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September 2005
September 30, 2005
Transmeridian Airlines decided to pull out of the
Toledo Metro Airport today, unannounced, screwing over untold numbers
of people who had reservations for today and the days and weeks ahead.
One such passenger would have been my mother who was supposed to
fly out on their plane next Wednesday. Not anymore, however.
Of course this is like the twelfth airline in ten years to ditch service in Toledo unannounced, so it isn't a huge shock to me. My mother, on the other hand, was completely freaked out. She dominated much of my day by having me find one-way flights back to Florida on Wednesday on obviously short notice. I found some good prices (horrible, really, considering that no airline prices are good if not book three weeks or more in advance), but flying out of Cleveland was invariably at least $100 cheaper than flying a different airline out of Toledo. The next big problem was that her rental car was expected in Toledo, and Budget Car Rental would double her costs (adding nearly $500) if she returned the car to Cleveland instead). She also couldn't get a seat reserved on the shuttle from Orlando's airport to her town a couple hours away since it was booked solid. My mother did not handle any of this well.
I poked around a bit and found that there were a lot more flights available on Tuesday, and at cheaper prices, and this would be good since I could take her to the airport on Tuesday but not Wednesday (this, we figured, would be necessary since she would have to take the rental car back to Toledo some time before going to Cleveland to catch her flight). We managed to get her flight arranged and confirmed for Tuesday morning from Cleveland, and I would take her. My father is supposedly trying to find some neighbor (any neighbor) who would drive to pick her up from Orlando (so that's still sort of a glitch in the plan), and I suggested that we take the car back to Toledo tonight rather than spend the time over the weekend.
So my grandma had gone out to a luncheon with old friends. She got back just before 4 PM, we got ourselves together, went to Meijer to do our bi-monthly shopping, brought everything back and put it away, and then headed to Toledo in both cars. Returning the rental car went fairly smoothly, and the wait at J. Alexander's restaurant wasn't too long at 30 minutes, but even with prompt service it was past 9 PM when our food arrived. It was all delicious and perhaps even worth the wait, but it made for a late night. By the time we got back to Sandusky it was already nearly Midnight. Considering all we did and the time we did it in, we did well, but it was a loss of a day to me completely.
Tuesday morning I'm going to have to get up around dawn to take my mother to Cleveland Hopkins Airport asa well, and I can assure you that I'm not looking forward to that. Still, I'm not the one who still has to be concerned about whether she has a ride from Orlando to her house a couple hours away, so I guess I shouldn't feel too put out. I do ... but I really shouldn't. And I guess I'll get over it.
Posted at 2:20 AM
September 29, 2005
Some days the idea of living in a virtual world like the Matrix is very appealing, regardless of the lack of freedom that would inherently be behind it. Wouldn't you much rather be ignorant and content than full of the stench and desolation of reality?
Posted at 2:29 AM
September 28, 2005
Scary but true. Various news sources (and a lot
of political blogs) are carrying this frightening set of plans by
the Republican leadership on ways to cut all of their least favorite
programs from the federal budget (cutting some entirely from existence)
all based upon the claim that they have to cut these programs to
pay for the costs of rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina. It's bad
enough that they don't cut back on the money being fueled into the
wrong-headed war in Iraq; and it's bad enough that they don't pay
for rebuilding by repealing Bush's tax cuts that only really benefit
the very wealthy; but it's abominable that they are planning to cut
huge programs that directly benefit the poor and needy, the elderly,
and even the basic middle class. It is simply despicable. It is exactly
what I expect out of the Republicans. How sad that is.
The Republican proposal, titled "Operation Offset," was authored by the Republican Study Committee, a group of over 100 influential members of Congress, including powerful committee chairs and members of the Republican leadership [3]. The proposal starts with support from at least these 100 representatives, and they are looking to quickly build momentum.
A full reconstruction of the Gulf Coast region is generally estimated to cost around $200 billion [4]. We could more than meet this cost by rolling back Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for just the wealthiest one percent of the country, which would save us an estimated $327 billion [5].
"Operation Offset," however, calls for an astounding $949 billion dollars in cuts over 10 years to vital national services [6].--almost five times the full cost of reconstruction. To further put that in perspective, it's also more than 4 times what we've spent in Iraq [7].
This plan is not about "offsetting," or rebuilding--it's about exploiting this crisis to push their longstanding goals for America. As conservative movement leader Grover Norquist has often put it, the goal is to get government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." [8] This proposal is their latest attempt to drown the public sector.
The excess of the Republicans' proposed cuts is almost unbelievable. You can read the full proposal here.
Here are just some of the most egregious cuts:
--$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
--$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
--$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
--$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
--$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
--$5.5 billion to eliminate ALL funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
--$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
--$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
--$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
--$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
--$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
--$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program
And the list goes on and on.
Footnotes follow:
[1] "Lawmakers Prepare Plans to Finance Storm Relief," The New York Times, September 20th 2005
(Note: the $500 billion referred to this article only covers section 1 in "Operation Offset". The full proposal has six sections and calls for total cuts of $949,674,000,000 over 10 years. See the full proposal here.)
[2] Center for American Progress
[3] The Republican Study Committee
Some examples of prominent RSC members include:
--RSC Founder Rep. John Doolittle (AZ), Republican Conference Secretary
--Rep. Eric Cantor (VA) Chief Deputy Majority Whip
--Rep. Richard Pombo (CA), Chair, House Committee on Resources
--Rep. Joe Barton (TX), Chair, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Posted at 12:05 AM
September 27, 2005
This article
in today's Toledo
Blade reveals basic truths about Bush's presidency. First note
the title and compare it to the subtitle of the article. Bush obviously
wants you and me to make the big sacrifices to cut back on energy
consumption, but he and his buddies will burn energy at every opportunity.
If you reader this further (as you should), he's basically saying
that the middle class and poor can struggle to solve energy shortages
but the wealthy (and/or Republicans) will do whatever the hell they
want.
Read further in the article, notably the last line. Bush apparently expects the local authorities who are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to have the "vision" to direct redevelopment and reconstruction. That's understandable as Bush couldn't provide "vision" to anybody. At least he realizes this and doesn't use the same vision that he's using to 'reconstruct' Iraq.
Here is the article (my thanks to Steve for pointing
this out to me):
President urges nation to forgo unneeded trips
Bush plans 7th visit to inspect hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast
by ANN McFEATTERS
BLADE WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
WASHINGTON - Urging Americans to conserve gasoline, President Bush yesterday said hurricane damage will adversely affect the nation's energy supply but added that he is ready to open up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve again if the nation starts running short.
Mr. Bush today plans to fly a seventh time to the Gulf Coast to inspect hurricane damage.
He intends to see Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas, hit hard by Hurricane Rita.
After being briefed at the Department of Energy yesterday, he said the administration is "paying close attention to the [energy] markets" and that will determine whether the reserve is tapped again.
The back-to-back storms of Rita and Katrina, he said, "show how fragile the balance of supply and demand is in America."
Although Mr. Bush has been criticized for failing to talk much about energy conservation, yesterday he said, "We can all pitch in" by being "better conservers of energy."
He said if Americans are able to forgo an unessential auto trip, "that would be helpful."
He said he's directed federal agencies to curb unnecessary travel and asked federal employees to use carpools and mass transit where possible.
"And we can shift peak electricity use to off-peak hours. That's a way for the federal government to lead when it comes to conservation," he said.
The pump price of a gallon of gas rose yesterday to $2.80 nationwide. That's below the $3 a gallon seen after Katrina hit, but several industry experts said it is likely to rise higher.
And shortages are still widespread in Texas and Louisiana.
Crude oil futures were up more than a dollar at nearly $66 a barrel.
Natural gas was up about a dollar - a record high that caused nervousness among homeowners in the Midwest and the East. Forecasters say they expect a colder, snowier winter than normal in those regions.
Despite less damage than expected to the refineries along the Gulf Coast, a White House fact sheet said 1.56 million barrels of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been stopped and assessments are under way on the 700 platforms and rigs in Rita's path.
Before Rita, oil wells were pumping approximately 880,000 fewer barrels a day because of damage caused by Katrina.
The extent of damage to underwater pipelines is unknown, and restarting refineries will take time. Gulf Coast oil refineries affected by Rita and Katrina represent 31 percent of national production.
Mr. Bush made another pitch for nuclear power and for building more refineries.
Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, yesterday introduced a bill to provide tax incentives to build refineries at defense bases that are being closed.
"The current lack of oil refinery capacity is largely the result of a conscious decision by the oil industry in the 1990s to limit supply to increase profitability - in the 1990s, approximately 50 refineries were closed, and since 1995, over 20 refineries have been shut down," said Dave Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program.
"The oil industry succeeded in increasing their profitability - Exxon is now the most profitable company in the world, making a record $7.84 billion dollars in earnings last quarter," he said.
The Sierra Club and other groups said they will oppose a new Republican effort in Congress to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, saying it would take a decade to produce oil and reduce the cost of gas only about a cent per gallon by 2025.
They noted the United States consumes 25 percent of the world's oil consumption and has less than 3 percent of global oil.
Nonetheless, some environmentalists said that temporarily relaxing some federal regulations, as was done after Katrina, makes sense because of the current disruption of oil supplies.
The Environmental Protection Agency is waiving the winter-summer blend requirements, increasing flexibility in diesel supply, and waiving reformulated gas requirements to increase supply.
The Department of Homeland Security is permitting ships with foreign flags to transport fuel from one U.S. port to another, which is usually forbidden.
