massdestruction

Al

Today I picked up a vinyl copy of Al Green's Let's Stay Together.... Lord.

Licensed to Jill

My main man Fred pointed me to the latest controversy on the UNC campus, this über-young-republican essay on racial profiling. I picked up yesterday's copy of the Daily Tarheel just in time to see her fired. Don't jump to conclusions though, the editor (whom I feel most sorry for) fired her because she misrepresented her article to three different people she interviewed for it. One of them wrote a complaining letter that was printed and explains it more.

When I read her hate-filled drivel I immediately thought about Churchill's quote about people being liberal in youth and conservative in old age. If that's true I would had to see Jill "Licensed to Jill" Bandes when she's 40. Maybe she will run away to Talon News Service now and become the next Jeff Gannon.

Whatever your sad future holds my dear, please don't drop the "Licensed to Jill" line.

Do you think he wears a little brown beret?

In a New York Times article Michael "Heck of a job Brownie" Brown talks about how he couldn't get a "unified command established" after Katrina hit. He blames the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana for his failings of course. Interesting to me is this, within all his blaming others he mentions that out of the 2600 FEMA employees he sent "10 to 20" officials to the area before the storm hit. As I pointed out in the previous post, they sent around 500 people here for Ophelia and thats just employees, you should have seen their big-ass U.N-colored vehicles with satellite dishes on them, not to mention the line of semis full of water on the Virginia border waiting to come in to the rescue. So um... listen Brownie, where was all that shit during Katrina and why are 500 of 2600 people in N.C. while there is still such a huge amount of work to be done on the Gulf Coast?

That is a heck of a job Brownie. By the way, here is my favorite part of the piece:

"Until you have been there," he said, "you don't realize it is the middle of a hurricane."

Right you are Brownie, right you are.

Oh! Ophelia

For those of us who live in the middle of the State Ophelia was absent. We had maybe two or three rain squalls and a small tree limb fell on our sidewalk, but I think it might have been a crazed squirrel escaping the evil-eye my dog was throwing its direction. The storm is so amazingly slow it remains to be seen how badly the coast was(is still being) hit. At this point it looks like besides some expected flooding there isn't any major damage.

The slightly humorous side that those of you who don't live here might not have seen is the huge FEMA presence. They have been here since Tuesday with trucks and people and lots of things that loudly display FEMA so that we all know that they are right on top of things. The local news channel asked one FEMA official if perhaps their large presence was overkill for this category one storm and after a bit of wavering he had to admit that it was. The Governor made some remark about us having more experience than FEMA at these things which was humorous but with 61 shelters open on the coast for a minor hurricane, perhaps he is right. In no way should that reflect on the Katrina problems though, the population difference is quite large.

The Smokeys

Cate and I went to the mountains for a few days to simply sit and enjoy it. We rented a cabin in the Smokeys for this trip. As long as I have been enjoying the N.C. mountains, I know very little about the Smokeys. Most of my N.C. mountain time revolves around the areas of the Pisgah National Forest including the Linville Gorge, as well as Mount Mitchell, Wilson Creek, and areas immediately outside of Ashville. The Smokeys are beautiful, of course, but there are very few hiking trails (which are all very long) and even fewer access roads. To explore the Smokeys via my favorite method (foot) takes quite a bit of investment in time. I should make that investment at some point.

For this trip... all luxury during the nights with a couple of small day hikes. Relaxation would be the word of the weekend.

Where ya been Dave?

In the moutains enjoying the cool moutain air. Thanks for asking.

He shoots, he scores

I read in two different daily blogs this morning about Keith Olbermann's rant on MSNBC last night (was it last night?) but I didn't watch it probably because I read it in two different places. I've now read it on a third, but much closer friend's blog, and I finally watched it. Now I feel as if I should link to it here as well. I was blown away by the commentary in this clip and it makes me think we should get more sports announcers in the news. Very powerful, do yourself a favor and give it a viewing.

the levee was dry

Levee funding graph via LA Times

Honor-ray. You know, Louisiana-style French

This morning I saw some footage of Lt. General Russell Honore, who is directing the National Guard in the Hurricane areas. It was wonderful to see if not three days late. He is a classic military man saying "Over" in his interviews and he was marching through New Orleans telling the soldiers to point their guns down saying, "This isn't Iraq, Soldier!". When he took some New Orleans policemen (I'm being generous unless New Orleans started hiring 17 year old, puberty-mustache wearing, gun toting, boys as Officers) to task for their crazy offensive stances with guns on the back of a pick-up, he received a loud round of applause by the people standing on the side of the street waiting to be evacutated. Oh wait... I know what that was... Leadership! Imagine that!

Of course, if Bush keeps up his weirding ways FEMA director Michael Brown will get a Medal of Freedom award after this and Honore will be bucked down to a coffee-making private. We'll see.

Sinking cities

On Salon there is a great interview with a geologist about what happened during Hurricane Katrina (in New Orleans) and why. If you aren't a premium member of Salon you need to watch their stupid commercial before reading it but it really is worth it if you like science.

Note: as a friend pointed out, the synopsis of the article: blame the French.

Posted by dmason at 09:04 AM