In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

What Caused Katrina?

Abortion? The gays? Girls Gone Wild? It’s time to add another cause to the list of reasons for divine retribution: The middle east peace process.

The article is so laden with ridiculous theories that it’s a pretty fun read, and I’m having a hard time picking out which parts are the craziest. Read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:

As Aaron Klein pointed out exactly two months after the July 7 London bombings, many rabbis in Israel believe that Katrina’s wrath was Divine retribution for America’s pivotal role in the Gaza and northern Samaria forced evacuations, which were completed just two days before the powerful hurricane made landfall between Miami and Fort Lauderdale and five days before it ripped apart much of America’s Gulf coast. Mere coincidence?

It is interesting to note that the name Katrina begins and ends with the vowel “a,” as does Gaza. If you take out the middle part, “tri,” which means three, you get Kana, which is the name of the Galilee town in Samaria where Jesus did his first public miracle, turning water into wine. If you add a final “n” to that you get Kanan – the original biblical name of the Holy Land. This is obviously just coincidence.

Those readers prone to dismiss out of hand the proposition that Israel’s Sovereign Lord might have been signaling unhappiness over the U.S. role in the forced Jewish uprootings should consider a few chilling facts: Both events began with security personnel knocking on residential homes in a portion of the coastal south in order to warn residents to immediately evacuate their homes, although for clearly different reasons. In both cases, thousands of residents were reluctant to leave, fearing they would never return to their beloved homes. Indeed, several thousand homes were leveled in Gaza and northern Samaria, while hundreds of thousands were destroyed or badly damaged along America’s Gulf coast.

In both instances, people suddenly became effective refugees in their own lands; many forced to move to temporary shelter. Security personnel faced personal danger from angry, sometimes violent, residents. Looting then followed by some of those remaining behind. Both affected regions played a significant role in foreign exports, especially of agricultural products, resulting in substantial economic loss to the countries involved. Approximately the same overall percentage of citizens in both cases lost their homes and/or businesses. Coincidence?

Dude, he’s so wrong! It should be clear by now that Starbucks caused Katrina, with their homo-promoting and whatnot. Duh.

To be fair, some right-wingers do want the lunatic fringe to shut up.

Posted in Uncategorized

Power Line

This is so telling:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It’s enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it… jump to certain conclusions.

Katrina Links

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. Vomitinducing. 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.

Breaking News

Satire is a fine art:

WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 9 – As the grim body count climbs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and its consequent flooding, fingers are increasingly being pointed at a pattern of systemic negligience by representatives of an entire political party. And some observers are saying that the problem goes all the way to the top.

“As far as I’m concerned, every single Democratic politician bears the blame for the shocking death toll in this disaster,” Secretary of State Condimelda Rice told Creek Running North. “Every single objective observer warned them starting in 2000 that the Bush Administration would wreak havoc on the fabric of this country. They did nothing to combat us, nor even to mitigate the worst effects of our actions after the fact. We have gutted this nation’s wealth and destroyed its infrastructure, and they did nothing but stand by and watch it happen. They had the skills, they had the manpower to do something about the damage we were sure to cause, and yet they have just sat on their hands for five long years.”

Vice President Dick Cheney echoed Secretary Rice’s remarks. Speaking to CRN from a fortified pro shop at the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club, he said “Their opposition to anything we do is so ineffective and weak-willed, that for two years I’ve had to tell myself to go fuck myself. If you ask me, that’s not the America I know.”

Well done, Chris. Read the rest.

FEMA Needs to Tell People What It Intends for Their Homes

Kathryn Cramer has been all over the Katrina story with NOLA disaster, tracking water levels in specific parts of the city using satellite photos and other amazing feats of technology.

In doing so much work with individuals locating their homes, she has made some compelling observations:

The question is this: How much of New Orleans does FEMA plan to restore, and how much does it plan to simply replace? And if the houses are replaced with something else, are they to be replaced for their original owners? Or will the land be taken by eminent domain and redistributed?

Although she has found some vague information on the FEMA timeline for general “debris removal”:

[i]t’s not clear to me whether this time-line applies (or even could be applied) to the cleanup of New Orleans. But now that Michael Brown is out of the way, presumably some plan for the future of New Orleans is coming together.

Whole neighborhoods will need to be torn down entirely. We know this. It’s obvious from up there in orbit where Digital Globes satellites live. But how many neighborhoods? And who will decide? Will FEMA tell you in advance if your house is to be razed, or only after the fact? FEMA needs to make its plans public as soon as possible.

…before the real looting begins. Bureaucratic looting of people’s lives, property, and wealth.

Read the rest and tour her amazing research abilities in the Katrina archives.

The disaster has raised many questions all over the political landscape. The bloggers at Whirled View have also come up with many strong observations about the efficiency of the government response and what this means in the future.

Living Below Water: The history of a sinking city.
Yeah, There’s Going To Be More: When a city that was built on a landfill is flooded.
Plenty of Troops?: “Sows ears cannot be turned into silk purses indefinitely.”
Preparedness: Why we have to anticipate disasters ahead of time. (We might even have to use thing handy little thing called science.)

The Real Lesson of Katrina

The essential point is this: If all of our politicians and agencies could not properly prepare to handle a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina – when we had at least 48 hours prior warning – how can we possibly handle multiple, simultaneous nuclear strikes by Muslim terrorists on our cities?

Riiiight…

Evacuees “Better Off”

“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas,” Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program “Marketplace.” “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.”

…do I even need to comment?

Posted in Uncategorized

Hipster Guerilla Advertising

Okay, post edited.

It appears I jumped to conclusions due to the American Apparel crap that has been happening in Blogtopia. Thereby I retract my initial cynicism and will re-promote these guys.

Turtle Tees are donating their entire month’s proceeds to the American Red Cross for Katrina victims. And if Mac knows and likes them, they’re a-okay by me.