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September 20, 2005

I would just like to say...

...that trackback spammers that would think to clobber a blog with scientific, political and theological musings with links to whatever vile pornographic and gambling crapola are not only somewhere down there with the scum of the universe, they don't have the sense that God gave an eggplant.

I would link them to my good church's beliefs on such societal ills as these if I didn't think such truths would be COMPLETELY lost on them.

Anyhow, I've cleaned up, and I'm working (or, shall I say, I'm getting Jeff to work) on how to block-out said crapola in the future.

Posted by Chuck at 10:53 AM | TrackBack

September 17, 2005

The Market Knows All, Dr. Chuck edition

I really don't have a very strong comment here, except to read this and worry about what comes next in the Katrina-hit areas (especially in Alabama and Mississippi, where the worst-off citizens aren't in the public eye like they are in New Orleans).

Because Charley was a small Cat-4. Take those 1,500 numbers in that article and multiply them by 50. At least.

But hey, if developers come in and decide that hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods are undervalued, and are going to rebuild them uber-nice and with uber-high rents to boot, then its up to the people to decide whether they value those properties enough to rent them anymore. Such things as family history, limited resources, and no means to get schooling? Tough. There's always someone willing to come in and pay a bit more, and we're sorry if grandmothers or young families get lost in the shuffle, but That's Just The Way The Market Works.

Some days, doesn't it just feel like everything is fighting uphill?

(This post format stolen shamelessly from Jeff Eaton. Read the first installment, the second installment, and the installment in which he links me.)

Posted by Chuck at 09:55 AM | TrackBack

September 09, 2005

Best laugh-out-loud line in a month

From the blog of Democratic Leadership Council wonk Marshall Whittmann, AKA "the Bull Moose":

The Moose observes that we have reached such an extraordinary moment in our political life that the voice of sober minded reason is Newt Gingrich.

And I'm sure I disturbed the BIO 1010 class across the hall with my laugh. Because, dang it, the Moose is RIGHT.

The argument is laid out in full in this op-ed by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post. Check this thinking, it is so clear that I'm left feeling an idiot for not having thought it first:
Gingrich argues that the values debate that has divided America so sharply during the past decade is over. There's a broad consensus about most issues, and anyway people realize that the country's big problems aren't about morality but performance. "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working," Gingrich told me. "The issue is delivery." And that's true at every level -- city, state and federal.

Gingrich's critique of the federal response is as devastating as that of any Democrat. "For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve," he wrote fellow Republicans this week. "The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable," and for that reason, "it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed." He observes in another memo, "While the destruction was unprecedented, it was entirely predictable."

I think that's the thing that has the populace so completely infuriated. If you even CASUALLY studied the New Orleans situation, you knew full well what peril that city was in if The Perfect Storm hit. And you know how unpredictable hurricanes can be - for crying out loud, last year we had Charley, a meandering Category 2 storm in the Gulf that suddenly took a hard right turn and made landfall as a VERY destructive Cat-4.

Memo to disaster planners: if you thought you knew, you didn't know. And people died as a result. I think I'm allowed to be embittered because of that.

For even those that were prepared, we're now in a cycle of "nobody told me I had to ask permission for that" blame-gaming where one branch of government thought another one was going to do a job, and the other thought the one was going to do the job.

Somebody get the dang job done, already.

And, with Gingrich's delivery argument, I fully expect that there's going to be some kind of groundswell of people seeing this as an issue that needs to be addressed in the next round of elections. It's one thing to be concerned with issues, but if government - particularly government that has claimed a responsiblity for making sure we are Ready for the next disaster - is so hopelessly broken as to leave literally thousands of its own citizens to die, then who is to say that the ticket to electability won't be the Ability To Get The Job Done?

Posted by Chuck at 06:07 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 07, 2005

Katrina Radio

If you're interested in the New Orleans latest and you're not listening to 870 AM out of New Orleans, you're missing the best news source on the PLANET, bar none. They are streaming online, and when the atmosphere is right you can pick them up, clear as a bell, all over the Southeast.

What's really been wild has been how masses of the radio broadcasters in the city have pulled together to make it so good.

Posted by Chuck at 07:11 AM | TrackBack

September 04, 2005

Hurricane Katrina relief

I say at the beginning of the post below that I buy into the faith-based charities, and the one that I cherish above all the others is my own denomination's United Methodist Committee On Relief. UMCOR very quietly gets work done in these times - they may not have the public profile of the Red Cross, but they work through local churches to deliver simple, important needs are met.