Oil-rich Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is feuding with the United States, nevertheless said the first of 1 million barrels of oil will reach the United States this week with full delivery expected by Oct. 31.
The International Energy Association also has agreed to begin releasing 60 million barrels of oil to the markets.
Speaking with reporters afterward, President Bush rejected a suggestion that his request to Congress to allow the Defense Department to be the first responder in disasters meant that the Department of Homeland Security is not up to the task.
He said he wants a "robust discussion" in Congress about the federal role, especially by the Department of Defense, in a disaster "right off the bat to provide stability."
Mr. Bush also did not rule out the possibility that he will name a "reconstruction czar" to oversee the rebuilding of the hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast.
Mr. Bush said the government was ready to release fuel from its emergency oil stockpile to alleviate high prices.
But he stressed the "vision" for rebuilding must come from the local authorities
Posted at 12:01 AM
September 26, 2005
Tomorrow is my grandmother's 91st birthday - and she doesn't look a day over 70 (really!). As incredibly frustrated as I do get with my grandma I still love her deeply, and I'd be thrilled if she were around for another 20 or more years. Considering how healthy and active and intelligent as she still remains, I see that as a distinct possibility.
Today my grandma was truly thrown for a loop. My sister flew in to surprise her this afternoon, only for a short stay (she leaves Wednesday afternoon), but it was a secret I kept well, and my grandma was absolutely speechless when she walked through the door. My mom is also here, having arrived last Thursday (and she'll be here for another week and a half (ugh!)). So my grandma has been quite happily surrounded by her family today, and tomorrow promises to be a great time for her as we're planning a very elegant dinner to celebrate. Before that my grandma will have a nice massage around noon, and I expect to have a nice lunch prepared for her as well. By the end of the day she should be very full, relaxed, and happy. It will be wonderful to see her so pleased.
Posted at 10:17 PM
September 25, 2005
Who wants an Orange Whip? Orange Whip? Orange Whip?
Posted at 11:54 PM
September 24, 2005
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes
A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams you lose your heartaches
Whatever you wish for, you keep
Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling thru
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true
Posted at 12:19 AM
September 23, 2005
I wonder if I'd sleep better if a had a great guy wrapped around me? I wonder if I'd have less anxiety and less depression if I had a guy to hold me and tell me he'd always be there? I wonder if I'd have hope again for the future, merely from a boyfriend holding my hand?
It would be nice to find out.
Posted at 9:59 PM
September 22, 2005
I'm once again debating whether I should continue
posting to this Journal on a daily basis. For those of you who've
been reading this Journal long enough you won't be surprised to hear
this - I make this consideration about once a year, I guess, and
write about my thoughts on the matter. Each time I decide to continue
daily postings, so maybe I shouldn't even reconsider this knowing
that I'll likely just keep up the daily tradition. Still, I don't
feel like I'm doing any of what I wanted and expected to do in this
Journal.
When I first started this website I had honestly planned to use the Journal as a writer's journal, experimenting with prose, writing a poem here and there, writing a description or dialogue in some piece of fiction I was thinking about, writing out old memories vividly, and writing some philosophy that would be good fodder in later writings. By and large I've failed to do any of that. Sure, I've done some experimenting with poetry (rarely, and not for a while) and I've recounted some memories (again rarely, and certainly not in the detail that I could or should have), but mostly this Journal has been a journal in the sense of being a diary - a recounting of the days events or something significant from the day, sometimes just a whiny rant about something crappy that happened. Lately I haven't even really been living up to that. I've found interesting articles that have meaning to me and post them, but I don't give much commentary to go along with them. Or I've completely copped out and just posted a song lyric or a quote or some random line or weirdness. Honestly I feel like this Journal is certainly not what I originally wanted, and it's becoming less of what it has become as a diary, and now it's not even really what could be considered a blog. It's, to me, just a big disappointment, but cons1idering how I feel most days I highly doubt that I'll be making any drastic turnarounds any time soon.
So with all of this in mind I wonder if I should
stop forcing myself to post every day, posting instead with something
significant to post rather than just posting anything because
of the sense of daily obligation. Maybe I could go to posting just
on Fridays or maybe even just posting when I'm inspired. A huge part
of me hates the idea of letting go because I expect that I'll post
so infrequently that it would be ridiculous. I love the idea of posting
daily, I just hate that I'm not posting anything worth reading. At
least it certainly feels that way.
I've posted every day but one since I started this Journal nearly five years ago, and that one day was the day of my laser eye surgery when I couldn't focus at all and I wasn't even supposed to open my eyes for a day. Even when I've had my computer crashed or stolen I've managed to write and post every day, sometimes not posting for a couple of days but always writing something and always posting. It feels good to have the continuity and consistency from posting every day, but what's the point of posting when it has no meaning to anyone? I get so little feedback that I really don't even know what the people reading this Journal expect or want, and even if I did would that make a difference when the whole problem is having the motivation and desire to write something? I don't know.
As usual I won't make any snap decisions on this right now. As usual I'm leaning toward continuing to try to post daily. I just wish I felt better about what the hell I'm posting. This website means a lot to me, and I want to update it daily. But it also means enough that I want it to be significant. And I don't want to post just because I feel that I have to. I want to feel like I'm really communicating to somebody, anybody, and right now I don't feel like I'm doing that. If I decide to stop posting daily I'll be sure to make that clear on the website. Right now I just don't know what to think. I guess that's a given, though. We'll see.
Posted at 3:41 AM
September 21, 2005
It seems ridiculous to say, considering how depressed I was a month ago at the start of the semester, but I have been becoming more and more deeply depressed each day as the semester has progressed with pretty much no abatement. I am to a point now where I'm having horrible headaches every day that won't go away, I can't sleep for much more than five hours at a time without waking up (and then being lucky if I can get back to sleep at all, even after lying in bed uncomfortably for 3 hours), and I constantly feel exhausted. My shoulders and neck are so tense most of the time that I think they may spring off my body at any point. I'm cranky; I'm irritable; I can't concentrate; my memory has been for shit; and I can't get anything done. My anxiety is so bad about certain things that even when I've decided to take care of a certain thing (with a detailed plan) I still can barely move and most often don't get anything accomplished as a result.
My finances at the moment aren't great, but I'm
in control and on budget, but that will all change very soon since
Congress passed a law a while ago that requires all
credit card companies to double their minimum required payments.
My budget works such that I pretty much use what little cash I have
to pay a bit above my minimum due on all credit cards and then use
the cards to pay for my purchases (food, gas, etc.). For the most
part this strikes an uneasy balance - I don't add too much debt beyond
my interest on my accounts, but there is a steadily increasing debt.
In years past I have used my student loans to keep the balance, paying
down (and more often paying off) one or two cards each semester or
each year. Without having any financial aid this year I'm
barely even covering the minimum amounts due, but now (less than
a month from now) my expected payments will be double. Even if I
still had some financial aid it would be too much expected payments.
So the bottom line is that either at the end of next month or the
following month I won't be able to pay my bills. Also next month,
thanks to our beneficent idiots in Congress, bankruptcy laws will
change and make it nearly impossible for individuals to declare bankruptcy.
Now to be honest, I don't want to ever have to declare bankruptcy,
but at this point, based on what I know will happen next month, I
don't feel like I have a choice. Sadly bankruptcy will be almost
surely a huge blow to me, and at this point no one will tell me if
I'll lose my car or my computer or whatever if I declare bankruptcy.
From the way I understand it, some people barely come out with their
clothes and a bed. It almost makes me wonder if I'm better off defaulting
on everything and just fending off creditors.
So the whole finances situation is very upsetting,
very confusing, and very depressing. Add to the the fact that my
grandma has, in the last three months or so, entered that stage where
old people have to argue everything. She won't listen to me or believe
me even if I have a doctor's instructions in front of me or a newspaper
article in her hands backing me up. I don't like confrontation in
general, and to have my formerly-sweet, docile grandma actually looking
for a fight and pushing for it even when, after she starts, I say, "I
don't want to have this argument again" ... it's not only frustrating
but depressing. My sweet, wonderful grandma is gone and has been
replaced by someone I don't recognize and am beginning not to like
too much at all. As a result I've been avoiding her a lot, and that
makes me feel guilty. Of course when she argues with me I try to
let it go but finally can't stand it any more and argue back, and
then that makes me feel guilty, because I really don't want
to argue with my grandma. So that, too, is upsetting me.
I've also got a painter who had been contracted in late spring to work on our house who is dodging me and won't answer my calls. I've got a large section of lawn that is drying out and dying off and I'm torn between watering it to save it or letting it go because I know exactly the argument that will come from my grandma about the water bill.
I could even mention the hundreds of beautiful guys I see every day that make me die inside with longing even just to talk to them or hang out with them, and that has been a hugely depressing thing for me. It's not just the desire for a boyfriend, either. I'm really dying inside because of the lack of any social interaction at all, and I feel like I'm more alone than ever.
Probably worst of all is that I have absolutely
no creativity in me whatsoever, even on my best days, and I haven't
been able to do anything with the story for my thesis. I've had five
weeks to work on it, and I only have five more weeks before the absolutely
final draft must be submitted, and I feel completely fucked on this.
I honestly feel lost as to what to do at all with this story, even
though Theresa, my advisor, has given me ample suggestions. I just
can't get anything to work, and I am absolutely at a standstill.
This, more than anything else I think, is destroying my sanity from
all directions.
