Straight Up |: September 2005 Archives

If the title Big Ugly weren't already taken -- it's the name of a novel about dirty D.C. politicians and lobbyists -- we'd pin it on Tom DeLay, instead of The Hammer.

Which got us to thinking about the novel. William Weld wrote it. You remember him: former federal prosecutor and two-term Massachusetts Governor who's now campaigning for the New York Republican gubernatorial nomination. It begins: "Washington sure is a funny town."

We hold no brief for Weld as author or political candidate, but given the shit that's hit the fan in the nation's capitol, we thought we'd excerpt some passages at random. For example:

There are never any frowny faces at fund-raising events, not at breakfast, not at lunch, and not at cocktails. Everyone there is highly paid, except for the elected officials. These events are our taste of flying first class. We can't take it in salary, so we take it in kind. The press is rigorously excluded; all the stars are in alignment for a full, free, and frank exchange of views.

Except, that never happens. What does happen is the lobbyists present their views, and the senators listen. And eat. Thoughtfully. And nod. It doesn't matter if your mouth is full of smoked salmon and caviar, because the last thing anyone wants or expects is for you to say anything. Or, worse, ask a question. If there's one thing you don't ask at fund-raisers ... it's questions.

Since this is fiction, naturally it's not Weld speaking. It's his principle character, newly elected Massachusetts Senator Terrence Mullally, formerly an assistant D.A. in Brooklyn and a D.A. in Boston whose checkered past is recounted in "Mackerel by Moonlight," Weld's previous novel.

I don't mean to tell you that all my problems in Washington were caused by others. ... Here's the deal: I get there, national press is loving me, six foot four, black hair, lantern jaw, good on his feet, state adjoins first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary -- I'm thinking I have the situation pretty well covered, okay?

But wouldn't you know it?

The only people in Washington who get the story more wrong than we did are the ones being paid to get it, namely, the media.

And the "mountainous and ambitious" Louisiana chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, "who chewed designer tobacco non-stop, no Red Man for him," has it in for Mullally, the northeastern liberal "gentleman from Massa-Two Shits."

Ethics? We spend ten hours in hearings -- remember, the attention span of a United State senator is eight minutes -- to decide whether one of our brethren has economized excessively on hotel expenses during trips around the country with female staffers. We vote to issue subpoenas to all the hotels, to see how many rooms were used. ... Nobody on the committee could have cared less, but we had to fling this dirty laundry out on the line, or the press would have said we didn't care. Which of course was true, we just couldn't have it said we didn't care.

"Big Ugly" concludes with an epilogue that begins: "I guess you know the rest." But since you probably don't, we'll tell you. Among many other things, a major criminal investigation of a crooked sitting vice president is suspended and she is elected president, the first woman to hold the office. At the same time, Senator Mullally comes away unscathed by his own involvement in scandal. End of story:

I had preserved my options. Maybe I had sold a couple of guys down the river; but they were no blood kin of mine. ... Simple triage. After many false starts, I had finally got this place figured out. Situation covered. As a result, I could still aspire to the highest offices in the land.

Clichéd? Yes. Cynical? Of course. True to reality? Next question ...

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Now that the world is one big blog, God may become a blogger, too. That's not a certainty, of course, we're merely speculating. But at the very least He's about to get his own first-ever God Blog Convention two weeks from now in southern California.

GodBlogCon, as it's being called, will feature keynote speaker Hugh Hewitt and other religionaires, evangelicals, pastors, biblical scholars, and -- though we're not sure of this -- possibly a handful of pre-Christian Vestal Virigins, like the old-fashioned one pictured above, just to add a chorus line.

Since the gathering is "designed to mobilize the Christian blogging community," no Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Zen Budhhists, Confucians, Zoroastrians, Shintos, Copts, Surrealists, Animists, Shamanists, Sikhs, Jains, Babis, Baha'is, Rastafarians, Neo-Paganists, Agnostics, Atheists, or Scientologists are expected. In any case, attendance will be limited to 300 lucky folks eager to find out what the God bloggers have in mind.

Leave it to Bill Reed, music journalist, show-biz chronicler and memoirist extraordinaire, to figure out that "one of the high profile Louisiana heroes of Hurricane Katrina" -- Jefferson Parrish President and former Mayor of Kenner, La., Aaron Broussard -- also happens to be a righteously capable rhythm-and-blues singer.

Reed writes on his blog that when he caught Broussard on NBC's Meet the Press three weeks ago, "angrily lamenting the failure of the national government to act in a timely manner in the face of Katrina" -- the name tickled a "sense memory" in his brain, and he recalled buying a vinyl LP, right, which had been released by "the fine fine superfine" Dese Days Rivertown Records label:

And sure enough, digging through my LP collection I came up with an ultra rare disc -- circa the 1980s -- of the then-mayor recording with a who's who contingent of New Orleans instrumentalists and singers, including: John Fred, Earl King, Chuck Carbo, Frankie Dent, Bobby Loveless, Oliver Morgan, Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe, and the the Dixie Cups.

Although "that other Aaron has nothing to fear," Reed observes, Broussard's tracks on the disc -- "Night Owl," "Trickbag," "Making Love to You," "Domino" and "Knock on Wood" -- make him wonder whether the mayor ever considered, or had, a professional singing career.

After seeing Broussard on TV again, Reed adds:

It dawned on me that a good way to not only help Gulf Coasters, but also to pay part of my astronomical monthly Kaiser Permanente (when is Michael Moore going to finish that exposé on health care providers?) insurance premium might be to sell the LP on Ebay... with a starting bid of $9.99.

We checked this morning. The disc is still on the auction block, and that's still the price.

Oh yeah, back on Sept. 4, this is what Broussard had to say on Meet the Press in the spectacular interview that -- to lay it out in proper tabloid terms -- stunned program anchor Tim Russert and amazed millions of viewers with its candor and emotional power :

We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. I am personally asking our bipartisan congressional delegation here in Louisiana to immediately begin congressional hearings to find out just what happened here. Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired? And believe me, they need to be fired right away, because we still have weeks to go in this tragedy. We have months to go. We have years to go. And whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chain-sawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership. It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.

