Slashdot Mirror
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."
We could maybe get back to actually governing this country.
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What a wild idea.
Please, lord, wash them all out to sea.
Love,
Actually, this could be good for the GOP since who in the hell wants to protest in the middle of a hurricane?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
And Joe Biden said: "You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist."
Which is entirely accurate. If you are one of the many evangelical Christians who actively work to support settlement building in the West Bank, then TA DAAA you are a Zionist. Now of course, the primary reason why those Christian evangelicals are helping is beause they believe they are helping to fufill the messianic prophecy of Revelations. In other words, they are actively trying to encourage the Apocolypse. But strictly speaking they are still Zionists, and passionately so.
Looks they are preparing for either a hurricane or vortex of some serious protest: http://www.abcactionnews.com//dpp/news/region_hillsborough/orient-road-jail-cleared-out-to-handle-rnc-arrests -- They have transferred inmates out of an entire facility in expectation of filling it with protesters. Odd.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Can you name the critical Obama policy bills the GOP successfully filibustered? After successfully filibustering said bills, what attempts did Obama make to lobby moderate Republicans to vote for cloture to end the filibuster OR what changes did Obama and the Democrats make to the bills to make them palatable to all parties and bi-partisan?
Harry Reid did change the generally accepted method of introducing bills for a vote practically eliminating the ability to debate and amend the bills. This action changed the Senate from a deliberative body that could compromise to one that could only vote up or down on any particular bill. What surprising result sprang up from this? Oh, yeah, the minority party had enough votes (41) to prevent cloture and, therefore, a vote on the bill.
It takes too sides to reach a compromise. Introducing bills in a manner where debate and amendments are disallowed doesn't exactly create a playing field where compromise and bi-partisanship can occur.
I am currently working with the City of Tampa, preparing for the RNC. All I really have to say is that this exact scenario has been expected for over a year now. Tampa in late August? You can almost expect a hurricane, and the emergency management involved is highly prepared for such a situation.
The real disaster will be in the outskirts of Tampa, not as much prepared as the city center. Tampa has not had a direct hit in a very long time, and our electrical infrastructure will be destroyed in some areas (think Charlie, Frances, Gene). Usually yearly storms will take out the weak trees, but our lack of a big storm in decades will cause much more damage to the Tampa area than it would to Miami or West Palm for example.
We could get into an interesting argument on why the evangelical movement pushes for constitutional amendments for a untraditional lifestyle choices like being gay, but not for other things in the two spots the Bible mentions homosexuality, like wool blends, not eating shellfish, etc.
We could have an even more interesting argument about why the importance of being non-materialist and helping the poor is called socialism instead of the fulfillment of the morality found in the Bible. Where is the constitutional amendment demanding that we help the poor?
But I think you'd rather type a series of exclamations and question marks.
I don't wish for anyone to die horribly in a storm, which is why I said nothing of the sort. I said it would be ironic if the storm hit Tampa for reasons that should be self-evident.
As far as Billy Graham goes, on the scale of evangelical leaders he's not the worst.
But he's also remained curiously silent while his son goes on rants claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the government, or that "[Barack Obama's] problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim."
Slashdot has an intellectual lean, not a right or left leaning. I would guess that the majority of people here, by a large margin, are social liberals, fiscal conservatives, and against government intervention in their daily lives.
If it wasn't for the bible thumpers, they would be Republicans. If it wasn't for the fiscally ignorant, they would be Democrats. If it wasn't for the distrust of government, they might even be politicians.
But, the lack or rational debate is a function of unbudging dogma. The republicans became "The Party of NO" in the 90's, and really haven't gone anywhere since.