Catblogging: A Campin' We Will Go Edition

Priorities

In light of recent and upcoming events, it is interesting to note that

Procter & Gamble says it spends more than $5 million a day developing products like Olay's Regenerist, which uses an "exclusive Amino-Peptide Complex" to minimize fine lines and age spots.

Discuss.

Not So Fast

One of several bitter and harsh messages that Hurricane Katrina has delivered to the poor in this country should be a surprise: You cannot count on public transit or public officials to get you out of harm's way when it's important for you to leave your home.

That was certainly true in New Orleans and is probably true anywhere else in this country. And it's always "been the book" on public transit: You move to its schedule, it doesn't move to yours. If you're especially in a hurry, well, gee, that's too bad.

Car ownership in the developing world -- China and India, in particular -- is skyrocketing. If you can afford the additional choice and safety of a private car -- wherever you are in the world -- you buy it.

And there, as here, it's the poorest of the poor who can't buy that choice and are left to fend for themselves in the slim pickings of what's left.

Rather than fantasize about a world where jobs long gone now suddenly migrate back to the center of Minneapolis and St. Paul because of high gas prices, a more realistic and compassionate approach for the Star Tribune and others would be to find a way to get more of the poor real transportation: private cars.

Light rail or a bus won't get a new immigrant to a good construction job in Blaine, or Hugo, or a manufacturing job in Monticello or Rosemount.

And it sure won't get him and his family out of town when the sirens go off.

What's needed is creative thinking about car use and car costs (like insurance) ... and the roads they will need to drive on. Certainly car ownership, like home ownership, should be the focus of good government policy concerned for the long-term health of our region and the country.

-The world would do better with more private cars
Fritz Knaak
23 Sep 2005

Ah, yes, more cars equals good policy. Good to GM and Exxon, maybe, but not to everyone else. And why root for China and India to have car ownership rates equivalent to ours? Consider the combined population of China and India - 2.386.578.200. That is about 37% of the entire population of planet earth.

There are about 225 million registered cars in the US. Doing some quick math, this would amount to 1,815,752,844 more cars on the road in China and India.

Cars that run on the same gas and oil we now lay claim to. China and India will want that oil. China owns the bulk of our national debt. China - and India - are both nuclear powers. China and India have begun forming an alliance. And what about Iran? Others are getting in on the game, too. If you think gas is expensive now, just wait...

Second, there has been massive government policy and subsidy for years to funnel people into private automobiles and to destroy public transit. Slowly, we are beginning to realize that transit - and mixed use development - is needed.

But go ahead, put all your transportation eggs into one basket; a basket that a much bigger mofo is eyeing up. It doesn't bother me - I don't have a car. Just don't come cryin' to me about a government bailout when you can't afford to fill up your tank.

And I'll bet you the biggest whiners will be the "free-market" "libertarians".

This much is clear: we cannot lay absolute claim to the world's oil for much longer. Better to give it up and discover new energy sources than to have it ripped from our hands at a moment of others' choosing.

Oh, and as far as getting out of town when a hurricane is coming, haven't you been watching the news?

Crawling through Houston's northern suburbs yesterday afternoon, the resident of Missouri City, Texas, grew increasingly worried that she would be trapped in her car when the hurricane hit.

"It's hell," she said as she idled on Interstate 45. "There's no gas. There's no food ... the bathroom is a problem.

"I guess at this point my strategy is to pray," Kritikakis said. "I thought about going home, but I probably don't have enough gas to get back. ... At this rate, there are going to be a lot of hurt people."
[...]
With temperatures in the 90s, many cars were overheating, as were some tempers.

"I've been screaming in the car," said Abbie Huckleby, who was trapped on Interstate 45 with her husband and two children as they tried to get from the Houston suburb of Katy to Dallas, about 250 miles away. "It's not working. If I would have known it was this bad, I would have stayed at home and rode out the storm at home."

-Evacuees fear being trapped on highways
Seattle Times
23 Sep 2005

Catblogging: Post Hiatus Edition

Final Solution

Our own Roger Clegg noted last year that "Birth rates for unmarried women vary widely by race and Hispanic origin ... Among African Americans, 68.2 percent of births are illegitimate, versus 23.0 percent for non-Hispanic whites."

Meanwhile, so far as males are concerned, the Bureau of Justice reports that "At midyear 2004 there were 4,919 black male prison and jail inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,717 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 717 white male inmates per 100,000 white males."

Under the circumstances, to say, as Steve Sailer does, that African Americans "tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups," and "need stricter moral guidance from society" does not seem to me very outrageous.

