All posts by Rand Simberg

Satire

War Takes Priority Over Texans

August 2, 1943

HOUSTON (Routers) In this hurricane-ravaged city, a large number of Houstonians are now questioning the misplaced priorities of the Roosevelt administration, an administration that many increasingly see as valuing war mongering over the actual safety of the American people.

Last Tuesday’s storm, which killed almost two dozen people and injured dozens more, with property damage in the millions of dollars, was the worst to strike the area since 1915, when hundreds were killed in Galveston.

“This hurricane completely blindsided us,” said one resident. “The first we heard about it before it hit was when one measly airplane flew out over Galveston Bay to see how big the storm was.”

Many find it shocking to consider how much more warning these stalwart southeast Texans could have had, had the hundreds of B-17 bombers sent to England in order to attack Germany, that had never been a direct threat to us, been instead pressed into service closer to home to look for storms in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, supposedly as a result of “threats” from German U-boats, ships were under orders of radio silence from the administration, further preventing warning of the storm from reaching the unaware Houston-area residents.

Another consequence of the administration’s focus on the war could be seen at Ellington Field. Many Army Air Corps personnel were diverted to the task of physically holding down warplanes to keep them from blowing away, instead of being freed up to help maintain order in the wake of the disaster.

Many think that this is a sign of prejudice on the part of a haughty, patrician president from the northeast.

“It’s very clear that Franklin “Delanodamngood” Roosevelt doesn’t give a damn about ordinary folk down here in Texas,” said one local man. “It’s been almost a week now since the storm, many of us don’t have water, and he hasn’t even come down here to see how we’re doing. All he can think about is his pointless war.”

(Copyright 2005 by Rand Simberg)

General

Unlovely Rita

Here are a couple pictures of the storm from my front yard, over neighbors’ homes across the street.

This one is looking south-southeast, out over the Atlantic. Those angry looking clouds are headed my way. The carousel is spinning from left (east) to right, with these clouds below heading away from me, to the west.

A few minutes after I took these, the heavens opened up.

Political Commentary

What, No Vichy Britain?

Non-Americans, and particularly French non-Americans, are fond of noting how ignorant Americans supposedly are of the rest of the world and history. Which makes it all the more ironic that the French foreign minister apparently doesn’t know that Hitler never conquered Britain:

Needless to say, Douste-Blazy’s question was met by his hosts with amazement. “But Monsieur le minister,” Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, “England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II.”

The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: “Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?”

Well, I suppose that he should at least be given some credit for deigning to visit that “sh**ty little country,” Israel, and the Holocaust museum.