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Wednesday, September 14th, 2005
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8:00a - Stolen from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) maclean because more people need to see this.
Get Off His Back (Updated)
By Ben Stein
Published 9/2/2005 11:59:59 PM
***UPDATED: Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005, 2:13 p.m.***
A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.
4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.
5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.
6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.
7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.
8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.
9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.
10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.
11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.
12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.
God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.
****
UPDATE: Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005, 2:13 p.m.:
More Mysteries of Katrina:
Why is it that the snipers who shot at emergency rescuers trying to save people in hospitals and shelters are never mentioned except in passing, and Mr. Bush, who is turning over heaven and earth to rescue the victims of the storm, is endlessly vilified?
What church does Rev. Al Sharpton belong to that believes in passing blame and singling out people by race for opprobrium and hate?
What special abilities does the media have for deciding how much blame goes to the federal government as opposed to the city government of New Orleans for the aftereffects of Katrina?
If able-bodied people refuse to obey a mandatory evacuation order for a city, have they not assumed the risk that ill effects will happen to them?
When the city government simply ignores its own sick and hospitalized and elderly people in its evacuation order, is Mr. Bush to blame for that?
Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush's fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?
Where did the idea come from that salvation comes from hatred and criticism and mockery instead of love and co-operation?
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He also writes "Ben Stein's Diary" in every issue of The American Spectator.
current mood:  impressed (13 comments |comment on this)
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1:43p - Dear lord you people are fucking stupid.
I'm just waiting for someone to start shouting that George Bush was involved in faking the moon landing.
This latest bullshit theory I've been seeing is that somehow, some way, because of Bush's energy and ecological policies, he has impacted global warming SO significantly in the span of less than FIVE YEARS that he's caused the severity of hurricanes to increase enough to devastate the Gulf Coast.
What kind of Mickey Mouse hocus pokus BULLSHIT is that?!?
Let me introduce you to a man by the name of Dr. Patrick Moore. Dr. Moore has his Ph.D. in Ecology and his Bachelor's in Forest Biology. Back in the late 60s, Dr. Moore helped organize this little group of rag-tag activists into an organization called Greenpeace. However, after having served as leader and director of Greenpeace for almost two decades, Dr. Moore has since left Greenpeace because of the rabidly anti-science anti-technology anti-corporate anti-capitalist mindset that currently drives the organization. Simply put, it was no longer the same organization he had helped found, and so it was time to move on.
Let's hear some things he's got to say about environmentalism:
"The forests of North America cover about the same area they did a hundred years ago. Yet 75 percent of the public think they are disappearing. The reason there is so much forest today is that we use so much wood - and wood is renewable. Wood is made by renewable solar energy in a factory called The Forest."
"So the campaign against using wood is logically inconsistent with the campaign to prevent climate change and CO2 emissions," he said. "People have been duped into thinking that when you go to a lumber yard and buy lumber, you're causing the forest to be lost, when, in fact, you're sending a signal into the market to plant more trees and produce more wood."
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"A lot of people are afraid of pesticide residue on their food. That's why they are in favor of organic farming - they think the food is better because it doesn't have pesticides on it. The Natural Resources Defense Council's scare about Alar on apples almost destroyed the apple industry in California," Moore said. A four-year peer review study by the National Cancer Research Council of the United States and Canada published in 1997 found no evidence of connecting pesticide residue in food with cancer in humans. "It's a fact that 30 percent of cancer is caused by tobacco, a perfectly natural substance, and 35 percent by diet - too much fat and cholesterol, also natural substances. Ironically, the environmental movement's campaign against pesticides scared parents into avoiding fresh fruit and vegetables for themselves and their children."
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"Frankenstein foods, killer tomatoes, terminator seeds - all these scary metaphors are being invented to make people afraid of what they are eating," Moore said. "Isn't it interesting that these titles are borrowed from scary Hollywood movies?" Moore said that 30 percent of corn and 80 percent of soybeans - a major component in all processed foods - are genetically modified, and there hasn't been one case of a health issue. "In fact, the truth of the matter is genetically modified crops result in a drastic reduction of pesticides because they make the plants resistant without the use of chemicals. Farmers till the land less and there is more crop productivity using less land."
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"Climate change, to me, is one of the most interesting subjects because it points out the limitations of science," Moore said. "Most people think that if you take enough people in lab coats and throw enough money at them, then you can find the answer to any question. Of course that isn't true. Science actually has its absolute limit." He said there are so many variables that trigger climate change - other than CO2 - that it is "impossible to sort out the root cause."
Moore emphasized that the most important point in the climate change debate is "the fact that there is only one planet Earth, and it's very hard to do statistics on a sample of one, when you're trying to predict the future. If there were 50 planet Earths that were identical, you could increase CO2 on 25 of them and leave the other 25 alone, and you might get statistical probability." Moore said scientists who produce studies about global warming are reduced to best guesswork, plus some questionable computer models.
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You completely uneducated, self-important fuckwits spouting off about how George Bush is making global warming and the ecology of our planet worse and somehow that makes him responsible for the deaths in the Gulf Coast really need to stop spreading lies and misinformation just because you don't like who is in charge of this country.
current mood:  restless (21 comments |comment on this)
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