Andreson Cooper is Awesome

This excerpt is awesome, from NYTimes about Anderson Cooper, anchor for CNN.

Mr. Cooper's Sept. 1 interview with Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, marked a turning point in the tone of hurricane coverage as he snapped when she began thanking federal officials for their recovery efforts.

"Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting," Mr. Cooper interjected. "I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

"And when they hear politicians slap - you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours."

The Environment

I had this thought a while ago, before this blog, but I would like to make my prediction now, just for the record. I think it was about 6 months ago, when there were early reports of conservative Republicans representing the Christian Coalition advocating the protection of the earth and its environment, because the Bible asks that humans be good stewards and take care of what God has given to us.

For me this was a turning point in politics waiting to happen. The growing concerns over oil in the Middle East, the diminishing supplies of oil worldwide, and global warming becoming a scientifically confirmed phenomenon convinced me that the environment and environmental concerns are going to be the hot-button issue in the next presidential election. Even more, it will be the issue that wins the presidency. So that was my prediction. With conservative Christian politicians backing this typically left-leaning political issue, I see it as a common ground that the Democrats can really rally behind to grab the attention of a broad spectrum of voters. I was so convinced that I even bought a clean energy ETF (the only one that exists), PBW, and it is doing quite well now, I must say.

While environmental issues have stayed out of the headlines in recent months, I still think that now is its time to shine. Human disregard for the environment contributed to the severity of Katrina's storm, from the erosion of the barrier islands that would have absorbed some of the energy and power of those ridiculous winds to the global warming that made such a powerful storm in the first place. Deep within the current political atmosphere, I see the environment being a unifying theme. We can plan for the future by environmental planning for the Louisiana coastline to mitigate the risks of complete and utter destruction by storms and hurricanes and floods. We can invest in more clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our contribution to global warming. If I could make an investment in the environment as a political issue, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Getty Images

I think Getty Images is awesome. They have such good quality pictures for almost any type of picture I'd want to include in a presentation or in graphic art. I used to think the little gettyimages watermark on all the pictures was annoying, until I found out that it goes away if you sign up for a free account. Anyways, I thought this picture was kind of funny.

Cultural Differences

I really like this article by Nicolas Kristof of the NY Times. He comments on the horrors and degeneration of civilization in New Orleans after the hurricane.

One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.

"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."

Personally, I've been finding it interesting to view the looting and anarchy in New Orleans in light of other responses to other disasters. While it may be unfair to compare the breakdown of civilization after Katrina and the cooperation and strength of NYC after 9/11, I did comment to Blaurb the other day how the response after the tsunami wasn't nearly as bad as it is reported to be in New Orleans. Kristof's comments further support the notion that Americans were behaving very very badly.

I've begun to ask myself the question: What makes New Orleans so crazy? I've come to three thoughts on this.

1) Competition. As society breaks down, competition naturally becomes more fierce. The fact that it happened in America may have exascerbated this effect, since our entire political and economic system is based on the competition and capitalism. Knowing that, it just plunged society into darkness, as each and every person saw the disaster not as a tragedy, but as opening up more opportunities. On a side note, my first thought that triggered this theory was that N.O. was in the "middle of the country" a.k.a. in a "red state," and that meant that they were republican and probably even more competitive than if this tragedy had happened in say California or Boston.

2) Polarization of Society. I think that as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, people in crises tend to help each other less. Perhaps this is because the rich and poor can't relate to each other and fully understand each others' plight? As a rich person, getting out of N.O. would be a relatively simple task; could he not understand how difficult it would be for a poor black family in the worst parts of town to get out? In a fishing village flattened by the tsunami, I'd know all my neighbors. Some may be richer and some may be poorer, but we all understand each other and have similar access to resources. In that environment, I hypothesize that there would be less looting and more compassion amongst survivors.

3) Technological Gaps. Perhaps our society has progressed and become so dependent on technology, that we don't know what existed before. It's like when you're in math class in elementary school, learning addition and subtraction, and you think, "We have calculators now. Why do I need to learn how to add?" Or the same question I asked myself in high school, "We have TI-89s now. Why do I need to learn Calculus?" When the electricity went out and the phoen system went down, society no longer knew how to operate. The infrastructure certainly wasn't there. No one was taught how to survive without electricity. No one was taught how to survive on their own. With telephone and the Internet, no one was forced to get to know their neighbors. The New Orleans community wasn't a community at all. The citizens didn't know each other, they simply inhabited the same city. Could this breakdown in the local community have fueled the rampant looting and crime in New Orleans?

Government

After 5 years with this Bush administration, I've been starting to think about how I would characterize it in the history books. Early on, I would have been one to hold the view that, sure, Bush is dumb (or at least dumb-sounding) but he puts smart people around himself and he listens to them. When the Iraq war started, I still kind of held that view, likening the Iraq situation a little over-exuberance on the part of the Bush administration (revenge for Daddy). When it came out that there were no WMDs, I definitely thought there was some "irrational exuberance" (to take a phrase from the venerable Alan Greenspan) going on, along with some mistakes made by poor leadership.

The whole vacation thing has pissed me off, too. The president should not be allowed to vacation, and definitely not during a war or during a national crisis like Hurricane Katrina. The lack of compassion and concern in Bush's response has led me to believe that this administration is one the history books will call idealistic and naive. Highly principled, short-sighted (and dangerously so, as we have seen), and quick to retaliate against its enemies, Bush and his administration need to grow up.

What happens when someone speaks out against the administration or something Bush and his cronies are doing? They get punished, as we have seen with Cindy Sheehan, Valerie Plame and her husband, the Justice Department guy who attempted to call more attention to rises in racial profiling of Latinos and African-Americans, the list goes on, even as you go further back before Bush became President. How childish. Bush is like the class bully, where you know that if you tell on him, he'll come to getcha.

And Iraq? Bush is like a stubborn little boy, who won't admit he's wrong and "stays the course" at the peril of other American lives. Remember the debate between Kerry and Bush, where a woman asked Bush to talk about mistakes he's made in his first term? Remember how Bush couldn't give a straight answer? Now I realize, that maybe that's because he doesn't think he's made any mistakes.

How about the disasters that have occurred on Bush's watch? One word: Unprepared. It's true that planning and organization are higher-order functions of the brain, so naturally, this administration sucks at them. 9/11 might have been avoided or foiled before disaster struck, if, perhaps, Bush had paid more attention to the reports about the safety and security of America. Of course, safety and security are issues that we shouldn't expect from someone as immature as Bush; he's only a child. For those of you who've seen Fahrenheit 911, do you remember Bush's dumbstruck expression upon hearing the news about the World Trade Center? I'll give him credit for the months after 9/11, as he provided leadership to coordinate the outpouring of aid and the reconstruction of New York. It still didn't stop him from using the opportunity to manipulate the world towards his own agenda, however. And Hurricane Katrina? I find it easier to imagine the Bush administration as a 4-year old child who has just heard the news about the disaster. He hears the news but can't comprehend what it means, and how to help.

Too bad there isn't a Supernanny for Presidents. Maybe we should be thinking more about child psychology when dealing with this administration.