Alan Stang -- Hurricane Ike, the Media and Houston

HURRICANE IKE, THE MEDIA AND HOUSTON

by Alan Stang
September 23, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

[Announcement: Did you know Alan Stang has a new radio show? Click here for details.]

For many years, I did hard news. I don’t know why they call it “hard”; maybe because it is hard to get. To get it you hit the bricks and search it out. Hard news is the facts, what actually happened. Later, there is commentary, opinion about what happened. Of course, it no longer works that way. Most of today’s “news” is propaganda crafted by expert disciples of Joe Goebbels and Freud’s son-in-law, Ed Bernays to trick its victims into doing or not doing something.

Consider for instance Chris the Kook Matthews. He runs a show called “Hardball,” where he specializes in throwing softballs to Senator Hussein. Chris the Kook said that when he meditates on Senator Hussein a thrill runs all the way up his leg. Ask the normal men of your acquaintance about this. You will learn that a normal man would be mortified were he caught saying it. So Chris the Kook is not a normal man.

On the other hand, although I know that the recent Republicrud National Convention was a Hitler rally conducted in English and that Governor Sarah was chosen to quench the stench, it is perfectly true that the sight of her produces a thrill that begins at my big toe, travels to my ankle, where it kerbobbles a bit, proceeds upward to the knee and then to the hip, where it kerbobbles again. By the way, I checked with the Love Priestess. She said it’s okay. It’s normal.

The good news is that the right-wing Communist media are discrediting themselves ever more outrageously. Very soon, even the blind will see as much 20/20, but they won’t see it on the television show of the same name. As the economy unravels, the dollar craters and the District of Conspiracy either communizes the biggest players or lets them collapse, propagandists like Rush Humbug and Shallow Sean Hannitwerp bray ever louder that the economy is “sound.” Compare what they say to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, where there is talk of 1929.

Dave Ramsay scorns anyone who dares suggest it is not, reserving his choicest vitriol for people who say they have bought gold. He says gold is a terrible investment. It “fluctuates.” No. An ounce of gold is always an ounce. The paper you need to buy it is what fluctuates.

Is it remotely possible that a man as smart as Dave Ramsay doesn’t know paper currencies without gold backing collapse all the time; doesn’t know that governments around the world are frenetically trying to collect it? Yes, Dave wants you to get out of debt. He wants you to get out of debt so you can buy what he sells. The trouble is he doesn’t sell gold.

And there is Hugh Hewitt. Around here we call him Hugh Blewitt. Nobody is more Catholic than Hugh Blewitt. Listen to him daily and you will learn all about his church, from high church officials to Catholic laymen, etc. Hugh of course is pro-life. He’s Catholic. He is also nauseatingly favorable to sodomy and lesbianism.

When a bull dyke calls, he leaps to welcome her. When she announces what she is, he exclaims, “And there’s nothing wrong with that!” He explains that buggers and bull dykes are an important segment of his listener base. Hey, Blewitt! The Roman Catholic Church is as opposed to homosexuality as it is to baby killing. Did you know? I did, and I’m not Catholic.

Because liberaloids, both Democruds and Republicruds, in media and politics, are insane, they hate Ron Paul. Why? It isn’t just what he says. Yes, they disagree with that. But observation reveals something more than disagreement. They fear and hate him with a frenzy; they tremble, unable to contain their rage. Why?

Because he is what they say they are and are not. Because he is what some came to Washington to be and sold out. That is why his very presence is a reproach; his existence an accusation, which explains their visceral fear and hatred. They investigated and investigated and could find nothing to expose.

Look at the Hollyweird Obamatrons. Because God gave them good looks combined with an ability to repeat convincingly what someone else has written, they have convinced themselves that God also made them much smarter than we are. He did not. Indeed, because they are prisoners of their own life styles – days of workouts, makeup, voice and other lessons, plastic surgery and, most important, schmoozing with other birdbrains like themselves – they are often amazingly stupid and ignorant.

Remember, I know this from observation. I was one of Mike Wallace’s original writers and interviewed them. In an earlier life, I was a movie star in “Havana,” with Robert the Red(ford) See my book, Scumbags I Have Known. Recently, zombie like, they were repeating the line that “Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor.” They will keep saying what they are told to say.

Meanwhile, here is some hard news. From a variety of sources in the police and fire departments, words arrives that hundreds have actually died in Galveston and the adjoining Bolivar Peninsula. They drowned in their homes or were swept out to sea. The rescue people are now collecting their bodies. Some will wash up on the beach; others will never be found. Why did this happen?

I only recently learned that there is more to a hurricane than the category. There is also the surge (not the one in Iraq). The category tells you about the wind. The surge tells you about how much water it will push onto land. Consider a ship. The prow almost comes to a point. It slices through the water, which recedes along the hull.

Suppose, instead of a prow, the front of the vessel has a snow plow. Now the water has to get to either end in order to recede along the hull. The plow will push a lot of that water forward. Now suppose that snow plow is hundreds of miles long. Umpteen buckets of water will not be able to escape. The snow plow will inexorably push them before it.

That is what happened on the Texas Coast. Yes, Ike was a Category Two hurricane. Many people may have figured they could ride it out. But the monster pushed a wall of water ashore. It rose very quickly. Imagine the horror. Trapped in their attics, on their balconies and roofs, the victims pulled out their mobile phones and called for help. It was too late. The 1900 Galveston hurricane was the worst natural disaster in American history with six thousand dead. Ike will turn out to be one of the worst. It killed as far north as Ohio.

You may be hearing about this for the first time. Even now, no one is allowed on the island. If you leave, you can’t return. One possible reason for the blackout is what I call the “Jaws factor.” The revelation that hundreds of people have died in a place is not the best incentive for tourism and investment. There is also the fact that our Communist media are still sifting through Governor Sarah’s garbage, hoping to find something else they can accuse her of.

You will be happy to hear that FEMA failed again. Local commentators were making bitter jokes about it. In one typical FEMA arrangement, no food was available on site for rescue and emergency workers who had come from all over to help. The school district that was supposed to feed them is now worried that FEMA will not reimburse it for meals it did not serve. Local Houstonians had to come to the rescue. Which raises the question of why we need FEMA at all. It is just another excuse to take control and waste money the federal government does not have.

The question arises: Why would allegedly rational people voluntarily subject themselves to this hurricane carnage every year? The answer may have eluded you because of its obvious simplicity. They are crazy. In other areas of life they may appear perfectly normal. If you were to meet a Houstonian in some other part of the world, you would most likely suspect nothing, except for the telltale “y’all” and the obligatory “fixin’ to.” Think about it for a moment and you will realize that no other explanation makes sense.

But I live here too. In the last five years, we have had to evacuate twice. That means dismantling everything, loading it, traveling far enough to avoid the surge, returning, unloading, reassembling, and spending eight days in the dark without power, dining romantically by candlelight.

This year, we went to the home of one of our sons, where the wind blew a hole in the roof and wrecked the fence. As I write, he is still without power. After Rita, I could not find my Bible, presented to me by Corpus Christi Christian hero Lester Roloff. It reappeared just before Ike, when my son found it in an overlooked carton.

This latest experience reminded me of our stay in the Dominican Republic. At the time, you got four hours of electricity a day and the natives were much better prepared. When the lights went out, shouts would erupt throughout the neighborhood. “¡Apagón!” Our daughter, the Princess Royal, then two something, would shout, “Up and gone!” which also made sense. All over the neighborhood, the generators would turn on. They would turn off when electricity returned, hailed by new shouting. “¡Viva la corporación!” That is what they called the power company.

In the years between hurricanes like Ike and Rita there is the nerve wracking question of whether you will have to initiate the evacuation process as other approach. And you have to add to all this what billionaire genius Howard Hughes said about Houston, which I shall not record here. Wouldn’t that mean I’m crazy too?

Of course it does. But I at least have a recognizable excuse. Many years ago, in between speeches at a youth camp, I became aware of a manicured finger jabbing at my face and a voice that began, “Who do you think you are?” Although she seemed at least superficially normal (and in fact was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen) the lady they belonged to turned out to be a native of a Houston suburb known to inmates of the time as “Stinkadena, Where the Air is Greener.” Foreigners called it Pasadena.

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Hold on, I told myself. This could be wife material. And, sure enough, thirty four years and five children later, known to the civilized world as the Love Priestess, she is still driving me crazy. So, I at least have some semblance of a rational explanation for my presence. What’s your excuse?

You will be overjoyed to learn that I have now recovered sufficient sanity to move. By the time the next hurricane season arrives, we shall be far enough west so that demented escapees forced to evacuate will come to us.

[Announcement: Alan Stang's new radio show, The Sting of Stang, will debut on Monday, July 14th, 7 to 8 a.m., Central, M-F, via Republic Broadcasting Network. To listen, go to republicbroadcasting.org and click on Listen Live. Call in is 800 313-9443. If you can't listen at that time, do so via the archives, which are free. I'll be talking about the various manifestations of the conspiracy for world government, its tactics, such as the illegal alien invasion, its purposes and its players, from Jorge W. Boosh on down.]

Alan Stang was one of Mike Wallace�s original writers at Channel 13 in New York, where he wrote some of the scripts that sent Mike to CBS. Stang has been a radio talk show host himself. In Los Angeles, he went head to head nightly with Larry King, and, according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. He has been a foreign correspondent. He has written hundreds of feature magazine articles in national magazines and some fifteen books, for which he has won many awards, including a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for journalistic excellence. One of Stang�s expos�s stopped a criminal attempt to seize control of New Mexico, where a gang seized a court house, held a judge hostage and killed a deputy. The scheme was close to success before Stang intervened. Another Stang expos� inspired major reforms in federal labor legislation.

His first book, It�s Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, was an instant best-seller. His first novel, The Highest Virtue, set in the Russian Revolution, won smashing reviews and five stars, top rating, from the West Coast Review of Books, which gave five stars in only one per cent of its reviews.

Stang has lectured in every American state and around the world and has guested on many top shows, including CNN�s Cross Fire. Because he and his wife had the most kids in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, where they lived at the time, the entire family was chosen to be actors in �Havana,� directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, the most expensive movie ever made (at the time). Alan Stang is the man in the ridiculous Harry Truman shirt with the pasted-down hair. He says they made him do it.