So I'm not doing so hot right now. I apologize for
just posting articles and leaving little blurbs or quotes lately
(for the past month or so), but I feel completely lost and weighed
down. I don't know what to do, but I have to do something soon
because time is running out on absolutely everything I have to do.
The pressure is bearing down on me lately, and it's making my depression
all the worse, and if I wasn't immobilized by my depression and fears
before then I certainly am now.
I have no answers right now, and I have no idea what to do. I feel pretty pathetic right now, so please don't e.mail me to tell me that's what I am (I do well enough at criticizing myself on a regular basis, thank you). For those of you that care, thank you. I don't mean to worry anyone, and I'm sure that time will still continue, no matter how badly any of this turns out. I just wanted you all to know what's going on because I clearly haven't been expressing myself here much lately. So now you know. (and knowing is half the battle, or so says G.I.Joe).
Posted Written at 12:37 AM
September 20, 2005
Where are you?
Posted at 10:34 PM
September 19, 2005
What did the pimp say to the pirate as his floating pleasure yacht was being boarded?
"Yo, ho, ho!"
Aye mateys, 'tis Talk Like a Pirate Day once again, yar. Avast ye scurvy dogs! Batten the hatches; hoist the mains'l; quick, move that thing ... and ... that other thing ... move it!
Shake yer booty and I'll plunder your riches! Who's to be me first mate, eh? Shiver me timbers and I'll shiver yours ...
Posted at 11:59 PM
September 18, 2005
Texas wins, hands down, for being the most homophobic,
hateful, Nazi-istic state in America, as evidenced by this recent
article (and I could add so many more articles from over the years
that it defies imagination. Georgia runs second, in my estimation,
and this most
recent news article is a small sample of that, but Texas is so much
worse as to be nearly incomparable even to the second worst homophobic
state in the union.
Prison Gay Sex Slave Trial Begins
(Wichita Falls, Texas) After enduring 18 months in a Texas prison where gangs bought and sold him as a sexual slave, Roderick Johnson will appear in federal district court Monday for jury selection as his civil trial begins against the prison officials who he accuses of failing to protect him
"Roderick Johnson was brutally raped by prison gang members," said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU's National Prison Project and Johnson's lead attorney. "The devastating horror of the first rape was multiplied many times over the next 18 months because prison officials refused to intervene to protect him."
Beginning in September 2000, Roderick Johnson was housed at the James A. Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Texas where prison gangs bought and sold him as a sexual slave, raping, abusing, and degrading him nearly every day for 18 months.
Johnson filed numerous complaints with prison officials and appeared before the unit's classification committee seven separate times asking to be transferred to safekeeping, protective custody, or another prison, but each time they refused, telling him that he must "fight or fuck," according to legal papers filed by the ACLU.
Prison officials moved Johnson out of the Allred Unit and into a wing designated for vulnerable prisoners in April 2002, only after the ACLU intervened on his behalf.
The ACLU lawsuit seeks damages against seven Allred officials for ignoring his pleas for help and failing to protect him against continued sexual attacks.
Johnson's story is not an isolated case, Winter said.
In 2001, Human Rights Watch identified Texas as the worst state in the nation for prison rape. This summer, a Department of Justice publication found that prisoners in Texas reported six times as many allegations of prisoner-on-prisoner sexual violence than in any other state. Gay prisoners in Texas like Johnson - who is no longer in prison - are highly vulnerable to rape and exploitation perpetrated by prison gangs.
And here's the other article:
Ban on Gay Parenting Proposed
When she was 9 years old, Michele Surprenant watched the woman next door punish her three children by locking them out of the house. The woman did it again and again, and Surprenant couldn't stand the sight — especially the 2-year-old boy, sitting out in a diaper.
"It made a huge impression on me," recalled Surprenant, 33, of DeKalb County. "Finally, my best friend and I took him inside to play with him and make sure he was safe."
Michele Surprenant of DeKalb County, 33, a hospital social worker and a lesbian, has been a foster mother to six children, four of them medically fragile, including her current foster child, who suffered brain damage from being beaten in his home. 'Sexual orientation has nothing to do with being a good parent. It's about caring and loving,' says Surprenant, who adds that if Georgia bans gay foster parenting, 'I would probably move.'
That desire to care for mistreated children stuck with her. Over the past three years, the hospital social worker has been a foster mother to a total of six children. Four have been medically fragile, including her current foster child, Nick, 2, who suffered brain damage from being beaten in his former home.
But Surprenant is worried that she might not be a foster mother much longer. She is a lesbian, and she fears that Georgia is on the verge of banning foster parenting and adoptions by gays and lesbians. That fear is shared by gay rights groups.
There is no formal proposal for a ban. No lawmaker has announced legislation for it, and state child welfare officials say no policy change is planned.
But there are signs that such a ban may be coming. The state recently hired a new head of the Division of Family and Children Services who, when she held a similar job in Nebraska, instituted a ban on gay foster parents.
Gay advocacy groups have been concerned since last year's election, after Georgia Republicans successfully pressed the Legislature to add a ban on same-sex marriage to the state constitution. State voters overwhelmingly ratified the ban in November.
In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers say, they have discussed submitting legislation to ban gay foster parents and adoptions by homosexuals when the Legislature convenes in January. The state Senate majority leader said recently that he would welcome such legislation.
Those who favor such bans argue that the state should not expose children to what they say is an unnatural, if not deviant, lifestyle. They say such children may be stigmatized, lack proper adult role models and have a greater chance of growing up homosexual themselves.
"The Bible does address [homosexuality] as a sin," said Sadie Fields, chairman of the Christian Coalition of Georgia.
Gay and lesbian rights advocates dispute those assertions and say that sexual orientation has nothing to do with being a good parent. Georgia Equality, the largest statewide gay rights group, has formed a committee to combat any move toward a ban. A legal expert with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is helping.
It may not be widely known, but there are hundreds of gay foster parents and thousands of gay adoptive parents in Georgia, gay advocacy groups estimate. DFCS officials say they do not ask about sexuality when screening people.
Many such foster and adoptive parents are not often public about their sexuality. The majority are believed to be women. Most of those who are open about their sexuality live in the Atlanta, Athens or Savannah areas, said Chuck Bowen, executive director of Georgia Equality.
Bowen said gays have a history of taking in children who are hard to place: those with HIV or developmental disabilities and crack babies.
Renn McClintic-Doyle of Stone Mountain, who has been a foster parent of seven children and adopted two, said the state cannot afford to lose gay foster parents, especially considering the need. Georgia has about 15,000 children in foster care and 4,000 foster homes.
McClintic-Doyle said she and her partner had no trouble gaining state approval to become foster and adoptive parents. But they occasionally run into a caseworker who seems to object to their lifestyle.
"They overscrutinized our home," she said. "They were very leery. They required more documentation."
Kara Suffrendini, a lawyer with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said that few states restrict gay foster and adoptive parents but that Georgia is one of about a dozen the group expects will pursue such legislation. Some states, she said, are considering retroactive bans that could remove children already placed in the homes of gays and lesbians.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, has said he has no plan to push such a ban in Georgia. Perdue and his wife, Mary, are former foster parents, and his wife's Children's Cabinet has highlighted the need for more foster parents.
"The governor is not pursuing a ban on gay or lesbian adoptive or foster parents," said spokeswoman Heather Hedrick. "If legislation comes to him for signature, he'll make a decision to sign or veto it at that time."
State officials also say the new director of DFCS, Mary Dean Harvey, has no plans to implement such a ban. Harvey declined to be interviewed for this article, said agency spokeswoman Dena Smith.
In an August interview with Southern Voice, an Atlanta gay-oriented weekly newspaper, Harvey said the Nebraska ban "was not my policy."
But a 1995 article in The Omaha World-Herald said that Harvey had sent a memo to her administrators not to place foster children "in the homes of persons who identify themselves as homosexuals."
Timing could be right
A few weeks ago, Republican state senators talked about the prospect of a ban on gay adoptions and foster parenting, said Sen. Nancy Schaefer (R-Turnerville). No decision was reached on whether to propose such legislation in January, she said.
Schaefer supports such restrictions. "There's a lot of pressure to provide the right type of protection for children," she said. "I don't think it is a natural lifestyle. I don't think it's always deviant, but it's not natural."
Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams (R-Lyons) also supports such a ban. He said legislation to impose it would receive serious consideration and would have a good chance of passage. "If a bill would be introduced prohibiting foster care and adoptions by gays, we would entertain it," Williams said.
Several factors point to Georgia as being ripe for such proposals, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. About 75 percent of voters endorsed the ban on same-sex marriages last fall. "I could see this as the natural next step," Bullock said.
A referendum on such a ban could also draw more Republicans to the polls next year during a midyear election, he said.
Gay and lesbian advocates say that such a ban would devastate a community of thousands who volunteer to take in children.
When Nick came to Surprenant 16 months ago, he was a 1-year-old who had been badly beaten. Part of his skull had to be removed to alleviate brain swelling. Nick had to wear braces on his left arm and leg and a big white helmet to protect his head. He suffered brain damage from the beating, and at 16 months old he could maneuver little more than to sit up, and he could say only "bye-bye," Surprenant said.
Surprenant made 97 doctor visits in nine months, and now Nick can walk and talk in full sentences. Now when they walk out of the supermarket, Nick waves goodbye to the cashier and blows kisses, she said. "Sexual orientation has nothing to do with being a good parent. It's about caring and loving. You have to be the advocate for the child."
