Virginia777—Not really—lol. But it depends on what you are looking for. Cleveland and Cincinnati used to be pretty exciting areas. Now they are Rust Buckets.

Except for six people dying, the tornado of Xenia , Ohio was an attempt, (by Karma, i guess) to eliminate another impoverished Ohio town, plauged by redneckism—so, was therefore, exciting..but I had alot of friends who knew someone who died pretty well and lost homes. My family lived in a big house in the next (was a village) over and many moved in with us for awhile. That was exciting for a high school kid (me)

My grandpa used to call it the asshole of the world. Many people that live there agree, but it is a rough ittle place and hard to get out of.

Lake Erie is a mess again. All in all, I wouldnt say that Ohio is a good place to “tool around and see what turns up”—what turns up alot these days, is angry as hell former plant workers who think that the Second Amendment is about all that they have left!

to KDelphi:

you’re kidding!

Ohio sounds a lot more exciting than I realized!

Texas has tornadoes, hurricanes, deserts (that are growing) plus suck-cessionists too! Oh joy! (He said archly.) So with some of the best hospitals and worst medical care in the USA it is a study in contrasts. We have NASA’s command center and a black man several years ago was dragged to death by whites here. We have (unfortunately) Chuck Norris and we had (sadly) Molly Ivans (1944-2007). It is hick and metropolitan at the same time. Avant guard and rustic. Big enough for 5 states if we so choose. Sometimes I think that might be the better option than one big clunker of a state. Bigger isn’t always better.

The state celebrates its independence and nationhood but not becoming a state of the Union. Some do dream of a Second Texas Republic. Maybe one day they may get their wish and regret it. Maybe not.

Only four states were originally independent nations when they joined the USA. Texas, California, Vermont and Maine were so until they made the plunge into a union. [East Florida flipped a coin and become part of West Florida instead of independence.]

In our depression California has slipped from 9th largest economy (if they were a nation again) to 10th and I can say that its fall isn’t yet finished with this larger than ever fire.

So many things happening some natural and others decidedly unnatural like our depression which was caused on purpose to put us into this very situation. One not unlike the last time these same families, corporations and groups tried to overthrow our gov’t in 1934. Such a situation works to their advantage. But not ours.

Virginia777—Sorry, but the largest, most destructive toranado ever recorded on earth took place in the county in Ohio I was born in.

I was actually in Norfolk Virginia , visiting a friend who had married a sailor saw it on the T-V!!

I suppose Idaho has landslides and Texas, Minute Men….Florida has hurricanes. NH is too snowy (used to live there too) and everyone shoots at anyone that they dont recognize , on sight, and then you have to be their jailhouse counselor, as the only one in town….

I would try another country.

Why in the world would one not want to live in California because of it natural disasters?

I think Ohio is “safe”, Eugene Robinson,

enjoy.

Folktruther, September 3 at 5:44 am

Two dead firefighters deserve a bit more from you, I believe….

Oh, foosh.  there are over 5ive million of us living in LA and every year there are brush fires and a few houses burn.  Big deal.  You’d think the sky was falling.  Simply a diversion from America’s and the world’s real problems.

The problem wasn’t Los Angeles but building into the hills and areas where fires normally erupt annually as a cycle that clears away the brush for new growth. Those capitalists who built there didn’t care and managed not to tell the people they were now living in a normal fire zone.

Human intervention isn’t always good Mr. Robinson, it compounds the previous meddling that humans do when they don’t use their brains and their “hearts” to see what they are doing. The unscrupulous do not feel for others and just use their brains to make their profit and damn everyone else. Human ignorance of cause and effect and snubbing Nature is hubris so common. Those homes should not be rebuilt in those fire zones unless they want to pay exorbitant fees for fire protection and rebuilding their houses, the same way. Just like those who gamble with their lives in tornado and hurricane prone areas.

