As some of you by now know, I have been drafted. My regular government phone job has been swallowed up in the Katrina relief effort and for about two weeks I have been manning the FEMA-line talking to victims about their losses. My job basically consists of me taking their registration application so they can get some relief to help pay for disaster-related needs, ie: food/shelter/repairs/etc.

My impressions so far are that FEMA is a horribly run organization and is resulting in many many people not getting the aid they need when they need it. Let's start with this. At first they asked for volunteers and put 160 of us on the lines, this started 9/01 (already 3 days after the hurricane) after a day of training. Just yesterday (almost 2 weeks after) they "drafted" my whole callsite, about 500-600 in total. Hopefully this will help us answer even some tiny fraction of the calls. From what people are telling me it takes on average anywhere from 2-3 days of continuous calling to finally get someone on the phone.

Then there's the fact that people are supposed to be able to call about their application to find out about the status of their claims. They are supposed to call the normal FEMA line and press option 2 or 3. Well about half my calls are people trying to get to the help line with no success. The help line has in fact been down almost continuously since the disaster began. These people literally have [/i]no one[/i] that can tell them if relief is on the way. They are totally at the mercy of fate, some of them stranded in totally foreign states with no cash, maybe some kids, and no idea what is going to happen to them. It is so personally frustrating to have to talk to these people day in and day out and not be able to offer them any bit of comfort.

The organization itself is something really lacking. As I mentioned before I received one day of training (having never worked for FEMA before) and the new people they've just "drafted" are getting 4 hours. And while it's understandable we need to get the bodies on the phone to answer the calls ASAP, what happens is most of us have no idea how the whole system even works. We receive about 15-20 minutes of an update meeting everyday where new numbers are being called out and jotted down, and then off to answer the calls. Would it have been impossible to have these numbers on hand before the disaster? The thing is that this storm was not a surprise. It didn't just pop out of nowhere on 8/29. It was forecasted days in advance, and while no one could have predicted the extent of the catastrophe (though some local new reports from New Orleans accurately predicted the levies collapsing and the disaster that would follow) we could have been mobilized a lot sooner. At least the original 160 of us could have received our training beforehand and been ready to answer those calls on the 29th or 30th instead of 48 hrs. later.

As you can see above, none of my personal experience has anything to do with politics. This is my job and I do it 6 days a week. These are my observations and they don't need a liberal bent to be horrible. Realistically though, many of these problems are politically based. FEMA has been overhauled under the current administration and made part of the Deptartment of Homeland Security. It is directed by Bush appointees (the head, Michael Brown, former Arabian horse-marketeer with no creds whatsoever, has officially resigned today, bye-bye Brownie). There is a real shortage of National Guard members from the affected states (between 30-40%) who would normally have been mobilized from within the states to help with the relief effort. There are foreign countries trying to supply aid who are being turned away soley for political reasons (take the 1100 Cuban emergency doctors, especially trained to deal with trauma/injuries from hurricaines).

I could go on, but I think the point is made. People are suffering. People are dying. Many are dead. FEMA is our nation's first-responder in times of natural disaster. FEMA has done a horrible job with its responsibilities and we owe it to the victims to make sure the reasons behind the massive failure are found and dealt with.

And we call ourselves a superpower...

"I ain't threatening nobody, and I ain't pointing a gun at nobody," Mattlage said. "This is Texas."

Mattlage said he was initially sympathetic toward the demonstrators, but that they have blocked roads in the area and caused traffic problems.

He said he fired his gun in preparation for the dove-hunting season, but when asked if he had another motive, he said, "Figure it out for yourself."Quoted from: Mom to Continue Protest Against War

Can't we just let Texas go? You know they want it, most of us want it, so why the heck not. The US and the Republic of Texas, or Bushland, or whatever. Dove hunting. That is funny though...

...is setup in LaSalle park by the lake. It looks like a circus tent, but nothing seemed to be going on. There was also no sign saying, "Hi, I'm a circus." So what is it? Anyone know?

As for me? Where do i stand? Well, to be honest I kinda like the A-bomb and wish we could drop more.

Well, maybe not the really big ones, at least not for everyday use, but just the regular type. You know, they only flatten one city at a time. In fact, I think if we had just used them a couple of years ago we could have stopped this bloody war in Iraq and started on the bigger business of building their capitalist democracy. Like when the people in Basra and Fallujah were acting up, all into the terrorists and stuff, we could have just used their cities as examples. Flatten those two insurgent bases and the whole country would have been ripe for our democratic sovereignty (until such time as they were capable of taking up the reins themselves of course).

To me, it's just not safe to have this huge arsenal of nukes without using them. They sit there and rot, eventually they start to contaminate our own soil. And who wants to store them anywhere? Nowhere in America is safe to store these dangerous compounds. But there are so many places that are just crying for the democratic forces of an A-bomb. We get our practice and get to dispose of the volatile compounds in places where the ill effects can stand as reminders of past failures. How much less susceptible to terrorism would children growing up in Iraq be if only 50 miles down the road seethed a nuclear hotbed, where a misplaced step would show the consequences of not embracing the democratic vision as laid down by the compassionate American forces?

Again, we've got use them, or we're going to lose them. Not in my backyard! To allow these useful tools to sit is a crying shame. Let's drop 'em and let every one feel the democratic American vision.

Or at least that's what Dr. Laura has to say. Today in my search for radiophonic sustenance I happened upon the dowager Ms. Schlessinger's program. I think she's on for like 12 hours a day on AM 930 since it seems no matter what time I'm driving to/from work she's on, 7:30 or 1:30. Today she admitted to going to Hooters. Apparently she had heard such horrible things from her listeners that she had to go check it out. And it was alright. Gosh be darned! The curly fries were just wonderful, and the waitresses wore nothing more revealing than tight shorts, "better than what most of your kids are wearing these days," bemoaned Dr. Laura.

I've never actually been to a Hooters. Did they ever live up to the implied reputation of such a name? Anyway I think they need to add a disclaimer to their signs and advertisements:

[size=m] Hooters, if it's good enough for Dr. Laura i'ts good enough for your sorry ass![/size]