Sentential Links #15

Most of Blogistan has, as you might expect, focused on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath this week. I've already done a lot of linking about that kind of thing, so I won't do a whole lot more here. As always, click for context.

:: I was wondering whether or not to continue with the "good news" postings. I think this story has just inspired me to continue. (I'm not sure where Michelle gets her energy, but her response has been one of the more inspiring individual responses to Katrina. If you're looking for a specific way to help the survivors, give her a look. She's got some great stuff going.)

:: Anyone saying that now is not the time to play politics, now is not the time to look for people to blame is either consciously or unconciously helping to shield politicians from responsibility for their failures. You can't criticize a political leader without it being a political act. Tell me that no political leaders here deserve criticism.

:: "I spent my capital and grasped success,
Look on my works, my Country, and—" but there
The brittle stone was rudely hacked away,
And just one word in rusty brown was scrawled: Despair.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The ruins of a million dreams stretch far away.

:: Fall is when I go all Martha Stewart. Although I tend to leave illegal trading out of the mix, a weird insanity befalls me. Even though I never, ever cook anything more complicated than Hamburger Helper or grilled chicken breast during the rest of the year, I start seriously pondering recipes for ridiculous things like homemade marshmallows and foods involving flambe.

:: If the supply of oil can be increased we might be able to dodge the bullet, but if, as some sources suggest the big Saudi fields have passed their peak, we might end up looking back and seeing Katrina as the incident that finally toppled the global economy into a peak oil crisis -- the true end of the 20th century that began when, in Lord Curzon's words, the western allies of the first world war "sailed to victory on a wave of oil".

:: Number one son tells me that if you slam someone against a truck while they have a mouth full of gas that what gas they do not sallow will be blown out their nose. (Note to self: use some kind of siphoning device when stealing gas from neighbors.) (Further note to self: do not blog about stealing gas from neighbors.)

:: Oil? We'll be drilling the entire states of Alaska, California, Texas, and Oklahoma for one year. After which we'll clean them up better than before. (Eco-nuts protesting this will be given honory Swedish citizenship and deported by kayak.) But if we need extra oil and we ask, you'd better think twice before you say no. We'll always have enough in the strategic petroleum reserve for B-52's and our carrier groups. If we have to send them out, they will be, we promise you, in a very bad mood. Very bad. (This is absolutely hilarious if it's satire. If it's meant straight, well, then, someone should probably pen a sister letter to this one apologizing to the world for the onset of our national dementia. Link via James Wolcott. Oh, and by the way, Right-Blogistan: note that Mr. Van Der Leun makes no attempt to block Mr. Wolcott's link traffic. I'm just sayin'.)

That's all for this week. There was actually a lot of compelling writing in the blogs I frequent often, and in the ones I frequent less often, but I just don't feel like wallowing full-time in post-Katrina funk today.


(And yes, I've given quite a bit of cash already, in case anyone's wondering. As much as I feel I can comfortably afford. Which isn't much, really, but there's another payday awaiting me at the end of this week, too.)

UPDATE: OK, I'm adding one, because I think that the question posed here is a serious one that we ought to be considering a bit:

Everyone suggests that part of the problem is that FEMA's focus was redirected toward terrorism after 9/11. In and of itself, this is neither surprising nor wrong. But the requirements to respond to a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city are largely identical to the requirements for responding to a hurricane like Katrina: food, medicine, maintenance of order, evacuation, and temporary shelter. So what are FEMA's plans for responding to, say, a large scale chemical weapon attack on Chicago? They'd have less warning than they did with Katrina and the requirements for aid would be largely similar. What would they do?