Fun to see the latent religiosity coming out in these eschatological comments. One gets
the distinct feeling that a lot of folks would gladly take apocalypse if, as part of the deal,
their fellow human travelers would finally get their comeuppance.

Revenge fantasies aside, it’s normal for the vegetation in southern California to burn. In
fact, the overall health of the ecosystem relies on this cycle. It’s also normal for a few
houses on the perimeter to get caught up in this. When you live in those areas you do so
with the knowledge that you are on the front lines of a battle between humans and the
rest of nature, one that’s taking place all over the planet. Under these circumstances
there’s bound to be a skirmish from time to time.

It’s not the end of the world. It’s not nature taking a shot across mankind’s bow. Dream
on! It’s just another fire season. It happens every year. Just as others might feel
excitement at the first snowfall, Angelinos can look forward to the sun glowing bright red
at mid day, or ashfall dancing across parking lots. Get past all the excess moralizing, and
it’s actually quite beautiful. Just make sure you keep up on your insurance premiums.

I am sorry for the people losing everything there, but, the fires are natural, are they not? Sure, there is more drought, etc due to global climate change (ie hurricanes, thunderstorms, etc), but it is simply that there are very few places on the planet anymore that are not inhabited.

Man against Nature, guess who wins?

The title of the article made me think this thread was about Obama’s chance for a second term.

ooops, my bad.

Carry on!

Cognitis1—-I really don’t think you are 1.  Maybe
666th.  Your limited vocabulary makes me question
your intellectual level. Not only did I not mention
“hate” but I purposefully mentioned “love.”

Several days ago I recorded a documentary on CNBC
titled “Porn: The Business of Pleasure.”  I just
finished watching it.  Los Angeles is the Porn
Capital of the world.  Wonder if there is a relationship to the fires surrounding Los Angeles
and the filth that eminates from there?

Not screed enough, Eugene. How many of those evacuated, let alone burned down already, are grateful for firefighters? And for California Fair Plan? Which, in effect, is mandated “public option” for homeowners, though a seriously expensive option. How many of aforementioned are opposed to single-payer healthcare because would be gub-run?

Re mainstream media “coverage”—both local and national—another yellow-journalism job of fear-mongering by constant mention of “10,000 homes threatened.” Thus far, about 50 have actually burned down. If not strictly fear-mongering al Qaeda-like, then sensationalizing, which is to say yellow as fire. But so thirsty have we been rendered, we haven’t collectively much idea of that hue of yella.

Recall banks still destroying millions of “homes” all across the joint. More than any fire or flood ever did. Maybe not literally the actual structures, but certainly homes.

If this little chip in the continent’s west coast was a good place to make a city, maybe not so much a megalopolis expanding outward with every passing day. Into wilderness, where was brush, glorious oak trees, weeds, coyotes, and mountain lions too. Fire has swept across this or that part of west Cal annually over geological eon. Ah, beautiful nature, which will not have us with our silly ideas.

LA is the megalopolis most subject to natural “disaster” in the entire nation. Indeed, the earthquake that will one day topple far more than 10,000 structures. Media will not be here to televise that any more than it will be to televise the revolution, which is a tad less likely event than earthquake.

But New Orleans already underwent destruction of far more than 10,000 structures. By the end of California’s fire season, maybe 300-500 structures will have burned down. Not at all bad under circumstances of economic flight to own a little separation. Though most places threatened by fires are fairly ritzy. Next up? Brentwood/Bel Air, which ain’t seen fire in going on 50 years. When predicable fire happens, all will again get to foot the bill either to protect or to salvage developers and customers. Well, not exactly “all,” after yet more tax breaks to property owners. Sales taxes (in Orwellian: VATs)  then imposed on those who can least afford to pay and who mostly are stuck nowhere near a Cal Oak.

