The Future
First of all, I applaud President Bush’s acceptance of responsibility for the Federal government’s sluggish and disorganized failure in responding to Katrina. While yes, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco also share in that blame in their lack of preparedness, it was nice to hear the President admit that his overly centralized powerbase filled with unqualified cronies is not the best way to run a country, that having .75 of every FEMA dollar devoted to terrorism as opposed to other disasters is a bad idea. I think putting an experienced Fire Chief in charge of FEMA is a great first step for disaster response. Putting someone with a strong military background or an FBI director with a background in criminal investigation and law enforcement in charge of Homeland Security would be an excellent second step in reorganizing how the government protects their citizens from dangers.
Katrina Questions
In the wake of this, the greatest natural disaster this young country has ever seen, people with an eye for history such as myself have much to ponder. While we donate our dollars, our time, our space and box up goods for food, clothing and toiletry drives, we also watch and wonder what the results, both physical and philosophical, of this grand experiment are.
Should New Orleans and the savaged Gulf Coast regions be rebuilt? One of long standing members of my SciFi/Fantasy board is a journalist from Amsterdam. The Netherlands, a country that has been living below sea level for 900 years. They take their dikes seriously. When he saw what New Orleans had in place before the hurricane he was appalled.
“Now, my country has fought rising waters for 900 years, no nation is more aware of how important dykes and levees are than the Dutch. We are just shocked to hear about how the dykes were grossly underfunded! That ought to have been priority number ONE! And yes, compared to the vast amounts of money America spends on useless consumerism, or on the military... well, there is only one word for it and that is DISGRACEFUL.
When rising flood waters threatened the dykes in the heart of Holland, 700,000 people were forcibly evacuated. It wasn't a suggestion or guideline like in New Orleans, no, everyone was ordered out and those without transportation were picked up. Nobody was left behind, except for the armed forces who guarded against possible criminals. Why were so many helpless people left behind in New Orleans?….” ~ Wajz the White
New Orleans is one of the oldest and most historic cities in the United States. Of course it should be rebuilt. The survival of the French Quarter shows that the French had a good notion when they settled there. But New Orleans will be a very large investment over many years and be very different from the “Nawlins” we have known.
Not only will the mechanical system for holding the water back have to be replaced outright, but civil engineering must take place to prevent or compensate for what was a major problem before Katrina came along: New Orleans was sinking. New Orleans was built directly on the Mississippi delta, on a layers of sediment and silt laid down by the river for millennia. When man built the levees, he routed the river directly out to sea stopping the process of laying down new sediment except in the harbor and channels where the City and State spent millions yearly dredging it out so that they were still useable for commercial ships. Combine this with pumping out all the groundwater to hydrate a large city and Nawlin’s began to sink approximately 3 feet a century. Some preliminary studies have pointed to this being a factor in the flooding as the storm surge overtopped the levees at Lake Ponchartrain. Somehow the engineers must find a way to allow nature to take it’s course for the city’s own survival.
I know less about the impact of man’s “taming nature” on the Gulf Coast during this tragedy, but his heavy prescience along the coast of Mississippi and Alabama was also felt painfully during Hurricane Katrina as communities and business built right on the water were destroyed by the 30 foot storm surge lashing inland. Yes, waterfront property is very valuable investment for the individual, the business and the city, but is it worth the cost of human life and clean up after a hurricane, something that strikes this coast regularly? Maybe it’s time for Alabama and Mississippi to set up a long row of state beaches as a buffer zone for everyone to enjoy and tell people and business to build further back from the water.
What will be the impact of the poor of New Orleans on the America? For a long time the Christian Right has been running around claiming there was a “Culture War” occurring in our midst, which is why they cling so tightly to a administration who’s incompetence and crooked deals have been proven time and time again; simply because they say the right things to keep evangelicals happy. But has Katrina stripped away the façade to show the real conflict in progress? A “War” on Americas Poor and Middle classes? I'm not talking about "the indigent" as Barbara mistakes them all to be, but the majority of the people left behind in the New Orleans. Families with a home and jobs, living paycheck to paycheck as all the Lower and Middle classes are like myself. I have a job, a duplex and car, but one bad earthquake and that's me on the floor of some sports arena. As it is, this isn’t about welfare, this is about human life. This isn’t a war with all out assaults but a war of neglect as the poor and middle classes take on more and more of the financial responsibility for supporting the government, yet can afford less and less of the basic needs to support a family, like owning their own home (or insurance on that home).
