Greetings from sunny New York! Here in Brooklyn, we currently have close to two feet of snow on the ground, with more on the way. As you’ve probably heard, a big portion of the US has fallen victim to the Presidents’ Day Blizzard, which strikes me as oddly appropriate for this holiday, and for our current President in particular. The similarities between the storm and the Shrub are legion:
- They’re both very, very white.
- They’re both light and fluffy.
- They both obscure the details, rendering things in smooth, rounded, general terms.
- They are both costing our nation billions of dollars.
- Both are widely talked about in the news, but neither has held a single press conference.
- Both of them have piled it up so high that we’ll be shoveling for a long, long time.
etc…
Fanny Roborat
16 comments
craig
February 17, 2003 at 2:31 pm
1Do you think this blizzard is what the Orange Alert was all about? FEMA is part of DHS, right? Maybe al Qaeda really has one of those sci-fi weather machine weapons of mass destruction. Wouldn’t that be cool? (sorry, lost my head for a moment).
The Administration cannot admit that al Qaeda controls the weather because it would cause mass hysteria if Americans knew that Osama bin Laden could wipe out the Major League season with a monsoon. (Look what he did to the Daytona 500. He knows that Texas is NASCAR country.)
Why are you looking at me like that?
Chicory
February 17, 2003 at 2:54 pm
2Explains everything
!!
Anonymous
February 17, 2003 at 3:44 pm
3And then out came the sun and dried up all the rain…wait, wrong song. You get my point though. Who is going to be the sunshine for Washington? (Although saying wrong song implies there is a right song. No way am I thinking this hard today.)
Rana
February 17, 2003 at 4:47 pm
4*snerk!*
your name here
February 17, 2003 at 7:32 pm
5Now Bush will also prove that this storm is linked to Saddam.
Elliott
February 17, 2003 at 8:08 pm
6-They hurt the poor more than the rich
-They make us use more oil
-They make you wish for a better day in the future
-They hopefully won’t be here in two years
etc…
Sara J
February 17, 2003 at 9:10 pm
7major differences:
1. Snow is clean
2. Snow is pleasant when it falls on your face
3. Snow probably won’t invade Iraq
4. Kids of all ages love to play with snow
5. Snow never killed anybody on purpose
6. Bush can be gotten rid of in two years
dong
February 18, 2003 at 12:59 am
8This thread has it all wrong. George W Bush hasn’t had anything to do with snow since he was 29.
He was very clear about all that. Sorta. Eventually.
MarthaMyDear
February 18, 2003 at 4:21 am
9Now all we need is for a throng of Bushleaguers to show up and explain how the blizzard is magically Clinton’s fault.
Antsy
February 18, 2003 at 8:48 am
10That last line is priceless, coming after the others (last couple of lines really) — great pacing!
Max
February 18, 2003 at 11:09 am
11"It’s a storm of lies, a blizzard of lies…
It’s a hurricane of lies we’re living in every day.
They’ve got you coming and going,
there’s so many contradictory messages
that you don’t know what’s going on at all.
You’re crazy, out of your mind.
You don’t know if <i>anything</i> is real."
– Neurosis
intro to "to crawl under one’s skin"
craig
February 18, 2003 at 1:33 pm
12Both make us fear the possibility of a nucular winter
Dugrless
February 18, 2003 at 1:41 pm
13Remember the Talk Magazine interview where W mocked the clemency pleas of death-row inmate Karla Faye Tucker ("Please don’t kill me! <hee hee>")? I’d add "unbelievably cold" to the list of resemblances with the blizzard.<br><br> (For those who’ve forgotten, or never heard, here’s a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/06/23/bush.execution /index.html">CNN story</a> about his chilling attitude towards the death penalty.)
Sarah
February 18, 2003 at 1:46 pm
14You are sooo right.
Brad
February 20, 2003 at 10:42 am
15Adam, I resent your scurrilous attacks on snow.
–S.A.D.L. (Snow Anti-Defamation League)
Joe J. Reed
February 26, 2003 at 4:35 pm
16Here’s a piece I wrote about this blizzard:
God sends President’s Day message to American war supporters. Says The Almighty, "Take the hint: You’re Getting Snowed!"
February 18th - In a display of Talmudic caprice reminiscent of His Old Testament heyday, the Author and Creator of All Things unleashed a torrent of rain and snow storms on the American people this past Holiday weekend; a symbolic gesture that apparently missed the mark.
After “getting the feeling you Americans still haven’t gotten the point,” the Lord God Almighty released a statement to the American news media early Tuesday morning explaining his actions.
“I can’t believe you idiots are still falling for this tripe,” quoth the Heavenly Father in reference to President Bush’s repeated insistence that an unprovoked Saddam Hussein poses a threat to National Security, and therefore must be overcome by military force. “Listen,” continued the Big Beard in the sky, “I’ll be the first to admit that Saddam’s a bad guy and that something should be done to improve living conditions for the Iraqi people. But take it from Me: waging war on a cagily unpredictable despot is not the way to go.”
Citing frustration with hawkish impassivity and the exhaustion of all traditional methods normally employed to deliver His message, the All Merciful One decided to wield the influence of Mother Nature in an effort to give Americans “one last chance” to “voluntarily comply” with His wishes.
Beginning late Sunday evening, His Holiness cast a deluge of sleet, snow, and freezing rain across the American plain spanning from Nebraska to the Carolinas, and stretching from Florida to Maine. Precipitation in the D.C. metro area was particularly staggering, with parts of Maryland receiving up to 46 inches of snow by the time Blizzard conditions had finally dissipated late Monday night. By all accounts, Blizzard Daniel was among the most prolific forces of nature on record, albeit one with a surprisingly limited death toll.
“I was a little worried the symbolism would sail over your heads,” Yahweh confessed. “But then I thought, ‘No way! The combination of dramatic natural forces imbued with symbolic overtones is really gonna drive home the message this time.’ I mean, c’mon! Didn’t any of you notice how I held back just long enough to allow over 12 million people worldwide to march in the F15 antiwar protests, and then Cablamm! dumped two feet of snow in Washington D.C. on President’s Day?!
“I mean, Jeez!! What else does a Deity have to do? I even named the friggin’ thing ‘Blizzard Daniel’! Daniel. Don’t you see? From the Ancient Hebrew word meaning “God is my judge.” In reference to Daniel the prophet? The guy who foretold the fate of mighty nations undone by their own hubris? Oh, forget it.”
“I now realize that I was giving you people way too much credit. Deciphering the hidden meaning behind acts of grace just ain’t your forte, I suppose. But, hey, I guess I should have learned that lesson after sinking the Titanic. My bad.”
“Why I didn’t endow you people with a more attuned sense of irony, I’ll never know,” lamented the Omniscient One.
Although apologetic about the loss of life resulting from His latest attempt to stem the tide of war, the King of Kings justified His divinely inspired natural disaster on higher grounds. “Look, it sucks that people had to die at all, but believe me… this is a walk in the park compared to what you people are in for if you continue to press for unilateral military action against Iraq.”
“And the fact that Bush and his cabinet of war mongers have managed to get you to believe otherwise,” added the Supreme Being in his concluding remarks, “well, that’s just a bigger snow job than even I could pull off.”