How many minutes before Bushco is blamed for this?

Mojave Mark on May 6, 2007 at 1:56 PM

I can’t believe this hasn’t happened yet; or that he and Mr. Cheney aren’t blamed for knowing the tornado was coming, and for not helping the good people in time.

What on earth were they thinking.

I laughed and said

If we didn’t drive whenever there’s a tornado watch, we might not drive for weeks. You’re just as likely to get hit sitting still as if you’re a moving target. Keep the radio on, and if they say ‘tornado warning‘, and you’re in a county they’re talking about, find a place to stop the car and take shelter.

That was an F3 that didn’t kill anyone, but did injure fifty, according to the research I’ve been able to do. The damage to our house was a few shingles torn away, which me elder brothers replaced, and our lawn mower was picked up and carried a few houses up the hill (we got a call from the neighbor asking about it after the storm, and I was sent over to bring it back home).

I believe it was the same day (June 8, 1966), an hour later, the same storm system produced an F5 tornado hit Topeka, killing 16 and injuring 450. A guy I worked for a few years ago lived there at the time. He told me about how he stood at the top of the stairs to the basement looking out at the tornado. When he saw an I-beam in the air, he turned and hurled himself down the stairs. He might have hit two of them, he was moving so fast. At his grandparents’ house nearby, there was a garage built of concrete blocks on a slab foundation. After the storm, that slab was completely cleared off — you could have eaten off that floor, because it had literally been vacuumed clean. A few feet away, his grandmother’s rose bushes weren’t missing a petal.

The point is that you just never know what they’ll do. KS has had tornadoes recorded in all 12 months of the year. People probably think we’re nuts to live here, just as I think the CA folks along the San Andreas Fault are loony, or the FL people with their hurricanes….

But the thing is, even a beast like this latest F5 would cut a swath of destruction a mile wide and a few miles long. Most of the time what gets wiped out by a tornado is a few thousand acres of crops, maybe some livestock, farm equipment and buildings.

And the great advances in Doppler radar make it possible for the forecasters to tell us about the rotation in a storm cell before an actual tornado is even formed. That gives plenty of time to take cover. To put the numbers in perspective, in the 1990s there were 31 deaths (20 from the Wichita/Andover behemoth, which was on the ground for 30 miles, which is just unheard of) out of a total population of 2.6 million at the end of the decade. That’s one death per 87 thousand people.

There are many things more likely to kill me than a tornado.

RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 5:16 PM

Thanks for providing a good example of the type of myopic posters I mentioned who seem incapable of reasonable discourse or civil dialog. Firedoglake? Never heard of it.

This may surprise you but the only time I bother with HuffPo or DU is when one of the hotair threads reference it. Why? Because they don’t represent the majority of the party – period, end of story.
It would be unfair and irresponsible if I characterized all republicans as racist and myopic.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 5:07 PM

The problem is you can’t a characterize us that way, but we bring the goods when we do characterize the other side. HuffPo and Kos are the biggest lefty blogs out there and their comments are DOMINATED by hate. Here you’re lucky to find a few questionable borderline comments that would come anywhere close to comparing to the majority opinion on the other side. And by the way, don’t talk to me about racism.. You talked about reading firedoglake… I hope you enjoy your blackfaced Liebermans.

RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 4:50 PM

This may surprise you but the only time I bother with HuffPo or DU is when one of the hotair threads reference it. Why? Because they don’t represent the majority of the party – period, end of story.
It would be unfair and irresponsible if I characterized all republicans as racist and myopic. I don’t but with some people in this forum, any disagreement is seen as reason to attack out of hand.

And as to what is my side or not my side you really don’t know what my party affiliation, if any, is. I have posted enough times in the last seven months that you could probably figure it out if you followed a few bread crumbs.

There are people at hotair who can engage in a responsible dialog without getting into name calling. That is why I post here. There are a couple of other places like townhall that are not bad either.

The most irritating thing with some party partisans is their inclination to paint millions of people as traitors or allies to terrorists (right calling out left) or karl rove acolytes in bed with government conspiracies to create fictional conflicts to support big oil(left calling out right).

I’ve said it time and time again but the majority of all voters fall right and left of center. To win their support requires much less vitriol and more logical arguments and persuasion. Whether it is Honora, Nonfactor, and myself to name a few there are some who feel the need to attack because we may be more moderate, or even, gasp a Democrat.

So in the search for civil and meaningful dialog, those are the reasons I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the bomb throwers on either side have to say and why I remind people there are bomb throwers on both sides.

I deliberately went to look for a HuffPo post on the tornado just to find these type of comments. I didn’t have to wonder if they were there, because I know the hate that your side is filled with. I went there ready to copy and paste because I KNEW what I’d see. No, not one questionable comment every few weeks. DOZENS A DAY, AT LEAST!

