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Vienna: The Texas State Bird
What is it that you see all over the Vienna skyline? That’s right, the Texas State Bird – The Construction Crane. As near as I can tell, Vienna is in the middle of “boom” economy. All that talk we hear about how bad the European economy was certainly not seen at any time during my visit. Road construction, buildings of all types and all of the employment agencies are all quite busy. The mall, yes, the mall was jam-packed until closing every single day. This is not economics data, its just a guy observing facts on the ground. I didn’t see any post apocalypse euro-detroit here. I saw a busy port city, much like Houston if Houston was on a river rather than the coast.
Vienna is the gateway to the east. And while I didn’t make it any further than the border with Hungary during my visit; its my opinion that the east must be doing very well indeed for this much trade to have rubbed off on Vienna. There very well may be unemployed in Austria, but I didn’t see any evidence of a poor economic situation in this city at any time during the week. The cars were all new, as were the motorcycles, everyone has a cellphone and the stores are all busy.
Interestingly, I saw only one policeman the entire visit. And I saw only one beggar on the subway. I did see graffiti, lots of it. And yet, most of it came down just as fast.
As we all know, Vienna is where the Turks were stopped in their invasion of Europe and the Western world. And yet, 500 years later, what is the big question for the Viennese and for Austria? Whether or not the Turks should be in the EU. The Austrians have an election coming in October where the key issue separating the political parties is that very thing.
Talk about holding a grudge. Its been 500 years folks, let it go for cryin’ out loud …
Of course it really doesn’t have anything to do with a war fought over 500 years ago nor is it as racially based, as you would assume. It’s really all about trade. Right now, Austria enjoys the benefits of being the gateway to the eastern world. All sorts of goods and services, both legal and illegal are going through Austria via the Danube and the greatly increased road traffic that has occurred since the end of the cold war. If Turkey becomes part of the EU, the trade the Austrians are currently enjoying with the east will come to an end, at least that part of it that generates tax revenue. The illegal trade in people, goods and drugs will always continue.
And what about immigration? Well, its certainly here, both legal and illegal. One thing I did notice during my experiences this week in Austria is that in jobs that in the US are typically handled by immigrants, like low skilled food service, are largely held by teenage kids, something that used to be quite common in the states at one time. Where I expected to find lots of non-german speaking people, I found instead, high school and college aged kids.
There is also a high amount of Islamic people living in and around Vienna; in fact the UN is sitting right in the middle of the Viennese Islamic neighborhoods. Coincidence? Maybe, but it struck me as funny, but maybe I’m the only one. If there is an “Islamic issue” its one involving the immigration of sub Saharan Islamic peoples into the city.
Did I see any anti-US sentiment while I was here? No, not at all. In fact, one of my hobbies is to read graffiti for political comment, and frankly I didn’t see a single instance of anti-war, anti-US reaction anywhere including the communist neighborhoods near the Prater that I went through while walking around the city. While I tried to look as innocuous as I could, I was occasionally spotted as an American but I was never asked if I thought “Bush is an idiot” or “ Do you think the war is wrong”? However, since I am a Californian, I was asked several times to comment on Arnold Schwarzeneggers performance as Governor, to which I gave a polite “thumbs up” for those who felt they needed to know how he was doing. I then tried to explain that as Governor he is not Prime Minister and that as the leader of the executive branch of government, he has a very difficult task when he has so many people working against him. To this, they just respond with a shrug of the shoulders. Europeans as a rule; genuinely do not understand our concept of limited government.
Its not that they don’t care about us or don’t notice who we are, its just that this little town of a million people way out on the Danube their concerns are more about the state of the world just across their border in the Slovakian countries. They really don’t seem too worried about "us yanks" one way or the other.
This is not to say that CNN International and the German News Deutche Welle doesn’t start and end every commercial break with something like “ Egyptian women want to know about their loved ones being kept in seclusion in Guantanamo against international law and the latest on abu ghraib, next on CNN”. I believe that if you were to watch CNN International for three days straight, I cant see how you could not want to commit suicide. It’s not that the news here is primarily anti-US, its that its anti-life in general. There is no good news to be found about anything – ever. It’s all disaster - all the time! It’s enough to make you seek therapy if you watch it long enough.
Today’s big news on DW is the fires in Southern California. It now seems that the foreign news are getting a great deal joy by reporting American disasters as if they portend the end of the American empire. It’s no longer just a forest fire or a hurricane, its proof at last of the collapse of America.
The only current news I was asked about by the Austrians was “Bush’s number two man being indicted for conspiracy”. I hadn’t heard the news, so I thought “Cheney?”. Nein! They said, “Tom Delay”! I thought to myself “when did he get a promotion”? Truth be told, the District Attorney in any city can indict whomever they want for whatever reason (see: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in Wikipedia under “trumped up charges with no factual basis in the law that results in lots of camera time for a DA in search of a better gig”.). Its been said that they “can indict a ham sandwich if they want to”. My only word of advice for Mr. Earle is the old saying the mafia has about: “if you set out to kill the king, you better be sure to get him, because if you miss, your life wont be worth squat”. Mr. Delay is not the “throw in the towel” type and he’s likely to make sure that everyone in the Earle camp including Mr. Earle himself gets a complete hammering before this is over. I sure hope the camera time is worth the wrath that Mr. Delay is going to throw at him.
The only thing I can say to Mr. Delay is this: Karma Buddy, what goes around comes around. You didn’t really think they would let you destroy their business and not get upset about it did you? So you can’t really be surprised that this happened.
Anyway, Vienna was a blast. The food at all levels was always excellent; Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. The people were always nice even when my German wasn’t up to the task. I completely enjoyed the trip and I’m looking forward to retuning to the land where the formula for creating “ice cubes” is know to almost every restaurateur.
Posted @ September 30, 2005 01:29 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (5)
Vienna: My 15 minutes of fame
I turn my back for two seconds and what happens? “I get profiled by Pajamas Media.”
The dark beast of “jet Lag” hasn’t visited me on this trip and that’s great because the things I was supposed to present later on this week are having a dose of “the gremlins”, so my after hours efforts don’t involve visiting the local gasthaus but working with those who are still stateside to fix our little problems prior to the big show.
So yeah, I’m in Vienna, not that I’ve seen very much of it yet. I expect that I should get out and about around Thursday. What’s the bad news there? Well, It’s going to rain on Thursday and Friday. Talk about calling in some atmospherics for some great photos!
The neighborhood changed dramatically Monday morning from a downtown industrial area to a very much alive part of the city. There is a mall just around the corner, which has provided us with a small grocery store with a very much appreciated supply of Diet Coke.
Ice on the other hand, is still in short supply and must be rationed between the Americans who still insist on using it in their drinks much to the dismay of most of the Europeans in our little group.
Posted @ September 26, 2005 09:54 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
Reporting From Vienna
I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We'd run anything it people wanted it enough, and had the money to pay. Of course a situation like that does tempt amateurs. You know they, can't stay the course like a professional. Now the city is divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power: American, British, Russian and the French. But the center of the city, that's international, policed by an international patrol, one member of each of the four powers. Wonderful! What a hope they had. All strangers to the place and none of them could speak the same language, except of course a smattering of German. Good fellows on the whole. Did their best, you know. Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities. Bombed about a bit. Oh, I was going to tell you, I was going to tell you about Holly Martins, an American came all the way here to visit a friend of his - the name was Lime. Harry Lime. Now Martins was broke and Lime had offered him some sort, I don't know, some sort of a job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap…
The Third Man - 1949
How was the flight? Unbelievable and by "Unbelievable", I mean bad. Seat 40k – that’s the last seat in the last row in an Airbus 320. What’s worse? There are no vents for the passenger on the A320. The fine folks at Airbus Industries consider that cooling stream of air you get to direct to yourself a luxury. Every seat on the plane is full. So needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep on the flight. I don’t think there’s much left that they could do to make the experience of air travel like that of riding in a Greyhound bus in 1952, the only thing missing on this flight was the acrid smell of urine from the passenger sitting next to me, with that exception it was like riding in the back of the bus to Miami for 15 hours with Ratzo Rizzo and Joe Buck.
Vienna seems to be the entrance to the European 3rd world - the Slovakian and Serbo-Croatian areas, so this is who you see on the flight. Babushka, Babushka, Babushka, Muscle boy, Babushka, elderly man, Babushka, Babushka, child. Repeat it 40 times and that’s what every row on the plane into Vienna looks like. There was a family seated next to me who were going to attend a funeral for their departed father, they were Romanians who moved to the United States back in 1989. After getting to Vienna, they had a 5-hour wait while one of their relatives drove up from Romania to drive them back. In total, they were looking at another 18 hours to go after they got to Vienna. I wish them well.
Passport control is a laugh; you get more scrutiny coming in and out of “Best Buy” than you do coming into Austria. I think I watched 500 people clear customs in less than 5 minutes; the stamp in the hand of customs immigration officer was just a blur. Osama himself could come through with a nuke under one arm and a couple of harem girls on each shoulder and I doubt they would even look up from their desks.
I’m in the industrial part of town and its not fair to judge the whole town from what I’ve seen so far because what I’ve seen so far is like Detroit only without the heartwarming cackle of gunfire out in the distance. Vienna is an industrial city with many refineries surrounding it and at the center are all of the palaces and sites that tourists see. Since I’m traveling on business, I’m nowhere near the pretty palaces and churches that everyone sees in all the tourist guides. Once again, the world of Road Warrior travel is different from people who travel for fun. It’s a gritty working class town that seems fascinated with suspension bridges and I'm in the part of the city that pays the bills. Apparently, not every European city makes its living selling t-shirts and taffy to tourists, to which I can only say "thank god!"
