WASHINGTON – My big brother Larry, who got me interested in politics when I was a kid, as well as my dad, were both born in Joplin, Missouri. Larry once worked as assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft and played a very small role during Ashcroft’s confirmation hearings when a reporter from the St. Louis Post Dispatch called to get a quote on Ashcroft. It ended up with Larry giving Orin Hatch’s office a letter about him and the big desegregation cases in which my brother was deeply involved.
As you no doubt know by now, Joplin has been leveled through nature’s carnage.
I’ve been to about 75 disasters, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” Spencer said. “You don’t typically see metal structures and metal frames torn apart, and that’s what you see here.” – Joplin tornado kills 89; toll could climb
The devastation we’re hearing about down in Joplin is complete. Larry now lives in Columbia, Mo., where I was born, but the news is harrowing. The video here illustrates what a twister feels like in the blackness of unbound weather carnage, just skip forward to around the 2 minute mark and wait. It’s chilling.
Lowes, Wall-Mart, the high school… homes and lives, all trashed. St. John’s hospital is gone, so I just don’t know… Joplin High School was wiped off the map.
I remember Joplin as a child, my mom taking me there to see where daddy and she lived in the early days. Then my brother and I did a Route 66 trip, including a bit of lingering in Joplin so he could show me around. It’s a tiny, quaint town that has been leveled by a tornado that unleashed such hell that it took debris up 20,000 feet into its funnel, then dropped it on tiny little Duquesne.
“The President called Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to personally extend his condolences and to tell all of the families of Joplin affected by the severe tornadoes that they are in his thoughts and prayers. The President assured the governor that FEMA will remain in close contact and coordination with state and local officials.”
“The President has directed FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate to travel to Missouri to ensure the state has all the support it needs. In addition, in anticipation of requests for assistance, a FEMA Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) is en route to Joplin. This self-sustaining team will work with FEMA officials already in Missouri to coordinate with state and local officials to identify needs and any shortfalls impacting disaster response and recovery.”
“The Federal government will continue to support our fellow Americans during this difficult time.”
It’s at moments like these I want to tell the get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” club, led by Grover Norquist, to go pound sand.
I went to every single small (and large) towns as Miss Missouri, in what seems like a lifetime ago. It’s a sobering thing when nature goes on a rampage and they’re expecting more severe storms today.
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.