Good Karma, Curt

Ken AshfordDisasters, Red Sox & Other SportsLeave a Comment

From the Boston Globe:

Last autumn, Curt Schilling helped the Red Sox win it all. Now, he and his wife, Shonda, are helping a New Orleans family of nine who have lost almost everything.

Moved by the plight of thousands of Gulf Coast residents whose lives were shattered by Hurricane Katrina, the star pitcher and his wife arranged to fly up a family and to put them up in a Boston-area hotel, where the family has been since Saturday.

The Fields family has seven children, four boys and three girls. They are between the ages of 5 and 12. The family fled its New Orleans home just before the storm, with only a few clothes and groceries.

As they realized the scope of the devastation in New Orleans, the Schillings decided to help, and they chose a personal, immediate gesture rather than a simple contribution of money.

”When we realized how many people had nowhere to go, we didn’t just want to make a donation," Shonda Schilling said yesterday.

”We decided we wanted to bring an entire family here and put them up," she added. ”We all need to take care of each other at a time like this."

Condi Thinking About Giving The Silent Treatment To Iran President

Ken AshfordBush & Co., IranLeave a Comment

From AP:

"Iran needs to get a message from the international community that is a unified message," Rice said at a news conference that focused mostly on talks she plans to hold in New York next week during the special session of the U.N. General Assembly.

She said she might say "hello" to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if they come across each other in U.N. corridors.

But that’s it.  Just a "hello".  If he’s lucky. 

Or she could just walk past him, like he’s not even there, and go straight to her locker. 

Or maybe she could have a friend give a "secret love test survey" for Ahmadinejad to fill out in study hall.  But no — he’ll probably be all like "what’s this?" and stuff.  It’s not that Condi doesn’t like him, but she doesn’t like him like him, y’know?

Paranoia Of The Day

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy18 Comments

Flight93memorialThis amuses me to no end.

Take a look at this picture.  It is what the proposed Flight 93 memorial will look like from the air (Flight 93, as you recall, was the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11).

The image-over-substance wingnuts are absolutely freaking out about it.  Why?  Because it’s sorta shaped like a crescent!  You know — the crescent!!  The symbol of Islam!!

Michelle Malkin has a round-up of all the outrages, including my favorite (so far) from hyper-paranoid Charles at Little Green Footballs, who asks: "Is this a coincidence, an example of amazing cluelessness, or something more deliberate?"

Yes, Charles.  It was deliberate.  The planning committee for the memorial, which includes families of the Flight 93 victims, are really just a bunch of closet islamofascists.

Let me see if I can one-up their paranoia.  Wasn’t New Orleans known as the "Crescent City"?  Coincidence?  Seems unlikely.  Maybe that hurricane wasn’t a hurricane, but a clever Bush attack on Islam!  I guess that would explain why Bush was so aloof to the plight New Orleans faced — he didn’t want to interfere with military operations.

Now, to be fair, the Flight 93 Memorial does look like the crescent that you find on many Islamic flags (including the proposed flag for the New Iraq, the nation we screwed up are building as a response to 9/11 . . . which actually makes the memorial design more ironically apropos than many people realize).

But I’m offended by the design for other reasons.  Here’s what the Flight 93 Memorial also looks like:

  1. The letter "C".  Obviously, this is an endorsement of the Clintons.  The design should be reworked so that it is less partisan.
  2. A smile.  There was nothing funny about the fate of Flight 93.  Why besmirch this solemn ground with a feel-good symbol?
  3. A frown.  9/11 was really sad, but do we need to be reminded of that fact?
  4. A chamber pot.  This is just plain offensive.  It sends the message that the victims of Flight 93 were just pieces of shit.
  5. The letter "C" again.  Actually, it looks like the "C" in "Coca-Cola", and it’s the same color.  This is nothing but crass commercialization of a national tragedy.
  6. A fingernail clipping.  This isn’t offensive so much as bizarre.  What were the designers thinking?
  7. The moon.  This would be okay, except that the plane hit the ground in the middle of a sunny day.
  8. A croissant.  Too French.  ‘Nuff said.
  9. The chemical symbol for "Uranium".  This is a bad idea.  It will only serve to make everyone think of "yellowcake" and WMD not being found, and all that stuff.
  10. Charlie Brown’s head.  When designing memorials, you have to think long-term.  This memorial is going to be there for hundreds of years.  Will future generations even know who Charlie Brown was?
  11. A barrette.  You know, the thing that Josie and the Pussycats have in their hair.  Bad idea — see "fingernail clipping" above.  Also, they’re not in fashion, I’m told.  And, if you ask me, "barrette" sounds a little French.
  12. A rainbow.  For the love of all that is good and decent, can’t the gays stop foisting their agenda on the rest of us?

P.S.:  Maybe we should redesign the crescent-shaped wall at the MLK memorial.  And the crescent-shaped U.S. Navy Memorial (that bunch of dirty ragheads!)

“Welcome To Krakow”

Ken AshfordDisastersLeave a Comment

Gulag I’ve been seeing these stories pop up all over the place.  Very disturbing.  Here’s one Oklahoma family’s account of trying to bring food to Katrina victims located in a FEMA Gulag Shelter:

He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.

My son looks at me and mumbles "Welcome to Krakow."

My mother then asked if the churches would be allowed to come to their cabin and conduct services if the occupants wanted to attend. The response was "No ma’am. You don’t understand. Your church no longer owns this building. This building is now owned by FEMA and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. They have it for the next 5 months." This scares my mother who asks "Do you mean they have leased it?" The man replies, "Yes, ma’am…lock, stock and barrel. They have taken over everything that pertains to this facility for the next 5 months."

