: were signed into law yesterday by Mayor Mike McGinn.

13 replies on “Morning News”

  2. Little Rachel Beckwith has raised almost eight hundred thousand dollars to bring clean drinking water to people the world over. One littl girl will save thousands of lives. Amazing. RIP sweet child.

  5. @2
    That reminds me of the three sweet innocent looking girls I met on the street the other day. They gave me a handout and were selling charm bracelets to raise money for their church, and their trip to Africa in order to help plant trees and crops. I said READ THE STRANGER, FUCK YOUR GOODWILL MISSION, FUCK YOUR CHURCH AND WHOEVER YOU WANT TO HELP.

  8. In other local news, dam removal on the Elwha is nigh at last, and Bill Yardley of the NYT covers it beautifully on the front page of today’s NYT. Don’t miss the absolutely beautiful slideshow. This is great news for Puget Sound salmon. (Note to Ben S. – Kathy Fletcher, one of the environmentalists you derided on KUOW the other day, worked more than a decade helping keep this project alive at the state and federal level. You could learn a thing or two about not just habitat restoration but persistence and hard work from her, if you want.):

    Beginning late this summer, one of the most promising and pure acts of environmental restoration the region and the nation have ever seen will get under way here, experts say, in the form of the largest dam removal project in American history.

    It will demolish two massive hydroelectric dams, one of them 210 feet high, that block the otherwise pristine flow of the Elwha River, nearly all of which is within the boundaries of this remote national park.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/30d…
    Slideshow “Reviving a Habitat” at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07…

  11. @9, thanks for that story–just saw the dam for the first time on a misty morning a couple of months ago after they had shut down the dynamos. Spectacular rugged terrain and amazing clear water (though I’m sure the latter was due to the presence of the dam, during max runoff at least).

    @11, you’re welcome!

  12. #9, #12

    Anything that Gregoire can do to make us less dependent on free hydropower and more dependent on that coal plant in Centralia is alright with you Democrats, I guess.

  13. @13, hydropower isn’t free, though I understand your wanting to think it is. And the dams on the Elwha have very low output.

    But look at it this way: there are roughly 100,000,000 homes in America. If every household replaced just four of their 100W incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent or LED bulbs, instead of treating that notion like an evil Democrat-instigated plot (it’s George Bush who signed the phase-out law), those 400 million new-type lightbulbs would burn 10 gigawatts of power or less, instead of the 40 gigawatts old-style bulbs would gobble.

    Coal and nuclear plants each have an average size of a gigawatt. So with that simple conservation step you could shut down 30 coal or nuclear plants.

    Moreover, if those bulbs in each home are used on average for 4 hours a day, Americans would have $4.38 billion more in their pockets every year (assuming 10 cents per kilowatt hour).

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