I’m nowhere near as good at this as Scout is, but this seemed to be the easiest way to show you the range of information we gathered while we were down there, travelling through neighborhoods that weren’t flooded (in which the beauty of the city was evident and moving), places that were beginning to rebuild, and places where it looked like the storm was yesterday. These are all photos taken by me or Mr. A. A. Continue reading NOLA Images
I had ready a nice long post on the delusions the American people belabor under with respect to New Orleans … and it went away when CBS.com tried to install RealPlayer on my computer, Mozilla shuddered and revolted and my entire online world shut itself off. Begone, auto-install demons! As Jesus says, “Save early and save often!” No fear, I’ll reproduce the whole thing from memory. Until then, here’s a funny that may be applied to the Corps’ broken floodwalls, FEMA trailers and our famous blue roof tarps. Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White … Continue reading How Government Fixes Things
Wins the Internet. A. Continue reading This Idea
Fox decided this week that he needed to get in on the sick action, too, so he promptly turned up with a tumor that had to be removed on Wednesday night. He spent yesterday in the animal hospital, but he’s home today with a hopeful prognosis, accompanied by four types of medication and a seriously pissy attitude. We’ve been instructed to give him no treats at all so as not to upset his stomach, but he’s sure, if he wanders around the floor long enough, he’ll find one: A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging: Fox Edition
The joke about Joey, of course, was that he was turned up to eleven. He was everything a ferret should be, cranked up to ridiculous levels. Ferrets like to chase. Joey could run the stairs of our apartment building, up to the third floor and down to the basement, until Mr. A and I were both red-faced and gasping, and then he’d turn around and look at us like, “Is that all you got, punks?” Ferrets like to hide things. Joey would steal only one of my black ballet slippers, the ones I wear around the house, and stash it … Continue reading Thanks, Joe
I’m sure a lot of you get your New Orleans news via the WaPO, NYT or even nola.com. Please don’t. Most of the national news media clowns love to visit Bourbon Street for two days (or not visit at all) and patronize, cluck in disapproval and kick a struggling city while it’s down, with the occasional nod to real progress. Meanwhile, the local Times-Pravda simply wags its head up and down to our current political cabal and paints flowers, stars and unicorns in the place of real news, with the occasional Breaking Story that is regurgitated hat to most of … Continue reading The Real Value Of Information Is When It’s Out There
Hey, Dana, when one wants to give the impression of smallness while talking about lost evidence, one does not employ the word “universe” every 5 seconds. Q Is there any concern that the loss of White House emails through outside email providers might involve a violation of law? MS. PERINO: Well, I think one of the things to step back and take a look at is that we are talking about a very small universe of emails. … we don’t have an idea on the universe of the number of emails that were lost. I went through the small slice … Continue reading The White House Found A New Word, Isn’t That Cute?
Spocko commented on my last post: Great points and I think the media need to be reminded of it and challenged when they patronize or hold preconceived notions that are incorrect. (Like Media Matters does for conservatives, you can do for Anti-Nola bias) He is absolutely right and that’s a media gorilla afewofus are working towards. Writing for Huffington Post or TPM and giving periodical interviews to NPR, OpenSource and CNN is all well and good, but it’s just another news segment or section of the ePaper within the rules of this quick-turnover news factory. New Orleans needs its own … Continue reading NOLA Matters
Why do I get the feeling that somewhere there is some poor slob(s) telling his FEMA supervisor he honestly thought MREs were indestructible… As many as 6 million prepared meals stockpiled near potential victims of the 2006 hurricane season spoiled in the Gulf Coast heat last summer when the Federal Emergency Management Agency ran short of warehouse and refrigeration space, according to agency officials. In all, hundreds of truckloads of food worth more than $40 million are being thrown away or scavenged for unspoiled contents to be offered to domestic hunger-relief groups, FEMA officials said. Most of the meals were … Continue reading As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!