Like all cities in the modern world except Singapore, Vienna has graffitti. The graffiti in Vienna is less about “tagging” and more about whining about capitalism and the inequities of life. Graffiti in Europe seems to be about the need to say something pithy, where in the US it’s more about saying “mine”. Perhaps I should get a can of spray paint and write "get a blog" on one of the city walls? I’m sure there’s an anthropology thesis in this observation if you look hard enough. I’ll take pictures of some of the better comments left on the walls by Austrian graffiti artists and post them as they come along.
How am I holding up? Not bad really. I took a walk today down to the Donau and the Danube rivers. I had a small nap and a snack here and there and so far, no signs of jet lag at all, which is a complete blessing for which I am ever so thankful.
Oh, and people smoke here. They smoke everywhere, all the time and as much as they can even while riding a bike. It isnt until you return to the "world of the smoker" that you realize just how different the world was before we started making smoking into the new "social pariah" it has now become.
The smell of cigarettes is in everything everywhere and everything you touch. Mix it with the smell of diesel from car exhaust, and make everything concrete and that’s the general ambiance of the place. All post war industrial glass with the occasional socialist paradise apartment block to break up the dull monotony with more soul killing monotony.
And whats the funniest thing I've seen so far? Someone riding a bike while talking on a cell phone and smoking, which takes my dislike of cell phones to a whole new level and watching Spongebob Squarepants in German(Plankton!, Du Doch Nicht!).
More to follow...
Posted @ September 25, 2005 11:29 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
It's Deja Vu All Over Again.
Streaming Video from Houston - www.khou.com
I've spent most of the day talking to friends and collegues in the Houston and south Texas area. Despite our most recent memory, several of them said " oh, I dont think it will be that bad". Unbelievable.
Ok, I grew up in earthquake country, I'm not used to the idea of warnings for disasters, but if you think this is just a little wind and rain that's coming, you are deranged. This is a BIG storm, that will still be big when its 100 miles inland. its not going to veer off, its not going to suddenly dissapate, its not going to hit an unpopulated area. Its going to hit, and hit big.
This is not just a big storm. This is more like a 100 mile wide sustained tornado. Plan accordingly.
Posted @ September 22, 2005 02:18 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
D Minus 3
Business Travel. It’s a new level of Dante’s Inferno.
On Saturday I leave for Vienna for a conference. 16 hours of sitting in a hermetically sealed cigar tube which is optimally designed to create Deep Vein Thrombosis in people of my size, followed by two days of jet lag inspired grogginess while I sit in a room full of people and try to look interested when its clear to people sitting a mile away that I’m not and never would be. Worse still, I will be expected to attend all the schoomzing meetings and “mixers” after its over. Its one level of hell to attend a conference, its another level of hell to be forced to “have a good time”. I hate enforced corporate happiness. I have a solid wall between my private life and my work life; very rarely does anything pierce the wall from one world into the next. I don’t hang out with people I work with and I don’t work with people I hang out with, it’s a little rule that I have that helps keep things simple. It's a rule that every company I have worked for has tried to interfere with.
The nice thing about going to Vienna is I will have about half a day where I can try to see some of the things in The Third Man. Usually when you travel on business and it doesn’t matter where you go, you see the same three things, Car rental – Hotel – Client Basement. There is rarely time to get to know the place. In fact in all my travels as a consultant there was only one place I ever went back to after the project was over to visit; and that was Calgary Alberta.
Today is D Minus 3. This is the first day of the trip because as of today, this is the day I begin adjusting my internal clock to local time. Tonight I’ll stay up most of the night and over the next couple of days I'll begin living on "Central European Summer Time"( sounds like a summer replacement series on CBS during the 1970's, doesnt it?).
Over the years, I’ve found this process to be the best way to avoid jet lag when going east. I’ve never understood is why I have such a problem with jet lag when I go east and almost no problem when I go west. With this process, I don’t really avoid anything; I just start the pain earlier. Instead of a couple of days of being out of sync, I have one day where I just need a good nights rest. Unlike travel for holidays I’m traveling for business, and that means that when I’m presenting next week I’m “on stage”. I can’t afford to be dragging around while I adjust so I start doing the adjusting here in this time zone.
Holiday travel is all about letting go and relaxing, but business travel is all about ritual and superstition. Where’s my lucky jacket, my Laptop backpack, my “go” bag and so on. Things have to be “just so”. I’m surprised at the number of superstitions I’ve developed over the years, but they are there as well as the luggage. When you have over 750,000 miles on just one of the big carriers, you are always aware that with each flight the odds get better of a problem occurring. Air travel is very safe, but the actuarial tables don’t lie. Fly often enough long enough and something will certainly happen and after awhile you wonder “ is this the one that does me in”? So what do you do to alleviate the thoughts? That’s right, you go where all humans always go, a reliance on rituals and superstitious talismans that you have gathered over the years.
There was a time when I liked to go places for business. There was also a time when I had hair on my head too. I think that both of those things left me at about the same time, somewhere around the beginning of Clintons first term.
Over the next week I will try to blog daily on the experience of business travel to another country. This is in the spirit of the true nature of a “blog” which is to act as an online diary.
This is travel, not for pleasure, but for commerce.
This is work.
This is what it means to be a “Road Warrior”.
Posted @ September 20, 2005 11:16 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (5)
If it was a snake it wouldda bit me!
I've figured out the best solution to Germanys Election Problem!
Its so obvious I dont know why no one else thought of it!
Have Schroeder and the SPD run the East side of Germany and Merkel and the CDU run the West side of Germany. Give each 2 years to improve their part of Germany, and the one with the lower unemployment rate wins!
You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.
Oh, I've also been called to do some work overseas, so blogging will be weird for the next two weeks while I transition from stateside to parts abroad.
Blogging the "road warrior" experience? maybe. I had a hell of time with the camera at the air races and getting them uploaded and presented in a decent way on the blog. I wonder if its worth the effort.
Update: North Korea now says " and bring us a shrubbery...!"
Ok - Try this one on for size. It's entirely possible that the team of North Koreans that made yesterdays deal are not the same as the ones that are today saying they want a "toaster" with the deal or its over.
Here's some things to ponder:
1. Is Kim still in charge?
2. Is there more than one "NKOR faction" at work here?
3. The Chinese made a big move to sanction this deal. This new statement is a serious affront to their credibility, how are they reacting?
4. How can anyone seriously think we should be working on diplomatic channels with these whack jobs, much less giving them a reactor?
5. Money Laundering?
North Korea's government is producing high-quality counterfeit $100 bills and is working with criminal groups in China to sell the fake U.S. money internationally, U.S. officials say.
well this is getting very interesting.
Posted @ September 19, 2005 09:31 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
Tauntine
When I read this today:
“US to send four astronauts to moon in 2018”
For just a second I wondered how old the 12 men who made it to the moon would be if and when that happens. So here it is:
Neil Alden Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) - 88 years old
Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., Ph.D (born January 20, 1930) – 88 years old
Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. (June 2, 1930 – July 8, 1999)
Alan Bean (born March 15, 1932) 86 years old
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998)
Edgar D. Mitchell (born September 17, 1930) 88 years old
David R. Scott (born June 6, 1932 86 years old
James Benson Irwin (March 17, 1930 – August 8, 1991)
John Watts Young (born September 24, 1930) 88 years old
Charles Moss "Charlie" Duke, Jr. (born October 3, 1935) 83 years old
Eugene A. Cernan (born March 14, 1934) 84 years old
Dr. Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt (born July 3, 1935) 83 years old
I hope that at least one of them is there to see it happen. I have one simple request. This time if we decide to take the effort,cost, blood,sweat,tears,lives,manpower and courage to return to the Moon...
then we should stay.
Posted @ September 19, 2005 11:34 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (6)
Whatta Weekend
Just a few quick notes to cover a very big weekend.
1. Afghanistan Votes and yet hardly anyone notices.
What was a miracle last year is just another piece of quaint foreign news. Why? Because to most of the worlds media, “no violence = no story” which is a lesson for the coverage of Iraq. Afghanistan is a huge success for the Bush Administration and for the western world, and frankly for Afghanistan as well. For those who now say that Afghanistan was “good” and Iraq was “Bad” try to remember that they were also saying that Afghanistan was “bad” all the way from the start, through last year’s election. Two elections have occurred since the fall of the Taliban, so its time to chock this one up as a “win” for President Bush.
2. North Korea: Nuclear? Did we say “Nuclear”?
I’m not going to go jumping up and down on this one just yet, but it appears that North Korea has just tossed in the towel on their Nuclear Program. The six party talks that have been lambasted so much by the Democrats appear to have paid off. However, as long as a state of war exists between North Korea and ourselves, I say that words are one thing, deeds another. That being said, the whole concept of the six party talks seems to have paid off. I think the process may prove more important than the end result. If it all holds together, it will be a masterpiece in diplomacy. So far, it looks like another big win for President Bush and his policies.
3. Germany Votes: Schroeder doesn’t win, Merkel doesn’t lose.
What’s the big news here? For me its that the Left Party has doubled its support since 2002. Do they teach history in Germany? If you cant get kicked out of office when your country has the highest unemployment rate in 70 years, I don’t know what it will take. Does anyone besides me remember Paul Tsongas and a full roster of other Democrats banging the drum about how “great the German economy was” and how we should emulate them. You don’t hear that from the opposition any more. Will the European Union be a trivial pursuit question in 5 years? It sure looks like it to me.
