On the Upper East Side

On the Upper East Side
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Many months ago, when Mike Grass came to town.

Santorum Is A Tool.

Santorum has critical words for forecasters in the wake of Katrina 09/09/2005
Damon Boughamer
(Washington) -- U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is suggesting that early mistakes in predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina may be a symptom of lost focus at the National Weather Service. Santorum, who introduced legislation earlier this year to curb the output of government weather forecasters, says tracking life-threatening weather must be central to what the agency is doing.
00149_ric09d.mp3
Asked about Katrina by WITF, Santorum described weather service warnings for Florida, where the storm first made landfall, as “not sufficient." Santorum’s bill instructs the government to abandon weather prediction and data reporting efforts that duplicate private-sector activity. He came under fire when it was revealed that the head of State College-based AccuWeather, which would benefit, has given his campaigns thousands of dollars.

Sigur Ros concert is being streamed live on Sunday

Remember when you would huddle around the radio to hear a show?

#1310: Fifty States, Fifty Slogans: "This is frakking great.""

(Via Diesel Sweeties by R Stevens.)

This is why I love Canada:

Canadians Arrived In New Orleans Five Days Before The U.S. Military

By D.L. McCracken
Sep 8, 2005, 12:03
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Louisiana state senator Walter Boasso is praising the rapid response of rescuers who arrived in New Orleans to assist in saving trapped residents as the waters from the corrupted levees began to rise the day after Katrina. The surprising aspect of the senator's praise was the fact that he wasn't referring to the United States military or FEMA. He was praising the Canadians.

The forty-six member Vancouver-based Urban Search and Rescue Team arrived in the St. Bernard Parish which lies east of New Orleans a full 5 days before American rescue units, and the volunteers worked 18-hour days rescuing 119 people in total.
...

From andrewsullivan.

The Toughest Guy In New Orleans Underwater: UPDATED: "

(Thanks, Jhayne)

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

Marc Reisner is mentioned.

sigh.

Not More Spending, Better Spending: "

(cross-posted on tpmcafe.com)

This article from the Washington Post this morning makes an important point: Underfunding the Army Corps of Engineers was not the problem that caused flooding in New Orleans. The problem was that the Army Corps of Engineers spends money on the wrong things, pushed by members of Congress and its own inclinations.

'Liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some GOP defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency,' the Post notes.

But the article points out that the Army Corps was already in the middle of a $748 million construction project right on the Industrial Canal where the most devastating breach occurred. Unfortunately, the project involved building a new lock on the canal, which had nothing to do with flood control and was justified by a prediction that barge traffic would increase, which has not occurred.

According to this study from the bipartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense, which is the best source for info on waste in the Army Corps and in big projects, the lock-replacement, the most expensive in U.S. history, would (or would have) caused horrible environmental damage to the same low-income neighborhoods that have been washed out by the storm. The report also notes that the major beneficiary of the new lock would be Bollinger Shipyards, Inc., 'the only shipyard on the north side of the lock.'

Incidentally, a quick search for Bollinger Shipyards on the Center for Responsive Politics site reveals that the company and the family that runs it are quite apolitical and seem to focus on their business.

Just kidding! -- the company and seven members of the Bollinger family have given $562,000 to candidates and political committees since 1998, 99% of it to local and out-of-state Republicans. The Bollingers were the fifth biggest contributor to Sen. David Vitter, identified in the Taxpayers for Common Sense report as a major advocate for the lock project.

But campaign graft is not the only thing going on here. The other part of the story is simply that the Army Corps likes to build big things. If you've ever read Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner, which I think is one of the five or ten best books ever written about American politics, you'll be familiar with the tales of the Army Corps and the Bureau of Reclamation and their obsession with building big dams wherever they could. The book mostly deals with places where water is scarce, so it's not directly applicable to New Orleans, but my guess is that the same dynamic applies. Building up the levees and flood walls are mundane, long projects with no immediate payoff to anyone. Building a new lock, or a new dam, is what real men do.

According to the Post, Bush has increased appropriations for Louisiana Army Corps projects somewhat over the Clinton years, which isn't surprising. But much of this is a dynamic that goes on year after year, and the last President who really tried to break the power of the Army Corps, the Bureau of Reclamation, and their congressional backers was Jimmy Carter, one of his biggest mistakes.

