The Hair, The Beard..........

The Snake!

That's right my friends it that time of year once again. The air chills, the leaves begin to fall and the bone crunching goodness that is our national sport once again rules the air waves. Why, you ask, do I post a picture of southpawed has been to celebrate the return of all that is right and good with America? Two reasons.

First, Kenny Stabler represents the glory years of not only the Raiders but of the NFL as well. A throw back even when he was active, Stabler had the ability to stumble from the champagne bottle littered hottub, weave his way through the maze of passed out bimbos, and find himself upright on the field carving up the opponent's defense with near savant like ability. Kenny was not only a man, he was the man, and to 17 year old highschool fans it didn't get any better than Kenny Stabler firing a pass to Fred Biletnikoff for another first down, or Cliff Branch for the TD bomb. The Raider's slogan was "Just Win Baby" and that is what they did on any given Sunday. Today's league is a hollow shell of what the NFL once was, restrained from its former greatness by selfish stars, and PC enforced parity. Yet we still love it, and once again its time to throw open the windows, put on the extra sweater, light the cigar and get ready for some football.

Secondly, my second fave team is playing the Superbowl Champs tonight in the league kickoff game. Just one of my many talents is a near clairvoyant ability to pick games against the spread and every Friday this fall will be NFL Friday at the Pursuit. So my remaining picks will be published tomorrow. For tonight, go with the Raiders and give the 7.5.

Just win baby!

More Bush Incompetence

So Louisiana has received more Army Corp funding than any other state during the Bush administration eh? This kind of throws the whole, "Bush cut funding" argument, which was specious to begin with, out the window.

That is except when you consider that the lying bastard should have saved the corrupt Louisiana politicians from their foul ways.

Mary Landrieu, please call your office. Tears and further accusations will be needed to cover for this one. Perhaps the Mayor can teach you to curse on the radio, I hear that scheme is particularly impressive to the national media.

Via Instapundit

Ummmm, So What?

Why just last night I had a pan seared Halibut fillet, roast corn salad and some delicious Gaija melon. Afterwards, I watched Rockstar INXs and contemplated my vacation this winter.

What Must It Be Like?

I saw this article this morning and it made me wonder what it must be like to feel so full of moral certitude that you have no problem exploiting the victims of tragedy for your own political gain. I realize we live in a political world, and our system thrives on debate between adversaries. This crosses the line, and its from the same people who complain that the right does this sort of thing all the time. I thought the left's position was that hypocrisy was the greatest sin one could commit.

Final Thoughts On Katrina

I have been unable to post anything over the past couple of days because the disaster in New Orleans has refused to leave the forefront of my thinking. After posting about "Mayor Sleepy and Governor incompetent" below, I took a little criticism in the comments section for being one sided and suffering from an unfortunate case of poor nasal hygiene. Oh, and there was also the suggestion that my post represented "everything that is wrong with this country". So I guess I really covered the bases!

Despite the fact that I have led disaster responses, albeit on a much smaller scale than Katrina, and despite the fact that my experience and training suggested to me that this was primarily a local problem, I took this criticism to heart and I have refrained from posting any further until more facts came to light. While this site does not get a significant amount of traffic, it is instructive that those that did not like my "Mayor Sleepy" bit really didn't critique the post on fact or focus, but I think more on terms of tenor. I wasn't very nice to Mayor Sleepy or Governor incompetent, and that rubbed good people the wrong way.

Fair enough. My extreme disdain for these two fools (oops there I go again) was born of my disgust not only for the way they not only abandoned their responsibilities in the midst of an ongoing disaster, but also for their pathetic attempt to transfer responsibility for the disaster to those who did not have primary responsibility as first responders in an emergency. It seemed clear to me at the time that the Mayor and the Governor were in violation not only of their roles in a disaster scenario according to traditional command and control structure, but most likely of these roles as per formal guidelines that their governments most have established. Evidence that has developed since my posting on Friday has shown that my hunch was correct and that if anything I under emphasized the degree to which these two abdicated responsibility.

