Are we standing up or down?

And then there was one. . .

Friday, September 30, 2005
Associated Press, Reuters

The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has dropped to one, the top U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress yesterday, prompting Republicans to question whether American troops will be able to withdraw next year.

General George Casey, softening his previous comments that a "fairly substantial" pullout of Iraq could begin next spring and summer, said troops could begin coming home next year depending on conditions during and after the coming elections there.

"The next 75 days are going to be critical for what happens," he told the Senate armed services committee.

The Bush administration maintains training Iraqi security forces to defend their own country is key to bringing home U.S. troops. But Republicans pressed Gen. Casey on whether the United States was backsliding in its efforts.

In June, the Pentagon had told legislators that three Iraqi battalions were fully trained, equipped and capable of operating independently.

Despite the drop to a single combat-ready battalion, Gen. Casey hailed significant progress in training Iraqi security forces and noted that U.S. troops were embedded with more Iraqi units in mentoring roles than before.

"Have we lost ground? Absolutely not," he said.

He suggested the Pentagon's standard for what constitutes a fully capable Iraqi battalion is high and that it's been difficult to ensure logistical support for Iraqi units. "I understand how it could be perceived as disappointing."

General Casey, be sure to report to the President that we're "making progress", that we're "staying the course"; and that as the Iraqis "stand down" we will "stand up". Ooops.

If There Is Time

MedImmune, NIH Team Up on Bird Flu Vaccines

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page D04

MedImmune Inc., the maker of the nasal flu vaccine FluMist, said yesterday that it will collaborate with National Institutes of Health researchers to develop a library of vaccines for more than a dozen strains of avian flu.

Public health officials have been racing to contain a lethal strain of bird flu circulating in Southeast Asia that is jumping from birds to humans and raising concern that it could become a pandemic, as many researchers think it could.

The government recently awarded a $100 million contract to Sanofi-Aventis SA for an undisclosed number of vaccines that target the current strain circulating, called H5N1. But there are about 16 strains of bird flu, and the government wants Gaithersburg-based MedImmune to create vaccines for each.

"We are trying to prepare for the other potential strains that might take over our attention," said Kathleen Coelingh, MedImmune's senior director of scientific affairs. "We want to have a library against the various forms, so we can pull them off the shelf in the future."

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, said in an interview that FluMist may have more advantages than traditional flu vaccines because it uses a live but weakened version of the virus to induce immunity.

Researchers think live vaccines induce a broad range of coverage that can protect people even if the molecular structure of the virus changes to become a new strain.

"You get more cross-protection," Coelingh said. "It doesn't have to be a perfect match."

MedImmune and the NIH will make the new vaccines using reverse genetics. Researchers will obtain samples of the 16 strains, then reproduce the key protein that attaches to nasal passages, causing infections. The engineered protein is essentially then attached to the FluMist vaccine, like changing wheels on a car.

There are a lot of unknowns about avian influenza, including when it is likely to occur. Best guesses I've heard are in the next 1-3 years. Let's hope Medimmune has the time it needs to develop these vaccines.

Pocketbook Tightness

Katrina Takes Toll, Consumer Spending Dips

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, September 30, 2005; 12:37 PM

WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Katrina caused $100 billion in uninsured losses in August while consumer spending plunged by the largest amount since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the government reported Friday.

Because of the devastation along the Gulf Coast, personal incomes fell by 0.1 percent in August, the Commerce Department reported. Incomes would have risen by 0.2 percent had it not been for the hurricane.

In another worrisome sign for the economy, consumer spending, after adjusting for inflation, plunged by 1 percent in August, the biggest decline since September 2001, as consumers pinched by soaring gasoline prices cut back in spending in other areas.

The sharp drop in spending raises concerns about consumers' staying power in the face of soaring energy bills. Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for two-thirds of the economy.

Analysts said the toll from Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which struck in September, is likely to depress economic activity for several months.

The worry is whether the surge in energy prices, partly reflecting the shutdown in production along the Gulf Coast, will so rattle consumers that the economy could be pushed into a full-blown recession. The Conference Board reported a sharp drop in consumer confidence in September.

Analysts, however, believe that the spike in energy prices seen in August and early September will not be enough to shut down consumers' appetite to spend on other items, although they are forecasting that economic growth in the current July-September quarter will be lowered by as much as a full percentage point.

The 1 percent drop in spending after adjusting for inflation compared to a 0.5 percent decline in spending before inflation was taken out. The difference largely reflected the fact that consumers were buying more expensive gasoline to fill up their cars during the month.

Income after adjusting for taxes fell by 0.1 percent in August after an increase of 0.4 percent in July.

Everybody I know is strapped.

DEMOCRATS: TIME TO BE CREATIVE

With stories of Republican Party corruption, cronyism and incompetence actually dominating the airwaves, there is--gasp!--an actual shred of a glimmer of a snippet of a hint of a chance that the Democratic Party can amount to something again in the United States of America.

But for this to happen, the Democrats actually have to be creative, courageous, and focused on the lives of individuals.

I gave up on politics after Howard Dean's crucifixion at the hands of the national media in Iowa. The intellectual, moral and structural bankruptcy of "The Way The Game Is Played" became far too apparent and overwhelming for any sane person to continue to absorb as a direct, active participant in the very middle of the fray, in the belly of the political beast. There has been no "way out" of this deep, entrenched mess that is American politics, and lacking that epiphany, I cooled down my emotional and spiritual jets out of necessity... as I assume many of you did not after the Iowa primaries, but after November 2, 2004.

