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Katrina Links

Jill

What happens when you move people from LGBTQ-friendly New Orleans and into not-so-friendly areas of Texas? You get arrested for taking a shower.

Social analysis of the hurricane: Damn you single black welfare mothers for letting your animalistic sons run loose!

The worst of the worst. Vomit–inducing. Examples:

-only an iron will could keep any normal person from looking at some of the NOLA refugees and saying “get over it, get a job, quit feeling sorry for yourselves.”

-While a lot of the people we saw on TV may be living in poverty, one thing is for sure, they eat well and often.

-The good news is that Hurricane Katrina destroyed five of nine Louisiana abortion mills, although their displaced vermin were scurrying around shelters within 72 hours handing out free morning-after pills and abortions.

Lovely.

36 thoughts on Katrina Links

  2. How do you “hand out” an abortion? Offer a coupon? W.T.F.

    Sounds like a job for the design genius at feministe, no?

  3. The first worst link states that the only thing that has been destroyed “are some of the neighborhoods”, mostly slums. How interesting. My grandmother lived in Lakeview, one of the nicer areas in New Orleans, and one of the most heavily damaged (I believe her house is currently partially underwater. That’s an improvement from last week, when it was completely underwater. It’s less than a mile away from the 17th St. Canal levee breach.) So…it’s OK to destroy where the people of a city LIVE? Especially if those people are poor, I suppose. Also, my grandmother will be absolutely fascinated by this new knowledge – she didn’t know that for 30-odd years, she was actually living in a “slum” that should have been destroyed in the first place, according to this pompous jackhole. I can’t even comment on the other links – I’ll get so angry that I’ll just start typing in nothing but profanity….must calm down. I just know that I’m awfully tired of people who know nothing about New Orleans spouting off generalizations about that city and its inhabitants.

  5. Let’s not pretend that appalling quotes in the wake of Katrina have been a right-wing-only phenomenon. The left has contributed more than its fair share: see here and here for some examples. For my money, RKF Jr. suggesting that Katrina was divine punishment for failing to sign Kyoto was pretty disgusting, as was Randall Robinson’s claiming that black people were feasting on corpses.

  6. While I don’t see RFK jr.’s rhetoric as acceptable, he’s not saying that God is punishing this country or the gulf states for our failure to ratify Kyoto. He’s saying that global climate change is partly responsible for the hurricanes. Our dependence on fossil fuel has prevented us from doing our part to mitigate global warming, including measures like the Kyoto protocol. Our dependence on fossil fuel has therefore contributed to disasters like Katrina, as well as to the appalling scarcity of the relief measures and the severity of the economic damage resulting from gasoline shortages.

    There is no rational reason to suspect a cause and effect relationship between teh buttsex and weather patterns; my dental dams did not steer planes into the World Trade Center or storms into the gulf coast. Environmental irresponsibility and inhumane selfishness, however, do cause deaths among the poorest of the poor.

  9. It’s too bad you’d totally get a cease-and-desist if you worked in a cross-marketing reference for Domino’s.

    No! Chili’s! Baby-killer Baby-Back Ribs!

  10. He’s saying that global climate change is partly responsible for the hurricanes.

    …which is of course preposterous. We, the modern world, did not invent extreme weather with the onset of global warming. Most of the data suggests that extreme weather events, at least in the US, are actually down from a peak cycle in the 30s and 40s. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the Al Gores of the world from irresponsible pontificating. Just because the uber-press refuses to report on reputable research that counters global warming as a purely human-caused event doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That said, I’m not going to advocate any of the fearmongering on WND any more than some of you would advocate the stuff on Kos…
    …or am I wrong about that? Suffice it to say there’s some nasty stuff out there…

  13. yeah, well… don’t let the facts get in the way of a good argument…

    We are no fans of Kos.

    I knew there was something about this blog that said “possibly somewhat reasonable leftwingers”. Seriously, not even tryin’ to be snarky or nothin’…

  14. I know little about the weather, but the Katrina situation is actually an interesting case study on the erosion of how the effects of human activity on the environment affects negative environmental change that eventually comes back to kick us in the ass. There is considerable evidence that the erosion of the LA wetlands was one main factor in the severity of the hurricane. As we continue to slice and dice the wetlands in the Gulf, we are removing a considerable natural buffer that greatly, and literally, absorbs the effects of hurricanes by the time they reach proper land.

    I’m no environmentalist, so maybe someone else can explain that better. What I do know is that there is a movement down South to restore the wetlands by creating artificial floods at the mouth of the Mississippi that mimic what would have happened had the river not been dammed for all these years.

