The Battle of New Orleans

New Orleans Mardi-Gras mid-70s

Sometimes I dread going to the computer because I know I've got to write about something that's just too painful to face. Writing about the death of a friend initially feels ludicrous, as though their presence could be adequately replaced by mere words. The amount of outraged e-mail I've received this week about Hurricane Katrina actually exceeds the amount I received in the week following 9/11, I've barely scratched the surface, and it's strangely understandable. Response to 9/11 was immediate. Imagine your reaction if you had seen the buildings on fire and NO FIREFIGHTERS showed up. If the buildings collapsed and there weren't rescue workers ON THE SPOT. Your outrage would have immediately switched from the perfidy of the perps to the neglect of the responders. It took weeks for the rational among us to understand the depth of the lies in the party line concerning 9/11, the blatant shifting of blame, but it took no time at all to see that people were dying in New Orleans simply because somebody wasn't doing anything about it. Guess who?

That very question has turned into a shell game of such infinite complexity and magnitude that your brain will never stop hurting if you try to figure it out. Okay, I understand it takes time to mobilize the rescue effort, but wouldn't it have taken less time if they'd prepared a week earlier?

The parallels to 9/11 are uncanny. They knew a disaster was coming, they had the opportunity to mitigate it but did nothing, the death toll will remain unknown until they dig through the rubble, it's being used as an excuse to gouge more money from the public through pleas to give to charity and through escalating gas prices, and those responsible not only won't get fired, they'll get promoted. Oh, and the federal government is blaming everyone but themselves. For the Whitehouse to blame the mayor of New Orleans in any way for this clusterfuck is like a brain blaming the foot for not taking care of an ingrown toenail. It's the foot's job to register pain in order to get the brain off it's ass and tell the hands what to do about it. I apologize to brains everywhere for using them in a metaphor for George W. Bush. The response to Hurricane Katrina hit the trifecta of greed, selfishness, and indifference. Never have I seen a man trying so desperately to look like he cared when he'd clearly rather be golfing.

The enlightened among us see only people, poor, desperate, in need of aid, and we want to help and damn those who don't. But then we stop for a second and realize its not just people, it's black people and only black people. Surely there are poor white people in New Orleans. I know there are. I saw them. How come they're not packed in the Superdome? Common knowledge seems to indicate that those with enough money to get out, got out, but it seems that somehow all the poor white people got out too. In a country as diverse as the United States, how did a meteorological disaster become a matter of race? 

Why is everyone calling them refugees instead of evacuees? I always thought a "refugee" was someone who fled to a foreign country to escape danger or persecution, but I guess the definition has just been stretched to include people whose homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster but whose government has a definition of "homeland security" that doesn't include natural disasters or black people.

"By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge, to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them, where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning."
- Hobbes: Leviathan -

This feels worse than 9/11, not politically or morally but personally. Among the words you may use to describe my feelings towards the WTCs, you would find admiration and respect, but not love. I loved New Orleans more than any city I've ever visited, and since I've never traveled abroad, I considered it the finest city on earth. It was our Paris, our Venice, our slice of old world tradition. I grew up in Los Angeles where a building was considered ancient if it was built in the 50s, a schizophrenic city with a million personalities, but New Orleans had actual history and a unique personality that is irreplaceable, now washed away like a dream sandcastle.

This whole event raises questions of enormity impossible to fathom. I can't wrap my head around the death of a city. If I were to mourn the death of Disneyland, I'd have to unleash dozens of childhood memories of unrestricted joy, of particular reactions to particular stimuli. I'm going to leave most of the news to the people I've quoted below and get on with what happens at the best funerals, when friends gather to tell outrageous stories of the deceased, to exorcise their pain in sharing their love for the recently departed. I'm just going to testify about the life of the city I love.

New Orleans Sidewalk mid-70s

In the mid-seventies, I was lucky enough to have a place to crash in New Orleans during Mardi-Gras season. The first year the offer was made I had no way to get there but that didn't stop me. I checked with an agency looking for drivers to deliver cars and found a U-Haul full of furniture that needed to be driven to Nashville. A quick look at a map told me Nashville was just north of New Orleans. All I'd have to do is hitchhike through Mississippi. Why not?

Turned out the guy with the U-haul full of furniture also had a Lincoln Continental. I swear to God he wouldn't trust me with all his furniture, so he drove the truck and I drove the Lincoln all the way from Los Angeles to Tennessee. I did indeed hitchhike through Mississippi to New Orleans. I was smart enough to show up three weeks before Mardi Gras so I got to see the city change from normal to outrageous and back again. Loved it so much I went back for four years in a row.

First of all it's not "Noo Or-Leens," it's "Nwaluns," or "Noir-luns" if you're a film buff. People in Nwaluns know you're a newbie if you pronounce it wrong, and they have other tricks up their sleeves. In downtown there's a street called Burgundy, but beware asking directions. Pronounce it like the wine and who knows where you'll get directed because its pronounced BurGUNdy and if you don't know, fuck you. There is no rational explanation for the pronunciation of Burgundy Street other than as an easy way for locals to pick out the tourists and send them places they didn't want to go.

I can't separate it from the food. New York has great pizza and hot dogs, L.A.'s got great burgers, the salmon and morel mushrooms in Seattle are magnificent, the cheesesteak in Philly, the BBQ in Texas, I've had 'em all, but for depth and variety of tasty treats, nothing in the United States even comes close to New Orleans. I can't imagine anything more selfish than mourning the death of a waffle, but I didn't actually eat any of the other victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Hummingbird Cafe off Canal Street had the best waffles on the planet earth, loaded with pecans, so I pray the Hummingbird survived.

Get this. There's a four star restaurant in New Orleans that's packed every day, reservations only, that has no menu. Why? Because they only prepare one meal a day, that's it, so if you eat there, that's what you're getting. You don't have a choice, and there's no way of knowing beforehand what they're preparing. You sit down and they bring you the soup they've made that day, followed by the salad they've made that day, followed by the entrée and dessert they've made that day. And you gobble them up, whatever they are, because they are spectacular. The day I ate there it was pork chops, but what I remember most was dessert, bananas flambé, bananas cut lengthwise, fried in butter, covered in rum, and set on fire at the table. Someone from New Orleans must know the name of this place and is hereby ordered to let me know.

And it's not the only place with only one thing on the menu. Buster Holmes is a place in the middle of the ghetto that served red beans and rice and only red beans and rice, for less than a dollar at the time. Yeah, if you were rich you could order a piece of meat with it, some chicken or catfish, but the red beans and rice were the entrée and the meat was the side dish. It was spectacular and there was always a line.

When you ordered coffee at the Cafe du Monde, they would give you an empty cup, then fill it simultaneously from two giant hand-held kettles, one filled with dark roasted chicory coffee, the other with steamed milk, and the two streams of black and white liquid would mix in the air before filling your cup. And you'd have to be insane not to order a side dish of freshly fried beignets covered in powdered sugar (to call them doughnuts is to sully the word) as a side dish to your entree of coffee. (I like the one in Metarie better than the one in the French Quarter.)