Hurricanes are just as natural to the continent’s east and Gulf coasts, though southwest coast too as one is about to hammer Cabo once again. From Virginia round to Texas and on down to Venezuela. Including New Orleans smack where the Big Muddy meets big oil. In private business’s infinite wisdom, pols were directed to dig up that delta so as to allow for more ready access to dough, profit the motive needless to note.

Loony Tune economic system that values property over people? Meet, Ms. Nature.

New Orleans could be bulwarked enough to withstand a 5 were biz to direct government to spend as much as was spent over a month to wage high war on Mesopotamia. If not against rain and wind, then against levy-busting surge. That would involve also reinstallation of nature that was there before “wise” directive. Called “marshland.”

Possibly LA too, though more of an ideological problem: Not much chance of and for intelligence when publicly funded “freedom” is at stake. Otherwise, LA might—unlike during celebrated Bradley era—rein in development at the same time as deadbeat Council/Supers provided by law for a half-mile-wide DMZ between mountains and cities constituting metro LA. Any who chose to live beyond the DMZ would be on their own. Then we might see to a few cents more for LA hospitals shut down a while back.

By NYCartist, September 1 at 3:22 pm #
There’s a fab cartoon, each panel showing people living somewhere’s else saying what this article says, and you end up with almost everyplace having something vulnerable.  What “we” need to learn, is how to:STOP BREEDING AS IF WE WERE FLIES!

Every problem we now face is caused by one simple problem, too many people! Nature is a self correcting mechanism! Fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes are all the easy solutions. The really had one will be water and food! And those issues will soon be upon us!

Here is a bad idea you won’t read much about. In California rice and cotton are grown.  These crops take huge amounts of water and can be grown elsewhere in the country.  California is experiencing a bad drought yet no notices this stupid use of land.  Cotton is actually a left over from the Civil War when cotton growers came here to escape the ravages of war.  Being born here in Los Angles in 1950 it is ok with me if you can convince the people who moved here after that to leave, but I won’t hold my breath.

I thought from the title that this blog was about Obama’s health care plan.

My bad.

Carry on!

As long as humans treat the environment as their ad hoc dumping ground, disasters will follow.  Technology can save us by letting us work together without living right on top of each other and on top of fragile nature.  Anybody remember the Bhopal tragedy?  Even “Drill, baby, drill” is a forgotten chant.  Eventually the San Andreas Fault will enforce the final vote for LA.  Let’s hope humans have moved outta town by then. 
    There should be some forethought taken before building homes on tinder piles and mudslide areas.

Eugene Robinson’s article along with much of the commentary it’s elicited illustrates effectively the ‘circular-reasoning’ to which those CONfined within the virtual-world of “civilization” are limited….perilously so.  Several of the CONtraption’s defining CONceits are also on-display here….rampant homo centrism not least among them.

Another is the received opinion that processes within the system are essentially merely cyclical, with things getting back to pretty much the same basically “normal” CONdition from one round to the next.  This fails to take into account the vast ideological/institutional/electro-mechanical apparatus at-work, and the intensifying and accelerating effects this has on everything put into it.  So the entire thing itself, along with all those enmeshed in its toils, is actually spiralling toward some terminally singular state mostly imperceptible to those same captives….and even to those of them styling their selves as occupying positions of command-and-CONtrol “authority”.

From here in Indian Country us Turtle Island holocaust survivors have a more comprehensive view of the condition our tame Sisters’ and Brothers’ CONdition is in.  It looks to us like a “global” CONcentration camp (and remmeber, we have some first-hand experience of such things) run by the most sociopathic among its inmates.

So we wonder how so many of them can get so involved in the trivia of religion and politics and “saving” cities, which are the very definition of their mostly self-inflicted, and nearing its inevitable dead-end, predicament.  Coult it just be one of Life’s little ironies?

Hokahey!

There’s a fab cartoon, each panel showing people living somewhere’s else saying what this article says, and you end up with almost everyplace having something vulnerable.  What “we” need to learn, is how to:
1. stop cutting trees
2. pay attention to the levees (NOLA)and rebuild the
  wetlands
3. Work with nature because there’s no place “safe”
  from everything.