Now you want to say “why bother looking”… Well, it’s obvious you don’t want us to see your side for what it is.. But the reason to look is just that. We simply want to point out just what goes on over there, so we keep reminding ourselves what we’re up against, and exposing it to those who are unaware.

lorien1973 on May 6, 2007 at 1:16 PM

You know it is kind of funny – if you walk down just about any street of any town in Kentucky (my roots), you will not find anywhere close to one in three democrats that agree with the truthers, very few who agree with gun control, and many who are not too keen on high taxes for social programs, and who have children in the uniformed services.

But according to some of your associates at hotair, the simple fact that they are Democrats means they are traitorous gun grabbers who believe in cockamamie conspiracy theories who are ready to cut and run from Iraq.

So far today I have been called a jerk off, idiot, and a couple of other choice words by some posters here. What exactly do you call that? Compassionate Conservatism?

my guess is that the majority of democrats have no idea those things are being said since they are not visiting DU or Kos.

I think you are trying to imply that if they don’t visit the blogs that they don’t have the opinions. We have poll-proof that 35% of democrats think that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. I bet you could walk up to any random liberal on the street; and get them to wish death on Cheney. Do you disagree with this?

Ditto the majority of republicans who would probably be disappointed at the attack dogs in their party who discount the slightest disagreement with name calling and the like.

Curious; that democrats “say things” (previous quote) but republicans are “attack dogs”. I think that says a lot about where you are coming from; right there.

What The Machine NEVER sees, however, is those same democrats/leftists calling those people out or dressing them down for their vile crap.
The Machine on May 6, 2007 at 12:27 PM

There was some thread on hotair a couple of months back in which a study showed a very small number of voters are engaged in the blogosphere. I can’t remember the exact figures but am pretty sure it was less than 5% of the eligible voters.

The article seemed to support the theory that mostly partisans of either party were most actively engaged.

Soooo to answer your question, my guess is that the majority of democrats have no idea those things are being said since they are not visiting DU or Kos.
Ditto the majority of republicans who would probably be disappointed at the attack dogs in their party who discount the slightest disagreement with name calling and the like.

But my main point in my comments is why waste so much time gauging what the “other” sites are saying?

What The Machine NEVER sees, however, is those same democrats/leftists calling those people out or dressing them down for their vile crap.

One has to wonder WHY.

Meanwhile, the childish fingerpointing they always do — “oh yeah, well THIS post proves that you evil rethuglicans do it too!” — is disengenuous at best, shows an inability to understand the difference between someone’s reaction to leftist tripe versus seeing that it was the leftist tripe that initiated the rightwing response in the first place.

You have to understand the absurd and childish Rules of The Left:

They can make mistakes and don’t have to apologize for any sort of the vilest filth, the Right must be absolutely perfect at all times.

The French Left has now learned to threaten violence and rioting in order to try to get elected.

The ploy won’t work, simply because the left never accounts for human nature, something they cannot understand, so the American Left will follow suit immediately.

That is because the left has never had an original idea, ever.

.

I’ll update tomorrow when a clear and credible charity emerges; but if you gave some money after Katrina you might want to look those folks up again.

I’ll be watching for that. Thanks, See-Dubya.

Of course not. Neither does the comments of some posters at DU represent the majority of Democrats

Nor do the democrats at Huffo, DailyKos, nor the 35% that believe the 9/11 conspiracy, etc. Nope, definitely not a majority of democrats. Just a small fringe group. I know. I know.

As for that DU part, I didn’t have to go to the DU to hear it. My extremely liberal grandmother is in town and made some comment last night about how the tornadoes “keep missing the ranch”.

Extremely bitter old liberals are loads of fun to be around fyi.

It’s unfortunate that 99% of Democrats give the 1% a bad name.

However with this line of thinking I’d say Florida certainly displeased GOD with its complicity in 2000 Pres. elections. THat year Orlando had 4 severe hurricanes, unprecedented especially for landlocked Orlando.Hmmm……
By: brooklyncitizen on May 05, 2007 at 11:50pm

caught by RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 4:21 AM

Huffpo commenter from brooklyn is now quite easily the DUMBEST fool on the continent.He’s blaming this weather on the 2000 election.
Find a shrink, brooklyncitizen hate boy, you’ve lost it.

And screw anybody playing politics with this.

Lawrence on May 6, 2007 at 8:26 AM

Classic liberalism is a personality disorder. People afflicted with it have no ability to balance rational and emotion. Regardless of how you react to an event, emotionally or rationally, you have to go in the opposite direction to balance your thinking and actions.

Just remember, we’re all born with a librals heart- some of us, however, were also born with a brain and know how the world really works.