Some advice

The NYT advises against buying this year's pointy shoes.

"If you go for them, be warned: acquaintances will raise their eyebrows; friends will compliment you, lying; good friends will rib you ceaselessly."

You will, however, get laid.

No links; I'm feeling bone lazy

1. You know, given that the reports of crime-by-black-victims-of-Katrina turned out to be mostly spurious, and that crime-by-rich-white-Republicans seems to be on the rise, maybe Bill Bennett should have suggested aborting Republicans to keep crime down.

2. The Violence Against Women Act expires tomorrow; from what I can tell via NOW's web site, though there are three bills that have been introduced in the house and senate to renew it, none of them has been voted on yet. Worth hassling your representatives over, this one.

Bad news day

1. Roberts was confirmed. Nothing to do now but hang on and see if the edge of the cliff's gonna crumble or hold firm....

2. The inimitable and much-adored Twisty has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She blames the patriarchy, as do we all. Goddamn fucking cancer. Go wish her good luck, 'k?

3. Totally minor and selfish, but I'm getting pressure to serve on a dissertation committee as a last-minute replacement for someone who went on leave. The subject is kind of interesting to me, actually, and I'd be inclined to say yes except that just as the thing should be coming to a head, I am also supposed to be (a) organizing a conference panel; (b) writing a conference paper; (c) writing an essay for a publicaion that's doing a special issue and has already accepted my proposal (and god, do I need the publication, as I did jack shit last year); (d) doing some administrative work for my department; (e) *hopefully* doing job interviews; and (f) teaching my heavy semester. What would y'all do? I don't plan on sticking around here, so there's no favor to curry; on the other hand, I'm here now and there's such a thing as responsibility; I like the topic (which intersects with my own work), but I don't have really high hopes for the quality of this student's work; god knows I don't want extra work, but then again, as a last-minute replacement, how much work would it really be? Someone advise me....

Fun with Schadenfreude

Madeline Kane's been writing political poetry (at posting time, the top entry was DeLay, but there are some fun things on other subjects, so scroll around); Roxanne is running a DeLay haiku thread (some of the entries are great). I can't top either of those, kitty ditties notwithstanding; my poetic talents run more to doggerel for children.

Luckily, there's something that's perfectly apt within that category.

Tom, Tom, the favored son,
Stole a pig and away did run.
The pig was eat, and Tom was beat,
And Tom went crying down the street.


With apologies to Mother Goose and to Richard Scarry, whose Best Mother Goose Ever really is.

A ditty for my cat

Based on a little song I made up for Pseudonymous Kid; unfortunately, the kid version has his name as a key rhyme-word. So instead y'all get Daisy's version.

Mrs. Kitty, Mrs. Kitty
You are sweet and you are pretty,
You're the beautifullest kitty of them all;
You're bossy, fierce and loud,
You stand out in a crowd,
But physically you're really very small.


(No, that isn't a picture of Daisy--though it looks just like her.)

Queer eye for the god guy

Just in case you missed the latest Shouts and Murmurs column in the New Yorker--and because I think it's hilarious.

“One word,” said the Lord God. “Landscaping. But I want it to look natural, as if it all somehow just happened.”

“Do rain forests,” suggested a primitive tribal god, who was known only as a clicking noise.

“Rain forests here,” decreed the Lord God. “And deserts there. For a spa feeling.”

“Which is fresh, but let’s give it glow,” said Buddha. “Polished stones and bamboo, with a soothing trickle of something.”

“I know where you’re going,” said the Lord God. “But why am I seeing scented candles and a signature body wash?”

“Shut up,” said Buddha.

“You shut up,” said the Lord God.

I miss home; I'm glad to be home

Some notes from my trip:

Two weekends spent in Oiltown and the intervening work week spent in Agriville.

I took a shuttle from the best hotel in Oiltown. Conversation with the shuttle driver: Me: Did you grow up in Oiltown? Shuttle driver: yes, but I went to high school in Big City, then moved back. Me: Ah. I really like Oiltown, but I don't know if I'll ever come back. Him--giving me an incredulous look: You like Oiltown? Me--laughing: I think it's inevitable that people who grow up in Oiltown hate Oiltown, but yeah, I really do. Maybe because my grandparents lived here, I don't know.

Then a prop hop to Big City, then a redeye (delayed because of a hydraulic replacement), then a last-minute switch to a later commuter flight than the one I missed, where Mr. B. and Pseudonymous Kid met me and we drove back to Tinytown. Boy, are my arms tired.

I was the last family member to leave Oiltown. My jet-set cousin, who lives in Tokyo, had arranged for us all to stay in the best hotel, which is part of an international chain he belongs to. It was a lovely hotel, and I was very glad to stay there on the last weekend, because staying there reminded me of Grandma's house: tidy landscaping, the sine curve reflections of pool water on concrete, the sound of rippling water in a fake (but pretty) stream, clean, well-appointed rooms, unshowy amenities like comfortable beds, free bottled water, and a concrete patio with chairs and a small table for smoking and drinking coffee by the stream in the morning sunlight. An overall sense of small quiet luxuries. Staff who didn't try to be invisible, but instead smiled and nodded good morning as they went about their work. I sat with my aunt and cousin on the patio all evening on Saturday, after my dad and his wife and my sister had driven back to Agriville. We ordered a bottle of wine, a pizza, and a salad from room service, and ate them together off of communal plates, sharing the two forks. While my aunt prepared for bed, my cousin bummed a couple of cigarettes and declared himself "one of the great social smokers." We discussed his love life, his mother's increasing disability, my job search, who had been at the funeral. Sunday morning he treated my aunt and me to a champagne brunch: fresh-squeezed orange juice, lots of coffee, cold salmon. Then they left.

I had a few hours before my first flight, so I sat on a bench by the water and, finally, after a week of funeral arrangements and aunt-care (the Pastor, in an aside to me after the funeral: You did a great job taking care of the funeral. Me: Thank you. Pastor: How is it that all the arrangements fell to you? Me, after a pause: I don't know. It just often seems to happen that way), thought about my grandmother: what she taught me, what I will miss, what I've lost, what I will keep. I didn't say any of this at the funeral, because it it small and private--and Grandma's public accomplishments were many, so the eulogies focused on those.

But as much as her other virtues--public spirit, charity without condescension, the active construction of community institutions that have, and will continue, to grow beyond what she started--deserved mention and memory, the thing that mattered to me most, as a little girl, were her sense of order and domestic tranquility. Grandma was not a sweet old lady; she didn't bake or dote on us. When she was younger, she was a sharp dresser; she never left the house without "putting on her face," and she colored her hair until she was 80ish. She kept her disabled son with her all his life, and made arrangements for his happiness: he had the master bedroom, where he kept his huge collection of videotapes, model cars, and country music, and she built the pool originally when he was a child in the hopes that their having the pool would encourage other kids to come over and play with him. She was kind to him, but she could also be impatient and sharp at times. There was order and regularity to their home life. There were always Oreos (my uncle's favorite) in the mouse-shaped cookie jar (which I now have). The last time I ever went to her house, maybe four or five years ago, I looked in the cookie jar and yep--Oreos. There was always ice cream before bed. We were allowed to sleep in as late as we wanted, but when we rose, the breakfast table would be set with fresh orange juice and vitamins in the bowls of the spoons, and we would eat breakfast while watching the hummingbirds at the feeder outside the kitchen windows. We would spend the afternnoon, usually, in the pool, where grandpa would bring out quesadillas for lunch, which we would eat at the patio table, dripping through the chairs' plastic weave onto the astroturf patio. The dogs would wander in and out, and grandma would remind us to close the sliding glass door. Or I would sit and read in the clean, quiet living room, which had cast-iron gates at the entrance. They were tied shut with a piece of kelly green acrylic yarn to keep the dogs out. Now that couch, the sideboard where Grandpa kept Irish whiskey, the china cabinet where Grandma kept the good china and silver, are all downstairs in my living and dining room. In the evening, Grandpa would take the dogs out for a run, and we'd go with him, to the fields at the edge of town (now new housing developments), where the Great Dane, Dachsund, and a series of German Shepherds would chase rabbits, and where I memorized the smell of the earth in that part of the world--a cross between raw peanut shells, dust, and something else, probably farm chemicals, with faint breezes of eucalyptus and the sweet smell of alfalfa.

Grandma once told me I mortified my mother by saying, "I always love coming to Grandma's because it's so clean." It was--she always had housekeepers, several of whom were at the funeral, as well as the grandnephew of one of the housekeepers I best remember: her son and later grandnephew would play in the pool with us and, later, when the grandnephew's parents became addicted to drugs, Grandma reluctantly gave up her support for his mother, who had been a state track star and for whom Grandma had entertained hopes of a college scholarship and possible Olympic career, and turned instead to taking the grandnephew under her wing. He spent a lot of time at her house, and indeed went on to college and a lucrative career in Northern Big City. He somehow found out about the funeral--one of his aunts must have told him--and surprised us all by walking in towards the end of the service and sitting in back with his wife. Afterwards, I apologized for having started the funeral before he arrived, and he said, "no, I drove all the way from Big City, I was just glad to get there before it was over." He and my sister--who remembered him much better than I do--enjoyed getting caught up and swapping stories of their kids.

So Grandma's housekeepers, it must be said, were really responsible for the well-kept house; but Grandma, of course, was responsible for the overall sense of order and calm. The television was hardly ever on, and I never missed it. I remember her scolding me once for wanting to eat in front of the tv so I could watch the Olympics; from her I continue to hold the idea that meals are a time for sitting together and talking. My cousin said, and it's true, that we learned the art of conversation there. It always surprises me, at other people's houses, that families spend so much time watching television together. We do it too, sometimes, and it's one of my unhappinesses with my current domesticity. I want to achieve what Grandma did: a house that's calm, and peaceful, with space to sit and talk in the evening. It wasn't really a kids' house--she had some childrens' books in the yellow bedroom where we slept, and I certainly read those, but there weren't really toys or crafts or lots of kid-centered activities. Instead, the grownups went about their business--preparing meals, running errands, feeding dogs--and, for the most part, we were left free to find our own entertainment, reading or swimming; or hanging around talking to the grownups; or going along on errands. As we got older, of course, we'd help with the cooking, or wash dishes, or feed the dogs, or help my dad sweep the pool, or put the laundry away. There was never a sense of being assigned chores, but there was also never a sense of "just leave it for the maid"--Grandma would have been angry and appalled at that kind of attitude. Instead, it was a house where people were expected to clean up after themselves, and where doing so seemed as natural as breathing; where the decor didn't change in thirty years (except when she updated the kitchen wallpaper), but everything was durable enough and well-maintained enough and chosen so carefully that it never looked worn or outdated; where books were dusted; where the scent of the house, the second I walked through the unlocked door and announced my presence, never failed to make me feel immediately relaxed, happy, at home.

I have one of Grandma's old coats--camel-colored cashmere, with a white fur collar. When I came into posession of it, the ticket stub from when Grandma and Grandpa flew to my wedding was still in the pocket. For the first year I wore it, it still smelled of her and her closets. Even now, if I bury my face in the fur, it faintly retains the odor of home.

PKaraoke

It's the last Bitchless night as the two tired and somewhat sick men-o-the-house decide to pub it for a late dinner. PK asks, upon hearing a simply horrible, drunken, distorted, out of key, and rhythmless fellow karaoking Cher's Do_You_Believe_in_Love,
"Papa? Is there something wrong with that man's brain?"

Life and Landing On Mars

In the considerations of scientists over the last 100 years, whether or not there might be life on Mars has been most mutable. Recent discoveries on Mars: evidence of liquid water in Mars' past, water ice on and probably beneath the martian surface, methane in the atmosphere, as well as earthly discoveries of life in what we consider extreme conditions, have brought us to where we are today -- thinking that Mars may harbor life. That Mars may be lifeless is indisputable. That it could have life, given what little we know, is also indisputably possible.

Nowadays, when we send out space probes, we sterilize them. What little I know of this seems to indicate that our sterilization processes may be far from perfect. Regardless, the rationale for sterilization is sound -- whether or not life exists or has existed at the probe's destination, sending some of Earth's life to the destination would potentially muck things up beyond repair. When we fear a spacecraft might not be sterile, we purposefully destroy it while it still has fuel enough to perform a fatal maneuver, as we did with the Galileo probe to protect the potential life on Jupiter's moon Europa from earthy microbes possibly riding on the probe. These are real concerns that govern our use of current robotic space probes.