Unless, that is, you believe that it is ill-mannered to talk about these things at all... in which case you had better take the matter up with Roger Clegg and the Bureau of Justice for their "shocking," "unspeakable," and "tasteless" breaches of etiquette.

-"Judgement and Guidance"
The Corner, National Review Online
5 Sep 2005

Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
Baker explains later he didn't intend flippancy but has long wanted to improve low-income housing.

-"The Shame"
The Stakeholder
9 Sep 2005

In 1904, Alfred Ploetz founded the German Eugenics Society. Sixteen years later, a work seminal to the development of the German eugenics movement, The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, was published. Written by Karl Binding, a widely respected judge, and renowned psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, the work was key to the formulation of Nazi ideology, rhetoric and practice:

[It] defended the theory which stated that the elimination of "worthless people" should be legalized. Thus the concepts of "worthless life" or "life unworthy of life" used by the Nazis come from that book. Binding and Hoche speak in that book about "worthless human beings". [Binding and Hoche] plead for "the elimination of those who cannot be saved, ... whose death is an urgent need" ... [and] about those who are below the beast[s] [with] "neither the will to live nor to die". [The book also refers] to those who are "mentally dead" and who form "a foreign body to the human society".

The work of Ploetz and the words of Binding and Hoche were the foreshadowings of Hitler's "final solution" two decades later.

-The Holocaust
Wikipedia
accessed 9 Sep 2005

NOLA Needs Your Help

I'll have to figure out how to do a banner or something, but here are some links to good organizations that are responding to Hurrican Katrina:

Mennonite Disaster Service

American Red Cross

Humane Society of the United States (don't forget our four-legged friends)

Muir Mail

Mr. Muir:

I see that you took exception to New Orleans resident Mike Franklin's rationalization for the rampant looting occurring in said city. To refreh your memory, Mr. Franklin's words were:

"To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society."

Your response was:

"I have doubts if Franklin can spell the words "crutch" or "entitlement" but he sure has the "somebody-owes-me" concept mastered."

Now, I realize that your response is cloistered in partisan code-words (i.e., "entitlement" as a synonym for "liberal mentality"), but consider the words of Donald Rumsfeld during the looting of Baghdad:

"Stuff happens."

Mr. Rumsfeld also sought to analyze the situation in Baghdad as "a spontaneous outburst of the oppressed Iraqi people" and that "free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."

Maybe that's where Mr. Franklin picked up his rationalization of the spiralling lawnessness in the streets of New Orleans.

Something to think about,

(mister serious)
Minneapolis, MN

Different Here

"The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's "Today" show. "We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them."
[...]
Bush expressed sympathy for those who were still suffering but also said there should be "zero tolerance" for breaking the law during an emergency situation.

-Troops, Police Deployed to Stop Looting
Associated Press
1 Sep 2005

Yet when rioters were tearing up the U.S.-controlled city of Baghdad last week, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld responded by saying, "Stuff happens." Then, echoing statements of other Bush administration apparatchiks, Rumsfeld described the looting of the city as an "untidy" display of freedom. In response to questions about the first signs of chaos in the streets of Baghdad, the Secretary of Defense told Americans that they were seeing "a spontaneous outburst of the oppressed Iraqi people..."

-'Stuff Happens': Riots? Looting?
The Nation, via Common Dreams
15 April 2003

Given the magnitude of the situation - a disaster like many of have never witnessed - I have a simple solution for the looting problem.

Shoot 'em. Shoot 'em on sight.
[...]
Perhaps a sign of the times we live in came in the comments from an individual identified as Mike Franklin, who lives in New Orleans. Talking to an Associated Press reporter, Franklin offered an explanation, albeit skewed, about the reason some people loot.

"To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society," Franklin said.

I have doubts if Franklin can spell the words "crutch" or "entitlement" but he sure has the "somebody-owes-me" concept mastered.

-Jim Muir: Thoughts on looters, shooters, fools and heroes
Southern Illinoisan
1 Sep 2005

"It is unfortunate that there was looting and damage done to the museum and we have offered rewards, as Secretary Rumsfeld has said, for individuals who may have taken items from the museum to bring those back," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush is spending a long Easter break.

-Bush Cultural Advisers Quit Over Iraq Museum Theft
Reuters, via Veterans for Peace
17 April 2003

The point is not to condone looting; but if it were, I could just say that the looting is simply an eruption of freedom-loving behaviour by NOLA's poor and oppressed.

Hey, BushCo said so.