Ankle Bite-Back

"Jim-"

"Eh? Oh. I was daydreaming...of a far country and the wench is dead. I tend to do that on my days off. Sorry."

"You said you were going to let the Democrats have it over their unconscionable attacks on President Bush over Hurricane Katrina."

"Ah - so I was. Or am...."

~ ~ ~

Yesterday was for "Blogs Across America." Now we can return to the crapola.

Took a look at Jen's post on Randi of the Redwoods. Just goes to what I maintain is a case of incurable pathological projection on the part of his domestic enemies. They attribute to him all the viciousness and hatred that they harbor for him. It almost makes me pine for the days when they made fun of him as being "stupid," but I guess getting their asses kicked politically by this man so many times has drained their one-time abusively puerile senses of humor.

The vomit isn't limited to Air Scamerica, of course. Brother Meringoff was left "speechless" by posts on the DNC site "attacking Condoleezza Rice for shopping while the people of New Orleans are suffering...[and a]nother...criticizing White House spokeman Scott McClellan for categorically denouncing looting." Which is comical in light of other lib carping about the federal government's supposedly slow response to stopping the looting. I guess they mean it's okay if the "poor" and "minorities" do it, but everyone else should be lined up next to a ditch they're forced to dig and summarily shot.

Anyway, what can you say to people whose rhetoric is little more than a windy, hyperventilating version of "[Bleep] you!!!" You take them apart limb by limb with the one weapon against which they have no defense: facts, evidence, and logic.

Take this post from redstate.org for starters:

It is all Bush’s fault. Katrina was brought on by the failure of the United States to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty (never mind that even had the US signed on to this singularly stupid treaty there would be no measurable effect now, or probably ever, on climate change). The damage caused by Katrina could have been mitigated if all those Louisiana National Guardsmen and their equipment had been home and not in Iraq.

No less a personage than the exquisitely coiffed Howard Fineman baldly carries the water for the Left:

National Guard officials insist that they have enough men and women on hand to do the job, but common sense tells you that they could use the others stationed abroad.

Actually common sense tells you nothing of the kind.

To summarize:

The Louisiana Guard is not specially trained to deal with natural disasters, and only 30% or so are deployed outside the country. The one exception to that training skill set is the 225th Engineer Group, and it is still at home.

Streiff concludes:

Viewed from any position the idea that a very small number of troops could in anyway have had an impact on the aftermath of Katrina is laughable. It is doubly laughable because it ignores the 10,000+ out of state National Guardsmen who began arriving in Louisiana on Wednesday and the thousands of out-of-state police officers who have also been loaned to Louisiana, a team from Loudoun County, Virginia is departing as I write this.

This whole story line is nothing more or less than a dishonest attack perpetrated by the left in their concerted effort to make political points on the backs of the dead and homeless. Attacks that have moved me squarely in line with Thomas’ position on this subject.

Thomas doesn't mince words:

In what would, once, have been a surprise, the ever-decent Left is attempting to use another human tragedy as a club in their unending holy war against Chimpy McBushitlerCo. (One supposes that they need a new weapon with their cheap use of a now-gone grieving mother at an end.) As the Left long ago abandoned the pretense of original thought, they’re apparently relying on this piece to do so, to the effect that recent budget cuts for the levee projects are to blame for this disaster.

As one of the two Louisiana sons among the Editorial staff here, my two cents:

This is not unlike peeing on a grave. And, worse, it's stupid and factually incorrect to boot.

After going on with fact after evidence after logic to lengths that, were this fistfight a boxing match, would have been stopped on a TKO long before Thomas drew it to a merciful conclusion, he threw out this peroration:

This madness is all of a piece with the "Bush was on vacation when this happened" idiocy. Yes, we could have used his heat vision to seal some of the levees at weak points, and his superhuman strength might have been enough to save some collapsing concrete. But what we really needed was for him to get the rest of the Justice League out there, especially Green Lantern. Or at least to reverse the Earth's rotation and save us from this disaster.

This is obscene. It's actually worse than obscene, because not all of those bodies floating down there right now are from the mausoleums. How distorted is our political discourse - excuse me, their political discourse - that they start pointing fingers before the bodies are in the damned ground? We haven't even buried the dead yet, and they're trying to pin the untold lives and livelihoods lost on an opponent for political gain. I'd say something about shame, but the Left long ago forgot that....

I no longer see the Left as a set of political opponents. I understand them now to be what they are: An uncompromising, barely human mass of malignancy, that exists only to be crushed electorally and culturally once and for all. Or, as a wiser man than I put it, The Evil Party.

Couldn't put it any better myself.

But Lord knows others gave it the old college try.

Jeb Babbin details how the military swung into action with Joint Task Force Katrina on Wednesday, or within twenty-four hours of the hurricane disaster. Jim Geraghty asks:

What kind of cold-hearted ghoul looks at the human suffering on the Gulf Coast and has the initial reaction of, “well, you have it coming for your policy choices”? Probably the same folks who had the “Yes, but” reaction to 9/11.

Jonah Goldberg observed how the enviroLeft has constructed its own "theodicy" (the branch of theology that tries to explain how a good God can allow evil to persist - the answer, BTW, is original sin and the resulting curse on nature, in case anybody's interested...), with their deity being, depending upon their propaganda need at a given moment, an impersonal Darwinian process "red in tooth and claw" to borrow Tennyson's phrase, or a Gaia-like goddess so puny and helpless that she can be imperiled by a mere mortal Republican POTUS, who is cast in the part of their "devil."

