Night and Day, “Obama rips federal response to disaster” edition

Breitbart’s got the video, a montage of President Present (when he was merely Senator Present) blasting the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  Takeaway line:  “We’re going to do some hard thinking about how we could have failed our fellow citizens so badly.”

And now, the with Gulf oil spill?  B.O. is basically saying “Hey, nothing we can do.  It’s BP’s fault.  I’m going on vacation.”

Washington comPost: GOP may delay convention due to Gustav

That sure is newsworthy…but the comPost just couldn’t help itself with this crap:

For Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina. A new major storm along the Gulf Coast would renew memories of one of the low points of the Bush administration, while pulling public attention away from McCain’s formal coronation as the GOP presidential nominee.
…
Staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge for either political party. But GOP officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the Bush administration’s bungling of Katrina and its aftermath in 2005.

One narrative the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) still clings to is that the Katrina mess was Bush’s fault.  It has been shown exhaustively that La. Democrats (then-governor Blanco and N.O. Mayor Ray “School Bus” Nagin) dropped the ball with that.

I mean, Katrina flattened south MS and south AL, but their Republican governors implemented their plans, and it worked out fine.  Plus, Hurricane Wilma did more monetary damage to FL right after Katrina, but FL’s Republican governor had prepared well and executed the plan flawlessly.  It’s clear that incompetence struck La., but it wasn’t Bush’s.

(Sidebar: “Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida as a Category 5 storm in August 1992, and the sluggish federal response was castigated by state leaders as well as then-candidate Bill Clinton in his successful bid to defeat President George H.W. Bush that fall.” Florida had an anemic plan for Andrew, and its governor in ’92 was Lawton Chiles…a Democrat. Go figure. It’s as if Dems are so betrothed to a big federal government that that abdicate all decision-making to the feds.)

But anywho, read that excerpt again, though.  It reads like a Team Barry press conference: “For Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina.”  Exactly WHAT did McCain do wrong during the Katrina fallout that makes Gustav an “untimely reminder”?  WHAT did McCain do with regards to Katrina that Gustav would remind people of?  Barry O and the Dumbocrats try this whole “Bush-McCain” link, and we’re used to that, but now the comPost is getting on board.  Howard Dean must have faxed them their talking points a little late.

Nope…no liberal media bias!

UPDATE: Random thoughts: Tropical Storm Fay

UPDATES BELOW.

It’s hard to concentrate on blogging when you’ve got strong gusts of wind and sheets of rain pelting your window near your computer.  I think I’ll pass on blogging today.  Go away, Fay!

UPDATE (08/21/2008 – 2:28 PM EST): For some reason, the rain and wind have let up for a while now.  The projected path makes it look like Fay is gonna get more medieval on my asset this evening.  So, I’m gonna pull a Barry O and flip-flop on the above.  In other words, I’ll blog a little bit, until I flip-flop back the other way and hunker down.

UPDATE (08/22/2008 – 10:12 AM EST): Had a hard time sleeping last night with the howling winds.  I need to tell my neighbor to take down his windchimes next time a tropical storm comes through, since those things were clanging all night.  Things are quite a bit calmer right now, but the feeder bands from the ocean will be coming in throughout the day, making things blustery and rainy again.  Quite a bit of flooding has hit the area, but fortunately (knock on wood), not my neighborhood.  Power flickers sporadically, so I think I’m gonna power down the PC for a good bit of the day.  Talk amongst yourselves.  🙂

UPDATE (08/22/2008 – 10:15 PM EST): Had not one, but TWO tornados come within a few miles of my house!  Fortunately, they had a bigger bark than bite.  They were large, but the damage they did was minimal (as far as we know right now).  The flooding in many parts of Jacksonville is enough to make Noah sweat.  I just want the wind to calm down long enough.  Supposedly, the wind shouldn’t be as bad tomorrow, though the rain will continue.  The weatherman said we got about 6.6″ of rain today.  That’s not even counting yesterday. 

Oh, well, I’m gonna try to catch up on my sleep.  Again, talk amongst yourselves.  I see jen’s regurgitating enough of that racist Howard Dean’s talking points (all while lamely defending her Manchurian candidate, Barry “The Defender of Infanticide” Mengele…after all, defending a practice so horrid that even Planned Parenthood doesn’t condone it is hard work.  As we all know, not knowing how many houses your rich wife with separate assets owns is MUCH worse than vigorously defending slaughtering innocent newborn survivors of abortions.) to keep you fine folks busy, which prompted our friend Tommy Chong to hit her up for some of her stash.  😆

UPDATE (08/23/2008 – 10:05 AM EST): I’m alive, and all seems pretty calm here.  To quote the great Barry Manilow (wait…did I just say that?  Hey, I still like girls, OK??  😆 ), “Looks like we made it!”

