Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

IRENE

I've got my candles, flashlight, food provisions, a bottle of deliciously liberal Chardonnay,
and a Julien Barnes novel all ready for Irene to come crashing into Boston on her psychedelic motorcycle.





Stay safe everyone.

UPDATE:

The bleak, uncaring world of Libertarianism:

"GILFORD, N.H. -- After a lunch speech, Ron Paul slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and said that no national response to Hurricane Irene is necessary.

"We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960," Paul said. "I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district.

Let's take a look back at Galveston circa 1900, shall we?
The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston in the U.S. state of Texas, on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. It was the deadliest hurricane in US history, and the second costliest hurricane in US history based on the US dollar's 2005 value (to compare costs with those of Hurricane Katrina and others).
The hurricane caused great loss of life with the estimated death toll between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused more than 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people."

h/t Dependable Renegade

11 comments:

Kevin Robbins said...

Good luck to you there in Boston, Shaw. Hoping that Irene wimps out before she gets to you.

Leslie Parsley said...

I hope it wimps out, too. I'll be thinking about you and hoping for the best.

Les Carpenter said...
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IRENE said...
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okjimm said...

Irene is getting a lot of coverage... and it dawned on me, while I bask in beautiful weather, that I now know a whole bunch of folks on the east coast.... and while it seem Irene has weakened, it can still cause great havoc, turmoil, damage and distress.

I truly hope all out there get through ok..... the best to you all.

(O)CT(O)PUS said...

Ooops, I think a tree just fell on the Village Idiot and his consort. R.I.P., RN.

(O)CT(O)PUS said...

Here is my comment left under Captain's Fogg's recent post at the Zone, Manha de Carnival:

Yesterday, New Joisy’s verbally abusive GOP despot said: “Mandatory evacuation means we will arrest you if you don’t leave your homes” only to backtrack a few hours later with: “Well, maybe we won’t arrest you, but we won’t rescue you either.

So Ron Paul thinks FEMA is a nanny thang, that folks should fend themselves just like the good ole days when thousands died in a single storm.

In 2004, hurricanes Frances and Jeannie tore through my neighborhood. A single mom who lived down the road had sent her teenage daughter to Miami to stay with relatives while she braved the storm alone. Days later, the mom was found dead.

No matter what any Republican says, whether they err on the side of caution or err on the side of recklessness, they are all so fucking callous and stupid, I’d like to smack them, smack them all! I can’t do snark and cynicism when I am this angry.

Leslie Parsley said...

Ron-boy isn't the only Republican in the asylum. Boehner and Cantor are joining hands and threatening to withhold federal aide unless cuts are made elsewhere. And then there's always the inmates at Fox who have called for the end to the National Weather Service.

I think they have a group leader who holds up his hands and asks them to come up with the most outrageous thing they can think of.

Les Carpenter said...
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Les Carpenter said...
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(O)CT(O)PUS said...

Republicans Lock Down Town Halls To Stifle Critics. They are even holding private meetings and charging admission ... taking graft from big money donors while keeping out the public. Yup, that is how a once viable democracy has devolved into proto-fascism.