Rusted Sky

New Orleans / 2005 Hurricane Katrina

Quite literally...

Aaron over at Free Will has a good summation of the problems going on in NOLA. He finishes, before touching on the evacuation of NOLA and Mayor Nagin with this...

"Hindsight is 20/20, and we've never done this before. It's an absolutely unreasonable standard to see every obstacle as some kind of damning "failure". Everyone who gets out of that city alive is a victory. We can learn from this and try to plan better in the future, but it will happen again to another city somewhere in the world, someday and the situation will be just as helpless and desperate then, too. This, folks, is as good as it's going to get. It's an absolutely horrible situation, but that's why it's called a "disaster". It sucks."

The wierd thing is, if anyone had proposed putting mechanisms in place BEFORE something like this happened, they'd likely have been roundly criticized for wasting government money on preparations for an unlikely scenario. For instance, let's look at setting a tent city up for 50,000 people. Find the land, appropriate the land, put in the necessary sanitation and water infrastructure and security structure - and you'd have people screaming at the top of their lungs that this was actually an internment camp that the administration was getting ready to pull a Dachau.

NOLA is a disaster area. You can only do so much preplanning for any particular disaster. Plans for levee breaks? Sure. Plans for hurricanes? Sure. Plans for power outages and pumping station failures? Sure. Plans for breakdowns of civil and civic structures? Sure. Plans for evacuating the city if need be? Sure.

But as a city, you only have a finite amount of resources that you can allocate to preparations for any one disaster. Cover them all, and your resources get stretched mighty thin.

He also posted:

Years ago, when I was in school, I was invited to participate in a think-tank type of workshop at SIU on a similar scenario for Southern Illinois if the New Madrid were to blow and turn this joint into a sandbox. You know what we found? That we were screwed. There was no way to plan ourselves out of the worst-case-scenario. That, as it turned out, was the point of the exercise: To impress upon us that there was no Batman, there was no Superman, and that if the earthquake hit, with hundreds of thousands of people spread out across dozens of devastated towns, it would take days, at a bare minimum, before anyone could reach us, and that we had to take this threat seriously and convey to others the importance of preparing for the disaster, having a bugout kit, being at least moderately prepared for a survival situation. Same rule applies here:

New Orleans is not going to be "saved". It's not possible. It's Atlantis. This is a disaster on an unprecedented scale, the kind of comic-book catastrophe like a major shift in the New Madrid, the La Palma tsunami, the Yellowstone caldera, or a significant meteor shattering over a major city and creating a firestorm that no society has the resources to really "shield" a city from and that no society has the technology to magically "fix" in the aftermath. For all intents and purposes, this may as well have been a nuclear meltdown. Nature is history's greatest monster, and when it decides to go on a killing spree, even the most powerful superpower in human history is simply incapable of fighting back. Nothing within the scope of our imagination can make New Orleans a habitable place right now.

I expect it to get a LOT worse.

J.

In today's bleat he posts:

If anything put me off reading the internets today, it was the two themes of perfidy and nuance. The former being the Bush-is-evil sites that can’t wait for the President to show up at a tent city to do a photo-op in the breadline so they can drag out plastic turkey jokes, and the latter being sites that obsessed over the President’s remarks today. I heard them. I was very underwhelmed. I suppose a bitten lip or a moist eye would have helped to part the waters of Canal St. like the Red Sea, but I don’t expect moving rhetoric from him anymore. I think the White House has a tin ear these days – I heard another speech the other day about how They Hate Our Freedoms, and true though it may be it’s as fresh as a Pink Floyd tune on a classic FM station. I know; impressions are everything, appearances count. But as I get older I care less about the political value of a particular address and more about what actually happens, and I would prefer the 1950s sci-fi movie Authority Figure as the societal default, i.e., someone who bluntly states the facts and says “that’s all, boys” before leaving through a pebbled-glass door to do something, leaving the reporters shouting questions. Sometimes you just tire of spin, the endless carping, the incessant pissy miserabilism, to quote the Pet Shop Boys. It’s as if there’s a superior breed of humanity, uncorrupt and all-knowing, waiting in the wings to solve all our problems if only we’d let them have the reins of power and speak the honeyed words. Listen to them and human failings will be erased, nature turned aside like a man who enters a French restaurant in tennis shoes.

Wait a week, and let’s see what's accomplished by the humans we have, and then we can start throwing javelins.

Well, shit. I won't be wading in that cesspool again soon. One post actually advocated the Red Cross. But most put much more more emphasis on hatred of Bush than anything else. (Like I should really have expected better from Kos?)

And Neal Boortz has an interesting little clip up. Seems a number of his readers have been sending in clips from DU, and he's got two cute ones up.

Here are just a few postings Boortz listeners found on democraticunderground.com. Listen, my friends, to the voices of American Democrats:

BTW, does anyone else think it's suspicious that the levees didn't break until AFTER the hurricane passed and it was clear the storm surge was not going to swamp the city. It would probably only take a couple of sticks of dynamite to get those things flowing. Seems like someone wanted Bush to have another pile of debris to climb on top of.

and...

I didn't think of deliberate destruction of the levee, but that's sure possible. No one was there to see. I HAVE been wondering why Bush looks so perky and happy - like he's very PLEASED about the hurricane. It seems like more than his usual sociopathic cluenessness. Is there something about the oil infrastructure, the neighborhoods that were destroyed (surely not strongholds of GOP support), the probable availability of cheap land now that so much has been destroyed. Or perhaps just that the cost of oil has soared so high? He's a sociopath who is incapable of empathy, yes, but doesn't he seem really, really tickled to you? Like he's gotten something he thought he might not be able to pull off?

