Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

A friend of mine introduced me to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series of books while we were in college. I read all of the books and loved Adams' wit and sense of humor. His hilarious treatment of trivialities, politeness, bureaucracy, and gross improbabilities is the defining characteristic of his books. Unfortunately, that didn't translate to the big screen too well.

I really wanted to like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Honest. I loved the book and was ever so hopeful that the movie would turn out to be something at least in the same ballpark. It wasn't. To reuse the baseball metaphor, this was a bunt that went out of bounds. It just wasn't funny. I didn't even smile once, much less laugh. The characters are annoying -- especially Zaphod, played by Sam Rockwell ("Guy" from Galaxy Quest). What really annoyed me the most, though, was that the movie just up and ended, almost as if the producers ran out of money for more film in the cameras.

IMDB gives this a 6.7 rating, but caveat emptor on that one. I'd wait for the cable release, not even pay-per-view.

A few posts back I ripped Gov. Kathleen Blanco for dropping the ball when it was time to take action about Hurricane Katrina. From days before the event until weeks afterward she demonstrated that she was past her competence threshold with the disaster preparations and relief effort. It seems, though, that people are taking advantage of her deerlike "headlight freeze" to politically shoot her down point blank.

There's a movement -- and even a website -- dedicated to what talk radio was yesterday calling the "recall effort." I've got a few words to say about this, but before I do it's important to note that I didn't vote for Blanco. I thought Bobby Jindal could do a better job and I stand behind that statement even today. I normally don't indicate which way I vote but it's important in this case.

The mere idea that Blanco should be recalled is an utter joke. Yes, the governor was operating way past her abilities when she was trying to coordinate disaster preparations and relief. Yes, her inability to get along with Mayor Nagin -- or to at least to get that idiot leashed -- was a major failing. That being said, the majority of the voting population of Louisiana elected Blanco and using her shortcomings from Katrina to get her yanked out of office is nothing more than sour grapes made manifest. I don't particularly think Blanco is doing a great job, but it's no worse than a host of previous governors. The governor won the election fair and square, or as fair and square as one can get in Louisiana, and deserves to have her four years without dealing with recall efforts. Every time I see her on television it looks like someone just beat her with a stick -- I think she's had enough already without having to make her endure a recall petition.

Now the petition will never fly. It takes signatures from a minimum of 1/3 of the current voting population to get a recall started and they have 180 days in which to get them. The petition will not only never fly, it's on a one-way crash dive into the briny deep. Regardless, it's just another slap in the face to her and I think she's had enough slaps already, mine included. I think what I think and I'm neither ashamed nor apologetic over it, but people need to understand when someone has been beaten down enough for a transgression. She's our duly elected leader and, while I don't think she's going to particularly distinguish herself over the next 2 1/2 years, she deserves the opportunity.

She's paid enough, people. Let's move on.

The title of this post has a dual meaning. First, it reflects the current question of whether the military should be allowed to be first-on-scene with future disasters. Second, it reflects what I think would be the result of allowing that to happen.

There is presently a federal law called Posse Comitatus that prohibits the military from taking a direct role with any kind of law enforcement situation on United States soil. This has been in existence since the Civil War and is designed to prevent the U.S. military -- arguably the most destructive man-made force on the planet -- from policing its citizens. We have a system of checks and balances in the federal government that limits any one body from becoming abnormally authoritative. Moreover, the President is Commander-in-Chief for a very good reason -- to place the ultimate authority of the military in civilian hands, hands which are limited by the aforementioned system of checks and balances. It is this separation of powers that makes the U.S. republic sufficiently decentralized so as to prevent any one body from assuming power over the country. Separation of powers has worked perfectly well for the past 216 years and there is no reason for anyone to fix something that isn't broken.

But, you say, we're not trying to fix something that isn't broken. We're trying to fix something that is -- law enforcement and disaster relief in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Yes, we're trying to fix that for certain, but we can't fix one thing by breaking another. The U.S. military, pardon the metaphor, is like a tiger in a circus. The tiger is capable of destroying anything it comes up against, but it's controlled by the fellow with the chair and the whip. The chair is a shield and the whip is the incentive for the tiger to go where instructed and do what is commanded. Remove the chair and the whip and the fellow risks becoming dinner for the tiger. Still don't see where I'm going with this?

