All the victims of Ike.

Parts of Texas are still underwater.

Communities that believed they were safe from Ike found themselves now flooded out and without power as the gulfstream dragged the storm north and east.

The coverage provided by the GOP-controlled media are too politically cautious when disclosing how many victims there are and how the progress for the relief effort is going. Where is the ice? Water? Plans? Leadership?

But, as one DUer posted earlier, this is not the end of Ike.

Let me change directions slightly and talk about heat-related deaths (I don't know anything about winter-exposure-related deaths, but suspect it may be similar). All I know about heat-related deaths came from one book, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Heat-Wave/Eric-Klinenberg/e/9780226443225/?itm=1">"Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago". It's about the over 600 people who died during a heat wave in the city of Chicago in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Heat_Wave">1995.

I mention this because it shows the danger of running a government like a business and how these types of deaths (severe temperature-related?) are easily isolated from each other. The author, Eric Klinenberg, was able to show the full impact of the heat wave and the policies that failed to deal with it.

As many on DU know, there are people living in parts of this country that use heating oil to keep themselves warm during the winter. The price of that heating oil is based on the price petroleum, which has nearly tripled under the administration of oilmen and doesn't look like it will be dropping thanks to Ike and other storms that may come along before November.

We might know how many people have perished in Ike (if journalists would do their job), but Ike's impact on this country (thanks to the GOP's short-sighted, self-serving policies) is not over.

Winter's coming and heating oil will be expensive.

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Kick