We now know the following:
1. No local command and control structure was in place to serve as a coordination point
2. The State command center was not in touch with anyone locally or at FEMA
3. The city and state violated their own plans on several provisions
4. The city did not order an evacuation until a direct plea was given by President Bush
5. Evacuation was too late, with highway lane direction being changed only as of noon Sunday, less than 12 hours prior to the storm.
6. The Mayor knew that he could not evacuate the city
7. The Mayor had planned to release a DVD telling citizens "they were on their own in evacuation"
8. The city had run a practice exercise 13 months earlier that highlighted these issues, and nothing was done to improve the situation
9. Previous evacs to the Superdome during much smaller storms had resulted in crime, attacks and squalor, yet nothing was done to prevent the same from occurring.
10. The city had a significant public bus capability that was not planned for, utilized or protected.
11. Two third's of the city's police force abandoned their post. This was in part due to the failure of the city to provide for the protection of the policemen's families while they worked to save lives.
12. The Governor failed to deploy the National Guard troops at her disposal in a timely manner.
13. The Governor failed to request FEMA aid in a timely basis.
14. State and local plans did not include any storing of food, water, or medical supplies as a first response source of relief while federal assets were moving into the area.
15. Despite the example of New York's communication problems on 9/11 no precautions were taken to maintain disaster communication.
16. As of last night, the Red Cross was still not allowed to move into New Orleans by the State Homeland security agency.

There is no question that the feds failed to act quickly enough in this scenario. Most accounts estimate that their delay cost the citizens of New Orleans a critical 12 to 24 hours of additional suffering before relief could be provided in any sufficient manner. I find it very difficult to quantify exactly how to criticism FEMA in any specific manner because of the failings of local officials that I've listed above. How, for example, do you quantify the exact delay in providing aid that is the result of poor FEMA management when there was no local infrastructure for the agency to access in New Orleans. One way might be to compare the results in Mississippi to those in New Orleans. Doing this provides an indication of just how important local planning is to the relief effort.

Mississippi, which has almost been treated as an after thought in media reporting, fared much better than New Orleans inspite of the fact that it was hit much harder by the hurricane. The difference, in my view, is two-fold. First, the New Orleans flood presented a much more complex relief challenge than the ruined buildings and blocked roads of Mississippi. Second, and more importantly, the state of Mississippi clearly benefited from superior preparations, and better leadership. Compare Haley Barbour's work to Kathleen Blanco's complaints and you get a pretty clear picture of one of the complicating factors in this disaster.

Yet what about FEMA and its director Mike Brown? Brown's resume does not suggest that he is qualified to head the agency, and his agency's performance this past week has not been above criticism. I will be very interested in the post mortem of this exercise, and I suspect he must go.

As for President Bush there is also room for criticism. Clearly he appointed a man to head FEMA who was not the best possible choice. This appointment is all the worse since FEMA was moved under the control of the Department of Homeland Security which added a layer of management between the President and his disaster head. This combination of increased bureaucracy and weak leadership had a direct impact on the fed's responsiveness in my view.

Should Bush have moved faster to federalize the recovery effort? This was probably impossible given the legality of the relationship between the federal government and the state. While the feds had to be aware of the utter incompetence of the Louisiana authorities, it is not their job to usurp the wisdom of the local electorate. In fact, it is largely illegal for the fed's to do anything until the proper requests come from state authorities, and as we've established these requests were slow in coming from Gov. Blanco.

So that's it. I've purged myself of this whole Katrina disaster and hopefully can now think about something else. To those that disagreed with me in my Mayor Sleepy post, I say thanks and assure you I took your thoughts to heart. I guess I also ended up disagreeing with you, but I suppose that is no real surprise.

Oh, and one more thing. For some reason I seem to attract a fairly balanced group of readers representing both the left and the right views in this country. I am quite proud of this fact and I hope to be able to continue this. So I do have a question for my valued readers from the left end of the spectrum and I ask this with completely snark free intentions. Are you proud of the response of the left and the Democratic Party? Personally I have found myself stunned that so many would jump on the back of a disaster to accuse the President of disinterest, guitar playing, golfing, classism and outright racism. I may be wrong, but I find it hard to come up with anytime the Clinton haters politicized the suffering of others to attack their target. So I 'm kind of curious about your thoughts if you care to share them.

UPDATE: Remarkably ignorant of disaster preparation and action, the media has been unsurprisingly inept in its rush to assign blame to the feds. Now it seems they may be getting a clue as to what really happened. Here is a report from ABC which finally provides a little balance in the reporting.

