After a new survey showed that Barack Obama's job approval numbers were plummeting faster than the barometric pressure readings preceding Hurricane Irene, the decision was made to pull the president off the golf course and make him sit petulantly at the NRCC center of FEMA, where he would hopefully look like a POTUS instead of a clueless POS.
"My biggest concerns are with flooding and power," Mr. Obama told the emergency staffers, cleverly eliminating the concerns with sunspots, UFOs, volcanos, and giant radioactive monsters which the other meteorologists had believed were the primary threats from hurricanes.
Still, when all was said and done, Hurricane Irene turned out to be something of a disappointment for the president, who had been eagerly adding to Hurricane Hysteria in the previous days, warning that it could be of "historic" proportion. You see, Obama wanted a real gobsmacker of a hurricane so he could appear to have handled it better than Bush handled Katrina. Moreover, a truly disastrous storm would have been more "bad luck" that Obama could blame for his own failings.
Hope n' Change is grateful that the storm's damage, although significant, wasn't worse...and not just because it will annoy the president (though that's a bonus).
With so many humans doing so much to deliberately damage our country from within, it's just nice that Mother Nature finally decided to give us a little bit of break.
The president consoles himself for a lost day of golfing.
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21 comments:
He really didn't look anything like a POTUS during Hurricane Irene. Not that he ever does. People just assumed he'd at least look like he cares considering how he lambasted Bush 43 over Hurricane Katrina - which was a big media whitewash lie to begin with (as in whitewashing the fact that GW called and pleaded with Louisiana's governor not to idly sit back and ignore the threat by refusing to evacuate and ready National Guard days in advance).
In contrast, Obama refuses to even leave Martha's Vineyard until New York and New Jersey governors were taking preemptive action to help those who refused to or couldn't evacuate. Not a peep was heard when Hurricane Irene hit the Carolina shores as hundreds of thousands watched property wash away or power go out.
It's sad that I have more respect for the idiotic governor of North Carolina who seemed prepared and capable compared to our current POTUS. The irony is simple, too. In the course of a week, two consecutive disasters gave Obama the opportunity to show some grace, capability, leadership, and composure.
A man who believes Soros' words concerning catastrophes and opportunities just ignored legitimate plight. The party that "cares"...
Just putting this bit out there.
Who watched the 9/11 GW Bush interview on Nat Geo? I though it was quite good, and it was certainly a nice contrast to the past week's turmoil.
FYI: There's a documentary on tonight concerning the hunt, capture, and interrogation of KSM.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~George Santayana
Preparedness can mitigate some of the damage wrought by natural disasters. Then, we are left with cleaning up, repairing and rebuilding. I dare say were were not at all prepared for Hurricane Obama when it blew through the country. Oh yes, there were warnings, and most went unheeded. That storm unleashed its full fury on us and we appeared powerless against it. It has left untold damage and deep scars that will take years to heal, if ever. But unlike Katrina or Irene, this one never had to happen. It was the very definition of man-caused disaster.
Indeed, anonymous, when this regime becomes part of the past, we must vow to never forget it lest we condemn some future generation to repeat it.
I just laughed out loud and am now explaining the reason to the apolitical people in the office.
Thank God for "global warming". Irene, the first major storm to hit New England since the pre-anthropogenic warming days was barely a cat-1.
Of course, this denied the President a natural disaster to distract America from "man caused disaster" that has been his administration up to this point. (A decimated northeast would have been perfect justification for a new trillion-dollar "stimulus" that the Democrats want so badly for the benefit of his prime benefactors) So it's back to work preparing next week's big "Labor Day" speech to present his latest economy-killing agenda.
But, but, disasters are GOOD for the economy, no? All that activity repairing everything?
Yeah, right...
I'm still hoping for appearances of "The Nethermen" in their brown wind-breakers...
@Anonymous (top)- Good post! I have yet to see any real evidence that Obama cares about anyone or anything other than himself.
Regarding the National Geographic special on 9/11 with George Bush, I haven't seen it yet but had TIVO grab it.
@Angry Hoosier Dad- You're right on target with "Hurricane Obama." It starts with a large mass of heavily churned air, turns into immediate destruction, and leaves behind the need for massive cleanup.
@DonSurber- I'm still amazed that there are "apolitical" people out there. In any case, glad you got a laugh!
@John the Econ- It will be interesting to see if Obama still tries to use the aftermath of Irene for his own political ends. And I'll bet the scriptwriters for Obama's big speech are starting to feel the deadline pressure.