Hurricane Katrina's lasting service to America, then, could be that it awakened a lot of Americans--me included--to the possibility of a new way out, a direction that can take us out of this enormously deep ditch we've dug for ourselves as a nation. But before we can say that definitively about Katrina, the organization that--for better or worse--carries the weight of opposition to everything the Bush Administration represents, the Democratic Party, has to finally become (again) the standard-bearer of this country's best values and most moral instincts. It's the 1930s all over again in America... or at least, it needs to be for the Democratic Party.

After the rampant speculation and the socially Darwinistic, everyone-for-himself mentality of the 1920s, FDR stepped in to heal the country from its Hoovervilles and exhibit government at its very best to lift up struggling communities.

Today, in the midst of the Katrinavilles that are part of our all-too-literal "sink or swim" mindset towards our poorest and weakest citizens, we Americans find a Republican Party awash in corruption, influence peddling, machine politics, and bold power plays for enormous sums of cash, prestige, and lobbyist-written legislation.

Where, pray tell, has the Democratic Party stood during this tsunami of greed?

Can the Democrats say that they're not as brazen or corrupt as the Republicans are? Yes, as far as it goes.

Can the Dems say they're not nearly as hostile toward the poor as Republicans are? Yes, all things considered.

But can the Democratic Party say that it has been effective, creative, original, courageous, and principled throughout the Bush era?

Can the party that (sans Paul Wellstone, Russ Feingold, and a precious few others) rolled over for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War say that it has been a principled opposition to the Republicans?

Can the party that has only continued to dig even deeper into the corporate trough, under the lasting influence of Bill Clinton, say that it is not money-hungry?

Can the party that, in its recent presidential primaries, shunned the likes of Bill Bradley and John Edwards--politicians who talk with more than a little frequency and sincerity about Katrina-esque considerations of race, poverty and social moral outrages--claim to be focused on people first and power second, on moral uplift first and prestige second?

Can the party that is good at saying what it's against ever say what it's for?

Can the party so often harmed by media manipulation ever have the savvy, courage and moral force to not only do the defining in the battle of public opinion, but stay the course with resoluteness, conviction, and a sense of righteousness that, if articulated well, could actually capture votes in Southern states and turn some minds around in this country?

The political hurricanes coming from the Gulf Coast region--two caused by Mother Nature, the third by the smelly hot air floating over Tom DeLay's Southeastern Texas base of operations--give the Democratic Party a chance to be the ones to clean up the wreckage, and thereby tell America the Democrats are different, different in such a way that the country ought to trust them at the ballot box again.

But this will not come about as the result of anything familiar or predictable that looks, cooks, breathes and tastes like politics as usual.

It's not spin. It's not message. It's not legislative jujitsu. Not primarily.

What has always defined the Democratic Party in its greatest moments--and among its greatest figures in their hours of glory--has been a deeply and unmistakably moral identification with wronged, suffering people.

FDR did this with the nation through the New Deal. Harry Truman did this in his "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" whistle-stop tours on the hustings in 1948, against a distant and aloof elitist in Thomas Dewey. Also in 1948, Hubert Humphrey spoke against the evil of segregation and demanded that the party make a sharp turn in the direction of civil rights, over and against the Dixiecrats who would eventually become part of the Republican Solid South we see today.

LBJ, so much like President Bush in the Vietnam War, was--on the contrary--deeply moral (and, instructively, moved to act from personal experiences from his rural Texas upbringing) in his response to American poverty. Jimmy Carter's yearning for a better world helped bring about the Camp David Accords, and has made Carter the greatest ex-president in American history, doing good tirelessly on a global scale while Gerald Ford plays golf and Barbara Bush reveals how thoroughly out of touch the whole Bush family has always been in relationship to ordinary, struggling Americans.

The Democratic Party, when at its best, has not needed to talk to show Americans it cares about their immediate problems. The Democrats have acted. Period.

Today, that need for action is as morally needed and as politically astute as ever.

Memo to Howard Dean and any other Democrat who wants to turn the tide: do something big. Do something radical. Do things that communicate nothing but an extraordinary amount of gut-level concern for our citizens on the ground who are struggling against the backdrop of Bush Administration greed, incompetence and favoritism. Stop mouthing all the coded words, phrasings and responses that only deepen resentment toward the party among people already inclined to dislike it. Stop digging a deeper hole with either social conservatives who are inclined to like your economics better, or economic conservatives who see the Bush Administration's lack of fiscal responsibility, but don't see in you a legitimate alternative.

My solution, Democrats?

Remember, you need to do something big, right?

Here goes: have your most respected figure--I'd say President Carter--go on national television to announce, in a speech of around 15 minutes, that the Democratic Party will forgo all monetary contributions from corporations or individuals through this next presidential election cycle, choosing to use only funds existing in its reserves along with federally-allowed cash infusions. The Democrats, from the presidential race down to the smallest House race, will refuse outside donations and urge that anyone wanting to donate to the party should instead direct all their funds to Katrina and Rita relief efforts, as well as efforts to alleviate poverty and homelessness and other social evils in their own neighborhoods.