It's very important that the liberal message here is not just 'spend more money.' Whether the issue is the Department of Homeland Security or the Army Corps, the point should be to spend the money have smartly, efficiently, in the public interest, and with the kind of cost-benefit analysis that puts the right value on disaster-prevention.

"

(Via The Decembrist.)

FW: [IP] Yahoo apparently born in Year of the RatSiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

What do we have to do to paint such companies as UnAmerican?

What if this had been the Soviet Union or Cuba instead of China?

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Wednesday, Sep 7, 2005 3:26 pm
Subject: [IP] Yahoo apparently born in Year of the RatSiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

Yahoo apparently born in Year of the RatBy JOHN PACZKOWSKI
Sure, Yahoo signed China's "Public Pledge on Self-discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry," a voluntary agreement to monitor and restrict information deemed "harmful" by Beijing, but no one thought the company would follow it to the letter. Reporters Without Borders this week accused the Internet giant of helping Chinese state security officials catch and prosecute a journalist who "leaked state secrets,"Beijing's shorthand for criticizing the government. According to the media watchdog group, Yahoo willingly handed over information that enabled officials to link the IP address of the journalist's computer to a state secret he'd forwarded to foreign media via e-mail. In this case, the "state secret" was a message warning Chinese journalists of the dangers of social destabilization and risks resulting from the return of certain dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. "We already knew that Yahoo collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. "Yahoo obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate," the organization said. "But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations? How far will it go to please Beijing? ... It is one thing to turn a blind eye to the Chinese government's abuses and it is quite another thing to collaborate." The accusations highlight the conundrum facing Internet companies battling it out for a piece of the lucrative Chinese marketplace. How does one do business in China without supporting a government known for its censorship of online information?

-------------------------------------
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Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

Daily Show Sep 6 2005

Daily Show Sep 6 2005
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Major Disasters of Bush Administration, in alphabetical order.

Victory is Mine!

ok, Allen's.

At 7:45 this evening Allen announced that he had trapped the mouse
between a cabinet and the floor in the kitchen.

Fin.

Not just the Senate.

The California legislature has passed a bill which now goes to Arnie to legalize gay marriage.

You Don't Expect Anyone to Have a Plan for Collecting Bodies, Do You?: "

By DHinMI

There are no plans for how (or even whether?) to collect all the bodies in Louisiana:

Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of
an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies
Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.


Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in
eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery 'are not being
released yet.'


Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no
protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved
even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the
city as they searched for survivors.


Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and
over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the
living.


But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every
house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane
Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care
of the dead remained murky.

Sure, why develop a plan for dealing with the bodies. It's not as if it's a health risk, is it? Or it's not like there's a limited time to collect the bodies before decomposition or mutilation by vermin and stray or wild animals will make them unrecognizable, thus denying whatever solace the loved ones of the dead may get from at least being able to bury their dead.

What's disgusting about this is that planning for dealing with the dead isn't something that has to be devised and discussed. There should already be a generic plan in place for any such disaster. Somebody should be able to email an electronic file, and the crisis managers should be able to start assigning tasks based on the preexisting plans. And from the comments of former FEMA officials with the agency during the Clinton administration, there almost certainly were plans for just about every contingency presented by Katrina. Just like how almost everything that's happened in Iraq was forseen by people expert and experienced in any of the relevant competencies or knowledge areas, almost every problem wrought by Katrina had been anticipated, and there were plans in place for addressing the problems. The Bush administration appears to have either ignored the plans, tossed them out, or is just completely incapable of even following the plans they had been given.

The failure of the Bush administration to support the local and state governments trying to contain the damage and death caused by Katrina is bad enough. But the callous incompetence of the Bush administration wasn't only a failure to protect Americans from the horrific deaths by drowning and neglect, it was a failure to protect the innocent from the depraved:

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food
service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday,
flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started
pointing out bodies.




'Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated,' he said. 'That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man.'



Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.




'That's a kid,' he said. 'There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut.'




He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.

'There's an old woman,' he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a
sheet. 'I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to
death,' he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.


Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40
more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. 'It's not on, but at
least you can shut the door,' said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson...

Many trapped by flood waters in shelters found their own ways of dealing with those who died in their midst.


