Sweet home Chicago

So yesterday I went back to school-my first class in fourteen years.  From now through December I have class on Monday and Wednesday evening, plus Tuesday afternoon. 

I originally planned on taking the regional Metra train downtown to campus, but the powers that be who run the university of my choosing have aligned themselves with the Chicago Transit Authority, which means that every semester I get charged $85 for an unlimited use transit card, like it or not.  I'm not complaining; within eight weeks or so I will have taken $85 dollars worth of rides with four weeks of the semester left. 

It does change my plan, though.  I was going to walk the mile or so to the train station in my hometown, and then the mile or so from the station in the city to campus.  To catch the CTA train that bisects the Kennedy Expressway, I have to drive four miles and park.  I can still chose to have a lengthy hike once downtown if I want, but I have to admit that in the dead of winter I will be thankful for the stop three blocks from campus.

But I was looking forward to the exercise.

Yesterday I left several hours before class, so that I would have time to get my bearings and take care of a few administrative issues.  As soon as I got on the train, I experienced a trinity of events that led me to believe that perhaps I was not going to have a good day:

1. I could only get a seat facing backwards.  This is a hit-or-miss thin for me.  Sometimes I can stomach it, sometimes I cannot.  I definitely cannot read while facing backwards, and it is a forty-five minute trip.

2. As soon as I sat, I felt my feet stick to the floor.  Someone had spilled a drink (or something) and I had not noticed.  The floor was very sticky.  So much so that it took some effort for me to move my feet.

3. At the first stop after I got on, a man sat down next to me.  He was, shall we say, ripe.  There's no smell quite like this one; not plain body odor, but a smell that comes from wearing clothing while sweating profusely, hanging it up and letting them dry, and then wearing the same clothes again the next day. 

Fortunately, he was only on the train for ten minutes or so.  The rest of the ride was uneventful, except when I noticed the advertising banner running along the side of the top of the train.  It was 50 Cent pimping for some brand of vitamin water.  One of the panels said "No groupies.  No love.  Just 50" and showed him sitting at a table with a bottle of this water, reading the Wall Street Journal, while three scantily clad women stood off in the distance, wondering just what the hell was wrong with him.

I wonder who thought that advertising campaign up.

One thing I love about my decision to get back into the classroom is the fact that it forces me down to the city several times a week.  I used to work downtown and got very familiar with its intricacies, so much so that I used to think of myself as somewhat of an urban expert.  And I realized yesterday that I have allowed that part of me to erode in three years since I left the city.

My class started at six.  I was early.  I went up to the fifth floor, found my room, and sat in a chair next to the window that faced east.  From my vantage point I had a clear view of Lake Michigan, Grant Park and Buckingham Fountain.  I sat in silence for about ten minutes, drinking in this view, until other students started to arrive.  I forgot how calming the views of this city can be sometimes.

At the halfway point of our class, we moved to the other side of the building, to a room where we will be doing half of our work.  This room faces west, and has no air conditioning.  It was hot yesterday, so the windows were open.  The tracks of the L run adjacent to the building, so every five minutes or so, we were interrupted by the metal works of a passing train.

You might think that annoying.  I would respectfully say that you are incorrect.

I do love this city.

The buck stops where?

I'm pretty sure that this will be the last I have to say about the horrific response of the powers that be to the disaster in New Orleans.  I've taken some time to digest all of the news from the area over the last few days, and my level of anger over the response has reached critical mass.  It will do no good to continue to be bitter.  It will take a while for the true reaction of the public to be heard about this, all the way to November of 2006.

I must say that I am absolutely amazed at the level that some of the blowhards are going to in order to deflect blame from the federal government.  Fox News has all but declared a jihad on democratic Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco.  I wouldn't be surprised to pick up the paper tomorrow and see that Bill O'Reilly took it upon himself to go down to Baton Rouge and arrest Blanco.

And you don't even need to sign off of AOL to sip some of the Bush Kool-Aid.  Check out this line:

"those who are strategically skipping the obvious blameline for a perceived partisan gain are no better than the looters who are/were "saving themselves" with carts-full of high-end electronics, clothing, etc."

Nothing like a little perspective...there's more of that stuff here.  Hey, making fun of Sean Penn!  And throwing in some French every so often!  Classic!

