Did President Obama rebuke the hurricane from his lofty NOAA command post?
But what really happened?
Remember when, to thunderous world applause, President Obama pledged he'd make the oceans recede? The assembled press corps shivered with excitement and collectively piddled down their little hind legs as His O-ness soared to oratorical heights untrammeled by mere-mortal presidents.
David Plouffe hinted Monday that Obama has fulfilled that campaign promise this past weekend, but would not elaborate when pressed. Others were more direct, criticizing the president for his unilateral intervention that has stirred the wrath of the ocean's rulers.
"He should not have done it," clucked the UN Special High Poobah Rapporteur for Climatological Appeasement. "His unilateral oceanic imperialism smacked too much of that horrible Bush administration. The ocean's denizens are angry. President Obama should apologize."Bush, Cheney to blame for ignoring, disrespecting the ocean kingdom
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| Has Obama incurred the wrath of Poseidon? |
And it is alleged that President Bush urinated upon their abode during various sailing jaunts off the coast of Kennebunkport, Maine. While in the very act of "drainin' the lizard", the former president is rumored to have said, "what's the ocean ever done for me? Heh heh heh!"
Ocean Kings Pledge to Rebuff Obama Apology
Reverend Al Gore of the International Church of Gaia insists the Earth is angry, and that includes the roiling oceans, which will "conjure up category 25 hurricanes and steal our coconuts" if we don't change our ways.
Cowering Europeans are bracing for further waves of righteous oceanic anger, certain that the foamy spillover will inevitably reach their shores. EU Parliament members have taken to wearing flippers and have outlawed seafood consumption in an effort to appease the angry gods of the deep.
47 comments:
LOL!
Guess you don't live in Vermont, Colorado.
"The dire warnings blared out by the nanny state trio of Obama, Bloomberg and Napolitano never came to pass."
Tell that to the 40+ dead Americans and their bereaved families.
Tell that to Vermont, where members of my family live and where dozens of towns have been isolated and flooded by the destructive storm--tell it to the millions of people still without electricity.
It's very cute to laugh at the fact that Irene didn't kill more people and destroy more property, but instead, because of warnings and people taking proper precautions as a result, only 40+ Americans died.
Are you disappointed?
I imagine that had Mr. Obama said and done nothing and mobilized no one, people like Harnden would be tearing the president and his administration apart like a wolverine.
This post and the link provided only proves that the right has lost its sense of decency when its O.D.S. compels it to mock the presidency and its agencies for warning people and preventing an even greater loss of life.
I'm not sure I understand the rest of the mockery in this post, but I have a gut feeling it's in poor taste.
Gotta go now and tell my family in Vermont how funny your think their dire circumstances are.
I said exactly nothing about Vermont.
You're attempts at shaming people who are not to blame into silence won't work here.
I for one enjoyed your post VERY much.
As we already know very well, the people on the left have a hard time to find any humor in anything... except when they want to make fun out of Republicans...
Mal: What truly galled them was that I was mocking their messiah.
The misdirected, misplaced outrage gives them away.
When this thriller is made, may I play the Mermaid? :-)
Did you see "On Friday's Early Show, CBS somehow thought it was appropriate to bring on former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to offer "lessons learned from other hurricanes," as Hurricane Irene bore down on the East Coast. Anchor Chris Wragge not only failed to ask Nagin about his failures in leadership in the lead-up to Hurricane Katrina, but also twice labeled his guest an "expert in the field"
Some expert. an expert in WHAT TO DO WRONG AND HOW TO BLAME THOSE (for years and years) WHO FOLLOWED THE RULES, maybe?
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!
Obummer is in desperate need of a crisis he can capitalize on. That lousy earthquake was only a 5.9 and now his hurricane was only 2. What is our poor President to do.
Z: You sing, right? You'd be perfect for the role!
I blogged on liberal failure Nagin's so called "disaster expertise" awhile back:
Ray Nagin is now a disaster consultant??? What does he do, consult on how to create them? Teach courses on how to make them worse?
Does he explain how to cower in an air conditioned hotel while your citizens are drowning or trapped in a fetid nightmare? Does he explain how to dither instead of performing a simple evacuation?