Ever had a muffaletta? Not likely unless you've been to the Central Grocery on Decatur off Jackson Square. All I can say is Google it and you'll find to your horror that it's a magnificent sandwich that's also spelled muffuletta, muffelatta, muffeletta, muffalata, muffaleta, muffalatta, muffalotta, muffaletto, muffelata, muffuletto, muffeleta, and muffeletto. There are more than 7,880 online recipes, but since the Central Grocery has never revealed the secret of their olive relish, I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait till it reopens and go there yourself.

Someone's got to explain to me why the rest of world, even Boston, boils their crabs in plain water, when the crabs in New Orleans, boiled in spices from a "crab boil," clearly put the rest of them to shame. There's a place on Bourbon Street in the Vieux Carre where you order a tray of a dozen of them and though you're stuffed to the gills, you go back for a dozen more.

It was the 70s and the only place in the world you could get Barq's root beer and Popeye's fried chicken was the south. Popeye's made the Colonel's taste like fried socks, and every year I'd bring back a couple six-packs of Barq's in their trademark embossed bottles as souvenirs for my friends.

Okay, I'll stop. The gumbo, the pralines, the Zapp's potato chips, the mint juleps and hurricanes, the eggs Hussard and eggs Sardou (how come it never occurred to me while making breakfast to simply place a poached egg in an artichoke heart on a bed of spinach and cover it with a mixture of bordelaise and hollandaise sauces?), the crawfish étouffée, (I attended a crawfish race where they ate the losers, then ate the winners), the king cakes, the bouillabaisse roux, the alligator sausage - one of the great disappointments of my later life is that I got fat off the wretched food of Desert Hot Springs instead of the magnificent taste treats of New Orleans, where getting fat is a blessing.

In part two, Lagniappe (below), food for the stomach was nothing compared to the food for the soul. I get grabbed by Mississippi cops in a journey to the heart of Mardi Gras in search of gris-gris.

Dr. Hollywood Predicts!

Within a year, there will be a network sitcom about a white middle-class family who take in a couple of black New Orleans "refugees" who turn out to be non-stop Mardi-Gras party animals. Hilarity ensues.

New Orleans Mardi Gras mid-'70s

Lagniappe
(Cajun for a little something extra)

   The ancient patriarch gathered his children to his deathbed and explained their inheritances to them.
    "To you Bernard, the studious, I leave my money, all of it, to do with what you want. To you, Heimlich, the adventurer, I leave my land, in hopes you will finally make a proper home. And to you, Paco, I leave my most treasured possession, my luck."
    "Your luck?" said Paco.
   The patriarch pulled out a cheap plastic piece of junk jewelry and handed it to him. Paco said, "Hey pops, this is nothing but a cheap plastic piece of junk jewelry."
   "Appearances are deceiving," said the patriarch. "Listen up."
   "I owe everything to that amulet, my wealth and my health," he continued. "Without it, none of you would be getting anything. I used to be in great shape but had nothing. Yeah, I know, it's hard to believe, but in my twenties I didn't eat meat and I actually fasted for several weeks every January in order to clean out my system. Then I started eating meat, made a great fortune, and turned into the decrepit mess I am today. I blame Mississippi."

Why I'm Not a Vegetarian

   I stuck out my thumb and got a ride right away, out of Memphis, across the border into Mississippi. The driver looked in his rearview mirror and said "You got any pot on you?"
   Trick question. I had a couple joints hidden away where they'd never be found, inside a thermos I always kept filled with hot coffee. You'd have to pour out the coffee to find it. Did he want to get high? Was he a nark? Seemed a funny way to bust people, picking up hitchhikers and taking them to another state. All I could say was "Why?"
   "I'm being followed by some undercover cops who've been after me for ages. They see a strange person in my car and I just know they're going to stop me. We're about to get searched."
   I confessed that I had something rolled, but that it would be damn hard to find.
   "Okay, listen, I'm going to let you out of the car at the next stop, then continue on and hope they don't stop me."
   The next stop turned out to be a burger joint in the middle of nowhere. He dropped me in the parking lot with my suitcase, sleeping bag, and guitar. Before I could stick my thumb back out, a dark gray sedan pulled into the opposite end of the parking lot, and I could see that the passenger was actually looking at me through binoculars.
   They were cops. He wasn't lying. I had to look normal. I had apparently asked to be dropped off, otherwise why was I here. It was nothing but a burger joint. Nothing else for miles. I could just sit there like an idiot, or I could do what it looked like I was expected to do. I went inside and ordered a burger. I sat in the window and ate it slowly while reading a book, keeping my eye on the guy in the sedan who still had his eyes on me. Only when I had finished and wiped my mouth with a napkin did they take off. I had eaten meat for the first time in years, and it saved me from being rousted by Mississippi cops.
   I waited another half hour, then went back to the road and stuck out my thumb. The first car that came along was the sedan. They pulled over and questioned me. Yeah, I was on my way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. No, I didn't know anyone in Mississippi.
   Then they asked the same question. "You got any pot on you?"
   No way I was going to give them the same answer. "Why?" wouldn't have been the proper response. I pulled out my greatest acting ability, channeled Lee Strasberg, and said "Man, I'd have to be an idiot to hitchhike through Mississippi with pot on me." I didn't look like an idiot. I had actually been reading. A book.
   "You're damn right, son," said the cop. "Tell you what, we can't let you keep hitchhiking here. You got enough money for a motel room?"
   I did. They took me to a nearby motel where I checked in and spent the night. The next morning I stuck out my thumb again. Got to New Orleans the next day without any more problems.

"My favorite animal is steak."
- Fran Lebowitz -

The Build-Up

   One reason for getting to New Orleans early is that the parades start at least a week before Fat Tuesday. There's one or two, then five a day, then ten, building to the final day of non-stop neighborhood mini-parades leading to Canal Street where they merge into one giant parade.
   I stayed in the house of a district attorney I'll call Paul but whose real name must remain secret for obvious reasons. Every Mardi Gras his front door would stay open and a giant bowl of ganja would sit on his living room table surrounded by rolling papers. It was non-stop party for two weeks. He knew the pastures to invade on cold winter mornings when there had been an overnight rain. We'd head across Lake Ponchartrain, sneak into a farm, and mosey around the cows looking for patties with mushrooms growing out of them. Bruise them a little and if they turned purple, you knew they were the kind. Just the right spice for homemade pizza.
   People in New Orleans waited all year for one big blowout, and the city was full of used clothing stores where you would pick this year's costume. Only a lazy bastard would wear what he wore last year. I loaded up on strange clothes for the big day. Don't forget the fancy umbrella, useless for the rain but perfect for dancing down the middle of the street.
   I checked out all the places I'd heard about, the Audubon Zoo (where they all asked for you) and the Vieux Carre, home of the world's best balconies. The streetcar line to Desire was changed to a bus line in 1948 so I was reduced to taking a bus named Desire.
    I wallowed in all things Cajun, especially the music. Zydeco was something new that grabbed my legs and forced me to dance. I'd heard Dr. John but not the early stuff, Kon kon, the kiddy kon kon, Walk on Gilded Splinters, the dark authentic voodoo Dr. John. Bought a ticket to see him on Mardi Gras day. I'd been into Little Feat but now it was The Meters (now The Neville Brothers) all the way. Saw them live with The Wild Tchoupitoulas, authentic Indians who only come out on Fat Tuesday, whose one and only album I must insist you buy immediately.

