I can’t even watch the footage anymore, it is too upsetting. I think we have lost a city.
Just go donate.
by John Cole| 33 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
I can’t even watch the footage anymore, it is too upsetting. I think we have lost a city.
Just go donate.
This post is in: General Stupidity
Maha Cindy speaks:
While George golfed yesterday, the worst hurricane ever struck New Orleans; oil went up to over 68.00/barrel; and an American soldier was killed in the charade and cataclysmic occupation of Iraq. The soldier’s family doesn’t even know what’s going to hit them yet. The death is “Pending Notification.” I continually ask myself: “How do George Bush and other death-mongers live with themselves?” While George vacations and bikes and golfs his way to the lowest poll numbers since Richard Nixon, other “patriots” are wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes and going along with the farce that the mission from hell: Killing more people in Iraq, because so many have already been killed” is somehow a good thing ordained by God. I can live with myself, but trust me, sleep does not come easily to me these days.
I know, I know. I am not allowed to discuss her repellant and repugnant statements and opinions because she is a grieving mother.
*** Update ***
Sheesh. I didn’t know she met the President today (at least the only one some of you guys recognize). (h/t Jeff)
*** Update ***
Excellent! Mother Sheehan’s commercial was just on CNN. I hope they play it every ten minutes.
by John Cole| 33 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
It looks like New Orleans is dealing with the worst case scenario:
Rescuers worked through the night to reach hundreds of people stranded after Hurricane Katrina ripped across the Gulf Coast killing dozens of people, destroying countless homes and leaving more than a million people without power in three states.
And authorities said they would not be able to reach some of the hardest-hit areas until first light on Tuesday.
The storm is blamed for at least 67 deaths and that toll is almost certain to rise. Mississippi officials said at least 54 people were killed there, including 30 who were killed in an apartment complex near the Biloxi beach. Alabama reported two deaths. The storm killed 11 people last week when it made its initial landfall in Florida.
While Louisiana officials have not yet confirmed any deaths there, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said there have been reports of bodies floating in the floodwaters.
“My heart is heavy tonight,” Nagin said in the interview on CNN affiliate WWL-TV. “I don’t have any good news to share.”
Nagin said that about 80 percent of the city was flooded and that some areas were under 20 feet of water.
This is disastrous, and I thought for a while yesterday that they might be spared the worst.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
Mr. Will with some ‘intelligently designed’ snark:
This summer’s movie stars are not the usual bipeds, but other animals — emperor penguins and grizzly bears. Their performances are pertinent to some ongoing arguments.
“March of the Penguins” raises this question: If an Intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins? The movie documents the 70-mile march of thousands of Antarctic penguins from the sea to an icy breeding place barren of nutrition. These perhaps intelligently but certainly oddly designed birds march because they cannot fly. They cannot even march well, being most at home in the sea…
The penguins’ hardiness is remarkable, as is the intricate choreography of the march, the breeding and the nurturing. But the movie, vigorously anthropomorphizing the birds, invites us to find all this inexplicably amazing, even heroic. But the penguins are made for that behavior in that place. What made them? Adaptive evolution. They have been “designed” for all that rigor — meaning they have been shaped by adapting to many millennia of nature’s harshness.
Read the whole thing. He is ‘ruthless’ to the idiot who was eaten by bears.
by John Cole| 46 Comments
This post is in: Military, Republican Stupidity
This seems to me to be wildly irresponsible rhetoric coming from Haley Barbour:
Barbour and other officials had a harsh warning for those thinking of looting.
“I’ve urged the highway patrol and national guard to treat looters ruthlessly,” Barbour said, “The rules of engagement will be as ruthless as the law allows.”
I can understand the desire to send a message to possible looters. I really can. I can even recall saying out loud myself that I thought looters should be shot on sight.
But I wasn’t serious, and I wasn’t the Governor of Mississippi, and I damn sure wasn’t about to unleash a bunch of young National Guardsmen on the public with orders to be ‘ruthless.’
Even though Barbour intends for them to act within the law, it seems to me that if you tell a bunch of young heavily armed guys to be ruthless, ruthless is what you will get. That just strikes me as irresponsible.
Am I way off base here? I don’t think I have to go too far back in the history books to find an example of what can happen when undertrained military personnel were given an apparent green light to be as tough as they want with people who were deemed unacceptable. National Guardsmen aren’t police, they aren’t lawyers, and sending this sort of message is going to lead to problems.
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Thanks to the Intertrons, the notorious NYC subway flasher may have been, ahem, fingered:
Cops want to question a Manhattan restaurant owner after getting numerous tips that he’s the subway flasher caught in the act by camera phone, police sources said last night.
Nearly two dozen people have phoned the Daily News and the NYPD to say they believe Dan Hoyt, co-owner of raw-food eateries called Quintessence, is the man whose photo appeared on the cover of Saturday’s paper.
Investigators contacted Hoyt by phone and asked him to come in for an interview, NYPD sources said. No arrests have been made.
Insert your own oyster joke.
by John Cole| 11 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
I am pretty harsh on Kos and company a lot of the time, but I thought his latest advertising campaign was a classy touch.
Go check out the third blogad (“Support Your Favorite Bloggers”) on Ezra’s site. Read it, and click the ad.
But read Ezra’s post on the Gas tax v. CAFE standards first.