Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Slightly infuriated by this RFK Jr. point from the Huffington post. Such moral grandstanding in a time of domestic natural disaster sets his cause back, if anything. Everyone hates the Monday morning quarterback, and however legitimate his point, its completely inappropriate to be bringing this fact up now. Same goes for Sydney Blumenthals political opportunism in this piece-- "Its not like they didnt see it coming."

Its like some asshole sitting on the curb, eating an apple, and watching you take a serious spill on your skateboard. When you get up and dust yourself off, the first comment is "You shouldn't have tried that, man."

I'd like to think we're better than this.

Even Ol' Rush's naming the hurricane after Editor-In-Chief of the Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, seems childish by comparison.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

First time here and very tasty offerings abound.

But the shrill advocacy of upholding "good taste" even when your countrymen have been shafted once again by an incomptent arsehole would be surreally funny if my blood wasn't boiling at the very thought of somehow deferring judgement indefinitely on Bush and his rapacious cabal.

This kind of lunatic thinking was everywhere right after the London bombings - let's just close our eyes to the cast-iron causes behind this atrocity and maybe everything will be okay once Blair rides to the rescue with policy-making on the hoof.

duh,

Disagree with it all you like but the reasons behind the London bombs are coming home to roost: http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1561383,00.html

But it's taken almost two months of good taste, media spin and government bullshit to get to this point.

Truly bizarre that you can't open your eyes to some of the undeniables at work in the New Orleans disaster

CJN said...

Hi there

I'm well aware of the undeniables at work, both on the policy side (funding cuts in flood prevention), as well as the environmental side. my point here is quite simple. RFK Jr's post, which while containing several points that I agree with, gravely oversimplifies the matter. While global warming (and the US rejection of the Kyoto protocol) certainly is playing a role in shifting weather patterns around the globe, I feel that this is an arguement better made after the dead are collected from the floor of the Superdome, the children receive their insulin, and there is some semblance of order installed from the present chaos. Now, if you want to make the arguement that the White House was bloody slow to mount a response (and the fucking Secretary of State was shoe shopping on Fifth avenue on the 31st when she should be, at the very least, coordinating international aid), then i will be with you 100 percent.

Anonymous said...

I never see any reason for seperating the fatal results of wanton incompetence and the reasons behind the incompetence, whether it be in domestic, foreign or qny other policy.

see - http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/09/politics-of-weather-3-shyness-of.html

and for more general

- http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/09/politics-of-weather-redux.html