There's a book coming out next month about Zubaida Hasan, a little Afghan girl horribly burned and disfigured in a cooking accident. It took a long chain of people to get Zubaida the help she needed, but I'll always wonder about the anonymous Green Beret who first saw her on the street and decided to take her to the base for medical treatment. He wasn't a surgeon who could restore her, but it was his actions that made it all happen.
There's lots of good video of her, but this one's my favorite. Hearing her sing "Sweet Home, Alabama" is too much.
Watch the video. You won't be sorry.
Well, this is interesting. Italy has banned burqas in public. No face-hiding period, by male or female, is allowed:
The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.
"In the course of the investigation, it has been possible to identify a dense network of individuals from the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy, believed to have helped the fugitive cover his tracks," Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Senate. "We have before us a grave threat that has to be confronted with all the means of prevention and contrast that we have."
The Bible in Australian. Pretty cute.
(Via Pyromaniac.)
Just like me and you, the Sun-Sentinel's Michael Mayo manages to get through the work day without tape-recording people without their knowledge and consent. I'd have more respect for journalists if they all held to Mayo's credo of "hitting hard, keeping it above the belt and following the law and an ethical compass."
When I look at the names of the journalists signing the petition for Jim DeFede, all I can think is that they consider three of those things optional.
I also note the absence of the names of two prominent Herald writers: Glenn Garvin and Carl Hiaasen. I'd like to think it's because these men know it's hypocritical for a reporter to carp about lack of ethics in others if he has none himself.
UPDATE:
Terrific column by Carl Hiaasen today describing Teele. Hiaasen has no problem calling what DeFede did illegal, and repeatedly terms it as such.
UPDATE II:
Executive Editor Tom Fiedler's response to the firing:
But fundamentally, this isn't a question of the law. It's a question of how Herald journalists, and particularly our most visible and most experienced, are expected to operate.
When it comes to maintaining our integrity, we must be absolutists. There can be no parsing of ethics. We cannot be a little bit unethical.
UPDATE III:
Scratch Carl, as he affirms that laws really are for other people.
***
Previous posts:
DeFede Update-O-Rama
Adios, Jim
Today journalist John Podhoretz posted his score from an online personality quiz. His score was "drama nerd."
I'd felt he was in a sort of blogging rut, but it looks like he's inspired again.
The prattle of the dead.
(Sorry if I ruined it for anybody by saying what his score was.)
Ah, poetic justice:
A Kansas high school student convicted of battery for puking on his Spanish teacher will spend the next four months cleaning up after people who throw up in a police car.
Perfect.
The Daily Ablution's Scott Burgess, Louisiana boy and slayer of media dragons, has a wonderful write-up in the Times-Picayune on his role in bagging two bad guys in Sassygate. Check it out.
My special thanks to Scott for taking out Guardian editor Albert Scardino, the Savannah scalawag.
Scardinos in Georgia! How did they ever get in?!
***
Previous post:
Albert Scardino
Where am I today? Focusing on updates to the Jim DeFede firing.
From the reaction of the journalism community, nobody has ever been fired before for poor judgement, ethics violations, or breaking the law. It's quite fascinating to follow this groundbreaking event as it unfolds.
UPDATE:
In the latest legal maneuvering, I'd say getting your State Representative to be your lawyer when the State Attorney is eyeballing you is about as slick as snot. I'm sure State Representative Dan Gelber makes his legal expertise and political power available to all his downtrodden constituents -- that's the kind of nice guy he is:
On Friday, DeFede gave a statement to Miami-Dade prosecutors and detectives investigating Teele's death. DeFede told reporters he spoke to prosecutors about his friendship and conversation with Teele.
The State Attorney's Office has not charged DeFede, said its spokesman, Ed Griffith.
DeFede's attorney, State Rep. Dan Gelber, said the facts do not support charges.
"At the end of the day what you're talking about in this case is a very distraught public official who called his favorite journalist an hour before he killed himself to tell his side of the story," Gelber said. "Our view is that those facts do not create the basis for prosecution under Florida's privacy law."
According to this news video, DeFede gave the illegal tape to the Herald editors and the Herald doesn't plan to give the tape to State Attorney, calling it "unpublished notes."
****
Previous post:
Adios, Jim
Well, what do you know? Albert Scardino, my favorite newspaper editor in the whole world, has resigned from The Guardian over Sassygate.
Don't feel bad, Al. Publishing a call for the President's assassination and then hiring a member of a terrorist organization and publishing his opinions on the London bombings are mistakes anybody could make.
You could always come back to the States and run for dogcatcher. You'd probably lose, like what happens whenever anyone in your family runs for office -- but it's a goal. And you need goals right now.
