We are so screwed

It was very warm and sunny weekend at Casa Monzeglio.  Normally at this point in the gardening season we are flirting with frost.   However, as I was bunching basil and cilantro on Friday evening for the Farmers' market on Saturday it felt like midsummer.  The only jarring note was the sunset at 7 p.m. instead of 9.   At this point in the season I am in harvest mode, but if we had any moisture, there would be an explosion of weed seedlings.  It hasn't rained in 20 days and only brief showers are predicted for later this week, heralding a cold front which may finally usher in fall weather.  Meanwhile, very little has been heard from climate change deniers.  After Harvey, Irma and Maria, most Americans are shell shocked by the constant drumbeat of superlatives used to describe these storms.  Coupled with the unusually warm fall weather across much of the country, the flacks for the fossil fuel industry are lying low.   This is cold comfort to the millions of Americans in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands who will shortly be running out of food and potable water and will have no electricity for months.  The GOP is still trying to demonstrate it is capable of governing the country by passing a healthcare bill.  The problem is virtually any organization related to health care is overwhelmingly against the bill, decrying it as cruel and unusual punishment for millions of Americans.  As Paul Krugman points out this morning in the NYT, the republican party has lied its way to control of Congress and the presidency, and now it must deliver legislation based on those lies.  I can hardly wait to see what the party of "fiscal responsibility" does for tax reform, aside from blowing up the deficit to provide tax cuts for wealthy donors who have threatened to turn of the cash spigot if their concerns are not addressed.  Faced with the need to deliver on their lies, the GOP has turned into a pretzel in an attempt to reconcile the fantasy they fed the base with the reality of governance.  We are sooo screwed...