The Only Republican in San Francisco

“Anti-War, My Foot”

Love that title. On a previous post, I asked, “Who is Christopher Hitchens?” and the more I read him the more I love him. What’s particularly great is that he is a long-time, studied liberal. Or, he was until the last few years, while American liberalism has become an intellectual hollow stump.

Key quote from Anti-War, My Foot:

It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as “antiwar” when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, “No to Jihad”? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, “Yes to Kurdish self-determination” or “We support Afghan women’s struggle”? Don’t make me laugh.

Give it a read here.

For better or worse: a follow up

So, in an earlier post I related a bit where I was upset about the reporting of vicious but unsubstantiated rumors of rapes and murders happening in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. What upset me was the willingness of (in this case) CNN to put some jackass on the air repeating such stories. My point at the time was, “This is not fact, and this is not helpful. Why is he on the air?”

Now the NO Times-Picayune, a paper that was ruthless in its coverage of Katrina, announces “Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated”.

Remember the supposed stacks of corpses at the Superdome? It turns out there was a total of six deaths at the dome, most of them natural causes and none of them the result of crime.

Rapes? No victims and no witnesses have come forward.

The homicide rate in NO during the week of Katrina was...the same as every other week of the year.

Remember when Ray Nagin predicted 10,000 deaths that would shock the nation? Thankfully, only around 1000 souls have been lost, and that’s for the whole storm across three states.

I hate to say it, but the MSM have a race problem. The willingness to report savage behavior of a largely black population is hard to countenance...

Update: The LA Times catches on. And, if you read to the end, they quote a professor who can’t help but avoid the race component.

Krauthammer on “sin”

Charles Krauthammer does a better job than I on many topics that I’ve addressed in the last week or so. In particular, he hits on weather as theology and the sequence of responsibility.

Obvious, inexpensive, preventable

Glenn Reynolds breaks down those things that quite obviously can and should have been done in New Orleans.

Imagine if just a few things had been planned for:

- Superdome and Convention Center stocked and manned.
- A mandatory evacuation called, and enforced, more than 24 hours in advance. City resources used to evacuate the needy.
- Police communications maintained.

Had these three things happened, the three major headlines (People dying at Superdome/Poorest residents left behind/Looting ensues) would been prevented. All of these things were achievable.

20/20 hindsight of course, but who was in the best position to plan for these things?

NO Politics, part 2

So the initial polls seem to indicate that people agree that the locality and the state hold the most blame for the unfolding outcome in New Orleans:

http://us.cnn.com/2005/US/09/07/katrina.poll/index.html

(Scroll down to the sixth paragraph. You’ll notice that the article tries to focus on Bush but the numbers don’t support it...)

What’s most interesting, and frankly heartening, is that the greatest plurality in the poll feels that no one is to blame. This is true. The question is, who helped, and what could have been done better.

Even the use of the word “blame” tells me that someone is trying to get out of responsibility. Notice that Bush and Republicans aren’t using that word...ask yourself, who is?

The “blame” goes to Mother Nature and hundreds of years of building a city in harm’s way...the credit goes to those that are saving lives.

Related: Wesley Pruden’s ”Not much traction with the abuse”

How the politics will play out, part 1

OK, now that things are calming down a little in NO, and that opportunist Dems are in full spin and attack mode, I will step lightly into how the politics will likely play out here.

If a friend of mine were to ask what I thought of everything that’s happening in NO, I would ask whether s/he were talking about the PR or the reality. They are not the same here.

The great, initial failures here, the ones that put thousands of people in life-threatening conditions, start locally and move out from there. People are beginning to realize this as they are begin to put two and two together.

Let’s start locally. The local government is the first responder to any disaster, especially those that have been expected as long as this one. It has been expected for decades.

One must ask:

- If the mayor is going to send thousands of citizens to the Superdome, why was it not stocked with water, food and most importantly, emergency personnel? Generators? This could have arranged from days to years before the storm.

- Where were the police? Where was their post-disaster command center? Why not the Superdome? I’m not being facetious...

- By now you may have heard about the hundreds of local buses that were not used to help. The above link does the math.

To be clear, I don’t think the feds are off the hook, but it’s clear that the feds have saved a vast amount of lives -- a claim neither the city of NO or the state of LA can make. Trust me, no one has lower expectations of goverment than I, but facts are facts.

Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco are in full political posturing mode -- and are saving no lives but their own. The former should be in handcuffs and the latter should simply be given a quiet space away from pills and sharp objects.

Update: count the “whatever/whenevers” in this interview...

For better or for worse

With all that’s happened in the past week, one must try to observe and distinguish between those trying to make a situation better and those trying to make it worse.

I will address the likely political fallout regarding NO soon, but in the meantime must quickly relate an anecdote.

My lovely gf and I were watching the news, and I got upset about a guy claiming that there were awful rapes and murders happening in NO. My objection was that what he was saying might or might not be true, but it did not stop the network (in this case CNN) from broadcasting it.

Now this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1563532,00.html

It’s amazing what people will say in trying times -- and increasing rumors and claiming unwitnessed mayhem does not improve anyone’s life. I am working hard to understand the human animal...

A more complete treatment by Michelle Malkin.

And productivity plummets...

News.com reports on Massachusetts’ decision to adopt an ’open’ desktop. The quotes are from News.com, since ’open’ is a very loaded term.

This sounds like a great example of philosophy trumping logic. Open standards make many things easier, but they are certainly not the only criterion in a business decision.

You’ll note that the majority of organizations still choose commercial software even when “open” alternatives are available. Why?

Productivity. The commercial products tend to be more mature. And why are they more mature? Because the profit motive compels the developers of the software to understand and address the needs of their users.

While supporting the open formats may be desirable, it does not make sense to mandate them, as MA is doing. The directive is to migrate away from software which does not support the Open Document formats. This effectively reduces the choices that state agencies have when choosing software, making them less responsive to the needs of their constituents.

The goal should be to make the gov’t as responsive and efficient as possible. This means letting agencies choose the best tool for the job, based on the demands of their tasks. Mandates from above, which limit choices, do a disservice to the citizens.

Unfortunately, one can only assume that this mandate comes from a philosophical point of view somewhere near the top. The State of Mass is making a monolithic decision, one that is the opposite of what most successful organizations have chosen.

An addendum: Microsoft’s forthcoming XML-based file formats will be fully documented and licensed, royalty-free, in perpetuity. That sounds pretty open to me. Will MA add these to their list?

Updates:

David Berlind asks, ”Should more public agencies heed Massachusetts’ OpenDoc policy?”

Microsoft Blasts Massachusetts’ New XML Policy, in Information Week.

George Ou asks “Is Word ’open enough for Government work’?”

David Coursey calls it ”little more than a harmless swipe at Microsoft”

Do you buy the state’s argument that OpenDoc better serves the citizens? Do you buy MS’s technical arguments about the OpenDoc format being technically inferior?

The state will find that its choices are narrowed in terms of software, functionality and availability of tech talent.

Peggy Noonan on leadership during a crisis

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110007187

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