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Lake Delton, Wisconsin

Local resident Steve Zowin said the water drained like a bathtub. The Wisconsin Dells calls itself the "waterpark capital of the world," but on Monday, when torrential rains caused Lake Delton to tear through an embankment, ripping apart Highway A and draining into the Wisconsin River, that waterpark capital is now a disaster area. Resorts are seeing cancellations - Zowin said his business is down at least 75%, which is huge - and another resident said that fishing will be gone for at least the next five or six years from Lake Delton.
But there is more bad news for local residents. Yes, not only did they lose homes, not only are they losing business because of the empty lake. Yesterday they learned that Lake Delton is Not Covered by National Flood Insurance.

The homes would have been covered by the National Flood Insurance program since 1975, but the village didn't adopt a new floodplain map. The village lost its floodplain designation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and its eligibility to participate in the National Flood Insurance program.

So even though Lake Delton is a disaster area, it's not a Federal Disaster Area, and won't receive funds from FEMA. FEMA suspended the village from eligibility in the program seven years ago after the village failed to formally adopt an updated floodplain map called a Flood Insurance Rate Map, or FIRM. Lake Delton's village clerk and engineer said the map was not adopted because of "gross inaccuracies" in how FEMA expanded the floodplain.

FEMA said the village had three years to appeal the map, but never did file such an appeal. There is no record of a formal map revision petition from the village; Lake Delton was suspended, making homeowners inelligiable for flood insurance. And in a classic case of government officials pointing fingers at each other, the people suffer. This flood is not a flood. This flood is a Catostrophic Event. Yet the people suffer.

As we look at weather events globally - I'm only talking about hurricanes, cyclones, torrential rains, all causing these catastrophic events - I have to wonder at how much we have contributed to weather gone wild. Even more, I am appalled at government's callous disregard for the citizens whose lives are devastated by these events. But when that disregard is further impaired by misjudgment, mismanagement, greed and just plain stupidity, I become angry.

There are solutions that the United States can implement. Frankly, with a serious recession upon us, we could look to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's example of programs put forth in The New Deal. I think we could specifically look at The CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps, which put unskilled, unemployed young men to work building roads, levees, and repairing the infrastructure. Perhaps, if we stopped spending money we don't have on an illegal war in Iraq, we might get to spend some of it on our failing infrastructures at home.

We've got a clear choice between Barack Obama and John McCain. McCain is more of the "heckuva job, Brownie" school of disregard. Obama will get things done.

Facing November's Election

The June issue of Vanity Fair has an article by James Wolcott that focuses on one of my main concerns: the absolute viciousness of the Clinton-versus-Obama supporters as we all eat each other alive. I am not talking about the candidates; I am talking about the supporters of the candidates. As we flay the skin off of each other, it keeps the focus off of what really matters: the White House and McCain.

Wolcott's article focuses mostly on the rift at Daily Kos, and other liberal blogs. Wolcott writes:

The rancor was disproportionate in intensity and extravagant in invective, a fervor worthy of ancestral foes. Months-old grievances seethed and erupted as if they had been bubbling for centuries in a lake of bad blood. On the most egoistic plane, it seemed like a clash of entitlements, the messianics versus the menopausals. The Obama-ites exuded the confidence of those who feel that they embody the future and are the seed bearers of energies and new modalities too long smothered under the thick haunches of the tired, old, entrenched way of doing things. The Hillarions felt a different imperative knocking at the gate of history, the long-overdue prospect of the first woman taking the presidential oath of office. For them, Hillary’s time had come, she had paid her dues, she had been thoroughly vetted, she had survived hairdos that would have sunk lesser mortals, and she didn’t let a little thing like being loathed by nearly half of the country bum her out and clog her transmission.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush polishes his cowboy boots, completely obtuse to the fact that he's destroyed the economy, the environment, Iraq, our standing in the world, the Bill of Rights, absolutely everything he's touched. He's probably secure in the knowledge that with all the Democratic infighting, he's not going to be Impeached, and probably has a nice parcel of land in Paraguay just waiting for him. VP Cheney's response to just about any tough question is his curled lip, "So?" Because he's also secure in the knowledge that he's going to slide out of office unscathed.

Meanwhile, Obama is likely going to declare victory tonight - which is fine with me, let's get on with it, let's focus on November, and McCain. Please. Let us stop doing the Republican's job, let us stop making this easy for McCain. When we consider that McCain's chief economic advisor is Phil Gramm,, vice chairman of a U.S. division of Zurich-based financial giant UBS and former advisor to Enron. UBS is currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens.

So I ask you: does it matter if Hillary wears pantsuits, or if Obama's former pastor is a jerk? When you consider the constant barrage of information, candidates are under a level of scrutiny that is beyond human endurance. We can focus on minutia or we can focus on the issues that matter, and elect a Democrat.

Government Explained

DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a
man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your
government.

BUREAUCRACY
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you
for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have down sized and
are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one tenth the size of an ordinary cow and
produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

CALIFORNIAN
You have a cow and a bull.
The bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away for two weeks.
It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn't.
You try to sell the transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your farm.
Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help "working cows."
Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7 of your farm "for
the children."
Arnold Schwartzenegger signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming you groped their
teats.
You declare bankruptcy and shut down all operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times' analysis shows your business failure is Bush's fault.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have to laugh. Despite the overwhelming saddness I feel about Senator Kennedy's illness, I have to find a way to laugh. Despite the frustration I feel that the two remaining Democrats continue to have a slugfest, I have to find a way to laugh. Myanmar refuses to accept US Naval aide to the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy River delta region, which boggles my mind, but I have got to find a way to laugh.

Because if I don't find some humor somewhere, I will become buried in grief, anger and frustration. Senator Kennedy will fight with all he's got to live his life to the fullest. We cannot eulogize him yet, he's still among the living. Yes, it is a terrible prognosis, but he's still very much among the living. I expect he will move forward with courage.

Eventually, we will have a Democratic Party nominee for President. It will be either Obama, or Clinton. And I have got to find a way to laugh because this is waltzing into the realm of the surreal. We're in at an extraordinary historic juncture. For the first time, the United States will nominate EITHER a Woman, or a Black - and this means that the White House is no longer the exclusive domain of White Male Protestants (or the one Catholic). This is exciting. But what do we do? Obama supporters demonize Clinton; Clinton supporters demonize Obama. And the McCain supporters sit back and let us do their job for them. If that's not hilarious, I don't know what is. Okay, maybe not hilarious. It's black humor, though, please give me that much.

As for the military junta in Burma - I mean WTF! Aid is aid, and to refuse the US Navy because they don't LIKE us is tantamount to murdering their own people.

But if I do not find a way to laugh, I might begin to sob and never stop. Right now, I feel I could drown in a sea of my own tears.