This is going to break people all over the country.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

I've seen local gas prices jump by 30 cents in three hours this afternoon (Dallas TX). As a one-man independent company that relies on driving to a client's site for their convenience, I don't know how much I can raise my rates and stay profitable without sending my clients to the storefronts for their computer repairs. Right now, all over the country, there are many of us sitting at our desks thinking exactly the same thing.

We now also have to plan simple things such as trips to the store for groceries (which will also go up due to shipping increases and other factors). No more jumping into the Beast to drive five miles for a burger, unless it's combined with other necessary trips.

And this is in a place that is well out of the line of destruction of the hurricane. I simply cannot wrap my head around how hundreds of thousands of lifelong NO residents are fleeing without a place to sleep, without a meal to cook, and without fresh water to drink. The water is poisoned, the ground is saturated, the vehicles are empty and/or stuck in the mud. People are going to starve, and they are going to sicken, and due to this administration's past arrogance in the face of international disasters, we the people are going to be on our own. It is going to be a winter far worse than this nation has seen before, and with our nation's treasury broken by a useless war, we don't even have the manpower or funds to help ourselves. People are going to die, and in large quantities.

Cities are drowning, and the president is strumming a guitar.

Damn it all to hell, will SOMEBODY IN WASHINGTON do what needs to be done and arrest that cocksucker???? What the hell are you waiting for? THE TIME IS NOW. Someone please please PLEASE step up to the plate and just DO SOMETHING.

Please. You have a nation begging you.

[Borgnine]

1. We won't be able to sustain three more years of this.

I don't see how, barring running the entire Administration out of D.C. and straight into the Hague.

[Deja Q]

4. That's their plan.

Destroy the government.

Pity they won't lose their jobs once all is said and done, but nobody's perfect...

[Deja Q]

2. Blame ANY politician of the last 25 YEARS who has supported

any oil initiative and voted against energy system overhaul.

They make the decisions therefore they ought to be held accountable. (though they'd rather give themselves big raises and increased benefits)

This is NOT a Bush-only situation.

We should have learned from the 1970s oil crisis.

But hadn't.

And even by 1982 set things in motion that would make us far more dependent on the stuff.

The net result WILL BE more crime, agony, despair, and death.

[jackster]

8. AMEN!

n/t

[mike_c]

9. bingo-- this has been coming for decades, and we knew it....

It's not Bush's fault. We have all created a society with infrastructure dependent upon an unsustainable, finite resource. It can't go on indefinitely. Bush is part of the problem, of course-- and he's especially resistant to finding long term solutions, but so has every american politician been for the last 75 years. This crisis has been anticipated for decades.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. I've heard of another suggestion. . .

but it's not fit to be mentioned here.

:evilfrown:

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. I believe that we don't even have a clue how much this will hurt us

But apparently NO is a toxic soup, a floating grave for lots of people right now. There are poor who are trapped and people all over without homes.

[jackster]

6. as I said earlier today....

I'll use the D word

the depression begins - only hastened by Katrina, but surely inevitable with the dismantling of our democracy going back to Raygun.

I'm 50 years old and I never thought I'd see this

[wli]

7. Bushler has destroyed the country. It's over.

There is no coming back from this.

[Arkansas Democrat]

10. Our Gas Prices

went up 15 cents over night! Yesterday we were at $2.54 and now we're at $2.69!!

I don't look for that fall in prices after Labor Day like I've been hearing about.