Prepare yourselves. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley came out with a message today

The two major pipelines that furnish gasoline to many states, including North Carolina, have been affected by Hurricane Katrina and are currently without electricity. They service North Carolina and 8-10 other states.

90 percent of our gas comes from these pipelines and right now they are not operational.

Suppliers generally have a week or so of supply. They have been shut down since the hurricane.

The pipelines need electric supply and the refineries that produce gasoline need to make urgent repairs also are without electricity.

The refineries that produce gasoline need to make urgent repairs.

Consequently, we do not know the extent of the problem, but we do know that there will be a signifcant loss of gasoline in the Southeast, at least in the short term, until the electricity is restored.

This is not only a state problem, this is also a regional and a national problem. We are hoping that the Department of Energy will take some action as soon as possible. I have tried to get direction from DOE, but they have not yet responded.

In the meantime, I am asking all North Carolinians to conserve gas. Some stations are already out.Wait for more information before making Labor Day travel plans.

The refineries and lines in the Gulf region centered around New Orleans supply somewhere between 11 and 20% of our country’s gasoline. There will be shortages and disruptions in the supply chain nationwide, at least in the near term (4-10 weeks will probably be the worst of it). I would advise you to drive as little as possible for the near future and use public transportation whenever you are able.

This will, of course, create a shock effect on our economy, perhaps even to the point of bringing the R-word into play. We are going to be feeling Katrina nationwide for quite some time. New Orleans may never recover.

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Screen captures of their respective official websites, taken on the same day, mere seconds apart. (click for full size image)

GOP:

Democrats:

Now which party do you think cares more about the people and has this country’s interests at heart rather than its own partisan gain?

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No, really.

An evangelical Christian group that regularly demonstrates at LGBT events is blaming gays for hurricane Katrina.

Repent America says that God “destroyed” New Orleans because of Southern Decadence, the gay festival that was to have taken place in the city over the Labor Day weekend.

And note: the org saying this is not out of the wingnut mainstream.

This is a group that has been defended by scores of lead religious right organizations in just the past year, including the Southern Baptist Convention, Center for Reclaiming America (attached to D. James Kennedy), the American Family Association’s AgapePress, WorldNetDaily, the men over at the Concerned Women for America, Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coaltion, the freepers, and more.

Of course, I’m sure Kevin Drum will make a nice post at any moment now to plea with the Left to not politicize things and draw a false equivalency between the language above and pointing out the Bush took funding away from FEMA and staffed it with political appointees with no disaster experience.

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the “homeland security borg.”

This year it was announced that FEMA is to “officially” lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

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on Flickr. Some amazing pics there, such as:

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I hear this outburst outside my office:

What is this bar thing? You know you’re not helping here. How do I get rid of this bar? It’s totally not helping at all. If I wanted this here, I would ask for it…

Imagine a lot of vehemence and exasperation here. MG then calls Granola over to see if Granola can fix it. Whereupon Granola calls me to see if I can fix the “problem.”

If you’ve ever used Excel since, oh, 2003 or so, you’ll notice a little formatting pop up/drop down that appears whenever you paste text into a cell. It looks like this:

This was the source of the problem. It goes away as soon as you type in any cell.

Malaprop Gurl has been using Excel daily for months.

Update: later explosion.

Google is done. I’m over it. It is … riDICulous. It’s been done for a long time now. It’s just too much crap.

Update: now she’s making fun of the voice mail menu recording

She just won’t shut up. She’s like you have 3 messages, message 1 blah blah blah, if you would like to listen to message blah blah blah.

Imagine the blahs with a WC Fields nasal slant and you’ll be right there.

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I believe this is reason #5011 why we invaded, but I may have lost count in the middle there somewhere.

The terrorists and insurgents are now waging a brutal campaign of terror in Iraq. They kill innocent men and women and children in the hopes of intimidating Iraqis. They’re trying to scare them away from democracy. They’re trying to break the will of the American people. Their goal is to turn Iraq into a failed state like Afghanistan was under the Taliban. If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition.

Just as Iraq was not a terrorist training camp until we invaded, neither were the oil refineries going to be sources of money for terrorists until we invaded.

When your justifications for remaining in a war are down to essentially throwing more bodies down the drain so as to not have all the deaths that came before them be meaningless, you know you’re in a failed operation.

We lost. It’s worse than Vietnam. We chose this country for our military rather than having the enemy dictate the battlefield, and we still got our asses handed to us by ragtag guerillas in less than 3 years. All thanks to incompetent leadership pursuing an elective war of imperialism against a target that posed no threat and about whom they had little understanding. Our military did just fine, thank you very much, but you can’t beat an impossible situation, which is where they’ve been placed.

Impeach Bush. Impeach Cheney. Impeach Rumsfeld. Impeach Wolfowitz. Impeach Rice. Indict Powell. Indict Feith. Indict Perle. Indict Chalabi. Indict Judy Miller. Indict Rove. Indict them all for war crimes, human rights violations, perjury, fraud, and homicide.

