Tony Snow's Financial Crisis

Tony Snow is the latest public servant to leave the White House. He says he cannot afford to stay on his salary of $168,000 a year. Poor Tony and his children. He is out of money!

These are the same people who tell the rest of us that we should be able to raise a family of four on $20,650 per year! That is the official number from the 2007 Department of Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines. Families who make less than than receive some assistance (not much, but some).

It is grotesque how divided the country is when it comes to income and opportunities. But it is immoral that we accept it as "that's just the way it is - it's your own fault if you're poor".
--- T

White House Press Secretary Snow Resigns - The Huffington Post

Nokia to challenge Apple's iPhone

Today's Seattle Times reports that Nokia is taking on iphone, iPod and iTunes. I do like Apple but I will always cheer for Nokia, of course. I am hoping that Nokia's presence here in Seattle gets more prominent with the purchase of Twango. And I don't see why not.
--- T


Business & Technology | Nokia aims to challenge Apple's iPhone | Seattle Times Newspaper

Senator Craig Caught with Pants Down

It is almost unbearable to watch the republicans shoot themselves in the foot time and time again. This time a senator from Idaho was arrested in an airport bathroom for soliciting gay sex. [I am not quite sure what law he actually broke, but perhaps he was trying to pay for sex?]

Mr. Craig has been very anti-gay throughout his political career. It seems like another self-hating homophobe taking out his frustrations on those he has power over. Shame on you!
--- T

GOP Senators Say Craig Should Resign - The Huffington Post

Fredo

Alberto Gonzales is the next one leaving the sinking ship called the Bush administration. It was pretty amazing how long the embattled attorney general could hang onto his job with new scandals coming out almost daily. He was the one who approved torture as a reasonable method of interrogation; he also thought that it was ok to lie under oath, or forget everything but his own mother's name.
--- T

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/it-was-you-fredo_b_61985.html

The American Poor

The American poor/working class don't know how to fight back, they just do what they've been programmed to do for generations: be good consumers and spend every last penny they earn. But this time they have not only spent their last dime; they have also borrowed money to spend some more, and cannot possibly pay it back. Barbara Ehrenreich writes about their plight below.
- T

Smashing Capitalism!

By Barbara Ehrenreich, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted August 22, 2007.

We may be witnessing the first time in history that the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution.

Somewhere in the Hamptons a high-roller is cursing his cleaning lady and shaking his fists at the lawn guys. The American poor, who are usually tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class, suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial system. Incredibly enough, this may be the first case in history in which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution.

First they stopped paying their mortgages, a move in which they were joined by many financially stretched middle class folks, though the poor definitely led the way. All right, these were trick mortgages, many of them designed to be unaffordable within two years of signing the contract. There were "NINJA" loans, for example, awarded to people with "no income, no job or assets." Conservative columnist Niall Fergusen laments the low levels of "economic literacy" that allowed people to be exploited by sub-prime loans. Why didn't these low-income folks get lawyers to go over the fine print? And don't they have personal financial advisors anyway?

Then, in a diabolically clever move, the poor - a category which now roughly coincides with the working class -- stopped shopping. Both Wal-Mart and Home Depot announced disappointing second quarter performances, plunging the market into another Arctic-style meltdown. H. Lee Scott, CEO of the low-wage Wal-Mart empire, admitted with admirable sensitivity, that "it's no secret that many customers are running out of money at the end of the month."

I wish I could report that the current attack on capitalism represents a deliberate strategy on the part of the poor, that there have been secret meetings in break rooms and parking lots around the country, where cell leaders issued instructions like, "You, Vinny -- don't make any mortgage payment this month. And Caroline, forget that back-to-school shopping, OK?" But all the evidence suggests that the current crisis is something the high-rollers brought down on themselves.

When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth, even at the company's famously discounted prices.

The sad truth is that people earning Wal-Mart-level wages tend to favor the fashions available at the Salvation Army. Nor do they have much use for Wal-Mart's other departments, such as Electronics, Lawn and Garden, and Pharmacy.

