I have been mulling over three recent posts by Rana at Shakespeare's Sister, by Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch and by C.N. Todd at Freiheit and Wissen. All took as their theme the (by now old) claim that the Democratic Party has ceased to be representative of a significantly large portion of the American Left and moreover, no longer have a "vision worth voting for". That the Democrats have become, by their own intent, Republican-Lite.
This is a familiar story, and one that has been replayed several times - most notably in 2000 and again in 2004. Recently, though, the argument has received new impetus from events. Lindorff puts it best:
Iraq War going to hell, with U.S casualties approaching 2000 dead and 25,000 wounded, at a cost of $200 billion and rising. Poverty in America on the rise in a period of supposed economic growth. Republican Party a cesspool of corruption. White House being investigated for outing undercover CIA agent. Abortion rights under serious threat, with the Supreme Court being packed with right-wing judges. New Orleans, just drying out from disastrous flood, being raped by White House-linked corporate pirates and scam artists. Budget deficit topping half trillion dollars. Gas and heating oil crisis looming, while oil companies reap record profits. Bush poll numbers hit historic low as even some Republicans abandon him as an incompetent. Oh yeah-all this and global warming and the end of human life as we know it.
Man, if you were an opposition politician looking to make a run for Congress next years, or for president in 2008, this would be a magical time. But where's the opposition?
The media tell us that the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 are Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and maybe John Kerry. What all these people have in common is their deafening silence on all the issues of importance facing Americans and America.
So why are these "opposition" politicians silent, and why are they not so much an opposition as a shadow - administration, not able to stand against the tide of administration policies even with such momentous events as a spur? Well, E.J.Dionne had a pretty good take recently in the Washington Post:
the party's problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.
You get the idea? If the Democrats want to be elected by the current electorate, then they must move towards a centrist-right politics. They also have placed themselves in the enviable position of needing corporate funds to swell campaign coffers, through inadequately tending the hard left of their funds base. Where the Left sees their traditional party moving to the right for reasons of electability, they are becoming more and more intransigent about funding that party. This is one of the major complaints behind the recent split in the labor movement. The new Change to Win Coalition, made up of seven of the largest unions, recently split from the AFL-CIO partly because of disagreements over being cannon-fodder for the Democratic Party without any concommitant policy support from that party.
However, and its a big however, the current electorate is not the same as the potential electorate. By American standards the turnout for the 2004 Presidential election was high - yet by the standards of other Western democracies it was woefully low. Chris Bowers at MyDD recently researched who didn't turn out to vote and came up with some interesting findings. In 2004, for example, the national median income was $35,100 p.a. yet the median income of the electorate was $55,300 - a difference of 57.5%.
In other words, it is mostly the poorest segment of society who don't vote. Consider that although Bush gained 52% of the electorate, he only got 34% of all the possible votes. That means there is a huge potential constituency out there, between 25% and 30% of the potential electorate, who simply don't vote - and they don't vote simply because neither Republicans nor Republican-Lites have policies that address their concerns!
Lets start by getting rid of the notion that social policies are what sway the poorest voters. Let me assure you, because I am poor working class and live alongside poor working class people (in Texas yet!), we don't care about keeping down gays or blacks or about christian fundementalist power because the gays and blacks and christians are all poor together and we see the common theme first. We don't care about the right to bear arms because although we can't afford guns the gangbangers keep shooting us with them when we get accidentally caught in the crossfire. We aren't anti-abortion because we know stuff happens, especially when you can't afford prescriptions. That few bucks for condoms might be the entire family food budget for today...or even this week! We don't care about immigration because the illegal immigrants are just doing what we would do to find a better life for our kids.
What we want is education as a right for our kids for as far as the kid is capable of going (not just till High School), some help to find work that isnt minimum wage (travel, education, childcare) or some help with the bills if our work isminimum wage (or below - which is still legal if you are waitstaff for instance), a livable income if we really truly cannot work, medical care where the first question is "what's wrong?" not "how will you pay?", a break on crippling interest and bankruptcy cycles because you worry about how to pay after the kid is cured, that kind of thing.
On a wider canvas, when we get a breath from worrying about bills, we are concerned about the alarmingly rising rate of poverty which is consigning more and more Americans to the life we live - and we don't wish it on them any more than we would wish it on us. We care that workers in other countries can take our jobs primarily because both Democrats and Republicans have pushed globalized free-trade without pushing its balance - globalized worker's rights and benefits. We care intensely that our hard earned pay is funding graft for corporations who buy and sell whole administrations and their oppositions via the lobbyist system.
Sounds pretty progressive, eh? Those are the goals of the real workers, the manual workers and of the poverty stricken. And as long as neither Dems nor Repubs have that agenda then that 30% will not vote.
But I have an answer.
Its a safe bet that neither Greens, nor any kind of American Labor Party nor any socialist group nor Naderites will mount enough of a challenge in the near future to break the dual-party system, even with the massive potential electorate they have. Partly this is because of demonization as "tree-huggers" or "commies" that both major parties gleefully indulge in.
Democrats, the ones with the most vested interest, are the most aggressive about this. Arguments include "Americans would never vote for a socialist" and "splitting the left's vote would hand perpetual power to the Republicans". Both are utter nonsense. In the first place, Bernie Sanders never seems to have any problem getting elected and is a shoo-in for Senator in 2006. Many Green and Labor candidates would have excellent chances of election in areas where the Democrats have no chance and Republicans rule - mostly because of the successful demonization of the Democrats as "latte-sipping elitists". As Chris Bowers figures above show - far from splitting the left vote a strong party advocating for the working class would actually increase the size of the electorate by engaging all those voters who currently have no-one to vote for. They could pick up that unsung 25% and leave room for the Democrats to move to the moderate-right to their hearts content!
Moreover, why would the Dems have to run against any further Left party? They don't put up a candidate against Sanders because they know he is very popular and he will be part of their caucus in the House. Its called coalition government. If the Dems stood back and let real Lefties run in certain areas where they could really capture the vote then together the Dems and the Left could beat the Republicans...and for sure the Dems ain't going to do it on their own. So, to turn the argument around - do the Dems want to be a The Only Alternative so much that they are willing to sacrifice power to the Repubs for it? It seems some are.
A strong third party would also mean that both established parties would have to be on their merits not on their laurels - constantly looking over their shoulders to see what the new kid is saying. That could hardly be bad for the nation.
But if no leftwing party at present is strong enough, then what? Remember the old Polish "Solidarity" movement? A coalition of the progressive left that effected real change against an entrenched system. that should be the model. Sure, there would be fueds and differences over concepts - but the small groupings on the real Left are far more used to using a system of consensus and laisse-faire historically in any case. They are used to a system where prominent leaders are delegates as well as representatives. Any union body, any Green party local branch, is used to the give-and-take an American Solidarity would require. It could be done.
Moreover, it makes good political sense - the Republicans know this because they modelled their current heirachy on those very leftwing organistations that would make up such a coalition. As Bill Bradley wrote back in March for the New York Times:
To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.
You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid. The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.
At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.
Whereas
To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.
Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.
There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan.
Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe.
In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace "Republican lite" platforms - never realizing that in doing so they're allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate.
A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.
So where to start? Well, what the Greens and the Unions and the Laborites should do is get together for talks about establishing exactly that kind of grassroots up structure for a coalition movement on the Left - a true American Solidarity. I will even suggest a slogan; "we won't be Left unheard". There are even some bigger names who are currently in the Democratic camp who could be enticed, perhaps, into becoming the faces of the American Solidarity movement. I am thinking of people like bernie Sanders, John Conyers and even Chuck Pennaccio of PA. They should be approached with offers of support and funding. The Democratic Party should be approached as a possible ally, with a level of co-operation in caucus negotiated and a deal to not run against each other where demographics say it would be counter-productive.
And Lefty bloggers should be doing their bit too - we could even be pathfinders in the grassroots movement. Bloggers on the non-latte-sipping Left are pretty good at getting along even where we differ on details. We can form one or more of the think-tanks that are so needed by this new movement. We can also act as fundraisers and talent-spotters, targeting independent (i.e. non Dem or Republican) candidates for everything from local dog-catcher on up. Remember, that massive constituency is out there and I know from experience they would love to have someone to vote for.
What do you think? Is it an idea worth talking about? Is it an idea worth actually doing something about instead of just endlessly talking? Let me know.
Update
This Gallup poll couldn't be more timely or more pertinent.
Dean's World reads it thusly:
Gallup reports that nobody likes either major political party.
Okay, actually, they report that both parties have their highest unfavorability numbers in history. Does that mean a breakout of a third party as a major force in the next election? For 2006, not a chance. For 2008: only if things remain this way, and if both parties nominate someone seen as an "establishment" candidate.
Time to start organising.
Up-update
Shamanic, guest-blogging at Shakespeare's Sister, is tracking where this conversation is going from here with input from various bloggers. Its worth keeping track of where this goes.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Where's The Republican Outrage?
Is there any person so low that they won't find defenders in the Republican Party? How about Bill Bennett?
The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.
"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller’s question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.
"But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."
He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
And all the Pirate-In-Chief can think to do, even after recent events and the pall of alleged racism thereby, is to get his Press Secretary to tell the world such flagrantly racist remarks are "not appropriate".
There then followed a frantic Bennet ass-covering attempt in which refused to recant but instead claimed:
he was merely extrapolating from the best-selling book "Freakonomics," which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago. "It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies," Bennett said.
So why didn't he say "male babies" or even "poor babies" and instead picked "black babies"? Because he's a freaking racist, that's why!
And its amazing the number of people who are swallowing Bennet's defense, including some on the left who should know better. When a thing waddles like a duck, shits like a duck and squawks like a duck, its probably a duck. In the flow of talk radio Bennett used words in haste and those words gave us all insight into his deepest soul. All demographic points aside, he could have used another example e.g. "poor babies" but instead his true thoughts flew from mind to tongue. He then tried to cover for it by tacking on some hasty words about it being morally reprehensible but the message had already been sent and received.
Bennett showed us that when he thinks about the subject, he thinks about skin color before he thinks about economic status and his defenders are either doing the same thing or are so interested in being "fair" that they have forgotten Al Gore's advice - that such people "use colorblind the way duck hunters use their duck blind, they hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t figure out what they’re up to."
And that's where the Republican outrage is - nowhere. They are all behind the duck blind with Bennett.
The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.
"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller’s question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.
"But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."
He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
And all the Pirate-In-Chief can think to do, even after recent events and the pall of alleged racism thereby, is to get his Press Secretary to tell the world such flagrantly racist remarks are "not appropriate".
There then followed a frantic Bennet ass-covering attempt in which refused to recant but instead claimed:
he was merely extrapolating from the best-selling book "Freakonomics," which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago. "It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies," Bennett said.
So why didn't he say "male babies" or even "poor babies" and instead picked "black babies"? Because he's a freaking racist, that's why!
And its amazing the number of people who are swallowing Bennet's defense, including some on the left who should know better. When a thing waddles like a duck, shits like a duck and squawks like a duck, its probably a duck. In the flow of talk radio Bennett used words in haste and those words gave us all insight into his deepest soul. All demographic points aside, he could have used another example e.g. "poor babies" but instead his true thoughts flew from mind to tongue. He then tried to cover for it by tacking on some hasty words about it being morally reprehensible but the message had already been sent and received.
Bennett showed us that when he thinks about the subject, he thinks about skin color before he thinks about economic status and his defenders are either doing the same thing or are so interested in being "fair" that they have forgotten Al Gore's advice - that such people "use colorblind the way duck hunters use their duck blind, they hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t figure out what they’re up to."
And that's where the Republican outrage is - nowhere. They are all behind the duck blind with Bennett.
More CIA Warrants Issued In Italy
Just in case you had forgotten about this - and for sure the administration would like you to - three more warrants have been issued in the Italian case of the alleged kidnapping and rendition to Egypt of a suspected terrorist by CIA agents.
The Italian government are pissed, since no-one had bothered to inform them about the CIA's plans and it busted a major Italian intelligence operation designed to roll up several terror cells there. Meanwhile in the US there has still been no comment from either CIA or White House on this flagrant trampling on another allied nation's sovereignty nor has there been any call for an investigation to find out whether said trampling had high-level approval.
As a sign of their anger, the Italian government has allowed national newspapers to print the names of those warranted for arrest. They now include 21 CIA agents and a US diplomat. None are believed to still be in Italy and the diplomat is believed transferred to Mexico City.
I guess that's another member of the Coalition of the Naive that Bush can't count on for his next foreign adventure. The UK has already said it isn't interested in more military aggression abroad.
The Italian government are pissed, since no-one had bothered to inform them about the CIA's plans and it busted a major Italian intelligence operation designed to roll up several terror cells there. Meanwhile in the US there has still been no comment from either CIA or White House on this flagrant trampling on another allied nation's sovereignty nor has there been any call for an investigation to find out whether said trampling had high-level approval.
As a sign of their anger, the Italian government has allowed national newspapers to print the names of those warranted for arrest. They now include 21 CIA agents and a US diplomat. None are believed to still be in Italy and the diplomat is believed transferred to Mexico City.
I guess that's another member of the Coalition of the Naive that Bush can't count on for his next foreign adventure. The UK has already said it isn't interested in more military aggression abroad.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
The Pentagon's Porkers Hate The Troops
MSNBC reports that the Pentagon are breaking the law and penalizing troops under fire.
Nearly a year after Congress demanded action, the Pentagon has still failed to figure out a way to reimburse soldiers for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.
Soldiers and their parents are still spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for armor they say the military won’t provide. One U.S. senator said Wednesday he will try again to force the Pentagon to obey the reimbursement law it opposed from the outset and has so far not implemented.
Typical Bush administration tactic - promise the Earth and then wait to see if anyone notices that you haven't delivered even a shovelful of grit.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly stalled on reimbursement. First it was going to be February 25th as required by Congress, then in late April it was going to be done "within 60 days" and now Pentagon spokeswoman Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said the department "is in the final stages of putting a reimbursement program together and it is expected to be operating soon." But defense officials would not discuss the reason for the delay.
The whole lot of them, everyone who is culpable for this delay, should be charged.