By the way, let me get a shout out to my old man: Happy Birthday, Dad!

Katrina aid building luxury condos in Tuscaloosa

Yet another reason (among many) that we do not need the federal government running our health care! From Breitbart/AP:

With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama’s football stadium.

About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and ‘Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art.

While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any special Katrina-related tax breaks, many others are real estate investors who are purchasing the condos with plans to rent them out.

And they intend to take full advantage of the generous tax benefits available to investors under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO Zone, according to Associated Press interviews with buyers and real estate officials.

The GO Zone contains a variety of tax breaks designed to stimulate construction in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. It offers tax-free bonds to developers to finance big commercial projects like shopping centers or hotels. It also allows real estate investors who buy condos or other properties in the GO Zone to take accelerated depreciation on their purchases when they file their taxes.

The GO Zone was drawn to include the Tuscaloosa area even though it is about 200 miles from the coast and got only heavy rain and scattered wind damage from Katrina.

The condo deals are perfectly legal, and the tax breaks do not take money away from Katrina victims closer to the coast because the depreciation is wide open, with no limits per state.

But the tax breaks are galling to some community leaders, especially when red tape and disorganization have stymied the rebuilding in some of the devastated coastal areas.

“The GO Zone extends so damn far, but the people who need it the most can’t take advantage of it,” said John Harral, a lawyer in hard-hit Gulfport, Miss.

Check this schmuck out:

“It is a joke,” said Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate, who has nevertheless used GO Zone tax breaks on projects that include a new hotel and a restaurant. “It was supposed to be about getting people … to put housing in New Orleans, Louisiana, or Biloxi, Mississippi. It was not about condos in Tuscaloosa.”

“It was not about condos in Tuscaloosa.” Nope, instead it was about new hotels and restaurants? “It’s not fair! But, if people are gonna get rich off of it, I might as well, too. But I’ll assuage my own guilt by chanting loudly and longly ‘It’s a joke! It’s not fair!’ After a while, I might actually believe it.”

More:

An investor could write off more than $155,000 of the cost of a $300,000 condo in the first year and use the savings to lower his taxes on other rental income, according to Kelly Hayes, a tax attorney who advises investors in Southfield, Mich. Without the GO Zone tax break, the depreciation benefit from a single year on such a property would typically be just $10,909.

(The tax break is not available to people who buy a home for their own use.)

Yes sir, with that kind of forethought and management, the federal government would just do a bang-up job managing our health care, wouldn’t it?

Non-political post of the day

Ummm…what??  Hurricane…Flossie?  Have we already run out of good names to use?

Today’s "Damn that global ‘warming’" update

From al-Reuters:

The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.

The season will bring 14 named storms, of which six will become hurricanes and three will become major hurricanes, WSI said in its revised outlook. WSI had previously expected 15 named storms of which eight would become hurricanes and four would become major hurricanes.

“Because the ocean temperatures have not yet rebounded from the significant drop in late spring, we have decided to reduce our forecast numbers slightly,” said Todd Crawford, a WSI seasonal forecaster.
…
Despite the downgraded forecast, WSI still expects the 2007 season to be more active than last year, and added that storm-weary parts of the Gulf Coast could still be hit.

“We feel the general threat to the western Gulf is reduced slightly, with a corresponding increase in the threat to the eastern Gulf and Florida,” Crawford said.

Let’s see: after a busy 2005 hurricane season (blamed by various nutbars, including the Goreacle, on global “warming”), we were told 2006 would be just as busy as 2005. We got nothing, especially here in Florida. Then we were told that 2007 would be busy, and now we’re being told that due to (** snicker **) colder than expected temperatures, 2007 is being revised downward.

Three exit questions: (1) At what point can we stop referring to these people as “experts”? (2) How have these shysters managed to convince people to keep paying them for their chronically wrong forecasts? (3) Considering that this has been an unseasonably cool year (some might say it’s a cool cycle?), can we please get off the Chicken Littleism that the treehuggers have been spewing our way?

NAACP does more Katrina racist demagoguery

Same sh#t, different flies: “Blah-blah-blah-‘Whitey’s out to get us’, blah-blah-blah-‘Bush hates black folks’, blah-blah-blah-‘Insert Katrina-and-other-completely-unrelated-and-inappropriate-comparison-here’, blah-blah…”. From Motown:

NAACP National Board Chair Julian Bond said Sunday that the civil rights organization is needed now more than ever because the Bush Administration has done little to support blacks.
…

…Bond said the possibility that New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will never be rebuilt is comparable to a “lynching.”