TechCentralStation delivers a double-whammy. After S.T. Karnick knocks over four separate "journalistic" exercises in apocalyptic "global warming" hysteria, James Glassman unloads on the fearmongers and filth-spewers of the Bushophobic Left:

[T]he response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.

Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces....

But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit.

Something Hugh Hewitt is calling "another Wellstone funeral moment." Pity the '06 election isn't as close as the '02 one was then.

On the state level, the contrast between Mississippi's Governor and Louisiana's is predictably yawning:

Mississippi's Governor Haley Barbour came closest to the Giuliani model. We are friendly acquaintances; I knew him years ago when he was a political operative in Washington. I'm frankly surprised he's turned into a leader, but he has. From the beginning of the hurricane drama Mr. Barbour came close to Mr. Giuliani's specificity. In news conferences he laid out with breadth and precision the facts of the Mississippi coastal devastation. He had to keep telling the press and the public that there would be more dead than they understood, a delicate thing to have to do. He did it with candor and transparency but no defeat. He had command of what facts were known. His face was shocked and sad, but he never looked beaten; he referred on Larry King Live to the rebuilding of the coast as if it were a foregone conclusion but one that will take massive work. He seemed straight, unillusioned, human. Watch Mr. Barbour. If he continues like this, he's going to become a significant national figure.

Whereas....

The performance of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco in the first days after the Katrina disaster has some wondering whether she's up to the daunting task of guiding her state as its largest city struggles to recover.

Blanco "has come across as a nice person," noted the New York Post's Deborah Orin, but she seems "overwhelmed instead of inspiring."

Governor Blanco did little to reassure observers during a press conference on Tuesday, when she seemed on the verge of bursting into tears.

And Louisiana Donks actually made excuses for this display - including her initial excusing of the lawlessness and looting going on in New Orleans.

The contrast with the President is even more embarrassing:

So what prompted the order that prevented Hurricane Katrina from being a natural disaster of unprecedented magnitude?

The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. Governor Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude.

That's right, folks: George W. Bush didn't "lose" thousands of Big Easy lives; he saved the lives of thousands more that are alive today because of his actions.

Dubya was on the ground in New Orleans today, setting the example he always sets:

I understand that an entertainer on the NBC special said some incredibly distasteful stuff about President Bush. No doubt a lot of folks will be pretty upset. I am taking my cue from the President, who spent the day in the company of a lot of folks who seem to have spent the last 48 hours doing nothing but blasting him in an attempt to escape fallout. President Bush said nothing about his critics, but kept the focus on the victims. W is in the business of getting the relief organized and saving lives. He isn't taking political shots, and I doubt he's going to, no matter how great the provocation. He's a good man and a great president, and his example should instruct his supporters to keep the focus on Americans in desperate need of help and hope.

I don't think the focus is going to drift from maintaining that focus. Hugh has some excellent policy suggestions for GDub in an adjoining post. And of course see my post below for directions and links on how you can do your part to aid the survivors of Katrina.

But I have to differ with Double-H on one thing - I think that answering the other side's slanders is part of the recovery effort. Not that the President should do that - it isn't his job. It is our job, however, and must be done and continue to be done in the days, weeks, and months ahead, if this natural disaster is not to be followed by the man-made disaster of a Democrat restoration.

Just like Katrina, it can happen, with equivalent results. Unlike Katrina, it can be averted.

Think of it as a political levee system to keep the "Human Filth" from ever again flooding the American body politic.

PS: Just to show, for the record, that not every apple in that barrel is rotten, I post this addendum from Instapundit:

Lefty blogger Skippy has donated, and is issuing a challenge to bloggers left and right. "this is not about red states v. blue states...this is not about left v. right...this is not about liberal v. conservative... the people in louisiana, mississippi and alabama are americans. this is about america. and americans have historically always rolled up their sleeves and pitched in to help out their fellow countrymen in need."

Amen, brother. Do us all a favor and spread the word on your side of the levee.

Such as Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore. I don't think they've gotten the kumbayah memo. You might need to bash them over the head with it to get their attention.

If you do, make sure to put it on PPV to benefit hurricane victims. I know I'd buy it.

UPDATE: I think David Frum should speak for us all:

And yet ... and yet ... is all this really necessary? The time will come, and come very soon, when the great self-critical mechanisms of American society and government will go to work to study what went wrong. Those who deserve blame will get blame in plenty then. But now - with the dead still uncounted and unburied, with the living still struggling for refuge and help, is there not something indecent about the haste with which the American left avidly tries to turn this terrible disaster to political account?

Is there not something bizarre about their willingness to fire off accusation after accusation, each contradicting the last? The disaster was caused by the Bush Administration's failure to protect the environment from global warming .... no, no, it was caused by the Administration's refusal to manipulate the environment by funding more levees to control the Mississippi River .... it's Iraq, no it's budget cuts, no it's wetlands, and on and on and on.

Good God, what is wrong with these people? Will they ever learn to see somebody else's misfortune as something more than their political opportunity?

Not until they get their power back. It's only the spectre of what such evil, heartless bastards would do with power that gives me hope that a majority of voters will continue to keep them securely away from it until sanity returns to that party - if it ever does.