When Russert tells him, "Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?" Broussard gives him another earful:

Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.

And then he gives "just three quick examples," with which we're all familiar by now, but which, coming from the horse's mouth, are worth remembering and repeating:

We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA -- we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday -- yesterday -- FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America -- American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

It's time to shut him up. He's going on too long. Russert tells him, "All right." But Broussard won't shut up:

And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

Brousssard starts to breaks down in tears at this point (see the video), Russert tries to give him a breather. "Mr. President..." he says. But Broussard won't let him::

Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

So, is anybody out there furious enough to buy Broussard's blues? It's more than just an old LP now, it's one of those rare artifacts that gives life to history.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Notice anything peculiar? We do. If you don't, we're not going to tell you what it is.

But we'll give you a hint, Mr. Jones. It has to do with news judgment (i.e. how the breaking story of DeLay's indictment was headlined on the MSNBC.com cover). It also makes you wonder how the Web's most highly trafficked news site, or other mainstream media, will play this story -- if they ever do.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Playing catch-up on this, but only by hours, and it's never too late for such news. Here's UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge's reader poll. The professor (of corporate law, no less) cites a report in The National Enquirer, which claims the Bullshitter-in-Chief has reverted to an old habit.

He's boozing again:

When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

Speculation about his drinking -- like this tale of mood swings and erratic behavior -- has been bruited for so long that (on the principle that there's fire where there's smoke) it may actually be true. Or it may just be a clever National Enquirer editor figuring, "Time to rev up the rumor machine and work that story again." But either way, we love it.

And this is no rumor, we're glad to say.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Jeb Eddy, the Republican ashamed of his party, defended himself in an email exchange with a critic, John Armor, who claims Eddy is just a Democrat in disguise.

Among the many things he says, Eddy notes that if one thing expresses "my Republican values," it is "Ike's farewell address three days before Kennedy's inauguration." He also says:

[A]s a Republican, I disagree with many actions, policies and values of the current Republican party, especially its present leadership. The effort to silence dissent within the Republican party has been a hallmark since Ronald Reagan. I believe it is misguided, and am willing to stand up and say so.

In the argument over whether Eddy is or isn't a true Republican, what escapes Armor and critics like him is that they're making Eddy's own case for him. By arguing that Eddy is not really G.O.P. ilk -- mainly because he has given contributions to Democrats and doesn't believe in the current Republican leadership -- they contend that to be deemed worthy of the G.O.P. he must be a narrow-minded, Bible-thumping, war-mongering supporter of incompetence, cronyism and mismanagement.

Which is precisely Eddy's larger point. And when Armor paraphrases Forrest Gump to clinch his argument -- "Republican is as Republican does" -- all he's doing is testifying to his and the G.O.P's Gumpness. Of which this is further proof: "Senator says storms are punishment from God." Needless to say, the senator is a Republican.

--Tireless Staff of Thousands

Something else for Christopher Hitchens to chew on, the weasel-word "seemed" notwithstanding:

An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.

We can't be sure, but we don't think the officer -- 29-year-old Capt. Ian Fishback -- is what Hitchens even in his wildest attack on the so-called liberal press would term a phoney peacenik. Fishback is a West Point graduate from Michigan and son of a Vietnam War veteran, according to Eric Schmitt's report.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Christopher Hitchens (who objects to the phoney peaceniks of the antiwar protest in Washington -- he's especially incensed by Ramsey Clark) and Jinx McHue (the latest reader to write us that Jeb Eddy is no Republican, see Wizbang!, Chronwatch and Shock & Blog, but rather "a big, fat, liberal phony -- but that's being redundant, isn't it?") both make the case that the press can't be trusted to clarify the issues or even to lay out the facts because it's biased, stupid, easily fooled and, not least, amnesiac.

In answer to which -- oblique ripostes, admittedly -- we offer two poems inspired by columnists whose writings we believe to be fair, smart, fully informed and equipped with thorough data bases:

HARDING DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

-- Leon Freilich

And this, from Mort Subiet's boot hill, otherwise known as "boot hell."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Press inquiries keep coming about Samuel Thompson, the lone violinist who played Bach for fellow refugees at the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center. The latest arrived a few days ago from Li Chen, a reporter in China who saw our items about Thompson, and asked to be put in touch with him for a story in the magazine Focus on People Weekly.

We've also heard from the Boston Globe, the classical music radio station WFMT in Chicago, and Strings magazine in northern California. All of them said they wanted to do stories and were stirred by our items of either Sept. 3 (Eyeballing Katrina), Sept. 7 (Hurricane Music) or Sept. 9 ( Untold Story of 'Hurricane Music').

We have no idea how many others are writing about Sam or have already done so, though we're aware of mentions in Newsweek and Time, and stories in the San Antonio Express-News and the Los Angeles Times (which reported on him before we did, although we didn't know it at the time), and a caption in The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, which published the photo of him that caught our eye in the first place and which we posted but had to take down for copyright reasons. And we know from Sam's subsequent emails to us that following his evacuation from New Orleans friends of his put him up in Fort Worth, Texas, and that he's been working as a substitute player in the San Antonio Symphony.

As we've already noted, Sam says he was prompted to play for his fellow refugees by two women from Canada who were staying in the same youth hostel he was in and who were with him in the Superdome. It turns out that one of them, Sara-Lise Rochon, took a photo of him playing what she called "that magical instrument of yours." There it is, above, and it's a great substitute for the photo we had to take down.

