Year 3, Month 8, Day 31: Here Comes The Story Of The Hurricane…

As of August 25, Tropical Storm Isaac is heading straight for the GOP Convention. What could possibly go wrong? The Washington Post:

MIAMI — Forecasters cast a wary eye Tuesday on Tropical Storm Isaac, which was looming in the Atlantic Ocean and poses a potential threat to Florida during next week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa.

It’s much too early to say with any certainty whether it will gain hurricane strength or make a beeline for Tampa, on Florida’s west coast. But it’s the type of weather that convention organizers knew was a possibility during the peak of hurricane season — and they have backup plans in place in a worst-case scenario.

Blown away? Dare we hope? Sent August 25:

Fans of irony have much to savor in the news that Tropical Storm Isaac is now moving directly towards Tampa and the site of the Republican Convention. First, information about the storm’s likely path is provided to city, state and federal planners by the exact same government agencies the GOP’s policies would systematically de-fund. Similarly, plans for coping with such extreme weather events — before, during, and after — are unimaginable without the support of U.S. Government agencies, such as FEMA.

That the Convention’s planners apparently never considered that scheduling their event in a storm-prone area might be problematic exemplifies the Republican Party’s difficulty with reality — a difficulty that reaches its apex in the fact that the erstwhile party of Teddy Roosevelt is now the political home of those who deny both the science of global climate change and the very notion of environmental responsibility as a civic virtue.

Warren Senders