If she were no longer permitted to be a foster mother, Surprenant said, "I'd fight for a while, but I would probably move."
'Outside the mainstream'
The prospect of a ban will probably be discussed when the Christian Coalition of Georgia meets in November to craft its priorities for the coming legislative session, said Fields, who lobbied for the gay marriage ban in 2004. She said she would like to see legislation addressing gay foster and adoptive parents next year.
"The whole atmosphere that surrounds homosexuality is outside the mainstream," she said. "It is not conducive to a healthy upbringing."
Talk of a ban chills Barbara Gibson. The 39-year-old lesbian said it changed her life when she took in Zachary as a baby five years ago. He had been born at 27 weeks, addicted to crack cocaine and weighing not even 2 pounds. She visited him in the hospital for four months and was first able to hold him on Mother's Day 2000. She served as his foster mother for about two years and adopted him in 2003.
"After I met him, I couldn't not do it," Gibson said.
At age 2, Zachary was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy that left him weak on his left side, and his thinking is developmentally delayed. He runs around the house, running his toy motorcycle over the kitchen counter. He slurs and drools a little when he talks.
"He's very resourceful, a very spirited child," Gibson said. "He's very joy-filled. He's just Zachary."
Posted at 12:08 AM
September 17, 2005
Television stole my brain.
Posted at 11:47 PM
September 16, 2005
There is never an acceptable defense for man's inhumanity to man.
Posted at 12:15 AM
September 15, 2005
What do you have in your wallet?
Whatever it is, you must have more than me. I miss making decent money.
Posted at 12:41 AM
September 14, 2005
The high point of my day - the redeeming point in fact - was reading these two lines at the end of Comicality's new chapter of The Secret Life of Billy Chase:
"So, I thought back to every word Brandon spoke to me today at the lunch table, wondering if he was giving away some hidden signals or something. I DO remember him saying that he wished he had some more meat in his sandwich at one point.....but I don't think he meant that as a metaphor for hot gay sex."
Posted at 11:30 PM
September 13, 2005
Yes, as I wrote yesterday, Ohio is quite fucked up. My list of reasons are many, and the list of causes would probably be even longer. One clear cause, however, has been a very entrenched, very corrupt Republican-dominated political system, pervasive in virtually every part of the state. A set of amendments to the Ohio Constitution, set for a vote in this November's election, were challenged in court by the Republicans who fear them, and fortunately the courts refused to stop the amendments from being presented. The Republicans fear these amendments and rightly so because they pose a serious threat to the Republican-favoring gerrymandering and the Republican control of the election process. Not only will this threaten the Republican hold on local, county, and state political offices but it also threatens the Republican strength at the federal level, in voting for congressmen, senators, and even the president (the "selective placement" of too few voting machines in poor, Democratically-dominated districts during the last presidential election almost surely was the cause for Bush to barely win Ohio and thereby to win Ohio's electoral college votes which gave him victory.
The Republicans have vowed to take their fight to the people and persuade the voters that these amendments are unjust, but I have to wonder how they hope to do that. Having voting districts drawn up by independent organizations rather than the majority party is is no way a bad thing. Lowering campaign contribution limits is great. Making the chief elections officer someone other than the Secretary of State, who is clearly part of the system, is a good thing. I'm sure the propagandistic spin from the Republicans will do its best to make all of these things sound terrible, but I'd have to wonder how, particularly after the past year the Ohio Republican party and Republican-dominated administration have endured (voter fraud, rampant cronyism, misinvestment and loss of state funds, the whole "Coingate" affair, and more have been huge issues in Ohio papers for all of 2005). I'm sure that the bad press and legal problems facing the Ohio Republicans will push them to protest even louder the closer we get to election time. Hopefully, like all other political machines that have dominated for a while in on place or another in this country, the Republican machine in Ohio will be not only broken but the Republicans will finally reap what they have sown for so many years.
The People Will Decide
A last-ditch attempt to keep election-reform issues off Ohio's Nov. 8 ballot should be seen for what it clearly was: an act of political desperation.
The Ohio Republican Party, which was behind a court challenge to scuttle the issues, wasn't really concerned that a law was violated when non-Ohioans circulated the petitions. What alarmed the GOP most was that its 15-year political stranglehold on this state would be threatened if Ohioans were to vote on these four constitutional amendments.
And now they will. Ohio First, the GOP-backed front group, had its challenge rejected on procedural grounds last week by the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus. Ohio First now says it will drop the court case and try to convince voters to reject the issues on Nov. 8.
The complaint against out-of-state paid petition solicitors was especially transparent considering that no such rule was enforced last year when the same tactic was used by Republicans and their allies to put the successful constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage on the ballot.
Particularly amusing was the stance of Attorney General Jim Petro, one of three GOP gubernatorial wannabes, who managed to come down on both sides of the petition issue. Mr. Petro's office defended Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in the case, but Mr. Petro, playing the good party soldier, personally came out against out-of-state circulators.
Fellow Republican Blackwell couldn't very well argue against out-of-state petition solicitors because they were used to gather signatures for the tax-limitation issue he hopes will help sweep him into the governor's office in 2006.
The point is that more than 350,000 registered voters signed the election-reform petitions, and there was no good reason to deny the people of Ohio their say.
Whether the proposed amendments will cure what ails Ohio's electoral system is still open to question, but there is little doubt that state election laws have been manipulated to GOP advantage over the years.
The amendments would:
• Take the process of redrawing legislative and congressional districts out of the hands of elected officials to prevent a dominant political party from gaining permanent advantage in winning elections;
• Remove the secretary of state as chief elections officer in favor of a nine-member appointed state elections board;
• Permit absentee voting without a reason, by mail or in person, up to 35 days before an election, and
• Restore state campaign contribution limits, which were more than doubled by the GOP-controlled legislature.
We expect a vigorous debate on these amendments before Election Day, which is what the Republicans were trying to avoid in opposing them on a weak technicality.
Posted at 10:15 PM
September 12, 2005
I live in such a fucked up state it's unbelievable. Ohio is a complete mess, full of massive unemployment, low wages for those who do find jobs (and they won't find those jobs at the Bureau of Employment Services since so many of those have been closed to cut the state budget that most cities (like Sandusky, where I am) don't have one at all), with constantly rising secondary education costs (due to the state cutting funding drastically), with poor testing levels in education at the primary and secondary levels, with some of the worst polluting cities in the Unityed States, with a backward/conservative/bigoted attitude about everything from sex to marriage to race to sexuality to technology (although they seem to love gambling and prostitution). Ohio at one time had a lot to offer, say twenty or thirty years ago. Unfortunately things ground to a crashing halt about that time, and no progress has been made in anything since then.
I've gotten used to this since moving back here from Chicago. It's certainly worse here in Sandusky, a small city, than in Toledo, a bit larger city, but it is nonetheless horrible. I'm used to it but I in no respect like it.
Today, headlining the stories on CNN.com, I read this article which is clearly about child abuse in the town of Wakeman, practically right next door to where I live. This sort of mistreatment of children sickens me anywhere, but only in Ohio would the parents get away without any charges at all after keeping 8 children (mostly foster children) locked in small wooden cages without even pillows or blankets. It's sickening.
What the fuck is wrong with this state?
Police Find 8 Ohio Kids Locked in Cages
(CNN) -- Police in northern Ohio on Monday rescued eight children whose parents told authorities they kept the kids in locked cages for their own protection.
The children, ages 1 to 14, were found locked in cages at their home in Wakeman, about 40 miles southwest of Cleveland, according to Lt. Randy Sommers of the Huron County Sheriff's Office.
The children were all either adopted or foster children, he said.
Authorities said the kids were kept in wooden cages, less than 3 feet by 3 feet, without pillows or blankets.
Shortly after being found, the children were sent to Fisher-Titus Medical Center in Norwalk, where they were listed in good condition.
The children's parents, Mike and Sharon Gravelle, had 11 children in all, according to authorities.
Police said no charges had been filed against the parents.
"Basically, the parents thought they were providing for the protection of the children from themselves and from each other," said Sommers.
"They thought there was circumstances with these children that warranted the cages at night," Sommers added, but he would not go into details of what those circumstances were.
All 11 of the children found in the home have been placed in the custody of the Huron County Department of Children and Families.
Posted at 12:32 AM
September 11, 2005
Mark Moford once again comes directly to the point:
George W. Bush Still Rocks!
Stop criticizing! The rich man's CEO president is executing his job requirements perfectly
Everyone is slamming poor Dubya. Everyone is saying, oh my God, he's more inept than we ever imagined, he has no idea what's really going on, he's oblivious and in denial and he pretty much let all those poor black people die in filth and misery, and he basically ignored the massive Katrina disaster for days before finally being pressured into cutting his umpteenth vacation short and actually taking action.
This is what they're saying. Kanye West was right, Bush doesn't care about black people, or the poor, or anything that doesn't directly serve his handlers' agenda or flatter his monochromatic ego or anything that isn't spelled out for him in nice simplistic pie charts and reassuring matronly tones.
And lo, the darts are slinging in from around the world, according to SF Gate's own World Views column: "Maddening incompetence ... reminiscent of a drought-stricken African state," says Britain's Daily Mail. "Can't get it together," says a major paper in Italy. "A plethora of grim tales of disaster," says the Scotsman. "Superpower or Third World?" asks the Spanish daily Noticias de Álava. Why did BushCo fail its first great national-security test since Sept. 11, despite having two days' advance notice of Katrina's wrath? asks Le Monde. And on it goes, the world's powers looking on in one part shock and one part disgust and all parts repugnance for Bush's rampant ineptitude and America's apparent inability to take care of its own.