There you have it. George Bush may have ordered the flood wall in New Orleans destroyed for some political advantage.

J.

From The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose I've pulled the following image and link. (I put a copy of the image up on my server space, to not snag much of their bandwidth.)

There's a lot of other folks to donate to, of course, but I'm doing a bleg for the Red Cross... and Methodist Relief. 100% of donations go to their work. And if you're looking for a more tangible way to help them, you can get the specs for the kits they distribute and make up your own. (This would be a good Scouting project, I think.)

Want to help? Find a way. Give blood, give time, give money. Want to bitch? Go hang out at Kos and get out of the way.

Technorati tags flood aid and Hurricane Katrina

J.

Katrina Phishing Scams Begin

I had hoped... but no. We saw it in the looting, we're hearing it about the thugs robbing folks who stayed and shooting at military helicopters bringing relief supplies. Yet I believe that for every bad story published, there's a dozen more unnoticed good deeds. Perhaps I'm stupidly optimistic, but if I didn't believe that I'd truely despair....

J.

Maybe there's something to be said for just stacking dirt like crazy to keep water out of a city...

Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute - New York Times

The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.

Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms.

...

"A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising," he said last night. "I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come."

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

Doesn't much matter now what caused it. They're going to try sealing off the canal, and when it's stabilzed then plugging the hole.

Good luck to them!

J.

A woman posts because she's ashamed of herself.

Democratic Underground - I did not stop to help a * supporter today.

I would have done the same thing except I would have pulled over and asked her if she supported Bush. If she said yeah, then I would have said, "Then I'm only going to offer your baby a ride, not you." And if she refused, I'd tell her that she could call her little hero in the White House for help then. Then I'd speed off, leaving her behind.

Difference being I wouldn't feel any remorse. I'm beyond that. They are hateful people with hateful beliefs, and it would probably be best if the child was taken away and raised by someone else and she was left to fend for herself. In my eyes, Bush and those who still support him are not even Human. They do not deserve sympathy, pity or any other emotion devoted to humans. They aren't Human because they are incapable of feeling sympathy or pity for others.

I hate to say it (I will anyway, of course) but I wonder if the same sort of hatred was put forth by the more intolerant Germans over the Jews in the late 1930s? Look at it - the poster's managed to completely dehumanize someone who's broken down by the side of the road - simply because she had a "W" sticker on her car. (Not the original person who wrote - she was feeling pretty bad about what she did.) You get the feeling that poster would shove this person into a gas chamber, perhaps? Talk about not feeling sympathy or pity.

The thing I dislike about DU is that it panders to the absolute worst in the Democratic party. The most hate-filled, the most illiberal, the least tolerant crowd - and they self-reinforce their feelings like crazy.

Reading through the thread, what's sad is she's figured out for herself what she did wasn't what she was inside... but quite a few folks are telling her she's wrong to feel that way.

i would probably have done the same thing. anything W is soo contaminated!
prior to sonny boy's sitting in the oval office, i'd always give money at the supermarket--money which was earmarked for the salvation army to help feed the poor.

after sonny boy stole the chair at the oval office, a cashier once asked me if i wanted to donate money to help feed the poor... i told him, tell sonny boy to give feed the poor with my tax dollars which he just gave to the rich and unneedy!

and angry too is how i feel about this collecting money from the private sector to help the stranded in NO. why isn't my tax dollar being used for that!?

I generally don't post but this is so striking I was moved to.

Given what's going on in this country today it's inconceivable that you would do this.

How exactly does leaving a woman and small child stranded demonstrate your superiority over anyone?

People are more than their politics. History is replete with tragic examples from the left and right when society forgets that. When we start denying a person in need their humanity because of a bumper sticker we are going down a very ugly road.

Even if you could not 'lower' yourself to actually help them personally, why not call 911 on your cell?

Who benefited from this non-interaction? Not that woman and her child and certainly not you. I hope your example is a cautionary tale for others.

J.

One of the things about being in the military for any length of time is you become aware of just how very important the supply system is. It provides your food, your clothing, ammo, tanks, spare parts, medicine to the hospitals - EVERYTHING goes through Supply. (Please note I'm simplifying for clarity here. Figure if the military needs it, Supply gets it. In the civilian world, retail serves the same function.)

Hand in hand with Supply comes Logistics. A simple definition of Logistics is "getting what you need, where you need it, when you need it, in a condition you can use it". (On the civilian side, you've got FedEx, UPS, DHL, the post office, and a heck of a lot of warehousing and shipping companies - all of which get stuff from the seller to the buyer on every level.)

And it all works pretty darn well. You can get what you need, when you need it. Logistics rules! Um, except when you actually can't get the stuff where it's needed, when it's needed.

What you see in New Orleans is a logistics nightmare. The major methods of transportation were unavailable. Roads? Washed out or flooded. Rail? Same. Air? Airports flooded - no way to land. Helicopters? Can't carry much. Ships? Docks nowhere near where the supplies were needed, and local transportation was unavailable. You literally can't get the stuff there in the quantities needed.

Folks, imagine you're the logistics manager on a disaster response team. You've just been alerted to be ready to respond to a disaster like New Orleans - where basically everything around the city was scrubbed away. Here are some of the questions you'll be asking yourself.

1. How much is going to be needed, and what?

2. Where are the supplies to be used currently warehoused?

3. Where are the supplies going to be needed most?

4. How are you going to get the supplies where they're needed?

5. Where are the disaster response people (most of whom have Real Lives until a disaster hits) going to be coming from, and how long will it take them to get there, organize, and establish a staging area to receive the supplies for initial stockpiling?

