Lee's Blog

So, Democrats are defending the fact that former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (and this year superdelegate) Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina were giggling about the fact that Gustav was going to “hit New Orleans about the time it [the RNC] starts …” and claiming “That just demonstrates God’s on our side.” The basis of their defense is that some Republicans (not National Chairman and not Congressmen) thought it would be great if it rained on The One’s speech on last Thursday night.

The defenders apparently have as little regard for human suffering as Fowler and Spratt, as they think that taking a little unworthy pleasure in the thought that people who came to the DNC to see the apotheosis of The One might get wet and thus not enjoy the show, is exactly the same thing as being gleeful over the misery of people who have nothing to do with the RNC (and are in fact in many cases Democrats themselves).

Some people will die when Gustav lands (people have already died, but they weren’t in the U.S). Some people will lose the homes in which they’ve lived their whole lives. Some people will lose everything they’ve worked for. Some people will end up having to move away and start new lives elsewhere.

And that’s even if Gustav doesn’t destroy one of most important ports in the country and seriously wound the economy. It’s also going to force up gas prices a lot, which itself will harm the economy and injure all those little people that the Democrats care ever so deeply about.

But thinking that all that is just peachy as long as it hurts the Republicans — well, that’s exactly the same as thinking it would be funny if some people in a football stadium got a little wet.

This bit of loathsomeness is a conversation recorded on an airplane, in which former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (and current superdelegate) Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina giggle about the fact that Gustav was going to “hit New Orleans about the time it [the RNC] starts … That just demonstrates God’s on our side.”

Oh, and that disgusting organism Michael Moore explains that This hurricane is proof that there is a god in heaven..

So what you’re saying is, your side, given the power, would drive millions of people from their homes in the heat, destroy thousands if not hundreds of thousands of their homes, wreck the infrastructure that they depend on, quite possibly destroy one of the most important ports in the country, and do severe damage to the national economy … all to make your opponents look bad.

I have a very low opinion of politicians, especially today’s Democrats, but I wouldn’t have gone that far. However, if that’s how they describe themselves, I can hardly argue, can I?

I was following the hurricane coverage all day yesterday. The most political thing I even thought about the onrushing disaster is that all Governors must make important decisions under conditions of uncertainty, but that Republican Governors are blamed if the decisions turn out to be bad, and Democratic Governors are not. It literally did not even cross my mind that this could conceivably benefit one side or the other in the presidential election.

Update: I added links to the Youtube page to the names of the vermin. This is to help Google with its searches.

This is an interesting comment. The commenter (thor at comment 28) is denigrating President Bush as part of denigrating Governor Palin, and claims that Bush “only held the ceremonial post of Texas governor before he was nominated”.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a co-worker who has a poster that shows how much of the Federal governments expenditures goes to defense and how much to education (education is substantially less). He pointed this out to me and said, contemptuously, “that shows our national priorities!” Well, I was trying to be collegial, so I didn’t point out that providing for the common defense is a constitutional power and duty of the Federal government, whereas providing for education is an extra-constitutional matter. Instead, I just said, “That shows Federal priorities, not national priorities.” He gave me a blank stare, so I added, “There are the States, you know.” He sniffed, “But they’re nothing”, so I thought it was time to shut up.

During Hurricane Katrina (three years ago Friday), the MSM and the Democrats blamed President Bush for everything that went wrong in New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole, with no real criticism of the Governor or the Mayor. Granted, the Governor and Mayor were both Democrats themselves and neither was a white male, so one kind of knew that they would not be criticized, but still …

What all these stories have in common is a very distorted idea of the relationship between States and the Federal government, shared by entirely too many people. They seem to think that Governors, and State governments in general, just take orders from the Federal government. Oh, they’re allowed a little pomp and circumstance, but really they’re just functionaries.

But this is entirely untrue. The Governorship of a State is not a ceremonial position; it has real rights and real duties which the Federal government cannot ride roughshod over. The President did not order an evacuation ahead of Katrina in 2005 because he couldn’t — the President does not have that power. He appealed to the Governor of Louisiana to order an evacuation (I remember that word vividly from the coverage at the time), and she grudgingly acquiesced, making it perfectly clear that she took no responsibility for the decision. But it was her responsibility, and when Bush was Governor of Texas, another State on the Gulf, he had to be prepared to take that exact same responsibility, and had to make the call even when no one could say exactly where the hurricane would hit or how hard it would hit. (Likewise, he couldn’t just send in the National Guard without her request, which she didn’t make for entirely too long.)

The Governors of Texas and Louisiana are having to make vital decisions right now, and they’ll have to take the flak if they pull the trigger on an evacuation that turns out to be unnecessary, or if they don’t pull the trigger on an evacuation that turns out to be necessary (they’re both Republicans, so they will be blamed unlike a Democratic Governor). Yeah, most of the time a Governor’s role is ceremonial — making speeches, signing bills that other people wrote and voted on, cutting ribbons at opening ceremonies — but they have to be prepared for those parts of their jobs that aren’t ceremonial.