Nagin & Blanco’s evacuation plans for New Orleans’ simply did not account for a way to get the poorest citizens of the city out, those the most at risk from floods without an independent means of travel. Nor did it even include remotely adequate means of caring for them once they gathered at the central location Nagin named: The Superdome. On paper they simply fell through the cracks and in real life tens of thousands suffered and hundreds, if not thousands, died for it. Why? Why were the people of the Garden District better cared for by their city than those from the East Side who were much more at risk for flooding? Why did Nagin place the monetary interest of businesses over the lives of his city by he delaying making the evacuation mandatory? Are the wealthy politicians and lobbyists of City, State and Federal governments going to find themselves politically besieged by a renewed force of political activism from lower classes that have finally realized if they do not protect their vital interests, no one will?
And how will America as a culture change in the face of this? As so many of the people interviewed during this crisis have pointed out, we have billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops to effect regime changes a world away, but not enough to protect our own people. Yes, that is grossly over simplifying the issue, but that is how it looks to many of those abandoned in Katrina’s wake. The economic heart of the Right just got gutted. How is that going to effect the Conservative’s and Moderate Republican approach to politics and American society? Is the banding together of individuals across political lines going to have any lasting effect on American society? Will the offers of assistance from countries like the much lambasted France and Venezuela perhaps get the more rabid neo-con “America Uber Alles” types to rethink their view of the rest of the world? Their view of themselves as good Christians?
What does Katrina reveal about us as Americans, as human beings? Well, that’s a heavy one. Human beings react extremely in a crisis (“Crisis”, hell one woman at the Convention Center described it as “Apocalyptic”, a far more apt term.), bringing out the best and worst of themselves. While the looters looted (and that’s “looters”, not people scavenging for food), the violent attacked and the politicians dithered, the American people mobilized on their own in a force more massive than anything anyone in rescue services was prepared for. Yeah, the bastards got all the air time, but there were far more people who donated cash, sent water, food and clothes, volunteered time, opened up their homes and their hearts….and I don’t believe that Americans are unique in this instinctual feeling of charity and community.
It may be naïve of me, but I have always believed that people were inherently good. You can throw all kinds of psychological and anthropological rationalizations at it, but in the end I believe that this showed that “the better angels of our nature” were alive and well in the 21st century.
Richmond
On to lighter fare.
First of all, let me deal with the Bush race and Truex subsequent fine. For those that missed it was the wildest damn thing I’ve have ever seen on TV. And that pic is just where it started. The #8 that you see going up into the wall then proceeded to go all the way around turns 3 and 4 on it’s side finally coming down right side up on the front stretch.
Needless to say, the normally staid Mr. Truex was a tad upset about this. After having asphalt grinding by 3 or 4 inches from your ear at 80 mph, you’d be a little upset too. So after he got out of the car he flipped the driver who forced him up into the wall, Mike Wallace, off. Twice.
“Naughty Naughty” said NASCAR and slapped Truex with a 25 point fine for, you guessed it, “Actions detrimental to stock car racing”
SO F-ING WHAT? As Jimmie once said, the thing that would surprise the fans the most are the amount of hand signal and gestures that get thrown around the track during races. These guys spend 3 to 5 hours in a perpetual state of road rage, flipping someone the bird is only the tip of the iceberg I am sure. So he flipped him off for scaring the living hell out of him (I know Truex said that he was upset about the wrecked car, but his reaction was a bit more…effusive than usual.) This is freakin’ ridiculous. I think the fine really has more to do with Truex’s Crew Chief getting in officials faces for black flagging Truex earlier in the race for not having all the tie down pins for his hood in.