Anyone remember the book “The rise and fall of the great powers”? The Author, Paul Kennedy predicted that Americas best days are behind her because of imperial overreach.
When did he write this? 1987. Well that worked out perfectly didn’t it?
I wonder how this book will fare in 10 years time.
Is that enough? Ok, let’s toss this one in.
4. Pakistan Leader Visits Israeli leaders.
The leader of a Muslim country addressed the American Jewish Congress last night in New York. If that doesn’t make your head spin, I don’t know what will. You need to understand that this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. Presidents of Islamic countries don’t sit down for a chat with Jewish leaders.
When you hear people talk about “destabilizing the worlds political situation” as if it were automatically a bad thing, try to remember that all of this that happened this weekend is some form of “destabilization” and most of it is good. Germany will find its way, it may not be Merkel who ends up as chancellor, but Schroeder cannot look at this as a win, but thats what I like about the left, they always try to make "losing" into something of a virtue.
The score so far:
Afghanistan moves from a religious dictatorship to a western style secular government with a constitution and the enfranchisement of women with two peaceful elections.
Pakistan stops the proliferation of atomic materials and arrests its nuclear scientists.
Libya drops its atomic weapons development, and rats out their suppliers and begins moving towards open elections. Libyan investment and tourism quadruples overnight.
Lebanon is no longer occupied by Syria and has also had free elections.
Israel has given up on Gaza. The result is more Arab countries coming forward and giving Israel the diplomatic recognition it deserves.
Iraq is no longer a dictatorship, has gone through one election cycle has built a Constitutional process. Its new governing system has taken three ethnic and religious bodies and tied the together and despite all the worries and the outright attacks, no civil war has broken out in Iraq. Terrorists continue to be marginalized; Saddam goes on trail next month.
Whatta weekend. What a decade.
Posted @ September 19, 2005 12:56 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
Notice
I have returned, heres a quick on taken from the pits to tide you over. I will sift through the shots, pick the "best of the show" and get them up as soon as I can.
Short version:
Beautiful weather - great show - outstanding scene - big crowds.
(UPDATE) It seems my new masters at Pajamas Media have given me a task of some urgency. I've got some more work to do before I can get the pictures loaded, so well try again for this evening. I promise, its worth the wait...
Posted @ September 17, 2005 05:26 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
2005 Reno Air Races
I'll be Blogging the Reno Air Races this year.
Unlike last year, I'll be bringing a decent digital camera and I have a much better blogging platform on which to post the pictures.
Look for updates late Saturday night.
In the mean time, try to imagine what a pack of P-51's sounds like going at nearly 400 miles per hour right on the deck right before you in the stands. There is no sound like it in the world.
Then try to imagine what sagebrush, hot asphalt, Nevada high desert and kerosine smells like when mixed with 100,000 people grinning ear to ear while they get one more chance to see one of the greatest remaining shows in aerospace.
Every year they say "this will be the last year for the unlimited air racing". Someday that may come true. But this year, for at least one more year the sight and sound of P-51 Mustangs going around the pylons with F8F Bearcats and Hawker Sea Furys in tight formation can still be seen by the admiring public for just a little bit longer.
I once got the chance to meet Cole Palen, the curator of the "Old Rhinebeck" before he died. "Old Rhinebeck" is out on the east coast and if you ever get a chance to go see it you should try get there. Old Rhinebeck is one of the finest collections of aircraft Ive ever seen, but the best thing is, you get to see them fly. Old Rhinebeck is a grassy field, in the hills of the hudson valley and the museum has aircraft from the golden age of flight. Sopwith Camels, Fokkers, Albatrosses, you name it.
Cole Palen believed that for aircraft to be appreciated as aircraft and not as modern industrial art, need to be seen in their natural state; not sitting in a museum where you cant even touch them, but flying.
There is no words that can quite describe the sound of a Mustang in flight. If you get the chance to see one, do so. If you get a chance to see two of them, then by all means go.
But if you get a chance to see 15 of them race...
Well, like I need to tell you what to do.
Posted @ September 15, 2005 10:08 PM | Aviation | Comments (6)
Former Bush Supporter Criticizes Presidents Hurricane Response
A lawsuit was filed today in 9th Federal District court against the Bush Administration by Superman, a former Bush supporter who is also known as the "man of steel". The complaint brought forth by the Krypton born superhero is that President Bush is now being asked to control the weather and to save people from floods which violates the role of the Federal Government as set forth in the Constitution.
“Controlling the weather is my job” says the man of steel “ I kept trying to shore up those Mississippi levees after they broke, but every time I showed up there was some guy with the Coast Guard telling me that he "had it handled". I nearly hit at least a dozen Navy helicopters while trying to rescue folks in New Orleans. I can't tell you how dangerous it is trying to dodge those things, its damn dangerous out there, even for me!”. The Krypton born superhero was quoted from his “fortress of solitude“ saying that "As of late, no one looks to the Superheroes in the Justice League for support anymore". He also stated "Everyone just thinks that President Bush is a superhero, capable of great feats of strength and superpowers that rival any of those found in the Justice League of America, well its bull people!. I'm hear to tell you, he's just a normal everyday guy. Why he doesn't even have tights or a cape!"
“The day I see President Bush tie a railroad track into a bowtie, that’s when I’ll be impressed. But for now, he’s just another guy with ambitions way beyond his abilities.”
Superman issued this angry screed in response to reporters who questioned why Superman was slow on the response to the Hurricane.
He said:
“Listen, I got more than one thing going on here, there’s Mole Men breaking out of their tunnels in New Mexico, there’s Lex Luthor and his latest scheme, General Zod and his; how about a little prioritization here people? I'm out busting my ass trying to save you from threats from the 9th dimension you’d think you could deal with a little water an sewage without going all wiggly at the knees. Yeah its real funny how its always "Oh Superman save us!, oh Superman move that comet to a different orbit!, oh superman help me pl-pl-pl-please save me, I’m going to be late to work, can you go back and spin the earth backwards so we all go back in time so I wont get my pay docked. Honestly folks, it just never stops".
Later, he was quoted as saying:
"Why don’t you go to Aquaman and ask him why HE was slow on the response to the hurricane. “Prince of the deep?” my blue tight wearing ass... “Prince asleep on the sofa” is more like it. Gumby and Pokey have more superpowers than that limp wristed freak of nature".
Aquaman could not be reached for a response to this comment from Superman.
Posted @ September 12, 2005 12:49 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
Night Visits
I live a very sedate and simple life of a suburban father of two. But it wasn’t always so. Back in the 80’s and 90's, I was a “road warrior”. I traveled all over the US up to 50 weeks a year going from one software crisis to the next. Our clients didn’t pay the hourly rates we demanded because things were going well at their companies. They paid us because they were in trouble, deep deep trouble and we were the kind of unique “tech mercenaries” that were sent in to turn horribly managed, under funded, overextended projects into something that could be called “a success”.
For all its glory, and for all the pay, it was actually a hard life. No matter how attractive it may sound, business travel is hard work. There’s “going on the road”, which is fun and “living on the road”, and living on the road is just hell. Because no matter where you go, you see the same four things, Airport – Car Rental – Hotel – Un-windowed Basement of a Clients Office. You work from early morning till later at night, and during crisis time, you eat primarily from vending machines and cafeterias. We lived hard, but we played hard too. Sometimes you could get out, but very often, your client was in some backwater hell hole that you didn’t want to be at any longer than possible, but there were exceptions to that. Manhattan was one of those exceptions.
Whenever we were in or around Manhattan, we always tried to find time to go into town. The thing about Manhattan is that unlike most every other town in the world, even if you’ve never been there before, you feel like you have. Every TV show and thousands of movies have been there, so in a way, the first time you go to Manhattan, its like meeting a relative that you’ve always known about but never actually met before. You find yourself familiar with it, even when you have no business knowing what you know. There’s the building Oscar and Felix lived in, there’s Central Park, there’s “Tiffanys” there’s the Rockefeller Center Skating Rink. That’s where they tape Saturday Night Live. There’s the Chrysler Building, and you remember those cool pictures with Margaret Bourke White, There’s the Empire State Building and all you can think about is King Kong.
And then you see them standing there, the World Trade Center. If you were in New Jersey, you could see them, if you were in Long Island, there they were, and anywhere in Manhattan, there they were. Usually they were the first things you could see popping over the tree line as you drove towards the island. No details, no windows, just two big grey pillars standing out above the skyline. When you saw them, you knew you were close. You knew when you saw them you were going to go ahead and go into the city that night. No hotel lobby restaurant for you. No pizza delivery to the office. You were going into Manhattan.
I am visited from time to time by a recurring nightmare. It comes about every once in awhile, usually after I’ve been excessively fatigued or stressed out by some technical problem at work.
My nightmare begins in the same way every time and yet I never see it coming.
It starts at a restaurant and bar in Manhattan up around 92nd and 3rd called “wings of fire”, great Buffalo wings, good beer, basketball hoops and loud music. In the dream, most of the people in the bar are old friends or people I’ve known over the years. They look at me and I can see them, but I can’t quite make out who they are. I’m talking but the people don’t respond, they just sit there and look at me. The music in the bar begins to go quiet, until it can’t be heard at all. Everyone continues to sit at the tables, slowly drinking but saying nothing.
Then they stop drinking and begin to stare, they are staring at me. Even though I know almost everyone I see, there is something about these people in the bar that I can’t quite figure out.
“whoa, I’m getting a real bad vibe from this crowd” I say to one of my friend Joe, who’s seated right across from me.
“Well, they get like this sometimes, especially when they think that people have forgotten them”. He says to me.
