Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Vaca for George II

The White House today had the unmitigated gall to announce that the President was "cutting his vacation short" to return to Washington to spearhead the Hurricane relief effort.

Excuse me? Why the hell wasn't he flying back to D.C. on Sunday when it became obvious that the gulf coast was going to see devastating damage? Why did he wait until over 20,000 people were on day three in the Superdome to declare that the homeland security department (with its vast resources and authority) would be the lead agency in the aftermath? Did he have to see the bodies floating through the streets of the "big easy" to realize that an American city will soon be compared with Calcutta?

It has been made me puke all weekend prior to the arrival of the deadly Katrina to see that Bush would go out on his regular speaking engagements and take a minute or two from the podium to give advice on "taking cover" and "protecting your families." Evacuation instructions and preparedness advice ... that's work for Governors. Bush is so desperate the change the subject away from Iraq, he'll even ride in on the tide of a Category 4 hurricane to do it.

And what will the help be that comes from George II? I guess we won't be listening to all that wonderful conservative drivel about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, will we? No testimonials rugged individualism, no siree ... this is going to be the time to pull out the big government big red pen and write some checks. These are the times when even Republicans are thrilled with the massive power and reach of the federal government. One hopes that the Dems can take some notes and try to remember these times when rhetoric of tax cutting turns up again and the question comes to "What has the federal government done for you lately?" I hope it will save my fellow citizens from starvation and dehydration and prevent the economy from crashing into an energy crisis-provoked recession.

It's a lot to hope for.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

A friend in Kneed

Oy. The month of July, now mercifully over, did not treat me well.

A minor knee injury became a worse injury, then was revealed to be more a chronic problem (cartilage loss on the back of the patella ... all loose in the joint resulting in pain, locking, etc). Finally virtually unable to walk on it, I had a scope procedure last week whose results are yet unclear. And during my recovery (plenty of time to surf and learn) I'm finding that this is at best a short term solution.

So, oh crap, perhaps another re-alignment or other open joint surgery to fix the underlying problem. I went through all of this in '76 and '78 and thought that was the end of it ... endured in my youth. Next week, my son has the second of his two re-alignments this year. It's a LONG, painful recovery. I'm still astonished at how exhausting this minor procedure has been.

Well, I'll have to make more use of the old laptop and return to the blogosphere. And being stranded with daytime TV ... oy! So now that Bush is in Crawford we can all settle in for a midsummernight's dream, right?