As an interesting point of historical comparison, the mindset leading to the Russian Revolution really got rolling--not in 1905 or 1917--but in 1891 (or 1894?) when hot dry weather wiped out the crops and caused a famine.

The imperial authorities ran their government just as Republicans do. They put the interests of loyalists and buddies ahead of their civic responsibilities. To enrich grain merchants, Russia continued to export grain even as hundreds of thousands of people starved. Corrupt officials did nothing to assist victims. The government even denied a disaster was occurring, censoring the word "famine" from its accounts and impeded assistance efforts until it was too late. Sound familiar?

What happened as a result is that whatever moral authority and trust the Tsarist government had enjoyed was eroded significantly. To stay in power it had to rely more an more on repression and terror, which further undermined its moral authority. But the government was so incompetent that it was inevitable that it would create crises out of nothing and worsen crises that were unavoidable. Would you believe that in WWI, armaments manufacturers went out of business because corrupt War Ministry officials would only do business with the largest factories? And while this was going on, Russian troops had to face the mighty German army without bullets and artillery. In the end, a lot of the problems that we're starting to see now led people half a world away and a century ago to at best not care what happened to the Romanovs: endless war, rampant inflation, gross incompetence, bureaucratic anarchy and stupidity, ad nauseam. The Romanov style of rule radicalized the rest.

With Congress at 11% approval and the president at 24%, and all parties seemingly committed to continuing the war and doing nothing to prepare for the true crises our country faces, this continued incompetent response to disaster is not a good sign. As confidence in government collapses, does this mean terror will follow?

After days of fire planes and helicopters in the air working, the skies are quiet today. Why? The asshat in chief is doing his flyover. I seriously hope he leaves soon so the firefighters can get back to work.

I am livid that our firefighting efforts have to stop for this fucktard to take a tour.

FEMA and Bush, get the fuck out of SoCal. We don't want or need you here.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Our society has lots of individuals who are good at adapting to local environments, but our government does a terrible job of it.

Yesterday I saw a climatologist on Fox (strange, but true). He spoke about how southern Californians live in a drought-prone area, and how the local vegetation has evolved to utilize periodic fires as a means of reproducing. So what do we do? We build houses right on top of hills that periodically burn. The anchor sat there and nodded, but don't you know that same anchor would nod for the next anti-tax fool who proposed cutting funds for that same climatologist, not to mention gutting regulations for zoning hillside homes.

Katrina and the California wildfire are great examples of our society's failure to adapt to nature. Whenever that happens, nature will eventually snap back and destroy what we have built. In the case of soCal, it's inevitable that there will be more fires. It's also inevitable that the longer we suppress them, the larger and hotter they will burn, later on. Nature scolds us with large disasters. Are we listening?

It's not Murphy's Law; it's Darwin's Guarantee: Adapt, or perish.

"Death before being dishonored any more." - Col. Ted Westhusing

I was at an evacuation center for one night in San Marcos. What is striking is how white and middle class the people effected by the fires are. The victims of the Witch fire are overwhelmingly white and well-off and also Republican. Bush will take care of these folks, they are his base. There is no need for ethnic cleansing in North San Diego County. It is not an accident that Bush is visiting south Escondido and Rancho Bernardo. He will not visit or acknowledge the victims south of San Diego because they are more ethnically and politically diverse.

The scale of disaster, especially in terms of infrastructure and affected population percentage, of Katrina makes the the Southern California fires look like a fart in a snowstorm.

There is no structural damage to the highways.
The electrical systems are still up and running.
The cell phone system is still up and running.

Katrina displaced more than 1 million of the 1.4 million people in New Orleans - basically the entire city. Over Southern California there have been about 1 million of 24 million people evacuated. Even if we assume that's only San Diego, there's a world of difference between 1 in 6 million, and 1 in 1.4 million.

Oh, and there was a firestorm in 2003, and wildfires are basically an ongoing issue in Southern California - and have been going on here or there for months. (Compare this to New Orleans which was last hit full-on by a hurricane in 1979.)

Al Kamen | October 26

WaPo - FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.

Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices. They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News, MSNBC and other outlets.
Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the "commodities" being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.

He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters -- in one case, he appears to say "Mike" and points to a reporter -- and was asked an oddly in-house question about "what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration" signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.

FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted at one point to caution he'd allow just "two more questions." Later, he called for a "last question."

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" a reporter asked. Another asked about "lessons learned from Katrina."

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson said, hailing "a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team."

"And so I think what you're really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership," Johnson said, "none of which were present in Katrina." (Wasn't Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}