Month: September 2005

Absolutely Shameless:

From Crooks and Liars: The National Review Online is suggesting the Republican Party schedule their 2008 national convention in New Orleans.

(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)

Oh, yeah. Why don’t we jam them into the Convention Center, then keep them in there for the length of the convention without food, water, and working toilets? Maybe we can even have some dead babies in there, and I’m not talking about the fetuses in jars that so many Republicans seem to bring to these events.

And don’t forget the moat of swamp water.

Here’s the best summary I’ve seen on the economic impact on New Orleans to the rest of the country, from Stratfor. It matches my views almost perfectly.

We are now about to be put on a wartime footing, whether we like it or not.

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize – News Archive – Stratfor:

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize

By George Friedman

September 01, 2005 22 30 GMT — The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.

But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography — the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one — the Mississippi — and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.

For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn’t have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers – which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.

During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn’t come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn’t flow out. Alternative routes really weren’t available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.

Continue reading Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

…to more usual themes around here, we seque with this from TRL: The Rob Log:

NOTHING LIKE A MAJOR DISASTER TO MAKE A GUY HORNY

Any college students want to come stay in NYC for a few days? – 20
Reply to: anon-94749556@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-09-01, 8:58AM CDT

18-21 college students who need a place to crash and get away from the south for a few days, e-mail me a picture and your situation. I want to help.

this is in or around Lower Manhattan

Things that never change: the sun rises, the sun sets, and you can’t get Katrina Sex via Craigslist without a recent photo.

One could have just as easily included “No Fatties” in the posting, but after a few days without food or water, that’s probably redundant.

(While trying to clear out my draft posts folder, I came across this notion from May, and figured we could all use this as a break from reading about New Orleans.)

(Where was I? Oh, yeah. In a past life…)

…I was the co-host of the Love Conference on EchoNYC. This was back in the early days of Echo, pre-WWWAC and pre-Mosiac.

With all that, I’m finding this thread on Craig’s List Casual Encounters to be absolutely fascinating. Since the posts have been removed, I save them here for posterity.

It started with this post to Craig’s List Casual Encounters section:

married woman looking for married man – w4m 43yr: “Im 5’1, 115, white, petite, blonde, grey eyes, great smile and very good skin.

Guys – I posted about twenty minutes ago – I’ve had already at least a dozen replies – that’s good. What’s not good is that none have bothered to read my post. You should be (non-negotiable) 40 -45 (sorry ‘Bronx Buck – 32’), in good shape (sorry ‘JK’) and able to write a decent email. You must send a pic. ‘Cocker’ from Poughkeepsie, you are an idiot and I hope you never procreate.

Im looking for a man age 40 – 45, local area. You must be white, married, at least 5’9, in good shape and able to treat this as a no-strings meeting that may possibly lead to further meetings if the sex is very good. You should also be courteous, well-groomed and able to hold a conversation. I like dirty talk in bed but its a turn-off in your first email or first phone conversation.

My husband is away until Friday – I can meet any time until then, after that I can only meet on weekday mornings. I will share hotel bill. If we meet it must be somewhere at least 20 miles from Chappaqua. We will meet for a coffee or drink. If that goes well, we get a room.

Please reply with a message about you and a pic. You get my pic if I like your email and pic.

71277456″

(Via craigslist nyc.)

Continue reading In a past life…

I officially take back every mocking thought I’ve ever had about the SCA.:

–“orangemike” reports:

I’ve just gotten news on HordeNet that there are relief convoys of members of the Society for Creative Anachronism from all over driving into the South to do what they can; and looks like as well organized as the FEMA seems to be right now. Guess all that time recreating the Middle Ages may come to some good use after all!

Say what you will about the SCA, but they do know something about dealing with large events that take place in a sea of mud.

(Via Making Light.)

If you want to help them out, go here.

CNN anchors break down:

I’m watching Anderson Cooper lose it right now. He just went bananas on Mary L. Landrieu, the Senator from Louisiana – she was talking a lot of wishy-washy policy and Andy just totally faced her by telling a story about watching rats eating a woman’s corpse in the middle of the street. And Anderson’s not even in New Orleans, but in Waveland, a ravaged area of Mississippi. After returning from commercial break, he had to take a second on camera to compose himself, and then choked back tears throughout a long interview with a couple who had just found their baby after being forced to leave her in a hospital four days before. “Reporters are suppossed to remain distanced,” Cooper said. “There’s just no distance in Waveland anymore.” In general, it seems like the anchors on CNN are starting to get not only emotional, but angry. Earlier today, both Kyra Phillips and Aaron Brown were openly, aggressively critiquing the Bush administration’s handling of the situation. It always feels good to see anchors break out of their shells in times of crisis, and admit to being real human beings with passions and opinions. This kind of anger on CNN is almost as shocking as the images that are spawning it.

(Via TV Squad.)

New Orleans Died for Bush’s Sins:

No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they’re also worried and pissed off. They’re making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don’t say it now when people’s nerves are raw and they’re paying full attention, it’ll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting “healing process” begins.

[…]

Look at 9/11. There were tough questions about the breakdown of communications at Ground Zero, the lateness in scrambling fighter jets once the hijacked planes were heading toward NY and DC, Bush’s strange behavior on that day, etc., and in the aftermath those questions were considered inappropriate, “divisive.” We needed to grieve first, heal; and then the tough questions could be raised.

But they weren’t. As months passed, the focus was on overthrowing the Taliban and avenging 9/11, and tough questions were taken off the table as the drumbeat was about the Nation Moving Forward. The media fell into zombie lockstep behind the invigorated Bush agenda. It took the 9/11 widows and esp the “Jersey Girls” to push and shame the Congress, the media, and the administration into launching a proper investigation, otherwise it would have all slid into the memory hole apart from the iconic images of the smoking towers before their collapse.

(Via James Wolcott.)

If you want really angry people, here are some of the people still in New Orleans. In the richest country in the world, this is disgraceful. (Via Oliver Willis.)

And one final quote, but this one’s from a while back:

“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” — Grover Norquist

Congratulations, Grover. You’ve starved government to the size where you’ve facilitated thousands of drownings.

Or rather, let John Rogers (writer of The Core, Exec Producer of Global Frequency, and noted fan of Jon Sable Freelance) double it for you:

John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey has volunteered to match donations to the Red Cross for hurricane/flood relief:

I will continue the tradition of personally matching your donations done through the Paypal button (with all due respect, linking to a bunch of charities is one thing. We put our damn money where our mouth is here.)

Money slammed through the Kung Fu Monkey hut will be doubled.

And if you disagree with crazy liberal Bush haters, here’s your chance to try and bankrupt one of them. (No, not me, him.)

A few folks have asked that question in comments and emails. Why are you so angry about this?

Here’s why.

A row of school buses sits in floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 east of New Orleans. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

68, count them, 68 school buses. Under water. Unused.

By a rough guess, that’s four thousand people that could have gotten out of the city.

Four thousand people.

For something that people saw coming.

This, in microcosm, is the story of the tragedy.

And instead, we get crap like this:

The Lickspittle Sycophant Responds:

As a bedtime gift for you, the angry and stupid left:

The absence of large portions of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama National Guards is dismissed as unimportant, because after all, 3,500 guards are available in LA, 1600 in MS, and 750 in ALthose numbers are perfectly sufficient! Or maybe not. Oh, and what about their equipment, trucks, helicopters, halftracks, and etc?

But even more, Trevino states “Show me, please, that the funds were diverted specifically for the war; and that they would have averted the present disaster.”…

So, Trevino, Cole, Erick, and the rest of you shameless, heartless, blind idiots, here’s the data

So, Trevino, Cole, Erick, and other lickspittle, lapdog, sycophantic propagandiststhem’s the facts.

A city is destroyed, and in large part this disaster was eminently preventablebut the money, planning, coordination, and people necessary to accomplish that prevention and mitigation were diverted from already identified urgent needs and projects and sunk into the bloody sands of the Iraqi desert and siphoned into the bulging pockets of your campaign contributors and rich beneficiaries of your stupid tax cuts.

Happy now?

I am sure the other ‘lickspittle, lapdog, sycophantic propagandists’ will respond tomorrow to the ‘facts’ as outlined by this impenetrable fool, but just so you haven’t missed the premise, I will restate it for you:

“Bush is to blame for the levee breaking because if just a few more million had been spent the Category 4-5 hurricane would have been stopped in its tracks by a decades old levee project designed at best to stop Category 3 hurricanes.”

And there you have the angry left in all their incomprehensible glory.

Incomprehensible?

New Orleans is gone. It will cost 30 billion dollars to repair, if it can be repaired at all. (Personally, I’m not sanguine about that. With all the toxic gumbo now floating around down there, between gasoline, sewage, corpses and disease carrying bugs, it ain’t likely.)

And that’s not counting the loss of revenue and impact on the economy that the city represented. Let’s Fermi it out: 1.3 million people, average income $10K each (yes, it’s low) and that’s a billion dollars gone in annual federal income tax alone.

From there, it gets worse. The Port of New Orleans was the fifth largest port in the world, by tonnage.

Gas shortages are already showing up in the Carolinas. Atlanta is reporting $5/gallon (that was quick). Ten additional airports may have to close because there’s no fuel for the planes– Lisa, if you’re reading this, head for the airport NOW.

And that’s this week. Next month, we’re really going to be in trouble. The largest port in the western hemisphere is closed for import/export business for the foreseeable future. Nothing comes in country, nothing goes out. 20 states lose their Mississippi River shipping access. Minneapolis, Davenport, St. Louis, Memphis, Baton Rouge, Pittsburgh, Omaha, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Wheeling, and Louisville, all lose water access– unless they want to go up through the Great Lakes. Harvests will have no way to get out. Goods will have no way to get in. Oh hell, read more here.

This was predictable. And it was.

This was preventable. And it wasn’t.

20 million dollars to shore up the levees seems cheap now, doesn’t it? And that was slightly more than half of the tax cut Bill Gates received in 2003. But no, Bush felt Bill needed the money, as well as everybody else who benefitted from his ridiculous tax cuts. And then he set us to war in Iraq, costing nearly 200 Billion and counting, not to mention thousands of National Guardsmen who could have been used to, oh, I don’t know, drive school buses to get people out of town.

To have one 9/11 sized disaster on your watch, well, you can say you weren’t ready. But two looks like you just don’t give a damn.

You didn’t plan for this, Bush? Are you that dense? Are you surrounded by that many fools?

Do you comprehend why we’re angry? Hell, why aren’t you?