Atrios culls this point from Swampland comments regarding DoD Secretary Gates’ anger at the leak of the troop extension announcement… The deployment extension was likely supposed to be announced after Bush had vetoed the Democrats’ spending bill so that he could try to claim it was their fault. I was thinking along these lines regarding my post yesterday on Walter Isaacson saying that Bush “understands” the hardship the 10% FEMA match was placing on Gulf Coast recovery and that he would “probably” drop it. Yesterday I asked what is Bush waiting for…the veto? I was thinking in procedural terms but … Continue reading Veto mileage?
From The Corner… the Rutger’s women’s basketball team [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I’m not rallying behind them either, JPod. How refreshing would it have been if when asked about the comments, the team, or a bright young woman spokesman among them said, “Who? We don’t listen to Don Imus and we don’t really care what a nasty shock jock has to say — whether it be about us, politics, or anything else. We’ve got a game to play on Friday and that’s what we’re worried about right now, to be honest.” Yoo Hoo Kathryn oh Kathryn…Imus’s remarks came AFTER the game, … Continue reading When the made up quotes don’t even makes sense
Foti punts… BATON ROUGE – The question of whether former U.S. Sen. John Breaux will run for governor remained up in the air Friday after the state attorney general declined to issue an opinion on the issue of Breaux’s legal qualifications. A statement from Attorney General Charles Foti said “the issue of whether Mr. Breaux has remained a Louisiana citizen for the preceding five years is an issue of fact, and one that appears certain to be litigated. Due to the restrictions imposed by law as well as this office’s policies and historical practice, I must refrain from rendering an … Continue reading On Breaux’s qualification
More Brian Williams on bloggers via Think Progress… “If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading? What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring? This is societal, it’s cultural, I can’t change it. We should maybe pause to think about it. Because like everybody else, I can burn an hour on YouTube or Perez Hilton without breaking a sweat. And what have I just not paid attention to that 10 years ago I would’ve just consumed?” Willie wanted to read today’s Obsession with the GAO… But noooo some blogger made him miss it … Continue reading Brian Williams Cat Blogging
Everytime I go to New Orleans to blog…the first time…the second time…this recent third time…I am dogged by the thought that I’m forgeting something. Thanks to Brian Williams I finally remembered it’s my freaking bathrobe! “You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years” —Brian Williams, anchor of the “NBC Nightly News,” speaking before New York … Continue reading Brian Williams jars my mind
I am saddened to hear this. I loved his work. Kurt Vonnegut whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island. Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz. My favorite Vonnegut works were Cat’s Cradle and Welcome to the Monkey House. Yours? Continue reading Rest In Peace: Kurt Vonnegut
Oyster at Your Right Hand Thief has a great post on Bush’s delaying of restoring the wetlands of South Louisiana and rebuilding better levees in New Orleans. As Oyster says, Bush is just running out the clock… Just over a year ago, a conservative Republican who attends my church took out a quarter page ad in the Times Picayune, and published an open letter to the people of New Orleans. He urged everyone to vote in favor of consolidating the levee boards. He said he was convinced “in his heart” that if New Orleanians demonstrated their willingness to reform the … Continue reading “Unhelpful”
The GAO’s Director of Strategic Issues, Stanley J. Czerwinski, provided testimony today on Gulf Coast Rebuilding to the Senate’s Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. (Pdf here) The major finding, not surprisingly, is that in spite of Bush’s highly touted $110 billion for rebuilding very little has actually gone to anything other than immediate emergency needs. From the testimony… A substantial portion of this assistance was directed to emergency assistance and meeting short-term needs arising from these hurricanes, such as relocation assistance, emergency housing, immediate levee repair, and debris removal efforts.Consequently, a relatively small … Continue reading Scout’s Obsession with the GAO: Not a Whole Lotta Rebuilding Going On
CNN just announced it. UPDATE:More here Continue reading CBS radio Dumps Imus
I’ve had this on my “having a crap day, feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck” iTunes playlist for a while, and it seemed apropos: A. Continue reading You Barely Know Your ABCs — Please
Don’t you think? (Partial caption: In this photo provided by his daughter, Edie Vonnegut, writer Kurt Vonnegut is seen during the summer of 2006 in Barnstable, Mass., on Cape Cod.) Continue reading Perfect
I saw Walter Isaacson last night on Charlie Rose. He is Vice Chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority and he spoke a bit about the recovery in New Orleans. Isaacson alluded to some inside knowledge that Bush will probably drop the 10% FEMA match. And we have to pay 10% to match what the federal government pays. So far we’ve generated 2.6 million documents. Every traffic light, every you know fire hydrant, you have to document both for HUD and for FEMA how you’re going to do that match. That is just burying us and if we could get out … Continue reading So what does LRA’s Isaacson know about Bush and the 10% match?
