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WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
Magpie is a former journalist, attempted historian [No, you can't ask how her thesis is going], and full-time corvid of the lesbian persuasion. She keeps herself in birdseed by writing those bad computer manuals that you toss out without bothering to read them. She also blogs too much when she's not on deadline, both here and at Pacific Views.

Magpie roosts in Portland, Oregon, where she annoys her housemates (as well as her cats Medea, Whiskers, and Jane Doe) by attempting to play Irish music on the fiddle and concertina.

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Saturday, September 3

US Chief Justice William Rehnquist dead at 80.

Rehnquist's death gives Dubya another Supreme Court opening to fill.

The NY Times article on his death is here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:30 PM | Get permalink



This Dubya photo-op about takes the cake.

It beats out his strutting around in that flight suit by miles.

Check out this excerpt from a press release by US senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, which we found here, on the website for KTAL television:

But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast — black and white, rich and poor, young and old — deserve far better from their national government.

Landrieu also laid into Dubya for not yet having appointed a cabinet-level official to oversee Katrina relief and recovery work, and blasted FEMA for refusing yet more offers of aid:

I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims — far more efficiently than buses — FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

For more FEMA incompetency, see this earlier post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:05 PM | Get permalink



Who's doing and who's out to lunch.

Over at our other roost, Natasha presents the results of her Saturday project:

This afternoon, I decided to see how the most prominent of my local public and corporate citizens are stacking up on showing a bare minimum of compassion. The test? Considering that it's a Saturday and I spend a lot of time online, I went looking for mentions of this disaster and links to relief organizations on their websites. It's very literally, the absolute least anyone with an internet presence can offer.

It's been nearly a week since Katrina hit, so everyone on the planet with a television, radio or internet connection knows it happened and knows how big a disaster it is. Americans are dying of dehydration, and even when the help they're just now getting starts decreasing the immediate danger, we're going to have (at least) tens of thousands of Americans living like Palestinian refugees right here in our own country.

On Monday, I'm going to be calling as many of these people/groups up as I acn and asking what they're doing to proactively make use of their connections to wealth and power to get aid channeled to our fellow citizens. If I don't like the answers I get, I'm going to make myself as big a pain in the PR as I can.

The list resulting from Natasha's research is interesting, to say the least. For example, several members of Washington's congressional delegation don't seem to have been paying attention to the news lately.

Via Pacific Views.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:01 PM | Get permalink



If you're still wondering ...

... about the connection between the Iraq war and the piss-poor response to Hurricane Katrina, a look at this clutchful of background articles compiled by the Project on Defense Alternatives should clear things up considerably.

Via BOPNews.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:51 PM | Get permalink






This goes way beyond incompetence.

The feds are flirting with criminal neglect as they continue to refuse offers of aid for the Gulf Coast disaster area, both from within the US and from abroad.

First, we see that FEMA has refused firefighting and police assistance from Chicago:

Frustration about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has reached Chicago City Hall, as Mayor Richard Daley today noted a tepid response by federal officials to the city's offers of disaster aid.

The city is willing to send hundreds of personnel, including firefighters and police, and dozens of vehicles to assist on the storm-battered Gulf Coast, but so far the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested only a single tank truck, Daley said.

"I was shocked," he said.

"We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call."

Daley's remarks came on the same day that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had only lame excuses when pressed by reporters for a reason why the US had not (as of Thursday) accepted any of the numerous offers of disaster aid from other countries. If you read the transcript of her Thursday press conference, you'll see that the reasons rice offered boiled down to 'The proper bureaucratic rules need to be followed.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:26 PM | Get permalink



Dubya and Katrina.

A view from the Lebanese press:


Storm's a'comin!

[Cartoon: Armand Homsi/Annahar]

Via BeirutSpring.com and The Sideshow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:26 AM | Get permalink



Why hasn't the Red Cross been helping people in New Orleans?

Rivka explains.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:21 AM | Get permalink



Can we say 'complacent'?

Dubya administration officials say that the US economy will not be badly affected by Hurricane Katrina. Three or four months of sub-par performance is the most likely scenario, they say.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said he had discussed the disaster with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

He said both men felt it would not have a significant long-term effect on the US economy, although growth would be slowed for a short period.

Remember: This is the same administration that ran the economy into the ground while denying that anything was wrong. And which said that Iraq was going to be a cakewalk.

Via BBC.

More: For a more realistic view of the US economy after Katrina, we suggest reading this Washington Post article.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:39 AM | Get permalink



On the other hand ...

... the head of a major international energy watchdog isn't as confident that Katrina will be just an economic blip. According to Claude Mandil of the International Energy Agency, a worldwide energy crisis could result if damage to Gulf Coast refineries causes the US to up its purchases of European gasoline:

"If the crisis affects oil products then it's a worldwide crisis. No one should think this will be limited to the United States.... They are already buying gasoline in Europe. If the refineries are damaged, that will only increase. Then this will become a worldwide crisis very quickly."

Mandil told the paper that high oil prices represented a risk for global economic growth and urged consumers to alter their behavior to save more energy and limit the fallout.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:38 AM | Get permalink



No comment.

From Dubya's Saturday radio address about the Katrina disaster:

In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.

Via White House.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:32 AM | Get permalink



What he said [again].

From a commentary on the Katrina disaster by BBC reporter Matt Wells:

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

And that's just how Wells gets started. Read the rest of it here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:23 AM | Get permalink



'The inevitable result.'

The KnightRidder Washington Bureau has an excellent piece on how the Dubya administration's obsession with protecting the US from terrorists has destroyed the feds' ability to respond to natural disasters.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, once a powerful independent agency focused solely on responding to earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters that occur on average about four times a month, was placed within the huge Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security sends $1.1 billion each year to states to combat terrorism, but just $180 million to help prepare for disasters such as Katrina. Much of the terrorism grant money is given under conditions that specifically exclude spending it on items or personnel that would be used in responding to hazards other than terrorism.

