Posts from — September 2005

To convince him that it was time to go, the Postal Service agreed to issue a new Michael Brown first class stamp.

While Brown said he didn’t think it was a terribly good likeness, he felt that the fact that it was a “first class stamp” was recognition of the great job he did at FEMA.

Secretary Chertoff said that he didn’t needed it, but appreciated the stamp that was created for him.

Update: This is a graphic of all the stamps.

I guess there is hope for Republicans.

Part of Speech: adjective

Definition: unskillful

Synonyms: amateur, amateurish, awkward, bungling, bush, bush league, clumsy, disqualified, floundering, helpless, inadequate, incapable, incapacitated, ineffectual, inefficient, ineligible, inept, inexperienced, inexpert, insufficient, maladroit, raw, skill-less, unable, unadapted, uncool, unequipped, unfit, unfitted, unhandy, uninitiated, unproficient, unqualified, unskilled, untrained, useless

Antonyms: competent, skillful

Source: Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1) © 2005 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC

[™ Kevin Drum]

The Usual Suspects

You can’t prove a thing, Copper!

[Editor: From the front: Tonto, Mittens, and the Lone Ranger. Seen loitering near the scene of the crime.]

Friday Ark

The BBC report on the Labour Party conference is not reassuring: Wolfgang highlights deeper disquiet.

Headlines about an 82-year old Jewish escapee from the Nazis being manhandled out of Labour conference for daring to yell “nonsense” at the Foreign Secretary is probably not the way Tony Blair wanted to end this rally.

But, for many regular conference visitors, this was far from a surprise.

Ever-tightening security and a distinctly intolerant attitude towards “interruptions”, as the prime minister called them, meant this was a headline waiting to happen.

Tony has been attempting to build his own version of the “Bubble”, like his best buddy, the Shrubbery.

A hint: if you don’t like “interruptions”, get out of democratic politics. Getting yelled at and an occasional pie are part of the job.

Brown also testified it isn’t the government’s job to provide ice in the wake of a hurricane or other disaster.

Brown told the House panel that it’s wrong for the federal government to be providing ice to keep “beer and diet coke cool.”

He says that is why the government stresses people should have several days of non-perishable food on hand.

Brown says the ice should be used to keep baby formula and medications fresh.

Without getting into the practice of using cold drinks to maintain temperatures in a cooler, or the effect of having something cold to drink when the heat index is 105°, or the use of ice in treating heat-related illnesses, or the economic impact on a family of losing the contents of their refrigerator, I will ignore those benefits of ice and deal with a more fundamental truth: ice is made from water and is drinkable.

After Opal I was down to melted ice for drinking on a couple of occasions. The freeze-dried foods I was using required water to be semi-palatable. The minor wounds required clean water to prevent infection. Frozen water stays cleaner, longer that standing water in a jug, which is why I won’t buy a five-gallon water jug: it’s too easy for the jug to become contaminated.

The effect of a cold drink can applied to your face and neck can only be appreciated by someone who has been without electricity for a week and is working outside to clear trees and brush away from utility lines to speed the re-establishment of air conditioning.

What FEMA needs to do is to drop representatives into areas after a disaster with what they are wearing and a satellite phone. Let the representatives directly experience the effects of the decisions made by their agency and we might see an improvement in service delivery.

I also heard Mr. Brown talk about having trouble knowing where supplies were. I don’t imagine FEMA has thought of talking to any large trucking firms to learn how they track their trucks all over the country using satellites and computer links. FEMA might want to have someone look at GIS [Geographic Information Systems] and other mapping solutions. They could probably get a good deal from the multiple federal agencies that use it and provide the underlying databases.

1. I know, I should have said blogtopia™ [skippy the bush kangaroo].

I noticed on September 7^th that FEMA had erred in its preliminary disaster declaration and excluded the parishes that would be most subject to damage.

Melanie at Just A Bump In The Beltway may have located the problem: FEMA’s Map Assistance Center. If you are more used to asking about “supersizing” than reading maps, you may not give the correct answers about locations, or even be aware that counties are called parishes in Louisiana.

I’m sure Brown is one of those guys who won’t stop and ask directions.

After watching Governor Haley Barbour on television my Mother is interested in knowing what planet the state of Mississippi he is describing is on, as the state on this planet is still awaiting help.

Oh, anytime FEMA would like to start paying its bills on Ivan, that would be appreciated, and we could probably send more help to those forgotten in southern Mississippi.

The taxpayers pay these people to develop the aircraft and then buy them for millions. Now the companies want more money from middle school consumers who build model airplanes. Any royalties will be paid by the people who buy the kits.

Avarice, plain and simple. What’s next – a fee on teddy bears in uniform?

Update: Dutch team wins in 29 hours and 11 minutes of driving time.

When they ran into problems uploading pictures to the paper’s site he started Rita Images. Now the site is running pictures being sent in by readers.

Shrubbery = Corruption + Cronyism

The St. Petersberg Times wants us to: Meet the new Tom Gallagher.

Now there’s a new Tom Gallagher making his fourth run for governor. This one wants Roe vs. Wade overturned, cheered on legislators as they tried to force the insertion of a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo, favors a constitutional ban on gay marriage and denounces “activist judges.”

I don’t expect much from politicians but it would be nice if they would at pretend to believe in the rule of law. The man will sell his few principles for votes, so we should trust him because?

Justice not DeLay’d!