UPDATE 2: Good Lord, I just can't take much more of this. Is everyone on the left insane, or is it just the nut jobs that get TV time? I was working out today and I know I should just watch AMC, but "McCarthur" was on and while it is a very good flick, I've seen it and really the ending isn't a huge surprise so I popped over to FoxNews. My friends on the left, when they aren't quoting it to bolster their point, tell me that its reliably conservative. So, I'm watching some flood news, some Rehnquist funeral and quite suddenly the horrible apparition of a bloated Naomi Wolf appears on my screen.

Unsurprisingly, dear Naomi, who really should stay off the doughnuts for a while (not to mention do SOMETHING with that hair), believes that the whole disaster was Bush's responsibility. She bolsters her thoughts with statements that approximate "its a sad day when a nation can't turn to its president to take charge of a disaster", fully ignoring things like laws and constitutions. She then goes on to say something like, "Even Hollywood gets it. Harrison Ford would be holding meetings." I'm not making this up!

On to "debate" her if that is what you can call this was Ward Connerly who tried in vain to point out that first response is a local issue and we have things like laws that prevent the feds from barging in. Connerly looked utterly befuddled that he would have to explain something like this to a liberal, and the whole scene took on a sort of SNL look to it, not unlike the Mike Myers/Kanye skit from Friday night. Perhaps the only difference was that Naomi, unlike Kanye, is able to coherently string an incoherent argument together. Where are the Moynihans?

UPDATE 3: Further detail is now available on my point number 16 above. Major Garrett of FoxNews is reporting that the Red Cross had supplies prepositioned that could have been delivered to the Superdome and presumably the Convention Center. The Red Cross was barred by State Homeland Security because the felt if people were fed, they wouldn't leave. Read more in this Hugh Hewitt post.

Mayor Sleepy and Governor Incompetent

I really didn't want to start playing the blame game in New Orleans since there is a continuing disaster underway, and people need help. Unfortunately, in the last 24 hours of media coverage we've had to endure wild accusations from the moronic left, and unprofessional displays of ridiculous coverage such as seen on Fox News with Shepard Smith chasing a hapless New Orleans police officer, and last night on ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel berating the head of FEMA.

The real low though was reached by Mayor Ray "Sleepy" Nagin, and Governor Kathleen "Incompetent" Blanco. In the past 24 hours, these two leaders who did little or nothing to prepare their governments for a disaster that virtually everyone knew was possible had the temerity to blame the federal government for not responding fast enough. These two make me sick.

First lets take a step back. I'm not going to claim I know everything about preparing for a disaster, and recovering from it once it occurs, but I have had some experience in this area. In my past life, part of my responsibilities was to be in charge of the disaster recovery planning and action for a firm that managed hundreds of billions of dollars. I successfully led our 9/11 recovery effort, our East Coast power outage recovery, and I made sure that we were fully prepared when SARs threatened to shut down operations in the U.S. and or Canada. So I know a little bit about this stuff.

When planning for a disaster there is only one thing that you know with absolute certainty. No matter how much you plan, no matter how many possible disasters you can think of in your mind before the actual event occurs, when disaster does strike it will be in the form of something that you didn't anticipate. So instead of planning for specific events, you plan for specific contingencies such as loss of power, loss of communications, loss of key personnel, and so on. The key to disaster recovery efforts is to have a broad game plan in place, an infrastructure pre-built that will be available in a disaster, and to drill your team to react to contingencies that will inevitably arise.

One thing and one thing only has been clear in the New Orleans disaster. Mayor Sleepy and Governor Incompetent did none of this.

Not only was their planning insufficient, but these two had full knowledge of exactly what the disaster would be prior to its occurrence. This is a luxury that any emergency preparedness leader would relish. Knowledge of the specific event allows you to model everything in a way that typical emergency preparedness doesn't allow. Countless articles were written ahead of time that interviewed experts resident in New Orleans about the inadequacy of the levee system, and the likely impact of its failure. Even worse, hurricane Ivan gave these two a sneak preview of what was likely to happen in a larger hurricane event. Yet they did nothing. This is criminal negligence if I ever saw it and people are dead today as a result.

Lesson one from Ivan, or any other disaster for that matter, should have been that it takes time for help to arrive. It is a morbid equation that also tells us that the worse the disaster the longer it takes for help to get organized and in place.