I'm going to have a little fun here and assign specific blame, in parts, for the responsorial clusterfudge to New Orleans:

15%-The city of New Orleans, led by Mayor Ray Nagin (D)...granted, I don't have a lengthy knowledge of the challenges that the city faced BK (before Katrina), but since everybody with a Doomsday gene seemed convinced that New Orleans was one day going to be swimming in itself, one would think the city would have a comprehensive plan on how to deal with it.  The most damaging picture I have seen in all of this is the one of the 200+ buses sitting in a flooded parking lot, buses that could have been used to get more people out of the city ahead of the storm.  Nagin also seems to have lost a few brain cells since the flood, but I suppose that might be understandable given that his city has been destroyed.  His funding is limited, and the protection of the levees was up to the state and federal governments, so that is why they don't get a bigger share of the blame.  Nagin's chance of re-election?  I'd say 50-50.  I don't think a Republican can be the mayor of N.O., but he might face a challenge from a fellow Democrat.  See the Chicago mayoral primary of 1979.

35%-The state of Louisiana, led by Governor Katherine Blanco...she seemed woefully indecisive and unsure of what exactly she was supposed to do.  Again, given the circumstances, the state should have been ready for the big one to hit New Orleans.  She didn't seem ready to deploy the National Guard, though I do not know how much of Louisiana's guard is deployable.  Her chance of re-election?  Absolutely none.  In fact, I would not be surprised if she didn't run again.  If she does, she going to be absolutely torched.  I don't believe Louisiana uses the primary system, so she won't even advance to a run-off.  I don't even know when she is up for re-election, but if you love nasty, mud slinging campaigns, don't miss the next gubernatorial race in Louisiana. 

And for the record, I don't think she deserves to be re-elected.

50%-The federal government, led by the high and mighty George W. Bush.  For all who believe that the state is ultimately responsible for handling disasters, let me introduce you to The 2004 National Response Plan, organized by the Department of Homeland Security and eagerly supported by Bush.  The plan explicitly states:

"(at times of) any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions, the federal government pre-empts local and state government in its responsibility to act quickly."

That, in my humble opinion, is the so called "Smoking Gun" that proves to me that the federal government blew it.  The plan, a by product of the entire pledge of how the Federal Government vowed to make us "safer" in the aftermath of 9/11, took away the rights of the state in times of great disaster, whether terror related or as a result of Mother Nature.

You can spin it anyway you want, but the point is that  the government took over the role of savior for every state and city in the nation by enacting this plan in 2004.  It doesn't matter what anyone's handbook says, this is the precedent that was supposed to be followed.

Notice I am not including anything about budgets for reinforcing levees for the city.  If you want the blame the current administration for that, you must blame every presidential administration dating back to Lyndon Johnson.

That Bush continues to tell his FEMA director that he is doing a "great job", that he says that he will lead an inquiry in to how things went wrong, just fully shows how this man does not get it.  He is incompetent, and has created and formed an administration of incompetence.

Yet, there will probably be medals awarded by the president to the people in charge of this response.  He's done it before, awarding medals to the people in charge of intelligence who provided the incorrect information about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Let me go off here:  this Sunday will mark four years since September 11, 2001.  When you read and hear the tributes and memories of that awful day this year, remember something else, how your government has spent every day since then telling us that they have done everything they can to make us safer.

And then look at the current state of New Orleans and tell me how that could possibly be true.  How can we possibly be convinced that we are "safer" from any terrorist attack, any national disaster, when New Orleans is changed forever.

You blame the storm, of course.  But the sheer inability to perform and account for the horrible response to the flooding of New Orleans was a watershed moment for us.  It used to be impossible to think that such a thing could happen in modern America, but not anymore.

There is plenty of blame to go around for what New Orleans has now become.  Blame belongs to both democratic and republican elected officials.  But don't kid yourselves, if the response had been completely different, had been competent, the GOP would be preparing slide shows to show every night of the Republican National Convention in 2008.  Which, remember, will be in New Orleans.  You can book that now.

Unless the people ofNew Orleans stand up and say "no way!"

I may just join them.  

 

 

 

Tickets on sale yet?

So, is there anybody out there who DOESN'T believe that the GOP will hold the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in 2008???

Incompetence is color blind

I'm as skeptical as anybody about the federal government, but I am more than just a bit dismayed at the accusations that race played a part in the snail-like response to the flooding in New Orleans.

My first thought?  Let's not give the assorted bureaucrats involved with this cluster**** (Man, I love that word) any excuses for their incompetence.  The ridiculous amount of time it took to get help to N.O. is not because a majority of the people in need are black; the reason is plain and simple-an unbelievably poor and complete lack of planning by people who been reassuring us for the last five years that they were "ready."

Of course, I'm white, so by expressing this opinion I put myself at risk of being labeled along the lines of "how could you possibly know?"  Truth is, I don't. 

I've watched the video of Kanye West having a melt down on national television last night.  Perhaps he has been upset so much by the images we have all seen coming out of Louisiana and Mississippi that he felt that he was the proper person to speak up for the African-Americans of this country.  He certainly seemed very upset as he was attempting to speak.  Certainly, we all have said things that we later regret when we have the opportunity to look back on it.