The Wild Tchoupitoulas, Mardi Gras, mid '70s

   I had already mastered Scott Joplin, and I actually had the nerve to play the Maple Leaf Rag on the piano at the Maple Leaf Bar to a crowd of drunks who have hopefully forgotten. I had always considered him the heart of American musical culture when Van Dyke Parks told me about the man who influenced Joplin, the man ragtime actually came from, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the very first American composer (other than Benjamin Franklin), born in 1829 to a Creole Indian mother and Jewish German sailor father. Gottschalk mastered the piano early, moved to France to study with Liszt, came back and toured the south doing solo piano concerts for union soldiers during the Civil War. Why Hollywood hasn't made a movie about him I'll never know, but allow me to mention that his Souvenir de Puerto Rico, full of African/Caribbean influence, is my favorite piece of piano music of all time, and if you want to know where it all came from, you better give it a listen. (MP3)

Fat Tuesday

   Okay, we all know that Ash Wednesday is the day we stop sinning and repent our evil ways. Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras day, is the day before Ash Wednesday, when all good Christians invite the world to join them in committing all the sins that will be forbidden to them the next day. The world's shortest list is the one of all the sins that aren't committed on Mardi Gras day. This is what all Mardi Gras around the world have in common.
   But there's a back story that makes the one in New Orleans unique, and you need to hear it in order to understand why the cheap piece of crap plastic jewelry pictured below is one of my proudest possessions. This is the history as I understand it. The annual Mardi Gras in New Orleans is much more than a chance to blow off steam before lent.
   Like most major metropolitan areas, New Orleans was divided between rich and poor. The city is shaped like a U, the outer edges being the rich parts, the Vieux Carre and the Garden District, with the ghetto in the middle, literally blocks away. You can stand on Canal Street and stare at the grandest southern mansions ever built, then walk one block east and find yourself in the deepest poverty. I was sincerely warned by my friend the district attorney that I'd be taking my life in my hands if I wandered too far from civilization. According to him, the entire inner city was populated by blacks too stupid to leave, and who resented my existence.
    Centuries ago, the rich people in town took it upon themselves to ride their horses through the ghetto once a year and throw coins and jewelry to the poor who would gather by the side of the road. This was their version of charity.
    The poor would line the streets in hopes of receiving a token of mercy, and they quickly learned a lesson. The goal in attending one of these "parades" of benevolent rich people was to GET THE ATTENTION of the riders with the moolah. If you were a rich person riding your fancy horse through the rabble, whom would you throw a coin to, people just standing there going "me me me," or someone dressed like a peacock holding a giant basket with a bullseye painted on it? Something as simple as flashing your tits was enough of an attention grabber to get the guy on the horse to make a donation to your cause. The first patrician to throw a coin at a flamboyant reveler holding a homemade target was responsible for the tradition of observers showing up at Mardi Gras parades looking as outlandish as possible.
   Unlike other parades, such as the Rose Parade and other local patriotic affairs, the Mardi Gras represents a give-and-take. Though the booty has been reduced from real jewels and coins and coconuts to plastic imitations, nobody goes to a Mardi Gras parade just to watch - the object is to get something to prove you were there. Each Krewe minted it's own individual coins, the Krewe of Bacchus, the Krewe of Comus, the Krewe of Craw, one Krewe for each parade. Showing up anywhere else on earth covered in cheap plastic jewelry would be considered pretty goddam embarrassing, but not in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where a neck covered in hideous purple and gold novelty crap was a badge of honor showing how many parades you attended.
    The parades in New Orleans aren't something you park yourself on the sidewalk to watch, you go there dressed as outrageously as possible so that someone on the float will throw something at you. Chances are you won't catch it so...

RULE #1: If it hits the ground, do not, under any circumstances, simply pick it up. That's a surefire recipe for getting your hand trampled by a boot. If it's on the ground and you want it, stomp on it, then retrieve it from under your shoe.

     If you dream of someday riding on a Mardi Gras float, keep dreaming. Mardi Gras Krewes like Bacchus are as closed as Skull and Bones. Each parade leads to a private party where they change into tuxedos and evening gowns. You are very much not invited. Every year they announce someone who gets to be the honorary king of the festival, and even though they're usually B-level Hollywood celebrities, I'm always jealous because being made honorary king of the festival is just about the only goddam way that a non-insider can actually get to ride on a float.
    Once the Mardi Gras transformed from a mini-act of charity to a full-fledged, world-renowned festival, the black community put together their own parade, not a snotty group of whites who deigned to travel through the ghetto once a year, but a genuine celebration of everything non-white, a parade not INTO the ghetto but FROM the ghetto. The marching bands would play real music, not that John Philip Sousa crap. There would be flambeauxs and dancers who actually had rhythm. The map of the parade route would NOT be printed in the paper. It would start in the ghetto and the leader of the parade, with his giant marching stick, would decide at each intersection what direction to go in. There was no way of knowing where to find them. It was the Zulu Parade, reputed to be the best parade on earth, by blacks for blacks, and if you were white and wanted to see it, you'd just have march into the ghetto on Mardi Gras day and try to find it.
    I had a girlfriend who lived with her parents. One day her father took me to his office and showed me his pride and joy, shelf after shelf of binders holding his Mardi Gras coin collection. They were arranged by year and covered decades. He pulled down a book and showed me the mint condition coins, one from each parade, like any fine coin collection, each page with plastic so you could see both sides of every coin. Every year he attended as many parades as possible, then swapped with other collectors to complete the collection. I spent an hour going through them. Many were incredibly beautiful, and some of the older ones were actual coins, not just plastic.
   He had Zulu coins, which he said were the rarest. He had to trade for them with other collectors. He had never actually found the Zulu Parade himself.