(Via Michelle Malkin.)
I knew there was a good reason for my liking Kinky Friedman. He founded a rescue ranch for dogs, called Utopia. The dogs on death row at the county shelter are brought to the ranch to stay until adopted.
IT’S TRUE, FOLKS: I’M KNOWN FAR AND WIDE as the Gandhi-like figure of the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch. What, you might ask, does a Gandhi-like figure do? Nothing, of course. And what kind of profit does this modern-day prophet earn from the daunting task of doing nothing all the time? None, of course. But if you keep asking questions, you’re going to irritate the Gandhi-like figure, who has his hands full as the spiritual leader to 63 dogs, 22 horses, 3 donkeys, 9 pigs, 2 goats, 15 chickens, 11 cats, 2 turkeys, and a rooster named Alfred Hitchcock who crows precisely at noon.
Of course, it wouldn't be Kinky if the dogs didn't come with strange descriptions.
The fundraising is going well, and he can always count on one pretty Texan to lend him a hand:
Two-handed self-touching?
Watch that body language, Laura.
There's one less sob-sister at the Miami Herald today.
Jim DeFede was fired for illegally taping a telephone conversation with Art Teele, who commited suicide in the Herald's lobby last night.
Jim's yearly wailing about whatever Dade County "charity" program had its state funding removed that year due to the mean, lowdown, nastiness of Governor Jeb Bush, got me to actually read the Florida budget, where I discovered there were 66 other counties that needed or wanted things too. From there it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to the notion that just because you start a charity program, nothing says the state has to supplement your generosity.
So my thanks to Jim DeFede for making me a better-informed citizen.
And if he'd have asked me, I would have told him: it's illegal to tape a telephone conversation in Florida without the other person's consent. I didn't even have to go to journalism school to learn that.
Says Jim: "I told them I was willing to accept a suspension and apologize both to the newsroom and our readers. Unfortunately, The Herald decided on the death penalty instead."
If he thinks being fired is the death penalty, I wonder if he'd reconsider this lady's situation.
With DeFede's exit, will the Miami Herald use this opportunity to hire a columnist who doesn't have the same world view as every other columnist in its stable?
Probably not.
UPDATE:
From "An Open Letter to Miami Herald Publisher Jesus Diaz and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler" at Journalists for DeFede:
"But in any case he came forward on his own and has admitted his mistake."
Because admitting you made a mistake makes it all better.
Are these journalists infants? Admitting you made a mistake is simply something an adult does.
It doesn't absolve from wrongdoing and it doesn't stop repercussions.
DeFede can tell it to the judge. No doubt he'll be seeing one soon.
See also:
Babalu Blog is weighing in on "Journalists for DeFede."
UPDATE II:
DeFede also thinks his admitting he made a mistake should make it all better. At some point he is going to have to grow up.
UPDATE III:
From the NYT:
"'There's a dangerous, dangerous trend here of any journalist who makes any kind of mistake is automatically killed,' said Mr. DeFede."
Forget the actual dead body of Teele in the lobby. The important dead body here is the metaphorical one belonging to DeFede, as he received "the death penalty" and was "killed" by his Herald bosses. Let's keep our priorities straight.
UPDATE IV:
Journalist Juan Paxety's take on this is a must-read.
UPDATE V
Many famous journalists are adding their names as supporters of Jim DeFede at the Journalists for DeFede site.
If any of you citizen journalists wish to add a name to this published list, the addresses are wallstenp@yahoo.com or charlie_savage@yahoo.com. Bonne chance.
UPDATE VI
A big woot for my entry onto the list at 232 as "Mike Litorice."
For you Lilly the Shepherd fans out there, here are several short films Mr. Cracker took of her at the park today, with Shiloh in a supporting role.
It was pretty windy out, so you might want to turn down your sound, and yes, I know, the last film is very sad. If it's too distressing, I'll take it down.
UPDATE:
Lilly's now a member of the famous Cassie's Three-Legged Dog Club, soon to be celebrating ten years online. Woot!
UPDATE II:
And thanks for the letters, y'all. I've spent the whole morning answering Lilly's fan mail.
This is so unfair.
Just because a guy decides to turn off all the lights in his apartment and clean the cobwebs in his front window in the middle of the night by the light of a flashlight while he's naked, people start making accusations.
And now this Disney World employee is probably going to lose his job because of passers-by with their minds in the gutter. "Standing in his apartment window and shining a flashlight on his genitals." Please. Like these witnesses are so fine they never get cobwebs.
Duane may not have been the shy, retiring type.
Wail on, Skydog!
Comments aren't working this evening. I'm waiting to hear back from my hosting company.
