Clarity on "The Mainstream"

For months, years even, we've been hearing caterwauling from the leadership of the Left about "the mainstream", especially as it relates to the judiciary. Every time President Bush nominated someone for a judicial post, leaders of the Democrat Left ran to a microphone to denounce them for being "outside the judicial mainstream".

This accusation from the Left reached its peak recently with the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Senator after Senator said they would have to withold their vote until they could test his mainstream-ness, as they defined it of course.

We had the hearings. Roberts demonstrated his exceptional qualifications for the position in two days of grilling by the Judiciary Committee. The Senate Democrats failed to land a glove on his credentials or skills.

So, now the Senate has voted. And now the "mainstream" has been clarified.

The vote: 78 to 22.

Who's out of the mainstream? The 22.

Kennedy. Clinton. Schumer. Durbin. Boxer. etc.

Each and every one of these shrill demagogues are now officially on the record. And out of the mainstream.

Can we please stop hearing from them now?

ABC's anti-Religious Talking Points

I watched two premiers on ABC tonight: the series premier of "Commander in Chief" about America's first woman president and the season premier of "Boston Legal".

Here's a thought: how likely is it that two back-to-back shows in primetime on a network would have script elements taking a cheap shot at Creationism?

For example, one of the lines in the opening of "Commander in Chief" implied that if the Republican Speaker of the House becomes President, then we'll have "...book burnings, Creationism in the classroom..." . "Boston Legal" contained a similar cheap shot after showing a montage of religious statements made by presidents.

I knew "Commander in Chief" was going to be a show with a liberal bias in the mold of "The West Wing". And it lived up to that with it's dose of liberal hysteria.

It's was a fairly good drama, and I'll probably watch it. And, of course, I'll enjoy heckling it each week.

I only have one request: could they send the script writers who wrote this character of a strong female chief executive to Louisiana to aid Governor Kathleen Blanco who, in stark contrast to the Geena Davis character, became a blubbering, paralyzed, and ineffective leader in the face of a real emergency?

Democrats Abdicate Responsibility

Once again, petulant Democrats in the House of Representatives have taken their ball and gone home.

For those of you who don't regularly watch C-Span, the House committee with oversight on FEMA conducted hearings today regarding FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina. The key witness today was embattled former FEMA director Michael Brown, who came out swinging to defend himself. He faced a lot of tough questions from the Republican members of the Committee and one invited Democrat.

Why only one Democrat?

Because the Democrats on the committee refused to show up for the hearing. These Democrats are insisting on an independent bipartisan commission, similar to the 9/11 commission. Their view is that the Republicans running the committee (again, because they won the most elections!) will whitewash the issue. (If you watched the hearings you saw some tough questioning from the Republicans) Since the committee Democrats haven't gotten their demand, they refused to play ball.

In other words, they abdicated their responsibility as elected officials to participate in the hearings.

A simple question for them. If we have to have an independent commission every time there is a controversial issue because we can't trust Congress to do it's job, why do we need Congress?

Note to the Democrats on the committee: demonstrating your irrelevance is not a smart move.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: False Certainty

I'm immersed in my study of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design Theory (ID). I'm reading essays, books, critiques both ways, etc. Lots of reading. Since I'm immersed in the topic, I also notice articles in newspapers and on the internet about the subject as well.

For example, I read an article from the Associated Press on the internet last week titled:

"Genes Show Signs Brain Still Evolving"

As I was reading the article I was reminded of a very old, and very bad, joke that I heard almost thirty years ago in one of the four calculus courses that I took in college. It goes like this:

Three scientists were riding in a car on their way to a meeting in Scotland. There was an astronomer, a physicist, and a mathematician.

Looking out the winding, the astonomer saw an animal standing sideways to the car out in a pasture.

"I didn't know that there were brown cows in Scotland", said the astronomer.

"Wait a minute", said the physicist. "All we can really say is that there is one brown cow in Scotland."