As for Cup, well, like last year simply because it is the last chance for driver’s to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup, the second Richmond race becomes one of the most interesting races of the year as it become a wild balls out race for position for those team “on the bubble” (meaning they have a shot of either winning or losing their place in the Chase.) Two of my guys didn’t make the Chase and sadly both of them had performances in this race that showed why. *sigh* It was a bit frustrating to watch, not only because they both had lousy cars that hung around in the late-teens, but because they wasn’t any coverage of what was going on with Dale or Elliott. I didn’t find out until yesterday that both of them were fighting tight handling (meaning the car didn’t want to turn) cars through the entire race. The media was focusing more of the moves and shakers on the track that had a chance to get into the Chase such as Jamie McMurray, who got clipped by Tony Raines (“My brakes were bad” my ass) ending his Chase run. Or more colorful characters like Robbie Gordon and Sterling Marlin who’s game of bumper cars got them called into the NASCAR hauler after the race (no fines I know of).
But Mark Martin maintained a position in the middle of the standings, despite having a 13th place finish (they didn’t even cover him all that much either :P ) . Yay!
The Drivers in the Chase for the Nextel Cup are:
Tony Stewart - #20 - Home Depot
Greg Biffle - #16 - National Guard
Rusty Wallce - #2 - Miller Lite (Retiring this year)
Jimmie Johnson - #48 - Lowe Hardware
Kurt Busch - #97 – Sharpie/Crown Royal
Mark Martin - #6 – Viagra (Might be retiring at end of this year. Mark announced his retirement, but they have not been able to find someone to fill the seat for 2007.)
Jeremy Mayfield - #19 – Dodge Charger
Carl Edwards - #99 – Scott/Office Depot
Matt Kennseth - #17 – DeWalt
Ryan Newman - #12 – AlTell
While the points for everyone else remains as they were, just under 3000, these ten drivers have been bumped up to 5000, putting them out of reach of anyone else. Each place is then divided by only 5 points. Effectively leveling the playing field.
But team that finishes in the 11th place at the end of the year gets a million dollar prize which puts a big target on Elliott’s back since that’s where he is.
So Go Mark! Take that Championship home at last! And Go Dale and Elliott!
Though can someone tell me why when I type in www.elliottsadler.com into my address bar it comes out as “Adult users only: The Websense category "Sex" is filtered”
Elliott, just what have you been doing? ;)
Katrina Questions
In the wake of this, the greatest natural disaster this young country has ever seen, people with an eye for history such as myself have much to ponder. While we donate our dollars, our time, our space and box up goods for food, clothing and toiletry drives, we also watch and wonder what the results, both physical and philosophical, of this grand experiment are.
Should New Orleans and the savaged Gulf Coast regions be rebuilt? One of long standing members of my SciFi/Fantasy board is a journalist from Amsterdam. The Netherlands, a country that has been living below sea level for 900 years. They take their dikes seriously. When he saw what New Orleans had in place before the hurricane he was appalled.
“Now, my country has fought rising waters for 900 years, no nation is more aware of how important dykes and levees are than the Dutch. We are just shocked to hear about how the dykes were grossly underfunded! That ought to have been priority number ONE! And yes, compared to the vast amounts of money America spends on useless consumerism, or on the military... well, there is only one word for it and that is DISGRACEFUL.
When rising flood waters threatened the dykes in the heart of Holland, 700,000 people were forcibly evacuated. It wasn't a suggestion or guideline like in New Orleans, no, everyone was ordered out and those without transportation were picked up. Nobody was left behind, except for the armed forces who guarded against possible criminals. Why were so many helpless people left behind in New Orleans?….” ~ Wajz the White
New Orleans is one of the oldest and most historic cities in the United States. Of course it should be rebuilt. The survival of the French Quarter shows that the French had a good notion when they settled there. But New Orleans will be a very large investment over many years and be very different from the “Nawlins” we have known.