    Amulets and coins from other parades may have been fun collectors items, but they weren't gris-gris, imbued with mystical voodoo power like the amulets from Zulu. White people wearing a Zulu amulet during the Mardi Gras were gazed upon with awe. Man, I had just hitchhiked through Mississippi with a bag of dope, actually got stopped by the cops, and didn't get caught. Weren't no paranoid delusions of potentially getting beaten to a bloody pulp going to stop me from seeing the goddam Zulu Parade.
   Mardi Gras morning I got up, gobbled some mushrooms, watched a bit of the local parade, then marched into mid-city in search of Zulu.
   The rumors were right. I was the only white person for block after block. I searched for an hour then heard a sound down a narrow street that could only be a marching band. I ran down the block and there it was, the Zulu Parade, hundreds crowding the sidewalk as it went by, first a marching band playing a soul tune, not just marching, dancing up a storm, surrounded by flambeaux, flaming torches that whirled and flew, everyone dancing, drinking, me too, it remains the best parade I've ever seen.
   Those on the floats were throwing gris-gris but none reached me. Then there was a glitch down the road and the parade stopped with a float right in front of me. People on floats would point at the person they were aiming at, then throw at them till they caught it. The crowd was reaching up, crying "ME! ME" as the coins and beads flew through the air to the outstretched hands. Finally, as the glitch stretched into minutes, the crowd was sated and I was the only one going "ME! ME!" I was the only white face in the crowd. No one would throw me a coin. Ten minutes went by and I knew it was futile.
   Then I noticed a phenomenon. People would run up to a float and hand the riders something, a six-pack of beer, anything, just a gift, and they'd be rewarded with a handful of stuff. I had my Polaroid camera. I figured if I was in the parade, I'd like a nice Polaroid of me on the float. I took a shot, waited for it to develop, then pushed my way through the crowd to the still stationary float.
    I pointed to one of the masked riders and waved the photo at him. He leaned down, grabbed it, and his jaw dropped. It was just what he wanted. He pointed at ME, emphatically, clutched a handful of beads and coins and threw them. So many black hands appeared between me and the float that I didn't get a single one. The guy on the float saw what happened and pointed to me again. He became as determined as I was to get myself a coin, but before he could throw a second time, the glitch got fixed and the parade took off. I ran down the center of the street, he kept throwing, and I kept missing as the crowd gathered around me. Finally I grabbed ahold of the float and hung on for dear life, dragged down the street, refusing to let go until I got my due.
   The rider saw what was happening, leaned over the edge of the float, and actually placed one right in my hands. We saluted each other, I let go of the float, and the parade continued down the street.
   I looked around. I was in the center of Canal Street, surrounded by barricades with thousands of people pushing towards me, precisely where I didn't belong. The police grabbed me and threw me out of the street, over a barricade and into a crowd where I was almost crushed to death, but I didn't care. I got what I came for.

   And here it is, the symbol of my psychedelic youth, a white boy in blackland, drunk, stoned, flying high, an endless celebration. Amazing I still have it.

   I headed to Dr. John, whose concert ended as he opened the stage doors on both sides and let the passing parade through one and out the other, then invited us to join in. Nobody left that theater through the lobby. We all jumped on stage and paraded out into the street with the doctor.

   "That's some story," said Paco.
   "Yep," said the patriarch.
   "So Bernard gets all the money?" said Paco.
   "Yep," said the patriarch.
   "And Heimlich gets all the land? said Paco.
   "Yep," said the patriarch.
   "And all I get is this Zulu amulet?" said Paco.
   "Yep," said the patriarch, who promptly kicked a bucket that was conveniently placed at the foot of the bed.
   Paco put on the Zulu amulet and headed to an audition he had that afternoon for a small part in a Fox sitcom about a white middle-class family who take in a pair of New Orleans flood refugees who turn out to be non-stop Mardi-Gras party animals. Hilarity ensued. The producers weren't very happy with his line reading, but just as he was leaving the sound stage, the casting director, who was from New Orleans, noticed the Zulu amulet around Paco's neck.
   "Where did you get that?" asked the casting director.
   Paco told him the whole story, ended up the star of the sitcom, and next year was made honorary King of the Mardi Gras.

Bush Nominates Zombie Rehnquist to the Supreme Court

"We're sticking him in the freezer. Just because he's dead doesn't mean he wouldn't make a fine Supreme Court Justice," said president Monkeybananas. "His brain was already frozen when he was the fifth vote that make me preznit, so I don't see why he can't still rule just because he's cryogenically impaired," said Monkeybananas. "As a matter of fact I'm making Rehnquist the all time eternal chief justice of the Supreme Court from now until I say different, cause since he's dead, he now speaks through me, just like Jesus does."

Jesus Christ wasn't available for comment, but we did get his answer machine...

"Hi, this is Jesus. I'm not in right now, but if you leave a message, I'll not only get it, I'll twist it out of shape until it barely resembles what you originally said. Just like they did to me." [BEEP]

Musical News

Take Me Out of Gaza
(to the tune of Take Me to the River)

Don't know why
You move me like you do
You're an Israeli soldier
and I am a Jew

I don't know why
You treat me so bad
Think of all the nachus
We could have had

I want to know
can you tell me
I'd really like to stay
Still you...

Take me out of Gaza
Read me from the Torah
Wrap me in a shmata
For the intifata
Fill me full of tsuris
Mollify the tourists
in Palestine
in Palestine
no longer mine

Internet Joke of the Week

Rumor has it that the only reason President Bush offered money and aid to rebuild the Katrina-damaged coastal areas of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana is that he misheard on the news that there was "major damage and flooding all along the Golf Course."

Quiz of the Week

"While the people are still without water, electricity or security, authorities are focusing their efforts on getting the oil flowing again." What is the dateline for this news story?

A) Baghdad. 
B) New Orleans. 
C) All of the above. 
- Ironic Times -

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week's question...

What mistakes have I made? Please be cruel. I'm your punching bag of the week.

Actually, since you gave me top billing in the answers to #164's question, I'm gonna paste a Bush-level smirk on my egotistical face and confidently assert you have MADE NO MISTAKES WHATSOEVER. Keep doing exactly what you're doing, it's and all.
- Jimmy McConnell
 

    Saruman! Sauron was the huge flaming eye. Tolkien broke a cardinal rule by having two villains with such similar names, not only starting with the same letter but also sounding so much alike. 
- Jeff

    Giving a flying fuck. Sometimes, my good sir, you are too damned romantic for your own good.  And, btw: Keep it up. Sometimes, I get mired in my own cynicism... 
- james and Katherine Allard

And on a more personal note...

You picked the wrong parents - you could be rich or handsome or both.
- John Zutz, Milwaukee

Does poor choices in girlfriends count as mistakes?
- XXX OOO

By golly you're right. From now on, better parents and only fabulous girlfriends.

Stupid Questions of the Week

According to the White House press office (quoted below), neither Bush nor anyone in his cabinet has ever been asked why the Bush twins haven't volunteered to serve in Iraq. I'd make that number one of the questions I'd like to ask him on national television, and I'm sure you can think of lots more.

