'TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Lake George
By Baron Dave Romm
The following is my introduction to the Shockwave Radio broadcast of 9/3/05, edited for the web. You can hear the entire program on the KFAI archives (scroll down to Shockwave, most current show until next week).
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last week. As listeners remember, I was in Gulfport, MS in July. My brother Dan and his family live near there, and we went up and down the now devastated part of Mississippi and into New Orleans. My brother played host to me, who was playing tourist. Now, I wish we'd done more. Dan bought his house because it was higher than the previous high water mark in the area. Alas, that mark has been obliterated. The house is a mess. It's still standing, but everything on the first floor is smashed against the walls. Sheesh, and that's where I was staying.
My brother did one smart thing; really two smart things: He digitized all his pictures. After he loaded the CDs into his computer, he gave half of them (17) to me and was going to give half to our other brother. For safe keeping. whew
I urge all Shockwave Radio listeners to back up their files, especially memories, and send backups to friends and relatives. The files can be encrypted or not, depending on how much you trust the recipient and what the files are. If you've scanned family photos, I don't think you need to encrypt the DVD archive you send to your relatives. If you back up all your tax information and private journal and Netflix Queue, you should probably put them behind some sort of password. But leave the password with someone you trust, just in case something bad happens, so your grandkids can see your records.
In the meantime, let's talk about Katrina and the response to the disaster. The Katrina disaster was predicted as far back as 2001. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country. The other two? An earthquake in San Francisco and, are you ready, a terrorist attack on New York City.
So far, FEMA is two out of three and the Bush administration is batting less than zero. The oily conservative response to repeated warnings: Cut the budget for emergencies and give tax breaks to their rich friends. The budget for Army Corps of Engineers projects in Southern Louisiana was slashed. National Guard troops, no longer under the control of state governors, are being taken away from homeland duties to shore up dismal army recruiting over the war in Iraq.
Katrina would have been a disaster no matter how much preparation had taken place, but the destruction could have been ameliorated and many lives could have been saved if only the Republicans had heeded the warning. It should be noted that Katrina was not the worst case scenario for New Orleans. A blast of cooler, dryer air had reduced Katrina from a Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 hurricane. The eye of the storm missed the city. Bad as it was, it could have been worse.
In an astonishing double standard, conservatives whine that any criticism of Bush is somehow "Bush Bashing". Just a few short years ago, when we had elected presidents, our leaders were held to a quote "higher standard". Well, the whining and moaning from the right is getting old. It's time for even Republicans to get off their duff and demand accountability.
My brother, sister-in-law and nephew escaped and are fine. My brother, a doctor who works at the VA hospital in Biloxi, is very busy. My sister in law and nephew have found a temporary home with Jewish families in Atlanta, and aid is pouring in from friends across the country.
My family knew what was coming and made preparations to reduce the disaster's impact on them. Why couldn't the Bush administration act with foresight? Why did it take so long to mobilize relief efforts? Why couldn't Republicans in Congress heed the warnings and prepare... as they were advised to do four years ago?
I suspect we won't get an answer. We'll just get more whining and finger pointing and charges of "Bush Bashing". Idiots.
Meanwhile, Shockwave Radio Theater has some suggestions, namely:
The Top 11 things that will get a faster government response than
dire warnings of catastrophe.
Credit for the idea and several
of these from cobaltgreen's
Live Journal entry:
11. Announce they are giving late term abortions in the Superdome.
10. Spread the rumor that they're thinking about disconnecting the feeding tube of a white woman in a coma in one of the remaining New Orleans hospitals.
9. Win the Tour de France seven times in a row
8. Proudly announce that without proper government paperwork to hinder them, ministers are performing gay marriages.
7. Out a CIA agent and then whine about the media.
6. Have lots of money and demand to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom
5. Have someone related to Osama bin Laden demand to visit Bush's Crawford compound.
4. Publish a textbook that doesn't mention Intelligent Design.
3. Be a member of the cabinet... no wait, that won't work. Be a former member of the cabinet and publish your memoirs.
2. Hire a gay prostitute to get White House press credentials. Bush can claim a mandate. (With or without the space in "mandate".)
1. Find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, or merely claim to.
In New Orleans, the people cleaning up the mess are really pissed about it, and are naming the flood waters Lake George. I suspect much of the New Orleans area will be Lake George for a while, if not forever. Metafilter (care of Daily Kos) comes a reminder of a book that says the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 provoked a response that paved the way for the New Deal.
Coming soon: Podcasts!
This just in: Chief Justice Wm. Renquist died Saturday evening. Now two of the five justices who voted in the majority in Bush vs. Gore are off the bench. Is g_d trying to tell us something?