Since 1995, the federal government has declared 562 major disasters. All were natural disasters except two terrorist attacks: Oklahoma City in 1995 and the 9-11 attacks.

The hearings and investigations will likely show that the disaster response expertise of FEMA was badly eroded once it became part of the terrorism-fighting bureaucracy of Homeland Security, state officials and some former FEMA officials said.

"There are no emergency managers at any level in the Department of Homeland Security. It's all law enforcement," said George Haddow, former FEMA deputy chief of staff. "It doesn't look like anyone's in charge to me because the system has been deconstructed."

Clark Kent Ervin, the former Bush-appointed Homeland Security inspector general, said FEMA disaster officials frequently expressed concerns that not enough attention was being focused on natural disasters. Apparently, he said, nothing happened.

Several US senators have announced that they will be holding hearings to investigate the slow and inadequate federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It's going to be interesting to say what version of the usual 'i'm not responsible' and 'nobody could have expected what happened' defenses will get used.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:32 AM | Get permalink



Democracy continues to bloom in Iraq.

The Iraqi government is getting rid of independent labor unions.

Via House of Labor.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 AM | Get permalink



And now for something completely different.

Powerwalk Right In the Middle, a mashup of John Lennon, Dr. Hook, and Stealers Wheel that made us grin about a mile wide. [MP3 player req'd.]

Via The Anti-Hit List.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink



No big surprise here.

We've been wondering how long it would take for Dubya's administration to find a way to use Hurricane Katrina as a method for tossing money at Halliburton. And tonight we find the answer here:

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

Via Houston Chronicle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink



The effects of Katrina, beyond black and white.

Rene P. Ciria-Cruz takes a look at how ethnic news organizations are covering Hurricane Katrina's effects on their communities. Besides sampling the angry response of African American media to the (at best) fumbling response of Dubya's administration to the disaster, the article also looks at the Katrina coverage in Asian and Latino media.

Some 300 Koreans living in New Orleans have evacuated to Baton Rouge and Houston where they are being lodged in Korean churches or in the homes of Korean hosts, report the Korea Times and the Korea Daily. Others fled as far as Philadelphia. An official from the Korean Council of Houston said there were many Koreans in Biloxi, where more than 30 deaths have been reported. The majority of Koreans living in the Gulf region as small-business owners and many fear not only the loss of their homes, but also their livelihoods.

Dozens of Vietnamese are still stranded in a small town near New Orleans called Versailles, where more than 10,000 Vietnamese settled after the Vietnam war, report the Saigon Broadcasting Television Network and the Vietnamese Calitoday. Many of the stranded are senior citizens who don't have relatives to help them. The refugees are among those who took shelter in the Lavang church of Father Vien The Nguyen.

Responding to reports published in New California Media's website, reader Hung Nguyen blogs that "300 Vietnamese people stranded in sewage water" are gathered and waiting for help at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church at 5069 Willowbrook Drive in New Orleans.

Most of the Vietnamese in Biloxi and Gulfport have been evacuated to Alabama and Atlanta. In Houston, the population of Da Minh Convent, in just a few day increased more than threefold, reports the Nguoi Viet newspaper. The convent, which housed 50 nuns, received more than 100 refugees and "more are coming."

Sister Hang Pham said, "The first few days, Vietnamese arrived to Houston not knowing where to stay. Some were sleeping in their cars and others sleeping on the sidewalks. So we, along with other organizations, offered some to come to our convent," she laughed. "But don't worry, we are not asking them to convert!" she told the Nguoi Viet reporter.

Via Pacific News Service.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Friday, September 2

Guess what month it is?

And guess which US government agency is sponsoring it? [Hint: It's the one with the color-coded warnings.]

Here's the answer. And yes, it's for real.

Via Gordon.Coale.

| | Posted by Magpie at 4:08 PM | Get permalink



Hell must have froze over today.

While we were perusing the CNN website, we found this revealing summary of how the official picture of New Orleans compares with the view of local officials, reporters, and others who are actually there.

Uncollected corpses
  • [FEMA chief Michael] Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.

  • [CNN Producer Kim] Segal: We saw one body. A person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. And then there is another body next to that. There were others they were willing to show us.

  • Evacuee [Raymond] Cooper: They had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when I went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. You got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. One guy -- that's how I found out. The guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? I'm like, no. He dragged two bodies in there. Now you just -- I just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. He's dead.

Real news from CNN. Imagine that!

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:32 PM | Get permalink



This pretty much says it all.

Doesn't it?


Dubya eats cake while NOLA submerges

We got this from BOPNews, who got it from Out Loud, who doesn't know the graphic's origin.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:53 PM | Get permalink



What he said.

From an article by former NY Times editor Howell Raines:

Every great disaster - the Blitz, 9/11, the tsunami - has a political dimension. The performance of George Bush during this past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude. Louisiana's anguished governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, climbed into a helicopter at the first possible moment to survey what may become the worst weather-related disaster in American history. She might even have been able to stop the looting in New Orleans if the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana Army National Guard had not been in Iraq for the past 11 months. They are among thousands of Southern guardsmen who could have been federalised by the stroke of a pen had they not been deployed in a phony war. Even Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a tiresome blowhard as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has shone a throat-catching public sorrow and sleepless diligence that puts Bush to shame.

This president, who flew away on Monday to fundraisers in the west while the hurricane blew away entire towns in coastal Mississippi, is very much his father's son when it comes to the kinds of emergencies that used to call forth immediate White House action before its Bushite captivity. When he was president, his father did not visit Miami after Hurricane Andrew, nor for that matter, did he mind being photographed tooling his golf cart around Kennebunkport while American troops died in the first Iraq war. Now the younger Bush seems determined to show his successors how to holiday through an apocalypse. Consider the visible federal leadership presence in Louisiana on the day that the levee broke, a full day after the hurricane first hit. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US government department charged with disaster preparation and response, issued the usual promises. Bush, for his part, urged people not to stay where they were, even if their evacuation residence might be the roofless, toilet-clogged Superdome.

Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge, an army colonel seemed to be the most senior federal official at a televised news conference called to announce a Corps of Engineers plan to drop sand bags into the raceway of the broken levee. The proposed drop did not take place because the shortage of helicopters was such that the aircraft had to be diverted to rescue work. Twenty-four hours later, on Wednesday, as Bush met by intercom with his emergency team and considered a return to Washington, as Pentagon and Homeland Security promised relief by the weekend, intensive care patients were dying at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. They had languished for two full days because the overworked coast guard helicopter crews available in New Orleans did not have time to reach them. As for the Superdome refugees, it finally fell to the governor of Texas to announce that they could come to Houston's Astrodome. What other American president, one wonders, would fail to house these people in the decent barracks available at the closed and active military bases scattered throughout the South? The plain fact is that Jimmy Carter did a better job of housing the Mariel refugees from Cuba than Bush has done with the citizens of New Orleans.

The populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the welfare of people, it was caring. The church-going cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the house of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die on foreign deserts.

In the first part of the piece, Raines reflects on what the city of New Orleans has meant to US music, literature, and history. There are a lot of policymakers and media blowhards(especially the ones who're suggesting that the city not be rebuilt) who ought to read it.

Via UK Guardian. Thanks to ChrisW for the tip!

More: CJR Daily thinks that the first part of Raines piece goes way over the top [scroll down]. We still think it has a certain charm.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:36 PM | Get permalink



Take a look at this screen grab from CNN.

How many things are wrong?

Dubya being oh-so presidential

  • The helicopters are on the ground, not out rescuing people or delivering aid.

  • The soldiers in the background are standing at attention, not helping with the relief effort.

  • The whole background has been choreographed to make Dubya look 'presidential.'

Oh yeah, we forgot the biggest thing that's wrong:
  • Dubya thinks he is helping people.

Via Think Progress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:52 AM | Get permalink



Remember how Dubya said that 'no one could have anticpated the breach of New Orleans' levees?

Well, even Mr Bill anticipated it in this 2004 public service announcement for the effort to save Louisiana's wetlands.

Warning: The humor of the PSA is a little bit creepy given this week's events.

Via Scott Bateman.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:28 AM | Get permalink



What's wrong with the federal response to the disaster in New Orleans?

Listen to this Thursday interview with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin that was broadcast on WWL radio. Nagin minces no words. [MP3 player required]

CNN has a transcript of the interview here. [Magpie reader ChrisW suggests that this is a better transcript.]

Via MetaFilter.

More: And things appear not to have changed much since yesterday. Here's part of an Interdictor post from earlier this morning.

Teams Alpha and Bravo finished the medium range recon and there are 3 separate locations on fire. We have pictures coming shortly.

During the recon, I spoke to some Federal Marshalls and NOPD. Morale is LOW. Very low. They're not seeing the military presence they say they were promised. I told those guys they can't possibly imagine how much we (the world) appreciate their dedication. I asked what civil rights the citizens have and the US Marshalls looked at me like I just fell off the turnip truck and chuckled. I asked if citizens can have guns for protection and he said if someone thinks he needs a gun, he should have already evacuated. He also said they are setting the city on fire.

The NOPD wants to know where "the two active duty brigades" were that he says they were told were supposed to arrive today. When I asked him what he would want to tell the world, he said Everyone keeps talking about the military presence in the city, and then asked me," Do you see any military around here" in dusgust.

The Interdictor, for those who don't know, is blogging from New Orleans.

Still more: The Interdictor reports seeing two military helicopters and 'what looks like a whole batallion of troops' heading to the New Orleans convention center, where thousands of people have been stuck for days without food, water, or assistance.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:03 AM | Get permalink



We were going to call this 'No Comment.'

But we just have to say something about the following:

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

September 1, 2005

SUBJECT: Assistance to Federal Employees Affected by Hurricane Katrina

I have directed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to establish an emergency leave transfer program to assist employees affected by Hurricane Katrina. The emergency leave transfer program will permit employees in an executive agency to donate unused annual leave for transfer to employees of the same or other agencies who have been adversely affected by Hurricane Katrina and who need additional time off from work without having to use their own paid leave.

GEORGE W. BUSH

And, no, we are not making this up. You'll find the memo posted on the White House website here.

So while southern Louisiana, Missisippi, and Alabama are dealing with the worst natural disaster in US history, our Dear Leader won't give extra paid leave to the federal employees whose lives have been disrupted by the disaster. By contrast, the governor of Kansas has issued an executive order giving 20 days of paid leave to state employees who are trained volunteers so that they can go work in the disaster area. Yeah, we're sure most of the federal workers need time off to get their lives in order again — not to volunteer in the relief effort. But given the magnitude of the disaster, wouldn't compassion dictate offering federal workers some additional paid leave without having to rob other workers to provide it?

Dubya's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster isn't just incompetent, it's inexcusably cheap-ass.

Via Uggabugga.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:15 AM | Get permalink



California's senate OKs same-sex marriages.

By a 21-15 vote, California's state senate has passed a bill that would make same-sex marriages legal. This is the first time that any body of a state legislature has voted to approve such marriages without a court ruling forcing them to do so. The bill now goes to the state assembly, where its future is uncertain — the assembly rejected the bill on an earlier vote during the current legislative session.


One down, one to go

State Sen. Carole Migden,, D-San Francisco, right, one of the Legislature's six gay members, hugs Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Sunol, after she spoke in support of a same-sex marriage bill during the Senate session on Thursday. [Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli]

Several lawmakers said they believed their vote on the bill would be one of the most important they cast as lawmakers.

