Rip Snorter's Blog

 

This morning a close friend of mine attended services at the San Antonio Mission Church (Catholic) in the village. I’m a bit incredulous what happened next.

The priest was discussing the issue of how Christians ought to point out the sins of their neighbors. Then he stuck his toe into different waters.

“A lot of you mightn’t have noticed,” I’ll paraphrase him, “that on the very day the hurricane hit New Orleans, a hundred thousand gays and lesbians arrived to have a celebration of their sexuality and an enormous parade.

“Now, this mightn’t have been the work of the Lord, hitting New Orleans the way he once destroyed Sodom and Gonorrhea (me smiling to meself), but I just want you to think about it.”

Hey blog readers.

I refer you to this Blog entry Thursday, September 01, 2005, entitled,

 

“Who'd have thunk it?

“Seems a body of leading edge Christian thinkers has figured out what caused that hurricane to hit New Orleansand do so much damage.

“It ain’t a chaos butterfly at all.

“It’s the Wrath of the Good Lord done it.

“All that sinning and drinking and whoring down on Bourbon Streetfinally caught up with them, evidently. The Good Lord finally got a belly-full of Mardi Gras.

“But don’t be surprised if you begin hearing all those flood victims in New Orleansaren’t deserving of Christian pity and help in their sufferings. They just naturally brought it all on themselves, like Sodomand whatchallit, Gonorrhea.

Next thing down the pike is probably going to involve those homeless Louisianans bringing the wrath down on the rest of us, as well, with their Godless frivolity.”

I’m not a Mormon, but I’ve always appreciated Brigham Young’s response when he heard there was a Christian army headed for Utah to straighten things out.

“We’ve all experienced a lot of Christian Charity before we came here, them confiscating our property, burning our houses, killing, beating and raping our families, murdering Joseph Smith.

Now they want to send us some more Christian Charity. Arm yourselves, stock up food, clothing, blankets, guns and ammunition and hide in the hills if you hope to survive.”

 

Don’t get the idea I’m as good at predicting numbers as I am at predicting the behaviors of Christians. I’m not.

Jack

 

 

 

 

An October, 2004, synopsis in a National Magazine.  A well-researched, widely publicized feature that reads like a news story from last week?

That story didn't come out of a crystal ball.  It came out of the mouths of all the people in a position to know what to expect, who knew it would happen.  People who study hurricanes and what they do, people who study geography, hydrology, emergency managements and disaster.

They all agreed.

Those people who were interviewed for the feature didn't keep the information hidden.  It wasn't in a folder drawing dust in the file cabinet.

Every one of the agencies who were interviewed to create the story had been communicating the information to the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans for decades, where evidently it DID sit in file drawers drawing dust.

I know for a fact this is true from personal observation. 

During the early 1990s I toured those levies, the lower lying areas with FEMA officials, Red Cross officials, Emergency Management Coordinators from other States inthe FEMA Region VI, Corps of Engineers officials, and Louisiana State and local officials.  The precisely same information concerning what would happen if a major storm hit was communicated to and by everyone present.  It was obvious.  We even kicked around ideas involving specifics of needed emergency plans with City and State emergency managers.

A case can be made that when a tsunami hits and kills people it's an accident.  When an earthquake hits in an earthquake prone area and lives are destroyed, it's still an event that mightn't have happened, had reason to catch residents by surprise.  A tornado in West Texas tornado alley is still a low probability at any give spot.

This is a disaster of another sort.

Responsibility lies with every human being to behave prudently in matters involving his own personal safety.  To look carefully at the traffic before venturing to cross a street with the knowledge that cars use that street.  To mosey over toward Metairie if there's a hurricane stalking in the gulf.  But, before that, to elect officials of the sort who were responsible officials, who weren't merely demigogues and rhetoriticians.

In this instance the secondary responsibility for the safety of the residents, making sure they had the information to allow them to make prudent choices, lay with the City and the Parrish.  An evacuation plan in place and tested.  Intergovernmental agreements with inland communities for shelters in the event of an evacuation.  Disaster plans in place and exercised.  Everyone educated on the possibilities, everyone knowing what would need to be done and when, where and how to do it.

The next level of responsibility lay with the State of Louisiana, and the Governor to absolutely drop a hammer on the heads on responsible local officials who weren't doing their jobs.  To use every means available, legal, publicity, and volume to order, threaten, plead and cajole those City and Parrish officials to prepare for the inevitable.

This storm could have happened a decade from now and it would have been no different, maybe worse.  The City of New Orleans would have been no better prepared, and Louisiana would have been no better prepared.  The population would have been no better prepared.

The lazy, irresponsible, shirking attitude of the residents, the City and Parrish governments and the State of Louisiana would not have changed even though every year the inevitability of this event increased and they knew damned well it was doing it.

There are disasters, and there are disasters.

Jack

 

Edited in as an afterthought:

I did some drinking on Bourbon Street with the Louisiana State Flood Plain Administrator after that tour.  We talked about his problems implementing any kind of plan, even the minimums required by law in Louisiana.  He was a good guy, a solid, caring black man who'd really like to do his job. 

"It's politics, man.  The City doesn't like exercizing emergency plans.  It might upset the tourists.  Out in the parrishes it's all cousins and nephews.  They don't want to hear anything about anything but Federal grant money and new roads."

 

 

October, 2004, This article in National Geographic Magazine described just what happened to New Orleans as a scenario for the next hurricane to hit. 

Here's the link:

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

 

 

By Joel K. Boerne, Jr.

The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers everywhere.