Suppose we didn't worry about such things. Suppose there is life, an ecosystem, where we send a space probe. Suppose further, that some hardy bacteria or fungus stowed away on the space probe and is thereby introduced into the alien ecosystem. Chances are it will die out. However, there's a slim chance that such stowaways could find habitat, potentially altering or even destroying an existing alien ecosystem.

On earth, science has shown that all life is related. It seems every lichen, bacteria, fern, and fish have a common ancestor. Given how small our solar system is, and the fact that meteor impacts and volcanoes can throw material from one planet, into space, and subsequently onto another planet, and given that some life can be dormant, frozen, for a very very long time, it is conceivable, however improbable, that if there is life elsewhere in our solar system, that we might be related through common ancestry.

Such a scenario was alluded to when a few years ago scientists found what are possibly fossilized bacteria in an Antarctic meteorite of martian origin. Despite the fact that this discovery has not generally been, in any sense of the word, "proven" or even substantiated as being of biological formation, the discovery has brought to light and into the public imagination the fact that even without a rocket ship, life transfer between planets is at least conceivable.

So if we find bacteria or even their fossils on Mars, one of the greatest and most interesting unknowns we'd want to pin down is whether these are related to terrestrial life.

If we inadvertently "pollute" Mars with earth life before we get a chance to either confirm Mars' lifelessness or study its ecologies, then we mess up a huge chance at understanding and studying the nature of life on the grandest scale yet.

I'm not saying that we should hold martian bacteria as sacred, so that were they ever discovered, we'd never send earth life to the martian surface. But surely we'd want to study any extraterrestrial life thoroughly before risking biological cross contamination, either way.

But in all the heady talk of sending people to Mars in our lifetimes, and the potential of discovering life there, no one seems to mention that the two are at some odds with each other ( at least not in what I read ).

Given the rather difficult challenge of sterilizing robot probes, keeping a biologically impermeable set of seals around all astronauts, their habitats, and their waste seems impossible. If people go to Mars it seems to me unavoidable that we will bring earth's biology into the Martian landscape. Do we not care about this? Is it somehow known that every living thing we might drop there will die in Mars' thin and cold atmosphere? Is it known that in looking for life on Mars we'll be able to with certainty determine whether a dead or dormant bacterium is Martian or an earthly stowaway? Given the possibility that Earth and Mars could previously naturally have shared organisms, it seems imperative that until we know with certainty that Mars is barren, we don't risk making it not so.

There is, of course, another reason for caution. H. G. Wells predicted it in War of the Worlds. But in his story the Martians visited Earth first. Their doom was earthly bacteria. He might have got it partly right, as in a few years, we might be the invaders brought low by some unexpected effect of mixing martian biology with our own. Or is this just the stuff of science fiction? What do you think?

NASA's Monkey, Man in Space

I loves me some spaceships. But I love science more. In deference to the regular readership, I'll hide my tech geek rant in the first comment.

Katrina Disaster Preparation Official ConCalls on TAPE Obtained by NPR

From NPR Morning Edition, September 23, 2005 ·" In the days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, officials in local, state and federal governments held a series of telephone conference calls aimed at coordinating their responses to the storm. The sessions were recorded by Walter Maestri, emergency manager for Jefferson Parish, who shared them with NPR."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859329

Nothing like an actual record of what was said by whom and when to quell the spin. Power to the press.

The Catholic Church May Stop Ordaining Gays

Wow. This neat little article, Expected Vatican Ban Roils American Church, is full of all kinds of weirdness, so I will follow suit. I am going to speculate wildly about things I know almost nothing about, so don't take me seriously. Seriously. I am after all a lay-person, which means I get to have sex, HA! But only missionary, and not *with* actual missionaries. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah,

"the upcoming 'instruction' from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained."

I was raised catholic in the bible belt, overwhelmingly outnumbered by fundamentalists, literalists, predominantly baptists. When discussing the the bible, my literalist counterparts were forever at odds with me and the handful of other catholics as to how we could take so much of the bible as being non-literal, like, for instance, Genesis. To them this seemed a slippery slope [to Hell]. The word was the word, and it was God's literal truth.

There were, of course, other things that some catholics, especially American catholics didn't take literally. Take for instance the idea that homosexuals should not be ordained. This is an old old idea which has for many centuries been effectively ignored. Now as an ex-catholic, I marvel at how the church is shocked, shocked I tell you, that there is gamboling going on here at Ratz's! Your winnings your Holiness. [Sorry, that was an ugly stretch...]

Turns out that the

"church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained...because their sexual orientation is 'intrinsically disordered' and makes them unsuitable for ministry."

And they mean it, now.

As the article states,

"James Hitchcock, a church historian at St. Louis University and conservative commentator on contemporary Catholicism, said he thinks the ban is necessary considering that a study the U.S. bishops commissioned from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found most of the alleged abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys"

Maybe the church thinks the way Mr. Hitchcock does. Maybe not.

If they do share his view that most of the alleged abuse victims having been adolescent boys somehow means that homosexuals should be barred from entering the priesthood, then there is a whole lot of evidence that isn't provided to make such a link. I mean, it is possible that most of the abusers were gay. But it could also mean that the majority of abusers were straight, as if memory serves, there were a few abusers who abused dozens or even hundreds of boys.

Speaking of boys, I thought most of the abuse victims were prepubescent like all the alter boys I saw when I used to go to church. Perhaps Mr. Hitchcock is right and I am wrong about the age of most of the victims, but him calling them adolescents seems to me possibly an injust way of blaming homosexuals in general instead of boy oriented pedophiles. Does that make sense to anyone but me? I mean I thing of pedophiles, both girl and boy oriented pedophiles, as distinct from regular straight and gay men, or women for that matter. I think implying that gays in general are either more abusive or pedophilic is abhorrent and damnable. [ammended]

Again, if the church is going exclude gays from the priesthood as Mr. Hitchcock suggests, that being because they associate them with sex abuse, then why not have a new policies directed against sex abusers only, both the gay and the straight.

Futhermore, if the church actually believes gays are not to be admitted into the priesthood because they are "intrinsically disordered", then what of those already ordained? What of monks? Nuns?

But maybe this is not what is going on at all. Even though this predicted vatican instruction to exclude gays from the seminaries and ordination is said to be coming from the group that researched the sex abuse scandal, perhaps it has little or nothing to do with sex abuse.

I suggest that the church sees what it may think of as two problems. The first is sex abuse, which the church may actually regard a orientation-neutral, and this they are dealing with by implementing separate new policies as well as implementing their old policy of sweeping it under the rug as much as possible. The second problem which I think they see is the gayness of the American church.

"Estimates of the number of gay seminarians and priests vary from 25 percent to 50 percent out of about 42,500 priests in the United States."

Wow. It could be that in the investigation of the abuse cases, the catholic church became undeniably aware that this many of its US priests are gay. They may feel that it is unacceptable for whatever homophobic reasons they may have. If there is an ongoing trend toward a more gay US clergy, or even if gays are holding steady at, pick a number like 40%, and if the church wants to reverse it, the the seminaries are the critical place to do it. They are the gates into the priesthood. If they are closed to gays, then even if the church does nothing about gay existing priests, gay monks, or lesbian nuns, the power hierarchy in the US catholic church, the priests, will gradually become more het as older priests become replaced by only straight priests. That is, of course, only if the gatekeepers employ some sort of infallible gaydar. It is amusing to imagine potential gayness tests. Has the vatican got a crack team working on this?

As to the existing gay clergy, kicking them out of priestly positions seems highly impractical given the shortage of US priests already. Now I wouldn't put it past them, but it would certainly pose massive problems for them to purge the gay clergy.

Seems like it'll piss off a lot of straight priests, as well as lay-persons too. Makes me glad that I am out, out of the church that is.

Two Dinners in my make-it-up-as-I-go style:

Yesterday :
Preheated oven to 375.
Placed a parted chicken on a large pyrex oven pan so that the parts were not touching.
Sprinkled liberally with sea salt.
Added pepper from the grinder, some course, some fine ground.
Thinly sliced 2 medium yellow onions, added to the chicken.
Chopped 5 bars of celery, discarding lowest 2 inches, added to the chicken.
Sprinkled with 2/3 tsp garlic powder.
Sprinkled moderately with ground sage
Sprinkled liberally kasoori methi (Dried Fenugreek Leaves) I got this recently in an Indian Grocery as part of a list of things necessary to make my own curries. It has become one of my favorite herbs for cooking meat and poultry, and in soups.

Baked for 30 minutes at 375, turned oven down to 325 and baked for a little less than 2 more hours.

Made mashed potatoes.
Got a pot of salted water on to boil.
Peeled 10 plum sized thin skinned yellow potatoes.
Roughly diced them to 1/2 inch pieces.
Placed in boiling salted water, boiled 20 minutes. I peel, dice, and add to the water each potato individually, this ensures that the pieces will be slightly unevenly cooked, some softer than others. The 20 minute timer starts as the last potato pieces enters the boiling water.
Drained pieces thoroughly.
Immediately added 2 tablespoons of butter (the heat of the potatoes must melt the butter), 3 pinches of salt, and a large splash of milk.
Mashed partially so that there were still some discernible potato pieces.

Dribbled the chicken drippings as sauce over both the chicken and the potatoes.
----------------
Today's: PK loved the chicken but wanted something other than leftovers today. He specifically requested Bob-the-Builder pasta. This is basically spaghetti-Os, with pasta shaped like characters from the Bob-the-Builder kids' TV show. We're out of these cans at the moment. So, I ask him, what is it you like so much about Bob-the-Builder pasta? He says, "the sauce."
So:
Into a blender goes
1 28 Fl Oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 1/2 Tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Blended that thoroughly, so that all the seeds and skin were pulverized into the sauce.
Heated this very slowly on the stove until it lightly boiled for about 5 minutes, basically just warming, not cooking, the sauce.

Served with al dente pasta (neither the Bitch nor I can stand overcooked pasta, in fact she's not a pasta fan at all, though PK and I love the stuff), I used the spiral tub kind called scooby-doo's, and as the goal was can-style pasta, I drowned the pasta in the sauce. PK loved it and said it was very close to the canned sauce he'd asked for.

Phone conversation with Pseudonymous Kid

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, can I tell you a riddle?
Me: Sure.
Pseudonymous Kid: Ok. What's the difference between a piano and a fish?
Me: I don't know. What's the difference between a piano and a fish?
Pseudonymous Kid: A piano has things you can hit, and they make noise. And it has legs. A fish doesn't make noise, and it doesn't have legs.
Me: . . . .
Pseudonymous Kid: Isn't that a good joke? I heard it on tv.
Me: Um, yes, that's a great joke, Pseudonymous Kid.
....
Me: Pseudonymous Kid, I miss you so much. I wish you were climbing all over me and being pesty.
Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, why do you want me to be pesty when you are far away? And when you're here, not so much?
....
Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, can you hear me?
Me: Yes.
Pseudonymous Kid (muffled): Can you hear me now?
Me: Yes, a little, but you're quieter.
Pseudonymous Kid (almost incomprehensible): Can you hear me now?
Me: Barely.
Pseudonymous Kid: That's because I'm hanging the phone off the end of the bed.
Me: What? I can't hear you.
Pseudonymous Kid: I'm hanging the phone off the end of the bed.
Me: Oh. Don't do that, I can hardly hear you.
Pseudonymous Kid (slightly louder): Okay. How's this?
Me: Better.
Pseudonymous Kid: That's because I'm hanging my head down off the bed now, so that you can hear me better.
Me: Okay.
Pseudonymous Kid: I call it "mountain talking."
Me: What?
Pseudonymous Kid: Mountain talking.
Me: Okay, I see.
Pseudonymous Kid (louder again). Mama, did you feel like you were falling?
Me (laughing a bit): Yes, I did. I felt like I was falling.
Pseudonymous Kid: That's because I dropped the phone.
....
Me: Okay, Pseudonymous Kid, let me talk to your papa.
Pseudonymous Kid: First you have to say the secret password. And I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Me: Is it "mouse"?
Pseudonymous Kid: No. But it's kind of like "mouse."
Me: Is it "hamster"?
Pseudonymous Kid: That's part of it, but not all.
Me: Cute hamster.
Pseudonymous Kid: That's part of it, but not all.
Me: I love my cute little hamster, Pseudonymous Kid.
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes, that's part of it. But not all.
Me: Um.... I can't guess any more.
Pseudonymous Kid: It's the cutest animal in the world.
Me: Mouse?
Pseudonymous Kid: What's the word for lots of mice?
Me: Mice.
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes, that. That's part of it, but not all.
Me: I love you, little mouse?
Pseudonymous Kid: That's part of it, but not all.
Me: I love you very much, my cute little mouse, and I am your mama mouse?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes. That's it.
Me: Okay. I love you, Pseudonymous Kid. Can I talk to your papa now?
Pseudonymous Kid: No, you have to describe everything I am looking at now.
Me: Pseudonymous Kid, put your papa on the phone.

