What I Wouldn't Wish on My Worst Enemy

(1) This, which I experienced some two years ago for about 2 months and which, thankfully, I have not experienced since; and

(2) This, which I have been experiencing for the last few days and which I hope will end tomorrow following a visit to the Dentist.

It is not so much the intensity of the pain associated with each (which is relatively low intensity) that makes them absolutely horrible experiences. I have a pretty high pain threshhold and can generally stand the level of discomfort that comes with the kind of low-intensity pain of each. Rather, it is the chronic omnipresence and persistence of the pain that comes with each that becomes unbearable. There's just no relief from it.

Personally, I'd rather the one time jolt of pain associated with a smashed thumb, a broken bone, a serious flesh wound requiring multiple stitches, or a severed ACL (all of which I have experienced), than any kind of low-intensity, but chronic and omnipresent pain of inflamed and irritated nerves anywhere in the body.

Rightwing Identity Politics

Came across this today:



Now, the women in this clip are all conservative pundits and bloggers who regularly go to great lengths to rail against the "identity politics" of the left. And yet here they are, without any sense of the irony of it all, explicitly playing the same game. I guess they see the value of shared identity markers after all! Notice there are no men in the video. How discriminatory!

Imagine this, though: What would someone like Michelle Malkin say if a bunch of black pundits and bloggers crafted a video montage that used all the same tropes and identity markers wrapped around the phrase "I am Barack Obama"? I don't think we have to ponder this question too hard. We know exactly what these folks would say. In their characteristically crude way, they'd say something like this: "Look at those race hustling poverty pimps playing the race card!"

But let's take this whole "I am Sarah Palin" video at face value. Does this now mean that, for those women who metaphorically claim to be Sarah Palin, even though they really aren't Sarah Palin, they can go around wearing their McCain/Palin campaign buttons and claim in all seriousness: "I am the one I have been waiting for!" Talk about pompous narcissism!

The Cult of Sarah Palin comes to the GOP. Inspiration and Hope have cracked and penetrated the dour frumpiness of conservative killjoys and erstwhile Obamaphiliaphobes who went around (and still go around) pooh-poohing us Obamaphiles for actually liking our candidate and letting ourselves feel inspired and good about things. I think that's a great thing! Now we liberals can go around making fun of their weepy and emotional enthusiasm, too!

Currently In The Fridge/Freezer

Looking for a late night snack, this is what I can find in my ...

Refrigerator: A gallon of skim milk, a loaf of bread, a half-dozen eggs, a hunk of cheddar cheese, an onion, a bottle of white wine, and about 8 12-ounce bottles of water.

Freezer: Ice cubes, some various bags of ground coffee, and some bags of nuts.

Hurricane season stores.

Mrs. Huckupchuck's declaration to me this evening went something like this: I will never again keep anything perishable in the refrigerator/freezer during hurricane season that can't be consumed over a couple of days, max.

And so, for about 3 months of the year, I can no longer expect to find gallon containers of chocolate ice cream in the freezer readily accessible for a guilty pleasure snack after the kids have gone to bed.

Bummer.

Pshew!

Gosh, darn! I'm exhausted! I don't think there is anything worse than being a college professor and administrator and having to return to the office and the classroom after an unexpected weeklong evacuation holiday has thrown off a carefully orchestrated academic program that now has to be completely reconfigured.

And it's all the worse when that reconfiguration involves not only rewriting syllabi and shuffling around assignments, but in reworking collaborations with equally disrupted community partners in setting up community service assignments.

I guess it wouldn't have been as bad if the evacuation had happened after a rhythm had been established and a routine fixed in place; but we didn't even have enough time to start the process before it got disrupted. And now we have to basically start over again completely.

Needless to say, I did not have time to think today with all the classroom visiting and phone calls and schedule coordinating and lecturing that faced me just about every minute. And it's not likely to slow down at least until the end of this week.

I just pray to God that I don't have to restart this all over again come next week!

Palin: Pitbull with Lipstick?

Andrew Sullivan:

Ferraro was being interviewed within four days of being announced. Dan Quayle gave an interview one day after being selected.

We are now on Day Nine for Palin and are told to expect another thirteen before she's ready.

This is a pitbull with lipstick? More like a cowering chihuahua.

Heh.