What are you talking about? I ask in a near whisper while leaning across the table to him.
“Aw, come on now Frank, You remember what you used to say, that 10 years after you’re dead most people have a hard time remembering what you looked like much less that you were ever alive in the first place?” Joe says leaning forward and pointing around the room.
“Yeah, and?”
“Buddy, look at me. You don’t see anything out of the ordinary here at all, do you?” I look at Joe, but I can’t make out his face, its there, but the details aren’t clear.
“No, not really, why?”
Joe shakes his head. “I think they want you to go down there” he says to me as he sips his beer while looking over the top of his glass with a sour look on his face. The bar is now absolutely silent.
I slide my chair back and stand up to leave. No one moves, except Joe, who watches me as I turn to walk out the door. “ I’ll see you later buddy” he says to me with a wave of his hand then returning to slowly nursing his beer. I walk outside to hail a cab, and look back to see everyone in the bar lined up at the windows, looking at me as I leave. They stare, and lightly wave as I drive away in the cab. I tell the cab driver “ take me down to Wall Street”. The cab heads down to Lower Manhattan as I sit in the back seat, thinking about what I’ve just seen. His cab license says “Mike Lee” and gives at date of some time in 1978. The date strikes me as odd, but I say nothing and the name means nothing to me. The cab driver asks, “ About where do you want to get dropped off this time?” I tell him “just drive around for a bit, I’ll let you know”.
“You cant keep putting it off you know, so why don’t you let me just take you there?” the cab driver says over his shoulder.
“Ok, I suppose its time”, I tell him this like I have said it to him a thousand times before.
We turn the corner and begin to drive up to the World Trade Center, and as we do, the cab slows. I tell the cab driver to stop and let me out. Unlike the normal day-to-day life of that part of Manhattan at this time at night, the street is now absolutely quiet. I step out of the cab and look up to see the buildings, still standing solid and in place. I’m awestruck at their beauty. It’s as if they have never fallen and never would. They are solid and standing in wait for the next days work with no hint to their eventual fate. I cross the street and walk over and stand outside the fountain in the central plaza and look out over the whole area, the two towers standing in their rightful place lit from below by the lights that illuminated those great tree like street level columns. Concrete, steel and glass, the lobbies, the security guards, the cleaning staff shuttling cleaning carts back and forth, the floor polishers busy at work. Each of them waves at me as I go by and I instinctively wave back. I stop and walk up to the wall of the south tower and touch it, running my hand over the cold smooth glass of the lobby windows.
I hear a tap on the glass from inside. It’s the security guard tapping his flashlight to get my attention.
“ We knew you wouldn’t forget us” he shouts to me through the glass, muffled both by the sound of the floor polisher at work behind him and the thickness of the glass. The floor polisher gives a wave and a nod, but I cant quite make out either of their faces, just as I couldn’t quite make out Joes face either. They are familiar, yet unclear.
I start back for the cab and turn at the street to look back. They are still there, standing high in the Manhattan sky, marking their location from all directions.
“And what did you forget this time” the cab driver asks me.
“ I forgot how beautiful it all was. I forgot how quiet it is at night down in the plaza” I say as I look at the cab driver. He’s leaning over his steering wheel, looking down at his dashboard, talking to me though his window while he slowly smokes a cigarette, its cherry end the only light in the cab.
“You still don’t get it do you?” he says to me. “ Those are just buildings, and yet you can remember most of their details although you only visited them twice, but what about the people you’ve known in your life who died, do you remember them even people you lived with or worked with for days on end? Do you even remember what they looked like?
You don’t even remember me, do you”?
Then it hits me. I suddenly remember who “Mike Lee” is. And I wake up.
Mike Lee was the first person I ever knew who died. We went to High School together. He drowned in the American River one summer when I was 17. I remember his brother Greg, I remember his Uncle Max, I remember the house they lived in, but I can’t really remember what Mike looked like and it bothers the hell out of me. Each of the people in my nightmare back in the bar on 92nd and 3rd, including Joe are people I’ve known who have died. And yet even for Joe, after a time they all fade. It isn’t until I wake up from this nightmare that I find myself going through yearbooks and photographs to remind myself of those who are no longer with me. For some of the people I’ve known who died, I don’t have photographs. I have to construct what I remember about them from memory and I know that every year, I forget just a little bit more of what was once a person who lived who touched my life in some small way.
It’s not death itself that bothers me; it’s the way that time tends to erase people from our memories that I find frightening. 10 years after we are dead, most of us wont be remembered by people outside of those who are in our own families.
No matter how significant the works we might accomplish in our life, unless someone who still lives remembers us, the memory of our existence will be lost forever.
This year is the 4th anniversary of the massacre of 9/11. I’ve always had a difficult time looking at the pictures from that day. I’ve never understood why that is exactly, I just don’t. There’s something so repulsive to me to see those pictures, something I’ve never ascribed to the worst concentration camp photos, pictures of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima or Nagasaki and I know that 9/11 is nowhere near as bad as any of those things, but something about it has always bothered me more than all the other things. As near as I can tell, it’s because of the fact that unlike the Concentration camps, Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Pearl Harbor, I was at the World Trade Center before it became a place of death. It still lives in my mind; it still fills the skyline of Manhattan.
Sure, I see an occasional picture, and every once in awhile I use one to make a point on the blog, but I’ve never bought a book about 9/11 and I’ve never watched a single television show about that day.
Something changed in me on that day. I am not the same person I was on September 10th but I have never forgotten what I saw on that horrible day, not one small piece of it.
I will never forget what it was I saw before that day.
They were beautiful.
Update: Neo-Neocon has a rememberence that I quite enjoyed, and is not at all metaphysical.
Posted @ September 11, 2005 02:53 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (7)
Well that was then...
Louisiana Senator Mary L. Landrieu
Quote:
"We are indeed fortunate to have an able and experienced director of FEMA who has been with us on the ground for some time".
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco
"Director Brown, I hope you will tell President Bush how much we appreciated - these are the times that really count - to know that our federal government will step in and give us the kind of assistance that we need".
Both are quoted at a press conference held on Monday August 29th, prior to the levee breaks that inundated the city.
From the New York Times.
Posted @ September 10, 2005 05:24 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
The Mind Staggers
From Drudge:
"This morning on Fox's "Fox and Friends," former Indiana Democrat congressman and 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer called on President Bush to name former President Jimmy Carter to the head of efforts to rebuild New Orleans.
Roemer told the stunned hosts: "The second thing we should do is put somebody like former President Jimmy Carter in charge of rebuilding New Orleans."
Congressman Roemer, Havent those poor people suffered enough?
Posted @ September 09, 2005 10:42 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
Say it with me...
Tonight when I saw a Chinook with a Singapore flag on its side I said ‘ Wow, how did they get here so fast”. So, I went to the Internet and got my answer:
"Singapore is sending a fourth Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) CH-47 Chinook helicopter from its Peace Prairie detachment in Grand Prairie, Texas, to assist in the Hurricane Katrina relief operations. There are now 45 RSAF personnel deployed with the four Chinook helicopters in this mission.
The RSAF Chinooks have flown 39 sorties thus far, transporting several hundred evacuees and security personnel, and more than ten thousand tonnes of equipment and humanitarian supplies.
Three RSAF Chinook helicopters, based in Grand Prairie, Texas, have already flown to Fort Polk, Louisiana to aid rescue operations mainly in resupply and airlifting missions.
Thirty eight RSAF personnel, comprising pilots, aircrew and technicians have also been deployed. The Singapore team will work with the Texas Army National Guard in their relief efforts. American Ambassador to Singapore Frank Lavin said the American people were deeply grateful for Singapore's help".
I didn’t know we had guests from Singapore, but I’m glad they came.
So Say it with me kids:
“Thank you Singapore”.
Meanwhile, In New Mexico where our German allies do their training at Holloman Air Force Base…
What is it, 11 days till the German Federal Election?
Posted @ September 08, 2005 10:43 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
What If?
I can't improve on this paragraph from the NY Times, so I wont:
This article from the New York Times is titled "Political Issues Snarled Plans for Troop Aid". It doesnt jump out and say so, but those "political issues" are the very constitution that we all hold dear.
The wooden stake that the Democrats are trying to pound into “Count George’s” chest is the phrase “ Bush didn’t do enough”.
“ Bush Knew”, remember that one? Oh yeah. I do.
Or how about:
“Bush Lied- People Died”, Ah yes! There’s nothing that tells you your dealing with a truly superior intellect like when they whip a little rhyming action on you to make their point.
Now there is this new wooden stake that the Democrats are trying to pound into his chestand its made from the same timber as those other two.
“Bush didn’t do enough”.
This says that there are things that he had within his power to do that he could have done and if he had been a decent man of feeling and humanity and not a death obsessed and drooling Halliburton corporate robot he is, he would have done so.
If only.
If he had taken steps to invoke the Insurrection Act, he would have likely faced an open race riot in New Orleans and the Press and the Democrats would have willingly fed that fire. The face of the military arriving into Louisiana, not as rescuers but in a Federal takeover, in coup like fashion would have made the current headlines pale by comparison. Remember, Kanye West has already famously stood up and said that President Bush already sent troops ‘To kill us” meaning black folks in Louisiana. If President Bush had taken these extraordinary steps, the same people who are screaming today that he “didn’t do enough” would be caterwauling to the high heavens about the obvious destruction of the “bill of rights”; the overstepping of federal power and the destruction of the Constitution. President Bush would be castigated for “overstepping his authority” and would be painted in the press as if a fascist takeover of local governments and their authority had taken place.