Nah. But it's nice to be able to throw questions like these back at the fundies.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a Live Journal demi-blog, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Norman Solomon: Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House
While the death toll rises in New Orleans and criticisms of his inaction grow more outraged across the country, [Bush] wants us to think about making a charitable contribution, not taking political action. But George Bush and Dick Cheney must not be let off the hook.
Maureen Dowd: 'United States of Shame'
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
Jim Phillip: Running on Grease (athensnews.com)
An Ohio man is busy re-tooling diesel engines to run on a fuel you can typically get for nothing -- used cooking grease.
ROGER EBERT: Telluride #1: Premieres & rarities
Knowing that the Toronto festival begins next Thursday, the veteran festivalgoer uses Telluride to see films that can be seen nowhere else -- and might, for that matter, never be seen anywhere again.
JEFFREY GANTZ: Dante, dude: The Commedia finds a 21st-century vernacular (bostonphoenix.com)
I gotta tell you that the last volume of that surfer Dante thing has come out and it's really somethin'.
CORRINE FRISCH: How to search for "the soul of kindness" (illinoistimes.com)
Field Notes on the Compassionate Life ... enriches its readers. It makes us feel good. But what it does even better is help us realize that it's not enough to feel good. We need to do some good in the world. "Do-gooder" shouldn't be an epithet.
From Bruce
Question
Q: What is the biggest FUBAR of George W. Bush's presidency?
1. Not protecting us against 9-11.
2. Letting Osama bin Ladin go free and stay free.
3. Invading Iraq without a good reason or a good exit strategy.
4. Looting the treasury and turning our biggest federal budget surplus into our biggest federal budget deficit.
5. Not preparing us for natural disasters such as Katrina.
6. Telling the incompetents in his administration that they are doing a "fabulous" job and then rewarding them with promotions.
7. Too early to tell - we have three more years of his "leadership" to survive.
Purple Gene Reviews
'The Constant Gardener'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
A bit cooler than seasonal, but still sunny.
Doing The Right Thing
Al Gore
Rob Webb, director of Rural/Metro Ambulance Service in Blount County, said hospital patients and evacuees flown into Knoxville from New Orleans Saturday showed their gratitude as they left the plane.
An American Airlines plane arrived at McGhee Tyson Airport at 3:10 p.m. Saturday with about 130 people from New Orleans.
Former Vice President Al Gore was on the plane, helping patients. He did not grant interviews to reporters Saturday.
``My understanding was that he made this happen, that he actually arranged for this aircraft,'' Webb said.
Ninety of the passengers were patients from Mercy Hospital in New Orleans, according to Knox County spokesman Dwight Van de Vate.
For the rest, Al Gore
Criticizes Katrina Response
Anne Rice
Novelist Anne Rice harshly criticized the response to Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in her old hometown of New Orleans.
"Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question," Rice wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published Sunday.
Rice, author of the "Vampire Chronicles" books including "Interview with the Vampire," said people have asked her in recent days why so many people stayed behind when they knew the hurricane was coming.
"They didn't have any place to go," she wrote. "They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn."
For more, Anne Rice
Volunteers at Astrodome
Macy Gray
It wasn't for a concert. R&B singer Macy Gray came to town specifically to help refugees from the flooding in New Orleans.
"I just really wanted to help out," Gray said after spending Saturday handing out clothes and toiletries in the Astrodome. "I think the most important thing to them is their futures. They are here, and they have gotten out of that disaster but it is, like, now what? Because they can't live like that forever."
"It is crazy when you don't know what is going to happen to you the next day and suddenly that is what their lives are like," Gray said of the refugees.
Macy Gray
Berlin To Re-Name Street
Frank Zappa
Berlin aims to name a street after the late US rock legend and counterculture guru Frank Zappa and has invited his children to take part in the ceremony.
The Berliner Zeitung reported in its weekend edition that Marzahn, a district on the eastern fringe of the capital made up of communist-era prefabricated high-rise housing blocks, hoped to become home to Frank Zappa Strasse.
The article said that district planners were reviewing a proposal by the Orwo Haus, an association of young musicians, to rename what is now called Street 13 after the provocative star (1940-1993) who still has a strong cult following throughout the former communist bloc.
Frank Zappa
New Stamp
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo died 15 years ago, almost half a century after she made her last film, and still people won't leave her alone. Which is good news for her many fans.
On September 23, five days after the 100th anniversary of her birth, the U.S. Postal Service will unveil a Garbo stamp at the Scandinavia House here in New York; it'll be a joint issue with the Swedish Post, which will hold its own event that day in Stockholm. (The stamp, for the record, is based on a photograph of Garbo at age 27, taken in 1932 by MGM's Clarence Bull during the filming of "As You Desire Me"; engraver Piotr Naszarkowski adapted that image for the stamp.)
