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-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Gustav, God, McCain, W, and Moore....
Posted by Anonymous | 8:58 AM
Love him or hate him, Michael Moore has been speaking out bravely against the total and complete insanity of the past 8 years from the get go. This morning I woke to a letter in my inbox from Mike to God, and...so clearly does it spell out whats happened to us all as Americans, who has hijacked our country, the undercurrent of ideals from nuts implying who and what we are, and how helpless we have been in the face of a construct of fear designed to immobilize us.

This insidious fear , constructed by the Rovian spin machine, has glued us to our couches and demanded that we sit on our hands while our fellow Americans and citizens of the world suffer; go shopping, is the message that we get from our leaders...don't question what is being done in our names because if we do, maybe we are less than patriotic. Even if he is over the top, Moore has bravely spoken out about the truth of this sad situation. He is also someone who immediately took action when Katrina hit, raising money, closing his office, and sending all of his resources there. That is what Americans do in the face of disaster. As the Bush administration is winding down their fiasco, maybe we can start to get back to ourselves. 8 years is a long, long time in the American short term memory, but maybe we need to start expecting a little more of ourselves and eachother.



As of yesterday New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordered the evacuation of NOLA and hopefully that is moving along as well as can be expected. There is no wonderful and smooth way to get the old and infirm out of their homes and to ensure pets and property. There is no easy way to then return to destroyed homes and to try to rebuild again. Even with most of the people gone...even with a partially rebuilt infrastructure...there is no way to tell what is going to happen. The same news reports about Louisiana also apply to Florida, Texas and just anbout any Gulf region where this or the next storm could hit. From the AP:



So, direct from Mike's site, here is his letter from this morning...you can read it here or there...and be sure to look at the trailer to the new documentary Trouble the Waters which is playing in limited release right now and should be required viewing as we decide who is going to take over the mantle of Commander in Chief.

Sunday, August 31st, 2008
An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson's ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be canceled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!"

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God's fellow children who are reading this, the city of New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately

c/p RIPCoco

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Education
Posted by SPIIDERWEB™ | 3:20 AM

I'm here for ya.

I was gonna post about the cyclone heading toward Bangladesh, but was just too damn lazy.

Ya never know with Mother Nature. She can be benevolent or a veritable hellion.
Headline: Powerful cyclone kills 242 in Bangladesh

The loss of life is truly ghastly. I would never have guessed the carnage would be so severe. I naïvely thought people would seek safe shelter. Then we come to the next story.

A huge earthquake hit Chile.

Headline: Quake kills 2, damages homes in Chile

Mother can surprise you.

OK, here's the education part of this fucking post. My mind is so full of trivia, facts, useless knowledge I need to spit some of it out now and then to make room for more trivia, facts and useless knowledge.

Let us start with a Richter Scale 3 earthquake which is just a damn annoyance to people on the west coast of the US. From there, things get really hairy.

The quake in Chile was 7.7 magnitude. Bear with me. This will floor you:
The magnitude of most earthquakes is measured on the Richter scale, invented by Charles F. Richter in 1934. The Richter magnitude is calculated from the amplitude of the largest seismic wave recorded for the earthquake, no matter what type of wave was the strongest.

The Richter magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale (base 10). What this means is that for each whole number you go up on the Richter scale, the amplitude of the ground motion recorded by a seismograph goes up ten times. Using this scale, a magnitude 5 earthquake would result in ten times the level of ground shaking as a magnitude 4 earthquake (and 32 times as much energy would be released). To give you an idea how these numbers can add up, think of it in terms of the energy released by explosives: a magnitude 1 seismic wave releases as much energy as blowing up 6 ounces of TNT. A magnitude 8 earthquake releases as much energy as detonating 6 million tons of TNT. Pretty impressive, huh? Fortunately, most of the earthquakes that occur each year are magnitude 2.5 or less, too small to be felt by most people.

So we're talking 10 times 3. Then 10 times 4. Then 10 times 5. Then 10 times 6 plus a few more points.

Folks, that's goddamn huge. Thank God only 2 died.

FYI: Indonesia had a quake of 8.5 magnitude. So did Sumatra. And Alaska.

Hey, that's nearly 10 times the destructive force of the Chile quake. And the list of 8+ magnitude earthquakes is almost endless

As you should know by now, don't fuck with Mother Nature. You will never win.

Cross post from SPIIDERWEB™.

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