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday. But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party. The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it. Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great. "The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast. Suhayda is sitting in a lakefront restaurant on an actual August afternoon sipping lemonade and talking about the chinks in the city's hurricane armor. "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse." The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when." Yet just as the risks of a killer storm are rising, the city's natural defenses are quietly melting away. From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any place in the U.S. Since the 1930s some 1,900 square miles (4,900 square kilometers) of coastal wetlands—a swath nearly the size of Delaware or almost twice that of Luxembourg—have vanished beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Despite nearly half a billion dollars spent over the past decade to stem the tide, the state continues to lose about 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of land each year, roughly one acre every 33 minutes. A cocktail of natural and human factors is putting the coast under. Delta soils naturally compact and sink over time, eventually giving way to open water unless fresh layers of sediment offset the subsidence. The Mississippi's spring floods once maintained that balance, but the annual deluges were often disastrous. After a devastating flood in 1927, levees were raised along the river and lined with concrete, effectively funneling the marsh-building sediments to the deep waters of the Gulf. Since the 1950s engineers have also cut more than 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of canals through the marsh for petroleum exploration and ship traffic. These new ditches sliced the wetlands into a giant jigsaw puzzle, increasing erosion and allowing lethal doses of salt water to infiltrate brackish and freshwater marshes. While such loss hits every bayou-loving Louisianan right in the heart, it also hits nearly every U.S. citizen right in the wallet. Louisiana has the hardest working wetlands in America, a watery world of bayous, marshes, and barrier islands that either produces or transports more than a third of the nation's oil and a quarter of its natural gas, and ranks second only to Alaska in commercial fish landings. As wildlife habitat, it makes Florida's Everglades look like a petting zoo by comparison. Such high stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows—scientists, environmental groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to forge a radical plan to protect what's left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin. To glimpse the urgency of the problem afflicting Louisiana, one need only drive 40 minutes southeast of New Orleans to the tiny bayou village of Shell Beach. Here, for the past 70 years or so, a big, deeply tanned man with hands the size of baseball gloves has been catching fish, shooting ducks, and selling gas and bait to anyone who can find his end-of-the-road marina. Today Frank "Blackie" Campo's ramshackle place hangs off the end of new Shell Beach. The old Shell Beach, where Campo was born in 1918, sits a quarter mile away, five feet beneath the rippling waves. Once home to some 50 families and a naval air station during World War II, the little village is now "ga'an pecan," as Campo says in the local patois. Gone forever. Life in old Shell Beach had always been a tenuous existence. Hurricanes twice razed the community, sending houses floating through the marsh. But it wasn't until the Corps of Engineers dredged a 500-foot-wide (150-meter-wide) ship channel nearby in 1968 that its fate was sealed. The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known as "Mr. Go," was supposed to provide a shortcut for freighters bound for New Orleans, but it never caught on. Maybe two ships use the channel on a given day, but wakes from even those few vessels have carved the shoreline a half mile wide in places, consuming old Shell Beach. Campo settles into a worn recliner, his pale blue eyes the color of a late autumn sky. Our conversation turns from Mr. Go to the bigger issue affecting the entire coast. "What really screwed up the marsh is when they put the levees on the river," Campo says, over the noise of a groaning air-conditioner. "They should take the levees out and let the water run; that's what built the land. But we know they not going to let the river run again, so there's no solution." Denise Reed, however, proposes doing just that—letting the river run. A coastal geomorphologist at the University of New Orleans, Reed is convinced that breaching the levees with a series of gated spillways would pump new life into the dying marshes. Only three such diversions currently operate in the state. I catch up with Reed at the most controversial of the lot—a 26-million-dollar culvert just south of New Orleans named Caernarvon. "Caernarvon is a prototype, a demonstration of a technique," says Reed as we motor down a muddy canal in a state boat. The diversion isn't filling the marsh with sediments on a grand scale, she says. But the effect of the added river water—loaded as it is with fertilizer from farm runoff—is plain to see. "It turns wetlands hanging on by the fingernails into something quite lush," says Reed. To prove her point, she points to banks crowded with slender willows, rafts of lily pads, and a wide shallow pond that is no longer land, no longer liquid. More like chocolate pudding. But impressive as the recovering marsh is, its scale seems dwarfed by the size of the problem. "Restoration is not trying to make the coast look like a map of 1956," explains Reed. "That's not even possible. The goal is to restore healthy natural processes, then live with what you get." Even that will be hard to do. Caernarvon, for instance, became a political land mine when releases of fresh water timed to mimic spring floods wiped out the beds of nearby oyster farmers. The oystermen sued, and last year a sympathetic judge awarded them a staggering 1.3 billion dollars. The case threw a major speed bump into restoration efforts. Other restoration methods—such as rebuilding marshes with dredge spoil and salt-tolerant plants or trying to stabilize a shoreline that's eroding 30 feet (10 meters) a year—have had limited success. Despite the challenges, the thought of doing nothing is hard for most southern Louisianans to swallow. Computer models that project land loss for the next 50 years show the coast and interior marsh dissolving as if splattered with acid, leaving only skeletal remnants. Outlying towns such as Shell Beach, Venice, Grand Isle, and Cocodrie vanish under a sea of blue pixels. Those who believe diversions are the key to saving Louisiana's coast often point to the granddaddy of them all: the Atchafalaya River. The major distributary of the Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya, if left alone, would soon be the Mississippi River, capturing most of its flow. But to prevent salt water from creeping farther up the Mississippi and spoiling the water supply of nearby towns and industries, the Corps of Engineers allows only a third of the Mississippi's water to flow down the Atchafalaya. Still, that water and sediment have produced the healthiest wetlands in Louisiana. The Atchafalaya Delta is one of the few places in the state that's actually gaining ground instead of losing it. And if you want to see the delta, you need to go crabbing with Peanut Michel. "Peanut," it turns out, is a bit of a misnomer. At six foot six and 340 pounds, the 35-year-old commercial fisherman from Morgan City wouldn't look out of place on the offensive line of the New Orleans Saints. We launch his aluminum skiff in the predawn light, and soon we're skimming down the broad, café au lait river toward the newest land in Louisiana. Dense thickets of needlegrass, flag grass, cut grass, and a big-leafed plant Michel calls elephant ear crowd the banks, followed closely by bushy wax myrtles and shaggy willows. Michel finds his string of crab pots a few miles out in the broad expanse of Atchafalaya Bay. Even this far from shore the water is barely five feet deep. As the sun ignites into a blowtorch on the horizon, Michel begins a well-oiled ritual: grab the bullet-shaped float, shake the wire cube of its clicking, mottled green inhabitants, bait it with a fish carcass, and toss. It's done in fluid motions as the boat circles lazily in the water. But it's a bad day for crabbing. The wind and water are hot, and only a few crabs dribble in. And yet Michel is happy. Deliriously happy. Because this is what he wants to do. "They call 'em watermen up in Maryland," he says with a slight Cajun accent. "They call us lunatics here. You got to be crazy to be in this business." Despite Michel's poor haul, Louisiana's wetlands are still a prolific seafood factory, sustaining a commercial fishery that most years lands more than 300 million dollars' worth of finfish, shrimp, oysters, crabs, and other delicacies. How long the stressed marshes can maintain that production is anybody's guess. In the meantime, Michel keeps at it. "My grandfather always told me, Don't live to be rich, live to be happy," he says. And so he does. After a few hours Michel calls it a day, and we head through the braided delta, where navigation markers that once stood at the edge of the boat channel now peek out of the brush 20 feet (six meters) from shore. At every turn we flush mottled ducks, ibis, and great blue herons. Michel, who works as a hunting guide during duck season, cracks an enormous grin at the sight. "When the ducks come down in the winter," he says, "they'll cover the sun." To folks like Peanut Michel, the birds, the fish, and the rich coastal culture are reason enough to save Louisiana's shore, whatever the cost. But there is another reason, one readily grasped by every American whose way of life is tethered not to a dock, but to a gas pump: These wetlands protect one of the most extensive petroleum infrastructures in the nation. The state's first oil well was punched in south Louisiana in 1901, and the world's first offshore rig went into operation in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947. During the boom years in the early 1970s, fully half of the state's budget was derived from petroleum revenues. Though much of the production has moved into deeper waters, oil and gas wells remain a fixture of the coast, as ubiquitous as shrimp boats and brown pelicans. The deep offshore wells now account for nearly a third of all domestic oil production, while Louisiana's Offshore Oil Port, a series of platforms anchored 18 miles (29 kilometers) offshore, unloads a nonstop line of supertankers that deliver up to 15 percent of the nation's foreign oil. Most of that black gold comes ashore via a maze of pipelines buried in the Louisiana muck. Numerous refineries, the nation's largest natural gas pipeline hub, even the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are all protected from hurricanes and storm surge by Louisiana's vanishing marsh. You can smell the petrodollars burning at Port Fourchon, the offshore oil industry's sprawling home port on the central Louisiana coast. Brawny helicopters shuttle 6,000 workers to the rigs from here each week, while hundreds of supply boats deliver everything from toilet paper to drinking water to drilling lube. A thousand trucks a day keep the port humming around the clock, yet Louisiana 1, the two-lane highway that connects it to the world, seems to flood every other high tide. During storms the port becomes an island, which is why port officials like Davie Breaux are clamoring for the state to build a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) elevated highway to the port. It's also why Breaux thinks spending 14 billion dollars to save the coast would be a bargain. "We'll go to war and spend billions of dollars to protect oil and gas interests overseas," Breaux says as he drives his truck past platform anchors the size of two-story houses. "But here at home?" He shrugs. "Where else you gonna drill? Not California. Not Florida. Not in ANWR. In Louisiana. I'm third generation in the oil field. We're not afraid of the industry. We just want the infrastructure to handle it." The oil industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs. But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence rates. For decades geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But two years ago former petroleum geologist Bob Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization. That led nearby underground faults to slip and the land above them to slump. "When you stick a straw in a soda and suck on it, everything goes down," Morton explains. "That's very simplified, but you get the idea." The phenomenon isn't new: It was first documented in Texas in 1926 and has been reported in other oil-producing areas such as the North Sea and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Morton won't speculate on what percentage of wetland loss can be pinned on the oil industry. "What I can tell you is that much of the loss between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne was caused by induced subsidence from oil and gas withdrawal. The wetlands are still there, they're just underwater." The area Morton refers to, part of the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, has one of the highest rates of wetland loss in the state. The oil industry and its consultants dispute Morton's theory, but they've been unable to disprove it. The implication for restoration is profound. If production continues to taper off in coastal wetlands, Morton expects subsidence to return to its natural geologic rate, making restoration feasible in places. Currently, however, the high price of natural gas has oil companies swarming over the marshes looking for deep gas reservoirs. If such fields are tapped, Morton expects regional depressurization to continue. The upshot for the coast, he explains, is that the state will have to focus whatever restoration dollars it can muster on areas that can be saved, not waste them on places that are going to sink no matter what. A few days after talking with Morton, I'm sitting on the levee in the French Quarter, enjoying the deep-fried powdery sweetness of a beignet from the Café du Monde. Joggers lumber by in the torpid heat, while tugs wrestle their barges up and down the big brown river. For all its enticing quirkiness, for all its licentious pleasures, for all its geologic challenges, New Orleans has been luckier than the wetlands that lined its pockets and stocked its renowned tables. The question is how long Lady Luck will shine. It brings back something Joe Suhayda, the LSU engineer, had said during our lunch by Lake Pontchartrain. "When you look at the broadest perspective, short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the long term you're going to pay for it. Just like you can spend three days drinking in New Orleans and it'll be fun. But sooner or later you're going to pay." I finish my beignet and stroll down the levee, succumbing to the hazy, lazy feel of the city that care forgot, but that nature will not. Subscribe toNational Geographic.

