Mailbag Stuff

Mother Of All Panoramas In Colour And Widescreen
That's the pickie above from when Spirit got up 'Husband Hill' on Mars, but now in colour.

No Blame?
I try to refrain from talking about the Presidency of GW (Global Warming?) Bush because the man inspires nothing but incredulous-ness and an odd sense of inappropriateness for a civilization in a post-modern era. The man is hardly modern, even though he preobably thinks he is because he totes a gun and drives a car and uses a mobile phone.

The War in Iraq is a subject in great contention here as it is everywhere, as some people disagree with it on principle, while others point out that crude oil is the issue and because civilization is running out of the stuff, we're suddenly in a bind. So it is today that I want to put up this link from Pleiades about how GW Bush diverted funds from eco-management and into his war effort, and howw that made an impact on how Hurricane Katrina made her impact on New Orleans.

Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.
 
In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans - it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.
 
Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.
 
The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)
 
This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.
 
The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."
 
This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

Aye to that.
The major point of why I'm putting it here instead of over at Flaming Horses as I ought with political stuff is because with Global Warming, we're going to be getting more and more severe storms like Hurricane Katrina; not less. Richard Hoagland is offering up a hyperdimensional weapon theory of Hurricane K but he need not look that far for a cuplrit. With all the ice shelves and glaciers melting around the world, there's a lot more water available to be thrown around by storms. This is all part of what's been predicted for years, and unlikely storms in the past are going to increasingly become moe likely in the coming years. Insurance companies are going to lose a lot of money going foorwards because Global Warming is going to throw out all their actuarial calulations.

To have had 5 years of an admnistration in America that chose to ignore this scientific advice, is just literally (as we can see) catastrophic. And ithe Addministration didn't ignore it at its own peril; it did it at the peril of its own citizenry. That's exactly where the outrage lies.