With bodies still floating dead in the water, attempts to affix political blame for a natural disaster continue apace in the “progressive” world of “reality-based” politics, a land where tyrants are good, people who fight them are bad, and religion is only worthwhile when it can be used to bludgeon the religious.
Firstly, and while the hurricane was ongoing, TalkLeft (along with the Swing State Project), attempted to blame Bush for having the National Guard deployed in Iraq during war time—when it’s absolutely clear that the National Guard is meant to combat hurricanes and provide disaster relief, and that the President, evil, shortsighted, derelict cowboy chimp that he is, should have seen this coming! Which, had the folks pontificating at TalkLeft been alive during World War II, presumably they’d have insisted that letting the Nazis march through Europe—and allowing Japanese militarism to take over the entire Pacific theater—was a small price to pay for having our troops home in the event a really bad tornado tore through Kansas, or a nasty earthquake hit San Francisco.
Of course, there are already more than the 6000 11,000 troops [source: Bush’s Wednesday Rose Garden statement] currently available to LA, MS, and AL, but why ruin a good argument with a lot of silly numbers, right?
Anyway, simultaneous to TalkLeft’s politics of perfect hindsight, worldwide progressives immediately began beating the Kyoto drum—the suggestion being that had the US simply signed the Kyoto Protocol, the 2.5-degree temperature drop that controversial climate modeling suggests humans might potentially effect in 20 or so years would have magically prevented what is historically a cyclical occurence of powerful Atlantic hurricanes (which, from a statistical standpoint, have been below strength for several decades). And joining them yesterday domestically in this puerile drumbeat was noted climate doomsayer Ross Gelbspan, who, in a Boston Globe piece, wrote, “The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming”—a position that the New York Times, however reluctantly, was forced, in good conscience, to debunk.
Still, such a thing as rigorous scientific reason is hardly sufficient to curtail the gathering storm created when high-pressure systems from enviromental hysterics collide with low-pressure gases given off by vituperative lefty political ambitions—which means that the recriminations will continue, though they take on ever new shapes. To wit: private-jet and limousine-liberal Robert Kennedy, Jr., takes to the Huffingtonpost to argue that global warming in general—and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour in particular—are to blame for the hurricane damage. Writes Kennedy:
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
Why it’s “worth recalling” this is anyone’s guess, as the Kyoto Protocol was defeated unanimously by the Senate, and has nothing whatever do to with Global Warming itself, but rather is an economically disastrous and bureaucratically bloated means of combatting the problem that may or may not be either man-made or worth “combatting.” Not to mention the inconvenient fact that global warming didn’t cause the hurricane.
No, what Kennedy wants to do is lay the death of hundreds of folks from Mississippi and Louisiana at the foot of the Bush environmental corp and a governor who actively supported them. Which is a simply an unconscionable and wretched thing to do—especially in the very midst of the disaster—but a tactic that is all too easy for the left, who, let it be said, has sunk to a new low that even I didn’t think possible.
But wait, it get’s better. Writes Kennedy:
In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo [on behalf of the “fossil fuel industry,” which got Bush to rethink CO2 emissions caps] that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.
Fresh off declaring Pat Robertson a godbothering kook for calling for the death of a vehemently anti-American, terrorist-aiding despot, suddenly ol’ Pat is de rigueur again—having prophecized the very irony that Kennedy locates—then luxuriates over—as somehow rich and fitting.
YOU SEE, RED STATERS? A VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS IS A VOTE FOR GOD’S WRATH!
Which, perhaps they’d have learned that lesson better were God allowed back in schools, eh Bobby Jr? (h/t to Rob at Say Anything, who has much more here).
Not to be outdone, however, the Kossacks (and others), as Red State notes, have begun suggesting that “funds, projects, manpower, and equipment slated for New Orleans reconstruction and shoring up of various levees, causeways, canals, bridges, and etc were diverted to the Iraq war”—an “argument” that relies upon this Editor and Publisher article about budget cuts. Concludes Red State contributor and Louisiana native Thomas—after forcefully and factually demolishing the ridiculous suggestion that the Federal Government is somehow responsible for storm surges that overshoot levee walls:
This madness is all of a piece with the “Bush was on vacation when this happened” idiocy. Yes, we could have used his heat vision to seal some of the levees at weak points, and his superhuman strength might have been enough to save some collapsing concrete. But what we really needed was for him to get the rest of the Justice League out there, especially Green Lantern. Or at least to reverse the Earth’s rotation and save us from this disaster.
This is obscene. It’s actually worse than obscene, because not all of those bodies floating down there right now are from the mausoleums. How distorted is our political discourse—excuse me, their political discourse—that they start pointing fingers before the bodies are in the damned ground? We haven’t even buried the dead yet, and they’re trying to pin the untold lives and livelihoods lost on an opponent for political gain. I’d say something about shame, but the Left long ago forgot that.