"When I leave this legislature, I want to tell my grandchildren that I stood up for dignity and the rights of all," said Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont.

Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, said members should listen to a higher power when deciding how to vote.

"I don?t think there is a member in this chamber who doesn?t somewhere ? either readily on the surface or somewhere deep down inside ? know that this is not the right thing to do," he said. "Where does that come from? It comes from a higher power."

But Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Los Angeles, said he "absolutely believes this is right."

"The last time I checked, a higher power created all of us. In the eyes of God, they are all human beings, all equal to him," he said. "Why are they not equal to us?"

Via SF Chronicle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink



Blogging from New Orleans.

The Interdictor has been online from downtown New Orleans almsot continuously during and since the hurricane hit.

Here's the final post from Thursday, posted at 10:46 pm CDT:

The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don't know what you're hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:

"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:

Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.

It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.

Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.

There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.

Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.

The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.

The buses never stop.

Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area -- Saulet Condos -- once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back.

He reports that the conditions are horrendous. Heat, mosquitoes and utter misery. The smell, he says, is "horrific."

He says it's the slowest mandatory evacuation ever, and he wants to know why they were told to go to the Convention Center area in the first place; furthermore, he reports that many of them with cell phones have contacts willing to come rescue them, but people are not being allowed through to pick them up

I have "Bigfoot"'s phone number and will gladly give it to any city or state official who would like to tell him how everything is under control.

Addendum: Bigfoot just called to report that "they" (the authorities) are cleaning up the dead bodies at the Convention Center right now.

There's lots of good stuff at the Interdictor. Check it out.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Thursday, September 1

Fats Domino 'rescued but missing.'

It doesn't quite make sense to us, either, but that's how the BBC puts it.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:49 PM | Get permalink



No comment necessary.

Here's an excerpt from an interview that MSNBC's Alison Stewart did with NBC photojournalist Tony Zumbado earlier today. Zumbado had been shooting video at the New Orleans Convention Center.

ALISON STEWART: Tony, I know you've seen a lot of things in your career, but have you ever seen anything like that?

TONY ZUMBADO: I've gotta tell you, I thought I'd seen it all, but just when you think you've seen it all, you go into another situation and you see something horrific. I've never seen anything in my life like this. ... I can't put it into words the amount of destruction that is in this city and how these people are coping. They are just left behind. There is nothing offered to them. No water, no ice, no C-rations, nothing, for the last four days.

They were told to go to the convention center. They did, they've been behaving. It's unbelievable how organized they are, how supportive they are of each other. They have not started any mêlées, any riots ... they just want food and support. And what I saw there I've never seen in this country.

We need to really look at this situation at the convention center. It's getting very very crazy in there and very dangerous. Somebody needs to come down with a lot of food and a lot of water. There's no hostility there ... they need support. These people are very desperate. I saw two gentlemen die in front of me because of dehydration. I saw a baby near death.

I went back with Harry Connick Jr. He spoke to them and told them he would do anything he can to help them. They seemed to appreciate that. He's the only person of authority - believe it or not, a musician -- to go in there and tell them that things are going to be ok.

STEWART: Are you telling me there is no police in the area, no National Guard in the area?

ZUMBADO: I don't want to sound negative against anybody or any official, but according to them, and what they saw, they left and they're there on their own. There's no police there's no authority. ... You would never ever imagine what you saw in the convention center in New Orleans.

CJR Daily has more details on the interview, along with some trenchant comments about what images of New Orleans should and shouldn't be shown by the media.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:47 PM | Get permalink



Why did Dubya's adminstration cut funding for the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans district?

Don't ask.

Scott McClellan just finished meeting with the press, and he got a lot of questions about the Bush administration's decision to cut funding for the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers and the president's slow trek back to Washington after disaster struck.

"This is not a time for politics," McClellan said. "This is a time for the nation to come together and help those in the Gulf Coast region. That's where our focus is."

Via Salon.

[Paid sub. or ad view req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:46 AM | Get permalink



Another casualty of the hurricane?

Legendary R&B performer Fats Domino is among the missing in New Orleans.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:37 AM | Get permalink



How badly is the Gulf oil infrastructure damaged? [Part 2]

The US Energy Department says that some of the oil refineries that were damaged by Katrina may not re-open for months.

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:34 AM | Get permalink



Q: What does the disaster in New Orleans have to do with 9/11?

A: In both cases, Dubya's administration wants the US public to believe that 'nobody could have anticipated' the disaster.

Going back to May of 2002, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice offered this response to charges that the administration could have anticipated the 9/11 attacks:

'I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Centre, take another and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked plane as a missile. All this reporting,' she insisted, 'about hijacking was about traditional hijacking.'

Her remarks came despite, for example, warning that 'suicide bombers belonging to al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House - Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against CIA headquarters.' There were other warnings [see this UK Observer article for examples, too, but Dubya's administration chose to ignore them.

We've been waiting to see when the administration would use a similar excuse to explain the lack of preparation for a hurricane disaster in New Orleans, and the slow response of federal authorities to that disaster. And, as an obvious sign that the administration is afraid to be caught with that huge bag it's holding, Dubya himself used the 'nobody could have expected it' excuse in an interview with Diane Sawyer this morning:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we are having to deal with it and will."

Nobody could have anticpated it? How about the author of this October 2001 article in Scientific American? Or the producer of this September 2002 report on PBS? Or the authors of this June 2003 series of articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune? Or the producers of this Science Channel documentary that aired this past June?Or those of this Newhouse News Service article published on the eve of the disaster?

That list, of course, ignores the extensive scientific literature on how coast erosion increased the hurricane danger to New Orleans, and the reports issued by the Army Corps of Engineers about the possible dangers to the city.