Meanwhile, the same incompetents prove themselves the masters at turning government pork into corporate profits for no material result whatsoever. Case in point, the Future Combat Systems program. As DefenseTech notes:
As recently as last year, the program was slated to cost $92 billion. Then, suddenly, that estimate ballooned -- first to $127 billion, and next to $145 billion. Finally, we were told that this gargantuan sum would only pay for transforming a third or less of the Army.
And what would be so different, after all that cash was spent? When the program first got started, the armored vehicles were not only going to be light -- they were going to be electric-powered. And they were going to fire laser weapons. Now, all of that has been dropped, understandably.
But even the more basic changes have seemed near-impossible to pull off. The effort to get all soldiers on a common radio, for example, is facing massive restructuring, after the project's main contractor, Boeing, seems to have flushed $5 billion and three years worth of work down the toilet.
"The government has not seen sufficient evidence of the contractor teams’ understanding of the scale of integration required… to ultimately achieve the program requirements," the Army told Boeing in an April letter. "Nor has the industry team displayed sufficient ability to estimate a cost and schedule baseline and rigorously manage to that baseline."
In other words, the radio project has become slow and bloated. Just like the rest of FCS.
Stick that in your Porkbusters website, Mr. Reynolds. Go on, I dare you!
Cancelling the huge portions of FCS that simply don't work and aren't going to work would save billions, not paltry millions. The US does not need a new battletank at the present time. There are maybe 4 other nations capable of building a comparative vehicle to the current Abrams and they are all allies! It would cost a fraction of the current development budget to up-armor the Abrams with spaced applique such as the Brits have used to render it invulnerable to shoulder-fired missiles and everything except a cataclysmically huge IED. If you want to talk about postponing spending until the aftermath of Katrina and Rita is paid for, then you should be looking here.
related Newshog Posts
The GOP Hates Our Troops
OpTruth Lists Senators Who Hate The Troops
Let's Talk About Armor, Mr. Rumsfield
Nearly a year after Congress demanded action, the Pentagon has still failed to figure out a way to reimburse soldiers for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.
Soldiers and their parents are still spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for armor they say the military won’t provide. One U.S. senator said Wednesday he will try again to force the Pentagon to obey the reimbursement law it opposed from the outset and has so far not implemented.
Typical Bush administration tactic - promise the Earth and then wait to see if anyone notices that you haven't delivered even a shovelful of grit.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly stalled on reimbursement. First it was going to be February 25th as required by Congress, then in late April it was going to be done "within 60 days" and now Pentagon spokeswoman Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said the department "is in the final stages of putting a reimbursement program together and it is expected to be operating soon." But defense officials would not discuss the reason for the delay.
The whole lot of them, everyone who is culpable for this delay, should be charged.
Meanwhile, the same incompetents prove themselves the masters at turning government pork into corporate profits for no material result whatsoever. Case in point, the Future Combat Systems program. As DefenseTech notes:
As recently as last year, the program was slated to cost $92 billion. Then, suddenly, that estimate ballooned -- first to $127 billion, and next to $145 billion. Finally, we were told that this gargantuan sum would only pay for transforming a third or less of the Army.
And what would be so different, after all that cash was spent? When the program first got started, the armored vehicles were not only going to be light -- they were going to be electric-powered. And they were going to fire laser weapons. Now, all of that has been dropped, understandably.
But even the more basic changes have seemed near-impossible to pull off. The effort to get all soldiers on a common radio, for example, is facing massive restructuring, after the project's main contractor, Boeing, seems to have flushed $5 billion and three years worth of work down the toilet.
"The government has not seen sufficient evidence of the contractor teams’ understanding of the scale of integration required… to ultimately achieve the program requirements," the Army told Boeing in an April letter. "Nor has the industry team displayed sufficient ability to estimate a cost and schedule baseline and rigorously manage to that baseline."
In other words, the radio project has become slow and bloated. Just like the rest of FCS.
Stick that in your Porkbusters website, Mr. Reynolds. Go on, I dare you!
Cancelling the huge portions of FCS that simply don't work and aren't going to work would save billions, not paltry millions. The US does not need a new battletank at the present time. There are maybe 4 other nations capable of building a comparative vehicle to the current Abrams and they are all allies! It would cost a fraction of the current development budget to up-armor the Abrams with spaced applique such as the Brits have used to render it invulnerable to shoulder-fired missiles and everything except a cataclysmically huge IED. If you want to talk about postponing spending until the aftermath of Katrina and Rita is paid for, then you should be looking here.
related Newshog Posts
The GOP Hates Our Troops
OpTruth Lists Senators Who Hate The Troops
Let's Talk About Armor, Mr. Rumsfield
Hey, Chicago Tribune!
Hire this woman. Fast. Before someone else does.
Because you will be hiring a web-presence other newspapers would gut themselves for; because she would run the best newspaper-based current affairs and politics blog on the planet; because even for a weekly op-ed she would be incredible and because she is one of the most readable writers on the planet today.
Thank you.
Because you will be hiring a web-presence other newspapers would gut themselves for; because she would run the best newspaper-based current affairs and politics blog on the planet; because even for a weekly op-ed she would be incredible and because she is one of the most readable writers on the planet today.
Thank you.
Nurses Want Universal Healthcare
In military circles its often noted that the Top Gun types get all the new shiny toys and get good pay while the poor bloody infantry can't even get decent body armor while being paid for chit, yet its the ground troops who do all the real work.
So too in the health field.
Buried at the bottom of an article in the US National Library of Healthcare's mag Medeline Plus in which California doctors bemoan the overloaded state of emergency room services, note that doctors won't even get out of bed for less than $3,000 and then propose a solution that means they get even richer - comes the "money shot".
But Vicki Bermudez of the California Nurses Association said
approaches such as the doctors are promoting address only the
symptoms of a much deeper problem.
"It's a real concern the emergency room physicians are raising," she
said. "But it is a piecemeal way of looking at it.
We have to deal with the problem of the uninsured and not pretend
that the real problem is reimbursement for emergency rooms."
Despite its huge political obstacles, Emerson said, the nurses
association favors a national health insurance program that would
cover everyone. That way emergency rooms could return to the job of
treating emergencies, and the uninsured who now go there because
it's their only option when ill instead could go to their own
doctors or clinics for routine care.
Planners would always do well to listen to the poor bloody infantry.
(Hat tip to Kirkrrt)
So too in the health field.
Buried at the bottom of an article in the US National Library of Healthcare's mag Medeline Plus in which California doctors bemoan the overloaded state of emergency room services, note that doctors won't even get out of bed for less than $3,000 and then propose a solution that means they get even richer - comes the "money shot".
But Vicki Bermudez of the California Nurses Association said
approaches such as the doctors are promoting address only the
symptoms of a much deeper problem.
"It's a real concern the emergency room physicians are raising," she
said. "But it is a piecemeal way of looking at it.
We have to deal with the problem of the uninsured and not pretend
that the real problem is reimbursement for emergency rooms."
Despite its huge political obstacles, Emerson said, the nurses
association favors a national health insurance program that would
cover everyone. That way emergency rooms could return to the job of
treating emergencies, and the uninsured who now go there because
it's their only option when ill instead could go to their own
doctors or clinics for routine care.
Planners would always do well to listen to the poor bloody infantry.
(Hat tip to Kirkrrt)
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
UK Says Military action against Iran 'inconceivable'
The Guardian: Jack Straw, foreign secretary, says military action against Iran won't be supported by the UK.
Mr Straw told the BBC's Today programme: "The truth is, as Condoleezza Rice has said, military action in respect of the Iran dossier is not on anybody's agenda.
"All United States presidents always say all options are open. But it is not on the table, it is not on the agenda. I happen to think that it is inconceivable."
Mr Straw told the BBC's Today programme: "The truth is, as Condoleezza Rice has said, military action in respect of the Iran dossier is not on anybody's agenda.
"All United States presidents always say all options are open. But it is not on the table, it is not on the agenda. I happen to think that it is inconceivable."
Blunt And Dreier To Power-Share
House Republicans have announced that Dreier and Roy Blunt of Missouri would share leadership responsibilities in an interim arrangement for the rest of the year, but that Blunt would hold the title of Majority Leader.
Having served on then-Governor George W. Bush’s original ten person exploratory committee and as the liaison between the House and the Bush campaign, Blunt has close ties to the Bush Administration. When Blunt was named Missouri’s Republican of the Year in 2000, President Bush described him as "a leader who knows how to raise his sights and lower his voice."
If the probe into DeLay's misdeeds widens further, Republicans may yet be looking for another Majority Leader. Blunt has always been an intimate of DeLay's, constantly voting in lockstep with the Texan and accepted a donation of $16,019 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. His PAC, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, has received donations totalling $150,000 from ARMPAC in 2000.
Blunt is notorious for his ties to the special interests in Washington. His behavior has proven embarassing to fellow members of the GOP caucus on more than one occasion.
Just days after ascending to the #3 leadership post in the House, Blunt got caught slipping in a special provision to benefit Phillip Morris, a longtime contrbutor to Blunt, and the employer of his then-girlfriend, Abigail Perlman. His wife is now a lobbyist and one of her clients, Altria, gave $270,000 to Blunt-related committees.
Other firms which have each donated $150,000 or more to his committees - SBC, UPS and Burlington Northern - are clients of his lobbyist son, Andrew.
Jim Ellis, also under indictment for his role in the Delay scandal, was also first a director and later a consultant to Blunt's PAC, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund.
More of the same old cronyism and corruption, in other words.
Having served on then-Governor George W. Bush’s original ten person exploratory committee and as the liaison between the House and the Bush campaign, Blunt has close ties to the Bush Administration. When Blunt was named Missouri’s Republican of the Year in 2000, President Bush described him as "a leader who knows how to raise his sights and lower his voice."
If the probe into DeLay's misdeeds widens further, Republicans may yet be looking for another Majority Leader. Blunt has always been an intimate of DeLay's, constantly voting in lockstep with the Texan and accepted a donation of $16,019 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. His PAC, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, has received donations totalling $150,000 from ARMPAC in 2000.
Blunt is notorious for his ties to the special interests in Washington. His behavior has proven embarassing to fellow members of the GOP caucus on more than one occasion.
Just days after ascending to the #3 leadership post in the House, Blunt got caught slipping in a special provision to benefit Phillip Morris, a longtime contrbutor to Blunt, and the employer of his then-girlfriend, Abigail Perlman. His wife is now a lobbyist and one of her clients, Altria, gave $270,000 to Blunt-related committees.
Other firms which have each donated $150,000 or more to his committees - SBC, UPS and Burlington Northern - are clients of his lobbyist son, Andrew.
Jim Ellis, also under indictment for his role in the Delay scandal, was also first a director and later a consultant to Blunt's PAC, the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund.
More of the same old cronyism and corruption, in other words.
DeLay Indicted!
By now you will almost certainly have heard this so I am really just posting for the sake of completeness.
AP puts the whole sorry mess of Republican crooks and croneyism in one report:
DeLay, 58, was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.
DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians.
"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County district attorney today," DeLay said in a statement.
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties, said GOP congressional officials. Some of the duties may go to the GOP whip, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. The Republican rank and file may meet as early as Wednesday night to act on Hastert's recommendation.
Criminal conspiracy is a state felony punishable by six months to two years in a state jail and a fine of up to $10,000. The potential two-year sentence forces DeLay to step down under House Republican rules.
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the president still considers DeLay — a fellow Texan — a friend and an effective leader in Congress.
"Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people," McClellan said. "I think the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work."
The indictment puts the Republicans — who control the White House, Senate and House — on the defensive. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also is fending off question of ethical improprieties. Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into Frist's sale of stock in HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by his family.
Less than a week ago, a former White House official was arrested in the investigation of Jack Abramoff, a high-powered lobbyist and fundraiser.
OOps, no...I apologise...they forgot Rove. There are rumors of an indictment for him soon too.
The new House majority leader will be David Dreier - possibly the first time the U.S. has had a gay majority leader. Simianbrain has all the details - Dreier employs his live-in boyfriend as Chief of Staff for his office at extremely high wages for the position. Because they aren't married, there is no disclosure requirement for the financial arrangement they have worked out.
How long before Bush himself becomes enmired in one of these developing criminal cases?
AP puts the whole sorry mess of Republican crooks and croneyism in one report:
DeLay, 58, was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.
DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians.
"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County district attorney today," DeLay said in a statement.
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties, said GOP congressional officials. Some of the duties may go to the GOP whip, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. The Republican rank and file may meet as early as Wednesday night to act on Hastert's recommendation.
Criminal conspiracy is a state felony punishable by six months to two years in a state jail and a fine of up to $10,000. The potential two-year sentence forces DeLay to step down under House Republican rules.
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the president still considers DeLay — a fellow Texan — a friend and an effective leader in Congress.
"Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people," McClellan said. "I think the president's view is that we need to let the legal process work."
The indictment puts the Republicans — who control the White House, Senate and House — on the defensive. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also is fending off question of ethical improprieties. Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into Frist's sale of stock in HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by his family.
Less than a week ago, a former White House official was arrested in the investigation of Jack Abramoff, a high-powered lobbyist and fundraiser.
OOps, no...I apologise...they forgot Rove. There are rumors of an indictment for him soon too.
The new House majority leader will be David Dreier - possibly the first time the U.S. has had a gay majority leader. Simianbrain has all the details - Dreier employs his live-in boyfriend as Chief of Staff for his office at extremely high wages for the position. Because they aren't married, there is no disclosure requirement for the financial arrangement they have worked out.
How long before Bush himself becomes enmired in one of these developing criminal cases?
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Brownie On CYA Duty
If I were a cynical man I would suggest that the only reason Brownie is being kept around is to say that everything was the fault of the Louisiana locals, thus keeping Dubya from having to investigate himself for any responsibility in the disaster.
And here I am, suggesting exactly that.
Its a measure of how far Bush's star has fallen from grace that even the House Republicans aren't interested in the line of CYA his appointee is handing out.
"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," two days before the storm hit, Brown told the Republican special congressional panel in Washington today.
I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays R-Conn. "That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren't capable of doing that job."
Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas told Brown: "I don't know how you can sleep at night. You lost the battle."
"At the end of the day, I suspect that we'll find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast," said committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va.
Hmmm, maybe they have figured out that axing the Dept. of Homeland Security, possibly the most dysfunctional organ of big government ever seen and de-integrating its various functions back to individual smaller and more efficient departments, would pay for all of Katrina and Rita's aid in about 3 years...i.e. 2008.
