Kick at the Darkness

Check out the survey on blogging behaviour in Canada. Worth your 45 seconds.

The link says that the US should amend the 17th amendment and not allow Senators to run for President (even though Senators lose the election roughly 100% of the time). The point being that in their questioning of John Roberts, most of them are running for president more than questioning a potential Supreme Court Chief Justice.
As for the Canadian Senate....... at least a grandstanding obstructionist senate would getting something done, as opposed to our irrelevant, unresponsive, ridiculous senate in Canada. They have us on that one.

The Globe and Mail ran, on page A11, this story that 'the big one' may be coming. A11?

The biggest single natural disaster, with the biggest loss of life in N. America's history may be on its way? I hope that this is just a general heads up (the story states that no one is entirely sure) but I would think that the heads up would be more prominent and might feature a quote from our Deputy Prime Minister on the topic of the possibility of oncoming armaggedon.

I was thinking of investing in a car. I am not interested in something that guzzles gas. I am not interested in a Smart Car, as it requires that the dog, wife and baby squeeze into only one seat.
I thought the Ford Escape hybrid might be a good saw-off. It is not cheap, but with gas prices high, and smog warnings becoming more common, it might be worth it.
I visited my friendly local Ford dealer today and asked for some preliminary information. The sales dude basically told me I would be crazy to buy one since the engine sucks, it is expensive and no one knows how to fix it. All fears I had about the hybrids. Does anyone have a better experience with a non-Prius hybrid?

For some reason, people in Canada are now thinking that a new National Energy Program is a good idea. What I find awful about this is that people would seemingly rather tear apart the constitution than pay $2.00 a litre for gas.

Sure a NEP 2 would be strictly legal, but clearly the constitution wants the provinces to control their natural resources. This is largely a good thing, and should not be discarded to keep SUV's on the road.

Finally, for the conspiracy theorists............ If you think the gas companies are fixing prices for gas, stop buying gas! The only way to test this theory is to see if the price is elastic with demand, so stop buying gas and find out. As long as we keep buying gas, no matter the price, the price will inevitably go up. NEP 2 applies a production solution to a problem that is rooted in consumption. Bad economics, bad policy, bad idea.

I like surprises. The genuine surprises that you could not have seen coming. Sometimes pregancy, a pair of friends becomes a couple, the New England Patriots win 3 Super Bowls in 4 years.
I don't like surprises that are not surprising. Katrina, unfortunately is the most grizzly example of this I have ever seen.
The Times-Picayune dedicated a forest of column inches to the topic of the big hurricane a couple of years. The simulation they did, along with the LSU Hurricane Centre, essentially lined up, blow for blow what has happened this week in New Orleans. This entire situation was distressingly predictable.
As I noted in Part II of the Katrina series, I hope that Canada takes a lesson from this to realize that the crossing of fingers does not constitute an emergency plan. I hope that the US learns hiring a political hack to be at the center of command and control functions at FEMA is a bad idea. I hope that someting remotely good can come of this maelstrom of the utterly bad.

I think that Paul Krugman has it about right. For him the issue of the US government's reaction to Katrina was not a matter of race, class or anything else. It was a case of an administration that is not terribly concerned with governing. To quote Saturday Night Live "Presidenting is hard". Harder, in fact than Commander-in-Chiefing or running for President. This administration has not stopped running for President since the first inauguration and shows no signs of stopping, despite the tricky constitutional issue prohibiting him from running again.

If Doucheblog's sources (daily kos?) are correct (big if) then the President has sunk to a new low, in assembling a levee reconstruction team to work behind him, for only the time that he was on the scene, packing up as soon as he and the cameras left the area. Again, more evidence of an administration that is not interested in getting anything done other than getting elected.

The death toll from this administration is getting hard to count. Asleep at the wheel on 9/11, a highly questionable war in Iraq and now this. Presidenting is hard indeed.

It may be myopic or even jingoistic to think of this, but what if something similar happens in Canada?

Most agree that our equivalent would be the earthquake on our west coast. Let's use that as an example.

- The lower mainland is decimated, as is southern Vancouver Island. Vancouver General Hospital and the Vancouver Police Station at Hastings and Main are goners. The roads in and out of Vancouver proper are difficult, if not impossible to pass as bridges are badly damaged or gone all together.

- Our main military presence in BC, at CFB Esquimalt is a disaster at this point. No help there.

- The Search and Rescue function at CFB Comox can help, but is quickly over-run. CFB Cold Lake and Trenton come to the rescue. Luckily, given that this is an air-based function, it can happen relatively quickly.

- My main question, is how long would it take for our troops to be in Vancouver to quell the looting, establish order and let the Red Cross do their job? I would hazard a guess that it would be a lot longer than the 'unacceptable' amount of time it took the US. Remember, they have 40,000 troops on the ground (we have 65,000 in total) and they are landing more helicopters per minute than we have in our entire air force. We would be left dreaming of the level of unacceptability that is being decried in the US right now.

I wish this bothered more people than it does. Macleans did an admirable job of pointing out this problem and I certainly hope that is is not treated the same as the ominous warnings from the Times-Picayune and US News and World Report in the months leading up to Katrina.

Suffice to say that Katrina cannot be described by the meager words available to my meager brain. It is awful. Just awful. I hope that the death estimates are higher than reality and that at least some of the rumors of what went on at the Superdome were urban legend. I do not expect either of these hopes will come to fruition.
Props to Instapundit for its comprehensive list of Katrina related charities.