Category: Edgewise

  • Dispatch: A friend

    Another email from a friend — this one anonymous — that I thought worth sharing here: i’ve been wondering about the media folks and their bursts of honesty and anger about bush–like you said, even fox has them, but also it’s coming from middle-of-the-roaders like brooks and some republican politicians too. it is sorta extraordinary,…

  • Dispatch: Heroic Imp

    Earlier today, my pal Heroic Imp sent me this chilling vision of the future I thought was worth sharing: New Orleans has one of the world’s greatest international ports, one of the largest in the nation, and it is a major focus of the city’s economy. New Orleans is home to the corporate offices of…

  • A Little Understanding, Please…

    Aside from the very slight chances of a hurricane and a flood occurring coincidentally, planners had to identify and assign personnel according to their skills. It must be remembered: –Every hurricane or flood is different. Some call for public-safety skills, boats and sandbagging, while others require clockmakers and paleontologists. –The records had to be, by…

  • Is the national guard stopping aid from getting in to New Orleans?

    That’s the word on indymedia.org and getyouracton.com. One show-stopping excerpt: Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke – they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding…

  • Donate to Habitat for Humanity

    Help Hurricane Victims Rebuild Their Lives The situation on the Gulf Coast is grave. Reports of devastation are staggering. Thousands of families are left homeless or with homes that are severely damaged. Katrina was nothing short of catastrophic–especially for families in low-income housing and mobile home parks. In a disaster like this, families who were…

  • What took so long

    Can anyone verify the following assertions (from a mailing list I’m on)? Halliburton hired for storm cleanup 01 Sep 2005: The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. & Roof Installation Newton repair roofs, restore electric power and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform…

  • Government by photo-op

    Is this really the best way to help the relief effort? It goes to show how overwhelming things are here right now that I encountered the First Lady yesterday and I almost forgot to put it in this e-mail. It actually couldn’t have been a worse experience; a team of us were working to put…

  • FEMA Chief Brown: An Unqualified Success

    Talking Points Memo on the qualifications of FEMA chief Michael Brown (aka “Brownie”): The news out today about FEMA Director Michael Brown tells the ugly tale. So let’s just review what we now know — with key new details first from a diarist at DailyKos and now confirmed in more depth in this morning’s Boston…

  • Sympathy for the FEMA

    “In Louisiana’s capital, Baton Rouge, the head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown said power outages, rising waters and violence by looters and others shooting at rescuers had complicated relief efforts.” .-LA Times How is FEMA supposed to function effectively under these kind of adverse conditions? Rising waters! Power outages! Looters! Who can be expected plan…

  • Deep Thinker at the Helm

    And they say his imagination is limited… …in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: “It’s totally wiped out. … It’s devastating, it’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.” (Newsweek)

  • Looting

    Have you been watching Fox and Fox type TV this past couple of days? Their coverage of the looting is making me insane. Poor people who’ve lost everything, even lost the city they were poor in, stealing food, stealing clothes, stealing TVs, I really don’t care. Who are we to judge them? Who is the…

  • Yes, I get sophomoric when I vent.

    President Bush has announced his first priority response to the disaster in New Orleans has been to head off flooding in all major waterways surrounding Crawford, Texas. “We are not about to fall back into a passive, reactive, defensive strategy on this. If we do not fight flooding in Crawford today, we will be fighting…

  • Action Movies–History of Advanced Fighting Techniques

    As far back as Blade Runner it was already well established that the fastest way to cross a room was by a sequence of rapidly repeated back flips. Bit it was only in the Matrix films we learned that bullets cannot harm you as long as you are engaged in tumbling exercises of any kind.

  • The Course

    “…the Americans, who have already expressed their frustration with the Sunnis, have recently become irritated with what they regard as the stubbornness of the Shiites as well.” NYT, 8/26/05 I can’t understand this criticism. Each of the three Iraqi factions is doing its utmost to emulate the American model. They are Staying the Course and…

  • It was bound to happen

    In an administration that considers the press a special interest and likes to take their message directly to the people, it was inevitable that eventually President Bush would start his own blog.

  • Got (moooo) Smog?

    A curious editorial in the Sunday New York Times points out that California’s agricultural heartland may be at the heart of an air pollution crisis that could require regulation of cow emissions as well as car emissions. It seems that the mammoth dairy farms of the San Joaquin Valley–where about twenty percent of the nation’s…

  • Mannish boy

    Saw this somewhere today – it’s sad but not entirely surprising (Masculinity Challenged, Men Prefer War and SUVs): Men whose masculinity is challenged become more inclined to support war or buy an SUV, a new study finds. Their attitudes against gays change, too. Cornell University researcher Robb Willer used a survey to sample undergraduates. Participants…

  • Remembering what America stands for

    I’m reprinting this report from the AP in full: U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour’s comments during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing for Ahmed Ressam, as provided by court officials. Ressam, an Algerian national, was sentenced to 22 years for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium. — “Okay. Let me…

  • Legal complaint v. Sensenbrenner

    saw this on the Well: July 28, 2005 Office of Lawyer Regulation 110 East Main St Room 315 Madison WI 53703 I hereby request investigation on the basis of the following: Hon. James Sensenbrenner U.S. House of Representatives Washington DC 202/225-5101 We believe the ex parte communication, “in which [Mr.] Sensenbrenner directly contacted the chief…

  • Rove-o-matic blog robot

    Tired of coming up with new synonyms for “treason”? Let Night Light’s the rove-bot pen your next screed for you.

  • Is that really news?

    Didn’t read the article. (Couldn’t be bothered.) But the headline made me chuckle: “Announcement of Supreme Court Nominee May Be Soon”