It gets worse though. While with one hand the high-rollers, H. Lee Scott among them, squeezed the American worker's wages, the other hand was reaching out with the tempting offer of credit. In fact, easy credit became the American substitute for decent wages. Once you worked for your money, but now you were supposed to pay for it. Once you could count on earning enough to save for a home. Now you'll never earn that much, but, as the lenders were saying -- heh, heh -- do we have a mortgage for you!

Pay day loans, rent-to-buy furniture and exorbitant credit card interest rates for the poor were just the beginning. In its May 21st cover story on "The Poverty Business," BusinessWeek documented the stampede, in the just the last few years, to lend money to the people who could least afford to pay the interest: Buy your dream home! Refinance your house! Take on a car loan even if your credit rating sucks! Financiamos a Todos! Somehow, no one bothered to figure out where the poor were going to get the money to pay for all the money they were being offered.

Personally, I prefer my revolutions to be a little more pro-active. There should be marches and rallies, banners and sit-ins, possibly a nice color theme like red or orange. Certainly, there should be a vision of what you intend to replace the bad old system with -- European-style social democracy, Latin American-style socialism, or how about just American capitalism with some regulation thrown in?

Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis; already, the government has rushed in to soothe the feverish markets. But in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.

Lapsuuden poluilla

Kesalla -67 muutettiin tahan pieneen kerrostaloon. Meidan parveke on keskimmaisessa kerroksessa vasemmalla. Meilla oli olohuone, lastenhuone, keittio ja vessa. Naapurit oli ihan kivoja, paitsi yksi ukko, joka oli kiukkuinen. Se asui yksin poikansa kanssa alimmassa kerroksessa. Talon edessa oli leikkikentta, jonne kokoonnuimme tapaamaan uusia kavereita.

Samana kesana olimme veljen kanssa myos kesasiirtolassa kuukauden; se oli pitka aika olla pois kotoa, mutta olin jo tottunut siihen, silla olin edellisen talven viettanyt mummon luona Kemissa ja setani luona Kemijarvella.

Syksylla alkoi ekaluokka koulussa.

Made in China

For many years I've been lamenting the fact that almost anything you buy at the store these days is Made in China. Not because I hate China, but because I feel strongly that we ought to make our own products as much as possible: for good jobs, for pride in our own work, for keeping the money in our own communities, for controlling the process and quality of our products.

I grew up with TV ads encouraging us to buy things made in Finland. It made us proud to see the Finnish flag on a toy or a tool we bought. And we knew it was good quality. We were willing to pay a little extra for it. Mom always said that a poor person cannot afford to buy cheap.

Even now I love shopping in Finland because I can actually find locally made products of high quality, still. The Made in China label is creeping in, for sure, but not nearly as much as in the United States - the once proud manufacturer of goods.

When buying toys I have always looked for products made anywhere in the West. It's difficult and expensive, as 80% or American toys are manufactured in China. There are small, independent toy stores here in Seattle that sell European - or locally made - toys. That's where we shop. In fact, I hate Toys R us! Everything about those stores cry out: cheap! Over-advertised! Poor quality! Breaks in a day! But they are always crowded with people looking for the latest fads and cheap stuff they can give to their children. It makes me sick.

Now the hunger for cheap has started to take its toll: millions of Chinese-made toys, dog food, tires and toothpaste (I always buy Finnish toothpaste!) have been recalled because of health hazards. No surprise there.
--- T

Life Expectancy

Americans are 41st on life expectancy in the world. What's wrong?

I can think of two reasons. First: too much good food. (Gluttony, though one of the seven deadly sins, seems a natural tendency in humans.)

Americans are very food-oriented; any time they congregate they eat - and not just a little cup of coffee and a pastry while socializing: they have table-breaking amounts of melt-in-your-mouth goodies with hot dishes, cold dishes, salads with lots of creamy dressings, chips with dip, tasty ethnic foods and wonderful desserts on top. People stand around tables talking and laughing and eating all they way through - not to mention all the drinks.

When Americans watch TV (and they watch a lot of it) they must have snacks to go with the entertainment. People get together to watch sports or other important shows, and they always bring food and drink.

It's all very comforting: you never need to go hungry. But it's too easy to over-eat, especially when most of your physical activity is walking to the kitchen and back or walking to your car to drive to work or grocery store. You just can't burn off all the calories until the next meal.

