For me, the best story on Katrina was James K. Glassman’s piece-mainly because it reports that Jim’s beautiful daughter Zoe, my godchild, got out with her husband and baby.
“Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive,” writes Jim. “Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.
“That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.
“Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. It has everything to do with the immense forces of nature that have been unleashed many, many times before and the inability of humans, even the most brilliant engineers, to tame these forces.”
As The Other Charlotte reports, the levees of left opinion have burst and George Bush is being blamed for Katrina. I’m sure Katrina will turn out to be the fault of the neo-cons by the end of the week. Meanwhile, there is a tendency to look for something besides pure lawlessness in the activity of looters (“The moral nuances of stealing something you can’t eat, drink, watch or sell Do flat-screens float?”–Lucianne.)
But before we become too preoccupied with this, Thursday has been designated as blog bleg to ask everybody to help the people of the beautiful city of New Orleans.
Captain Ed Morrissey of Captain Quarters puts it this way:
“Regardless of where you decide to contribute, please join the blogosphere tomorrow in getting aid to our brothers and sisters in the disaster area.
“UPDATE and BUMP: I’m bumping this to 9/1 to serve as my bleg post for CQ readers to donate what they can to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I want to add a few words to the above post first.
“One of the proudest and, ironically, humbling moments as a blogger came at the beginning of the year, after the deadly tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people throughout Asia. I asked CQ readers to step up and donate what they could to provide relief for the hundreds of thousands of survivors, who had to live through hell while trying to piece their lives and homes together again. I privately hoped to raise $5,000; together, the CQ community donated over $35,000.”
We’re not equipped to do hurricane relief here, but hope that you will reach out to the people of New Orleans with whatever help you can supply.