Levee @ MindSay

One of the front page stories in today's Sacramento Bee covered the unpleasant prospect of levee breaks in the Sacramento region.  (Dunno how long the link will be active, but here it is.)

 

Nice little map that went with it, showing how many government agencies will be flooded if we have a levee break a mile south of downtown.  (Virtually all of them, except the lottery offices.)

 

Interestingly, both my place of business, as well as my apartment, fall into the 3 - 7 feet of flooding range.  Sweet.  Glad I live on the second floor!

 

 

Had a nice talk last night with my friend Shannon.  (The local one, not the one back home.)  I'd called her to see if she wanted to go to see The Kimberly Trip at Luna's this Friday, only to find out that she'd sent me an email the other day mentioning the same concert.  I never got that email, though.  She'd attached a bunch of photos she'd take of me at the Sac-Poly pool night a couple weeks ago.  Must've gotten hung up somewhere in limbo.

 

 

Last Friday was my last day to cancel going to the Loving More conference in June.  Since I'm decidedly strapped for cash, I called them up Friday after work and told Robyn I wasn't going to be able to make it.  She was bummed, because she was hoping I'd be there to sell copies of my book.  I said I'd hoped to do that, too, but...

 

"We sell a lot of books at that conference," she says.

 

"A lot?"

 

"A lot."

 

Hm.  Cardigan's calculator tells him that he only needs to sell a couple dozen books to completely cover the cost of the conference.  And of course, the exposure is even more important than the immediate financial return...

 

"And," she goes on, "I'll toss in bunkhouse lodging at no cost."

 

Guess where I'll be for four days in June?

 

 

The D.C. trip is coming pretty soon.  Apparently, I haven't mentioned it, but after that trip ends, I'm taking the rest of the week off.  I'll see my kid brother (who lives in Baltimore).  I'm going to meet two of my MySpace friends (who live in Fredericksburg, VA).  And then I'm headed up to Brooklyn to visit an old friend.

 

I can't even begin to convey how excited I am to see Cris again.  It's been so long... almost a decade.  We were co-workers for a time at a job back in the Philly area.  We weren't even, honestly, all that close of friends.  But she was very important to me for a few reasons.

 

But y'know, I have some trepidation about seeing her again.  Truth is, I had a big crush on her at the time.  And I fear that I've built her up a lot in my memory.  I sometimes wonder if she's really anything like my "memories" of her.  Wouldn't be the first time I've had unrealistic expectations of people.

 

We'll see.  I'll be in Brooklyn in only 17 days.

 

 

And speaking of New York... last night at The Blue Cue, the bartender (who's from Long Island) tipped me off to excellent pizza here in Sactown!  Giovanni's, here I come!  Woo hoo!

      

I don't like George Bush. In fact, I pretty much dislike everything about him - everything he stands for, everything he's done, and everything he hasn't done for this country.

BUT I don't blame him for the hurricane or the damage. I laugh when he goes on the air and says, "I don't think anyone predicted that the levees would break," when we have footage of experts saying, "If we get hit with a level 4 hurricane or even a slow moving level 3, the water will break through and New Orleans will fill up like a bathtub," the saturday before the hurricane.

But I don't blame him for it happening.

I get upset when I see footage of him traveling to San Diego after the hurricane hit, or laughing and joking on Good Morning America while his fellow citizens die. I get upset when he waits five days before going to New Orleans, and even then flying overhead with a caraven of helicopters, coming on TV and saying ambiguous dribble like, "There's still a lot of work to be done," and "We'll solve this problem...because we're problem solvers" before hopping back into his caravan of helicopters and leaving, without taking anyone with him in the process.

But I don't blame him for the problem.

And I don't think we can afford to blame people while others are still dying. Our first priority is to save those people. As I said to Goddesseunomia before she vanished, when a bombsquad gets called in to disarm a bomb, their first order of business is not to conduct an investigation to find out who planted the bomb. Their first order of business is to disarm it.

But that being said, let me ask, "When will people finally start being held accountable, not just in this crisis, but in everything? Where is the responsibility in politics?"

Politicans have always hired their friends in positions they aren't qualified for. I have accepted that. It is always going to happen. But when a crisis arrises, and those unqualified people can't step up to the plate because they have no idea what they're doing, there needs to be accountability.

Do you know what FEMA is? The Federal Emergency Management Agency? The group in charge of directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? You do? Okay, good. Let's move on.

Do you know what Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, did before taking that job? He was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray from the incredibly important post of...

...the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association.

Right now you might be asking yourself what this guy knows about leading us through a natural disaster. Your first instinct is the right one - absolutely nothing.

In fact, he didn't even know anything about commissioning international Arabian horses. A member of the International Arabian Horse Association wrote this about Brown after realizing he was in charge of saving the people of New Orleans, "For three years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Association. He was an unmitigated, total disaster. I was shocked when Captain Clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry. I am telling you this after watching the shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is killing people."

Will there be any accountability when the water is cleared? When this is all over, will Bush or anyone invovled in the ridiculous hiring of this ridiculous man be held accountable for their actions? I understand that politicans always hire their friends, but this time it is killing people.

And what does President Bush say about all this?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Yes, Brownie. You sure are.  Tens of thousands of people are dead. Thousands of people are still dying. New Orleans is still 60% under water. We haven't even begun to imagine the total damage to Mississippi and the other effected states.

But you're doing one heck of a job. Because, as one reporter noted, "I haven't heard of a single Arabian horse drowning in the flood."

Nice job, Brownie. Nice job.

I don't think we should attack Bush yet. I think we should save everyone first. But once the disaster is over, I think Bush and his staff need to be eaten alive.

into the breach. The problem could be solved within hours.