Second: inequality. Although some (quite a few) Americans are so rich they could practically buy eternal life; there are many more who cannot afford proper health care or even proper (nutritious) meals. They bring down life expectancy numbers in America.

The big mystery is: why do Americans tolerate such inequality?
--- T

41 nations top U.S. life expectancy

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the United States include Japan, most of Europe and Jordan.

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.

The shortest life expectancies were clustered in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV/AIDS, famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

Researchers said several factors contributed to the United States' falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."

Among the other factors:

• Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly one-third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

• Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

• A relatively high percentage of babies born in the United States die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations. Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe, had lower infant-mortality rates than the United States in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries — 222 in 2004 — than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.

Murray, of the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, Murray said. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go a long way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

James Moore on Rove

Those of you who find Karl Rove as disturbing as me, read this blog by James Moore. He is right on target about the influence of Rove.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-rove-goes-on-forever_b_60211.html

The Seattle Times on Rove

Editorial
Rove leaves, too late

Karl Rove is leaving the Bush administration too late. The damage is done.

The man whom President George W. Bush himself credited as the "architect" of his 2004 re-election also played a hand in tarnishing the presidency with his career-long hallmark — ruthless, divisive strategy and we-know-best arrogance. That strategy won two national elections but has been corrosive to a nation weary of political ends trumping credible government policy. Rove, who followed Bush from Texas, is the president's closest adviser. Rove's fingerprints are all over the Bush presidency — whether it's the decision to go to war in Iraq or to cross an ethical line in dealing with U.S. Justice Department personnel decisions, or the shameless propensity to tinker with government-agency reports for political purposes.

The White House deputy chief of staff failed miserably in his efforts to spur reform of Social Security and federal immigration policy and — probably most disappointing for him and his boss — at his larger goals of burnishing a positive Bush legacy and cementing a permanent Republican majority in Congress.

Though Rove played a role in disclosing the identity of former Central Intelligence Agent Valerie Plame — he testified before a federal grand jury five times — he was never indicted.

There is still a chance he might be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a Senate committee about the political firings of nine U.S. attorneys, including Seattle-based John McKay.

The president who was supposed to be "a uniter, not a divider" has become the "decider" without footing in reason or accountability. That failure, among many others, is Bush's, but Rove mapped out the road that brought him and the nation to this point.

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Arianna Huffington on Rove

Ms. Huffington wrote a delicious piece on Rove's exit! Please read at link below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/rove-exits-with-his-usual_b_60209.html

Karl Rove Out!

Just saw the news about butterball Rove leaving the White House! It is very exciting news even though I haven't had a chance to read/hear much about it yet. You know there's a good reason for it, because everything he does is for a reason. He is as calculating and manipulative as they come. He is the ultimate truth-bender and end-justifies-the-means kind of person one could find. To him winning is everything, even if you have to destroy everything along the way. He represents the extreme dirty American politics played by the far right. I hope this means that the decline of the truth-benders is in full swing.

I once had a coworker who said he wanted to be the next Karl Rove... Well, as you might guess he and I did not have a lot in common.

Censorship

Nicole Brodeur
Mistake or not, it's censorship

By Nicole Brodeur
Seattle Times staff columnist

Let's test the First Amendment, shall we?

"George Bush, leave this world alone." "George Bush, find yourself another home."

I'm still here and employed, my freedom of speech intact. (As I write this, anyway.)

Wish I could say the same for Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who sang those same two lines (to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall") Sunday night in Chicago, where the Seattle-based band was headlining Lollapalooza.

The performance was webcast on AT&T's Blue Room entertainment site.

But the part where Vedder slammed the president? Cut by AT&T's "content monitor."

"This, of course, troubles us as artists, but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media," Pearl Jam said in a statement Wednesday.

AT&T took until Thursday to admit its monitors had made a mistake; they were only supposed to bleep out excessive profanity or nudity of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe-malfunction" kind. An AT&T spokesman told The Associated Press that it was trying to secure the rights to post the whole song on the Blue Room site.

Are we buying all that?

Do we have any choice? That's really the issue here.

If anything, Pearl Jam's Chicago-style silencing gave mainstream consumers a taste of what's at stake when media giants like AT&T have a firm grip on what we receive through the myriad technologies at our fingertips.