(Western Hero - Liberal Lunacy Will be the Death of Us All)
Only in liberal lala land can someone kill more black people than the average Klan member and still be hailed a hero and an expert.
I disagree, SF, that you were not mocking the people who suffered through this disaster--and it is a disaster, with many governors declaring their states an emergency.
It's true you didn't mention Vermont [a bit defensive there, no?], but since Vermont is still part of this country you love so dearly, I thought perhaps it was worth noting the suffering of the people there as a result of this "over-hyped" hurricane.
Hurricane Irene is among the top 10worst hurricanes in fatalities and #8 in economic damages to hit the US.
Your post derides the president, implying he and his agencies over- reacted to this dangerous storm.
The fact is that the individual state governors' and federal agencies' reactions were proper and most likely saved lives and protected property.
Your job, I understand, is to mock everything this president does, but in this case, I'm afraid your post has as much resonance as a fart in a windstorm.
Shaw:
It sure resonated with you!
Since you are such a smart person, I'm sure a dispassionate read of this blog post will reveal to you that I used the hurricane as a lead-in to a parody, which is the purpose of this post.
For the record, I think the president and other government officials did the right and prudent thing. It's just that they are scolding us and warning us so often that it can become like the boy who cried wolf.
The news was really predicting a big whammy from Irene. I think we should thank God it was not worse, because it easily could have been.
btw, read it again, and you can see that on another level it is not about hurricanes at all.
Ah, the trolls cannot stand their Messiah mocked. As for me? Loved the post. Reagan often used humor to disarm his opponents.Well done.
Funny! I've just had this out with a group of high school friends. We're in the last lap of preparing for our collective 70th Birthday Party on September 18 to be held at a luxurious Eastern Seaboard Resort Hotel.
At any rate rate, one of them -- a Shavianesque character I've known since 1949 -- spent the morning scolding us for preparing to make merry in the face of "This Great National Tragedy" by quoting the New York Times (must be the source of Lady Kenawe's opinions) -- and hanging crepe for all the victims, and bemoaning all the horror and the gore like a professional mourner hired to pep up a celebrity wake.
Here's what I said to that group after briefly quoting our Class Mourner:
"Do you realize that if the winds had kept up just a little while longer, Wall Street and other low areas would have been under water ..."
~ "Pro Crepehanger"
Sure, and if I had been born with wheels I might have been a Rolls Royce.
I'm just thankful -- as everyone else should be -- that Irene didn't live up to her media-driven expectations. I'm very sorry it was as bad as it was, but I detest bathos and media-generated hysteria.
Someday, the earth might open up beneath our feet and initiate humanity's free fall into Hades, but I ain't gonna spend what might be left of my life worrying about it, or wasting time trying to outguess, outwit and sidestep Mother Nature.
I know one gal -- a retired college professor from Assachusetts, wouldn't you know! -- who's ruining her marriage and alienating her friends, because she's become obsessed with the fervent belief that life on earth might soon be destroyed by a wayward asteroid -- like the one that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs aeons ago. She, apparently thinks and talks of nothing else these days -- and she's a year younger than I. We met at the University as fellow Freshmen in 1959.
She used to be a lot of fun, till she became a radical feminist, an environmental case, a member of MoveOn.org, of PETA, and an ardent supporter of The Southern Poverty Law Center to which she plans to leave most of her considerable fortune -- the part she doesn't leave to PETA. That's what happens to people who spend too much time in Massachusetts.
Accept the things you cannot change,
Change what you can, (if you feel you must),
But above all have the wisdom to know the difference.
As Dylan Thomas wrote in Under Milkwood:
Isn't life a terrible thing, thank God.
“ ... Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
~ Philippians 4: 8
Be of good cheer;
You are still here.
There's nothing more futile, wasteful, inane than crying over spilt milk. Just shut up, quit wailing, quit scolding, get down on your hands and knees and start scrubbing.
Cheerio!
~ FreeThinke
PS: SilverFiddle, if you wrote that piece, you have the makings of a modern day Jonathan Swift. Go, man. Go!