    (there’s room for a pun in there, but i’m leaving it alone)

    I knew there was something about this blog that said “possibly somewhat reasonable leftwingers”.

    The way Kos sees it, we’re sitting around waiting for him to go and say something stupid just to jump down his throat. And, well, I kind of am. 😛

    Dude rubs me the wrong way and that’s saying it politely.

  15. There is considerable evidence that the erosion of the LA wetlands was one main factor in the severity of the hurricane.

    I’m not an environmentalist either, but I play one on the big screen. It wasn’t a main factor in the storm’s severity, but in the damage severity. The wetlands are a natural buffer from the storm surge. Damage to the wetlands has been due to a variety of reasons, some of them natural, some political. Don’t get me started on the levee.

  17. As we continue to slice and dice the wetlands in the Gulf, we are removing a considerable natural buffer that greatly, and literally, absorbs the effects of hurricanes by the time they reach proper land.

    That works for dinky hurricanes. By the time you get up to a cat 4 or 5, all the wetlands that ever were won’t stop or even slow down a 15-20 foot storm surge. It’s simply far too great a volume of water to be absorbed or redirected.

  19. Huh? George W. Freakin Bush single-handedly (or with the help of Halliburton, I suppose) eroded twenty miles of natural wetlands in 5 short years? How does one man, considered so dense just a short time ago, morph into the single most clever and diabolical mastermind of the millenia? Here’s a quick review: work on the levees has been stalled, beginning in 1978 or thereabouts, by lawsuits from several parties, one of which was the Sierra Club. The basis for these lawsuits was the supposed damage to said wetlands. So the levee did not get restructured and the wetlands apparently went to hell for other reasons. So tell me again — where does George come in here?

  20. Don’t be disingenuous, Rob.

    Bush and his GOP cronies cut the funds for wetlands restoration – in a plan based on a spectacularly successful one in Florida, which oddly enough was somehow fine with the GOP.

    This stuff is readily accessible, public information.

    Incidentally, the notion that the Sierra Club stalled the levee restoration is utter bullshit. The only thing the club said was “don’t dredge nearby wetlands to build levees.”

    Go read the article available at the link I provided. It rebuts your silliness rather well.

  21. Rob, there is lots of “evidence” that the Holocaust didn’t happen either. Should the uber-journos give that equal time as well?

    Sure, a scientist can state anything. But we look at the preponderance of evidence, and the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that not only is there climate change occurring more rapidly than ever before, but also that the last 150 or so years of human-caused industrial activity has promoted the rapid climate change.

    I try to be reasonable, as you suggest, and look at evidence without a preconceived bias based on political ideology. It’s a shame when politics has to enter into everything, isn’t it?

  22. That’s just completely ridiculous, David. A moment’s consideration will show you that.

    Perhaps you can explain how wetlands can halt 10,000 cubic yards of water per acre? This should be good.

    But we look at the preponderance of evidence, and the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that not only is there climate change occurring more rapidly than ever before, but also that the last 150 or so years of human-caused industrial activity has promoted the rapid climate change.

    Correlation does not establish causation. The preponderance of the evidence shows that Europe was warmer in the 1200s and the late Roman period than it is now, yet there is no evidence of human-caused industrial activity to account for it. Perhaps alien astronauts set up an industrial colossus in North America, then abandoned it and converted the continent back to a greenfield?

  23. Hurricanes form over warm seas. Increases in the temperature of the oceans leads to increases in the severity, though not the frequency, of hurricanes. There’s plenty of evidence that human activity has contributed to the warming of the oceans.

    Another stat I read was that every mile of wetlands absorbed a foot of storm surge, so it most definitely would have made a difference.

  25. So what, Rob? I’m no fan of the Dems, and spent the entire Clinton administration as an environmental journalist cataloguing Bill’s stupid, destructive actions.

    That doesn’t let Bush off the hook for being orders of magnitude worse.

    Perhaps you can explain how wetlands can halt 10,000 cubic yards of water per acre? This should be good.

    Now you’re just being stupid, David.

    Take that acre of oceanfront with 10,000 cubic yards of water on it. Imagine twenty miles of wetland between it and the city. To get to the city, that water has to spread out over the intervening wetland. Each acre of storm surge spreads out over 160 acres of intervening wetland. Evened out, a 20-foot storm surge is at about four centimeters when it gets to the other side.

    Now obviously, the storm surge is going to be more than an acre thick, so there will be significantly more water the wetlands will have to accommodate. But neither is the wetland a perfect platonic surface. There will be mangroves and cypresses, willows, hillocks and sloughs, and all kinds of other topography to blunt the force of the storm surge, reflecting a lot of the energy back toward the open sea. The figure Zuzu cites for wetlands’ lessening off storm surge height is not far off.

