Bush 50%, Obama 35%

This is gonna leave a mark, especially since it's coming from a liberal polling agency:

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama's handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama's done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Overall only 32% of Louisianans approve of how Obama has handled the spill to 62% who disapprove. 34% of those polled say they approved of how Bush dealt with Katrina to 58% who disapproved.

So, what are the people of Louisiana looking for right now? Could it be leadership?

If there's any 'winner' in this unfortunate event it's Governor Bobby Jindal. 63% of voters approve of the job he's doing, the best PPP has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There's an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he's handled the aftermath of the spill.

This isn't Obama's "Katrina", it's Obama's "Worse than Katrina".

Today's Frivolous Global Warming Lawsuit

H/t Jawa Report:

VICTIMS of Hurricane Katrina from Mississippi are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed.[...]

"The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents, seen by AFP.

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures "in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them".

This suit might have gotten some sort of settlement before the whole ClimateGate thing blew up the global warming religion. Now, they'll probably just get laughed at.

Obama Has a Katrina Moment Planned Today

The One will be winging his way to New Orleans for another chance to bash Bush and throw money at an unsolvable problem. You'd think the folks in the underwater city would be glad to see the president, but of course, they're grumpy:

Slightly more than four years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, President Obama is traveling to New Orleans today to fulfill a campaign promise to survey first-hand the city’s recovery.

…But before the president even steps foot on the ground in Louisiana, critics in the region have taken aim at the administration on several fronts: They fault him for waiting nine months before going to New Orleans, staying for only four hours and not going to any of the other states affected by the devastating 2005 storm, such as Mississippi and Alabama.

Tommy Longo, the mayor of Waveland, Miss., a town that was leveled by Katrina, said that Obama was “missing the Ground Zero of Katrina.”

“We haven’t whined. My citizens get up every day and they go to work, rebuilding their city from under the ground up, and it would mean a lot to them if they knew that they were on his mind,” Longo said of the president. “It would mean a lot to everyone if he actually put his feet on the ground here in Waveland.”

Even Louisiana officials have voiced displeasure with the trip and want more from the president.

“I think the trip could have been longer,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in a television interview Wednesday. “But I want to say that people are not angry. If they’re anything, they’re just a little disappointed and frustrated, but understanding that the president has a lot on his plate.

Stretches of the Mississippi coastline were swept clean as much as five miles inland, but Mississippi has a Republican governor and voted for McCain, so they'll be skipped.

What Happened to All The Wailing About Katrina?

Ben Evans of the AP noticed that the Porkulus Bill contained not one dime aimed at helping Katrina victims and wonders what happened to all the concern Democrats used to show about that issue:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there's no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf's fiercest advocates say they're happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

"I'm not saying there won't be a need in the future, but right now the focus is not on more money, it's on using what we have," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike over Katrina funding.

It's a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf's needs years later.

Just last summer, Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. Bush was pilloried for not mentioning the disaster in back-to-back State of the Union addresses.

Democrats never did care about Katrina victims, they just cared about the issue. Now that they don't need the issue, the victims can just go drown.

No Shelter for the Stupid

What a difference it makes having a Republican governor in Louisiana:

NEW ORLEANS — Police with bullhorns plan to go street to street this weekend with a tough message about getting out ahead of Hurricane Gustav: This time there will be no shelter of last resort. The doors to the Superdome will be locked. Those who stay will be on their own.

New forecasts Friday made it increasingly clear that New Orleans will get some kind of hit — direct or indirect — by early next week. That raised the likelihood people would have to flee, and the city suggested a full-scale evacuation call could come as soon as Sunday.

Those among New Orleans’ estimated 310,000 to 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept “all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones,” the city’s emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has warned.

As Katrina approached in 2005, as many as 30,000 people who either could not or would not evacuate jammed the Louisiana Superdome and the riverfront convention center. They spent days waiting for rescue in squalid conditions. Some died.

Stung by the images that flashed across the world, including the photo of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, her bodied covered with a blanket, officials promised to find a better way.

This time, the city has taken steps to ensure no one has an excuse not to leave. The state has a $7 million contract to provide 700 buses to evacuate the elderly, the sick and anyone around the region without transportation.

During Katrina the city had lots of buses too. Unfortunately, they were all under water.

Idiot lefty Michael Moore think the landfall of a hurricane in New Orleans during the GOP convention is a "proof that there's a God in heaven". He's thrilled at the potential for death and destruction as long as it might possibly be used again Republicans.

However, he better be careful what he wishes for because if the state functions remarkably better during this storm than during Katrina it won't be hard to point to the difference in the state government as a major reason. The incompetent Democrats who ran Louisiana in 2005 got a complete pass on the responsibility for their problems during Katrina as the press rallied around the notion that everything bad was Bush's fault. If I was a senior Republican, I'd make sure any successes in this storm were trumpeted.

The good news is the storm's track seems to be taking it away from New Orleans. The bad news is it's moving closer to Houston, and all along that area there are oil production facilities. It's now a Cat 4 - very dangerous.

McCain's Pastor Problem Tries to Fix the Situation

Pastor John Hagee, who is considered by the left to be John McCain's equivilent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is trying to mitigate the damage he's doing to the McCain campaign with his statements about Katrina being a judgment from God because there was a gay parade planned in New Orleans:

Pastor John Hagee has revised his view of God's wrath, and chances are John McCain couldn't be happier.

Without fanfare, in an e-mail sent the latter part of Friday, Hagee backed off his assertion that Hurricane Katrina was the Almighty's punishment of New Orleans because it had planned to host a gay pride parade.

Hagee's history of anti-Catholic statements already has made his high-profile endorsement of McCain a mixed blessing. And much to the McCain camp's chagrin, Hagee earlier this week reiterated his opinion that God targeted New Orleans -- remarks coming as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee geared up for a campaign stop in the still-recovering city.

A McCain spokesman quickly stressed that the candidate rejected such statements. And then Hagee, in the e-mail billed as an "official statement" from the influential televangelist, did so, as well. He wrote:

"As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses. But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us."

That's quite a different opinion thhan he publicly expressed in September, 2006. During an interview with NPR, he said the devastating storm "was, in fact, the judgment of God against ... New Orleans." The city, he continued, "had a level of sin that was offensive to God" because "there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came."

On Tuesday, Hagee refused to disavow those comments. He told talk radio show host Dennis Prager, "What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God... . It was a city that was planning a sinful conduct.''

People who believe that Katrina was God's wrath on New Orleans or that AIDS was God's wrath on homosexuals have to believe in a God that's pretty ham-handed and apparently can't throw one down the middle of the plate. In both cases millions of innocent people were affected by these events who had nothing to do with either the debauchery in New Orleans or the debauchery in the gay community. I just don't think God is that careless a smiter.

In Biblical days God seemed pretty capable of directing his smiting exactly where he wanted it. Have the years taken the edge off his control? I doubt it.

Pronouncements like what Pastor Hagee said about New Orleans do nothing to further the cause of Christ, and certainly don't make his kind of religion more attractive. They haven't helped McCain much either.