Think about it. Think about the people who already think the Patriot Act goes too far; imagine how they would react the use of the Insurrection Act for Hurricane Disaster relief.
For those that say “The President didn’t do enough” I say, what else would you have done? I also say that most people still don’t understand just how big this disaster was. Most people think it was just New Orleans. It was not.
It wasn’t just the folks in New Orleans that were destroyed here. The damage and death goes far beyond that one city. FEMA’s largest action prior to this was for Hurricane Andrew, and that event involved 22,000 people. FEMA now has 162,000 under direct care and 400,000 effected. This is beyond anything anyone has ever had to deal with.
Everyone is calling for Michael Browns head, but unlike the New Orleans police force, FEMA has held its ground and done its job. 50% of the police force of New Orleans is still AWOL. The mayor is sending his surviving officers to Las Vegas. Yet no one calling for Michael Browns head is calling for the head of New Orleans Police Cheif Eddie Compass.
Do I think President Bush should have invoked the Insurrection Act?
No.
Just imagine what would have happend if he had. I doubt that the action would have saved a single life, but the precedent of federal takeover of state authority would effect us all for years. This isnt just a disaster, its a breakdown in the rule of law, and its the breakdown in common executive communication between Federal and State. There is no "Cockpit Resource Management" training for the President and State Governments ( but there should be...)
I do think we witnessing something that clearly shows that there are limits to what the President can do and there are limits that we will never accept removing from the President and we as a Democracy need to be very careful what we do next.
In this case, I think it shows that there are disasters, natural and man made that by their destructive nature simply remove the local authority and their infrastructure. The result is to render useless the process of executing disaster plans that are dependent on the locals who may not exist or are so overwhelmed that they are no longer effective.
I think when that type of wide area all encompassing disaster occurs, its necessary to establish a temporary “Federal Disaster District” and appoint a military governor for the duration of the disaster. This "Special Emergency District" should be established by Congress and signed off by the President. It should have both geographic and calendar boundaries, with the “end of the disaster “ clearly defined and the District returned to the states in which the district is established after the need for the district has been cleared. Inside the District, the area is administered under a modified version of martial law for the duration of the emergency.
However, its unlikely the Supreme court would agree that such a thing meets the rights of the states provisions set forth in the Constitution, and once again we find ourselves in a situation where the state itself would have to ask the Federal government to establish the "Federal Disaster District" which sounds fine, until a case arises, like Hurricane Katrine where the state is less than willing to cooperate with the Federal government.
But none of that exists today in legal structures or designs. Its extremely doubtful that you could get the speed out of congress and the executive branch to create the “Federal Disaster District” as fast as some people think that things should happen in the modern world.
Today, everyone counts on the basic fundamental idea that in an emergency, people will pull together to do the right thing. Hurricane Katrina has shown that for some people, no disaster is more important than maintaining a position of partisan power against the Bush administration.
Just imagine the opportunity for abuse of power in this whole area of law. Imagine a future President who decides they really want to go to ”War On Poverty”. You want to talk about the Kelo Decision and “eminent domain”? Lets try talking about it when we give the Federal Government the power to take over areas of the country for what they call a “disaster”.
On one hand, I'm sometimes happy that the Government is shown to be ineffective and not the all seeing all knowing god on earth that some people think it is. On the other hand, I now understand precisely why it was the President Lincoln suspended 'Habeas Corpus'.
Posted @ September 08, 2005 08:42 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
The Kingfish is Dead
With Hurricane Katrina, we’ve had direct damage from the initial Hurricane, a city wide flood, looting, bacterial outbreaks and water so infected that it’s considered toxic just to touch it.
And the fun is just getting started.
Now that the waters are receding we are about to see the next level of unspeakable horror.
Lawyers. Lots and Lots of Lawyers.
Floodwaters have always done a great deal of damage in civilizations but we live in a different age from those in the past. We live in the age of lawsuits. Lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits are responsible for the complete transformation of the modern western world.
Now that the State and Federal officials are busy wandering the freshly “dewatered” streets of New Orleans, one of these lucky civil servants is going to discover something that I don’t think anyone in Louisiana wants to admit, but is almost certainly true.
The water surrounding the City of New Orleans is almost certainly contaminated with chemicals that the EPA and the State of Louisiana consider to be carcinogenic, and they will be found at levels almost certainly beyond what can be considered acceptible for people to be allowed to return to their homes.
“So what”; You say?
Anyone else besides me remember a place called “Times Beach”?
Go read the wikipedia entry on Times Beach, then scale the problem up by 10,000 times and that’s what we’ve got on our hands in New Orleans.
Did you notice that I said “we”?
You see, on one hand the simple answer is to condemn the flooded areas and return them to a sort of natural flood plain. The problem is that its harder to do than you think. The areas that are condemned are one part of the equation, but the other part of the problem is the areas you don’t condemn, even the areas that weren’t effected are in fact effected by the large scale changes that are about to occur.
When I said “we” what I meant to say is;"who’s going to pay for this"?
Well, we are. all of us.
But one group is going to pay in a way that I dont think most people have considered.
The people who lived in New Orleans have suffered and they will continue to suffer, but the suffering doesn’t end there. The “Food Chain” of suffering doesn’t end until the last lawsuit is settled out of court. Our children will have kids of their own before that happens.
Remember, everything is just "a problem" until someone checks their tires one day and finds dioxin, asbestos, or PCB’s and someone else discovers that its been driven all over town, then it’s "a real BIG problem". Every miscarriage, every cancer victim, every case of autism in the lower Mississippi will result in a lawsuit against the City and State.
For those of you who find yourself mystified at the attitude and behavior of the Governor and Mayor as of late this little problem might help you understand one reason why they are acting so odd(besides the fact that they were odd before the Hurricane). The real problem we now face isn’t the potential decontamination costs its that there isn’t enough money in the world to cover all those lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits. Do the words " Federal Superfund" spring to mind? Yeah, it does me too.
Add to this ‘witches brew’ of lawyers and potential lawsuits is a history of political corruption that goes back centuries in Louisiana. This corruption was overlooked and in some cases downright tolerated so long as it was kept within the family but what Katrina has done is bring attention to the outside world of a true American shame, the plight of the people who previously lived below sea level on the lower Mississippi. What the Mayor, The Governor and every official in Louisiana above "city dog catcher" is looking at is the one thing they have rarely seen in their careers and that is scrutiny by the press, by lawyers who will be crawling through every transaction looking at every relationship, trying to find every bit of corruption they can find. Insurance companies as well as a whole host of Federal agencies are about to lose a great deal of money and its always been my experience that people will leave you alone so long as you don’t mess with their money, but if you mess with their money, they will make it their lifes work to see that you pay for your error.
Once the Lawyers start finding corruption it will be very much like the effects of a second flood only this time, it’s a flood that will sweep away the Democrat political machine that has run Louisiana since the Civil War.
To the Democrat party, its as if they just lost a capitol city in their domain during wartime. Think of it like the impact of the fall of Atlanta on the Confederates during the Civil War. Louisiana just lost its last solid Democrat voting districts, and any part of the existing Democrat machine that is still standing is about to be tied down in a Gulliverian web of lawsuits and Federal corruption charges which will surely come as a result of the floods.
Katrina didn’t just end a way of life in the lower Mississippi, but it has brought an end to a way of doing business in Baton Rouge.
In the end, It wont be 'conservative values' that will have beaten the Democrats, it wasnt the "Reagan revolution" and it wont be the Bush family.
It will be the lawyers.
Katrina marks the end of the Democratic party in its current incarnation. Some day you will be able to measure time as "Before Katrina" and "After Katrina". The last great Democrat capital of the old south has fallen to an outside force, a force of lawyers and officials that will make life hell for the political machine that has run the state and city for generations, there is no "win" here, only a "hold" and in the end they will have to give up. Louisiana in 20 years time will look like a smaller leaner version of Texas, friendly to business with low taxes and Democrats will only exist in force at the edge of college campuses, just as they do today in the once great Democrat stronghold of Texas.
30 years ago, Texas was Louisiana. Today Texas is an economic force that is capable of the highest growth out of any state in the union. An economy so strong that its taken to supporting 150,000 people from Louisiana in the blink of an eye. A large number of those people will go on to stay in Texas after the waters have been removed from New Orleans but all will be impacted by what they saw in Texas, and some will begin to expect it of their own government when they finally return to Louisiana.
The Louisiana Democratic machine - is Dead.
And it was Katrina and the flood of lawyers it unleashed that finally finished them off.
Posted @ September 07, 2005 09:25 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (5)
Thank You Secretarys Rumsfeld and Minetta.
The Department Of Defense has provided the following to Hurricane Katrina:
· 374 Department of Defense, Coast Guard, and National Guard helicopters and 76 fixed-wing aircraft are supporting the operation;
· 963 total search-and-rescue, evacuation and supply delivery missions have been flown by Department of Defense, more than 500 of them during the past 24 hours. Collectively, they have moved more than 15,000 people and almost 5,000 tons of supplies in Mississippi and Louisiana; · 75,000 people have been evacuated from the disaster area as of Sept. 4;
· Air medical evacuation and search-and-rescue operations in New Orleans are now focused on the Algiers section of the city, where approximately 3,000 individuals need to be evacuated;
· Total Department of Defense rescues, evacuations and patient treatments in New Orleans now total more than 8,000 patients transported, more than 2,000 people rescued and more than 5,000 patients treated;
· Maritime units supplied 78,000 gallons of fuel to hospitals, law enforcement, National Guard and other critical government services;
· Nearly one-fourth of the 21 million Meals Ready to Eat ordered by FEMA have been received;
· The Army Corps of Engineers is performing de-watering operations in New Orleans with pumps and controlled levee breeches;
· Seven helicopters also preparing to conduct fire fighting operations in New Orleans;
· The secretary of transportation is seeking Department of Defense concurrence to use four Maritime Ready Reserve Fleet ships as temporary housing for relief workers.
