Smoke & Mirrors

After days & days of playing the blame game and losing out to the realities of the situation, the president and his party has finally stopped trying to shift it all to the shoulders of swamped gulf-coast officials. In a desperate change of tactics the president now accepts full responsibility "to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right." (Nice qualifier there… Way to show backbone and leadership!)

The hallmark of the Bush Administration is their emphasis on public relations over substance, as more than adequately illustrated by the memo from the former head of FEMA Michael Brown to The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. It's not exactly stellar evidence of a serious and hard driving effort to confront a national disaster in the making.

"Identification of potential issues..."

"Convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

Hardly something you’d expect to see from the head of FEMA while a deadly hurricane is ravaging the nation.

It is also perfectly illustrated in the Herculean efforts on the part of the administration to repeatedly deflect criticism with the excuse that relief efforts are ongoing.

"You know, Tim, what we're contemplating now is the fact that we are very, very much in the middle of a crisis. … ." – Michael Chertoff on Meet the Press

And apparently we are to indefinitely forgo criticism so they can focus their "efforts" on relief & rebuilding.

Chertoff later adds, "So what I'm focused on now and what I want my department--in fact, what the president has ordered all of us to be focused on now--is: What do we need to do in the next hours, in the next days, in the next weeks and the next months to make sure we are doing everything possible to give these people succor and to make their lives easier?"

Months he says… There’s plenty of time to figure out what went wrong he says…

Well for Months, The President fought against an independent investigation of 9/11. As a result, we are still not prepared to protect our citizens from a national emergency, whether natural or man-made. It looks to me like if they have their way, in the years to come we will be just as ill prepared.

And the smoke and mirrors show continues…

(Post Edited on March 13th 2008 to remove broken links. Text was not changed)

Slow starts all round…

Well that was a slow start for a new blogger. Then again, I did have some kind of excuse. I had been sick for awhile when I made my first post, and soon after that I discovered that my body had decided to grow a tumor for some reason. So understandably I think, my attention was diverted from an interest in building a blog for awhile.

But the nuisance is out now, and it apparently wasn’t malignant, so my life is getting back to what I’d prefer it to be.

So much has been happening outside my own personal concerns. Here in the county… and out in the world… It seems almost impossible that I’d be able to catch up…

Katrina & New Orleans is an ever present and growing story. There’s been so much horror and despair, so much anger and frustration… Perhaps I can be forgiven for looking for signs of hope even as the dead still wait for recognition and respect.

The hurricane revealed what is usually hidden, to our embarrassment and shame. A democracy neglected, and threatened with decay. Whole communities exiled from their country though they never leave it’s boarders.. Whole classes of us, virtually unrepresented by a government that is supposed to derive its purpose from us…. People unserved by a country that was built on the premise that it exists to serve.

Even here in our own county we suffer the neglect of disenfranchised communities without the power to protect their own interests. It's happening as usual at the hands of the larger community without the will, or understanding, or sense-of-duty to take action, perhapse even to care. I’ve felt helpless as largely from the sidelines I saw the story of SCMH unfold. And now, unless something changes in the county, we get to witness the slow sad decline that privatization of absolutely everything, regardless of the consequences, will inevitably bring about.

But out of sight, out of mind. And what you don’t know can’t hurt you…