Say that the Republicans' embrace of big money in no way makes the Democrats less guilty of their participation in a corrupt system that has taken money, time, resources and energy away from helping people and into the hands of special interests. Say that the only way for the Democrats to prove anything they claim to stand for is to spend zero time raising cash, and 100 percent of their time in relationship with their constituents alone.

Say that the Democratic Party has offered a lot of talk, but little action, a lot of hat, but no cattle, over the past several years, and that it's time to put our beliefs into practice, governing the way every struggling working-class individual near the poverty line would want a government to act on behalf of its people.

Say that this era of a directionless, cowardly, out-of-touch, ineffective Democratic Party is unacceptable, and that action--nothing else--will define the Democrats from now on.

Such a statement obviously seems like fantasy:

"Naw, they couldn't do that!"

"NO! They can't forgo more money when the Republicans are only digging deeper!"

"Come on! That's political suicide in this day and age. Only Jimmy Stewart in a black-and-white movie could say something like that. Real life is different."

But then tell me this: where has record fundraising gotten Al Gore and John Kerry? Why has such a grandly incompetent president been able to win roughly 50 percent of the country twice in a row? And, most important of all, how have the poor fared in this country well before Katrina came along? Were Democrats right there in the trenches with them, or courting lobbyists just as Republicans were... only with more timidity and less effectiveness? People like Paul Wellstone and Bill Moyers could tell you the answer.

The realms of fantasy and moral courage often seem to be inextricably linked these days, because the notion of a whole political party showing moral courage is incredibly foreign to the modern political imagination.

But we need to remind ourselves--and the Democratic Party's leaders--that moral courage must never be viewed as fantasy. It should be viewed as the right thing to do.

Democrats, do the right thing, and stick by it for years to come. Dare to do something morally bold, so audacious that anyone inclined to dislike your party could be changed as they see how far you're willing to change yourselves and the way you act on behalf of each and every struggling American... especially those involved in the hurricanes that have offered this country a way out of its deepening pit of moral decay and social injustice.

Selling Out

On the editorial page of the Tucson Citizen this morning:

Our Opinion: Bill OK'd to gut Endangered Species Act

Tucson Citizen

The frantic push to instantly overhaul the Endangered Species Act turned toxic yesterday when the U.S. House suddenly voted 229 to 193 to decimate the act.

The rewrite of the act, pushed hard by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., endangers the very essence of this 32-year-old law.

Yet Pombo managed to win approval of his bill - which was just made public Sept. 19 - after only one meeting of the House Resources Committee followed by a floor vote a week later.

The bill focuses on relief for landowners at protected species' expense:

* It would forestall for at least five years any controls on pesticides, which contributed greatly to declines in the bald eagle and now plague the Pacific salmon.

* No longer would threatened species be mandated for protection.

* Developers would get priority. They could demand project reviews in 180 days without providing extensive details. If the Fish & Wildlife Service didn't respond in time, the developer could plow ahead. And if the site later was found to harbor a dwindling species, the government would have to buy the land to save it.

* Taxpayers would lose, too, being forced to compensate any landowner who claims economic hardship by having to withhold action that might harm a listed species.

In Arizona, 70 species are on the endangered list, and more are on a waiting list. The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted Aug. 15 to ask Congress to uphold the ESA.

At stake are long-range conservation plans in Pima County, as well as in San Diego County, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Clark County, Nev., Environmental Defense noted after yesterday's vote.

A majority in the U.S. House clearly have failed to hear their constituents' concerns.

Since when is anything in the House about the constituents? This is about corporate fundraising with developers.

ABC Discovers Flu

ABC News Nightline last night was devoted to avian influenza. The link takes you to the video.

The Economy

This is from the Royal Oak (MI) Daily Tribune, but it applies to all of us.

Winter forecast: High heat bills

By Christy Strawser

Daily Tribune Staff Writer

PUBLISHED: September 30, 2005

Even the good news is bad this winter as experts predict the best case scenario will bring a 40 percent increase in energy costs. Worst case, some say combined increases in electricity and natural gas could push bills up 71 percent.

Michigan's economy is dire, bankruptcy is increasing, joblessness is up, gas prices are still well above $2 a gallon, tax increases are on ballots in Berkley and Royal Oak — and it will probably cost much more than it did last year to heat your house and keep the lights on.

Charity leaders are afraid of what this jumble of financial insecurities will mean for seniors, single mothers and families clinging to the edge, living week to week on a tight paycheck.

"I know that we are getting a lot of people already asking about assistance with energy," said Major Glen Caddy of the Salvation Army in Royal Oak. "While we do get money to deal with it, most of it doesn't come in until the New Year. I'm not aware of any additional funding out there on the horizon."

The Michigan Public Service Commission estimates that last year's average monthly gas bill of $140 will go up by about $58 a month this winter. Thanks to hurricanes and shortages, residential bills for heating oil will increase by 31 percent, and electricity users will see costs rise by another 17 percent, according to the Energy Department.

Sucks, doesn't it?

The Forgotten

Via Susie:

Four guards charged in the death of female inmate
The woman, 34, died of a skull fracture and had broken ribs
By KRISTIN M. HALL
Associated Press

NASHVILLE, TENN. - Four guards at a privately run jail have been indicted on reckless homicide charges accusing them of beating a female inmate to death.