"What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call," the band said. "And it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."

Amen to that.

The incident raises the issue of "net neutrality," which seeks to address the freedom and access the Internet is supposed to allow us, and the control being harnessed by those who provide access.

Consider: Corporate providers can give faster download times to some content, and not others.

And if they are the ones holding the content, we have no choice but to watch what they choose to show us.

That, to me, is censorship.

Corporations say we should trust them not to censor.

Mistake or not, AT&T just gave us a reason not to.

I understand it's a delicate dance. Technology is advancing so quickly, it's hard to keep up with who owns what, how it is presented and what safeguards should be in place.

But I think we're clear on the First Amendment, and the right it gives artists like Vedder to say what he feels without fear of being cut.

We depend on artists to make us think and learn and raise our own voices not only in song, but at the polls. Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan. Joe Strummer of The Clash, who sang, "Know your rights."

(Among them: "The right to free speech — unless you're dumb enough to actually try it." God rest Joe's soul.)

We need to keep a close eye on our rights, but also on those being taken by corporations.

And for those who missed it, Pearl Jam is making the full, uncensored webcast available on its site. (www.pearljam.com)

Good thing; some of us would like to sing along.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Viva la Mescaleros!

Babies And TV

It's hard to believe that we still need more studies to prove that babies need interaction with their parents and other people to become smart, curious and social. But obviously we do. A recent study shows that babies who have engaged in watching TV intended to enhance their intelligence, are actually less intelligent and advanced than their counterparts. Duh?

Gore in Singapore

Just because someone says the earth is flat doesn't mean we have to take him seriously, right?

Gore says big energy undermining global-warming consensus

By GILLIAN WONG
The Associated Press

SINGAPORE — Former Vice President Al Gore said today that some of the world's largest energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., are funding research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming as part of a campaign to mislead the public.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, rejected the allegation.

"There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community" about global warming, Gore said at a forum in Singapore. "In actuality, there is very little disagreement."

"This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science," Gore said. "We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion."

Gore likened the campaign to that of the millions of dollars spent by U.S. tobacco companies years ago on creating the appearance of uncertainty and debate within the scientific community on the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes.

"Some of the tobacco companies spent millions of dollars to create the appearance that there was disagreement on the science. And some of the large coal and utility companies and the largest oil company, ExxonMobil, have been involved in doing that exact same thing for the last several years," Gore said.

After the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world's top climate scientists, released a report in February that warned the cause of global warming is "very likely" man-made, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere," Gore said.

"They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools," he said.

Last year, British and American science advocacy groups accused ExxonMobil of funding groups that undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. The company said the scientists' reports were just attempts to smear ExxonMobil's name and confuse the debate.

ExxonMobil spokesman Gantt Walton said Tuesday that the company's financial support for scientific reports did not mean it influenced the outcome of those studies. ExxonMobil believes the risk that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change warrants taking action to limit them, he said.

"The recycling of this type of discredited conspiracy theory diverts attention from the real challenge at hand: how to provide the energy needed to improve global living standards while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

Gore said that with growing awareness of climate change, the world will see an acceleration in efforts to fight the problem, and urged businesses to recognize that reducing carbon emissions is in their long-term interest.

But while Washington should lead by example, he said developing nations also have to play a part.

"Countries like China, just to give an example, which will next year be the largest emitter in the world, can't be excluded just because it's technically a developing country," Gore said. "When you look at the absolute amount of CO2 each year and going forward, China will soon surpass the U.S."

As its economy expands, China faces an increased risk from the effects of climate change and must find ways to leapfrog old, polluting technologies in ways that can maintain growth, Gore said.

In June, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency said China overtook the United States in carbon dioxide emissions by about 7.5 percent in 2006. China was 2 percent below the U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, the agency said.

Infrastructure II

Infrastructure

We are spending about two billion a week in Iraq enabling a bloody civil war that kills innocents and destroys infrastructure needed for modern life. We have also spent billions in reconstruction in Iraq: schools, government buildings, bridges... only to be destroyed later by a nasty war. How senseless is that? Some are getting rich as wars are being waged, but the rest suffer.

We don't have enough money or political will to take care of our own infrastructure back at home. Bridges are collapsing and pipes are rupturing, while we waste money on a war with no winnable solution. How do you define insanity?

