Joe Conason Blames Earthquake Deaths on Tea Party 'Pandemic Mental Tic'

NewsBusters ^ | March 5, 2010 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

You want to know what caused all those earthquake deaths in Haiti as compared to Chile? A Tea Party mental disorder. That is the laughable premise put forward by Joe Conason in a supreme stretch.

If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.

For those of us unfamiliar with geological terminology, it may come as a shock that the Chilean quake, rated 8.8 on the Richter scale, was roughly 500 times more powerful than the Haitian quake in January, which rated 7.0. Yet in Haiti, probably more than 200,000 lives were lost; in Chile, the number of dead is estimated at about 800. While that is still a terrible tragedy, the Chilean death toll is far less than 1 percent of that in Haiti.

[PJ-Comix]

And reading Conason columns is the primary cause of mental constipation.

[Hardastarboard]

What kind of left wing alternative, bizarro world universe do you have to live in to draw these kinds of conclusions? Joe Conason’s remark is further proof, as if it were needed, that liberalism is a mental disorder.

[Patton@Bastogne]

only read the first half of the article ... laughable indeed ... joe’s obviously trying to brown-nose his liberal editor with this nonsense ...

[RoadTest]

Remember - he’s pedalling this propaganda to an audience that’s been dumbed down by the National Education Association, whose motto is: “NO TEACHER LEFT BEHIND”.

[ontap]

We on the right have been starting earthquakes for decades. How else to kill all those awful puppies and kittens and rid the world of petunias!!!

[NavVet]

Of course, Chile has privatized social security, and Hati does not, therefore government run social security causes earthquake deaths.

[mbynack]

The real cause of the Earthquakes is a major shift in the US. People are running from the center and the left to get to the right and they’ve shifted balance of the earth.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Added this thread to here:

Close Encounters with the Loony Left [link-list]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2464035/posts

[piytar]

Ah, that’s what behind the exageration of the Chile quake! Yes, it was HUGE, but and 8.8 is FIFTY times more powerful than a 7.1, not 500! Also noticed the Hati quake has been downgraded to a 7.0 by the seismologists in the LSM.

[dforest]

Yeah, and Tillie the Whale only became a Killer Whale after attending the Orlando Tea Party.

[silverleaf]

“Mentalities” don’t kill people in earthquakes.

Poorly constructed buildings do. What kind of “mentality” builds schools hotels hospitals etc, out of inferior crumbly material? Besides Haiti, let’s ask the tea party people in China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran (sarc)

[sauropod]

Here in the United States, however, anti-government ideology is a pandemic mental tic that has now developed into a virulent disorder afflicting a large number of citizens — including many of our self-styled conservatives. Infuriated because their party cannot permanently control the White House and the Congress, they have gradually persuaded themselves that all government is evil, that all taxation is theft and that all regulation is tyranny. Or at least that is the tone of their rhetoric.

If the Chileans had adopted this kind of manic and reflexive attitude, many more of them would undoubtedly be dead today. The "free market" extremists who call themselves conservative probably wouldn't worry much about the loss of life, because they are far more concerned with ideological consistency than with practical effects. But the rest of us might consider the wiser approach of Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist whose work is often cited by the extremists when they claim to be defending freedom.

In "The Road to Serfdom," perhaps his most popular work, Hayek explained that he saw no reason why "the state should not assist individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision.

This is infantile reasoning.

Chile has been dealing with earthquakes a long time. They have good construction codes requiring earthquake-resistant building construction. Haiti, has not paid the same attention to earthquake-resistant design, so their structures were especially vulnerable to earthquake motion. So, a lot more death happened.

This is what happens when a news "journalist" that does not posess a hard science degree, or elementary logic reasoning capabilities, is given a megaphone.

For Conason to quote Hayek and drag him into his argument is quite a stretch also.

Gawd!

[domenad]

The minute I read somewhere “Let the private sector fix earthquakes” I’ll become a raging hammer-and-sickle carrying commie. Until then, Conason, you and your ridiculous crap-kicking Stetson can shut your buffet hole.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

I haven't been following closely. Have the Tea Party folks been advocating anarchy? Setting building codes to promote earthquake resistance is a legitimate function of local government.

[muawiyah]

Joe seeks to attribute the regulatory reforms advanced by Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte to Leftwingtards.

Yup. Made my day.

[agere_contra]

Well said! Pinochet just saved about a million people!

[ripley]

Mr. Conason is wrong.

All of those earthquakes were caused by the Bush Presidency having an effect on the magnetic fields that surrounded the plate faults that gave way, resulting in those horrific earthquakes.

Had President Bush not been elected, the magnetic fields would not have been bent by the evil, sulfurous, emanations coming from the oval office and the congress, thereby preventing tragedy. (Brilliantly mentioned by
President Chavez at the U.N.)

It is a scientific fact, proven by the wisest and smartest Democrats in the country, that right-wing thought processes are so evil, that they effect magnetic fields, weather patterns and the movements of the planets.

/S/

IMHO

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Liberals live in a different world than normal people. They have different reactions to the same phenomena as normal people. It’s impossible for normal people to fully understand what a liberal says.
Better to ignore them.

[mancini]

Is Joe Conason still around? I thought he would have spontaneously combusted by now, he is so full of animus.

[ari-freedom]

umm who created OSHA and the FDA? That’s right. Republicans. Now stop raising taxes and making people dependent on welfare entitlements, please.