Prompted by the developments surrounding Katrina, Fred Wilson posted his thoughts on our country and they dovetail nicely with my own.  Of course he says it much better and more concisely than I ever could.  Here’s the most important part:

I hope and believe that we are on the cusp of a new political
order.  We’ve had the liberal excesses of the democrat’s run from the
depression through Vietnam.  We’ve had the conservative excesses of the
republican’s run from Vietman through Iraq.

It’s time we get back to electing people to govern who know
something about leading, operating, and managing.  We need pragmatic
moderates who make the hard decisions without caring about the
political impact. We need civil servants in the mold of George
Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower.  We need people who
care about the details of governing rather than the details of getting
elected.

Congress is back up for election next year and alot of governors are on the line as well.  Let’s get started.

Just like most people in America I’ve been watching the reports from New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast and wondering what the hell is going on.  I’m all the adjectives everybody’s been throwing around: shocked, horrified, disgusted, angry, etc.

My first instinct is also like most peoples’ and that is to find someone to blame.  But from past experiences (all bad) like this I’ve learned to vent those sentiments on someone I trust (my wife), wait for the emotions to simmer down and then do some serious pondering. Here’s where my first round of pondering leaves me:

• The president is an easy target.  I haven’t liked his style or his policies for a while now and of course my first instinct was to say, "Damnit, it’s all his fault for (fill in the litany of reasons here)."  Well, you know, we hired the president and the other leaders in this country.  Ultimately it’s our fault for not demanding better services, better policies, better people to run this country.
• It’s OUR tax dollars, no matter what Brit Hume and his a-hole buddies think.  Not mine, not yours, not theirs.  It’s ours.  That means that we must demand to know why those tax dollars can’t be used to protect our weak and vulnerable compatriots.  Right now this isn’t about poverty and welfare, that’s a longer, larger debate for  another time.  It’s about the fact that a natural disaster has occured within America’s own confines, something that can happen to any one of us, and we weren’t there to help.  I say "we" because this is our country, these are our hired hands that failed to prepare adequately.
• I have no problem with people asking the president and the rest of the leadership tough questions now, and not later.  Why?  Because it lights a fire under the asses of those who are giving the orders.  I have no doubt that the grunts are working their butts off in incredibly hard circumstances, but it seems painfully obvious that someone needs to push the people at the top.  Case in point:
• How the hell did the leadership not have some kind of system in place to regularly check all of the major buildings in New Orleans for survivors, especially in the dry areas?  If a reporter and an entertainer (Harry Connick, Jr.) can get to the convention center and find thousands of starving people in desperate need of help how can leaders not know that?  Their response when asked about the convention center was "We just found out about it."  That’s crap.  And now that they know about it, where’s the help?  At a minimum can’t they just drop some water there for some people? ** Update: at about 2:50 on Friday CNN reported that a relief convoy made it to the Convention Center.**
• We’re responsible for this.  As such we should do whatever it takes to help, and if that means writing a check to whomever then I guess we need to do it.  But when things are settled down we need to ask why the checks we write to Uncle Sam every year aren’t sufficient to at least provide the minimum of what I government is supposed to provide and that’s the protection of our citizens from unnecessary death and destruction.  Remember, we have our next chance to hire and fire the leadership of this country next year.
• We need to send the message that this is our country, all of us together.  We should demand that at a minimum the government will provide protection for our people.  Our employees have screwed up and we need to put the screws to them.  Enough is enough.

Finally, I want to say to everyone that I’m sorry.  The adjective I didn’t use before to describe my reaction is the one feeling that dominates my soul today: regret.  I regret not being more forceful in communicating my demands to our leaders.  I regret not being more involved, for being too moderate. In my own small way I’m responsible for what has happened this week, and for that I’m eternally sorry.  I’ll try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

My family and friends already know that I don’t care if we’re talking Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or Independents because they’re all the same to me.  I care only about what they actually do, and I can tell you I’m not satisfied with what we’ve got now and if I have anything to do with it they’re gone as soon as possible.

There’s an email rumor flying around Florida warning that gas stations are going to close at midnight and stay closed for 2-3 days.  According to this report that caused a run on gas stations, and authorities believe that it may be an exaggeration of official statements that said some of the state might experience gas shortages.

Given that it happened in Florida we should probably dismiss this as typical Floridian behavior, but today a friend told my wife that his wife was at a BP station filling up and the woman working the register was saying that they were raising their prices for the second time in 20 minutes.  On top of that she said that once they were out they wouldn’t be getting another shipment for a while.

It’s anecdotal, but word like that gets me thinking maybe I should top off just in case.  Of course I could also behave like a Floridian and put it in an email and, voila, we’ve got "Miami in Carolina."

There’s also an energy expert out there saying that prices could go up 65 cents a gallon as early as this weekend.  That’s one prediction I buy, you know, because it’s hard to underestimate the price-gouging ability of this industry.

Given the current gas climate here’s what I’m looking forward to:

• The look on the faces of the little 5 feet tall, 95 pound bottle-blond soccer moms and blinged-out mama’s boys who have cornered the Escalade market spending $75 at the pump for one fill up.
• The one free fill up a month promotions that GM will inevitably tack onto their "Employee Discount" program when they extend it, again, next week.
• Still spending less for a gallon of gas than I do for a gallon of milk.

Here’s what I’m not looking forward to:

• Listening to the insufferable little tree huggers drone on and on about their wonderful little hybrid.
• Listening to the insufferable big tree huggers drone on and on about their wonderful little hybrid, but I’ll be polite to them since they’re bigger than me.
• Possibly owning a hybrid.