Near an elementary school at Poland and St. Claude avenues, Dwight and
Wilber Rhodes, two brothers, said they had tried to save a middle-aged
man and woman at the Convention Center who appeared to have drowned.


'We performed CPR on them, but they were already dead,' Dwight Rhodes
said. 'So we took the food out of the freezer and put the bodies in.'


Of the four bodies that lay just inside the food service entrance of
the Convention Center, the woman in the wheelchair rattled Brooks the
most. When he found her two days before among the sea of suffering in
front of the Convention Center where one of the last refugee camps
evacuated, her husband sat next to her. He had only one concern when
Brooks and some of his comrades carted her away.




'Bring me back my wheelchair,' he recalled the man telling him.


One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5 years
old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was
gang-raped.


'There was an old lady that said the little girl had been raped by two
or three guys, and that she had told another unit. But they said they
couldn't do anything about it with all the people there,' Brooks said.
'I would have put him in cuffs, stuck him in the freezer and left him
there.'


Brooks and his unit came to New Orleans not long after serving a year
of combat duty in Iraq, taking on gunfire and bombs, while losing
comrades with regularity. Still, the scene at the Convention Center,
where they conducted an evacuation this week, left him shell-shocked.


'I ain't got the stomach for it, even after what I saw in Iraq,' said
Brooks, referring to the freezer where the bulk of the bodies sat
decomposing. 'In Iraq, it's one-on-one. It's war. It's fair. Here, it's
just crazy. It's anarchy. When you get down to killing and raping
people in the streets for food and water … And this is America. This is
just 300 miles south of where I live.'

Anarchy in America. It's bad enough that the Bush administration failed to do everything possible before 9-11 to protect Americans from terrorists. It's bad enough that the Bush administration, by not deploying enough soldiers and outfiting soldiers and their vehicles with sufficient armor, didn't do everything possible to protect American soldiers in Iraq from death and maiming. It's bad enough that the Bush administration didn't do everything possible to prevent people dying awful deaths while they waited in vain to be rescued in the aftermath of Katrina. But doing so little to prevent 7 year olds from having their throats cut and 5 year olds from being gang raped demonstrates that the President and his administration can't even be counted on to try to protect us from ourselves.

"

(Via The Next Hurrah.)

FW: [IP] Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences (not good!!! djf)

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Tuesday, Sep 6, 2005 5:58 pm
Subject: [IP] Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences (not good!!! djf)

Begin forwarded message:

From: Kelley Greenman <greenman.k@inkworkswell.com>
Date: September 6, 2005 5:32:33 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences

Dave,

This was sent to another list. Perhaps it's too controversial for IP. Still, this is shameful.

Kelley

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/6/132725/8931

Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences

Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at
the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display
case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up
the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the
windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The
cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices,
and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not.
Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the
looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home
yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a
newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the
National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of
the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real
heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New
Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and
disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running.
The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to
share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop
parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many
hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to
keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers
who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging
to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that
could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers
who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of
those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of
their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the
20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French
Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from
Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of
New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the
National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and
the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with
$25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not
have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have
extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours
standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We
created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We
waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses
never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits,
they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously
abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as
water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors,
telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to
wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into
the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian
and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other
shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and
that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked,
"If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?"
The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra
water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with
callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were
told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to
give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a
course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would
be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay.
Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police
commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a
solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater
New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the
City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong
information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander
turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are
there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great
excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals
saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told
them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings
and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now
joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in
wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline
to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the
foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began
firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various
directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward
and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our
conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The
sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us
to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was
little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not
going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the
Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain
under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an
encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide,
between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to
everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could
wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip
up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some
chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated
and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from
self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank
further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by
vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi- trucks and
any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape
the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck
and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the
freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn.
We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two
necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered.
We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made
beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic,
broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system
where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and
candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or
food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look
out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the
first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not
have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and
individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90
people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking
about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations
saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were
going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials
responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling.
"Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct.
Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol
vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway".
A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy
structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and
water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into
groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or
"riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible
because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once
again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in
an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from
possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the
police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New
Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search
and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a
ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section
of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable
to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport
had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the
airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we
arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were
forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy
overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any
possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected
to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at
the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had
been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for
hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any
communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception
given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to
someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was
callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were
lost that did not need to be lost.