6. What transportation systems are operational into the affected area, and how much can they carry per day? (You don't know the conditions yet - you've yet to find out just how screwed you are.)

7. Where are there facilities to store and distribute the supplies INSIDE the disaster area, and how close are they to the areas of greatest need?

8. Do you have vehicles to transport the supplies into the affected area?

9. Are airports in the area operational? Is airlift feasible? (A standard Air Force C-130 can haul about as much as a railway box car - call it 20 tons. But if you don't have anyplace to land it, or airdrop the supplies, you're kind of out of luck. You can get the stuff there fast, but it won't do you much good.)

10. Are the highways passible? How long will it take to clear the highways into the disaster area?

11. Are railways passible? Are there unloading areas that would be suitable and feasible?

(Note - ships are right out. They can transport a heck of a lot at one time, but it takes too long to get the supplies loaded, and if there's no place to unload and distribute stuff from the ships then all you've got is a floating warehouse that might as well be on the other side of the world.)

Then you start your planning - aware that whatever you plan may have to change in moments if conditions change. The questions I've got above are just off the top of my head - figure there's a good fifty or more OTHER problems they had to solve for each question above. And they ALL have to be solved before the first truckload gets to it's destination.

Now, New Orleans is an example of everything going wrong. It'll be a screaming nightmare for logistics planners for decades. You've got a mayor that didn't issue an evac order until prodded hard, who basically didn't follow his own disaster prep plans, a city that had the routes into it destroyed along with a lot of the surrounding area, and was flooded to boot - and it took ONLY four days to get organized, get the supplies procured, delivered and staged, get vehicles and get the roads opened and get large quantities of aid in.

Four days - to move a mountain. There were some damn sharp people working their asses off to make that happen.

It's easy to bitch about how bad and slow the response was. If you aren't familiar with what the logistic response entailed, you can go "If Domino's can get me a pizza in a half hour, why couldn't FEMA get stuff to NO faster?" If you think you could have done better, I strongly urge you to get a degree in logistics management and go to work for FEMA. If you can figure out a way to cut the response time to a worst-case scenario ... something like NO ... by even 10%, you'd be a hero. Unsung, unnoticed except by a handful of your peers, but a hero still.

J.

Google Maps - New Orleans, LA has before and after shots.

J.

Chrenkoff has an interesting post up. One thing that the media isn't tell ing you is that Mississippi got hit WORSE than Louisiana did. Of course, New Orleans gets the attention, primarily because it's so bad and it's got name recognition.

Go. Read.

J.

Like an entire STATE when it comes to disaster relief. To look at the coverage, the ONLY place affected by Katrina was New Orleans. I know, I know, the media just wants to 'help' by pointing out the problems. And now they're tossing the race card on top, trying to ... what? Try to deflect blame from the NOLA mayor and the failed city disaster prep folks? Yet if the media won't acknowledge and detail the scope of the actual problem, how can they effectively suggest remedies?

Captain's Quarters

The media has painted a distorted picture of the disaster almost from the beginning, and certainly after the levees broke on Lake Pontchartrain. The scope of 9/11 was a few city blocks in New York and Washington DC, and if one relied on the Exempt Media coverage for Katrina, the impression it gives is that the scope for Katrina's impact falls mainly on an entire city.

However, vast stretches of Mississippi have been devastated by Katrina, with towns like Biloxi and Gulfport almost completely destroyed. The area of destruction requiring attention comprises the same square mileage as England. Getting resources to all affected points within that zone simultaneously would take an unprecedented, Herculean effort that no one could have anticipated prior to landfall on Monday morning.

As I've detailed before, what we've done in response to Katrina is nothing less than an organizational and logistics miracle. That there's folks who not only won't realize that but go out of their way to denigrate it is pretty darn pathetic.

Update: One of the commetors posts:

"Now then, if the MSM were to look at the outlying areaas....outlying areas the size of Great Britain...they might see a shattered population and infrastructure where neighbor is helping neighbor, where aid is vitally needed, but people are making do until it arrives, where there is no wholesale despair, no wholesale lawlessness, and a place where people picking up the few pieces of their lives that remain, holding on to their Faith, and try to push on through to the next day and the next day...where volunteerism is far more important than politics. These are the things that are deeply held by Mr. Bush.

If I were a cynic, I might actually believe that the MSM's coverage of the New Orleans debacle, and the intense coverage of Democratic officials bemoaning the lack of Fedex overnight instant aid from Bush was an intentional ploy to undermine the present Administration. But they wouldn't do that, would they?

J.

And an F for motivation.

The Australian: Sean Penn's rescue bid sinks [September 05, 2005]

EFFORTS by Hollywood actor Sean Penn to aid New Orleans victims stranded by Hurricane Katrina foundered badly overnight, when the boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

The actor, known for his political activism, was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.

When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street. (Points off for failure to check gear before using it. If you take care of your gear, your gear will take care of you.)

Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."

With the boat loaded with members of Penn's entourage, including a personal photographer, one bystander taunted the actor: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?"

Honestly I don't think he's short on cash. He could have been a great spokesman for fund raising in Hollywood - start things off with a million and ask the celebrities out there to chip in the same. I know the Red Cross would have been thrilled to see that.

But I guess a photo op while rescuing little kids is more important.

J.

Or, I agree with him. Doesn't matter - he makes the same points I've tried to, without being, um, delicate about it.

As a former Air Force logistics officer, let me clarify the following for the idiots in the Left Wing Media:

1. Things can get destroyed far more swiftly than they can get fixed.

2. The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

J.