So we'd suggest that Dubya stop trying to make excuses and actually try to do something constructive to assist the millions of people affected by Hurricane Katrina, instead of trying to control the damage that he and his handlers fear that yet another failure will do to his poll standings.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:04 AM | Get permalink



How badly is the Gulf oil infrastructure damaged?

And how much of a hit will the US economy take as a result of that damage?

Watching CNN earlier tonight and reading various press accounts of the hurricane aftermath, we've noticed that little of the coverage has dealt with what has actually happened to the oil platforms and other oil industry infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. At the Oil Drum, an anonymous and 'quite reliable' oil industry insider offered this description on Wednesday night:

There are MANY production platforms missing (as in not visible from the air). This means they have been totally lost. I am talking about 10's of platforms, not single digit numbers. Each platform can have from 4 to 100+ wells on it. Most larger ones have 20-30 wells in this area, with numerous caisson wells. They are on their sides, on the bottom of the gulf - they will likely be left as reef material, provided we can get permission. MMS regulations require us to plug each of the wells that were on these platforms - HUGE cost now, as the platforms are gone... Hopefully, MMS will grant `abandon in place' status for these wiped out structures.

We also set individual wells as satellites and pipe them back to existing platforms. These stand-alone wells are called caisson wells. 90% of those in the storm path are bent over, rendering them a total loss, We would have to remove the existing bent structure and drill a new well, as bent pipe is basically unusable.

We utilize platforms as gathering hubs. We pipe the raw oil/water to them and then send it on for separation, or separate it there and send finished oil on. Damage to a hub means everything going to the hub is offline indefinitely. There are +/- 15 HUBS missing. MISSING!! As in we cannot find them from the air.

Thus even if the wells feeding the hub are ok, we have nowhere to pump the oil to...

This is not good, folks.

What will this mean for the availability and price of oil/gas in the US? And for the US economy in general? Economist James Hamilton, who specializes in the oil industry, offers a grim view here and here.

One of the questions I am almost always asked by reporters is, "will the price Americans pay at the pump go even higher?" My stock answer is, "I'm not sure." But in the present circumstances, having just seen a 55 cent per gallon rise in the price of September gasoline futures, the question is a no-brainer-- American consumers are in for a huge shock at the pump within a very short period.

And the next question I get asked is, "will that put the U.S. into a recession?" If it were just the consequences of the storm itself, my answer would have been, "probably not." The reason is that I think most people would see this as a special event, tragic but thankfully short-lived. But this event did not arrive out of the blue. Instead, it came in an environment in which there was already considerable anxiety about gas prices and sound basis for worrying about a possible recession even if Katrina had done no harm.

Could this be enough to tip the whole economic cart over? I'm not certain that it will. But it would seem foolish to deny the very real possibility that it could.

Despite Dubya's assertion that the US will be a 'stronger place' after the country deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we suspect the next few months [at the minimum] are going to be a rough ride.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:23 AM | Get permalink



'Casual to the point of carelessness.'

While we heard Dubya's speech on the Hurricane Katrina disaster earlier today on the radio — and were very unimpressed with what the prez had to say to the nation — we didn't actually see any of it until tonight. Watching the president recite a catalog of the stuff that the feds are sending to the Gulf Coast, we were struck by his almost total lack of affect. There was absolutely no sense that this man had an ounce of feeling for the people whose lives have been turned upside down in the past few days; no evidence that he really understood long-term problems that Katrina has dumped on the nation. And we certainly noticed that he didn't ask for even the smallest amount of sacrifice on anyone's part.

We weren't alone in thinking that Dubya delievered a pretty poor performance. The NY Times has an uncharacteristically blunt editorial on Dubya's speech. Here's how it ends:

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

Now go over here and read the rest of it. It's worth your time.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink



Q: What does the Iraq war have to do with the disaster in New Orleans?

A: This is what.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA [Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project] dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

Via Editor and Publisher.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Wednesday, August 31

With all the terrible afternath of Katrina ...

... the death of hundreds of Iraqis today shouldn't get lost in the shuffle.


The aftermath

Iraqi pilgrims walk past shoes lost during a stampede on Baghdad's Al A'ema bridge August 31, 2005.
[Photo: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters]


Trampled, crushed against barricades or plunging into the Tigris River, more than 700 Shiite pilgrims died Wednesday when a procession across a Baghdad bridge was engulfed in panic over rumors that a suicide bomber was at large.

Most of the dead were women and children, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. It was the single biggest confirmed loss of life in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Dr. Swadi Karim of the Health Ministry operations section said 769 were killed and 307 injured.

Tensions already had risen among the Shiite marchers because of a mortar attack two hours earlier near the shrine where they were heading. Then the crowd was slowed by barriers about a quarter of the way across the Two Imams Bridge, Interior Minister Bayn Jabr said on state-run TV.

"Pushing started when a rumor was spread by a terrorist who claimed that there was a person with an explosive belt, which caused panic and the pushing started," Jabr said. "Some fell from the bridge, others fell on the barricades" and were trampled to death.

The barriers are meant to keep Sunni and Shiite extremists out of each other's neighborhoods at opposite ends of the bridge.

The two-lane, 300-yard-long bridge was littered with abandoned hundreds of sandals lost in the pushing and panic. Children who had plunged 30 feet off the bridge floundered in the muddy waters, trying to reach dry land.

Survivors were rushed in ambulances and private cars to hospitals. Thousands raced to both banks of the river to search for survivors, and bare-chested men jumped in to try to recover bodies.

Scores of bodies covered with white sheets lay on the sidewalk outside one hospital whose morgue was jammed. Many were children, old men and black-gowned women.

Via AP and Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:28 PM | Get permalink



More eerie reading.