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My own emphasis added at the bottom...

Leo Kowalski, 92, Retired Elevator Operator: "

You’ve lived in Williamsburg almost your entire life. How’s the neighborhood changed?

Oh boy, it’s lousy sir. Very lousy. They think they own the neighborhood.

Who's they?

They ride on the sidewalk. Bicycles all over the place. Motorcycles. Motorscooters. Whatever. They walk about with phones in their ears. Like a bunch of cattle.

Do you have a cellphone?

I have a phone, but I have a regular phone in the house. I don’t have this phone where you walk. Telephone man says they’re going to go deaf. It does something to your ear. I don’t know how true it is…

I heard they can give you brain cancer.

Yeah? Gives you brain cancer? You don’t have one do you?

I do have a cell phone. Pretty much everyone has one these days. It lets you go places and still make arrangements… but let’s go back to talking about the neighborhood.

Well, look at these lovebirds over here. On the corner smoochin’. You’re not supposed to do that. It’s a distress to the other people. And look at these people [walking by]. Two babies. Next time they’ll have three.

And you see what they got coming up the road here right now? You never seen this before. Carrying babies on their shoulders. I don’t say nuttin’. It’s none of my business.

What’s wrong with carrying a baby on your shoulders?

Suppose the baby falls off and cracks her skull open? And then what?

Has Williamsburg changed in positive ways?

It’s changed a lot. You got people that shouldn’t be here if I had anything to say about it. They got rings here and here. On the belly button. Maybe on the ass for all I know. I don’t know how they got here in the first place. They probably don’t even have a job. A lot of them walk on the street here and the girls put their hands in the boys pocket. Right in the back of their pocket! To see if they got any money.

And we never had these holes [in clothes] either. Never! Not when I first came over. One buys a hole and they all gotta. And then when they don’t have holes they’re carrying shopping bags.

Okay, maybe I should be asking you what you don’t like. What is it you don’t like about Williamsburg? Not just Williamsburg, but New York.

I don’t like the coloreds grabbing the white people when the white people should be sticking together. They want to mix chocolate milk.

"

(Via Gothamist.)

Duke Doesn't Suck.

3 Duke students travel to New Orleans, rescue people, come back while feds say they couldn't help anybody: "

But hey, in all fairness, George Bush was on vacation.

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.


The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.


'We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai,' said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla....


At 2 p.m., the trio decided to head for New Orleans, Buder said. After looking around, they swiped an Associated Press identification and one of the TV station's crew shirts, and found a Kinko's where they could make copies of the ID.


They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.


'We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in,' Buder said....


'Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out,' Buder said. 'They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don't want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere.'

"

(Via AMERICAblog.)

One half hour to get through to Dell Technical support, then 20 minutes of them getting down the information needed to transfer me to another department, and then again to a linux department.

All this because I need to get bad RAM replaced on a server.

It looks like the price of calling Dell to replace the bad RAM will cost as much as just going out and replacing the RAM.

Dell Support is a joke.

Text Message from New Orleans: "

An operative who's been reporting on the disaster in New Orleans sent us a text message this morning:

I have a rehnquist joke for you - he's actually been dead for 4 days but fema just found him.

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

RELATED:

Rehnquist, R.I.P. [Wonkette]

Finally [Wonkette]

"

(Via Wonkette.)

Chertoff's Reading Habits: "

On Sunday, DHS chief Michael Chertoff told 'Meet the Press's' Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that 'everyone' thought the crisis had passed when the storm left: 'I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'' We're wondering what papers the Chertoff household gets, because these are the headlines that greeted most people Tuesday morning:

The Newseum has over 400 frontpages archived but we suspect that the one with the 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet' hed exists primarily in Chertoff's mind.

Hurricane Katrina [Newseum]
Transcript for September 4; Michael Chertoff, Marc Morial, Mike Tidwell, Mark Fischetti, David Wessel, Haley Barbour & Aaron Broussard [MSNBC]

Thanks to the NewsDesigner for a cleaner frontpage pic!

"

(Via Wonkette.)

Here's a simple pledge, "Never believe what the Bush Administration says, ever again."

The Will 2 Believe: "

Kevin Drum expressed some amazement today at the fact that the ABC News poll puts Bush's approval for handling of Katrina at 46%, vs. 47% disapproval. As Kevin says, 'Even if you're a more forgiving sort than I am, what exactly has he done that deserves approval?'