The indictment issued this week also charges the four guards with aggravated assault against Estelle Richardson, 34, who died in 2004. A medical examiner said she died of a skull fracture and had broken ribs and a damaged liver.

Corrections Corporation of America, which employs the four guards, said it has cooperated with the investigation. It said the four guards have been on administrative leave since Richardson's death.

CCA is the largest for-profit prison operator in the United States and has run the Metro Nashville Detention Facility under a contract with the city and the county since 1990.

A police investigation found that the guards used excessive force on Richardson the day before she died. The guards acknowledged there was an altercation but said no excessive force was used.

Death is quite casual among our imprisoned population, the largest in the world.

In the Gulf

Hobbled city opens doors to some
There won't be much to eat, drink or do

It may be Christmas before things are humming

By Bruce Hamilton
Staff writer

As thousands of residents return to New Orleans today, one month after Hurricane Katrina, they will find a city that is recovering but still short of adequate goods and services. For much of what they need, they will have to leave again.

Although a handful of retail operations were open or trying to open in the city Thursday, including a smattering of drug stores, banks and a hardware store, most businesses remained empty and unattended. Formerly busy commercial corridors remained desolate strands of debris boarded with plywood. In the short term, New Orleans' consumer economy will be based mostly in East Jefferson or on the West Bank.

While utility crews worked feverishly to get the electricity on in the neighborhoods being reopened, a number of areas are likely to be without power. Water on the east bank of New Orleans remains undrinkable, and some residents might discover their water service has been turned off because of damaged pipes.

Residents who live in the reopened zip codes can enter the city at 8 a.m. Residents will need a driver's license or utility bill to prove they live in one of the specified ZIP codes, while business owners must show a business license or card. No special credentials are required.

"This is somewhat of an honor system. We are asking people to stay in those ZIP codes and be conscious of the fact that other areas of the city are not ready for re-entry," said Sally Forman, a spokesperson for Mayor Ray Nagin.

Nagin toured the city Thursday on the eve of its reopening, saying that Algiers businesses are bouncing back and he expects the same on the east bank "once we can get a few businesses open."

Some residents will no doubt arrive with plans to stay, while others want to take a look at their homes before deciding.

"We're probably going to stay in Metairie until we can get the house cleaned up," said Uptown resident John Mullen, who stopped in the CVS at Prytania and Upperline streets with his wife, Lori, and their three children.

The Mullens had evacuated to Little Rock, Ark., and Lori Mullen said she was considering taking her children back there.

As one CVS employee said moments before the family walked in, "you can't bring your kids back to this." Residents were "traveling back and forth," he said, "but they can't live here."

The drugstore was using generator power to open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. "We anticipate people coming in," the manager said. "But if there's no power and the water's not safe, people won't stay."

The Walgreens on Tchoupitoulas Street Uptown is open and was crowded with customers.

Food stores are sparse

Grocery stores, many of which had looting damage, were struggling to replace inventories, clean up and dispose of spoilage. Some stores expect to reopen within the next week, while workers at others, such as the Whole Foods Market on Magazine Street Uptown, said they could be closed up to another month. Marla Hubble, store director of the Winn-Dixie at the Riverside Market, said she hoped to open by Thursday, barring any further disasters.

The Winn-Dixie at Toledano Street and Claiborne Avenue was closed, its doors broken and its interior dark. The parking lot outside was ghostly, and a hearse was parked on the neutral ground out front.

Workers were busy cleaning Uptown institution Langenstein's at Pitt and Arabella streets, but co-owner Michael Lanaux said the grocery store won't be open for another 10 to 14 days. "I think a lot of businesses will see things get back to normal close to the Christmas holidays," he said.

Until that time, Lanaux said, business owners should be happy to get half of their previous customer base back.

Whether or not a real city, with a real residential and commercial district, can be rebuilt is an open question. I'm of several minds about this and don't yet have an opinion.

Flu News

A reminder: I'll be on Air America Radio tonight at 8 EDT with Janeane Garafolo to discuss Avian Influenza. Next week is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week on the web, and I'll be participating in that, as well as being one of the organizers.

The Flu Wiki is coming along nicely as a community resource. Go and read and add your wisdom.

Turning Back the Clock

House Passes Bill Aimed at Gutting Endangered Species Act

Americans turn to the Senate to protect wildlife

September 29th, 2005

Contact Info:
Susan Holmes, Earthjustice, 202-667-4500

Washington, DC-- The U.S. House of Representatives took a dangerous and short-sighted step today in passing legislation seeking to cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act. The bill, H.R. 3824, not only threatens to eviscerate the Act; it could also set a precedent for the undermining of other vital environmental laws. The bill passed with 158 Democrats and 34 Republicans opposing.

“Today’s vote represents a rejection of the values held by the vast majority Americans: that we have a responsibility to protect all species and the special places they call home,” said Susan Holmes, senior legislative representative at Earthjustice. “This bill does so much damage to the Endangered Species Act that our grandchildren may never be able to experience much of the unique wildlife that defines America. If the President signs this bill into law, he will be sealing the death warrant for treasured American wildlife like the Florida panther, the California condor, and some Pacific salmon stocks.”