In June 2003, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a five-part series on the danger that the city would face if it was hit directly by a strong hurricane. The paper's general conclusions about the city's situation were dead-on:
  • The combination of sinking land and rising seas has put the Mississippi River delta as much as 3 feet lower relative to sea level than it was a century ago, and the process continues. That means hurricane floods driven inland from the Gulf have risen by corresponding amounts. Storms that once would not have had much impact can now be devastating events, and flooding penetrates to places where it rarely occurred before. The problem also is slowly eroding levee protection, cutting off evacuation routes sooner and putting dozens of communities and valuable infrastructure at risk of being wiped off the map.

  • Coastal erosion has shaved barrier islands to slivers and turned marshland to open water, opening the way for hurricane winds and flooding to move inland. Hurricanes draw their strength from the sea, so they quickly weaken and begin to dissipate when they make landfall. Hurricanes moving over fragmenting marshes toward the New Orleans area can retain more strength, and their winds and large waves pack more speed and destructive power.

  • Though protected by levees designed to withstand the most common storms, New Orleans is surrounded by water and is well below sea level at many points. A flood from a powerful hurricane can get trapped for weeks inside the levee system. Emergency officials concede that many of the structures in the area, including newer high-rise buildings, would not survive the winds of a major storm.

  • The large size of the area at risk also makes it difficult to evacuate the million or more people who live in the area, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of dying even with improved forecasting and warnings. The American Red Cross will not put emergency shelters in the area because it does not want to put volunteers or evacuees in danger.

    The Army Corps of Engineers says the chance of New Orleans-area levees being topped is remote, but admits the estimate is based on 40-year-old calculations. An independent analysis based on updated data and computer modeling done for The Times-Picayune suggests the risk to some areas, including St. Bernard and St. Charles parishes and eastern New Orleans, may be greater than the corps estimates. Corps officials say the agency is studying the problem with an updated model.

We were particularly struck by this feature about what would have happened if Hurricane Georges had hit New Orleans in 1998, instead of veering away at the last minute.

The 'Washing Away' series is well worth reading. Maybe now it will have the influence on legislation and policy that it should have had when it originally appeared.

Via Romenesko.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 PM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny awesome!

Photos from a NOAA-43 hurricane hunter's flight into Hurricane Katrina, taken by one of the people on the mission.


Katrina's eyewall

Hurricane Katrina's eyewall at sunset
[Photo: Mysterious Chicken]

The photos of Katrina (when it was a category 5 storm) are at the end of the set. They were taken on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:44 AM | Get permalink



Another resignation from Dubya's administration.

This time it's Susan Wood, who was head of the Office of Women's Health in the US Food & Drug Adminstration.

Wood quit her position resigned because of the FDA's continued refusal to make emergency contraception more easily available. The last straw for Wood was the FDA's decision last Friday to postpone indefinitely any action on making the morning-after pill (Plan B) available to women without having to get a doctor's prescription. According to the FDA, it needs to figure out how Plan B can be kept out of the hands of young teenagers. [A 'problem' we find of dubious importance, given the long experience in the US of limiting sales of tobacco and alcohol to minors.]

"I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled," wrote Wood.... "The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women's access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions, is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women's health."

As is usual when the administration is embarassed by a public resignation over policy matters, the FDA has had no comment.

Via Feminist Daily News.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:20 AM | Get permalink



We're so glad the prez has time ...

... to play his new guitar.

The prez & his gee-tar

[Photo: AP/ABC News, Martha Raddatz]

It's not like he had anything more important to be doing yesterday.

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:47 AM | Get permalink



More expensive than Vietnam.

The US is spending money faster on the war in Iraq than it did on the Vietnam War, says a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies. According to the report, the current monthly cost of operations in Iraq is US$ 5.6 billion; the average cost of operations in Vietnam was US$ 5.1 billion after adjusting for inflation.

While the Vietnam War ate up a larger proportion of the US annual GDP than the amount going to Iraq (12 percent for Vietnam vs. 2 percent for Iraq), that comparison doesn't take into account the fact that the Iraq war is being financed by deficit spending. According to the IPS report, that deficit spending may nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next decade.

Other findings of the report are:
  • The cost of the Iraq War could exceed $700 billion. In current dollars, the Vietnam War cost U.S. taxpayers $600 billion.
  • Staying in Iraq and Afghanistan at current levels would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next decade.
  • Since 2001, the U.S. has deployed more than 1 million troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Broken down per person in the United States, the cost so far is $727, making the Iraq War the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years.

A PDF file containing the full report can be downloaded here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:25 AM | Get permalink



Tuesday, August 30

While Dubya cuts his vacation short ...

... and makes sure that he can be seen looking 'presidential' while the US Gulf Coast reels from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, lets not forget that his administration cut US$ 72 million in funding for the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans district and shelved a study on how to protect New Orleans from a category 5 hurricane.

Via Think Progress and BOPNews.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:54 PM | Get permalink



Predicting the disaster in New Orleans.

We knew we'd seen something about what could happen if the Crescent City suffered a direct hit from a strong hurricane on television in the last couple of years, but we couldn't figure out where. Thanks to a reader of Boing Boing who remembered the same program, we can point you to this transcript of a report by Daniel Zwerdling called 'The City in the Bowl.' It aired on Bill Moyers' progam 'Now' in September 2002. It makes for very eerie reading.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says consider this troubling fact: more than a million people live in this area, and they're stuck in a geological trap.

WALTER MAESTRI: New Orleans is, if you think about it, it's a soup bowl. Think of a soup bowl. And the soup bowl-- the high edges of the soup bowl-- is the Mississippi River. It's amazing to say, but the highest elevation in the city of New Orleans is at the Mississippi River.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says, imagine what happens if a hurricane like Andrew comes raging up from the Gulf:

WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Remember the levees which the Army built, to hold smaller floods out of the bowl? Maestri says now those levees would doom the city. Because they'd trap the water in.