Removing or amending Posse Comitatus allows the military to take a more up-front role in domestic situations. It is inherently dangerous to allow the regular military -- as opposed to the national guard -- to deploy to domestic locations and assume an authoritative enforcement role. Why? Two reasons. First, it gives the military a power that it shouldn't have and it gives the President an extra power that isn't adequately limited by separation of powers. So, playing devil's advocate here, either the President could more easily utilize the military in a coup d'etat or the military itself could do it. Now Congress could put stipulations on the approval for military deployment if/when they amend Posse Comitatus, but approval mechanisms would slow down deployment for true disaster situations so I think an extended approval process would be unlikely. This means that we'd essentially be saying "The President and the Joint Chiefs are good folks...they'd never do anything like that to the United States." International history is not on our side with that attitude and we just can't take that chance anyway.

The second reason is less esoteric and much more concrete. When you boil it down, the US. military has one function: to kill people. People put candy coating on this and call it "keeping the peace" or some other such moniker, but keeping the peace is done through the threat of extreme violence and death. We have the most well-trained military in history and they're armed with the best and most powerful weapons at our level of technological ability. They have Abrams battle tanks, stealth fighters, hunter-killer submarines, cruise missiles, neutron bombs, aircraft carriers, and nuclear weapons. We have SUVs, televisions, and a six-pack in the fridge. They're trained to kill on sight and with little provocation. We feel an unalienable right to complain and bitch when things don't go our way. They have semiautomatic weapons. We have channel clickers. They can parachute in from aircraft and dominate an urban area with trained killers and support aircraft in a matter of hours. We can't get our lawn mowers started half the time. Putting these two groups of people in close proximity and somewhat at odds with each other is a recipe for disaster.

Military men themselves have echoed the latter reason in recent days, making the argument I just made (and doing a better job of it, as well). Major General Bruce Lawlor, who was the head of the civil support unit at the Pentagon prior to retiring a few years ago, said that "there is a clear difference between disaster relief operations and warfare. Our armed forces are designed to protect us from enemies, not protect us from fires, floods and hurricanes."

Now will this dreaded thing come to happen? I don't think so. No politician likes to be swept aside and there seems to be quite a supply of ruffled feathers in Congress and at the state level these days in response to this idea. Moreover, a good number of people in the federal government see the dangers in doing this so I'm sure that it'll go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter. Nevertheless, it's an idea that should never have even been expressed.

Faithful readers of my blog here, whoever you are, no doubt are aware of my penchant for complaining about politics, politicians, and the media. It's not that I single them out but rather that their Valley of Transgressions is so fertile that the fruit therein is overripe and begging to be plucked and examined. Okay, enough with the fresh produce metaphor. At any rate, they ask for it with the idiotic, inane, and shamelessly greedy attitudes they possess. I've got some general complaints about Katrina -- involving both politicians and refugees -- and rather than post several things here I'll just put it all in one post.


Gripe #1: Governor Kathleen Blanco

I certainly don't fault Gov. Blanco for running for office; the governorship of Louisiana is the most powerful office in the state and she was ambitious enough to go for it and win it. That being said, Blanco's deerlike frozen stare into the headlights of Katrina has suddenly made her the poster child for single-term governors. Any person running for governor -- or president, for that matter -- has to understand that crisis situations can develop and that the person holding the big office has to have a cool head, a plan, and act decisively. It's been 40 years since Betsy hit New Orleans in 1965 and Blanco certainly isn't solely at fault for New Orleans not having a real plan for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, especially considering that she's only been in office for about a year. That still doesn't excuse her from freezing up when important decisions -- decisions that could save or sacrifice lives -- needed to be made. She owned up to it yesterday only after Bush did it first and shamed her into saying something.

Gubernatorial candidates need to survey the lay of the land before they commit to running for office; if they don't like what they might have to deal with then they should pass on governor and maybe run for Congress. Blanco choked when she needed to be decisive. Others might insist that nobody could be prepapred for every possible crisis. Sure, I agree completely. But a hurricane in Louisiana? C'mon. That would be top on my list. And we've all known for years that a Category 4 or 5 could hit New Orleans -- it's sitting out there under sea level, 90 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and protected only by an antiquated system of levees and pumps that barely work when it rains hard. The question of why they were left in that state and who didn't cough up the money to fix them is no doubt going to be a central topic in the coming year or so for people in Louisiana, but for now it's not important. Blanco needed to get an evacuation plan going days earlier. Nagin, the New Orleans mayor, refused to work with her when the time finally came and he did some other stuff as well, but he's an idiot. So while some of this can be pawned off on Nagin, Blanco is an intelligent person with political savvy and I for one expected more from her than what we got.