"Actually", smiled the mathematician, "the only thing we know precisely is that there is one cow in Scotland that appears to be brown on at least one side."

Bad joke, I know. You have to be a real science geek to get that joke. I personally love it.

The point of the joke is the level of precision and certainty common to different scientific disciplines. Mathematicians being very precise, astronomers less so. What's a billion light years here or there? Over the years I decided that Darwinian evolution advocates often fall in the less precise category.

I encountered another angle on this concept in my own scientific training in my chosen field. Metrology - "the science of measurement". A practical science, but a science. In the course of my training I learned to beware of false precisison. In other words, beware of stating the results of a measurement to a higher degree of precision that you could actually achieve with your measuring instruments. In other words, saying "a quarter of an inch" is different than saying "0.250000". This is especially dangerous when you are using calculators to convert measurements and you are fooled by your 8-digit display to think you are more precise than you really were. As an example, I once watched a man measure an eight foot long piece of metal with a standard toolbox 25 foot metal tape measure. Not a precise instrument by any means. Using the tape measure, which was marked off probably in 1/8th inch increments, he measured the metal rod. Then, very confidently, he recorded the measurement on a blueprint to 4 digits of precision. 8.6250 inches. He was fooling his readers with that sense of accuracy.

Unfortunately, I usually bring that joke and that training with me when I read scientific articles and because of them I usually end up heckling and deconstructing the article. Why? For two reasons:

- The headlines of these articles often implies a sense of certainty in the "discovery"

- The body of the article will often start with a degree of precision that the remainder of the article either can't back up or will contradict.

Let's examine our example. Again, the title:

Genes Show Signs Brain Still Evolving

Okay. It starts out confident and promising. "Genes show signs..." Will the article back that up? Let's continue...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The human brain may still be evolving. So suggests new research that tracked changes in two genes thought to help regulate brain growth, changes that appeared well after the rise of modern humans 200,000 years ago.

Wait a minute..."may still be evolving"? My confidence is slipping. But hey, it's backed up by "new research". Okay, I'm still listening.

That the defining feature of humans - our large brains - continued to evolve as recently as 5,800 years ago, and may be doing so today, promises to surprise the average person, if not biologists.

Wait a minute...stepped off a cliff again. Twice.

"...and may be doing so today"? Really? How confident are we again?

"...continued to evolve as recently as 5,800 years ago". Really?

5,800 years ago? Not 5,700? Not 5,900? How about almost 6,000 years ago? How about 6,000 plus or minus 1000 years ago? Are you sure? Are you that sure? Does the validity of this discovery hinge on how sure you are?

Let's press on and see how sure we are.

"We, including scientists, have considered ourselves as sort of the pinnacle of evolution," noted lead researcher Bruce Lahn, a University of Chicago geneticist whose studies appear in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

"There's a sense we as humans have kind of peaked," agreed Greg Wray, director of Duke University's Center for Evolutionary Genomics. "A different way to look at is it's almost impossible for evolution not to happen."

Wow, that sounds pretty sure. So sure, that "it's almost impossible for evolution not to happen." But then again, how likely is it that a director of a "Center for Evolutionary Genomics" is going to speak up and say that genetics don't show evolution? Really now. He'd have trouble finding a seat at the center's Darwin party. Let's see if anyone disagrees with all of this certainty.

Still, the findings also are controversial, because it's far from clear what effect the genetic changes had or if they arose when Lahn's "molecular clock" suggests - at roughly the same time period as some cultural achievements, including written language and the development of cities.

Lahn and colleagues examined two genes, named microcephalin and ASPM, that are connected to brain size. If those genes don't work, babies are born with severely small brains, called microcephaly.

Using DNA samples from ethnically diverse populations, they identified a collection of variations in each gene that occurred with unusually high frequency. In fact, the variations were so common they couldn't be accidental mutations but instead were probably due to natural selection, where genetic changes that are favorable to a species quickly gain a foothold and begin to spread, the researchers report.