This is also true of the President, actually. An awful lot of his time is spent approving what other people did, signing bills that other people wrote and voted on, appointing people to do things that someone will do in any case, etc., but then there are the parts of the job that aren’t ceremonial. Throughout the Cold War, every President had to be conscious that the balloon might go up, and if it did, he’d have to give the orders to launch. Even if the worst didn’t happen, there are always disasters, the risk of war, and terrorism. The President has to be prepared to deal with that.

Now, let’s talk about Senators. Each Senator is one of a hundred. He can trade votes or just not vote on a bill to avoid offending his constituents. If he doesn’t feel like showing up one day, who cares? Others can vote. If he goes off running for President for a year and never votes at all, who cares? Others can vote. If there’s a disaster, he can look photogenic, wring his hands, look photogenic, criticize those who are actually trying to do something about it, and look photogenic. But he doesn’t have any responsibility at all to personally take action on anything. He can always hide behind the rest of the Senators. If you want a “ceremonial post” to denigrate, it’s that of Senator.

And the next President will be a Senator no matter what. I hate this election.

Update Oct 3: Spambots have latched onto this post for some strange reason, so I’m closing comments, to the disappointment of my many fans.

Apparently Governor Palin is being criticized for having a child at risk of having Down’s Syndrome. Let’s see … she was apparently 43 when she gave birth. That makes her odds of a Down’s Syndrome child 1/53 according to this chart. I don’t think it’s terribly irresponsible to run that risk*. I know people who’ve had children at that age with no issues except for concern about the mother’s health. There are lots of things that can go wrong in a pregnancy and produce a child with birth defects. Anyone who has a child is running a risk, and sometimes they come out on the wrong end of the odds.

It was just bad luck, and, sad to say, bad luck happens.

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* It’s not like the child has fetal alcohol syndrome, or the like, for which she would certainly be to blame, and I would certainly condemn her.

Wow. This is beautiful.

Wandering around the blogosphere for the past week, I noticed that as the vice presidential candidates were announced, each side gleefully claimed that the other side had now lost the election through its choice. The Republican side gloated over Biden, and the Democratic side is gloating over Palin. Each said the other’s choice smacked of desperation.

I am reminded of Asimov’s “Mirror Image” story, in which each side in a dispute tells the same story but, of course, with the details reversed. There was a key difference in “Mirror Image”, though, and there is a key difference here: given the number of vice-presidents who had to take over in the 20th century, the vice-presidency isn’t exactly a “bucket of warm spit”. But it isn’t the presidency, either.

In this video, I thought the chant early on was quite revealing:

“Love peace justice!”
“Kill Michelle Malkin!”
“Love peace justice!”
“Kill Michelle Malkin!”
“Love peace justice!”

Such lovely people.

McCain’s letter to Obama.

The nicest compliment I ever got as a lawyer was “You write like a piranha.” But I think McCain may have out-piranhaed me.

The 3am text message didn’t seem to make a lot of friends. I’m not stupid enough to give out my phone number to anyone that I don’t have to, especially not a politician, so naturally I didn’t receive any such text message.

Various people suggested, “Why didn’t you just turn your cell phone off if you didn’t want a phone call at 3am?” Because some one might need to call me, that’s why! As I said, I’m not stupid enough to give out my cell phone number, but I do leave both phones on all night, because if my family, friends, or employer need to call me, I’d better be available, you know? And maybe some person who is stupid enough to give their cell phone number to a politician also needs to have the ability to receive phone calls in the middle of the night.

Other people suggested that the text message had to go out at 3am because it would have brought down the cell phone system if it had been done earlier in the day. Then The One misrepresented the terms of the agreement under which he collected all those cell phone numbers, didn’t he? It wasn’t that you’d get notified “as soon as he decided”, but that you’d get notified at the next 3am slot after he decided, even if the actual announcement had taken place hours earlier.

I actually kind of believe the suggestion that the text message couldn’t go out earlier because of the cell phone system, because otherwise the whole mess can only indicate complete disorganization on the part of The One’s election committee. I’m not even a politician (thank FSM!), but even I can see that the way to do this would be to assign one minion for each person on the “short list” — plus some extras to throw people off the scent — to write a nice glowing text message explaining how The One has chosen that person, along with a brief description of how wonderful the person is.

The One couldn’t send a text message until he’d notified the Secret Service and they’d dashed out and secured the candidate, which necessarily meant that the story would start to leak, but as soon as the Secret Service reported him secure, the appropriate text message should have been sent out. That would have been around 6pm, as I understand it, which no one at all would have objected to.

So why was there that lengthy delay? As I said above, I think it really is because the cell phone companies wouldn’t allow it to be sent earlier, and therefore that The One got all those phone numbers under false pretenses.

This is just bizarre.

I’m linking to Little Green Footballs for this as pages that produce derision tend to vanish from The One’s website. The One’s “page not found” shows an exclamation point inside a triangle, with a magnifying glass revealing that the dot of the exclamation point is really an American flag. The text is, “We are all imperfect”. I guess the message is that if you look hard, with a magnifying glass, you can detect the sole imperfection in The One, which is that he is an American. The background image is of a rampaging mob waving baseball bats or similar weapons over their heads.

This is deep symbolism.

This goes along the The One’s gang sign. This is two hands interlaced to form uh … no, not a zero … uh … no, not that … uh … no, definitely not that either … an O! Yeah, that’s right, obviously an O.