I was absent from blogging while my telephone line was down. Yes, I am still a part of that backward part of the world where the phone lines are not buried and are subject to wind damage. I am also not yet a part of the high-speed Internet world, although that is due more to my own laziness; I must clear enough of the basement from the detritus accumulated by myself and DH, otherwise known as darling-pack-rat, so that some limber and ambitious soul (who I will pay well) can run new wiring through my narrow, rocky, and otherwise unpleasant crawlspace otherwise known as a basement.
Being one who does not think about things that I can do nothing about, I also neglected to keep any record of my activities during the 5 day on-line moratorium. Nonetheless, here are a couple of quotes, without comment, that have been on my mind:
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“Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible – Democrats who are rediscovering poverty and blaming it on George W. Bush, or Republicans who are rediscovering poverty and claiming that the government can fix it. Both sides are unwilling to face reality: We haven’t rediscovered poverty, we have rediscovered the underclass; the underclass ha been growing during all the years that people were ignoring it, including the Clinton years; and the programs politicians tout as solutions are a mismatch for the people who constitute the problem.”
Charles Murray, editorial, WSJ 9/29/2005
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And further, from the Comment section of the new (November) Atlantic Monthly:
“Things Left Undone”
Richard A. Clarke, Atlantic Monthly, November 2005
“And now we see that our ability to deal with the aftermath of disasters, whatever their cause, has actually regressed since the mid-1990s when FEMA was an independent agency with cabinet status run by competent and nonpartisan personnel.”
And further down:
“People concerned about readiness on the home front have taken to comparing the cost of specific projects to the “burn rate” of spending on the war, as in this analysis published in Mother Jones: security upgrades for all subway and commuter-rail systems, or twenty days in Iraq; security upgrades for 361 US ports, or four days in Iraq; explosives screening for all US passenger-airline baggage, or ten days in Iraq.”
In conclusions:
“Many Americans are familiar with a prayer of confession, perhaps learned in childhood, that includes the line “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done: and concludes “Have mercy upon us”. It is time we admit we have left things undone, and set about doing them.”
All in keeping with my own drivel from previous posts.