Something Sara-Lise Rochon said about the value of music when she sent Sam the photo is especially worth noting -- as is the charm of her English, which is not the first language of une Quebecoise. "I'm so happy you played over there," she wrote, "not only because it's helping you now, mostly because it made so much people (including me and all the people from the hostel) feel like there was still a world going on somewhere, because music still existed, and it came for us in that helldome."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

"Fallujah is the Guernica of our time," former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has said over and over. He said it again at the antiwar protest in Washington, where he once more termed the current occupant of the White House a war criminal who deserves to be impeached.

The Nuremberg judgment calls the war of aggression the supreme international crime. It's the first crime against peace. There can be no war crime until there's war. It leads to all of the crimes against humanity. It is a supreme international crime. And George Bush's “Shock and Awe,” a synonym for terrorism -- isn't it? “Shock and Awe” -- was a war of aggression.

"The whole assault," Clark went on to say, "was built on deliberate lies, not misinformation, not poor intelligence. They knew damn well what they were doing. They wanted to do it, and they did it. And every moment of this invasion, which takes the lives of Iraqi people every day, is an illegal occupation."

It's not just the Iraqis being killed, as we know too well. But it's mostly them, and so long as the slaughter continues -- by the Sunni insurgents, the Al Qaeda suicide bombers, all the other Islamofascist brigades, and not least the largely U.S. and British occupying troops -- all our Bullshitter-in-Chief's pious declarations about making us a safer nation and the world a freer place are blind posturing to hide his guilt.

--Tireless Staff of Thousands

Morning round-up: "US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan -- an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed -- that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand," The Independent reports.

Meantime, Benjamin Hart Viges, below, a 29-year-old former soldier who served with the 82nd Airborne Division and saw action in Iraq, including Baghdad and Fallujah, has told how indiscriminate fire from U.S. troops is likely to have killed an untold number of Iraqi civilians. "I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds," he says.

We know Christopher Hitchens insists it's a lie -- see his debate with George Galloway (scroll down for the video) -- but the British medical magazine The Lancet has published a report estimating that as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed as a result of the war.

Viges is no flaming liberal. As The Independent also reports, Viges "quit his job as a waiter in Seattle and signed up for the US Army" the day after 9/11. What is more:

[I]t was only when he watched Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ," that he decided to file for conscientious objector status. "I consider myself a Christian and I thought Jesus wasn't talking smack," he told the American-Statesman newspaper, in his current home of Austin, Texas.

Here's Viges in his own words.

And if anybody had any doubt that the Bullshitter-in-Chief's regime is protecting the land of the free and the home of the brave from terrorists, British journalist and author Robert Fisk has been denied entry to the U.S. Fisk can always be relied upon to speak truth to power, most recently in this commentary. As Hammond Guthrie writes --he tipped us to that bit of news -- "Is it any wonder?"

Finally, The Observer reports, "British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month." Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently hopes this will show that the threadbare cliché progess is being made still has legs. And as usual, Paul Krugman draws the apt conclusion. In today's column, "Find the Brownie" (subscription required), he writes: "Something is rotten in the state of the U.S. government." Obvious, it's true. But there's no getting around the "lethal consequences" of the regime's "culture of cronyism and corruption."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

"Antiwar Fervor Fills the Streets." That's not us talking. That's a front-page headline in The Washington Post. Norman Mailer, where are you? An estimated 300,000 people turned out, protest organizers said, which was "triple their original target." A mere 200 counter-demonstrators or so showed up outside the FBI building, the Post reports. The Bullshitter-in-Chief was out of town. Out to lunch, too, where he usually is.

--Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: A reader writes: "Jeb Eddy is a longtime donor to peace causes, environmental causes -- See greenfoothills.org -- and a Kerry donor. So don’t be a fool for any picture." Well, what of it? More power to him.

In Katrina's wake: "By executive order, [the Bullshitter-in-Chief] has suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that workers on federally funded construction projects must be paid the prevailing wage in the region. ... But federal contractors can now pay less."

LOOK TO THE LORD

When God in his inscrutable way
Sends down another calamity,
George W. and cronies say:
Why waste an opportunity?

-- Leon Freilich

A LAND TWICE BLESSED

Dick Cheney's got his underground lair,
Secure from floods and fire,
While in the national House of Prayer,
We have the overground liar.

-- Leon Freilich

Here's a must-read report: Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater Down" in the current issue of The Nation. It's a follow-up to his and Daniela Crespo's "Overkill" about the deployment of privatized paramilitary mercenaries in New Orleans, like those pictured below, as noted here two weeks ago.

Cahill quotes one of the roughly "150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear" who "wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase Operation Iraqi Freedom printed on it" and complained that "he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem." The guy didn't know where he was, either. Cahill quotes him: "When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'"

The report continues:

One might ask, given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, US Army, US Border Patrol, local police from around the country and practically every other government agency with badges, why private security companies are needed, particularly to guard federal projects.

Here's why: "Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP."

According to election records, Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands [of dollars] to Republicans, including more than $80,000 to the Republican National Committee the month before Bush's victory in 2000. This past June, he gave $2,100 to Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign. He has also given to House majority leader Tom DeLay and a slew of other Republican candidates, including Bush/Cheney in 2004. As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills.

[With the Bullshitter-in-Chief] using the Katrina disaster to try to repeal Posse Comitatus (the ban on using US troops in domestic law enforcement) and Blackwater and other security firms clearly initiating a push to install their paramilitaries on US soil, the war is coming home in yet another ominous way. As one Blackwater mercenary said, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

Get thee to Washington.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

As much as we love literature, we feel it's more important to confront the Bullshitter-in-Chief's regime. So it's no contest for us. We'd rather participate in the Massive March, Rally & Festival, which launches three days of antiwar activities in Washington on Saturday, than jerk off at the National Book Festival, which begins there at the same time. (Vide poet Sharon Olds.)

Wouldn't you rather attend the Peace and Justice Festival, followed by the free Operation Ceasefire Concert, than listen to book fest host Laura Bush extoll "the joy of reading" with her usual platitudes?