 

The framers of the US Constitution knew all about kings.

That’s the reason when they created the job of president, they were careful to studiously limit his powers, making it so almost anything he did required the consent of the US Congress.

The Constitution of the US gives the President the power to pass, or veto acts passed by Congress, with the caveat that Congress can over-ride his veto.

The Constitution makes him the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. He’s allowed to make war, provided a declaration of war has been passed by Congress.

He owns the diplomatic corps and gets to appoint judges and cabinet members, but only with the advice and consent of Congress.

Otherwise, the framers didn’t allow the president to do much of anything.

They didn’t want a king. They knew perfectly well what kings, dictators emperors, and presidents behaving as any of the above were capable of doing.

Today, Americans have come the full circle.

While the dictators have mostly been stripped of their powers all over the world, while the monarchs are eunich figureheads, while the emporers have all fallen into the wastebins of history, Americans are demanding, absolutely begging for the American president to become a king, (or remain one) and continue ignoring the limits of the office established by the US Constitution.

This hurricane disaster is a glowing example of Americans once more demanding that their president act as a king, or emperor.

The people who are whining and complaining aren’t, as they should be, demanding that the president act precisely in accordance with the requirements of the Constitution. They are screaming hatred at him because he’s not behaving the way they fanaticize some king they’d prefer from another political party might behave, given the opportunity.