Gee, guys, if you have the courage of your convictions, join the National Guard. They could use a few, ahem, bodies right now. Or at least act out your more lurid dreams and head down to New Orleans or Gulfport. Grab a body floating by. Reporters are thick on the ground—scream at Bush and shake the body in front of the camera to good effect.
I no longer see the Left as a set of political opponents. I understand them now to be what they are: An uncompromising, barely human mass of malignancy, that exists only to be crushed electorally and culturally once and for all. Or, as a wiser man than I put it, The Evil Party.
On other days I might suggest that such a mass-dismissal of an entire hemisphere of political belief is a bit, well, overwrought.
But it’s beginning to dawn on me that I might need to rethink that…
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update: BUSH PLAYS GUITAR WHILE ROME BURNS!
HOW DARE YOU, MR BUSH! WHY AREN’T YOU SUBMERGING YOURSELF IN SEWAGE AND FASTING, AS A SHOW OF SOLIDARITY?
Or,
SCREW DISASTER RELIEF, YOU EVIL RETHUG! IMAGE IS EVERYTHING!
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More, from QandO. See also, Austin Bay, Captain’s Quarters, Michelle Malkin, Ed Driscoll, The Noonz wire, John Cole, and The Anchoress.
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update: CINDY! adds her imprimatur, making it official that Bush’s environmental policies caused the hurricane. Which means her son was doomed to begin with (after all, it’s just a matter of time before something Bush does or doesn’t do kills the rest of us, too), so the news that he went to war for oil and greed—AS BUSH HIMSELF ADMITS!—isn’t as horrific as it might otherwise be.
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update 2: Having not bothered to educate himself, Andrew Sullivan ominously repeats the “charges” made in the Editor and Publisher article cited by the Kossacks (and subsequently obliterated by Thomas at Red State).
In short, had Bush, in 2004, not been so unjustly concerned with Homeland Security and the Iraq war, he would have anticipated a storm that surged over the New Orleans levees by a good 7 feet—roughly 50% above than their current height—and done something to prevent it: namely, pulled out of Iraq prematurely and given extra money to New Orleans to fund a project that would be finished in roughly 6 years. And one which wouldn’t have helped anyway. From Popular Science, May 2005:
Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. “This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes,” says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. “That’s because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it.”
The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale defines a category-5 storm as one with “winds greater than 155 miles per hour and storm surge generally greater than 18 feet.” Although hurricanes of this magnitude slamming directly into New Orleans are extremely rareâ€â€occurring perhaps every 500 to 1,000 yearsâ€â€should one come ashore, the resulting storm surge would swell Lake Pontchartrain (a brackish sea adjoining the Gulf of Mexico), overtop the levees, and submerge the city under up to 40 feet of water. Once this happened, the levees would “serve as a bathtub,” explains Harley Winer, chief of coastal engineering for the Army Corps’s New Orleans District. The water would get trapped between the Mississippi levees and the hurricane-protection levees. “This is a highly improbable event,” Winer points out, “but within the realm of possibility.”
New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.
To determine exactly where and how high to build these levees, the engineers have enlisted the aid of a 3-D computer-simulation program called ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation Model). ADCIRC incorporates dozens of data pointsâ€â€including seabed and coastal topography, wind speed, tidal variation, ocean depth and water temperatureâ€â€and charts a precise map of where the storm surge would inundate New Orleans. The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.
Typically, Sullivan leaves the question hanging portentously and doesn’t technically commit one way or the other—after all, Andy must always leave himself an out—but simply by stamping the conjecture with “concern,” Andy has done enough to raise eyebrows, and the Dem shill knows it.
He’s a hairy Josh Marshall, Sullivan is. Nothing more.
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(h/t Cole)
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update 3: Chrenkoff has a similar post, only conveniently numbered and with additional source material.
OUR HOLY MOTHER, ST. CINDY WEIGHS IN!!!
“Well, George and I are leaving Crawford today. George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego , so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused. Recovery would be easier and much quicker if almost ½ of the three states involved National Guard were not in Iraq. All of the National Guard’s equipment is in Iraq also. Plus, with the 2 billion dollars a week that the private contractors are siphoning from our treasury, how are we going to pay for helping our own citizens in Louisiana , Mississippi, and Alabama? And, should I dare say “global warming?” and be branded as a “conspiracy theorist” on top of everything else the reich-wingers say about me.”
-Cindy Sheehan
(http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/2438)
Being a Kennedy sure has lost its luster.
While the centrist blogs are trying to figure ways to help with relief efforts the lefty blogs are doing this stuff, amazing.
