Happy Birthday, Kevin!
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Black Saturday
Well, last night Marcella and I were invited to celebrate the big 40 of Kevin Gregory Carter. All week long I thought about the many memories that we have shared over the years. I got to share a few of those stories. I remember that Kevin (and Darren) were two of the first kids I met when my family moved from Huntington Beach to Sandy. Over the next few years there were many fun (and maybe stupid) times shared with my Ida Lane friends. We LOVED playing with fire. We pretty much figured out what was flamable. One day after playing in Kevin's garage lighting everything we opened up the garage door and all of this smoke piled out. I told the story when I lit the field on fire behind our neighborhood while Kevin and Scott were trying to light a model rocket. I remember the countless times we would sleep over at Kevin's house and then go down to the Centre theater. We would clean the theater and then going exploring. We would spend the entire Saturday running around downtown SLC. I CANNOT imagine letting my kids do that. Then we would ride the UTA bus back to Sandy for a whopping 10 cents. Kevin loved Spyra Gyra and the Doobie Brothers. I found him a Best of CD at target and a box of matches. I went to Kevin's mom's funeral, I was there at his wedding (just a day or two before mine) and I'm glad that he's back here in Utah County. His son, KJ, and JJ go to the same junior high school. Last year Kevin decided to leave the corporate world to start Inspiricpics. Happy Birthday, friend.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Random Thoughts
Well, I've been thinking about a bunch of things that I should blog about. I get excited to write in the morning but then I get too busy and then it's late at night and I'm tired. I should write more but at least I'm writing.
These thoughts are not in any specific order.
Thought 1:
Since I went on my diet/exercise kick 7 months ago I have lost over 30 pounds. I need to post another picture showing the much slimmer/trimmer me. Oh, someday.
Thought 2:
I STILL need to blog about my Sacramento trip, Holland, and Hawaii. Dang! It's been so long I wonder if it's even worth it.
Thought 3:
My buddy, Norm, sent me this link the other day about some guy in Germany that powers his car using dead cats. So all week long while driving to work, every time I see a dead cat on the road I've thought, "Dang, gas is so expensive!" The German needs to come here because there are 4 or 5 cats on the way to work splattered on the road.
Thought 4:
So I'm thinking about these roadside cats-for-fuel thing and then I seem something which to me seems pretty strange. Near the onramp for the Alpine/Highland exit they have been doing lots of construction for the past several months. Most of it has been for the Cabelas that just opened up. Anyhow, as I was passing this big bulldozer the driver stepped out of the cab. It was a young, blonde, tight t-shirt wearing woman. I thought that was pretty strange. I bet she is pretty popular at work.
Thought 5:
This is really why I wanted to blog this morning. Since my lovely wife had been confined to the bed/couch (she calls me the prison warden btw), Olive and I have had good quality time this week traveling back and forth from Highland to South Jordan. She is such a sweetheart. Each
morning and afternoon we rock out to various songs on daddy's iPod. She can pick out the song usually within a note or two. It doesn't matter what it is, she loves to sing with daddy. We listen to Big & Rich, Enrique, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Everclear, LeAnn Rimes, you name it. What a treat. I tried to play some Billy Squier this morning. She didn't like it.
Well that's it. No more thoughts (except ones that involve my pillow)
These thoughts are not in any specific order.
Thought 1:
Since I went on my diet/exercise kick 7 months ago I have lost over 30 pounds. I need to post another picture showing the much slimmer/trimmer me. Oh, someday.
Thought 2:
I STILL need to blog about my Sacramento trip, Holland, and Hawaii. Dang! It's been so long I wonder if it's even worth it.
Thought 3:
My buddy, Norm, sent me this link the other day about some guy in Germany that powers his car using dead cats. So all week long while driving to work, every time I see a dead cat on the road I've thought, "Dang, gas is so expensive!" The German needs to come here because there are 4 or 5 cats on the way to work splattered on the road.
