The Conservatives Are Jerks About Hurricane Irene…

I don’t how else to say it, but I have been caching up on the news and what I’m reading about what they said about the hurricane is full of bull! Sorry for being so blunt but have you read what they have said?

First, the conservative press, George Will said on ABC Roundtable: Politics of Storms

Florence nightingale said whatever else you can say about hospitals, they shouldn't make their patients sicker. and whatever else you want to say about journalism shouldn't subtract from the nation's understanding and certainly shouldn't contribute to the manufacturered synthetic hysteria that is a part of modern life and I think we may have done so with regard to this now tropical storm as it now seems to be.

Do you believe this bull? The topography of the New England states with it valleys and forests make it especially susceptible to flash floods and wind damage. To warn people to take precautions is not hype but common sense. There are still hundreds of thousand people who do not have power and some probably will not get it back until the weekend. A strong wind blowing down Long Island Sound creates a strong storm surge. The effects of a hurricane in New England are totally different from a hurricane in Florida or Texas where storms surges goes for miles inland. For the conservative press to criticize the President and the governors for telling their citizens to be prepared is wrong, it is bull shit! It is gutter politics. What does Mr. Will want a Katrina all over again, where the rich were able to flee and the poor are left behind to fend for themselves.

This opinion piece from the Washington Times,

One approach, let's call it the Red State mentality, is that the media hypes up storms to an insane level. It isn't a disaster, it's just a little windy.

The Blue State approach is to send in the National Guard to save everyone, and while they're there it would be nice if they could build a few new public buildings.

Think of this as you-are-all-a-bunch-of-wimps vs. I-want-my-mommy.

News Busters said,

When you think about the unnecessary panic and fear ginned up by the media over what indeed turned into a tropical storm before it hit Manhattan, one has to wonder how much time and money was wasted in preparing for the hyped worst case scenario that fortunately never transpired.

The Daily Beast said,

Irene fell far short of the media’s dire warnings even before it was downgraded. Howard Kurtz on the scaremongering by television and local officials.

So the liberals have hyped the storm, what do you think? At the height of the storm 775,000 customers without power here in Connecticut shattering the previous number of customers who lost power in hurricane Gloria. Forty-seven people were killed as a result of Irene, making it the 4th deadliest hurricane in the last 30 years. A friend’s house on Long Island Sound was flooded and her neighbor’s house bashed in from the storm surge and the storm surge went inland over a ½ mile, exceeding all other hurricanes except the 1938 hurricane; here are some pictures from around the state. The center of town where I live was flooded and they were worried about the dams breaking. Eighty-three percent of the town lost power. Look at this video… do you think that the news media hyped the warning?

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What do the Republican candidates have to say…

Cantor says federal help on Irene cleanup must be offset
The Hill
By Pete Kasperowicz
08/29/11

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday reiterated that the federal government has a role to play in cleaning up the damage caused by Hurricane Irene, but stressed again that federal funds must be offset by spending cuts.

“This is a time, an appropriate instance, where there is a federal government role,” Cantor said Monday morning on Fox News.

“We will find the money if there is a need for additional monies,” he added. “But … those monies are not unlimited, and what we’ve always said is we offset [with] that which has already been funded.”

So the Republican House Majority leader wants to hold hostage all those people and small businesses who need federal disaster relief so that he can blackmail Congress into getting his way. Where will he find the money? They have already made drastic cuts in programs for the seniors cutting “Meals on Wheel”, for infants with cuts to WIC, cutting medical help for women’s health programs, while at the same time refusing to tax those who can afford to pay more, the billionaires and millionaires.

What does Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul think about helping with disaster relief?

…On the eve of hurricane Irene, Paul called for abolishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Paul is absolutely frank about wanting to turn back the clock to a simpler time:

"We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960," Paul said. "I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district.

"There's no magic about FEMA. They're a great contribution to deficit financing and quite frankly they don't have a penny in the bank. We should be coordinated but coordinated voluntarily with the states," Paul told NBC News. "A state can decide. We don't need somebody in Washington."

Paul, a government minimalist, gets points for honesty and consistency. He believes in an every-man-for-himself society, and is honest about how retrograde that is. Paul notes, for example, that Galveston, Texas, is in his district, site of the most deadly hurricane disaster in the US of all time, is the 1900 utopia he imagines. Thousands killed, a city destroyed. In the aftermath, a telegram was sent to President William McKinley: "I have been deputized by the mayor and Citizen's Committee of Galveston to inform you that the city of Galveston is in ruins." And while the city has rebuilt, historians say that what could have been one of the most important port cities in America was set back more than a century by the Great Storm. Some argue that it is a city that has never recovered.
Crosscut
By Knute Berger

Everybody for themselves, the Titanic mentality. The rich get the life boats and everyone else swims.

So what did Rep. Bachmann the presidential candidate have to say about the hurricane Irene?

The Huffington Post
Jon Ward

She later said that she was only joking.

The conservatives hold the Sword of Damocles over our heads while people whose homes have been washed away and are begging for assistance and give us a Hobson’s choice of what we want to give up; food stamps for the millions of unemployed or loans to rebuild our house and small businesses.

While the conservative media mock up and call us wimps.[/RANT]

Update: 8/31/11 8:15pm

Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history, and analysts said that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies.
New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER

This shows even more how much of a fool that George Will is for shooting off his mouth before the storm even hit.