Opinion: Remember Hurricane Irene? Well, here comes Katia

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Somehow we missed Harvey and Jose. But everyone remembers Hurricane Irene last weekend.

Now, standby, here comes Katia.

Currently the tropical storm, which astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught on camera above, is gaining steam waddling its way across the Caribbean toward the southeastern United States.

So far, it’s only packing winds just above 70 miles an hour, which will get your attention in a sailboat but isn’t even enough to knock over a local weatherman doing a live-shot on a deserted downtown street corner.

No one’s predicting this far out, of course. But draw a line ahead of the storm and up the Eastern U.S. coast.

And it’s Hello, Carolinas and Virginia again.

Drawing a political line ahead of the storm after the holiday weekend and we have Jobs Plan City on tap. Gov. Jon Huntsman did his jobs plan last night. And we published it right here.

Mitt Romney will soon be releasing his job ideas, even though he famously admitted that he himself is unemployed at the moment.

And then comes the next new and improved Jobs Plan (‘As Advertised on TV’) from Hawaii’s favorite son, the Big Kahuna in the White House.

After announcing that he intended to share his autumn jobs rhetoric with a joint session of Congress next Wednesday night without checking in with the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Real Good Talker agreed to Thursday night.

In the interests of bicameralship the unity president then dispatched an email to millions of supporters bashing and threatening both of the hosting houses.

‘It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on,’ said the post-partisan president.

A Thursday night congressional speech, TV-ratings-wise, puts Obama right before kickoff kickoff of the New Orleans Saints vs Green Bay Packers, instead of against Wednesday’s Reagan Library Republican debate. That’s the much-anticipated first political singalong with new GOP front-runner Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a podium.

Of course, nobody wants any storm damage anywhere.

But the prospect of Barack ‘Photo Ops Are Good for My Health’ Obama being forced to choose between suggesting billions more spending on infrastructure to a divided Congress on national TV after agreeing to cut spending, or attempting an encore of his ‘I’m the One Who’s Supposed to Look in Charge Here’ hurricane briefing by all those FEMA TV screens is most intriguing from a political stagecraft POV.

Speaking of hot air, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has upped its 2011 storm estimates, especially for the August through October timeframe. A normal year would see 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two biggies with winds greater than Capitol Hill, in excess of 111 miles an hour.

NOAA is now predicting up to 19 named storms, up to 10 hurricanes greater than 74 m.p.h and up to five venti systems above 111.

And BTW, for baby-naming purposes, we are safely past Gert. The next names on the 2011 storm list are Lee and Maria, unless you maybe can hold it past Ophelia for Tammy or Whitney.

RELATED:

How a hurricane becomes a political opportunity

Ron Paul’s federal disaster relief plan: Kill FEMA

Obama misses East Coast quake, but learns about it later anyway

-- Andrew Malcolm

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