@Pete(Detroit)- Cleaning up after disasters would be good for the economy, but Obama spent all the money preparing for "shovel ready" jobs...and it turns out you can't really shovel floodwaters very effectively.
Stilt, et. al., I was thinking the same sort of thing when I saw a bizarre picture of Obama, looking clueless, with a name plaque on the desk in front of him with his name and title, at the "command center." -- and I think, yes, good to know who in the room doesn't have a clue as to what to do. There's an image of the hurricane by satellite above his head, like a cartoon bubble, and I thought to put in it: "Finally, shovel ready jobs!"
It's buffoonery, since the differences between Irene and Katrina are so vast as to be laughable. (And still tearful for those of the latter storm, I assure you.) Irene will be forgotten in a week; Katrina is still visible. The president has not cleaned up what he inherited, I can see.
And Obama's biggest worry is whether his fundraising parlors in Manhattan can be opened soon enough again.
Whenever now I hear him say "I'm on top of things" I think: Yah, like a wet blanket smothering the flame of liberty and the fires of prosperity. He's so against global warming he's against heating up the economy for heaven's sake.
To Anonymous:
As a Louisiana native, I can say you were right on target. Everyone seems to blame Bush for the delay in Katrina relief when Kathleen Blanco refused for valuable, desperate hours to allow the Feds to get active. That woman put the cause of women in Louisiana politics back 50 years by her foolish, selfish behavior and Mary Landrieu was aiding and abetting her every foot of the way. They both ought to be heartly ashamed of themselves. But I forget they're both Democrats - no concept of shame.
Now with Hurricane Irene, CNN had Ray Nagan on as an expert commentator? That's proof of MSM idiocy if ever there was.
CNN had Ray Nagan on as an expert commentator....ON WHAT? How to let unused school busses get flooded in their parking lots instead of using them to evacuate people? How to determine if a city is a Chocolate City? I'm sure the folks in Hershey, PA could use his insight on the latter.
So much buffoonery, so many targets, so little time. That amateurishly staged 'reality clip' of Obama at HCC pretending to have a clue reminded me of those Star Trek episodes where, in Kirk's absence, some self-important bureaucrat invokes a technicality to assume command of the Enterprise. All goes badly and finally the desk jockey is forced to relinquish command so Spock can try and salvage the situation. That's Obama and 'flooding'. How cool if Spock could enter the Oval Office flanked by a red-shirt team to relieve our POS POTUS of 'command', and off to the brig pending court martial at the nearest Star Base...
But really, aside from OKing emergency money (ouch), things like hurricanes should not have us looking to a POTUS for rescue. That's a Governor's job. Get the word out, read the 10 Emergency Preparations list on-air constantly , and let LEOs, EMS and Red Cross do the jobs they're trained for. FEMA does nothing but gum up the works; they're the EPA of the emergency world; shut them down and transfer assets to the states.
As for the media hype...TWC, CNN etc affected so many people, and the wilful hype distortion caused so many real people and businesses to make expensive cancellations/relocations, that I wonder if this won't be the event we look back on as a major tipping point when MSM and cable news lost its last shreds of credibility.
I can speculate on why BO looks so petulant in that photo. When the power went out, the 326 people who bought a Chevy Volt called him wanting to know where the hell they could plug their cars in so they could drive forty miles away from the storm. It's obvious he had no good answer....
@Jim Hlavac- Clueless, useless, pointless...the very definition of Obama in a crisis. And it doesn't really seem like he's knocked himself out trying to speed recovery in Louisiana, does it?
@gray lady- Something we don't hear often enough regarding Katrina is "posse comitatus." That's the government act that made it illegal for Bush to mobilize Federal help (in the form of troops) to Louisiana without the permission of the Dems in charge of the state... and they refused to give that permission, even when everyone else could see they were setting their citizens up for disaster.
@Bruce in KC- Nagin isn't just an "expert," he is a disaster and always has been.
@Andrew- I'm all for putting out warnings and erring on the side of caution, but this was just ridiculous. Did we really need minute-by-minute live shots of reporters in rain coats standing in drizzle, acting like they were in war zones? Did we really need to see waves breaking on shore to know that's where waves always break? And personally, I got tired of seeing footage in which wet tree branches were gently wafting to and fro while the "crawl" underneath claimed we were looking at 85mph sustained winds.
@Colby- I'd never thought of the Chevy Volt's distance limitation in terms of what happens when you need to get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry. When the floodwaters are rising, you really don't want to have to plug your car in for another 12-hour "fill up."