Lahn offers an analogy: Medieval monks would copy manuscripts and each copy would inevitably contain errors - accidental mutations. Years later, a ruler declares one of those copies the definitive manuscript, and a rush is on to make many copies of that version - so whatever changes from the original are in this presumed important copy become widely disseminated.

Scientists attempt to date genetic changes by tracing back to such spread, using a statistical model that assumes genes have a certain mutation rate over time.

For the microcephalin gene, the variation arose about 37,000 years ago, about the time period when art, music and tool-making were emerging, Lahn said. For ASPM, the variation arose about 5,800 years ago, roughly correlating with the development of written language, spread of agriculture and development of cities, he said.

"The genetic evolution of humans in the very recent past might in some ways be linked to the cultural evolution," he said.

Other scientists urge great caution in interpreting the research.

That the genetic changes have anything to do with brain size or intelligence "is totally unproven and potentially dangerous territory to get into with such sketchy data," stressed Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Aside from not knowing what the gene variants actually do, no one knows how precise the model Lahn used to date them is, Collins added.

Uh oh. Trouble in the tribe. Let's bypass for a moment the accuracy of the "molecular clock". I'm just going to relish the quote that it's "totally unproven and potentially dangerous territory to get into with such sketchy data". Delicious.

But, did they at least hang with the study author about the 5,800 years? Let's look:

Lahn's own calculations acknowledge that the microcephalin variant could have arisen anywhere from 14,000 to 60,000 years ago, and that the uncertainty about the ASPM variant ranged from 500 to 14,000 years ago.
Those criticisms are particularly important, Collins said, because Lahn's testing did find geographic differences in populations harboring the gene variants today. They were less common in sub-Saharan African populations, for example.

That does not mean one population is smarter than another, Lahn and other scientists stressed, noting that numerous other genes are key to brain development.

"There's just no correlation," said Duke's Wray, calling education and other environmental factors more important for intelligence than DNA anyway.

Uh oh. Not quite the precision that "5,800 years" implied. Not that I believe the other numbers either. 14,000 to 60,000 years ago? Really? I guess if you have better numbers, use them.

After you re-read the total article a couple of times you have to ask yourself two questions:

1. How many "probably"s and "may have"s does it take for a discovery to just become a inconsequential statement made by someone trying to justify their research?

2. How - in any way, shape, or form - does this article hold up and have any news value for the Associated Press to report?

But, I must say, I had fun heckling it.

The Most Serious Story that You're not Watching

Able Danger.

It's the story that's flying under the radar in politics right now. Washed out, if you will, by hurricane's and war. It's there, percolating. Ready to explode in Senate hearings and on the internet. But not yet. Two more weeks and it might bubble up.

Here is a quick summary of the Able Danger story, in case you have missed it:

- Army Special Forces command, probably responding to a tasking to prepare for terrorist activity, set up a secretive task force called "Able Danger" using existing personnel reorganized into a project team.

- Able Danger set out to identify the terrorist threat

- Able Danger employed the work of a brilliant computer specialist who developed a "data mining" technique to plow through huge amounts of "open source" (non-classified) data to find patterns identifying terrorists. The open source data consisted of driver's license data, voting records, etc. The amount of data utilized exceeded 2 terabytes. (Almost 25% of the material in the Library of Congress. Huge amounts of data)

- According to the Able Danger team, in 2000 they had identified several potential terrorists, including Mohammed Atta - eventual leader of the 911 hijacking teams - and his terrorist cell in Brooklyn. They had it charted out on the wall, including Atta's picture.

- The Able Danger team tried to pass this information on to the FBI for action. They scheduled 3 meetings with the FBI. Each meeting was cancelled, probably by Defense Department lawyers.