But it's so unfair, isn't it, to attack poor Dubya like this? Just a little misplaced? After all, Bush has always been the rich white man's president. He is the CEO president, the megacorporate businessman's friend, the thug of the religious right, a big reservoir-tipped condom for all energy magnates, protecting against the nasty STDs of humanitarianism and progress and social responsibility.
He has always been merely an entirely selective figurehead, out of touch and eternally dumbfounded, a hand puppet of the neoconservative machine built and fluffed up and carefully placed for the very specific job of protecting their interests, no matter what. Repeat: No. Matter. What. Flood hurricane disaster war social breakdown economic collapse? Doesn't matter. Corporate interests über alles, baby. Protect the core, reassure the base, screw everyone else unless it begins to affect the poll numbers and then finger-point, deflect, prevaricate. All of a piece, really. Because Bush, he was never actually meant to, you know, lead.
So maybe it's time to stop with the savaging of poor Dubya. He is, after all, doing a simply beautiful job of kowtowing to his wealthiest supporters while slamming the poor and running the nation into a deep hole and creating the largest deficit in American history, all while his cronies in oil and industry and military supply and Big Energy gain immense and staggering wealth and pay less and less tax on it. This is what he was hired to do. This is why he is in office. Hell, the day after Katrina, Bush flew right by Louisiana and headed straight to San Diego to party with his Greatest Generation cronies. Reassure the masters, first and foremost, eh Shrub? Understood.
Is this not what we all expected? Can you reasonably say you thought it would be different? Just look. All major social services are being gutted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a joke, second in line only to the ungodly useless Homeland Security Department, which has become about as reassuring and trustworthy and humane an organization as a prison in Guantánamo.
The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans just last year. The White House hacked that down to about $40 million, even as it passed the most bloated and nauseatingly pork-filled $12.3 billion energy bill in recent history, one that guaranteed we'd be sucking at the tit of foreign oil and kneeling before Bush's pals in Big Energy for decades to come, even as more and more teenagers die in Iraq for Bush's inept and failed war. Yay politics.
Why didn't National Guardsmen from Louisiana and Mississippi march into New Orleans immediately after Katrina exited to take charge and keep the peace? Why, because most of them are serving in that same violent and brutally costly war in Iraq, silly. Fully 30 percent of the guard is stuck over there, along with 50 percent of their equipment. Yay Vietnam 2.0.
Why did FEMA chief Michael Brown wait hours after Katrina struck to timidly plead with his parent company, Homeland Security, for some backup, not to actually get their hands dirty but rather to help "convey a positive image" about the government's response to the victims? Why, because he's an incompetent lackey Bush appointee who was fired from his former job as head of something called the International Arabian Horse Association. Yay pathetic nepotism.
Just look. Senate majority leader Sen. Bill Frist, icon of hollow self-righteousness and the energy magnate's friend, has already leveraged the Katrina nightmare to argue for more drilling in Alaska, much in the way BushCo whored Sept. 11 to cram the Patriot Act down the nation's throat and make fear and xenophobia a national pastime. And let's not forget trusty profit-sucking sidekick Halliburton, which has already scored a sweet deal to help repair Katrina damage, thanks to the fact that the former director of FEMA is now a Halliburton lobbyist. Ah, war and death and tragedy. They are just so goddamn profitable, right, Dubya?
And then, the kicker. Then you read that Bush has actually ordered an official probe into the botched Katrina relief efforts, a formal federal investigation into what went wrong, which is a bit like a shark ordering an investigation into what happened to all the fish. Unless this probe starts and ends in the White House, unless it hangs Bush himself up by his monkey ears and dangles him over a river of toxic Louisiana sewage, it's merely useless and insulting and more than a little sad.
Let's say it outright. The truest measure of any president, of any leader, is how well he takes care of his own people. And Bush, well, Bush has done a simply spectacular job of taking care of exactly his own people -- the wealthy, the corporate, the extreme religious right, his core base of supporters -- while happily and fiercely ignoring, restricting, condemning, destroying the rest. Are you educated or progressive or liberal or alternative-minded or sexually open or homosexual or anti-war? This means you. Are you dirt poor and belong to a minority and don't drive an SUV and contribute six figures per annum to the RNC and maybe live in a flooded swamp in the Louisiana bayou? This means you, squared. Sucker.
Here, then, is the new American motto, as reimagined by BushCo: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and we'll let them die in a filthy and decrepit storm-ravaged American football stadium while our president languishes on vacation and ponders his oil futures and fondly remembers his good ol' days of getting drunk at Mardi Gras before going AWOL from the military. God bless America.
Posted at 9:45 PM
September 10, 2005
Where's the reset button on this damn thing (life)?
Posted at 12:47 AM
September 9, 2005
Hold me.
Posted at 11:29 PM
September 8, 2005
Love
John Lennon
Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved
Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved
Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
We can be
Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needing to be loved
Posted at 12:45 AM
September 7, 2005
Lonely days. Seeing cute guys that are too young for me is really depressing. Hell I'd even just like them as friends, nothing more, but that's not happening either. If this is indicative of how the rest of my life will go then you can have it. I'd be better off buried alive.
Posted at 11:26 PM
September 6, 2005
I suppose it will seem unimportant in comparison to all of the other major events currently happening - the suffering and devastation of hurricane Katrina, the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist and the nomination of Roberts as his replacement, and even the little-reported news of a few days ago that gay marriage is now law in California thanks to the a strong vote in the California Assembly - regardless of the major events of the past few days, the news today that Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, has died ... this is to me very sad because it feels as though my best childhood friend has died.
Silly as Gilligan and the whole show were, as poorly written and cliche as the scripts were, and as predictable and even repetitive as the gaffs and routines of the show were - to me Gilligan's Island was filled with people I loved, people who felt like friends, who I could understand and want to spend time with. I could watch reruns of the same episode over and over again and still laugh, still smile, still love every minute of it. It was sad to see the passing of Jim Baccus and Alan Hale, Jr. in years past, but Bob Denver, Gilligan himself, strikes at the heart of my feelings, embodying the show in its entirety. I, and many others, will certainly feel his absence. Rest well, Bob.
Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, Dies at 70
LOS ANGELES — Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy castaway Gilligan on the 1960s TV show "Gilligan's Island," made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died. He was 70.
Denver died Friday at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina of complications from treatment he was receiving for cancer, his agent, Mike Eisenstadt, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Denver, who for the past several years had lived in Princeton, W.Va., also underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year.
His wife, Dreama, and children Patrick, Megan, Emily and Colin were with him.
"He was my everything and I will love him forever," Dreama Denver said in a statement.
Denver's signature role was Gilligan, but when he took the role in 1964 he was already widely known to TV audiences for another iconic character, Maynard G. Krebs, the bearded beatnik friend of Dwayne Hickman's Dobie in the "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963.
Krebs, whose only desire was to play the bongos and hang out at coffee houses, would shriek every time the word "work" was mentioned in his presence.
Gilligan on the other hand was industrious but inept. And his character was as lovable as he was inept. Viewers embraced the skinny kid in the Buster Brown haircut and white sailor hat. So did the skipper, who was played by Alan Hale Jr. and who always referred to his first mate affectionately as "little buddy."
"I feel like a part of me is gone, too," Hickman told The Associated Press. "We were a comedy team and I was proud to be his straight man. He was a wonderful comedian. Underrated, really."
California state Sen. Sheila James Kuehl, who played Dobie's love-struck pursuer, remembered Denver as a mentor, both in acting and life.
"What he taught me about acting was when you work to make the other person look good, you end up looking good yourself," she said. "What he taught me about life was that you could love your work, but it was really more important to love your friends and family."
"As silly as it seems to all of us, it has made a difference in a lot of children's lives," Dawn Wells, who played castaway Mary Ann Summers, once said. "Gilligan is a buffoon that makes mistakes and I cannot tell you how many kids come up and say, `But you loved him anyway.'"
TV critics were less kind, dismissing the show about a group of tourists being stranded on an uncharted desert island as inane. But after it was canceled by CBS in 1967, it found new audiences over and over in syndicated reruns and reunion films, including 1981's "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island." (It also led to the recent TBS reality series "The Real Gilligan's Island.")
One of the most recent films was 2001's "Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three Hour Tour in History," in which other actors portrayed the original seven-member cast while three of the four surviving members, including Denver, narrated and reminisced.
After "Gilligan's Island," Denver went on to star in other TV series, including "The Good Guys" and "Dusty's Trail," as well as to make numerous appearances in films and TV shows.
But he never escaped the role of Gilligan, so much so that in one of his top 10 lists — "the top 10 things that will make you stand up and cheer" — "Late Show" host David Letterman once simply shouted out Denver's name to raucous applause.
"It was the mid-'70s when I realized it wasn't going off the air," Denver told The Associated Press in 2001, noting then that he enjoyed checking the Web site eBay each day to keep up on the prices "Gilligan" memorabilia were fetching.
"I certainly didn't set out to have a series rerun forever, but it's not a bad experience at all," he added.
The show's success, according to its creator, Sherwood Schwartz, was rooted in the fact that people of entirely different backgrounds were thrown together each week in a comedic setting.
"I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications," Schwartz said.
Besides Hale's skipper and Wells' young farm-girl tourist, the other castaways were Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, as rich snobs Thurston and Lovey Howell; Tina Louise, as movie star Ginger Grant; and Russell Johnson, as science professor Roy Hinkley Jr.
