Current affairs

It sends a chill up my spine when I realize that the same folks who brought us a mismanaged Iraq war, bungled hurricane relief efforts, and a host of other debacles, are in charge of protecting Americans from a potentially devastating avian (bird) flu epidemic. Bernadine Healy, M.D., a former director of the National Institutes of Health, said that we are “Unprepared for Bird Flu” in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report. Her uncheery assessment starts off with: When the avian flu brewing in Asia hits our shores--as most experts believe will happen--and if it maintains its…

“Totally unnecessary.” That was my reaction to the story in yesterday’s Oregonian about how two police officers killed a crazed, naked, unarmed man after he had jumped on the roof of their patrol car. A witness to the shooting, Paul White, said that at no time was the man (Fouad Kaady) threatening or combative. He was just standing on the roof of the car, hands at his side. Undoubtedly the grand jury investigating this case will be told by the officers that they believed their lives were in danger. Give me a break. Being afraid is a lot different from…

Over on my Church of the Churchless weblog I wrote yesterday about how religion is bad for societal health. In this post I discussed a study which found that religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. A Los Angeles Times editorial called this “The dark side of faith.” We’re seeing that side much more clearly now in the United States. The forces of darkness, masquerading as fundamentalist Christianity, are trying to get us to deny realities revealed by science, treat homosexuals as second-class citizens, get government involved in private…

In 1788 Alexander Hamilton foresaw the danger that a President might try to nominate someone like Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. That is, someone who came from the President’s state, who was personally allied to him, who was so pliable as to be the “obsequious instrument of his pleasure” (dear God, please send me such a woman; who knew the Federalist Papers had such an erotic ring?). Hamilton thought that a President would be ashamed to do this. As Bush should be. Here’s an excerpt from the History News Network’s instructive article, “What Did the Federalist Papers Say About…

Ah, I’ve never used “duplicitousness” in a blog post, but I couldn’t resist. There just wasn’t another alliterative "d" word that I could put after “DeLay’s.” For yesterday I saw Tom DeLay interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Now, I’m sure DeLay has some good qualities. He probably is kind to pets and loving toward his wife and children. I do my best to look upon him as a human being, flawed though he is (as are we all). Yet when he settled into his cocky, smirking, can’t-touch-me interview demeanor, I instantly loathed him. And what I heard next didn’t…

A picture is worth a thousand denying words. For several hours Fox News has been showing photos of a major breach in a New Orleans levee. Just now I watched a live news conference featuring an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman. Fox’s split screen had him on the left, with a televised image of water rushing through an obvious breach on the right. Here’s the interchange between he and a reporter: Brigadier General William Grisoli: What’s happening in the Industrial Canal is that we were able to repair in three weeks up to about a seven-foot level. We knew that…

Be a patriot. Be unselfish. Be strong. Don’t top off your car’s gas tank because you’ve heard that Hurricane Rita could bring us $5 gas and lines around the block. Panic and a “I’ve got to get mine” mentality is just going to make the gasoline situation a lot worse. Fill up when you usually do, not before. I wait until my tank is two-thirds to three-fourths empty. Please do the same. Stifle the urge to horde gas by rushing out to fill up. If everyone does this, a lot of the nation’s gasoline is going to be sloshing around…

After writing “Now is the time for finger-pointing” I’ve heard from some people who questioned the appropriateness of bashing the Bush administration for bungling Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Here’s my considered thoughtful response: Hell, yes, it is appropriate. Let me explain. I agree with those commenters that I’ve been focused much more on pointing out the failings of the federal response in general, and of FEMA’s response in particular, than with supporting the relief efforts. Yet personally, we’ve contributed $400 to those efforts, $300 of which has gone to animal rescue organizations. So we’ve been putting our checkbook where my…

We've made several donations to the Humane Society's relief effort for animals affected by Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. Click on the banner to make a contribution yourself. The link leads to the HSUS Disaster Relief Fund. "Animals are people too," as the saying goes. They suffer just as we do and deserve help on their own merit. In addition, the human victims of Hurricane Katrina often are more devastated by the loss of a beloved pet than by the loss of material possessions, as this CNN story says. Laurel has been worrying about Snowball ever since she heard this…

I admit it: I’ve become obsessed with pointing my finger at the Bush administration’s failure to respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Several times today friends asked me, “How are you?” I’d respond, “If you’re just talking about me and my life, I’m fine. If you include how I feel about the lives that have been lost by Department of Homeland Security and FEMA bungling, I’m not fine at all.” And then I’d take off on my finger-pointing rant.

It’s been a beautiful sunny warm day here in Oregon. I started off wanting to simply enjoy it, to be in the here and now. Then, driving into Salem this morning I heard right-wing talk show host Lars Larson plug his upcoming broadcast from Washington where the anniversary of 9/11 will be “celebrated.”

“We’ve got to make sure 9/11 will never happen again,” Larson said. “We must never forget the lessons of 9/11.”

For the rest of the day I couldn’t stop thinking, “Hey, 9/11 did happen again in the guise of Hurricane Katrina. The final death toll hasn’t been calculated yet, but estimates range into the thousands. And we did forget the lessons of 9/11, because the Bush administration failed to heed the clear warning that a category 4 hurricane was likely to hit New Orleans, sitting on its hands when many lives could have been saved.”

My already-dark mood wasn’t improved when, listening to the radio while driving home late in the afternoon, I heard Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff intone, “After this is over there likely will be some serious changes in how the federal government reacts to natural disasters.”

Are you kidding me? Bush and company have had four years to make serious changes to how the federal government reacts to disasters both natural and unnatural. Now you want more time, Chertoff? That’s bullshit, which is all that we’ve been getting from the Bush administration.

I’m sick of it. This is the time for finger-pointing and getting mad as hell. This is the time to never forget the victims of Hurricane Katrina. This is the time to vow to honor the dead and homeless by casting votes against the Bush administration in November 2006.

In today’s New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that people on the Gulf coast have been “Killed by Contempt.” Meaning, the present federal government has contempt for the role of government in helping people who can’t help themselves.

A political crony, Michael Brown, was appointed FEMA director. FEMA funding was slashed after 9/11. Those were conscious decisions to enfeeble government’s ability to respond to a disaster. So Krugman is absolutely right: the Bush administration has killed people by contempt.

On the radio today several times I heard a heartbreaking interview where a New Orleans official, Aaron Broussard broke down in tears on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” You have to hear Broussard’s voice to get the full impact of the story he told about a woman in a nursing home dying after waiting four days to be saved.

You can read about this disgrace here and here (or read the continuation to this post.)

[Monday morning update: The New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, published a devastating “Open letter to the President” on Sunday. The editorial calls for every FEMA official to be fired, starting with political flack Michael Brown, the FEMA director. Great idea.]

Well, that’s not such a good metaphor for a hurricane disaster—holding FEMA’s lungs underwater would be a better image. Regardless, last night Nightline showed an interview Koppel conducted earlier in the day with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director, Michael Brown. He gave Brown no mercy. Nor should he have. Koppel acted like professional journalists should, yet rarely do in these days of fawning deference to Bush administration incompetence. Whenever Brown tried to wriggle out of a question about how FEMA has been responding (or, rather, not responding) to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Koppel interrupted him with…