![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An Ounce of Prevention...
Sep. 9th, 2005 10:17 amI'm no good with the Big Picture. I'm too suggestible. I lack the necessary intellectual stamina for scrolling through endless secondary sources.
So I gravitate away from analysis and towards primary sources.
A photograph of a weeping woman holding a stunned child. Bloated bodies floating face-down in a river that once was a street. (The LA Times took that one off the website quick enough!) Desperados in a supermarket. Knee-high human garbage inside the Superdome. (And it's wrong of me, I know, to be amused by the fact that ESPN is now running hurricane victim coverage – I suppose their rationale is that it's happening inside a sports stadium so hey! it must be sports.)
But my eyes glaze over when confronted with endless, seemingly identical news stories and timelines. Someone's gotta take the fall. Who should it be? Mayor Nagin, admittedly easy on the eyes but a former cable executive for God's sake which argues little in the way of executive administrative experience: on the 27th of August he issues a voluntary order of evacuation (presumably because a mandatory order would have involved foresight and planning that was never carried out.) That same day, Governor Kathleen Blanco – a Democrat – puts in an early request for disaster relief; mysteriously the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines do not make it onto President Bush's list though by any reckoning, these are the parishes most at risk. His declaration of emergency contains these words: "I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments," thus effectively elevating the Feds to First Responders here. Somewhere in the sea of words I think I remember FEMA's mission statement floating past me – something about coordination and management. But then there is the fact that FEMA has apparently been the clearing house for Bush administration sinecures, lo these four years past, the place where all those guys who raised the big campaign bucks for reelection – Michael Brown! White courtesy telephone! – are put out to graze and grow fat.
Anyway, very interesting piece in today's New York Times today about why the National Guard was deployed instead active-duty troops in New Orleans – apparently the President would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, a quaint piece of legislation designed to quell a state in revolt. Now I am wondering now how many of last week's scare headlines – Looters Take To Streets! Martial Law Declared! – were masterminded by the administration's Roving band of mediaistas, the groundwork necessary to manipulate popular support for for a military invasion on home soil. Why air-lift those boys to Iraq to die in a war we can't win when you can send them to Louisiana?
This is why I don't read newspaper stories: they make me paranoid.
Because already I'm thinking, when the Big One hits here in sunny, la-la-LA California, it would be wise to have a generator, 2 weeks of provisions and a big fat rifle to protect me against the Federal government's rescue attempts.
So I gravitate away from analysis and towards primary sources.
A photograph of a weeping woman holding a stunned child. Bloated bodies floating face-down in a river that once was a street. (The LA Times took that one off the website quick enough!) Desperados in a supermarket. Knee-high human garbage inside the Superdome. (And it's wrong of me, I know, to be amused by the fact that ESPN is now running hurricane victim coverage – I suppose their rationale is that it's happening inside a sports stadium so hey! it must be sports.)
But my eyes glaze over when confronted with endless, seemingly identical news stories and timelines. Someone's gotta take the fall. Who should it be? Mayor Nagin, admittedly easy on the eyes but a former cable executive for God's sake which argues little in the way of executive administrative experience: on the 27th of August he issues a voluntary order of evacuation (presumably because a mandatory order would have involved foresight and planning that was never carried out.) That same day, Governor Kathleen Blanco – a Democrat – puts in an early request for disaster relief; mysteriously the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines do not make it onto President Bush's list though by any reckoning, these are the parishes most at risk. His declaration of emergency contains these words: "I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments," thus effectively elevating the Feds to First Responders here. Somewhere in the sea of words I think I remember FEMA's mission statement floating past me – something about coordination and management. But then there is the fact that FEMA has apparently been the clearing house for Bush administration sinecures, lo these four years past, the place where all those guys who raised the big campaign bucks for reelection – Michael Brown! White courtesy telephone! – are put out to graze and grow fat.
Anyway, very interesting piece in today's New York Times today about why the National Guard was deployed instead active-duty troops in New Orleans – apparently the President would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, a quaint piece of legislation designed to quell a state in revolt. Now I am wondering now how many of last week's scare headlines – Looters Take To Streets! Martial Law Declared! – were masterminded by the administration's Roving band of mediaistas, the groundwork necessary to manipulate popular support for for a military invasion on home soil. Why air-lift those boys to Iraq to die in a war we can't win when you can send them to Louisiana?
This is why I don't read newspaper stories: they make me paranoid.
Because already I'm thinking, when the Big One hits here in sunny, la-la-LA California, it would be wise to have a generator, 2 weeks of provisions and a big fat rifle to protect me against the Federal government's rescue attempts.