I don’t like this guy. He’s already performing plenty well enough like a king to overly satisfy my needs and desires. The people who are demanding he become a monarch wouldn’t like him better if he was more like one, either.

And there’s cause to doubt any of us would like a king from the other party any better, comes to that.

This country doesn’t need a king. It doesn’t even need a president. The machinery of government is so entrenched the country would go on operating business as usual indefinitely, were he to simply vanish.

The only people who would miss him, miss the office are the king worshipers and the media.

The framers of the US Constitution knew all about kings and king worshipers.

Jack

 

 

For some while I’ve been haranguing you bloggers to take a look at what this War on Drugs is doing to destroy our institutions, mainly in the criminal justice arena. Here’s an example of a tip-of-the-iceberg for-instance:

The Lincoln Courier, Lincoln, Ill, reports police Cpl. Diana R. Short, 46, and her husband, paramedic John T. Short, 41, were charged with several drug felonies, including growing marijuana in their home for distribution, plus charges of illegal weapons possession. Short's husband has already accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to six years. Meanwhile, Diana Short has pleaded not guilty; she faces 18-90 years in prison.

Okay. There’s going to be a bad apple in any barrel. Right? A cop sees a river of money running under her feet, same as all cops do. She’s holding a cup and she’s thirsty. Her pay, according to her thinking, isn’t at all what it should be, and she drives past crack houses and drug deals enough times a night to know the battle to get it off the streets is futile. Begins to wonder, “Why not give myself a raise?”

Several months later Diana's daughter, Brianna D. Strohl, 24, was charged with conspiracy to do a meth cook raise money for her mother's bail. Short evidently instructed her daughter by phone from a jail phone and the calls were recorded. The daughter faces 6-30 years.

You have to read a lot between the lines here to see the implications.

First, this lady cop certainly knew phone calls from the jail were recorded, but for some reason we can only guess, she wasn’t deterred from talking about committing a felony on a jail phone.

Hmmmm.

Secondly, this officer was raising weed in her home. Is it possible the officers charged with enforcing drug laws aren’t being tested regularly? Even if the cop wasn’t smoking there’s pollen. Pee in a bottle. Hair, clothing, that sort of thing.

The fact is, in the State of New Mexico police officers are almost never given drug tests. During the several years I worked for an agency within the New Mexico Department of Public Safety not one employee of that department was asked to take a drug test.

Now why, one wonders, would that be?

Probably a visit to your own police department, bloggers, will reveal the same is true in your own State Police and local police administrations.

“I can’t answer for you,” Bob Dylan once whined, “You’ll have to decide,

Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side.”

Jack

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

 

Maybe it's being nested here surrounded by great big hostile piles of dirt makes us so conservative.

You can study that sign all you want and not find anywhere it gives permission for any hurricanes. 

Quite frankly, I'm thinking with all the bad press hurricanes have been getting, probably there's no way they're going to upgrade it this legislative session.

Sometimes one little thing can screw it up for everyone.

Jack

 

I've got to start keeping up with the news.

I was reading comments on a blog on another website and made an alarming discovery.

Evidently, President Bush has declared a War on Gas! 

The blog comment I was reading didn't say that. 

I deduced it my ownself with my lightning quick mind.  The person who made the comment had gone out to pick up emergency aid supplies to send with a transport to help the hurricane victims. 

Had to gas up the car on the way to Walmart.  Paid $4.95 per gallon.

Okay.  Probably we've all been wondering why gas prices were going so high without any obvious decrease in availability.  Or maybe all of you knew, but because I'm so reclusive I just missed it.

Whoopee! 

We might pay more, buy by gollee, a lot of people are going to get rich without winning the lottery, and there's gonna be plenty to go around.  Genius, our prez.  Picked the only way possible to be sure Americans will always have a surplus of petroleum.

Jack

 

 

 

 

The scrutineering’s begun, the witch-hunters are getting their torches all lit up for some really juicy burnings at the stake.

So who is responsible for what’s happened in New Orleans and surrounding communities?

The people of Louisiana are responsible. Louisiana knew about those dikes. The residents knew about them. They continued to build behind them.

Now they’ve been destroyed by the flood they knew was coming for many years.

Who’s responsible for the mess there now? FEMA? President Bush?

Frankly, I dislike FEMA somewhere around Category 5, assuming this was a Cat 4 storm. But FEMA is not responsible for what happened here. They didn’t make the choices that put houses in areas where they’d flood. In fact, they pleaded, begged, threatened and cajoled the communities of Louisiana for many years trying to get them to mitigate flood damage by building outside floodprone areas.

I wish I could assign some blame to FEMA, but I can’t.

So, who then?

The Corps of Engineers?

With the exception of 404 Permitting personnel, the employees of the US Army Corps of Engineers are probably the most qualified, responsible, competent workforce I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with. The Corps, however, is the instrument of the US Government. It can do nothing without the consent of Congress and the President.

Prez Bush?

I like this president about as well as I like FEMA. I’d love to see him take a bath on this. But the bath would be misplaced, because this Prez, however stupid and lousy I believe he is, (the mirror image of the electorate) had nothing to do with this. He was asked to assist, and he’s assisting as best he can. It might be his fault he can’t respond better, but he had no responsibility to respond, except within the context of the overall well being of the nation.

So who does that leave?

The people you’re seeing submerged in anguish on the news are precisely the people who caused this disaster, by their failure to evacuate, their failure to vote taxes to improve levies, their failure to support building standards to prevent this kind of devastation, their failure to elect officials who’d behave responsibly in the face of this threat that’s been before them for generations.

This nation has no responsibility to Louisiana for this disaster, other than a humanitarian one.

Whatever help can be provided through charities, FEMA (short of funds for rebuilding), and individuals is admirable. It’s compassion and generosity of the sort we ought to demand of ourselves.

But no person who is not a resident of Louisiana is responsible for this debacle. No person who resides outside the boundaries of Louisiana has any obligation beyond a moral one to do anything for them at all.

Louisiana is getting the kind of help you’d give when you extend a hand to a drowning man. It doesn’t matter whether he was drunk and fell out of the boat, whether he was using bad judgment to get himself into that predicament. The rest of us will extend a hand.

