Tag Archives: Joplin

Another I Cantor Believe This Moment

Posted on August 25, 2011 by | 8 Comments

 You’re on your own, Natural Disaster Victims

Remember Eric Cantor’s “you’re on your own” response to the deadly Joplin, Missouri tornado in May?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said “if there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental.”

That’s right, Cantor, in an act of absurd callousness, wanted spending cuts to offset the hundreds of millions, if not billions, in tornado damage to the town.  Natural disasters are a zero sum game, and I said this at the time:

Would Cantor be saying the same thing if a tornado or massive storm swept through VA-7 and the suburbs north of Richmond, causing billions of dollars of damage?  Which would be a worse answer, that he wouldn’t expect spending cuts before helping his own district out…or that he would insist upon them?

Well gosh, with the earthquake this week and Hurricane Irene barreling towards Virginia, we’re about to find out.  And the preliminary answer is that yes, Eric Cantor would screw over his own constituents.

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Posted in Libertarian Lunacy, Political Shenanigans, What the Crap!?, Zandar

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Shorter Eric Cantor: Suck it up, Missouri!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Might offer federal assistance to Joplin if they give up their Medicare

I’m glad Eric Cantor said aloud what we all now know:

Republicans don’t care about anything or anyone but themselves and their cronies. Women, minorities, the poor, the middle class, even their most strident constituents (Joplin is one of the reddest, if not the reddest county in Missourah) mean jackshit to them.

The GOP just don’t give a fuuuuuuck:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

It makes about as much sense as this: Continue reading →

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Posted in Please Die in a Fire, Political Shenanigans, Teabilly and GOP Mendacity, What the Crap!?

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The Joplin Tornado Video Shot From Inside a Store

Posted on May 24, 2011 by | 3 Comments

I finally watched it, and it’s TERRIFYING.

A group of people were trapped inside a convenient store when the tornado — the deadliest single tornado in the US since 1947 and the ninth-deadliest tornado of all time — ripped through Joplin, Missouri. The video is horrifying.

It sounds like something out of a disaster movie.

Unimaginable:

Commenter jinxtgr at Balloon Juice got me thinking (his comments are after the jump): whether or not you believe that the recent floods, hurricanes, and tornados are the result of natural or human-caused climate change, it seems fairly obvious that the weather as of late has been bizarre, to put it mildly; so the question becomes what now?

The below explanation about the patterns of weather I find fascinating and compelling. As I understand it, his argument boils down to this: Weather is a chaotic system, but falls into predictable chaotic patterns. There are no weather flukes or outliers, only weather indicators. Climate change simply shifts the weather patterns (like an Overton Window, if you will), creating storms more destructive than we’ve ever seen because it pushes the outer limits of how destructive a storm can be to Really Fucking Destructive.

This doesn’t mean that every storm is going to be as destructive as the one in Joplin. It means that Mother Nature is telling us “This is how bananas I can get. Just you wait and see.”  In any event, the weather tomorrow is supposed to be terrible throughout the Midwest, so there’s that.

I don’t know what to take away from all of this. After the tsunami hit in Japan, I stayed awake all night, reading about the Ring of Fire, waiting for an earthquake to hit, and wishing I had some earthquake insurance.  I spent the following days watching every Discovery Channel program I could find on tsunamis.

Needless to say, I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I find it fascinating:

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, What the Crap!?

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