Willie B Bienville Starringin ~Flop FlopFlop~ Variety says–“You would think most cats would not take on a project with Flop written all over it. You would be wrong. Most cats are not Willie B Bienville.” (music: Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing) (99 seconds) Continue reading Kitty Video Blogging
Link: When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, the American economy was on its knees. Thousands were poor, homeless, unemployed, without hope. They wanted someone to blame; they wanted someone to answer for their fate. And this is what Roosevelt told them: “If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common … Continue reading Columnwhoring: Can We Dig Up FDR And Run Him Again?
Biden: McCain wrote that the president’s strategy is beginning to show results but that most Americans don’t know it because the media cover the bad news, not the good news. Of course, reporting any news in Iraq is an extraordinary act of bravery, given the dangers journalists must navigate every day. But the fact is, virtually every “welcome development” McCain cited has been reported, including the purported anti-al-Qaeda alliance with Sunni sheikhs in Anbar, the establishment of joint U.S.-Iraqi security stations in Baghdad and the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to go to ground — for now. And here’s something that’s … Continue reading Good News
In last night’s dream, Kurt Vonnegut died. I woke up with a start to find that the radio was still on and he is indeed gone. Player Piano followed by Cat’s Cradle, scout, those are my Vonnegut favorites. He went after a full life (and head of hair) and gave us the gift of literary protest. Cheers, good sir, thanks for the memories. All the news isn’t bad. Football season is around the corner and my boys have a full schedule ahead of them, replete with three prime-time games and a Christmas weekend showdown against the Chicago Boors (in Chicago, … Continue reading 2007 Packers Schedule Announced
The picture on the left was taken at the tail end of a tour of (flooded and unflooded) New Orleans I gave a visiting friend last weekend. The building that hosts this mural of the famous Iwo Jima flag-raising event lives across the street from our World War II museum and is being torn down as part of the museum expansion. What’s sad is that it was painted by participants of the pre-Katrina Prison Wall Mural Program – a nicely-done piece of New Orleans history is bulldozed away. Even sadder is that the tearing down of the mural reminds me … Continue reading Democracy, Just Not In America
Athenae, you’ve been saying to yourself, I’ve been reading about this Don Imus controversy everywhere. But I feel there’s a lack of real coverage of the nasty, racist pig. I feel a lack in my understanding of the situation. Where can I turn for help? Children, when you suffer, I suffer. I need to respond to you.I need to help: Imus falls short a lot in my opinion, but I see him as a veteran of the broadcasting business, too. I dislike the master race baiters Jackson and Sharpton more. People who have never seen/heard his show probably don’t realize … Continue reading Today on Athenae’s Obsession with the Freepi
From the Times Online Life for ordinary Iraqis is getting worse as they try to live with a poor healthcare system, little electricity, a shortage of drinking water and bodies left lying on the streets in unsanitary conditions, a report by the Red Cross has revealed.SNIP A mother living in Baghdad told the Red Cross that dead bodies were a constant reminder of the conflict. “The most important thing that anyone could do would be to help collect the bodies that line the streets in front of our homes every morning. No one dares touching them,” she said. “For us … Continue reading Worse than ever