Worth thinking about.
And here I am, suggesting exactly that.
Its a measure of how far Bush's star has fallen from grace that even the House Republicans aren't interested in the line of CYA his appointee is handing out.
"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," two days before the storm hit, Brown told the Republican special congressional panel in Washington today.
I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays R-Conn. "That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren't capable of doing that job."
Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas told Brown: "I don't know how you can sleep at night. You lost the battle."
"At the end of the day, I suspect that we'll find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast," said committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va.
Hmmm, maybe they have figured out that axing the Dept. of Homeland Security, possibly the most dysfunctional organ of big government ever seen and de-integrating its various functions back to individual smaller and more efficient departments, would pay for all of Katrina and Rita's aid in about 3 years...i.e. 2008.
Worth thinking about.
The Right, Terror And The Moral High Ground
The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning says that the IRA has completely decommissioned its weapons. Every single member of the Commission, having seen the process with their own eyes, vouches for the statement. So do two churchmen who witnessed the process.
But Ian Paisley doesn't. The provincial petty-Napoleon says:
The more the search-light is put on this, the more we discover there is a cover-up,"
There are all kinds of accusations - that the independent chuchmen who witnessed the decommisioning were IRA plants, that the lists of IRA weapons were tampered with, that weapons were given to "sister organisations" instead of being destroyed. And yet, the list of weaponry actually seen destroyed by General de Chastelain is impressive and accords exactly with Jane's estimates based on UK intelligence papers.
And at this point it is pretty obvious that if Paisley had destroyed every single weapon with his own hands, he still wouldn't be satisfied. However, if he and his party are not satisfied then the peace process in Northern Ireland is at least partially hamstrung. Which of course is what Mr Paisley wants - he and his backers, the Orange Order and the various Loyalist terror groups who are still perpetrating violence and attacks on the police as well as feuding amongst themselves. As long as Northern Ireland is polarised, Paisley has power far beyond his own small, rabidly bigoted, pond. Should peace take a firm hold, he and his extreme-roght sectarianist ilk will be consigned to the trash can of history and good riddance.
So its apt at this point to ask - when will the DUP ask the terrorists it shelters to give up their weapons? Well -
Sammy Duddy, a member of the Ulster Political Research Group - which advises the UDA, said loyalists would not follow the IRA's lead.
"The general has no chance of seeing that achieved. Should he live to be 208, he'll never see it," he said.
"He's living in cloud-cuckoo-land if he thinks the loyalists are going to decommission and do what the IRA's doing.
Which brings up two questions, among many, that I would particularly like answered.
Why is Mr. Paisley continually allowed to believe he has the moral high ground by not being utterly sidelined by the UK and Irish governments?
and
Why does the American Right support these people in the midst of a "War on Terror"?
You tell me.
But Ian Paisley doesn't. The provincial petty-Napoleon says:
The more the search-light is put on this, the more we discover there is a cover-up,"
There are all kinds of accusations - that the independent chuchmen who witnessed the decommisioning were IRA plants, that the lists of IRA weapons were tampered with, that weapons were given to "sister organisations" instead of being destroyed. And yet, the list of weaponry actually seen destroyed by General de Chastelain is impressive and accords exactly with Jane's estimates based on UK intelligence papers.
And at this point it is pretty obvious that if Paisley had destroyed every single weapon with his own hands, he still wouldn't be satisfied. However, if he and his party are not satisfied then the peace process in Northern Ireland is at least partially hamstrung. Which of course is what Mr Paisley wants - he and his backers, the Orange Order and the various Loyalist terror groups who are still perpetrating violence and attacks on the police as well as feuding amongst themselves. As long as Northern Ireland is polarised, Paisley has power far beyond his own small, rabidly bigoted, pond. Should peace take a firm hold, he and his extreme-roght sectarianist ilk will be consigned to the trash can of history and good riddance.
So its apt at this point to ask - when will the DUP ask the terrorists it shelters to give up their weapons? Well -
Sammy Duddy, a member of the Ulster Political Research Group - which advises the UDA, said loyalists would not follow the IRA's lead.
"The general has no chance of seeing that achieved. Should he live to be 208, he'll never see it," he said.
"He's living in cloud-cuckoo-land if he thinks the loyalists are going to decommission and do what the IRA's doing.
Which brings up two questions, among many, that I would particularly like answered.
Why is Mr. Paisley continually allowed to believe he has the moral high ground by not being utterly sidelined by the UK and Irish governments?
and
Why does the American Right support these people in the midst of a "War on Terror"?
You tell me.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Brownie's New Job - FEMA Contractor
Via The Left Coaster comes the news that, far from being fired, Brownie has been hired as a consultant by FEMA.
6:44 p.m.
(CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina.
9:05 p.m.
(CBS) — Later this evening, CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger spoke with a spokesman for FEMA, Russ Knocke, who confirmed that Brown remains on the FEMA payroll. He also said that technically Brown remains at FEMA as a "contractor" and he is "transitioning out of his job." The reason he will remain at FEMA about a month after his resignation, said the spokesman, is that the agency wants to get the "proper download of his experience."
Bush and his cronies simply don't care how obvious they are about their crookedness anymore, do they? The don't even care about their own supporters - the Right was just as vocal in calling for Brownie's head.
And he has been getting paid the whole time! In fact, as a contractor he probably gets paid more!
Words fail...
6:44 p.m.
(CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina.
9:05 p.m.
(CBS) — Later this evening, CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger spoke with a spokesman for FEMA, Russ Knocke, who confirmed that Brown remains on the FEMA payroll. He also said that technically Brown remains at FEMA as a "contractor" and he is "transitioning out of his job." The reason he will remain at FEMA about a month after his resignation, said the spokesman, is that the agency wants to get the "proper download of his experience."
Bush and his cronies simply don't care how obvious they are about their crookedness anymore, do they? The don't even care about their own supporters - the Right was just as vocal in calling for Brownie's head.
And he has been getting paid the whole time! In fact, as a contractor he probably gets paid more!
Words fail...
Osama Breathes Easy As Sheehan Arrested
Its a day for pondering extremes.
On the day that Cindy Sheehan and others have been arrested in Washington.
Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey was killed last year, and several dozen other protesters staged a sit-in on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue after marching along the pedestrian walkway, the Associated Press reported. Police warned them three times that they had to move along before making arrests, the news agency said.
...
Sheehan and some 200 other protesters sat in circles on the sidewalk, apparently courting arrest. Hundreds more people rallied in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue.
(Shakespeare's Sister has more)
While almost simultaneaously the Heretik blog informed us that four other peace protestors, the so-called St. Patrick's Four, have been aquited of the most serious charge levelled against them.
WHAT WE HAVE HERE is best said by attorney Bill Quigley:speaking for Clare Grady:
This is a simple case of government overkill; this is a simple case of the abuse of government power; this is a simple case of the government trying to take a simple case of non-violent protest and make a "federal case" out of it.
The government is calling these four people arrogant and unlawful and dangerous.
These four people could have stayed home and watched shock and awe on tv. They could have said this is somebody else's problem. They had jobs and kids and school and church -- just like the rest of us -- but they were peacemakers.
So why do I mention I am pondering extremes?
Because the President of Pakistan, one of the Bush allies in the "War on Terror", admitted the other day that he has no interest in catching Osama binLaden and isn't even bothering to look for him in the most likely area for him to be!
Asked if Bin Laden would ever be caught, President Musharraf told Time he hoped so.
But he added: "One would prefer that he's captured somewhere outside Pakistan. By some other people."
As to the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man - "We don't know anything at the moment," President Musharraf said.
"The reality is that about a year ago, we had some identification of a rough area where he was, through technical means, but then we lost him. That is how intelligence works."
He said he thought the "safest" place for Bin Laden to hide was on the border with Afghanistan.
"This line we are not including in each other's areas, so therefore you can easily switch sides."
One has to wonder, who is the enemy of freedom here, the peace protestor at the sit-in or the repressive dictator who is openly protecting the world's greatest criminal horror? I mean, come on George!
Is there a single issue, a single point of interest to the American people and the World, where the Bush administration is not terminally screwed up?
On the day that Cindy Sheehan and others have been arrested in Washington.
Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey was killed last year, and several dozen other protesters staged a sit-in on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue after marching along the pedestrian walkway, the Associated Press reported. Police warned them three times that they had to move along before making arrests, the news agency said.
...
Sheehan and some 200 other protesters sat in circles on the sidewalk, apparently courting arrest. Hundreds more people rallied in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue.
(Shakespeare's Sister has more)
While almost simultaneaously the Heretik blog informed us that four other peace protestors, the so-called St. Patrick's Four, have been aquited of the most serious charge levelled against them.
WHAT WE HAVE HERE is best said by attorney Bill Quigley:speaking for Clare Grady:
This is a simple case of government overkill; this is a simple case of the abuse of government power; this is a simple case of the government trying to take a simple case of non-violent protest and make a "federal case" out of it.
The government is calling these four people arrogant and unlawful and dangerous.
These four people could have stayed home and watched shock and awe on tv. They could have said this is somebody else's problem. They had jobs and kids and school and church -- just like the rest of us -- but they were peacemakers.
So why do I mention I am pondering extremes?
Because the President of Pakistan, one of the Bush allies in the "War on Terror", admitted the other day that he has no interest in catching Osama binLaden and isn't even bothering to look for him in the most likely area for him to be!
Asked if Bin Laden would ever be caught, President Musharraf told Time he hoped so.
But he added: "One would prefer that he's captured somewhere outside Pakistan. By some other people."
As to the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man - "We don't know anything at the moment," President Musharraf said.
"The reality is that about a year ago, we had some identification of a rough area where he was, through technical means, but then we lost him. That is how intelligence works."
He said he thought the "safest" place for Bin Laden to hide was on the border with Afghanistan.
"This line we are not including in each other's areas, so therefore you can easily switch sides."
One has to wonder, who is the enemy of freedom here, the peace protestor at the sit-in or the repressive dictator who is openly protecting the world's greatest criminal horror? I mean, come on George!
Is there a single issue, a single point of interest to the American people and the World, where the Bush administration is not terminally screwed up?
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Blair Blusters On BBC Bias
No-one on this side of the Atlantic is talking about it but Blair is trying to softpedal on the reports recently crowed all over the rightwing blogs that he had told Rupert Murdoch he felt the BBC was anti-American in its coverage.
The Independent reports on an interview in which the BBC's Andrew Marr asked Blair about the allegations out front.
Tony Blair looked uncomfortable when quizzed by Andrew Marr over whether he thought the BBC coverage of Hurricane Katrina shown "anti-Americanism" within the corporation. Deny it and he would risk a public clash with Rupert Murdoch, who had blurted out the Premier's private views. He blustered: "There were certain bits of the reporting I didn't much care for but that's my view. I'm not making any great criticism of the BBC."
As more than one commenter said at the time, it looks very like Blair was brown-nosing Murdoch because he wants the tycoon's media empire to continue to cheerlead for him and is now brown-nosing the BBC because he knows he was out of order.
Pleeeaaasseeee can we have Gordon now? Hells bells, even Kennedy would be better than Tony Blur.
The Independent reports on an interview in which the BBC's Andrew Marr asked Blair about the allegations out front.
Tony Blair looked uncomfortable when quizzed by Andrew Marr over whether he thought the BBC coverage of Hurricane Katrina shown "anti-Americanism" within the corporation. Deny it and he would risk a public clash with Rupert Murdoch, who had blurted out the Premier's private views. He blustered: "There were certain bits of the reporting I didn't much care for but that's my view. I'm not making any great criticism of the BBC."
As more than one commenter said at the time, it looks very like Blair was brown-nosing Murdoch because he wants the tycoon's media empire to continue to cheerlead for him and is now brown-nosing the BBC because he knows he was out of order.
Pleeeaaasseeee can we have Gordon now? Hells bells, even Kennedy would be better than Tony Blur.
Newshog Roundup 25th Sept.
This feature used to be called Instahoglets but only a couple of people knew what that meant. It's a summary of the interesting stuff I came across that I didn't get time to blog about, presented in the Atrios style - a snarky punchpost and no detail. Go read the links.
The military are telling Bush they want to take the lead in responding to disasters. Which means Homeland Security has been one immense waste of time and $47 billion a year, right?
If you were ever conned into believing Republicans weren't led by a bunch of lying, cheating weasels then read this eye-opener on what's considered fair politics by the gangsters of the College Republicans.
Ever felt that your home country isn't your home anymore? You are not alone.
Left of Center points out why Bush's poll numbers really matter. They encourage the GOP cracks to grow.
Want to feel sick to your stomach? Try this apologia for Pres. Musharraf of Pakistan's recent claim that rape is a money-making scheme for women - brought to you by the rightwing nutters at mensactivism.org.
I've been saying for a long time that low income citizens don't vote because the corporate flunkeys of both major parties don't represent them. Here's the proof - if the Dems don't ditch the moneybags aristos thenm they will never, ever get elected. Since there's naff all chance of them ditching their big names, it's surely time for a third party - a New Labor Party.
Blair sold out the workers too - now with unions to the left of him and Brownites to...umm...the left of him too, will he survive the Valley of Death a.k.a. the Labour Party Conference this week?
Blair might survive if he manages to placate his party with a new plan for withdrawal from Iraq.
Oh yeah, I meant to ask...if its not about class or race - why is there is still Apartheid education in America?
GAO Says Tax Cuts Aren't Economically Viable. "We're on an imprudent, unsustainable fiscal path" says Government Accountability Office head David Walker in a new report on Thursday which the Bush administration has already said they intend to ignore.
Finally, Andrew Sullivan says Bush is a socialist - a statement so patently absurd as to even draw the ire of the faux-left, immigration-hating Blairites at Harry's Place blog.
Thanks to Kat at TDG for some links
Thanks to Kat at TDG for some links
Rita Wrap-Up
Well, Rita came and went with far less destruction than Katrina, for which we are all thankful.
But let's not pretend that the low cost by comparison was the result of good management rather than utter accident. Rita's track took her past the greatest danger spots at Galveston, Houston and the hundreds of thousands of stranded motorists in impromptu campsites or pulled over on the edges of the interstate. The torrential rains she brought have landed over terrain able to take it, rather than the arid flash-flood country of Texas which spaed Austin, Dallas, San Antonio or dozens of other major towns and cities from being innundated. Once over land, she weakened far fater than her sister, Katrina, had.
