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Hurricane Could Make a Mess of Republican Convention
Hugh Pickens writes "ABC News reports that Hurricane Isaac, currently a tropical storm brewing southeast of Puerto Rico, is on track to hit Florida the same day that Mitt Romney and 50,000 Republican delegates, journalists, protestors and guests descend on Tampa for the Republican National Convention but whether it will skim the east coast near Miami or crash head-on into Tampa, is still up in the air. The worst possible scenario is that Hurricane Isaac stays on the western track, skating over the Caribbean Sea south of Haiti, crossing the primarily flat landscape of western Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico then curving east and hitting Tampa dead-on. 'Tampa is just as vulnerable as New Orleans was in the sense that the water will funnel into the bay area and from the storm surge which will flood completely the whole entire city of Tampa,' says meteorologist Max Golembo. 'It would be a disaster in the Tampa area.' If a hurricane or tropical storm is bearing down on Tampa, the priority of law enforcement is to evacuate residents, leaving GOP officials to make the decision of when to evacuate delegates says Hillsborough County Emergency Management spokeswoman Holly Wade. 'We have to look at a lot of factors, like timing and landfall,' says Wade. 'We provide the weather information, then we take that to the host committee, which decides if the event goes on or if the event gets altered.' A Category 2 hurricane could disrupt convention activities because the Tampa Bay Times Forum, site of the festivities, is within a mandatory evacuation zone for storms of that magnitude."
Good.
I came here thinking the same thing, sadly enough. The best part would be the irony of it all, the self-righteous hypocritical lot.
Not to mention I'm sure they're tracking this approaching storm using the national weather service, relying on local emergency response services, using publicly-funded roads, hosting the event in a taxpayer-funded stadium, etc.
Let the spin, begin.
You don't have to be a leftist to hate the GOP.
And the reason nothing passed was the Democrats were attempting to be bi-partisan. You can see how well that worked out for them.
GOP, the party of NO!
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It's actually Snark. The left doesn't genuinely believe these things.
The right? Does. That's why they The left is just responding to the initial comment.
Of course the Right pretends they can't recognize a sense of humor so they feign outrage at the Left, while putting themselves on a pedestal.
Mods, why was this allowed through the filters? It ain't tech, it isn't geeky in a technology sense (I will recognize there are hurricane geeks), and it is really just political trolling no matter how you look at it which I am willing to watch meaningful threads degenerate into but having it start off degenerate is a waste at every level.
Timothy, you suck for posting this.
There is no reason to tolerate intolerance. Absolutes are for fools.
Of course, not all conservatives are assholes, but the GOP panders to these assholes, along with the stupid and selfish to form their base of support. That is fine, but it is hardly cricket to simultaneously pretend that the GOP has any credibility, either effectively or morally.
They intentionally bent over for these loons, and earned the reputation themselves.
Object to it as snark if you want, but trying to pretend they're equivalent is out of line.
You may some day have to accept that there is a substantial difference between the two parties/ideologies, that one has become the home of a rather fanatical group of people who govern on a platform of fear and self-deception while engaging in vitriolic and deceitful attacks while simultaneously asserting a hypocritical protest that they are the victims of hatred and oppression, that the other side is the liars, the meanies, and the real oppressors.
I'd even give you good odds that some conservative wanker will jump up and say "Yep, that's the Democrats/Liberals/Progressives" all right, as that's their method of operation. They project all of their faults onto you, and completely lack the integrity to examine their own actions.
Just see how Mitt Romney can flip-flop all day, how Mitt Romney can lie about Obama on Welfare Waivers, the size of the military, or Medicare Cuts while pretending it's Obama's nose that should be growing to Redwood proportions as quickly as bamboo.
Sorry, you may not like it, but things aren't equal, and if there's anybody reasonable, intelligent, or likable left in the GOP, they need to look around and see who else in is their party.
I'm a fairly long-time Slashdot member. My user number isn't anything to write home about, but I've been here enough years to make some observations. You know what my general, detached impression is? Slashdot doesn't lean left. It's actually full of misguided libertarians who haven't quite grown up yet.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
It's not just that there are subgroups that are hateful.
There's a guy who shot up a Unitarian church in Knoxville, TN, and he had a big selection of books by Ann Coulter with highlighted passages that seem to explain why he did it.
There's another guy who shot Representitive Giffords (and a six year old to get to her), and again, had a bunch of material by Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and others in his personal library.
There's another guy who shot a guard at a Holocaust memorial center, again with a bunch of right wing connections, and many of the same books.
(I'm not naming any of these scumbags. It's their victims that deserve to be remembered.)
The amount of hate mail and death threats sent to the current president in his first month in office was at least 10x as large as anyone before him recieved in the same time.
Just today in the news, there's a sitting judge in Texas who advocates raising taxes for one reason and one only - to fund training his local Sherrif's dept. into a force that can fight off the invading UN troops he expects momentarily.
So it's not a case of arguing that there are more in one group or another. There's no logical argument as to the actual facts.There are about 10 times as many in your group as the other, if you go by the hate letters, or an infinitely higher percentage if you go by the bodycounts. That's the point. ALL the murderers are on your side. Apologists for the right keep pointing to people such as reverend Wright, or some 'eco-group' that pours paint stripper on gas guzzlers, as though some jerk who never actually killed anyone cancels out at least one mass murderer, maybe all of them, however many you get. What's wrong with your party, the whole party, is that it is willing to equivocate so that when there is a nutbar fanatic actually killing in the name of your cause, they are willing to claim that is balanced by a person on the other side saying something mean spirited. You just stooped to that same tired argument, so I will label you, you personally and not you as part of any larger group, as the one who is the problem. Stop coddling killers! Stop helping a political party that coddles killers. Stop using this false equivalency, or stop being surprised when decent people start talking about you like you need tarred and feathered and run out of their town.
Who is John Cabal?
I would ask that before any of you post on politics, you stop and ask yourself if the rhetoric you are using is really justified or contributes to a sane, civil discussion.
Oh come on, your party has decided that they're the voice of god. Sane, civil discussion is no longer an option. If there's no room for compromise, and there isn't with you folks, there's no point in discussing anything.
You've picked your side, and you threw your lot in with the anti-intellectual fundamentalists. You chose to support this attitude. Have the balls to take the criticism that will come your way. God will protect you.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.