Denver's death leaves Wells, Johnson and Louise as the cast's surviving members.
Denver was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., on Jan 9, 1935. He discovered acting while studying law at Loyola University in Los Angeles in the 1950s. While struggling to make it as an actor, he taught private school and worked for a time at a post office.
After landing a small role in the 1959 Sal Mineo film "A Private Affair," he was cast as Krebs in "Dobie Gillis" and his career took off.
Denver is survived by his wife and children and a granddaughter, Elana. The family said no memorial service is planned.
Posted at 11:32 PM
September 5, 2005
I stumbled upon a new blog that speaks to me. Christopher Macintosh seems to share a lot of my views, and this recent entry in particular sounds just like something I would say (and it's undeniably something I totally agree with).
Why?
As I watch the television coverage of the horrifying devastation and suffering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I hear repeated by many people interviewed a recuring theme: gratitude to God for sparing them. I am paraphrasing, but several times, I have heard people say that if it weren’t for God’s grace, they would have died; that if it weren’t for God’s help, their home would have been destroyed; that had God not intervened, they would have lost their family.
I am profoundly confused and disturbed by such comments. Before I go further, I must say that I have great respect for those who are sincere in their faith and I mean no disrespect to them. A number of my friends are people of faith and I certainly do not mean anything insulting to them or to their brothers and sisters in faith when I ask, Why?
In every great moment of trauma, whether it is a natural disaster, a crime, an act of war, personal illness, or financial difficulty, one often hears comments to the effect that were it not for God, it could have been worse. However, my question is this. If God is all-powerful and all-merciful, if one thanks God for not allowing the disaster, illness, crime, etc., from becoming worse, why show gratitude? If God had the power to show mercy and spare some, why did he permit it in the first place?
Did God cause the disaster, illness, crime, etc.? If not, did he, indeed, have the power to make it less severe? If God had the power to make it less severe, why did he permit it at all? What kind of God permits the Holocaust? What kind of God allows a mother to watch the BTK killer disembowel her son? What kind of God permits horrors, agonies, the unspeakable to occur? And, why ask him in his infinite mercy to spare some or to give strength to survive the catastrophe he has either caused or allowed to occur?
And, why should I want to worship and venerate such a God? Why should I honor a God who would throw me into the pits of Hell for not believing in him, a God so egotistical that he would punish for eternity someone who chooses not to believe or to follow?
Why would anyone want to believe in such a foul power?
I shake my head in wonder when I hear the emotional and pseudo-intellectual gymnastics believers endure as they attempt to explain the inexplicable. God works in mysterious ways. We must just accept and have faith. Why?
Can someone please tell me why?
Posted at 10:41 PM
September 4, 2005
Just about everyone from every quarter seems to be offering criticism of the Bush administration's failure to respond for crap to the disastrous effects of hurricane Katrina. Bush and his cronies and appointees and his fellow Republicans all deserve every amount of scorn, derision, and outright hatred that is being brought to bare upon them for their parts in not only failing to act quickly to save lives but because they failed to make any plans at all for a calamity that was a dire threat that demanded planning and preparation and fortification of the levees and other defenses. Andrew Sullivan's recent article in the Times points out a vast majority of the points where blame can be given, and Bush stands at the top of the list for (ir)responsibility.
Focus: When the levees broke, the waters rose and Bush’s credibility sank with New Orleans
The president tumbled to the epic scale of the disaster far, far too late, says Andrew Sullivan
Like many seismic events, Katrina’s true impact might take a while to absorb. What started as a natural disaster soon became an unforeseen social meltdown and potential political crisis for the president. The poverty, anarchy, violence, sewage, bodies, looting, death and disease that overwhelmed a great American city last week made Haiti look like Surrey.
The seeming inability of the federal or city authorities to act swiftly or effectively to rescue survivors or maintain order posed fundamental questions about the competence of the Bush administration and local authorities. One begins to wonder: almost four years after 9/11, are evacuation plans for cities this haphazard? Five days after a hurricane, there were still barely any troops imposing order in a huge city in America. How on earth did this happen? And what will come of it?
In the past, American disasters have led to political changes — the Johnstown flood in 1889 and the Galveston hurricane in 1900 led to fury at class privilege and a government that seemed not to care for the poor. The 1927 flood in New Orleans — and the inequalities it exposed — propelled the rise of the populist demagogue Huey Long.
There seems to me a strong chance that this calamity could be the beginning of something profound in American politics: a sense that government is broken and that someone needs to fix it.
It did, after all, fail. It failed to spend the necessary money to protect New Orleans in the first place. This disaster, after all, did not come out of the blue.
Below is a passage from the Houston Chronicle in 2001, which quoted the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the three likeliest potential disasters to threaten America. They were: an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York City (predicted before 9/11), and a hurricane hitting New Orleans.
Read this prophetic passage and weep: “The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all. In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city’s less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20ft of water.
“Thousands of refugees could land in Houston. Economically, the toll would be shattering . . . If an Allison-type storm were to strike New Orleans, or a category three storm or greater with at least 111mph winds, the results would be cataclysmic, New Orleans planners said.”
Katrina, of course, was category four.
So what was done to prevent this scenario? There
was indeed an attempt to rebuild and strengthen the city’s
defenses. But the system of government in New Orleans is byzantine
in its complexity, with different levees answering to different
authorities, and corruption and incompetence legendary.
More politically explosive, the Bush administration has slashed the budget for rebuilding the levees. More than a year ago, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”
It’s still unclear whether even with higher levels of funding the levees would have been strong enough to withstand Katrina in time. The Army Corps of Engineers has backed the president and said that the levees were built for only a category three hurricane and were in satisfactory shape. But levees need constant maintenance and an agency with a one-year budget cut of $71m might have skimped. The connection between shifting funds to fight wars abroad rather than to defend against calamity at home is a politically explosive one. As one Louisianan said: “You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military, but you can’t get them down here.”
To make matters worse, thousands of Louisianan National Guardsmen, who might have been best able to maintain order, are deployed in the deserts of Iraq, in a war that is increasingly unpopular. Again: it’s hard to know if this really would have made a huge amount of difference, but the argument has the force of a category five political storm.
In fact, there are plenty of troops and National Guardsmen who could have responded adequately. Iraq holds only 10.2% of army forces. There are 750,000 active or part-time soldiers and guardsmen in the US today. The question then becomes: where were they? The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi, said last week: “On Wednesday, reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High school shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw air force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.”
Where was the urgency to get these soldiers to rescue the poor and drowning in nearby New Orleans, or the dying and dead in devastated Mississippi? The vice-president was nowhere to be seen. The secretary of state was observed shopping for shoes in New York City. The president had barely returned to Washington; and had already opined that nobody had foreseen the breaching of New Orleans’ levees.
Earth to Bush: the breaching of the levees had been foreseen for decades. If anyone wanted evidence that this president was completely divorced from reality, that statement was Exhibit A. It didn’t help coming after a five-week vacation, when most Americans are lucky to get two.
As chaos spread, the president seemed passive. He said on Friday that he was “satisfied” with the response, but not the results. What does that mean? Then he held a photo-op with Senator Trent Lott, whose house had been demolished. “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,” Bush said. “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.”
According to the official White House transcript, laughter followed that remark. Lott was Senate majority leader until a few years ago, when he was forced to resign because he said he regretted that racial desegregation had taken place in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. So while the poor and the black were drowning or dying, Bush chose to chuckle in the South. It beggared belief.
Why was martial law not imposed? That was a question nobody seemed able to answer. The mayor of New Orleans unleashed a diatribe at the lack of federal response, while Michael Chertoff, the head of homeland security, pronounced himself proud of the work of his department.
On Friday, Bush was forced to say on television that the response to disorder in New Orleans was “not acceptable”.
But wasn’t he ultimately responsible? In the 2000 debate with Al Gore, he had said that coping with natural disasters made him, a hands-on governor, better suited to the presidency than Gore, then vice-president. That quote began to find its way onto the talk shows and cable television last week.
The reaction from Washington seemed more like one of mourning about a disaster that had happened and was over, not mobilisation to prevent and counter a catastrophe that was still in full swing.
As for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it soon became a joke. After CNN had shown scenes of chaos in the New Orleans Convention Center — with bodies, looters, people dying of diabetes, children lacking basic amenities, and disease spreading — the head of the agency, Michael Brown, went on television and said: “We just learnt about that today, and so I have directed that we have all available resources to get to that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water, the medical care that they need.”
The same day, Chertoff scolded a National Public Radio reporter for asking about the chaos at the convention center, telling him not to believe rumours, and that food and water were being delivered to anyone who needed them. The disconnect between rhetoric and reality seemed vast. Anyone with a television seemed to know more than the men assigned to manage the disaster. To add insult to injury, President Bush appeared with Brown and congratulated him for doing “a heck of a job”.
The president seemed oblivious to reality. One reason why this event may reverberate is exactly that disconnect. Five days after a hurricane, American citizens were still helpless across the region; and yet the president was “satisfied”. Over two years after the invasion of Iraq, the road to the airport to the Green Zone is still not secure, and yet the president has pronounced himself pleased with progress.
The resonance was not lost on many Americans. There comes a point at which the central question of this presidency — its competence — overwhelms every other issue. If the president’s credibility is shattered at home, how can it be restored abroad? For anyone who wants the effort in Iraq to succeed, Bush’s response to Katrina can only be grim news.
