Number Two in Pre-Teens

I just found out that the post I did on the Michael Jackson verdict a few months ago is number 2 in MSN Search for the terms "michael jackson preteen boys."

I'm not sure that's something to be proud of.

Is This the Straw That Breaks the Camel's Back?

A talking head somewhere, I think it was on the McLaughlin Group, said that this may be the crisis that wakes up America. It is obvious to anyone paying even superficial attention to the news that local agencies in New Orleans were overwhelmed by Tuesday until army & National Guard finally arrived Friday and Saturday.

The media is asking a lot of hard questions, and Scott McClellan's evasive tactics do little to hide the fact that the administration was caught with it's pants down.

Slow Response in New Olreans

Today's headline is President Bush complaining that the slow federal response in New Orleans is "unacceptable." It's about time he realized this.

I can forgive the lack of response on the first day. On Monday the message from the media was that "New Orleans had been spared." But on Tuesday morning the breaking news was threat the levees holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain from city had been breeched.

Now I am no genius, and I've never even visited New Orleans, but when I heard that I knew that this would be very, very bad.

As the week when on, there were reports of wide spread looting - both from citizens and by members of the rapidly disintigrating police department, shootings, and general lawlessness. Citizens are told to go to the convention center, yet no transportation or aid is available there. It wasn't until Thursday afternoon that there were reports of the National Guard entering the city.

So where was the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard, composed of citizens with personal connections to the affected areas, who signed up for the Guard to assist in exactly this sort of crisis? Well, about 6,000 of them are stationed in Iraq, accomplishing little more than the justification of the Bush Administrations misguided policies so that we'll forget about the Iraqi WMDs and 9/11 connections that don't exist.

Donald Rumsfeld boasts of his restructuring the military to be highly mobile and quick to respond. While the effectiveness of this strategy in Iraq is debatable, it seems that these capabilities would be exactly what New Orleans could have used this week. If an armed presence and supplies entered the city by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, this would have been a much different story.

Many people are asking why helicopters were not used more extensively to drop in supplies. Forget helicopters, except in areas inaccessible by road. As far as I can tell, Interstate 10 from Baton Rouge to downtown New Orleans is passable by trucks and busses. If I-10 can accommodate the transportation of much the food eaten in New Orleans in normal times, then why isn't food available in those parts of the city that can be accessed from I-10?

Here are my predictions:

Questions about why effective disaster response was so delayed will become a major scandal. Many people will come to the conclusion that the amount of resources sent to Iraq depleted the amount of resources available for disasters at home.

The federal government will be accused of racism because the large majority of affected people seen in the media are black. I personally don't believe there is a racist motive, but such rumors may cause additional civil unrest in affected areas.

Finally a positive prediction: New Orleans will recover, and within a few years, I'll visit Bourbon street for some jazz, a shot of bourbon, or maybe even an absinthe frapp.

Where's the National Guard?

This morning's breaking news is about gunfire and other mayhem following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The National Guard and police are trying to keep up, but are spread too thin. National Guard units are coming in from all over the country to restore order.

Just last July, a group of state governors expressed concern over the readiness of their national guard units to respond to natural disasters.

For Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana, the major concern was with hurricanes. She and three other states in the hurricane belt - Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi - have agreed to help one another in the case of the threat, hurricanes or other disasters, as they tried to adjust to tighter circumstances in their states.

"Jeb Bush already called me once this year to say, 'I'm just checking in,' " said Ms. Blanco, a Democrat, referring to Florida's governor. Mr. Bush, a Republican, did not attend the conference.

Yesterday the Washington Post revealed that more than 6000 National Guard troops from Louisiana and Mississippi who ought to be available to provide desperately needed help to their neighbors are instead overseas perusing the President's fantasy of eliminating terrorism and creating friendly western-style democracies by invading and occupying foreign countries.

In Louisiana, which took the brunt of Katrina, some 3,000 members of the 256th Combat Brigade are in Iraq, while 3,500 members of the Guard were deployed to help hurricane victims and another 3,000 were on standby.

In neighboring Mississippi, the Guard had 853 troops on hurricane duty _ a small slice of the more than 7,000 Guard troops in the state's ground and air components. Some 3,000 National Guard troops from Mississippi are in Iraq, another 300 in Afghanistan.

Instead of making us more secure, our foreign policy based on lies and deceptions is making our nation and people less secure by reducing our ability to respond to both man-made and natural disasters at home.