World Goes Nuts

Desperately seeking refuge from Topical Storm Cindy, George W. Bush is now telling us that we're in Iraq for the oil.

If that didn't blow your mind, consider that the radical right is now saying, "Impeach Bush!" World Net Daily's Joseph Farah, formerly an ardent supporter of the POTUS because John Kerry was "treasonous," says Bush is too soft on illegal immigrants. (When Bush gets up from his nap and hears about this, he's going to be so cranky.)

And then we learn that hundreds of people died today in a religious stampede in Baghdad.

And if that still hasn't fried all your wiring, long-dead Louisiana governor Huey Long re-appeared this morning to talk about the hurricane that killed thousands of people in his beloved state.

Battered Louisianans who had access to a working TV set probably didn't turn it to C-SPAN this morning. Even on a calm day, most people wouldn't. But if they did they probably did a double-take when Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, appeared at a FEMA press conference on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

Tell me that McHale isn't a dead ringer for the Kingfish (see photos above).

In times like these, lots of people turn to religion for answers, although maybe they don't also turn completely away from reality, as Bridgett Magee has. Sure enough, she says, the Jews did it. Well, some of them, anyway.

In a fascinating piece on BeliefNet, Deborah Caldwell explores Magee's theories:

At least one New Orleans-area resident believes God created the storm as punishment because of the recent role the United States played in expelling Jews from Gaza. On Sunday evening, Bridgett Magee of Slidell, La., told the Christian website Jerusalem Newswire that she saw the hurricane "as a direct 'coming back on us' [for] what we did to Israel: a home for a home."

Stan Goodenough, a website columnist, described Katrina as “the fist of God” in a Monday column. “What America is about to experience is the lifting of God’s hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel,” Goodenough writes. “The Bible talks about Him shaking His fist over bodies of water, and striking them.”

Other people say it's not God but Gaia the earth mother. As Caldwell notes:

Meanwhile, spiritual and political environmentalists say that massive hurricanes such as Katrina, along with the Asian tsunami, are messages from the earth, letting humanity know of the earth’s pain. These hurricanes are caused by global warming, environmentalists say, which are the result of using too much fossil fuel. They see the catastrophic consequences as a kind of comeuppance.

All we really know for certain about comeuppance is that Paul McHale, the dead ringer for Huey Long, used to be in the House of Representatives, where he was the first Democrat to condemn Bill Clinton for getting a blow job from Monica Lewinsky.

Unlike Hurricane Katrina, that was an imperfect storm.