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In her article, This Is America, 2005 Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway made a reference to how much better Florida and Mississippi were treated by the Federal government following hurricanes in the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons than Louisiana.

I want to disabuse anyone of that impression. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Jeb Bush of Florida are Republicans and are suppressing the scope of Federal mismanagement.

Folks, I was here. When my personal cache ran out after a week, I got water and ice from the Bank of America, not a government agency at any level.

The Pensacola Beach Blog just had a post, Little Matchstick Girls, about the insurance problems and local governments can’t finish the clean up from Ivan because FEMA can’t make up its mind what it wants them to do.

MSNBC has a continuing feature on its web site, Raising From Ruin, which focuses on the problems in Mississippi. In a recent entry you can read the story, Flabbergasting, of a woman who was turned down for FEMA assistance because she didn’t suffer enough damage. As the pictures with the article show, her house is gone, totally washed away, but according to FEMA she didn’t have enough damage.

Just because the Republican governors don’t talk about the incompetence of FEMA, doesn’t mean that FEMA did their job, it means the governors have more loyalty to their party, than their people.

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I have always found Good King Wenceslas really annoying.

This is a real guy, although he was the Duke of Bohemia, and not a king, he was a real member of the 10^th century aristocracy, and he is the patron saint of the Czech Republic. He is revered as a kind man for the way he treated children and slaves. Apparently owning slaves is fine as long as you don’t kill too many.

His mother had his grandmother, her mother-in-law, strangled, and he forced his mother out at sword point. He sounds more like he was ready for Dr. Phil, than canonization.

So then we get to the song. The song says that on Saint Stephan’s Day, the day after Christmas, he sees one of his peasants out scrounging up fallen limbs to heat his humble hovel, and Wenceslas carries food and a few logs to the peasant’s abode to brighten up the holiday.

At the time commoners weren’t allowed to cut trees for firewood nor hunt, as those were the rights of the aristocracy. They were allowed to pick up dead limbs in the forest to heat their homes. They would have a fire in their shacks and a smoke hole in the roof, not a fireplace, so the logs weren’t going to be useful unless they were split.

On the day after Christmas there were sure to be a lot of leftovers that would go to the kennels, so the “Good King” Wenceslas was carting dog food to a peasant, who was expected to be overcome with gratitude at the beneficence of his Duke.

There is a happy ending: Wenceslas was murdered by his brother’s goons after five years of showering the peasants with the happy life that had them out seeking firewood in the middle of a blizzard.

The Church felt kindly towards Wenceslas because his mother was rather repressive towards the Church, while he wasn’t, so he became a martyr.

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™ ^{[Mercury X23]}

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Yes, it’s the time of year when the Sun dies and must be re-born through an elaborate ceremony that involves some form or type of sacrifice, such as finding gifts for people you can’t stand and smiling brightly as you receive yet another gift based on an urban legend that you actually like truly stomach-wrenching color combinations.

Of course there was a time when the Solstice sacrifices were more visceral and the evergreen was covered in things that pleased only ravens and such, but we have put all that behind us by opting for the possibility of electrocuting one another and causing chaos on the power grid.

What a brilliant idea: moving a large supply of pre-kindling soaked with highly flammable resins into your house, loading it down with petrochemical-based ornaments, lacing it with heat-producing electrical devices, and surrounding the base with cardboard boxes and tissue paper. You just can’t have a traditional celebration without a proto-bonfire in your living room.

I do think that followers of Mithras might want to curtail their typical birthday service in light of Mad-Cow Disease, but global warming will certainly make the services in the oak wood in traditional druidic robes more comfortable.

When you put up your stocking on the mantel and put out the turnips for Gouger, Rooter, Tusker, and Snouter as well as the pork pie and sherry for the Hogfather, you can rest assured the Sun will come up, because it just slipped around back to return the lager it rented.

Enjoy! You have nothing to fear, except that sniveling little creep with the camera/phone at the office party or the eggnog that was put out rather early causing you to suspect that the bits on top aren’t nutmeg. [The pictures probably won’t appear on the ‘Net and the brandy will surely take care of the salmonella.]

[Note: Mercury X23 has graciously re-posted the meaning of NODWISH.]

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