09:41 – I’m still working on the earth science manual. As always recently when I sit down to write, I’ve noticed that my endurance is not what it used to be. Fifteen years ago, even ten, I could do heads-down writing for 10, 12, 14 hours a day for weeks on end. Nowadays, I’m tired after four or five hours, and six or eight is my absolute limit. Oh, I can sit there longer and type words on the screen, but there’s no point. What I can produce for six or eight hours a day is useful output; anything after that is just time wasted because the output is not acceptable. It takes more work to clean it up and fix it than it would take just to start from scratch.
I’m afraid the Republicans are going to cave. They need to remember that the reason they were elected was to stop Obama and the Democrats by any means necessary from destroying the economy and the country. Refusing to pass an increase in the debt limit is a good way to do that, and polls show that a majority of citizens want them to do just that. Force the government to live within its means. Cut spending with a meat-axe, cut taxes, cut the size of government dramatically, and kill ObamaCare. That’s what they were elected to do, and they need to do it. If Obama chooose to default rather than cut spending elsewhere, fine. That’s on him and the Democrats.