Andrew Sullivan also sees the McCain Campaign's shielding of Palin from the press as patently sexist.

Quote of the Day

"And why does Sarah Palin's Alaska seem like Alabama with penguins polar bears?" Andrew Sullivan, responding to (and relating to the current moment) a selection from Christopher Caldwell's 1998 Atlantic Monthly article on how Southern Conservative Christians hijacked the Republican Party.

What's the Deal with Cable Service Complaints?

I'm about to reveal my biases here, but so be it. I'm listening to WWL870AM radio, and the programming now is dealing with Cox Cable outages. Now perhaps it's because I have managed to live without any TV in my home for the past 10 years, but I just can't bring myself to have any sympathy -- zip, zero, nada -- for those people who have electricity, water, and telephone services to be complaining to high heaven about their lack of cable. In fact, to listen to folks complaining about their lack of cable kinda disgusts me. What gives? Can people not survive without their 5 million gazillion trash cable TV shows? Really, with hundreds of thousands of people without electrical power to run air conditioners, stoves, refrigerators, lights, etc., the priority should continue to be the restoration of basic utility services fundamental for getting people back into their homes. Cox cable service just ain't that critical. So, please ... all you Cox cable customers sitting in the comfort of your air conditioned homes with your refrigerators stocked and your lights on, count your blessings and let WWL870 provide real public service information to people on matters much more critical to getting home and to survival than to your favorite cable TV mindnumbing garbage.

Spud McConnell and Barack Obama on Gustav

I was driving back to New Orleans this Wednesday and was listening to WWL870 for local radio coverage of the post-Gustav reality in New Orleans. I heard Spud McConnell take a call from Barack Obama. Now I can't find the transcript or the audio clip of this 3-4 minute exchange on WWL870's website; but as soon as I can find it I will post it. Let me just say that Spud McConnell was a grade-A dork during his exchange with Obama. Obama calls to express his solidarity and concern for the people affected by Gustav, and what does Spud do? He uses this moment as an opportunity to bludgeon Obama with a call for more oil drilling. Can you believe it?!?! Remember, now, this is Wednesday late morning/early afternoon. Most of us who evacuated only have scant knowledge about the conditions of our homes, and Spud decides that the most important thing he can talk to Obama about is the need for more oil drilling. It wasn't as if they were even talking about energy policy. Spud just injected a bit of this foolish Republican meme out of the clear blue into the conversation. Spud talks to the likely next President of the United States about the threat of hurricanes and its impact on peoples' lives and homes in the gulf coast, and his preferred subject is oil drilling? Sheesh! What a dork. Spud has no business being on the radio. If anyone can find this transcript, please let me know.

Back Home

Power restored early this morning. A/C and refrigerator up and running. Family's re-settled.

But ...

Bags still packed.

They Lie, Part II

NOLA Bloggers - The following comment was left in the comments section of my previous post entitled "They Lie." I imagine the reporter visited other blogs and left a similar comment; but just in case not, I thought I'd highlight it here:

This is Adam Lynch, a reporter with the Jackson Free Press, doing a story on the government's reaction to Gustav. Sounds like not everything was roses and perfume. Somebody give me a call with their comment if they're not afraid of reporters. My number is 601-362-6121 ext. 8.

I don't really have a strong desire to answer the call. But perhaps someone of you might. If so, please have a go at it.

Thoughts on the McCain Convention Speech

First, I think it was clear that McCain's speech was flat and uninspiring. His timing was off, parts of his speech got swallowed up in the applause, and the enthusiasm level among the delegates there was palpably low. (For instance, NRO's K-Lo wasn't reduced to tears.) If I had to guess, I'd imagine that most of the folks there would prefer the ticket to be Palin/McCain and not McCain/Palin.

Second, the GOP has a diversity image problem. When the few token minorities were shown on the television, it seemed strained and forced -- as if they had to target them instead of just sweeping over the crowds to capture the diversity.

Third, what rather surprised me was that McCain, speaking to the party faithful, basically had to reject this party's past performance. It seemed to me that not only did he have to distance himself from the Bush Administration, but also from the GOP itself. This seemed quite surreal and strange to me given that this was supposed to be a nominating convention for the Republican Party. And the audience was noticably lukewarm to McCain when he said things critical of the Republican Party.

