"Ideas have consequences"

is one of the favorite sayings of the right, especially conservatives.

I have been fascinated by this meme since it was spun in the Clinton years by folks like degenerate gambler Bill Bennett.

"Ideas have consequences" is not the meme I grew up with. That would have been actions have consequences. The idea that ideas have consequences seems to indicate that some ideas have consequences just for being thought, but as Bob Dylan famously pointed out, "If my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine."


What is really true is that ideas that are translated into actions or omissions of actions indeed have consequences.

But I think some folks just think "Don't think that thought! Don't think that thought!"

That's what came into my head in response to Razorskiss' reply here to his post here.

Now this "armchair commentator" - that would be me- (who had good friends endure Bush's mercies in Manhattan after 9/11, and who lost a high school classmate - albeit not a close one -in the Towers AND cleaned up his share of hurricane damage when he lived on Long Island - Gloria was a pain in the butt) says that because of statements he makes like this:

I have people like him in my "Ripostes" section, with a content warning, for a reason. Times like this are why.

...

which is subtitled "Read at your own risk." ...Thoughts are dangerous, you know.

Especially, evidently, if they bring to bear unpleasant facts that clash with one's beliefs.

People like Razorskiss voted for someone who claimed "moral beliefs" who really engaged in cronyism.

We New Yorkers and ex-New Yorkers saw it a mile away in a New York minute.

We tried to warn the rest of you.


But instead of listening (an action) and actively searching out the truth another action, you dared not risk finding out what has clearly led to the loss of great life and property.

And I'm not talking about just George W. Bush here; especially if the Governor and Mayor are culpable.

And we're talking about those who voted for him.

Thus, if Razorskiss dared to find out the truth, he'd have known - it was all over the progressive blogosphere, that the statement he made:

FEMA assists MEMA (or LOHSEP) in emergency *management* operations. They *assist*. They do not take charge, they assist!

is hogwash. FEMA, under law, can take charge. They should have. They failed to. They failed to coordinate.

I've seen enough of my share of bad situations, but this is an embarassment for America, and it is even more embarassing that some folks, who claim to be "religious" cannot dare to examine their conscience.

I feel very bad for all the folks who lost their lives and property in this disaster- everyone- but we've seen Bush regime damage control before, we've seen the ineptness before, we've seen the whitewashing before, and we know where the blame lies.

I wish Razorskiss luck in reconstruction (from his blog he was awfully lucky); unlike Charmaine Neville he didn't lose everything, but was helpling the "least of these" to the best of her ability.

Unfrickin' believable...

I cannot believe, that even at this date, some folks are still trying to blame the poor and/or African Americans traped in Louisiana for what went on...

Rx: See this video here, or if that link goes bad, read the transcript here.

After seeing that, anybody who's going to write off "those people" and "elements of their population," should wash their keyboard out with soap.

And as far as "sensationalizing," ...there's an estimated 40,000 dead bodies rotting in the streets and in the water in New Orleans.

That's 8-12X the number of people killed in the Kobe quake, at least 15X the number of people killed in the World Trade Center.

What planet do some people inhabit???

Powerline reverts to an excuse and a mantra...

Powerline basically says, "Look at all these bad things poor George W. Bush had to endure! But at least we have only 5% of people looking for work who are unemployed (who cares about those whose benefits ran out?) and there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil in almost 4 years..."

Well, that brings up a question: If there was another terrorist attack, or an earthquake, or an epidemic, does anyone honestly think FEMA could respond?

Does anyone think if something happened in the next few weeks that anybody would be anything other than screwed?

Americans agree, it seems. If there is another attack on American soil, Bush will have been a perfect failure.

The Republican Party is Antiamerican and Must Be Destroyed strongly denounced in order to make sure our liberties are preserved...

I am not kidding. I am all for a multiple political parties, and I am proliberty, and pro-civil liberties.

That's why any true American must demand that the Republican Party as we know it cease and desist.

Why? Because of this, (HT Atrios) and this. There simply is no excuse for this garbage. This is America. We do not censor the media here. We do not shut out opposition debate. We do not tolerate puppet governments acting at the behest of a leader.

Get out of town George W. Bush. You're a disgrace to the office.

And anyone who is a card-carrying member of the Republican party should be denied a security clearance, should be given exactly the same treatment that we gave Communists in the 1950s; it is patently obvious that those who support George W. Bush are a grave threat to the American way of life, and are a clear and present danger to the liberities of Americans.



Update: Evidently they've gotten a bit better with respect to press restrictions or maybe a "sea change".

Good.

Remember the old canard about "Clinton's haircut on the runway delaying flights?"

It's false, of course, but, even if it were true, it would pale in comparison to chemotherapy being denied to cancer patients because Bush was doing a photo-op instead of attending to Katrina!

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 30 -- The Naval Medical Center in San Diego's Balboa Park was shut down to accommodate a visit by President George W. Bush Aug. 30, RAW STORY has learned, forcing patients to cancel chemotherapy treatments and hundreds of scheduled patient visits.

"The pharmacy is closed. The emergency room is closed. Even chemotherapy patients will not be allowed on base," the daughter of one patient told RAW STORY shortly before the President's arrival. "My mother is a patient...She was contacted and told that her appointment had been canceled and would be rescheduled later…All civilian personnel and patients will not be allowed on base."

Hundreds of patient visits were cancelled as a result, she said. Patients and staff at the Naval Medical Center voiced concern over the shut-down of non-critical patient care services for a photo op that never even materialized. None were willing to go on record by name for fear of retaliation, such as loss of jobs or revocation of healthcare privileges.

One hospital volunteer expressed shock and disappointment at the apparent disregard for patient welfare.

"I think it's disgusting. People who are getting chemotherapy or radiation are on a very set schedule. They are not supposed to miss a session or put it off by even a day, because it's based on the life cycle of a cancer cell," the volunteer said, adding that some patients had waited weeks for appointments. "Some had to postpone for quite a while, because the radiation and chemo rooms were full on other days," she added. "They closed everything down just so he [Bush] could have his photo op in the lobby with the corpsmen."

I was always one who loudly complained whenever Bush I, or Clinton visited NYC; they inevitably caused huge traffic jams; in my opinion, if they were better public servants they'd need a whole lot less "security."

But this is such a callous disregard for human life.

It ain't an imaginary 2 hours on a runway.

"Natural limits to what government can do..."

The above was what I took away from one of my commenters; the question I thought of was, just what are those "natural limits?"

Also, in my response to Greensmile I noted:

The thing that will bring down the United States if these people are not turned out of office is their complete contempt for the very notion of a social contract, that some notion of a society, that needs stability, must be encouraged, and cannot be "privatized."

In America, the rich and powerful have stability; the higher up on the food chain you are, the better you are able to insulate yourself against calamity. But the idea that government should at least try to avert calamity is alien to these people, and it is alien to them on ideological grounds, the same grounds that Stalinists used to justify their absurd economic system.

Now this isn't some newfangled idea - the idea of a social contract, that government can do things to avert at least some calamities and promote tranquility even for the most dispossesed, and for visitors to a country. It's thousands of years old...



As an opinion piece in the usually abysmal Washington Post put it:

The story begins in the usual manner, with the king asking his faithful minister, Gun, to save the country from rising waters. Unfortunately, Gun is an arrogant guy and thinks he can control nature. For nine years he labors, building dam after dam to stem the raging tide. As each dam falls apart, the waters rage ever stronger. Eventually, the king wises up, banishes Gun, and orders Gun's son, Yu, to have a go. A humble man, Yu quietly studies the problem and concludes that attempting to constrain nature is futile. Rather than build dams, he gently channels the flood waters into an irrigation system. The crops bloom, the waters recede, the people are saved and Yu is anointed king.