- The Able Danger team was disbanded before 911, apparently because their dragnet had also picked up information on U.S. nationals and caused some embarrassment. All 2.4 terabytes of data were deleted, without the consent of the general in charge.

- Two weeks after 9/11, Congressman Curt Weldon claims that he took a copy of the Able Danger chart with Atta's picture on it to the White House where he gave it to a National Security Council deputy.

- The 9/11 Commission staff was briefed on Able Danger, but discounted it and did not include it in it's report.

- Congressman Weldon has been trying to highlight the Able Danger information to make the case that the 9/11 Commission did not do it's full duty in this regard. He and a Lt. Col from the team have been making the rounds of talk shows discussing the controversial fact that they had identified Atta before 9/11.

- The 9/11 Commission and the Pentagon have both been publicly trying to discredit the Able Danger witnesses. Four more team members have publicly come out to support the Lt. Col's version of the story and are ready to testify.

- Sen. Arlen Specter opened hearings last week in the U.S. Senate on Able Danger. Congressman Weldon testified. The 5 members of the Able Danger team were ready to testify, but were prohibited by the Pentagon from doing so in open hearings.

- After mounting pressure, the Pentagon reversed itself this week. The five team members will testify on October 5th in the Senate.

The pressing issues are:

- Why was the team not allowed to coordinate their findings with the FBI? Was it "the wall", erected by Commissioner Jaime Gorelick when she was Janet Reno's deputy AG at the Justice Department? Has the "wall" been taken down?

- Had Able Danger given the leads to the FBI, could 9/11 have been prevented?

- Why did the 9/11 Commission discount the information and not include it in the final report?

- Most importantly: If the team had that level of sophistication in identifying potential terrorists, why isn't it in operation today protecting us?

Tune in to the hearings on October 5th. Yes, you may have to find it on C-Span. But, it's worth your time. You can fit it in between hurricane stories.

70's Flashbacks

My formative years were in the 70's. I can relate to the 70's. And it seemed like I was inundated this weekend on TV with the 70's:

- That 70's show reruns nonstop on every channel. That one sparks a lot of deja vu with me.

- Breaking Bonaduce: a reality show with 70's star Danny Bonaduce. An irresistble primetime reality theraputic train wreck.

- a music infomercial with "songs of the 70's" - hosted by Greg Brady

- a ridiculous anti-war rally featuring fringe hippies spouting ridiculous hysterical rhetoric about the "facists" dragging us into an illegal war on the mall in Washington D.C. An amalgam of drop-outs and malcontents representing every fringe niche of the left railing against the administration.

Oh. Wait a minute. That last one wasn't actually from the 70's. It happened yesterday in Washington D.C. It just looked like the 70's, hippies and all.

the Importance of Judges

By coincidence, as the nation's representatives in the U.S. Senate confirm for us the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, two judgements come down from lower courts that demonstrate how much power judges have and how much damage to our society that they can do with imprudent rulings:

1. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the current statement of the pledge, which includes the phrase "under God", is unconstitutional.

This action of a few, the judges, on behalf of a minority, a group seeking to remove all expressions of belief from the public square, is clearly not the will of the majority of Americans - who would support the pledge as is. This thwarting of the majority is to the court's peril in the esteem with which the public holds the judiciary.

2. A federal judge in Michigan has declared unconstitutional a Michigan law which bans partial-birth abortion.
Here are some truths about this awful and unwise decision:

- Every time the people's representatives take this up as a legislative issue, they vote to ban this barbaric procedure.

- Every time a judge rules on the law passed by the legislatures, they rule it unconstitutional.

One judge thwarting the expressed will of the people's representatives. This is untenable, and is the reason that abortion is still such a polarizing hot button issue. The people, via their representatives, are not allowed to settle the matter in a democratic fashion.

In this case, one liberal judge appointed by Bill Clinton thwarted the will of Michigan's legislature. Untenable.

