3rd world America

Here in east coast Pennsylvania we've had a time of it recently! Last week power outages form Irene now today they're turning off the water (in Harrisburg) so I heard though I've seen no official post online. I do see where gas is being turned off, and there are "Mandatory water conservation notices". Wow! Even the brain-dead wrong-wingers ought to be able to tell that climate change is REAL! Regardless of their mad-ideology. We had the massive heat wave earlier in the summer, now massive storms and all the damage and tragedy they've created. Put those together with the 3rd world state of our crumbling away infrastructure and things are getting really bad. Starting to think the lunatic-fringe survivalists are onto something. At least as far as the necessity of being self-sufficient. If I had the money I'd definitely be looking at getting a small house in the country (enough land to grow a few vegetables maybe) with some passive and active solar, it's own well, wood-stove, etc. Something that isn't going to get flooded. Something with it's own heat/water/electricity! In today's increasingly 3rd world america you can't count on even the basic utilities to be reliable. It's an open, well known fact that Harrisburg's water delivery system is -very- old, and in extremely bad condition. Of course there's no money to do anything about it, and there doesn't seem to be any will to do anything about it. The power grid in general across the country is well known to be a chaotically pieced together mess that's also very old, and extremely out of date. Don't even want to talk about the condition of the roads and bridges! Sub-standard cell phone and internet service in comparison to REAL first world nations. It's all pretty bleak and very few people are really seriously talking about it. Only hope I've seen at all as far as serious interest/discussion recently was a interesting interview on Charlie Rose last night. Tom Friedman of The New York Times & Johns Hopkins Professor Michael Mandelbaum on their book 'That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind In The World It Invented And How We Can Come Back'