Chicago Tribune Writer Comes Under Fire For Column Wishing for Hurricane Katrina

In a column expressing a desire to see Chicago rise the way New Orleans did in 2005, a Chicago Tribune columnist wrote a piece that was released on Thursday with are-you-kidding-me title of “In Chicago, wishing for a Hurricane Katrina.”

Kristen McQueary wrote about how she found herself “praying for a storm,” that would prompt a “rebirth” in Chicago. The rest of the article alludes to McQueary’s hope that this figurative event would be able to bring light to issues “beneath the pretty surface,” that “threaten (Chicago’s) future.”

“Envy isn’t a rational response to the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” McQueary wrote in her opening. “I can relate, metaphorically, to the residents of New Orleans climbing onto their rooftops and begging for help and waving their arms and lurching toward rescue helicopters.”

The column has since been retitled to Chicago, New Orleans and Rebirth. It also now includes this tweet from McQueary, emphasizing that the storm she wrote about was a “figurative” one, and that she acknowledged Katrina as a tragedy:

Kristen McQueary‏@StatehouseChick

If you read the piece, it's about finances and government. I would never diminish the tragedy of thousands of lives lost.

• RETWEETS54
• FAVORITES40
• 

2:56 PM - 13 Aug 2015

McQueary soon wrote a new article apologizing to New Orleans and those she offended, but even so, the original title was out there long enough for people to say how it made them feel:

Via: Chicago Tribune

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Let the Obamacare body count begin

There can be little doubt that by applying the logic of the left, the Obamacare body count can commence soon. David Henderson laid out the basics, rebuking lefty Matt Iglesias:

In comparing Bush on Hurricane Katrina and Obama on ObamaCare, Matt Yglesias writes:

The administration and the Democratic Party writ large had very high aspirations for the Affordable Care Act, viewing it as a legacy-defining major pillar of the American welfare state that would massively improve the lives of millions of people. If they can't make the basic infrastructure work, none of that will happen and it'll be a huge failing. But even in the worst case, they're not going to get anyone killed. That's a big difference.
Excuse me? In the worst case, where they don't get the infrastructure working and so millions of people will lose health insurance, they're not going to get anyone killed? How could that be? Surely some of the millions who lose health insurance will die without it. Maybe not many. But not "anyone?" Hard to believe.

On the same day, I noted:

It is already certain that on January 1^st, 2014, people with sick and injured family members will be showing up in emergency rooms and told that they have no health insurance coverage. Bankruptcy, lack of treatment, and eventually, fatalities will result. Obama lied and people died. The slogan writes itself.

Via: American Thinker

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Does the health-care fumble mean game over for Obama?

President Obama’s signature initiative is on the ropes — Down in the count! Fourth and long! — but he remains strangely sportsmanlike.

“We fumbled the rollout on this health-care law,” he admitted at Thursday afternoon’s news conference. “I am very frustrated, but I’m also somebody who, if I fumbled the ball, you know, I’m going to wait until I get the next play, and then I’m going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team.”

Four times he mentioned fumbling — both the HealthCare.gov Web site and his promise that people could keep their health plans if they liked them. “These are two fumbles on something that — on a big game, which — but the game’s not over,” he said.

In a narrow sense, that’s probably true: There may well be enough time to salvage Obamacare.

But on the broader question of whether Obama can rebuild an effective presidency after this debacle, it’s starting to look as if it may be game over.

The record for recent second-term presidents is not good: Reagan had Iran-contra, Clinton had impeachment and Bush had Katrina and Iraq. Once a president suffers a blow such as Obama is now suffering with his health-care law — in which the public not only disapproves of a president’s actions but starts to take a negative view of him personally — it is difficult to recover.

This week’s Quinnipiac University poll found Obama’s job-approval rating at its lowest ever, 39 percent. More ominous: Only 44 percent say Obama is honest and trustworthy, while 52 percent say he is not; that’s the first time more thought him untrustworthy than trustworthy. Polls show Obama’s personal favorability rating has dropped in tandem.

Via: Washington Post

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#Obamacare Watch: This Is What Technocracy Looks Like edition.

And this is why we left that particular political philosophy in the Thirties, where it belongs.

Grim reading on the Obamacare exchanges here from Yuval Levin (short version: the exchanges are in one whole joojooflop situation), with an important caveat:

The character of the conversations I had with these very knowledgeable individuals in the last few days reminded me of something: It reminded me of the daily intra-governmental video conferences and calls in the wake of hurricane Katrina in 2005. I was witness to many of those, as a White House staffer. What I saw in the first days of the disaster quickly fell into a pattern: local, state, and federal officials on the ground would report on what they knew directly—which was often grim—and then they would pass along information they’d heard but hadn’t gotten first hand, which was often much more grim but almost always ultimately turned out not to be true. Some of these stories went public (remember the shootings at the Superdome? They never happened). Some didn’t. They were often reported with a kind of detached authority that made them believable, and they were a function of living in panic amid an unbelievable situation over time.

The combination of these conversations over a week has therefore left me thinking that it may not be clear to anyone exactly how deep and lasting these problems will prove to be, which could mean they’re worse than they seem but could mean they’re not as bad as they seem. The technical architecture of the federal exchanges and to a lesser extent the state ones has been very badly screwed up. The problem may be so bad as to render Obamacare’s rollout impossible in practice at this point. But it may not be. And right now no one knows if it will or will not. My gut sense after listening to these insiders, for what little it’s worth, is that it’s not likely that the situation will prove to be much worse than it now seems, and it’s more likely that it will prove to be less bad than it now seems.

But I don’t know, and no one else does either.

Via: Red State
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