For more than 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has served as a safety net for wildlife, fish, and plants that are on the brink of extinction. H.R. 3824, sponsored by long-time enemy of the Act Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA). The Act has successfully protected hundreds of species from extinction, including the bald eagle, the Florida manatee, and the grey wolf.

According to a recent study in the scientific journal Natural History, just 22 of the 1,370 species listed under the Act have gone extinct. That’s less than one-tenth of the 227 species that would have gone extinct without the Act, the authors said.

“Rep. Pombo’s bill cuts huge holes in this safety net,” Holmes said. “If the Senate fails to do the right thing and reject this bill, America stands to lose hundreds of species of rare plants and animals. I don’t want to have to someday explain to my daughter why we let animals like the whooping crane and the southern sea otter vanish, and I’m sure most Americans would feel the same way.”

“The bill would create an unlimited new entitlement that would force hardworking taxpayers to write blank checks to big developers and corporations simply for obeying the law that prevents them from unreasonably wiping out species,” said Glenn Sugameli, Earthjustice’s Senior Legislative Counsel.

Among other things, H.R. 3824 seeks to:

· Repeal one of the most important parts of the Endangered Species Act’s safety net—the protection of critical habitat;

· Allow political appointees to manipulate science to fit their political agenda by allowing the Secretary of the Interior to define “best available science”;

· Eliminate the vital check and balance role wildlife agencies play in reviewing many federal projects that could push threatened and endangered species further toward extinction; and

· Create an unlimited new entitlement that will use taxpayer dollars to pay developers, the oil industry and others for simply obeying the law and not killing or injuring imperiled wildlife or destroying the places they call home.

“If Pombo's version of the law had been signed by President Nixon in 1973 in place of the Endangered Species Act, many of the species that were hanging on by a thread three decades ago -- including wolves, bald eagles, grizzly bears, manatees, and whooping cranes -- might already be gone from the lower-48 states,” Holmes said. “We’ve managed to keep these marvelous animals around for another generation to enjoy. Now it’s up to us to make sure that no generation will ever have to look back and wonder why we let our wildlife disappear.”

The ESA is broadly popular with the US public, but they don't know this is going on. This really angers me. My senators are going to hear from me about this.

Book Meme

The reveres at Effect Measure tagged me with the book meme: How many of the American Library Associations top 100 most frequently banned books of the last decade have I read? The answer, friends, is 33.

And, while you are over at Effect Measure, take a look at their latest bird flu post. It is an important one. Remeber that next week is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week.

But the Schools....

I've been listening to the Joint Chiefs and Rummy testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee. This is science fiction to anyone who reads Juan Cole and Riverbend. The hero of this session, surprisingly, is Lindsey Graham. He was the only Senator (including DINO Lieberman) who asked real questions and insisted on real answers.

Watching this, the sensation was a lot like watching the Sunday chat shows. The air of unreality is very much the same.

Three Car Bombs Explode in Iraqi City, Killing at Least 40

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 29, 2005

Filed at 1:25 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three suicide car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously Thursday evening in a city north of Baghdad, killing 40 people and wounding many others, a hospital official said. Skip to next paragraph

The attacks, which occured about 6:45 p.m. (10:45 a.m. EDT), hit a bank, a vegetable market and another location in downtown Balad, a mostly Shiite city 50 miles north of the capital, witnesses said.

Dr. Khaled al-Azawi at Balad Hospital said 40 people died and scores were wounded, many of them seriously, with burns and mutilated limbs.

Earlier, the military said a roadside bomb killed five American soldiers Wednesday during combat in the western town of Ramadi. It was the deadliest single attack on U.S. troops since a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines near Haditha in western Iraq on Aug. 3.

The five dead Americans were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force and were hit while ''conducting combat operations'' in the insurgent hotbed, a statement by the Marines said.

Hubris Always Brings Nemesis

Troubled Year Gets Worse for the GOP

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page A01

Bad news often comes in bunches, but for a Republican Party that not long ago looked ahead to an unfettered period of growth and expansion, yesterday's indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) represented one of the most significant blows the party has suffered in a year replete with problems.

Since the fall of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1998, no two Republicans have been more responsible for the GOP's recent electoral and legislative successes than DeLay and President Bush, a power tandem whose strengths have complemented one another repeatedly. Bush has been the party's public face, direction-setter and most effective campaigner. But in Washington, DeLay has been an iron force who bent the system to his will and priorities.

Over the years, DeLay raised and moved vast sums of money to buttress GOP candidates, kept the party's often-narrow majority together to move a Bush agenda that drew little Democratic support and changed the terms by which K Street lobbyists did business with Congress. With muscle and determination, DeLay ruled the inside game, and his indictment is therefore all the more significant -- a powerful symbol that the Democrats will attempt to exploit as an example of the GOP's abuse of power.

The indictment -- which Republicans say is politically motivated -- adds to the gathering headwind that now threatens the Republicans as they look toward the 2006 elections. Whether this becomes the perfect storm that eventually swamps the GOP is far from clear a year out. But Republican strategists were nearly unanimous in their private assessments yesterday that the party must brace for setbacks next year.

On almost every front, Republicans see trouble. Bush is at the low point of his presidency, with Iraq, hurricane relief, rising gasoline prices and another Supreme Court vacancy all problems to be solved. Congressional Republicans have seen their approval ratings slide throughout the spring and summer; a Washington Post-ABC News poll in August found that just 37 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the lowest rating in eight years.