Gripe #2: Galleria Shopping Sprees

It was utterly moronic for FEMA to give refugees $2,000 credit cards. For one thing, they only did it in Texas and nowhere else, so it was applied inconsistently. For another, the vast majority of the southeast Louisiana refugees -- mostly from New Orleans -- are poor or close to it and giving them $2,000 credit cards is like handing the keys to a Baskin Robbins to an eight year-old. This FEMA credit card decision was a lapse in judgement akin to the Battle of Waterloo. In fact, the FEMA man on the scene as well as the FEMA director have since been replaced -- the former was fired, the latter resigned -- for this and other questionable decisions.

What irks me even more, though, is how the people with the FEMA cards are so aptly living up to my woefully low expectations of them. It was reported on the radio on my way to work that refugees in Houston are going on shopping sprees in the Galleria. That's how I like to see my tax money get spent -- cash handouts so that homeless refugees in the Astrodome can walk around with Gucci shoes, Sony PlayStation Portable gaming consoles, new jewelry, and other luxury items. What about the essentials? Food? Medicine? Shelter? Nah, their benefactors -- the good people of Houston -- haven't dried up the gravy train yet so they're getting the bill for those items. Once Houston has been bled dry by the refugees, they'll disappear into the woodwork and become part of the lowest common denominator of the city. For goodness sake, why don't these people have some common sense and pride and use the money as it was meant to be spent? Squandering a gift is a disrespectul spit in the face to the person who gave it. The taxpayers of America gave it -- you, me, everyone who works hard and pays taxes -- and they're going out and buying stuff that most of us can't afford ourselves without some prior planning. That's a crime.


So that's it -- Blanco, FEMA, and the refugees sinking about as low as they can go. Not all of them, certainly, but enough bad apples to put a spoiled face on the bunch. The events of the past 2-3 weeks have shown us how tragedy can beget anarchy, violence, wholesale thievery, and shamelessly gluttonous exploitation of goodwill. Katrina truly brought out the best and the worst in our nation.

A friend of mine today e-mailed an article to me entitled "The Curse of the Superdome" from the NOLA.com website. Dated this past Monday, it describes how the present site of the Superdome was once the Girod St. Cemetery -- deconsecrated in 1957 due to neglect -- and references an older article from the Times-Picayune describing in detail what happened when groundbreaking began on the site back in 1971.

Apparently, it was a surprise to everyone that a cemetery was underneath the ground because the backhoe brought up human bones. The excavation stopped until the site was verified to not be a crime scene and then they started digging everything up. Now cemeteries have been moved before in many cities to allow for commercial expansion, but the remains were always treated with respect and the key word is moved, i.e., relocated. Apparently, back in 1957 not everyone was relocated so they just lost their tombstones and stayed in the dirt waiting to be dug up in 1971 by a construction crew. The construction crew, not knowing what to do with human remains and with nobody giving them instructions, just dug everything up and dumped it all in one big pile. Dirt, bones, caskets, the whole works.

Most of these people died in the 1850s from the yellow fever epidemic or in the 1930s from the cholera epidemic. I think these poor people deserved better than a splintered casket and a fragmented corpse. Of course, relocating them would have cost money -- probably state money -- and we don't want to talk about money in Louisiana for fear that one of our politicians might not get his or her in-ground swimming pool this year from their annual kickback.

Louisiana Superdome: $165 million (1975 dollars)
Fixing the Louisiana Superdome: $100 million (2005 dollars)
Digging up a bunch of yellow fever and cholera victims and unceremoniously dumping their remains in a big pile: priceless.

For giving the go-ahead on this indecency there's dumbass and corrupt politicians and civil servants; for everything else there's the Louisiana taxpayer. The Louisiana Taxpayer: we're everywhere a dollar bill needs to be.

The Road Warrior, Part V: Prime Meridian?

Saturday morning rolled around this past weekend and the inevitable question came from my mouth, "Where do you want to go today?" Perhaps, in retrospect, I shouldn't have used the old Microsoft slogan albeit it was purely by accident. Perhaps, in retrospect, I shouldn't have phrased it as a question. Meridian, Mississippi, was the response. Meridian. Oh boy. I had lived one hour south of Meridian for about 12 years while growing up and nobody ever went there except to eat dinner at Weidmann's.

