Katrina Roundup
Suzette Haden Elgin has an interesting essay on the “biblical proportions” construct, and its meaning. Thomas Barnett has written “The art of the long view,” which is an interesting perspective to be able to maintain right now. Another useful perspective comes from Bill west at the Counterterrorism blog in “Katrina Response – Another Quick Observation,” where he observes that the Coast Guard may have saved more than 10,000 lives by acting promptly.
That perspective is important to maintain as things that might have been scandalous on August 30th, like “U.S. Attorney’s Porn Fight Gets Bad Reviews,” now seem sort of irrelevant. But they’re all part of the reality-disconnected world that we’re allowing our elected officials and civil servants to inhabit. That world is documented in “Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top” in the Washington Post:
“We’ve had our first test, and we’ve failed miserably,” said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. “We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress.” With Katrina, he noted that “we had some time to prepare. When it’s a nuclear, chemical or biological attack,” there will be no warning.