9/13    Finger pointing/FEMA thread below reminds me of the following line from
        Plan 9 From Outer Space:
        LT HARPER: "Your guess is as good as mine, Larry. But one thing's sure.
        Inspector Clay is dead...murdered...and somebody's responsible!"
        \_ I don't think there's any evidence of competence in any of the
           governmental parties involved.  But I am also not comfortable
           due to the lack of evidence to say that any one governmental party
           is less competent than any other.  I suspect any such claim at
           this point would be ideological rather than factual.
           \_ I think it's safe to say that all parties in all sectors south
              of the Mason/Dixon line are less than competent.  I used to
              feel bad about this "predjudice", but the older I get, the more
              evidence I see of it.  This clusterfuck would not have happened
              in Boston or Seattle not becuase there's a FEMA conspiracy
              to fuck New Orleans, but because the police and other emergency
              service workers in those places see themselves as public servants
              and not as the biggest gang in the jungle.  Ask yourself why
              the NYPD didn't act like the NOPD on 9/11.  Because of the
              leadership of New York?  Maybe a little, but mostly because
              northern culture is simply, objectively better.  Every single
              NYPD cop had to make a personal choice to put their city before
              their own life, and every single NOPD cop had to make a choice
              to turn into a fucking barbarian the day order started to
              collapse.  The fucking southern trash are right that the schism
              in American culture is about values, they just got it wrong who
              has the values.
              \_ 9/11 NYC was a much different event than Katrina/NO.  Using
                 the response of *some* NOPD in a wide spread disaster as a
                 sign of all southerners being trash vs. NYC in a devastating
                 but physically localised disaster as a sign of the superiority
                 of northerns is, at best, simply inappropriate.  You really
                 think people in NYC are going to "come together and help their
                 fellow man" when the shit hits the fan on a wide scale?  Most
                 of them watched it on TV from home the same as the rest of us.
                 When you start tossing phrases like "southern trash" around
                 as generally applicable to a hundred million people, you only
                 diminish the rest of your points.  Same thing with phrases
                 like "every single NOPD cop had to make a choice to turn into
                 a fucking barbarian".  So every single NOPD cop was looting,
                 raping, and murdering people?  I think not and no reasonable
                 person is claiming that anywhere.  I know people who were
                 there at the superdome as first responders with food, water,
                 medicine, etc.  It wasn't the NOPD shooting at them.  It
                 wasn't NOPD raping children and shooting random innocents.
                 It was "their fellow man".  The same "fellow man" you'd find
                 in any wide spread disaster because that's what some people
                 really are when there's no legal structure to hold them back.
              \_ This is cool.  -John
              \_ I wouldn't judge the entire South by New Orleans. For
                 instance, Florida seems to be able to handle these
                 calamities. The truth is that Louisiana is an extremely
                 poor state and that the people living in and running New
                 Orleans in particular are corrupt and incompetent. I know
                 someone who lived nearby on the Mississippi coast whose
                 house was flooded and the situation there never deteriorated
                 like it did in New Orleans. Of course, those were mostly
                 law-abiding white folks with at least enough money to
                 get the hell out of there - but even the people who
                 stayed came together as a community to help each other.
                 New Orleans is many times larger than those towns, much
                 poorer, and the people are far less educated. Even so, the
                 people who stayed do not represent the entire city. Most
                 people got the hell out of there. The poor, elderly, and
                 criminally-minded are what remained.
           \_ I don't think any reasonable person is heaving blame exclusively
              at any one person - the fact is that the whole system failed.
              My hope is that this failure will lead to a larger conversation
              about how to make government work better and more efficiently -
              but my fear is that politics as usual will guarantee lots of
              expensive pork for the few, lots of opportunistic politics,
              and very little change for the better.  It's also quite alarming
              that in the four years after 9/11, the government (at all levels)
              seems to have become *less* competent at handling disaster and
              catastrophe.  Contrast the four years after 9/11, the amount
              of money spent, and what was accomplished, with the four years
              after Pearl Harbor.
              \_ Look at the finger pointing discussion.  There was clearly
                 a desire to exonerate the LA governor and place the blame
                 at FEMA's feet.
              \_ I think all levels of the government, both federal and state,
                 failed.  Like I said, I don't see any sign of competence
                 anywhere.  But the finger pointing discussion below is a
                 clear example of an attempt to exonerate the LA governor and
                 to place the blame at the feet of FEMA.
                 \_ Yeah, but it's the motd.  I said *reasonable people*. ;)
                    I also believe that the failure is systemic, a failure of
                    the current approach to government at state and federal
                    levels - but that's a discussion for another time.
                 \_ You know, there is a difference between the culpability of
                    state and local authorities and FEMA, because FEMA has
                    *no other reason for existence* other than disaster
                    planning and recovery.  The governor of Louisiana
                    was not elected on the basis of her ability to
                    prepare for and recover from disasters, while everyone
                    involved with FEMA *should* be in their positions
                    because of their abilities in this specific area.  -tom
                    \- by making the "clusterfuck" sound really bad, the
                       region will get a lot of fast tracked money.
                       spreading around "10,000 dead" is probably worth
                       a couple of billion. that moron brownie will cost
                       teh federal govt a couple of more billion. it's
                       too bad he didnt commit suicide like the JAL supervisor
                       after a JAL crash. of course given a lot of this will
                       flow to halliburton, it's not like some of the executive
                       branch people will care ... $2000 for a displaced
                       person, $200,000 to Halliburton Carpet Cleaning Service.