A Big Bag of Wind

I'm relieved that Hurricane Irene has now become Tropical Storm Irene, and that the death and destruction are much less than feared.  Better to overhype than underhype, but on the other hand, there's not much you can do about people too stupid to heed the warnings, or people who are never prepared and who are unable to live by their wits because everything is now done for them. Power Line's John Hinderaker writes:

"I’m sure it’s a relief to everyone on the East Coast to know that Obama is personally directing hurricane response efforts. Never mind that he isn’t competent to organize a Little League baseball team; today’s charade obviously is a corollary of the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, in which America’s mass media committed group malpractice, somehow managing to blame the inevitable consequences of a severe weather event, magnified by incompetent local authorities in New Orleans, on the Bush administration. Obama is setting the stage to receive praise, rather than blame, no matter what actually happens between now and when Hurricane Irene blows itself out.
This is one more step in the degradation of American politics. One hundred years ago, people understood that the president had nothing to do with hurricanes. Now, the president is expected to pretend to have control over more or less everything. This has something to do with the inexorable expansion of federal power, and also something to do with the dumbing-down of the American people."

It's Obama who is a blowhard and a disaster, so this is appropriate.