Rambling Rhodes

Duty Calls

I've been summoned, so I shall fisk this.

Everyone is playing the blame game on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, and we at the top end of the Mississippi River can join the fun by pointing fingers close to home.

Or we could, you know, stop frickin' blaming for a few frickin' weeks and start frickin' DOING something useful for the Katrina victims. But, I suppose such obviosness has never occurred to Coleman in the past, so why should it start occurring to him now?

Part of what drowned New Orleans is a political ideology determined to shrink government and ignore scientific evidence of global warming. Well, "stuff" flows downhill, and some of those tainted ideas came straight from Minnesota.

I'm going to take a stab at this, and it's a half-hearted stab that's not even reinforced by a Google search, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that PART OF WHAT DROWNED NEW ORLEANS WAS WATER! In fact, most of what drowned New Orleans was WATER. That damndable chemical known as di-hydrogen oxide. Oh, and a freakin' hurricane. Last I heard, and again my knowledge on this is a bit hampered, but according to the news reports I've watched, hurricanes don't consist of swirling, high-powered political ideologies determined to shrink government and ignore scientific evidence of global warming.

Take a 1998 publication of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis that has pooh-poohed global warming and pushed for "limited government." To some folks, that means government should cut taxes on the rich instead of wasting money on flood levees.

Of course, Coleman neglects to mention that the levees that actually were breached were among the most recently updated (and deemed in good condition by the Army corps of engineers) with, wait for it, FEDERAL money. Oh, and also, it takes years and years to construct and/or update a levee system so, even if funding hadn't been so "evilly" cut, you probably wouldn't have seen new levees until somewhere around 2011 (pure guesstimate on my part, but so is most of Coleman's research). Of course, I imagine the little cymbal-clanging monkey in Coleman's head believes that levees are built with a little elbow grease and a trowel and can be completed in an afternoon, if you really put your mind to it.

The results of such recent American Experiments are on view in New Orleans, where the most effective government initiatives have come in the form of supplying body bags and restricting journalists from recording images of the human costs of government inaction.

"Restricting" is Coleman's way of translating "Requesting." Easily confused terms, I know, particularly when your mind works about as effectively as wet gunpowder.

In "Global Warming: Divided Science and Unfounded Policy" (and many other papers) the center argued that even if global warming is real, the cost of fighting it is too high. Cutting back on emissions (by agreeing to the Kyoto Protocols), the report contended, would put a damper on the economic wealth that will save us from hurricanes that might take lots of lives in poorer countries but not here, by gum.

"By gum" was actually in the original text for the Center of the American Experiment, but they eventually threw it out in favor of "Boy howdy."

The piece was written by David W. Riggs, formerly a senior fellow at the center. Riggs now rails against global warming from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank in Washington, D.C., whose mission is preventing environmental concerns from interfering with business.

Okay, let's take a nice long second to really appreciate what Coleman is trying to do here. He is trying to say that global warming was the culprit responsible for Hurricane Katrina, because, you know, Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane. Coleman's not the only dope to make this logical vomit. I call it logical vomit because, under this sort of reasoning, every other hurricane that comes after Katrina is going to be a Category 5 or stronger. Don't they HAVE to be? Oh, wait, I guess there was another Category 5, Camille, in 1969, back when the theory of global warming was little more than an itch in science's shorts, and we have Category 4 hurricanes going all the way back to the turn of the century and further. So, maybe Coleman's just being his usual dumbass self.

Fatality lists might be "tragically long" in Bangladesh, Riggs wrote. But storm fatalities in the U.S. -- even with global warming -- would be "few" because "our economic well-being reduces our exposure to risk and facilitates recuperation when disaster strikes."

AHA! Gotcha!

You know, it occurs to me, Coleman's bio at the Star-Tribune says: Nick Coleman writes about people and events in the metro area. So, it begs the question: What the fuck is Coleman doing quoting a guy located in Washington D.C. in a column about a hurricane that hit nowhere near the metro area? I think it's beyond time that the Strib starts trying to rein this maroon in a little bit.

Quoting another author, Riggs explains: "The wealth of our society makes it possible for people to incur the expenses of relocation."

If Riggs is quoting another author, shouldn't that author be attributed? Nevermind.

Oh, really? Tell that to the people who drowned in nursing homes while waiting for help from "emergency" agencies that moved like molasses in January.

YEAH!

Oh, wait, those buses were supposed to be coordinated by New Orleans officials. . . so, I guess. . . er, Center of the American Experiment? Uh, water? Ummm. . . uhhhhh. . . DAMN YOU GLOBAL WARMING AND ADULT ADD!