Besides, he was wrong.  George W. Bush cares about black people like Kanye West, because black people like Kanye West have money.  It's not about black or white when it comes to W.  He is all about the green.

The only reason West was even on television last night is that he has made a successful career as a rapper, singer, performer, whatever you want to call it.  I've heard some of his work, and he does have talent.  But he falls into the same trap as so many others that have made millions of money in the hip-hop music industry; he resorts to offensive stereotypes at times in his songs, though he's not as prolific with the "thug" lyrics as most other hip-hop performers.

I am probably not the person to be making these points, but I can't help it.  I despise the lyrics present in a lot of rap music, lyrics that glorify violence, drug use, and the exploitation of women.  I don't understand why it is so popular.  It has a great effect on the young minds that listen to a majority of this music.

I'd bet that a lot of Kanye West CDs were washed away from homes in the floodwaters of New Orleans.  Yet what does West know about that life?  He's a millionaire.  And if you read his biography, you'll see that he was fortunate to avoid growing up in poverty.  Though his parents were divorced when he was young, both were a presence in his life.

If West had to go off last night, I would have been much more impressed if he had just said something like "everyone needs help, but the minorities need it most."  Would that have been over the top?  Certainly, but it also would have been true.

That goes for the politicians taking the opportunity to inject race into this.  Get some perspective and realize that this is not about "you."  People are upset and angry, and rightly so.  But it should not be about race; it should be about incompetence.  To assume that this administration could "delay" their response solely because they were not concerned about helping black people gives WAY to much credit to the administration.

They weren't prepared.  Whether the people in need of help were black, white, red, orange or purple, the federal and state agencies were not prepared.

On time two weeks in a row

1. What is the price of gas at your regular station?  Have you made any changes to holiday plans because of gas prices? It was $3.30 a few days ago, when I last noticed it.  I haven't made any changes because I have no real plans.  I don't think prices would cause me to make any changes to my life until it hit $5 or so.  Of course, I am in a position now where I don't need to drive much. 

2. Some people feel that the song that was #1 when they were born somehow helps shape their life.  Which song was #1 when you were born, according to this site.  Do you think it relates to your life at all?  Ugh.  The US #1 on the date of my birth was "Groovin" by the Little Rascals.  I can't stand that song.  So I did it again to see what the UK #1 was; Ugh, ugh.  "Silience is Golden."  Neither applies to my life.  I don't groove, and I am hardly ever silent.

3. Take this quiz:  Which child does it say you are?  Is it correct about your birth order? I am likely an only child.  I am actually not an only child, though my two siblings like to tell me that I was adopted, so maybe I am...

4. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #61 from De:  What animal do you equate your spirit with and why?  (This site may be helpful.)  Anything that flies.

5. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #62 from Psychfun:  If you had to describe your personality as a nut (as in the eatable kind) what nut would you be and why? Whichever one is the toughest one to crack open, so that most people give up and never eat it.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #63 from Chris:   Who knows the "real" you better - - your real world friends or your Jland readers? I think a majority of the people who read this are non-AOL folks, so it's not even close.

My

Yesterday I wrote about driving into New Orleans from the east, and how a moment of driving over the water on I-10 at sunset will stay with me forever.

I found this over at Midlife Matters: a picture of what that road looks like now.

Words fail me.

Following up the breeze

This takes you to excerpts from a series that ran in the New Orleans Times-Picayune (what the hell is a "picayune" anyway?) in June of 2004 explaining how the federal government cut the budget for projects to raise levees around New Orleans.

It's important to note that even if the work was fully funded and completed, there's simply no way of knowing if it would have been enough to save the city from flooding.  However, I think it needs to be acknowledged that certain "priorities" caused other ones to be overlooked.  Indulge at your will.

See this too.

As for wondering if anyone has stated that New Orleans "deserved" all this since it is a decadent city, well, it didn't take long to find something.  I particularly enjoyed the following:

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge... we must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long," Marcavage said. "May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," Marcavage concluded.

If you read the entire thing (and if you do, I hope you did not just eat), you'll see that "Southern Decadence" is an annual New Orleans gay festival.  The city, rightly so, welcomes everyone who chooses to celebrate life in New Orleans.  I have no doubt that Michael Marcavage pins most of the blame for Katrina on "Southern Decadence."

And I was all set to join up, grab my supplies and help "REPAINT America"!  Then I re-read it, and put my rollers away.  Silly moi.

(Note: the links are a blatant rip-off of Andrew Sullivan.  He has millions of readers.  I do not.  I thank him for helping me provide facts.)