Republican or Democrat, American or Foreign, the politicos are fine subject for speculation, rumination and a bit of derision.
Michael Brown, Katrina and the Bloviating Lords
I watched the hearings on Hurricane Katrina in the House of Lords (a.k.a. The Senate) and also followed along on the live thread on the hearings on Freerepublic.com.
I think I've figured out the problem though this is no thanks to the bloviating Lords who viewed this as yet another opportunity to get cherished camera time with their very partisan points of view.
First, it was the Democrats who insisted that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) be placed under the bureaucratic umbrella of the then new Department of Homeland Security. By me, the Democratic solution to everything is to throw money at the problem and make the government bureaucracy even larger.
In the real world of businesses, such willy-nilly and politically opportunistic re-location of entire departments is very rare and takes many years to effect. Bombastic pronouncements from congress critters looking for votes do not make such transitions happen much as the dear Lords would like to believe.
Michael Brown was a political appointee by the Bush administration and such things are common. He was head of the Arabian Horse Association or some such for God's sake. At any rate, before Katrina, Brown managed FEMA well enough through all the hurricanes that hit Florida, the California fires, and other disasters that required FEMA assistance. FEMA was never meant to be a first responder and local governments not totally dysfunctional such as Louisiana understood this. An argument could be intelligently made that a plan should have been in place for FEMA to respond more quickly and forcefully in the event of anemic local response. Evidently the former head of the Arabian Horse Association and political appointee, Michael Brown, hadn't thought of that.
Before the congress critters decided FEMA should be under Homeland Security, I surmise that Brown had the ear of the president all to himself. I suspect Bush whispered into Brown's ear to pay the change of FEMA reporting structure no mind, to keep on doing the same as always. Just a hunch here.
When Hurricane Katrina hit, a whole bunch of dominos began to fall. Beginning with, based on Brown's testimony before the House of Lords, Brown's total lack of communication with Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff. Brown kept alleging his contacts with the White House throughout the hurricane's landfall to the breaching of the levees. Such communication consisted of emails and spoken conversations with Bush aides. Brown asserted that communication with White House Chief of Staff Andy Card was the same as direct contact with the president and I suppose he's right.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
If you had bothered to read the Times article instead of Tammy Bruce's spin on it, you'd know that the English nurses are proposing ways to minimize serious damage done by self-harmers (or cutters), who are generally not out to kill themselves, but instead are compelled to inflict damage on themselves over and over again, often as a response to trauma or abuse.
While it's easier to go for the humor in wondering why anyone would want to prevent infection in suicides, the reality of the situation is a bit sadder than that and really has nothing to do with a culture of death or government involvement in anything. It's a mental health issue that is intertwined with the physical health issues these people involve themselves with. While you don't have to understand it, at the very least they're deserving of some compassion, don't you think?
2 - chantal stone
all mental health issues and illnesses deserve compassion that they so often do not receive.
3 - Mark Saleski
If you had bothered to read the Times article...
c'mon lisa, it's no fun coming to ridiculous conclusions if you're constrained to starting with actual facts & stuff.
embarrassing.
4 - Pat Fish
Lisa,
No I did not read the original article. I quote the Tammy Bruce article and indeed that is the one I read. I don't think that makes me a bad person but so okay.
As for the self-mutilators, well fancy that I do indeed have some experience with this my compasionateless self. Having a daughter who had been doing this very thing since a teenager and having been to every type of health professional known to man to deal with it.
Now do I think the United States government should be handing out clean blades so that my daughter may mutilate herself without risk of infection?
Takes a whole different light when you look at it that way.
But I'll allow as my misinterpretation of the original article led me to believe the blades were being handed out for suicide, now I will take the same stance for handing out blades for self-mutilation.
I'm sorry, but I don't think it's something my government should be doing. I'd be doubly upset if my government were giving my daughter non-infected blades as, silly me, I would think it would tend to make the obsession worse. Not that there isn't a world full of sharp objects and other things with which to multilate oneself, I can't believe the handing out of such things by a sanctioned government wouldn't lend an aura of respectibility to the matter.
Obviously my experience is only anecdotal having just one child and indeed the only person I really know that regularly inflicts cuts or burns upon themself. But I do my daughter does it only on places on her body you can't see. With her it isn't a regular thing, just kind of sporadic, during stressful times.
I don't know why and none of the health professionals know why but I do know this, I have nothing but compassion for anyone dealing with this or any other health and life-affecting issues.
I don't think the government should be involved in administering death or clean blades and I'm sticking to my story. No accusation of lack of compassion is ever, just not ever, going to work.
With that I step down.
5 - Lisa McKay
No I did not read the original article. I quote the Tammy Bruce article and indeed that is the one I read. I don't think that makes me a bad person but so okay.
No, it doesn't make you a bad person. But it does make you a person who is repeating someone else's false interpretation of a news story, which certainly lessens your own credibility.
Having a daughter who had been doing this very thing since a teenager and having been to every type of health professional known to man to deal with it.
I'm sorry that you and your daughter have had to deal with this, Pat, and I will withdraw my compassion crack and offer an apology with it, which I hope you will accept.
Having said that, your interpretation of this story is just plain wrong. I realize you got tangled up in this same issue on the Oregon assisted suicide thread, too, and I don't understand why you insist on confusing the medical establishment with the government. The Times article is about nursing - the nurses who care for the self-harmers are debating what is ethical, within the conduct of their profession, in terms of helping these patients to hurt themselves less than they already are. The nurses will be the ones dispensing clean blades and antibiotics to patients, not the government. The government will not be forcing nurses to do this, or even recommending that nurses do this. The government, in short, has nothing to do with it, just as the government in the US has nothing to do with administering, recommending, or overseeing assisted suicide, beyond removing legal sanctions against such activity. It just isn't the same thing.
I agree with you that the government shouldn't be administering death - I'm also opposed to capital punishment.