Fourth, McCain's speech (as was just about every other speech I heard) was devoid of any real substantive policy ideas. Occasionally, one would hear the standard boilerplate of conservative orthodoxy (cut taxes, limited government, fighting terrorism, etc.,), but there was nothing of substance provided. And, in fact, the delegates didn't want substance. All they wanted was red meat social conservatism. McCain didn't give them as much of this as other speakers did, which I think explains why most in the audience were so unenthused about him.

I tend to like John McCain at the gut level; but I think he loses the election if it continues to be about him. I suspect that as the next phase of the general campaign winds up, conservatives re-energized by the selection of Sarah Palin are going to want to see more and more of her. There will be some creep to elevate her as the de facto primary force on the GOP ticket. And this is dangerous for the GOP because the more Sarah Palin creeps to the top of the ticket in the minds of campaign observers and average citizens, the more her lack of experience to be President will become more of a legitimate issue. The only thing conservatives have to blunt criticism of Palin's readiness to be President is the fact that she is on the ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate. So the more that she becomes the de facto primary face of the GOP ticket, the more this argument loses any kind of force. And the more that Palin becomes the face of the GOP ticket, the greater the likelihood the ticket loses. So, from where I sit, the GOP is in a tough bind. McCain can't win the election on his own and he needs to roll out Palin more completely to keep the base energized; but the more he rolls out Palin, the more weak and inexperienced and desperate the ticket seems.

The next two weeks will reveal quite a bit, I think.

Still Without Power

But waiting patiently. Hopefully it will return sometime today so that my family can have a weekend back at home before plunging back into the regular routines come Monday morning.

Giuliani and Public Campaign Financing: Conservative Duplicity

I haven't heard or read anyone else comment on this, but one of the things that struck me in Giuliani's speech was his criticism of Obama for backtracking on accepting public (i.e. taxpayer) financing for his Presidential campaign. He used Obama's decision to not dip into the federal treasury to finance his campaign as a sign of Obama's dishonesty because, apparently, Obama promised to force taxpayers to fund his campaign. Tell me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Obama, with this decision not to accept a hefty government handout for nothing more than running an electoral campaign, ultimately save the taxpayer a significant amount of cash? Isn't that kind of fiscal behavior something conservatives generally applaud? Reneging on a promise (and a debatable one at that) to suck money from the U.S. treasury for such things should be the kinds of "changes of heart" that conservatives embrace. Really, it is not unthinkable that conservatives would naturally seek, as a matter of course and if their fiscal principles are to be believed, to eliminate the fiscal abomination of taxpayers being forced to support the electoral campaigns of candidates with whom they might disagree. I am continually baffled by how recklessly and carelessly conservative "principles" get tossed out the window when it is politically convenient to do so.

GOP Hypocrites?

This was too good to pass up. As to GOP hypocrisy, you be the judge:



Ahem ...

H/T: Andrew Sullivan.

Whither Entergy?

One thing that I can't understand is why Entergy New Orleans won't provide a street by street update of power outages. In today's day and age, I am certain that Entergy, by this time, knows exactly which homes are without power and exactly why they are without power.

How difficult would it be for Entergy to map this out on their website? On the one hand, this would really help support the public officials in their re-entry plans. If people knew definitively that their homes were without power, they might wait that extra day or so that public officials are requesting before returning. Entergy New Orleans does have this map up on their website, but as you can see it is useless to individual homeowners. The only way homeowners can know for sure whether or not they have power is to come in town and check out their homes. Another benefit to posting a street update of power outages is that it avoids the angry and frustrated phone calls that homeowners will be making to the power company, to the media, and to the public officials that this lack of information produces. For the sake of public order and good will, Entergy should do this. It is a simply question of transparency and honesty in disseminating information to homeowners. There is just no reason for us to be in the dark about this subject.

Maybe they fear a larger backlash if this information were to become public. Some might complain about why some areas seem to be getting power while others aren't. Some may complain about discrimination in the prioritization of deployment of teams to restore energy to certain neighborhoods over others. Some may just complain for the sake of complaining. This will in all likelihood come to pass. But I think that they shouldn't fear this so much. They should trust the people. We might not like the information we get, but I'm pretty sure we'll be much more appreciative at least of having this information than feeling like we are being snowed and stonewalled.

