[Rhodes22-list] Rummies observation

[brad haslett]

Bill,

Where to begin?  Your numbers are off, way off. The
governor of Lousiana doesn't need permission from
ANYONE to commit her troops, some 8000 at home into
action.  The order to evacuate the city of NO came
after Bush personally pleaded with the mayor and
governor to do so (they have phones in Crawford, just
like Martha's Vineyard).  Blah, Blah, Blah. There is
plenty of blame to go around:  W, the Feds, etc.  But
where the hell was the local government, first
responders, etc?  Have you read the article published
August 18, 2005 that on the first day of school in NO
they didn't know how to get in contact with all the
school bus drivers or how many employees the school
district had?  What did Rudy do on 9/11 with no notice
versus these people who had days notice?  Rather than
try and improve on this theme, I'll post a blogger who
has probably written the best obvervation yet.  

Brad

Here it is, it is quite lengthy but worth it.  Enjoy

TRIBES
(Folks, there's R-rated language throughout this
thing. Normally I can edit it out; this time, not so
much. I may do so later, but now I want to leave it as
I wrote it.)







I’m generally an optimist, and it’s been my pleasure
to be able to write mostly about the good and the
noble things in our lives. But the events in the Gulf
– of Mexico – have brought to a head a summer and a
year that has been getting progressively uglier and
more painful to watch. 

Who can not see the way the country has changed, not
since 9/11, but before that – since the 2000 election?
Who cannot feel the split, the division, that rips
like a shredding sail on a broken mast, canvas tearing
like the sound of musketry, as the rigging falls to
the deck?

This breaks my heart. It just breaks my heart into
little pieces. I have said less and less as I see more
and more, because deep in my core I still don’t want
to believe that some Americans could willfully and
consistently do such destructive things out of such
petty and base motivations, things which make in time
will make the horrors of New Orleans look like a flea
circus in a small tent, with the much larger carnival
raging unseen in the background. 

I’ve taken sides in these essays, obviously – that’s
what I do. But I have never, until now, felt the need
to take the gloves off and really let fly. I always
feared I would regret it, later. I still do. Only now,
I fear I will regret it worse if I do not. 

So now we must look at Tribes.







Now please pay attention to this, because I’m not
going to state it again, and if you don’t hear it now
much mischief will follow:

I believe that the human animal – the raw material of
our physical bodies – is essentially interchangeable.
By this I mean that I could take the children of
Fallujah and turn them all into Astronauts, convert
Jewish babies into fanatical, mass-murdering SS
guards, and shake a generation of the poorest
Voodoo-worshippers in Haiti into a cadre of top-flight
nuclear physicists, chemical engineers and computer
scientists. 

Race has nothing to do with this – precisely nothing.
The mobs of murdering Hutus and swarms of slaughtering
Serbs are as different racially as it is possible to
be, and they are cut from precisely the same cloth. 

I know this is so because there have been murdering
scumbags of every stripe and color in the long history
of the human race – which is depressing – and that
these animals, at any given time, represent only a
small percentage of the majority of people, also of
every stripe and color – which is not. There is no
corner on virtue, and no outpost of depravity. Human
hearts are indistinguishable and interchangeable.
Anyone who claims otherwise is, without further
argument or statements necessary, a complete
God-damned idiot. 

Now, with that said – have we all heard that loud and
clear? – there are light-years of difference in how
various Tribes will behave. 

Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful
opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said
he wished that white, middle-class, racist,
conservative cocksuckers like myself could have been
herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see
how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the
fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the
eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the
Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class,
racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would
not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a
citadel of hope and order and restraint and
compassion. 

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the
blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work
with and associate with were there with me, it would
have been that much better. That’s because the people
I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks
and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of
individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My
Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad
things happen, and that these are an opportunity to
show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into
burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and
self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do
not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe
is not fearless; they are something better. They are
courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and
kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give
orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough
about how the world works to figure out ways to boil
water, ration food, repair structures, build and
maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded
and the dead with respect and compassion. 

There are some things my Tribe is not good at at all.
My Tribe doesn’t make excuses. My Tribe will analyze
failure and assign blame, but that is to make sure
that we do better next time, and we never, ever waste
valuable energy and time doing so while people are
still in danger. My Tribe says, and in their heart
completely believes that it’s the other guy that’s the
hero. My Tribe does not believe that a single Man can
cause, prevent or steer Hurricanes, and my Tribe does
not and has never made someone else responsible for
their own safety, and that of their loved ones.