American Daughter Media Center - Katrina's Timeline

Katrina's Timeline - from the time it turns towards NOLA, until Thursday night.

It's not pretty, folks. It's all down there, from the forecasts to the newscasts. There was warning. There was time. There just wasn't the will.

People died because the mayor dithered. Not Bush. People died because the mayor tried to wing it, ignoring his disaster plan. Why? Who knows. We do know there was a disaster plan, we do know that school buses were part of it. We know the buses went unused while Nagin called fro Greyhound to send down 500 of them - while he had well over 500 buses to hand sitting unused.

A disaster plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on if it isn't followed. Might as well fold it into paper airplanes and throw them at the hurricane for all the good it'll do.

Update: Damn. This was published on July 25th. Found over at Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: New Orleans's Hurricane Evacuation "Plan"

In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind; Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult By Bruce Nolan, Staff writer, New Orleans Times-Picayne, July 24, 2005:
City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation.

Well, that'd explain why the buses weren't used...

J.

But I followed a link and found the following...

Cold Fury ? Blog Archive ? Tom Ridge’s Duct Tape

You know, it never occurred to any of our leftist friends in the blogosphere or the MSM, that maybe Secretary Ridge went to the trouble of preparing a readiness web site with emergency kit lists, in the public interest. It never occurred to them that it could be anything other than partisan fear mongering.

Well, shame on them. Do you think anybody might have taken Ridge’s pronouncements and urging to be prepared, had his every comment not been met with mockery, allegations of political dirty tricks, and the relentless cry of “duct tape duct tape”?

Matter of fact, here’s some icing on the cake. Here’s a spectacularly ill-informed lefty mocking out DHS for not taking seriously it’s duty to tell people to prepare for disasters. You’re shitting me, right? When a cabinet secretary puts out a 12 page list of simple things to do to prep for disasters, and you spend two years mocking it as a fear mongering, politically motivated directive to buy duct tape, it seems to me you have few grounds to accuse others of having not taken the threats seriously.

You remember the duct tape - but after having laughed at how stupid an idea that was (never mind that duct tape's pretty damn useful, and plastic sheeting can be turned into rain gear, shelter, and water collection and storage devices) did you bother to go to Ready.Gov and look at their suggestions?

Of course not. I didn't either. By happenstance after 9/11 my wife looked at me and asked "Shouldn't we get some fresh water?" (We had two 5 gallon bottles for the disaster that was supposed to befall us on 1/1/2001 or was that 1/1/2000? I forget....) So we did. As far as the rest of the stuff went, we've got camping gear and propane stoves, tents, and about two weeks supply of food. We're not downwind of any urban areas, so the chem, bio and radiological stuff we pretty much ignored. Ready.Gov concentrates on the possibilities of terrorist attack and the destruction and disruption of that sort of attack, of course.

And I'll admit it's a hell of a lot easier to make fun of the folks telling you to prepare for the worst than actually think ahead and PREPARE. But just because it's funny doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.

And that doesn't mean it's all sorts of hard to get stuff. Just take a look.

It's easy to laugh. And none of this would prevent a disaster, of course. But it isn't designed to. It's supposed to buy time.

J.

Magic Marker Strategy - New York Times

I've got the article below the fold in case you don't have a NYTimes login - you can access it if you want. It does bring up some good questions. And the Magic Markers? Cold, but effective - undoubtedly offensive to some. If it comes to a choice between 'sensitive' and ineffective, and 'cold' and effective, I'd say let's go the cold and effective route.

J.

Winds of Change.NET: US Navy Ships and Hurricane Katrina

A hell of a lot. Go take a look.

J.

Right Wing Nut House ? KATRINA: RESPONSE TIMELINE: Politics served up with a smile… And a stilletto.

The following is a timeline that details the response of local, state, and federal authorities to the disaster in New Orleans.

I have not included any information for other areas hit by the storm.
I used one source almost exclusively – the online editions of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (hereinafter referred to as TP). I daresay the paper will receive a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. (9/6): More sources have been used as they have become available.

I wonder if he's considered a career as a historian?

J.

Spotted this, and I'll admit I'm not too surprised.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

From all corners of this country, hundreds of would-be rescuers are wending their way to the beleaguered Gulf Coast in buses, vans and trailers. But government red tape has hampered many who ache to help Katrina's victims.

Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines. (ed. -- note that the details provided are pretty sparse here. Trying to find more...)

An outraged Broussard said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the agency needs to bring in all its "force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives."

Unfortunately, it looks like FEMA hasn't learned there's a time to dump the red tape, and LEAVE IT ALONE. But on the other hand, having a lot of folks flooding into a disaster area in an uncontrolled/uncoordinated manner isn't a good thing either. It'd be entirely possible for a lot of the aid folks to end up in trouble on their own. So, though this doesn't look too good I'd like to get more details before any judgement is passed.

J.

Posted on my company's web site...

While it is understandable that many of us want to go to the aid of those in need and help with the relief efforts, officials have requested that volunteers stay out of the affected area. Conditions are still unsafe in many locations. Additionally, there is no infrastructure to support volunteers at this point. Roads are out, shelter is scarce, and food/water is unavailable for large groups of volunteers. For those who want to help, the best guidance at this point is to stay out of the area and give money to support coordinated relief efforts already underway. At the point officials identify ways they can use our help, we'll let you know.

J.

A nurse with a little bit of attitude - Hurricane Katrina update #3

Thank God for Nurses.

J.

Gilligan died...

Bob Denver's Gilligan Fan Club

He was 70.

Godspeed... and thank you for all the laughs over the years...

J.