OK, so when are people ever going to learn that the oso’s name is “Smokey Bear,” not “Smokey the Bear”?

Show the bear some respect, Eugene.

I was always taught, and still believe, that one should have a healthy respect for Mother Nature. We (humans) will always take from nature and return very little. However, there is a balance that can be achieved, and that is what we should strive for.

I live in NJ. Once, one of the most polluted areas in the World. Yesterday, I was watching a Red-Tailed Hawk circling high in the sky. The reintroduction of birds of prey has been hugely successful. Red-Tailed Hawks in the Pine Barrens, Bald Eagles in the wetlands, Peregrine Falcons in the Meadowlands, and Ospreys down the shore. All, nothing short of amazing, considering… Now, we need to take care of the Horseshoe crabs and the Red Knots.

Development has taken on a new direction here. Public/private partnerships (unfortunately, sometimes corrupt) have placed an emphasis on a balance between business, citizens and nature. It’s not so much an “environmental” issue as it is a quality of life issue. It is however, very expensive. I would like to see the rest of the country learn from NJ’s past mistakes.

If you want to know more about Los Angeles, and who built it up and how that happened, you must read Mike Davis.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_(scholar)

Without housing, jobs and a water supply (not local, but most locals don’t even know that) people would not have moved to the Southwest to enjoy the weather.

Thanks for exposing your and christian96’s comments as
impertinent to the blog: I only responded to both
christian96’s hateful and illiterate comment and your
inane—by your admission—defense. This blog’s matter
is not about damning all who don’t accept Jesus to
hell; so, yes, christian96’s hateful illiterate comment
didn’t pertain to this blog’s matter, and thus your
inane defense didn’t pertain as well. Let’s revert
comments hence to the matter at hand.

cognitis1, September 1 at 11:32 am #

Your continued use of invectives and projected
emotion is becoming boring. You, dear sir, are the
one responding defensively and why do you
constantly refer to Dobson, Hedges, Robertson and MacArthur? What do they have to do with Los
Angeles and it’s precarious position as a city in
a collapsing environment? You have surely wandered
far from the subject of this thread. I for one
will endeavour to stay focused on the harrowing
threat to our very existence here in the west. I
hope you find some comfort and I wish you nothing
but peace. 

Only someone illiterate and defensive could interpret
my rational and moderate comment to be hateful. My
comment consists both in tone and diction with much of
what Chris Hedges has written about pagans like
christian96. You need to post on Pat Robertson’s or
James Dobson’s sites, where you and christian96 would
find other illiterate hateful cattle.

cognitis1, September 1 at 10:25 am #

I didn’t peruse your comment, I read it. Your projected
hate came through loud and clear. Civil? No, it was
rude and insulting; at least to somebody who could take
the spewed bile seriously. Obviously you are a very
angry person and you have my profound sympathy. I hope
you can find some peace in your life. You hurt yourself
far more than the target of the impotent insults you
project.

Ouroborus:

Since you evidently didn’t peruse my comment, don’t
correct my diction, which was both literate and civil.
Christian96’s comment was a hateful and illiterate
platitude right out of John MacArthur or James Dobson
or Pat Robertson, and such hateful platitudes insult
the intelligent and disgust the literate and eliminate
the rational. Rather than unconsciously correct the
literate and rational, attempt to define christian96’s
platitude as NOT a hateful platitude. Next.

cognitis1, September 1 at 10:04 am #

Surely that was uncalled for. Civility and the skilled
use of the mother tongue should suffice; all else fails
and insults intelligence, no?

christian96, September 1 at 9:40 am #

Well, mistakenly, I was hoping for a little more
love. My belief/orientation isn’t what’s important
here; what is important is our respective views of
the world around us and we don’t have to constantly
refer to our dogma; just how we personally feel/view
the world. Quit trying to “teach” me about that which
I already know and reject; for “ME”. I have no
problem with you as a Christian, just your trying to
cram it down my throat and it ain’t gonna happen, so
just stop it, okay? You want to engage me in
conversation? Do so, minus the Christian dogma. You
need to remember; it’s the height of arrogance to
assume the majority of the world is wrong because
they don’t believe in Christianity. And the non-
believers out number believers (in Christianity) by
about 2 to 1; probably more. So, I will speak with
you, but not if you insist on continuing to preach.