Sarah Palin Superstar

Was there anything of substance at all in Sarah Palin's speech last night about the great problems of our day? I heard very little. But not to worry ...

NRO's K-Lo was reduced to tears. It's like she was a teenage girl witnessing a Beatles concert in the early 60s. She writes:

I’ve not cried during a political speech since the pope and George W. Bush met on the South Lawn of the White House earlier this year.

Pull out the smelling salts! K-Lo just might faint. Such transcendence! Superstardom!



The GOP has their superstar. Hopey change-itude comes to the GOP. Forget experience, knowledge, awareness of issues, or even concern for issues: just feel the love.

The Hucks Have Returned

We're back in the N'awl. The house is without power; but fortunately my brother's place in Lakeview has full power. So we can stay close by in relative comfort until we get power restored. That's a comforting feeling. Good luck to all my comrades who returned yesterday or who are returning today. I hope your homes have electricity and I hope your lives get back to normal soon.

What's Wrong with Community Organizing?

Last night, I watched the latter part of the GOP convention. I got to see Giuliani's speech as well as Sarah Palin's speech. I am biased so I guess I'm not a good judge of the quality and effectiveness of the speeches. Trying to be as objective as I can, I will say that I thought they were o.k., but nothing superlative. However, I was in a room full of Republicans and conservatives who really liked both speeches.

But there was one thing about both of these speeches that puzzled me. I don't understand why both Giuliani and Palin viciously attacked Obama for having been a community organizer. I kept thinking: "Don't they know that people, both liberals and conservatives, who are interested in local issues and who are involved in their local communities, are in essence 'community organizers'?" I understand that they are trying to use this as a slap in the face of Obama's "experience"; but what they actually did was to take a swipe at the work of community organizing in general instead of at Obama specifically.

I, myself, am involved in local community work as a volunteer. I consider myself to be a "community organizer" of sorts. Many people I come into contact with, and who are both liberal and conservatives, volunteer at the community level and would probably consider themselves a kind of "community organizer." It can be in the local pro-life Church organization planning a rally against an abortion clinic. It can be developing youth leadership programs. It can be getting involved in Junior Achievement or YMCA programs. It can be assuming an active role in the homeownership or neighborhood association. Community organizing is essentially assuming a leadership role in helping members of the local community come together around shared issues of local concern and deciding what, if anything, to do about them. It is essentially a non-partisan, non-ideological activity of civic engagement. Ideology rarely factors into community organizing. It is issue-based and reflective of the interests of the specific community that is being organized. And yet Giuliani and Palin repeatedly demeaned this kind of work as essentially unimportant and insignificant. By taking a swipe at this aspect of Obama's life experience and work, I think they revealed themselves to be dismissive of that fundamental aspect (and maybe the only aspect) of the everyday person's life in his or her community that gives him a sense of civic pride. "Community organizing" binds people to politics in ways that watching conventions on television can never accomplish. And it is much more real to people. Attacking that can't be a wise strategy. I noticed that Palin and Giuliani mocked Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" line. But by demeaning community organizing, they themselves are mocking an individual's "clinging to community."

If they want to take on Obama's lack of experience, there must be better ways to do it that won't be perceived by the common person interested in civic life at the local level as an attack on their own work within their local communities.

It's a losing strategy. And I think it is a great tactical mistake. Rest assured that the Obama campaign will flip this around and make it appear as if the GOP is cynically demeaning the good work that people with a sense of local civic pride engage in and take pride in. In fact, I got an email from the Obama campaign this morning that jumped on this issue. And this won't be the end of it, I'm sure.

More Gustav Miscellanea

Man, if you are somehow dependent on the national media for information relative to the situation in New Orleans regarding local conditions and re-entry information, you would be experiencing a twilight-zone sense of surrealism. First of all, the national media, once Gustav made landfall and the "excitement" of tragedy dissipated, they moved to the next possible crisis storms: Hanna and Ike. Secondly, all media are making me feel insignificantly invisible. Now I have a newfound appreciation for this:



Let me move on to some more reflection on the I-59 traffic situation during our evacuation. As I said previously, I simply could not believe how the media and the authorities would outright lie about the situation. If they weren't saying how wonderful the contraflow was working and how smoothly things went, they were downplaying the significance of the traffic jam. It took me 10 hours to go from my home in uptown to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. No matter how you try to spin it, a 10 hour experience for what is normally a 1-and-a-half hour trip is NOT -- I repeat, NOT -- a sign of ANY kind of success. But what really rubbed me raw the most was that they couldn't even bring themselves to tell folks the honest truth. It was extremely irresponsible of them to do this. If they had done this, at least people could have tried to look for alternative routes and taken the backroads. They didn't do this. Instead, their rosy picture of the wonderful success of contraflow made it seem to motorists that using the interstate system would be smooth, if sometimes bumpy, sailing. Let me assure you, it was anything but.

