Ruminations on a Hurricane

The news coverage, especially on TV, was just non-stop self-congratulatory mutual masturbation, over and over these idiots congratulating each other and telling each other how great they were, especially the studio pukes to the morons stupid enough to actually go into the hurricane zone, rather than get as far away from it as possible. On a couple of instances I heard the studio idiot talk about the field reporters "deploying" into the hurricane zone. Sorry, but as a military officer I have deployed, and it's not as a civilian weatherman into a hurricane. You media pukes need to find a new, more accurate word for what you are doing, something like, "go" or "travel" or "toward."

I read a newspaper editorial yesterday entitled "Natural Acts of Terror." What absolute bullshit, capitalizing on morbid fascination and preying on the ongoing fear of terrorism to get the ignorant to read your pointless, rambling column about how bad a hurricane is. Author, an "act of terror" is something carried out by a person. An "act" implies deliberation, forethough, and reasoned action. Read up on your terrorism definitions, and you'll see even more precise definitions of "act of terror." And you'll see that your column's title is about as oxymoronic as you can get. Your title was cheap and low and cynical, as well as flat-out wrong.

For all of the homeless, I feel empathy. I've never lost my home, but I've also never purchased coastal property. I don't make enough to purchase coastal property. And if I did, I'd have to have an awful lot of money before I'd do so, knowing that coastal flooding and hurricane destruction are an integral part of that kind of ownership. That's just simple personal responsibility. So, if you live on the Gulf of Mexico, on the US east coast and your house or your vacation home gets obliterated by a hurricane, what did you expect? You took a gamble, that your place might get missed, that you might get a 25- or 40-year run of good luck and not have your place destroyed. But eventually the odds will turn, as coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are finding out. If you build in a flood plain, eventually you'll get flooded. If you build on the coast, whether California, Texas, or Maine, eventually the sea will take your house away. That's a fact; it's only a matter of time. I feel for the folks who lost their houses and belongings, but no one held a gun to their heads and forced them to build on Mobile Bay.

So should the govt pay for your folly? Sorry, but no. If you build in these areas, it's on you to insure your property. It's expensive, sure, so you have the choice--the personal choice--to pay the cost or not. If you elect to do it, good on ya, and you'll be covered (more or less; don't get me started on the goddamn insurance companies). If you choose not to pay the insurance costs, then you get what you have chosen to get when the sea rises up and takes your house away.

NPR had some purportedly heartfelt bits of callers from the disaster area. One was pretty intense, a guy whose mom had died and they couldn't reach the funeral home. Implied was the possible loss of the body in the melee, mess, and destruction. That's pretty heavy, if you're tied to veneration of the dead, that is. But hey, apparently it was important to him. There was the lady who said she only had $80 to her name, with all of her money in the bank. She's clearly unaware of the FDIC, that the vaults likely were okay, and that her money--assuming that she had some in there to begin with--would still be available to her, albeit not for a couple of days yet. If all fails, she can go to a shelter and get on with life. Then there was the lady who complained so bitterly that the usual 2-hour drive to Grandma's house had ballooned to a staggering 4-hour! drive, and that Grandma was confused and despondent. Well, yeah, what in the hell do you expect when something like this happens? What did she think would be the case? Why didn't they tell her to evacuate earlier? Why didn't they go and get her on Saturday or Sunday? Then there was the call from what I heard to be some suited yuppie dipshit talking about how his son's kindergarten had gotten all disrupted and cancelled, after he just started only two days ago! Jeezus, dude, give it a rest. That is not a crisis, not even close. I heard a working parent bitching very indirectly about having to arrange for child care and such since the kindergarten wouldn't be doing that for him. And finally there was the drawlilng mom who had just figured out that their young son was stressed over the situation, and that he needed to be talked to and comforted. Duh. What has she been thinking about for the last four days, her Creative Memories photo albums, the new Audi TT? Concentrate on your kids, ass, because they are the only thing that matters, the absolute only thing that matters.