My address is under the pic in the contact area of the sidebar if you're desperately missing talking to me.
UPDATE:
They're back on now.
It's wonderful that Tony Blair won't give one inch to terrorists. Now if he'd only stop making excuses for the IRA. At this point, it's silly.
Blowing people up in marketplaces isn't any cuter if the bombers had freckles.
Piss on any "Irish-American" who sends money to Ireland for some struggle. Don't kid yourself those people think you're a fellow Irishman. They don't. You're just an idiot with a checkbook.
*Noah Baumbach claims his dog is Tom Cruise. I know that's not possible, but curiously, both the dog and Tom Cruise are stumped when you hide their treats underneath something. I know, Tom -- it's the dyslexia.
*Fallout from the Bernard Goldberg ambush has Jeff Jarvis touting his mutual admiration society with life-hater extraordinaire James Wolcott. If water seeks its own level, these guys are the Love Canal.
James Wolcott's bemoaning loss of civility over in Jarvis's comments section is stunning in its irony. Wolcott wouldn't know civility if it hit him like a Cat 5.
*Rasputin is proving more difficult to kill than ever.
*Presentation is important when serving food. It probably shouldn't look like dog vomit.
Now I'm off to buy vacuum cleaners, both canister and upright, because I need all the help I can get.
The Cotillion has started and it looks to be a barn-burner.
It's hosted this week by Fistful of Fortnights, Who Tends the Fires, My VRWC, and e-Claire.
They did a great job putting everything together. Go check it out.
She's learned nothing from the past, empty-headed narcissistic adolescent that she is:
Actress and activist Jane Fonda says she intends to take a cross-country bus tour to call for an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq.
"I can't go into any detail except to say that it's going to be pretty exciting," she said.
Fonda said her anti-war tour in March will use a bus that runs on "vegetable oil." She will be joined by families of Iraq war veterans and her daughter.
They plan to return to the Santa Fe area, where she was promoting her book, "My Life So Far" on Saturday.
I wish her father had loved her; we'd have been spared her shenanigans.
This is an editorial from the Arab News. It's the best thing I've read lately on terrorism, with the exception of everything written over at Iraq the Model.
I'm not italicizing due to length:
After London, now the Egyptian tourist resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. Evil continues its rampage around the globe. Yet more innocents are slaughtered on the altar of hate. Where next, people ask.This is not the first such atrocity in Egypt. The 1996 attack on Greek tourists in Cairo, which left 18 dead; the September 1997 killing of nine German tourists outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and two months later the devastating massacres of 58 tourists in the Valley of the Kings; last year’s bombs in the Sinai resorts of Taba leaving 34 dead; the deadly bomb last April at the Khan Al-Khalili souk in Old Cairo, another tourist haunt. All were carried out by militants intent on destroying Egypt’s tourist industry, Egypt’s livelihood.
Yesterday’s barbarity follows a pattern — a pattern of pure evil, so evil that most people find it difficult to believe that human beings could do such things.
How can anyone justify the killing of innocents? No religion condones it. Yet that is what the militants do. What is that justification to target Egyptian workers at a downtown cafe? Why did they merit death?
Most of those killed yesterday were Egyptians. It is impossible to fathom the terrorists’ warped thinking, but they clearly think that ordinary Egyptians, like ordinary Londoners, are disposable.
Theirs is not just a war against the Egyptian economy and government, it is a war against the entire Egyptian people, as it is against all the people of Britain, of Spain, of Lebanon, of Iraq, of Indonesia, of the US — of everywhere. The terrorist is at war with the entire world.
It is not enough to hunt down and destroy these men of evil. The thinking that drives them must also be destroyed. That puts a special responsibility on decent human beings everywhere. These fanatics claim to act in the name of Islam. That has to be shown to be a lie.
Their vision of the faith is so warped, so twisted, that it has nothing to do with Islam. They pollute it, they make it feared, even hated elsewhere in the world, they bring shame and humiliation to the faithful. They have departed from Islam. Muslims here and elsewhere must tell the world, not just once but again and again, every time the fanatics attack, that they have nothing to do with Islam, that they have been cast out.
Until the message gets through the world, Islamophobia will continue to grow. Until it gets through to the fanatics themselves, unless they realize they are damned, the slaughter of the innocents will continue.
No major city in the world will be spared — not in the West, not in the Muslim world, not anywhere. In their minds, we are all disposable, we are all potential victims of their all-encompassing hate.
Egyptian blogger Big Pharoah puts it all very succinctly:
I will tell you something that you ought to never forget. Write this statement on a piece of paper and stick it on your fridge: The sky is the limit with terrorists. If a terrorist in Baghdad found legitimacy in slaughtering over 20 kids who were receiving candy from US soldiers, then another terrorists will find his own "legitimacy" in attacking a target in Cairo, Riyadh, Paris, and London. Don't worry; they have a bag full of "legitimate motivations."
