- The Age of Cheap Oil and Easy Ignorance is Over (Dave’s Travels) – Dave says we need to share responsibility for creating the situation that led to the disastrous response to the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.
- What Dave Said (Rex Hammock) – Rex, who is Dave’s (see above) political polar opposite, says that people with opposite political leanings, but similar "foundational convictions" end up coming full circle to meet each other.
- You Can’t Cross-Examine a Hurricane (Is that Legal? via Ed Cone) – I’ll let the post speak for itself: "Mike Chertoff is probably one of the 2 or 3 smartest people I have ever known…
Mike Chertoff is a career prosecutor, and an outstanding one by any
measure. He is a law enforcement guy in every fiber of his being. It’s
how he made his name…Mike Chertoff doesn’t know natural disasters. This is why he would say, without seeing the absurdity of it, that a hurricane followed by breached levees was an unforeseeable succession of catastrophes, rather than foreseeable parts of the same catastrophe…So what do I think? I think that we are seeing what happens when a
career prosecutor tries his hand at civilian disaster relief. And more
generally, I think we are seeing what happens when a nation gets so
fixated on its human enemies that it forgets its other vulnerabilities." - Bush’s Hurricane Response Time (Joe Write) – Joe compare’s the time it took Bush to get on the ground after different hurricanes.
- War on Error (Doc Searls) – Doc describes quite well the issues we face as our national priorities change and we focus on the politics of governance as well as the politics of elections. Yes, they are different.
- The Scandal of Katrina (Buzz Machine) – Jeff Jarvis has quotes from two sources, one an editorial from the Times-Picayune and the other an interview with the president of Jefferson Parish that call for the immediate firing/replacement of the leaders of FEMA. They offer compelling testimony for why this is necessary now, not later. Not sure if I agree with them, but like I said it is compelling.
- The Bursting Point (New York Times) – David Brooks compares the current climate in America to the 70s; he doesn’t think it’s quite as bad thanks to a robust economy, but he thinks it’s still bad enough that we’ll see political changes. Personally I’m wondering if the economy might start looking like the 70s too.
- The Unsinkable Data Center (business2blog) – Seems that there’s a data center in New Orleans that has stayed operational throughout the disaster thanks to a diesel generator and a deeply buried cable. An employee has kept his blog going throughout as well. A full article from a Wired magazine about the center is here. And in the ironic news of the day, the data center was built by Enron:)
Discover more from Befuddled
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Befuddled 