August 2006 Archives

On Tuesday, NPR's "All Things Considered" did a piece on a play from Scotland called "The Black Watch." The title refers to a very old regiment of the British Army, and the plot centers around soldiers of the Black Watch. The 42nd Reigment of Foot (Royal Highland/Black Watch) have been in almost every major scrape the Brits have encountered for the last 300 years, most notably, Waterloo, and most recently, Iraq.

The interview with the writer of the play is fascinating, and the sound clips from the actors are entertaining. One comment struck me, though. The writer regards Iraq as "Scotland's Vietnam" in terms of the damage done to soldiers and to the relationship between the public in Scotland and its army. Regiments such as the Black Watch don't fight for Queen and Country, they actually join the army to fight for their village/town/city. The Iraq war is putting the same sort of squeeze on recruiting that's experienced in the States on the British army, and that's forcing them to consolidate regiments. Since the "village identity" of the consolidated regiments is diluted, that makes recruiting all the more difficult.

Fascinating unforseen consequences.

Referring to a comment Paul Begala made on CNN yesterday, Atrios said:

We've finally started to see more Democrats internalize the idea that these people are stupid, and ugly, and nobody likes them. They should be treated with the derision and contempt they've deservedly earned.

Referring to a comment Paul Begala made on CNN yesterday, Atrios said:

We've finally started to see more Democrats internalize the idea that these people are stupid, and ugly, and nobody likes them. They should be treated with the derision and contempt they've deservedly earned.

Hmmm...Hannity dead, Pelosi speaker...as much as I'd like to see Hannity laid out and being mourned, Pelosi as speaker will hopefully save a lot more lives.

Hannity: "[M]aking sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the [House] speaker" is "worth ... dying for"

On the August 29 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Fox News host Sean Hannity sought to encourage Republican voters and candidates to ensure a Republican victory in the November midterm elections by proclaiming that "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for, and one of 'em is making sure" that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) "doesn't become the speaker." Hannity then urged his listeners to "[i]gnore the polls, ignore the media, ignore the pundits. It's 70 days to go. The end is not here yet. We still can turn this thing around."

[via Media Matters for America]

Now that 29-Aug has come and gone, the focus of the media shifts to 11-Sep. Unlike us laid-back Yats and such, Noo Yawkers tend to be a bit more open about their feelings. Well, that's not totally fair to New Orleanians. We're still pretty damned pissed off at anyone from Bush to the NOPD in terms of the governmental food chain for the storm. The New Yorkers have had time for full-blown PTSD to set in. Still, what Avarosis says here applies to the way I feel about the hype of last weekend:

What the hell is our obsession with remembering September 11? We remember it, ok. I don't need a TV commercial to remind me of that day or how I felt. I was there. It took me a long time to get over it. And I most certainly don't need my politicians, or anyone else, trying to drag me back to that day kicking and screaming several times a year as if I don't remember it, and as if it's somehow healthy to keep bringing it up.

Then he finishes with this:

You want an ad campaign? Here's an ad campaign:

The answer to that question for Katrina was:

So, no, I don't need no steenking ad campaign. I need the promises made to my city by local, state, and federal officials to be kept. So do the folks in NYC. Otherwise, STFU. We'll all grieve and remember on our own.

Somtimes Colorado really scares me:

Congressman Bob Beauprez was denounced by state legislators today for comments he made in a recent radio interview about black pregnancies and abortion.

"In some of our ethnic communities, we're seeing very, very high percentages of babies, children, pregnancies end in abortion," Beauprez said in an interview broadcast on Colorado Public Radio. "I've seen numbers as high as 70 percent, maybe even more, in the African-American community that I think is just appalling."

Of course, the black community called bullshit on Beauprez and he apologized.

My big concern here is not that a lunatic pro-life Republican would lie. That's no surprise. That he was allowed to lie so blatantly on CPR without a reporter stepping in and challenging what the interviewer clearly had to know was false is shameful. But, that's how the liberal media attacks Republicans, of course.

What I also find interesting is just how bigoted this statement is. After all, if blacks and minorities are all welfare queens who are sucking up state aid, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid, how can they afford private abortions to the extent that Beauprez wants people to believe they are? After all, you can't get an abortion on Medicaid benefits, so all those black women are going out of pocket to terminate their pregnancies. What a douche.

(via Avarosis)

I wonder if they'll keep my friend from flying if she wears her gold necklace that spells out her name in Arabic:

T-Shirt Inscription Keeps Iraqi Man From Boarding Flight ... REPORTER: Raed Jarrar was wearing a T-shirt that read We Will Not Be Silent in Arabic and English, when he was approached by security officers. The officers said the Arabic script was upsetting other passengers, and told Jarrar to either turn the shirt inside out or wear something else. Jarrar protested but finally wore a T-shirt provided by a Jet Blue employee.