Americans seem not to know Yu's story, for we insist on defying nature. We blithely set sail on churning seas and fly into stormy skies. We build homes on unstable hillsides, and communities in woodlands ripe for fire.

Then they go on to say, "We rely on technology and the government's largess to protect us from our missteps, and usually, that is enough..." which is the whole problem: the people in charge don't think there should be "government largesse," nor should there be a promotion of harmony in society.

This story is not simply about floods - as is the New Orleans story itself, but it is about how it came to be, and who is responsible.

New Orleans sits at the base of the river in the US, where a great deal of traffic goes, even today, and near areas where oil is drilled and refined. It is, in fact, an epicenter of interstate commerce. Yet conservative ideologues who find any use of the interstate commerce clause repugnant, did nothing. And I'm not talking just Republicans here- the Democrats, too, have shifted so far to the right that the very idea of creating an infrastructure to work with nature - and to promote domestic tranquility and the commonwealth is "socialism" while the "American way" is a society where calamities on the scale Triangle Shirtwaist fires are the norm, about which "we just can't do anything."

We know other societies do some things better than ours; it's simply idiotic not to adopt those items from other societies that work.

More Bush regime mendacity...

What else can it be called?
With censoring the bad news, stealing resources for photo-ops, that delayed relief efforts, and outright, bald-faced lies in an attempt to take credit for something other people were doing (while Bush was on vacation and raising money), it is a wonder that people still think Dear Leader can do no wrong.


Update: This diary in Kos pretty much takes apart the "Bush told the mayor and/or governor to evacuate New Orleans" meme; if it were true, then it's a LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) event.

There's a big difference between this and 9/11: there was -until the recent attempts at censorship- no double super secret cloak and dagger bullshit associated with this: it's all out in the open and a matter of public record what happened, and it simply can't be spun. (See the links here to see that it's slam dunk no doubt about it that FEMA screwed up, regardless of what state and local officials did.)

This post on Powerline is a good example of the uttler moral cluelessness coming from the right at present: Hindrocket is concerned with "Bush bashing," not trying to for a moment to think that there might be some responsibility by Bush (as well as state and local officials, where applicable) to this.

Trip Reading...

Wondering what to do on long plane flights, in the tradition of my father, who travelled to Asia about 60 times, I often purchase a book to read. Unlike my father, though, I don't go in for fiction novels that "pull you in" with cliffhanger endings and short chapters.

The book I bought for this trip was in Powell's at PDX, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers," by Mary Roach. It was in the "science" section. I kid you not.

I give it two thumbs up. I read most of it on the plane; later, in a restaurant I reread a passage about cannibalism, and laughed so hard (both times) tears came to my eyes. It must have been especially strange in the restaurant; I hope the sushi chef wasn't offended. The passage in question concerned a report by Reuters conerning a certain pair of brothers in Hainan, China, one of whom owned a restaurant, and the other who owned a crematorium, and the author's attempt to verify the report. It's worth the price of the book for that passage alone.

Powerline screws up again...

They praise Bob Denver, but Maynard Krebs was a schlemiel. He did irreperable damage to the very idea of Thelonius Monk - who was a f*king genius.

I hope Bob Denver goes to a good place, but Maynard Krebs wasn't much of an epitome of Beat culture.

Geez.

Bush is culpable...

Damned right: it's blame game time.

Though I suspect that Nagin and the governor might bear some blame themsleves.

And people who voted for Bush bear some blame to - they put him in office.

Blame for what?

Let's start with about 40,000 dead bodies:

A co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery since Hurricane Katrina, and his business partner here has described the grim task there.

"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.

His partner, Dan Hicks, of Paducah, Ky., was deployed Monday. Buckner, of Dickson, is on standby. Their funeral home is one of several collection sites for donations to be taken to the Red Cross in Fayetteville on Wednesday for transfer to places in need.

The 40,000 estimate does "not include the number of disinterred remains that have been displaced from ... mausoleums," Buckner told the Times-Gazette Monday.

(Usless and tasteless aside: I am reminded of an old episode of the Beverly Hillbillies where Granny is explaining about a "bunch of greens that weren't planted deep enough and at the first heavy rain there were greens all over the place" (paraphrase) to someone who thinks Granny is planning her funeral, and who thinks the greens are a family of Greens...)

And while they were dying, and while others were going hungry and thirsty, where was Bush?

Even as Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast that Sunday night and early Monday, Aug. 28-29, and the National Hurricane Center was warning of growing danger, the White House didn't alter the president's plans to fly from his Texas ranch to the West to promote a new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

By the time Bush landed in Arizona that Monday, the storm was unleashing its fury on Louisiana and Mississippi. The president inserted into his speech only a brief promise of prayers and federal help.

He continued his schedule in California, and he didn't decide until the next day that he should return to Washington. But it took him another day to get there, as he flew back to Texas to spend another night at his home before leaving for the White House.

Once the president was in Washington, the criticism only intensified.

While a drowned New Orleans descended into lawless misery, Bush delivered remarks from the Rose Garden that were seen as flat and corporate. It was a sharp contrast to the commanding, empathetic president the public rallied around in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In a television interview, Bush said - mistakenly - that nobody anticipated the breach of the levees in a serious storm.

Even Monday's trip to the region was a redo, hurriedly arranged by the White House over the weekend after lukewarm response to Bush's first in-person visit to the Gulf Coast last Friday.

Bush had raised eyebrows on his first trip by, among other things, picking Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. - instead of the thousands of mostly poor and black storm victims - as an example of loss. "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch," Bush said with a laugh from an airplane hangar in Mobile, Ala.

In the same remarks, Bush gave FEMA chief Brown - the face for many of the inadequate federal response - a hearty endorsement. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush said.

Later in Biloxi, Miss., Bush tried to comfort two stunned women wandering their neighborhood clutching Hefty bags, looking in vain for something to salvage from the rubble of their home. He kept insisting they could find help at a Salvation Army center down the street, even after another bystander had informed him it had been destroyed.

Let's call it his "Marie Antoinette moment." (HT: Americablog)

Bush's Mouthpiece claims the buck stops with Bush. Let's see him resign, then, OK?

Here's how it's done:

Joe Carter thinks apparently that expecting a government to take measures to keep citizens safe is a form of idolatry. Not so, Joe; this really comes down to basics.

Serendipitously the same evening I read Joe's post, I happened upon the Daily Yomiuri; this article appeared there:

TOKYO - (KRT) - Japan's Construction and Transport Ministry plans to send a team of ministry officials and experts to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to conduct on-site research, a move aimed at studying safety measures for low-lying areas in Japan, according to ministry sources.

With Hurricane Katrina having submerged almost the entire southern U.S. city last week, the ministry has been alerted to the impact a major storm can have even on a major industrialized country, the sources said. The disaster has prompted the ministry to consider reviewing its flood control measures, they added.

Japan has a total of 1,169 square kilometers of area at or below sea level, including the Kanto Plain and the Osaka Plain. Above all, the Koto delta district along Tokyo Bay's waterfront is home to 3 million people, prompting fear of possible disasters similar to the one seen in New Orleans as a result of broken levees. In light of this, the ministry intends to dispatch personnel to New Orleans to try to determine the cause of the city's levee breaches.

New Orleans was flooded mainly because a levee near Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city, collapsed under eight-meter high waves.

Also in Japan, as sea-level zones run through big cities, so does damage from tidal waves. In 1959, a typhoon hit Ise Bay with a 5-meter-high storm surge that broke levees on the Nobi Plain in Nagoya and other cities, leaving more than 5,500 people dead or missing.

Following the deadly disaster, the then Construction Ministry tightened its flood control measures by building breakwaters and floodgates resistant to tidal waves caused by typhoons equivalent in strength to the one that devastated the Ise Bay area.