Don't apologize, don't appease, don't capitulate. It will never be enough for them.
Enjoy a creepy tale of divers bringing a ten-year's-dead body up from the biggest underwater cave in the world. What could possibly go wrong?
Today I watched a man read a book while he picked the lice from his hair one by one and ate them. There must be some part of them that he didn't fancy, because after chewing the louse for a few seconds, he'd pull some part of it back out of his mouth and flick it onto the carpet. Perhaps it was some sort of husk.
I called my friend over to observe him, in case I was misinterpreting the tableau. I'd only ever seen monkeys cracking lice in nature documentaries and wasn't completely sure if this was an accurate approximation of a human being doing the same thing.
She said she'd be seeing it forever, so I guess it was.
UPDATE:
From the mailbag:
That anecdote is one of the most disgusting things I have EVER read in my life. I hope you were able to throw that nasty, sub-human sumbitch out on his filthy ass.
What? I'm planning on applying for a grant to study him.
About the millionth time I hear this, I'm going to have to start to wonder whether it does have something to do with Islam:
Interior Minister Habib al-Adli pinned the attack on Islamic militants. "This is an ugly act of terrorism," al-Adli said in a statement carried on the government news agency. "It has nothing to do with Islam, they are only acting under the slogan of Islam."
Maybe it was the work of those volatile Lutherans.
Whichever Einstein came up with the idea of random searching the bags of non-profiled people on the NYC subway needs to get it together. If the object is to find explosives in a milling crowd, it's agreed the best answer is sniffer dogs.
Searching grandma's pocketbook while Mr. Allah Akbar is wearing an explosive vest isn't going to help one bit.
Here's something for the idiots who will find it necessary to wear a t-shirt complaining about dogs sniffing air:
More on this random search silliness over at Michelle Malkin's.
It's reported that the police have shot and killed one of the bombers from yesterday. They yelled for by-standers in the subway to get down and then took him out.
During the time of Baader-Meinhof, one of my Army friends was in the airport in Frankfurt when there was a chase and a shoot-out. If the Polizei yelled for people to get down, it was in German, and he didn't understand it. It's a scary thing for most people to see, I'm sure.
I'm glad, however, that the famously mellow British police have been freed to do what they need to do to protect the public. If some witnesses found it horribly upsetting; they'd be a damn sight more upset if they wound up with their guts hanging out due to a bomb.
UPDATE:
Proving that Austin Bay hasn't cornered the cogitation market, Mr. Bingley has thoughts.
UPDATE II:
Lots of breaking news on the investigation over at the BBC log.
Don't you hate it when you're in the subway and your bomb fails to blow up properly? You're expecting a big kaboom and a headlong rush into eternity, and all you get is a little kapop and a bunch of strangers staring at you:
Ivan McCracken told Sky News: "I was in a middle carriage and the train was not far short of Warren Street station when suddenly the door between my carriage and the next one burst open and dozens of people started rushing through. Some were falling, there was mass panic.
"It was difficult to get the story from any of them what had happened but when I got to ground level there was an Italian young man comforting an Italian girl who told me he had seen what had happened.
"He said a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack.
"The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage."
Next time, don't run from the bomber, subway riders; run at him. Run at him and kick the crap out of him.
It didn't take airplane passengers any time at all to settle on this response.
Here's another of Duane at Muscle Shoals. For a skinny guy, he had a nice behind, don't you think?
Wail on, Skydog!
It turns out that one of John Kerry's deepest, fondest wishes was to watch a baseball game at Fenway with Ted Williams.
It's not too late. He's got a way with wealthy women and could probably sweet-talk daughter Claudia Williams into loaning him her dad's head for a trip to the ballpark. I think you're allowed to bring small styrofoam coolers into the park. Even if you're not, they'd surely make an exception for Ted.
If it's Tuesday, it must be time for the Cotillion. This week's hostesses are Doctor Sanity, Right Girl, Annika, and Beth.
Cruise on over to the wingding.
Today is the 36th anniversary of the day Senator Ted Kennedy heroically saved himself from drowning.
Suggestions for celebrating this day include:
*Wearing a neckbrace.
*Crying to your mom.
*Hiding under the bed.
*Calling in the lawyers.
Feel free to add others as the spirit moves you.
In pursuit of safety (also known as "avoiding lawsuits"), school districts in Broward County have taken away swing sets, sandboxes, bouncy horses and even hand-pulled merry-go-rounds. "No Running" signs are now posted on the playground of every elementary school in the county.
