The few, the proud, the profoundly confused

To: Walter E. Gaskin
Commanding General, Marine Corps Recruiting Command

Dear General Gaskin:

My 83-year-old mother is in receipt of the following letter from you.

"Dear _____,

The United States military is in need of your service.

Now is the time to put your unique language skills to the test as a member of the United States Marine Corps. Your command of the Arabic language will be invaluable among the elite few, where you'll play a pivotal role in communicating with people from Arabic-speaking countries."

[etc. snipped]

Now, my mother does, in fact, speak several languages, including Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, Spanish, and English. But she does not now nor has she ever spoken Arabic.

And, have I mentioned that she's EIGHTY-THREE?!

I know that database marketing and mailing list rental can be, wait for it, hit-or-miss, but this glimpse into your valiant if misguided effort does not inspire confidence.

I'm just glad you're not tasked with hurricane watch, General.

You aren't, are you?

Your bemused servant,
Sinyet

So you've heard what the locals are calling New Orleans? "Lake George"

Then there's the quip that Rehnquist actually died on Tuesday, but FEMA only learned about it four days later.

But seriously ....

If swathes of the affected Gulf region will be without electricity for a month or so, and with gasoline both scarce and expensive, couldn't we ask that part of the $5 million in assistance pledged by the Chinese be delivered in the form of bicycles? Nice, old-fashioned, upright bikes with fat tires and panniers. Listen, it works in Bangladesh and India. It could work in Mississippi. Give the bikes away to able-bodied people who agree to use them to aid the elderly and infirm to get needed supplies. If China won't do it, somebody put me in touch with Lance Armstrong's people: if he were to make such a donation to the American people, it would do his image more good than any number of bike rides at the Crawford ranch.

~~

Has anyone given any thought to the cost of the medical care the survivors will require?

Laurie Garrett at the Council for Foreign Affairs has written a clear-eyed and scary e-mail (at http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200509/msg00032.html) about the disease entities that may be/are spawning in NOLA.

But what are the chances that surviving four or five days in the heat, without adequate hydration, has caused currently subtle but long-term kidney damage in a lot of people? People without medical insurance, but who must now, if there is any decency left, must have their medical expenses met by the government.

this WAS the dirty bomb, plus a tsunami

It's a valid question someone posed:

"What's wrong with America that we turn almost immediately to see how our celebrities are going to respond to anything that happens regarding our country, and they are revered for throwing these damn concerts??"

Here's merely one opinion. There's nothing wrong with America. It's just the political system that's utterly broken. We have not been asked to sacrifice anything for so long by our politicians. They claim they don't WANT our taxes (well, of the super-rich, anyway). They don't WANT "big government." They only thing they ask is that the "private sector" contribute to, yep, "private" charities. They have absolutely abandoned the leadership role that government must take in times of crisis.

In the meanwhile, celebrity has become commodified, and since there are no leaders in the spotlight, celebrities have stepped in. And since this is a consumer society (remember when we were told to go shopping after 9/11), even charity is reduced to an exchange: I'll entertain you, if you do the right thing.

If Katrina had occured September 10, 2001, the muddled incompetent response would have been perhaps understandable.

But now? After anthrax; after serious concerns about "dirty bombs," containers carrying explosives or biological agents; after Madrid, and London, and Sharm el Sheik?

New Orleans was hit by a dirty bomb. It was a dirty bomb fueled not by fissile material, but by climate change (without arguing the causes of climate change here).

The rest of the coast was hit by a tsunami: not literally, but that was the effect.

So there are two immense disasters in the homeland. But the homeland guard is overseas, in a situation that their military and political masters have mishandled as cluelessly as they have the situation here and now.

Our classified spy satellites are being focused on the Gulf of Mexico instead of the other Gulf, to aid in rescue. One of the people who run that program said the images indicate that the effects were worse than the effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

I don't know if that is true, but, goddam it, wouldn't a "reality-based" government announce that fact, if it's true? It would take some onus off the poor initial response. Instead, they lie, and lie, and smile, and blame everybody else save themselves.

They knew this hurricane was coming. They did nothing. They knew the levees would give way. They took away the funding. They ran an exercise last year of a flooded NO. They knew from that exercise that 30% of the city's population could/would not evacuate even under a mandatory evacuation order.

Why didn't NO have publicized plans to use the overpasses that would be above the highest waters as staging/rescue/evacuation sites?

How are the surviving families going to be reunited? Who is going to pay for all the medical care they require, given our lack of a national medical scheme? What plans (ha!) are in place for the NEXT hurricane to come into the Gulf, and the next?

How many people who have still not been located, out in the back of beyond, will die before water and food and medicine is gotten to them?

For a long time after the World Trade Center collapsed, I would wake up and cry. Now, I wake up and am ashamed, and enraged.

"They're tryin' to wash us away .... "

"Goodnight, America, how are you? Don't ya know me, I'm your native son? I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans. I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done."