But anything we do beyond that is purely a matter of personal choice.

Which, of course, is a falsehood. We’ll all do a lot more than that, and we won’t have any choice at all. We’ll pay for it in deficit spending by our government and tax dollars without anyone asking whether we’d like to do more.

Jack

 

A decade ago emergency management workers used to marvel. 

A tidal wave, an earthquake, mudslides, floods hit in South America, China, Armenia, casualties would be in the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands.  But a similar event in the US would leave a few dozen people dead with just a lot of property damage.

Emergency management workers knew this wasn't their doing.  Mitigation workers knew it wasn't their doing.  A few believed it was just a confirmation that God was on the side of America.  Most believed it was pure, dumb luck.

Everyone knew the potential was there, the vulnerabilities.  In fact, one of the reasons no effective mitigation efforts found support lay in the fact that these things simply don't happen to the United States.  They happen elsewhere, to foreigners, to strangers. 

We watched the tragedies, helped as we could, we Americans, but we came to believe a catastrophy for America was an airline crash where a hundred or so people died.  A hurricane where people lost their homes. 

It's clear our luck ran out on this one. 

I saw a newspaper this morning and read with shock about the chaos and the inability of the emergency response and recovery infrastructure to deal with an event of this magnitude.  I shouldn't have been shocked, because it's obvious, in retrospect.

Maybe things would have been different if we'd not stretched our resources so thin.... if we'd continued to use our regular Army to fight our wars and left the National Guard and Army Reserves inside the US boundaries, but there's no assurance of  this. 

There's a certainty that a lot less human death and suffering and property damage from looting would have resulted if there'd been a determined evacuation before the storm came in.  There'll definitely be a lot of questions asked about why that didn't happen.

But the reason it didn't happen is right there in the beginning of this jotting.  Things of this magnitude don't happen here.  Those victim-faces filled with anguish could have made the choice to leave.  They didn't do so because they believed as we all tend to, that US soil is somehow sanctified against such stupendous tragedy.

The costs will by high in their personal lives because of this tragedy.  Their choice to stay will also be enormously high for the rest of us, as well. 

If those traumatized victims had merely used good judgement, taken measures to behave the way any prudent person would behave when a CAT 5 storm's coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, the only thing those FEMA, National Guard, Police, Firemen and rescue workers would be dealing with would be a few stragglers who simply found it impossible to leave, and the hospitals who couldn't.

Hopefully all over the US people with spare bedrooms will give over a piece of themselves in the form of shelter, make the sacrifice to trust those people who made a lousy choice we might well have made ourselves.

Somehow those people have to be relocated to the spare bedrooms of America for a while.

Are we up to the task?

I'm not.

Jack

 

 

There's probably a lot Americans can learn about themselves, about the government, about foreigners, and about victims from this event, provided they'll allow themselves to do it.  However, that seems unlikely.

That's an unfortunate trait we humans share, not allowing ourselves to closely observe, digest, and learn things we'd rather not contemplate.

We've grown accustomed to the shrill cries of immediacy, the razor edge of opinion communicated as fact, of analysis while the water's muddy and incomprehensible, then the unfortunate decisions left behind and forgotten after the scapegoating and recriminations are over.  There'll be another crisis or exciting sports event, important musical concert to demand our attention to help us avoid learning whatever's to be learned from all this.

Time was when we could afford such things.  The US once had a gross national product that involved manufactured goods, as opposed to raw materials, agricultural products and hamburgers.  Today all we have is an enormous military, a lot of computer related activity, and an inflated view of ourselves because of what we once were, similar to the one the Brits had of themselves during the first generation following the dissolution of the Empire.

We've done a lot to get where we are, to maintain the self-image, but it's going to go away.  Deficit spending simply can't happen on a sustained basis, even though ours has set a lot of records. 

Fact is, there's got to be a time coming when the remittance man knocks and wants to be paid.  When the addict, the gambler, or just the poor guy who's buying groceries and gasoline on his credit card tries one last time and the guys who've been making the loans shake their heads, no.

Hopefully that won't happen during the immediate aftermath of this storm.  But in view of petroleum prices there's reason to suspect it will happen sooner than we'd like.

Americans are going to have to pull back the reins, begin to examine what things they're willing to give up as a nation, or the issue will be decided for them.  But, of course, the first half of that sentence is an absurdity, moot.  The issue's going to be decided at the bankruptcy auction, by the remittance man, by the grocer, the car dealer, the world when it finally shakes its head, no.

When Americans begin to come down off the emotional high of watching storm victims and marching goose-step in their legions of admiration-explosion for the heroes and their pity for the victims they could serve themselves well by turning off the television, cancelling the newspaper, and simply thinking about this disaster, about America, about foreigners, about the national deficit, and about what, precisely, the common dollar bill has to eat to keep it alive.

Jack

 

Three draw sets:

United Kingdom Thunderball
Dec 1, 2004 8 15 18 26 31 11
Nov 27, 2004 11 18 22 28 33 14
Nov 24, 2004 3 7 8 23 27 11

Dec 23, 2000 06 11 17 25 26 9
Dec 16, 2000 11 21 22 24 33 1
Dec 9, 2000 09 16 19 21 28 4

Multi State Hot Lotto
Jul 14, 2004 3 18 25 32 38 14
Jul 10, 2004 9 11 14 22 33 6
Jul 7, 2004 2 15 22 28 30 17

Multi State Mega Millions
8/20/2002 2 13 20 23 43 6
8/16/2002 22 31 33 44 52 43
8/13/2002 3 10 15 18 25 52

Louisiana Lotto
Aug 17, 2005 3 19 21 22 26 36
Aug 13, 2005 5 8 11 21 22 33
Aug 10, 2005 10 18 22 29 32 37

Illinois
Aug 8, 2005 2 7 9 10 24 42
Aug 6, 2005 6 10 11 29 33 44
Aug 3, 2005 2 11 17 25 35 44

Washington, D.C. Quick Cash
Jul 21, 2005 7 9 13 21 35 36
Jul 20, 2005 8 9 12 22 24 35
Jul 19, 2005 2 14 28 31 37 38

May 15, 2005 10 13 17 19 37 39
May 14, 2005 2 5 11 12 22 33
May 13, 2005 1 9 14 19 26 36