Now Japan was a poorer country in 1959, but their government tends to try to a) learn from its mistakes, and b) takes preventative measures, and so since '59, they apparently have been doing a good job at prevention.

Did the US Federal government send civil engineers to Kobe after the earthquake there?

Carter's response is nihilistic; it is better to have public officials take proactive measures and follow through on them, rather than relying on the ideology that "no government is best" and then take the consequences of dead people when catastrophes hit. It's idiotic to hide behind the ideology of "federalism" and "we can't do anything" when clearly there are things that can be done. They just weren't because too many people were snookered into thinking "government is the problem."

One other thing I'll add: in Japan and China people aren't generally bothered by typhoons; much of their hydrology and civil engineering already reflects a resistance to them. (I know this for a fact; I went through one in Osaka once. I was at a technical conference, and nobody stopped doing anything. Not even the lights went out. And it wasn't a wimpy storm either.) Japan, a small country with little plain area, doesn't have all that much area that's floodable compared to Louisiana.

Air America online sure has a lot of commercials...

I'm here in the Hotel Francs in Kahim Makuhari, and while preparing for my meetings (don't ask what time it is... when you're in as many time zones as I've been in during the past week the only thing to do is work with the jet lag), I've got Air America on through BB.

They've got lots of commercials now.

Not that the righties will admit it, but evidently there's a huge market for Air America.

Just when you think you heard everything...

Denial ain't a river in Egypt, as some folks say...Joe Carter thinks that the problem with the New Orleans massacre was a failure of conservatives to back "a true leader – whether a Democrat or Republican – and [to have] supported them in the New Orleans mayoral race."

I'd start looking at one's own political and moral eyeplanks a bit deeper than that...

For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.

You might have expected the administration to reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it is following a natural disaster. As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago.

But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

Really, do conservatives take responsibility - ownership of anything???

More travel blogging...

Nara, Japan:

• Murasaki is missing. This is a tragedy, as it is the only izakaiya restaurant in the immediate area that takes American Express, my "corporate credit card."
  
  
• There is a two "new pence" coin that keeps diffusing into my Japanese coins; it feels and weighs too much like a 10 yen coin. But it's not exactly a 10 yen coin. It would be nice if there was one global money system, so folks who travelled wouldn't have to constantly fumble for the right change. But that won't happen in my life.
  
  
• My room wasn't ready when I arrived, so, sweaty and jet lagged, I decided to finally make it to Hohryuji temple. (法隆寺) (Not that most folks who regularly reads this blog probably aren't much aware of it, but regardless, please forgive the redundancy.) 法隆寺 (Flowering of the Dharma Temple) is 2 train stops from Nara, and happens to be the oldest still-standing wooden structure in the world. It looks like any of the other temples in Nara, but, well, a bit older. What is odd - or perhaps wise is a better term- about 法隆寺 is that one part of 法隆寺 contains what seems to be a cross between a museum and a Buddhist temple; there are statues of Kannon (Avolokitesvara) and other Boddhisattvas that are "under glass" in temperature/humidity/security controlled conditions with offering paraphenalia outside the glass. This is good; what shocked me about Tiantong temple in China was the complete openness of fragile scrolls, etc. 法隆寺 was built by a Prince Shotoku in the Heian period - when the Japanese government was ruled from Nara- and there is much folklore about Prince Shotoku. What is interesting to me is the distance, though. This - two trainstops from Nara- was not, actually, like you find in Warsaw today, with the Catholic Churches "merged" with the Presidential houses. Say what you want, but even the devout Prince Shotoku must have realized that at least a spatial separation of church and state wasn't entirely a bad idea.
  法隆寺 is worth the trip; it is a huge complex, actually, almost in itself as big as the temple complexes in Nara (which were built a couple or three hundred years later than 法隆寺.
  

By the way, there'd be a lot more standing wooden structures in the world if people didn't keep invading each other and if people werent' careless with fires. Kiev, apparently in the 9th century, was a huge metropolis by Dark Ages standards, but it all burnt down.

Dow 8,000? 7,000?

Really, Rhenquist has died, the entire world thinks we're a 3rd world country it seems- on the plane rides over, people were reading about Bush's disasterous presidency in English, German and Japanese.

Really, there's no question now, whatever may be the responsiblity for prevention (of which Republicans bear more than a little bit), how but can the markets shun the US market if the clown who's responsible for this is going to "lock up" the court - especially if he puts in a shoddy thinker like Scalia? (Shoddy- yes- read his opinions. They may be "witty" but they are utter nonsense.)

America is screwed.

Heathrow Airport blogging - and now for something completely different

Everybody else in the blogosphere can write about the terrible situaton in the south better than I can at this point, so I might as well try "local color" for a bit.

I am waiting in the Star Alliance lounge at Heathrow for my flight to Kansai (Osaka, Japan)- which, unfortunately, is Lufthansa. But at least the internet access is free.

As it happens, I was staying at the Hilton London Metropole hotel for my meeting here in the UK. As it also happens, that hotel is located right near the train station made famous by one of the London bombers. As it also happens, this hotel is right smack dab in the middle of an Arab/Muslim neighborhood. We have a saying back in New York- you don't shit where you sleep. Even though the bomber, Mohammed Sidique Kahn, wasn't from the neighborhood, he must have known - how could he not?- that he would be doing this nasty deed in the middle of a Muslim neighborhood. What an asshole, is all I can think. At any rate, the people in the Lebanese restaurants were warm and friendly, and the food was first rate. I had only found out about the newsworthiness of my immediate locale on the last day I was here, but to be honest, it didn't bother me a bit. Why should it? I'm here to do a job, and have much more tangible issues to concern me in my life. But I can't help but think of what Scotty Peck wrote about evil: not only is evil, well, evil, but it's almost always glaringly stupid and ignorant as well.

Anyway, I'll be glad to get out of the UK, and go to a country where I can exist within my per diem. Japan. Geez, London is expensive.

Can you imagine what the French are saying about us now?

From the Financial Times (subscription required):

European coutnries were yesterday preparing to release emergency stockpiles of petrol as the US confirmed that some refineries hit by Hurricane Katrina would stay shut for months.

US officials had estimated that the closures would last only one to two weeks. Officials from member governments of the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog of indulstrialized countries, said they were waiting for a formal US request.

The IEA is thought to be close to agreeing to release petrol and other products that could either be sent to the US or used to reduce European imports, thus making more oil products available for the US.

Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Canada all have large emergency reserves.

One European goverment official cautioned that approval was needed from all IEA energy ministers and that any release might be delayed until the weekend.

America has had conservative goverments relative to the "old Europe" French and Germans for decades, and recently we've been getting nasty with Canada.

The country that did the Berlin airlift can't - or won't- even help the folks in New Orleans now. None of this is lost on our "old allies."

Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Apparently a regular at Kos thinks so....I bet if I google the news he'll turn up right... Shall we see?

Holy cow, he sure did.

You'd think that after 9/11 his writers would have done a new schtick.

This is bad for him politically. Right below the bible belt bad.

And yeah, we will politicize it.

Lest anyone think Bush is not full of sewage, click here.

Sky News: Katrina makes the area look like a "3rd World Country"

Link

You simply have no idea what this looks like from the UK. Terms like "helpless giant" are being thrown about by Rupert Murdoch's network with abandon.

Cindy Sheehan was sort of right- Bush bears some responsibility for the disaster in New Orleans...

Sorry Mossback, but Cindy Sheehan's right and you're wrong. We
already have in the public record the equivalent 9/11 Aug 6 PDB for New Orleans:

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."


The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

One of the aspects about being a responsible adult is that one tends to prepare and defend one's life and loved ones against the "system shits the bed" sceneario.

Bush and his supporters haven't been the types of folks who go in for ...well... planning.