“It can be said that Katrina, like lynching, not only destroyed the work of generations in a single day, but is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders.”

Actually, if anyone is being “lynched”, I would say it is the taxpayers:

Federal agents investigating widespread fraud after the Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 are sifting through more than 11,000 potential cases, a backlog that could take years to resolve.

Authorities have fielded so many reports of people cheating aid programs, swindling contracts and scamming charities after the hurricanes that Homeland Security inspectors, who typically police disaster aid scams, have been “swamped,” says David Dugas, the U.S. attorney in Baton Rouge.

“There’s definitely a backlog,” says Dugas, whose office helps coordinate an anti-fraud task force formed after the hurricanes. “Right now, that means we might not get to some cases as quickly as some people might like. If there’s still a backlog in two years when we start running up against the statute of limitations, that’s different.”

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita triggered more than $7 billion in disaster aid to Gulf Coast households, plus billions more in government contracts and rebuilding projects.

But I’m sure to the racebaiters like Bond, that’s a different (and more acceptable) kind of “lynching”.

UPDATE: Why do Democrats hate people in hurricane zones?

UPDATES at the bottom of this post.

Yet another shining example of how the left “feels” instead of “thinks”, even when it comes to an otherwise nonpartisan subject like hurricane news and help. From the South Florida Sun Slant-inel:

Rush Limbaugh has long been a thorn in the side of liberals, but now, because of him, some Democratic politicians don’t even want to join with a local radio station to broadcast hurricane information.

Radio station WIOD, AM 610, has been the official channel for emergency information from Broward County government for the past year. The County Commission, all Democrats, balked at renewing the deal Tuesday, unable to stomach the station also being home to Limbaugh’s talk show.

Commissioner Stacy Ritter said she did not want to support a station that’s out of step with area politics. Ritter, a Democratic stalwart in the state Legislature before being elected to county office, cited talk shows hosted by Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and WIOD’s partnership with Fox News.

“They have every right to speak, but we don’t have to do business with them,” she said.

Limbaugh has long been a fixture on WIOD, but no county official raised an issue about him or the other shows when the deal was approved for the first time a year ago.

The deal with WIOD would ensure that news conferences are broadcast start to finish live from the county Emergency Operations Center in Plantation. Emergency managers became concerned during hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 that radio and television stations preempted their announcements in favor of news out of Miami.

Limbaugh, who lives in Palm Beach, could not be reached for comment. Ken Charles, WIOD’s director of AM programming, said the station’s talk show lineup has no relationship with its news coverage and that the county should focus on the benefits of teaming with the station.

“It’s a shame that people would let politics get in the way of saving lives in a hurricane,” Charles said.

The contract with WIOD was on the verge of being rejected when commissioners instead delayed a decision until next week. They told their communications staff they want more information on why WIOD was recommended and what their options are.

Ritter’s concerns were echoed by Commissioners Ken Keechl, a former president of the Dolphins gay Democratic club, and Suzanne Gunzburger, who served on the vote-tallying board that recounted the 2000 presidential election. (So gays and “Gore got more” moonbats are driving the decision. Freakin’ wonderful. – Ed.)

But Commissioner John Rodstrom, a one-time young Republican leader who later became a Democrat, said the county should not politicize emergency management.

“If we are going to start censoring what people write in the paper or speak on the radio or television, that’s a slippery slope,” Rodstrom said. “This is necessary. It’s something we need to do for emergency response.”

A county task force that looked into the response to Hurricane Wilma listed finding a radio partner among its recommendations last year.

Judy Sarver, the county’s public communications director, said WFTL and WLRN also offered to take on the role, but that she and other emergency planners preferred WIOD because of its signal strength, numerous FM sister stations and willingness to give Broward top play.

Let’s see: When dealing with a life-or-death subject like hurricanes, you can either go with a local station that has a strong signal and far-reaching presence, or go with an out-of-town station with a weaker presence and that gives YOUR area short shrift. Decisions, decisions.

It’s bad enough that the Dems’ presidential candidates are more afraid of Fox News than Al Qaeda. But it’s just flat-out disgusting that these morons would politicize something as apolitical as hurricance coverage!

UPDATE (06/14/2007 – 8:11 P.M. EST): Apparently, after being bombarded with angry phone calls, the Broward County boobs have decided that it’s be a good idea to broadcast emergency info to the broadest group on the strongest signal, even if that station carries the “evil” Rush Limbaugh. Every once in a while, by hook or by crook, common sense wins out.