EXTRA: Death toll up to 8, recovery efforts will be active for awhile

Between the time I wrote a weather-related commentary and the time you read this, the death toll in Illinois due to Sunday’s severe storms (winds of up to 190 miles per hour, in some places), the death toll climbed to 8 people.

Which is still small, considering how large a swath of Illinois got impacted.

LARGE ENOUGH THAT early Tuesday, Gov. Pat Quinn added added six more counties to the list of those that are now officially state disaster areas. Those include Will County that makes up the far south suburban portion of metro Chicago.

But it doesn’t change the fact that this was primarily a storm that devastated rural Illinois communities, and that we in Chicago ought to feel fortunate that we didn’t get hit harder.

In all as of Tuesday morning, there were 13 counties on the state disaster list – which is a designation that doesn’t mean much in itself. But in order to qualify as a federal disaster area (which is what provides all the outside aid to help rebuild), the state must first make a declaration.

“While the recovery will be long and hard, we will work in the coming days, weeks and months to assist these communities and help the people who live there rebuild their lives,” Quinn said, in a prepared statement.

IT WILL BE just a matter of days (possibly by week’s end when we stop getting bombarded every news cycle with the same images of devastation from places like Washington (which seems to be the favorite for TV news crews, possibly because Peoria isn’t that far away). But places like Gifford, Diamond and New Minden (also downstate Illinois communities) also got whacked pretty hard.

Not that anybody with a civic conscience ought to be headed there. Because the reality is that anybody who thinks they can help out with the relief effort would really be doing nothing more than getting in the way of the cleanup crews. People who think they can seriously help ought to contact the Red Cross, or Washington city government at (309) 563-4035 to let the locals know of their availability.

They should be aware of the reality that while the news coverage will soon move on, the need for relief will be ongoing for months as people try to rebuild the lives for themselves that they suddenly lost in a few seconds on Sunday.

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We should feel fortunate we were spared brunt of Sunday's storms!

“Washington” is in the national news these days – as in the downstate community where the locals think Peoria is the nearby big city.

The harsh storms that cut their way through Illinois and spread into the Chicago area on Sunday seem to have done the most damage in central Illinois. Those of us urbanites got to watch television footage Monday morning of destruction throughout the rural community, and some of it bore a strong resemblance to the wreckage of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

THERE DOESN’T SEEM to be much of a death toll. But there are now many families who are now homeless – and there’s a chance that at least a few of them will never fully recover from their losses.

“Nov. 17, 2013” will go down as a historic date in that community’s story, and we’ll have to see in coming months how well Washington, Ill., manages to rebuild itself.

I bring this up because I wonder how many people here got hit with some heavy rain and strong winds and are now going to go on and on and on about how badly they were hit by Sunday’s storms. There’s going to be a lot of “trauma talk” from people who are going to want to compare their “losses” to what other people suffered from.

We were fortunate.

THE ONLY CHICAGO-located color of any significance related to Sunday’s storms was that the brunt of it hit the city proper right around the time that the Chicago Bears were preparing to play the Baltimore Ravens.

Fans had to take cover under the stands at Soldier Field, and the game itself was delayed a couple of hours. Soggy and shuddering fans got a few stories tell that they will remember much longer than the 23-20 final score – or even the fact that the Bears, themselves, won!

But it would have taken a direct tornado touchdown (as opposed to a football one) on the playing surface itself (sending those upper decks flying off into Lake Michigan, or maybe crashing into the Willis Tower) for THAT to have been more significant than the destruction in rural Illinois.

The Chicago Tribune on Monday reported a death toll of six people across the state, with some 21 tornado touchdowns across the state.

NOT TO DETRACT too much from the people who suffered serious loss. But we should consider that most of us were very fortunate, and that we live in a place where the major devastation (the fire of 1871) occurred nearly a century-and-a-half ago.

In my own case, I was in suburban Tinley Park with my brother around mid-day, which was the point in time when the brunt of the storm soared over my head.

That isn’t too far (just one community over) from the tornado touchdown in suburban Frankfort. And I have to confess that for about 10 minutes, the sky got uglier than usual and I had to wonder if something could possibly happen outside.

Yet, the storm managed to pass over me, and within a half hour there was light again in the sky and the only evidence that anything had occurred were the leaves and branches that were blown about the street – making more of a mess than usual!