Mar 16, 2005 7 12 13 15 31 35
Mar 15, 2005 1 11 22 24 26 33
Mar 14, 2005 6 7 15 16 36 38

Jan 19, 2005 13 16 22 27 32 38
Jan 18, 2005 1 5 11 22 32 33
Jan 17, 2005 2 11 24 32 34 35

Florida Lotto
Jun 8, 2005 17 21 22 40 43 45
Jun 4, 2005 9 11 16 22 44 52
Jun 1, 2005 18 19 21 34 36 49

May 7, 2005 3 25 29 47 50 53
May 4, 2005 10 19 22 33 34 44
Apr 30, 2005 8 18 20 31 45 50

Florida Mega Money
Apr 6, 2004 5 31 40 43 12
Apr 2, 2004 11 22 28 44 3
Mar 30, 2004 20 24 36 40 18

AT Can Super Seven
Jul 12, 2002 1 3 6 10 12 17 29 21
Jul 5, 2002 11 22 26 31 37 39 44 27
Jun 28, 2002 8 13 19 24 30 43 47 33

Jul 12, 2002 1 3 6 10 12 17 29 21
Jul 5, 2002 11 22 26 31 37 39 44 27
Jun 28, 2002 8 13 19 24 30 43 47 33

Euro millions... 11/22/44
Sep 3, 2004 8 12 14 15 34 6 7
Aug 27, 2004 1 11 22 28 44 1 9
Aug 20, 2004 6 9 10 27 35 6 8

Aug 12, 2005 15 23 30 37 40 7 9
Aug 5, 2005 2 11 21 22 30 4 6
Jul 29, 2005 3 19 26 49 50 4 5

Jun 4, 2004 9 13 34 41 42 3 7
May 28, 2004 6 11 35 41 44 5 6
May 21, 2004 15 29 37 39 49 4 9

Ontario Lottario
May 28, 2005 32 35 36 40 41 45 14
May 21, 2005 10 11 22 34 39 44 15
May 14, 2005 5 10 12 15 20 24 2

Feb 19, 2005 1 3 5 24 25 34 17
Feb 12, 2005 7 11 16 22 34 44 27
Feb 5, 2005 10 19 22 25 41 44 15

Delaware Multi Win Lotto
Apr 15, 2005 3 7 10 12 17 29
Apr 13, 2005 2 11 22 28 31 33
Apr 11, 2005 3 8 18 31 32 35

Pennsylvania Lucky for Life Lotto
Mar 5, 2005 3 4 8 12 13 14
Mar 2, 2005 6 8 11 22 33 35
Feb 26, 2005 5 8 14 20 24 29

Jan 19, 2005 12 13 17 27 35 37
Jan 15, 2005 3 11 18 22 33 35
Jan 12, 2005 6 15 16 21 24 27

Multi State LOTTO South
Mar 2, 2005 15 20 23 25 32 36
Feb 26, 2005 6 10 11 14 33 44
Feb 23, 2005 15 23 29 33 35 42

Arizona The Pick
Feb 12, 2005 4 8 9 13 21 30
Feb 9, 2005 3 11 22 24 33 38
Feb 5, 2005 4 17 19 21 22 35

United Kingdom Lotto 6/49
Feb 9, 2005 12 18 22 24 32 33 32
Feb 5, 2005 19 22 33 36 43 44 5
Feb 2, 2005 2 19 28 33 44 49 40

Wisconsin Super Cash
Jan 24, 2005 4 8 18 21 26 29 17
Jan 23, 2005 5 11 22 29 33 36 1
Jan 22, 2005 17 22 23 24 26 33 21

Massachusetts Cash Winfall
Dec 23, 2004 9 14 25 29 33 34
Dec 20, 2004 2 10 11 19 22 44
Dec 16, 2004 2 4 6 15 34 46

Ohio Super Lotto
Nov 17, 2004 7 15 24 29 35 46
Nov 13, 2004 3 11 14 33 44 48
Nov 10, 2004 1 8 11 24 29 46

New Jersey Pick 6
Oct 25, 2004 11 12 16 22 30 44 11
Oct 21, 2004 5 7 29 37 40 47 12
Oct 18, 2004 9 28 42 43 46 48 31

Chronological single draw multiples:

Aug 6, 2005 6 11 17 22 33 4 New Mexico Road Runner Cash
Aug 2, 2005 11 17 22 33 34 Connecticut Cash 5
Jul 17, 2005 11 24 33 42 44 Missouri Midday Show Me 5
Jun 27, 2005 6 7 11 22 44 Missouri Midday Show Me 5
Jun 11, 2005 3 11 22 29 33 9 Rhode Island Wild Money
May 31, 2005 11 22 33 37 38 Nebraska Pick 5
May 27, 2005 11 12 22 32 33 Indiana Lucky 5
May 24, 2005 7 11 22 31 33 Missouri Midday Show Me 5
May 24, 2005 2 5 11 22 33 Pennsylvania Cash 5
May 19, 2005 2 11 22 28 33 8 Rhode Island Wild Money
May 18, 2005 11 19 20 22 33 Iowa Cash Game
Feb 18, 2005 11 22 25 32 33 Indiana Lucky 5 Midday
Feb 13, 2005 11 22 33 34 35 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Jan 17, 2005 6 11 22 26 33 Michigan Fantasy 5
Oct 28, 2004 1 11 22 23 33 Texas Cash 5
Sep 11, 2004 11 15 17 22 33 18 Rhode Island Wild Money
Aug 22, 2004 7 11 22 33 36 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Aug 19, 2004 8 11 14 22 33 Nebraska Pick 5
May 21, 2004 10 11 22 27 44 Missouri Show Me 5
Mar 31, 2004 8 11 22 27 33 Missouri Show Me 5