My Tribe doesn’t fire on people risking their lives,
coming to help us. My Tribe doesn’t curse such people
because they arrived on Day Four, when we felt they
should have been here before breakfast on Day One. We
are grateful, not to say indebted, that they have come
at all. My Tribe can’t eat Nike’s and we don’t know
how to feed seven by boiling a wide-screen TV. My
Tribe doesn’t give a sweet God Damn about what color
the looters are, or what color the rescuers are,
because we can plainly see before our very eyes that
both those Tribes have colors enough to cover everyone
in glory or in shame. My Tribe doesn’t see black and
white skins. My Tribe only sees black and white hats,
and the hat we choose to wear is the most personal
decision we can make.

That’s the other thing, too – the most important
thing. My Tribe thinks that while you are born into a
Tribe, you do not have to stay there. Good people can
join bad Tribes, and bad people can choose good ones.
My Tribe thinks you choose your Tribe. That, more than
anything, is what makes my Tribe unique. 

I am so utterly and unabashedly proud of my Tribe,
that my words haunt and mock me for their pale
weakness and shameful inadequacy. 







Membership in my Tribe is not free. 

I have been the first person at four accident scenes.
I have crawled into overturned cars on country roads,
cars whose wheels were still spinning, and gone on
hands and knees through broken glass to comfort
strangers while uniformed policemen stood around
outside and told jokes. I have put my triple-knit
polyester chauffeur’s blazer over an elderly black
woman hit by a bus and used my belt as a tourniquet to
slow the dark spread of blood widening beneath her
badly broken leg, and been amazed, every time, at how
the sounds of approaching sirens seems to come almost
before I have time to hold her hand and tell her she’s
gonna be just fine. 

I say this not to glorify myself – on the contrary. I
am embarrassed to write such things. I am a pampered
and lazy Hollywood TV editor who gets paid insane sums
of money to do a cake job while much better people
than me do this every day, for peanuts. There is
nothing remotely heroic about me. I simply do what
millions and millions and millions of my fellow
Americans do every day, in ways large and small. They
step up to the plate, not because they want to be
heroes, but because someone has to do it. These simple
people donate their time, their money, their food,
their cars and their houses every single day, and ask
and expect nothing in return, while a few miles away
from me in Brentwood millionaire movie stars throw
fabulous parties to remind each other how swell they
are, then waltz out into their chauffeured limos with
their tens or hundreds of millions of dollars firmly
in place, feeling good that they had the chance to
really make a difference by raising awareness of
whichever cause they feel will most make up for their
feelings of inadequacy and guilt by showing both
themselves and us just how much better people they
really are. 

What kind of money could Barbara and Martin and Tim
and Susan and Gwenneth and George and Steven and Viggo
and Linda and Harvey and Brad and Angelina and Ben and
all the rest – how much could they really put
together, if they actually believed what they say –
not to mention the cash available to the Malodorous
Michigan Manatee of Mendacity? What kind of check
could they write? $500 million would be less than 10%
of every outspoken celebrities' combined wealth. That
money could take every poor person in LA county and
put them into much nicer apartments than the one I
live in. They could, at a stroke, shame the President,
the Congress, and the evil NeoCon warmongers by
putting every displaced person in New Orleans in a
Marriott for a year. They claim this is the kind of
better human they have evolved into. 

Why don’t they do it? 

They don’t do it because that Tribe worships the
golden statue of themselves, that’s why. A
church-going pharmacist in Des Moines would be ashamed
of herself for giving only 10% of her modest salary.
But Sean Penn can take himself, an entourage and a
personal photographer – that’s three or four people in
a four-person boat – and show us all how incredibly
big and down-home he is by sailing off a few feet to
rescue people, before the boat sinks from the
incompetence of failing to put in the drainage plug.
He wore a very nice white flak vest, instead of the
passé orange life preserver, because getting shot at
is a lot more macho looking, if a million or so times
less likely, than drowning because you went out into
the water with a lead vest rather than a life vest.
It’s a scene in the trailer that runs incessantly in
their heads: In a world run by evil corporations, a
rebel who plays by his own rules starts a deadly game
of cat and mouse with an all-powerful conspiracy in
this searing portrait of extraordinary courage in a
life under siege, starring
me! 