Some Sites Mr. B Likes

Ok, this'll prolly bore the regular readership to tears, sorry:
My Daily Newspaper is GOOGLE NEWS
Pretty and Tech and Medicine at BOOK OF JOE
Tech Geeky Stuff at BOING BOING
Aerospace News at SPACEDAILY
Space Science News at UNIVERSETODAY
Cassini's Latest Images via NASA
The History of Spaceships at ASTRONAUTIX
Daily Show Clips
Current Weather Satellite Photos and Movies via NOAA

This Week in Nuclear Non-Proliferation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The good news is the The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK (North Korea)), China, Russia, South Korea, the US, and Japan (home of Hello Kitty!) have signed a joint statement. For the Six-Party-Talks which have been on-again/off-again for the last two years, this represents a huge achievement and is potentially the biggest step in the direction of keeping all of Korea, north and south nuclear weapons free since North Korea officially left the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003. Basically the statement says that all parties are agreed that North Korea will give up its existing nuclear weapons and its program to develop more as well as giving up its existing civilian power generating nuclear reactors and will re-join the NPT in exchange for a bunch of aid including primarily electrical power to be supplied by South Korea and possibly China and Russia and a new nuclear reactor to be supplied by the United States. Kudos to the North Koreans, the Chinese negotiator who drafted the statement, and The Secretary of State Dr. Rice. Under her leadership the US negotiating team gave up a crucial concession, namely allowing North Korea to have a civilian power generating nuclear capability in the future.

The bad news is that a day later the North Koreans have clarified their position with regard to the timing of these events stating that they have to get the new reactor before they give up their existing nuclear programs and weapons. The joint statement is significantly vague on timings of events. Based on the reactions of the other parties, the North Koreans' reactor-first requirement may destroy this process. I mean, reactors take years to build, and billions of dollars.

In further bad news, the European 3, Germany, the UK, and France, now seem to have lost patience with negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear programs. Iran is threatening to pull out of the NPT altogether should the matter be referred to the UN Security Council, or, even if the 3 or the US use threatening language with regard to Iran nuclear programs. Well the 3 are circulating a draft resolution which will in fact bring the matter before the Security Council. Given what they know, they are mandated by the NPT to do just that, or they would be in NPT noncompliance. According to Reuters the draft asks the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to report to all members of the Agency and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations ... Iran's many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement."

In the cold war, nuclear arms issues were considered a matter of rationality, an international chess match in which self and mutual interests were calculable and predictable. Now that Iran and North Korea are entering into potential nuclear weapons capabilities, it seems that from a Western, Russian, and even Chinese point of view the motivations and potential actions of these potential new nuclear weapons wielders are unfathomable, even crazy. Disregarding for a moment the temptation to escalate the name-calling from "rouge nations" to "kooks with nukes", I gotta say I think it makes a lot of sense for Iran and North Korea to want to have nuclear weapons. Were I a State Department negotiator I wouldn't know how to begin to try to convince either Iran or North Korea how it makes more sense for them not to have nukes. I mean, you can't go in saying, "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them..." North Korea, for example, has demonstrated in past that it would rather put up with unmitigated famine than loss of its nuclear program. Iran knows it can weather even the harshest of economic sanctions, their only real worry is a potential US invasion, which, from Iran's point of view, ultimately has little if any connection to the Security Council's considerations or proclamations.

Poor Iran and North Korea. Neither has any friends to speak of. Both are basically surrounded by nuclear weapons equipped military forces. For their military forces to have any credibility, ultimately, they have to have nukes because in the way these things are generally considered, a nuke trumps any weapon, except another nuke.

It seems to me that the main and basically overriding reason that any country would seek to gain nuclear weapons is because their potential adversaries have them. That is, in any given potential conflict, the non-nuclear side "B" cedes to the nuclear-weapons bearing side "U" the ultimate decision as to whether "B" will even exist after the conflict regardless of campaigns' results, regardless of effort, sacrifice, or even apparent victory.

Which brings us back to the NPT. Iran's negotiator is right when he says that the NPT was founded on the idea that ultimately total nuclear disarmament was the agreed goal. In this regard, they fault the nuclear weapons powers, in this case, the uglies, with what they consider amounts to NPT non-compliance. We've had almost 40 years of the NPT and rather than a significantly nuclear-disarmed world, we have a world of nuclear weapons haves and have-nots and an ongoing IAEA effort to enforce a status quo rather than an improving situation. And that effort at maintaining a status quo has been far less than successful. Firstly signing into the NPT is voluntary, China, Israel, Pakistan, and India have become nuclear weapons powers when they each were not NPT signatories. That means they broke no international law in their obtaining these weapons. China was even subsequently let into the treaty as a "have" and India may soon follow suit. Iran and North Korea are technically NPT violators as they both did sign in as have-nots and their actions were pretty much inarguably in violation while still in the treaty. As mentioned above, North Korea officially left the NPT in 2003 and Iran is currently threatening leaving the treaty.

What is all this worth? Why doesn't the NPT work? I think it is primarily because the perpetuation of nuclear haves and have-nots. I think it is past time for the big 5 nuclear powers to get serious about drastic nuclear arms reductions. I'd even go so far as to say that the US military is so good at conventional warfare that it doesn't need nukes in the context of a nuclear- disarmed Russia and China. The problem here would be the perceived unequally of might diminishment. That is, Russia might balk saying, with great credibility, that without nukes, Russia becomes proportionately much weaker than either the US or China. But to my way of seeing it, if the big powers could get their act together and disarm, then it would be so much easier to disarm the lessor nuke weapons nations.

Only then could an arms negotiator in the US State Department really say "Nukes are bad. Really really Baaaaad! You don't want them. Nobody should have them." Let's face it, unless we go there, it is actually irrational for Iran, North Korea, hell, even Japan and Taiwan not to have nukes.

"People make mistakes"

Hello all. Thank you for all the lovely comments and emails about my grandmother. It really is okay: she was quite old, she had been very unhappy in the nursing home for the past year, they had recently discovered that she had breast cancer, and all in all I think hers was as easy a death as one can have. I will write more about it later.

In the meantime, though, I am popping in just to post a link that was sent me by a reader: Under Din of Abortion Debate, an Experience Shared Quietly. It reminded me of some of the things I'd written in my posts Abortion and Do You Trust Women? The stories are very sobering, mostly sad. But the article gives me hope, because I believe that if we start listening to and reading about the real experiences of women who have abortions, we will see a far more empathetic and nuanced picture of abortion that we get from the theoretical arguments about "life" and "choice."

While public conversation about abortion is dominated by advocates with all-or-nothing positions - treating the fetus as a complete person, with full rights, or as a nonentity, with none - most patients at the clinic, like most Americans, found themselves on rockier ground, weighing religious, ethical, practical, sentimental and financial imperatives that were often in conflict.
....
Often kept secret, even from close friends or family members, the experience cuts across all income levels, religions, races, lifestyles, political parties and marital circumstances. Though abortion rates have been falling since 1990, to their lowest level since the mid-1970's, abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures for women in America. More than one in five pregnancies end in abortion.
....
"I'd lose my job," she said. "My family's reputation would be ruined. It makes me nervous even being in the waiting room. You don't want to know who's here, you don't want to be recognized, and you don't want to see them ever again. Because in society's eyes, you share the same dirty secret."

"My oldest son won't let me see my grandchildren," said Sherry Steele, 57, a surgical assistant who started working at the clinic after her daughter had two abortions.
....
They arrived as a result of failure of one sort or another: a poor sexual decision, a broken relationship, a birth control method that just did not work. More than half of all women who have abortions say they used a contraceptive method in the month they conceived...
....
While abortion rates have been falling generally since 1990, the decline has been steepest among teenagers, and rates are lowest among educated, financially secure women. Researchers attribute the drop in teenage abortion to reduced rates of pregnancy, as a result of better access to contraception - including the three-month Depo-Provera injections - and abstinence.

Conversely, for poor and low-income women, rates increased during the 1990's, possibly in response to the 1996 welfare overhaul, which reduced support systems for women who carry their fetuses to term. At every income level studied by the Guttmacher Institute, African-American women were more likely to terminate their pregnancies than white women.
....
Like many women at the clinic, Leah had conflicted feelings about what she was doing. "I always said I would never, ever have an abortion," she said. "I probably will regret it. I'm pro-choice for cases of incest or rape, but if it's your own fault, you should accept responsibility. And it's my own fault." . . . . The procedure took only minutes. Afterward, in a recovery area, she said she was less shaken than she had expected. "I thought I'd be crying," she said. "I feel goofy now, but not in a bad way. I feel relieved more than anything. I know I'll never forget it, but I'd rather do that than have a child I can't take care of."
....
Karen, 29, who arrived at the clinic 20 weeks pregnant, expressed no qualms about ending her pregnancy. Like nearly half of all women who have abortions, she had had one before, when she was 18. She did not look on abortion as shameful, she said, adding, "All of your past goes into making you who you are."

She has a 9-year-old son, and she said she felt she could not start again with a newborn child. . . . . Karen and her boyfriend have an unstable relationship plagued by money problems, and they lived with a relative after being evicted from their home. She did not come in earlier in the pregnancy, she said, because she did not have the money. . . . "People tell you you can put your child up for adoption," she said. "But if your kid has medical problems, no one wants to adopt him. And you never know."
....
Tammy, a Muslim, had her first abortion a year ago, after having three children. . . . "I know it's against God," she said of her abortion. "But you have three kids, you want to raise them good.
....
Alicia, who was 17 or 18 weeks pregnant, said she did not have the abortion earlier because she was afraid to confront her parents. When she finally told her parents she was pregnant, she said, her mother threw a stool at her and kicked her out of the house.
....
Regina, 28, blamed a contraceptive Depo-Provera shot from an Army nurse in Iraq for her pregnancy. In Arkansas, she receives the injection in her hip, where it is most effective, but in Iraq she got it in the arm. . . . She arrived at the clinic with a cut on her nose and bruises on her forehead and lip, which she suffered after telling her boyfriend she was pregnant. "He flipped out because he wasn't ready," she said. She had thought, upon learning of the pregnancy, that she "was about to get married," she said. She came in with two fellow sergeants, who wore their uniforms. Her boyfriend was in jail, she said.
....
Ebony, 28, an operating room supervisor, rinsed the blood off the aborted tissues for Dr. Edwards to examine. Ebony, too, had a story. When she was 15, her aunt and grandmother had made her carry her pregnancy to term. Later, she had an abortion. As a Baptist, she still considered abortion a sin - but so are a lot of things we all do, she said.
....
Since 1992, when the Supreme Court recognized states' authority to restrict abortion as long as they did not create an "undue burden," states have enacted 487 laws restricting patients or providers. . . . In surveys, Americans largely support these restrictions, even if they say abortion should be legal.
....
Dr. Tom Tvedten, who has been performing abortions in Arkansas for 20 years, [said] "But every time a restriction is placed on us, it increases our costs, and that cost is passed on to the consumer."
....
For the clinic, the regulations add paperwork and require extra staff members, said Dr. Jerry Edwards, the chief physician, who owns the clinic with his wife, Ann F. Osborne, the director. Penalties can include lawsuits or criminal prosecution.