In the case of partial-birth abortion, this tendency of the judiciary to stop the democratic process is particularly eggregious because partial-birth abortion is itself eggregious and barbaric. The judge in question apparently offered the opinion that the law presented an "undue burden" on women seeking an abortion. I personally have no problem balancing the barbarity of the act against that undue burden and in coming down in favor of the law, which expressed the will of the people of Michigan. But, I'm not wearing a black robe so my opinion doesn't count.

Supporters of this procedure, and of the judges who regularly rescue them from the expressed will of the majority, often argue that these bans of partial-birth abortions are faulty because they do not contain exceptions for the life or health of the mother. These arguments are themselves faulty because this procedure has nothing to do with the life or health of the mother. But then again, most supporters of the "right to choose" this barbaric procedure are entirely ignorant of the realities of this procedure. They simply support this right reflexively thinking, erroneously that they are being noble. They are not. Supporting barbarity is barbaric, not noble.

I have yet to have a discussion with a supporter of the "right to choose" a partial-birth procedure who could even begin to adequately describe the actual procedure. This is not trivial. It is central to the argument. Most people do not want to know the actual details of the procedure due to squeamishness. In fact, the purveyors of this barbarity count on your squeamishness to continue to practice without scrutiny.

***Squeamishness alert: description of partial-birth abortion follows. However, if you're too squeamish to know the truth about the procedure, you forfeit the right to have an opinion on it ***

For starters, no one that I have had this discussion in person with knew that the procedure takes 3 days. 3 days. If your life was in jeopardy, would you "choose" a procedure that takes 3 days over a C-section. Of course not. So, let's dispense with the "life of the mother" nonsense, because that is not the reason for choosing this procedure.

No pro-choicer that I've had this discussion with knew the mechanics of the procedure. The dilation of the cervix over 3 days using laminaria. The blind positioning with forceps of the baby in a breech position. The delivery of the child up to and except it's head. Puncturing the baby's skull with sharpened scissors. Sucking the brains out with a vacuum. Finally, completing a delivery of a dead baby.

It's not about the health of the mother. If the mother's health was in jeopardy, would you intentionally position the baby in breech which has a higher complication rate? Would you stop the delivery at the neck?

The procedure is not about the life of the mother. The procedure is not about the health of the mother. The procedure is about delivering a dead, intact, baby. Dead, because that is the result the mother has elected with her "right to choose". Intact, to reduce the liability of the abortionist - who risks leaving body parts inside if he uses other traditional methods at the late date.

That's the reality of partial-birth abortion.

It's barbaric. And I have no trouble at all labelling supporters of this "right" as barbarians.

Including this judge. A barbarian in a black robe.

It's time to start impeachment procedures for some of these out of control judges. That's the only check available against those who would regularly thwart the will of the majority.

Confirm Judge Roberts Quickly.

The confirmation hearings have started for John Roberts, nominee to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice.

In normal times it would be difficult to listen to blowhard Senators primp for the cameras (in all cases) and assault the nominee (in the case of the blindly partisan Democrats on the Judiciary Committee). Only the most rabid Bush-hating left would dispute that Roberts is technically qualified for the seat with his impeccable resume. The President had the right to nominate him, and the Republicans have the votes to confirm him. That's what you get when you win elections.

So all that's left is the show.

And these aren't normal times. We have a national disaster on the Gulf Coast that needs attending to. We don't have time for blowhard Senators to put on a show for the sake of their base.

Two days.

Ask your inane questions.

Then vote. Up or down. But vote.

Confirm the judge, and then get on with - for example - reexamining that pork laden transportation bill to trim out the ridiculous projects and put money into real infrastructure improvements like levees.

Liberal Bubble

I had ocassion to pass through a major university town this week. It's been a long time since I was in the liberal bubble that is a college campus these days. Wow. No doubt about it. Time stands still there and the ground tilts distinctly left.