Well, the beginnings of our journey were quite inauspicious -- Meridian as the destination and 4 P.M. as the time we were leaving -- and it didn't get better from there. Meridian is on I-20 just like Ruston, except that it's a 4-hour drive east. No, that doesn't do it justice. Pardon my French, but it's a 4-hour ass haul to get there. Just think of sitting in a hard, wooden chair listening to a 4-hour economics lecture while suffering from hemorrhoids and you'll start getting the idea.

Once we reached Meridian, Julie started driving us around town. We quickly learned where the ghetto was -- everywhere. Ghetto to the left, ghetto to the right, and straight ahead never looked promising, either. She managed to find a small pocket of nice-looking houses in a decent neighborhood, but we had to get really lost to find the place. We quickly found the ghetto again, however, and never did find the way back to the decent neighborhood. Perhaps it was some kind of temporary transdimensional gateway. Perhaps we were just that unlucky.

Whatever. I think that Meridian was about as unprime a location as could be had in Mississippi with the possible exception of Pascagoula, the de facto alimentary canal of the state. Returning to Meridian after my 14-year absence from the city made me wish that it had been longer. Julie and I look really hard for reasons to like the places we go visit -- we've even found charm and quaintness in Palestine, Texas, so you know we look deep -- but I can't really say anything about Meridian except that Weidmann's used to be a truly great place to eat. Unfortunately, someone bought the place and, while keeping the name, switched it all around. It just wouldn't be the same anymore.

In conclusion, I think the fact that a liquor store, a payday loan joint, and a funeral home share three of the four corners of an intersection in Meridian pretty much sums up the place. If you need gas, Exit 22 has some nice gas-n-go places with decent prices. If you don't need to stop for gas, keep going to Jackson or Tuscaloosa.

For anyone reading this from Meridian and who is incensed by my less than glowing opinion of the city, remember that my home is in Ruston, a wart on the backside of Louisiana. While I wouldn't trade Ruston for Meridian, my dog of a town has just as many fleas as yours. Meridian has ghettos galore; Ruston has bubbas driving dualies with rebel flags and peeing Calvins stuck on the back window next to the NRA sticker. Same dog, different fleas. If you're my neighbor across the street, of course I'm not talking about you and I really do think those mud flaps do wonders for your Ford deisel.

Heaven help us all.

Just to show that not everyone in New Orleans has lost their sense of humor, here's one fellow who definitely wants the looters to stay away. Enjoy.

Waveland is a small town on the Mississippi gulf coast about 30 minutes from New Orleans -- you cross the Rigolets on US 90 and as soon as you hit Mississippi you're pretty much in Waveland. It was a nice place and it's now gone. Totally.

A friend of mine here in Lafayette -- Dave M. -- made a pilgrimage to Waveland the other day with his cousin and family, refugees from Waveland. He took this picture and e-mailed it to me and I wanted to share it here because I think it's a powerful image that speaks volumes. The picture, which was taken mid-afternoon, is in shades of blue for some reason but I think that it makes the scene that much more dramatic. I also think that the historic marker -- seen better in the zoomed-in second image -- is a fitting marker to be left standing after Katrina. In the midst of the destruction on Main St. there's a flag flying in the breeze above a marker from Camille dedicated to the people who came to the rescue. I've got no doubt that Waveland will be rebuilt and will be as nice as it ever was.

Thanks for the shot, Dave.

Katrina came home all right -- right to my home growing up. My parents live in Laurel, Mississippi, which is about 30 miles north of Hattiesburg or around 90 miles north of Gulfport and Biloxi. The eye of Katrina rolled right over Laurel a few hours after it hit Waveland and the rest of the coast, and Laurel got 110-120 mph winds and tornadoes. This is what I knew as of last Thursday night.

Last Friday at 12:30 A.M. my parents' cellphone started working again and my wife and I were woken up by mine ringing. We were relived to hear from them -- they were okay but there was a lot of damage done to the house, mainly in the back where the garage and my old room are located. A tornado came through their neighborhood right at the height of the hurricane and twisted a lot of trees out of the ground thanks to the waterlogged soil. We offered to get supplies over to them, especially considering that they had a new gas generator and there was no gas to be had in Laurel or anywhere nearby.

