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Hurrican Katrina before impact.

On August 29, 2005 hurricane Katrina hit and a disaster that was waiting to happen, did.  The Federal government was responsible for the chaotic response but, to be fair Louisiana’s governor, New Orleans’ mayor, and the citizens of New Orleans all shared in the blame.  As happens with most tragedies, one or two people end up getting blamed despite how complex a situation is… in the case of hurricane Katrina Michael Brown, head of FEMA, and George W. Bush, president of the U.S., took the rap.  Entire books could be written about the lashing those two men took in the press by celebrities, politicians, and many others.  Fairly or not, hurricane Katrina was tied to President Bush and the idea that he was an incompetent boob.

Since 2005, politicians from Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid to the Congressional Black Caucus have not wasted a moment hurling invectives at then-President George W. Bush were he to even consider not funding a project in or for New Orleans.

Isn’t it strange how times change when you go from a Republican in the Executive Office to a Democrat?  It has been over 5 years since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans a recent report from says of the progress made there:

But many recovery trends have slowed or stagnated in the past year as tens of thousands of blighted properties, lack of affordable housing for essential service and construction workers, and thin public services continue to plague the city and region.

Furthermore, in January 2009 the most recent comments on New Orleans are:

Yet, storm damage remains widespread, potential destruction from new storms looms large, and state and local leaders must simultaneously confront the opportunities and challenges presented by Washington’s economic recovery efforts and the potential sunsetting of the federal Office of Gulf Coast Recovery.

Out of the $838 billion “stimulus” bill President Obama signed recently, how much money was allocated towards rebuilding New Orleans..?  Don’t think too long about this because the answer is $0.  Now let us consider what is usually the rejoinder by the media and Congressional Democrats when cutting funding to New Orleans is a possibility is swift and harsh but, with a Democrat in the White House the silence is deafening.

New Orleans' 9th Ward in December of 2008

So it is not as if New Orleans has been rebuilt and there are not further challenges to be met.  While the unemployment rate for the city is below the national average, as recently as the Summer of 2008:

Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. Bush was pilloried for not mentioning the disaster in back-to-back State of the Union addresses.

While the state of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama can use some of the money they are granted in the stimulus for hurricane Katrina-related spending, doing so would take away from other projects they might want to fund, an issue that the rest of the governors do not have to face.

The argument is being made that direct funding in the stimulus wasn’t needed because there’s still money that hasn’t been spent but:

Ironically, Bush made similar arguments in recent years as Gulf advocates latched onto nearly any legislation they could find to pursue reconstruction money. For example, he routinely argued that Katrina funding didn’t belong in war spending bills and that new funding wasn’t urgent because unspent billions were already in the pipeline.

A recent poll of who handled a Gulf Coast disaster better (Bush/Katrina or Obama/BP) guess who scored higher?  That’s right… Bush:

Former President George W. Bush showed more leadership in dealing with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has shown in handling the oil calamity in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a poll of Louisianans released Friday.

By contrast, those polled said that Bush’s leadership on Katrina was better than Obama’s on the spill. A majority,  54%, said that Bush did the better job of helping Louisiana through the hurricane crisis compared to the 33% who chose Obama, PPP said on Friday.

Any person with commonsense can see that a double standard is being applied here because the Democrats are in charge of Congress and the White House.  While President Obama isn’t “tainted” by hurricane Katrina because he was not running the show when it happened, the press is giving the issue a pass because of their bias towards Democrats even after the BP oil spill.

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Liberals love to talk about how America is oppressing the poor around the world – economically, environmentally, socially, militarily.  Popular culture is filled with these messages.  The movie Syianna is an example.  A poor immigrant turns to terrorism because he has no other options.  He views the U.S. as being the demon in the world.  If only he were middle class, had a job, an education, and opportunities he would not blow himself up.

Just as a recent FBI crime report shows that even though gun ownership in the U.S. is at a record high but crime is decreasing so we have yet another Liberal myth busted – the poor “oppressed” terrorist.

Witness attempted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  Sure, he grew up in a poor country, Nigeria, but he grew up in a nice house, his father had a great job (was one of the richest men in Nigeria), he went to the best schools:

“These young men were not children of the poor,” he says. “They came from privileged homes, they came from powerful homes, they came from homes of people that were holding high positions in government.”

This breed of Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle and upper class, aggressively embraced a stricter — and increasingly violent — version of Islam. The young Nigerians rebelled against the existing order of their rich and political well-connected parents in northern Nigeria.”

Liberals want Americans to dole out billions of dollars to help poor (and corrupt) nations confront the problem of “global warming” which they see as being caused by fat, greedy Americans.  They think that if they can knock the standard of living in the U.S. down a few notches and raise it in the Third World that terrorists will disappear because they will feel fully integrated into society and will turn away from terrorism (radical Islam actually).  We have heard this myth hundreds of times over from Liberals for more than two decades but, as with most Liberals beliefs, reality is slightly different.