I was actually ready to publicly commend the guy,
until I heard about the personal photographer. If he
wanted to help people – and that’s all – he could have
paid for that boat, and a few hundred others, manned
them with reasonably competent recreational boaters,
and sent out a flotilla. But no. It’s not about having
people saved. It’s about something else entirely. It’s
about having people saved by Sean Penn. That’s when I
realized that whether it’s the Murderous Regime in
Iraq, or the Murderous Regime in Iran, or the
Murderous Storm in Louisiana
ultimately, it’s all
about Sean Penn. Peace Be Upon Him.

But thank God we have people like him, and the rest of
that vain, useless, smug, self-centered, incompetent,
insecure and thoroughly broken Tribe to point out the
error of our ways. 

I hate those sons of bitches with all of my heart. And
the fact that so much of our society has come to
worship these shallow, egomaniacal dolts says a lot
about where we are, and none of it is good. 








Now this next point is so obvious, so simple and so
self-evident that there is no way the deep thinkers of
the far left will possibly be able to see it. 

Let’s not talk about Black and White tribes
 I know
too many pathetic, hateful, racists and more decent,
capable and kind people of both colors for that to
make any sense at all. Do you not? Do you not know
corrupt, ignorant, violent people, both black and
white, to cure you of this elementary idiocy? Have you
not met and talked and laughed with people who were
funny, decent, upright, honest and honorable of every
shade so that the very idea of racial politics should
just seem like a desperate and divisive and just plain
evil tactic to hold power? 

If such a thing is not self-evident to you, please get
off my property. Right now. I should tell you I own a
gun and I know how to use it. I assure you that the
pleasure I would take in shooting you would be
temporary, minimal, and deeply regretted later.

Now, for the rest of you, let’s get past Republican
and Democrat, Red and Blue, too. Let’s talk about
these two Tribes: Pink, the color of bunny ears, and
Grey, the color of a mechanical pencil lead. 

I live in both worlds. In entertainment, everything is
Pink, the color of Angelyne’s Stingray – it’s exciting
and dynamic and glamorous. I’m also a pilot, and I
know honest-to-God rocket scientists, and combat
flight crews and Special Ops guys -- stone-cold Grey,
all of them -- and am proud and deeply honored to call
them my friends. 

The Pink Tribe is all about feeling good: feeling good
about yourself! Sexually, emotionally, artistically –
nothing is off limits, nothing is forbidden,
convention is fossilized insanity and everybody gets
to do their own thing without regard to consequences,
reality, or natural law. We all have our own reality –
one small personal reality is called “science,” say –
and we Make Our Own Luck and we Visualize Good Things
and There Are No Coincidences and Everything Happens
for a Reason and You Can Be Whatever You Want to Be
and we all have Special Psychic Powers and if
something Bad should happen it’s because Someone Bad
Made It Happen. A Spell, perhaps. 

The Pink Tribe motto, in fact, is the ultimate Zen
Koan, the sound of one hand clapping: EVERYBODY IS
SPECIAL. 

Then, in the other corner, there is the Grey Tribe –
the grey of reinforced concrete. This is a Tribe where
emotion is repressed because Emotion Clouds Judgment.
This is the world of Quadratic Equations and Stress
Risers and Loads Torsional, Compressive and Tensile, a
place where Reality Can Ruin Your Best Day, the place
where Murphy mercilessly picks off the Weak and the
Incompetent, where the Speed Limit is 186,282.36 mph,
where every bridge has a Failure Load and levees come
in 50 year, 100 year and 1000 Year Flood Flavors. 

The Grey Tribe motto is, near as I can tell, THINGS
BREAK SOMETIMES AND PLEASE DON’T LET IT BE MY BRIDGE.

Now, let’s do a little free associating, just to take
the model for a test spin: 

I’m going to throw out some names, and you tell me
whether you think they are Pink or Grey? Okay? Ready?

Donald Rumsfield.
Al Sharpton.
Bill Clinton. 
Ted Kennedy.
George W. Bush.
Condoleeza Rice.

Okay, my score is Grey, Pink, Pink, Pink, Grey and
Grey. Easy, right? Dems = Pink, Repubs = Grey. Now how
about these?

