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“The gig in Boston’s canceled. It’s OK, it’s not a big college town.” -Spinal Tap
Days when you see horrible natural disasters are days when you recognize the importance of a national government prepared to respond. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan is no different, and for someone who lives in California AND about a mile from the beach, it has a slight resonance to me. If your plan is to cut the small sliver of non-military discretionary spending, you’re going to hit hard at preparedness for events like this:
Tucked into the House Republican continuing resolution are provisions cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the National Weather Service, as well as humanitarian and foreign aid.
Presented as part of a larger deficit reduction package, each cut could be pitched as tough-choice, belt-tightening on behalf of the GOP. But advocates for protecting those funds pointed to the crisis in Japan as evidence that without the money, disaster preparedness and relief would suffer.
“These are very closely related,” National Weather Service Employees Organization President Dan Sobien told The Huffington Post with respect to the budget cuts and the tsunami. “The National Weather Service has the responsibility of warning about tsunami’s also. It is true that there is no plan to not fund the tsunami buoys. Everyone knows you just can’t do that. Still if those [House] cuts go through there will be furloughs at both of the tsunami warning centers that protect the whole country and, in fact, the whole world.”
The bill would cut $126 million from the National Weather Service over the next six months, and in total, as much as $1.2 billion from NOAA, which would undoubtedly lead to furloughs.
I’m reminded of Bobby Jindal scoffing in his response to the State of the Union in 2009 at money to be spent on “volcano monitoring,” when not but a few weeks later a massive volcano erupted in Alaska. Silly as it may seem, the government has a role to play in actually preparing for contingencies to protect its people. And traditionally, the US government has played a role in providing humanitarian and disaster relief to allies harmed by natural disasters. There are major cuts in those areas as well.
Unless you want to leave all that to Koch Industries.
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way to go Team GOP!!
If this piece of Crap passes there WILL be more deaths because NOAA will be gutted and no one will be monitoring anything. There will be no warnings for such as the tsunami that is still hitting thew California coast.. It is not real bed 3 -7 feet in ares BUT there is a lot of damage to boats docks and such… Watching live broadcast here in the Bay Ares….
Don’t Mess With Mother Nature… She always has a way of letting ya know just who IS really in charge here…
There WILL be blood on the Republican’s hands because of this stupidness .
Heh, there’s a guy that doesn’t lack his own importance.
Conservative voters/constituents have been brainwased by the corporate-owned media to clap and cheer at such funding cuts. Conservatives just think that what happened to NOLA was part of “God’s plan” for such dreadful
darkiessinners.It’s *also* like when the Snowbilly Grifter dissed earmarks for fruit fly research as being useless, when, in fact, such research may lead to advances in understanding autism:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/24/palin-fruit-flies/
Stupid, short-sighted, pathetic. But Doug Coe has infested many of our nation’s churches to preach to the true believers that only God can solve these problems, and man should stay out of it. I have absolutely no issue with people’s faith and how they approach their relationship with God. But using THAT as a justification for the “do nothing” and “no science” approach to dealing with natural disasters and medical issues is flat-out irresponsible, to say the least.
However, too many voters have been convinced that making such cuts will somehow in some magical way inure to their ultimate benefit. It won’t. It only inures to enriching the uber wealthy, per usual.
I’ll bet these jerks think they don’t live in earthquake country. They might be in for a surprise.
And, uh, Katrina? Oh yeah, ancient history I guess…
Yep. See comment #3
Let the Reelfoot rift cut loose and they’ll get an education.
The last time the Madras fault decided to kick off it changed the course of the Ms river.
don’t think it would matter if they did – no better example of the shortsightedness of their sociopathic/authoritarian plague than what those bastards in WI did to their own political futures yesterday
It’s enough to make one conclude there is a God – and the gop are the ones not listening to Her messages.
Scott Walker:
Sounds like wishful thinking.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/117794798.html
Their mythology has blinded them to reality.
I guarantee ya the WI H8 think they’ll survive a recall vote.
did you see the AR Drilling Comm. extended moratorium on the underground disposal ? how dire must the data/implications be for those guys to call a halt ?
Sounds like bullshit to me.
Rick Scott in FL campaigned on creating 700,000 jobs in 7 years. What neither he nor Walker are telling their states is that those jobs will be created overseas by corporations they bribe to move to their respective states with tax exemptions.
It is..
My 2¢ on things
Probably already pretty damned dire. The Reelfoot rift in an aulacogen fault which is a “failed” rifting event. They are very deep and very extensive. Injecting waste into one doesn’t strike me as a good idea.
http://splicd.com/FUnCPDOjJ1M/60/61 :D
The problem is that these Koch whores don’t care, they know they’ll get lobbying gigs at higher pay for their servitude.
Ding!