Thought 4:
So I'm thinking about these roadside cats-for-fuel thing and then I seem something which to me seems pretty strange. Near the onramp for the Alpine/Highland exit they have been doing lots of construction for the past several months. Most of it has been for the Cabelas that just opened up. Anyhow, as I was passing this big bulldozer the driver stepped out of the cab. It was a young, blonde, tight t-shirt wearing woman. I thought that was pretty strange. I bet she is pretty popular at work.
Thought 5:
This is really why I wanted to blog this morning. Since my lovely wife had been confined to the bed/couch (she calls me the prison warden btw), Olive and I have had good quality time this week traveling back and forth from Highland to South Jordan. She is such a sweetheart. Each
morning and afternoon we rock out to various songs on daddy's iPod. She can pick out the song usually within a note or two. It doesn't matter what it is, she loves to sing with daddy. We listen to Big & Rich, Enrique, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Everclear, LeAnn Rimes, you name it. What a treat. I tried to play some Billy Squier this morning. She didn't like it.
Well that's it. No more thoughts (except ones that involve my pillow)
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Traverse Mountain: For the past few Saturdays this has been my challenge. First I ran to the top and back (about 8 miles or so) and the next Saturday, my buddy, Tim, took me up the top by riding our bikes and then once on top we rode trail after trail. It was beautiful but I was dang tired (and sore) after the 3+ hour trek. I wonder how long we will be able to enjoy such beautiful country.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Robert Tracinski revisited
A few days ago I sent an article by Robert Tracinski. I was very interested in the responses from all of you and so I thought I would share with all of you some of the responses. I really do
appreciate the thought and sentiment you all expressed.
Amen (I actually got several responses like this)
*********************************
What do you want me to say? Another right-wing bigot flaps his gums. This was my favorite quote:
*********************************
Well, I think it is way too early to make generalities about what exactly went wrong (if you can even pinpoint it to a certain thing)--but I think that when all is said and done, there will be plenty of blame to go around as far as whose at fault. I'm not sure I agree with the author's assertion that the welfare state is ultimately at fault, and his intimation that most people on welfare are parasites sucking the system dry... I actually think that's a bit of a crass generalization. The more I read about some of these people who were caught down there, the more I think about how much they're caught up in a cruel cycle... it's easy for us to say "well, if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything"--partticularly those of us that have had the relative comfort of a middle class up bringing... but if the more I read some of these people's stories, the more I wonder if that sentiment is applicable across the spectrum. I think there are some true barriers for some of these people to improve their stations in life...whether it be a child being born into an environment that makes it inconducive to actually getting a decent education, or the fact that their parents are unable to make a sufficiently decent living to provide such conducive environment.
That said, do I think the answer is the welfare state the author derides? Not necessarily... but I think that saying the welfare state is the end-all of the problem is trite and dogmatic... see the below article for some of the stories of people that didn't make it out... they don't really sound like welfare parasites to me...they just sound like people who were trying to get by and didn't have any other choice but to hang out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301508.html
*********************************
In my humble opinion, Robert here has it dead on, and political correctness is not allowing for an honest discussion of what truly went wrong.
*********************************
Re article, there may be an element of truth to the main message. Its no secret the NO has been a magnet for criminal activity for years, but it most likely presents an inaccurate picture to paint the general populace with the same brush as a few hundred/thousand criminals.
Besides, even normal or otherwise well adjusted people will do the unexpected when under tress or in shock. Its really ugly there, but your profession has been telling people for a long time that NO was a disaster waiting to happen.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Robert Tracinski
Until tonight, I have never heard of this guy. My Aunt sent me his article which I post (and hopefully properly credit) in its entirety. I want this somewhere where I can read it again:
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
An Objectivist Review
by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is
obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two
groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
An Objectivist Review
by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist
September 2, 2005
It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.
If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is
obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.
Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.
But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.
The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.
The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.
The man-made disaster is the welfare state.
For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.
When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).
So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?
To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:
"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.
"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....
"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.
"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "
The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.
What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?
Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?
My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)
What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.
There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two
groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.
All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.
No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.
What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)