Stilton,
In all fairness, the Chevy Dolt DOES have a proven reliable gasoline backup system for escaping hurricanes. It is still a joke of a car, and I really question the cognative powers of the people who have actually bought them. What ARE they thinking? Are they trying to make Prius owners jealous? They sure as hell don't impress me and my 1998 Jetta diesel that still gets 50 mpg. And it does that while SOUNDING like a real car.
The "broken window" fallacy: Natural disasters are hardly good news for the economy. Yes, although some areas of the economy do, in fact, get "stimulated", it's only at the expense of other out-of-view areas of the economy. And remember, any way you look at it, a natural disaster represents billions of dollars of assets wiped off of the national "balance sheet".
The only upside to natural disasters as opposed to man-made disasters is that we don't vote to create them.
Grew up in Florida, healthy respect for 'canes is in my DNA, but for all the nonstop sensationalized filler-blather on TWC, CNN etc, anyone not already versed on surviving a hurricane was unlikely to learn the essential actions. Instead, the ridiculous 'buy bottled water'. Meh.
I recommend a great blog done by a Katrina survivor, 'Listening To Katrina', an insightful analysis and narrative by a bright, educated, survival-oriented guy who through family issues and decision creep wound up not getting out until the window was closing, and getting trapped in the mass interstate gridlock of refugees. Lots of learn-from-my-mistakes actionable wisdom, expensively acquired, with no whining. He considered himself a survivalist but when faced with actual evacuation he realized how inadequate a 3 day 'bug out bag' is when everything else you leave behind is going to be destroyed forever without trace...and lost precious hours packing photos and looking for crucial documents (diplomas, certificates, deeds, car titles, wills, home/car/medical insurance policies, passports, current year's tax files, etc) they would need to rebuild their lives (the house was in fact destroyed, all documents lost). Opened my eyes, changed my own evac planning. I've gathered & scanned all important doc's in advance to disk/thumbdrive/upload to 'cloud' so I can get out fast if needed.
His blog also details the cluster**** of MSM, local/state officials, misinformation, denial, disorganization. Choked interstate and side roads, people creeping along at 2 mph, cars ahead running out of gas and blocking the lane, bad official decisions making everything worse. Must-read.
@Stilton, the amateur pretenses by MSM 'field' reporters sank almost to the level of hoaxery. Two favorites:beachfront reporter in light drizzle faking a stagger against imaginary gale force winds he claims he is in, then behind him two passerby enter frame and stroll past normally, hats in place; BUSTED. And then: blond TWC twenty-xing anchor-bimbo who chirps 'And if you lose power at home, you can always continue to follow us online at FaceBook and Weather-dot-Com." Because, er, surfing the internet doesn't require electricity? Wifi, cable broadband, cell towers don't require electricity? Irene showed how moronically low 'professional' cable news has sunk...below campus-student-station standards, below Public Access or even youTube standards.
I love that no one has yet mentioned the guy in the background on the tv flashing the camera.
@Andrew- The blog you mentioned is at http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs/klessons/ (sorry that's not a clickable link, but I'm slow about learning new html skills). Looks useful!
I also caught the idiocy you mentioned with people being told that if the electricity goes out, they can check things online. Yeah, good luck with that.
@Badlarry- I was starting to wonder if that was a little too subtle (grin). That's a real screen capture from one of the alleged news channels, when a guy whipped his swim trunks off and jumped around "full monty" style for the world to see. I photoshopped it into the original photo of Obama (which had a satellite view of the storm on the actual TV monitor). And I blurred it just a little to protect the innocent.
I just heard on the news this morning that Janet Napolitano is coming to NC today to survey.... crop damage. Yep, crop damage.
Why doesn't she go to Arizona or NM or Texas and survey what the eff she is supposed to survey?!
Crop damage? I think whoever sent her on this trip has BRAIN damage.
The wife and I were laughing about the "If your power & phone goes out, go online and get the info you need to survive" comment, except when we saw it, it was coming from some NYC or FEMA official.
These are the people who are supposed to save us.
Can't wait until they're employing my doctor.
@Colby- So now damaged crops are a matter for Homeland Security? What exactly is Janet going to do about it, other than perhaps open the borders even wider to allow cheaper farm workers in?
@John the Econ- "If you're having a heart attack, please press 1 on your touchtone phone" (30 minutes later) "All our representatives are helping other emergency patients, but please hold. Your call is very important to us. Para Espanol, pulsa numero dos."
How much do you think the taxpayers shelled out for that top notch folding place-holder note in the front of The One? Did they do that so he'd know where he was supposed to sit? Or so Mother Nature would know where to drop the next asteroid?
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