Then, on Sunday, as part of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's "Call for Justice Weekend," there will be a "Mock Trial" of the bullshitter's regime, targeting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (played by Francisco Letelier, son of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean official assassinated in Washington in 1976), former CIA Director George Tenet (played by Steven Volk, a professor from Oberlin College who is a friend of Charles Horman and a survivor of the Pinochet coup) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (played by the actor David Clennon, who was in the movie "Missing").

The trial, to feature real attorneys and evidence, will be based on U.S. and international laws that prohibit torture. "After the grim revelations of the last year regarding U.S. torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, there can be little doubt that our nation faces an extraordinary moral crisis,” Jennifer Harbury, left, who is coordinating the UUSC event, said in a press release. A lawyer herself, Harbury began her own investigation into torture when her husband disappeared before being murdered in Guatemala in 1992 by Guatemalan officials serving as paid CIA informants. Since then she has pressed for disclosure of the U.S. government’s involvement in human rights abuses in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Her recent book "Truth, Torture and the American Way" examines long-term U.S. involvement in torture tactics.

Other notable participants in the trial are to include Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, who will act as a trial commentator; U.S. Col. Ann Wright, a military expert who will testify on the security risks created by the use of torture. Sister Dianna Ortiz, who will testify about the presence of a U.S. agent in her torture cell in Guatemala. Marcos Arruda, a Brazilian activist, will testify about U.S. involvement in torture in Brazil.

Iraq and Afghanistan, Guatemala and Brazil, U.S. foreign policy and torture, the war on terrorism and violations of civil rights at home -- this weekend ties it all together. Screw the book festival.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

We're back from Chicago, the most underrated city in the country. One of the things we noticed on a cool, sunny day: Michigan Avenue, brimming with tourists and shoppers from the Old Water Tower south to the Tribune Tower, made New York's Fifth Avenue look like a cheap alleyway.

We also visited the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University Library (just north of the city in Evanston). The library is famous for its archive of radical literature and materials (including the best documentation of the Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871). It also has probably the world's most complete collection of books and materials on the 20th-century art movements of Art Nouveau, Dadaism, Expressionism, Futurism, Surrealism, Constructivism and Fluxus.

The day we visited Russell Maylone, the curator of special collections, his office was a jungle of newly acquired documents and materials from the Fluxus artist Charlotte Moorman, who died in 1991. Moorman was notable for, among other things, her topless avant-garde cello performances in collaborations with video artist Nam June Paik. She also created works with Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Yoko Ono. Composer Edgar Varese called her "the Jeanne d'Arc of new music."

Meantime, the library is deep into cataloguing the huge archive of Dick Higgins, another major Fluxus artist, prolific writer, and founder of Something Else Press. (Full disclosure: Higgins was a friend of the Tireless Staff of Thousands's boss, who was the last editor of the press, following Emmett Williams; and the library houses the TSoT boss's own collection of letters, manuscripts, artworks and other documents largely from the late-'60s.)

Not incidentally, the library also holds the personal papers of John Cage, including the Notations collection, an archive of arts performance music manuscripts that Cage compiled. And, oh yeah, anyone interested in feminism, take note: The library has a major archive, the Women's Collection, focusing on the women's liberation movement from the late 1960s to the present. It comprises 4,000 periodical titles, thousands of ephemera files, and several thousand monographs.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: Speaking of Chicago, this week the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to consider H.R. 3667, which designates a facility of the United States Postal Service (at 200 South Barrington St.) in Los Angeles as the "Karl Malden Station." It's about time! Malden was a Chicago native, after all, and one of Hollywood's great actors.

As you probably know by now, the poet Sharon Olds has turned down Laura Bush's invitation to this weekend's National Book Festival in Washington and -- "more better" (in the mortal words of the Bullshitter-in-Chief) -- a chance to dine with the bullshitter's wife-in-chief.

Olds writes, protesting the war in Iraq and the regime's attack on human rights, "I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration." Olds says she couldn't help thinking she "would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting 'extraordinary rendition': flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us."

She adds: "So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it." Hell, even Americans like us, who long ago lost their pride in the U.S. of A. (remember Vietnam?), feel shamed and anguished.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Frances Newton was to be executed 28 minutes ago by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Her 11th-hour appeal for a stay of her unjust death sentence fell on deaf ears in the U.S. Supreme Court. And we have seen no news that Texas Gov. Rick Perry lifted a finger to prevent her from being executed either.

Postscript: Frances Newton was executed: "Strapped to the death chamber gurney and with her parents among the people watching, she declined to make a final statement, quietly saying 'no' and shaking her head when the warden asked if she would like to speak." The Texas governor rejected a delay in the execution Wednesday afternoon, the AP reports.

Our Tireless Staff of Thousands is taking a collective trip to Chicago and won't be posting for several days. Before we go, please have a look at this video of Frances Newton, who is to be executed today at 6 p.m. in Texas, and see whether she is someone who deserves to die even if you believe in the death penalty. Everything about her 1988 murder conviction is a miscarriage of justice.

Frances Newton should receive not only a stay of execution but a new trial. Further, if she does not receive a stay, she would be the first African-American woman executed by the state of Texas since the Civil War. We hope the Bullshitter-in-Chief is listening. As a favorite son of Texas and as someone who proclaims his humanity daily, he ought to do everything in his power, by bringing his influence to bear on the governor of Texas, to see that her execution is delayed. If he does not do that, he will have another death to answer for -- though not from Katrina.

Want some rare insight into the Katrina catastrophe? Check out Malik Rahim on the dead body left in the street of his New Orleans neighborhood; Mike Howell on the looting he saw by middle- and upper-class whites, the evacuation procedures (or lack thereof) and what he terms "the seven betrayals"; and Jeremy Scahill on the Blackwater mercenaries hired by the government (denials notwithstanding) to provide security in the French Quarter, as they did in Iraq. You can also read Scahill and Daniela Crespo's "Overkill," about the privatized paramilitary deployment. Then have a look at this picture and caption worth a thousand words:

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

We didn't know the war in Iraq was over. If you read or hear anything about it in the news, please let us know. We looked for it this morning on the front pages of The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, New York's Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald, the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press.