This is going on all over the country, thanks to organizations like the National Program for Playground Safety. But why should we trust them? They have a swing in their logo and swings account for 70% of all playground accidents! Why not put the Grim Reaper in there while you're at it?
Great way to encourage our kids to get killed on the playground, NPPS.
So what are the new playgrounds like?
The newest playgrounds are usually filled with equipment engineered in accordance with U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines. They might expose schools and parks to fewer lawsuits, but they're not as challenging as the previous generations of playgrounds, said Joe Frost, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas who runs its Play and Playgrounds Research Project.
"Play is one of children's chief vehicles for development," Frost said. "Right now it looks like we're developing a nation of wimps."
Sounds about right.
Take a minute to check out what the artists over at Tampon Art have created.
I was praying I'd find a tampon Elvis there, but it was not to be.
The last tampon you'll ever see.
For those of you wondering, Lilly is doing fine. Next week she'll be finishing up a one-month treatment of Cipro -- yes, the famous anthrax medicine that was in such short supply not so long ago. I believe the doctors have moved on to a new drug for treating that, and Cipro can now be reserved strictly for my dog's chronic pee problems.
Lilly is so much heavier now that we plan on going ahead with getting her the wheelchair. It was easier for her to hop around outside when she was a scraggly bag of bones. She's added a lot of heft (more than 20 pounds) and is taking many more breaks while out on a walk than she used to. Inside the house, she scoots around on the carpet. If I stuck a brush in her mouth, she might start to paint.
I remember how when I first brought her home, I would feel grossed out when her stump accidentally touched me. Now I gnaw on it to annoy her. I was doing that today while she gnawed a bbq spare rib. Funny how you get over stuff like that.
If a rattlesnake rattles at you, action of some sort is required on your part; whether it's leaving the area, killing the snake, or catching it and moving it elsewhere. Otherwise you're going to get bit:
"Muslims in Britain have two choices: They can compromise and take the Islam Blair wants you to take, or follow the true Islam,'' Sayful Islam, the former head of the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun, said in March. "For too long, we have followed the White House. It's about time everyone followed the Black House of Islam."
That England is dawdling about deporting radical clerics, and is even letting new ones in, is tantamount to suicide at this point.
After the Texas National Guard brought an Iraqi man and his son to Houston and successfully repaired the son's congenital heart defect, the father showed his thanks to surgeon Dr. Charles Fraser Jr:
"I don't know if I've ever had a thank you like I had from this father. He grabbed me by the face, he kissed me all over the face, he kissed my hands and he fell down on the floor and kissed my feet," he said.
Great. The Iraqi dude will go home and leave us to deal with the surgeon's God complex.
A Charlotte County man who decided to take a cool, refreshing dip in the canal behind a house after mowing the lawn has met his Maker, courtesy of a 400-pound alligator.
When the trappers arrived, the gator was dragging the body of 41-year-old Kevin Murray around by his right arm. While easily getting the body away from the creature, catching him proved more difficult. After ruses failed, an officer put a bullet through its head. That only stunned the gator, however, and it took a second slug to do the trick.
Lt. Steve Mevers, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says he intends to find out why it attacked the man.
I'll provide him the answer right here: Age of Aquarius or not, the 6'2" 400-pound bull gator attacked Kevin Murray because it was feeding time, because Kevin Murray was much smaller than he was, and because Kevin Murray was made out of meat.
There's really no one quite like Christopher Walken:
Walken thinks it would be great if actors had tails. "A tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell if they're annoyed. You can tell whether they're scared. They bush their tail. If I was an actor and I had to play scared in a movie all I'd have to do is bush my tail. I think that if actors had tails it would change everything."
Throw in some dog hackles to raise and lizard frills to frill out, and movies just got a whole lot more interesting to watch.
In England, Tariq Ramadan is getting a snuggle for being the voice of moderate Islam:
Yet the desire to prove that London's Metropolitan Police is not Islamophobic has created grotesque examples of political correctness. Scotland Yard is contributing $15,000 of taxpayers' money to enable a Swiss Islamist academic who is a recognized apologist for terrorism, Tariq Ramadan, to address a conference of young Muslims in London next month, despite knowing full well that Mr. Ramadan had been banned from America.
He's banned from France too.
Daniel Pipes provides background on Ramadan in this article (it also includes links to other articles on him as well) and Ramadan himself has his own website where you can read some of his love letters from the West.
I hope none of y'all own desirable property in the city of Hollywood. Their commission is eminent domaining to benefit a developer for the second time this month and they plan to keep on doing it:
When Commissioner Cathy Anderson asked what the public purpose was, City Attorney Dan Abbott did not hesitate.