Turner Classic Movies this week begins a monthlong showing of 21 of Garbo's films begins, starting with a new, 90-minute Kevin Brownlow documentary titled, simply, "Garbo." Narrated by Julie Christie, it recaps the unique Garbo saga and includes many eye-poppers, including a rare look inside Garbo's East Side apartment in Manhattan (full of vivid colors, vibrant paintings and exquisite antiques), and boasts 122 seconds of screen tests done in 1949 for a film she came close to doing for producer Walter Wanger based on Balzac's "The Duchess of Langeais."
Greta Garbo
New Publicist
Brooke Shields
Before her well-publicized spat with Tom Cruise this spring, Brooke Shields's career seemed more depressed than she was. But after she landed the lead in Broadway's Chicago and a starring role in Tom Green's upcoming Bob the Butler, things started looking up for the maudlin model. Now, sources say, Cruise's former publicist Pat Kingsley has quietly agreed to represent Shields, in what many insiders are interpreting as a not-too-subtle slap at her former client.
Shields has been feuding with Cruise ever since the actor slammed her on the Today show for using medication to battle postpartum depression. Not surprisingly, her decision to ditch longtime publicist Karynne Tencer to join Kingsley at PMK has many Hollywood insiders buzzing. Kingsley, who reprsented Cruise for over a decade, was fired by the star last spring after she urged him to limit his pro-Scientology sermonizing. Since then, says a PMK insider, "Pat's been pretty upfront about her disdain for Cruise. This will drive him absolutely crazy."
Brooke Shields
Woman Slashes Painting With Knife
Roy Lichtenstein
A woman attacked a painting by American Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein, slashing it four times with a knife at an exhibition in the western Austrian city of Bregenz, police said.
The 35-year-old woman, a resident of Munich in Germany, pulled a jack-knife from her bag on Saturday and damaged the painting, "Nudes in Mirror," police said in a statement issued on Saturday night. Visitors and staff then stopped her.
The Austrian news agency APA reported that the woman said the painting in the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum was not authentic.
Roy Lichtenstein
Halts Promos For 'Invasion'
ABC
Citing sensitivity over the real-life disaster unfolding on the U.S. Gulf Coast, broadcaster ABC has pulled its promotions for a drama series about a family coping with a fictional hurricane.
ABC executives decided that hurricane references in promotions for "Invasion," set to premiere on September 21, might be upsetting or offensive to viewers because of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, a network spokesman said on Thursday.
The series opens with a powerful hurricane that hits the town of Homestead, Florida, ushering in a series of unexplained phenomenon that suggest the storm may have been a smokescreen for some type of alien invasion.
ABC
Soderbergh Slams Reality TV
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh, who used a cast of nonprofessionals to make "Bubble," a murder story set in a bleak Ohio town, says fiction on screen is more real than reality TV.
The Oscar winner for "Traffic," and director of "sex, lies, and videotape" and "Erin Brockovich," Soderbergh was in Venice this weekend for the out-of-competition premiere of "Bubble."
Soderbergh slammed reality TV for being "as far from reality as you can imagine and more fictionalized than the movies you see."
"They're forcing the issue onto characters," Soderbergh said, contending reality TV's goal is to "force these people to be humiliated."
Steven Soderbergh
Mystery Of Lost Prime Minister Solved
Harold Holt
Australia's most enduring political mystery came to an end Friday when authorities ruled that the prime minister who disappeared almost 40 years ago had drowned and was not assassinated or taken by a Chinese submarine.
Harold Holt disappeared while swimming in heavy seas at a surf beach in the southern state of Victoria on December 17, 1967, after serving almost two years as prime minister.
His body was never found, sparking a wave of rumors and often crackpot theories about his fate, including that he was killed by American assassins.
But Victorian state coroner Graeme Johnstone said in a formal ruling Friday that Holt had drowned in rough seas at Cheviot Beach, south of Melbourne.
Harold Holt
Keeps Doors Open
Johnny White's Sports Bar
The bars of the Big Easy prided themselves on staying open come rain or shine but only one kept serving through the Hurricane Katrina crisis.
"We don't have any locks on the door," said Julie Sprinkel, a server at Johnny White's Sports Bar on the normally raucous Bourbon Street.
Pitch dark but for a few candles, the laughter could be heard along the street, famed for its alcohol-fueled debauchery, which on a normal night would have been flooded with hordes of hedonists decked out in cheap Mardi Gras beads.
Bourbon Street largely escaped the floods that hit after New Orleans levees were breached. And in the first days, a few stranded tourists also wandered in to sample the warm beer that became the drink of the day after the power went off and the refrigerators stopped working.
For more - Johnny White's Sports Bar
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