Tell it to all the babies who have lost their mothers. Tell it to all those who hungered and thirsted and prayed and begged for help.

Yes, let's gather all those people around and try to explain to them that the reason for their misery is global warming.

Once upon a time, Americans pledged each other their lives, their fortunes and their honor. Then those who hate government came to govern.

WTF? Does anybody else's brain hurt right now trying to figure out where the hell Coleman is going with all of this, or where he came from, or where he should go? Don't you just want to club him about the head and shoulders with a Clue x 4?

During the tragedy in New Orleans they stood by while poor people died, behaving like the fortunate folks in first class on the Titanic who rested on the oars of their half-empty lifeboats -- safely distancing themselves from the shouts and screams of steerage passengers until the waters quieted.

They? Who are they? Riggs? Babies? How does this apply to the Twin Cities metro area? How can so many unrelated threads be brought together so haphazardly into such an ugly literary tapestry? Why didn't I get the least bit turned on by Kate Winslet's bare tits in Titanic?

The destruction of New Orleans is a travesty of injustice and indifference that will haunt us for years, fueled by the blindness of ideologues who think global warming is good and government is bad and who don't see poor people in the path of destruction until they float to the surface.

"Ideologues who think global warming is good." You just kind of what to let that sentence fragment hang there for awhile, airing it out. It's such an awful sentence fragment, with no basis in anything, least of all fact, that it just emanates a kind of stink, like when you walk into the bathroom after your roommate's been in there for 40 minutes. Everything that follows that fragment is practically invalidated by it. When Coleman shoots himself in the foot, he apparently uses a Howitzer.

In the past days, I have heard Fox News' Bill O'Reilly say you shouldn't count on government to protect you. I have heard radio's Rush Limbaugh say that expecting the government to build levees is an example of a welfare mentality. I have heard many ideological zealots excuse the appalling failure to save the sick, the elderly, the children, by shrugging their well-tailored shoulders and saying there is a limit on what government should do and the private sector should be called upon first.

Just a point of order here, if Rochester, Minn., is swept away by a tornado, I fully intend, and have always fully intended, to rely on myself first, my gun second, my neighbors third, local authorities fourth, the private sector maybe fifth, and somewhere way the down the fucking line I expect the federal government to arrive and lend a hand (and, yes, do a better job than FEMA is currently doing in New Orleans).

But, wait a minute Nick, I thought this was about GLOBAL WARMING!

Here's what they mean: Them that has big wheels and wallets can get out. Them that don't must sink or float.

And now it's a class warfare column! Nick is touching all his hot button issues this time around. I wonder if he'll get around to complaining about storm sewer fees.

That is not America. That is our stereotype of Bangladesh. But even Bangladesh works better in a disaster than we do.

Yeah, once U.S. aid arrives, maybe.

I have a suggestion for another American Experiment. If anyone still thinks government should not be responsible for saving people, let's lock them in an attic where water is rising to the roof. Without an ax.

This is Nick Coleman disengenuousness taken to a whole new level. He hears Limbaugh and O'Reilly say that citizens should not expect the federal government to be their first line of relief after a disaster (absolutely CORRECT), and he portrays it as them saying government shouldn't be responsible for saving people at all. "Let 'em all rot and float!" I imagine his television screen consists of a thick lacquer of his own Coleman spittle from hours of him screaming at it.

There are no atheists in foxholes. And there wouldn't be any government-haters in that attic, praying not to be saved by a firefighter who draws his pay from the public till.

Um, global warming? American Experiment? Yoo hoo! Anybody see a point here? I'm at the end of the column now, still looking for a point. Hellloooooo? Anyone? Anyone? Riggs? Beuller?

UPDATE: Wow, Daily Kos channels his inner Nick Coleman. Best parts, as if penned by the non-monkey himself:

Conservatives believe government shouldn't exist to help people. That everyone should be left to the wolves.

Rrrrrigggght. Which explains the approval of $62 billion in relief money. Which explains all the relief efforts that were taking place (though arguably flawed) even before the levees gave up the ghost.

Democrats would've taken care of Katrina victims from the get go. That would've been our first impulse, our first instinct. Republicans had to be shamed into helping people.

They would have waved their magical Democrat wands and done everything perfectly correct! In fact, they would have banded together to force the hurricane down to a Category 1/2. They would have focused their collective Democrat "feel-good" rays to rebuild the levees to withstand meteor strikes! Isn't 20/20 hindsight about the greatest thing EVER? They would have gotten all those buses up and running like, um, all those local and state Democrats failed to do. . .

Kos, step away from the Coleman frequency. Believe me, you don't want to go there.

Posted by Ryan at September 9, 2005 02:03 PM | TrackBack