And one of their most important ministries are the disaster relief kits they put together to have on the ready, whereever there is a need in the world. These relief kits were delivered last year in the throes of the Tsunami, and they surely will be needed again beyond Katrina's effects.

Mind you, if you are at the Shorter, one of your classmates is also arranging contributions to the Red Cross as part of the work of SAVE. Their work should be commended to the hilt, and supported.

And, if you are in the greater Rome community, there is a broad community relief effort underway that deserves your attention as well.

There is literally no excuse for failing to support these people so desperately in need. There are so many opportunities to give SOMETHING.

Posted by Chuck at 09:47 PM | TrackBack

Katrina (D-New Orleans)

This week may have been a watershed in my personal politics.

I've never been a traditional conservative anyway. There are many things about conservatism - particularly the blind faith in the private sector as the solution for everything under the sun - that have never sat well with me. I have never voted for George W Bush, but I've never been ready to wholeheartedly support the Democratic Party either, mostly because the overwhelming sense I've gotten from the Democrats is that they are a group of bumbling incompetents who couldn't be trusted to organize a drinking game in a brewery.

And I have always had a measure of sympathy - and, at times in my life, out and out support - for the Christian Coalition and its politics. I am anti-abortion (I won't even dress that up in its "pro-life" jargon). I am a believer in faith-based charities (I might even plug one somewhere else on this site). I am, in many senses, a religious traditionalist, and so many of my friends and family fall into the general camp of "if Christianity was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it is good enough for me."

Which I can get behind. I mean, I would be able to get behind it more if it hadn't been deism that was good enough for the Founding Fathers, but that's another debate for another day.

But, if I'm going to be able to take this "compassionate conservative" president that we have and claim him as my own, then I need to have evidence of his compassionate conservatism.

And he's had his chance.

And he has blown it in the most tragically spectacular fashion possible.

The flooding of New Orleans, when the post-mortem comes down, is a disaster that every single branch of government dedicated to protect and provide for its citizens will bear blame for, from the parish and city governments to the federal government itself. So this may be about the incompetence of a Republican federal government.

But raw incompetence is one thing. It might even be forgivable.

Bald-faced lying in the face of death and destruction, for the sake of protecting political position, is something else ENTIRELY.

And what has not only affected me, but shaken much of my belief to its core, has been the shameless attempts by this administration to deny that anybody foresaw an event like this happening - when it has been predicted for YEARS. Any of us who watched the hurricane coverage when Ivan came crashing through in 2004 heard the horror stories of what would happen if that storm keyed on New Orleans, and breathed a sigh of relief when the storm passed that city by and sure disaster was averted. Do these people take me for an idiot?

It has been the persistent failure of Federal authorities to recognize even the most basic facts on the ground, even as anybody who could turn on CNN or Fox News (or even the Weather Channel, for crying out loud!) could see the desparation and the tragedy unfolding. Do these people have no conscience?

And I have had to observe both of these things in the face of the argument I have been patiently buying into for the past four years that FEMA had to be folded into the Department of Homeland Security for the cause of streamlining our response to every kind of possible calamity - terrorist or otherwise - and now all of those plans have been shown to be folly.

If you are familiar with Andrew Sullivan at all, you have your opinions of him. Many of those opinions might not be exactly polite. Many of those opinions might even be right. But I have a hard time reading this and not nodding and saying to myself "that sounds about right".

Especially after hearing the juxtaposition of Washington pols patting one another on the back and saying "job well done" while the local leaders on the ground can't get through an interview without breaking down completely.

Look, I could keep linking for DAYS here. I've been reading enough to link for days. But I have to make a point here.

I preached in church this morning. The text I preached off of, in putting the Great Commission into the context of church growth, was 1 Corinthians 9:16-23. I concentrated on the idea that Paul was willing to be selfless in how he shared the Gospel - to give up his own rights to make sure those who received the Word from him would have as many freedoms of their own as possible. "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible."

Which is how my read of the Christian faith gets, the more I try to live it. We are supposed to be - literally - public servants. We are supposed to so order our lives so that our own priorities are placed as far down the order as possible, so that Christ can be glorified.

And in this hour, when the needs of humanity are placed in front of us so starkly, I see the leadership of our federal government - a leadership that has appealed to the very faith in Christ I claim as a means to get elected - continuing persistently to preserve their self-interests in the face of death and destruction.

How can I possibly be honest in my own faith and ever support them again?

UPDATE: Here's a far better roundup on the lies and/or incompetence from the likes of Chertoff and Brown than I could ever come up with, from the blogosphere's appointed king of hurricane-blogging. Warning: don't read if you can't take repeated cussing by the righteously indignant.

Posted by Chuck at 08:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack