Sturm und Drang, at a remove

The last couple of days have seen few posts here; this has instead been a time for reading and watching the horrific news coming out of the Gulf Coast. There really hasn’t been much worthwhile for me to say, except please donate, and I hope you either already have or will today. The online Red Cross donation form may be hobbled by heavy traffic; please try again or call 1-800-HELP-NOW.

More later today, or perhaps tomorrow.

Donate

Phone lines may be very busy. Consider donating online.

Technorati Tags: Hurricane, Katrina, New Orleans, Gulf Coast, Disaster Relief

Under the gun in New Orleans

In the words of Laura Rozen, here are amazing sources of online first-hand info on the assault of Katrina:

Postings to a hurricane blog maintained by Times-Picayune reporters
inside a generator-equipped ‘hurricane bunker’ in the paper’s offices

Breaking news collated by those same reporters

UPDATE: From The Shelter-of-Last-Resort Department:

10:30 a.m. - This shot, taken from the third-floor roof of the Times-Picayune building during a slight break in the rain, shows where Hurricane Katrina’s winds ripped away a large portion of the white covering of the Superdome on Monday morning. (NOLA Photo by Jon Donley)

Also (though not as current): BBC Online’s “Talking Point” reader’s blog

Technorati Tags: New Orleans, Hurricane, Katrina

Meme-ilicious

I hope to do no posting whatsoever today, for other duties call and Waveflux must answer. You may amuse yourself in the meanwhile with this unnamed meme quiz which I definitely stole from Welfare Queen (link defunct), who may or may not have stolen it from Wendy, who doesn’t seem to be entirely innocent herself.

1. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what’s the first thing you look at? My puppy-dog eyes.

2. How much cash do you have on you right now? Forty-nine bucks. You can’t have any.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with “TEST”? Zest.

4. Favourite plant? Huh? I’d pick an herb, but that’s like saying your favorite animal is veal. I don’t have a favorite plant, and you can’t make me.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? Some one I don’t know, and who likely has no business calling me.

6. What is your main ring tone on your phone? “This Is Techno.” Rockin’!

7. What shirt are you wearing? A Baseball as America jersey.

8. Do you “label” yourself? Only with the blinds drawn, as it were.

9. Name brand of your shoes currently wearing? New Balance.

10. Do you prefer a bright or dark room? Dark. See question number eight.

11. What did you have for breakfast? A double steakburger w/cheese and mayo, large cheese fries, and a large chocolate malt from Steak ‘n Shake. This is not the usual breakfast item at my house; special circumstances, which I may not divulge, apply here.

12. Since question 12 is weirdly missing, make up a question. (Question stolen from WQ) Q: Why are you so cool? A: Because you’ve had a lot to drink.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night? Sleeping, dreaming, left leg twitching.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell phone say? Not applicable; only lazy illiterates use text.

15. Do you ever click on “Pop Ups” or Banners? Never.

16. What’s an expression that you say a lot? Booyah! Actually, I now randomize my expressions.

17. Who told you they loved you last? My wife.

18. Last furry thing you touched? Venice, kitty number one out of four.

19. How many hours a week do you work? Precisely thirty-seven point five, as per my inflexible job description.

20. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed? What is this “film” you speak of?

21. Favourite age you have been so far? Criminy. Thirty-three wasn’t too bad if you don’t count the painful wounds.

23. What is your current desk top picture?

(This was taken before the acqusition of kitty number four, Roxy.)

24. What was the last thing you said to someone? “Thank you.”

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to go back in time and fix all your mistakes which would you choose? The latter, of course.

Technorati Tags: Meme, Quiz

Dr. Pangloss on Iraq

Divided they stand, eh?

Shorter David Brooks:

A broken constitution is just fine for a broken country! Peter Galbraith says so, and he’s real smart.

(Via Gilliard.)

Addendum: John Cole needs some of what Brooks is smoking, because the latest turn in the hunky-dory constitutional “process” makes no sense to him whatsoever:

So they don’t have an agreement, they aren’t meeting, yet they are just pretending everything is fine and they don’t need to dissolve? Am I missing something?

Just talk to David Brooks. Everything’s fine in his world.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, David Brooks

FOX News: Endangering Americans to protect America

FOX, the Boston Quackie of journalism

Well, no matter what journalistic silliness CNN is guilty of, at least it never put an innocent family in harm’s way.Too bad the rabid and irresponsible FOX News can’t say the same. Kevin Drum relates an astonishing story:

Just when you thought cable news couldn’t sink any lower, cable news sinks lower. Two weeks ago, Fox News wrongly identified the house of Randy and Ronnell Vorick as a terrorist lair:

In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.

Hilal, whom Loftus identified by name during the broadcast, moved out of the house about three years ago. But the consequences were immediate for the Voricks.

Italics mine. He gave out the address! On national TV! That’s practically an invitation for local thugs to firebomb the house.

Read more for Loftus’ appalling rationalization.

Like the Daffy Duck “Boston Quackie” character, FOX is friend to those who need no friends, enemy to those who have no enemies.