True. But there's a factor here that I think is always neglected in these polls: There's always a thin line between what we believe and what we wish to be true, or need to believe to be true. Unless you've given up completely on the Bush presidency, you naturally want to think the president and the government are doing the best job they can do with the disaster, because to believe otherwise is kind of terrifying. After Sept. 11, Bush's ratings went sky-high not so much because he did anything particularly distinctive in response, but simply because you have no choice but to trust the president under such circumstances. Similarly, especially if your own family is affected by the war in Iraq, you have to believe that the president is making the right choices and started the war on the best intelligence and on honestly held beliefs. It's simply a fact of human nature that people have an easier time believing the thing that makes them feel a little more comfortable and secure in their previous assumptions and their trust.

Jon Stewart put it well in his interview with Christopher Hitchens, when Hitchens obnoxiously asked if Stewart was really saying that he was 'on the President's side,' responding, 'No, I need to believe that the president is on my side.'

And that's a fact about public opinion that I believe Bush and Rove understand better than anyone. Whether they learned it only after Sept. 11, or knew it all along (the interview with fired Bush ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz that came out right before the election suggests that Bush had an early instinct that what he calls 'political capital' could be created not just by persuasion, but by creating extreme situations -- notably war -- in which people essentially have no choice but to defer their trust to the president), they know it now.

And this is part of the story of the Bush presidency: at each point they have created situations in which to believe the worst about the president requires a difficult and unsettling surrender of your own assumptions and sense of security. It's easy and comfortable to believe that the president gets blowjobs from interns, and even to get comfortably outraged about it. But it's much more difficult to accept that he would lead us into war on false pretenses, or countenance the betrayal of a covert agent for political gain, or treat the federal disaster management agency as a 'turkey farm' for cronies of cronies who washed out at their previous trivial jobs, or ignore warnings of a terrorist threat, or...

That's also part of the disconnect or polarization in American politics. Those of us who at some point crossed over the river -- we've come to grips with the fact that our lives and our assumptions are in some degree of peril because of the president, in a way that we never felt about Nixon, Reagan or Bush I -- will believe anything, and have trouble understanding those who haven't crossed over, who still want to believe where it's possible to believe.

It's why it's extremely important not to fall into the trap of 'let's not be political at a time of crisis.' This is a moment where the unthinkable finally becomes real for a lot of people. Because it is real.

(crossposted at tpmcafe.com)

"

(Via The Decembrist.)

Keith Olbermann on MSNBC

The Video: http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings

The Text: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8514671/

Definitely see the video if you can. It is editorializing, and
everybody's saying the same thing these days, but he says it better
than many.

Gore personally helps charter a flight for 140 people from New Orleans, and doesn't grant any press interviews.

Edison Hate Future: "

"

(Via Warrenellis.com.)

im brown, on the metro and messin with your head: "Ever since Sept 11, but especially after the London subway bombings, i have been getting 'the look' on public transportation and at airports. To put it mildly, my days of picking up girls on a plane are over. Shit, getting up to piss on a plane causes at least one lady on a plane to piss herself. It's like a chain reaction."

(Via Best of Craigslist.)

One can only hope for an Orange revolution in Egypt.

Zakariya Abdel Aziz, chairman of the judges' group, warned that election safeguards needed to be put in place. If that did not happen, the election could "subject the office of president to danger, and subject it to the Ukrainian model," he said, alluding to the mass protests in Ukraine last year over charges of election fraud. "The committee and its president must take note of this and revert back to law."

It seems that time and time again this FEMA's (and by line of control the Bush Administration's) incompetence is being "routed around" by ordinary citizens that use the alternative lines of information and communication that exist to both ask for and receive help.

For instance, this story about a Wisconsin Bus Caravan that organized a trip to the Gulf Coast within 24 hours.

I wonder of this flattened organizational structure is just a small part of the inevitable evolution of disaster response and recovery.

A study of the flow reputational capital of help requests and responses in this crisis, especially with the tarnishment (perhaps that is too light a word) of the name of the federal agencies, may prove to be quite interesting in the coming months.

On NBC's Meet the Press this morning:

But the government message has found itself struggling for time on the airwaves against angry criticisms like Ms. Landrieu's, and anguished cries for help, like that of Mr. Broussard, the local official who broke down sobbing on NBC.