John Kennedy
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
Franklin Roosevelt

These are more interesting, because there is something
very Pink, something warm and emotional and comforting
about them. Put all four of them at a dinner table
(which I would trade the rest of my life to serve ice
water for) and I think you would see four warm,
gentle, bright and genuinely funny men.

Now, think:

Cuban Missile Crisis
Fredericksburg
Reykjavik
Pearl Harbor

I get solid Grey scores here. What about you? I get
tough, hard-nosed, capable, competent, confident men
facing evil straight in the eye and not backing down.
(And anyone who even thinks about selling short
Reykjavik as a symbol for those eight years of
steadfast resolution should see my gun warning,
above). 

Also, I see two Democrats and two Republicans.
Opposing parties. Same Tribe.

Now, when things are going swimmingly, when the End of
History has arrived, as it did in the 90’s, having a
Pink president (careful!) is no big deal. In fact,
it’s a downright advantage. He can be a goodwill
ambassador, and charm the pants (you heard me!) off of
foreign dignitaries and have everyone cooing and
gushing about how swell Americans are once the
fascists are out of power. 

Now, unfortunately for Pink Power, there remain in the
world a few people not impressed by this attitude. 

Not long ago, National Geographic ran a really
first-rate, 3-hour documentary called INSIDE 9/11, as
perfect an example as you could possibly want of the
power of a real documentary to enlighten and inform
without taking sides. 

Watching it was horrible, especially for people like
me, because we feel like if we had only known what was
going on we could have done something about it. 

A few weeks ago, a reader was kind enough to send me a
link about a theory and seminar called The Bulletproof
Mind, written by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman. Just the
small blurb I read enlarged my mental horizon by an
order of magnitude, because it clarified many of the
confusing things I have been feeling as so much of the
country plunges deeper into irresponsibility, fantasy,
bitterness and delusion.

I excerpt a small portion of it here, without
permission, in the hope that those of you who are
serious about surviving things like Katrina will go
here and buy it. 

Lt. Colonel Grossman, a far better man than me, a man
who does things I only talk about, writes in his
introduction to The Bulletproof Mind: 

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said
this to me: "Most of the people in our society are
sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who
can only hurt one another by accident."

This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per
100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is
four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the
vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt
one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are
victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic,
staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of
violent crime. But there are almost 300 million total
Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim
of violent crime is considerably less than one in a
hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many
violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the
actual number of violent citizens is considerably less
than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends
of the situation: We may well be in the most violent
times in history, but violence is still remarkably
rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent
people who are not capable of hurting each other,
except by accident or under extreme provocation. They
are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me
it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is
soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something
wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard
blue shell. Police officers, soldiers and other
warriors are like that shell, and someday the
civilization they protect will grow into something
wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to
protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said,
"and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do
you believe there are wolves out there who will feed
on the flock without mercy? You better believe it.
There are evil men in this world and they are capable
of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend
it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety
in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a
sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the
wolf." Or, as a sign in one California law enforcement
agency put it, "We intimidate those who intimidate
others."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a
healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a
capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow
citizens, then you have defined an aggressive
sociopath--a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for
violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens?
Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is
walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the
heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia,
and walk out unscathed.

He continues:

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of
the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the
sheep live in denial; that is what makes them sheep.
They do not want to believe that there is evil in the
world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen,
which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire
sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout
their kids' schools. But many of them are outraged at
the idea of putting an armed police officer in their
kid's school. Our children are dozens of times more
likely to be killed, and thousands of times more
likely to be seriously injured, by school violence
than by school fires, but the sheep's only response to
the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of
someone coming to kill or harm their children is just
too hard, so they choose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks
a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for
violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog
must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any
sheepdog that intentionally harms the lowliest little
lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot
work any other way, at least not in a representative
democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a
constant reminder that there are wolves in the land.
They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to
go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the
ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding
an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog
cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go,
"Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock
tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
As Kipling said in his poem about "Tommy" the British
soldier:

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, 
an' "Tommy, fall be'ind," 
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," 
when there's trouble in the wind, 
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, 
there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," 
when there's trouble in the wind.

Understand that there is nothing morally superior
about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to
be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny
critter: He is always sniffing around out on the
perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that
go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous
battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a
righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older
and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when
needed right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think
differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never
come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the
attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that
is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't
on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors,
said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of
those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference."
When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have
truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to
be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

While there is nothing morally superior about the
sheepdog, the warrior, he does have one real advantage
-- only one. He is able to survive and thrive in an
environment that destroys 98 percent of the
population.