Feb 6, 2004 11 18 22 29 33 California Fantasy 5
Feb 5, 2004 3 11 16 22 33 Connecticut Cash 5
Jan 18, 2004 11 12 22 25 33 Indiana Lucky 5
Dec 6, 2003 11 12 22 33 38 California Fantasy 5
Nov 4, 2003 4 11 22 23 33 Iowa Cash Game
Sep 21, 2003 11 12 22 30 33 Washington, D.C. DC Hot 5
Aug 9, 2003 10 11 13 22 33 Virginia Cash 5
Jul 26, 2003 7 11 22 28 33 Indiana Lucky 5 Midday
Jun 22, 2003 9 11 22 24 33 Missouri Show Me 5
Jun 13, 2003 5 11 22 24 33 Florida Fantasy 5
May 21, 2003 5 11 22 23 33 Iowa Cash Game
Apr 16, 2003 11 22 30 33 38 Georgia Fantasy 5
Apr 1, 2003 11 20 22 32 33 Indiana Lucky 5 Midday
Mar 28, 2003 11 17 22 29 33 South Carolina Carolina 5
Feb 13, 2003 6 11 22 23 33 Texas Cash 5
Feb 1, 2003 11 16 22 33 34 Ohio Buckeye 5
Dec 21, 2002 11 15 22 25 33 New York Take 5
Dec 18, 2002 1 11 22 31 33 New York Take 5
Nov 19, 2002 4 11 16 22 33 Florida Fantasy 5
Nov 14, 2002 5 11 16 22 33 Indiana Lucky 5 Midday
Nov 12, 2002 11 17 22 29 33 Indiana Lucky 5 Midday
Nov 2, 2002 11 22 29 32 33 Texas Cash 5
Oct 23, 2002 11 12 22 23 33 Connecticut Cash 5
Sep 11, 2002 8 11 13 22 33 Connecticut Cash 5
Sep 10, 2002 4 11 22 33 34 Iowa Cash Game
Sep 5, 2002 9 11 22 33 Nebraska Pick 5 04
Aug 21, 2002 11 20 21 22 33 Iowa Cash Game
Jul 24, 2002 11 22 24 28 33 Michigan Rolldown
Feb 26, 2002 11 22 27 29 33 Connecticut Cash 5
Jan 11, 2002 2 11 20 22 33 Virginia Cash 5
Dec 25, 2001 10 11 22 29 33 Massachusetts Mass Cash
Nov 3, 2001 3 11 22 26 33 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Oct 20, 2001 11 15 22 27 33 Michigan Rolldown
Sep 30, 2001 11 20 22 32 33 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Aug 3, 2001 9 11 19 22 33 Michigan Rolldown
Jun 7, 2001 8 11 21 22 33 New York Take 5
May 10, 2001 3 11 22 30 33 Missouri Show Me 5
Feb 27, 2001 11 33 41 43 44 Missouri Show Me 5
Nov 27, 2000 11 22 28 31 33 Indiana Lucky 5
Nov 18, 2000 8 11 22 35 44 Missouri Show Me 5
Aug 26, 2000 1 11 16 22 33 Michigan Rolldown
Jul 29, 2000 1 11 22 25 33 Iowa Cash Game
Jun 27, 2000 1 10 11 22 33 Virginia Cash 5
May 12, 2000 1 3 11 22 33 Washington, D.C. DC Hot 5
Apr 2, 2000 3 11 15 22 33 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Feb 10, 2000 11 16 20 22 33 Virginia Midday Cash 5
Jan 4, 2000 6 11 22 29 33 Virginia Midday Cash 5
Dec 25, 1999 11 18 22 30 33 Montana Montana Cash
Nov 23, 1999 11 22 26 33 35 Georgia Fantasy 5
Nov 17, 1999 11 16 22 33 37 New Jersey Cash 5
Oct 2, 1999 11 19 22 33 36 Pennsylvania Cash 5
Sep 7, 1999 2 11 22 26 33 Virginia Midday Cash 5
Jun 25, 1999 11 22 30 33 35 Massachusetts Mass Cash
Jun 2, 1999 1 8 11 22 33 California Fantasy 5
May 10, 1999 11 18 22 32 33 New York Take 5
Mar 22, 1999 1 11 22 23 33 Georgia Fantasy 5
Jan 19, 1999 7 11 12 22 33 24 Minnesota Gopher 5
Dec 31, 1998 6 11 22 33 34 New York Take 5
Dec 16, 1998 11 14 22 33 34 Iowa Cash Game
Oct 23, 1998 5 9 11 22 33 Iowa Cash Game
Jun 28, 1998 7 11 14 22 33 Connecticut Cash 5
Jan 14, 1998 11 15 22 31 33 Iowa Cash Game
Oct 21, 1997 4 11 16 22 33 Ohio Buckeye 5
Aug 14, 1997 11 22 29 30 33 Indiana Lucky 5
Jul 28, 1997 5 11 22 33 34 Iowa Cash Game
Jun 23, 1997 11 13 22 23 33 Arizona Fantasy 5
May 15, 1997 11 15 22 26 33 Arizona Fantasy 5
Aug 1, 1995 11 13 17 22 33 New Jersey Cash 5
Jul 12, 1994 11 22 26 33 36 New Jersey Cash 5
Oct 19, 1993 2 11 13 22 33 Arizona Fantasy 5

New York Lotto
Jun 29, 2005 4 22 40 41 43 44 47
Jun 22, 2005 1 33 38 54 55 56 46
Sep 8, 2004 11 21 24 40 49 55 42
Sep 4, 2004 8 17 22 39 44 54 14
Aug 14, 2004 3 19 36 44 46 55 32
Jul 10, 2004 10 22 25 31 38 44 23
Jul 7, 2004 22 26 32 44 46 56 4
Jun 2, 2004 12 19 23 33 54 55 24
Jan 31, 2004 2 5 11 33 50 54 32
Dec 24, 2003 5 8 11 33 48 57 43
Nov 15, 2003 22 25 35 37 44 52 31
Sep 24, 2003 10 14 18 30 33 55 54
Aug 30, 2003 11 15 16 25 44 47 17
Aug 27, 2003 8 12 22 30 41 44 32
Aug 20, 2003 10 14 18 22 33 57 44
Jun 14, 2003 11 15 16 29 37 55 51
Jun 11, 2003 2 13 22 30 53 55 33
Apr 9, 2003 4 19 22 25 43 44 2
Apr 5, 2003 10 22 25 33 34 54 7
Mar 19, 2003 2 7 31 33 48 55 42
Jan 1, 2003 22 37 40 44 45 49 38
Sep 14, 2002 11 18 35 51 53 55 22
Jul 17, 2002 18 22 30 51 55 59 8
Jun 22, 2002 1 7 11 22 42 52 32
Apr 6, 2002 15 31 33 37 49 55 28
Mar 9, 2002 8 20 22 24 33 41 29
Feb 27, 2002 8 19 22 31 44 53 25
Jan 23, 2002 11 16 20 22 30 37 23
Jan 19, 2002 11 23 28 39 44 53 42
Dec 8, 2001 1 11 35 50 55 56 7
Nov 14, 2001 6 8 11 17 22 41 23
Aug 29, 2001 10 11 21 24 33 41 18
May 9, 2001 11 12 22 29 45 47 7
May 5, 2001 6 22 29 33 36 50 32
Dec 23, 2000 11 22 25 32 38 51 28
Dec 6, 2000 2 12 19 22 33 41 42

Make of it what you will.

