“”Showing the recklessness of the GOP’s budget, proposed cuts would gut funding for Hawaii’s tsunami warning system,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), joining Democrats in trying to tie GOP budget cuts to threats posed by the recent Japanese earthquake.
But if you go through the GOP budget cutting bill, you won’t find any mention of cuts in tsunami warning funding, or in the National Weather Service, which has also been getting a lot of media attention about budget cuts as well.
The cuts – which right now have no chance to get through the Senate – would be in the budget of NOAA, the parent organization to both the tsunami and weather forecasting organs.
Simon Winchester continues his discussion of geological history and assures us that a major earthquake along the west coast is inevitable. In the video, he talks about the San Andreas fault line and the Cascadia subduction zone which runs from California to Vancouver, B.C. The Cascadia fault would be under water which would create tsunamis.
Much area along the west coast is coastal highway with only one way out. The area is flat and if everyone tried to leave at once, the roads would become parking lots.
For every Winchester, there are nay-sayers who say “the big one” will not be like what happened in Japan. Further south, two nuclear plants, San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, both in Southern California, are built along fault lines. Both are built to withstand a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. That would not pass muster in last weeks Japanese quake. Those with California Emergency Management seem to be assured and us that they are ready. That statement seems to ignore the fact that even though something is very improbable, that doesn’t make it impossible.
We can only wait and see if the earthquake cluster theory has validity. There is also some concern on the part of geologists that the super-volcano Yellowstone is due for a dust up. Any eruption of Yellowstone would be disastrous for not just that region but the entire country and Canada because of fallout from the eruption.
Again, now is not the time to cut back on any safety precautions that can help us be ready to survive major attacks from Mother Nature, whether it is hurricane, tornado, and other storm rediction, or earthquake, volcano and tsunami warnings. Our very lives might depend on it. Looking back just 6 years should remind us of the ferocity of Katrina and how there are just some things you can never be totally ready for.
Some conservative commentators are becoming increasingly put off by Sarah Palin. One such person, Matt Labash, writer for the Weekly Standard said that because of Palin’s continued cries of victimhood and grievance, “She’s becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition.”
Palin has not done much to endear herself to the old GOP guard. According to Politico:
Sarah Palin has played the sexism card, accusing critics of chauvinism against a strong woman. She has played the class card, dismissing the Bush family as “blue bloods” and complaining that she is the target of snobbery by people who dislike her simply because she is “not so hoity-toity.”
Most famously, she has played the victim card — never more vividly than when she invoked the loaded phrase “blood libel” against liberals and media commentators in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.
For years, conservatives have laughed about liberals playing the victim card. Now the conservative commentators and intellilgensia have turned the tables. The backlash gets increasingly stronger each day.
This year, the conservative intelligentsia doesn’t just tend to dislike Palin — many fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right.