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT Sunday center around how fortunate I was NOT to have to suffer. It is a feeling we all ought to be thinking these days, even while Gov. Pat Quinn spent his Monday touring assorted sites that WERE hit by the storms.

That, and doing our part to use a rake to clean up the mess on our property.

Because just leaving it there and counting on some future storm to wash the debris away? That’s even lazier than those people whose houses already have their Christmas holiday decorations up because they never bothered to take them down last year!

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Obama/Palin political ‘tiff’ lays out nation’s partisan split all too perfectly

We have got a new political “controversy,” courtesy of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who wants us to think that President Barack Obama said something extremely controversial when he spoke recently about our nation’s foreign policy obligations.

She’d like for us to think that Obama said something so incredibly radical that it ought to perfectly illustrate why he was never fit to be a government official of any sort, let alone president.

ALL SHE REALLY did, however, was illustrate the difference between the factions that too many of us fall into when it comes to partisan politics these days.

For the record, Obama made his “controversial” comment at a press conference that brought the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington to a close. He took a question from a reporter-type from Bloomberg Business News who wanted to know if Obama thought he had gained any political “capital” that would give his thoughts more influence in international affairs.

Part of his answer was: “It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because, whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower. When conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them.”

That has Palin ticked off, and she used a weekend Washington “appearance” (as in the Illinois town of just over 10,000 people who think of Peoria as the nearest significant city – and which could wind up being the closest that Palin will ever come to setting foot in Chicago) to denounce him. She particularly hates the portion of his line that referred to “whether we like it or not.”

ACCORDING TO THE Associated Press, Palin said, “I don’t understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that ‘America’ is powerful.”

A part of me wants to say she misinterpreted him. But I also have been around enough political types to know that most of them usually do know what a political opponent truly meant – they just don’t care. Palin’s intent was to ratchet up a political point, and she succeeded.

That AP blurb got picked up in newspapers across the country. Which means it turned up on the websites of all those newspapers. Which means it is now all over the Internet. Which means that every nitwit with a desire to comment (including myself) is now making an issue of this.

But when I look at what Obama stated and what Palin retorted, I can’t help but think that this moment illustrates the partisan split that has afflicted our society.

OBAMA WAS TALKING about the U.S. obligation related to our role in the world, while Palin was talking about the U.S. perk related to that same role.

Obama gave a response making it clear that he views the U.S. foreign policy as being a responsibility that our nation must live up to. For if we fail in our obligations, the potential is great for small problems in other parts of the globe to become big problems, and ones that are reaching enough that we get dragged in anyway.

It is a view that says there are consequences to the actions of the United States government. We can cause problems beyond our borders. Which means we need to express a certain caution when we act. We can’t act recklessly, without regard for others.

Now such a thought process definitely offends the isolationists of the world. Because they’d like to think we can cut ourselves off from the interests of other countries. I’m sure they hate the suggestion that we have a responsibility to other parts of the globe – which is the price we pay if we want our nation to have the moral high ground when dealing with international affairs.

YET PALIN’S CRITICISM comes from another perspective.

She likes the idea of the United States having that influence because she likes the idea of being on the side that gets to tell people what they must do. Those isolationists usually are the conservative types who would be inclined to prefer someone ideologically aligned like Palin.

She is appealing to them by trying to say that our nation’s foreign policy is about being in charge when we see it in our interests. But the idea of an “obligation” being thrown into the mix bothers her (and them) because it means there will be occasions when they will be forced to confront issues they aren’t comfortable with.

Heck, it means there will be times the United States will have to throw its weight behind people whom they would prefer to ignore.

EXCUSE ME FOR thinking that this kind of thought makes Palin and her followers the equivalent of the old schoolyard bully, who wants to be able to do what he wants and when (while also having the ability to ignore whatever things are too troublesome).

Which makes me wonder if we ought to truly think of the Obama opposition these days as being those old bullies merely being miffed that life has passed them by, and they’re desperately trying to grasp onto the days when they could “muscle” people into doing what they were told – regardless of how stupid the order was?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama talks about our nation’s obligation to the rest of the world (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/press-conference-president-nuclear-security-summit), while Sarah Palin enjoys the thought of being able to give out orders when it suits her whims (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5guZZTwSW93FMmLEsFeBHJDLZoGtQD9F583601) or desires.

Politics and partisanship have been financially rewarding during the past year (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7601668/Barack-Obama-and-Sarah-Palin-are-enriched-by-cosy-political-media-complex.html) to both Obama and Palin.