On the ethics front, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is under investigation for selling stock in his family's medical business just before the price fell sharply. The probe of well-connected lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former close associate of DeLay, threatens to create even more troubles for Republicans. Finally, the special counsel investigation into whether White House senior adviser Karl Rove or others in the administration broke the law by leaking the name of the CIA's Valerie Plame is nearing a conclusion.

Pass the popcorn.

Life and Art

I wandered over to Reid Stott's blog this morning and found him pointing to Operation Eden, "A personal chronicle of what hurricane Katrina
has done to my poor proud people." Photographer and writer Clayton James Cubitt has crafted an extraordinarily affecting chronicle of what happens when disaster meets human poverty. Just go read it. As Reid says, "this is art."

Human Rights Abuse

Trapped in a Flooding Jail Cell

Published: September 29, 2005

The New Orleans police superintendent has been forced to resign because of the department's horrific performance in the Katrina disaster. New Orleans city officials should not stop there. They should also scrutinize corrections officials and the officers who work for them. A harrowing report from Human Rights Watch charges that corrections officers simply walked away from a locked and flooding jail building that housed 600 inmates. The prisoners were trapped and forgotten for as long as four days, the report says, and dozens are said to be unaccounted for on an official evacuation list.

Many of the inmates in the jail, the Orleans Parish lockup, were probably being held for minor offenses like public drunkenness and criminal trespass. Some jail buildings were evacuated in the early stages of the disaster. But the inmates in another building say the guards who were supposed to shepherd them out simply disappeared, leaving the cells and building doors locked. As the water began rising, the prisoners on the ground level could be heard calling for help. "We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us," one inmate is quoted as saying, "talking to them every few minutes. They were crying; they were scared."

This is horrific. Some heads should roll.

Wild Ride

Attempt to Pick Successor Is Foiled
Blunt Temporarily Takes Reins as Conservatives Reject Dreier

By Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 29, 2005; A01

As the legal troubles mounted for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in recent weeks, he and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert talked repeatedly to craft a detailed strategy for the Republican leadership for the day when a long-feared indictment arrived.

DeLay, according to several GOP sources, knew that House rules would give him no choice but to step down immediately. But he made clear to Hastert, his longtime friend and protege, that he was determined to fight the charges and return to power as soon as possible.

What he and Hastert wanted was a timeserver, someone to hold the job but with no ambitions to stay in it. And they had someone in mind. This week, an aide to the speaker approached Rep. David Dreier about his role in a post-DeLay caucus. Dreier, a congenial Californian who has loyally served the GOP leadership as Rules Committee chairman, expressed interest in helping Hastert.

There was one big problem: When DeLay's indictment was unsealed yesterday, conservatives in the GOP caucus immediately erupted in anger over rumors that the selection of Dreier, whom they regard as too moderate, was being presented as a fait accompli .

As the conservatives met to vent frustrations and plot options, Hastert was changing course in a separate meeting on the second floor of the Capitol. Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.), the majority whip, was making a personal appeal for the promotion. Hastert agreed, forestalling a possible revolt by conservatives, who regard Blunt as one of their own.

The wild day of maneuvering made clear that beneath the image of lockstep discipline in the House -- which DeLay himself enforced for years -- the GOP caucus is rife with ambitious personalities in not-so-subtle competition. With DeLay sidelined, it will fall largely to Hastert to move President Bush's agenda and to maintain order among an increasingly restless crowd as the 2006 elections approach.

Message discipline seems to have broken down.

The Insider

The Philly Daily News Will Bunch blog has some hot stuff on Harriet Miers, who is the hot gossip for the SCOTUS this morning:

White House counsel Harriet Miers has never served as a judge before, and while this career "hard-nosed lawyer" (as she is invariably described) from Texas certainly deserves some kudos for a trailblazing career as a female lawyer, she's not a legal scholar, either.

But she does know better than just about anyone else where the bodies are buried (relax, it's a just a metaphor...we hope) in President Bush's National Guard scandal. In fact, Bush's Texas gubenatorial campaign in 1998 (when he was starting to eye the White House) actually paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal pre-emptive probe of the potential scandal. Not long after, a since-settled lawsuit alleged that the Texas Lottery Commission -- while chaired by Bush appointee Miers -- played a role in a multi-million dollar cover-up of the scandal.

Whatever Miers knows about the president's troubled past, she may soon be keeping that information underneath the black robe of an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The AP is reporting that Miers, who not long ago succeeded Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (also a possible nominee) as White House counsel, has leaped to near the top of the list to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:

Outside advisers say the candidates include federal judges and two persons who have never served on the bench: corporate lawyer Larry Thompson and White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Miers is a skilled lawyer -- mainly on behalf of big business, including Microsoft and Disney -- and the first woman elected Texas State Bar President. But her main qualifications for the highest court in the land appear to be the same as most of Bush's recent appointments: He is unfailingly loyal to George W. Bush.