A very good sendup of the media. Caution - definitely adult language which is NSFW - unless you've got headphones or a real liberal work environment.

NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: HURRICANE REPORT

J.

Of pretty much anything that's 'sensational' in the media.

Salon.com News | A city in ruins

The Army presence is heavy in the Convention Center. Troop transports arrive with busloads of people. They're processed quickly, searched, loaded onto giant helicopters and flown to New Orleans Airport, where buses, planes and trains are now moving in high gear to evacuate the city.

Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

"What?"

"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."

"Are you serious?" I ask. He says he is.

The doctor has been here for six days, volunteering for the state.

I know a lot of you somewhat dislike Bush. (And NO is slightly damp at this point...grin) And I realize you're somewhat more politically oriented than I am - but after having watched administrations since Nixon come in with great promises of problem-solving and finding most of them not paying any real attention to actually solving the problems they used to get I'm getting to the point I'm grateful when ANY politician even TRIES to solve problems.
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If someone tries, and fails - would you slam them worse than if they didn't try at all? If all you have to judge success or failure by is media reports, considering that the reporter and cameraman would bypass twenty people who say that things are going well for one person who's hysterical - is it a fair assessment of the success or failure of an operation? Or do you believe that they're offering a balanced view of things?
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I'm a skeptic because I've learned that the media's not interested in presenting what's actually happening. They'll go for the sensational stories. They'll go for the ratings. Tragedy and hysteria gets viewers, viewers=ratings, ratings=revenue. Revenue drives the media industry.
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Now, take a look at the media coverage of the disaster. If you were to judge by the disaster coverage as far as CNN/MSNBC/FOX/ABC are concerned - NOLA's been completely destroyed and it's an ongoing disasterous clusterf*k, and a few trees blew over elsewhere. And the roads and rails were apparently clear right up to two miles outside NO - so what took the relief so damn long?
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My point being, in case it isn't clear, that the entire AREA down there, an area about the size of Great Britain, has been leveled. New Orleans had the reporters, so all we get is what the reporters THERE see fit to report, as they see fit to report it - and their first concern is making sure the viewer comes BACK. You don't get that with good news.
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I'll give props to ZDF for getting out into the sticks and actually trying to cover the REST of the story. (Probably it was because they couldn't shove their way into the media feeding frenzy surrounding New Orleans, he said, cynically..) I really wish that the media would devote 1/5th of their time showing the things that are going RIGHT. I realize it would take away from the impressions they're trying to generate ("How bad is it? Tune in at 11!") but it'd be a welcome relief from the "It's all totally messed up" mantra they're pushing.
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Just my two cents, take it as you will...
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J.

Geraldo making multiple takes of an old lady evacuating. Yeah, that's a big damn help in getting things taken care of, isn't it?

J.

Mommy Sheehan

Heaven knows we could all use a laugh at this point.

J.

There's life in NOLA yet. Lot of rebuilding to do - but she still shines...

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Some lights are on in the city of New Orleans as shown in this night photo made late Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005. Power is slowly being restored to the area still besieged by flood water. New Orleans officials said Tuesday that they would begin to force people to leave their homes. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Doesn't look like it was the Evil Rove Racist Death Machine after all. Instead...

American Red Cross

Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

The Red Cross shares the nation’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.

The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access.

J.

Blockquote>Right Mom - Part IV: OUTCOME AND SUMMARY

We have failed the people of New Orleans. Specifically, we, as a society, have failed the poor underclass of New Orleans.

They have done exactly what they were supposed to do, as taught to them for the past 40-50 years.

They have waited in the proper line that they were supposed to, depending on their life’s stage (birth/death/desire to move, etc.).

They have been where they were supposed to do be. Doing what they were supposed to do.

Do you realize that most of these people have never been beyond 20-30 miles from their point of birth? They didn’t travel all over, not even around the state or region. They stayed almost exactly where they grew up. Why should they have gone further away when everything was taken care of for them?

But, by putting them into a system that punishes “free thinkers” and industriousness, we robbed them of the ability to take care of themselves and their family.

We, as a society, conditioned them to not take initiative to save themselves and their family. Interesting premise there. If you tell someone that they're helpless, that everyone else will take care of them, should it be a surprise that when they have to take care of themselves it's not exactly something they're good at?

J.

Everything looks like a nail.

Alenda Lux

I'm not sure what it is with Washington that they believe there isn't a problem that they can't throw a lawyer at to solve. This was proven with the 9-11 Commission when, in an attempt to find out what went wrong with our intelligence organizations, we were given a panel of lawyers with absolutely no background in either intelligence or organizational theory. Indeed, the results show the disconnect that is bound to occur when you put people in charge of running organizations dealing with issues in which they have no relevant experience.

Michael Brown has also proven this at FEMA, and I think Michael Chertoff has as well at Homeland Security, though not as blatantly as Brown. But I don't think, even with the best leadership, that FEMA could pull off an adequate recovery effort without some semblance of local leadership, which was sorely lacking in New Orleans. Nevertheless, we need to fix FEMA.

And for God's sake, limit lawyer involvement. They're looking for who's at fault - NOT how best to create a working system. Or, as Tom Paxton put it:

One Million Lawyers
Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure.
Like locusts and flash floods and flu.
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to.
If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease.
If it isn't disease, then it's war.
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please
How the world's gonna take any more?

(CHORUS:)

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

The world shook with dread of Atilla the Hun
As he conquered with fire and steel,
And Genghis and Kubla and all of the Kahns
Ground a groaning world under the heel.
Disaster, disaster, so what else is new?
We've suffered the worst and then some.
So I'm sorry to tell you, my suffering friends,
Of the terrible scourge still to come.

