UPDATES

The power is back on--our path to world domination may continue! Um, actually, my path to Monday Night Football continued, until the Raiders decided they'd rather play pattycake. They made Jake Plummer look like a real quarterback. I fear a collapse for the silver and black is imminent, age (and the theft of Jon Gruden) finally having caught up with them. Then my path to Ebay continued, followed by my path to the blogosphere. It's good to be back--and thanks for the linkage, Instaman. Also, thanks for letting me into the Axis, Meryl. I'm happy to hear you survived Isabel too.

Noting Meryl's much harder life than mine post Isabel, I have to say that I do disagree with her assessment of the government's disaster preparedness efforts. It may be that I'm just not a big government guy, or it may be that I lived through enough tornadoes during my Texas years to know that pretty much any big storm that you've been warned about for days may well wipe you out, or it may just be that I'm a contrarian son of a gun who's suddenly happy to be able to walk around my house without a flashlight, but I don't think the government rates a D for this storm. Fact is that at least in Maryland we got days of warnings, we had days to watch the storm come in on the Weather Channel's radar views, and days to ponder what it would mean if Isabel lived up to the hype and actually wreaked havoc for a while. And she did. She moved too fast to dump much rain on us, but brought enough winds and storm surges to devastate much of the Mid-Atlantic in a few short hours. In short, Isabel was a natural disaster. Having been sufficiently warned, people either took the necessary steps to make their post-storm lives bearable or they didn't. The JYB family did a partial job at preparedness--we had the wind-up radio which was indispensable. We had plenty of food and water on hand, and we were either smart or lucky enough to have gas appliances. And we don't live anywhere near the water, and that's by choice. I love the water most of the time, but don't want to depend on structures near the water when little things like hurricanes blow through. But we didn't have a generator, so when the storm took our power down we were stuck.

But about that power outage. Word on the street is that it was mostly caused by falling trees, which makes perfect sense. Yes, I heard transformers popping on the night of the storm, and such events can be caused by any number of things, but I also saw lots of broken trees and branches after the storm, a few of which rested on or cut through power lines. That's not good for the grid. So why doesn't the power company or the government or whoever just cut the darn trees and keep them away from the power lines? People won't let them. Property owners get mad when the power company sends out a crew to trim their trees. Environmental groups pressure the power company to leave the precious trees alone. And so in many areas, rural and urban, the trees grow wild or at least aren't pruned properly, and when you have a storm you have nature pruning the trees the hard way, causing many trees and parts of trees to cut lines, and you get power outages. It's simple, really. The more trees you have near power lines, and the less pruning you're allowed to do on those trees, the more likely said trees are to cause outages when the wind blows hard enough. Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina have lots and lots of trees, many of which aren't pruned until it's too late. How, exactly, is that the government's fault? I don't see it.

What I do see is that in my county alone the powerful people set up 92 storm shelters. I did see and hear the powerful people warn everyone to take the storm seriously, stock up on necessary stuff, if you live near the water to run inland, and if you decide to stay put to stay put. After the storm, I heard about a massive effort to rescue people from flooding homes and an even more massive effort to get the power back on. Maryland's first storm death occurred because a man decided he was better off driving in the middle of a hurricane than listening to the constant stream of warnings not to. He lost control of his car and smashed into a tree, dead because he chose poorly. How, exactly, is that the government's fault? I don't see it.

I suppose the powerful people could've done better. They could've sent out crews to cut back the trees before the storm, but how should they have decided which trees to cut? They could've anticipated that Isabel would break all state records for flooding. They could've guessed that some idiots wouldn't listen no matter how many times they got on the air to say what to do and what not to do before and during the storm. But I really do think that, for once, the government at all levels acted responsibly and actually reasonably. Isabel was a nasty storm, not the nastiest we've ever seen but certainly worse than most expected. That's not anyone's fault, and I have a hard time seeing how terrorists can learn much from this. Sure, they could run around popping transformers here and there, and that would surely be an irritant. But you're not going to see terrorists cutting an island in half the way Isabel did in North Carolina, and you're not going to see terrorists creating the next 100-year flood on the Chesapeake's western shore. And sure, terrorists could create havoc by knocking off a nuclear power plant, but isn't that what the war is intended to prevent? And what's that kind of attack got to do with a hurricane? I don't see it.

If the terrorists could learn anything from Isabel, it's that we're not an easily shaken people. We find out a huge storm is coming our way, and we shrug it off for a day or two. Then we run around buying stuff and getting ready, then we ride it out, assess and repair, and move on. We don't riot because the power's out fora while. We help our neighbors. We get our government to give us some of our money back to rebuild our smashed towns. We learn how to make the next storm less deadly, and then we get on with our business. Yes, the terrorists could learn much from Isabel--just nothing that they'd want to learn, and nothing they learn should comfort them. We're not a perfect people by any means, but we're tough. Tougher than any storm, tougher than any terrorist.

So I'd give the government, at least in my neck of the woods, a solid A. It didn't do anything stupid or counterproductive. It warned us well in advance and suggested ways to prepare. It declared the legal emergency status early enough afterward to give some comfort. It kept us informed around the clock, and has stayed on the power situation making sure that the utilities don't take too long to get the power back on. And though I wouldn't be able to say this if my power was still off, I'd still be thinking it. We spent four days without power almost down to the minute. I'm over it. I was over it before the power came back on.

Anyway, I'll get back to normal blogging fairly soon. The storm's over and there's still a war to win, and there's still a media and its political party to overcome in winning that war.

Anyhow, what follows is the result of having too much time on my hands as a hurricane bore down on my humble abode:

Top Five indications that you’re hurricane obsessed

5. You wonder what they’ll name the next three hurricanes, and you hope they name one after you
4. You start sorting your batteries, classifying them by brand, by color and by taste
3. You know the serial numbers and manufacturer’s suggested retail price for more than four types of generators
2. You know your Hazel from your Agnes
1. You mentally undress the Weather Channel babes

MORE: By the way, Chief Wiggles is running a toy campaign for Iraqi children. Building our empire the hard way, American style--our fierce interrogating fighters give toys to the kids in the countries we take over. Or something like that, if you're looking for the nonsensical left-wing conspiracy angle. Check out the Chief's laudable effort here. And give, if you can. It's for the Empire, by gum!