The Cascades' volcanoes are daunting enough, but they're not the only volcanic threat to the Lower 48.

The biggest threat is Yellowstone National Park, which is actually a giant volcano known as the Yellowstone Caldera. God help us all when this one blows because when it does, everyone east of Yellowstone will be buried in ash. (Not that this will be the first national and international disaster to come out of Wyoming.)

Welcome to the major leagues, Bobby. Don't let the door hit you in the ass...

Krugman: "the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead."

Krugman was responding to what Jindal said about volcano detection, and he's exactly right.  All they've got left is finding stuff in Democratic bills that sounds funny, and publicly snickering at it.

If this were the summer of 2001, when the big stories were shark attacks and Chandra Levy, that sort of triviality might work as a political play.  But by playing this sort of game now, they're not only digging their own grave, but stepping in it and dragging the dirt down on top of themselves.

Maybe we can loan them some more shovels. :-)

Of course the Republicans begrudge you preparedness! You are just a pinko commie hippy loving f*g so you are beyond consideration! Berkeley! Sheesh....

/snark

Why bother having an army?  Why not just count on volunteer armed citizens to protect us all?

god, what a disaster, jindal looks like a total douchebag, and the public is openly contemptuos of them.

talk about a pr failure

If you are serious about disaster preparedness, I heartily recommend the Zombie Squad.

No, seriously.

From their website:

Zombie Squad is an elite zombie suppression task force ready to defend your neighborhood from the shambling hordes of the walking dead. We provide trained, motivated, skilled zombie extermination professionals and zombie survival consultants. Our people and our training are the best in the industry.

When the zombie removal business is slow we focus our efforts towards educating ourselves and our community about the importance of disaster preparation.

To satisfy this goal we host disaster relief charity fundraisers, disaster preparation seminars and volunteer our time towards emergency response agencies.

Our goal is to educate the public about the importance of personal preparedness and self reliance, to increase its readiness to respond to disasters such as Earthquakes, Floods, Terrorism or Zombie Outbreaks. We want to make sure you are prepared for any crisis situation that might come along in your daily life which may include having your face eaten by the formerly deceased.

Yeah, I am from Colombia which has 15 active or dormant volcanoes. They are things of beauty. From my school as a boy I could look out and see the Nevado del Huila towering 18,000 feet with its snow pack glistening. In 1985, Colombia learned the dangers of not keeping close tabs on its volcanoes. The Nevado del Ruiz erupted melting its snow cap and sending a lahar, a mudflow, down its flanks. It buried 25,000 people in the town of Armero. It was the largest death toll from a volcano since Kraktoa erupted in 1880s. Pasto, a provincial capital, lies under the very active Galeras. A few years ago a number of scientists were killed with a gas release. Monitoring the volcanoes in the Aluetians is important because just above all US-Asia air traffic overflies the region. A volcano blows and airliners can tumble out of the sky. Volcanoes are majestic and deadly.

Now here's what gets me. To write my little post last took 15 minutes. All I had to do was google USGS volcano monitoring to ascertain the few facts required. Is the GOP this lazy and intellectually uncurious? Or they prefer to be simply stupid? And doesn't it make sense that it you are going to attack a Federal program that you look up what it does before you derisively attack it?

My question from last night is valid. How can you trust the GOP with our lives when they can't even do 15 minutes of research?

He hates US. He, like the Republican Party and their core supporters hate the "Left Coast". I even know of some rare conservatives in SF who hate the Coast (why they are here I have no idea). Volcanoes are easy to snicker at when your party is reduced to mostly a part of the country where they do not exist. And if the SF Bay Area was flattened by a "big one", they will be dancing on our graves.