Free Republic

Don’t get me wrong, we’d be happy to get rid of her. But America doesn’t deserve Grunhilda. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has confirmed she is in talks with Joe Biden’s campaign to become his running mate, as the race to join his ticket reaches an unseen fever pitch. “I’ve had a conversation with some folks,” Whitmer said in a Tuesday morning interview on the “Today” show. Nothing better than folksy, female VP.  A rising star in the Democratic Party who has garnered national headlines through her handling of the Wolverine State’s COVID-19 outbreak, Whitmer is considered one of several women...

Rain washes out DNC opening festivitiesBy Cecelia Hanley Updated: Sep 03, 2012 11:02 PM EDT CHARLOTTE, NC (RNN) – Mother Nature likes messing with the political process. The Republicans had Hurricane Isaac that postponed their festivities in Tampa, and late afternoon summer thunderstorm cut short CarolinaFest2012 for the Democrats. As native North Carolinian James Taylor sang "You've Got a Friend," the skies opened up and people ran for cover under awnings, hotel drive ups, parking garages and covered restaurant patios. Many lingered to see if the concert would continue after a rain delay, but organizers canceled the event. Earlier in...

In the space of a year, a tsunami, an earthquake, brutal storms and floods have claimed more than 300,000 lives and cost at least 100 billion dollars in damage. Humans prefer to view these catastrophes as the result of misfortune, of randomness, of the unfathomable forces of Nature, of the whim of gods or of God. But the exceptional disasters of the past 12 months raise a far more difficult question. Could mankind be to blame? For many scientists, the deep pain from this year's string of disasters is to a very large degree man-made. From the Mississippi delta to...

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones remembers attending an emergency training session in August 2001 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that discussed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the United States. First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York. Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault. Now that the first two have come to pass, she and other earthquake experts are using the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to reassess how California would handle a major temblor. Jones, scientist-in-charge for the...

MAN-MADE MISTAKES INCREASE DEVASTATION OF "NATURAL" DISASTERS Daily Policy Digest ENVIRONMENT Thursday, September 08, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While storms such as Hurricane Katrina are sometimes called an act of God or a natural disaster, the devastation they leave behind is not. But the actions that humans take contribute to the damage caused by extreme weather, say observers. For example: People continue to live in mobile homes, although tornadoes turn them into matchsticks and one-third of all deaths from tornadoes occur among people living in mobile homes. Mobile-home communities and poor neighborhoods are also much more likely to be situated in flood...

99 years apart, disasters that devastated both cities share strange similarities. The old New Orleans is dead, drowned in the worst natural disaster in an American city since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. There is an eerie sense of parallel between the two catastrophes 99 years apart. Both cities were destroyed. Both cities had to face an uncertain future. San Francisco recovered and became the city it is today. The story of New Orleans is yet to be written. New Orleans in 2005 was about the same size as San Francisco in 1906 -- 484,000 people lived in...

<p>State Attorney General Earl Anzai said the only way to protect the state from future claims such as the one upheld in the 1999 Sacred Falls landslide may be to pass a law exempting the state from liability.</p> <p>"I suspect that we'll have to go to the Legislature and get relief to be sure that the state doesn't get sued every time someone gets hurt, and not only in wild areas," he said last week.</p>