Nada.

(To be fair, the two-week-old assault on Tal Afar rated as the top story this morning on the World News page of the WashPost web site. It's the fourth story down on the LAT web site's World News page, also fourth story down on the NYT's web site's International news page. (In the NYT print edition it was slotted on page A6.)

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

In re: Al Gore on global warming, a reader writes:

I was at Portland's event. There were so many obvious and glaring comparisons [in his before-and-after slide show]. I was one of many people told the room was full ... hundreds of us stood in line waiting to get in to see the presentation. We sadly left, only to be called by friends as I drove away. "He's staying for a second showing!" I immediately returned and waited in line for two hours, and it was worth it! Not only was the presentation timely and intellectually informative, it was comforting to feel the strength and commanding presence of such a great but humble man. I wish he would consider another run, but somehow I suspect he's too smart for that. Our country's loss.

-- Marge Bare

Never having been in the same room with Al, we can't say how strong or commanding his presence is. But we'll take Ms. Bare's word for it: The man in person is, uhm, magnetic. We only wish his magnetism had come across on the tube in those presidential debates so long, long ago.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Here's a very stylish slide show of the deserted streets of the French Quarter and other nearly deserted downtown 'nabes just before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. It's touristic but worth a look. The photos are not news or "newsy" -- they're "arty" portraits rather than journalistic -- yet they offer specific information and bring the scenes alive. And there must be 200 of them.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Remember the lone violinist Samuel Thompson, who played Bach for hurricane survivors? Well, lots of people had a look at our story, including the classical music radio station WFMT, in Chicago, which may do a story of its own about him. It ought to, we wrote them, because he seemed to us "a really fine person" whose "experience intersects lots of things," including "classical music, African-American heritage, Katrina" and so on.

Well, here's an untold part of Samuel's story about surviving Katrina. He told it to us in an e-mail a few hours ago:

Forgot to mention THIS part, which is most important, and even if not published, for people to know there were good things going on in hell."

1. If it weren't for the fortitude of two beautiful women, one from England and the other from Quebec, I would have been trapped in the Superdome the entire week. Francesca and Sarah, respectively, are two women who were staying in the same youth hostel as I when we were evacuated and, when the National Guard decided to "move" the international travelers (called "foreign nationals") away from the "general population," both Francesca and Sarah said, very adamantly, "Tell them that you're traveling with us." Yes, they saved my life, and I will be forever grateful to them for not abandoning a new friend.

2. When first settling into the Superdome and also at the Basketball Arena, Sarah asked me if I would play. So, it's all to Sarah Rochon of Quebec, wherever she is.

Notice that Samuel, right, says nothing about race -- he's black and (we are guessing) Francesca and Sarah are white -- but we'd bet that race had something -- a BIG something? -- to do with moving them away from the "general population" (mostly black) and their sense that, unless they insisted, Samuel would not have been evacuated with them. Are we making an unfair assumption by pointing to race rather than nationality, Samuel, or are we essentially correct?

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: We just came upon Los Angeles Times reporter Scott Gold's eloquent word picture of Samuel playing for fellow survivors. We had no idea it existed until now. Two days before we even posted the photo of Samuel performing, at the end of a lengthy story headlined "Trapped in an Arena of Suffering," Gold wrote:

Suddenly, incongruously, the first notes of Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor," the Adagio, pierced the desperation.

Samuel Thompson, 34, is trying to make it as a professional violinist. He had grabbed his instrument -- made in 1996 by a Boston woman — as he fled the youth hostel Sunday where he had been staying in New Orleans for the last two months.

"It's the most important thing I own," he said.

He had guarded it carefully and hadn't taken it out until Wednesday afternoon, when he was able to move from the Superdome into the New Orleans Arena, far safer accommodations. He rested the black case on a table next to a man with no legs in a wheelchair and a pile of trash and boxes, and gingerly popped open the two locks. He lifted the violin out of the red velvet encasement and held it to his neck.

Thompson closed his eyes and leaned into each stretch of the bow as he played mournfully. A woman eating crackers and sitting where a vendor typically sold pizza watched him intently. A National Guard soldier applauded quietly when the song ended, and Thompson nodded his head and began another piece, the Andante from Bach's Sonata in A minor.

Thompson's family in Charleston, S.C., has no idea where he is and whether he is alive. Thompson figures he is safe for now and will get in touch when he can. In the meantime he will play, and once in a while someone at the sports complex will manage a smile.

"These people have nothing," he said. "I have a violin. And I should play for them. They should have something."

Thank you, Scott Gold.

PPS: "Yet another perspective on the chaos," a friend writes, pointing to this eyewitness account of survival. "What a horror story."

PPPS: Samuel sent an e-mail today, Oct. 1, commenting on our guess that race must have played a role in his evacuation from the Superdome, even though he didn't mention it. He writes:

With more people paying attention to issues of race (or, rather, becoming painfully aware of them) and with modes of thinking that help validate and, in some cases, assume racism -- I understand how you thought that. The majority of the people in the Superdome and, if I may say so, in most of the shelters that have been covered in the news, were African-American. But in this instance, I think Sara was more concerned about the well-being of another human being rather than thinking about race issues.

I'm sure there are many people who did think I "got out" simply because of the [white] people with whom I was associating, and yes, there was the question, "Are you African or from the islands?" before the group left the Superdome. But the man who became the leader of this group, an Australian, had no problem with me joining it.

I have never used my ethnicity as a "card." No, I did not feel entitled and, yes, I do have and will always have compassion for those who were "left behind." But to assume that race was an issue in my securing safety does nothing but perpetuate discussions that dishonor humanity.

That's a wrap.

