Be scared: the other risks Bush is putting on us as he defunds safety

[Inland]

Let me address something else, like Rummy said, the stuff that we know we don't know.

Now we find out that the fed government defunded programs to keep NO safe from hurricanes in o rder to fund Iraq.

What do you think they've cut from YOUR area? What do you think, for example, is happening at the Center for Disease Control? How about the bridge you drive over every day?

Take a few thousand items, cut them to the bone, ignore them, take a little risk on each one....some of the risks will come occur. It's simply probability

They are risking your very life, and they don't even know how or how much.

All you know is that THEY don't know or don't care or both.

Be scared.

[nickinSTL]

1. In this area, a local TV talk show

was discussing how utterly unprepared we'd be for an earthquake.

We're not that far from the New Madrid fault line, which had a number of severe quakes in the early 19th century.

The most widely felt earthquakes in the recorded history of North America were a series that occurred in 1811-1812 near New Madrid, Missouri. A great earthquake, whose magnitude is estimated to be about 8, occurred on the morning of December 16, 1811. Another great earthquake occurred on January 23, 1812, and a third, the strongest yet, on February 7, 1812. Aftershocks were nearly continuous between these great earthquakes and continued for months afterwards. These earthquakes were felt by people as far away as Boston and Denver. Because the most intense effects were in a sparsely populated region, the destruction of human life and property was slight. If just one of these enormous earthquakes occurred in the same area today, millions of people and buildings and other structures worth billions of dollars would be affected.

--

The maximum intensity experienced in the Alaska earthquake of 1964 was X; damage from the San Francisco and New Madrid earthquakes reached a maximum intensity of XI.

--From the USGS http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq1/history.html

[whatever4]

4. Yup

And it's a nice big one too. Lived here most of my life, grew up knowing about it. When it goes, it's going to reshape thing around here too. Look for granite to live on; it's the oldest and most stable rock we have, some areas remained intact when it went off before. Head to the Ozarks, Ozark foothills. Ancient moutains. Take care neighbor.

[displacedtexan]

2. The Port of Baltimore is still not secure.

The last I heard, we have resources to check about 2% of shipments entering from abroad.

We feel really safe.
</sarcasm>

And don't even get me started on our whack job Repuke governor's hatred of Baltimore's public schools and social programs.

[madmom]

3. No program left behind...

to repay there corporate sponsors.Crimes Against Nature by Robert Kennedy Jr. is an interesting read to say the least.Yes be very scared,then get very active.