· Department of Defense is working to fill a FEMA request for communications support for the New Orleans Police Department.
· The Department of Defense has provided 745 hospital beds at New Orleans International Airport, with additional beds available aboard USS Bataan and USS Iwo Jima and 500 more beds en route to New Orleans;
· The Air Force will provide an 85-bed mobile hospital unit and air logistics support at Alexandria Airport, La., currently a staging area for rescue operations;
· Ten 250-bed Federal Medical Shelters have been established at Department of Defense installations: two at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla; four at Fort Polk, La.; and four at Meridian Naval Air Station, Miss.
All while continuing to support military and reconstruction operations in Germany, Japan, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
To this date; The Actor - Sean Penn has only provided comic relief to improve the morale of first responders in the New Orleans area.
Posted @ September 06, 2005 11:52 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
Compare And Contrast
New Orleans (Sept. 5, 2005) – U.S. Navy search and rescue (SAR) swimmer, Aviation Warfare Systems Operator 1st Class Tim Hawkins, retrieves and evacuates a victim of Hurricane Katrina from a rooftop in New Orleans into an SH-60B Seahawk helicopter.
And Where is 'Mother Sheehan'?
"Sheehan plans to protest the Blue Angels Air Show scheduled for Sept. 10 at Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine. The protest, with the theme “Stop the Worship of the Gods of War,” has been organized by the Maine Chapter of Veterans for Peace. The Web site of Gold Star Families for Peace, which Sheehan founded, lists the protest as an upcoming speaking engagement. "
Tim Hawkins - Saving lives.
Cindy Sheehan - Contributing to global warming.
Posted @ September 06, 2005 09:35 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
Sean Penn: Proof that God has a Sense of Humor
If I had known there was a “best political metaphor” contest going on, I would have submitted something of my own.
Posted @ September 05, 2005 11:38 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0)
10 Things I learned From Hurricane Katrina.
1. For large scale disasters that are multi-state, multi-city, multi-jurisdiction in their impact, all planning that is based on the authority and existence of the local officials is null and void.
Until this disaster I have always accepted the idea that “local authority is the best authority”. It never occurred to me that there are some situations where the local authorities themselves would be destroyed along with their infrastructure. Sitting around and waiting for them to call you for help is a pretty silly idea. It seems pretty obvious now, but two weeks ago, I would not have accepted that idea. Now I know different because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
2. 'Bush Derangement Syndrome' can lead directly to peoples deaths.
I wonder how many more people would be alive if the Governor of Louisiana and the President had a good working relationship. When you get all done calling the President every name in the book, you might find you still have to work with the guy and he has to work with you.
I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know how it happened but at some point people stopped watching sports and started watching party politics. Katrina and its after effects is where “political bashing” stops being funny. I think the corrosive nature of our politics helped contributed to the deaths of thousands by making people who should be working together suspicious of each other.
Remember, the Civil War started first as a culture war. Try and think of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” as a new strain of “Lincoln Derangement Syndrome”, then go to Gettysburg and see where it might all lead.
If we don’t step back from the edge, we could find ourselves in a second Civil War. We might be forgiven for the first Civil War, but we will never be forgiven for the second Civil War.
3. For some people the most important part of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t how many people were killed or suffering, but how much it would effect Bush.
I found it striking how at a time when people were dying, the most important thing on some people’s minds, both left and right was how it might effect Bush. I would never have predicted that a month before Katrina. Last I checked, Bush isn’t running for anything, he’s won both his Presidential elections, and will never run again, why the preoccupation with his poll numbers? He’s not going to leave office until his term is over. With solid control of both houses of congress for the foreseeable future and a rock solid cabinet, there will be no impeachment, so what is to be gained here?
And what is to be lost? Civilization itself.
4. Civilization has a 24 hour shelf life
Modern humans think that the conditions they live in are natural; that people are nice and that they have no need for police forces or weapons and that peace in their neighborhoods will exist forever even with no authority imposed on it.
Hurricane Katrina hits and 24 hours later its “lord of the flies”. Civilization, like fresh fish, tends to go off very quickly when there is no refrigeration. You should plan accordingly.
5. If you were a corrupt and ineffective government before a disaster, you will have no standing with the locals after the disaster.
New Orleans has been known as one of the most corrupt governments in the United States. Not having moral authority in the face of an emergency is what cost the New Orleans Police force the ability to establish order after the Hurricane passed. The leadership of the force could not maintain its rigor in the emergency, as a result its membership began to break down. There are items that come to my mind such as the number of people who resign in light of being in an emergency shows just how bad the situation was within their organization
What impact does this have for the rest of us? Well lets see, Washington D.C., what kind of city government is that? Detroit? or how about the State of California or Washington? We all get endless laughs out of lame government and it’s a credit to American life how little their government impacts their lives, but in a disaster, you really need a government, at the very least, you need authority that you can trust.
Put a large scale natural disaster in any of those other places, and we will see a repeat of the same things we saw in New Orleans, not for any other reason than their governmental incompetence has lead to contempt in the minds of the populace. That is a very, very bad thing to have when things go badly.
6. Cable News reporting of the “hurricane of the weekend” has contributed to desensitizing of the true nature of the danger that hurricanes can create.
Admit it, before Katrina when you saw 24 hour wall-to-wall Hurricane reporting, you said “ oh, must be a slow news week”. The result of nonstop 24 hour coverage of even small hurricanes was to desensitize people to the true dangerous nature of Hurricanes. Humans have short memories; as a result they tend to forget. I’ve lived in the same area since 1972, in that time, I’ve probably seen 4 good floods that have resulted in people dying and 5 that left property damage, yet I still meet people who say that the area never floods and is not at risk. I’ve met people who live below sea level in the area, I point out to them that they are living below sea level by point up to the levees that they live below; I point out that the area is a drained swamp at the intersection of two major rivers. Their reaction is to say “the city would not have approved the building of these houses if it were dangerous”.
Then they tell me they didn’t get flood insurance because it seemed silly when it rarely rains here. The lesson is the same in both cases; to some people, if it didn’t happen last year, it never happened at all and can therefore never happen. The dumbest, most ridiculous phrase ever invented by the insurance industry is “the 100 year flood”. Once spoken, people actually think that they wont see another problem for 100 years and thus – there is no problem. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a huge hurricane, the result is people act like its never occurred. We were foolish to not learn from those lessons of history, but the fact is it’s nearly impossible to get people to pay attention to natural history. You can build all the levees you want, all the pumping stations you want, if you live below sea level, you will eventually get flooded out.
After Katrina, what I worry about now is the next hurricane this season will lead to outright panic rather than the complacency we have just seen.
7. For the first time in history, individuals are blamed directly for the weather.
The weirdest and hardest thing for me to understand is the large number of people who really and honestly believe that President Bush actually caused the Hurricane. The first response from most of Europe was to say “serves them right” and to point out that the Hurricane was in fact caused by President Bush’s policies on climate, almost as if he had a big analog knife switch on his desk marked “ Bad weather” at one end and “good weather" at the other and that he would grab with both hands and flip it towards "bad weather" and giggle out loud with a big snidely whiplash laugh.
This to me is the most staggering example of human stupidity since the creation of the “Whip Inflation Now” button. Because President Bush didn’t support the Kyoto treaty means that the weather has changed for the worse is utterly asinine. There is no better example of modern mans turn from scientific reasoning than this simple belief in the minds of so many people.
This "kyoto means salvation" idea almost points back a sort of animist cult that believes that its leaders are somehow favored by the gods when things are going well and that when bad things happen that the leader has fallen from favor by the gods. I thought we had grown past that sort of thinking, but it seems that the euro-enviro-vegan cult has revived it.
8. That’s right you’re not from Texas, but Texas loves you anyway.
100,000 people migrate to Texas from the depths of disaster in the blink of an eye.An instant town springs up, a town so large that it has its own zip code and despite challenges of every type and its all working pretty well. I think that unprecedented in the history of mankind. There’s a lot to be studied here and rather than hashing out the politics of it all, people should get down to the astrodome and help out, and if you cant do that, try to take down notes of one of the truly amazing events to happen in modern history. Hurricanes happen, but evacuations and relocations of this scale, size and quality don’t.
9. The Coast Guard model works pretty good.
Once upon a time, the Coast Guard was the Navy in peacetime and was the central core on which the Navy was formed in wartime. The Coast Guard is not a 'Department of Defense' organization, and no one joins the Coast Guard to get their names in the history book. They join and very often get the chance to save lives as well as serve in the front line on the war on terror. The Coast Guard is also not burdened by the “posse commitatus” rules that entangle the Air and Army National Guard.
I politely suggest that a bigger Coast Guard is a good idea. I also suggest that the culture and organizational methods they deploy work pretty good and could serve many groups within the Department of Homeland Security.
Oh, and for those of you who really want to do something to help the country but you are too old to join the National Guard, then go join the Coast Guard Auxiliary. They are a big part of the success of the Coast Guard. The CGA is another successful model for how to integrate civilian volunteers into professional services.
10. Modern Man, for all his advances, still lives at the mercy of nature.
It is striking to me that for all the satellite models, for all the computer simulations, for all the projections of disaster, for all the communication, the net effect of all this was that we still found ourselves caught flat footed by something like a Hurricane. While on one hand I do find myself surprised by the damage, but I also know just how bad it could have been, had not satellite projections and the communication allowed as many people to leave as they did.