Forgive us, lawd, we know not what we do. Fools that we are, we offered an olive branch to Tom Friedman, and today he reverted to form in another typical faux memo to "Iraq's Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni leaders" from "An American friend." Advising them on the impact Katrina is likely to have on Iraq, due to the weakened political capital of our Bullshitter-in-Chief, he tells them who's responsible for weakening him: It's the press.

Yup, in Uncle Tommy Boy's view, "the Katrina TV drama is not going away" because, "Hell hath no fury like journalists with a compelling TV story where they get to be the heroes and the government the fools." He says this, mind you, when reporters have had their cameras smashed and guns pointed at their heads by police and the National guard to keep them from photographing Katrina's aftermath, just as was done in Iraq.

This morning's Democracy Now tells about that. As soon as the segment is posted online, we'll provide the link. In the meantime, have a look at this report and this one and this (gracias Romenesko): Washington Post reporter Timothy Dwyer said he heard a sergeant from a state agency telling a camera crew allowed on a boat in a flooded area near downtown New Orleans: "If we catch you photographing one body, we're going to bring you back in and throw you off the boat." And this, from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter: "I did not actually count the number of automatic weapons pointed at me, but there were at least five, and I was certain they were all locked and loaded ..."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: Here's the DN segment, both video and transcript. And don't overlook this equally revealing segment: FEMA Promotes Pat Robertson Charity, with links to "Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash" in The Nation and "Disaster used as political payoff" in New York's Daily News.

We don't read Tom Friedman much lately, at least not with any expectation of enlightenment. But he surprised us the other day with a couple of things he wrote about the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his bullshit regime in re: Hurricane Katrina:

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

And this:

...[T]hen there are the [chief bullshitter's] standard lines: "It's not the government's money; it's your money," and, "One of the last things that we need to do to this economy is to take money out of your pocket and fuel government." Maybe [he] will now also tell us: "It's not the government's hurricane -- it's your hurricane."

Except that FEMA's Brownie Boy and Homeland Security's Mikey the Mouth have already told us that. As well as this:

POSITIVE COVERAGE

-- Leon Freilich

Not coincidentally, we lately feel toward the cutesiness of Maureen Dowd much as we do toward Friedman's folksiness. But the other day she suprised us, too, with this:

The administration's foreign policy is entirely constructed around American self-love -- the idea that the U.S. is superior, that we are the model everyone looks up to, that everyone in the world wants what we have.

But when people around the world look at Iraq ... they see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice ... So much for [the bullshitter's] "culture of life."

By contrast, have a look at Dow Jones chairman Peter Kann's commentary in the editorial pages of today's Wall Street Journal. What an embarrassment! (One formidable reporter in the newsroom of that illustrious paper proposes assigning Peter to the Baghdad bureau.)

It's hard to decide which is worse, though: the awfulness of Kann's take on Iraq or David Brooks's fatuous commentary, "Katrina's silver lining." If there's any silver lining to be found, it's that Katrina has stripped everyone of the illusion -- assuming they still had it -- that the chief bullshitter's regime is more competent at home than in Iraq.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

A friend writes from Portland, Oregon:

Al Gore was in town last night with an excellent (and eye-opening) presentation on Global Warming -- a concept that continues to escape [the Bullshitter-in-Chief]. Can you imagine Georgie saying something/anything like:

"We're entering -- have already entered -- a new phase of human history. The fundamental relationship between our species and our home planet has been utterly transformed."

Al's presentation had lots of (lovely) before and (sadly) after slides ... leading into one of these split screens [showing] that two years ago he predicted the melting of Mt. Kilimanjaro's snows within 15 years. Update: It is all "virtually gone" today.

I really enjoyed hearing him but just could not get it straight in my head that [the Bullshitter-in-Chief] is "ruining" the country when by popular vote Gore should be running it. Oh right, I remember now, we live in a nonsense vs. no-nonsense world -- what was I thinking?

-- Hammond Guthrie

Oh, about the Katrina rescue operation: Our Bullshitter-in-Chief "blithely announced at a photo-op cabinet meeting that he, personally, was going to 'find out what went right and what went wrong.' We can't imagine a worse idea," The New York Times said today in an editorial we wish we had written. Since we didn't write it, we'll quote it.

It went on to say, "[W]e have learned through bitter experience -- the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example -- that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs." The chief bullshitter himself "signaled yesterday that we are in for more of the same when he sneered and said, 'One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game.'"

What did we expect? Here he is in his photo-op cabinet meeting with the other bullshitters:

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Violinist Samuel Thompson, who was caught on camera playing Bach for fellow hurricane survivors in New Orleans last week, had no idea he was being photographed by The (Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate -- we posted the photo in Eyeballing Katrina -- even less that it would make him something of a celebrity. [The photo has been taken down for copyright reasons. -- Ed note.]

"I'm still overwhelmed at much of this," Thompson emailed us, "not only of being trapped in the city but also that [my] one small event could end up all over the press."

We grabbed the chance to ask him who he is and what pieces he was playing when he was stranded by the floodwaters.

The short answer: He's a professional musician, born 34 years ago in Charleston, S.C., who took up the violin at age 9, and has studied at the University of South Carolina, Oklahoma State University and Rice University. He was playing the Adagio from Sonata No. 1 in G Minor (listen to a sample) and the Grave and Andante from Sonata No. 2 in A Minor (listen to a sample).

The long answer: He'd been working on those pieces for "quite some time," having performed the G Minor in concert last year and having practiced the A Minor as part of the repertory for a competition he'd been slated to enter this week, the Rodolfo Lipizer International Violin Competition. "In fact, I was supposed to be flying out right now for Gorizia, Italy," he writes. "Well, that changed. So, now I'm planning for '06-'07, which should include two other competitions."

Because we only see the top of his head in the photo that made him what he jokingly calls "the world's New Orleans violinist," we asked him to send us a photo that showed him full on. Here he is, in a portrait by Ryan Brodie:

Samuel Thompson has played throughout the United States since 1989, when he made his solo debut with the Carolina Amadeus Players Chamber Orchestra. He made his national debut in 1998 with the National Repertory Orchestra, and he's played in the orchestras of the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet, the New World Symphony (Miami), Mercury Baroque Ensemble (Houston) and the Louisiana Philharmonic (New Orleans).