Below is the classic rationalization:

This claim can frequently be heard by policy makers or others seeking to influence international aid and development policy in a way that will also positively affect counterterrorism efforts. Russell Ackoff, emeritus professor at the Wharton School of Business, put forth this view at a conference designed to promote private business’ role in combating terrorism:

The basic problem that spurs terrorism is misdistribution of wealth within the U.S. and around the world. “Awareness of this inequality is widespread because of communications,” [Ackoff has] noted. “We don’t understand how to close the gap, and the IMF and the World Bank often make matters worse.”

A recent study on the matter finds different results:

Terrorists have higher educations and incomes than expected Although study is still limited, the evidence that there is no simple, direct line from poverty to terrorism is persuasive. Analyses of terrorist activities in the last two decades consistently reveal that individuals who support and commit terrorist acts are likely to be more highly educated and have higher incomes than others in their society.

Is it any surprise that most terrorists tend to be Muslim and come from oppressive regimes?  Growing up in a theocratic police state surely causes frustration in a person.  After all, if you feel you have no power to change your circumstances, even if you are well educated and not poor, you might take desperate actions.

The key is not in giving huge dollar amounts to Third World countries but towards pushing for freedom in all corners of the world… spreading democracy.  Corrupt leaders do not like this idea (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Yemen, Sudan, etc…) but it is the only way to improve the world.

Liberals do not like thrusting their beliefs on dictators – only on Americans – but that is exactly what is required if groups like al Qaeda are to be quashed.

President Obama has shown, over and over, a reluctance to push any despotic regimes towards democracy or at least a more open, transparent societal model.  He has also shown, over and over again, a willingness to try and strip the tools American intelligence and law enforcement agencies need in order to keep this country safe.  Instead, President Obama finds it easier to blame everything on George Bush.

Obama still has time to turn things around but, thus far, the signals he has sent out are only finding encouragement among America’s enemies.

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The Obama administration has ordered an end to use of the phrase “Global War on Terror,” a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

In a memo sent this week from the Defense Department’s office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”

From the reality of June 2010:

Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing and left a sinister warning that unless the U.S. leaves Muslim lands alone, “we will be attacking U.S.”

Shahzad answered: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.”

Maybe our Dear Leader needs an al Qaeda refresher course?

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OED is DEAD

We shouldn’t be too surprised that the famous Oxford English Dictionary is going out of print.  After all, the 20 volume set costs about $1,200.00 and weighs nearly 750 pounds while, for a small fee, it is available on the Internet.  As the saying goes, if your job is too easy robots will probably be doing it soon and printing a book few will ever read or buy is a pretty easy job.

Few in America (or even in England for that matter) speak or write English very well so it’s unclear that the death of the monster  tome will really have any effect aside from preventing snooty writers and teachers from showing off their bank account and bookshelf space by owning the 20 books themselves.  Technology has replaced good old fashioned learning as we recently read about the youth in China and Japan who are forgetting how to write because they use computers and cell phones all the time.

Americans don’t seem to know their English as well as they once did.  After all, they elected someone who continually spouted the words “hope” and “change” and He didn’t consult the OED first because He didn’t know what they meant – and neither did anybody who voted for him, apparently.

Or you could say that He did consult the OED first and thought it best to leave everything vague so as to not be called to account for His promises.

The average English speaker apparently knows between 12,000 and 20,000 different words while, we are told, Shakespeare (or Shakey as the Brits call him) used over 30,000 different words.  I would say today we only need to know the meaning of a few words like “illegal immigration” or “patriotic” or “Fox News is full of lies.”  Simplifying life down to this level is what the Elected Class wants as it makes the public easier to control because their minds will be focused on just a few things so they will not be concentrating on the wider issues.

Liberals don't need the OED to describe this rally by Beck.

Glenn Beck’s rally on the Lincoln Memorial could not be measured by the simple, dictionaryless writers of the mainstream media so they restored to things like “extremism” and “hatred” and “fear” and such.  To try and describe the beliefs and agendas of the 300,000 people who took time out of their lives to show their concern for this country is a remarkable thing and yet, to read about it in the news is to think these people were motivated by a gutter-like level of fear and hatred.

The OED is available online like so many of the refutations regarding Liberals and their attempts to discredit the opposition but, like the 291,500 different words in the dictionary, most will go unread.  There is a concerted, coordinated, and planned effort underway by a host of journolists, “activists” and politicians to distort, subvert, and ignore the truth and facts found in the “flyover” states and in the cities, schools, universities, and capitols around the nation.  The end of the OED print edition is nothing more than a simple reaction to market forces though we should all take a moment to reflect upon all of the words found within its 20 volumes and why we, as a nation, seem to give our elected officials the power to control our lives using only a handful of them.

Maybe these SEIU members could have used the OED at their rally last weekend:

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