Though that opportunity has little chance of arising, another one shows promise. I've been contacted by the makers of a documentary film who are going to get a chance to interview on camera many of the fundamentalist Christian leaders we've grown to know and love, and they're looking for questions. "In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, God gives regulations for using beautiful virgins as war booty for victorious warriors. Should we be following his instructions in Iraq?" is a good one. How about "If God created just Adam & Eve, where did all the people in the land of Nod come from?" or "Knowing that Woman would be tempted by the Apple why didn't God plant Brussels Sprouts instead?" The bible describes homosexuality as an abomination. It also describes eating shellfish as an abomination. Why is one a worse abomination?

Send your questions here and who knows, maybe you'll actually get to see Pat Robertson try to answer it.

Special Offer for New Orleans Refugees

The Unfeeling President
by E.L. Doctorow

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. 

He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be. 

On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear. 

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. 

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be. 

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life.... They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. 

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. 

So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options, but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to. 

Read the rest here.

Don't Take My Word For It

   "This is not 'just politics' or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies...
   "It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies - ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands...
    "In June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant 'major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.'
    "The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, 'It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq.' 
- Molly Ivins: New Orleans: It's about us -

    "A cargo ship loaded with frozen chickens ran aground during Katrina, spewing the chickens onto the beach-front property near Long Beach and onto the property of Tom, a news reporter. 'The smell of chickens rotting under 93-degree sun is unbelievably bad,' Tom said.
    "Other sights are more grim.
    "A writer told of counting 30 bodies in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Another, whose own home was completely demolished, could think only of others. 'There are people just wandering around, trying to find food in all this mess,' she said. It's so sad."
- Barbara Lowell: Most are safe, but life has changed -

    "Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
    "Nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness- suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."
- New York Times Editorial: Waiting for a Leader -

    "I've talked directly to the pResident. I've talked to the head of Homeland Security. I've talked to everybody under the sun. I've been out there. I've flown these helicopters. Been in the crowds. Talking to people. Crying. Don't know where their relatives are. I've done it all, man!
    "And I'll tell you, man: I'll keep hearing that it is coming. This is coming. That is coming. And my answer to that today is: BS! Where is the beef? There is no beef in this city. There is no beef anywhere in south-east Louisiana and these goddamned ships which are coming: I don't see them!
    "I basically told [Bush] that we had an incredible crisis here and that him flying over it on AirForce One does not do it justice and that I have been all around this city and I am very frustrated because we are not able to master resources and we are outmanned in about every respect.
    "Do you know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, 1000s of people that where stuck in attics, man. The old ladies. When you pull off the ventilator vents and look down there and standing there in water up to their fricking neck. They don't have a clue what is going on down there. They flew down here. One time. Two days after the doggawn event was over with TV cameras, AP reports, all kinds of goddamn - excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed...
    "I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man and we are talking - one of the briefings we were talking about public school bus drivers and come down here and bus people. I'm like you gotta be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggawn Greyhound busline in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans. That's them thinking small, man and this a major, major, MAJOR deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy...
   "We are getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart from people saying: I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out and that is happening as we speak. 
    "And you know what really upsets me? e told everybody of the importance of the 17th Canal Street issue. We said please, please take care of this and we don't care what you do figure it out. [We said it to] everybody! Governor, Homeland Security, FEMA, you name it - we've said it and - you know - they've allowed that pumping station next to pumping station 6 to go under water. People to stay there and endanger their lives. And what happened was that when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again into the city and it started to get to levels that probably killed more people.
    "In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes of this city. That's a power station over there. So there is no water flowing anymore on the East bank of New Orleans Parish. The critical water supply was destroyed, because of lack of action...
   "There is nothing happening! And they are feeding the public a line of bull and it's spinning and people are dying down there.
    "They are showing all these reports of people looting and doing all the weird stuff - and they are doing that - but people are desperate and they are trying to find food and water. The majority of them. And you've got some knuckleheads out there and they are taking advantage of this lawless, this situation where - you know - we can't really control it and they are doing some awful, awful things, but that's a small minority of the people.
    "Most of the people are looking to try and survive. And one of these things. Nobody talked about these things. Drugs flowing in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me and that's why we had the escalation in Murrays. People don't want to talk about this, but I want to talk about this.
    "You had drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They are looking for something to take the edge off their Jones if you will and right now they don't have anything to take the edge off and they've probably found guns, so what you see is drug starved, crazy addicts - drug addicts that are wreaking havoc and we don't have the manpower to deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we are not overrun.
    "But... we authorized eight billion dollars to go to Iraq. After 9/11 we gave the pResident unprecedented powers to take care of New York and other places. You mean to tell me where most of y'all is coming through, a place that is so unique, when you mention New Orleans all over the world, everybody's eyes light up. You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have 1000s of people that have died and 1000s more that are dying everyday - that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need?
    "C'mon man. I'm not one of the those drug addicts - I am thinking very clearly and I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it is the governor's problem. I don't know whether it is the president's problem. But somebody needs to get their ass on the plane and sit down - the two of them - and figure this out right now!
- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin -

    "The Bush/Cheney and the Illuminati gang and their connected associates all stand to benefit financially from Hurricane Katrina to the tune of hundreds of billions and over the long term, TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS. They will reap the huge profits from higher oil prices. They will get the billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild New Orleans and all the other areas devastated by this 'storm'. They will be able to buy the devastated property for pennies on the dollar. Their banks will receive huge amounts of interest on the loans that will be made to the U.S. government, corporations and individuals who will need the financing for rebuilding. Their similar horrific insane 'destroy and rebuild' plan 'for profit' was used in WW l and WW ll. and is currently being used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    "Lie, cheat and murder on a global scale>>>this is the sick, insane, satanic Illuminati way, unfortunately for humanity."
- Michael Shore: Was Katrina A "Man-Made Storm" For Profits? -

"If one has to choose between the head and the heart, one should choose the heart, because all the beautiful values of life belong to the heart. The head is a good mechanic, technician, but you cannot live your life joyously just by being a mechanic, a technician, a scientist. The head has no qualities, capacities for joy, for blissfulness, for silence, for innocence, for beauty, for love, for all that makes the life rich: it is the heart."
- Osho -

    "If you get a chance, check out FOX News and Nazi talk radio spinning Bush's disaster. FOX says, 'There's plenty of food & water - why are people complaining?' Roger Hedgehog, subbing for the vulgar Pigboy, said 'The biggest problem is the New Orleans police force is busy looting the city.' They're not outright using the word 'nigger' but their tone of voice tells us they wish they could.
    "Pickles is on TV saying, 'The reality isn't anything like what we're seeing on TV,' so we need to find a way to stop those damn cameras from lying about Bush so much.
   "Rachel Maddow on AAR said Rush asked, 'Why don't these people have cars?' Gee Rush, we don't all make $30M a year slurring blacks and gays. With Republicans, it's always, 'I got mine, so screw those who have less or nothing.'"
- Bartcop -

