Let's Talk About the Weather . . . (with a little bit about politics, too)

My mother called me last night. My hometown, Hamilton, Ohio, was bracing for a snow storm. Not so unusual as this is the middle of February. But what WAS unusual -- in fact so unusual that history didn't really have a Winter to compare it to -- was the fact that the expected 9-11 inches of additional snow was going to drop on a current accumulation of 25 inches! My hometown -- 25 miles from Kentucky -- was looking at a possibility of 3 feet of snow!

This is, to say the least, for that part of the world . . . "unusual". Last Summer and Fall, I started saying that the weather, beginning in November, 2009, was going to go in to a record-breaking almost surreal state of deep-freeze for approximately 30 months . . . roughly until Spring, 2012. That prediction is looking pretty good, so far.

I did my 5 minute prediction spot yesterday for "The Strange Dave Show" and I said that the current brrrrr brrrrr chilly-willy temps would break soon -- but not until after another 3-4 week spell of even COLDER, SNOWIER weather. Then -- An early Spring . . . one in which I expect the weather to go from Ice Age to a balmy beautiful time in a matter of days -- sometime around mid-March, approximately 4 weeks away.

But soon after, say mid to late April, I expect what will be the true form of natural destruction to appear from this brutal spell of weather -- Floods. I believe we are going to see floods of incredible magnitude this Spring, again record-setting in both size and scale.

Lots of people may die in these floods and my fear is that this may set off, in some minds, an apocalyptic take me home Jesus mind-set. Raging flood waters in a crippled economy two years from the "dreaded" 2012 . . . well, if these floods happen, it will likely be the catalyst for an awakening of the darkest most superstitious thoughts.

The United States has drifted, over the past 25 years, from a nation of primarily rational thinkers towards a nation of political extremists, zealots bent on "their way or no way" and so the compromise bone has been weakened and the all speed ahead damn the torpedoes mind-set has been aroused in ways we've never before seen -- at least not in the United States.

My other "big" prediction for the past few years has been the erosion of the U.S. economy. Each year, since 2006, I keep saying that economic news is going from bad to worse, each year (perky little puppy dog that I am) I am told that I am being "negative" -- "think positive" people tell me . . . "it will surely be fixed soon". But I don't think it is going to be fixed soon and I am going to tell you why I believe that is so.

Because . . . the ends are growing stronger while the middle falls apart. Centrist politicians -- what I would surely have been had I been a politician and not gone so anti-corporate due to the death of my child and an insight in to the destructive powers lying in wait due to unbridled corporate control of the legislature -- are dropping like flies.

It is a game for extremists because, to paraphrase retiring centrist Senator Bayh, "money goes to people with a recognizable 'brand'".

"There's just too much brain-dead partisanship, tactical maneuvering for short-term political advantage rather than focusing on the greater good," Bayh told ABC News Tuesday.

In other words, lobbyists' dollars go towards people who make the most noise for their causes. There ain't no money in compromise!!

We now have a Jerry Springer-style government. There is a reason people with 8 teeth and an I. Q. of 73 get on TV . . . but isn't it possible that we have taken this "Reality TV" madness a bit too far . . . that we choose politicians due to sound-bites rather than actual achievement. Nothing gets done unless it furthers a particular cause -- the one with the loudest voice will ultimately win in this environment and in a media-driven world the loudest voice is almost always the RICHEST voice. Corporations rule . . . the average American drools . . . and so the work of enlightened rational men for 225 years goes down the drain.

The great poet William Butler Yeats said it best 90 years ago -- looking back at the destruction of "The Great War" . . .

"The Second Coming"

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?