"Normally, if someone's a flagrant violator of medical regulations, they get disciplined by the profession," Dr. Edwards said. "But these guys go for the pocketbook or put you in jail. It's much more punitive than the doctor who commits Medicare fraud."
....
As laws become more restrictive, technology has gone the other way, making abortions possible both earlier and later in pregnancy, and by pill or surgery. Doctors can perform abortions as early as eight days after conception, and 59 percent of women having abortions do so within eight weeks, according to 2001 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fewer than 1 percent have abortions after 20 weeks. A late-term procedure called intact dilation and extraction, sometimes known as "partial-birth" abortion, accounted for less than two-tenths of 1 percent of all abortions in 2000. . . .
....
Since September 2000, when the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug mifepristone, sometimes called RU-486, for early abortion, more than 460,000 women have chosen this option. . . . At the Little Rock clinic, few patients chose the pills rather than surgery. "With medical termination, the discomfort is significant because they have to go through mini-labor," Dr. Tvedten said. "There's a lot of hard cramps and usually significant bleeding. It's cheaper, safer and less painful to have a surgical termination."

Laws to restrict abortion result in later, more expensive procedures. Women have abortions because they need them. They have them because they know that they cannot raise children right in poverty, in abuse, with no educations, under puntive social conditions, in desperate circumstances. They know that adoption is, at best, only sometimes an option, and they are unwilling to take that chance with their own children. Women have abortions, at great expense and trouble, despite abuse and ostracization, despite great shame and disapproval, in the face of myriad laws trying to prevent them from doing so, because they are responsible.

Women have abortions in order to do the right thing.

YO HO HO

Today, as ye ken, be Talk Like a Pirate Day. In celebration, here be a treasure chest o' pirate images, pirate links, pirate booty, even books about pirates, for th' drivelswiggers among ye.

Bitch Ph.D's Grandmother Passed this Morning

After a couple of years of slowly worsening health, Bitch Ph.D's grandmother passed this morning. She was a wonderful and grand dame, and a favorite of the Bitch. She was 92. Bitch Ph.D spent the last day and a half with her and was very happy to have been there. She is holding up well and staying for the funeral. She will return here next week. Thanks to all for your support and help.

PK as though played by Eli Wallach

PK (waking up) "Ew papa your owie!" (I've a small fresh cut above my right eye)

Me "What? Oh. Did my band-aid come off?"

PK "Yes. And you're ugly!"

Me "Ugly? Because of my owie?"

PK "No,(giggles) You're always ugly!"

Me "Oh no! Really?"

PK "Heehee! Yes! You two-faced dog of a jackal!" Laughs

As Global Warming Happens More Cat 4 and 5 Hurricanes Happen

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5742/1844?ijkey=iqoyPaiwaACR6&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

This research study shows a rise in the number of severe cyclone storms and associates it with global warming. Multiple studies confirm this. It is historical, not some climate projection for the future. This is happening now. This is not some hard to imagine, poles melting, waterworld problem that to some seems far in the future. This is current and ongoing disaster escalation due, quite possibly, to CO2 emissions primarily from coal and petroleum fuels' use. That is, it looks like global warming has, in the last three decades especially, resulted in an marked rise in hurricane type storms of category 4 and 5 worldwide.

So, if Bush is really serious about responding to Katrina, he must also reverse his administration's environmental policy. This would mean joining the world in the Kyoto accords which restrict CO2 emissions and seeking steeper reductions agreements next. That's not to say that I think Bush will ever do this will, but, if not, it must be a point for the Democrats to push for change, a campaign issue.

Bush's whole point about rejecting Kyoto was that it would cost Americans disproportionally much, that its costs to the American economy would be too great. Well, if global warming caused in part by our American disproportionally high energy use, and its resulting disproportionally high CO2 emissions results in Katrina-scale destruction repeatedly, then the costs to the US economy will be even more unacceptably high. The argument that Kyoto is unfair to Americans doesn't wash when the result of doing less than Kyoto is more and greater "natural" disasters hitting our shores.

Not joining Kyoto is thus far more unfair to Americans as it is far more ruinous to our economy, our national security, and of course, our lives.

Post Corrected 12:33 AM 18 Sept 2005

Get Your War On Katrina Posts

A slow down in postings has meant I'd almost stopped checking MNFTIU/GYWO. Get Your War On now has September updates! Harsh stuff. Get Your War On

David Rees, the cartoonist, is performing live Monday, September 19, 2005 in Brooklyn, NY at Galapagos Art Space, 70 North 6th Street
8:00 PM, in case you are in NYC.

Dr. B is visiting her grandmother

After today's long three legged trip, Dr. B reports she and her father visited her grandmother at the hospital. Grandma had some some milkshake and conversed for about an hour after which she plainly stated she wanted to them to leave. This cheered Dr. B as it showed her that Grandma is on her game, still very much her own self. Other bitchy relatives are due to join them this week. She sends her thanks for all the help and support.

Gretnazies

From the LA Times comes this story,
After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons

of a mostly white suburb of New Orleans that barred evacuation into or through their community by New Orleans flood evacuatees. Now the community seems to be rallying to justify this decision as necessary and trying somehow to assert that it was not, and that they are not, racist.

Sickening. Look at all the euphemisms they hide behind. They say they were protecting themselves and their property. They say they were protecting their community. They say they were avoiding bloodshed, several cite the higher murder rate in New Orleans as a reason to have barred flood evacuatees, on foot, including elderly and children, from crossing into Gretna. They say it was not about race.

Dr. Crazy sums it all up

With the question about the Roberts hearings: do we want a supreme court justice who doesn't have a thesis statement?

Mi Vida Loca

1. I have the nicest colleagues in the world. Every person I asked to cover my classes said yes, immediately, wished me well, and told me not to worry, they would take care of it.

2. Who in the world would ever have thought that keeping a blog would enable me to see my grandmother one last time? Amazing.

3. I cannot *believe* how much travelling I do. Have gotten to the point where I can pack in about fifteen minutes.

4. Extra-special super surprise: Mr. B. asked/offered to guest blog while I'm gone. Should be interesting....

Some good news

I got to talk to my grandmother. She was breathing pretty hard, and couldn't really talk much herself, but she did say that I "wasn't tiring her out" by keeping her on the phone. So I told her what's going on with us and PK, that he should start reading very soon, that he's in kindergarten (her other sentence: "kindergarten already? Oh my!"), that I loved her and miss her and I am glad my father is there with her.

I also got to tell her, thanks to a very generous anonymous reader, that I will be flying out tomorrow and should be there by mid-afternoon. Dad and the nurses seem to think she will hang on that long, and I told her that I hope to see her tomorrow and say goodbye in person. I've made arrangements with my department chair and a colleague, who will cover one of my classes next week (I will need to arrange for someone to cover the other one). So I will fly out and stay a week, which hopefully will mean that I will get to see Grandma as well as my sister (who is arriving on Wednesday). And, probably, attend the funeral next weekend.

So. It was good to talk to her. It's good to have time to make arrangements. And it's going to be really good to see her, too. I doubt I will be able to blog while I am gone, and there is no time (obviously) to arrange a substitute. I will see you all when I get back.

Sad

Most of you regular readers will remember me fretting about my grandmother, who wanted her feeding tube removed, and the family tension over whether or not to honor her decision. Well, finally we all decided to do it, and it was removed in April or May, a few weeks before I flew down to visit her in June. On my visit, we took her out to her favorite ice-cream parlor and she ate an amazing amount of ice cream--something she really misses in the nursing home. Then we sat on a bench in the warm air for quite a while, just because she didn't want to go back to the nursing home before she was tired. We took her back, then left her napping only after I'd reassured her repeatedly that yes, PK and I would still be there at dinner time. Saw her at dinner, but she was too tired to get out of bed, so we said goodbye and caught our flight home.

My dad and my sister both called me yesterday to say that Grandma is now dying. It sounds like a more or less conscious decision; she simply isn't eating enough to sustain life. It turns out that at some point in the last couple of months they've also realized she has breast cancer. Her 92nd birthday was yesterday (my sister says; I think it's tomorrow.) She's had a good long run of things, and it seems like her death now is, on some level, a conscious decision. So there's comfort in that. The nursing home has called in hospice, and she has someone with her. They say that she will probably die within 48 hours, so there isn't time for me to fly home--although, checking Travelocity, it looks like I will be able to afford a ticket for the funeral, if it is next weekend. My dad was down there just this last weekend, and took her out to lunch--he said she barely ate, maybe two bites. The hospice nurse, who I just called and spoke to, said she is feeding Grandma lunch right now, but that unfortunately Grandma is too weak to be able to speak or listen on the phone right now. (The phone isn't right by her bed; she would have to get out of bed to reach it.) My dad is driving down this afternoon again, though, and has a cell phone, so he will try to call me then so that Grandma and I can say goodbye.

More Roberts links

1. Bill Scher says Don't Buy Roberts' Privacy Talk

2. Hesoid argues that Roberts will Overrule Roe.

3. Scott Lemieux pays careful attention to Rehnquist's earlier attempt to Overturn Roe.

4. NARAL points out that Anti-Abortion groups are very pleased with the hearings so far.

5. Mimbreno points out that, while Roberts would be one of the few Justices on the Supreme Court to have a background in Indian Law, he also apparently distorted the wording of an important precedent and argued against tribal sovereignty.

6. The Rude Pundit sums up the hearings for those of us who can't watch them.

No one expects the Spanish inquisition

From the NYT:

Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for "evidence of homosexuality" and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, according to a document prepared to guide the process.

Presumably they'll start with the seminaries nearest Salem, and branch out from there.

I don't know about you, but I could use a little dose of Pseudonymous Kid

(This morning)

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, never tickle me again!
Me: Never? Never ever?
Pseudonymous Kid: No. Never, ever again.
Me: Okay.

(This afternoon)

Me: Come here, PK (tickling)
Pseudonymous Kid: No! Mama! I told you, don't ever tickle me again, never!
Me: Oh that's right. Never?
Pseudonymous Kid: Never!
Me: But it's fun to tickle you. It makes you laugh.
Pseudonymous Kid: It's not fun for ME.
Me: Okay, you have a point. No more tickling.

(This evening, after dinner)

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama! Tickle me!

So how's that Iraqi constitution coming along?

On the BBC news right now, a man who avoided the massive bombing in Baghdad today said, "If the government can't protect us, we must protect ourselves." Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, says it's not a civil war. I can't imagine what else you'd call it.

But apparently one of the reasons we're there is to prevent civil war, so I guess we can't say that there's a civil war going on. Just keep repeating: "it's not a civil war, it's not a civil war."

In other war news, if you missed this article in the July Harper's, it's worth reading: A War of Disabilities.

The hidden economic costs of the war in Iraq will not be found in the immediate treatment of the wounded or in increases to military death benefits. As expensive or labor-intensive as these might be, the largest monetary costs will involve the long-term care of thousands of severely and irrevocably damaged veterans; and these costs will only increase as the years pass. We are going to have to care and pay for a very large number of patients with what are, in any honest prognosis, lifelong disabilities.
....
Every wounded soldier will soon become a veteran and will--unless he or she is old enough for Medicare or miraculously lucky enough to find a managed-health-care company that will take on patients with extreme preexisting conditions--be forced to receive any ongoing care through Veterans Affairs. There is little to suggest that the VA--an overburdened and underfunded system--can handle the wounded from Iraq once they are released from Department of Defense care.
....
The average wait for a VA decision on an initial claim for disability benefits is 165 days; to rule on an appeal of one of its decisions, the VA takes, on average, three years. (In the last ten years, some 13,700 veterans have died as they were waiting for their cases to be resolved.) In Minneapolis the waiting period for an orthopedic appointment at a VA hospital can be more than six months, and patients there have been told to expect a further decrease in services over the next budget period. The VA needs more money, and its claims and appeals process needs an overhaul. Yet this administration hasn't adequately increased funding to the VA to deal with the influx of new veterans from Iraq. Of the 290,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who had left active duty by January 2005, 22 percent have already sought treatment from the VA; more than a quarter of them were diagnosed with some form of mental disorder. At this time, more than 1 million have served in these wars. The GAO recently found that six of seven VA medical facilities it visited "may not be able to meet" increased demand for PTSD. Hundreds of billions have been given to the Pentagon to pay for this war; to pay for the war's aftermath, VA discretionary funding for 2006 is to be increased by only one third of 1 percent.