All of the National Guard’s equipment is in Iraq also.
HOLY CRAP!!! ALL?!?1?
We have GOT to get this women into the pentagon, post fucking haste. Why haven’t we tapped into this brilliant foreign strategist before???
In fact, just give her the reigns. MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!!
All of the National Guard’s equipment is in Iraq .
What the? Well, someone needs to tell my husband, because his one weekend a month is effin’ WASTED.
You know, St. Munchausen-by-Casey might be onto something.
If we had a few M1A2 Abrams patrolling the streets of New Orleans, that 120mm smoothbore and co-ax machine gun could sure cut down on the looting… providing the crews don’t drown in 20 feet of water, of course…
To be fair, a lot of that washed off in the Chappaquidick.
A little Turtle Wax and power buffing to Teddy’s huge fuckin’ head should fix that right up.
If Bush were as good as a Kennedy, he could make “…immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murky current,…”
Seriously though, is anyone really surprised by the behavior of the left? I certainly aint. Their tenet is not to solve the problem, but to convolute it with baseless inane rhetoric and accusations.
Witnessing this absurdity is funny at first because one thinks “man, how can these people be so effing stooopid.” But after a while it’s just nauseating. And there just aint enough Pepto to go around.
Nothing is quite as poignant as the sympathy of a mother who knows the grief these families must feel. What a great American, today we are all Cindy Shriekhan.
Also, first place I look for headline and some commentary when it comes to global warming is the analysis at http://www.junkscience.com.
Oops. The MIT scientist that RFK depends on:
…says Katrina wasn’t caused by global warming:
Unsurprising that Gutfeld has declared martial law at HuffPo.
I’ve got left-wing friends that are so far gone that it’s sucked the fun right out debating him on anything related to Bush.
These gutter tactics and ugly lows are sickening.
It’s probably good that we encounter these left-wing views almost exclusively online. Think of the bruised faces and loose teeth.
It would be insensitive for me to point out that claiming a shield to the term conspiracy theorist in the same sentence you use the phrase reich-wingers is almost absurdly ironic. Then again, I’m an insensitive war mongering rethuglican, so it is in my nature.
Should I play the guitar or drown kittens this afternoon, I’m torn.
Any bets on the reich-winger comment making even one MSM report? My money is on no, after all it isn’t bigoted if it comes from the left.
Note to Bushhaters: There are 800 some freshly dead Iraquis whose demise you can blame on Dubya.
Go on. You can do it. I know you can.
DAMN BUSHITLER,
I knew it all along that this administration’s irresponsible environmental policies were to blame for Katrina. Somehow, someway he purposely guided Katrina to our beloved Gulf Coast. Thank you St Cindy for for reaffirming my suspicions.
Nutjob
St. Peter: Did you year that Barbour talked your boy Bush out of Kyoto?
God: MeeeDamn!! That one’s got balls the size of coconuts.
St. Peter: There’s CO2 all over the place.
God (pressing intercom button): Scotty, what have you got in the tube?
Scotty: Et’s a wee hooriceeene, a catagoooly fieeve.
God: Fire tube 1 Scotty………Alright Mr. Governor, let’s see how you like a Holy Golden Shower.
Has anyone suggested that, to be completely fair, Bush should send his daughters to swim in what is now Lake 9th Ward?
You know, because of Abu Ghraib.
CHICKENHURRICANERELIEFSUPPORTER!!!
Funny, I already got the “Republicans cause global warming which causes hurricanes which cased Katrina” personally, from my crazy French woman professor today.
I’m way ahead of you on this one, Goldstein.
Listen folks:
It’s fun to set up straw men to knock down. The real issue isn’t global warming. Whatever you think about the merits of Bush’s environmental policies, no rational person blames the Administration for hurricanes and its effects.
The thing to focus on is the response to this tragedy that has befallen a great American city. It’s too early to draw any conclusions about that. Given that New Orleans is a major city with what, in retrospect, are glaring vulnerabilities to hurricane damage, it will be interesting to review what government at all levels did to prepare for a disaster of this magnitude. And now that the worst has happened, what government, especially our federal government will respond to the situation.
Frankly, a lot of these comments are irrelevant rubbish. There’s always plenty of times for recriminations down the road. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball–the catastrophic impact this storm has had on hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans.
Ummmm… I believe that is our point.
The thing is, that means people like RFK jr., Sid Blumenthal, a prominent figure in the German government, most of HuffPost, and a lot of others are not rational. Now, most of us around these parts have had that opinion for some time. We draw attention to these things because a lot of others, especially the media, insist on treating them as if they are rational.
Look, I’d love to just ignore these buffoons, but the New York Times won’t let me.
