Today is not love.

Today is not scheduled to be love until 9pm Eastern when I arrive in Atlanta. I totally flaked on sending the memo. Sorry!

You people know you're all going to hell, right?

Why are we going to hell now, Jesse?

EXTRA New Orleans -- now we've really confused the vampires.

Not you, Cindy. Them:

Hey, will it be Newer Orleans? Newer But Not Improved Orleans?

New Orleans Lite?

I Can't Believe It's Not New Orleans?

Upper West Orleans?

New -- No, REALLY New -- Orleans.

Hey, will it be Newer Orleans? Newer But Not Improved Orleans?

New Orleans Lite?

I Can't Believe It's Not New Orleans?

Upper West Orleans?

New -- No, REALLY New -- Orleans.

Longhorn.

You people know you're all going to hell, right?

Oh, totally. How else am I going to see all of my friends? We'd be bored hanging out on clouds, playing the harp. You know hell has all the best guitar players.

CNN says FEMA is suspending boat rescues because the danger is too high. My stomach feels sicker and sicker as more news breaks.

ETA: The breaking news banner on the website disappeared, so I don't know if they're backing off that report or not. I heard it first on the air but don't see other outlets reporting it yet.

Scary in an 'he'd start a Waco if he was in the right mood' way.

He's ex-military. Certain kinds of military guys live for this sort of thing. They're survivalist sorts. More Hobbes, less Locke and Rousseau.

rant:

I don't fault Dubya for not "preventing" the flooding in NOLA. It was going to happen no matter what. That's the way this city was designed and built. It's odd that an "improved" levee collapsed, but I'm not sure what to make of this.

What I do fault Dubya for is that we KNEW this could happen, and he consistently refused to help NOLA -- or any other city facing these sorts of catastrophic events -- get ready. Worse still, one of the great lessons of 9/11 -- poor communication and poor command and control kills -- was never, ever acted on. While millions were going to Alaska to save them from Al-Queda's plan to nuke Anchorage, cities consistently complained that they weren't getting money for disaster planning and training. Even when they did get training (e.g. tabletop exercises), the lessons learned weren't acted on by the Feds.

To me, the problem is the idea of Homeland Security. Dubya has spent gazillions of dollars on mashing together departments into a super-monolith bureaucracy whose modus operandi is to get America ready for TERRORIST attacks and spend pork-barrel money.

Think about this for a second: Major Al-Queda terror attacks since 9/11: 4 (Casablanca, Indonesia, Madrid, London)

Major hurricanes in the Southeast since June 2004: 5 (3 in Florida, Denis, Katrina)

We're spending billions trying to prevent what we can't prevent (loss of life in terror attacks) and neglecting what we can prevent (loss of life in natural disasters). Worse still, we're neglecting the $2-3B costs of getting urban and rural areas ready for disasters, choosing instead to pay the $20-30B costs of search/rescue, rebuilding, and keeping the insurance companies from collapsing or pulling out of areas.

And it comes back to Dubya's beloved Homeland Security. They're so focused on keeping cuticle scissors off airplanes they have neglected the very basics of disaster prevention. But, it's all about the "enemies," and you can't attack the ocean, and you can't declare a War On God.

Oh, and a little preterition: The Dubya administration sold off a section of the radio spectrum to communications companies, a section that was supposed to be used for police and fire radios.

So, I hold Dubya personally responsible for caring less about hurricanes and caring more about terror attacks. And while that's not as glamorous and trendy as blaming him for not funding the Corps, it is extremely damning in my book. If he were the head of a multinational corporation, I would expect his resignation post-haste, and he could expect to get caught up in a class-action suit for willful neglect. Unfortunately, this is politics, so he ain't leaving. Sigh.

/rant

shit. what dw said.