"Economic development," he said, "which is a legitimate public purpose according to the United States Supreme Court."
The vote was unanimous. The city commission is getting very comfortable with making people offers they can't refuse.
UPDATE:
Take time to read this excellent story on a property seizure that Juan Paxety witnessed as a young reporter.
I wish I could just look at their finger positions and name that tune in one pic.
Wail on, Skydog!
My dad told me that for except for getting married or buried, my name should never be in the paper. This is an exception to the rule he wouldn't mind.
Thanks for the kind mention, Tim.
So, has it happened then? Were the terrorists in London not only suicide bombers but also British subjects?
If so, we've entered a new phase of the war. It's seems impossible that many people will try to ignore the significance of this to the West, and yet I know they will.
Here's confirmation of something that became apparent on 7-7: with all our technology, the most valuable tool we have against terrorists is the dog.
And, let me remind you, in the future, dogs will also come in handy in our fight against the cyborgs.
UPDATE:
The BBC agrees: "Looks cute and cuddly, but this is the unlikely enemy of terror."
After a six-month-long investigation of FEMA, brought about by the anger citizens of hurricane-ravaged counties felt at the agency's paying out of $31 million to residents of an undamaged Miami-Dade County, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has released its official findings.
In the past, FEMA director Michael Brown, possessed of the world's sunniest disposition, has brushed aside criticism, seeing the glass as half-full. The Senate committee's roundhouse to the side of his head should finally wake him from his happy dreams. His inability to admit there was anything wrong has been a source of frustration to a good many people.
There are signs that the agency is already making some changes. This week, post-Hurricane Dennis, damage inspectors going out to homes are actually taking pictures.
Reforms suggested by the senators include:
• More accurate declaration of counties eligible for disaster relief to prevent federal aid going to communities with minimal storm damage.
• Numerous improvements to the agency's Individuals and Households Program to ensure accurate home inspections, prevent rental vouchers from being misspent and eliminate the "generic room" concept to reduce excessive personal property awards.
• Senators also called on the agency to improve its inspector work force by offering better training, completing criminal background checks before sending workers to a disaster zone, and establishing standards to ensure inspectors recuse themselves from situations that present an appearance of a conflict of interest.
• The agency also was asked to adopt guidelines for determining whether a death was disaster-related, including a requirement to document each request for funeral expense assistance. After Hurricane Frances, the agency reimbursed families for funeral expenses even though the deaths were not officially attributed to the storm.
The committee also stated that if FEMA does not make the recommended reforms voluntarily, that they themselves will do it with legislation.
This week's Cotillion is hosted by Feisty Repartee, Sisu, and Villainous Company.
Go see what kind of fancy reading shindig the ladies have put together. It's good stuff.
The Washington Times has a good series of articles about meth, which along with oxycontin, is wreaking havoc here in the South. These are our new scourges, and there may not be a Dr. Goldberger out there to get us out of this particular mess.
I can't be happier for the folks in the Panhandle. Praise God.
There have been deaths and there is damage, but nothing like last year.
Jeff Jarvis needs advice about electric toothbrushes. Can anybody help him?
A Kenyan economist is asking the West to help by not helping:
This interview is excellent and hopefully someone will glue a copy of it to the front of Bono's sunglasses.
(Via Van Helsing, who discusses the interview at length.)
Foreign terrorist cell or local boys?
This is confusing.
Brazil, whose scientists are too lame to come up with their own medicines, is planning to steal the work of others:
AIDS activists and humanitarian groups are praising Brazil for taking the first step by any country to break an AIDS drug patent and produce copycat versions, a decision they hope leads to massive exports to other poor countries devastated by the disease.
But property-rights advocates and the pharmaceutical industry are equating the nation's high-stakes move against U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories Inc. as government-sanctioned piracy of intellectual property driven by greed.
Go on, Brazil. Be a thief. Let your own labs rake in the bucks mass-exporting a copycat-version of a drug they were too stupid to think up on their own.
The labs that create these drugs don't have to research AIDS at all, especially if all they'll get for their trouble is ripped-off.
They can always crank out new vanity drugs like Rogaine and Viagra. They'll have to if they want to stay in business.
The Sun-Sentinel's Michael Mayo takes a look at the close relationship between Hollywood mayor Guilianti and developer Chip Abele and their ongoing attempted theft of the Mach family's land.
In this area, condos sell out within hours of being put on the market. Why any city would give a developer multi-millions in incentives to build a set of them is insane.
It would all just be crappy local politics if were not for the fact that they've teamed up to try to steal an ordinary family's land.