(CHORUS)

(BREAK:)

Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy
As far as the eye can see.
Lawyers around every bend in the road,
Laywers in every tree,
Lawyers in restaurants, lawyers in clubs,
Lawyers behind every door,
Behind windows and potted plants, shade trees and shrubs,
Lawyers on pogo sticks, lawyers in politics!

(CHORUS)

In spring there's tornadoes and rampaging floods,
In summer it's heat stroke and draught.
There's Ivy League football to ruin the fall,
It's a terrible scourge, without doubt.
There are blizzards to batter the shivering plain.
There are dust storms that strike, but far worse
Is the threat of disaster to shrivel the brain,
It's the threat of implacable curse.

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?
How much can a poor nation stand?

J.

I've been watching for this for a while. It's about a year or two overdue. Apparently there were some licensing disputes and manufacturing problems... but now it's on the market.

Gomo Gear - Virtual Keyboardl

I-Tech Dynamic's virtual keyboard and Bluetooth virtual keyboard began shipping on Monday August 29 and is currently in stock

The Virtual Keyboard is an innovative input device for PDAs, PCs, Laptops and Smart Phones that projects a full-sized virtual keyboard on to any flat surface for rapid text-entry and navigation. Compatible with O2 XDA I, O2 XDA II, Orange SPV e200, Palm Tungsten T3, QTek 8080 Smartphone, Palm m505, HP2210, HP3417, HP rx3715 (Use HP 5550 Driver), HP 3800/3900 Series (Use HP 5455 Driver), HP4150, HP5455, HP5550, Laptops / Desktops running Win XP/2000/NT/98 via serial connector, or optional USB adapter. Includes a leather case, connection cables for compatible devices, power adapter, quick start guide & drivers.

You know, I just thought of the perfect place for these.

Schools.

I spent three years in the DeKalb County school system. What a bored teen-ager can do to a mechanical keyboard is darn near a crime. I have no count of how many keys I had to rearrange, how many springs I had to replace, how many keyboards weren't salvageable.

These might be a bit expensive, but they're cheaper than a service call...

Hmmm. Stock's cheap, too, for IBZT.PK...

Hmmm.

Yeah, it's speculative. But on the other hand, a hundred bucks worth of stock might be worth something down the road....

J.

Finally, analysis instead of woulda, coulda, shoulda frothing.

Political Issues Snarled Plans for Troop Aid - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana's governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush's senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor.

For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort.

Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control. The debate was triggered as officials began to realize that Hurricane Katrina exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior homeland security officials, the hurricane showed the failure of their plan to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated and unable to act quickly until reinforcements arrive on the scene.

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Governor Blanco would have resisted surrendering control of the military relief mission as Bush Administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established. While troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

"I need everything you have got," Governor Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Tuesday, when New Orleans flooded. In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. "Nobody told me that I had to request that. I thought that I had requested everything they had," she said. "We were living in a war zone by then."

The governor illustrated her stance when, overnight Friday, she rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana Guard.

Also at issue was whether active-duty troops could respond faster and in larger numbers than National Guard soldiers.

By last Wednesday, Pentagon officials said even the 82nd Airborne, which has a brigade on standby to move out within 18 hours - could not arrive any faster than 7,000 National Guard troops, which are specially trained and equipped for civilian law enforcement duties. In the end, the flow of thousands of National Guard soldiers, especially military police, was accelerated from other states.

There's also an interesting proposal for a sort of Responder Corps which could backfill in case of an 'ultra-catastrophe', which kills all the first responders for miles around. (Well, in that case, there's not likely to be much left to worry about as far as people to rescue... sorry, just cynical. But for lesser catastrophies, I think it's not a bad idea.)

Read the whole thing. Like I said, I think it's a good analysis - without the heavy-duty screaming and fingerpointing that seems prevalent in other accounts....

J.

It's been ahell of a week.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

Authorities said Friday that their first systematic sweep of the city found far fewer bodies than expected, suggesting that Hurricane Katrina's death toll may not be the catastrophic 10,000 feared.

"I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief.

Atom Chip Corporation has some interesting products. Unless, of course, they're vaporware.

Wouldn't you want a 1TB IDE drive? How about a 2TB drive?

Maybe a wireless super notebook with the following specs?

Specification:1TB QuantumOptical Non-Volatile RAM /6.8GHz CPU, AtomChip® Quantum® II processor /2TB Quantum Storage[ATA-IDE] /12.1" WXGA 1280x800,6:10 TFT Glare Type LCD display with 1.3 Mega pixel camera /802.11a/802.11b/802.11g WLAN /Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100/2200BG/2915ABG network connection /WiFi,Bluetoth,GPRS-with Bluetoth antena /USB2.0x3 /Optical Drive: DVD Super Multi /LAN port, SVGA-out port, PCMCIA slot, 1394A port /Modem port /Interface Ports Front Side:4 in 1 Card reader[SDIO,SD,MS Pro,MS] /BOSE Headphone Music System with noise Cancelling /Buit-in two stereo speakers /Microphone /Application Launch Key:E-mail,Internet, Capture,WLAN /Pointer: Synaptics touchpad with 4 way scrolling button /Windows XP-Professional and Linux/ Voice Command /Li-Ion battery /AC Adapter/ Dimensions: 320(W)x242(D)x22(H)mm/28mm(front/back /Weight around 1900g.

I'm impressed. Unless, of course, it's all vaporware. (Like we haven't seen a lot of THAT over the years...)

J.