That's just pandering to racist fears of passengers...jeez...

(via TalkLeft)

I'd like to think that airlines would have modeled passenger behavior before making serious changes to carry-on rules, but since TSA did it for them, this is no surprise:

Fliers board faster as fewer carry on bags

In an unforeseen twist, new security rules for carry-on bags are enabling airline passengers to get on and off planes faster, helping flights leave on time.

The reason: less on-board congestion from fewer carry-ons stowed in overhead bins or under seats.

"We're boarding airplanes four minutes faster," says AirTran Airways spokesman Tad Hutcheson.

Of course, there is a price to be paid for this:

Airlines say they're struggling to deal with the huge surge in bags, and are spending a fortune to keep up. Airline ticket agents, baggage tug drivers and bag handlers are racking up overtime. Carriers won't say exactly how much they're spending, but "it's expensive," says AirTran's Hutcheson.

At Delta Air Lines, the increased bag volume is straining aging luggage systems at its main Atlanta hub and at New York John F. Kennedy Airport. If the new rules stay in place, Delta COO Jim Whitehurst says that airline soon will hire more baggage workers.

So, this has me wondering, is the improvement in on-time departures worth the grief associated with all that checked baggage?

On a personal level, I'm OK with the fewer numbers of carry-ons. My trips are at least a week at a time, so I've always checked my stuff, other than the computer. I don't feel any remorse about putting my computer backpack in the overhead, and things are moving significantly faster at TSA checkpoints, unless you're in front of a woman who has shoes that are extremely difficult to remove.

But do I feel safer? Not really...

is all I have to say about the one-year anniversery of the storm. There's so much mis-information out there this week that I'm just not going to even bother.

WE ARE NOT OK
8.29.05

In a sign of unity, bloggers of New Orleans are posting this simple message.

LJ user nolagrl pointed me to a neat article in Da Paper entitled "Six Things Not To Say To A Katrina Survivor."

While I like Mr. Crosby's polite and intelligent responses, I'm compelled to offer up my own:

"Hey, why don't you guys clean up this mess?"

Heh, what you're looking at IS the cleaned-up version. Did you see Nagin on 60 Minutes last night? He was right, New York has had five YEARS to clean up a hole in the ground and it's still there. That was a few city blocks, we had a whole bloody metropolitan area to deal with. So bite me.

"When my neighbor's roof sprung a leak, we all pitched in and fixed it."

You can't help fix the neighbor's roof when you're living in Houston, he's living in Atlanta, and the roof is on Congress Street in Da Nint. Besides, not only do people have to contend with busted roofs, they have to deal with moldy carpet, flooring, and sheetrock. So bite me.

"If you think this is bad, you should have seen Blanktown after the tornado."

And how many people live in Podunk, 10K? We're talking about damage that affected over a million people here. So bite me.

"It's been a year. You need to get over it."

The disrespectful piece of shit who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is still flogging 9/11, five years later. So bite me.

"God's not through. He's gonna wipe y'all out next time."

Oh, just bite me. And Fuck You, you fundigelical wacko.

"Say, could I get your picture standing on what's left of your house?"

Sure, if you're willing to come down and help me re-build, then we both can pose for befores and afters. Since you just want to smirk from a distance, just bite me.

That was CNN's lede into the 10pmEDT hour.

That's like saying "tough questions for my 12-year old son while his 18-year old brother sits on him and beats the crap out of him."

Oh, and then they're going to have "tough questions" for Mayor Nagin.

All the while the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the white house summers in Kennebunkport.

CNN nauseates me.

as usual, the rocket surgeons at Da Paper didn't put the photos on-line, but the description is neat.

Legos help young artist piece together the Katrina experience

...simple as that. The latest installment of "Ask the Pilot" on Salon.com (day pass required, but worth it) details a number of incidents that have cost airlines hundreds of thousands of dollars since Lieberman lost to Lamont in CT the British arrests resulting in our escalation from Big Bird to Ernie. Here's my favorite:

On Aug. 19, a Delta Air Lines jet made an emergency landing in San Antonio, Texas, because -- brace yourselves -- a passenger spent an unusual amount of time in the lavatory. According to flight attendants, the bathroom's ceiling panels had been moved and the smoke detector tampered with. The man, a resident of San Antonio, was detained and questioned -- including a physical search of his home -- before the FBI pronounced him "not suspicious at all." (The decrepit state of lavatories on most U.S. aircraft makes the crew's reaction even more overblown, but that's a topic for another time.)

the last sentence in parentheses is so true, particularly on Delta. Then there's this one:

In 2004, a United 747 bound for Los Angeles jettisoned thousands of gallons of fuel into the Pacific and returned to Australia because a discarded airsickness bag was discovered with the letters "BOB" scrawled across it. At its most nefarious, BOB is crew member jargon for "babe on board," but for reasons that defy explanation, the crew mistook the acronym for bomb on board, and went all the way back to Sydney.