There is a tendency in the Modern age to think that the problems of our forefathers are behind us, and for the most part they are, but its times like this that remind you just how weak we are in the face of true disaster.
We are all living just 72 hours from the 18th century.
Posted @ September 05, 2005 07:54 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (9)
May you live in Interesting times
Chief Justice Rehnquist has died.
Is it just me, or were the 90's just boring as hell?
To quote Lloyd Bridges Character from "Airplane"
"Guess I picked the wrong week to quit smoking..."
Posted @ September 03, 2005 08:48 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
Chief
What kind of right thinking person would ever in their right mind come to the conclusion that they want to be President?
From the very first day that you announce your intention to seek the office of President, you put you life through the worst kind of humiliating proctological exam by the press who while acting as the worlds “opposition research” division starts to examine your entire life history without the slightest respect for your privacy or for the privacy of anyone you might have so much as stood next to you on the elevator. Your whole life history, every person you ever dated, every little thing you might have said throughout your entire life is examined and analyzed by your political enemies. Newspapers assign reporters and allocate thousands of man hours to track down your 5th grade teacher to see if your alleged statement that “girls have cooties” is really true and thus show what an incredible misogynistic pig you really are. (Oh, how could you!)
Then you have to go raise money from other people who want you to be their friend. You make endless tiresome speeches that are created with precision and great care and repeated over and over only to be cut into bite sized pieces that will fit nicely in the evening news. You hate the taste of rubber chicken; the whole sad spectacle just embarrasses you.
Then you have to go knock off the other political hacks that got to the show before you, the ones that feel that: ” they are due” for the job of President because they “served as the undersecretary of food additives during the great red dye #6 controversy”. The tricky part is that after you run them off the political road, you have to go back and make them your friend, or even worse, your running mate.
Then you get to run for office. Wow! What fun that is. The Secret Service invades your house; your kids get their lives disrupted and god help you if they are teenagers. And just to make sure that shes the “right kind of woman” the press then examines your wife and her life, all the while failing to recognize that her life has been brought to a stand still because of your new career choice. To you, she’s your wife, your girlfriend, the best part of you and the center of your life. To the press, shes “Open Game”.
As you run for office, everything you say as well as the way you say it is put under the microscope. You cant have a bad day, you cant be cranky, you cant slap the crap out of some moron reporter, you have to sit there and take it, smile back politely and hope like hell you don’t mistakenly misspell a word forget to zip your fly or “forget to shake”, or come out of the bathroom with toilet tissue streaming behind the heel of your shoe.
If you act human, you are a boob; if you don’t, you’re a stiff. It’s a fine line. You walk it with all the confidence of a Wallenda with a hangover.
To top it all off, your campaign staff is made up people that are equal parts paid mercenary, true believer, rank amateur and some of them are even outright paid agents for the other side. Out of that soup sandwich of humanity, you have to make a team that will help you get elected. This is a challenge as the average campaign worker can’t type, can’t talk and usually can’t bathe.
Now you go from town to town first by bus and if things go well, by plane. The Press that follows in herd fashion capturing every moment and creating their own “reality distortion field” which envelops you and your campaign and it serves as a lens by which everyone views you as a person. You no longer control your image, people who hate you do.
Then it happens. Disaster occurs and you get elected.
What you’ve won is a change to repay those political debts you rang up during your campaign. Those campaign workers put those long hours in not just because they believed in you, it was also so they could get a great job to improve their resumes, now they come to you expecting to be rewarded for their service in the snows of Iowa, when they stood and fought while others left.
Only there’s too many of them for the number of jobs you can help with. Sure enough, someone loses and has to go home empty handed. You’re not even President yet and you’ve already disappointed someone.
Then there’s the heavy hitters; the guys who funded your campaign and helped get things moving when it was just an idea one day “way back when”. They want cabinet jobs; if not for themselves, for a sympathetic surrogate. You cant tell them no, but you cant tell them yes. How do you tell them maybe without making them angry? How do you give them what they want without losing control over the resource? But you now must also consider the members of your party in the Senate. They too will want what they can get from you. People think that because you are in the same party that they will work with you but the truth is they will make your life hell. They say things like “help me get that bridge/factory/base in my state or ill sink your candidate on his the first day in committee”. You wonder if your friends work like this, how will your enemies treat you? The answer is that your enemies treat you the same your friends; its just that your enemies stab you in the back with more honesty and feeling than your friends.
Then you get about 90 days from your inaugural of relative peace. Unfortunately, its not peace, it’s a time where the press circles you like wolves do around a flock of sheep, all smiles and quick light steps while waiting for just the right moment to rip out your throat.
And rip they shall, at every turn. Every single day.
Now that you are President, you awaken every day to the sight of protests outside your home. Every time you shake a hand, you check to see if the hand has a gun in it. Before you were President you could get in your truck and go to the hardware store. Now, you are lucky if you get to watch TV for an hour by yourself. Every family event becomes a chance for some person desperate for headlines to crash the party, and yet you come across as the big mean man because you had someone arrested for their rude behavior by crashing your kids party. Every vacation becomes a chance to make it sound as if you are slacking off. As if the President of the United States doesn’t deserve a day off considering that you work every single day, every day of your administration. You are never “off duty”, you are never on vacation; you never get away from the job. You and the job are one in the same.
The first part of your day is the hardest. You awaken to a briefing by the national security adviser who proceeds to tell you how many ways the world tried to kill you and the millions of people you are now responsible for while we all slept. You see, this is why every president leaves office with white hair, no matter how good they looked when they come into office; they always leave as a wisp of the man they were when they went into office. We don’t know what they hear in these briefings, but my guess is, that the information they receive is pretty staggering.
Day after day, you awake to the news that we once again, dodged a bullet. But one day the bullet finds a home and you as President find yourself at the front of a Nation at war. You send men to their deaths. You make decisions you will go over again and again for the rest of your life. Did you do the right thing? Should you have waited, did you wait too long? Did you get the right people for the job? What do you say to the families who didn’t come back? You are haunted both by success and failure.
Every moment of every day, a man follows you everywhere with a small case. That case contains the codes for launching nuclear weapons. You have at your command the most destructive power ever known to man. It follows you everywhere but it also haunts you. You cant afford the luxury of second guessing yourself but you do anyway. You wonder what you will do, and what the circumstances might be to cause you to use that power. You wonder if the day will ever come, and you pray every day that it doesn’t, and at the start of every day, you find out if today will be the day.
You send our troops to feed people in other countries, only to see them killed and dragged through the streets by lawless warlords for their efforts. And yet the world calls you a terrorist.
In addition to the joy of discovering just how many people want to kill you and attack your country, you also have to deal with just surviving nature. Tornadoes, Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Flood, Drought. They all “acts of God” and yet somehow they are all your fault. You can’t stop any of them, but you should have done something just the same.
They say that you didn’t move fast enough, you didn’t anticipate, you cut funding you should have known, you should have come sooner, you should have stayed away, you didn’t shake the right hand, you should have rebuilt faster, you shouldn’t rebuild at all. You should raise taxes; you should have cut taxes. You don’t have the right people on your team. You let those people die.
You let people die? The last one gets you the most.
When you see a disaster, all you see is people in need. What your political enemies see is one more chance to make you into a political piñata. Nu matter how hard they whack, you still have to get up and do the job and you have do it flawlessly. You want to snap, you want to call in sick, but you cant. You suck it up, you do the best you can, you shake hands with people you would just as soon kick the crap out of and you help people you’d rather have shot.
Credit? You say want credit for the good that you did? Oh you get credit, just as soon as you are dead. Then you’re a big hero and a statesman but as long as you are close to power, you are considered a threat to civilization.
This is a Democracy and you are just the President. Just one man responsible for one branch of the government, and even in that part of it, you have to share and compromise. You can propose a budget, but you cant approve it, you can sign treaties but the Senate must approve. You can appoint, but again the Senate controls just how far you can go.
So what do you do? Of course, you come back for more and run for office again. Another four years of people you hate hitting you with political sticks in hopes that candy and dollars will fly out of your entrails.
Why would any thinking person take that job? Why would anyone with any sense at all spend millions of dollars on the last job they will ever have? Why would anyone even think of taking a job where they are a target for every whackjob assassin in the world?
Can you be on the job every day for 4 years? 24 hours a day? Never get sick; never get away from the job. Can you use the best that your upbringing and training and life experience has given you to make the correct decisions of life and death for millions of people?
Oh, and can you make it look easy? Can you make perfect decisions that are fault free every day? I hope so, because that’s what we expect of the President. Zero tolerance for any display of human failure. Zero tolerance for your inability to see into the future. Zero tolerance for any failure of any member of your administration.
Zero tolerance. That’s what it means to be President of a Democracy. What’s a Democracy? It’s 350 million chiefs and no Indians.
And why would you want to be President? So you can get your name in the history books? So you can get your face on a piece of shiny metal currency? So you can get an office building, an airport or an Aircraft Carrier named after you someday? So your name can go down in pop culture as a synonym for “Hitler”?
Seriously, what drives anyone to give up everything just to be the President?
Everyone in a Democracy wants a combination Santa Claus and Superman for President. What we get instead is a mortal human being with frailty, failings, fears and anxieties, a mortal human being with the weight of the world on his shoulders who lives with half his country giving prayer for his good health and the other half tying a noose.
We don’t elect the President to their term in office; we sentence them.
