June 30, 2004

August 31, 2005

  • BILLION DOLLAR WEB COMPANIES TO NEW ORLEANS, "DROP DEAD." InformationWeek, "Web Reacts To Hurricane Katrina" :

    "But mainstream Web sites that had jumped to pull in money for the tsunami victims showed no evidence of repeating it here in the U.S. for Katrina's. Amazon.com, which raised more than $14 million for the American Red Cross in January via a donation link on its home page, didn't have one as of mid-day Monday. Nor did Google, Yahoo, MSN, or eBay, all of which hustled earlier in the year to put up donation links on their portals. (Google slapped up an 'Information about Hurricane Katrina' link on its Spartan home page, but that led to news sources and stories.)" Makes you ask just who are the people running these web cash machines, "unfeeling a**holes" [See comments] or just "differently clued?"


  • bushcontrol.gif
  • THEY CAME. THEY WADED. THEY DID A LITTLE SHOPPING: California Conservative -- Louisiana Looters: All Stocked Up And Nowhere To Go
  • THEY'RE LOCKING AND LOADING IN NEW ORLEANS. Yet again we see why, when government is slow to act, or will not act, or does not act in the interests of the people, why the 2nd Amendment was a very good idea.
    NOLA.com: Times-Picayune Breaking News Weblog : "Police regained control at about 3 p.m., after clearing the store with armed patrol. One shotgun-toting Third District detective described the looting as 'ferocious.'

    'And it’s going to get worse as the days progress,' he said.

    In Uptown, one the few areas that remained dry, a bearded man patrolled Oak Street near the boarded-up Maple Leaf Bar, a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder. The owners of a hardware store sat in folding chairs, pistols at the ready.

    Uptown resident Keith Williams started his own security patrol, driving around in his Ford pickup with his newly purchased handgun. Earlier in the day, Williams said he had seen the body of a gunshot victim near the corner of Leonidas and Hickory streets.

    'What I want to know is why we don’t have paratroopers with machine guns on every street,' Williams said.

    Like-minded Art Depodesta sat on the edge of a picnic table outside Cooter Brown’s Bar, a chrome shotgun at his side loaded with red shells.

    'They broke into the Shell station across the street,' he said. 'I walked over with my 12-gauge and shot a couple into the air.'

    The looters scattered, but soon after, another man appeared outside the bar in a pickup truck armed with a pistol and threatened Depodesta.

    'I told him, ‘Listen, I was in the Army and I will blow your ass off,’' Depodesta said. 'We’ve got enough trouble with the flood.'

    The man sped away.

    'You know what sucks,' Depodesta said. 'The whole U.S. is looking at this city right now, and this is what they see.'

    In the Bywater, a supply store sported spray-painted signs reading 'You Loot, I Shoot' and 'You Bein Watched.' A man seated nearby with a rifle in his lap suggested it was no idle threat. At the Bywater studio of Dr. Bob, the artist known for handpainted 'Be Nice or Leave' signs, a less fanciful sentiment was painted on the wall: 'Looters Will Be Shot. Dr. Bob.' "

  • EDITORS MUNCH ON MENTAL MELTDOWN AT NYT AND WAPO. Alas, by the end of August in New York and DC, the cities' psychotherapists have been on vacation for a full month and the strain is showing at the major newspapers' editorial squads. Mental stress, in these rarified realms of noxious negativity, always must manifest itself in Bush Derangement Syndrome. The current proof lies in the inability of either paper's editorial writers to pen a paragraph without blaming Bush. It would be laughable if it weren't so sad to watch what had to have been a few second-rate minds of the first water, drown in the rising floodwaters of their own bile.

    NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL. New Orleans in Peril: But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. TRANSLATION: "We have this compulsion to go postal whenever the thought of Bush enters our mind. Is this really crazy, Doctor?"

    WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL.Katrina's Staggering Blow: President Bush, who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early to tend to the fallout from Katrina. TRANSLATION: "Why isn't Bush driving a Humvee in Baghdad, and is it significant that Joan of Arc heard voices too, Doctor?"

    Pointer via Amy Ridenour
  • CAPTIONS COURAGEOUS: An AP captions disconnect shows up with blacks "looting" grocery stores while whites "find" bread and soda at a grocery store.
  • A LIBERAL "PAT ROBERTSON" MOMENT. South L.A. Pastor Says Hurricane Katrina is Revenge for Southern White Supremacy: "Reverend Lewis E. Logan II, senior pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, addressed the crowd at an anti-LAPD rally he hosted in response to Nation of Islam Minister Tony Muhammad’s alleged beating at the hands of police. The reverend began what appeared to be a prayer for the victims of the disaster – but then veered wildly, suggesting that Katrina is a Black woman seeking retribution on the South for its history of racism. … it is no a coincidence that it is exactly 50 years from the time of (inaudible) lynching and murder. That it is not a coincidence that the storm’s name is a sister. Katrina. For she represents the collective cries of mothers who have lost their sons (applause) to the brutality (louder applause) and the murderous grip of this racist white supremacist American culture (frenzied applause)."
  • OH, THE LITERATE HUMANITY! As untold numbers of bodies continue to float around the New Orleans area, and as the city deals with looting and evacuation, the ever inane mouth organ of book publishers, "Publishers Weekly" moans Bookstores Hit Hard by Katrina.
  • ONE IRAQ CITY SOLVES TERRORIST PROBLEM: Battle at the Border : "'We decided, either we force them out of the city or kill them.'
    - Sheikh Muhammed Mahallawi, leader of the Albu Mahal tribe, on fighting al Qaeda"
  • IRAQ CAPITOL JUST LIVES WITH TERRORIST PROBLEM: More Than 600 Killed in Baghdad Stampede : "BAGHDAD, Aug. 31 -- Rumors of a suicide bomber helped set off a stampede Wednesday among tens of thousands of Shiite Muslim pilgrims on a Tigris River bridge, killing at least 637 people as panicked worshipers hurled themselves off the bridge or trampled others underfoot, Iraqi authorities and survivors said."

    Seems to me that this classic blood-feud will, at some point, have to be settled by the Iraqis themselves, by going door to door.

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    Posted by Vanderleun at June 30, 2004 10:40 AM | TrackBack
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  • Comments:

    AMERICAN DIGEST HOME
    "It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

    Amazon figured out which way the wind was blowing, so to speak. They have a donation page now for Katrina victims.

    Posted by: Juliette at August 31, 2005 6:20 PM

    You sure ring that bell called "traitors" pretty easily, G-rod. One of these days, you're gonna bend that bell and then it won't ring. Maybe declining to help storm-ravaged people is seedy, scummy, shows a lack of human compassion, whatever -- but in what way does it become "Treason?" and in what way do these people become "Traitors?"
    And then what would you call the "Columbia Christians for Life" who not only decline to help but publicly state (first) that Katrina hit LA because of the 10 Abortion clinics in the state, and when that wouldn't wash, then said it was because of the planned Southern Decadence Labor Day Party (Gay-theme), to prevent it. In other words, too bad, but you people deserved it.
    Lack of compassion is not necessarily a characteristic of "liberals" or "traitors." "Unfeeling Assholes" would do fine as a descriptive.

    Posted by: Saintperle at September 1, 2005 9:17 AM

    You've got a point. I'll substitute yours in.

    As for the bell, there will, I fear, come a day when my ringing seems only faint and distant in comparison.

    Posted by: Gerard Van Der Leun at September 1, 2005 10:11 AM

    Other aspects of the Bush-bashing aside for the moment, anyone who can describe August in Crawford, Texas as an "idyll" with a straight face may already be beyond the reach of psychiatric help.

    Posted by: jaed at September 1, 2005 4:31 PM
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