    This is not rocket surgery, David. Come on.

  26. And as for the climate change nay-saying:

    Study Attributes Stronger Storms to Warmer Seas – New York Times

    WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (AP) – Storms with the power of Hurricane Katrina are becoming more common, in part because of global warming, according to a report from a team of researchers that will be published Friday.

    The number of storms in the two most powerful categories, 4 and 5, rose to an average of 18 a year worldwide since 1990, up from 11 in the 1970’s, according to the report, which will be published in the journal Science.

  27. You know, if the Bush Administration is (like every sitting Administration) going to try to take credit for the good stuff that happens, they should expect to get blamed for the bad stuff. Yes, Clinton, Carter, etc. did bad things too. But you know what? Bush has been in charge for about 5 years now. He’s the Man. (Remember the bumper sticker–GORE LOST. GET OVER IT.)When bad stuff happens now, it’s on his watch. It’s amusing for some to sneeringly suggest that all of the Left is trying to blame him for the actual hurricane, but no matter how you slice it, the FEDERAL response to the hurricane sucked big time, and Bush’s folks were in charge and responsible. That’s not to say local officials aren’t responsible, too, but let’s keep our eyes on the ball here: it’s the FEDERAL response we’re focused on. They’re the ones with the most resources, etc., and the brief to help out in a large scale natural disaster. All the rationalizing in the world doesn’t change that. If Gore were President now, and the same screwups happened, the Right would be calling for his head. So don’t waste my time whining about picking on poor Dubya.

  28. Take that acre of oceanfront with 10,000 cubic yards of water on it. Imagine twenty miles of wetland between it and the city. To get to the city, that water has to spread out over the intervening wetland. Each acre of storm surge spreads out over 160 acres of intervening wetland. Evened out, a 20-foot storm surge is at about four centimeters when it gets to the other side.

    You may be unclear on the concept. That 10,000 cubic yards of water is pushed toward the city by the 10,000 cubic yards of water per acre above normal sea level just offshore, and the 10,000 cubic yards behind that, and the 10,000 behind that ad infinitum de facto. Also, 10,000 cubic yards is an acre covered by just over six feet of water. A 20-foot surge will be about 33,000 cubic yards.

  29. You may be unclear on the concept. That 10,000 cubic yards of water is pushed toward the city by the 10,000 cubic yards of water per acre above normal sea level just offshore, and the 10,000 cubic yards behind that, and the 10,000 behind that ad infinitum de facto.

    You are, simply, wrong. A storm surge is a ridge of water in advance of a front. Do some goddamn homework before you just declare that all the hydrologists in the world don’t know what they’re talking about.

  30. The hell?

    Look now, I had six inches of seawater in my front yard exactly two years ago tomorrow, my dad had about a foot in his yard, and my boss had three feet in his house. It started out of the ditches around 1pm, peaked at 3:30, dropped a bit then peaked again at 4pm, then emptied out by about 5:30. When you’ve seen the storm surge from a hurricane come in with your own eyes, then you can attempt to lecture me on the subject. Not before.

  32. OK, David, fine. Your guesses based on your anecdotal information defintely outweigh everything any hydrologist has ever published on the relationship of wetlands and storm surges.

    You might hie yourself over to the Discovery Institute. The creationists could use a fine smart person like you.

  34. Awesome. I think I have a bit of a crush on piny.

    Join the club, my friend, join the club.

    Remember: you’re not only the president of the Asshat Club for Men, you’re also a client.

    Ok, I’ll admit that this is funny, but I think I’m gonna pull a Dawn Eden and draw the line here on ad hominems (perhaps being called an uninformed bimbo has made me sensitive, who knows). I’m not going to get into deleting comments, but I’d appreciate it if everyone could make their case without name-calling. This goes for me as well, so feel free to call me out if I start slinging insults around.

  35. I imagine even murderers and thieves were creeped out at the thought of little bags and buckets of dismembered babies floating around inside those places.

    Why do I have a feeling that they don’t use buckets to put abortion waste in? And why do I have a feeling that she used the word “dismembered” to get an emotional reaction.. like those posters of babies who have been aborted. I don’t think they make the women give birth and then chop off the baby’s limbs.

  36. I like how when “the left” starts talking about race and economic class, we talk about things like the legacy of slavery, racism and the difficulty of rising out of your socio-economic status. When “the right” talks about race and e. class, it’s about single mothers being sluts, bad culture, and teenagers being “lightly parented”.

    Hmm.

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