The really long answer: His teachers include Kenneth Goldsmith, "the late (and GREAT)" Raphael Fliegel, David Rudge, Donald Portnoy and John Bauer. Other influences -- "strong ones," he adds -- are Jorja Fleezanis, Laura Park, Rachel Jordan and Teiji Okubo. He also spent summers at the International Festival-Institute at Round Top, with the National Orchestral Institute, and the National Repertory Orchestra.

Additionally, he was a semifinalist in the 2000 New World Symphony Concerto Competition and served as acting second violinist of the Marian Anderson String Quartet in the summer of 2000. This year, he says, he has been auditioning for orchestras -- "three in five months" -- along with playing gigs and teaching. Finally, we should mention he's a fledgling photographer and a poet who's about to submit some of his New York poems for publication.

Break a leg, Samuel.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: Please see this update. Also, we've since obtained this photo of Samuel Thompson playing in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Turns out we weren't the only ones to note James Lee Burke's take on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Chicago Trib columnist Mike Downey cited it, too. So did Barbara Shelly in The Kansas City Star. And yesterday USA Today got hold of the prolific Louisiana novelist for his thoughts about Hurricane Katrina's damage to the city's cultural heritage.

"I'm not sure the city can come back," Burke told USA Today. He "believes the flood merely exacerbated the city's decades-long spiral of descent and social deterioration from illegal drugs, crime and government neglect," reporter Gary Strauss wrote. CNN news executive Kim Bondy, a New Orleans native, is pessimistic, too. "It's so steeped in culture," he said. "But now I feel like that spirit is broken. The thing that hurts me so deeply is that these are things you can't rebuild and you just can't get back."

Leave it to James ("Ragin' Cajun") Carville, though, to draw the opposite conclusion: "No one forgot how to play the saxophone or how to cook or write," he says. "Or have a good time. That's all still there. Calamities and disasters are part of New Orleans' history. This too shall pass."

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

The eulogies are coming in: Rick Bragg's lyrical memories on Friday, Richard Ford's reluctant gaze today, Ann Rice's not-so-lyrical accusation, too, not to mention Andrei Codrescu's footnote.

But we don't think anyone has written about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with greater charm or intimacy than James Lee Burke. More than half of his roughly two dozen novels are set in and around New Orleans and the Louisiana bayous. Here, for instance, he takes us on a simple, geographic tour with the St. Charles Avenue streetcar -- reputed to be America's oldest trolley line -- as seen through the eyes of Dave Robicheaux, the Cajun Vietnam vet and former Big Easy detective:

At one time New Orleans was covered with streetcar tracks, but now only the St. Charles streetcar remains in service. It runs a short distance down Canal, the full length of St. Charles through the Garden District, past Loyola and Tulane and Audubon Park, then along what is probably one of the most beautiful streets in the world. St. Charles and the esplanade in its center are covered by a canopy of enormous oak trees and lined on each side by old, iron-scrolled brick homes and antebellum mansions with columned porches and pike-fenced yards with hibiscus, blooming myrtle and oleander, bamboo, and giant philodendron.

That passage, picked at random from the 1988 crime thriller "Heaven's Prisoners," doesn't do Burke's writing justice. Some have called him "the Faulkner of crime fiction." I like to think of him as the common reader's Cormac McCarthy. He's less high-flown than either of them, but his writing is filled with much the same depth of feeling about the human condition as both, and sentence for sentence we'd say Burke is easily in their league.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

The most astonishing photos you're ever likely to see of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina were taken throughout the week by news photographers whose work has been distributed by the Associated Press. Some of them have been published in various dailies, some not. Click the links to see them. (Give them a chance to download. There are so many, it may take a while.) They show the stunning human drama, the physical destruction, and the rescue efforts that stretch from Louisiana and Mississippi across Texas, from Alabama and Arkansas all the way to Arizona and Oregon: first set, second set, and third set.

[Sept. 4: Those links are dead at the moment, possibly because the site has been overwhelmed by traffic. -- Ed. note]

[Sept. 5: Since those links remain dead, go to the photo galleries posted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Roughly 100 galleries so far are clickable, with more than 1,500 photos shown in reverse chronological order from Aug. 28 on. -- Ed. note]

The photos left us shaken. But we chose to display the one below, taken on Wednesday, because of what it says not about the catastrophe but about the dignity of some survivors. It seemed to us unique in its homely understatement. [The photo has been taken down for copyright reasons. -- Ed. note] You see no floodwaters, no raging fires, no wreckage, no rooftop rescues, no wounded refugees, no triage centers, no police or National Guard -- the other photos show all of that and more -- only Samuel Thompson, 34, of Charleston, S.C., playing a piece by Bach as Leonard James rolls past in a wheelchair inside the New Orleans Arena.

Thompson, who was stranded during the hurricane, also played for refugees inside the Louisiana Superdome.
-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: We've since obtained this photo of Samuel Thompson playing in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Greg Henderson, a pathologist, was attending an HIV/AIDS medical convention in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city. He remained behind after shipping his family to safety in Jackson, Miss. Henderson then managed to send this message to a friend via the Internet. Here it is, slightly edited:

I am writing this note on Tuesday at 2PM. I wanted to update all of you as to the situation here. I don't know how much information you are getting but I am certain it is more than we are getting. Be advised that almost everything I am telling you is from direct observation or rumor from reasonable sources. They are allowing limited Internet access, so I hope to send this dispatch today.

I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz Carleton Hotel in New Orleans. I figured if it was my time to go, I wanted to go in a place with a good wine list. In addition, this hotel is in a very old building on Canal Street that could and did sustain little damage. Many of the other hotels sustained significant loss of windows, and we expect that many of the guests may be evacuated here.