I noticed it immediately when I stopped for a burger. I had to wait an inordinately long time to be waited on. Why? Because the staff was deeply involved in hectoring a young man that they had just "discovered" was a PK - a preacher's kid. They all had to get their licks in, calling the poor unfortunate a "probable hypocrite" and ridiculing the fact that he had probably been dragged to church "every time the door was open." Only after they had all sufficiently piled on could they remember to ask "May I help you". Ahhh, the vaunted tolerance of the left. Apparently diversity is not big enough to accept a PK. But then again, I just wanted a burger.

That was immediately followed by an attempt to check into a hotel. I say attempt, because again I had to stand and wait while the staff tried to one-up each other on how evil drug companies were because they were out to make a profit on their research. "God forbid a drug company would develop a drug that benefits humanity and give it away for free!" Are we done yet? Everyone got their licks in on the evils of capitalism? Because, if you are done celebrating the enlightenment of your own intellects, can I get a room? I work for a living, my work day is not over yet, and I have paperwork to do. But don't let that get in the way of next hour's open forum at the check-in desk on the wonders of Marxism.

Apparently, the most important thing in the liberal bubble is talk. Not work, certainly. But talk. Lot's of it.

It took me back 25 years, when I myself was an undisciplined radical lefty who loved to rant about stuff that made me feel educated at the time but embarass me to think about today.

Yes, nothing has changed. Time stands still in the liberal bubble.

Biting My Tongue

There are so many observations that I want to make regarding Hurricane Katrina and it's aftermath.

All insightful and relevant.

None of them helpful. Not while people are still suffering.

So, I've donated to two organizations and am looking for other ways to help.

And biting my tongue.

God bless the sufferers and the helpers.

Still Spitting on Soldiers

One of the widely recognized shameful behaviors of our past would be the disgraceful behavior of the ant-war left spitting on soldiers as they returned from Vietnam.

At least, I thought it was recognized as shameful. I thought that lesson was learned and would not be repeated.

I was disabused of that notion a couple of weeks ago via a report on one of the fringe left's current means of protest. That involves the group "Code Pink", supporters of Cindy Sheehan - who was in her own right spitting on soldiers by jumping in front of every microphone she can find to assert that the soldiers are killers who are not fighting for a noble cause and that our enemy are "freedom fighters". It seems that Code Pink has started protesting outside of Walter Reed Army Hospital, where returning injured war veterans are treated. Code Pink chooses Friday nights, when the veterans and their families leave the hospital by bus for a meal, to stage their most vocal protests including laying out fake caskets on the sidewalk. They want the veterans to know that they were injured for nothing. Nice.

And I was disabused of the notion that the left learned to be civilized again today. I was listening to a radio interview of a National Guard chopper pilot who spent most of the last week airlifting 1700 people off of rooftops to safety in New Orleans. The pilot got to go home after that and expected a good reaction. Instead, he got picked at by haters and blamers who wanted to know why he "hadn't done more". The pilot said that the attacks took him right back to his experience coming home from Vietnam, which took him 25 years to get over. Nice.

Both activities boil down to one common thing to me - the left's 2005 version of spitting on the troops.

It was despicable then. It's despicable now. Cut it out.

Disaster - Lessons Learned So Far

I've learned a few lessons from the Gulf Region Disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the greatest natural disaster in our lifetime - so far:

1. The scope of disaster is mindboggling. I just can't completely comprehend the level of human suffering that has ocurred and that is still ocurring, with people still trapped and a million people displaced.

2. The strength of America is incomprehensible as well.

I heard Condi Rice interviewed this morning saying that the greatness of America is that we care about each other. I would quibble with that. I think people worldwide care about each other in a disaster. The greatness of America is that we've built a society that can pick ourselves up from a disaster, without waiting for the world to come in to rescue us. It's a strong society that has built the structure to rescue itself.

3. The capacity of people to fingerpoint and blame is endless.

I'm outraged by all of the politicians and media/talking heads coming out of the woodwork to blame the Bush administration for deaths.