The density of information of this memory is 128MB/square millimeter having the thickness of the recording media(array) of 20microns. 3.2GB of non-volatile RAM are contained in one cubic millimeter. Also, this new Quantum–Optical technology allows to build up to 256GB in one package / or module up to 35TB.

It almost looks like some are advocating ANOTHER layer of bureacracy in our disaster response systems.

Yeah, like that'll help.

It's been my experience that at some point you've got to stop adding layer upon layer upon layer of oversight, and actually pay attention to the folks on the ground doing the work. Adding extra layers of people who are nominally in control and able to push them every which way won't do much except cause a great deal of confusion when it comes to figuring out who should be able to decide what - and who should be RESPONSIBLE for what.

A long time ago the military figured out that trying to run things by committee wasn't a good idea. You don't see comittees at the squadron, wing, or group levels - you have squadron commanders, wing commanders, and group commanders. Each level gets its orders from the next higher level, which allocates resources according to what's available and appropriate. (Which is why you'll rarely see the 90th Avionics Maintenance Squadron being used for engine repair at the 90th Logistics Group motor pool, or the 33rd Water Purification Squadron being used to fix electric lines.) You won't see (except in EXTREMELY unusual circumstances) a shortcutting of the chain of command. That just isn't effective, and leads to confusion.

Now the critics of the response say things should have been different, that the procedures and command structures should have been bypassed. Well, maybe yes and maybe no. The structures are there for a reason - you don't just arbitrarily toss them to one side because you think the people in the positions of command are incompetent. But then you get into a stickier situation - what criteria do you use to decide the competency? Media reports? Timeline checklists? Senatorial dictates?

We need to examine the problem carefully, and make sure there's a real, measurable deficiency AND identify some real ways to fix it before we start slicing off chunks from the systems we have now. Otherwise, if a storm like Katrina hits while we're in the middle of a gut&replace, we'll be SOL.

J.

Captain's Quarters

The designers of the Flight 93 memorial at the impact site unveiled their effort yesterday.

If you're going for symbolism, how about a 300 foot white spire inclined about 30 degreees off vertical? Or maybe a big circle with a large X bisecting it?

Sorry - this just doesn't cut it for me. Guess I'll never be much of an artist, but I can sure tell what looks right and what doesn't quite look appropriate.

J.

The 12v halogen under-cabinet lighting we've got in the kitchen's getting a bit fragile. The fixtures, due to heat and UV, are getting brittle, and we've been having lenses and bezels fall off. But we like the underlight, it's dimmable and makes the kitchen very pleasant at night - also it was one of the things that sold us on the kitchen, which sold us on the house.

Oddly enough, they don't make the 12v style fixtures any more. I'd gotten some as spares - but we've been talking about putting in tile backsplashes above the counters and now would probably be best to swap the 12v systems for 120v systems. So last weekend I started on the easiest of the jobs, and promptly ran into snags that required the dishwasher be moved out and a lot of holes cut in the cabinet walls. Whoever installed the 12V systems didn't think they'd ever need replacing, apparently. They've put junction blocks behind drywall, ran cords through holes just barely large enough to accept the cord (much less any replacement ones) and overall it's been a lot more fun to swap out 8 lights so far than I would have thought. (And yes, I did try the trick of using string to snake the wires through - but the folks who did this (as I said) had minimal clearances on all turns and holes.) I wish I could use the 12v wiring for 120v, but we're pretty attached to this house and would hate to have it burn down. I just don't trust the wiring to take the extra voltage.So I've been cramming myself into cabinets trying to get wire pulled through the walls, swearing at the folks who installed this stuff, and leaving sufficient slack and large enough access holes so the NEXT swapout will just be annoying, not miserable.

Gotten 8 swapped out so far... only 10 remaining. But those will be the fun ones. 6 terminate in two transformers, which are at the back of a 6" wide cookie sheet cabinet by the side of the stove. I'll have to pull the stove out for those, I think. Well, next weekend will be soon enough to worry about them...

J.

9/11

Planes hitting.
People Jumping.

The beginning of the end.

J.

What causes some folks to prefer wild-ass theories to facts?

With 9/11, there's a whole raft of theories to float your boat on. It was really caused by the Jews. It was really caused by Bush to justify a war against Iraq. There weren't any people on the planes in the first place. The Pentagon was hit by a truck bomb. It was hit by a missile fired from a Navy ship. The firemen in the WTC were really planting explosives. Flight 93 was really brought down by an F-16. The list goes on and on and on. You can get DVDs with all the popular theories, each more fantastic than the next, each requiring the laws of physics and metallurgy and materials science be ignored or (at best) bent to the point of fracture.

Why do folks believe this shit? Why are they willing to accept as gospel theories that not only can't be proven, but sound bizzare?

My father is/was a long-time listener to Art Bell's show, and believed that the Comet Hale-Bopp was indeed being shadowed by a UFO. Well, we know how that turned out. You want to talk about weird stuff - that's the place...

What is it that tickles the fancy so that someone normally rational and very reality-based (I'm not using this in the political sense - It's my thinking that folks who say that their politics are 'reality-based' inhabit a very different reality than the one I'm using - but rather the psychological sense in that they can tell right from wrong, figure out proper conclusions from sufficient facts and are willing to modify their opinions based on verifiable information...) to the point where they latch onto an idea and aren't willing to examine it rationally?

My father was into the paranormal/UFO stuff for a very long time. Even as late as Hale-Bopp he was thinking we were continually being visited. We haven't talked about it for a while now, but I think the Heaven's Gate suicides really made him reconsider the whole thing. But after that, he started paying a lot of attention to his junk mail. (This wasn't an improvement, BTW. Send off 10 bucks to a snail-mail scammer, and you'll be on a dozen more mailing lists in a month.) And his gullibiity's been sorely used.