Gas wasn't much more available in north Louisiana, either. Partially because of the distribution network from the Gulf being down and partially because of the swelling population due to refugee shelters and packed motels, half of the gas stations in Ruston were closed and the other half were running out fast. In order to get 5-gal. gas cans we had to drive all the way to the Wal-Mart in Texarkana -- a 2 1/2 hour drive one-way -- but by late Friday night we had the cans and a shopping list for the following morning. We collapsed on the bed at 3 A.M. and fell asleep before our heads hit pillow.

Saturday morning came way too fast. We got up, made a run by Super 1 to get their food and pack down the cooler with ice, and then got the gas. I never knew this, but gas pumps cut off automatically at $75. Between my truck and 10 5-gal. cans we maxed the pump out twice. Then it was finally time for the Road Warriors to set sail to the homestead -- at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Julie had heard that Jackson was still impassable from somewhere -- the radio, I think -- so we decided to take US 167 to Winnfield and then catch US 84 east all the way to Laurel. Despite having seen Natchez for only the second time in my life it was still a greuling experience. The trip, thanks to a myriad of small towns and generally low speed limits, took us 6 1/2 hours one way; at least we were able to fill up the tank in the truck close to the Mississippi state line in Jonesville.

It was 9:30 at night when we got to Laurel and it looked like a war zone. The power was on almost all the way across Mississippi until we got to the outskirts of Laurel. My parents' neighborhood is the first thing coming in on Hwy. 84 and we saw huge trees down all over the place and power lines dangling and all over the road. Remember, this was 5 days after the hurricane went through, so we saw the edited version of the damage. I can't even imagine what it must have looked like on Monday afternoon.

As we wound through the neighborhood, it was pitch black with broken and gnarled-looking trees jumping out of the darkness when the truck's headlights swept across them. They reached right up to the road and we could tell that they had been cut and moved to make the road passable. I've never been creeped out from the old neighborhood before, but this felt like something out of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow thanks to the combination of the power loss and the trees. The area right around my parents' house was especially hard-hit and we had to drive across the corner of a neighbor's yard to avoid a downed tree and to freely pass under some power lines that were dangling about 6" above the cab of the truck at that spot.

Needless to say, my folks were happy to see us. We unloaded the gas, groceries, and propane tank for their grill, and then went inside and visited for about 3 hours before it was time to leave. I had brought my digital camera so photos could be taken for the insurance adjustor. Here's some images from that night...click on any of them for a bigger image.


I think the biggest shock was that limb coming down out of the ceiling and impaling the bed in my old bedroom. Now before anyone starts thinking I'm a pansy, my mother redecorated the room back in 1989 so soon after I moved out that the smell of old sneakers hadn't even dissipated yet. I guess she thought that wood paneling and red carpet -- I was fond of red at the age of 8 when we moved in -- didn't convey the image she wished to impart to guests. I daresay that a big tree limb stuck in the bed like a sword isn't going to do it, either.

We left around 12:30 A.M. with a sack of cold roast pork sandwiches from their dinner leftovers -- we hadn't eaten in about 8 hours -- and took Hwy. 84 only to Collins. I had found out earlier that the Jackson report was false and the interstate was open -- hallelujah. We caught US 49 up to Jackson and took I-20 west back to Ruston. My wife slept the whole way there and, despite listening to a Harry Potter audiobook on my iPod, by the time we hit Ruston I was weaving around like I was trying to knit a sweater with the front tires. Julie was knocked out, though, and I know that once she gets into that sleep groove there's no waking her up until she's fully rested. It's like popping a fly ball with the sweet spot on the bat, but for 8 hours.

Incidentally, we didn't find gas until we got to West Monroe, 70 miles into Louisiana, and they only had regular. Gas is still fairly scarce in Ruston and, down here in Lafayette, the gas is more plentiful but so are the people. It dropped from $2.99/gal. on Monday night to $2.69/gal. on Tuesday and it's stayed there for the past two days. I hear talk of $4-$5 for a gallon of gas in the upcoming months, but I'm hoping that it's just people talking about their fears and not something we need to really worry about. I have a 5.3 liter V8 truck with a 25-gal. gas tank from back in 2000 before the gas prices rose and I'm already spending $100/week in gas just to go up to Ruston on the weekends to see Julie. A $75 tank of gas is bad enough, but a $100-$125 tank of gas is going to make weekly visits a potential problem. And I really don't want that to happen -- I do love my wife so and I miss her very much during the week.