[Emphasis mine – BW] 

And that is how I felt watching every minute of that 3
hour documentary. 

I could have done something.

If I had known, if I had only known, I could have run
over that evil, sick son of a bitch Mohammed Atta in
the parking lot. I could have been on one of those
airplanes. They only had box cutters, for the love of
God! Those seat cushions have straps on the back for
floatation; they’d make excellent shields against a
goddam two inch blade. Ladies, listen carefully
when I
say go, you throw your shoes and cell phones and these
little liquor bottles and cushions and whatever you
can, just throw them right in the face of these
cocksuckers and guys, when we get up there we need to
kill them, fast, just break their fucking necks, just
stomp on their heads until they are dead, because I
know how to land a goddam airplane and
and


Now of course, right at this moment there are people
without honor or courage who read that and think this
is one big jerk-off chickenhawk fantasy and on some
level I guess it is. All I can tell you is that
watching that show, I wished to God I had been on one
of those planes, asking only that we knew what only
Flight 93 knew, and that was the fate that was waiting
for us if we did nothing. 

Because everybody dies. Even liberals. And all I can
say is that I believe in my heart that I would rather
die for something bigger than myself than lead a life
where nothing is more important than me. I admit
freely that were I actually there I might freeze up,
and wet my pants, and hide behind a stewardess,
because you can never really know until you are there.
But my times on the highways late at night, and with
the only engine silent at 9000 feet over the South
Georgia pine forests and at 400 feet climbing out of
Prescott Arizona on Christmas day reassure me, a
little, that perhaps I might do okay. Just as well as
a common person, a common American person in a crisis
– that’s all I pray for. 

Much has been said regarding how much more massive an
event Katrina is relative to lower Manhattan. But the
fact remains that firemen went up the stairs when
people were coming down, and one ordinary group of
people on an ordinary flight on an ordinary day
defeated the very best that the global terror network
could put together. Our ladies junior varsity squad
whipped the living shit out of their Super Bowl A-team
over Pennsylvania that day, and they did it because
for one brief shining moment the enough passengers on
that airplane went Grey.

And in Louisiana last week the governor cried and the
mayor blamed everyone but himself, and half the
country bought every single stinking Pink lie about
global warming and missing National Guard units and
blamed the sheepdogs while the wolves raped and
pillaged and looted everything in sight. 

Hundreds of New York firemen and policemen never came
home, never came home, but New Orleans Police Chief P.
Edwin Compass III said, of his men, “If I put you out
on the street and made you get into gun battles all
day with no place to urinate and no place to defecate,
I don’t think you’d be too happy either
 Our vehicles
can’t get any gas. The water in the street is
contaminated. My officers are walking around in wet
shoes.”

Well, Chief, I’m sorry your men’s feet are wet, but
getting their feet wet is part of their fucking job.
New York’s Finest aren’t complaining about wet feet or
places to pee because they died doing their jobs. They
were sheepdogs. 

Here is a video of New Orleans finest helping
themselves at WalMart. (Don’t hold the site against me
– it’s pretty loose.)

So, on one hand, we have a very blue city – New York –
confronted, out of the clear morning of a perfect fall
day, with no warning – with a terror attack, and they
march toward the sounds of screams and falling bodies
and die by the hundreds. One the other hand, we have
New Orleans law enforcement – also blue – whining
about wet shoes and helping themselves to the happy
period of lawlessness that followed an event that had
been expected for no less than seventy-two hours.

In New York, we had a governor who got every available
resource on the ground as fast as it could get there,
and in Louisiana we have a governor who...cried.
Governor, your job is to not cry. Your job is to be
strong. We have plenty of civilians crying. You want
to cry, cry in the car on the way home like everybody
else did four years ago. Crying Governors,
race-baiting mayors and looting police do not a Finest
Hour make. 

In New Orleans we have a mayor who left some 400-500
buses sitting fueled and underwater in the Ray Nagin
Memorial Motor Pool saying that evil white
conservative America was selling out his people within
24 hours of the catastrophe, from a safe and dry and
adequately toileted location, while four years ago we
had a Mayor who ran to the site of the disaster so
quickly it is a full-blown miracle he was not killed
when a building collapsed literally on top of his
magnificent, combed-over head. 