We've fucked up Iraq, and in the process, we've fucked ourselves up too.

Really, if the Bush administration were working for Al Qaeda, they could hardly do a better job.
Cripple the American economy; strengthen religious fundamentalism in America; undermine America's international reputation; kill and cripple thousands of Americans; destroy one of the most secular countries in the middle east; create an Islamic fundamentalist uprising in Iraq; kill and cripple thousands of Muslims, both secular and religious; create tons of propaganda to recruit more young men to fundamentalist violence. Lovely.

What other people are saying about the Roberts hearings

Since I'm way, way too tired to write something.

Naughty Number Nine
John Roberts and Me
When is Privacy Just Privacy?
Nancy Keenan's Statement on Today's Hearings
Abortion and Federalism

After watching today's hearings, I have to say I'm not really reassured. It seems reassuring to have Roberts say that he believes Roe to be settled law, and that he doesn't think that disagreeing with the logic of a finding is just grounds for overturning a precedent; but holding out the possibility to overturn precedents because it has proven "unworkable," or, more importantly, because it has been "eroded" worries me a great deal. The fact is, Roe has been eroded over time, with parental notification laws, banning intact dilation and extraction, requiring women to undergo waiting periods, requiring them to be notified (untruthfully) that abortion causes health problems, and so on. So the "erosion" clause seems weasely to me, and I hope that the Judiciary Committee will press him harder on that tomorrow....

And they're off. . . .

So the Roberts hearings have begun. I don't think we learned anything new today, though I can't help but comment on how much it pisses me off that Dianne Feinstein is the only woman on the Judiciary Committee. I'll be watching the hearings as closely as I can, via C-SPAN. We shall see what happens. I suspect he'll be confirmed, although I wish that were not the case--after reading this piece in the NYRB, I feel more worried than ever that Roberts has a strictly theoretical view of justice, rather than an active one.

Roberts played an important part in the administration's efforts to curtail the rights of African-Americans, to deny assistance to children with disabilities, and to prevent redress for women and girls who had suffered sex discrimination. He also justified attempts by the state of Texas to cut off opportunities for the children of poor Latino aliens to obtain an education. Roberts was in favor of limiting the progress of African-Americans in participating in the political process and of making far-reaching changes in the constitutional role of the courts in protecting rights.

In all of these efforts, which halted temporarily when Roberts left government for private practice in 1986, he was no mere functionary. Indeed, he often was prepared to go beyond his conservative superiors in the Reagan administration in mounting a counter-revolution in civil rights, expressing frustration with his conservative superior at the Justice Department, Theodore Olson, differing on a key constitutional issue with Robert Bork, and disagreeing on voting rights with Senator Strom Thurmond.
....
Roberts conceded that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment could pose a formidable barrier to legislation intended to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over cases involving school desegregation. But, he noted, the problem might be surmounted, since strict scrutiny would be applied only if there were "racial classification," and the legislation in question would only classify cases by type, i.e., not "race" but "school desegregation." Giving state courts the final say over school desegregation, he added, would not involve unequal treatment because white officials as well as black groups would lack the right to appeal.
....
In his views on court stripping, Roberts revealed a striking lack of interest in contemporary events. He adopted the unsupported finding that Helms and the Dixiecrats had placed in the voting rights bill, which held that busing as a desegregation remedy was a failure and led to white flight. He omitted to mention the fact that desegregation had spread throughout the South after the Supreme Court's landmark 1971 "busing" decision in the Swann case, and that the first major report by the National Assessment for Educational Progress showed that the achievement gap between whites and African-Americans had been cut in half during the 1970s, with the greatest gains coming among third-grade black children, most of whom were bused in the now desegregated Southeast.
....
[With regard to the Voting Rights Act] While civil rights groups worked with Bob Dole to produce a draft that was essentially the same as the bill the House had passed, Roberts prepared a lengthy memo for Attorney General Smith to give to the President. It read that the bill's effects test would likely lead to federal courts throughout the nation striking down any electoral system that is not neatly tailored to achieve proportional representation along racial lines. In other words, the effects test in the Act could lead to a quota system in electoral politics.

Throughout April, Roberts continued his campaign. He drafted a letter that was sent to Senator Strom Thurmond urging his support for striking down the House bill. On June 18, the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 85–8, with Thurmond joining the majority. Ten days later, Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law.

Nowhere in any of the memos that have been made available did John Roberts acknowledge the effect of the many years of disenfranchisement on black citizens. Instead his concern was about the effect of an imagined quota system on whites, a concern that twenty-five years later has proved to be groundless.
....
Roberts had also made clear his disagreement with Shapiro v. Thompson, a Supreme Court decision which struck down state residency requirements for welfare benefits, on the grounds that he was unable to find any right to travel in the Constitution.
....
In 1982, during what appears to have been an extremely busy year, Roberts turned his attention to the claims of students with disabilities under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Amy Rowley was a deaf student with minimal residual hearing, who got by in school by virtue of excellent lip-reading skills and an FM hearing aid. Lower federal courts, finding that there was a considerable disparity between her achievement (which was described as about average) and her potential, held that under the act she was entitled to the classroom services of a sign-language interpreter. Reagan's solicitor general, Rex Lee, supported their view. . . .

After the decision, John Roberts wrote to Attorney General Smith expressing his disagreement with the solicitor general's office for supporting Ms. Rowley's claim in the Supreme Court. He described the statute as "vague, mandating only a 'free appropriate education.'"
....
Roberts's campaign against remedies for sex discrimination also began in 1982. The issue was how to interpret Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, which had become invaluable for fighting sex discrimination on America's college campuses. The basic precept of Title IX was the same as that of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred federal agencies from subsidizing racial discrimination. . . .

Pragmatists in Congress and in the executive branch recognized that there was no practical way to limit the impact of federal funds to the particular departments or offices that received those funds. Money was fungible and to the extent that discrimination existed anywhere in an institution, federal funds could facilitate that discrimination. So for years federal administrators treated the entire public university or school system as the recipient of the federal funds. These could be withdrawn if discrimination against women was shown. When after years of wide acceptance a lower federal court rejected that view in 1982, John Roberts urged that the decision not be appealed. "Under Title IX federal investigations cannot rummage wily-nily [sic] through institutions," Roberts wrote to Attorney General Smith, "but can only go so far as the federal funds go.... The women's groups pressuring us to appeal would have regulatory agencies usurp power denied to them by Congress to achieve an anti-discrimination goal."

All of these were before Roberts became Solicitor General, and by my reading, many of these opinions were freely offered, not solicited. The article concludes by saying that "David Broder noted of Judge Roberts, "You can search his record in vain for examples of his sensitivity to the impact of the law on people's lives."" I agree. Justice that only exists on paper--arguments that violent abortion protests don't discriminate against women, but only against "pregnant persons," that overturning anti-discrimination laws isn't discriminatory because neither blacks nor whites could appeal the ruling--is not justice. A man who takes no notice of how the law functions in practice, of the effects of the law, is, in my view, a poor nominee to head the highest court in the land.

9/11 and the public sphere

The most enduring images of 9/11 are of firefighters and other rescue personnel, covered in dust and debris, emerging from destroyed buildings. Since 9/11, I think it's fair to say that rescue workers--firefighters, police, EMTs--have gained newfound respect from Americans.

I think it's also fair to say that, following both 9/11 and, now, Katrina, America is rediscovering the importance of community, of the public sphere. We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Our sense of "hanging together" may mean government-provided services at the national, state, or city level, or volunteerism and local community efforts. But I think, I hope, we are realizing anew that America is not, or not only, a nation of discrete atomized individuals, each pursuing their own personal advancement; it is also a collective society, one in which private interests and public interests overlap and reinforce one another.

If we can remember this, remember that the "family" and the "village" are not mutually exclusive, that my rights and yours do not need to cancel each other out, that the interests of mothers and children are not at odds, then I think we will become a better society. I hope that as the arc of history bends towards justice more of us will change our lives to look outward, to form alliances and friendships, to consider the needs of others, including those who are very different from ourselves. That we will develop empathy.

Here's a "Call to Arms" that is really, I think, a call to join arms. Not to fight amongst ourselves, but to work together towards a more just society, one that promotes the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity, one that provides for common needs, one that establishes justice, ensures tranquility, and reminds us that "We the people" includes us all.

RIP, Gatemouth Brown

CNN reports that Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown died in Texas yesterday, where he'd evacuated after Katrina. He was 81.

Here are a few free downloads from Amazon, if you're not familiar with his work. Great stuff.

Plan B and the politicians from outer space

Probably you've already seen this, but if not, the Village Voice has an interview with Susan Wood, who resigned from the FDA over their continuing politicization of emergency contraception.

At every level of the review process, we agreed that this was safe, effective, and appropriate for over-the-counter use. The decision was not made in the usual passage. . . . The only connection this product has with abortions is that it prevents them.

Feministing reported last week that Senators Clinton and Murray are calling on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to release the findings of an investigation underway examining the FDA rejection of the Plan B application. In addition to Senators Murray and Clinton, the letter was signed by Senators Edward Kennedy (MA), Maria Cantwell (WA), Barbara Boxer (CA), Jon Corzine (NJ), James Jeffords (VT), Christopher Dodd (CT), Daniel Inouye (HI), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Tom Harkin (IA), Mark Dayton (MN) and Charles Schumer (NY). Ann asks, and I agree, that we ask our Senators to push for the GAO's findings to be made public. So much of the politics around Plan B depend on misinformation and flat-out lies. If the facts were more widely known, the agenda of those who are opposed not only to abortion, but to *all* forms of birth control, would be exposed for what it is.

Cultural Catastrophe

From Salon, a story about something I haven't seen anyone discuss yet: the loss of archives in New Orleans. Apparently officials aren't allowing archivists back into the city to rescue anything from their collections. I can't begin to imagine the damage that's been done to history in this nearly 300-year old city, so important to American music, to American multiculturalism, to African-American history, to Southern history....

New Orleans is home to a vast collection of archival material. Major repositories include the Special Collections departments at Tulane University and the University of New Orleans, the Notarial Archives, Jazz archives, The Historic New Orleans Collection, the city records stored in the basement of the New Orleans Public Library, the Archdiocese's comprehensive regional records, and the Amistad Research Center's collection of African American history. Among the documents at stake are hundreds of years worth of mortgages, real-estate records, marriage, birth and death certificates, manumissions, and slave sale records, dating back to New Orleans' time as a French and Spanish colony. There is original documentation of the Louisiana Purchase and the Battle of New Orleans, Confederate veterans' handwritten remembrances, city planning documents, the histories of Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. And that doesn't even take into account the various collections of non-regional materials -- from rare science fiction and gay and lesbian collections to Amistad's collections from the Harlem Renaissance. Who knows what damage has been done to the letters, diaries, records, and book collections housed in private homes?

Katrina links

Random, because I haven't blogged anything else today. (Am having a rather black day. No worries. will probably be better tomorrow.)

1. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that firefighters are really frustrated at not being asked to do actual, you know, relief and rescue work because instead they're doing P.R. for FEMA.

2. Left 2 Right links to some amazing BBC footage of reporters rescuing people.

3. Elise (who just had her one-year blogversary--go wish her a happy one, you ingrates, she entertained you while I was away, after all) and Echidne link to a blog by a doctor who's helping in Louisiana.

4. Hungry Blues provides links to charities that are

* Organizing at the grassroots level in New Orleans, Biloxi, Houston and other affected areas
* Providing immediate disaster relief to poor people and people of color
* Directed by, or accountable to, poor people and people of color
* Fostering the democratic inclusion of poor people and people of color in the rebuilding process

5. Amanda points to music-related fundraising in Austin and elsewhere. Also, a story in the NYT about the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which is apparently relocating, for now, to NYC. And I'll once again draw your attention to their fundraiser, which is going not to the band itself but to *all* New Orleans musicians. Some greats down there--without health insurance, not a lot of money, minimal royalty payments (if any), often little or no social security, and zero job security. Yes, I know there are a *lot* of people suffering--and I'll draw your attention once again to the Red Cross ad on the right--but what can I say, jazz is near and dear to my heart.

