Remember Hurricane Charley?

If anyone gives you grief for criticizing President Disconnected for not visiting New Orleans, just remind them of this (stolen from DU):

August 13, 3:45pm EST
Hurricane Charley makes landfall

August 14, 2:15pm EST
During a speech in Sioux City, Iowa

Tomorrow, I'm going to travel down to Florida to visit with those whose lives have been hurt by Hurricane Charlie. I just want them to know that our federal government is responding quickly. We have got aid stations in place. FEMA federal officials are on the ground working with state and local officials. Many lives have been affected by this hurricane. And I know you join me in sending our prayers to those people who look for solace and help. (Applause)

Sunday, August 15 10:46 A.M. EDT
On the ground in Punta Gorda, Florida

THE PRESIDENT: You know the job of the federal government and the state government is to surge resources as quickly as possible to disaster areas. And that's exactly what's happening now. We choppered over and saw the devastation of this area. A lot of people's lives are turned upside down. We've got ice and water moving in, trailers for people to live in are moving in. The state is providing security so that people can have peace of mind that their neighborhoods will be safe. There's a lot of compassion moving in the area, the Red Cross is here.
What I'm telling you is that there's a lot of help moving into this part of the world -- it's going to take a while to rebuild it. But the government's job is to help people help rebuild their lives, and that's what's happening.
The coordination between the federal government and the state government and the local government is really important. I think it's excellent now. The governor can speak to that, if you like. But it's really important that when we say we're going to do something, that it actually happens. And that's what we're following through on now.

President Disconnected

Rather than face the final two days of Hurricane Cindy, Commander Codpiece was gracious enough to cut his vacation short to "deal" with Hurricane Katrina. On the flight back, Air Force One "swooped low" over New Orleans so that he could view the damage. How nice. Anyway, here's a view of New Orleans from ~5000 feet, the altitude of AF1:



Somehow, I don't think he was able to see this:



or this:



or this:



or these:









You might notice that most of these pictures show poor black and elderly people. That would be because they were least able to afford to evacuate. This was not a matter of wanting to leave - it was a matter of not being able to leave. And now the poor are paying the highest price for being poor. Tragic elsewhere in the world. Unacceptable here in America.

Gas lines

It's amazing how actions taken (or not taken) almost three DECADES ago can have a direct impact on the present. As everybody has seen, gas prices, for various geopolitical and geological reasons, have been steadily increasing over the past year or so.

When I passed our local Hess station yesterday afternoon, regular unleaded was $2.579. This morning (less than 12 hours later) it was $2.659. This afternoon (less than 8 hours later), it was $2.759, and it had a serious line.

This evening the Mrs and I were running some errands, finally ending up at Costco. The line for gas ran around the building. Stations along the way to and from had lines, or were out of gas and closed. And this is Central Florida.

Unfortunately, this has been building up since the early 80s, when Reagan decided that Carter's energy policies were not in sync with his and the oil industry's interests. At that point, this country was set on a path to energy vulnerability, culminating in what we are witnessing today.

I see people driving around in their Hummers and Expeditions and want to laugh at them, but then realize that partly because of them, we are paying higher gas prices and losing soldiers in Iraq trying to secure future oil for this country.

Time to take back the Swamp

Gator fans understand, and this video gets the blood flowing. Just waitin' for kickoff this Saturday. Urban renewal...

Movie

Intelligent design war comes to Florida

It seems that Jeb!?! Bush wants Florida to join the battle currently raging in Kansas among other places. Using Hurricane Katrina as cover, Jeb!?! appointed Cheri Yecke as the new Florida K-12 Chancellor. Seems Dr. Yecke was recently dismissed as the Minnesota Education Commissioner.Among the reasons for her dismissal: stating that local school boards should have the latitude to introduce "intelligent design". In addition, she was instrumental in crafting and implementing the No Child Left Behind Act, an unfunded mandate that has done nothing to improve education.

Fortunately for Minnesota, she pissed off enough people that they ousted her. Unfortunately for Florida, Jeb!?! decided to import the extremist failure, sending a clear signal that there's going to be a major push to undermine our science standards.

Two points of interest: Florida has the largest educational budgets of any state in the Union, and prior to the 2006 elections, Florida undergoes a massive review of text book standards and contracts with publishers.

From Pharyngula via Atrios. Thanks for the help PZ...

Are we the British?

Darth Cheney was nice enough to contrast the current situation in Iraq with the American Revolution. Rudepundit covers this, and I don't want to let the point get away.

But beyond lessons in childhood safety, Cheney offered a truly bizarre take on the U.S. forces in Iraq. See, despite being the "best-trained, best-equipped" military in the world, the Americans in Iraq are really just the same scruffy lot that fought the American Revolution. Farted Cheney, "The victories in 1776 were few, and the condition of the Army was dreadful. By Christmastime our men were cold, hungry, and exhausted, and many of them didn't even have boots to wear. The volunteers were near the end of their rope, and thousands of enlistments were set to expire on New Year's Day. These men were bound and determined to leave, so the Continental Army was about to evaporate."

But...

Ahh, see the little problem here is that, back in the day, the British army was the best-equipped, best-trained military in the Western world. And, you know, the American revolutionaries? Shit, let's just let the Army tell the story: "A force of farmers and townsmen, fresh from their fields and shops, with hardly a semblance of orthodox military organization, had met and fought on equal terms with a professional British Army. On the British this astonishing feat had a sobering effect, for it taught them that American resistance was not to be easily overcome."

And the Rude One brings it home:

And if we're gonna go with this "holy shit, we're the Redcoats in Iraq" scenario, let's go whole hog. Here's how the Revolutionary War was viewed, at least partly, in England: To fight the war, "Britain had first to raise the necessary forces, then transport and sustain them over 3000 miles of ocean, and finally use them effectively to regain control of a vast and sparsely populated territory. Recruiting men for an eighteenth century army was most difficult. The British Government had no power to compel service except in the militia in defense of the homeland, and service in the British Army overseas was immensely unpopular." How did the British make up for the lack of recruits? By outsourcing to the Hessians. Mercenaries, they were called then. Today, they're "security companies" or "Halliburton."

So, according to Cheney, we are the bad guys who should be kicked out. Ahhh, cognitive dissonance, thy name is GOP...

Somebody please pop the bubble

Our bubble-boy leader just won't let reality impose on his vacation...

Never forget this

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -- T Roosevelt

Chicago Air Show

To show that blogs need no segues (and no segue is a good one), here are some pics from the Chicago Air Show. Unfortunately, the Thunderbirds had a near miss (actually a near hit, according to George Carlin) so we only saw half of the their performance (they were grounded pending an investigation).

What price the dead?

I was struck by something I just heard on the Majority Report - a reference to Commander Codpiece spending billions in Iraq to protect Americans at home. But now with Katrina, how many have died who would not have with the money wasted in Iraq? Isn't a dead American unacceptable regardless of the circumstances?

Welcome

I suppose my inaugural post should be a welcome, despite everything that's currently happening in the world today. But I will have time to get to those later, so in the meantime, welcome to my blog...