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything," Mr. Broussard said. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night."

"Nobody's coming to get us," he said through his tears.

"Nobody's coming to get us," Mr. Broussard said, his head sagging. "The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sake, shut up and send us somebody."

Perhaps one of the most depressing moments I've ever seen on the program.

From TF:

Aides: assistant Army secretary forced out

March 6, 2002 Posted: 11:02 PM EST (0402 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) --The assistant secretary of the Army resigned Wednesday, with congressional aides saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had him fired for questioning proposed budget cuts for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Pentagon said Assistant Secretary of the Army Mike Parker resigned from his post and expressed appreciation for his contributions. But congressional aides said Rumsfeld wanted Parker fired after his testimony to Congress last week.

The White House declined comment. But a senior Bush administration official would not dispute the report that Parker, a former congressman from Mississippi, had been asked to leave.

"The administration expects its staff to support its budget," the official told CNN.

The head of the Army's civil works division, Parker was "terribly honest" in his testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, congressional aides said.

Parker said Bush's proposal to provide the Army Corps of Engineers with approximately $4 billion -- down about 10 percent -- was not the right number. The corps had requested more than $6 billion. The assistant secretary told lawmakers that the cuts would mean canceling $190 million in already contracted projects.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, the committee's chairman, called the decision to let Parker go "a serious mistake."

"Assistant Secretary Parker came before the Budget Committee and answered questions put to him honestly and directly," Conrad said. "That is precisely his responsibility in our constitutional system.

"The administration will cost itself credibility with Congress if it attempts to suppress the truth from its own representatives who testify before Congress."

A senior Bush aide said that when the budget is final, you "want everybody to support it." Parker, the aide said, "doesn't appear to agree with the president's budget."



Find this article at:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/03/06/army.secretary/

Ah Hungary...

Parting Shots: Axe Murders and a Reality-Show Lawsuit: "

Woah, where did the week go? We got so many other stories we want to tell you about, but it's already 6:00, so we're just going to give 'em to you fast and dirty. Not that there's anything wrong with fast and dirty...

• The cops arrested a man in connection with the brutal murder of two Germans in late July. After what seems to have been an extremely light grilling by the fuzz, the killer broke down and admitted that he hadn't bought a house from the couple, but instead strangled and axed them to death, and then dumped their rotting carcases in a well somewhere near the puszta.

• The British government is hoping to tackle the problem of out-of-control fly-away Brit stag animals by issuing a set of useful guidelines, including 'Know the local laws and customs, for example acceptable behaviour and alcohol laws.' Hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaah, oh that's rich. [times online]

• The Hungarian government is promising to slash spending on administration, and to keep the deficit in check during its dicey-looking re-election drive. Hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaah, oh that's even better. [portfolio.hu]

• Something called Endemol, which is the owner of the license for reality show 'Big Brother,' is suing the creators of the Hungarian reality show 'Való Világ' ('Real World') for stealing their idea. Attila Árpa, 'the father of Való Világ,' doesn't deny copying the concept but says Endemol has no chance of winning. We smell a new reality show!

• An 83-year-old woman had her leg crushed under the tire of a bus after her arm got stuck in the door, and the driver didn't notice. She was dragged for 12 meters. According to tabloid Színes Bulvár Lap (offline) the injured néni isn't angry with the driver, because he has visited her in the hospital.

• According to the French daily Le Figaro, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) included Hungary on a 'blacklist' of countries where they had found problems with air safety. Hungarian aviation authorities countered by saying that the ICAO hasn't written such lists since last November, because it is 'against their principles.' Super!

• The parents of a five-year-old girl who was paralyzed after receiving a required immunization shot as an infant sued the state and won. But a new law that will become effective on October 30th will shift the responsibility from the state to the manufacturer of the medicine in such cases.