"Gulf of Mexico added to Axis of Evil"
- Ironic Times -

    "[E]arlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.
The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.
    "The New Orleans hurricane scenario may be the deadliest of all.
    "In the face of an approaching storm, scientists say, the city's less-than-adequate evacuation routes would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water. Thousands of refugees could land in Houston.
Economically, the toll would be shattering.
    "Southern Louisiana produces one-third of the country's seafood, one-fifth of its oil and one-quarter of its natural gas. The city's tourism, lifeblood of the French Quarter, would cease to exist. The Big Easy might never recover."- Eric Berger: Keeping Its Head Above Water - New Orleans Faces Doomsday Scenario, Houston Chronicle 12/01/01 -

    "That the Bush administration diverted funds from the rebuilding of the New Orleans levees to Iraq is by now well-known. What you might not have heard is that the people cleaning up the mess are really pissed about it. A tipster informs us that down in New Orleans, they have a name for the flood waters that have invaded the city: Lake George.
    "Email attributed by tipster to 'friend at the EPA' after the jump. This is from a friend at the EPA: 'We're naming it Lake George, 'cause it's his frickin fault. Have you seen all that data about the levee projects' funding being cut over the past three years by the Prez, and the funding transferred to Iraq? The levee, as designed, might not have held back the surge from a direct Class 5 hit, but it certainly would not have crumbled on Monday night from saturation and scour erosion following a glancing blow from a Class 3. The failure was in a spot that had just been rebuilt, not yet compacted, not planted, and not armed (hardened with rock/concrete). The project should have been done two years ago, but the federal gov't diverted 80% of the funding to Iraq. Other areas had settled by a few feet from their design specs, and the money to repair them was diverted to Iraq.'" 
- Wonkette: A Tragedy By Any Other Name -

    "Last week American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said 'no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused.'
    "The Swedish Rescue Services had been planning to send a military cargo plane with water sanitation equipment and experts on Sunday. But according to the Swedish Rescue Services, the American authorities say they are not prepared to receive international help."
- Swedish Katrina Aid on Standby -

    "Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
    "Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: 'Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.'
    "It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended 'Spamalot' before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
    "When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
    "When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
    "Who are we if we can't take care of our own?"
- Maureen Dowd: United States of Shame -

    "We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA - we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, 'Come get the fuel right away.' When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. 'FEMA says don't give you the fuel.' Yesterday - yesterday - FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, 'No one is getting near these lines.' Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis...
   "And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
    "Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody."
- Aaron Broussard: President of Jefferson Parish on Meet the Press -

"OK, dear friends. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. Sorry, but if you voted for G.W. Bush and his lying band of neo-fascist corporate raiders, which I now refer to as the Republicons, because I consider them all 'conmen' who have and will continue to lie to the American people to stay in power and rape our nation - I want you to remove yourselves from my mailing lists. Just look at the response to the tragedy in New Orleans and consider the fact that you voted these bastards into office AGAIN because you trusted them to protect our great nation. I don't want to make you laugh any more. You don't deserve to laugh. Please write (right) REMOVE in the subject line and think about the damage you have done to our nation and the world. And if you believe in God, and are anti-science -- you're even worse. I mean it."
- Phil Proctor: Planet Proctor -

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same. Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster, however, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long. May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," 
- Michael Marcavage, director of Repent America -

    "Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
    "What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, 'the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go. Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge. Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable' in Cuba, Valdes said. 'Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin.'
    "They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, 'so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff,' Valdes observed.
    "After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, 'The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does.'"
- Scott Lane -

    "'If the People of New Orleans sued George Bush, FEMA and Homeland Security for Criminal Negligence during the recent Hurricane Katrina crisis, do you think that they might have a case?' I asked a top-flight civil class action lawsuit attorney.
    "'Hummmm....' he replied."
- Jane Stillwater: The most justified class action suit ever: The People of New Orleans v. G.W. Bush! -

   "Chevron donates $5M to Katrina fund (Link). That's nice, but... Chevron gouged us for $3.7B in just the last 90 days (Link). $3.7 billion is 3700 million dollars - that's what they stole with Bush's help. And out of 3700 million stolen dollars - they give back 5? Look at it this way: Had Chevron given $37 million, that would be one percent of the money they stole from working Americans in just the last 90 days.
   "Fuck Chevron."
- Bartcop -

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
- Condoleezza Rice at a performance of Spamelot on Broadway -

"I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question." 
- Spock: This Side of Paradise, stardate 3417.3 -

"Virtually everything in the Latin Quarter and the Garden District suffered some damage. Much of the turquoise-and-white facade of Commander's Palace in the Garden District is gone. So is one wall of Antoine's, famous for Oysters Rockefeller. The Cafe du Monde, home of smoky chicory coffee, did not appear to suffer extensive damage. Many of the city's oldest neighborhoods, including the Bywater and the 9th Ward on the east side, were lost under the floods. On Burgundy Street, a building that once housed slaves collapsed. At one historic above-ground cemetery, a lot in the Garden District known as Lafayette No. 1, uprooted magnolia trees destroyed part of a 200-year-old wall believed to contain human remains. The stately U.S. Mint in the French Quarter, once seized by the Confederate army, is missing part of its roof. No one knows what has become of the artifacts inside." 
- Q&A: Hurricane Katrina -

    "Hurricane Katrina left the French Quarter battered but still ready to party Monday, with the first bars on Bourbon Street serving up drinks by mid-afternoon, and locals and tourists venturing out in droves to gawk at what the storm left behind.
   "The hurricane ripped plywood from boarded-up storefronts, toppled brick walls built centuries ago into the narrow streets and sent slate-roof tiles flying as it battered the Crescent City Monday morning.
   "Many of the ancient magnolias shading Jackson Square were badly mangled and a lush garden behind the St. Louis Cathedral was largely toppled into Pirates' Alley. Along Esplanade Avenue, the area's northern border, live oaks that once hung like a canopy were now in the street, blocking traffic.
   "The residents and patrolling police voiced relief that one of the country's most eccentric and irrepressible neighborhoods and most of its famed tourist attractions survived relatively unscathed compared with other areas of New Orleans.
   "'We fared,' said Jimmy Brennan, part-owner of the famous Brennan's Restaurant on Royal Street. 'I hate to say it, but it turned into a hurricane party... We've had a great time.'"
- Lee Hancock: French Quarter comes through relatively unscathed -

"Might I point out that if every building in New Orleans had solar panels instead of being connected to an electrical grid, everyone would still have electricity? Think they'll keep that in mind instead of just replacing the old electrical grid?"
- Crazy Bastard -