Not only will the mechanical system for holding the water back have to be replaced outright, but civil engineering must take place to prevent or compensate for what was a major problem before Katrina came along: New Orleans was sinking. New Orleans was built directly on the Mississippi delta, on a layers of sediment and silt laid down by the river for millennia. When man built the levees, he routed the river directly out to sea stopping the process of laying down new sediment except in the harbor and channels where the City and State spent millions yearly dredging it out so that they were still useable for commercial ships. Combine this with pumping out all the groundwater to hydrate a large city and Nawlin’s began to sink approximately 3 feet a century. Some preliminary studies have pointed to this being a factor in the flooding as the storm surge overtopped the levees at Lake Ponchartrain. Somehow the engineers must find a way to allow nature to take it’s course for the city’s own survival.
I know less about the impact of man’s “taming nature” on the Gulf Coast during this tragedy, but his heavy prescience along the coast of Mississippi and Alabama was also felt painfully during Hurricane Katrina as communities and business built right on the water were destroyed by the 30 foot storm surge lashing inland. Yes, waterfront property is very valuable investment for the individual, the business and the city, but is it worth the cost of human life and clean up after a hurricane, something that strikes this coast regularly? Maybe it’s time for Alabama and Mississippi to set up a long row of state beaches as a buffer zone for everyone to enjoy and tell people and business to build further back from the water.
What will be the impact of the poor of New Orleans on the America? For a long time the Christian Right has been running around claiming there was a “Culture War” occurring in our midst, which is why they cling so tightly to a administration who’s incompetence and crooked deals have been proven time and time again; simply because they say the right things to keep evangelicals happy. But has Katrina stripped away the façade to show the real conflict in progress? A “War” on Americas Poor and Middle classes? I'm not talking about "the indigent" as Barbara mistakes them all to be, but the majority of the people left behind in the New Orleans. Families with a home and jobs, living paycheck to paycheck as all the Lower and Middle classes are like myself. I have a job, a duplex and car, but one bad earthquake and that's me on the floor of some sports arena. As it is, this isn’t about welfare, this is about human life. This isn’t a war with all out assaults but a war of neglect as the poor and middle classes take on more and more of the financial responsibility for supporting the government, yet can afford less and less of the basic needs to support a family, like owning their own home (or insurance on that home).
Nagin & Blanco’s evacuation plans for New Orleans’ simply did not account for a way to get the poorest citizens of the city out, those the most at risk from floods without an independent means of travel. Nor did it even include remotely adequate means of caring for them once they gathered at the central location Nagin named: The Superdome. On paper they simply fell through the cracks and in real life tens of thousands suffered and hundreds, if not thousands, died for it. Why? Why were the people of the Garden District better cared for by their city than those from the East Side who were much more at risk for flooding? Why did Nagin place the monetary interest of businesses over the lives of his city by he delaying making the evacuation mandatory? Are the wealthy politicians and lobbyists of City, State and Federal governments going to find themselves politically besieged by a renewed force of political activism from lower classes that have finally realized if they do not protect their vital interests, no one will?
And how will America as a culture change in the face of this? As so many of the people interviewed during this crisis have pointed out, we have billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops to effect regime changes a world away, but not enough to protect our own people. Yes, that is grossly over simplifying the issue, but that is how it looks to many of those abandoned in Katrina’s wake. The economic heart of the Right just got gutted. How is that going to effect the Conservative’s and Moderate Republican approach to politics and American society? Is the banding together of individuals across political lines going to have any lasting effect on American society? Will the offers of assistance from countries like the much lambasted France and Venezuela perhaps get the more rabid neo-con “America Uber Alles” types to rethink their view of the rest of the world? Their view of themselves as good Christians?
What does Katrina reveal about us as Americans, as human beings? Well, that’s a heavy one. Human beings react extremely in a crisis (“Crisis”, hell one woman at the Convention Center described it as “Apocalyptic”, a far more apt term.), bringing out the best and worst of themselves. While the looters looted (and that’s “looters”, not people scavenging for food), the violent attacked and the politicians dithered, the American people mobilized on their own in a force more massive than anything anyone in rescue services was prepared for. Yeah, the bastards got all the air time, but there were far more people who donated cash, sent water, food and clothes, volunteered time, opened up their homes and their hearts….and I don’t believe that Americans are unique in this instinctual feeling of charity and community.