Part of what made the damage in coastal Louisiana so severe has been the severe coastal erosion over the past half-century or so, caused by the damming and channelization of the Missisippi River and its tributaries. The load of silt that used to come down the river with the floods each year is no longer being deposited in the Missisippi's delta; instead, the bulk of it is flushed out to sea. With each year that passes, the Gulf of Mexico encroaches further into what used to be land. And with the loss of land, New Orleans and other inland communities lose more of the wetland buffer that has historically protected them from the worst effects of hurricanes.

On its Science of the Deep series, the Science Channel in the US aired an excellent documentary on the problem this past June, called 'Coastal Crisis.' We suspect they will be airing it again soon, and that watching it is also going to be an eerie experience.

| | Posted by Magpie at 7:46 PM | Get permalink



Dubya has another little gift for the US.

New figures show that the US poverty rate has risen for the fourth year in a row, to 12.9 percent. That means that about one in eight people in the US is living below the poverty line.

And, in case you were happy that you dodged that particular bullet, here's a figure that affects more of us: the growth in the median household income has stalled. (We suppose that Dubya will go on TV to brag that it's not actually dropping.)

Via AP.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:20 AM | Get permalink



Now we see why Pat Robertson wanted Venezuela's president killed.

He's a dangerous man — especially if you're an oil company with windfall profits at stake.

With the prospect of very high heating oil prices in the US this winter, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez says that his country is ready to provide low-cost heating oil to poor, elderly, and unemployed people in the US.

"In the United States, there are also many poor people and every year an important number (of them) freeze to death. Therefore, we're going to offer them heating fuel up to 40% cheaper" [than the going market rate] said the controversial leader during his weekly Sunday radio and television program "Alo Presidente!"

Chavez has the means to fulfill his promise: Venezuela's government oil company owns the Citgo in the US. The low-cost heating oil will make its way to consumers via Citgo's US oil refineries and its extensive network of gas stations.

Via MercoPress.

More: According to this Reuters story, Venezuela will sell up to 66,000 barrels per day of heating fuel to poor people in the US. This is 10 percent of Citgo's daily production. Distribution details are still being worked out.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink



Ooooooh, shiny!

Cats in sinks. Lots of them.


Just a cat in a sink

From the looks of the photo above, it appears that our kitty Medea has been moonlighting in someone else's sink.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink



Monday, August 29

Bits & pieces.


| | Posted by Magpie at 11:33 AM | Get permalink



Do you want fries with that?

The sign below was spotted in front of a butcher shop in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the hours before Hurricane Katrina's arrival.


Katrina's burger

[Photo: Robert Terrell]

We hope the sign and shop are still intact, and that the butcher and photographer are safe.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:06 AM | Get permalink



Speaking of kidnappings in Iraq.

Reuters is demanding that the US military release one of its photojournalists. Haider Kadhem was arrested by US forces after he and a sound technician drove into a gun battle. The technician, Waleed Khaled, was shot dead by a US sniper. Kadhem was 'merely' wounded in the back.

"Reuters demands the immediate release of Haider Kadhem," Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger said.

"We fail to understand what reason there can be for his continued detention more than a day after he was the innocent victim of an incident in which his colleague was killed."

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Whetstone, a military spokesman, said: "He is being questioned by our investigating officer."

He said there were "inconsistencies" in Kadhem's statements and officers were looking into "events that led up to the incident." No military investigator, however, had contacted Reuters, whose senior staff offered a full account of the assignment on which they dispatched the journalists shortly before they were shot.

US authorities have refused to tell Reuters or Kadhem's relatives where he is being held or which unit is holding him.

Reporters without Borders has additional details on the shooting incident here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:36 AM | Get permalink



Silencing another critic.

A vocal critic of the US military's decision to give Halliburton a no-bid contract for billions of dollars worth of work in Iraq has been fired by her Pentagon superior.

According to Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, he removed Bunnatine Greenhouse from her post as the US Army Corps of Engineers top procurement official because of bad performance reviews. Bunnatine's lawyer, however, says that she was fired because of her record of blowing the whistle on sweetheart contracts such the one awarded to Halliburton. Bunnatine has said publicly that the Halliburton deal invovlved 'the most blatant and improper abuse' of the contract process that she had seen in 20 years of government work.

Greenhouse has been the Army Corps' top procurement official since 1997. Then-commander Gen. Joe N. Ballard has said he wanted Greenhouse — a black woman — to provide a jolt to the clubby, old-boys' network that had long dominated the contracting process at the Corps.

Since then, Greenhouse has developed a reputation among those in both government and industry as being a stickler for the rules. To her critics, she's a foot-dragging, inflexible bureaucrat. To her supporters, she's been a staunch defender of the taxpayers' dime.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Greenhouse objected to a decision to give a five-year, no-bid contract to KBR for putting out the oil fires that Pentagon officials believed retreating Iraqi troops would set as the United States invaded. KBR had earlier been hired to write the plans for how that work would be conducted.

When the time came to award the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, the terms stipulated that the contractor had to have knowledge of KBR's plan. KBR was the only contractor deemed eligible. Normally, contractors that prepare cost estimates and plans are excluded from bidding on the work that arises from those plans.

When superiors overruled her objections to awarding the contract to KBR without competition, she recorded her concerns by writing next to her signature on the contract a warning that the length of the deal could convey the perception that limited competition was intended.

As Greenhouse became more vocal internally, she said she was increasingly excluded from decisions and shunned by her bosses.

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:26 AM | Get permalink



Iraq is now the deadliest war ever — for journalists.

According to Reporters without Borders, 56 journalists or assistants have been killed since the war in Iraq began, with the deaths occurring at a much faster rate than during the Vietnam War.

