Glenn Hauman: View From Above

An interview with the Prophet Bobby Henderson, the voice of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Personally, I find it to be a bit silly– for we know there is no prophet but “Bob”. (Not Bob, he’s just a pope.)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the great hope for the Republican party in 2008:

After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about “unleashing Chang,” his “mystical warrior” friend.

Here are Bush’s words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:

”Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.

”I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”

Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.

”I’m going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,” he said, as the crowd roared. [Gainsville.com; Sept 18, 2005.]

Geez, no wonder his kids have substance abuse problems. Daddy’s got his own problems dealing with reality. (But hey, so does their uncle.)

(Just what did Dad expose his kids to when he was the Ambassador to China? And where’s Maj. Bennett Marco when we need him?)

(Via Majikthise.)

KURT VONNEGUT’S LIBERAL CRAP I NEVER WANT TO HEAR AGAIN:

Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those wh trespass against us.
Nobody better trespass against me. I’ll tell you that.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the merciful. You mean we can’t use torture?

Blessed are the peacemakers. Jane Fonda?

Love your enemies – Arabs?

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can’t! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in s**t.

Bad Bad BAD:

WASHINGTON — President Bush, confronting a brewing rebellion within conservative ranks, promised Friday to help Congress cut spending in other areas to try to offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. […]

The president ruled out tax increases to reduce red ink. He said the Office of Management and Budget would help lawmakers trim federal programs to help offset reconstruction costs that independent analysts predicted would exceed $200 billion.

“You bet it’s going to cost money,” Bush said at a White House news conference.

“The key question is to make sure the costs are wisely spent and that we work with Congress to make sure we are able to manage our budget in a wise way,” he said. “And that’s going to mean cutting other programs.”

(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)

Cutting other programs– like, I don’t know, shoring up the levees and floodwalls– is what got us into this mess in the first place. If you hadn’t decided $20 million could be better spent on a desert war, you might not have to spend $200 billion now.

And as Mark Kleinman points out, the Republicans have been in charge of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for the past two and a half years. How come there’s $200 billion per year of unnecessary spending in the Federal budget?

Clearly, “managing our budget in a wise way” is beyond this doofus. I mean, he thinks costs are things that you spend. No, costs are what you incur. Resources are what you spend to pay costs. No wonder this idiot has driven so many company balance sheets into the ground. And now he’s doing the same with our country’s accounts.

It’s simply… magic. The only thing they forgot was 200 billion manna points (and rising).

Badtux the Snarky Penguin points out things that I didn’t take into consideration when I complained about the school buses being underwater:

# However, even if he had dispatched armed officers to seize the buses (which were guarded by OPSD police), there wasn’t enough buses there to be worthwhile. Media Matters has documented that there existed approximately 600 usable buses within the city limits of New Orleans, including the OPSB fleet and Nagin’s own Regional Transit Authority (note that the RTA provided transportation for middle school and high school students using the normal city buses, so the Orleans Parish School Board had fewer buses than you would expect of a district its size). The nearest high ground is a 3 hour drive away under normal traffic conditions on the three (3) land routes out of New Orleans. According to witnesses, these highways were so crowded with private automobiles that it instead took 7 hours to reach that high ground. Thus the buses would have been able to make at most one trip. Meaning that the *only* way to completely evacuate the 100,000+ people left in the city after those with autos fled was to have 1500+ buses already prepositioned within the city. Which would be difficult even under the best of conditions — the entire Greyhound Inc. bus fleet is only 1950 buses!

# Nagin instead decided to evacuate anybody who couldn’t leave on their own to the Superdome, which was designed to withstand 200mph winds, using the existing city bus fleet (which was entirely adequate for that purpose). An article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune describes Nagin setting up 12 neighborhood collection points (note that New Orleans is geographically a fairly small city) from whence people would be carried to the Superdome via the city buses.

# Nagin is also faulted for not putting the buses on “high ground” in order to use for Stage II of the evacuation plan he put into place (the one that called for people to be evacuated to the Superdome, and from there to high ground a three hour drive away). The question of what qualifies as “high ground” remains. The City has precious little of that. The riverfront parking garage is mostly below ground (i.e. they would have been swamped there). The upper decks of the Superdome parking garage were well above water, but their exit ramps were under 4 feet of water. The parking garages of most downtown buildings were also below ground and thus under water. The notion of parking them on the elevated freeway is utterly ludicrous — the winds of a Category 4 hurricane would have tumbled them like chess pieces, completely blocking the freeway and rendering it unusable for the Phase II evacuation. It’s unclear where you could park 265 city buses on the surface streets of the French Quarter, about the only “high ground” in the city. I don’t know what the final disposition of the city bus fleet was, but given the situation, I really can’t fault the mayor for saying “f’it, we’ll let the state and the feds figure out how to do stage II if we need it.”

I didn’t take into account that it was a 200 mile wide hurricane, with variance in directions, it would have been hours driving just to get out of the path of the wind and find shelter. There was dang little high ground to be had. In too many cases, there was nothing to be done but to ride it out where you could.

Which makes the response to the people left in town even worse.

Girls Gone Wild is contributing 100% of its proceeds from their Mardi Gras videos to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. (Link is clearly not safe for work.)

Think of them as historical documentaries.

A: He really doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.

(Making the rounds. Thanks, Sarah.)