I'm all for flight crews being pro-active when it comes to anticipating a shift in the paradigm from "set piece" plays like 9/11 to single-plane attacks, but the incidents outlined in the Salon article are just goofy. Read them, you'll find it interesting and humorous in a very sad way.

Actions have consequences. That's why computer types implement change control and do planning. Obviously those notions are foreign ones at TSA:

Checked luggage strains security

In an interview with USA TODAY, Transportation Security Administration head Kip Hawley said there has been a 20% surge in checked luggage at U.S. airports since liquids were banned from carry-on bags Aug. 10.
...
The sudden increase "puts on a strain that could result in some vulnerabilities," Hawley said. The system that screens all checked luggage for bombs "is being stressed," he said.

"It's the pressure on the system that leads to people saying, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' " Hawley said. "We want our (screeners) to focus on their security job without cutting corners because of volume pressure. ... Anytime you have a system that's overwhelmed, that's where failure is a concern."

You might have thought to consider that when you banned liquids from carry-ons, you moron. Did TSA honestly think that women were going to travel without their shampoo, soap, perfume/cologne, etc.? Of course there are a lot of roll-abords that are now being checked because of the new rules. I really hope TSA didn't just order the changes to carry-on rules without someone considering the impact on the rest of the system. If you're going to change a complex system overnight, you have to keep in mind that it's going to cost some money to maintain the same level of performance.

Even before the Corps of Engineers embarks on a project at home in New Orleans, they're required to do an Environmental Impact Statement. While the ultimate value of some of those EIS documents may be dubious, at the least, they force those looking to change things to think about the consequences. It appears that TSA has no sort of check in place in this regard.

I'm worried that TSA might be manned by the same kind of hacks that controlled FEMA prior to Hurricane Katrina. After all, "heckuvajob" Brownie might still be in charge there had it not been for the storm. True incompetence is often not revealed until after the fact.

Prior to the storm, we regularly read about bars in New Orleans that would have their alcohol permits pulled because they were trouble spots--fights, drugs, shootings. The shootings early Sunday morning at Kenny's Key West is just the most recent incident in this trifecta for the Metairie bar:

A Metairie bar a little more than a block from Lakeside Shopping Center exploded with gunfire early Sunday, leaving five patrons injured -- two critically, including a 17-year-old Harvey girl.

The shootings might be the worst violence linked to Kenny's Key West since Ivory Joe Guy, 20, of Westwego died May 2005 of multiple gunshot wounds in the hallway of the nightclub at 3012 N. Arnoult Road. In February 2004, Steven Stanford, 23, was shot dead across the street from the nightclub after an altercation inside the bar.

JPSO thinks the latest incident was drug-related:

No arrests had been made Monday. But Fortunato said investigators are searching for two unidentified men believed to be the shooters. Early indications are that the shooting may have been drug related, he said. The Sheriff's Office has not been able to determine who was an intended victim.

And let's not forget that one of the victims was under legal age and shouldn't have been there in the first place.

All this raises an important question: Given the history of the establishment, why is Key West allowed to remain in business?

I see two possible reasons:

First, we're talking Jefferson Parish here. Unlike black-owned establishments in the city, Kenny's Key West is white owned. It also has three video poker machines, which means the place puts $2000-$4000 cash into the pockets of the owners each week. That sort of revenue stream is hard to ignore, and also gives bar owners a lot of money to make political contributions.

A second (and arguably less insidious) reason this bar remains open despite its sordid past is that it provides a gathering point for lowlife. Without it, the folks who patronize Key West might scatter to other locations, shooting those up instead. I hesitate to adopt a "blame the victim" position on these shootings, but when you go to a bar that's had two fatal shootings on the premises in as many years, you do so at greater risk to your person than a more sedate establishment.

We don't get Showtime, so I haven't watched "Weeds," but based on this review, I think I'll get it on DVD when it gets to that point. Salon previews the show's second season:

This is what "Weeds" does best: It takes the nastiest bits of domestic life and turns them upside down, showing us the lives we might lead if we chose to loosen up, ignore the naysayers and follow our most genuine urges. Even when Andy takes Shane to see a hooker or Nancy shows up late for dinner and then washes down two aspirin with a beer instead of eating, it offers a little emancipation from conventional expectations of what's "normal." This is where "Desperate Housewives" seemed to be headed early in its first season, before it got waylaid by the empty plot twists needed to satisfy the expectations of the prime-time soap.