Infrastructure's boring, until ...

By Eugene Robinson
Syndicated Columnist

WASHINGTON — How can such things happen? How can it be possible that one minute you're driving home from work, or riding in a school bus with your friends, or heading to a baseball game, and the next minute you're plummeting toward the Mississippi River as the bridge you're crossing suddenly collapses?

How, for that matter, can you be hurrying through Manhattan near Grand Central Station and suddenly a subterranean steam pipe explodes, sending a geyser hundreds of feet into the air and leaving a crater in the street big enough to swallow a tow truck?

It's easier to understand disasters if they have proximate causes — terrorism, earthquakes, tornadoes. It's much harder to get your mind around what happened during rush hour Wednesday evening in Minneapolis, when a busy downtown bridge across the river simply ... collapsed. As U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference Thursday, in a pithy statement of the obvious, "Bridges in America should not fall down."

They shouldn't, but it's quite possible that more of them will. We should also expect that more steam pipes will blow, that water mains will burst, that dams will develop worrisome cracks and that sooner or later, probably during a heat wave, much of the country will suffer a crippling blackout.

The heavily used Interstate 35W bridge that catastrophically failed, spilling dozens of cars into the Mississippi, had been rated just 50 out of 100 for structural integrity at its last inspection two years ago, according to The Associated Press. That wasn't as much of a red flag as it seems in retrospect. Not for a moment did anyone believe there was any real danger of collapse, and the 40-year-old span wasn't considered near the end of its useful life. The rating just meant that the bridge had structural deficiencies that at some point should be addressed — just like 27.1 percent of all the nation's 590,750 bridges.

That estimate comes from the American Society of Civil Engineers, a trade group that every few years issues a report card on the nation's aging infrastructure. The engineers' most recent survey in 2005 gave the country an overall grade of "D" — and the reason for the low mark, as always, was that we don't spend nearly what we should on maintenance and repair.

Bridges were actually deemed to be in better shape than dams, roads or the power grid. But the civil engineers estimated that it would cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years "to eliminate all bridge deficiencies."

That's not a lot of money in the context of a $13 trillion economy. But does anyone think we're going to make infrastructure a national crusade? Have the presidential candidates been falling over themselves to stake out their positions on the oh-so-sexy infrastructure issue?

Of course not. Infrastructure is boring. Anyone who has ever owned a house knows that every once in a while you have to replace the gutters, buy a new furnace, waterproof the basement or insulate the attic. But the tendency is to spend the money on a new flat-panel TV, and let the infrastructure slide — until something breaks, floods or falls down. At that point, of course, the repair will cost twice as much as if you'd done it sooner.

In the case of a deficient bridge or dam, the added cost may come in human life. But given the restraints that entitlements and debt service impose on government spending, given the astronomical cost of the war in Iraq and given the urgency of problems such as health care and education, it's inevitable that technically deficient structures will go longer than they should without being repaired or replaced.

There are more than 160,000 "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete" bridges in the United States, according to the civil engineers' 2005 report. Of those deficient or obsolete bridges, 43,189 are in urban areas. There is no reason to think any particular one is about to collapse the way the bridge in Minneapolis did. But now we know that the theoretical possibility of sudden, catastrophic failure is real.

It's unrealistic to think this disaster is going to spur the nation to seriously address all its infrastructure problems. We'll talk about the issue for a while, then go out and buy another TV. But we can — and should — at least do a more-rigorous inventory, and identify the structures that pose the most peril. Yes, it's boring stuff to even think about. But just look at the alternative.

Eugene Robinson's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Elokuu

Elokuun ensimmainen aloittaa kesan loppukirin. Se tuo mukanaan melankolian ja lopullisuuden tunteen: siinako olikin koko kesa? Mutta ei sentaan viela; minulla on paljon sulateltavaa kesan matkojen jalkeen, ja synttaritkin ovat viela edessa (joskin tassa iassa ei niin paljon enaa vuosien vaihdosta riemuita).

Seattlessa elokuu on kuumin ja aurinkoisin kuukausi. On siis viela nautittava lampimista paivista ja pitaa melankolia loitolla kaymalla uimassa ja retkeilemassa metsassa.