As always: http://www.110stories.us

And your thought for the day, by way of Ronald Reagan: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

Is our country safer? Are we prepared for another attack? Have we stopped funding our enemies by being energy independent? Is our financial house in order, or are we spending ourself into debt? Are we all pulling together, or are rich folks getting huge tax cuts while spending is slashed on essential programs? Are we ready to be serious, or are we going to keep letting underqualified clowns and hacks lead us into one disaster after another?

And what are you prepared to do about it?

UPDATE:

Four Long Years, Mr. Bush:

Say what you will about the sad, conservative, privatized, small government, small morals response of this Bush Administration to the catastrophic human disaster that is Hurricane Katrina and its long, terrible aftermath. It is very bad.

But it is not the greatest failing of the Bush presidency.

The greatest failing of the Bush presidency is the timid Federal response to the events of September 11, 2001 in New York, and Washington, and Pennsylvania.

Yes, timid.

For all the rhetoric, for all the political hay made with the phrase “9/11” – although I suspect Katrina has ended its evident effectiveness forever – for all the manly posturing, the bullhorns, the stately music and the photo opps, we have failed. And by we, I mean the national government we placed in power and indeed, reelected on the promise of security.

Because Osama bin Laden is at liberty. And he has been for four long years: a span of time longer than that between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the surrender of Imperial Japan on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. The political and moral will to kill or capture (and then kill, frankly) the 9/11 mastermind has dried up along with the crocodile tears shed by politicians who see those terrible attacks as mere political opportunity.

As the commander of chief of the United States military, the most powerful instrument of statecraft in the world, George W. Bush as failed in the central mission of a nation attacked.

Failed miserably, with oak leaf clusters for incompetence and timidity. The CEO President outsourced the killing of bin Laden to feuding tribes in medieval Afghanistan. According to the stunning account in today’s New York Times Magazine by Mary Ann Weaver, the Administration allowed just 36 Special Forces troops anywhere near the caves of Tora Bora where they knew – they knew! – Osama bin Laden and his closest aides were holed up in the early winter of 2001.

You want to weep on this clear blue September Sunday, four years later, as the names of the dead are once again read on every channel in New York City, read this:

The view prevailing among senior American military leaders was that overwhelming air power, suitcases full of cash and surrogate militias could win the war. The intricacies of Afghan tribal life appeared to elude everyone.

George Bush had the opportunity to lead his army against Osama bin Laden, and kill him. He did not choose to do so. Instead he used 9/11 as a poor excuse to attack Iraq, to our national detriment.

In short, the President shied at the fence, shirked his duty, displaying a brand of Neo-Conservative perfidy to be witnessed by the world.

(Via Tom Watson.)

I’ve never been really rich. I’ve been well off, I’ve had cash, but I’ve never really been rolling in it– although I know some folks who are.

And I’ve never really been poor. I’ve been broke, I’ve been in debt, I’ve had days where I didn’t know where my next bit of money was coming from– but I’ve never really been in horrific shape. But again, I know some folks who are. A lot more of those folks, in fact.

I’ve never quite had to deal with the level of poor than John Scalzi talks about here, for example, but I’ve seen it. I’ve had to go to check cashing places to get money for the week; I’ve spent time in bad neighborhoods.

But I’ve never had to deal with the level of poverty that Will Shetterly talks about here, about having to have teeth pulled because he couldn’t afford root canals:

I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, and I don’t like either.

Part One: Teeth.

I have twenty teeth. I would have at least twenty-four if I could’ve afforded the root canals. I’ve been rich enough to afford root canals, and then rich enough to put them on a credit card. But when the cards are maxed, the tooth goes. While I sympathize with people who’re going through root canals, I envy them, too.

I’ve never been so poor that I couldn’t go to a dentist when I had to. I’m extremely fortunate….

I don’t dwell on my past much, so I can’t remember whether affordable dental care would’ve let me keep more than twenty-four of my teeth. And I’m very happy with the twenty I’ve got: ten above, ten below, no gaps, equally spaced in the front of my mouth. No one sees a missing tooth and assumes I’m white trash or trailer trash or any of the things that poor whites get called. If I ever need major work on a front tooth, I’ll have a very tough decision.

And this is a man who ran for Governor of Minnesota and finished third in a field of six.

What’s pricking my ears is that I’m hearing a LOT of this in the last few days, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I know a lot of guys in the comics and books and computing industries. Many of them are tops in their fields, many you’d recognize, many you’ve never heard of.

And all of them are in tight financial straits. Some may have to sell their house to cover the bills, some are already having trouble making the rent. Some are looking at bankruptcy. Some have already declared it in the past and are recovering. Medical costs are always a concern.

And I have a bad feeling it’s going to be getting much worse very quickly.

We still don’t know what the full impact of Katrina is going to be. I haven’t heard of any ships making it through the Port of Southern Louisiana, and I’m not sure when they’ll be able to. That’s billions of tons of goods not getting in or out of the country. And the harvest is coming.

We haven’t discussed the oil spills. Or the bacterial problems, and the diaspora of spores. Nor have we dealt with the cultural impact of the new American Gypsies, in a population relocation not seen since the days of the Dust Bowl. Prices are going to rise in a number of areas, and plummet in a number of others.

And I don’t yet know where we go from here. There seems to be a great sense of people holding their breath– because they don’t know what’s going to happen, and they don’t know what help they can rely on, the official responses to Katrina has shaken a lot of folks.

Any comments? Any clues? Any trends that I’m missing?