JULIETT “BALDILOCKS” OCHIENG is asking for help. I donated.

RAISING MONEY for Hamas. With that tool, George Galloway.

HEH: “Oh, great. The bad guys have Dr. Evil and all we have to save us is Pee Wee Herman.”

MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE CAMPS FOR THAT: Sebelius says we need ObamaCare “reeducation.”

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Is the U.S. Treasury the Scene of the Next Bubble to Burst?

WHY REPUBLICANS SHOULDN’T GET COCKY: Neither Party Deserves to Lead.

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: This Gerber telescoping pruner. The crepe myrtles were growing over/into the gutters, and with this gadget I was lopping branches with ease, including some that were surprisingly big. I had a similar one from Harbor Freight years ago, but it didn’t work nearly as well. As a ladder-avoidance tool, this is right up there with the much-loved light-bulb changer.

IN RESPONSE TO LAST NIGHT’S DISASTER-PREP POST, a reader emails:

Sorry for the late night mail but my Wife and I are thinking about the coming Earthquake in Southern California, it will come ,no doubt. We just restocked with 2 five gallon water jugs and 20$ worth of Campbells soup, as well as Lots of ammo and batteries, the biggest question, and I know the 4×4 roads is, how do we get out? I fear the GOV won’t help us and we will be left to our own devices. That said, what do I do about my neighbors? They will come “calling”,…. any thoughts?

If you can afford it, I recommend stockpiling enough for them, too. Food can be pretty cheap, and while it’s hard to store a lot of water, you can have an extra filter and/or some jugs of bleach. When things go bad, it’s good to have friends.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Food can be very cheap. The local grocery store often has 25 lb sacks of rice on sale for less than $10. That and a sack of dried beans (maybe $15) can keep a couple people going for several days, probably long enough for basic transport services to be restored, all for the cost of a few fast food meals, or a family night out at the movies. It can keep for a long time–years, if stored correctly.

And it beats looting for food during a disaster, or trusting to government efficiency for organizing disaster relief.

25 pounds of rice is a lot of rice.

UPDATE: Reader Ray Dawson writes:

Growing up living in Utah, I’ve always been concerned with keeping at least a 72 kit, after Katrina, my personal kit went to a week.
Now after reading my fair share of “apocalyptic porn” like “One Second After” I’m going to a months supply in my house. Last year a transformer blew and we were with out power for 2 days. I was actually embarrassed how well off we were compared to out neighbors.

But the most interesting thing is how many people open talk about preparedness, it used to be just Mormons and militia members. Now it’s pretty common. A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a waitress who told me her and her friends were preparing for Zombies, storing food, making bugout plans. She couldn’t bring herself to worry about EMPs or solar flares, earthquakes, etc. but she could, (and was!) preparing for zombies.

I wonder if people talking about zombies are subconsciously preparing for the next Katrina.

P.S. Killer site on how to buy a years worth of food for $225 a person.

For the zombies…

Yeah, the Zombie Squad folks capitalize on this. And you can never be too prepared for the zombies.

And I’ve noted the mainstreaming of survivalism before.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Tea Party Raids McConnell’s Kitchen Cabinet.

ANOTHER ARNE DUNCAN EMBARRASSMENT: Education secretary urged his employees to go to Sharpton’s rally. “Russ Whitehurst, director of the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution’s Brown Center of Education Policy, said nothing like this happened when he was a Department of Education program director from 2001 to 2008: ‘Only political appointees would have been made aware of such an event and encouraged to attend.'” And yet Sharpton still couldn’t pull a crowd.

HMM: Chinese Central Bank Chief Rumored To Have Defected. Hmm. Well, we’ll see.

MATT SHEFFIELD: Hating your countrymen is the new patriotism.

DON’T GET COCKY, KID. Gallup: GOP Takes 10-Point Lead In Generic Ballot.

THE END TIMES ARE HERE: MAN EATING GIANT SQUID DEVOURING FISH STOCKS.

PJTV: Brandi Milloy On The Border, Part II.

RUNNING FOR CONGRESS on an Amity Shlaes platform.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “What is absolutely staggering at the link is the vitriol in the comments directed not only at the candidate Gibson, but the author of the piece as well. Out of the box, the comments run towards ‘Rabid Blue State’ Blue. What is staggering is not how hateful the comments are, but the near-uniformly poor quality of the expression. I smell fear.” Indeed. I liked the guy who wants to run Gibson’s thesis through “anti-plagerism software.” Yeah, that “plagerism” is a real problem . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader suggests the vitriol is explained in this essay.

Related: Sharpton marchers bring the negativity.

SETTING THE BAR LOW, SETTING THE BAR HIGH:

It isn’t the snarky first part of this statement that is interesting; that’s banal, and while revealing in its own way, it’s de rigeur for he sort of people we’re talking about to on the one hand demand no one reach conclusions on the basis of necessarily limited information when it comes to them and their mascots, but who feel free themselves to rush to entirely unsupported conclusions regarding their opponents and targets, and express them in the snarkiest way possible, all the while holding the self-conception that they’re stalwarts defending civil discourse. . . . The same people who are sanguine about the Cordoba Initiative and caution against intemperance, rushing to conclusions without a forensic-level of CSI-type evidence, and cautioning against painting with a broad brush and guilt-by-association routinely and casually do all these things in their characterizations and portrayals of Tea Party members.

Indeed.

HEADACHE: First genetic link to common migraine exposed.

BACK TO SCHOOL: Our kids have become cannon fodder for two rival ideologies battling to control America’s future. “In one camp are conservative Christians and their champion, the Texas State Board of Education; in the other are politically radical multiculturalists and their de facto champion, President Barack Obama. The two competing visions couldn’t be more different. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Unfortunately, whichever side wins — your kid ends up losing.” Homeschooling just looks better . . . .

GENERATING POWER from electricity in the air.

UPDATE: Yes, Atlas Shrugged seems prophetic in ever so many ways . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: In answer to Conor Friedersdorf’s question, it’s this.

MORE ON CANCER TREATMENTS: A Protein Killer Could Treat All Cancers, and Possibly All Illnesses.

Faster, please.

MARKDOWNS ON flat-screen TVs.

ANN ALTHOUSE on Brooklyn College and Bob Dylan.

THE ANSWER TO A HOUSING RECOVERY: LOWER PRICES. Yeah, but those are surprisingly hard to come by. I note that houses in my neighborhood that are selling are going for 10-15% less than their 2005-2006 selling prices. But most of the people putting houses on the market are asking for 10-20% more than the 2005-2006 price, and are grimly hanging on rather than lowering the price to anything that might sell. My assumption is that either (1) they’re idiots: or (2) they bought them with tiny down payments, and can’t bring enough cash to the table to sell at the realistic selling price. (I’m always amazed to find out how many people with expensive houses don’t even have enough cash to cover the real estate commission if they can’t cover it out of the sale, but that’s often the case.) This problem will take quite a while to work out, I think.

FINDING UNCONVENTIONAL OIL with medical nanotechnology.