Posted @ September 03, 2005 12:59 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (7)
Anarchy begins at home
From Reuters:
“Federal disaster declarations covered 90,000 square miles (234,000 square kilometers) along the U.S. Gulf Coast, an area roughly the size of Britain. As many as 400,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.”
This is not a Hurricane. This is an atomic bomb. This was worse than 9/11, its worse than the Tsunami.
This is Katrina.
Katrina did not just wipe out New Orleans, it also did Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula. This one storm has effected anarea roughly the size of Great Britain. These cities are not tourist havens, populated with taffy making retirees who can leave town at a moments notice, these are working towns, working ports where people made things and went about their life outside of the bright spotlight of the worlds attention.
We all are affected by what these port cities do, and now that they are gone, we are all going to be effected by their loss. We are all going to be covered by the debris spread by Katrina.
I can deal with the horror of it. I can get used to the word “refugee”, but I cannot sit back and abide the blame game that is going on. Everyone on the left is working double overtime to make Katrina into George W. Bush’s’ Frankenstein monster. To hear some on the left, it’s as if George himself created the Hurricane. And the people on the right are also working overtime blaming the Mayor and Governor of Louisiana. And for gods sake if I hear one more “Christian” blame the gays and Mardi Gras, I’m going to come apart at the seams.
It’s all crap, and it needs to stop.
Does it occur to those of you that are blaming the mayor and the New Orleans police department that the very people you are castigating for a “lack of leadership” also lost everything in the disaster? The people everyone counted on to have the plans and to be on the job afterwards were also wiped out in this disaster. This is not a simple high water mark on some rich folks barrier island vacation homes; this is the utter destruction of 4 major cities.
I don’t remember any of us walking around last week saying how much we knew about how this was going to play out.
We all sit miles away from the disaster ready to pass judgment, but can any of us have any idea what it must be like to be a low paid civil servant reporting to work, knowing that your house is underwater and your family is missing and there’s 100,000 angry, wet and hungry people staring at you for answers?
Should the Mayor of New Orleans have declared martial law and had a forced evacuation 24 hours prior to the landing of the hurricane? Maybe, but would you have supported him? Was 24 hours enough to move 400,000 people? What about 72? Were there any sort of facilities, any people to carry off such a plan? Could you even implement that today even with all the clear need in full light of day? Were not talking about a few office blocks, this is city after city that needed to be fully evacuated, and where exactly would you have evacuated to? It’s just as likely that Houston was going to be hit, as was New Orleans. We have no idea how to do this sort of mass migration, even today. We are now evacuating to Houston in full daylight outside of the storm and it still takes time to move people en masse that far away. And now, Houston is full – that’s how big this is.
Some of you say “ we should bring in the Military” and we are. But lets remember, the military isn’t just sitting at the airport in their cockpits ready to deploy at a moments notice, they have to get ready, it takes time to move men and material anywhere in the world. Now for comparison purposes, if it takes 4 days to organize a military group, trained and driven to take orders on command to go somewhere, how long will it take to move civilians who do not follow orders and cant even be compelled to leave in the face of a category 5 hurricane. How long does it take when to make matters even worse, the locals start shooting at the people trying to help?
And for those of you complaining about the lack of relief workers, remember, relief workers will not go into any area where their security is at risk, and the locals have decided that shooting at the people trying to help is good sport.
Stop thinking of this as a Hurricane and start thinking of this as an atomic bombing and you can start to see what happened here was just beyond anyone local to have the ability to deal with it. The hurricane didn’t just destroy the buildings; it destroyed the authority and the infrastructure of local government as well.
The lesson here is that in true large scale disasters, you can’t count on the locals to even be there to take the lead. The assumption has to be that the locals are gone and cannot take part in their own rescue. That is not an assumption we make today in our planning, all disaster planning says the locals “drive the show”. Katrina showed the weakness in that idea. Katrina changed the paradigm of disasters in our memory. I always wondered what would take the place of 9/11 in my nightmares, and now I know what it is.
I have my issues with the way this was handled, but for now I’m keeping it to my self. None of this half assed Monday morning quarterbacking is going to do a damn thing to get those people out of there but the corrosive effect it will have on our government serves no one. There must be authority and if the left or the right continues on this game of political gamesmanship, the effect is will end in anarchy for all of us.
It must stop, and it must stop now.
We all learned from this disaster, and none of us is going to get out of it without some of it on us. We’ve all learned a valuable lesson that modern man doesn’t like to admit very often but its true nonetheless - there are things in the world that you don’t have control over that are much, much bigger than you, and on occasion they can and often do reach out and bite your ass. Modern man is pretty comfortable in his certainty and has lots of nice toys, like satellites and telecommunications but nature is much bigger than man and in the end, nature will always win.
We are not out of this yet. Things are possibly going to get worse.
Much, Much worse
When you have large numbers of people in that kind of water, Cholera is not far from the future. We Western people have no idea what a cholera epidemic is like, but I fear we are about to learn. Its not funny, its death inside of a day for thousands of people, the young and the infirmed will go even faster. Based on the current conditions, we are probably within 24 hours of a cholera outbreak in this area. Ladies and gentleman, if that occurs and God help us all if it does, you will look back on these last 4 days as “when things weren’t quite so bad”.
Stop looking for someone to blame and start looking for a way to help, were full up on critics at the moment we could use a few more “backs” in the process of getting these people out.
This is not anyone’s fault; this is simply beyond comprehension. We might have talked about it in academic exercises, but no one in the United States has ever seen anything like this. It doesn’t help anyone get out of there to waste your time on that fruitless exercise of trying to blame anyone for this.
We have no time to waste on such fecklessness. People are dying and more are going to die soon if we don’t get those people out of there quickly.
Posted @ September 01, 2005 11:21 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1)
One Year Ago....
The left was busy saying that people that serve in the National Guard were just pampered rich boys trying to get out of doing their duty.
How times have changed.
I'll be back in a few.
Posted @ September 01, 2005 10:22 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2)
Captain America Calling
Quote:
"The sympathy was muted in some corners by a sense that the United States reaped what it sowed, since the country is seen as the main contributor to global warming.
Joern Ehlers, a spokesman for World Wildlife Fund Germany, said global warming had increased the intensity of hurricanes. "The Americans have a big impact on the greenhouse effect," Ehlers said."
Its my guess that Mr. Ehlers also feels that women who wear short skirts are just “asking for it” and that O.J.'s wife Nicole Simpson "had it coming".
Since India and China also producing greenhouse gasses (at a rate far greater than the US by the way),when disaster strikes their shores will Europeans simply sit and opine that, “they had it coming”?
Perhaps if the United States turns its industrial power into something like that of most European countries and goes into the creation of chocolates, fancy pastries and Lego blocks, it too can produce no pollution so we too can also look down our noses at disasters around the world and say “oh its ok, they had it coming”. What a luxury it must be to be European, where being from a group of countries with a negative population growth and no industrial power with 12 per cent unemployed gives you the moral superiority to sit on the sidelines while other people die and say “too bad for you but you had it coming”.
Remember that this is the same group of people that called Americans “stingy” over the Indonesia tsunami disaster, for which Europeans also didn’t twitch a muscle to help and yes, once again blamed America for casing in the first place. I think I see a trend here.
There are literally thousands of times that Americans could have said to the world “You had it coming" but we don’t do that, we Americans say “how can we help you”, even when its for people we don’t like. Rest assured, we wont get support from Europe for this disaster, even though there are a million of our citizens that are homeless and displaced and a once great city is no more, because Europe likes to dispense its aid to people who prequalify under their scale of "those who deserve our help but arent too far away and have skin color and speech patterns remarkably similar to our own". I'm still trying to get a list of countries outside of Europe that Europeans have helped, but it seems that Europeans only help when the mood strikes them, and that seems a mighty rare event indeed something akin to the orbital period of the Hale-Bopp comet. Maybe "helping others" actually creates greenhouse gasses and thus not helping is a good thing? sure, in the minds of some Europeans, thats probably true.
The burden of being an American is that unlike the rest of the world, we live with the fact that there is no America for us to run away to or seek help from if things go bad. In this disaster we again see that for America, the only people in the world that we can count on are the ones represented by the stars in the flag. The rest of the world couldnt give a fig for America, unless of course, the rest of the world finds itself in need our help. Now that we need their help, where are they? Where is the UN? Where is the French Aircraft Carrier Charles De Gaulle? Wheres that great force of peacekeeping called the Canadian Armed Forces?
Oh, I forgot, "we had it coming". Yeah, I heard that same thing back when Mohammed Atta killed 3,000 people in New York. Funny how we always "had it coming" when things go bad, but we "dont deserve it" when things go good.
Just keep in mind that we don’t have to help the rest of the world. We don’t have to be the benevolent force in the world that we are. We’ve turned our back on the world before, and in the blink of an eye, we can do it again. Just remember that the last time we turned our back on the world, 52 million people died in a war that spanned the globe. Our dead are buried in every European country, people from America having lost their lives bringing Europe the freedom it now enjoys. The men buried in those cemetaries could have stayed home. The men who flew in the Berlin Blockade and died could have refused to fly. There were more than a few people who could have said to the Germans "you deserve it"; instead they flew, dropped food and sometimes they even died in the process. Why? Why did we do that?
Because thats who we are.
Goodbye Europe, its been good to know you, and thanks once again for reminding me why I'm eternally grateful that my family was chased out of that grand continent. From what I’ve seen this week from the French press, I think the best part of France is now under 20 feet of water on the banks of the Lower Mississippi.
We will rebuild. We will go on. And yeah, when Europe is in need some day, we will come and help.
Because that’s who we are.
Posted @ September 01, 2005 01:29 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
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