***

We then lug all food products requiring cooking back to the car. We start unloading our snacks. Mom appeared to have cornered the market in five counties on pop-tarts and apparently that was an acceptable snack so the guy started shoving them under the counter. He said these would be good to tied people over in between their two meals a day. But he tells my mother she must take all the breakfast cereal back. My mother protests that cereal requires no cooking. "There will be no milk, ma’am." My mother points to the huge industrial double-wide refrigerator the church had just purchased in the past year. "Ma’am, you don’t understand…

It could cause a riot."

He then points to the vegetables and fruit. "You’ll have to take that back as well. It looks like you’ve got about 10 apples there. I’m about to bring in 40 men. What would we do then?"

My mother, in her sweet, soft voice says, "Quarter them?"

"No ma’am. FEMA said no…

It could cause a riot. You don’t understand the type of people that are about to come here…."

Emphasis added.  Hat tip: Amanda Marcotte

Bush Incompetency Continues

Ken AshfordBush & Co., DisastersLeave a Comment

If New Orleans is going to get on its feet, the people there are going to need good jobs with decent pay.  It shouldn’t be a problem.  God knows there is plenty of work to be done.

Except . . .

One action Bush did not trumpet publicly drew a quick protest from a leading Democrat. By executive order, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, a move that will allow federal contractors to pay less than the local "prevailing wage" on construction projects.

Rep. George Miller of Martinez, senior Democrat on the House committee that oversees labor law, said the move would allow employers to pay "poverty wages" as they rebuild from the hurricane.

"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives," Miller said in a statement, noting that the prevailing wage for construction in New Orleans was about $9 an hour. "At under $9 an hour, workers certainly won’t be able to rebuild their livelihoods."

The must be doing handsprings in the Halliburton board room.

Freedom – Registration Required

Ken AshfordCourts/LawLeave a Comment

Apparently without any sense of irony, the Pentagon informs us that anyone attending this weekend’s 9/11 "Freedom Walk", a commemorative march to public memorial spaces throughout D.C., must be registered.  "Interlopers" will be arrested.  Boy.

New Orleans 2.0: Richer & Whiter

Ken AshfordDisastersLeave a Comment

That’s what the rich & white New Orleanians want.

The Wall Street Journal:

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it’s still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.

The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city’s Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city’s rich — and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O’Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor’s pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline …

The power elite of New Orleans — whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. — insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out."

Brown’s Padded Bio

Ken AshfordBush & Co., DisastersLeave a Comment

Time Magazine reports:

An investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA.

The weird thing is this: even taking his padded resume at face value, he still wasn’t qualified.

UPDATE:  The New York Times also sheds some snarky light on Brown’s FEMA deputies:

The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.

Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House’s Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience – and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy.

And MSNBC, in an article appropriately subtitled "Agency has suffered ‘brain drain’ since 2001", sums in up thusly:

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

***

[E]xperts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency’s ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities.

"[FEMA] has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed."

I’m no policy expert, but it seems to me that one of the lessons of 9/11 was that we needed to beef up the nation’s ability to respond to disasters, not dumb it down.  Am I crazy for thinking that?

Get Fired Up!

Ken AshfordRed Sox & Other SportsLeave a Comment

For the past seven years, the Boston Red Sox have spent each September trying in vain to catch New York.

Now they get a chance to play with the lead.

Boston begins a big three-game series at Yankee Stadium on Friday night with an opportunity to build a very comfortable cushion over its longtime rival in the AL East.

I know what I’m doing this weekend….

Indifference Foretold

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Remember way back when how republicans got all bent out of shape when a story (later shown to be false) circulated that President Bill Clinton had tied up air traffic because he was getting a five-dollar haircut on an airplane sitting on a runway?

I wonder where the outrage is about this:

Oh the blessed irony.  Last Tuesday, the 30th???  You know, the day all the papers looked like this???  President Bush was in San Diego at the Naval Medical Center, with the intention of the visit to thank medics who aided tsunami victims in Southeast Asia.  Well, not only was he busily ignoring the needs of the people in New Orleans; his little photo op in San Diego was also preventing patients there from receiving the medical care they need.

The Naval Medical Center in San Diego’s Balboa Park was shut down to accommodate a visit by President George W. Bush Aug. 30, RAW STORY has learned, forcing patients to cancel chemotherapy treatments and hundreds of scheduled patient visits.

***

"I think it’s disgusting. People who are getting chemotherapy or radiation are on a very set schedule. They are not supposed to miss a session or put it off by even a day, because it’s based on the life cycle of a cancer cell," the volunteer said, adding that some patients had waited weeks for appointments. "Some had to postpone for quite a while, because the radiation and chemo rooms were full on other days," she added. "They closed everything down just so he [Bush] could have his photo op in the lobby with the corpsmen."

Compassionate conservative?  Don’t make me laugh.

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Bush Losing Republican Support

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

The latest from Pew Research:

The American public is highly critical of President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Two-in-three Americans (67%) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28% think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush’s overall job approval rating has slipped to 40% and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52%, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president’s ratings have slipped the most among his core constituents ­ Republicans and conservatives.

Hopefully, many of them are now seeing what the rest of us saw way back when.

And Zogby polls report that Bush would lose in an election against every president since (and including) Jimmy Carter. In fact, Carter — the supposed ineffective president — would beat Bush by 8 percentage points.