We got of incredibly lightly. Yes, there has been billions in property damage and vast areas are without power or flooded still but material things can be fixed, can be replaced. Lives cannot - and so far reports indicate that only one person was killed, by a tornado spin-off which wrecked their trailer in Mississippi - as a direct result of the storm. Doubtless, others would have died but for heroic floodwater rescuers in Louisiana. A nation's thanks and praise goes out to those first responders. Even FEMA seems to have been more on the ball, getting a relief convoy to Beaumont, Texas - the hardest hit area - only a day after Rita made landfall.
The highest death toll from Rita came before the storm even hit, in a bus on the interstate near Dallas which exploded killing 24. Therein lies the real story of a failure to perform. As Rita hit the coast reports came in from all over East Texas of vehicles still trapped on exposed roads, of towns suddenly burdened by stranded evacuees they hadn't expected and of ad-hoc encampments at rest stops where people waited in fear to see if Rita would come their way.
Let's cut the nonsense and say what needs saying. The evacuation plan for Houston and surrounds was woefully inadequate. Not enough forethought and planning, not enough gas, not enough road-lanes, not enough response. If Rita had barrelled up the interstates from Houston to Austin and Dallas then the debacle of New Orleans would have replayed in ribbons as the roads were chopped into little islands to which rescuers could only have gained access by air. Thousands would have died. It was through the grace of nature, not the foresight of authorities, that the nightmare scenario didn't come to pass.
It needs fixed. It needs fixed before a terrorist attack or a natural event with far less warning hits another US metropolis.
Oh, and we can do without the photo-ops from supposed leaders too. Either the ones that are cancelled because its too sunny to make a good, serious backdrop or the ones that are in poor taste indeed as a Texas Governor echoes another ex-Texas governor's from-on-high detachment from the common people.
But let's not pretend that the low cost by comparison was the result of good management rather than utter accident. Rita's track took her past the greatest danger spots at Galveston, Houston and the hundreds of thousands of stranded motorists in impromptu campsites or pulled over on the edges of the interstate. The torrential rains she brought have landed over terrain able to take it, rather than the arid flash-flood country of Texas which spaed Austin, Dallas, San Antonio or dozens of other major towns and cities from being innundated. Once over land, she weakened far fater than her sister, Katrina, had.
We got of incredibly lightly. Yes, there has been billions in property damage and vast areas are without power or flooded still but material things can be fixed, can be replaced. Lives cannot - and so far reports indicate that only one person was killed, by a tornado spin-off which wrecked their trailer in Mississippi - as a direct result of the storm. Doubtless, others would have died but for heroic floodwater rescuers in Louisiana. A nation's thanks and praise goes out to those first responders. Even FEMA seems to have been more on the ball, getting a relief convoy to Beaumont, Texas - the hardest hit area - only a day after Rita made landfall.
The highest death toll from Rita came before the storm even hit, in a bus on the interstate near Dallas which exploded killing 24. Therein lies the real story of a failure to perform. As Rita hit the coast reports came in from all over East Texas of vehicles still trapped on exposed roads, of towns suddenly burdened by stranded evacuees they hadn't expected and of ad-hoc encampments at rest stops where people waited in fear to see if Rita would come their way.
Let's cut the nonsense and say what needs saying. The evacuation plan for Houston and surrounds was woefully inadequate. Not enough forethought and planning, not enough gas, not enough road-lanes, not enough response. If Rita had barrelled up the interstates from Houston to Austin and Dallas then the debacle of New Orleans would have replayed in ribbons as the roads were chopped into little islands to which rescuers could only have gained access by air. Thousands would have died. It was through the grace of nature, not the foresight of authorities, that the nightmare scenario didn't come to pass.
It needs fixed. It needs fixed before a terrorist attack or a natural event with far less warning hits another US metropolis.
Oh, and we can do without the photo-ops from supposed leaders too. Either the ones that are cancelled because its too sunny to make a good, serious backdrop or the ones that are in poor taste indeed as a Texas Governor echoes another ex-Texas governor's from-on-high detachment from the common people.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Bush USAid Appeal For Iraq Nets $600
$600 after two weeks - I kid you not.
Insta-skinflint, Powerlame, Little Green Mothballs, Captains Sixteenths, QandBigO, Charging RI-NoMoney, My Vast Right Wing Bankruptcy....
I could go on but I'm laughing too hard.
The chickenhawks are as unwilling to put their money where their mouths are as they are to put their necks on the line. Figures.
Update There's a lot of utter tosh being written by the freepers today about supposed turnout at the anti-war demo in Washington yesterday. They are trying to believe really hard that it was nowhere near 100,000 and I even saw one estimate of only 2,000 has been bandied about by Andrew Sullivan.
I think they have a real case of demo-envy. Only 400 turned out for today's pro-war rally. The chickenhawks can't even be bothered to get their chicken-asses out from behind their keyboards, let alone donate to the cause they supposedly believe in so fervently. Their "cheep-cheep" protestations deserve to be taken exactly as they are - laughable.
PS For all those good people visiting from Shakespeare's Sister - thanks for dropping by. Please, stick around and have a look at the rest of the blog, I think you will find something worthwhile to read somewhere in it all.
Up-Update Left of Center puts it in perspective for the wingnuts - Democrat hopeful Chuck Pennachio has been running an internet fundraising campaign for about two weeks now as part of his senatorial bid in Pennsylvania.
The running totals:
Chuck Pennacchio: $6,298.00
War in Iraq: $600.00
The price of realizing Chuck Pennacchio is ten times more popular than the War in Iraq? (come on, you knew it was coming) Priceless!
Insta-skinflint, Powerlame, Little Green Mothballs, Captains Sixteenths, QandBigO, Charging RI-NoMoney, My Vast Right Wing Bankruptcy....
I could go on but I'm laughing too hard.
The chickenhawks are as unwilling to put their money where their mouths are as they are to put their necks on the line. Figures.
Update There's a lot of utter tosh being written by the freepers today about supposed turnout at the anti-war demo in Washington yesterday. They are trying to believe really hard that it was nowhere near 100,000 and I even saw one estimate of only 2,000 has been bandied about by Andrew Sullivan.
I think they have a real case of demo-envy. Only 400 turned out for today's pro-war rally. The chickenhawks can't even be bothered to get their chicken-asses out from behind their keyboards, let alone donate to the cause they supposedly believe in so fervently. Their "cheep-cheep" protestations deserve to be taken exactly as they are - laughable.
PS For all those good people visiting from Shakespeare's Sister - thanks for dropping by. Please, stick around and have a look at the rest of the blog, I think you will find something worthwhile to read somewhere in it all.
Up-Update Left of Center puts it in perspective for the wingnuts - Democrat hopeful Chuck Pennachio has been running an internet fundraising campaign for about two weeks now as part of his senatorial bid in Pennsylvania.
The running totals:
Chuck Pennacchio: $6,298.00
War in Iraq: $600.00
The price of realizing Chuck Pennacchio is ten times more popular than the War in Iraq? (come on, you knew it was coming) Priceless!
Over "There".
The following is taken from a discussion that developed in comments over at The Price of Liberty. I thought it merited its own post and asked Libertas for permission to crosspost it once it was rewritten to his satisfaction. I am very pleased indeed that he agreed.
The War Between the States and Reconstruction traumatized this society and tragically a culture that prided itself on hospitality grew ever more xenophobic. Texas is a collection of paradoxes as is any place so vast in scale. I am from San Antonio, a place that is about as culturally distinct from Beaumont as one can imagine. In San Antone we have for almost 300 years lived in a bicultural society and so are somewhat less prone to fear of the “other.”
Growing up in a predominately Hispanic town with an Italian last name has provided me with some unique insights into the bicultural experience. My name is the same in Spanish as Italian and hence I am generally presumed Hispanic until proven otherwise. This has led to some interesting situations. When Hispanics decry discrimination, this is for me not an academic thing since anything bad that happens to them is almost as likely to also happen to me. I have been turned down for jobs, yelled at by rude bill collectors, denied credit and housing all because of mistaken ethnic identity. So I am particularly sensitive about how the least powerful among us are treated, since that usually includes me.
But as a businessman, I also saw that the knife cuts two ways. I once offered to build a free website for the local Chicano cultural arts center. When they heard that a person with a last name ending in an “O” from a company called Tristero was offering to build their site, they were enthusiastic and called a board meeting for the presentation. When a longhaired blond with blue eyes marched into that room the silence was deafening. What was disappointing was they immediately lost interest in the project and this was one of the shorter meetings of my career.
San Antonio is no Utopia, but it is one of the most successfully integrated cities in the country. Almost no one from San Antonio presumes that a Hispanic is an alien. In fact a San Antonio Hispanic is likely to be 4th, 5th or 6th generation and to be more “from around here” than the multitudes of white carpetbaggers living in the suburbs. Hence, the relatively peculiar San Antonio phenomenon of Anglo natives who consider the suburban Anglo “snowbirds” to be more of the interloper than the urban Hispanic “illegal.”
We have a thriving Hispanic middleclass and a St. Mary’s Law School that has been producing Hispanic lawyers for generations. We even have a Hispanic old money political class that underlies the power base. The University of Texas at San Antonio has a Hispanic president, in this context ironically named Dr. Romo. Perhaps nowhere else in the country is Hispanic upward mobility so viably a reality.
Almost everyone in San Antonio, regardless of ethnicity or class, has Hispanic friends and neighbors. Consequently militant Chicanismo has been less attractive here.
If all this discussion of Hispanicity seems a digression let me explain. In San Antonio if you go to the emergency room your doctor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you are arrested, the prosecutor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you go to a public park it will be filled with Hispanic children and families enjoying the day. I love this about my hometown and it is only when I leave that I truly appreciate how unique San Antonio is.
A few years ago I designed and built a trade show booth for a software firm. I had to accompany it to San Diego to set it up. I spent a week in that beautiful city by the sea. But while there I noticed something quite disturbing. After a while I realized something was missing. Then it hit me, “where are all the Hispanics?” I had been downtown for a week and there were none in sight. No Hispanic businessmen in suits. No Hispanic secretaries filling the restaurants at lunch, even the busboys were all Anglo. I went to Balboa Park and not a single Hispanic family for days. Plenty of very pretty young white men though, playing Frisbee and cruising for company. I thought perhaps that explained the absence of families. I was wrong.
After a few days this really began to bother me. I could see Mexico from there but could not find the Hispanics. Eventually we had to pack up and I went in search of bubble wrap. Even though this was a port city there was none for sale anywhere near the ocean. I made several calls, finally found an address and headed out. I drove for perhaps fifteen or twenty miles due east through neighborhood after neighborhood where the most inexpensive home went for about $500,000. Then I came to The Wall. A wall about 15 ft high bounded “civilization.” On the other side, a freeway that was as an effective a natural barrier as a mountain range and more effective than the Rio Grand. Over “there” was the Barrio. I drove into it for a few miles and it was like a whole other country. A Third World country. Not an Anglo face in sight. Nor a middleclass face either.
I reached my intended destination where I encountered a Hispanic elderly gentleman who was visibly shocked to see my pale face in his hood. He seemed to presume I was a government official of some sort there to give him a hard time. I explained that I was just a working-class schmuck in search of bubble wrap and he was visibly relieved. But he was still confused and more than a little concerned with my safety, he thought I might be lost. I told him I was not lost but “apparently gringos do not use bubble wrap in San Diego.” He laughed and asked me where I was from. When I said San Antonio, he said “oh, that explains it.” I said, “Explains what?’ He said, “Why you were not reluctant to come to the barrio.” I told him that I had spent perhaps a third of my life in barrios and had long ago learned that Hispanics don’t have cooties. “In fact if I get more than about twenty miles from a good taco I feel an irresistible urge to turn around and go home.” He laughed and told me to be careful because not everyone would immediately understand that I was from Texas and not simply a gringo. He said folks around there don’t think too highly of gringos. I told him I was beginning to understand why they felt that way.
I returned to the convention center where union construction crews were tearing down the displays. Again I noticed the dearth of brown faces. This was beginning to piss me off. In Texas when there is sweating to be done there are generally plenty of Hispanics around. But apparently not among union workers in San Diego. When I returned to San Antonio I called up my old maestro. He was a stonemason in the San Antonio barrio that had trained me to fabricate marble and granite. Paul Flores and I went out and got a couple of much needed tacos.
This was an epiphanous experience for me. I had always wondered why California Chicanos were so pissed. Now I understood why. In San Antonio there is no Wall. Our barrio has an infinitely permeable membrane that is perhaps twenty miles wide. If one drives north far enough you eventually have trouble finding that taco, but there is a huge zone of geographic integration. In San Antonio only the carpetbaggers of the suburbs consider the Hispanic an “other.” Heck, most of us have more than one in the woodpile and most Hispanics have a daughter or a niece married to a gringo. So I was shocked to find out that on the Left coast racism and segregation were so endemic. In California, segregation is created by managing property values and building walls and freeways. But it is as effective as the most egregious de jur form ever practiced in the South. In some ways, because this discrimination is cloaked in class, it is even more pernicious since this facilitates denial of the horrible racist truth.
Since I returned to San Antonio from that adventure, I have focused my attention on “otherness” and how cultures react at their borders. I have looked for the synthesis that emerges and the hybrid personalities it creates. Sadly for California, it seems the hybrid is more common in Texas. I have come to believe that South Texas is the cultural laboratory that prefigures the emerging demographic reality of the rest of the nation.
Every time I hear Lou Dobbs or some other gringo crying, “The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are coming!” I am simultaneously amused and offended. In San Antone they are not just coming, they are here and always have been. When I hear the paranoid complain they are “being invaded,” all I can think is, “It serves them right.” After all, most of the new immigrants are moving to places with names like Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California. Which makes one wonder, “Who invaded whom?” The Border is a fiction and it always has been. To all those scared Anglo-centrist out there, all I have to say is, “Get over it! Once you’ve tasted picante salsa you’ll never miss ketchup again.”
Ironically, It has been my studies of “otherness” that have brought me back around to my Southern roots on my mama’s side. I began to realize that what this country has been doing to minorities and to other nations; it has also been doing to my Southern brethren. I have been slightly surprised to discover how the methodologies used to study the exclusion of “other” groups also apply to the Southerner.