Not that he's completely to blame: New Orleans is one of those places that people 500 years from now will consider and say, "How could they have been so stupid as to build a city there in the first place?"

We now have a disaster on a par with the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. It could have been prevented.

London blogging...New Orleans panic...

London- It's kind of odd to be in a London Hilton that doesn't have CNN, but does have Dubai TV. (It doesn't have al Jazeera either, for that matter.)

I finally got internet access today. (Getting into my hotel room was an ordeal in itself- suffice to say though, that after years of doing this, I know that when they say they "don't have a room available," if you have a reservation, and are a frequent stayer, they do indeed have a room for you. All you have to do is apply polite stress to the system, watching, measuring results, and they will come through. It's one of the side benefits I got from reading Herb Cohen's book on negotiating. It's a fine room, too.)

It appears from the UK, - seeing the first headlines in the NY Times since I left the US, that New Orleans is this years' 9/11.

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - Chaos gripped New Orleans on Wednesday as looters ran wild, food and water supplies dwindled, bodies floated in the floodwaters, the evacuation of the Superdome began and officials said there was no choice but to abandon the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, perhaps for months.

President Bush pledged vast assistance but acknowledged, "This recovery will take years."

For the first time, a New Orleans official suggested the scope of the death toll. Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the hurricane might have killed thousands in his city alone, an estimate that, if correct, would make it the nation's deadliest natural disaster since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which killed up to 6,000 people.

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others hidden from view in attics and other places, Mayor Nagin told reporters. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

As survivors struggled with a disaster that left damage of up to $25 billion, a gargantuan relief effort began. Ships, planes, helicopters and convoys of supplies and rescue teams converged on the Gulf Coast, and Pentagon officials said 30,000 National Guard and active-duty troops would be deployed by this weekend in the largest domestic relief effort by the military in the nation's history.

With police officers and National Guard troops giving priority to saving lives, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores for food, clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often in full view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of carjackings, apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were reported, as were a number of shootings.

Having been to New Orleans in the past year and 1/2, I'm pretty shocked by this; not surprised- after all, New orleans was a low lying city in Hurricane Alley- but this is pretty devastating.

Very Brief Hiatus...

I'm off on a rather extensive business trip (出張で). In a couple of days I'll be blogging from London, then Japan, then Beijing.

Beijing should be cool...

"I'll see you Cindy Sheehan and I'll raise you Hugo Chavez..."

Seriously, though, Jesse Jackson's meeting with Chavez might be able to do some good.

It can't hurt. And who knows? And maybe Al Sharpton will galvanize African American sentiment for a reasonable exit from Iraq. It'd be nice though, if he seriously addressed Tawanna Brawley for us European Americans. I know he's older and wiser, and, frankly, would have made a better president than the current one. (Who'd doubt Al Sharpton would use force against our enemies?)

With Jackson meeting Chavez, and Martin Sheen and Cindy Sheehan engaging in a "bearing witness" as well, it's good to see the best traditions of progressive Christianity in action (and not surprisingly more people seem to approve of Sheehan's practices than Bush's at this point), as opposed to the folks who want to repeal the 14th Amendment and bring back the confederacy. (Also see this.)

With regard to that last link, I agree with Joe Carter when he asserts that the "dominionists" make up a small percentage of evangelicals. Having said that, I suppose it would be good now and then if one were truly able to actually uninvite one's self from another's blogroll...

What else would it do but be able to download directly?

I usually don't blog about technical issues, for the same reasons that flowers don't make noise. (Actually, I've never blogged about what I actually do...and the recent stressful spate of work has set up something rather cool for me. If I can pull it off. And now back to something completely different...)

Link

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 29 - Apple Computer and Motorola plan to unveil a long-awaited mobile phone and music player next week that will incorporate Apple's iTunes software, a telecommunications industry analyst who has been briefed on the announcement said on Monday...

It was not clear whether the iTunes phone would allow users to download songs directly from the Internet onto the phone, though music industry analysts said they doubted that such a capability would be immediately available. Mike McGuire, an online-music analyst with Gartner Inc., a research firm, said that so-called over-the-air downloads would first require ironing out technological and music-licensing issues.

But the day of wireless downloads of full songs is not far off, according to major wireless carriers. Sprint said on Monday that by the end of the year it planned to offer phones that allowed users to download full songs wirelessly. Mr. Nelson of Verizon Wireless said his company was also in the final stages of developing such a capability.

Oh, yeah, right the "technological" issues stem from the fact that infrastructure for high bandwidth apps sucks in the US...it's that wonderful, magical, mystical, hidden hand of the "free" market there...

Carrying one less device would be a wonderful thing.

"What I am feeling is water falling on my head"

First words from live video feed from MSNBC on Katrina.

Maybe they'll have updated the link by the time you read this but the very silliness of real-time reporting on this is absurd...

Hurricane thoughts...

New Orleans is a cool city; it's too bad they're going to get at least partially slammed.

It'll be bad because of its topography, but they'll survive.

I wonder if the above ground cemeteries will be OK. I don't know, but that seems kind of important to me.

I've always liked hurricanes (it's like an imposed party complete with candles if you're not being flooded or otherwise in a precarious state of life), but they were a pain in the but if you had a real life to live when they hit.

One other question: what's happening to the folks in jails?

Suicide bombers, poor rural military recruits and sex

Richard Bennett correctly identifies the sublimation of sex as a rationale for suicide bombers; what he missed is the connection between sexual potency and poverty and lack of opportunity. Lack of opportunity- it can be religiously imposed or due to poverty; but you know what? This exists everywhere - even in the US- and one side effect of poverty is alienation from one's self and one's community and society, with the resulting either a gross over-exaggeration of sexual performance or impotency. Either way, it's dysfunctional sexual behavior.

Rx: Gang of Four's songs:

• I Love a Man in Uniform
  
  
• Damaged Goods
  
  
• 5:45
  
  
• At home he's a tourist...
  
  

They were probably after Richard's time...

Why the price of oil will continue to go up - part III

This Kos diary says almost all of it.


The only other thing I'd add: there are still media business types saying prices might go down.

That's how you know that even if it's a bubble, it's not near bursting yet.

Why the price of oil will continue to go up - part II

I was but a young lad so it seems, when I left my first company after some 8 years of service...I remember a meeting I had with the VP of R&D, and discussed the many ills that company had, and after the meeting, I had realized a fundamental truth: often dysfunctional organizations are intentionally planned to be that way.

With Iraq having massive demonstrations in opposition to its proposed new constitution, it might be asked, "Was this planned?"

I suspect so, and so does Tom Hayden...

Far from planting democracy, US policy is squelching what little democracy there is, threatening to dismember Iraq, causing a civil war that will be the pretext for US troops to remain, and re-arranging the Middle East to include a de facto Shiite alliance from Teheran to Basra. That's why Bush can find no "noble purpose". It is about a war for dominance, not democracy.

The only problem, though, is that continuing civil war will mean continuing threats to oil supplies. There can't be "dominance," because the civil war has in it the prospect- pointed out months ago by Gwynne Dyer- that the Iraqis will eventually realize this is a suckers' game.

In the meantime, there will be threats to oil supplies- because that's why we're there.

If they can stop the oil flow, they win against this gambit. But we lose, and lots of folks die. As long as there's no clear resolution, there's uncertainty and oil will be pricey.

"Porn makes you bind" - distractions distract...

Link

Vanderbilt Uni psychologist David Zald and his team exposed [human] guinea pigs to a barrage of "disturbing" images interspersed with landscape or architectural snaps, telling them to scan the images for a certain target image. The press release explains: "An irrelevant, emotionally negative or neutral picture preceded the target by two to eight items. The closer the negative pictures were to the target image, the more frequently the subject failed to spot the target. In a subsequent study, which has not yet been published, the researchers substituted erotic for negative images and found the same basic effect."

