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Alaska's Mt. Redoubt Has Erupted
alaskana98 writes "Alaska's Mt. Redoubt volcano has erupted 3 times, with the first event starting at 10:38 PM Alaska standard time.
The ash cloud is estimated to be higher than 50,000 feet. So far, only light ash fall is predicted for areas north
of Anchorage."
i bet jindal feels like a doof
Explain why we are still not in an ice age if the "natural contributions of the Earth's own systems" are stable and don't cause climate change.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's spending money, right?
To pay people's wages? That sounds exactly like stimulus.
To buy equipment? That sounds exactly like stimulus too.
Sure less multiplier effects than say building roads and bridges to connect industries to transport hubs/people, but you can't say it "does nothing to STIMULATE the economy", since clearly it does.
Of course stimulating the economy by borrowing/printing money is retarded anyway, but that's beside the point.
Well, if simply paying wages is the goal, then you could pay a LOT more wages for $140,000,000 a year than you could by simply monitoring volcanoes. How much of that money is spent monitoring volcanoes overseas? How many American jobs does it provide? What is the LONG TERM stimulus to the economy when compared to say a school which employs teachers, janitors, administrators for decades, not to mention educating kids?
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against volcano monitoring, but not under guise of "stimulus". $140,000,000/yr will provide 2800 people with $50,000/yr jobs that actually build something, fix something, or make life easier for someone else, all of which would stimulate the economy much more than a few geologists sitting around collecting steam and ash data from a non-active volcano in the Phillipines. Again, I'm not saying it's not important, but it certain is not stimulus.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Why should you care at all how much energy Gore uses, if none (or little) of it causes Greenhouse pollution? Do you demand that we all live worse, even if we don't have to?
Gore is a leader because he leads. He took political risks - and real political damage - for years while he was ahead of public opinion. Now that the evidence is so overwhelming that even bad leaders like Bush admit the problem Gore has been working to solve while they've been working to cause it, Gore is widely recognized as that leader because he helped get the public to accept the science. Though the public is so hard to lead that even an example of a rich guy living well without causing the harm he's working to avert isn't good enough for some people.
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make install -not war
Well, your post was kinda flattering, if inaccurate. I thank you for the accurate flattery :).
I've been much less "partisan" since Republicans lost most of their power after holding way too much for way too long. I don't know how I look otherwise. FWIW, my "partisan" attitude is not so much a Democratic partisan, because I'm not a Democrat (I'm independent), as it is highly anti Republican, since that party has been such a damaging collection of bad people for so long, and we're so damaged by it.
In this case, you're going along with Jindal's Republican lie that $140M is spent by Democrats on volcano monitoring, when I pointed out the fact is that the monitoring gets only a (relatively small) fraction of that overall budget amount. And though Republicans did indeed spend some considerable money on volcano monitoring when they were the ones writing, passing and signing USGS budgets, I never complained - because I never saw evidence it was too much. In fact, if I'd seen evidence that it was too little, I probably would have complained. As I just did when Jindal attacked it, even if he has only lies and partisan posturing to offer, without power to screw up that budget (at the present time). Indeed, I could have pointed out the further Republican hypocrisy of Sarah Palin not only accepting the money Jindal badmouthed (but can't stop), but Palin's refusing to even comment on that dramatic divergence from the official Republican position on that budget, even as she continues to run for president. Because I'm talking about Jindal, disaster preparedness, and Republican refusal to learn from Katrina (or anything else), not the vaster and duller subject of mere Republican hypocrisy.
If you can show evidence that the current system (including the safety of USGS/contractor jobs in this Republican recession) "works fine" without the stimulus budget, I'd like to see it. All I can see is Jindal claiming he learned from his (imaginary, and self-defeating as a fable) Katrina experience that the government shouldn't fund monitoring for natural disasters. Katrina was predicted by government monitoring, too, but the full necessary system under Republican control and development didn't seem to "work fine". Except to Jindal, for whom it works fine as a (made up, self-defeating) story to tell on TV.
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make install -not war
Can Governor Sarah Palin see it happening from her house?
And if she does, does this make her a qualified Vulcanologist?