Things were obviously bad yesterday, but they are much worse today. Overnight the water arrived. Now Canal Street (true to its origins) is indeed a canal. The first floor of all downtown buildings is underwater. I have heard that Charity Hospital and Tulane are limited in their ability to care for patients because of water. Ochsner is the only hospital that remains fully functional. However, I spoke with them today and they too are on generator and losing food and water fast.

The city now has no clean water, no sewerage system, no electricity, and no real communications. Bodies are still being recovered floating in the floods. We are worried about a cholera epidemic. Even the police are without effective communications. We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that are admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant.

Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous. We hear gunshots frequently. Most of Canal street is occupied by armed looters who have a low threshold for discharging their weapons. The looters are using makeshift boats made of pieces of styrofoam to access [the area]. We are still waiting for a significant National Guard presence.

The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases. ... We have commandeered the world-famous French Quarter Bar to turn [it] into a makeshift clinic. There is a team of about 7 doctors and PA and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter.

Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police escort. The looters had to be held back at gun point. After a dose of prophylactic Cipro I hope to be fine.

We have set up a hospital in the French Quarter Bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. ... We are anticipating dealing with multiple medical problems, medication [needs] and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are imminent.

The biggest question to all of us is, where is the National Guard? We hear jet fighters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army. ... We are under martial law so return to our homes is impossible. I don't know how long it will be and this is my greatest fear. ... The greatest pain is to think about the loss. And how long the rebuild will [take]. And the horror of so many dead people.

PLEASE SEND THIS TO ALL YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED IN A DISPATCH FROM THE FRONT. ... By the way, suture packs, sterile gloves and stethoscopes will be needed as the Ritz turns into a M.A.S.H.

The message was forwarded to us by Clayton Patterson, an artist, photographer, editor, documentary filmmaker and community activist who lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side and was recently profiled in The New York Times. Patterson's latest project, "Captured," has just been published by the Seven Stories. Here's a review.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

THE BULLSHITTER SPEAKS

-- Leon Freilich

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while the Bullshitter-in-Chief addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

Now that New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast have drowned and the Bullshitter-in-Chief is scrambling to offer artificial respiration with underfunded federal agencies, what does Grover Norquist, Field Marshal of the regime's tax cut, have to say? As opednews.com reminds us, Norquist's infamous line that he wants to starve government small enough so he can "drown it in a bathtub" sounds like the special idiocy it always was.

Given the failure of the levees that protected New Orleans from the floodwaters of Lake Pontchartrain, many are saying that the chief bullshitter has plenty to answer for. This morning's lead editorial in The Washington Post has it right when it points out:

[The bullshitter's] most recent budgets have actually proposed reducing funding for flood prevention in the New Orleans area, and the administration has long ignored Louisiana politicians' requests for more help in protecting their fragile coast, the destruction of which meant there was little to slow down the hurricane before it hit the city.

The lead editorial in this morning's New York Times also has it right. Our chief bullshitter "gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday," reading "a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end."

He offered his usual pap: "This is going to be a difficult road. The challenges that we face on the ground are unprecedented. But there's no doubt in my mind we're going to succeed." That's to be expected of a mind like his. As Post reporter Peter Baker noted:

The words echoed the language [he] used through much of his August vacation whenever he emerged from the ranch to defend his handling of the Iraq war, and it reflected his leadership style. In times of calamity, he seeks to project an air of undiminished confidence regardless of the dark circumstances. He fashions himself a take-charge leader who thrives at making decisions that he never second-guesses even if they do not turn out the way he imagined them.

Finally, here's some of what the New Orleans Times-Picayune's prize-winning series, "Washing Away," presciently warned when it was published in 2002:

Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation's most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones. ...

The problem for south Louisiana is that the natural protections are rapidly deteriorating, and that in turn is weakening man-made defenses, mainly because the entire delta region is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana coast resembles a bowl placed in a sink full of water. Push it down, or just tip it slightly, and water rushes in. ...

If enough water from Lake Pontchartrain topped the levee system along its south shore, the result would be apocalyptic. Vast areas would be submerged for days or weeks. ... Adding a 20-foot storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 storm would mean 30 feet of standing water. ...

Whoever remained in the city would be at grave risk. According to the American Red Cross, a likely death toll would be between 25,000 and 100,000 people, dwarfing estimated death tolls for other natural disasters and all but the most nightmarish potential terrorist attacks. ...

Tens of thousands more would be stranded on rooftops and high ground, awaiting rescue that could take days or longer. They would face thirst, hunger and exposure to toxic chemicals.

We're already seeing tens of thousands of refugees being evacuated from the city, while mayhem disrupts the evacuation and officials concede that hundreds of thousands of displaced survivors will not be allowed back into the city for weeks, possibly months. Let's hope the predicted death toll turns out to be much too high. We're not as confident as the Bullshitter-in-Chief.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: President George W. Bush announced at 10:33 a.m. DST in the Rose Garden that to meet the Southeast's emergency, he is mobilizing himself. He will don his National Guard uniform and fly a jet to New Orleans immediately. "I'll do everything in my power to help out. Like I always do," vowed the president. (UPI: Unlikely Press International)

Entertained by its right-wing humor, William Carlson pays tribute to The Weekly Standard's neoconnery for the magazine's 10th anniversary. Although Carlson makes a fetish of two witty Standard writers (Andrew Ferguson and Matt Labash), he's inspired by founding editor William Kristol's bottomless warmongering on Iraq:

In fact, it inspired me to think: Maybe he should join the fight. He could emulate Theodore Roosevelt, who proved his zeal for the Spanish-American War by quitting his cushy desk job and organizing his own regiment to fight in Cuba ... the Rough Riders. Kristol's regiment could include other war-hawk opinion slingers in the Murdoch empire, guys like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. He could call it the Tough Talkers.

Thanks for the tip, Leon.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands