September 30, 2005

San Francisco Builds A Ski Jump

This event reminds me of something Annikus Gibbon once wrote:

And the great Emperor, deaf to the woes of his people, said unto them, 'lo, let us build a great ski slope in the middle of the village, and let them jump off it with skis, and afterward, they shall have sourdough bread, and circuses.'
San Francisco is falling apart, but hey, at least they got a ski jump.

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September 26, 2005

ABC Endorses Hillary For 2008

Am i the only one who sees ABC's new weekly Hillary propaganda show for what it is? They even have a fake blog to promote the thing.

Apparently President Allen is supposed to be an Independent, who was picked for VP to balance out a Republican ticket. The fake blog describes her as a "centrist." The plan is clear: get middle-of-the-roaders used to the idea of a female president in time for Hillary's run.

i won't watch that show with Emelio Estevez as president. But i'm a big fan of both Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland, so i'll have to give this propaganda reel a chance tomorrow night. Hopefully it won't be too sickening.

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September 19, 2005

Broussard's Soundbite Debunked

It was still one of the most difficult things to watch in the history of tv news. But the finger pointing it spawned needs to be revised.

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September 10, 2005

Dad's Words Of Wisdom #417 & 417A (Corrolary)

"The purpose of union activism used to be to protect the worker. But now, the primary purpose of unions has become the weakening various target institutions.

"The Democratic party has become nothing more than a such a union, which chooses as its target the United States of America."

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September 08, 2005

Open Gun Nut Comment Questions

Here's two questions i've been wondering about. i bow to your expertise, so please leave any thoughts you might have in the comments.

1. In the event of an extended period of civil unrest, when finding ammunition might become an issue, is it better to have a gun that shoots a common caliber of ammunition like 9mm, or is it better to have something that will use a less common caliber. Think of a donut shop. Normally, you'll always be able to get glazed donuts, but after the morning rush, maybe all you'd find are those disgusting brown crullers that nobody likes.

2. In the city, is it a good idea to advertise gun ownership with a sticker or say, posting a particularly good silhouette in your garage? Would this cause bad people to stay away, or would they simply watch more carefully for their chance to break in and try to steal your gun when you're out?

i will be blogging lightly for the next few days, but i'll check in to read. In the meantime, don't forget to give what you can for hurricane relief.

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September 07, 2005

Great News!

American hostage Roy Hallums is free! Details at Jawa Report.

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September 06, 2005

A Subtle Kind Of Bigotry

It's a delicate subject, and i try not to write much about it. A white person always runs the risk of being called a racist, no matter what they say. Usually it happens when white people say that charges of racism are exagerrated or without merit. In the case of this post, i should be safe, because i plan to be the one making the charges.

i've noticed a special kind of subtle bigotry, very cleverly disguised. The folks who exhibit this new bigotry probably don't even realize their bias, and they'd probably deny it vehemently. The purveyors of the new bigotry that i'm talking about are mostly in the media and the academy.

A more obvious example that has gotten play recently is the infamous looting/finding controversy that arose from the troubles in New Orleans.

[T]wo news service photographs . . . showed persons wading through chest-deep water in the New Orleans area with supplies taken from grocery stores. Many viewers noticed the seeming disparity of the darker-skinned subject's being described in the accompanying caption as 'looting a grocery store,' while the lighter-skinned subjects were described as 'finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.'
Unlike many on my side of the political spectrum, i find the AFP's description of the "lighter-skinned" subjects as "finders," rather than "looters" to be pretty indefensible. Yes, i know there were two different news agencies involved. But the choice of words was a conscious decision, and the photographer's rationalizations ring sort of hollow, at least to my ears.

kwest.jpgStill, i've noticed another type of more subtle bigotry lately. It's the condescending "some of my best friends are black" kind of bigotry that Time magazine showed, when they called Kanye West the "smartest man in pop music," and put him on the cover of their magazine.

Besides trying to show how hip they were, Time magazine's editors were also asking for approval with their backhanded compliment. Translated, what they meant to say was: "Look how non-racist we are. See, we think a black man can be smart too." Never mind that they picked a complete moron for their cover, as we saw last Friday. (And i'm making a totally non-partisan, objective observation. If articulation counts for anything, as the anti-Bush crowd continually tells us, Kanye is as dumb as a stump.)

A more obvious example to me is the way people in the media and academia so often refer to Martin Luther King, Jr. as Dr. King. When was the last time you heard a white guy with a Ph.D. referred to as Doctor so-and-so. You never hear anyone say Dr. Woodrow Wilson, for instance, and he was president of Princeton. Or how about Dr. Einstein? Or even Dr. Gingrich?

But you always hear people say "Doctor" King, which sounds so condescending. First of all there should be no question about MLK's intellect (and save your plagiarism comments for someone else. Just read "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" if you want proof.) But just like with Time Magazine and Kanye West, it's another way of saying "See, we think black people can be smart too."

It's not a question of respect. It's patronizing. MLK may have earned the right to have been called by his title, but i've yet to meet the Ph.D. who likes being called "doctor" outside of a formal lecture auditorium. In fact, King's friends called him Mike. i liked it better when the media called him Reverend, but of course now that's taboo because it implies that he might have believed in God.

But that's another kind of bigotry for another post.

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September 03, 2005

Finally!

Finally.

finally.jpg

Thank God for the U.S. Military. The politicians and the bureaucrats can go to hell.

