What good, good news. Thank God and praise Him from whom all blessings flow!<\/p>\n
Rita, while powerful,<\/strong> spared Galveston and Houston, and essentially spent most of her fury in \u201cextreme southwest Louisiana, a lightly populated area<\/strong> just east of Sabine Pass, Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n She is already a simple 50mph Tropical Storm at this writing. Whew! <\/em><\/p>\n Of course, there was still lots of destruction and downed powerlines, and buildings and homes lost, and more flooding in Louisiana, unfortunately. But the chaos to life and limb seems minimal at this report, and the potentially great devastation seems to have been avoided. We\u2019ll know more, later, of course.<\/p>\n I saw the headline on Drudge and the photo of Bush shaking hands with folks at the command center. I expect we will soon hear from predictable quarters that \u201cRita wasn\u2019t that devastating because Bush got involved, because it was about the rich white folks in Texas and not the poor folks in Louisiana. If he\u2019d been this engaged, New Orleans (which actually \u201chad\u201d dodged a bullet at first) would never have flooded. Because\u2026somehow..Bush\u2019s presence would have strengthened the levees.<\/p>\n Oh, look. I no sooner wrote those words, than someone sent me this<\/a>.<\/p>\n Darn that elitist Rita \u2013 she spared the rich folks in Houston and ruined many small towns in Louisiana. And guess whose fault it is? Nah, don\u2019t bother\u2026<\/p>\n Sensible people will note a few things: the state and local authorities in Texas had an emergency plan in place which they USED and they began taking every precaution early in the game. Sensible people will recall that the un-sensible<\/em> Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, had to, once again, more or less be FORCED to order an evacuation of his city which \u2013 oh, by the way \u2013 FLOODED AGAIN, even though as far as we can tell, President Bush was not setting off bombs at the levees or ignoring people hoping they would die.<\/p>\n Sensible people will understand that Rita moved and weakened, and much was spared, and they will thankful and full of praise.<\/p>\n Others will simply try to use the storm to foment more of whatever their agenda needs.<\/p>\n The DC March<\/strong> seemed, also, to be considerably less than reports and Phil Donoghue had promised. While some said it would \u201cthe largest such gathering since the beginning of the Iraq war,\u201d etc, it seems the protestors were the usual A.N.S.W.E.R. folks \u2013 the same folks who come out for every \u201cbig\u201d protest \u2013 the ones who have marched almost every year since President Bush came into office. And the co-ordination with London, SanFrancisco, et al, seemed much less impressive than it was in, say, 2003 when there really were \u201cmany hundreds of thousands\u201d taking to the streets.<\/p>\n I keep thinking of those women with purple fingers, raised in victory. Imagine protesting that.<\/p>\n The one time I bothered to flick on the TV and look for coverage it sure didn\u2019t look<\/em> like 100,000 people to me\u2026but then, tv always adds ten pounds.<\/p>\n That non-sequiter was as appropriate to the occasion as anything I heard while I was tuned in.<\/p>\n Maxed Out Mama<\/a> has a really good post wherein she links to many and also quotes some DU\u2019ers who are convinced that the (apparently now rabidly rightwing) C-Span coverage \u201cis not showing the people! It looks like a po-dunky picnic\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Why yes\u2026po-dunky picnic is precisely what it looked like to me, too. I am quite sure that if a gargantuan crowd had assembled, someone, somewhere, in some news agency, would have the picture. Haven\u2019t seen it yet. This ain\u2019t it<\/a>.<\/p>\n I did<\/em> see someone on the stage prattling about what a great guy Hugo Chavez was, so it seems that no matter what some will say, this \u201canti-war\u201d rally was your basic gathering of Socialists and Communists, doing their usual gathering things, but with a super-intensive Bush-hatred theme. We are super-intensely hating George W. Bush. And we\u2019re smarter than everyone else on the planet. Greener, more aware, more alert, more engaged, more sympathetic, more compassionate, more noble and better-informed than the rest of the world, too. Daddy\u2019s gonna pay for my crashed car.<\/em><\/p>\n I believe Joan Baez is singing tonight \u2013 we\u2019ve never seen that before.<\/p>\n I expect that the less-than-monumental turnout will be spun as a compassionate response to Hurricane Rita \u2013 that with so much devastation happening down in Texas, too many who would have marched did not do so out of consideration for the people struggling with the storm.<\/p>\n They\u2019re going to have to say something, because in the past A.N.S.W.E.R. has been able to rally together many more than they have this day\u2026and they ARE supposed to be riding a wave of anti-war momentum right now\u2026aren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n There\u2019s lots of coverage on the blogs \u2013 much moreso, it seems, than on the television, where reporters seem strangely downcast. I think they were expecting much more drama out of both Rita and the DC crowds.<\/p>\n In the blogosphere, check out Michelle Malkin\u2019s pictures<\/a> and Globalcop\u2019s<\/a>, Jeff Goldstein\u2019s fisking<\/a>. Oxblog reads the A.N.S.W.E.R. literature<\/a> so you don\u2019t have to. Gateway Pundit has quite a roundup and pictures<\/a>. Ann Althouse, in lawyerly fashion, nails the press\u2019 testimony<\/a> and utterly discredits them. Confederate Yankee, trying to nail down the crowd size<\/a> finds wild exaggerations that 300,000 attended and a blog report of a \u201cmassive turnout,\u201d but when it comes down to it, \u201ctens of thousands\u201d does seem to be the number honest media are comfortable reporting. Sigmund has some thoughts on spin<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s an anti-war protest, in fine weather, riding a \u201cwave of anti-Bush, anti-war momentum.\u201d Somehow, I just can\u2019t get impressed, you know?<\/p>\n Btw\u2026<\/p>\n Prayer works! :-)<\/p>\n UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein<\/a> is wondering about how booklovers were figured into this equation. Baldilocks<\/a> has pictures from the LA protest. Some really deplorably stupid signs. Chris Christner<\/a> has great pictures of dumb signs and some really appalling dialogue excerpts, that you just have to read to believe. More pictures here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What good, good news. Thank God and praise Him from whom all blessings flow! Rita, while powerful, spared Galveston and Houston, and essentially spent most of her fury in \u201cextreme southwest Louisiana, a lightly populated area just east of Sabine Pass, Texas, according to the National Hurricane Center\u201d She is already a simple 50mph Tropical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-katrinarita"],"yoast_head":"\n