Weather 'tis Nobler?

I have had a hard time going through the material describing the Natural Calamities that decimated the coastal and inland regions of four states, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas the late summer of 2005. Studying all the worlds and cultures that I have I thought I’d seen or heard it all, but nothing compares to the ineptitude and self-aggrandizing actions taken by the President of the United States before, during and after the Hurricanes made landfall. The unique comparison in this piece looks at it all from a different perspective.

Weather ‘tis Nobler?
The wind moves through the yard bringing with it a feeling of relief after so many months of still, humid laden air-it was almost as if the air too moisture had been too heavy to be moved anywhere. Temperatures still descend no lower than the mid-seventies mellowed by the darkness of night but they no longer reach into the upper nineties as they did for so long. It’s ‘cooler’ now…high’s approach but don’t cross over the 90 degree mark. Humidity and dew point measure in double digits and that chance for occasional showers so fondly referred to by forecasters, certainly present themselves with frequency.
Using such terms as chance of, occasional, spotty and widespread seem to be safety net phrases taught to prospective meteorologists bent on pursuing a career that will allow them to make predictions that will impact peoples’ daily lives but for which they will suffer no greater repercussions if they are in error, or mess up in some way than a few words of chastisement and perhaps for the younger and less hardened a wee bit of embarrassment. Remorse need not enter the picture, after all it’s only the weather…not something as important as people’s lives, the balanced budget of an entire nation, or the compassionate (we won’t mention intellectual) credibility before the entire world. Yet the alarming similarity in modus operendi as displayed by the President of the United States in the performing of his job and that of the meteorologists doing theirs is cataclysmically undeniable.
Those brave people-for they do go before an audience on a daily basis and based on computer models and their experience make a guess about weather trends-rarely give an entirely accurate forecast. I’d like to have a bit more confidence in my President, that he will be able to foresee and take appropriate action on whatever issues lie ahead for his constituents, than I do in the weather forecasters.
I want to interject at this point that I am a firm believer in meteorologists, they do an excellent job and can’t be more accurate than they are since they are guessing what a weather system will do over time. The weather system may have other plans, hence the margin of error implicit in every forecast. Such a margin is unavoidable and expected when dealing with weather it is not acceptable when coming from the country’s leader. Most weather men/women involve themselves in the community where they live and work spending their free time giving of themselves in many different capacities to going into schools and educating to charity events. HHmmm and the President….
Suffering through months of daily temperatures flirting with the century mark, high humidity and no breezes is not within the weather forecasters power to control, they bring us the information and being human we vent our spleen at the uncomfortable situation at them because they are there. They are not elected officials whose first responsibilities are to their constituents and were put in office to act in leadership capacities to take care of the needs and requirements of those who gave them their jobs. The troops are in needlessly in Iraq where over five BILLION dollars goes every day to further a cause that is none of our business, while here at home citizens of the United States suffer from deprivation and danger wondering how come they don’t have priority. Should they announce the existence of weapons of mass destruction? Perhaps plan and leak out a mock terrorist attack? Will such attention grabbing tidbits of fiction perhaps cause a shift in the money flow and redirect it towards a more suitable purpose?
Nobler has a variety of definitions which for the most part are variations on a single theme. One of them mentions having or showing qualities of high moral character. The meteorologist or the President…which is nobler.