What was irresponsible about it was not only that it unnecessarily damaged our future trust in media and public officials regarding evacuation traffic updates, but also that the deception placed peoples lives in danger. People, thinking that contraflow was successful, might have figured they could have easily left later and with maybe a half tank of gas, to evacuate. I can only imagine families with pets stranded on the interstate with a fast moving storm bearing down on them. Talk about a frightening scenario.

If only, if only, if only the media and the public officials would have been honest with us. If they had told us, contraflow is NOT easing traffic on I-59 and to expect a 10 hour delay before reaching Hattiesburg, Mississippi, then at least motorists could have tried to do something else. At least we could have made extraordinary efforts to conserve gas. At least we could have planned driving shift strategies so as to avoid exhaustion on the road. I am very disappointed, not to mention still very angry, that I was deceived in such a stressful and anxious situation. The media and the public officials responsible for advising motorists honestly about evacuation conditions should be ashamed of themselves.

The lesson I learned from this experience and from the dishonesty of the media and the public authorities on this is the following: Next time, do not evacuate.

And this lesson has been compounded by the completely out-of-the blue re-entry strategy. Who knew of this tiered system of re-entry? I sure didn't! Why was this never communicated until even after the storm. As soon as they ordered the mandatory evacuation, they should have informed us at the same time what the re-entry scenarios would look like, including the "tier" system.

For all the accolades that the authorities might be due for a successful warning and evacuation system (though I think it was over-sensationalized, if you want to know the truth), they have significantly botched the afterwards. I didn't even feel this marginalized and helpless and uninformed after Hurricane Katrina.

It is absurd that they will not permit people to return home. They should let anyone who wants to return the opportunity to do so. It is not up to the authorities to save me from myself, only from the hurricane. And now that the hurricane is passed, they ought to get out of the way.

So upchucketh the Huck.

Miscellanea

Is there any place where one can go online to find out what the re-entry plans are? NOLA.com has no information that I can find. The City of New Orleans website is as useless as it usually is. Pathetic. All I can get is very uninformative national media coverage.

I did read something in this piece by Bruce Nolan of the Times-Picayune, which had only this to say about re-entry:

Jindal said it is too early to raise hopes that evacuees from New Orleans will be able to return home Tuesday

"It's certainly too, too early to say that it's safe for them to start coming back tomorrow," Jindal said in a news conference at the state's emergency operations center in Baton Rouge.
Nagin said residents might be able to return to their homes within 24 to 36 hours after Monday afternoon, depending on the damage left by the storm.

But I think this is utterly unhelpful. And, furthermore, if they want to have a crush of folks returning all at once, making all of our return trips as unnecessarily painful as the exodus, then wait until later before allowing people to come home. If the situation is as reports indicate, they should let anyone return who wants to return anytime after midnight tonight -- with or without power. Some of us have generators, food, fans, and water waiting at home, not to mention our own beds.

Anyway, my plan is to leave for home tomorrow, passing by some family in Covington before crossing the Causeway and on into the City. What we don't want to have to go through is the indignity of travelling all the way to a certain checkpoint only to be stopped by some young, macho, power-hungry cop, to be humiliated, and then forced to turn back.

Anyway, Tulane is closed until next Monday, so I won't have to worry about an immediate re-transition back to the busyness of the office and the classroom.

But, I did notice this little tidbit in Bruce Nolan's article, which might, if it comes to pass, only exacerbate Jeffrey's headache and make him even more pissed:

Saints officials were weighing whether to move Sunday's home opener against Tampa Bay from the Superdome to Florida.

I hope for the sake of all Season Ticket holders that the Saints don't punish us any more than we already have been for having suffered through this nightmare of an evacuation.