~ FreeThinke
PPS: And the by the way it was ELEVEN towns in Vermont that have been flooded out --not "dozens." One of our group of high school friends happens to be spending the summer in one of the hardest hit of those places. Instead of bitching about it, she and her husband are having the time of their life pitching in with the rescue effort helping those less able-bodied and more querulous than they. This couple retired only a year ago, and certainly never expected to face disaster in the Green Mountains on their Dream Vacation, but like most good old-fashioned Americans from earlier generations, they've just rolled up their sleeves and gotten busy making lemonade out of the Great Big Lemon Mother Nature just handed them -- and even better than that -- they're sharing it with everyone in sight. - FT
Hey Silverfiddle, don't back peddle. Man up.
"The dire warnings blared out by the nanny state trio of Obama, Bloomberg and Napolitano never came to pass."
Do you know what happened in Vermont because of this storm? Worst flooding in their history. Large areas accessible only by helicopter. You said the storm as trivial. Retract.
"That's what happens to people who spend too much time in Massachusetts."--FreeThinke
My dear fellow, I feel it my duty to defend your less than noble words against my native Massachusetts.
There is much, to be sure, that could do with improvement, but the facts are that for a true blue state, it can be admired for several distinctions:
Massachusetts [not "Assachusetts" as you so drolly labeled it] has the lowest divorce rate in the country;
Massachusetts was the first state to recognize same-sex marriage.
Massachusetts is second only to Washington DC in citizens who hold post-graduate degrees;
Massachusetts has one of the lowest out-of-wedlock birth rates in the country;
Massachusetts is among the few states in the USA where obesity rates are low;
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont are the only states that did not lynch African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.
Massachusetts unemployment rate is better than the national average, 7.6% as of July 2011.
So, low divorce rate, high rate of post-grad education, low out-of-wedlock births, low obesity rates. Well those are among the many fine things that happen to people when they live in Massachusetts.
Ducky: You're cockeyed. I never said it was trivial.
Again, thank God it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Thank God it went out to see and only caused flooding damage. I've seen hurricane aftermath up close, and it ain't pretty.
Freethinker ---
"There's only what is, what ought to be is a fucking lie."
--- Lenny Bruce
I sing Jazz....this stuff needs the BLUES (but I can manage :-)
Shaw, you're so serious. Relax! I come from stern Puritan stock. My people came over c. 1630 and helped settle Massachusetts. My father and all his forebears were born there. I just don't like what it has become in the post-Brahmin Era. The aura of self-righteousness and insufferable condescension emanating from Beantown and Cambridge today is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Poor John and Abigail Adams must be spinning in their graves -- to say nothing of Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, Longfellow and Emily Dickinson!
Come down to earth, and join us poor mortals, if you really want to help improve the human race.
Cheerio!
~ FreeThinke
PS: What do you think of Olive Higgins Prouty?
Ducky, I somehow doubt you've had much experience outside the pages of those trendy tomes you love to read.
Lenny Bruce was a despicable asshole -- as were all his ilk.
"Lift thine eyes unto the mountains whence cometh thy help." Get your head out of the sewer.
~ FreeThinke
"PS: What do you think of Olive Higgins Prouty?"
Ah, "Now Voyager."
"Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars."
Wait, are you implying that the emperor has no cloths?
Olive Higgins Prouty?
Of Now Voyager?
"Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars."
[my original comment got eaten.]
Quit picking on Irene, by my count at least 2/3s of the deaths were caused by stupidity, not the hurricane.
If you're huddled in your house and a tree falls on you, that's a storm death (unless you're in a mandatory evacuation area).
If you're killed in a hurricane windsurfing, you're an imbecile.
The majority of deaths were caused by people doing things they shouldn't have been doing during a hurricane, not by the hurricane itself.
Shaw: It got caught in the spam filter. I don't know why. Some here rapid fire posts and seem to escape it. My spam filter must be part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. I apologize.
>If you're killed in a hurricane windsurfing, you're an imbecile.
And a candidate for the Darwin Award.
Choosing not to do stupid things is usually the best way to prevent waking up dead.