It's easy for Fundigelicals to scare off kids:

In 2002, the SBC's Council on Family Life reported that roughly 88 percent of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school. Dr. Frank Page, the denomination's new president, says SBC churches need to counter that statistic by finding ways to make themselves more relatable, more pertinent and significant to students before they graduate.

Here's the part I like, though. OK, I know this is Agape Press, but look at this graf:

Even though Christian students are under attack for their beliefs in many public schools today, Page believes those who are firmly grounded in their faith can have a "salt and light" influence on their peers and teachers. Nevertheless, the SBC president says his prayer is that more churches will begin offering Christian schools, both for families who can and for those who cannot afford such education.

They're able to write this "we're under attack" shit so casually. Tell a lie enough times...

To: NPR Ombudsman

Re: Juan Williams' latest comments on FNC

I'm writing to direct your attention to remarks made by your "senior correspondent" Juan Williams in his role as pundit on Fox News Channel. On the 5-August edition of the FNC show "Beltway Boys," Mr. Williams said the following in reference to Sen. Clinton:

"Now you have Senator -- Senator Clinton, likely Democratic presidential nominee, she hopes."

Sen. Clinton has not declared a candidacy for president. Multiple polls show that Democrats have at best a lukewarm interest in her at the top of the ticket.

Mr. Williams continued in the same exchange, saying:

"And she understands that the base of the party is concerned, preoccupied, angry over the war."

Every major poll indicates that it's much more than the "base" of the Democratic Party that's "concerned, preoccupied, angry" at the moment. Still, Mr. Williams continues to use RNC talking points rather than reality for his script.

Once again, this is the danger NPR faces by using "correspondents" who are paid pundits for other, highly-biased, news outlets.

Love,
YatPundit

In an interview with NPR, Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker says:

It serves nothing at all to villify someone because of their political party.

Would that Republicans felt the same way. While I don't feel it necessary for Mayor Booker to villify Republicans, I worry when Dems aren't willing to fight back.

I love when wingnut pundits fight. From Crooks and Liars, we get a segment from Scarborough defending himself and his position on Mel Gibson against Laura Ingraham:

SCARBOROUGH: ...In this case, I turned from being one of Mel Gibson‘s biggest supporters to being one of his biggest critics. Why? Because it was the intellectually honest thing to do to say I was wrong.

And our experiment we delivered Tuesday night was devastating to Mel Gibson‘s argument. That‘s why Laura Ingraham and John Gibson, the apologists for the deliverer of those anti-Semitic smears, are now attacking me, attacking the staff of my show, and attacking law enforcement officers. It‘s a shame.

They owe us all an apology. And if they were man and woman to admit that, like me, sometimes they make mistakes, that‘s what they‘d do. But in this political environment, it doesn‘t seem like intellectual honesty is in great form.

Of course, had the discussion point been The Clenis^tm, there would have been no dispute. Still, it's fun to watch a bitch-fight.

Thing is, Scarborough indeed does have the high ground. He's not only all over Gibson like red beans on rice for his anti-Semitic remarks, but because he was driving dead-ass drunk. He was .12, which is dead-ass drunk even back before most states (like CA) tightened their DUI laws and lowered the limit to .08. Personal beliefs aside, Mel Gibson is a menace and the rule-of-law crowd might want to factor that into their support of him.

This isn't a big surprise:

Under the terms, McData shareholders will control 30 per cent of the new combined company. Based on Brocade's $6.14 closing price yesterday, McData's shareholders will get 0.75 Brocade shares for each McData share they own, valuing McData's stock at around $4.61 a piece. McData's market value Monday was $3.11 for class A stock and $2.85 for class B.

The McData folks I've taught in EMC and HDS classes know they have a good product, but Brocade is ubiquitious. The two companies weren't even Bud-vs.-Miller, it's more like Bud-vs.-John Harvard's Brewhouse.

xposted to yatcuisine:

It's good to travel outside the city and drink microbrews with the knowledge that we have one back home that holds its own. Now New Orleans Magazine reports that Abita is having a 20th birthday bash:

Abita Brewing Co. will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company’s founding with a birthday bash at the Contemporary Arts Center on Aug. 12. The band Better Than Ezra will perform, free Abita beer will flow all night and proceeds from the $20 ticket price will benefit the Louisiana Restaurant Association’s hurricane relief efforts. For ticketing information, go to www.Abita.com.

Good beer and a good cause!

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