When you walk in gilded slippers on the golden path of obscene abundance and tainted wealth believing that your heaven on earth will be transcended by your flight to the lofty magic of the heavenly heaven (reserved for only the chosen few)-MOTU…
their sight is not blinded, it is transfixed, and reality is only for the unwashed masses!
The question is ‘how do we tear away the veil?’
Speaking of tsunamis… I’m waiting for the ‘all clear’ to be given to head home, they’re saying noon…! It’ll be 14 hrs since the sirens first sounded…!
Emptywheel has a fresh cross-post ready: House GOP Budget Cuts Tsunami Monitoring Funding
They would just say it’s part of “God’s plan” (no offense intended to anyone of faith, truly) and that’s just “the way it goes.”
Let’s face it: the super wealthy, like Haley Barbour will have their ruined properties paid for by US taxpayers, both conservative & liberal, while the serfs will be “permitted” to suffer the “consequences” of their decisions to live on the fault line/too close to the river/ocean, etc.
And the voters – both conservative & liberal – will go along with it. Pass the clicker, I wanna watch moooaar Jersey Shore…
Hooray!
Figure out how the fack to ‘tear away the veil’ first from the serfs, who either totally go along with this state of affairs and/or are apathetic/compacent/ingnorant/don’t care/don’t get/all of the above.
Nearly *everyone* lives in a fool’s paradise thinking: oh, it won’t happen to ME….
Stay safe and be well CT…
Agree! Totally!…then that is when the knashing of the teeth and ‘REALITY’ kicks in…alas too late!
Oddly enough, the world’s oceans have no respect for political borders. As you may remember from your pre-adolescent school days, ripples in ponds expand circularly. A tsunami-inducing event that affects the western Pacific could as readily affect Hawaii or the West Coast, causing billions or more in damages and untold loss of life. The comment you critique was factual and unrelated to self-importance, a distinction your comment suggests an unfamiliarity with.
Hear! Hear! Earlofhuntingdon…righteous
It was the American Indian Chief Seattle who so rightly claimed:
Whatever befalls the Earth – befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Conservatives have no use for science. Never have.
While I don’t like calling names & dissing others, some days the pathetically idiotic stupidity that appears to very proudly know no bounds is really hard to bear witness to… especially when the *consquences* of that abject, but proud, stupidity could end up having an impact on me (to be completely self-centered) and others.
Far too late, and even when the consequences are pretty extreme, as with NOLA, far too many US peasants twiddle their thumbs and find ways to *blame the victims* and then go back to their deep slumber. Pass the clicker! I am breathlessly agog to hear what Charlie Sheen just pooped outta his piehole (sez me, who *just* had an “intelligent” co-worker stop by my desk to play bunch of Charlie Sheen comments from her friggin cell phone… and then tell me that she’s “not interested” in Charlie Sheen… WTF????? brainwashed… citzens are brainwashed & don’t even know it).
It might also be useful to point out that as is true of California and Florida, the great majority of people in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, etc., live along the seacoast. Much of the world’s shipping – which delivers food, oil, electronics, cars, machinery, parts, etc. – travels through those regions. A low wave in mid-Pacific, squeezed through the narrow straits near Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia gathers height and increases its potential for damage to ships and shores.
It’s God’s will, People!
CT, I’m on the Mainland & trying to find info on tsunami damage on Maui. My car’s at the airport, in Kahului, where that 9′ wave hit. I’m wondering what will be left when I return.
Here’s what I gleaned from the Honolulu Star Advertiser:
The big earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906 was 7.9 on the Richter scale. The more recent one that hit in 1989 and did considerable damage was 6.9, ten times smaller than the 1906 event. The 8.9 quake that just hit Japan was 100 times the size of the 1989 event. The aftershocks in Japan are 7.0.
The idea that the US, with about 1500 miles of seacoast on the Pacific coast, more than that on the Atlantic coast, and that much again in the Gulf, would reduce its expenditure on weather related research is absurd. Only a Koch or another global warming denier who lives well above sea level would find that a reassuring development.
Oops, forgot. Silly secular humanist me.
Here’s wishing you much good luck with this. So sorry, and I hope you aren’t adversely affected, or at least, that any damage is not too bad.
Thanks.
One thing about being 5,000 miles away: there’s nothing you can do. Just scratching around in various sources for info re what’s going on.
The only real risk for us is our car, and hey, it’s insured. We live “up country,” and dogs are in an up-country kennel in our absence, so we should be okay.
Good news… Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your canine family members… We know just how much they mean to a family!!
I’m home now and we had some surge action but it didn’t travel very far, I’d hazard to say your car should be fine, considering the local news didn’t show much damage to Maui, I’ll keep an eye out for any photos or video on Maui…! Tomorrow’s papers should show the damage wrought…!