Now, much has been made of the fact that Ray Nagin is
an incompetent, race-baiting black man, and Rudy
Giuliani, who was neither, is white. Also, feminists
are upset that people dare attack Governor Blanco
because she is incompetent, weak, indecisive, and also
a women. And no doubt there are salivating
long-haired, short-cortexed idiots just waiting for
this to be over so they can sail into the comments
section and tell me what a racist and misogynist I am.

Well, here’s the news flash: Nagin isn’t incompetent
because he’s black. He’s incompetent because he’s
incompetent. Condoleeza Rice is black. Colin Powell is
black. Ted Kennedy, a man well-acquainted with rising
water crises is as white as they come. Kennedy is
incompetent; Rice and Powell are two of the most
competent people on the planet. 

This is about tribes, all right: not black and white
tribes, but rather a battle between the capable and
the culpable. 

Same holds for Governor Blanco. She’s not weak because
she’s a woman, or because she’s a Democrat. Truman was
a democrat. The Buck stopped there. She’s weak and
indecisive because that is the individual she is. I
wish history could work with variables: I’d love to
see what Margaret Thatcher would have done in such a
case. It would not only have been better, it would
have been good. That woman was tough. She could be
Grey as granite. And, for this, the Pink Tribe
despises her. 

Now it may come as a shock to those foreign luminaries
who come to lecture us on how an American city leveled
by forces roughly equivelent to a nuclear explosion
reduce it to something "like a third world country."

This difference being lost on them seems to be this:
in an American city there is garbage on the streets
and people wander around looking for food and water,
AFTER BEING LEVELED BY A CAT 5 HURRICANE, which is the
storm swell of the Dec. 2004 tsunami, plus winds,
extending inland not for two or three miles but for
two or three HUNDRED MILES. In a third world country,
people living in stacks of garbage, searching for food
and water happens EVERY STINKING DAY. That is the
NORM. 

It may come as a bit of a shock to these worldy
sophisticates, who are so quick to point out how
parochial and ignorant we simple folk are, that the
United States of America has local, state and federal
governments! And that this is the order in which
crises are dealt with!

A person of some modest education might have
remembered that the worship and adulation fostered
after 9/11 was for the NYPD and the FDNY. No one was
buying FEMA hats after 9/11, because FEMA is
essentially a mop-up agency. It's the first
responders, the local governments, that will determine
if a city will live or die. The State -- that means,
the "governor"-- has the sole authority to mobilize
the National Guard, and the governor of the state of
Louisana was not only slow to do that, she turned down
NG assistance from several OTHER states as well. The
President does not have the authority to drop precious
egg salad sandwiches from Michael Moore's missing
helicopters. We do this ON PURPOSE. We limit the power
of the federal government, as those of us fortunate
enough to have spent time in Civics, rather than Self
Esteem classes, are aware. This is so that we do not
develop a central power so strong that eventually we
end up with idiot inbred royals, or Presidentes for
life, on the face of OUR money. 

Now, if the critics on the far left are saying that
George W Bush needs more power, then by all means
let's amend the Constitution before Hurricane season
ends. Me, I'm agin' it. I think the man has enough to
do, really, besides worry about how many water bottles
need to be kept in the basement of the courthouse in
Alachua county, Florida and take down the names of
every potential bus driver in Torrance California, not
to mention the name of every first responder in every
town and county in every state of the Union. I've
noticed they are not shy about criticizing his
performance as President. That's legitimate, because
that's his job. His job is not to tell the Mayor of
New Orleans which buses need to be at which corners at
what times and with what drivers to pick up which
people and take them to which destinations. That's the
mayor's job. 

It's always such a pleasure to have Germans enlighten
us on the best way to move large groups of sick,
downtrodden people by rail. The only motivation I can
ascribe to such behavior is that same one that propels
young dim boys to tear the wings off flies.







Here is the Grey philosophy I try to live by:

Sometimes, Bad Things Happen. Some things are beyond
my control, beyond the control of the smartest and
best people we have, even beyond the control of the
simpering, sub-human village idiot from Texas. 

Hurricanes come. They have come for all of human
history, and more are coming. Barbarians also come to
steal or destroy what they cannot make themselves, and
they, like human tempests, have swept a path of
destruction through civilization since before history
was written on clay tablets on the banks of the
Euphrates. 