Calm the oceans, lol, obama couldn't wipe his own ass if it weren't for the teleprompter.
Seriously though, i'd be glad if the idiot could balance a cheque book. Is he back from splurging on another holiday yet, mind you i wasn't urging him to return any faster given how the more he fiddles the more he cocks up.
God, you all listen to and regurgitate Rush fucking Limbaugh. You morons!
bd: Do you have an original thought in your head?
When has Rush done a Poseidon parody?
Give me a date and time or STFU
Don't you love Bd's intelligent addition to any conversation?
RUSH LIMBAUGH RUSH LIMBAUGH!
As a good COnservative, I guess I should say I'm ashamed that I have never listened to RUsh for more than 20 minutes at one time, even in the car. Well, easier to kill the messenger (following your heroes at Moveon and KOS) than actually LISTEN and to figure out he's usually RIGHT.
By the way, SF...a friend recently said "ever notice how the msm never belittles Mark Levin?" He added that he thinks Levin is so powerful and SO RIGHT that they're afraid to bring notice to him. I found that a fascinating conjecture.
Mark Levin is a pimple, that's why nobody covers his drivel.
... and aside from the few dozen readers here... who listens to your drivel?
..." "ever notice how the msm never belittles Mark Levin?" He added that he thinks Levin is so powerful and SO RIGHT that they're afraid to bring notice to him."
I doubt that. Levin makes a lot of sense, sure, but certainly no more than Rush, and Levin has a tinny voice along with a cold, abrasive personality. Rush is fun -- if you know how to take him. You can practically hear the twinkle in his eye as he speaks. Of course he only appeals to truly bright people.
Rush functions like an Intelligence Test. If you don't like him, you're either a dodo or a Marxist.
Rush is the prime mover in the Conservative Radio Talk Show phenomenon. He got there first, has the strongest, most charismatic personality, and the most facile wit. And he's proved himself to be incredibly durable. He's withstood the test of time. If it weren't for Rush there would be no such thing as Conservative Talk Radio.
Of course naturally I love him, because I write all his material, and he delivers my lines perfectly -- just as though he were making it up on his own. He and I have had a great partnership going for a very long time. I SO enjoy being the silent, unseen, unknown guiding genius behind the scenes.
And just who am I?
The Great No-Longer-Silent Majority that's who I am.
The only other talk show host worth his salt is Michael Savage. He really tells it like it is, and pulls no punches. Of course he's an awful braggart, and unlike Rush he means it, but he's an honest, authentic Noo Yawk type -- like a lot of the men I grew up around -- so his crassness and utter lack of diplomacy and finesse don't bother me a bit. In fact it's refreshing.
Bullshit stinks more than any other kind of excrement, and there's entirely too much of it deposited by people who "supposed" to be on "our" side, and might just as well be in the pay of the enemy for all the good they do the Conservative-Libertarian cause.
VIVE RUSH LIMBAUGH!
~ FreeThinke
Good for you, Shaw!
I somehow didn't think you'd know who Olive Higgins Prouty was. I guess you knew she also wrote Stella Dallas, the ultimate paean to Mother Love and Sacrifice?
When I was a wee lad, Stella appeared in the form of a daily radio soap opera. At ages three and four I was quite taken with her, than I learned much later that Mrs. Prouty was not at all pleased with the treatment her material received on radio.
I have to confess I've never actually read her books, but know she belonged to a bygone era -- a time when "self-actualization" was not regarded as a virtue, but more as a dereliction of duty -- especially for a woman.
Have you an opinion on the quality of her work or any comments on the way Mrs. Prouty lived her life? She was no Edith Wharton, of course, but seemed to have been a New England woman of character, good-breeding and substance of a type "they don't make anymore."
Now one could say, "Well, thank God!" to that, or "Ain't it a shame?" In which camp would you reside?
Though you may not realize it yet, I'm offering you an Olive branch [the pun must have been Freudian slip. 'Twas not calculated, but I'll let it stand.]
Cordially,
~ FreeThinke
Shaw is a master at the art of feigned indignance.