Because Southerners have been as guilty as any of exclusion, people are loath to admit that Southerners themselves have also been systematically excluded in American society. This puts Southerners in the paradoxical position of being both the poster children for exclusion and simultaneously its victims. This dichotomy is not easily appreciated either in or out of the South. Hence one finds that the apologist for Southern culture is equated with being an apologist for exclusion. In my case nothing could be further from the truth. It is my revulsion at exclusion that has brought me to the position of being a Southern apologist.
Growing up as an original Latino of a different stripe, with Southern roots, in a bicultural city in the borderlands has given me a somewhat unique perspective on this phenomenon. I have forever had a foot in at least two worlds, sometimes more. I have never felt truly a member of any single group. I am an initiate in several but not exclusively a member of any. I have always felt at least a little excluded wherever I am. Hence I am obsessed by the mechanisms by which we both exclude and include one another, whether those mechanisms be class, race, ethnicity, religion, language or geography. I am fascinated by the interplay of these phenomena and the complex cultural calculus in which we are all prone to engage. I am also fascinated by how inclusion in one group is determined by exclusion from another. If one is an initiate of mutually exclusive groups one tends to be suspected by both of disloyalty. It is as if we were more often judged by our choice of enemies than of friends. Regrettably, and more than a little paradoxically, it seems that the fewer enemies one has, the fewer friends one is likely to accrue. So it goes with “otherness.”
It is difficult to discuss such tender issues without offending someone. Even here I have “otherized” snowbirds, gringos, carpetbaggers, suburbanites and Californians. Yet at least two of those groups include me. If you are a member of such a group, it is not my intention to exclude you either, but it is difficult to discuss borders without leaving someone on the “other” side. It is my belief that the seeker for the Truth will find it between the lines in that zone of mystery and synthesis where the hybrid blossoms toward the Light.
Libertas.
The War Between the States and Reconstruction traumatized this society and tragically a culture that prided itself on hospitality grew ever more xenophobic. Texas is a collection of paradoxes as is any place so vast in scale. I am from San Antonio, a place that is about as culturally distinct from Beaumont as one can imagine. In San Antone we have for almost 300 years lived in a bicultural society and so are somewhat less prone to fear of the “other.”
Growing up in a predominately Hispanic town with an Italian last name has provided me with some unique insights into the bicultural experience. My name is the same in Spanish as Italian and hence I am generally presumed Hispanic until proven otherwise. This has led to some interesting situations. When Hispanics decry discrimination, this is for me not an academic thing since anything bad that happens to them is almost as likely to also happen to me. I have been turned down for jobs, yelled at by rude bill collectors, denied credit and housing all because of mistaken ethnic identity. So I am particularly sensitive about how the least powerful among us are treated, since that usually includes me.
But as a businessman, I also saw that the knife cuts two ways. I once offered to build a free website for the local Chicano cultural arts center. When they heard that a person with a last name ending in an “O” from a company called Tristero was offering to build their site, they were enthusiastic and called a board meeting for the presentation. When a longhaired blond with blue eyes marched into that room the silence was deafening. What was disappointing was they immediately lost interest in the project and this was one of the shorter meetings of my career.
San Antonio is no Utopia, but it is one of the most successfully integrated cities in the country. Almost no one from San Antonio presumes that a Hispanic is an alien. In fact a San Antonio Hispanic is likely to be 4th, 5th or 6th generation and to be more “from around here” than the multitudes of white carpetbaggers living in the suburbs. Hence, the relatively peculiar San Antonio phenomenon of Anglo natives who consider the suburban Anglo “snowbirds” to be more of the interloper than the urban Hispanic “illegal.”
We have a thriving Hispanic middleclass and a St. Mary’s Law School that has been producing Hispanic lawyers for generations. We even have a Hispanic old money political class that underlies the power base. The University of Texas at San Antonio has a Hispanic president, in this context ironically named Dr. Romo. Perhaps nowhere else in the country is Hispanic upward mobility so viably a reality.
Almost everyone in San Antonio, regardless of ethnicity or class, has Hispanic friends and neighbors. Consequently militant Chicanismo has been less attractive here.
If all this discussion of Hispanicity seems a digression let me explain. In San Antonio if you go to the emergency room your doctor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you are arrested, the prosecutor is likely as not to be Hispanic. If you go to a public park it will be filled with Hispanic children and families enjoying the day. I love this about my hometown and it is only when I leave that I truly appreciate how unique San Antonio is.
A few years ago I designed and built a trade show booth for a software firm. I had to accompany it to San Diego to set it up. I spent a week in that beautiful city by the sea. But while there I noticed something quite disturbing. After a while I realized something was missing. Then it hit me, “where are all the Hispanics?” I had been downtown for a week and there were none in sight. No Hispanic businessmen in suits. No Hispanic secretaries filling the restaurants at lunch, even the busboys were all Anglo. I went to Balboa Park and not a single Hispanic family for days. Plenty of very pretty young white men though, playing Frisbee and cruising for company. I thought perhaps that explained the absence of families. I was wrong.
After a few days this really began to bother me. I could see Mexico from there but could not find the Hispanics. Eventually we had to pack up and I went in search of bubble wrap. Even though this was a port city there was none for sale anywhere near the ocean. I made several calls, finally found an address and headed out. I drove for perhaps fifteen or twenty miles due east through neighborhood after neighborhood where the most inexpensive home went for about $500,000. Then I came to The Wall. A wall about 15 ft high bounded “civilization.” On the other side, a freeway that was as an effective a natural barrier as a mountain range and more effective than the Rio Grand. Over “there” was the Barrio. I drove into it for a few miles and it was like a whole other country. A Third World country. Not an Anglo face in sight. Nor a middleclass face either.
I reached my intended destination where I encountered a Hispanic elderly gentleman who was visibly shocked to see my pale face in his hood. He seemed to presume I was a government official of some sort there to give him a hard time. I explained that I was just a working-class schmuck in search of bubble wrap and he was visibly relieved. But he was still confused and more than a little concerned with my safety, he thought I might be lost. I told him I was not lost but “apparently gringos do not use bubble wrap in San Diego.” He laughed and asked me where I was from. When I said San Antonio, he said “oh, that explains it.” I said, “Explains what?’ He said, “Why you were not reluctant to come to the barrio.” I told him that I had spent perhaps a third of my life in barrios and had long ago learned that Hispanics don’t have cooties. “In fact if I get more than about twenty miles from a good taco I feel an irresistible urge to turn around and go home.” He laughed and told me to be careful because not everyone would immediately understand that I was from Texas and not simply a gringo. He said folks around there don’t think too highly of gringos. I told him I was beginning to understand why they felt that way.
I returned to the convention center where union construction crews were tearing down the displays. Again I noticed the dearth of brown faces. This was beginning to piss me off. In Texas when there is sweating to be done there are generally plenty of Hispanics around. But apparently not among union workers in San Diego. When I returned to San Antonio I called up my old maestro. He was a stonemason in the San Antonio barrio that had trained me to fabricate marble and granite. Paul Flores and I went out and got a couple of much needed tacos.
This was an epiphanous experience for me. I had always wondered why California Chicanos were so pissed. Now I understood why. In San Antonio there is no Wall. Our barrio has an infinitely permeable membrane that is perhaps twenty miles wide. If one drives north far enough you eventually have trouble finding that taco, but there is a huge zone of geographic integration. In San Antonio only the carpetbaggers of the suburbs consider the Hispanic an “other.” Heck, most of us have more than one in the woodpile and most Hispanics have a daughter or a niece married to a gringo. So I was shocked to find out that on the Left coast racism and segregation were so endemic. In California, segregation is created by managing property values and building walls and freeways. But it is as effective as the most egregious de jur form ever practiced in the South. In some ways, because this discrimination is cloaked in class, it is even more pernicious since this facilitates denial of the horrible racist truth.
Since I returned to San Antonio from that adventure, I have focused my attention on “otherness” and how cultures react at their borders. I have looked for the synthesis that emerges and the hybrid personalities it creates. Sadly for California, it seems the hybrid is more common in Texas. I have come to believe that South Texas is the cultural laboratory that prefigures the emerging demographic reality of the rest of the nation.
Every time I hear Lou Dobbs or some other gringo crying, “The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are coming!” I am simultaneously amused and offended. In San Antone they are not just coming, they are here and always have been. When I hear the paranoid complain they are “being invaded,” all I can think is, “It serves them right.” After all, most of the new immigrants are moving to places with names like Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California. Which makes one wonder, “Who invaded whom?” The Border is a fiction and it always has been. To all those scared Anglo-centrist out there, all I have to say is, “Get over it! Once you’ve tasted picante salsa you’ll never miss ketchup again.”
Ironically, It has been my studies of “otherness” that have brought me back around to my Southern roots on my mama’s side. I began to realize that what this country has been doing to minorities and to other nations; it has also been doing to my Southern brethren. I have been slightly surprised to discover how the methodologies used to study the exclusion of “other” groups also apply to the Southerner.
Because Southerners have been as guilty as any of exclusion, people are loath to admit that Southerners themselves have also been systematically excluded in American society. This puts Southerners in the paradoxical position of being both the poster children for exclusion and simultaneously its victims. This dichotomy is not easily appreciated either in or out of the South. Hence one finds that the apologist for Southern culture is equated with being an apologist for exclusion. In my case nothing could be further from the truth. It is my revulsion at exclusion that has brought me to the position of being a Southern apologist.
Growing up as an original Latino of a different stripe, with Southern roots, in a bicultural city in the borderlands has given me a somewhat unique perspective on this phenomenon. I have forever had a foot in at least two worlds, sometimes more. I have never felt truly a member of any single group. I am an initiate in several but not exclusively a member of any. I have always felt at least a little excluded wherever I am. Hence I am obsessed by the mechanisms by which we both exclude and include one another, whether those mechanisms be class, race, ethnicity, religion, language or geography. I am fascinated by the interplay of these phenomena and the complex cultural calculus in which we are all prone to engage. I am also fascinated by how inclusion in one group is determined by exclusion from another. If one is an initiate of mutually exclusive groups one tends to be suspected by both of disloyalty. It is as if we were more often judged by our choice of enemies than of friends. Regrettably, and more than a little paradoxically, it seems that the fewer enemies one has, the fewer friends one is likely to accrue. So it goes with “otherness.”
It is difficult to discuss such tender issues without offending someone. Even here I have “otherized” snowbirds, gringos, carpetbaggers, suburbanites and Californians. Yet at least two of those groups include me. If you are a member of such a group, it is not my intention to exclude you either, but it is difficult to discuss borders without leaving someone on the “other” side. It is my belief that the seeker for the Truth will find it between the lines in that zone of mystery and synthesis where the hybrid blossoms toward the Light.
Libertas.
Rita Storms Ashore With Wind, Rain And Fire
Hurricane Rita plowed into the Gulf Coast at 2.30 Central Time Saturday morning, buffeting Texas and Louisiana with high wind, driving rain and the threat of flooding in the low-lying region.
The eye of the storm made landfall over Sabine Pass and the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, but Houston and indeed Glaveston seem to have been spared the worst of the storm. By daybreak, Rita had been downgraded to a Category Two hurricane - still enough to cause widespread damage but certainly not as lethal as had been feared.
Reports are begining to come in of prominent buildings - schools, police stations and the like - damaged or destroyed by high winds. For every such report there must be dozens of homes destroyed. Flash flooding (rather than storm surge) is now being reported in Beaumont and points North and pretty much the entire East Texas border, in a swathe more than 100 miles deep, is under a flood watch. That doesn't bode well for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who may no longer be actually on the freeway but are huddled in impromptu shelters or are camped in their vehicles at rest stops.
Over 750,000 people are without power and power shorts are causing another problem - electrical fires whipped up by the winds into infernos. In Pasadena a shopping center was engulfed, in Galveston firefighters could do little but watch as winds fanned a three building fire in the historic Strand and in Houston at least one apartment block was destroyed. Other fires are also being reported - but because the area is evacuated almost always not until the blaze has taken a major hold.
So far, the biggest casualty in terms of property has been poor, abused New Orleans where storm surge and heavy rain overwhelmed levee repairs and flooded areas which had just been pumped dry after Katrina. And at least in terms of property, a lot of people (Sen. Kay Hutchison among them) have voiced relief that the major refinery complexes around Houston and Galveston were not badly hit.
As to loss of life, its too early as yet to have any clear idea - but it seems that Rita has been far kinder coming ashore than she could have been.
PS Here in San Antonio - in marked contrast to what we were being warned of a few days ago - we are now being told by our weathermen that we may not even see any rain from Rita, let alone winds. As the days went by the track slipped further East and San Antonio was given a pass.
The eye of the storm made landfall over Sabine Pass and the refinery towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, but Houston and indeed Glaveston seem to have been spared the worst of the storm. By daybreak, Rita had been downgraded to a Category Two hurricane - still enough to cause widespread damage but certainly not as lethal as had been feared.
Reports are begining to come in of prominent buildings - schools, police stations and the like - damaged or destroyed by high winds. For every such report there must be dozens of homes destroyed. Flash flooding (rather than storm surge) is now being reported in Beaumont and points North and pretty much the entire East Texas border, in a swathe more than 100 miles deep, is under a flood watch. That doesn't bode well for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who may no longer be actually on the freeway but are huddled in impromptu shelters or are camped in their vehicles at rest stops.
Over 750,000 people are without power and power shorts are causing another problem - electrical fires whipped up by the winds into infernos. In Pasadena a shopping center was engulfed, in Galveston firefighters could do little but watch as winds fanned a three building fire in the historic Strand and in Houston at least one apartment block was destroyed. Other fires are also being reported - but because the area is evacuated almost always not until the blaze has taken a major hold.
So far, the biggest casualty in terms of property has been poor, abused New Orleans where storm surge and heavy rain overwhelmed levee repairs and flooded areas which had just been pumped dry after Katrina. And at least in terms of property, a lot of people (Sen. Kay Hutchison among them) have voiced relief that the major refinery complexes around Houston and Galveston were not badly hit.
As to loss of life, its too early as yet to have any clear idea - but it seems that Rita has been far kinder coming ashore than she could have been.
