Sunday, August 31, 2008

Gustav postpones RNC

Just saw the news conference where RNC officials announced that they are canceling all Monday's convention business in St. Paul except a 2-hour meeting to conclude necessary business.

Josh Marshall: "Of course, it's hard not to see this as political posturing." Right. When everything is political, everything is political.

Geez, some people need to get a life.

UPDATE: Ignoring the weather is an old habit of mine. My wife can't sleep at night unless she sees the next day's weather forecast on the news, but my attitude is, "If it rains, it rains." And I particularly ignore forecasts of catastrophic weather. People in the D.C. region tend to freak completely out at the approach of any weather system that might possibly contain a single snowflake. Not me. I take pride in never having missed a day of work because of snow.

All this by way of explaining why I've ignored Hurricane Gustav's approach to the Gulf Coast until a few hours before it is expected to make landfall. If you live in a coastal area of the Southeast, in late summer you will be bothered by the occasional hurricane. Beyond the coastal areas, however, a hurricane just means a day or two of heavy rain. Being from Atlanta, I grew up watching TV news as hurricanes slam Florida every year, with occasional hits on other Gulf states or maybe the Carolinas.

Hurricanes are nothing unusual, and they don't really affect the lives of most Americans. But since Katrina, because Democrats blamed Republican for the destruction of New Orleans, hurricanes have become politicized. And so now we have Michael Moore writing an "open letter to God" about Gustav, and going on TV to make a complete ass of himself:



I object to this, and not merely because I object to anything that gives Michael Moore an excuse to haul his fat ass out of his crumb-strewn Barcalounger and into a TV studio.

In a free society, not everything is political.

When you start politicizing the weather, you really need to rethink your priorities. Despite the Chicken Little "storm of the century" response of Ray Nagin to the approach of Gustav, the overhwhelming likelihood is that Gustav will not hit New Orleans, will not cause wholesale devastation, and will not result in the need for a massive humanitarian relief effort.

This means that Republicans have, in all probability, canceled Monday's prime-time convention activities for no good reason, thus ceding to liberals the argument that even the weather is political. The besetting sins of the GOP are not greed and indifference, but cowardice and stupidity.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin: "God is not on your side, gloating sleazeballs."

2 comments:

  1. "I object to this, and not merely because I object to anything that gives Michael Moore an excuse to haul his fat ass out of his crumb-strewn Barcalounger and into a TV studio."

    His comments open up by noting that a right-wing preacher had encouraged people to pray for a storm to interrupt the Dem convention.

    So either this is your 2nd post objecting to the politicizng of storms and I can find you criticising the exact same thing coming from someone else, or it really is just Moore that's the problem here.

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  2. You've got to admit, it's pretty funny that a right-wing preacher supporting the Republican Party should start a prayer campaign for a rain out of Obama's acceptance speach and get a hurricane that cancels the first night of the Republican convention.

    No matter your politics, you need to be careful of what you pray for, you might get it in an unexpected way.

    RTR!

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