UPDATE:
The developer of a new condo unit in Ft. Lauderdale is requiring people pay a $2,500 deposit merely for the pleasure of enquiring about a condo there. Did this developer also need millions in taxpayer-funded incentives to put up a building?
Live desktop coverage of Dennis can be found here.
He'll be landing this afternoon and right now is Cat 4. Good luck to everybody in his path.
Governor Bush says we're ready and that tomorrow it will be convoys of National Guard. We've had some good practice with responding since Charley last year.
UPDATE:
Three deaths so far, including one here in Broward: a man had a heart attack at a shelter, a little boy whose family was evacuating fell out of the car, and a local man was electrocuted by an exposed power line while running to get out of the rain.
UPDATE II:
Dalek in Alabama has a pic of his TV screen that shows some extremely interesting coverage, or lack thereof.
UPDATE III:
Drudge headline: Hell from the where?
All the models have Dennis hitting right where Hurricane Ivan hit less than a year ago: in Pensacola.
It has to land somewhere, so my suggestion is that it scooch over a little to the west and hit Alabama.
Everybody be safe.
*Jeanene Garofolo is guest-posting over at WuzzaDem's. Her dissent will not be stifled! (Smear vasoline or any viscous, opaque substance onto your eyeballs before clicking.)
*Liberal Larry is offering sage advice regarding the tragedy in London:
For once, let's rise above political rancor and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our friends across the pond in their hour of need, just as we did when Bush killed Princess Diana.
*Over at Ace's, James Bond has gotten a new assignment and Moneypenny sounds suspiciously like...Jeanene Garofolo with an English accent.
Larry will be pleased he sees he's wallowing in the middle of this Garofolo link-sandwich.
Since y'all don't hear nearly enough about my musical tastes, I'm responding to Tim Blair's music tag.
I tried to find full songs for everything. Wherever that wasn't possible, I've linked to clips:
1. Total volume of music files on my computer: Around 100 songs.
2. Last CD I bought: Here for the Party - Gretchen Wilson.
3. Song Playing Right Now: "Nothin' to Lose" - Josh Gracin. (Crank it UP!)
4. Five Songs (or Albums) I listen to a lot or that move me:
* Wide Open Spaces - The Dixie Chicks. (Watch this video and tell me they didn't have everything in the world going for them. Natalie ruined it all.)
* Eat a Peach (and many others) - The Allman Brothers. (The tunes on my sidebar say it all.)
* Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos.
* Lone Justice - Lone Justice.
* Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper. (Both the first album I ever bought and the first concert I ever attended were Alice Cooper's.)
5. Tag three others:
1. Salt Lick
2. Bird
3. What's a Kyer?
Bonus musical info:
Two of the albums Tim listed as favorites are in my own collection: Hank Williams Jr's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and the masterpiece How Will the Wolf Survive? by Los Lobos.
(Gracin audio via gazze.com.)
Train station, Hoboken, NJ.
Outside Grand Central Station, NYC.
Inside Grand Central Station, NYC.
New York Stock Exchange.
Union Station, Washington, DC.
Metro, Washington, DC.
Metro, Washington, DC.
Airport, San Jose, California.
Metro, Atlanta, Georgia.
Amtrak, Boston, Massachusetts.
Train station, Santa Ana, California.
BART, San Francisco, California.
There are so many crazies willing to do stuff like this; I didn't even automatically think of al-Qaeda.
For all the number of explosions, the loss of life has been small, for which I'm thankful.
The BBC has running updates here, as well as streaming video.
UPDATE:
For Americans wishing to send condolences and flowers:
British Embassy
3100 Massachusetts Ave.
Wash, DC
20008
(202) 588-7800
British Consulate
Brickell Bay Office Tower
1001 Brickell Bay Drive
Suite 2800
Miami, FL
33131
(305) 374-1522
Fax: (305) 374-8196.
UPDATE II
For what it's worth, seeing the banks of flowers at the US Embassy in Kiev after 9-11 made me cry in a good way. The support was most welcome.
I hope Americans fill the British Embassy and consulates here with expressions of our support as well.
From Tony Blair:
"It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.
Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world."
If you gotta come home to a crime, the most you can hope for is that it's a funny one:
A couple, who lives in the upscale New Floresta [Boca Raton] neighborhood, returned home from a vacation and found a man dead on his hands and knees with his head stuck in their barbeque grill.
I'd have liked to hear that domestic conversation.
I know which side of this fight John Paul Jones would be on. Someone once tried to take his ship:
Fort Trumbull Just Beginning The Fight
Published on 7/6/2005Letters To The Editor:
I am writing about the editorial titled “It's time to move ahead,” published June 26.You have got to be kidding if you think for one minute your words of nonsense could change the way we feel about our homes.