You’re right, Ken. But the stupid Left-y fuckers enrage me. In honor of more than 100 adult relatives in NO who just lost everything they ever owned or knew in life, I post this wacko-balancing link.
And now for the international response to Hurricane Katrina: ”…”
How about some international assistance? ”…” (The one link has nothing to do with the subject.)
International aid? Ooh, wow, lots! Oh, wait. Those links are about an organization called International Aid, based in… Spring Lake, Michigan.
Ah, heck. Who needs ‘em? We’ll take care of this ourselves.
TW: aid – I swear.
Uh, Ken? These aren’t “straw men.” I’ve linked and quoted actual arguments being made by actual progressives who have an actual voice in their party.
These are actual people. Just because the substance of their arguments are flimsy and easily knocked down does not make them straw men. It makes them shallow people making inane arguments.
How dare you rethugs try to crush these brave truth-tellers’ freedom of speech? NATURAL DISASTER BLAME-MONGERING IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM!!!
Jeff, my bloglove, you are on a roll.
Keep em coming!
Greg Gutfield
Hey Jeff, thanks for the link. I appreciate it!
KKKarl Rove exploded nuclear bombs under the sea. This caused the water to heat up quickly and lots of vaper to gather in the atmosfere. Then Air Farce planes seeded the clouds with dry ice and this is what led to Hurricane Katrina. KKKarl kreated Katrina to take attention away from Mother Sheehan so Chimpy could duck off to Califoria while the superdomes roof leaked.
Hey Ken, how about being a real maverick and posting that sentiment over at Kos and DU.
Hear Hear.
Go on over and tell them that they are all part of the group described as “no rational person”. I’d do so myself, but I’m one of those Rethuglicans that they already expect that kind of hate speech from.
What King Goerge saw from 1,700 feet at 350 mph
And thousands are seeing much closer than that.
SLIDESHOW of Katrina’s aftermath from the amazing folks at WWL-TV.
Any corporation would fire a manager so criminally negligent and grossly incompetent. But we’re stuck with this worthless piece of tripe for 3 1/2 more years. Can America stand much more of King Goerge?
Criminally negligent and grossly incompetent in what regard?
For not predicting that a 22’ surge would overtake a 15’ levee?
Tell me, did you even bother to read my post? Or are you just cutting and pasting from your site again?
Fageddaboudit, Jeff. It’s Liberalland.
The ineffectual howls of the third-stage moonbatitis sufferers are completely non-sentient in addition to being annoyingly predictable. The words come tumbling out, probably due to random post-infection nerve firings in the temporal lobe, but they are mere babblings, unconnected by any logical structure. The frontal lobes are the first to go.
I think he’s referring to Bush not yet pledging his support to the people of the upper Gulf Coast, and also authorizing numerous government agencies to bivouac in anticpation of delivering aid, authorizing the military to send numerous assets, and tap the strategic oil reserve, all while on his “vacation”.
Or maybe it’s because Bush hasn’t found his national guard uni and isn’t presently stalking through NO looking for looters to shoot. By that criteria, he is a buffoonish monkeyman.
*Salutes Ken*
Though, yeah, give Jeff credit that these people are prominent Lefties, rather than fringe nutjobs.
I listened to about 10 minutes of the Mike Webb show on KIRO in Seattle this evening. These bastards really are guzzling the koolaid. Believe it or not they even invoked Halliburton multiple times in the short time I listened to the tripe and they just knew that Karl Rove was machinating right now to save the PR day – so don’t tell them they are politicizing – Karl is doing it for them!
I’m sick of it – and I’m with Fred on this one – I hear this crap around tomorrow and some faces are gonna be looted with some knuckles.
YOU GUYS JUST DON’T GET IT!!!!!
New Orleans is almost 70% African American. And as everyone knows, “African Americans are mostly poor.” (Ted Kennedy in speech to NAACP, 2003) Poor people eat more fatty foods and therefore give off more radiant heat, thereby contributing to the rise in Gulf temperature – when they swim. And African Americans – poor, hot, fat people – do swim so don’t let those racists perpetuate the stereotype that those people don’t swim.
Stem cell research is the answer to this literal epidemic of poor, black, fat hotness.
Mr. Bush, why won’t break the levy on stem cell research? Why?
-Ron Reagan
So you’re telling me that fat black people are hot?
Son of a BITCH!
-Al Roker
Its real name is global warmingâ€Ââ€â€a position that the New York Times, however reluctantly, was forced, in good conscience, to debunk.
“…in good conscience…”? The New York Times HAS no conscience. As do most MSM outlets, they play to ignorance. I won’t even let my new puppy take a crap on the Times.
Jeff: It gets even better! You need to check out the graphic of where the Cat 5 flood wall would have been built. It isn’t available in the online article at PopSci but when you look at it you’ll freak out.