It may be naïve of me, but I have always believed that people were inherently good. You can throw all kinds of psychological and anthropological rationalizations at it, but in the end I believe that this showed that “the better angels of our nature” were alive and well in the 21st century.
Richmond
On to lighter fare.
First of all, let me deal with the Bush race and Truex subsequent fine. For those that missed it was the wildest damn thing I’ve have ever seen on TV. And that pic is just where it started. The #8 that you see going up into the wall then proceeded to go all the way around turns 3 and 4 on it’s side finally coming down right side up on the front stretch.
Needless to say, the normally staid Mr. Truex was a tad upset about this. After having asphalt grinding by 3 or 4 inches from your ear at 80 mph, you’d be a little upset too. So after he got out of the car he flipped the driver who forced him up into the wall, Mike Wallace, off. Twice.
“Naughty Naughty” said NASCAR and slapped Truex with a 25 point fine for, you guessed it, “Actions detrimental to stock car racing”
SO F-ING WHAT? As Jimmie once said, the thing that would surprise the fans the most are the amount of hand signal and gestures that get thrown around the track during races. These guys spend 3 to 5 hours in a perpetual state of road rage, flipping someone the bird is only the tip of the iceberg I am sure. So he flipped him off for scaring the living hell out of him (I know Truex said that he was upset about the wrecked car, but his reaction was a bit more…effusive than usual.) This is freakin’ ridiculous. I think the fine really has more to do with Truex’s Crew Chief getting in officials faces for black flagging Truex earlier in the race for not having all the tie down pins for his hood in.
As for Cup, well, like last year simply because it is the last chance for driver’s to make the Chase for the Nextel Cup, the second Richmond race becomes one of the most interesting races of the year as it become a wild balls out race for position for those team “on the bubble” (meaning they have a shot of either winning or losing their place in the Chase.) Two of my guys didn’t make the Chase and sadly both of them had performances in this race that showed why. *sigh* It was a bit frustrating to watch, not only because they both had lousy cars that hung around in the late-teens, but because they wasn’t any coverage of what was going on with Dale or Elliott. I didn’t find out until yesterday that both of them were fighting tight handling (meaning the car didn’t want to turn) cars through the entire race. The media was focusing more of the moves and shakers on the track that had a chance to get into the Chase such as Jamie McMurray, who got clipped by Tony Raines (“My brakes were bad” my ass) ending his Chase run. Or more colorful characters like Robbie Gordon and Sterling Marlin who’s game of bumper cars got them called into the NASCAR hauler after the race (no fines I know of).
But Mark Martin maintained a position in the middle of the standings, despite having a 13th place finish (they didn’t even cover him all that much either :P ) . Yay!
The Drivers in the Chase for the Nextel Cup are:
Tony Stewart - #20 - Home Depot
Greg Biffle - #16 - National Guard
Rusty Wallce - #2 - Miller Lite (Retiring this year)
Jimmie Johnson - #48 - Lowe Hardware
Kurt Busch - #97 – Sharpie/Crown Royal
Mark Martin - #6 – Viagra (Might be retiring at end of this year. Mark announced his retirement, but they have not been able to find someone to fill the seat for 2007.)
Jeremy Mayfield - #19 – Dodge Charger
Carl Edwards - #99 – Scott/Office Depot
Matt Kennseth - #17 – DeWalt
Ryan Newman - #12 – AlTell
While the points for everyone else remains as they were, just under 3000, these ten drivers have been bumped up to 5000, putting them out of reach of anyone else. Each place is then divided by only 5 points. Effectively leveling the playing field.
But team that finishes in the 11th place at the end of the year gets a million dollar prize which puts a big target on Elliott’s back since that’s where he is.
So Go Mark! Take that Championship home at last! And Go Dale and Elliott!
Though can someone tell me why when I type in www.elliottsadler.com into my address bar it comes out as “Adult users only: The Websense category "Sex" is filtered”
Elliott, just what have you been doing? ;)
posted by KiplingKat | 7:06 PM
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