Technorati Tags: FOX News, Terrorism, Journalism

Pat Robertson, from both sides of his mouth

Two loose canons

In the grand media tradition of self-dissociation, radical Christian cleric Pat Robertson tries backpedaling from his own murderous comments regarding Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He fails, of course.

Robertson today:

I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ I said our special forces should ‘take him out.’ And ‘take him out’ can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time.

Robertson on Monday:

If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it…It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

Yeah, you see how someone might misinterpret a fatwa like that.

In the meantime, the Miami Herald - no ally of Chavez - wonders aloud about sanctions for Robertson:

The Federal Communications Commission should find this wretched episode of interest, as well. If Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” merits a $550,000 fine, what about an open appeal to commit murder?

UPDATE: And now Robertson apologizes for the call for assassination that he claimed he never made. American mullahs are all milquetoasts. You’d never see a militant Islamic cleric back down like that. Anyway, here’s Robertson, part trois:

Robertson apologizes

Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized Wednesday for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during Monday’s broadcast of his “700 Club” program.

“Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement,” he said in a written statement.

Earlier, Robertson said that his remarks about Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader.

I can hardly wait to hear what he says tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Pat Robertson, Religion, Christofascism

No. No, no, no.

Now coming, as it were, to a reality show near you

Sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand and say this far and no farther. Enough is too much.

Reality show for sperm donors

Billionaire television producer John de Mol, behind the pioneer show Big Brother, will test the limits of reality TV with a program in which a woman searches for a potential sperm donor to conceive a child.

His new TV station Talpa, launched earlier this month, confirmed it will air a program called “I want your child … and nothing else!” but gave no further details about the show due at 1830 GMT on Wednesday.

“The plan is that we visit potential donors and — of course on camera — decide which man is most suitable,” the 30-year old woman who will feature in the program said in an interview with De Telegraaf newspaper.

“Afterwards there will be artificial insemination,” said the woman who was identified only as “Yessica” and who has bought a house with a room for a child. [...]

De Telegraaf also published an email address for men wanting to donate sperm to Yessica.

On top of the questionable morality of the show, I understand that donors will have to provide their own hand lotion.

Bibles and fascist banjos: A lesson in taxonomy

Loose canon

I’ve never been terribly fond of the term “Christofascism,” as its always seemed clumsy, overwrought, and generally mean to non-fascist Christians (some of whom are friends and family members). Even the mavens at Wikipedia have argued over whether the word is actually a word, or whether it’s fair, or whether it’s useful. The final determination was that “Christofascist” and its ilk are just propaganda terms, which has generally made sense to me.

However…

In an age where Bible-minded revisionists force thinly-veiled creation myths into public classrooms (with the public support of the Scientist-in-Chief and pandering presidential wannabes), where religious bigotry demands encoding discrimination into as many constitutions as possible to prevent gay men and lesbians from getting married, and where dangerously unstable televangelists can openly call for the assassination of a foreign leader…

I’m coming to realize that “Christofascism” is less of an epithet and more of an actual classification.

Technorati Tags: Pat Robertson, Religion, Christofascism

George Bush, father of the Islamic Republic of Iraq

Shiite happens

The end of the American illusion in Iraq - the idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy that would in turn transform all of the Middle East, referred to in James Fallows’ unheeded warning as “the ruminations of insane people” - begins this week. That Islam will likely become embedded in the constitution as an arbiter of Iraqi law is a surprise only to those who mistook means for ends, who conflated symbols with substance, who confused the trappings of democracy - purple fingers and the like - with democracy itself. The political triumph of Islam in Iraq became assured on the very day that the Saddam’s statue was toppled in a made-for-television event. Again, symbolism trumped substance. American triumphalism blinded the Bush administration and its supporters to the glaring inevitability of an Islamic state, blinded them to the limitations of U.S. power. The warning against national hubris was loud and long, but to paraphrase renowned mathematician and dinosaur hunter Ian Malcolm, it is astonishing how few people cared to hear it.

This is only the beginning of the great disillusionment. Year Three of George Bush’s debacle in Iraq is going to make a lot of things clear at last to some thoroughly confused people. Standing at the Corner at NRO, Andrew McCarthy announces that he is officially “off the bus“:

As those who follow these pages may know, I have been despairing for a long time over the fact that the principal mission has been subordinated by what I’ve called the “democracy diversion” – the administration’s theory that the (highly dubious) prospect of democratizing Iraq and the Islamic world will quell the Islamists.

Now, if several reports this weekend are accurate, we see the shocking ultimate destination of the democracy diversion. In the desperation to complete an Iraqi constitution – which can be spun as a major step of progress on the march toward democratic nirvana – the United States of America is pressuring competing factions to accept the supremacy of Islam and the fundamental principle no law may contradict Islamic principles. [...]

If I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace. [...]

If the United States, in contradiction of its own bedrock principle against government establishment religion, has decided to go into the theocracy business, how in the world is it that Islam is the religion we picked?

Ian Malcolm could explain it, I’m sure.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, George Bush

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