    "No one debates the fact that the hurricane has done significant damage to oil rigs, refineries and delivery systems along the Gulf Coast, a region that accounts for roughly 10 percent of US refining capacity. But roughly 90 percent of US refining capacity remains fully functional and, it should not be forgotten, the US has not stopped importing oil.
   "Additionally, the Bush Administration jumped to the aid of the oil companies long before the relief effort was in full swing.
    "The Environmental Protection Agency suspended summertime anti-pollution measures, lifting the requirement that refiners lower fuel volatility and cut sulfur levels. At the same time, the Administration moved to release oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was created more than three decades ago with the precise purpose of boosting fuel supplies in order to keep a lid on rising wholesale gasoline prices in a circumstance such as the one that has now developed.
   "Despite all the aid they are getting, however, the oil companies are not giving anything back. There is no evidence of a willingness on the part of these highly profitable corporations to sacrifice in a time of national emergency.
   "Make no mistake: These corporations should be able to absorb a hit. Over the past year and a half, the four largest oil companies - ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch/Shell Group and BP Group PLC - have pocketed close to $100 billion in profits. During the first quarter of 2005 alone, those firms pulled in a cool $23 billion.
   "But instead of sharing the pain, they appear to be moving to squeeze every cent they can out of the crisis.
   "With oil-industry friends in charge of the White House and the Congress, don't expect much of a response from the federal level."
- John Nichols: The Real Gas Gougers -

"The whole object of the spiritual quest is to discover your own inner Self, experience the Truth within your own heart. You cannot find it anywhere but within yourself, but once you discover it within yourself, you can find it everywhere."
- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda -

   "Let me make this clear: Everything which has happened as the result of Hurricane Katrina is my fault. Mine. Alone. No one else's. Stop wasting energy pointing fingers and put your hands to work helping out. It was me. Got it?
    "I was a United States Senator from Louisiana in 2001 when the levee at Lake Pontchartrain was declared unsafe and I didn't have enough clout with my Senatorial brethren to get sufficient money appropriated to fix it. It was my fault.
    "Notwithstanding my failure on that front, according to wire services: 'In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way were completed and in good condition before the hurricane. However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn't handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made based on a cost-benefit analysis in the 1960s.'
    "Oh. I almost forgot. I was the Commander-in-Chief of all United States Armed Forces in the 1960s which includes the Corps of Engineers. The cost-benefit analysis? My fault.
    "It is my fault that, as the Governor of Louisiana, I didn't foresee the need to have enough Louisiana National Guard troops - the vast majority of whom are NOT currently in Iraq, or Afghanistan or, for that matter, Indiana - pre-positioned and ready to preserve order.
    "I, frankly, forgot that there is a portion of the population which will steal anything from anyone given any opportunity and then will blame it on me because I didn't - in spite of ample warnings by sociologists from large Eastern Universities - foresee the need to have 27" flat-screen television sets available to every family in the New Orleans city limits as soon as the electricity went out. That one WAS my bad.
    "It is my fault that, as Mayor of New Orleans, I was boogying down Bourbon Street the night before the hurricane hit rather than being where I should have been - on the roof of the Superdome pounding in extra nails to hold the roof on.
    "As the architect of the Superdome, it was my fault for claiming that the Dome could survive 200 mile-per-hour winds. It couldn't even handle a relatively gentle160 mile-per-hour zephyr. Strap me to my drafting table and set me adrift.
    "Global warming? My fault. Despite the fact that nearly every serious climatologist in America has stated over and over again that there is no clear evidence tying human-generated greenhouse gasses to global warming, and even if there were, there is no evidence tying global warming to hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, I was opposed to the Kyoto treaty and so it is my fault.
    "It is also my fault that during the administration of Bill Clinton, the US Senate rejected the terms of the Kyoto protocols by a vote of 95-0. That would be zero, zilch, nada, nil, bupkis.
    "As the Grand Poohbah in Charge of all TV Coverage, it is my fault that there is constant video of looters and almost none of humanitarian activities. I am the person who issued the statement: 'No more rescue footage UNLESS the person rescued complains about how long they had to wait or, if he shoots at the rescuers.'
    "And, finally, as Chairman of the National Association of Gasoline Producers it is my fault that I had the bad judgment to put so much of my drilling, refining and transportation assets in a hurricane-prone area like the Caribbean basin. WhatwasIthinking?
    "If I could re-do that whole thing, I would have put all that equipment in Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. There may not be any oil there, but hurricanes are very rare.
    "So. There you have it. Everything that has happened is my fault.
    "Now. Shut up and help. "
- Rich Galen -

"BEGGAR, n. One who has relied on the assistance of his friends." 
- Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary -

"I've always relied on the kindness of strangers."
- Blanche DuBois -

    "The downside of being the Big Easy is that visitors feel encouraged to show you a side of themselves you'd rather not see, the blithering drunkenness and bare-breasted ladies and plastic gewgaws of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. You don't have to be Baptist to find the company of drunks discouraging and New Orleans is a Mecca for alcoholics. Big Easiness, however, is not conducive to good government and the city hasn't gotten much of that. There are large sections of town where the tourist is warned never to set foot. The schools are wretched and services are lousy and in a high-water-table city where even high ground is low and low ground is below sea level, the flood control system wasn't ever more than modestly adequate, and so last week the Big Easy got to know George Bush.
    "You don't have to be drunk to be stupid. Here was a patronage appointee, the pal of a pal, in charge of the federal response to Katrina and he sat and waited to see what would happen and when it happened, he froze. As Mr. Bush said, he had no idea that the levees wouldn't hold. Truly. It's not how we used to do things, back when there was a sense of shame attached to government incompetence that costs lives, but it's different in America these days. Don't ever get in trouble, is my advice. Head upriver and look for high ground."
- Garrison Keillor: Looking for higher ground. There used to be a sense of shame attached to government incompetence that cost lives -- but Katrina struck a different America. -

"Keillor would 'rather not see... bare-breasted ladies.' What does he have in common with Smithers? I smell a rumor coming on."
- Random Bastard -

    "'They killed a man here last night,' Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. 'A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windshield and they shot him dead.'
   "Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror.
   "'Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head,' Batiste said."
- Mark Egan: Rapes, killings hit Katrina refugees in New Orleans -

