Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Mark Steyn moment for Katrina

Mark Steyn writing in the Chicago Sun-Times today, is giving yet another example of the Phantom-Echo effect.  I've been saying since Tuesday that what Nature can do by accident some bunch of goblins can do on purpose.  Here's Steyn's more eloquent phraseology:

The comparison with Sept. 11 isn't exact, but it's fair to this extent: Katrina was the biggest disaster on American soil since that day provoked the total overhaul of the system and the devotion of billions of dollars and the finest minds in the nation to the prioritizing of homeland security. It was, thus, the first major test of the post-9/11 structures. Happy with the results?

Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment (and no, I've no idea what that means, though feel free to do your own jokes), wrote a hurricane essay arguing the novel line that "The Terrorist Katrina Is A Soldier Of Allah." You could sort of see his point. Imagine if al-Qaida were less boneheaded and had troubled themselves to learn a bit more about the Great Satan's weak spots. Imagine if they'd decided to blow up a couple of levees and flood a great American city. Would local and state government have responded any more effectively than they did last week? After all, Katrina, unlike Osama, let 'em know she was heading their way.
<snippy>
One thing that became clear two or three months after "the day that everything changed" is that nothing changed -- that huge swathes of the political culture in America remain committed to a bargain that stiffs the people at every level, a system of lavish funding of pseudo-action. You could have done as the anti-war left wanted and re-allocated every dollar spent in Iraq to Louisiana. Or you could have done as some of the rest of us want and re-allocated every buck spent on, say, subsidizing Ted Turner's and Sam Donaldson's play-farming activities. But, in either case, I'll bet Louisiana's kleptocrat public service would have pocketed the dough and carried on as usual -- and, come the big day, the state would still have flopped out, and New Orleans' foul-mouthed mayor would still be ranting about why it was all everybody's else fault.
At the bottom of the column he makes a joke about the 9/11 Commission retooling to become the "Katrina Kommission", but it ain't as funny as it should be since Senator Hillary Klintoon has suggested that very thing.  So really there's been nothing learned again.

Now, I have to say that right here is where the true EVIL of the Lyin' Left comes into its full, destructive strength.  There really have been some gigantic failures of the federal government generally and the Bush Administration's leadership thereof since 9/11, and this hurricane has revealed them.  But nobody can say anything about it because it feeds the Left and helps support their lies about pretty much anything and everything.  That's what makes lying bad, it destroys the truth and ties the hands of people with good intentions.

Case in point, if you think Katrina was bad just let five or six oil refineries close for six months and see what happens.  Couple pipeline failures in winter time.  If Al Qaeda was a serious enemy they'd do the pipeline thing and THEN start with the poison gas or the bio-attack.  I see no US government activity to protect any of that infrastructure whatsoever.  I see no Canadian activity in any regard at all, other than the usual BS to turn the screws on normal citizens.

Therefore citizens are going to have to rely on their own devices when it hits the fan, pretty much.  First World governments are reacting at Third World effectiveness due to political correctness and flat out corruption, that means WE are the ones who are going to get it done.  And that, boys and girls, means having the knowledge and the stuff on hand for when the shit flies.  By which I mean food, water, a generator, some kind of self supported heating (oil, not gas!), FUEL, and etc.  The wherewithall to protect same from looters might be smart as well.

Central distribution and central control is something we can't afford anymore.  Right now we have a fail-hard electric grid and our fuel supply complex is 30 years old and straining to keep up.  All manner of absolutely vital food and medical services have single points of failure, often electricity or fuel related like delivery or refrigeration. 

A simple thing like welding gas makes you think about what could happen with a delivery breakdown.  If you can't get oxygen and acetelene you can't cut metal, which pretty much means you can't FIX anything.  Canada has ONE factory making acetelene right now, in Separatiste controlled Montreal.  That's not smart.  But that's what is.

We are in a war.  We need distributed, redundant energy supply.  We need multi-source access to vital infrastructure maintenance technology like welding gas and a thousand other things that keep life rolling.  We need to be planning and equipping for disaster, not feeding the bottomless pit of socialist corruption.

What we need to be doing is to impose major, unceasing pressure on elected officials to fix this kind of thing, and we need to defeat the Left to get that done.  Screw the whales, save the damn levees.

The Lefty Despising Phantom

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