I am not a wolf. I have never harmed a person in my
life. But I am not a sheep, either. I know these
forces are out there, and wishing it were not so will
not only not make them go away – it will rob me of my
chance to kick their ass when they show up.

I am a sheepdog - an amateur, stand-by sheepdog.
Police officers and elected officials get paid to be
sheepdogs. Sheepdogs don’t cry, and they don’t
complain about wet feet, and they don’t wail about
conspiracies while waiting for the help that they
themselves are sworn to provide. 

Also, unlike so many in the ‘reality-based’ community,
I do not believe in a deity. For instance, I don’t
believe that a single god-king can summon storms,
hypnotize entire populations and be the focus for evil
in the world. Many people refer to Iraq as George
Bush’s war, a charge I find shockingly unfair -- to
me. I voted for him in 2004, and I support that war in
earnest. In future billboards, I would like to be
mentioned as having Kids Die in George Bush and Bill
Whittle’s War for Oil, and I expect the new crop of
MoveOn bumper stickers to say DEFEND AMERICA: STOP
BUSH AND WHITTLE. I’m tired of being left out of this.
George Bush did not take over the White House with a
six-shooter; people voted him into office with the
biggest number of votes in American history. I’m one
of those people, and damn you liberal cheapskate sons
of bitches, I demand my equal time. 








On the subject of disasters man-made and natural, one
more thing from INSIDE 9/11 rings a powerful bell with
me. At the very end, as Osama makes his way out of
Afghanistan and into hiding, he tells an Al Jezeera
reporter his motivations for the 9/11 attack. In his
own words, to the friendly folks back home, he
explains that his goal was to hurt America so badly
that we would have no choice but to go after him and
start the world-wide jihad that would result in him
becoming the new Caliph, ruling from his recently
completed palace outside Kandahar. He had seen much of
the Pink tribe in his formative years, seen weakness
and retreat in places like Somalia. He thought he had
our number but he made the mistake of having perhaps
the least Pink individual in modern history in the
White House. He made a worse mistake in flying his
murdering deathbots into a town that looked Pink, that
was painted Pink from head to toe, but whose
foundation was rock-solid granite grey. 

If I had gotten my 2000 voting wish and Al Gore had
been president that day, would he have been Grey
enough to knock that entire regime over and carry the
fight to the rest of the region? Or would he have
issued Stern Warnings and Worked With Our Allies and
gotten the UN to Issue a Major Ultimatum? 

I don’t know. 

But I do know, that there, in his own words, the wolf
said why he did what he did: he wanted to provoke War
with the US, and would do whatever was necessary to
accomplish it. And if we had not given him this war,
he would have kept striking until he got what he was
looking for. Nothing about US foreign policy, no word
about injustice for the Palestinians or Evil
Corporations or any of that. No, he said he wanted to
start a war with the US. And so he has it. And he
would have done whatever he had to do to get it.

And they will strike again, and those silent, dogged
sheepdogs who have succeeded so many times in the dark
silent hours will miss a scent somewhere, and more
people will die and that's what we can expect. Not
dying of Influenza or Black Death, not being
steamrollered under Nazi jackboots or watching Mongol
hordes swarming towards us over the horizon as we run
for the city walls. None of that. Only this. 

And when they come, storms man-made and natural, what
will the sheepdog/sheep ratio be? Enough? 

Now, when Pink Tribesmen say that these people can be
reasoned with, they are doing what sheep do: living in
denial. 

Because to say we are responsible for the terrorists
in the world is a way to say we can control this wolf.
If we believe we made him, then that means we control
him. We can unmake him. Such a worldview appeals to
the left, because it gives them Godlike Mental Powers.
All we have to do is act differently and he will go
away. It’s complete moral cowardice, of course – but
it’s understandable cowardice. It’s denial, because if
all the sins are ours then all we must do is repent
and the wolf will go away.

But that’s not what the wolf says. The wolf is not
interested in what we do. He does not spare little
lambs because they rub up against his leg and make
cooing sounds. The wolf wants to swallow us whole. He
wants the fight. He wants the war and the conflict.
And he will keep on huffing and puffing until one of
three things happen: We show him our throat, for him
to rip out; or we convert to Islam and become part of
his Caliphate; or we head out into the forest with a
shotgun and blow his fucking head off. 