PS Here in San Antonio - in marked contrast to what we were being warned of a few days ago - we are now being told by our weathermen that we may not even see any rain from Rita, let alone winds. As the days went by the track slipped further East and San Antonio was given a pass.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Give The Governor A Harrumph!
Its starting to look rather like we have another case of a Governor and staff who aren't quite up to the challenges of running a State in an emergency.
This from Knight Ridder:
In the end, about 2.5 million people evacuated from the Texas coast, most of them from the Houston-Galveston area, officials said.
For many who were trapped Wednesday and Thursday on Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas, the questions included why the nearly empty southbound lanes weren't opened sooner to northbound traffic.
The practice, called contraflow, didn't begin until Thursday morning. Traffic on the highway was jammed starting Wednesday.
Randall Dillard of the Texas Department of Transportation said the agency must wait to act until it gets an order from the governor's office.
Gov. Rick Perry said Friday that the decision was made as soon as local officials requested.
He declined to second-guess the timing, saying that when the issue is analyzed later, people will be amazed.
"It will be almost miraculous that this many people were moved out of harm's way," Perry said.
But one highway expert said the delay in converting the freeway to one-way lanes shows that Texas' emergency response officials had only partly thought through their worst-case scenario for evacuating the Houston area.
"They probably didn't have their evacuation plan details in complete shape," said Carlton Robinson, a Maryland-based former director of program planning for the Highway Users Federation. "They had the concept down, but they didn't have the details."
Emergency planners must not have anticipated such a large number of people trying to evacuate at once, Robinson said, or else they would have started contraflow before the highways became impassable.
And, of course, the really big question so far is not the contraflow but why so many people were on the roads who didn't need to be in the first place.
Here's the money quote from Knight Ridder:
Some people also may have been picking up mixed messages from top officials.
While Houston Mayor Bill White was suggesting Thursday that residents who didn't live in low-lying areas should stay in the city, the governor was warning people, "If you're in this storm's path, you need to get gone."
Pass around the bat-n-ball toys and lets have a big "harrumph" for the Governor.
This from Knight Ridder:
In the end, about 2.5 million people evacuated from the Texas coast, most of them from the Houston-Galveston area, officials said.
For many who were trapped Wednesday and Thursday on Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas, the questions included why the nearly empty southbound lanes weren't opened sooner to northbound traffic.
The practice, called contraflow, didn't begin until Thursday morning. Traffic on the highway was jammed starting Wednesday.
Randall Dillard of the Texas Department of Transportation said the agency must wait to act until it gets an order from the governor's office.
Gov. Rick Perry said Friday that the decision was made as soon as local officials requested.
He declined to second-guess the timing, saying that when the issue is analyzed later, people will be amazed.
"It will be almost miraculous that this many people were moved out of harm's way," Perry said.
But one highway expert said the delay in converting the freeway to one-way lanes shows that Texas' emergency response officials had only partly thought through their worst-case scenario for evacuating the Houston area.
"They probably didn't have their evacuation plan details in complete shape," said Carlton Robinson, a Maryland-based former director of program planning for the Highway Users Federation. "They had the concept down, but they didn't have the details."
Emergency planners must not have anticipated such a large number of people trying to evacuate at once, Robinson said, or else they would have started contraflow before the highways became impassable.
And, of course, the really big question so far is not the contraflow but why so many people were on the roads who didn't need to be in the first place.
Here's the money quote from Knight Ridder:
Some people also may have been picking up mixed messages from top officials.
While Houston Mayor Bill White was suggesting Thursday that residents who didn't live in low-lying areas should stay in the city, the governor was warning people, "If you're in this storm's path, you need to get gone."
Pass around the bat-n-ball toys and lets have a big "harrumph" for the Governor.
Bush Heading Straight To Colorado
WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush canceled his trip to Texas on Friday to avoid interfering with the move of a search-and-rescue team closer to the area where Hurricane Rita was to hit, the White House said.
Instead of traveling to San Antonio, Bush will go straight to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he will visit the U.S. Northern Command.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency decided to reposition the search-and-rescue teams from San Antonio closer to the storm, "and we didn't want to slow that decision up in any way. So we made the decision that we would go straight to Colorado."
Good move. Someone in the Bush entourage remembered the reports of supply flights delayed because Bush was in the area after Katrina.
Instead of traveling to San Antonio, Bush will go straight to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he will visit the U.S. Northern Command.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency decided to reposition the search-and-rescue teams from San Antonio closer to the storm, "and we didn't want to slow that decision up in any way. So we made the decision that we would go straight to Colorado."
Good move. Someone in the Bush entourage remembered the reports of supply flights delayed because Bush was in the area after Katrina.
Rita - First Impacts
Poor New Orleans. It has become the first Gulf Coast victim of Rita after the battering it got from Katrina.
"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry, a Georgia National Guardsman on duty at the broken levee. "We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly."
There was no indication that the bulk of New Orleans was in danger from the new flooding. But the largely abandoned Ninth Ward was swamped by a torrent of water pouring over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. The water gushed through gaps at least 100 feet wide and was waist-deep on a nearby street.
And watch for a big argument after the clean-up. The Army Corps of Engineers says the original flooding in New Orleans was caused by failure of the levees after storm surge waters overtopped them. Some expert disagree though.
Hurricane researchers at Louisiana State University disagreed, saying the walls collapsed because of a structural failure, not because floodwater from Lake Pontchartrain flowed over the top.
"There was a catastrophic structural failure of those levees," said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center. "Basically, they were not up to the task."
Faulty engineering or poor construction or a combination of the two could have caused the breaches, Heerden said.
If that claim is borne out, expect heads on pikes.
Meanwhile, 500,000 Louisianans are now on the roads, adding to the mass diaspora from the Texas coast. State police said flooding in coastal Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes had forced street closures by midday. Rising winds shook light buildings as far away as Baton Rouge and tornado warnings were in effect for parts of Louisiana.
Hurricane Rita has been downgraded to a Cat. Three hurricane, but that is still strong enough to cause widespread destruction as it comes ashore.
In Texas, the storm would cause a "catastrophic flood" likely to inundate the city of Port Arthur under an 18- to 22-foot (6- to 7- meter) storm surge, said Jack Colley, the director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. It would affect 5.2 million Texans, destroy 6,000 homes and have an initial economic impact of $8.2 billion, he said.
He predicted 16 hours of hurricane-force winds where the storm hits, as well as an onslaught of medium-sized tornadoes.
Yet so far, the biggest story is the failure of Houston's evacuation plan.
As authorities struggled to complete one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history in the final hours before Rita's landfall, the problems underscored that despite years of planning for a major emergency after September 11, 2001, attacks, a fast evacuation of a large urban area cannot be ensured.
More than 2 million people were leaving the Gulf coastal areas and Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city with a metropolitan population of 4 million, was deserted, with stores closed, roads emptied and few people on the streets.
People trying to escape Houston crowded inland-bound highways and sat for hours in enormous traffic jams on Thursday and struggled to find gasoline. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc. said its stations in the area had run out of fuel.
People who had not left by midday Friday were advised to stay in their homes.
"Those people at risk should not get on the highways to evacuate. People should prepare to shelter in place if they have not evacuated." Houston Mayor Bill White said.
It looks like a fair number of people may end up riding out the storm stuck in their vehicles on Interstates that flood frequently in far lesser storms. The scenario brewing is of freeways chopped into small islands, with hampered access for emergency responders. Motorists will be trapped, running out of gas and without access to supplies of food and water. Flashfloods and winds will undoubtably be dangerous and some may be washed or blown away.
The massive exodus of people overwhelmed the highway system, leaving expressways jammed like parking lots and the Mayor said on radio that the clogged roads could be a death trap in a storm.
Motorists stuck in the jams were relieved to be told that the National Guard would be arriving with petrol supplies but when they came to begin emergency fuel distribution, it turned out that the nozzles on the tankers were too large for civilian automobiles.
FEMA's central hub of supplies is in San Antonio, where Bush is today on a photo-op tour before heading to Northcom in Colorado. One could wonder why he isn't in the White House doing his job from its excellently appointed control rooms. Maybe he is worried about his Crawford ranch, 200 miles Northwest of Houston, washing away. Its a distinct possibility.
That aside, FEMA is going to have great difficulties getting those supplies anywhere along flashflooded roads. Dallas and Austin areas are now beginning to issue their own weather advisories in full and certain knowledge that 2 feet of rain in Flash Flood Alley is a disaster of epic proportions even when the roads are not gridlocked. FEMA hopes to move more supplies into the Fort Worth area on Sunday - best of luck with that. Some, maybe even most, of those trucks are going to end up on those gridlocked flood-created islands.
"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry, a Georgia National Guardsman on duty at the broken levee. "We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly."
There was no indication that the bulk of New Orleans was in danger from the new flooding. But the largely abandoned Ninth Ward was swamped by a torrent of water pouring over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee. The water gushed through gaps at least 100 feet wide and was waist-deep on a nearby street.
And watch for a big argument after the clean-up. The Army Corps of Engineers says the original flooding in New Orleans was caused by failure of the levees after storm surge waters overtopped them. Some expert disagree though.
Hurricane researchers at Louisiana State University disagreed, saying the walls collapsed because of a structural failure, not because floodwater from Lake Pontchartrain flowed over the top.
"There was a catastrophic structural failure of those levees," said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center. "Basically, they were not up to the task."
Faulty engineering or poor construction or a combination of the two could have caused the breaches, Heerden said.
If that claim is borne out, expect heads on pikes.
Meanwhile, 500,000 Louisianans are now on the roads, adding to the mass diaspora from the Texas coast. State police said flooding in coastal Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes had forced street closures by midday. Rising winds shook light buildings as far away as Baton Rouge and tornado warnings were in effect for parts of Louisiana.
Hurricane Rita has been downgraded to a Cat. Three hurricane, but that is still strong enough to cause widespread destruction as it comes ashore.
In Texas, the storm would cause a "catastrophic flood" likely to inundate the city of Port Arthur under an 18- to 22-foot (6- to 7- meter) storm surge, said Jack Colley, the director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. It would affect 5.2 million Texans, destroy 6,000 homes and have an initial economic impact of $8.2 billion, he said.
He predicted 16 hours of hurricane-force winds where the storm hits, as well as an onslaught of medium-sized tornadoes.
Yet so far, the biggest story is the failure of Houston's evacuation plan.
As authorities struggled to complete one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history in the final hours before Rita's landfall, the problems underscored that despite years of planning for a major emergency after September 11, 2001, attacks, a fast evacuation of a large urban area cannot be ensured.
More than 2 million people were leaving the Gulf coastal areas and Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city with a metropolitan population of 4 million, was deserted, with stores closed, roads emptied and few people on the streets.
People trying to escape Houston crowded inland-bound highways and sat for hours in enormous traffic jams on Thursday and struggled to find gasoline. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc. said its stations in the area had run out of fuel.
People who had not left by midday Friday were advised to stay in their homes.
"Those people at risk should not get on the highways to evacuate. People should prepare to shelter in place if they have not evacuated." Houston Mayor Bill White said.
It looks like a fair number of people may end up riding out the storm stuck in their vehicles on Interstates that flood frequently in far lesser storms. The scenario brewing is of freeways chopped into small islands, with hampered access for emergency responders. Motorists will be trapped, running out of gas and without access to supplies of food and water. Flashfloods and winds will undoubtably be dangerous and some may be washed or blown away.
The massive exodus of people overwhelmed the highway system, leaving expressways jammed like parking lots and the Mayor said on radio that the clogged roads could be a death trap in a storm.
Motorists stuck in the jams were relieved to be told that the National Guard would be arriving with petrol supplies but when they came to begin emergency fuel distribution, it turned out that the nozzles on the tankers were too large for civilian automobiles.
FEMA's central hub of supplies is in San Antonio, where Bush is today on a photo-op tour before heading to Northcom in Colorado. One could wonder why he isn't in the White House doing his job from its excellently appointed control rooms. Maybe he is worried about his Crawford ranch, 200 miles Northwest of Houston, washing away. Its a distinct possibility.
That aside, FEMA is going to have great difficulties getting those supplies anywhere along flashflooded roads. Dallas and Austin areas are now beginning to issue their own weather advisories in full and certain knowledge that 2 feet of rain in Flash Flood Alley is a disaster of epic proportions even when the roads are not gridlocked. FEMA hopes to move more supplies into the Fort Worth area on Sunday - best of luck with that. Some, maybe even most, of those trucks are going to end up on those gridlocked flood-created islands.
Breaking - Rita Bus Explodes
Gods, this is awful.
(Dallas-AP) September 23, 2005 - A sheriff's official in Texas says a bus that was apparently carrying Hurricane Rita evacuees has exploded on a highway near Dallas.
Officials say at least one person is dead and others are injured. Aerial images show emergency crews examining people near the bus, which was fully engulfed in flames.
More as it becomes available.
You have to wonder if the fire started because of engine overheating in the gridlock.
Update Thanks to Tex in comments, here is a link to the Houston Chronicle story, which says the fire started as a brake fire then the explosion happened when it spread to passengers' oxygen tanks. The passengers were all elderly evacuees from Brighton Gardens Assisted Living in Bellaire. The death toll is at least 24.
The wreck happened on Interstate 45, already congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. The bus was engulfed in flames and reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell, with large blue tarps covering the bodies. About 20 emergency vehicles surrounded it.
"Looks like the brakes overheated and caught the bus on fire,'' said Capt. Jesse Garcia of the Dallas Fire Department. "And the reason the fire was so intense is that there were oxygen bottles on board.
He said witnesses reported first seeing sparks from the front wheel wells of the bus, then hearing several explosions when the fire reached extra bottles of oxygen that nurses brought for patients.
The staff tried to pull patients from the burning bus, according to witnesses.
"There were several people attempting to pull patients out of there, but it got too hot,'' he said. "There was nothing they could do.
"Once the oxygen bottles exploded, the rescue attempts were over."
Terrible.
(Dallas-AP) September 23, 2005 - A sheriff's official in Texas says a bus that was apparently carrying Hurricane Rita evacuees has exploded on a highway near Dallas.
Officials say at least one person is dead and others are injured. Aerial images show emergency crews examining people near the bus, which was fully engulfed in flames.
More as it becomes available.
You have to wonder if the fire started because of engine overheating in the gridlock.
Update Thanks to Tex in comments, here is a link to the Houston Chronicle story, which says the fire started as a brake fire then the explosion happened when it spread to passengers' oxygen tanks. The passengers were all elderly evacuees from Brighton Gardens Assisted Living in Bellaire. The death toll is at least 24.
The wreck happened on Interstate 45, already congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. The bus was engulfed in flames and reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell, with large blue tarps covering the bodies. About 20 emergency vehicles surrounded it.
"Looks like the brakes overheated and caught the bus on fire,'' said Capt. Jesse Garcia of the Dallas Fire Department. "And the reason the fire was so intense is that there were oxygen bottles on board.
He said witnesses reported first seeing sparks from the front wheel wells of the bus, then hearing several explosions when the fire reached extra bottles of oxygen that nurses brought for patients.
The staff tried to pull patients from the burning bus, according to witnesses.
"There were several people attempting to pull patients out of there, but it got too hot,'' he said. "There was nothing they could do.
"Once the oxygen bottles exploded, the rescue attempts were over."
Terrible.
Rita Could Stall And Flood Texas
As I have been saying for a day or two, it looks very like Hurricane Rita will stall inland somewhere West to Southwest of Dallas and loiter for two or three days. The most recent National Hurricane Center prediction says:
AFTER LANDFALL...THE GUIDANCE BECOME VERY DIVERGENT AS HIGH
PRESSURE BUILD TO THE WEST AND POSSIBLY NORTH OF RITA. GIVEN THE
SPREAD...THE FORECAST TRACK WILL CALL FOR LITTLE MOTION AFTER 72 HR
JUST AS THE PREVIOUS FORECAST DID. THIS STALLING WILL POSE A
SERIOUS RISK OF VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WELL INLAND.
And looking at the NHC maps, the 5-day cone prediction isn't a cone at all but a perfect circle.
Ed Rappaport, the Deputy Director of the NHC, yesterday called the potential for the storm to stall his No. 2 concern, after the more immediate threat of coastal devastation. He added that Rita could dump up to 25 inches of rain inland.
This is what happened in Dallas last July after just one foot of rain. However, this time the rainfall will be prolonged and spread over a very wide area - perhaps as much as 200 miles in diameter.
So far, the media and FEMA seem to be focussed on landfall, where one heck of a lot of damage is going to be done.
A study performed last year by the engineering firm Dodson & Associates found that a Category 5 storm could inundate 369 square miles of Harris County, which contains Houston and some of its suburbs. The study estimated the total cost of a worst-case storm at $80 billion, with 75 percent due to flooding and the rest from wind damage.
You're looking at the southeast quadrant of the city of Houston, from downtown to Galveston Bay, being underwater," said Chris Johnson, president of Dodson & Associates.
That area is home to about 700,000 people, 15 percent of the metro population.
...
In Galveston, Texas, where the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history killed up to 8,000 people in 1900, flooding is a virtual inevitability.
"Galveston is going to suffer," city manager Steven LeBlanc said at a news conference Thursday.
The city is protected by a 16-foot seawall specifically designed to block incoming storm surges. But some forecasters said Rita could pound the barrier with waves twice that high.
But I am more and more worried that no-one is thinking about and taking precautions to deal with catastrophic inland flooding too.
AFTER LANDFALL...THE GUIDANCE BECOME VERY DIVERGENT AS HIGH
PRESSURE BUILD TO THE WEST AND POSSIBLY NORTH OF RITA. GIVEN THE
SPREAD...THE FORECAST TRACK WILL CALL FOR LITTLE MOTION AFTER 72 HR
JUST AS THE PREVIOUS FORECAST DID. THIS STALLING WILL POSE A
SERIOUS RISK OF VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WELL INLAND.
And looking at the NHC maps, the 5-day cone prediction isn't a cone at all but a perfect circle.
Ed Rappaport, the Deputy Director of the NHC, yesterday called the potential for the storm to stall his No. 2 concern, after the more immediate threat of coastal devastation. He added that Rita could dump up to 25 inches of rain inland.
This is what happened in Dallas last July after just one foot of rain. However, this time the rainfall will be prolonged and spread over a very wide area - perhaps as much as 200 miles in diameter.
So far, the media and FEMA seem to be focussed on landfall, where one heck of a lot of damage is going to be done.
A study performed last year by the engineering firm Dodson & Associates found that a Category 5 storm could inundate 369 square miles of Harris County, which contains Houston and some of its suburbs. The study estimated the total cost of a worst-case storm at $80 billion, with 75 percent due to flooding and the rest from wind damage.
You're looking at the southeast quadrant of the city of Houston, from downtown to Galveston Bay, being underwater," said Chris Johnson, president of Dodson & Associates.
That area is home to about 700,000 people, 15 percent of the metro population.
...
In Galveston, Texas, where the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history killed up to 8,000 people in 1900, flooding is a virtual inevitability.
"Galveston is going to suffer," city manager Steven LeBlanc said at a news conference Thursday.
The city is protected by a 16-foot seawall specifically designed to block incoming storm surges. But some forecasters said Rita could pound the barrier with waves twice that high.
But I am more and more worried that no-one is thinking about and taking precautions to deal with catastrophic inland flooding too.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Rita Update: Poor Stuck, Drivers Stuck, Flooding Dangers
Yet again, the poor of a major US metropolis are being left behind.
"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money."
Houston, in all fairness, stopped its municipal bus service at 2pm today so that the buses could be used for evacuations. It remains to be seen if it is enough and in time.
And even if you had the money and the transport to leave, plans for evacuation routes and gas resupply now seem to have been woefully inadequate.
What else can go wrong?
Well, how about the reports that Rita may stall over East Texas once it gets inland, dumping up to 2 feet of rain on the area, including Dallas and Houston? Texas leads the nation every year in flood related deaths - the arid conditions and a layer of clay combine to let water just slide off in flash-floods instead of soaking into the ground. Here is an excellent website with all kinds of information on Texas' flash flooding dangers. Yet a FEMA spokeswoman said "I don't think we're doing anything differently than we would for a (Category 5 storm) anywhere else."
Or the fact that FEMA's idea of prepositioning is to sit every single big-rig with all their water, ice, MRE's and other supplies - Forty-five truckloads of water, 45 truckloads of ice, and eight truckloads of MREs - in a flat floodplain field at Fort Sam Houston here in San Antonio.
And let's all pity the poor folks who will ride out Rita and any consequent flooding in their vehicles in interstate tailbacks.
Here in San Antonio we have been lucky. The hurricane's projected track has veered well away from our area and we are unlikely now to experience extremely high winds although we could still be in for enough rain to overwhelm flood control systems. We will probably see some stormy skies and some power outages. Still, I am very aware that our luck is some other areas misfortune.
Tomorrow should see things really begin to happen. Let us all hope we get off lightly.
"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money."
Houston, in all fairness, stopped its municipal bus service at 2pm today so that the buses could be used for evacuations. It remains to be seen if it is enough and in time.
And even if you had the money and the transport to leave, plans for evacuation routes and gas resupply now seem to have been woefully inadequate.
What else can go wrong?
Well, how about the reports that Rita may stall over East Texas once it gets inland, dumping up to 2 feet of rain on the area, including Dallas and Houston? Texas leads the nation every year in flood related deaths - the arid conditions and a layer of clay combine to let water just slide off in flash-floods instead of soaking into the ground. Here is an excellent website with all kinds of information on Texas' flash flooding dangers. Yet a FEMA spokeswoman said "I don't think we're doing anything differently than we would for a (Category 5 storm) anywhere else."
Or the fact that FEMA's idea of prepositioning is to sit every single big-rig with all their water, ice, MRE's and other supplies - Forty-five truckloads of water, 45 truckloads of ice, and eight truckloads of MREs - in a flat floodplain field at Fort Sam Houston here in San Antonio.
And let's all pity the poor folks who will ride out Rita and any consequent flooding in their vehicles in interstate tailbacks.
Here in San Antonio we have been lucky. The hurricane's projected track has veered well away from our area and we are unlikely now to experience extremely high winds although we could still be in for enough rain to overwhelm flood control systems. We will probably see some stormy skies and some power outages. Still, I am very aware that our luck is some other areas misfortune.
Tomorrow should see things really begin to happen. Let us all hope we get off lightly.
Imagine Facing Rita In Your Car On The Freeway
As 1.3 million Texans evacuate coastal regions and Hurricane Rita approaches, slightly weakened but still one of the strongest storms the Gulf has ever seen, preparations seem to be mostly on track. Shelters are designated and being filled, suplies and emergency crews are pre-positioned and last bus pickups are being arranged.
Still, there have been hiccups. Many of the motorists stacked up on roads out of Houston are running out of gas. There are no, that is zero, hotel vacancies that anyone knows of left in Texas and hundreds of thousands still on the road and the shelters nearer the coast simply don't have the capacity to hold everyone. After one Houston evacuee managed a huge six miles in almost 3 hours he said:
It could be that if we ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere that we'd be in a worse position in a car dealing with hurricane-force winds than we would in our house.
That has to be a worry for a lot of people out on the highways of Texas today.
Breaking - as I type this Fox has just said that the mandatory evacuation order for Corpus Christi has been cancelled. That must mean they are sure Rita wil come ashore nearer to Galveston than Corpus. The storm has also been downgraded to Cat. Four. The time is 1.00pm central. This is bad news for Houston and Galveston but good news for San Antonio. We won't have to deal with hurricane winds, it looks like - now all we have to worry about is torrential rain. Some forecasters are saying between 15 and thirty inches in 24 hours. San Antonio will be a lake if that happens. One wonders if FEMA did a good thing parking all the big-rig trailers with their emergency supplies on an air base slap in the middle of the flood plain. We will see.
Even if they reach shelter, evacuees may get an unpleasant surprise, as some did here in S.A.
The evacuees, many of them with medical needs, arrived at Blossom Athletic Center at 12:30 a.m. and were forced to wait more than two hours for help to arrive.
The evacuees said there was no food, water or basic medical necessities at the shelter.
"I was shocked to get here to find nobody to help us. They knew we were coming," said one evacuee.
The evacuees said they were told the Red Cross and other authorities were alerted to their arrival, but a Red Cross official said the agency was not aware that evacuees with medical needs were headed to the athletic center.
The storm hasn't even come ashore yet and already some cracks in the emergency planning are showing. The possibility of hundreds of thousands being trapped in their vehicles on freeways during a hurricane is not a pleasant one. Neither is the chance of a replay of crowded, unsupervised and unsupplied shelters. Lastly, I've seen no real indication that the risk of widespread serious flooding from San Antonio up to Austin and maybe even up to Dallas has figured into FEMA plans. They seem to be focussed entirely on the coastal strip.
Still, there have been hiccups. Many of the motorists stacked up on roads out of Houston are running out of gas. There are no, that is zero, hotel vacancies that anyone knows of left in Texas and hundreds of thousands still on the road and the shelters nearer the coast simply don't have the capacity to hold everyone. After one Houston evacuee managed a huge six miles in almost 3 hours he said:
It could be that if we ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere that we'd be in a worse position in a car dealing with hurricane-force winds than we would in our house.
That has to be a worry for a lot of people out on the highways of Texas today.
Breaking - as I type this Fox has just said that the mandatory evacuation order for Corpus Christi has been cancelled. That must mean they are sure Rita wil come ashore nearer to Galveston than Corpus. The storm has also been downgraded to Cat. Four. The time is 1.00pm central. This is bad news for Houston and Galveston but good news for San Antonio. We won't have to deal with hurricane winds, it looks like - now all we have to worry about is torrential rain. Some forecasters are saying between 15 and thirty inches in 24 hours. San Antonio will be a lake if that happens. One wonders if FEMA did a good thing parking all the big-rig trailers with their emergency supplies on an air base slap in the middle of the flood plain. We will see.
Even if they reach shelter, evacuees may get an unpleasant surprise, as some did here in S.A.
The evacuees, many of them with medical needs, arrived at Blossom Athletic Center at 12:30 a.m. and were forced to wait more than two hours for help to arrive.
The evacuees said there was no food, water or basic medical necessities at the shelter.
"I was shocked to get here to find nobody to help us. They knew we were coming," said one evacuee.
The evacuees said they were told the Red Cross and other authorities were alerted to their arrival, but a Red Cross official said the agency was not aware that evacuees with medical needs were headed to the athletic center.
The storm hasn't even come ashore yet and already some cracks in the emergency planning are showing. The possibility of hundreds of thousands being trapped in their vehicles on freeways during a hurricane is not a pleasant one. Neither is the chance of a replay of crowded, unsupervised and unsupplied shelters. Lastly, I've seen no real indication that the risk of widespread serious flooding from San Antonio up to Austin and maybe even up to Dallas has figured into FEMA plans. They seem to be focussed entirely on the coastal strip.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Rita Now Cat. Five - Refineries At Risk
Hurricane Rita has now strengthened into a monster 165mph wind Category Five storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The strength of the storm, probably the strongest hurricane ever to hit Texas, has prompted fears over oil infrastructure in the Houston area, where 10 refineries represent 13% of the nation's capacity.
one worst-case scenario modeled by Houston engineering firm, Dodson & Associates, predicts that a Category 5 storm coming ashore near Freeport could send a wind-driven surge of water up Galveston Bay and into the Ship Channel. Such a storm would swamp many of these facilities, according to the study. The city is home to the nation's largest refinery, Exxon Mobil's Baytown facility, which processes 557,000 barrels per day.
Freeport is also home to the massive Dow Chemicals where levees are only designed to withstand a Category Three hurricane.
Oh, and the most recent track predictions seem to have the storm's path shifting more towards Corpus Christi - which would mean the eye of what would still be a hurricane even this far inland would then track right over San Antonio. This could be...an interesting experience.
The strength of the storm, probably the strongest hurricane ever to hit Texas, has prompted fears over oil infrastructure in the Houston area, where 10 refineries represent 13% of the nation's capacity.
one worst-case scenario modeled by Houston engineering firm, Dodson & Associates, predicts that a Category 5 storm coming ashore near Freeport could send a wind-driven surge of water up Galveston Bay and into the Ship Channel. Such a storm would swamp many of these facilities, according to the study. The city is home to the nation's largest refinery, Exxon Mobil's Baytown facility, which processes 557,000 barrels per day.
