First and foremost, the LBK team would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to those in the Heartland who bore the brunt of mother nature's fury in the past few days.
It seems, however, that Kansas bloggers and politicians think these disasters are a good time to make some political hay.
Appropriately, Sen. Pat Roberts began running a new campaign commercial, "Greensburg" this week. The commercial shows the good Senator and his wife, Franki, walking around touring the destruction in Greensburg.
Honestly, our hats are off to Senator Roberts for being quick to get to Greensburg and tour the devastation with the rest of the Kansas Congressional delegation, but it seems he was the only one to bring a camera crew along.
An entire town was destroyed, several people were killed and even more injured, and Pat Roberts uses it for his own political gain. Classy.
Now, after an E-F3 tornado demolished the city of Chapman and the same storm produced an E-F4 tornado that sliced through Manhattan and the campus of Kansas State University before moving on to Jackson County, the craziest of all crazy Republican bloggers decides it'd be a good topic to attack the anti-coal crowd again (don't worry, it doesn't make sense to us either).
Typically, we don't link to the Meadowlark. We have a policy that his neurotic (although well-researched) rants aren't worth responding to, but today we'd like to make an exception to prove a larger point. Natural disasters are off limits.
Meadowlark argues that the research reactor at KSU (which doesn't actually provide power for anything) is a microcosm of the coal fight. He likens the political backlash against coal today to the backlash against nuclear energy in the past, and apparently this storm is somehow supposed to make us realize we should build the plants in Holcomb. I told you, dude is crazy!
Anyway, even if that argument made sense, which it doesn't, natural disasters such as this one, which took the lives of two people in Dickinson and Jackson counties, are not fodder for political advancement. They're tragedies, and should be viewed as such.
Shame on you Pat Roberts, and shame on the Kansas Meadowlark.
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6 comments:
Excellent post, LBK!
Hey - How about that. While the Governor shows up two days after the tragedy (where was she anyways?) and complains about how the Greensburg efforts will be thwarted because of he war in Iraq, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts shows up before anyone else, makes the phone call to get the aid there and starts helping a devestated town. Action on the part of Roberts, shallow politics on the side of the Governor. Roberts got to work, I wish I could say that about our Democratic Governor.
I agree with the above poster. Isn't it wonderful how Roberts shows up and does a little work for Kansans every six years?!! What a great guy!!!!
Does anyone really care about Roberts shallow attempts at taking advantage of a bad situation. A more important topic is this attempt at taking over Budweiser.
When foreign corporations start buying long-established American corporations like Budweiser, then our problems in America are a lot bigger than most of us understand.
Oppose the takeover of Budweiser beer by foreign corporations. The trade and budget deficit is causing this huge devaluation of the American dollar making American corp. cheap for foreigners. But only if we allow such things.
Time for trade tariffs, trade restrictions and kicking foreigners out of America--aka--the Bud Wars--trying to buy Budweiser is the last draw.
Left Brain: And you criticized Sebelius a year ago for making Greensburg a political point about the war?
The Meadowlark has a degree in Nuclear Engineering from K-State and spent 4 years in Ward Hall at K-State getting that degree. By the time the Meadowlark graduated, ALL new nuclear power plants in the U.S. had been stopped by "left brain" energy policies. The Meadowlark also worked on alternate energy projects in the late 70s, including wind energy and wonders why economists and engineers were used to propose economically sound solutions then, but only politicians seem to be involved now.
Why don't you address the points made in that posting instead of only name calling?
"Politics has stopped the construction of any new nuclear power plants in the U.S. since the mid-1970s, and in recent years the K-State nuclear engineering department merged with the mechanical engineering department to survive."
"Politics is now trying to kill the construction of new coal power plants in Kansas. Should we worry now about having enough power for heating and cooling during our retirement years when the wind does not blow? Do the politicians care if their policies may cause brown-outs, or even black outs, during periods of peak energy demand in the summer and winter?"
Where are your answers to those questions?
I worked on nuke plants whereas Meadowlark merely studied them in a book. If we build nukes, are you willing to work on the reactor and expose yourself to radiation?
Sorry but politics is not what is stopping nuke plants. Cost of operating a nuke plant is one of many reasons why they are not building nuke plants. Not to mention the slight problem of nuke waste materials and problems like reactor core meltdown. Remember Cherynobl. Obviously, you have not.
Coal is not the solution either due to the pollution. Gasohol/methanol are no solution due to the energy it takes to produce it.
Hydro and wind power are clearly superior to either at a reasonable cost of production.
Finally, solar is still too expensive. So, what is your solution to the energy crunch?
Nuclear? Buzzzzzzz.
Wrong choice.
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