While 63 journalists lost their lives in Vietnam, those deaths came over a period of 20 years. The 56 deaths in Iraq have happened in less than 3 years.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:12 AM | Get permalink



Hurricane Katrina may just now be hitting the Louisiana coast...

... but the storm is already having an effect on oil prices, which briefly surged to over US$ 70 per barrel. According to the BBC, some industry experts are worried that it could break the US $100 level in the near future.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:56 AM | Get permalink



Sunday, August 28

Busy busy busy.

Those GOP budget-slashers in the US Congress have a whole raft of lovely bills coming the nation's way by the middle of next month:

  • The Senate Finance Committee is looking to slash Medicaid by as much as US $10 billion. This, of course, is at the same time that many GOP-controlled legislatures are trimming state medical assisance rolls, too.

  • The Senate Agriculture Committee wants to cut farm price supports by US $2.4 billion over the next six years, along with s US $600 million cut in food stamps.

  • Another Senate bill will eliminate US $7 billion in federal funding for student loans. (No student left behind, eh?)

On top of those budget bills, energy committes in both house are readying legislation that will open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Isn't life wonderful in the US of A?

Via Washington Post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:07 PM | Get permalink



Hurricane Katrina.

It's a category 5 storm now, and is one of the strongest on record. And it's heading straight for New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina

[Image: GOES]

Like several other bloggers, we're wondering how well Louisiana is going to handle Katrina's aftermath with a considerable chunk of its National Guard members in Iraq.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:08 PM | Get permalink



Those damn secularists are at it again.

Or that's what a fundamentalist Christian education group is claiming, anyway.

The LA Times reports on a lawsuit against the University of California, which wants the court to order UC to give credit for high school science courses the embrace the creationist worldview. The suit was filed by the Association of Christian Schools International, which claims that the university's year-old policy of refusing to give credit for classes that use textbooks that challenge the reality of evolution discriminates against 'Christian' schools and attempts to secularize the schools. The suit specifically objects to UC's refusal to accept courses that use science books pubished by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books.

The Questionable Authority went looking to see just what was in some of these books, and found some interesting stuff in this 10th-grade biology text:

Biology for Christian Schools is a textbook for Bible-believing high-school students. Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling. This book was not written for them....

The people who prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second...If...at any point God's Word is not put first, the authors apologize....

The same encyclopedia article may state that the grasshopper evolved 300 million years ago. You may find a description of some insect that the grasshopper supposedly evolved from and a description of the insects that scientists say evolved from the grasshopper. You may even find a "scientific" explanation of the biblical locust (grasshopper) plague in Egypt. These statements are conclusions based on "supposed science." If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them....

After Pasteur's swan-necked flask experiment and thousands of other experiments supporting biogenesis, do people today still believe in spontaneous generation? Yes. Anyone who believes in evolution believes that spontaneous generation has occurred. ... If they can create life, they think they can support their belief in life's beginning without God....

The idea that life comes from similar life is important. God created humans and all of the other kinds of organisms with the ability to reproduce after their own kind (Gen. 1:12, 21, 25, 28); therefore, humans reproduce humans, oak trees reproduce oak trees, and cats reproduce cats. The idea of all life forms descending from a common ancestor cell that originated from non-living chemicals is absurd.

And these all come from what's supposed to be a science text, not a religious tract.

We took a quick run through the catalog for the Bob Jones University Press and found these additional gems:
  • The description of a grade 7–12 book on the fossil record:

    A discussion of the evidence from the fossil record, which supports the biblical view regarding the Flood and disproves the evolutionary view.

  • From the introduction to a text on space and earth science:

    The answers to important questions such as those above can be found only in Scripture. It seems proper, then, that whenever you are faced with a question you should first find out what the Bible has to say about it. If the Bible speaks clearly onthe issue, then you have your answer. If it is silent, then you must use the reasoning ability that God has given you to find an answer that is consistent with what Scripture says.

It looks to us like UC has good reasons to be leery of courses that use texts that contain stuff like what we've just presented. And it looks to us that the ACSI's claim of religious discrimination is no more than a smokescreen for yet another attempt to get the fundamentalist Christian worldview into all schools, not just the 'Christian' ones.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:53 AM | Get permalink



Bits & pieces.

  • You know that 'grassroots' group that's coordinating the pro-Dubya demonstrations in Crawford, Texas? The one called Move America Forward?

    Via What Really Happened, we find out that the group appears to be the creation of a PR firm in San Francisco called Russo Marsh & Rogers. To even less surprise, the firm is tightly connected to the Republicans, having (for example) run the recall campaign that put
    Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governor's mansion in California.

    And, strangely enough, all of the WHOIS data that was used to connect the PR firm to the Move America Forward has been changed quite recently, making it difficult to spot the connection.

    [Thanks to Suburban Guerilla for the tip.]

  • Cat and Girl ponder the nature of media.

    A drunken librarian?

    [For more Cat and Girl, go here.]

  • Mark Kleiman posts on how the US Justice Department has given Georgia permission to bar people from voting if they don't present a driver's license at the polls.

    The true purpose of the law, and its certain effect, is to reduce the number of poor, elderly, black and otherwise Democratic-leaning voters.

    Georgia has 159 counties, but only 56 places to get a driver's license, none of which is in Atlanta or in any of the six counties with the highest proportions of African-Americans in their population. Under the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department rejected a less restrictive law.

    Under the Reagan Administration, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department was widely referred to as the "State's Rights Division." That ugly tradition seems to have been revived.

  • More media business as usual, as the press covers [or doesn't cover] two rapes. [Via I Blame the Patriarchy]

  • Cartoonist Ted Rall shows us the consequences of staying the course. [Via The Sideshow]

    Staying the proverbial course

    [You'll find more of Rall's cartoons here.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:35 AM | Get permalink




Liar, liar, pants on fire!


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