There could be no doubt that Irene received entirely too much advance publicity. The reports of potential to do great harm were vastly overstated. BUT, we should all know by now that that's how media operates. It's crisis oriented, sensationalistic and shamelessly self-serving in its desire to sell soap for profit. Sex, violence, treachery and disaster sell. Subtlety and nuanced analyses of how and why problems occur put the average person to sleep -- or make him switch channels.
But it's nakedly apparent too, that media has an ideological bent to accentuate the negative and is on an apparent mission to destroy confidence in our country and the way we do business at home and abroad.
Irene did turn out to be a serious matter, but not in the ways media predicted. Wo knew the storm would end up being much more of a flash flood in parts of Central New England than the deadly destroyer of the coastline it was cracked up to be.
How many more time can the media "Cry wolf," before the public stops listening altogether?
And then what will happen when a TRUE disaster of epic proportions strikes? Hunh?
~ FreeThinke
"Shaw is a master at the art of feigned indignance."
Perhaps, Ms Theatre, but then aren't most of us guilty of a little play acting when we post our missives? If Shaw is like most of the liberals I know, her indignation is very real -- at least in her own mind.
I amy be getting soft in my old age, but I do think we ought to cut each other a little slack. Relentless hostility is so wearing -- and it too has about it an element of affectation -- at least after a while.
~ FreeThinke
"the overhyped hurricane Irene."
Here's how I know when a "conservative" is not really conservative at all. No real conservative assumes the best. In fact, only idiots do.
Wake up, Silver. You've been a little sleepy lately.
JMJ
Interesting thread of comments.
I see that some here missed the satirical point.
Z: Interesting comments on Levin...
I think FT has nailed it and my tastes run like his, although I don't get a chance to listen to much radio during the day. I do like to listen to Savage in the evenings over the internet if I have time.
FT,
I admire Mrs. Prouty's work and first heard of her years ago when I read Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar." Supposedly, the main character in that book is based on Prouty. (I understand Prouty befriended Plath, through some connection to Smith College.)
But I'd forgotten about that over the years until I again saw "Now, Voyager" on some movie channel.
Curious about the film and its origins, I looked it up and discovered Higgins-Prouty again.
In today's world "Now, Voyager" would be considered a "chick-flick." I think its themes of feminism, self-determination, and liberation were ahead of its time.
I admire Mrs. Prouty for her dedication to her art, despite some very difficult personal problems.
I'm in the "Ain't it a shame." category.
Thank you, Shaw. It's good to learn there are many points on which we can agree, and probably much we might enjoy together, despite our political differences.
I never would have thought of Prouty as a feminist -- more as a sterling example of well-bred femininity, perhaps -- but I can understand how her work could be interpreted in that light.
Sorry, but I just hate the term "chick flick." I see it as a demeaning -- a decidedly sexist designation and an insult to femininity.
What I object to so strenuously about contemporary feminism -- or that of the past five decades rather -- is the abrasiveness and stridency that goes with it.
I regard Betty Friedan and her work as The Feminine Mystaque -- to quote at Buchwald. I once had lunch in the same dining room with Friedan, and a ruder, cruder, more obnoxious individual you could never hope to meet. I felt embarrassed to witness such behvior.
There's a powerful charm -- and a great deal of quiet power -- inherent in old fashioned ladylike behavior. I regret its passing. Women don't have to take on the worst characteristic of male behavior in order to compete successfully with males.
Good day to you.
~ FreeThinke
More than a few years ago, I predicted the libs will take credit for the oceans not rising, seriously, in print and media, not in some trivial way, and I predict it again here.
Easy prediction to make actually.
If Now Voyager has an essentially feminist orientation, how do define the role of the Domineering Mother who precipitates most of the action? Was she the hideous tyrant she was, because she was a woman oppressed, or was she simply an oppressive personality by nature?
English literature is rife with old She Dragon of this type, of course. Some of them -- like David Copperfield's Aunt Betsy and Mr. Darcy's autocratic aunt in Pride and Prejudice turn out to be lovable.
I miss having women of that type around frankly. They had a colorful and vital role to play.
~ FreeThinke
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