6. On the charity front, I have to admit: when I first saw people linking to animal relief efforts, I thought, "yeah, I love animals too, but c'mon--people are more important." Now, though, stories like this are starting to come out. I read a brief anecdote in a story I can no longer locate about a little boy who cried until he vomited because, having rescued his dog and taken it to the Superdome and lived through several days in the conditions there, when he finally had a chance to evacuate, they made him leave his dog behind. And I also read somewhere else, which I can't locate either, about authorities starting to shoot animals. All those people who've lost everything, now losing their beloved pets. So here's a link to the Humane Society and Noah's Wish, which are working to try to rescue those animals and reunite them with their people, and also to Alley Cat Allies, which focuses on feral cats.

7. If you haven't yet read the post from This is Not Over that was linked over at Scrivener's place, about Bush's response to Katrina, not as a president, but as a human being, you really should do so. It's very powerful. Scrivener's been doing some very good blogging, too, about the people living in shelters now--most especially, I think, this post. Highly recommended.

8. Also, if you've missed Majikthise lately, she's actually gone down to New Orleans to help. Fascinating reading. She also provided this link to some Katrina timelines.

9. A really strong article over at Harpers on disasters and authority, the ways that governments protect private property over people, and the ways that the aftermath of disasters can be used as political fodder for creating more authoritarianism.

10. And last but certainly not least, in comments to a previous post, Abby points out that there is now an online petition to be presented to Congress, honoring Jabbar Gibson and asking that he be provided the Medal of Freedom and a college scholarship.

A day in the life

Oh. My. God. Let me just say that spending all day at the mall with Pseudonymous Kid yesterday, and then dragging him shopping for me today = Bad Idea. Meltdowns, hyperactivity, that charming child activity of playing hide and seek underneath the clothing racks, needing to say calmly, "sweetie, please stand still so I can measure your feet . . . put your shoes on . . . tie the shoes . . ." about five times each, the horror of actually trying to get a child to *try things on* (I know, I know, terrible idea, but I wanted to see if the 5T pants would absolutely fall off him, or if I could get away with buying "big." Answer: we can go with 5T, thank goodness), going to McD's for lunch, going to a place for dinner we haven't been to in four months and having PK break down when he found out they no longer give kids popsicles for dessert, having fits two days in a row because it was too late to go to the park after finishing shopping. . . .

I'd vow "never again," but alas, I know I will be doing this every year for the next . . . twelve years at least. Ugh.

On the up side, Pseudonymous Kid, despite a little trepidation about going to a new school, enjoyed his first day of kindergarten today. (They're phasing the kids in two / day and the whole class will start on Monday). I'm thrilled to say that there are EIGHT kids in his kindergarten class--as opposed to the TWENTY-FIVE that were in his preschool class last year. And no, it's not private school: it's the local neighborhood school (which was actually slated to close this year, b/c it's so small, but apparently it's not closing, lucky for us). The classroom is lively, and because one of the kids in it has some kind of developmental delay, there are two adults in it--the regular teacher and the woman whose job it is to assist the child who needs help. So the student / teacher ratio is practically unheard of. Add in that the two little girls whose mom is dating the guy across the street, and who PK really likes playing with, also go to that school. All in all, a great situation--SO much better than last year. I'm enormously relieved.

More up side: there's a "designer outlet" store that's going out of business. Score: three very nice skirts and a necklace for under $100; then on to the Marshall's, where I found a couple of very nice jacket-type sweater things that will go with the skirts.

As for PK, his most exciting purchase was a pair of his very first little-kid Converse. Black, of course. As soon as we got home he had to run across the street to show them to our neighbor (the guy whose girlfriend has the two little girls). PK has the biggest little-boy crush on the neighbor. His admiration is based on the fact that Joe (1) blows things up in the street with firecrackers sometimes; (2) hangs out on his porch drinking beer and/or smoking and/or barbecuing fairly often and is always willing to talk to PK while he's doing it; (3) has cool tattoos. Joe came over to admire the coolness of PK's new shoes. Turns out, too, that Joe's birthday is the day after PK's. So PK says he wants to have a birthday party with Joe at Chuck E. Cheese. And Joe, who is an incredibly nice guy, actually agreed to this: "My girlfriend's kids love the place, my buddy's kid loves the place--yeah, let's do it!"

It's possible that PK isn't the only one in the house who has a crush on Joe.

tchotchke lust

Dear lord, I want this so very much. For my desk.

More here. Via Ms. Uffish.

How to keep enrollments down

Me, walking across campus last week: La di da, here I am wearing a camisole and jeans b/c classes haven't started yet, la di da, syllabi, course reserves, meetings....
Some Frat Boy with bleached hair, handing out flyers: Hey! Come to our kegger on friday!
Me, startled, raising an eyebrow: Uh, no, I don't think so.
SFB: Aw, c'mon. Free beer for girls. Bring a friend.
Me, coldly: I am not a girl. (Walking past.)
SFB: Oh, I get it. You're one of those chicks.

(Tuesday, in class)

Me: Ok, let me call roll and see who's here. If you aren't registered yet, let me know at the end and if anyone drops you can add the class, but I am not taking overloads. Sandra Ackerman. . . .
Me, a few minutes later: Joel Smith? (Not, obviously, his real name.)
Joel Smith: Here.
Me, looking up to jot down notes on appearance, etc. I notice he has bleached hair: Wait. You look kind of familiar...
JS, looking at me, recognition dawning: Uh....
Me, flatly: We met the other day, I believe.
JS, a little pink: Uh, yeah.

Today JS wasn't in class. And I notice, checking the online class list, that he seems to have dropped. Funny, that.

"The real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans"

Hey, remember the story about the hotel guests who were evacuated in advance of the folks at the Superdome? And how some people pointed out that those same people had actually *hired* buses to be evacuated, only to have their buses commandeered by the National Guard? And that the debate was whether putting the hotel guests on buses before the Superdome evacuees was, or was not, racist?

A couple of the hotel evacuees tells their side of the story. Read the whole thing, it's a hell of a story. The money quote? "Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. "

Oops, almost forgot: I saw this first at ER's place.

Pseudonymous Kid builds a cannon

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama! When you finish your beer, can we put some fizzy stuff in the bottle and SHOOT something out of it, like C. told me?*
Me: Sit down and eat your dinner.
Pseudonymous Kid (jumping up and down); Mama! Mama! Can we put some fizzy stuff in the bottle and shoot it out THIS NIGHT?
Me: Okay, but only if you eat your dinner first.
Pseudonymous Kid (getting back in his chair): Okay! Yay! We get to shoot something out of the bottle this night!

(after dinner, I'm out back smoking a cigarette)

Pseudonymous Kid (from inside the house): Mama! Mama? Mama! MAMA!
Me: PK, I'm out back.
Pseudonymous Kid: Okay, I'll be right there! (Door slams.) Mama, can we shoot something out of the bottle now?
Me: Okay, just a minute. (Stubbing out cigarette.) Okay, let's go do this.

(In the kitchen, we arrange the empty beer bottle, some bicarb, and some citric acid.)

Pseudonymous Kid: What are we going to shoot out of the bottle? A mushroom?
Me (rummaging around the fridge): Hmm.... what do we have that's the right size? Aha! How about an olive?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes! An olive! That's perfect!
Me: Okay. Now, add two little spoons of the bicarbonate. (Holding bottle steady.)
Pseudonymous Kid (spilling bicarb all over the counter): One . . . Two . . . Okay! Two! Now what?
Me: Now, one little spoon of the citric acid.
Pseudonymous Kid: Okay! One spoon of citric acid! All done! Now what?
Me (pouring water into a little pitcher): Okay, now, take the olive in one hand and the bottle in the other and let's go do this outside.
Pseudonymous Kid: Okay! Let's go! Come on, hurry, it's fizzing already!
Me: That's because the bottle's still a little wet, don't worry, it'll fizz a lot more when we add the water.

(Out back.)

Pseudonymous Kid: Okay! Now add the water! Hurry up!
Me: Hold on. Okay, I'm going to pour the water in real quick, and then I'm going to put the olive in, and you have to hold the olive in hard with your thumb and shake up the bottle, real hard, and then take your thumb off and let it go. Okay? Ready?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes! I! Am! Ready!
Me (pouring water): Okay, hurry up! (Shoving olive into neck of bottle.)
Pseudonymous Kid (shaking furiously): Okay! Here it goes!
Olive: (Ploop!)
Pseudonymous Kid (laughing): It went! But it didn't go very far.
Me: Well, no, it's hard to get it to really work because it starts fizzing right away....
Pseudonymous Kid: Let's try it again!



* The boyfriend once explained to PK about how you can put an olive into a beer bottle with a little beer left, and shake it up real hard, and then launch the olive. Why PK was thinking of this all of a sudden tonight, I do not know, but I think I recommend the beer method over the citric acid method, both for simplicity's sake and because of the premature fizzing problem you get with the acid. Although the acid method *does* save on beer. In the end, we launched an olive, a gooseberry (too small and lets the fizz escape at the sides; very disappointing), and a third olive (more successful). You have to use unpitted olives, though, with no holes.

Higher ed and the hurricane

A couple of interesting recent stories from the Chronicle of Higher Ed., if you missed them:

1. Hospital Evacuations.

For nearly five days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, knocking out power, fresh water, and communications to three teaching hospitals in downtown New Orleans, doctors and medical residents at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center struggled to keep patients alive. A few doctors even fed each other intravenously in order to save what little nourishment they had for their patients.

In an adjacent medical-education building, 160 students and faculty and staff members also waited five days as panicked storm victims banged on the doors and snipers took aim at doctors trying to evacuate their patients. When rescue finally came, late Friday, medical-school administrators performed the grim task of euthanizing laboratory animals that had not already drowned in the fetid, gasoline-laced floodwaters.

Larry H. Hollier, dean of the LSU School of Medicine, looked shellshocked on Saturday as he recounted the struggle to rescue his staff and students as day after day went by and no help arrived. "They weren't the top priority," Dr. Hollier said. "The people on the rooftops were the top priority."
....
All of the patients and staff members at the Tulane hospital eventually made it out, while two patients at Charity Hospital died while waiting to be evacuated.
....
The field hospital has treated about 6,000 patients. Many of them had suffered from dehydration and exposure, while some were in renal failure or were critically ill because they had not been able to take life-sustaining medications.
....
"The conditions were horrendous," Dr. Aiken said after Dr. Jenkins handed the phone to a Chronicle reporter. "The power went out when the generators flooded, and we had to ventilate patients manually." He said doctors had carried critically-ill patients up eight flights of stairs in darkened, rat-infested stairwells to the hospital's rooftops, where they were met by sniper fire -- from unknown sources, for unknown reasons -- as they tried to load patients onto waiting helicopters. Meanwhile, hundreds of panicked evacuees were pounding on the hospital doors, trying to get in. The stench of human waste and decomposing corpses was almost unbearable, he said. Since the hospital's morgue had flooded, bodies of the dead were stored in stairwells.
....
Mohaned was immersed in his studies for an examination when the evacuation warnings began. "I was worried that if I left, I wouldn't be able to get back in time for my exam," he said. "I guess I didn't really focus on it. It was like, 'Another Louisiana hurricane -- whatever.' Besides, I was in a 10-story building, so I figured the worst that would happen is that we'd be out of power for a day or two."
....
After several hours of waiting, [Mohaned and his brother, both med students] were transported to the crowded and chaotic New Orleans airport, where dazed refugees were lying on urine-soaked floors.

2. Announcements From Affected Colleges (I'm reprinting this in its entirety, for readers who lack Chronicle access).

Update from U. of New Orleans · posted 1 hour ago

Presently UNO is operating out of the LSU System office in Baton Rouge. UNO’s educational mission remains the same – to provide quality education, research and service as the urban university of the LSU system. We plan to make electronic classes available in October, and we will open the main and satellite campuses as soon as possible. For Fall semester 2005, UNO students have also been offered the opportunity to register as visiting students at any Louisiana public university in addition to many other institutions of higher education throughout the region, country and world.
....
Southeastern Louisiana U. to Resume Classes Sept. 8 · posted 4 hours ago

Classes at Southeastern Louisiana University will resume effective Thursday, Sept. 8. Safety and security are paramount objectives. Students should use their own judgment about returning to campus. The University will work with students to make adjustments to schedule, class loads, and living conditions as needed. The Baton Rouge Center and the Livingston Literacy Center are open and classes will meet; however, the St. Tammany Center and other off-campus class locations remain closed.
more
....
Message from National Association of College and University Attorneys · posted 4 hours ago

The following message is posted on behalf of President Melinda Grier and CEO Kathleen Curry Santora.