That disaster exposed something else that few want to discuss: race and class. New Orleans is a city that has barely ever functioned effectively, and that was part of its charm. But it was also a city in which the enormous gulf between rich and poor was wider than elsewhere. When you look at the images of those stranded and left behind, they are overwhelmingly poor and black.
The wealthier and better informed escaped. And abandoned by their government, with bodies floating in the water, this underclass vented its rage.
A CNN host, receiving an avalanche of angry e-mails and calls, declared: “I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome? What is going on? This is a disgrace.” The Superdome itself became a scene from a Mad Max movie, with rumours of child rapes, suicides and overwhelming stench of overflowing toilets and spreading disease. Looking at corpses left stranded for days on the street, one resident told the Associated Press: “I don’t treat my dog like that.”
There was a sense that if this had happened in a largely white city, the response would have been far more urgent. There was a sense that the largely poor underclass in New Orleans was dispensable, that they could wait for help, that they should have left anyway. The fact that many were too poor to have cars or an easy alternative destination seemed to pass many by.
And the crime and looting that followed merely reinforced these prejudices and generalisations.
Much has been achieved in America this past decade in rescuing the poor and the black from welfare dependency and crime. But New Orleans is a terribly poor city: 50% of its children live below the poverty line, and when the tide rose, they sank first.
Of course, the president cannot be blamed for an act of God. And the authorities cannot be held responsible for generations of poor governance. But Bush can be held accountable for cutting the funds needed to repair the levees and the slack, casual way he first responded. In 1906, after the San Francisco earthquake, the first federal aid arrived two hours after the first shock. With today’s technology and infrastructure, people were still stranded in New Orleans five days after the hurricane. On the day Katrina hit, the president continued with a tour to promote his new medicare entitlement; he was with a man who had defended white supremacy, and was photographed playing the guitar and laughing.
On some cable channels, they began to run a ticking clock of the days and hours that people had been left abandoned. It reminded me of the televised reminders in the 1970s of how many days had passed since Americans had been taken hostage in Iran. In short: Bush, seemingly oblivious to the public relations disaster unfolding, began to look as if he could get Carter-ised.
The Bush-haters, of course, piled it on. But conservatives were not happy either. What this revealed was a staggering lack of organisation for emergency procedures four years after 9/11.
I received an e-mail from a Republican Las Vegas police officer trained in emergency management: “Some people say that you can’t hold the president responsible for this. Oh, yes you can. Because when he looked over at John Ashcroft after the jets hit the towers and said, ‘I want you to make sure this never happens again’, it was not meant to be specific to ‘no more planes hitting large buildings on the East Coast, right, boss’. It was meant that no American should have to run for his life through an American city. While Americans may perish in a senseless, unforeseen disaster, we’d save the ones we could . . . Ask yourself this: What if Al-Qaeda blew up the levees instead of the hurricane? Would the response have been any different?”
The president’s approval ratings were already in the very low 40s. The tracking poll of his response to the crisis showed discontent rising fast. By Friday, 70% were saying the government had not done enough; and a majority disapproved of the president’s handling of the crisis. At times like this, people normally rally round their president. This time, many are turning on him. And my sense is that this is just the beginning. On Friday the Republican Senator Susan Collins announced her intent to launch an investigation into what went wrong. Members of the Black Congressional Caucus said they were “ashamed of America”.
What harm can come to Bush? Not much: except a worrying weakening of his ability to carry the public for the war in Iraq. A competent Democrat could clean up with a message to restore government for the people rather than for special interests. But these days, a competent Democrat is an oxymoron. Hillary has been silent. She figures she need do nothing but let the anger vent on Bush.
But in Republican circles, one real change may have occurred. In a matter of days, Rudy Giuliani’s chances of becoming the next president improved drastically. What people want now is someone who can make the federal government work again. They want an executive who can fight a war and keep them safe. Nobody represents that kind of need better than Giuliani. His social liberalism — which makes him anathema to the religious fundamentalists who control the Republican party — would be overwhelmed by his appeal to law-and-order Republicans. Those Republicans know when an almighty error has been made. And last week, their president failed them. It will take enormous political work for him to win them back now.
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
Accusations that George W Bush has done too little too late to bring relief to America’s southern states devastated by hurricane Katrina echo criticism of his father’s actions 13 years ago, writes Gareth Walsh.
Andrew, a category 5 hurricane — Katrina was category 4 — hit Florida on August 24, 1992 killing at least 15 people and leaving thousands homeless. Damage was estimated at $26.5 billion.
Initially Bush Sr made a good start by flying to Florida just hours after the hurricane hit. The following day he toured devastated areas of Louisiana.
Commentators drew a favourable contrast with his performance after hurricane Hugo in 1989, when it had taken him a week to visit Charleston, South Carolina.
At first the relief operation seemed to go well. Additional troops were drafted into south Florida, 2,000 tons of supplies were shipped in and $300m was allocated to finance recovery efforts. But, as with Katrina, law and order broke down in the damaged cities when it took longer than expected to get aid to the people who needed it most.
Bush was thrown onto the defensive as Bill Clinton, then the Democratic presidential candidate, attacked him over the delays in delivering federal aid.
A scrawl by one frustrated householder on the roof of a wrecked home in Florida city put it bluntly: “Bush, if you want to get re-elected, help”, it read.
Bush was ousted from the White House by Clinton just over two months later.
Posted at 12:14 AM
September 3, 2005
Chief Justice Rehnquist died tonight. While he has clearly been in poor health with his battle against thyroid cancer, I had felt he was holding his own. I was particularly pleased that he refused to step down from his leading role of the Supreme Court. I was pleased because his determination meant that Fuhrer Bush couldn't appoint a new Justice (and a new Chief Justice) at least for a while. In fact I had completely hoped that Rehnquist would outlast Bush's term in office and the next president (hopefully not a conservative) would select a new justice.
Now my hopes are dashed. Rehnquist was a man to be respected, even if he was quite conservative and often on (what I would consider) the wrong side of various Supreme Court decisions. His replacement will undoubtedly be as supremely conservative as Bush thinks he can get away with. That probably means Bush will propose Alberto Gonzales, and I cringe at the mere thought. The whole mess of Supreme Court replacement, now encompassing two of the nine seats, will be a big issue for months, and I doubt I have any hope of being comfortable with the final outcome.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was certainly
enough to be concerned about for months, but now this unfortunate
and untimely death has added a new level of concern that will possibly
have an even greater lasting impact than the devastation left in
the wake of Katrina's path. Any way you look at it the coming days
will not be pretty.
Posted at 12:57 AM
September 2, 2005
This entry (below) is from an e.mailer to Andrew Sullivan's blog. The post is from a Republican who can find no support at all for Bush based on what the aftermath of hurricane Katrina is proving to have been a complete lack by this administration to do anything at all to make us safer since 9/11. I can't argue with a word of this, and it makes very valid and powerful points that I hope will be brought up again and again in the days, weeks, and months ahead as Bush and company try to spin all of this to somehow seem to be acceptable. I'm already sick from the idea of the what Karl Rove will be saying to make all of this seem alright.
"I've considered myself a socially libertarian, fiscally conservative Republican for a very long time. I got along with the idea that I wasn't going to get a whole lot of help. College wouldn't be free. Job training would cost money and time. And I'm probably a decent example of up-from-not-much.
But after watching what's happening in New Orleans-an American city that I've loved, visited and have always wanted to return to - I can't ever vote for these people again.
Being a Republican means that you expect the government to do just a couple things for you and nothing else. Build a road. Defend us from enemies, foreign and domestic. Stuff that would be a lot less organized if we all had to do it ourselves. Everything else is just gravy.
And as we poured money into Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I thought, "Right on," because some of that money's bound to fall on my head.
Well, something else would fall on my head first.
I work for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And that means that if something really catastrophic happens in MY city, and they ask me to stick around, that's the job. We have A and B teams and I'm a disaster recovery specialist on Team A. I've drawn up plans with names like Drawbridge and Smoldering Crater.
Here's what these people would do for me.
They would leave me there to die.
Look at the facts. There's no coordination on the ground right now. The city has no fresh water, no electricity, no services. The floodwater has so much oil and toxins in it that it's flammable.
In psychology they have what is called a fight-or-flight response. When faced with danger, do you subdue it or do you flee? Some of it has to do with risk assessment, but in this case, there is no flight. There is nowhere to run. So flight means die. If my choice was to pull a pistol on a truck driver or Nat, Jarren, Jayson, or any of you dies, that's no choice at all.
I'm not talking about the looters grabbing big-screen televisions and basketball hoops. I'm talking about the ones that are chest-deep in water carrying bottled water and diapers. You can't tell me for three days to be patient, the bus is coming, and they're piling up bodies in the street median.
We have known that this sort of disaster could occur for a century. Hell, the tour bus driver told me about it on the plantation tour. This means that we have been able to envision the stark reality of this occurring for a week-the newspapers all said the storm would hit New Orleans last Thursday.
A week to get buses? A week to get fishing boats? Trucks? This is the United States! I read someone who said, "All the people who weren't bedridden, or had money, or had cars left. The people that are left had none of those things."
There are people tonight who are going to sleep on overpasses for the fourth straight night. There are prisoners who will do the same. There are people dying at a convention center because no one will tell them that no one is coming for them, and the National Guard is protecting the kitchens. There are police officers who are turning in their badges because they've lost everything, have no guidance, and don't want to be shot by a looter.