Jack

Seems a body of leading edge Christian thinkers has figured out what caused that hurricane to hit New Orleans and do so much damage.

It ain’t a chaos butterfly at all.

It’s the Wrath of the Good Lord done it.

All that sinning and drinking and whoring down on Bourbon Street finally caught up with them, evidently. The Good Lord finally got a belly-full of Mardi Gras.

Something along these lines, I suppose:

 

Elisha at Bethel

2 Kings 23

Call him old bald headed one

Would they?

Taunt and yell

An old man walking

Those 40 children?

He stood it for a while

Our Lord, their mocking

Tried to hold his anger

Our heavenly Father

Tried restraint

But failed

When Elisha cursed

The urchins in His name

Sent two she-bears

From the woods

To teach them manners

Tore them all apart

All 40 cheeky kids

Smote them hip and thigh

Ripped them all to shreds

Those 40 children

Forty two, in fact,

But what’s a couple

More or less?

Call him old bald headed one

Would they?

_{Copyright©2002 Jack Purcell}

Seems a bit early for this sort of thing, though I suppose it was inevitable.

But don’t be surprised if you begin hearing all those flood victims in New Orleans aren’t deserving of Christian pity and help in their sufferings. They just naturally brought it all on themselves, like Sodom and whatchallit, Gonorrhea.

Next thing down the pike is probably going to involve those homeless Louisianans bringing the wrath down on the rest of us, as well, with their Godless frivolity.

Jack

I was thinking some more, lying there trying to meditate after I woke an hour ago, about the situation from the last entry. 

One thing that came to mind was one winter when I was living in Texas.  The winter was a tough one up north, power outtages, people in NY and Illinois without lights and heat for a considerable while.

That winter came at a time following a summer when there'd been a body of opinion in the north that showed little sympathy for some hard times happening in Texas.  Whatever it was that caused the Texas problems happened to work to the advantage of northern interests. 

Now, when all this happened, the northerner needs would require some sacrifices for Texans and higher fuel and heating costs in Texas.  That winter all over Texas, cars suddenly had bumper-stickers, "LET THEM FREEZE IN THE DARK".

As a nation we've always been on shaky ground when it came to regionalism and personal interests as opposed to national interests, or sometimes even lacking compassion, uncomfortably near gladness  for the hardships of others elsewhere when they worked to our personal or regional advantage.. 

I think the New World Order mentality has had some positive fruits in that regard, along with the fact what the US has been a fruit-basket-turnover game for the last 50 years, as our industry and manufacturing dried up and went overseas and Americans had to move to other regions to find any kind of work.

But the veneer of civilization probably isn't a lot thicker than a "LET THEM FREEZE IN THE DARK" bumper-sticker.  Americans and the entire Western world probably aren't further than three missed meals and an empty gas-tank away from savagery when the going gets tough.

Say, as has happened among the looters in New Orleans.

Jack

Tonight when I went down to Bernalillo to buy my lottery tickets the price on gas, I saw again, is again the highest I've ever witnessed in the US.  I'm told the price jumped immediately when the hurricane came in.  I got to talking to a guy outside the store who was obviously taking a break from driving.  Noted his Maryland tags and asked how the gas prices had been along his route.

"Higher than here.  $4 a gallon in Needles, California.  But it's going to go higher."

Interesting news.  A person has to wonder how high gasoline can go before it puts a boa-constrictor squeeze on all other consumer spending.  I'd guess, not a lot higher than it's gone already.

Meanwhile, Public Service Co of NM, has notified customers that charges for gas and electricity will be maybe doubled this winter.  If that's true here, I'd guess it's also true elsewhere.

So, I asks myself, what's happening here?

I'm seeing no assertions that these higher fuel prices have anything to do with the war we're in, but  they're coincident with it. 

I'm hearing no explanations for fuel prices going up the exact moment when a hurricane comes inland leaving a path of devastation, but from here it appears to opportunistic price-gouging.  The fuel in those tanks couldn't possibly have cost more as a result of the storm.  It was bought before the storm.  But, the price increase happened to be coincident with the storm in much the way the earlier price increases were coincident with the war.

In '74, when the Arab oil embargo drove gasoline prices sky-high for those times, Americans got awfully angry about it in fairly short order.  Admittedly, that was before the wussification of the citizenry was complete. 

But I'm inclined to believe that if this fuel price situation becomes an enduring feature of American life, there's no way it can fail to result in inflation, a wintertime disaster to almost match the Hurricane, but concurrent with it, and a lot of Americans who've never experienced hunger suddenly knowing there are more important things in life than who won the Super-Bowl.

My pre-wussification mind tells me those Americans will be looking for scapegoats, which might well not be true.  But if Americans discover suddenly that they've squandered the legacy of abundance left them by their ancestors, that they've sent their industry overseas by sleight of hand, that they've elected politicians based on the deadly desire to abdicate responsibility for their own lives, there's probably going to be a comeuppance.

Today there's a tender compassion for victims of a disaster.  But the day mightn't be far distant when Americans turn their backs on those in need because their own needs seem hardly less demanding.

I recall pictures when I was a kid, of Benito Mussolini hanging upside down from a lamp post while his former admirer/worshipers strolled by to spit on the corpse.  That's because Il Duce quit making the trains run on time.

But that's all pre-wussification.  No bearing on what happens in America when gasoline prices go to five bucks a gallon and home heating oil doubles in post wussificated America.

Jack