Freeport is also home to the massive Dow Chemicals where levees are only designed to withstand a Category Three hurricane.
Oh, and the most recent track predictions seem to have the storm's path shifting more towards Corpus Christi - which would mean the eye of what would still be a hurricane even this far inland would then track right over San Antonio. This could be...an interesting experience.
Rita Update - Generator Shortages
This seems to be the page that people using search engines to find Hurricane Rita news are entering on. I urge you to also look at the main page for further Rita updates. Cernig, 23rd Sept.
The MSNBC "Citizen Journalist" page has local reports that shortages of gas, water, boarding sheets and in particular electric generators are becoming widespread already.
I have searched all over Texas for portable generators. Everyone is out, and they are saying they have them on order but don't know when they will be in. From Dallas to Corpus Christi to Beaumont, Texas, everyone's out. One Home Depot lady said their shipments of generators have been re-routed to Louisiana for the Katrina disaster. Everything is going quick, water, gas cans, food. We saw what happened in New Orleans, and nobody is taking any chances. When will it end? We'll pray!
--Knowland Yee, Houston, Texas
Meanwhile, here's the latest advisory for Corpus Christi. The hurricane looks like it is headed for near Galveston but if it doesn't turn quite as fast as expected and hits Corpus then San Antonio is in for a bettering too - in which case large chunks of the city and its surroundings will flood.
.EVACUATION INFORMATION...
FOR NUECES COUNTY...THE MAYOR OF PORT ARANSAS HAS ISSUED A
MANDATORY EVACUATION OF PORT ARANSAS FOR NOON TODAY. A DECISION
FOR THE REST OF NUECES COUNTY WILL BE MADE BY THIS AFTERNOON.
FOR CALHOUN COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDER HAS BEEN
ISSUED FOR THE COUNTY EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
FOR REFUGIO AND ARANSAS COUNTIES...A MANDATORY EVACUATION
ORDER WILL BE IN EFFECT AT 3 PM CDT.
FOR SAN PATRICIO COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION WILL BE
IN EFFECT AT 2 PM CDT.
FOR KLEBERG COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION IS CURRENTLY BEING
IMPLEMENTED FOR THE PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE. THE PARK
WILL BE CLOSED ON THURSDAY.
ALL RESIDENTS OF THE MIDDLE TEXAS COAST SHOULD BE IN THE
PROCESS OF COMPLETING THEIR PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS TO PROTECT
LIFE AND PROPERTY.
...STORM SURGE FLOOD AND STORM TIDE IMPACTS...
TIDE LEVELS ARE CURRENTLY NEAR NORMAL ALONG THE MIDDLE TEXAS
COAST. HIGH SWELLS FROM HURRICANE RITA WILL AFFECT THE COAST BY
THURSDAY. TIDE LEVELS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE TO 3 FEET ABOVE
MEAN SEA LEVEL ALONG AREA BEACHES DURING THE DAY THURSDAY. THIS
WILL CAUSE WATER TO FLOOD BEACHES AND BEACH ACCESS ROADS. IN
ADDITION...HIGH SWELLS WILL PRODUCE A GREATER RISK OF DANGEROUS
RIP CURRENTS ALONG AREA BEACHES AND SWIMMING IS NOT RECOMMENDED
AFTER TODAY.
MORE SIGNIFICANT COASTAL FLOODING IS EXPECTED FRIDAY NIGHT AND
SATURDAY MORNING AS WATER LEVELS CONTINUE TO RISE AS HURRICANE RITA
APPROACHES.
Everyone is concentrating on the coast right now, and I am not all that confident they are thinking about the potential for flooding inland. Texas, unlike Louisiana, is mostly arid and the water just washes off that dry ground in flash floods.
My family and I should be flood-free where we are now even if San Antonio gets hit badly, although there is a storm channel about 50 yards from the apartment we are a good 20 feet above its top. There are a lot of people in the SA area who aren't as fortunate though.
I hope the authorities aren't preparing to fight the hurricane they had last time, because if they are then they are going to be caught flat-footed with everything out of position and late to affected areas again.
You can follow breaking news as it hits the net at NewsNow.
You can follow the storm's progress at StormTrack
The MSNBC "Citizen Journalist" page has local reports that shortages of gas, water, boarding sheets and in particular electric generators are becoming widespread already.
I have searched all over Texas for portable generators. Everyone is out, and they are saying they have them on order but don't know when they will be in. From Dallas to Corpus Christi to Beaumont, Texas, everyone's out. One Home Depot lady said their shipments of generators have been re-routed to Louisiana for the Katrina disaster. Everything is going quick, water, gas cans, food. We saw what happened in New Orleans, and nobody is taking any chances. When will it end? We'll pray!
--Knowland Yee, Houston, Texas
Meanwhile, here's the latest advisory for Corpus Christi. The hurricane looks like it is headed for near Galveston but if it doesn't turn quite as fast as expected and hits Corpus then San Antonio is in for a bettering too - in which case large chunks of the city and its surroundings will flood.
.EVACUATION INFORMATION...
FOR NUECES COUNTY...THE MAYOR OF PORT ARANSAS HAS ISSUED A
MANDATORY EVACUATION OF PORT ARANSAS FOR NOON TODAY. A DECISION
FOR THE REST OF NUECES COUNTY WILL BE MADE BY THIS AFTERNOON.
FOR CALHOUN COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDER HAS BEEN
ISSUED FOR THE COUNTY EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
FOR REFUGIO AND ARANSAS COUNTIES...A MANDATORY EVACUATION
ORDER WILL BE IN EFFECT AT 3 PM CDT.
FOR SAN PATRICIO COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION WILL BE
IN EFFECT AT 2 PM CDT.
FOR KLEBERG COUNTY...A MANDATORY EVACUATION IS CURRENTLY BEING
IMPLEMENTED FOR THE PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE. THE PARK
WILL BE CLOSED ON THURSDAY.
ALL RESIDENTS OF THE MIDDLE TEXAS COAST SHOULD BE IN THE
PROCESS OF COMPLETING THEIR PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS TO PROTECT
LIFE AND PROPERTY.
...STORM SURGE FLOOD AND STORM TIDE IMPACTS...
TIDE LEVELS ARE CURRENTLY NEAR NORMAL ALONG THE MIDDLE TEXAS
COAST. HIGH SWELLS FROM HURRICANE RITA WILL AFFECT THE COAST BY
THURSDAY. TIDE LEVELS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE TO 3 FEET ABOVE
MEAN SEA LEVEL ALONG AREA BEACHES DURING THE DAY THURSDAY. THIS
WILL CAUSE WATER TO FLOOD BEACHES AND BEACH ACCESS ROADS. IN
ADDITION...HIGH SWELLS WILL PRODUCE A GREATER RISK OF DANGEROUS
RIP CURRENTS ALONG AREA BEACHES AND SWIMMING IS NOT RECOMMENDED
AFTER TODAY.
MORE SIGNIFICANT COASTAL FLOODING IS EXPECTED FRIDAY NIGHT AND
SATURDAY MORNING AS WATER LEVELS CONTINUE TO RISE AS HURRICANE RITA
APPROACHES.
Everyone is concentrating on the coast right now, and I am not all that confident they are thinking about the potential for flooding inland. Texas, unlike Louisiana, is mostly arid and the water just washes off that dry ground in flash floods.
My family and I should be flood-free where we are now even if San Antonio gets hit badly, although there is a storm channel about 50 yards from the apartment we are a good 20 feet above its top. There are a lot of people in the SA area who aren't as fortunate though.
I hope the authorities aren't preparing to fight the hurricane they had last time, because if they are then they are going to be caught flat-footed with everything out of position and late to affected areas again.
You can follow breaking news as it hits the net at NewsNow.
You can follow the storm's progress at StormTrack
Rita Update - Houston Begins Evacuations and More
According to the Associated Press, Houston Mayor Bill White has now told residents in areas prone to storm surges or major floods to prepare to leave. White says "Hurricane Rita on its present course poses a risk to Houston and the whole Houston region".
Mayor White is telling those with their own transportation to use it as there are not enough government vehicles to get everyone out of vulnerable Houston areas.
Meanwhile, Michael "The Gremlin" Chertoff has been doing the early morning TV rounds.
Taking lessons from the problem-plagued response to Katrina, Chertoff said authorities had positioned supplies, begun making preparations for the early evacuation of people in nursing homes and hospitals and were checking on communications systems. He said the federal government had sent a Coast Guard admiral to Texas to coordinate the response.
"I hope that by doing what the state officials and mayors are doing now, are getting people who are invalids out of the way, encouraging people to leave early, that when the storm hits, there will be property damage but hopefully there won't be a lot of people to rescue," Chertoff told MSNBC.
Rita is currently a Category Four hurricane but is expected to strengthen in mid-Gulf then hopefully weaken again as it gets close to landfall. Even so, it will hit land, probably just south-west of Galveston, as "at least a Category Three" according to the National Hurricane Center. That would send a 20 foot storm surge over the Texas coastline sometime Saturday morning.
Much of Texas is arid and not capable of soaking up rainfall easily. Rain from the hurricane is as likely to create flash floods and widespread innundations inland this time around as the storm surge itself is on the coast. I hope both federal and local authorities are bearing that in mind as they make their preparations. San Antonio, for instance, has already experienced fatally serious floods in 1998 and 2002, and is still at least two years away from making the major improvements needed which would reduce the risk of flooding.
The authorities, both local and national, cannot afford to get it so woefully wrong again.
Yet there are some worrying signs.
Few mobile homes if any can withstand ... the magnitude that is projected with Rita," White said. "If you are in mobile homes or other structures that cannot withstand wind damage, we are asking you to evacuate."
He estimated that as many as 1 million people may eventually be evacuated from coastal areas and low-lying, flood-prone zones in the state's largest city.
Several major highways leading out of the city have been designated as evacuation routes, and White said residents should start leaving as quickly as possible Wednesday to ease traffic jams.
He said shelters would be open along the evacuation routes but encouraged evacuees to first try to take advantage of their own accommodations, including friends, relatives or hotels north and west of Houston.
Margaret O'Brien-Molina, a Red Cross spokeswoman in Houston, said residents planning to stay in shelters should try to bring as much food and water as possible. She said an evacuation of the size now ordered could put a strain on resources in shelters.
[Snip]
Area schools canceled classes Thursday and Friday, and White asked all employers in the area to require only essential personnel to show up for work for the remainder of the week.
White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels also encouraged residents who need help getting out of their homes to call friends, relatives and neighbors first.
"If there is no one to turn to, then we are asking you to reach out to us so we can work with Metro and other state organizations that are capable of providing transportation," White said.
White reiterated the call for Katrina refugees who have moved to Houston to heed the warnings to flee.
Governor Perry is saying there is no need to panic and is also urging everyone in possibly effected areas to leave now rather than later. "Homes and businesses can be rebuilt -- lives cannot," he says. The Governor today issued a disaster emergency declaration
Bush has pledged that FEMA is ready, Chertoff has said DHS and FEMA are ready and Northcom are saying the military are ready.
You can follow breaking news as it hits the net at NewsNow.
You can follow the storm's progress at StormTrack
Mayor White is telling those with their own transportation to use it as there are not enough government vehicles to get everyone out of vulnerable Houston areas.
Meanwhile, Michael "The Gremlin" Chertoff has been doing the early morning TV rounds.
Taking lessons from the problem-plagued response to Katrina, Chertoff said authorities had positioned supplies, begun making preparations for the early evacuation of people in nursing homes and hospitals and were checking on communications systems. He said the federal government had sent a Coast Guard admiral to Texas to coordinate the response.
"I hope that by doing what the state officials and mayors are doing now, are getting people who are invalids out of the way, encouraging people to leave early, that when the storm hits, there will be property damage but hopefully there won't be a lot of people to rescue," Chertoff told MSNBC.
Rita is currently a Category Four hurricane but is expected to strengthen in mid-Gulf then hopefully weaken again as it gets close to landfall. Even so, it will hit land, probably just south-west of Galveston, as "at least a Category Three" according to the National Hurricane Center. That would send a 20 foot storm surge over the Texas coastline sometime Saturday morning.
Much of Texas is arid and not capable of soaking up rainfall easily. Rain from the hurricane is as likely to create flash floods and widespread innundations inland this time around as the storm surge itself is on the coast. I hope both federal and local authorities are bearing that in mind as they make their preparations. San Antonio, for instance, has already experienced fatally serious floods in 1998 and 2002, and is still at least two years away from making the major improvements needed which would reduce the risk of flooding.
The authorities, both local and national, cannot afford to get it so woefully wrong again.
Yet there are some worrying signs.
Few mobile homes if any can withstand ... the magnitude that is projected with Rita," White said. "If you are in mobile homes or other structures that cannot withstand wind damage, we are asking you to evacuate."
He estimated that as many as 1 million people may eventually be evacuated from coastal areas and low-lying, flood-prone zones in the state's largest city.
Several major highways leading out of the city have been designated as evacuation routes, and White said residents should start leaving as quickly as possible Wednesday to ease traffic jams.
He said shelters would be open along the evacuation routes but encouraged evacuees to first try to take advantage of their own accommodations, including friends, relatives or hotels north and west of Houston.
Margaret O'Brien-Molina, a Red Cross spokeswoman in Houston, said residents planning to stay in shelters should try to bring as much food and water as possible. She said an evacuation of the size now ordered could put a strain on resources in shelters.
[Snip]
Area schools canceled classes Thursday and Friday, and White asked all employers in the area to require only essential personnel to show up for work for the remainder of the week.
White and Harris County Judge Robert Eckels also encouraged residents who need help getting out of their homes to call friends, relatives and neighbors first.
"If there is no one to turn to, then we are asking you to reach out to us so we can work with Metro and other state organizations that are capable of providing transportation," White said.
White reiterated the call for Katrina refugees who have moved to Houston to heed the warnings to flee.
Governor Perry is saying there is no need to panic and is also urging everyone in possibly effected areas to leave now rather than later. "Homes and businesses can be rebuilt -- lives cannot," he says. The Governor today issued a disaster emergency declaration
Bush has pledged that FEMA is ready, Chertoff has said DHS and FEMA are ready and Northcom are saying the military are ready.
You can follow breaking news as it hits the net at NewsNow.
You can follow the storm's progress at StormTrack
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