Folks, get real.

The first response to emergency is local. The mayor and his administration. If you must fingerpoint, you have to start with the fact that they failed their citizens badly. Did Bush send thousands of people into the Superdome with not enough food, water, or security? No. The mayor's people did. Did Bush leave tens of buses parked, to be later flooded, instead of deploying them to evacuate people before the storm? No. All you have to do is look at the AP photo on the "Drudgereport" of all the school buses parked and flooded to know who the first level of failure was.

The second response is the state level. If you have to fingerpoint, you have to put Govenor Blanco on the hook. Did Bush fail to deploy the National Guard quickly enough? No. Lay that at Govenor Blanco's doorstep. Instead of crying on TV, overwhelmed, she should have led. Where were the 8000 members of the Guard who were not deployed to Iraq? For that matter, where were the State Police of Louisiana? Why did Mississippi (who took the direct hit of Katrina and suffered massive damage) and Alabama not collapse the way Blanco did?

What's clear to me is that the government levels in Louisiana, know to be thoroughly corrupt, failed to protect their citizens.

The last response is federal, who step in to rescue overwhelmed local and state resources. Were they slower to respond than they should have been? Maybe? I don't know. But a lot of people are accusing FEMA and others unfairly.

I'm tired already of the race pimps (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson) throwing around the "racist" accusations.

And, how many fingerpointing Democrats, who were the first and second levels of failure, do I have to watch on TV blaming Washington to gain political traction? It's unseemly.

I watched the President of Jefferson Parish on "Meet the Press" this morning telling a heartbreaking story of a woman who was not rescued, and who drowned on Friday, accusing the feds of not helping enough. How does that make sense? If you were right there and couldn't save her, how do you expect the people can come in from several states away and save her? Obviously, I cut this traumatized man a lot of slack in his grief. But enough already, of the blame game.

4. The mainstream media is essentially irrelevant as newsgathering operations.

I wanted to tune in for a few hours last night. What did I find?

CNN and Fox News - excellent and moving coverage
MSNBC - some good, some bad
ABC - worthless. Showing reruns of Super Nanny while people are dying
CBS - worthless. Disgraced anchor Dan Rather interviewing some fingerpointers.

Meet the Press was disgraceful this morning, with Tim Russert in full meltdown mode calling for the Secretary of Homeland Security to resign. Did he question Mayor Nagin? Did he question Governor Blanco? No, just the feds.

5. If you're depending on government, at any level, to keep you safe in a disaster you're making a mistake.

I'm quietly reviewing my preparedness for disaster.

Checking my supplies: food, water, batteries.

Rethinking disaster plans.

Inventorying the guns I own (9mm, rifles, shotgun) and ammo. If you think that's crazy, ask some of the fleeing evacuees this week if they wished they were armed.

Now that I've had my say on lessons and fingerpointing - back to the helping.

Do something. Make a donation. Conserve energy. Take in someone.

Enough fingerpointing.

How Thin is the Veneer of Society?

It is very disconcerting, to say the least, to see anarchy break out in the streets of a major American city. Doubly so on the heels of the worst natural disaster in our country's history.

I have nothing to say politically about the disaster unfolding on our TV screens.

I have only sadness.

And compassion.

For those who are suffering.

For those reacting - those doing it "right" and those doing it "wrong". Thank God they're reacting.

For the beseiged mayors of devastated cities.

For governors and representatives who need to pull together a massive relief effort.

For our President and the Federal officials.

Let's step in and back them all up.

I do have some level of disgust:

For all of those I see on TV throwing the race card into the discussion. You're not helping. Shut the hell up.

For anyone trying to gain political traction out of people's misery and death. You're not helping. Shut the hell up.

And for the criminals who are preying on desperate people in New Orleans. They need to be taken down immediately.

Prayers, and action, for the suffering. That should be our focus.