I've heard the Governor of Louisiana talk about how we should all pray, how that will make things better. I've heard other elected officials, and lots of washed-out residents talk about how God will provide, how God will make it all better, how if we just pray more and harder, then things will be better. Sorry, no. If you pray, and think about God a lot, if you really believe in all of that, then you might feel better, but that's all that's going to happen. God isn't going to take the flood waters out of downtown New Orleans. God isn't going to plop all of the seafront mansions back down on their foundations in Gulfport. God isn't going to get those adrift oil platforms back on their moorings. God isn't going to keep the price of gasoline under $3.00/gallon. In your believin' cosmology, how and why is God going to make it all better, when He's the one who created the hurricane, and then sent it right into your face? If God is up there, watching and taking care of us, why does He create hurricanes? Why does he drown old people and children? Why does he crush fathers and husbands under falling trees? Why does He electrocute people with downed power lines, cause their houses to burn to the ground in the midst of a flood, take away absolutely everything that so many thousands of people who believe in Him so fervently have spent their entire lives building and protecting? If God is going to make it all better, why did God make it all happen in the first place?

I enjoyed seeing the folks camped out on the elevated freeway overpasses. I'm hoping to see the confrontations and ugliness that'll come when the authorities move to evict these folks from these squatting locations.

I heard some state Undersecretary for Something IMportant yammering on in his hollow politico-speech about how ". . . those in need of hospitalization will be afforded the opportunity to be involved in situations where their access to medical health care can be efficiently allocated to them and their affected family members based on the relative severity of the situation in which they are experiencing medical-related issues . . ." What a load of crap, from a bureaucratic load of crap. Say this: "Those in need of hospitalization will be hospitalized in accordance with their injuries and needs." Plain, direct talk, without elaboration or apology. The truth. That's how you earn respect and deal with unpleasant situations.

I loved one reporter's simple description of what it was like inside the Superdome on Sunday and Monday after the power went out and even more folks came to stay: "rank." Man, can you imagine what that place smelled like? All of the homeless and such? Funky.

So, if the Superdome roof is shot, and the place is as trashed as it sounds from all of the, uh, visitors, where are the Saints going to lose this season? Will they become the Baton Rouge Saints for this season? The Baton Rouge Creole Shrimp? The Baton Rouge Jambalaya? The possibilities are rich and enticing, like a dark bayou evening. Whatever.

And now the 41-odd thousand folks in the Superdome will be moving west to Houston. So that's going to be one stinky location, for sure. I'd ask where the Oilers will be playing, but we all know that it's deep in the heart of Tennessee now.

And where has our Illustrious Leader been in all of this? As the news unfolds on this hurricane and its aftermath, why is no one asking why the vacationing-est President in the history of this nation only on Tuesday decided to "cut short his vacation" to return to Washington to perform his duties as the Chief Executive of this nation? Why didn't this self-styled resolute leader order his staff to take him home on Friday, or Saturday, even Sunday? I'd like to think we have some large brains operating on teh White House and National Security Council staffs, yet no one was bright enough to tell the President that a proactive, forward-thinking, prepared, and leadership-oriented senior executive would've been back at his place of duty days ahead of schedule, setting the example for the entire national government. Yet apparently no one did. Dubya must've been having too much fun riding his bike, baling hay, working the horses, to worry about the millions who were absolutely certainly going to be affected by the disaster. I'm no meteorologist, and I'm no government senior official, but I'm a retired military officer, and am smart enough to see something coming and make plans for very logically following outcomes. Yet I see no evidence of this from the White House. Only on WEd night does the idiot go on TV to talk to the nation, to be a leader. He should have done it on Saturday evening, before the disaster, before the power went out, telling people to be ready and to prepare, to evacuate, to know that he was the President and paying close attention to the situation and that he had personally mobilized the national government structure and apparatus for what certainly would be a massive relief effort. Nope, absolutely nothing of the sort, just the "local" admonitions from the New Orleans mayor, and the LA/MS/AL governors. This is a total failure of leadership, once again, but Ignorant America just can't see it.