One of the things about being a geezer is that a geezer can remember "When"...if he is not completely worn out...and so then he has another chance to have a grumpy curmudgeon moment when he hears people saying really stupid things that involve the past. "When" is that time in the past that the broad mass of people did not experience, but about which they are expert.
We must delve into the "Tale of Two Faults". The word "When" pertains to those two faults. One is the fault of thinking that the Central Government should be involved in disaster relief or to believe that such has always been the case, and the other is feeling as though one is entitled to help from FEMA. Can we not ask, "What did people do before FEMA? AND, "Does FEMA help everybody in all the disasters?"
"When" is that time a Geezer has lived through, and knows that the people who are talking about "when" are speaking in horsefeathers. The fact is that King George I did not have any fault when Hurricane Andrew chewed up a wide swath of southern Florida. The press said that King George I did not "care" about the people and did not "respond" quickly enough due to his "insensitivity". But he really had no fault, either for the hurricane or the pace of recovery.
"When" is that time that King George II is blamed for all the ill-effects of Hurricane Katrina, because the "federal government" (central government) had not moved quickly enough to help the people. Once again, the problem was the stuctural corruption of one of the top five most corrupt cities in the United States, that being New Orleans. The other problem was the sloth practice by Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.
"When" is that time that Nashville, Tennessee was essentially totally inundated up to and beyond the third story throughout the city. The Grand Ole Opry was destroyed. The damage was in the billions, one pipe organ alone, pertaining to the Nashville Symphony Association, worth 2,330,000 dollars was destroyed. Damage was too extensive and devastating to list in this publication. It was a multi-State issue, affecting Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi. There were 60 people killed.
"When" is that time that Tuscaloosa, Alabama and other nearby places in the South that had a tornado outbreak in April of 2011. Several hundred people were killed in the episode, about 120 in the trans-Tuscaloosa - Birmingham area alone. With one visit Obama declared that he had never seen such devastation, and further declared that he had declared the area a disaster zone.
"When" is that time in Joplin, Missouri there were 160 people killed in May, 2011. And then there was really no interest from the press or the White House, as there had been scant interest in the previous two.
"When" is that time when there was an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The Obama Administration used the event to close down deep-water oil production, and to tell Bobby Jindahl that there's no problem with the loss of jobs, the people can get on unemployment and food stamps. When Jindahl responded that the people wanted to go back to work, not welfare, the president was perturbed and confounded. He found Jindahl's remarks disrespectful and offencive. Nothing was done in any meaningful way by the government for months....aggravating even James Carville...! Local action and State action, along with British Petroleum came on line first and better. Obama and his government refused to obey various injunctions issued by Federal Judges, and is still fighting legal issues about this even to this day.
And, now we have the scene of New Jersey and New York City, with the odd polarity of affluence or lack thereof six blocks 'over there' compared to people eating out of Dempster Dumpsters and other geezers trapped on the 18th floor of the Soylent Green Waiting Rooms, trapped because there is no electricity to run the lifts.....and folks wondering if they are going to freeze in a couple of days because the union thugs do not want non-union electrical workers from the Texas and the South coming in to do repairs. And then there is that inconvenient truth, that the EPA would not allowing Gulf oil tankers into closer refineries to New Jersey....because of environmental considerations.
Then we have the Episode of Good Feelings and Reaching-Across-the-Aisle between the liberal Republican Governor Christie and the marxist president Obama solved all the problems in New Jersey....and for a while Kumbaya became the national anthem....and we could forget about the meanies at Fox who are making a big deal about the killing of some old ambassador and his buddies in some place named Ben Gauzy. And, still, in New York and New Jersey, there is little progress towards recovery. And the Red Cross is doing its typical job of photo-op help, while the Salvation Army is actually getting blisters and doing the work outside of the view of the photo-op crews.
"When" is remembering that at Katrina, the authorities and the people had over five days to make some kind of preparation. They did nothing. Like New York State and City, and the State of New Jersey....not a lot was done in terms of storing up gasoline and diesel fuel, power plants, sandbagging of tunnel and subway entrances, or any such things. They also had about five days of warning. The much worshipped FEMA also did nothing to anticipate any response. All parties monitored developments, made preliminary plans, made initial preparations, etc. They never thought about the extra 1.5 feet of additional storm surge that would accompany the simultaneous tidal surge, because of the full moon.
"When" is to remember how hundreds of school busses were left to be inundated in their parking yard in New Orleans. One enterprising young man rounded up family and friends and went down and essentially took a school bus out and on the road to Houston. He was carrying about 30 people, and pulled up at the place that had been mentioned as the reception point in Houston for Katrina refugees. For their efforts of taking matters into their own hands, paying for fuel and food with their own credit cards and cash, and reporting where they had been told to report...the driver was, of course, arrested. It's against the law to defend yourself and yours while Mayor Nagin is returning from Dallas and Governor Blanco is wondering if "....these pants make my butt look too big"...while she prepared to address a press conference, where she explained that she had not made the necessary call to the President to request the intervention of the Central Government in the levee breach floods.
But Obama is a hero because he stopped by to walk arm in arm with Christi for a moment and then pronounce, "Stop behaving like government normally does, and cut through the red tape and do something! And that's an order!" And then he flew off....as in the case of the Benghazi....to Las Vegas. On Air Force One. He's solved all the problems by giving a vague rhetorical order that would be totally unenforceable.
And yes, Virginia, my father was in the horse cavalry when he and everyone in his regiment survived essentially 2 tropical storms, 1 tropical depression, and 1 huge hurricane inside of two months in 1933 in Brownsville, Texas....when the mouth of the Rio Grande ran 100 miles wide at the Gulf of Mexico. And, before Bush caused Global Warming/Cooling/ Climate Change, the city of Galveston, Texas was totally destroyed in 1900 by a hurricane that killed between 6,000 and 13,000 people in three hours. Somewhere between 6,ooo and 13,000 people of a population of 30,000. Dead...many were never found.
So, Virginia, study your history well so that you cannot be fooled by fools. And history is fun and interesting once you get into it. I leave you at peace for a while.
El Gringo Viejo