The bottom line is, says Zald: "We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images."

So, what's it all about? Well, the boffins reckon it's related to the "rubbernecking" concept - the process whereby you try and drive by an accident without having a shufti but "our emotions of concern, fear and curiosity cause us to stare out the window at the accident and slow to a crawl as we drive by"...

In the second experiment, the researchers sought to determine if individuals can override their emotion-induced blindness by focusing more deliberately on the target for which they are searching. In this experiment, the subjects undertook two different trials. In one they were told specifically to look for a rotated photo of a building; in the other they were told to look for a rotated photo of either a building or a landscape.

The research team hypothesized that the more specific instruction - to look for the building only - would help the research subjects override their emotion-induced blindness. After running the tests, the researchers discovered that they were partially right: specific instructions helped some subjects control their attention, but it didn't help others.

There's reasons people spend time on cusions cultivating ki...

While oil will keep going up until at least 2006

Oh, there'll be ups and downs, but the long term trend is up, up, up.

Yes, part of ihe story is peak oil, about which nobody's doing anything yet.

But the main reason oil will continue to go through the roof is Iraq.

Some points:

• America's energy policy at the business end has always been pretty savage: from killing off lots of whales, to enslaving coal miners, America has always turned a blind eye towards the ruthless extraction of energy to fuel economic growth. You could include slavery too, in that I suppose.
  
  
• Jimmy Carter- speaking honestly - declared the middle east an area of "strategic importance" to the US- which it was and is at the moment: dry up the oil, and we're screwed big time; and this time it won't be somebody doing an embargo on a whim (which was billed as being peed at Israel but actually had something to do with being paid off in worthless dollars).
  
  

This time it is about our very hegemony in the region that's at stake: our task is either to make Iraq a stable, prosperous, "Germany-like" (that is, the Germany of today) American "friend" or - or- give up the very way of life as we've known it for about 60 years.

Now... how likely do you reallythink that Iraq will be "Germany-like?" How about Saudi Arabia?

See where I'm heading?

The whole world knows, dammit, that our Achilles heel is cheap oil at the hands of religious fundamentalists and people who've been screwed by our policy of coddling dictators.

They're not likely to turn into "Germany-like" overnight.

So oil is going up, up, and away.

It was better to let sleeping Saddam Hussiens lie if ther wasn't an exit strategy from imported oil.

Period.

It's time to put away dreams of John McCain being a "moderate" alternative to Bush

The guy's pandering to the creationist crowd:

n Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.

McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.

What some "Maoists" think of Tibet...

You can't make this stuff up:

MIM believes the people of Tibet and China should cooperate economically under capitalism and not fight. That means that if the World Bank supports Han Chinese settlement into Tibet, we should not oppose it either! It's not a question of national culture, but one of economic survival. There is plenty of land in Tibet. The real question is economic development.

If the Tibetans take up Maoism, we support their evicting the Dengist regime from Tibet. If on the other hand Han Chinese return to socialism, they should oppose the "Free Tibet" movement and struggle to make sure Tibet progresses socially and economically. Either way there will be Tibetans and Han Chinese inclined to the Maoist road and there will be those who want capitalism or something even more backward.

Like I said, you can't make this stuff up. This is what real self-styled Maoists sound like.

Also noteworthy:

• They blame "capitalist inroaders" for Tiananmen square...
  
  
• Check out their Maoist movie reviews. For some reason, it reminds me of Focus on the Family's movie reviews, except that the Maoists don't seem to get out that often.
  
  

Now, of course I think these folks are Koo-Koo for Cocoa Puffs ^TM, and I post this merely to note its extreme oddity. All in all, though, I'd say their viewpoints seem much closer to some necons' viewpoints than my viewpoints, by a mile...

Try a little tenderness

When Americans talk about "the lessons of Vietnam," they usually mean failed policies and programs that shouldn't be repeated. But there were some successes in the Vietnam War, including an initiative to win the allegiance of captured and defecting Vietcong and North Vietnamese fighters by treating them generously and reshaping their attitudes. This idea - that harsh treatment of prisoners can be less effective than showing compassion - now deserves a test in Iraq.

The program in Vietnam was called Chieu Hoi, roughly translated as "open arms." While rarely effective against the most hard-core and high-ranking insurgents, Chieu Hoi succeeded in winning the support of nearly 200,000 fighters for the American-backed government of South Vietnam.

Under Chieu Hoi, defectors and prisoners who proved cooperative received clemency against treason charges as well as good food, health care, vocational training and jobs. At the same time, they were systematically indoctrinated with literature, classes and activities to persuade them to support the South Vietnamese government...

Captured enemy documents now in the archives of the Army Special Operations Command discuss the powerful effect of Chieu Hoi on the enemy. One Vietcong report from 1966 says: "The impact of increased enemy military operations and 'Chieu Hoi' programs has, on the whole, resulted in lowering of morale of some ideologically backward men, who often listen to enemy radio broadcasts, keep in their pockets enemy leaflets, and wait to be issued weapons. This attitude on their part has generated an atmosphere of doubt and mistrust among our military ranks." The Vietcong feared the program, and expended a great deal of effort in attempting to thwart it through assassinations, infiltration and counterpropaganda.

So what does this have to do with Iraq? While Chieu Hoi was geared to counter a Communist threat, it was based on universal principles of counterinsurgency that could easily be applied to the current struggle. In fact, Chieu Hoi was something of an import in its own right: it was the brainchild of three men with long experience battling rebels. One was Sir Robert Thompson, who led the British Advisory Mission in Vietnam and was renowned for his work in Britain's quelling of the Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950's. The others were Rufus Phillips, a former C.I.A. official working for the United States Agency for International Development, and Charles Bohannan, a retired Army colonel; this pair had led the American effort in late 1940's to stop the Huk insurgency in the Philippines.

They designed Chieu Hoi to focus on changing the underlying attitudes of the subjects, not simply on trying to control their behavior. Empirical research in social psychology reveals that efforts to directly control behavior through coercion or bribery usually leave underlying attitudes intact, or even harden them. Thus putting a gun to a man's head and instructing him to support a particular political ideology will work only as long as the gun is present and he is being watched. The preferred method for long-term change is instilling sincere belief in the new political ideology, making the gun and monitoring unnecessary.




I would submit that while it is true that "winning their hearts and minds" by changing their underlying attitudes is absolutely necessary and morally the only direction in which to go with prisoners of any stripe, it seems to me like this is speaking long after the cows have left the barn. Just like in Vietnam.

For what everone remembers is not this "successful" program, but the picture above, and what everyone will have burned into their brains is not how nice we can be once we've decided to drop the bad imitation of the Brittish in Northern Ireland/Israelis in Palestine, but Abu Ghraib.

It's actually more shocking that they have to publish an article like this - "see! we can get a lot by being nice to them!" - as though torture and Abu Ghraib was somehow the norm nowadays.

But - probably echoing the earlier articles on this topic from the Atlantic- it's OK, I guess to remind folks that this torture stuff only backfires.

And that folks who champion it ought to worry about karma...

Stupid NY Times Story of the day...

Secular Iraqis Say New Charter May Curb Rights, says the title, but right under it, "President Bush, however, asserted that the Iraqi document guaranteed women's rights and freedom of religion."

Now let us first say that George W. Bush is either over optimistic or being disingenuous and I'd suspect intentionally so.

Here is the constitution. It says pretty plainly:

CHAPTER ONE: Basic Principles

Article (1): The Republic of Iraq is an independent, sovereign nation, and the system of rule in it is a democratic, federal, representative (parliamentary) republic.

Article (2): First, Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:

a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.

c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

Second, this constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, and the full religious rights for all individuals, and the freedom of creed and religious practices.