Do you think because you can choose to stop printing the opinions of the people from all over this country that the Fort Trumbull residents are going to go away?
Do you think because you write words about compensation that that is supposed to make us feel better when we have told you repeatedly that this not about money?
Do you think that you can continue to talk about your development that we, the residents of Fort Trumbull, were never against where there is more than enough land to build whatever you want to build and at the same time let us keep our homes?
Do you think you can continue to talk about the Coast Guard Museum and how it will come to build in Fort Trumbull? I will chase them from my property.
I will go on every radio talk show, every television show and tell this horror story about how the New London Development Corp., the city of New London and the United States Supreme Court are kicking seven homeowners out their homes.
I have every name, number, address and e-mail for each person who has contacted The Day and hundreds of others that have contacted us and each I have spoke with has assured me they will stand with us if and when that day comes. I will contact each of them if I need to, to stay in my home.
We will not leave our homes.
We have not yet begun to fight.
Susette Kelo
New London
(Via F.R.)
No class.
I don't think we've had any Presidents who would go overseas and act as ill-bred as Chirac. If I were French, I'd be mortified.
This is Duane in Atlanta doing something or other to his guitar.
One of you experts fill me in, please.
Wail on, Skydog!
UPDATE:
I feel the need to have that little video up again. Thanks again to skydogj.
By the way, this site made Wikipedia for the Duane entry. Woot!
UPDATE:
According to reader Ben:
Posted by floridacracker at 04:08 AM | Comments (7)
Sandra Day O'Connor has written an illuminating article on why she's retiring.
With her lobbing grenades on her way out the door, I doubt very much she got invited to the SCOTUS Fourth of July picnic.
(Via INDC Journal.)
To NY Post columnist Cindy Adams, this is what a bum looks like.
I was browsing velvet Elvises and found one that looks just like a Filipino busboy.
Intriguing.
I believe the artist was trying to convey that Elvis was a helpless by-stander to his own fame, downward spiral, and untimely demise.
In New York, men as well as women are now choosing to show their butt cracks in public; giving me another reason to be thankful for not living there:
After the big January blizzard, many buckets of purgatorial rain, a chilly, leafless spring—summer, suddenly. Greenhouse gas has cooked Manhattan into a tropical isle; all the hot, half-dressed girls have returned like robins. It’s getting so there’s no place you can rest your eyes without being assaulted by a salvo of flesh. The subway poles are like strippers’ poles, encircled with the most marvelous and terrifying variety of breasts; but don’t look down, because there’s always that flurry of filthy, flip-flopped feet. And in every other direction: Man ass.
Perhaps they'd like to wear these with.
The Sun-Sentinel's Sherri Winston is offering Oprah a healing mantra:
Oprah and her camp recently made a big stank about an encounter at the Hermes boutique in Paris. The Big O wanted to buy Tina Turner a watch. However, when she arrived at the exclusive shop 15 minutes after closing time, she and her "team" were rebuffed. That's fancy talk for turned away.
In essence, Oprah was told, "No."
Oprah is fond of borrowing mantras. Here's one she can borrow: "I am only one of God's children; not God's only child. No is not a four-letter word."
Ahh, it feels good to be a healer.
While it's a pleasure to read that a local girl was chosen as a Presidential Scholar, an honor only 141 students earn each year, clicking the article's thumbnail photo brought to mind the Dolly Parton quote "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap."
UPDATE:
There's nothing to be seen here but bad art. Move along with you.
The hostility between troops and contractors is nothing new.
In Saudi our contractors were universally despised.
They ran quite a racket using our trucks to go buy the stupid things we had to have: candles, a plastic basin to wash in, etc. -- then charging the soldiers hurricane-gouging prices for the items.
When their tent had to be relocated, the guys slashed the hell out of the roof of it before putting it back up -- Take that! -- we were, after all, just MI pukes. I can see Marines doling out more substantial retribution.
They just announced on TV that Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring.
She's sent a letter President Bush saying that she'll step down as soon as her replacement is found.
Things are about to get very interesting.
What a wild resume the new president of Iran has. It seems one of his old jobs was shooting political prisoners in the head:
Former political prisoners who were in Evin Prison in 1981 have said Ahmadinejad was known to them as “Tir Khalas Zan”, literally meaning “he who fires coup de grace”.
The government-run website Baztab quoted allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami as confirming that Ahmadinejad fired coup de grace at prisoners who were executed in Evin Prison in the 1980s.
I wonder if he still does it now and again. I've heard Al Capone liked to get out the Louisville Slugger from time to time, just to keep his hand in the game.
UPDATE:
He's now also being accused of involvement in the execution-style slayings of three Kurds in Austria.
