Mother Nature Bitchslaps Cons

Global warming sucks, dunnit? But it does seem to have a poetic sense of timing this week.

In California, wildfires are demonstrating to Cons that fucking over California's budget may not have been a wise thing to do:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started the week promoting Wildfire Awareness Week in events with fire officials, during which he suggested he might have to cut 1,700 firefighting jobs if voters reject the May 19 ballot measures.

He had another such event scheduled Thursday in Riverside. But an actual fire broke out midweek in Santa Barbara, forcing a change of plans.

Schwarzenegger appeared Thursday at the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara instead. Instead of warning about firefighting cuts, he began reassuring Californians that the state would find the money to protect people.

Guess where they're going to find that money. Go on, guess.

The governor said that because he declared a state of emergency this week for the Jesusita fire, the federal government would reimburse 75 percent of the state's costs.

That federal government sure comes in handy when the piper demands his pay, doesn't it just?

But that isn't the most poetic of justice dealt this week. Mother Nature has a special place in her heart for Sarah Palin:

Because of a climate disaster, global warming skeptic Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has been forced to cancel her attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Wall Street Journal reports that an “unusually warm spring thaw in Alaska is causing some of the state’s worst flooding in decades, with rising rivers wiping out an entire village and bombarding another town with ice chunks as big as houses”:

Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday was scheduled to fly over the stricken areas after canceling a planned trip to the East Coast for primarily state business. The governor on Wednesday had declared a disaster for the flooded areas, including the Susitna River, which runs through her hometown of Wasilla near Anchorage.

The floods resulted from “a rare combination of unusually heavy winter snow and a spring warm-up over the past week that saw temperatures soar into the 70s — a good 20 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.”

Smell that schadenfreude. Mmm-mmm.

My heart goes out to the disaster victims. Here's hoping it won't take too much more of this before Cons start realizing that action to get global warming under control and programs in place to mitigate disasters are vitally necessary. What science, reason and general human decency couldn't accomplish, perhaps embarrassment and personal impact will.