In modern times, the text is usually completely rewritten for contemporary relevance, which was the case for the 2014 production given by The Santa Fe Opera. There it had "English dialogue by the British dramatist Ranjit Bolt and additional Mozart concert arias folded into the score" with the action taking place in Paris in the 1920s.

Is that the performance you heard?

I have supported Obama since the 2008 Primary.  I was unhappy with Hillary at that time.

I am now a big time supporter of Hillary.  I will campaign for her time permitting.

There may be qualms on the Left about her being a hawk, and I feel them on this.....And so a challenge from the Left to keep her on her toes a little bit, would be okay.

Hillary almost won in 2008 and but for (in my opinion) and very unusual challenger and a bad campaign manager, she would be President now.

You are carrying the water of the Right when you say she won't run.  You and the Right say this because you are afraid she will run and win.

Just as Hillary won't be.

Both inspire part of the base. But neither can unite the party.

This week's evidence came in the form of two polls -- conducted by NBC and Marist College -- of Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.  In Iowa, Clinton led Vice President Joe Biden 70 percent to 20 percent. In New Hampshire, Clinton led Biden by an even wider 74 percent to 18 percent. (That's not to pick on Biden; he was the strongest of Clinton's possible challengers.) Clinton's approval ratings in those polls are stratospheric; 89 percent of Iowa Democrats have a favorable opinion of her while 94(!) percent of New Hampshire Democrats say the same.

"Hillary Clinton -- if she runs -- is going to have a cakewalk to the Democratic nomination, no matter how many political observers might want to see a race," wrote NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann. "She's going to win the Democratic nomination, whether she faces actual primary opposition or not."

If they choose to frivolously wield impeachment against President Obama as though it were simply another political weapon in their arsenal, they run the very serious risk that voters will angrily flock to the polls in 2016 to seek their own retribution. There are very few Republicans still around who remember what it was like to lose an entire generation of voters, as they did in the 1930s. It took them over three decades to fully recover.

They should take a long and hard look at the present sorry condition of the GOP in California, a state where Republicans generally held sway until 20 years ago. Then in 1994 they trotted out Proposition 187, and wrote off the Hispanic community in the process. And when they drove the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis as nothing more than a naked political power play, their fate with California voters was pretty much sealed when Davis' successor Arnold Schwarzenegger turned out to be all meringue and no filling. The pyrrhic victory they won at the polls with Proposition 8 -- subsequently overturned as unconstitutional -- will probably be their last hurrah for quite a while.

This month in the latest PPIC poll, GOP gubernatorial challenger Neel Kashkari is trailing incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown by 40 points among independent voters, and only 23% of Californians -- mostly in the rural Central Valley and the desert communities -- are willing to identify themselves as leaning Republican. In the major urban areas where 75% of the votes are, Republicans are all but shut out everywhere save for Fresno, Bakersfield and San Diego. And even in those locales, they've fallen precipitously from a position of absolute dominance to one in which they're hanging on only by their fingernails.

That's the fate which awaits the Republicans nationally -- life as a primarily Caucasian party that's anchored in rural communities and enjoys only limited capacity and reach -- if they don't stop riding the white-wing crazy train.

MMGW has to be sold or green energy collapses like a house of cards.

Crichton spoke with clarity and was able to turn a phrase that got him attention. If you study him closely you can track him from being a believer to a doubter. Given his success in various fields, and yes his training, that says a lot, especially when taking a contra position is so unpopular and get you shut out of the media. One of my favorites:

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N* is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses--just so we're clear--are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing.

Aliens cause global warming.

I think that summarizes so much about the current state of "science." It has become a product to sell and the selling requires a narrative. There's  literally nothing/nobody that wants government money that doesn't use MMGW as a crutch.

And the fact is that, as Karl Popper pointed out, a theory cannot be a Scientific Theory unless it can be falsified.. a confusing way of saying that if it can't be proven, or if it is proven wrong just one time then it is proven wrong for all time.

It is a small "t" theory. And to believe it requires an act of faith. There is no difference between a religious belief and a belief in MMGW. Neither can be proven and both can point to all sorts of historical information.

As to quoting out of context, I provide links and the reader can decide for themselves. Schneider's words cannot be misunderstood. Nor can Jones'. If you wish something can happen so something can be proven then you know it hasn't happened.

As for the ice caps, well if we go back just 26 months:

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased last month, reaching levels not seen at this time of year for nearly a decade.

Link

If we go back 3 years:

The arctic ice appears to have bottomed out at a level 6.4% higher than the 2007 record. Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center says the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by about 2030, though that is hard to predict; other scientists say it could be mid-century before that dramatic point is reached. The article continues Why does this matter? Ice that's floating on the sea surface doesn't raise the sea level when it melts

Link

Of course the Greenland cover always comes up, yet:

All eyes are on Greenland's melting glaciers as alarm about global warming spreads. This year, delegations of U.S. and European politicians have made pilgrimages to the fastest-moving glacier at Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes.

Curiously, something that's rarely mentioned is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than they are today.

Link

And then we have this about Antarctica:

Antarctic polar ice extent has set another new record, defying alarmist global warming claims. Surpassing the greatest month-of-April ice extent in recorded history, the new record throws cold water on alarmist claims that the Antarctic ice cap has crossed a melting point of no return.

snip

Notably, while the majority of Antarctica is getting colder and the Southern Hemisphere polar ice cap is expanding, West Antarctica is a smaller portion of the continent that is experiencing modest warming. Taking advantage of this outlier trend in a smaller portion of the continent, the media has a long history of highlighting modest warming in West Antarctica or a small retraction of West Antarctic sea ice and falsely claiming this is caused by global warming and is representative of Antarctica as a whole.

Link

So is MMGW a "bee in my bonnet?"

Well, I grew up a science fiction fan and have a huge collection. So the possibility of massive destruction is not strange to me. My post Navy career was in engineer to customer service product management to technical sales and I take the position  that he who dies with the most toys "wins."