Now those secular Iraqis might know of which they speak. What is not clearly expressed - what remains vague here- are all kinds of issues which courts rule in the US.

The big example in my head here: what about apostasy?

Clearly secular Iraqis must have that in mind above all. And it seems pretty clear: you can't really have an Islamic state without some sanctions for apostasy, and if you have that, freedom of religion is out the window.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but that's how it looks to me. Maybe religious Iraqis will merely feel a "powerful sense of rage" in response to apostates, and let the alone.

But I suspect that's not the case.

With all the reports about the agitation for Islamic law in Iraq, if I were a secular Iraqi, I'd take no comfort in armchair 101st keyboarders hailing the Iraqi draft consitutiton as a "decent compromise."

DC Media Girl Roasts Malkin, and in the process her associates

Here, and here.

Michelle Malkin...Michelle Maglalang...even her name is a dimestore joke.

More evidence of Bush's popularity

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

If even the National Post is publishing stuff like this, you know the cluckster in chief is in trouble...


Moyer, of course has it right: Bush and his supporters really have no regard for the truth- they are classic bullshitters in the parlance of the term below.

(Atrios)

Who would Jesus assasinate?

OK, well, I thought it was interesting when Media Matters posted this bit about Pat Robertson being bloodthirsty and wanting Hugo Chavez assasinated, (HT: Atrios), but I'm actually kind of surprised that the NY Times picked it up.

Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.

Although those US officials have been at a loss to explain the presence of certain US embassy personnel near and around the coup leader.

In addition, the Times neglected to report that Robertson basically left out some salient facts: Chavez is dictatorial and corrupt, but has also garnered very broad support by turning petrodollars into social programs, boosting health and literacy of Venezuelans. It's the latter thing that really pisses off the conservatives; after all, they have no problem with dictatorial and corrupt Saudis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and of course, Robertson had no problem with his old friend Mobutu Sese Seko, or Roberto d'Aubisson, the Salvadoran death squad leader who murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero.

That dang libreral media...always leaving out context.

Joe Tierney: I'm dazzled by his erudition...

Actually, not.

Peter Maas wrote a pretty good overview of the peak oil situation in last Sunday's Times magazine.

Matthew Simmons, a head of a Houston investment bank specializing in the energy industry and author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy" was a main source for the book...

So what does Joe Tierney do? Well...

I didn't try to argue with [Simmons] about Saudi Arabia, because I know next to nothing about oil production there or anywhere else. I'm just following the advice of a mentor and friend, the economist Julian Simon: if you find anyone willing to bet that natural resource prices are going up, take him for all you can.

Julian took up gambling during the last end-of-oil crisis, in 1980, when experts were predicting a new age of scarcity as the planet's resources were depleted by the growing population. Julian had debunked these fears in "The Ultimate Resource," the bible of Cornucopian economics, which showed how human ingenuity had kept driving down the price of energy and other natural resources for centuries.

He offered to bet the pessimists that oil or any other resource they chose would be cheaper, in real terms, at any date they picked in the future. The ecologist Paul Ehrlich, author of "The Population Bomb" and "The End of Affluence," took up his offer and chose copper, tin and three other metals worth $1,000 in 1980.

Hey Joe, I got a bet for you! I'll bet you $5,000 that at some point the Anasazi ran out of water and became extinct...I'll bet you another $5,000 that climate changes in the Asian steppes brought about forced migrations due to lack of grazing land that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire.

I mean, if you're going to take it as a sure thing that natural resource prices can't go up to the point of squeezing civilization, then I would assume that when I trot out instances of environmental over-extension that he'd be perfectly willing to pay up.

The New Yorker this week: the article on Hewitt and the article by Gladwell.

Hugh Hewitt's profile in this week's New Yorker by Nicholas Lemann, is a very interesting deconstruction of Hewitt: the article is clearly written with a right-of-center slant; never really calling into question Hewitt's fundamental position on the media, which is, to wit: there can only be opinionated media.

Look, I'll admit that this blog is more opinionated than it would be if it were purely journalistic, but the purpose of this blog, in addition to recording facts and my own state of mind in relation to them is to be a bit propagandistic.

Hewitt seems to think there's nothing but propagandistic journalism.

That, in the definition below, is nothing but bullshit journalism, and it's most often seen from well, folks like Hewitt.

Recording facts as they exist, and attempting to be censorious of one's opinions is indeed a position: it is the position that in taking that orientation one can best arrive at a view of things free from one's prejudices. Hewitt just doesn't care about prejudices.

Also worth reading: the article by Gladwell on health insurance, which pretty much implies one obvious truth: if "moral hazard" principle insurance actually worked, insurance costs in the US would be going down, not up.

Single payer.

Yes, they really do have an army game on the army website - just so prospective Casey Sheehans know what they're getting into?

I thought Randi Rhodes was being hyperbolic, but it turns out she's right.

Evidently, though, Snowden's secret is not part of the game.

Snowden was wounded inside his flak suit. Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden's flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden's insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out...Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands over his eyes...

"I'm cold," Snowden wimpered. "I'm cold."

"There, there," Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. "There, there."

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

"I'm cold," Snowden said. "I'm cold."

"There, there," said Yossarian. "There, there." He pulled the rip cord of Snowden's parachute and covered his body with the white nylon sheets.

"I'm cold."

"There, there."

Conservative Terrorist Rudolph sentenced.

But this is is the important point:

John Hawthorne, whose wife, Alice, had died in the attack on Olympics, addressed Mr. Rudolph during the sentencing to describe him as Napoleonic - "little person, big bomb."

"You're still a small man," he said. "You show defiance and arrogance, but only to hide your fear of the dismal future in store for you." Mr. Hawthorne played a video tribute to his wife and noted that today would have been their 18th wedding anniversary.

Fallon Stubbs, Alice Hawthorne's 23-year-old daughter, offered Mr. Randolph forgiveness. "Because of you, I have become a tolerant person," said Ms. Stubbs, who was also injured in the bombing. "Not for you, but for me, I forgive you, I look at you, I love you.

"And if I cry," she added, "it's not for me. It's not for my mother. It's not for my father. It's for you."

At that point, Mr. Rudolph appeared to break eye contact, according to The Associated Press.

It's good that -unlike Paul Hill- Rudolph will have the rest of his life to contemplate the horrors he's inflicted on others.

And thankfully the extremistrs won't make a martyr out of the timid Rudolph like they did with Paul Hill.

A Challenge to right-wing readers of this blog...

With Bush's stunningly low approval ratings (he's now offically less popular than Nixon was in the summer of 73) it's reasonable for the Democrats to start thinking big- like taking back both the House and the Senate in 06.

Now, here's how it will go down: for the rest of 05, there will be nothing straying from the current game plan, which would be to basically try to have at least the Senate Dems on message, with the exception of an occaisonal turncoat like Liberman.

So, for example, there's no reason to filibuster Roberts- despite the fact that he appears to be an extremist, unless of course something big happens on that front - like, say, he could be filibustered.

The big enchilada, though, is 06.

There ought to be a unifying message- a Democratic "Contract for Americans."

Look, righties, it's unlikely you'll get what you want on abortion and gay rights out of the Dems, although on abortion, it's likely that the Dems could pass measures to actually minimize the number of out of wedlock births, for example.

But what would you want from them?

If you'll never vote for a Democrat unless they're against abortion and gay rights, then I suspect this doesn't matter. But then, as I implied below, you're not likely a "values" voter.

So what would change your vote? What should the Dems try to do to fix things?

Naturally they won't become Republicans.

I'd say myself they should offer up

• An exit strategy for Iraq.
  
  
• Term limits for Congressman.
  
  
• Term limits for Supreme Court justices.
  
  
• A constitutional ammendment explicitly spelling out the right of privacy.
  