In the case of something like 9/11, there's plenty of ridiculous claims, and plenty of sites debunking them. My favorite article on the whole thing was at Popular Mechanics, in their article Debunking the 9/11 Myths

Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

In a way, it's a lot like troubleshooting a problem with a computer. You don't go in with a pre-selected result in mind - you look at the problems, form a theory about the problem and how to fix it, and then test the theory (and the fix) to see if it does the job. If it does, you're in good shape. If not, you get to start over. Occam's razor doesn't necessarily apply when dealing with Windows problems - but in the real world it's surprising how often it's useful.

In the case of 9/11, which is the simpler theory? That 20 hijackers comandeered 4 planes? Or there was a massive conspiracy with remote controlled aircraft/missiles, and the planes never existed in the first place? (We won't even go into the large numbers of folks who'd be needed for a massive conspiracy like this, and how they could (a) disappear without even being missed, or (b) keep the secret so well that all there is to go on are unsubstantiated fantasies of an omnipotent government deliberately murdering it's own people to provoke a war.

Don't know about you - but I'll take the simpler explanation where it fits with the known facts...

J.

Memorable Quotes from Serenity (2005)

I'll admit I had a hard time keeping from laughing at them.

Apparently, this is the first of three movies. This might spark a revival of decent quality, funny, innovative SF to the theaters. Or at least funny... admittedly decent and innovative SF's in pretty short supply in the Hollywood warehouses these days..

J.

Looks like, according to Jane Galt. A lot of this is simply common sense - as in "If you do these things you'll be better off".

Asymmetrical Information: The poor really are different

The poor really are different
The post below is complicated, for some conservatives, by the fact that if the poor acted like the middle class, they wouldn't have problems like no credit or savings.
If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:
1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children
4) Work full time
These are things that 99% of middle class people take as due course. In addition, there's some pretty good evidence that many people who are poor have personality problems that substantially contribute to their poverty.

For example, people with a GED do not experience significant earnings improvement over people who have not graduated from high school. In this credential-mad world, this simply should not be. And it is true even though people with a GED are apparently substantially more intelligent than people without a GED.

How can this be? Even if the GED were totally worthless, available evidence seems to indicate that intelligence carries a premium in the labour market.

The best explanation seems to be that people with a GED (as a group) are smart people with poor impulse control. What intelligence giveth, a tendency to make bad decisions taketh away.

In other words, middle class culture is such that bad long-term decision making also has painful short-term consequences. This does not, obviously, stop many middle class people from becoming addicted to drugs, flagrantly screwing up at work, having children they can't take care of, and so forth. But on the margin, it prevents a lot of people from taking steps that might lead to bankruptcy and deprivation. We like to think that it's just us being the intrinsically worthy humans that we are, but honestly, how many of my nice middle class readers had the courage to drop out of high school and steal cars for a living?

I'm not really kidding. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was eighteen, if my peer group had taken up swallowing razor blades I would have been happily killed myself trying to set a world record. And if they had thought school was for losers and the cool thing to do was to hang out all day listening to music and running dime bags for the local narcotics emporium, I would have been right there with them. Lucky for me, my peer group thought that the most important thing in the entire world was to get an ivy league diploma, so I went to Penn and ended up shilling for drug companies on my blog.

Maybe you were different. But think back to the times--and you know there were times--when trying to win the approval of your peers convinced you to do things that were stupid, wrong, or both. Remember what it felt like to be sixteen and skinny and maybe not as charming and self confident as others around you, and ask yourself if you'd really be able to withstand their derision in order to go to college--especially if you didn't even know anyone who'd ever been to college, or have any but the haziest idea of what one might do when one got out. Try to imagine deciding to get a BA when doing so means cutting yourself off from the only world you know and launching yourself into a scary new place where everyone's wealthier, better educated, and more assured than you are.

Or take a minute right now and try to imagine how your friends would react if you announced that you'd decided to quit work, have a baby, and go on welfare. They'd make you feel like an outsider, wouldn't they? And isn't that at least part of the reason that you don't step outside of any of the behavioural boundaries that the middle class has set for itself?

Bad peer groups, like good ones, create their own equilibrium. Doing things that prevent you from attaining material success outside the group can become an important sign off loyalty to the group, which of course just makes it harder to break out of a group, even if it is destined for prison and/or poverty. I think it is fine, even necessary, to recognize that these groups have value systems which make it very difficult for individual members to get a foothold on the economic ladder. But I think conservatives need to be a lot more humble about how easily they would break out of such groups if that is where they had happened to be born.

And I didn't bring much to the marriage at all, aside from a near minimum-wage job, a lot of junk, and a willingness to listen to her ideas - because I could tell my own on money handling didn't work that well.

Sometimes, marrying someone with the qualities you lack is the best way to go...

J.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster sees all : CafePress.com

Now, the little guy goes to a Methodist school. Wonder what the response would be if I put a Pastafarianism sticker on my back window?

Don't forget to check out www.venganza.org - who knows? It just MIGHT be true!

J.

There's a lot we don't know about the heavens yet - though we're getting a decent handle on things there could still be the occasional golden BB just waiting to strike...

Free Will: Daily libertarian conservative news and commentary!

Mrs. O'Leary's Comet

Speaking of disasters, here's a theory about the Chicago Fire that I've never heard before:

First sighted in 1772, the comet was named for Wilhelm von Biela, who calculated its orbit around the sun in 1826 and discovered that it returned at regular intervals of 6.6 years. During the comet's 1846 pass, astronomers noted that it had broken into two large pieces. The position