Christian96 illiterate unconsciously regurgitates the
bile injected into him by Hedges’ “Christian” fascists.
Who is an illiterate pagan like this christian96 to
speak for God? The same Divine reason that separates
all men from other animals has manifested itself in
Buddhism and certainly Stoicism, from which
Christianity developed as a vulgar interpretation. For
any pagan such as christian96 to recklessly and
profanely speak for God and eliminate others indicates
not a Christian but rather a pagan hate-monger.

Ouroborus—-Since you have read the Bible you must
be familiar with the desire of Satan to be worshipped
when he tempted Jesus in the desert.  Satan is behind
all religions other than Christianity.  That includes
Buddism, Islam, etc.  Leave Satan and follow Jesus.

christian96, September 1 at 8:43 am #

Having actually read the bible; I can understand it as
your reference point, but this is a big world (and I’m
Buddhist); could you possibly couch your beliefs/views
in a less dogmatic context? Hey, just asking. I see it
as a payback for stupidity; that should work for about
any belief, yes?

Good idea, bad I.Q. No water, desert; ooh, ooh lets
build a city here. Stupid human tricks! When will we
ever grow up? Not likely IMO! 

The picture associated with this article immediately
reminded me of what Sodom and Gomorrah must have
looked like.  For years God has tolerated the evils
coming from the Los Angles area hoping that people
would repent and use the resources at their fingertips for good instead of evil.  When I was in
Jerusalem in Sept. 1999 I saw movies, television
programs, and porn contaminating the minds of the
children in the Holy city.  The evils were coming
from the Los Angeles area.  I believe the patience
of God has run its course.  It’s time for JUDGMENT!
You think the fires are bad.  You haven’t seen
anything.  Wait until the big earthquake flatens
Los Angeles.  Perhaps, they will then wake up and
start using their resources to promote love, kindness, forgiveness, and the other values that
help individuals and families prosper.  The choice
is theirs!

Half in our society truly beleive this is all their “god” given destiny and as such theirs to take. When we work against Nature there will be constant struggle as each action gains the natural re-action. learning to work WITH the natural world will gain us all time to enjoy what our Planet, Our MOTHER, has grown for her pleasure and ours. Peace.

It’s a cycle of destruction and renewal that will inexorably run its course unless humankind intervenes—which means that intervention is a good idea.

Man against nature, as Mr. Robinson so incorrectly asserts as a good idea, is no such thing.

The city of New Orleans once had a buffer zone of swamps that protected it, partially at least, from the ravages of an ocean agitated by hurricanes. Now that buffer has been drained, and the levees that took its place are maintained when affordable only.

As to that city in a desert, with its orange sky, endless need for water taken from the rest of the state, and endless traffic jams as well…Burn baby, burn.

I am a denizen of Northern California ( State of Jefferson for those in the know), thus my antipathy to L.A.

The longest lasting human artifacts are flint and obsidian spear points. But they were created by nature and merely adapted by humans. Everything that man creates is ephemeral, and that’s a good thing. It allows us to grow, and not remain captive to our own past. Better houses can be built, and new ways of adapting to nature developed. We are in the age of global warming now, and nothing will remain the same. The survival of our species is not a sure thing. Our intelligence is being tested. So far, we have risen to every challenge.  These fires will pass, and life will go on. And the really intelligent person will sell their gold and invest in obsidian. We’re probably gonna need it….