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Should Taxpayer Dollars Rebuild New Orleans?

But the founding fathers never intended, Article One, section Eight of the Constitution, never intended to provide one dollar of taxpayer dollars to pay for any disaster or anything that we might call charity.

Sure they did, buddy. It’s called the Interstate Commerce Clause, Art. I, Sect. 8, clause 3. Mr. JuCo econ prof:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.

Question: does a natural disaster impact interstate commerce? It sure does!

There used to be a guy who posted a lot on my forums that hewed to this line. His logic was internally consistent… but founded on completely illegitimate premises. The poster self-identified as a Christian and also as a proponent of views such as these (among others), but never bothered to question his own hypocrisy or straying from the teaching of his homedude Jesus. I wonder what’s become of good ‘ol LRob. I think of him much like Emperor Norton - an entertaining and infuriating batshit crazy resident. The place just isn’t the same without him.

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More money, same result. Proof positive that there isn’t anything, anywhere that Bush can’t do worse than any other possible human and no company or country he can’t run into the ground. He’s the most successful failure in recorded history this side of the Christian God.

The U.S. war in Iraq now costs more per month than the average monthly cost of military operations in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, according to a report issued on Wednesday.

The report, entitled “The Iraq Quagmire” from the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus, both liberal, anti-war organizations, put the cost of current operations in Iraq at $5.6 billion per month. This breaks down to almost $186 million a day.

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from the Onion, of course

Genie Grants Scalia Strict Constructionist Interpretation Of Wish

August 31, 2005 | Issue 41-35

WASHINGTON, DC - A genie freed from a battered oil lamp by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted the conservative jurist a strict constructionist interpretation of his wish for “a hundred billion bucks” Monday. “Sim sim salabim! Your wish is my command!” the genie proclaimed amid flashes of light and purple smoke, immediately filling the Supreme Court building with a massive herd of wild male antelopes. When Justice Scalia complained that the “bucks” had razed the U.S. Supreme Court building, trampling and killing several of his clerks and bringing traffic in the nation’s capital to a standstill for hours, the genie said, “Your honor, your wish is a sacred and unalterable document whose interpretation is not subject to the whims of society and changing social context.”

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Yes indeedy I do

Number of articles touting the “Bush Boom” on nationalreview.com: 44.

Change in median income 2001-2004: -$673.

Change in the number of Americans in poverty: +4.1 million

Change in the number of Americans without health insurance: +4.6 million

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I think I have a new contender for favorite Hitchcock movie, for reasons I can’t go into without ruining the plot. Let’s just say there’s some Kurosawa there and some quite modern storytelling.

It’s a murder/suspense film (of course), shot beautifully and well-acted. It’s not scary, but it is wonderfully told. There is some amazing camera work that you don’t realize is amazing until you realize that they had to do these shots before the invention of steadycams. Great stuff. Hitchcock was a genius.

But you knew that.

Interestingly, my favorite part of the movie - the thing that makes it one of my favorite Hitchock flicks, if not the favorite - is something that Hitchcock considered his second greatest filmmaking mistake. Hmm.

5/5. Good stuff.

Stage Fright, 1950
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd

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This picture was taken today. Leadership in action, Nero.

Donate. Because this man won’t.

Special bonus points for the preznidential seal on the geetar.

Oh, sorry, Kevin. Is that too political for your tastes?

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Give what you can. Audrey told me to take what I would have spent on cable for her and double it, so I did. Because I listen to Audrey. Audrey knows best, and the people of New Orleans - who are largely black and poor - need your help.

It’s worse than you think.

40,000-50,000 people in the superdome, including seriously injured people, and evacuees from the Hospitals.
There are no running water or sewage facilities — and no power. Temperatures are in he 90’s within the building. One man just committed suicide by jumping. ‘Unrest’ is growing within the superdome - and their
are there are now military as well civilian police on the scene. There are now several; major fires in view of city. There is evidently a fair amount of oil and gas floating on the flood waters.

Water is still rising and the Mayor is just now being evacuated by helicopter as City hall is now surrounded by water that can only be reached by small boat, water is about 3 feet deep at the steps of City Hall.

80% of New Orleans is totally submerged now, and will likely become 100% submerged tonight

…not to mention the prison riot and hostage situation currently ongoing in Orleans Parish Prison.

Disease and a lack of potable water are going to be the next major crises.

Please do what you are able.

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He’s, uh, doing his performance piece Trapped in the Closet Rap Opera.

It’s, uh, only possible to do something like this is you’re a supermegastar and can indulge in every whim without any handlers telling you that your shit stinks. Crazy bad.

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Perfect example of the subtle/backhanded racism in our country.

synopsis: blacks are portrayed as “looting” and non-blacks are not, or as Gilliard best sums it up: niggers loot, whites find.

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