My experience during the NY power outage was an excellent example of how a small event can become quite large and potentially devastating. We never planned for an outage that would roll all the way west to Ohio, and across the border to our operations in Canada. What we did plan for was what we would do if FOR ANY REASON or facilities were uninhabitable for a long period of time. Further, we drilled our people on what they would do at the beginning of a disaster while we were powering up our back-up sites. As a result, when power went down and communications were out, our team across two countries was able to act in a coordinated fashion even though many were not able to speak to each other due to land line and cell phone outages. Happily power came up the next day, and our preparations were not needed. However, had power not come up, our people were in place and ready to go because we prepared and drilled in advance.

So I must ask, what did Mayor Sleepy and Governor Incompetent have planned for their city while they waited for federal help to arrive? They knew a flood was likely. They knew exactly what the implications of a flood were for the city infrastructure and its populace. They knew that 28% of their population was living below the poverty line and unable to evacuate in the event of a hurricane. They knew that after the "near miss" of Ivan that the Superdome was uninhabitable within 48 hours.

They knew all of this, and more. Yet nothing was planned. In Chicago we have a fully reinforced 911 emergency preparedness center. It is run by disaster recovery experts, and drills are routinely run that include both the federal recovery experts and the local business community. The center itself is reinforced and will be the command center when a disaster strikes the city. Representatives from the city, state, and federal governments have been identified who will man the center. Specific business representatives have been named that will either be at the center, or be in touch with the center. Did Mayor Sleepy or Governor Incompetent put anything similar in place for New Orleans? If not, why?

New Orleans knew that a flood was possible, and that its impact would be devastating. Just thinking off the top of my head, I would have planned for this specific event by establishing a command center such as the above, and by constructing a fully reinforced warehouse that would have contained food, water, cots, blankets, medical supplies, pumps, generators, and a couple hundred thousand gallons of emergency gasoline. Oh, and I would have thought about boats. Inflatables, airboats something. Where is the infrastructure Mayor Sleepy? Where is the plan Governor Incompetent?

Mayor Sleepy and Governor Incompetent did none of this and New Orleans is a national embarrassment because of their abdication of duty. To hear these two now blame the feds for their own failings disgusts me, and it should disgust you too.

UPDATE: Will Collier at Vodka Pundit is a bit more even keeled than I am on this subject, and reaches many of the same conclusions through a different path. Its a must read. The failings of state and local government in this case are deep and profound.

I Hate To Mention This.....

.....but I think somebody needs to say it. So my apologies in advance if I'm being a little insensitive, but before we spend billions of our tax dollars rebuilding New Orleans I have one small question.

Should we move the city?

I am all for the American "can-do" spirit, and certainly we have the knowledge and wealth to make it better than it was before, but why in the world would we do this? By virtually any measure, New Orleans' current location is an awful place to build a modern city. It is surrounded by water and even worse is the fact that it has been sinking for the past century.

I've been learning some additional information over the past couple of days that raises this question even further in my mind. I had always assumed that the levee system surrounding the city was to protect it from Hurricanes, and for this reason wondered why in the world anyone would have constructed a system that they knew was inadequate to handle the worst of storms. Yet, it appears that I was wrong in this assumption.

According to what I've learned this week, the levee system was built to stop the seasonal flooding that occurred with a predictable frequency. Fair enough, but experts have now said that this decision actually was a conscious trade off between small routine flooding of the city, and a major infrequent disaster such as we are now witnessing. Even more to the point is the apparent fact that the levee system, reduced nature's natural hurricane protection by eliminating huge amounts of coastal wet lands and effectively bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the city's front door step.

Further, we're now told that not only was the levee system inadequate for anything over a fast moving category 3 storm, but that it had not been properly maintained due to cost factors and bureaucratic bungling between the city, state, and federal authorities. I've already heard one ex-mayor of New Orleans blame the president and the feds for not spending enough money on the levee system, and I'm really not interested in witnessing this kind of finger pointing, because we all know that there is plenty of blame to go around.

The bottom line is that this is a pretty dumb place to build a city, and now that the poor folks of New Orleans expect that my tax dollars will finance not only the rebuilding, but also the financing of the construction and perpetual maintenance of an improved levee system, I've got to ask the question.

Should we move New Orleans?