There are people tonight inside a concrete domed stadium with holes in the roof and no air conditioning who were told the buses are coming today, and they might, or they might not. There is no food. There is no water. There are bodies floating through the neighborhoods.
In the UNITED STATES.
Some people say that you can't hold the President responsible for this. Oh, yes you can. Because when he looked over at John Ashcroft after the jets hit the towers and said, "I want you to make sure this never happens again," it was not meant to be specific to "no more planes hitting large buildings on the East Coast, right, boss." It was meant that no American should have to run for his life through an American city. While Americans may perish in a senseless, unforeseen disaster, we'd save the ones we could.
And the Cabinet appointees were mushwits and he could barely speak a complete sentence and we're sending people overseas for God knows how long to help people who are indifferent at worst and hostile at best, but they were going to protect us. In 2004, that's all a lot of us needed. Well right now, it's obvious that they can't.
Ask yourself this: What if Al-Qaeda blew up the levees instead of the hurricane? Would the response have been any different?
No. It wouldn't. That city flooded in a day. And if it were Las Vegas, I would have been in some operations center watching people try to decide who gets to starve to death and who gets to get on a bus to Los Angeles or Phoenix. And there would be no certainty that I'd be on that bus in time to protect my wife and kids.
But one thing sure would have been different.
They wouldn't have had a whole week to sort it out and know what's coming. They were supposed to KNOW this already. It will have been FOUR YEARS next weekend since someone probably said, "Hey, what if..."
And for that, the whole stack of them should be fired.
I've had it. I'm done. And if the other bunch of assholes can't figure out that what's important is that babies don't starve to death here (and I'm not talking some metaphorical goo-goo thing with school lunches and welfare, but real, actual starving) and we get people out of harm's way, we'll get rid of them too. And so on.
Because this is about leadership, not about bitching on CNN how no one's in charge, or listening to Peggy Noonan furrow her brow at the Governor's performance, or bragging that we've sent in one National Guardsman for every 200 people, or actually having the audacity to say that "we had no idea the levees would break."
Today, I saw my country favorably compared to Indonesia and Thailand, (always our traditional benchmarks of infrastructural success) while the elderly die of thirst in the street. We sneered at France when this happened during a heat wave.
No more."
Posted at 12:35 AM
September 1, 2005
Hurricane Katrina. I wonder how many girls named Katrina are being mercilessly teased by their classmates as school is starting back up this week around the country. Makes you appreciate how wide-ranging the effects of this massive hurricane have been.
Seriously (since the above wasn't much so), I feel compelled to comment about Katrina, not because of my concern for the many suffering and displaced people who have lost homes, jobs, and loved ones (and I am concerned for all of those people) but instead I feel compelled to comment about the idiocy that surrounds this recently-passed hurricane and the aftereffects which it has caused.
First of all, while I appreciate the magnitude of
the devastation caused by this hurricane, I think that the comments
of many people have been not only overinflated but completely disrespectful
to the suffering of those who lived and died in the events which
Katrina is being compared to. Katrina was not "our
tsunami" or anything remotely equivalent, as claimed recently
by Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway in the Biloxi
Sun Herald. I similarly think that CNN's
Jeanne Meserve does a complete injustice to those who died and suffered
at Pearl Harbor or in the Oklahoma City bombing, among other things,
when she said "that
apart from 9/11 this is one of the most significant events that has
ever hit this country." Yes, Katrina has caused billions of
dollars of damage, but right now there is no evidence that the loss
of life is remotely close to any of these events, and there is no
way to compare even this amount of damage to the losses of others
when you realize that FEMA and other sources will rebuild Biloxi,
New Orleans, and everyplace else in Katrina's wake quickly, efficiently,
and in many cases better than it was before. Rebuilding in southeast
Asia is going slowly and will likely still take years while people
there have nowhere to go and don't even have safe drinking water.
It is beyond all propriety to compare these events, particularly
when Katrina gave plenty of warning for people to pack up and leave
while the tsunami, Pearl Harbor, and the Oklahoma City bombing (and
9/11) were all unexpected, immediate,and inescapable.
Since I touched on this subject let me discuss it
next. While I do sympathize with the suffering
and loss of those who lived in the path of Katrina, I only really
have compassion for them, not any respect for the loss of their homes.
If they lost family, friends, pets, jobs, or even sentimentally significant
buildings or locales, I can empathize and feel sorry for them, and
I'm sending as much good mojo their way as I can. If they lost their
homes, businesses, and personal possessions then I do feel sympathy
for their loss, but that sympathy is limited. I and everyone else
in this country knows that if you live in a place prone to damage
and destruction from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, mudslides,
or whatever then you have made a conscious decision to stay there,
build there, and almost certainly eventually lose your possessions
there as a result of the inevitable return of established natural
catastrophes. If you live in a place that has suffered from hurricanes
in the past - often, even - then you have made a conscious decision
to play the odds, and when you lose (and lose big), then you really
only have yourself to blame. As an example, it's probably not too
smart to live in a hurricane-ridden area and definitely not smart
to live in a town called Waveland in such an area - you're likely
to see your whole town live
up to its name. There are plenty of other, much safer places
to live in this country, and you set yourself up for what befell
you. Again, I feel sympathy for those who have lost their homes and
such, but I have trouble feeling much sympathy, particularly
knowing that my tax dollars (by way of FEMA) will help to rebuild
the homes and businesses of most of the people who made this bad
gamble in an area that was inevitably waiting for devastation from
one hurricane or another. That may make me seem callous to say this,
but that's the way it is.
I may seem callous, but I'm nothing compared to
others. Consider the statements by Repent
America that the devastation of hurricane Katrina was the wrath
of God upon New Orleans for producing "Girls Gone Wild",
Mardi Gras, and gay celebrations like "Southern Decadence." I
shouldn't expect much different from this crowd, really. If they
don't believe the repeatedly-supported Theory of Evolution then why
should they believe the science of Meteorology that has studied the
formation a nd paths of hurricanes for years, most of which in some
fashion strike in the same general vicinity as Katrina. Maybe the
Bible-thumping evangelicals should blame themselves for God's wrath
- after all, the Bible tells them to "judge not lest they be
judged" by God, and certainly the area hit by Katrina is deeply
set in the evangelical Bible Belt. Sure, that sounds good to me.
Katrina was God's wrath against the evangelical Christians of America.
It was a clear warning - 'Shut the fuck up or I'll kill you all.'
If the Bible-thumpers want to blame somebody (and surely they won't blame themselves as I have) then they should probably blame George W. Bush. Sure, I'm all for blaming W. for everything everywhere, and probably justifiably so, but the evidence is incredibly damning against him in the case of at least New Orleans, which is often the focus of the news reports on the destruction of Katrina. Bush and his fellow Nazi's ... errr Republicans ... have been proven to have cut funding for repairing the levees that keep New Orleans from flooding. In fact in the face of warnings from many people, even their own appointees, they took away funding and sent in to more important functions like, I don't know, Laura Bush's new dress of something. Bush's speech, two days after Katrina hit, was viewed as quite inadequate and lacking any sympathy for the people of the affected areas, and that lack of feeling was obviously at the heart of Bush's cuts of the funding that for years has reinforced the levees in New Orleans.
Bush seems far more concerned with looters and such than about those displaced from their homes and jobs. His zero-tolerance for looting and price-gouging seems to be a concern only about money matters, and Bush wouldn't be alone in this money-before-man style of concern. CNN/Money Magazine have numerous articles about the effects of Katrina on the stock market, on insurance rates, and on Wal-Mart closings, and while speculations about gas prices rising to $4 per gallon are indeed concerns, it doesn't seem all that important to be talking about how the devastation of Katrina will affect the dividends of some stock when people are homeless and mourning.
Instead there should be concern, expressions of
help - not the typical 'Support the Red Cross' crap either. The Red
Cross is a massively fucked up organization, and if their handling
of 9/11 and the tsunami are any indication, they will waste and withhold
(and spend on themselves) huge amounts of the money donated to them
that's specifically requested to provide help to the survivors of
Katrina. Screw the Red Cross and give support through a local charitable
organization in the part of the affected areas you want to help.
Certainly a better percent of your contribution will go directly
to helping people in that way, not in giving raises to Red Cross
administrators or helping them build new offices. If you can't send
money to a local charity then you can always go to Vegas. Well, maybe
not Vegas, but you can still gamble. Wil
Wheaton talked PokerStars into
setting up online
poker games whose earnings will go to helping those affected by Katrina.
Providing aid through gambling seems like feeding the homeless by
encouraging alcoholism as far as I'm concerned, but I can't debate
the value of immediate support to people who need it. I don't like
gambling and consider it an addiction that ca be very destructive,
but if you're going to gamble, at least see that the money gets spent
wisely.
I feel like a whole lot of people are more concerned about their money and investments than about the real people hit by this event. I'll admit that I, myself, am concern4ed about the rising cost of gasoline, but more for the lasting effects of that price increase than for the immediate problems (once the oil rigs and refineries are back online then the prices should go back down to the $2.40 range, but I seriously doubt that that will happen).
I am very much concerned about the people who have
been traumatized by Katrina, and I am sickened by the heartless people
who are getting far more press coverage than those traumatized victims.
It sickens me that this is what I have come to expect from my fellow
Americans, that their sympathy and compassion falls behind their
desire for a sound bite, their hope for a great chance to make money,
or the opportunity to score political points by doing nothing and
feeling nothing. This is not the America I grew up in or believe
in - but is the America in which I now live.
Posted at 3:04 PM