I made my decision by about 8:00 eastern on September
11th, 2001. I have never regretted it. 

It takes courage to fight oncoming storms. Courage. 

Courage isn’t free. It is taught, taught by certain
tribes who have been around enough and seen enough
incoming storms to know what one looks like. And I
think the people of this nation, and those of New
Orleans, specifically, desire and deserve some
fundamental lessons in courage. 

Because we are going to need it. 


--- Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:

> Nice try, Ed, but it won't wash.
> 
> 1/2 the Louisiana National Guard was in Iraq--along
> with all of their 
> meals ready to eat, and most of their equipment. 
> (We have now asked 
> your friends in France to send us food and water
> trucks.)  Walmart 
> immediately sent water, but FEMA sent it back saying
> New Orleans didn't 
> need it.
> 
> The Director of Homeland Security and the Head of
> FEMA both said they 
> didn't even know there were 15,000 people totally at
> the mercy of roving 
> gangs within the New Orleans Convention Center at a
> time when news 
> organizations were reporting about it on national
> television from the site.
> 
> The Governor and Mayor immediately called other
> states for help, and the 
> other Governors were ready to send, but W. was
> clearing brush in Texas, 
> Condi was shopping in NYC, -- (August is a vacation
> month) -- and there 
> was no one in DC to authorize the transfer of
> National Guard troops.  
> (You see, the states can't just send their armed
> militias into other 
> states, they've got to get authorization from the
> Federal 
> Government--which didn't happen.  And why should it?
>  "I don't think 
> anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" --
> George W. Bush, Good 
> Morning America, September 1, 2005.
> 
> The USS Bataan has been moored in the Gulf since
> last Monday, basically 
> doing nothing.  It can make 100,000 gallons of fresh
> water a day, it has 
> 6 (unused) operating rooms, and hundreds of (empty)
> hospital beds, it's 
> supposed to have helicopters so all these resources
> can be made 
> available to people in disaster areas.  It aided
> Tsunami victims...
> 
> PUH-leeze.
> 
> Bill Effros
> 
> PS -- This information comes to me, not from the New
> York Times, but 
> from Fox News.  Even Mr. Murdoch has had enough. 
> It's fine to have an 
> orientation, but it's time to take your head out of
> the sand.
> 
> 
> ed kroposki wrote:
> 
> >Mr. Rummy, 
> >	You want the Louisiana's Governors head to roll? 
> But she is a
> >liberal democrat!  Where are your political
> loyalties?  
> >	You know my orientation.  The truth is she should
> have declared
> >martial law the day before the storm.  On the day
> of the storm she had
> >responsibility to call for not only Louisiana
> National Guard but also out of
> >state Guard assistance.  There was another state
> Governor that said he had
> >alerted his National Guard and was waiting for a
> phone call (or any other
> >official method of request).  How can you be in
> agreement with me?  This is
> >impossible. 
> >	I will one up you.  Both she and the Mayor of New
> Orleans ought to
> >be tried for murder.  I request that you be put on
> the jury.  People were
> >officially told to go to the Superdome and
> convention center and no security
> >was in place.  That was a major abdication of
> responsibility.
> >	I have no problem holding those who accept high
> political office to
> >a high standard or even just a reasonable standard.
> 
> >	Why are you on the list, if I lived where you do,
> I would have been
> >out in that cool breeze.
> >
> >Ed K
> >Greenville, SC, USA
> > 	
> >
> >    
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
> >[mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On
> Behalf Of
> >R22RumRunner at aol.com
> >Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 8:43 AM
> >To: rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org
> >Subject: Re: [Rhodes22-list] Hurricane Katrina see
> latest track
> >
> >Thena,
> >It is sooooo good to hear from you. I have been
> traveling for a family  
> >members wedding and just returned. The highest gas
> price we saw was $3.41
> >per  
> >gallon. It was really frustrating watching the news
> and seeing all the
> >people  
> >sitting around and nothing being done. Some
> political heads are going to
> >roll  
> >for this fiasco, starting with the governor's.
> > 
> >Rummy
> >__________________________________________________
> >Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help?
> www.rhodes22.org/list
> >
> >__________________________________________________
> >Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help?
> www.rhodes22.org/list
> >
> >  
> >
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help?
> www.rhodes22.org/list
> 



	
		
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