    "This man does not deserve his job. He is a failure. His complete lack of empathy, his utter clueless incompetence, and his imperial hubris make him unfit to command the fry station at a McDonalds. His complete cluster fuck of the country of Iraq is debatable - in some fringe realm of neocon reality, it's debatable. But with New Orleans, there can be no debate. The Federal government, under his 'leadership,' has failed to deal with the crisis in Louisiana and Mississippi. Failed. Utterly. Miserably. At the cost of God knows how many lives. How many people will be buried, uncounted, in mass graves and thus save this man from having that number tattooed forever upon his forehead?
   "And do you know why this happened? Neither do I! Neither does anyone else!
   "There is no reason for this. Come on! We are the US of fucking-A. We are America. One company, Federal Express, could handle the disaster relief far better than what is being done now. But no one has asked them to step in. The US Postal service could be delivering food, water, and supplies to every neighborhood hit by the hurricane - but no one has asked them to do it.
   "This is the president's job. It's his job to go on television and ask for people to step up, ask people to make sacrifices, don't drive unless you have to, don't run your air conditioners unless you have to, stay home, telecommute, conserve, sacrifice for this crisis. It's his job to ask companies to eat the cost of feeding and housing the hundreds of thousands of refugees. Every hotel from the Gulf of Mexico to San Antonio, St. Louis and Miami ought to have its doors open to refugees to stay free of charge. Three squares and a bed - send Washington the bill later. We have umpteen million hotel beds in this country - there is NO REASON that people should be sleeping in the Astrodome.
   "There is so much that can be done with a FUCKING PHONE CALL when you are the president of the United States. What the hell is he doing? Where the hell is the help? There's nothing you can do about a hurricane. People who couldn't get out of the way are going to die. But afterwards!!! ---- every single uninjured person who dies as a result of neglect should add 20 years to the jail sentence of George W. Bush. His failure to act is criminally incompetent. He is responsible. He should be held responsible.
   "He should resign today. He has provided ZERO leadership so far - he won't be missed. At least then, everyone else, from mayors to governors to National Guard commanders, could begin to act on their own initiative and something might actually get done to help these people."
- Jeff Crook -

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
- John Adams -

"He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them."
- Samuel Johnson -

"No one asked me to volunteer."
- Homer Simpson -

"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
- Bill Hoest -

"There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them."
- Terry Pratchett -

"As punishment for my contempt for authority, Fate has made me an authority myself."
- Albert Einstein -

"Members of the Iraqi National Assembly are still struggling to come to an agreement on how the country's new constitution should handle a controversial issue: gay marriage. The delay in completing a constitution for Iraq comes as a blow to the Bush Administration which went into Iraq more than two years ago in order to defend traditional marriage."
- Iraqi Constitution Snags on Gay Marriage -

    "The conquest of Iraq by seizing command of the skies and seas, surrounding her and outgunning this lumbering warship of a country with broadsides represents the capture of a trophy ship by a buccaneer. The treasure beneath the sands of Iraq black gold in the form of billions of barrels of oil--exceeds in value all the gold from all the fleets of Spanish galleons that ever sailed. Seen from the perspective of a 17th century buccaneer, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld foreign policy of plundering countries on the high seas makes good economic sense. All that is lacking is legality and a suitable pirate banner...
   "Will we Americans simply be remembered by the world as just another band of pirates? Bigger but no better? Toward the end of the Golden Age of Pirates, the repercussions of resentment by land dwellers eventually overtook most of these buccaneers; those not killed in battle were captured and hung. Bartholomew Roberts, killed in 1722. Blackbeard 1718. Captain Kidd, hung by the neck and then allowed to rot, in 1701. The difference between pirates and those who play at being pirates is that the swashbuckler risked his own neck. Antony Sutton said of the modern pretender: 'These prominent men are really immature juveniles at heart. The horrible reality is that these little boys have been dominant in world affairs. No wonder we have wars and violence.'"
- Douglas Herman: Death's Head: Piracy, Plunder and Foreign Policy -

    "Is a tolerant society one in which you tolerate absurdities, iniquities and injustices simply because they are being perpetrated by or in the name of a religion and out of a desire not to rock the boat you pass no comment or criticism? Or is a tolerant society one where, in the name of freedom, the tolerance that is promoted is the tolerance of occasionally hearing things you don't want to hear. Of reading things you don't want to read. Where it is encouraged to question, to criticize and if necessary to ridicule any ideas and ideals and then the holders of those ideals have an equal right to counter-criticize, to counter-argue and to make their case. That is my idea of a tolerant society - an open and vigorous one, not one that is closed and stifled in some contrived notion of correctness...
    "To criticize people for their race is manifestly irrational but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas - any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society and a law which attempts to say you can criticize or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It promotes the idea that there should be a right not to be offended, when in my view, the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended, simply because one represents openness, the other represents oppression...
   "I then found my self asking a strange question. What is wrong with encouraging intense dislike of a religion? Why shouldn't you do that, if the beliefs of that religion or the activities perpetrated in its name deserve to be intensely disliked? What if the teaching or beliefs of the religion are so out-moded, hypocritical and hateful that not expressing criticism of them would be perverse? The government claim that one would be allowed to say what you like about beliefs because the measure is not intended to defend beliefs but believers. But I don't see how you can distinguish between them. Beliefs are only invested with life and meaning by believers. If you attack beliefs, you are automatically attacking those who believe the beliefs. You wouldn't need to criticize the beliefs if no-one believed them."
- Rowan Atkinson Speaks to the Lords -

    "This week, the liberal Web site buzzflash.com noted in an unsigned editorial that 'not one -- not one - of any of Bush's children or his nieces and nephews have volunteered for service in any branch of the military or volunteered to serve in any capacity in Iraq. Not one of them has felt the cause was noble enough to put his or her life on the line.'
    "Buzzflash is circulating a petition demanding that 'Either the Bush Kids Put Their Lives on the Line for George's 'Noble War' or the Troops Come Home.'
   "Publicity stunt or not, it does raise a question. If the sacrifice is so noble, has the president urged his own children, or enlistment-age nieces and nephews - of which there are eight - to join the military and fight in Iraq?
    "I called the White House to pose this question and was somewhat surprised to learn that none of the supposed liberal baddies in the White House press corps had ever asked the president or any of his spokespersons that question.
    "Spokeswoman Dana Perino couldn't find that this question had ever been asked."
- Terry M. Neal: Questioning Bush's Sacrifice for a 'Noble Cause' -

"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."
- Richard Bach -

"Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one."
- Andre Gide -

"This itself is the whole of the journey, opening your heart to that which is lovely."
- Samyutta Nikaya -

"Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting."
- John Russell -

"If you'll be my dixie chicken
I'll be your Tennessee lamb
And we can walk together
Down in Dixieland."
- Little Feat -

Everything Else

The fact that donuts aren't on The list of the 29 Healthiest Foods on the Planet is proof there is no God.

As if there weren't enough to worry about, those in the flood zone have to beware of toxic mold. (More about it here.)

For a fascinating look at the problem from the official point of view of someone who REALLY knows what he's talking about, read this Defense Department Special Briefing on Efforts to Mitigate Infrastructure Damage from Hurricane Katrina by Lieutenant General Carl Strock, Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Chief of Engineers, Friday, September 2, 2005 10:43 a.m.

Check out the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes before you let someone tell you we didn't know this was coming and precisely what to do about it.

Mary Magdalen annointed Christ's feet with pot.

Want to destroy a city? Got a HAARP at your disposal? Want to become a wingnut who believes they purposely created Hurricane Katrina in order to deliberately destroy the south? Learn how to steer a hurricane.

Go to Google, type in anything, then click on "I feel lucky," because you damn well better.