Dear NACUA Colleagues:

We have all been so touched by the heartbreak and devastation of those in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. I’m certain that many of our NACUA colleagues are considering ways in which they as individuals and their institutions can come to the aid of those whose lives have been turned upside down.

While the first order of business of course is to focus on the basic needs of our fellow human beings such as water, food, shelter, transportation and medical attention, we also know that eventually there may be a need for assistance in legal matters involved in disaster recovery whether it be research, expertise or advice on the myriad issues that will arise. NACUA will provide whatever assistance it can from the National Office and is available to serve as a clearinghouse both for those members who are in need of such legal information and expertise, as well as those who would like to offer assistance to their colleagues. If those of you near the affected region are in communication with our colleagues there, please let them know we would like to be of assistance.

If you need help or would like to offer your assistance, please e-mail Melissa Rooker, NACUA’s Assistant Director of Legal Resources at mrooker@nacua.org. Our thoughts go out to our friends and colleagues at this time of dire need.

Sincerely,
Melinda Grier, President
Kathleen Santora, CEO

NACUA’s resources page for Katrina is at http://www.nacua.org/lrs/Katrina/KatrinaResourses.asp
....
Tech Aid Offered by Assn for Computing Machinery · posted 6 hours ago

Over the last several days, the destructive effects of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf region of the United States have become distressingly clear. We extend our sympathies to the countless people throughout the area who are experiencing loss and suffering, and to our ACM members in the affected states who have been touched by this tragedy.

The technology community is well-positioned to contribute its particular expertise to the devastation resulting from this storm. If you would like to join in this critical aid effort, we suggest two organizations aimed at applying technology to this urgent situation.
....
NAFSA Prepares Katrina Response · posted 7 hours ago

A message from Marlene M. Johnson, Executive Director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators

Dear colleagues,

Today the enormous human and physical toll of Hurricane Katrina is only beginning to become clear. NAFSA: Association of International Educators extends its deepest sympathies to all of those affected by this tragic situation.

Among the hundreds of thousands of people impacted by the events of the past four days are the faculty, staff, and students of colleges and universities in the Gulf Coast region. NAFSAns of course are particularly concerned about the welfare of their fellow members there. Some 52 members live or work in the directly affected areas, and more than 200 in the three states most impacted, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

We can only imagine the extent to which matters of personal safety, basic needs such as shelter and food, and reconnecting with family members are occupying the energy of these colleagues. We are also certain that as international educators, their thoughts and concerns extend to their students. Taken together, the institutions in the affected area serve more than 10,000 foreign students and scholars. Some institutions have been completely evacuated and suffered extensive damage in the hurricane and its aftermath; others are operating with a limited ability to communicate with colleagues and assist their students. Potentially thousands of students and scholars have become evacuees and refugees.

Communities and institutions in neighboring states have also felt the impact, as they have received inquiries and visits from displaced individuals. In these early and sometimes desperate days, we are already hearing about the efforts of these schools and others across the country to assist and accommodate displaced students. As the nation rallies its full resources behind the effort to rescue those still in danger, assist evacuees, and to begin to restore normalcy in the Gulf Coast region, we commend them for their ongoing work, and we urge all of our colleagues to consider what they may be able to contribute to the effort.

Details about NAFSA’s response

NAFSA is in ongoing communication with the Departments of Homeland Security and State, in an effort to seek additional guidance on regulatory matters for members whose students and scholars have been impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

NAFSA Vice President for Public Policy and Practice Larry Bell and leaders from NAFSA’s Policy and Practice Committee are working on ways to provide additional member-to-member support on regulatory issues. Members who have questions about regulatory issues that they would like presented to government agencies may send them to NAregpractice@nafsa.org FSA members should also watch NAFSA.news for ongoing updates.

The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) will dedicate special resources to Designated School Officials (DSOs) who have questions related to SEVIS as a result of the hurricane and its aftermath. These communication channels will be staffed by personnel dedicated to this specific issue, in an effort to resolve issues as expeditiously as possible. Ongoing guidance about how to handle SEVIS reporting related to Hurricane Katrina will be posted on the SEVP Web site at http://www.ice.gov/sevis

NAFSA is also in touch with the departments of education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in a further effort to assess the needs of both private and public institutions affected by the hurricane.

Finally, NAFSA members have expressed a need for a means to exchange information regarding institutions that can offer space to students and scholars seeking to transfer out of the affected area. NAFSA is establishing an online discussion forum for this purpose. Look for this resource and other updated information on the NAFSA homepage at http://www.nafsa.org and in NAFSA.news.

NAFSA: ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATORS

1307 New York Avenue, NW, Eighth Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005-4701
1.202.737.3699 | FAX 1.202.737.3657 | data@nafsa.org
....
Southern U. Resumes Classes · posted 23 hours ago

Southern University, Baton Rouge, and Southern University Law Center (also in Baton Rouge), resumed classes today.
....
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is committed to the concept of tzedek (social justice) and will endeavor to help all those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina. As the world’s largest Jewish campus organization, we are uniquely capable of welcoming displaced college students to new campuses, to create support groups for these students, parents and alumni in their new communities, to raise relief funds on campuses and to provide a cadre of young volunteers. Hillel is committed to the welfare of students at affected campuses and to ensuring the continuity of Hillel of New Orleans which provides ongoing support to all students.
....
ACE and NACUBO Unveil Web Site to Assist Colleges and Universities · posted 24 hours ago

The American Council on Education (ACE) and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) have just gone live with a web site intended to serve as an information hub for campus relief efforts.

CampusRelief.org, underwritten by TIAA-CREF, provides links to the wide range of relief activities already established by a number of higher education associations and other organizations. Soon the site will allow for individual postings by campuses so that they can coordinate resources.
....
The Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida has set up a system, in cooperation the Florida Department of Education, to help all students affected by Hurricane Katrina (pre-K through university, public or private) continue their education until they can return to their home institutions.

Here’s a link to information on the FloridaCARES Intitiative: http://www.flbog.org/featured/FLoridaCARES.asp
....
EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology (IT) in higher education, has created a Web-based Hurricane Relief Community Exchange, which allows (A) institutions needing assistance to describe their IT needs and (B) institutions interested in helping to see those needs and, if possible, to follow up.

The Web site for this service is http://www.educause.edu/hurricane-relief. Campuses that need help with any aspect of IT services and infrastructure that was impacted by the hurricane and its aftermath are asked to convey those needs via the Web site, and campuses that are able to contribute are invited to use this vehicle to identify how, what, where, and whom to contact

Katrina may have been a bitch, but she's got nothing on the men in charge

Shakespeare's Sister alerted me to the latest piece of Santorum from Senator Man-on-Dog:

There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out.

(Video is available through ShakesSis, but I'm not linking to it b/c it doesn't work on the Mac OS. If someone sends me a link that does, I'll put it up.) Tougher penalties than losing everything one owns and possibly dying? Go get 'em, Ricky: let's fine those lazy bastards who don't own cars and those fools who won't leave their sick family members! That'll teach 'em to think they live in a free country rather than a police state. How dare they not do what they're told for reasons of their own. Of course, you were singing a different tune a couple of years ago, but hey, most of those people weren't black.

In the meantime, however, there was a very interesting story in yesterday's Washington Post.

In 1998, Deputy Assistant Army Secretary Michael L. Davis tried to stop the Army Corps of Engineers from rubber-stamping casino applications without studying the impact dredging would have on marshes that shelter wildlife, purify drinking water and help prevent flooding. This angered Lott, then Senate majority leader, who had recently flown to Las Vegas in a casino executive's jet and had raised $100,000 for Republicans at a casino-industry fundraiser.

Lott got the moratorium lifted, then he got the Army to launch an investigation of Davis. No wrongdoing was found, but Davis was removed from Gulf Coast permitting issues.

Ok. So not only did Lott build own a house in a floodplain. He also backed building casinos without looking into their impact on the marshes that protect the Mississippi coastline, and fired and persecuted the one guy who tried to stand up to him.

But Santorum wants to fine the victims rather than going after his buddy Lott, whose appetite for pork and casino lobbying money helped create some of those victims. What complete and utter assholery. What a flaming hard-on for power. What disgusting hypocrisy to prosecute the people who've been fucked while tossing the figleaf of photo ops and misdirection over the cockup of the bastards that raped them. Sorry, I'm channelling The Rude Pundit here, but honestly, how can one not?

For a very enlightening (and much calmer) dissection of the Bush administration's current buck-passing blame game, see this excellent post over at the American Street. On their rape of the poor, see Matthew Yglesias (who doesn't use that word because he's a respectable, paid, A-list political blogger) (but I can't help noting that even Michael Bérubé seems to have temporarily abandoned his poniard for a heavier, blunter instrument lately).

On the figleaf that the Republicans are trying to wave in our faces so we don't see them screwing us all over, see this post over by Sam Rosenfeld, which points out that Frist "postponed" voting on permanently repealing the estate tax to "focus on hurricane relief," even while

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested that Congress may well need to pass an economic stimulus package, complete with tax cuts, in order to ensure that Katrina’s effects on gas prices and other commodities do not drag down the entire U.S. economy. That sentiment was echoed by Frist.

And don't forget that the bastards still want to cut Medicaid (screw those sick poor people! If we make their lives hellish enough, Barbara Bush can be elevated to the status of prophet: they will be better off if we just cull the herd and relocate the survivors to camps). Keep your eyes on those Katrina relief bills: it will be very interesting, in a foaming-at-the-mouth kind of way, to see what kind of riders and addendums get tacked on to the bottom of 'em. 'Cause you know that's what's going to happen: the sick sons of bitches will offer short-term "relief" only if it's calculated to further, more devastating long-term abuse.

The most important thing I taught today

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, are koala bears and koalas cousins?
Me: No, sweetie, they're actually the same animal. Two different names for the same thing.
Pseudonymous Kid: Why are they called "koala"?
Me: What do you mean?
Pseudonymous Kid: Where does "koala" come from? Where do names come from?
Me: Oh! Well, we can look it up.
Pseudonymous Kid: Are we going to google it?
Me: Well, we could, but for words it's better to look them up in the dictionary. Ok, see here? It says the word is "early nineteenth century, from Dharuk."
Pseudonymous Kid: What's Dharuk?
Me: It's probably a language that the people in Australia speak, but let's look it up. Yes, it says it's a language from Australia, but now it's extinct. That means that no one really speaks it any more. But we still speak it a little, because we have the word "koala."
Pseudonymous Kid: Why are they called "koala bears"?
Me: Ok, well, probably because when European people first went to Australia they thought koalas looked like bears. But the people who were already there called them "koalas." So the Europeans adopted that word about two hundred years ago and called them "koala bears." But then sometime in the last hundred years, scientists realized that koalas and bears aren't really related, even though they look kind of alike. So the people who were in Australia before the Europeans were right, and now we mostly just call them "koalas."
Pseudonymous Kid: Oh, okay.

(In other news)

Ahhh!! Classes start today!!

Ok, one of my syllabi is ready and it is a thing of beauty. I don't have all my first few lectures totally jotted out (my "lecture prep" consists of a brief outline so I don't forget the main points, so don't think I mean "totally prepared speeches" or anything), but I do have student presentation topics all ready to go and the course calendar mapped out, and I think it'll be a good course. Plus the miracle of Apple's new Pages word processor means my syllabus is even pretty! And in color! With topic-relevant graphics and everything!

'Course, my other syllabus isn't quiiiite done yet... am still trying to find an online source for something I want them to read, but haven't ordered, and haven't actually read myself yet, so am not sure which sections I want to assign... but that won't be 'til after midterms so maybe I can just leave that week blank... yeah, right, because I'm so sure that if I don't have the readings lined up now, I'm going to get them lined up later... and I've alreaady ordered several expensive books for that course so I can't just have them buy the damn thing (especially since I only want them to read part of a much longer work)... maybe the library....