• In the process of turning Budapest's Madách tér (Madách square) into London, Steven Spielberg's crew removed stickers publicizing conservative opposition party Fidesz's National Consultation Board from the front of the organization's office. Meanwhile, the director of the acclaimed Holocaust epic 'Shindler's List' will allegedly compensate businesses affected by this weekend's shooting of 'Munich.' [index.hu]

• Lajos Koltai's supposedly so-so Holocaust epic 'Sorstalanság' ('Fateless') will be among the foreign films from which the American Film Academy will choose the Oscar nominees in January, having been officials put into competition by the Hungarian government. [index.hu]

• A bicyclist tried to rape a 24-year-old woman jogging on a bicycle path in the Southeastern town of Békéscsaba on Sunday. The woman managed to escape. Police have asked the help of civilians in finding the attacker, but are not urging motorists to run over any bicyclists they see. [index.hu]

• Two siblings, a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old, have been missing since yesterday afternoon, when they took off from their father's home near the eastern town of Nyíregyháza in the old man's Skoda. [index.hu]

"

(Via Pestiside.)

You've probably heard by now that Rehnquist has died.

No Further Commentary needed.

horror show update: "

I imagine most of you have seen all this crap from several other sources as well, but here are the links that made me cringe this morning:

Photo Op

Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La: But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Two key U.S. senators said on Friday they will launch a bipartisan coverup of what they described as an 'immense, but probably unavoidable failure' of the government response to Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who heads the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the panel's other top-ranking Republican, said they hope to shift as much blame as possible to lower-ranking officials and career federal employees -- ideally at an obscure government agency that few Americans have ever heard of.'

In keeping with recent congressional practice, we will try to shield the president and the senior members of his administration from directly responsibility for this fiasco, although a few token resignations may be required this time around,' the pair said in a joint statement. 'Our primary focus, however, will be on figuring out how to throw billions of dollars in additional funding to the very same agencies that failed so spectacularly this past week.'

Guard Troops Descend on New Orleans

Bill Wattenburg said that he has lobbied the administration and the military to immediately begin [a food drop program as was done in Afghanistan, Bosnia and in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami.] He said he was told that the military was prepared to begin, but that it was awaiting a request from FEMA. 'We know very well how to do this, and it's just incomprehensible that we're not,' Wattenburg said.

Firefighting gear stockpile unused

Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned. Responding to a CNN inquiry, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Short said Friday the gear has not been moved because none of the governors in the hurricane-ravaged area has requested it.

Daley 'shocked' as feds reject aid

A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck.

City personnel are willing to operate self-sufficiently and would not depend on local authorities for food, water, shelter and other supplies, he said.

'Questions Linger' about the speed with which troops were deployed

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested -- and continues to request -- that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Teenager 'loots' a rescue bus

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control. 'I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. 'I hadn't ever drove a bus.' The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.

'I dont care if I get blamed for it,' Gibson said, 'as long as I saved my people.'

Volunteers with 500 boats sent home:

They then specifically asked the DWF agent that they (and other citizens in the flotillia) be allowed to go to the hospitals and help evacuate the sick and the doctors and nurses stranded there. They offered to bring these people back to Lafayette, in our own vehicles, in order to ensure that they received proper and prompt medical care.

The DWF agent did not want to hear this and ordered them home -- ALL FIVE HUNDRED BOATS. They complied with the DWF agent's orders, turned around and headed back to Lafayette along with half of the flotillia. However, two friends were pulling a smaller 15ft alumaweld with a 25 hp. The DWF agents let them through to proceed to the rescue operation launch site.

The function of the military is to control the media:

Leroy Fouchea, [...] then offered to show reporters the dead bodies of a man in a wheelchair, a young man who he said he dragged inside just hours earlier, and the limp forms of two infants, one just four months old, the other six months old. [...] 'They died right here, in America, waiting for food,' Fouchea said as he walked toward Hall D, where the bodies were put to get them out of the searing heat.

A National Guardsman refused entry.

'It doesn't need to be seen, it's a make-shift morgue in there,' he told a Reuters photographer. 'We're not letting anyone in there anymore. If you want to take pictures of dead bodies, go to Iraq.'

Evacuation Disrupted by False Gunshot Report

Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report. 'We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on,' she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.

And yet, Army Times says:

According to Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeremy Grishamn, a spokesman for the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the vessel kept its helicopters at sea Thursday night after several military helicopters reported being shot at from the ground.

[ They go on to describe it as an 'insurgency'! What the fuck! ]

See Geraldo freak out on Hannity (QuickTime) More of this sort of thing at Crooks And Liars. Also, The Rebellion of the Talking Heads, since it is news when reporters start actually reporting.

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup. So at least there's that."

(Via jwz.)