  
• A constitutional ammendment on the "takings" clause.
  
  
  
• A real energy policy, with real conservation measures and CAFE limits for all vehichles.
  
  

There are actually a number of wedge issue laws that can be enacted.

So what would you like to see ?


Update: Digby's is indeed right here: our first priority will be to remove Republicans from power, and we will not be taking any prisoners in doing so.

It is conventional wisdom that one of the reasons Hackett did as well as he did was because of his sincere righteous indignation about the leadership of this country and I think it's at least partially true. That translates to strength and authenticity to people who hear long-winded multi-year withdrawal scenarios and immediately switch the channel --- which are a majority of voters. I think the guy is tremendously charismatic whose status as an Iraq war veteran made him somewhat unique, but there is little doubt in my mind that he was able to win over some people, probably the Ross Perot type independents, who respect candor and authenticity. In this day of over-handled candidates it is a very heady breath of fresh air to see a Democrat appear unafraid and unintimidated...

That, I think, is the real question here. Will our "shrillness" help or hurt the party? I think the netroots believes it's time to try a message that has a little more heat than lukewarm water. The establishment, still smarting from their seminal loss in 1972, is scared to death of anything that resembles real passion. Far more than a serious division in the party over specific policy, that, I think is the real fault line. What kind of politics --- not policies --- do the Democrats think will win?

So the policies I'd advocate would be ones that people would agree with but would marginalize the Republicans: the right of privacy, I think is number one on the list for this.

Maybe, just maybe Christians are starting to realize

what Chuck Gutenson's saying here.

I would like to think that most Christians, even most conservative Christians, aren't going to counteance rampant immorality from someone that says words against abortion and gay people.

But I think Bush is unpopular because gas prices are going through the roof.

Working to see that your kids don't get dead is caring for your kids.

Mossback's making his kids less safe OTOH, unlike Cindy Sheehan.

I've been picked up by "Unpartisan.com"

This is a pretty cool site. It's kind of an automated blog that automatically picks up feeds from blogs left an right about issues.

It's official: George W. Bush is an unpopular president.

George W. Bush's approval ratings drop: Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and 36% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 60% disapprove.


(HT: Atrios.)

Jujitsu and political debate...

Using the techniques of Jujitsu or Aikido (working with your opponent's force to defeat him) is often a very good way to illustrate the absurdity of one's position; a good example is this riposte in this Think Progress post on Gorelick:

OMG–poor President Bush–so surrounded by partisan Bush-haters that he can’t even appoint a bipartisan commission without it instantly becoming the “partisan anti-Bush commission”

So shocking that those partisan liberals would exploit the facts to attack our beloved president . . .

Think Progress : Great blog

The debunking of Jamie Gorelick nonsense, especially is good (e.g. here).

"Strict Constructionists" and Stolen Elections: Let's bring Freedom to America first.

Read the September issue of Harper's to see how completely absurd the concept of "strict constructionism" is. (Sorry, no link yet.)

Some key points:

• It's not clear that "the constitution as originally interpreted" meant that it was orignally meant to be interpreted the way it was originally interpreted. Anyone familiar with making contracts that have unforseen bugs in them knows this is a stupid idea.
  
  
• The idea, that say, the 14th Ammendment was written to disallow affirmative action ignores the, er...original intent of why the 14th Ammendment was added.
  
  
  
• Nobody but the most extreme of right wing extremists would favor things such as not paying women equally for equal work, or having state run churches, or having legalized discrimination at the state level. These are things near and dear to the folks like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, but they in no way represent most Americans' views.
  
  
  
• On reading the article, you cannot come away with the conclusion that the intent of these judicial extremists is to actually subvert justice.
  
  

Read the article.

Also, get the August issue and read "None Dare Call it Stolen." (Nice summary here. And here too.)

As Krugman reminds us of the 2000 election problems, and the unconscionable political interference by the largely Republican court, I would say the bigger priorities facing the US are bringing liberty and justice here.

Nobody can seriously, with a straight face say we're "liberating" Iraq when we're not liberated at home.

What to do about Iraq?

We are not really bringing liberty to Iraq. (Also see here for more.) That's a given by now.

In fact, the state of liberty at home in the US is in deep trouble.

We are still dependent on oil.

The best thing that can be done about Iraq is to get an exit strategy soon. There is no way we can achieve an objective of liberty there, or perhaps even strategic control of the oil there without engaging in genocide.

It's that simple.

We should try to put the problem in the hands of all interested powers - like the UN. We should admit we screwed up and ask the world for help.

That's a good start.

Then we can implement a real strategy to get the world economy off imported oil, especially from the middle east.

Bullshit!

Link

If “bullshit,” as opposed to “bull,” is a distinctively modern linguistic innovation, that could have something to do with other distinctively modern things, like advertising, public relations, political propaganda, and schools of education. “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” Harry G. Frankfurt, a distinguished moral philosopher who is professor emeritus at Princeton, says. The ubiquity of bullshit, he notes, is something that we have come to take for granted. Most of us are pretty confident of our ability to detect it, so we may not regard it as being all that harmful. We tend to take a more benign view of someone caught bullshitting than of someone caught lying. (“Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through,” a father counsels his son in an Eric Ambler novel.) All of this worries Frankfurt. We cannot really know the effect that bullshit has on us, he thinks, until we have a clearer understanding of what it is. That is why we need a theory of bullshit.

Frankfurt's own effort along these lines was contained in a paper that he presented two decades ago at a faculty seminar at Yale. Later, that paper appeared in a journal, and then in a collection of Frankfurt's writings; all the while, photocopies of it passed from fan to fan. Earlier this year, it was published as “On Bullshit” (Princeton; $9.95), a tiny book of sixty-seven spaciously printed pages that has gone on to become an improbable best-seller...

“So far as I am aware,” Frankfurt dryly observes, “very little work has been done on this subject.” He did find an earlier philosopher's attempt to analyze a similar concept under a more genteel name: humbug. Humbug, that philosopher decided, was a pretentious bit of misrepresentation that fell short of lying. (A politician talking about the importance of his religious faith comes to mind.) Frankfurt was not entirely happy with this definition. The difference between lies and bullshit, it seemed to him, was more than a matter of degree. To push the analysis in a new direction, he considers a rather peculiar anecdote about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was the nineteen-thirties, and Wittgenstein had gone to the hospital to visit a friend whose tonsils had just been taken out. She croaked to Wittgenstein, “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” Wittgenstein (the friend recalled) was disgusted to hear her say this. “You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like,” he snapped. Of course, Wittgenstein might simply have been joking. But Frankfurt suspects that his severity was real, not feigned. This was, after all, a man who devoted his life to combatting what he considered to be pernicious forms of nonsense. What Wittgenstein found offensive in his friend's simile, Frankfurt guesses, was its mindlessness: “Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying.”

The essence of bullshit, Frankfurt decides, is that it is produced without any concern for the truth. Bullshit needn't be false: “The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.” The bullshitter's fakery consists not in misrepresenting a state of affairs but in concealing his own indifference to the truth of what he says. The liar, by contrast, is concerned with the truth, in a perverse sort of fashion: he wants to lead us away from it. As Frankfurt sees it, the liar and the truthteller are playing on opposite sides of the same game, a game defined by the authority of truth. The bullshitter opts out of this game altogether. Unlike the liar and the truthteller, he is not guided in what he says by his beliefs about the way things are. And that, Frankfurt says, is what makes bullshit so dangerous: it unfits a person for telling the truth.

There goes that liberal media again...

Link

August 21,2005 | SALT LAKE CITY -- A Utah television station is refusing to air an anti-war ad featuring Cindy Sheehan, whose son's death in Iraq prompted a vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch.

