What Caught My Eye Today - Honduras, New Zealand, Texas, Doomsday

Honduras - I'm not saying that the U.S. on the brink of financial collapse, but perhaps the wonks in Washington DC should heed this item as a cautionary shot across the bow. Honduras has been on the brink of bankruptcy for months, as lawmakers put off passing a government budget necessary to pay for basic government services. The country is also grappling with $5 billion in foreign debt, a figure equivalent to last year's entire government budget. By comparison, the U.S. has about $5.6 trillion in foreign debt. The financial crisis adds to a general sense that Honduras is a country in meltdown, as homicides soar and drug trafficking overruns its cities and coasts. Experts say a mix of government corruption, election-year politics and a struggling economy has fueled the crisis. The international watchdog group Transparency International issued a study alleging some lawmakers had spent money on plane tickets to a tennis tournament in Spain, Mother's Day gifts and other personal expenses. Gee, that never happens. You'd think that as public servants, these folks would put country before personal gain. Still there must be something these guys are doing that merits hope. Lawmakers are discussing proposals already declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and don't deal with the immediate financial problems. In addition, Congress approved the sale of an additional $750 million in bonds last November without resolving any of the core budget issues. Okay then, let's summarize shall we? The federal government is spending money it doesn't have, passing laws that have nothing to do with resolving the budget crisis, and the laws it is passing are being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Is it just me or do these things have a familiar ring to them?

New Zealand - I'm a dog person through and through. As a child I was allergic to cats, an allergy which I outgrew, but certainly did nothing to endear me to them.  Still this is a rather harsh deal...even for a cat. An environmental advocate in New Zealand started an initiative asking his fellow countrymen to make their current cat their last in order to save the nation's unique bird species. He doesn't recommended people euthanize their current cats but rather neuter them and not replace them when they die. That's awfully big of him. No need to kill off the species right away, just let them go extinct slowly. The campaign is not sitting well in a country that boasts one of the highest cat ownership rates in the world. For thousands of years, New Zealand's native birds had no predators and flourished. Some species, like the kiwi, became flightless. But the arrival of mankind and its introduction of predators like cats, dogs and rodents have wiped out some native bird species altogether and endangered many others. 48% of households in New Zealand owned at least one cat, a significantly higher rate than in other developed nations. The survey put the total cat population at 1.4 million. In the U.S., 33% of households own at least one cat for a total of 86 million domestic cats. It never ceases to amaze me how the human race thinks it can circumvent Mother Nature. Animals have been roaming the Earth for a lot longer than humans and done a much better job of not screwing things up. We're pretty good at wiping out species even without conscientiously trying to do so. One final note, let's say boyfriend succeeds in his attempt at mass felicide (It's  a word. I checked). Do you really think he's thought through the impact on ecosystem? 

Texas - The White House has responded to a petition asking that Texas be allowed to break away from the country, saying the Founding Fathers who created the nation "did not provide a right to walk away from it." I don't suppose they gave us the option of kicking a state out of the Union. More than 125,000 people signed the petition, which was created a few days after President Barack Obama won re-election. The White House has promised to respond to any petition that gets more than 25,000 signatures within 30 days. In a related story, the White House recently increased the threshold to 100,000 signatures. Apparently, there are a lot of folks who have way too much time on their hands. A White House spokesperson, issued a response quoting Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address and a Supreme Court opinion after the Civil War. It said America was created as a "perpetual union," but one that allows people with different beliefs to debate the issues. In asking that Texas be allowed to leave the country, the petition cited the "economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending." It argued that given the size of Texas' economy and because the state has a balanced budget, it would be "practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union." The petition also said the federal government didn't share the same values held by the Founding Fathers. Pray tell, how exactly would this petitioner know what the Founding Father valued? They have been dead for 200 years. The White House responded that the writers of the U.S. Constitution addressed the need for policy change through elections, not secession. Don't you just hate when the government rains on your parade by providing unassailable proof that you are an idiot?

Doomsday - Just when you though it was safe to plan for the future now that we survived then predicted end of the world, there is another harbinger of the end of days. At least this one has an appropriate name. The hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" (click here) will remain firmly in their place at five minutes to midnight,  symbolizing humans' destruction, for the year 2013. In making their deliberations about how to update the clock's time this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists considered the current state of nuclear arsenals around the globe, the slow and costly recovery from events like Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and extreme weather events that fit in with a pattern of global warming. The clock is a symbol of the threat of humanity's imminent destruction from nuclear or biological weapons, climate change and other human-caused disasters. These guys strike me as "glass half empty" sort of people. The Doomsday Clock came into being in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. That year, the Bulletin set the time at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing humanity's destruction. By 1949, it was at three minutes to midnight as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated. In 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, the doomsday clock ticked to two minutes until midnight. The Bulletin was at its most optimistic in 1991, when the Cold War thawed and the United States and Russia began cutting their arsenals. That year, the clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight. You know, that totally makes sense to me. I had one hell of good time in 1991. Silly me, I thought it was because I was in college and had my whole life in front of me. It never dawned on me that the real reason I was in such a good mood was because human destruction was such a remote possibility that year.