Today is Martin Luther King's real birthday.In 1964, Martin Luther King became the youngest person to ever be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. >> To read more.
Yesterday Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction, was sworn into office. Jindall, a Republican, is a former two-term Member of Congress and the son of Indian immigrants. Jindal takes over from
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I'm excited about Jindal, a very smart man who is also (heaven help us) of my generation, but I diagree that Blanco was a "disaster." Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were disasters.
ReplyDeleteGov. Blanco was an energetic and determined advocate for her state when it needed her most.
You are right that the hurricanes were the defining disaster of her Administration, and she did NOT cause them. Blanco was simply the person in the Governor's chair when the long-expected wind and waves came to knock Louisiana to the ground. In that sense, she was simply the last car in a long train of failed political leadership, and perhaps it is unfair to blame her too harshly when the roots of the disaster are far longer than her tenure. For decades the levees had not been properly strengthened, the pumps had not been updated, and the disaster plan had remained poorly thought out. It did not help that FEMA was a basket case (and it still is), and that Bush did not give a damn (and he still doesn't). Nor did it help that a city build so close to the ocean and lower than sea level could probably not be saved no matter what you did. Mother Nature does tend to bat last.
ReplyDeleteHere in DC, when the bomb goes off (and it will), our locally leaders will show us what disaster plans they have, and chaos is sure to reign supreme and we may learn to eat the dead. Only after the fire, do we REALLY understand the need to invest in more fire extinguishers. And only after the bomb goes off in DC will I look back and, with complete clarity. say: "You know, I really should have taken that job in Montana."
Patrick