The ad began airing on other area stations Saturday, two days before Bush was scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

However, a national sales representative for KTVX, a local ABC affiliate, rejected the ad in an e-mail to media buyers, writing that it was an "inappropriate commercial advertisement for Salt Lake City."..

In a statement Saturday evening explaining its decision, KTVX said that after viewing the ad, local managers found the content "could very well be offensive to our community in Utah, which has contributed more than its fair share of fighting soldiers and suffered significant loss of life in this Iraq war."

Station General Manager David D'Antuono said the decision was not influenced by the station's owner, Clear Channel Communications Inc.

Celeste Zappala, who with Sheehan co-founded Gold Star Families for Peace, said she was puzzled by the decision.

"What stunned me was that it was inappropriate to hear this message," she said. "How is it that Salt Lake City should hear no questions about the war?"

This is the pitiful state of our liberties in the Bush era.

Operation Yellow Elephant

What's not to like?

More dishonesty from Bush...

Via Americablog, but I have a different take on this PR thing than Avarosis:

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- With anti-war protesters continuing their vigil outside President Bush's ranch, the commander in chief began a five-day push Saturday to tell Americans why he thinks U.S. troops must continue the fight in Iraq...

"Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said in the recorded broadcast.

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail."...

As he has before when he has been challenged, Bush invoked the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in his radio address.

"On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people," he said. "And since that day, we have taken the fight to the enemy."

Let's take the last bit first:

On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people.

The United States is the most heavily armed nation on earth. It spends more for defense than any other nation. Its navy is several times the size of its next nearest competitor.

The fact is we haven't relied on "vast oceans and friendly neighbors" to "protect us" since, I dunno, the Spanish American war.

Bush either really is that ignorant, or really is dishonest. I don't think Bush is ignorant.

And of course, Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11.

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail."

As London showed, stirring up a hornet's nest somewhere else won't prevent you from getting stung at home.

Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy.

All I can think of in response to this is:



And so, I suspect, does the rest of the world.

What's wrong with this picture?

I always thought the concept of a personal trainer was a bit too self indulgent except for possibly professional tennis players who generally are young enough to require the discipline. But this is too much:

Mr. Kupris, 23, is one of the most sought-after personal trainers in New York City. This may be in part because he is friendly and attentive, and in part because of his self-taught expertise in body toning. But what really distinguishes Mr. Kupris is his willingness to go beyond the trainer's traditional job description. He meets clients at home or wherever they want to work out. For $125 an hour he'll become more like a brother, helping them with many other aspects of their lives. Part chef, part activity director, part children's camp counselor, he represents a new approach to personal training: the ultimate full-service fitness consultant.

Personal trainers who meet their clients in a gym for a 45- to 60-minute workout have become relatively commonplace. Some 6.2 million Americans hired one in 2004, an increase of more than 2 million over five years, according to a survey conducted by the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.

Now some clients are looking for more than just workouts. They want someone who becomes part of their life: who motivates them to try new activities, coaches them about what to eat and provides any other hand holding they need to get strong and stay that way. Graham Melstrand, the director of educational services for the American Council on Exercise, said in an e-mail message that this new demand has created "an opportunity for the well-qualified fitness professional to move beyond the traditional boundaries of fitness programming in the health club setting."

Trying unfamiliar activities, many trainers say, is an important part of the new training strategy.

Poor Leonard Cohen

This shouldn't happen to any 70 year old.

You gotta watch your money no matter what...

Also: check out this bit on his day to day life.

Cohen's lifestyle may not be lavish, but he's still got a great attitude and a good life.

Worth reading today:

Armando's post in Kos, and Paul Krugman.

Here it comes: the oil shock....

Link

Forecasters still expect economic growth to remain healthy for the rest of the year, as companies invest in new factories and the housing boom continues. But the high cost of oil already appears to be curbing growth, translating into unusually modest gains in employment and pay.

If history is any guide, higher prices will hurt consumption, curb the nation's output and shift spending patterns. The risks of a domino effect on the economy are real, economists say.

"We can't lose sight of the fact that energy restricts growth," said Anthony Chan, a senior economist at J. P. Morgan Asset Management. "It is doing so."

So far, the economy has showed much more resilience in the face of higher energy costs than most analysts had anticipated. Although prices began rising in early 2002, consumers have kept shopping, companies have expanded and inflation has remained under control. At times, it seemed a new economic era had dawned.

Without question, economists say, rising oil prices cause less economic pain than they once did. It takes half as much energy to produce $1 of gross domestic product today, adjusted for inflation, than it did 30 years ago. Even at today's prices, oil is cheaper than it was in the early 1980's, once adjusted for inflation.

The falling costs of other goods, thanks in large part to global competition, have also helped cushion the blow from higher energy costs. While energy prices rose 3.8 percent from June to July, the price of all other goods inched up only 0.2 percent, the Labor Department said yesterday.

"There seems to be a greater tolerance in the economy in terms of what can be withstood," said Doug Leggate, an energy analyst with Citigroup in New York.

But a spike in oil prices still hurts, economists say, even if the pain does not come immediately. In the past, the full effect was not felt until a year, or even two years, after prices began rising. Both of the last two recessions - in 1990-91 and in 2001 - began more than a year after energy prices started a sharp climb.

"It is way too soon to be sanguine," said Andrew J. Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick in England, who has written about oil. "The influence of a petroleum shock runs deep and runs slow. My own view is that we will find oil shocks still hurt, and hurt fundamentally."

It was only 13 months ago that the price of a barrel of crude settled above $40. Oil, which closed yesterday at $66.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, is not likely to become much cheaper anytime soon, analysts say. Nor are natural gas prices, which have gained 73 percent this year. This means that winter heating bills for American households are set to soar.

Do people really want to be like they are on their blogs?

I think it's the Cindy Sheehan thing that's making the righties jump the shark- yes- jump right over that sucker, for me.


Take Michelle Malkin (e.g., here and here); please.

I'm sure Mr. Maglagang takes her everywhere, but she always finds her way back home.

Folks such as Malkin ( she's who has written things that reasonable people can call racist) have a problem with Cindy Sheehan.

Wow.

Malkin has a problem with Michael Moore, too, evidently.

Do you want to be like Michelle Malkin? Do you want to trash the name of someone who gave far more than Malkin can possibly conceive for Bush's folly?

Malkin has a lesson for us: we should practice right speech.

Similarly, Joe Carter, through his quotes on "Justice" "Sunday" II (if there were justice it would involve a some prosecutorial inquiries into Tom DeLay) quotes one Jerry Sutton, who teaches the same lesson. Sutton, to my way of thinking, is clearly slandering Michael Schiavo here, and one would hope that Schiavo would actually sue him. No doubt Schiavo has sustained damages for this type of behavior, and it's time that "Dr." Sutton learn what right speech is all about.

As they say, "Oyyyy!"

Link...

Business people who've never even thought of Buddhism also are finding themselves booked for Zen retreats with colleagues. Seminars with titles like Executive Zen, Zen at Work and Zen and Business offer businesses a way to help their employees handle stress and excel.

"When we take a moment out of an overfilled day and incorporate a very basic Zen practice, for instance, the practice of mindfulness, it's amazing how your day can turn around," said Monique Muhlenkamp, publicity manager for California's New World Library. In her work, she promotes such books as Marc Lesser's "Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration: How Zen Practice Can Transform Your Work and Your Life" ($14.95 paperback, 256 pages).

"For many people, it's no longer just about a job; they want and need more. Applying Zen to the day-to-day helps on many levels."

(Emphasis mine.)

And sure enough...

Q. What can one gain from a continuing meditation practice?

A. Clearly someone who is typing while thinking about the ball game will not perform in the same league as when you are attentive to the job at hand. So maybe you will get a raise, a promotion, satisfaction of a job well done, a more successful business.

Sometimes I understand Hakuin pretty well...