Here's how Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, on July 17, 2000, described her initial foray in the morass of Bush's Guard service:

The Bushies' concern began while he was running for a second term as governor. A hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named Harriet Miers was retained to investigate the issue; state records show Miers was paid $19,000 by the Bush gubernatorial campaign. She and other aides quickly identified a problem--rumors that Bush had help from his father in getting into the National Guard back in 1968. Ben Barnes, a prominent Texas Democrat and a former speaker of the House in the state legislature, told friends he used his influence to get George W a guard slot after receiving a request from Houston oilman Sid Adger. Barnes said Adger told him he was calling on behalf of the elder George Bush, then a Texas congressman. Both Bushes deny seeking any help from Barnes or Adger, who has since passed away. Concerned that Barnes might go public with his allegations, the Bush campaign sent Don Evans, a friend of W's, to hear Barnes's story. Barnes acknowledged that he hadn't actually spoken directly to Bush Sr. and had no documents to back up his story. As the Bush campaign saw it, that let both Bushes off the hook. And the National Guard question seemed under control.

So far, intriguing...but it gets better, and more complicated. At roughly the same time all of this was happening, Miers was also the Bush-named chair of the scandal-plagued Texas Lottery Commission. The biggest issue before Miers and the commission was whether to retain lottery operator Gtech, which had been implicated in a bribery scandal. Gtech's main lobbyist in Texas in the mid-1990s? None other than that same Ben Barnes who had the goods on how Bush got into the Guard and avoided Vietnam.

In 1997, Barnes was abruptly fired by Gtech. That's a bad thing, right? Well, on the other hand, they also gave him a $23 million severance payment. A short time later, Gtech -- despite the ongoing scandals -- got its contract renewed over two lower bidders. A former executive director thought the whole thing stunk:

The suit involving Barnes was brought by former Texas lottery director Lawrence Littwin, who was fired by the state lottery commission, headed by Bush appointee Harriet Miers, in October 1997 after five months on the job. It contends that Gtech Corp., which runs the state lottery and until February 1997 employed Barnes as a lobbyist for more than $3 million a year, was responsible for Littwin's dismissal.

Littwin's lawyers have suggested in court filings that Gtech was allowed to keep the lottery contract, which Littwin wanted to open up to competitive bidding, in return for Barnes's silence about Bush's entry into the Guard.

Barnes and his lawyers have denounced this "favor-repaid" theory in court pleadings as "preposterous . . . fantastic [and] fanciful." Littwin was fired after ordering a review of the campaign finance reports of various Texas politicians for any links to Gtech or other lottery contractors. But Littwin wasn't hired, or fired, until months after Barnes had severed his relationship with Gtech.

Littwin reportedly settled with Gtech for $300,000. This all could be interesting fodder for a Miers confirmation hearing this fall. Then again, Bush could pick someone else -- Thompson, or maybe an appeals court justice from Virginia named Karen Johnson ("Karen Johnson"? "John Roberts"? Is Bush getting these names from a Motel 6 registry or something?)

But they don't have Miers' top two credentials:

Loyalty...and a little inside information.

What does W call her?....something like "a pit bull in size six shoes?"

The Most Dangerous Profession

US forces 'out of control', says Reuters chief

Julia Day
Wednesday September 28, 2005

Reuters has told the US government that American forces' conduct towards journalists in Iraq is "spiralling out of control" and preventing full coverage of the war reaching the public.

The detention and accidental shootings of journalists is limiting how journalists can operate, wrote David Schlesinger, the Reuters global managing editor, in a letter to Senator John Warner, head of the armed services committee.

The Reuters news service chief referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by US forces in Iraq".

Mr Schlesinger urged the senator to raise the concerns with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the committee this Thursday.

He asked Mr Warner to demand that Mr Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the US forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law".

At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the country since March 2003.

US forces admitted killing three Reuters journalists, most recently soundman Waleed Khaled, who was shot by American soldiers on August 28 while on assignment in Baghdad. But the military said the soldiers were justified in opening fire. Reuters believes a fourth journalist working for the agency, who died in Ramadi last year, was killed by a US sniper.

'A serious chilling effect on the media'

"The worsening situation for professional journalists in Iraq directly limits journalists' abilities to do their jobs and, more importantly, creates a serious chilling effect on the media overall," Mr Schlesinger wrote.

"By limiting the ability of the media to fully and independently cover the events in Iraq, the US forces are unduly preventing US citizens from receiving information ... and undermining the very freedoms the US says it is seeking to foster every day that it commits US lives and US dollars."

Mr Schlesinger said the US military had refused to conduct independent and transparent investigations into the deaths of the Reuters journalists, relying instead on inquiries by officers from the units responsible, who had exonerated their soldiers.

He noted that the US military had failed to implement recommendations by its own inquiry into the death of award-winning Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot dead while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in August 2003.

He said that Reuters and other reputable international news organisations were concerned by the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by US forces".

He said detentions were prompted by legitimate journalistic activity such as possessing photographs and video of insurgents, which US soldiers assumed showed sympathy with the insurgency.

Earlier this week Reuters demanded the release of a freelance Iraqi cameraman after a secret tribunal ordered that he be detained indefinitely.

Housing Bubble

Cut-Rate Homes For Middle Class Are Catching On
By DEAN E. MURPHY

NOVATO, Calif. - Janice Quinci likes nice things: fashionable clothes, dinner out with her husband, a private school for her daughter. With a household income in the six figures, Ms. Quinci can pretty much enjoy it all.

With the notable exception, until now, of a home of her own.