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September 02, 2005

Get On The Bus

A real American hero, twenty year old Jabbar Gibson, who took it upon himself to grab the keys to a school bus and drive a busload of folks 13 hours to safety.

thebus.jpg

Gibson drove the bus from the flooded Crescent City, picking up stranded people, some of them infants, along the way. Some of those on board had been in the Superdome, among those who were supposed to be evacuated to Houston on more than 400 buses Wednesday and today. They couldn't wait.

The group of mostly teenagers and young adults pooled what little money they had to buy diapers for the babies and fuel for the bus.

. . .

'I feel good to get out of New Orleans,' said Demetrius Henderson, who got off the bus with his wife and three children. Many of those around him alternated between excited, cranky and nervous, clutching suitcases or plastic garbage bags of clothes.

They looked as bedraggled as their grueling ride would suggest: 13 hours on the commandeered bus driven by a 20-year-old man. Watching bodies float by as they tried to escape the drowning city. Picking up people along the way. Three stops for fuel. Chugging into Reliant Park, only to be told initially that they could not spend the night.

. . .

After arriving at the Astrodome at about 10:30 p.m., however, they initially were refused entry by Reliant officials who said the aging landmark was reserved for the 23,000 people being evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

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

. . .

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

God bless the man.

From the Houston Chronicle.

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Bush's Unfortunate Words Of Encouragement

This morning, President Bush gave what has to be his worst speech ever. And that's saying something. i've consistently criticized the president for his maddening inarticulateness, and today he said exactly the wrong things in exactly the wrong tone.

i understand the general rule of thumb in a situation like this. Presidents usually try to remain optimistic, and sound upbeat yet determined. That was exactly the type of approach that worked the week of 9/11. But after the horror of the last four days, the time for the standard speech template is over.

Bush's tone needed to recognize the reality of the situation on the ground now. The folks in the hell that was once New Orleans don't really give a flying fuck about Trent Lott's porch. They're not thinking about the rebuilding effort or whether the city will ever "be great again." They're worried about water, food, and whether they're going to get raped or killed when the sun goes down tonight.

In short, they're worried about survival, and they're understandably pissed at the government. Instead of recognizing that, the president tried to blow smoke up their collective asses. He should have let them know he was as impatient for results as they are.

Here's the lowpoint of that awful speech.

We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)
If i was down there, one of the victims, i'd be saying "Fuck Trent Lott, what about my house?!"
Again, I want to thank you all for -- and, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 -- (applause) -- they're working 24 hours a day.

Again, my attitude is, if it's not going exactly right, we're going to make it go exactly right. If there's problems, we're going to address the problems. And that's what I've come down to assure people of. And again, I want to thank everybody.

Here, i'd be livid. A "heck of a job?!" What an idiotic thing to say, factually, politically, in every way. With all due respect, President Bush is not the one who gets to make that judgment, and it's way too early to say what kind of job "Brownie" has done. But it's not looking good Brownie, that's for sure.

And just so you know, i'm a huge Bush fan.

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What If It Happened In Your Town?

Here's some advice from Confederate Yankee on what we now know should be an essential item in every disaster readiness kit.

Linky thanks to the ever-vigilant Publicola.

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Couple Of Thoughts Before i Run Off To Class

First, read The Anchoress every day. Here's an excerpt from her post yesterday.

The sad people who sit around like self-gratifying monkeys, constantly working their hate, working it and working it, are longing for release - for an orgasm that can only occur upon the utter political, personal and (for some) physical destruction of a human being named George W. Bush. Until they have that destruction, and that orgasm, nothing else matters. Nothing. And nothing can be seen by them, except through the prism of that hateful desire.

. . .

Hate tends to consume the hater, and I read some of the remarks some folks are making and think…are you so in love with your hate that you cannot let it go long enough to say 'let us band together and put politics aside, for now…' because this really is not the time to drive political daggers - it is not the time to try to figure out if the traditionally Democratic leadership in this state or that contributed to a city’s unpreparedness and vulnerability. It is not the time to sit and seethe with resentment or guffaw in anticipatory glee about how 'this will sink the Repugs in ‘06!'

Second, this disaster should be a lesson to all of us how misplaced our reliance on the government has become. It's ironic that the very people who didn't trust the government when it told them to evacuate before the storm hit are now living in hell because they are waiting for the government to come and save them. And the government is just not there. i make fun of Libertarians from time to time, but Katrina has proved them right in one thing. We must take responsibility for our own survival.

Trivia question: Name a disaster of any magnitude in which the government has not been criticized for responding too slowly. Hell, we had a building fire in Sacramento a few weeks back and the news for the next few days was all about why the local fire department took too long to arrive.

It's not just that state, local and federal agencies have been incompetent. The scope of the disaster would have made even a perfectly planned response seem incompetent. By way of thought experiment, here's a small example. Where are the busses to evacuate people from the Superdome? Flooded, by the hundreds in a parking lot. Why can't we fix them? All the mechanics are gone and there's no electricity. Why can't we get enough busses there from outside? Roads are flooded and destroyed. What looks like an adequate number of busses suddenly is inadequate as word gets out that busses are coming and even more people flock to the Superdome.

Another important lesson: the idea of a citizen militia as originally envisioned by the writers of the Second Amendment is not, repeat NOT, outdated.

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