In other words, the semester's started. Where are my class lists again?

It is, however, a gorgeous fall day.

The media seems to be growing some very sharp teeth

Check out this long and damning video editorial by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

These are leaders who won reelection last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping this country safe. . . . [this government] has promised us protection . . . it has proved itself incapable of protecting us from the biological weapon of standing water. . . . For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been, as we were taught in social studies it should always be, "whether or not I voted for this president, he is still my president." I suspect that anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week." . . . For him, it is a shame, in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there and he might not have looked so much like a 21st-century Marie Antoinette. . . . Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have forseen," all he needed to do was remember Churchill's quote from the 1930s: "The responsibility of government for the public safety," Churchill said, "is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence." In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself. It damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

Watch the whole thing, seriously.

Link via Shakepeare's Sister.

You're being played

Some of the discussion in the comments here and over at ER's place about whether "now is not the time to complain" or whether drawing attention to FEMA's fuck-ups is "too negative" or whether lending aid is incompatible with pointing out problems, or whether seeing and criticizing the massive problems of the federal government's response to Katrina is unnecessarily depressing and unproductive, or whether local authorities are to blame too, have started bugging me. Enough that I'm writing long windy sentences with comma splices, even.

More to the point, these criticisms are Republican talking points, whether those making them realize it or not.

the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett.
....
Republicans said the administration's effort to stanch the damage had been helped by the fact that convoys of troops and supplies had begun to arrive by the time the administration officials turned up.
....
administration officials who went on television on Sunday were instructed to avoid getting drawn into exchanges about the problems of the past week, and to turn the discussion to what the government is doing now.
....
One Republican with knowledge of the effort said that Mr. Rove had told administration officials not to respond to Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the hurricane in the belief that the president was in a weak moment and that the administration should not appear to be seen now as being blatantly political. As with others in the party, this Republican would discuss the deliberations only on condition of anonymity because of keen White House sensitivity about how the administration and its strategy would be perceived.

In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.

In other words, attempts to divorce "politics" from the massive federal screwup are political. As Flippy pointed out in comments, the Department of Homeland Security specifically

will assume primary responsibility . . . for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation [In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency]. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.

And as has been pointed out in many other places (see the first link in the post below this one), DHS actually *blocked* aid that had been requested by state and local authorities. I wish to god I could find the posts I've seen (if someone feeds them to me in comments, I'll update this post) comparing the response to Hugo to the current situation: when Hugo struck, the National Guard was *already in place* and ready to respond. FEMA was also on the ground before Hurricane Opal hit in 1995. Update: See also this comparison between FEMA's treatment of hurricanes in Florida in 2004 with what's going on now. So it's not as if no one knew how to gear up *in advance* for something like this.

No. It was the acknowledged responsibility of FEMA under the DHS to be ready for this thing. And they fucked up. The buck stops with the feds. I'm truly glad that things have started to improve, that people were finally evacuated, that search and rescue efforts are ongoing. But a lot of people--thousands, perhaps--died because the response was too little, too late. They need to be held accountable. It may be unpleasant, but it's unacceptable for adults in a free society to ignore unpleasant truths.

New Orleans Blues

Hungry Blues has an excellent post on "the wherefore and why" of what's wrong with the federal response to Katrina. He also has a great bittersweet history of the west end, with a gift at the end if you read all the way through it--a 1928 recording of Louis Armstrong's West End Blues.

Which reminds me--one of the relief needs post-Katrina is for ACORN, a well-established national (international, even) organization of low- and moderate-income families for social justice and community improvement. Among other things, they campaign for improved housing, schools and job opportunities; run voter registration drives; and work on health and environmental justice and living wage legislation. They are the grass roots that the Democratic party needs to build on, and their headquarters were in New Orleans. They're not a relief organization, but they are collecting funds to establish a temporary headquarters in Baton Rouge, to rebuild their New Orleans office, and "to find and relocate out 9,000 New Orleans member families, provide mortgage counseling, and ORGANIZING to get the victims of Kartina the voice and services they need." The Red Cross and other immediate relief aid organizations definitely need support; ACORN is an organization that will be around for the long haul and will continue to empower the people most affected by Katrina long after the destruction of New Orleans has fallen off the front page.

I saw somewhere (wish I could remember where) a great idea about having "Christmas in September"--that is, sending the money budgeted for the upcoming holidays to the Red Cross and foregoing Christmas gifts this year. "Neat idea," I thought, "and maybe a good idea for December, too, when aid will still be needed. But will the Red Cross still be helping people from Katrina then, or will folks have integrated into temporary (or perhaps permanent) living situations, making it harder to find out how or where to send help?" Well, ACORN is a good bet, now (if you still have money to give) or later, when you can afford it again. The need isn't going to go away, and neither is ACORN.

To-do list for September

It's fall, so time to get back to work.

1. The Violence Against Women Act is up for renewal this month. With all the other news, it's going to be easy to overlook; don't forget to drop a line to your congresspeople to let them know that this one matters.

2. What with Roberts now up for Chief Justice, a couple of reminders of important cases coming before the court this year on abortion and voting rights. Roberts' record on women and minority rights is pretty crappy. We really need to encourage our elected representatives to push hard on Roberts: we need access to all his papers, we need to feel confident that he supports the rights of all Americans before we give him a lifetime appointment to head the last line of defense for civil rights in this country.

3. And last but certainly not least, coming up this week, Congress is still going to vote on permanently repealing the estate tax. Also on the agenda: cutting capital gains and dividend taxes even further, and cutting entitlement programs. The fiscal irresponsibility here is just mind-boggling: we're running a huge deficit, we're fighting a war, and we've just had one of our major cities and several minor ones wiped off the map. And they still want to cut taxes?!?!? Call your congresspeople and send them letters telling them (politely, but firmly) to get their heads out of their asses and run the country responsibily.

Here's Landismom's letter re. the estate tax, if you want a template.

"She drowned on Friday"

You have to see this.

I've seen a lot of argument starting about whether the Bush administration is to blame for this disaster down south. People are starting to say "what about the state and local governments?" Now, I'm quite willing to accept that they, too, fucked up. But the bulk of the blame has to lie at Bush's door when stories keep coming out about FEMA and/or Homeland "Security" actually turning away help that state and local governments had sent for, arranged, or requested. See, for instance, the growing list over at Kos.

Yes, I know it's a downer. It's a little hard to be "up" right now.

Next, the plague of locusts

Rehnquist died tonight.

Holy crap

"At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome."

Story here.

"Those are my people down there"

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Story and downloadable video here.

"New Orleans now is abortion free"

According to Focus on the Family.

That's right. God will stop abortion, no matter how many babies he has to kill to do it.

Rescuers 'had to push the bodies back with sticks'
By Trymaine D. Lee

Lucrece Phillips’ sleepless nights are filled with the images of dead babies and women, and young and old men with tattered T-shirts or graying temples, all of whom she saw floating along the streets of the Lower 9th Ward.

The deaths of many of her neighbors who chose to brave the hurricane from behind the walls of their Painter Street homes shook tears from Phillips’ bloodshot eyes Tuesday, as a harrowing tale of death and survival tumbled from her lips.

"The rescuers in the boats that picked us up had to push the bodies back with sticks," Phillips said sobbing. "And there was this little baby. She looked so perfect and so beautiful. I just wanted to scoop her up and breathe life back into her little lungs. She wasn’t bloated or anything, just perfect."
.....
Phillips’ downstairs neighbor, Terrilyn Foy, 41, and her 5-year-old son, Trevor, were unable to escape, Phillips said. By late Monday the surging waters of Lake Pontchartrain had swallowed the neighborhood. The water crept, then rushed, under the front door, Phillips said, then knocked it from its hinges. In less than 30 minutes, Phillips said, the water had topped her neighbors’ 12-foot ceiling and was gulping at hers.

"I can still hear them banging on the ceiling for help," Phillips said, shaking. "I heard them banging and banging, but the water kept rising." Then the pleas for help were silenced by the sway of the current, she said.

Story here. Permalinks seem not to be working, so I've included the title of the article, above.

"Zero tolerance for price gougers"

Isn't that what Bush said?

Oh well.

For college and university students displaced by Katrina

A list of universities that are accepting late admissions and/or waiving tuition, either out-of-state or altogether. See also the article in today's Chronicle about the USDoE waiving several loan regulations for students and colleges affected by Katrina. The Chronicle article is subscription only; if you want to read it and lack access, email me and I will arrange to send you the full text.

Hero of the week

Jabbar Gibson.

"Gibson drove the bus from the flooded Crescent City, picking up stranded people, some of them infants, along the way. . . . The group of mostly teenagers and young adults pooled what little money they had to buy diapers for the babies and fuel for the bus. After arriving at the Astrodome at about 10:30 p.m., however, they initially were refused entry by Reliant officials who said the aging landmark was reserved for the 23,000 people being evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

"Now, we don't have nowhere to go," Gibson said. "We heard the Astrodome was open for people from New Orleans. We ain't ate right, we ain't slept right. They don't want to give us no help. They don't want to let us in."

After about 20 minutes of confusion and consternation, Red Cross officials announced that the group of about 50 to 70 evacuees would be allowed into the Astrodome."

Trent Lott lost his house

The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. 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. (Laughter.)

Image from the Wapo.

"God is looking down on all this"

"and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price."

Well, it looks as if Bush and the goddamn troops and some goddamn supplies have finally started arriving. Too late for the babies that died of dehydration, the old people that died of neglect, the sick people who died because there was no medical care, no supplies, no help. The link supplied via Boing Boing doesn't seem to work, but I agree 100% with the excerpt quoted:

the right has gotten their wish. they successfully made government ineffective. this is what happens when you take away the power of government. the point of effective government is to keep this from happening to society. and there is no better poster boy for the ineffectivity of government than the sitting president.

Juxtapose Bush to the Mayor of New Orleans, who is actually on the ground, who actually feels responsible, who gets the difference between bullshit and reality:

"President" Bush, to Diane Sawyer: I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.
......

New Orleans Mayor Roy Nagin: We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

Interviewer: Who'd you say that to?

Nagin: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.
......
Bush: There oughta be zero tolerance of people breaking the l aw during an emergency such as this. . . . I mean, if people need water and food, we're gonna do everything we can to get 'em water and food. But . . . it's very important for the citizens in all affected areas to take personal responsibility....
......
Nagin: I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it.
......
Bush: There's a lot of choppers beginning to move, and more choppers are on the way.
......
Nagin: Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country. . . . People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.
......
Nagin: did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important? . . . But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

(Cleaned up) transcript of Nagin's interview here. Audio MP3 available here. Bush's appearance on GMA available for download here.

I'm a little behind on the news at the moment, and I'll be busy this afternoon. Please update me on what's going on with links in the comments?

A li'l good news

They found Fats.

Sadly, they don't know if his family is okay yet. Allen Toussaint is also missing. And so, of course, are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who aren't famous. It's kind of nice, though, that both BET and NBC are going to be having music telethons in the next few days.

Hurricane and flood relief

You may have noticed--and if you haven't, I am calling your attention to--the second ad on the right-hand sidebar asking for donations for hurricane relief. (Unless, of course, you are on dialup, in which case you probably stop the page loading before the ads appear.) Chris Bowers at My DD did all the work to put together an alliance of liberal bloggers to offer the ad for free, including getting BlogAds to donate the infrastructure and other organizations to track the progress of the fundraising. All proceeds go directly to the Red Coss: neither I nor Blog Ads takes any profit from that particular ad, which will be up for the next two weeks.

Billmon also has a great list of places taking donations for relief.

And finally, an additional source for donations that is especially dear to jazz-loving me: the Preservation Hall Hurricane Relief Fund, which will donate 100% of the money raised to New Orleans musicians. Most working musicians, as you know, live a pretty hand-to-mouth existence. Preservation Hall will even give you a free t-shirt if you can donate $150 or more.

By the way, Fats Domino is missing.

Also by the way, those of you who emailed me in the last couple of weeks will, eventually, get a response; I'm a little backlogged, and I have syllabi to whack together and meetings to attend for the semester that starts next week....