"We figured we would rent our whole lives," Ms. Quinci said. "We didn't really think that we could afford to have a place to ourselves."

Ms. Quinci, 29, was speaking from the front porch of her three-bedroom townhouse here in suburban Marin County, north of San Francisco. She and her husband, Vito, a salesman for a wine distributor, bought it new from a developer last November with no money down and at a steep discount. Inside, the refrigerator was pushed aside as workers laid a new kitchen floor - at no cost to the Quincis - because the original one was not up to snuff.

The Quincis might not look the part, but they are the beneficiaries of an unusual form of public housing that is gaining popularity in real-estate-obsessed America.

Some middle-class families are buying homes at budget prices made possible by government agencies, private developers, not-for-profit groups and employers.

Affordable housing, once shorthand for low rents for the poor, is being stretched like never before to include homeownership for people who are more likely to have Starbucks cash cards than food stamps in their wallets. These middle-income earners, priced out of homes from Burlington, Vt., to Santa Fe, N.M., are being offered financial breaks to live in hot real-estate markets and near their jobs.

"Our thinking is that a healthy middle class is important to the city," said Geoffrey Lewis, assistant director of policy at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which has overseen the building of hundreds of units reserved for middle-income earners. "We want to keep these people in Boston; they are the glue in the neighborhoods and the glue in the economy as well."

Sometimes called low-cost, work force or inclusionary housing, the cut-price units are most popular in places "suffering from success," as one study described the cities where real estate costs outpaced incomes and where government officials, businesses and housing advocates were struggling to increase homeownership for all but the rich.

Unlike traditional government programs intended for the most disadvantaged, the emphasis is on people with full-time jobs who earn too much to qualify for federal assistance but too little to obtain a conventional mortgage, at least not in the cities or neighborhoods where they want to live.

Typically, those household incomes are 80 percent to 120 percent of the median income, which, in expensive metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Boston and New York, can extend into six figures for a family of four.

Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, said, "In many places where housing costs have escalated, that historical social contract appears to have been voided, the contract that if you work you can find a decent place to live."

The price breaks are usually not achieved through direct subsidies but a range of cost-cutting programs, including cities making zoning changes for developers, providing land at reduced cost, expediting approvals of building plans and allowing the construction of bigger and more expensive homes elsewhere.

In some programs, like that of Burlington Community Land Trust in Vermont, the units are subsidized with state property transfer taxes. Elsewhere, employers and lenders offer financing packages direct to buyers.

Even in New York City, where efforts to reach out to the squeezed middle class began decades ago with construction of Mitchell-Lama buildings, the ever-growing affordability problem has led to a flurry of new programs, city officials said.

About 200 blocks in the Greenpoint and Williamsburg neighborhoods of Brooklyn were rezoned in May to include incentives for developers to build housing for a range of incomes, including households earning as much 125 percent of the median, something that had previously been reserved for high-priced Manhattan.

"By creating ownership, you are giving moderate income residents a financial stake in their neighborhoods, so they benefit from the improvement rather than be hurt by it," said Shaun Donovan, the housing commissioner in New York.

The spread of the phenomenon is too new and dispersed to be quantified, government officials and housing advocates say, and so far it occupies only a small piece of the nation's affordable housing pie. Still, it is catching the attention of home builders, city planners, educators and business people across the nation, leading to workshops and seminars on the subject as well as a spate of local laws that make it simpler for developers to offer the units.

Public and private investors are also discovering the trend. Investment funds totaling $190 million have been created in the past year in Los Angeles and San Diego Counties for the purpose of building middle-income housing in so-called urban infill areas that have access to public transportation.

The funds' manager, the Phoenix Realty Group, expects to finance more than 3,000 homes in the next five years. As in many work force projects, the builders will be allowed to construct more units than typically permitted under zoning laws. The "density bonuses" enable the developer to make up the lost profit on each unit by selling more of them.

"It's an unserved niche," said Tammy Harpster, Phoenix's vice president for acquisitions in San Diego.

Conrad Egan, president of the National Housing Conference, an affordable housing advocacy group in Washington, said the stepped up focus was due in part to a "turnaround on the part of political leaders and office seekers" that the market cannot provide affordable housing for many Americans, even those who are financially secure.

"The picture has shifted because more and more constituents of these local and state leaders are affected," Mr. Egan said.

A lottery is under way for condominiums in a seven-story building on the harbor front in East Boston, with all 30 units reserved for people earning 80 percent to 120 percent of the median income, or as much as $99,000.

More than 550 other subsidized homes have been built in Boston over the past few years - some in buildings where other units sell for millions of dollars - that have been reserved for middle-income earners at prices as low as $190,000 for three bedrooms.

In South Burlington, Vt., a 60-unit condominium project opened in February, with half of the units reserved for people earning up to 140 percent of the area median income. The Burlington Community Land Trust provided a direct subsidy of $25,000 on the homes, which sold for $119,000 to $169,000.

As in most of the arrangements around the country, the Vermont buyers agreed to restrictions on the resale of the homes, including how much profit they could make in order to keep the units affordable.

"There are seven teachers in there, and a couple of them are college professors," said Brenda Torpy, executive director of the land trust. "The gap between what people earn and what they can afford is really creeping up. These people are not who you would think of as low income."

The median income around here is over $90K, but I don't think that's going going to get you into the the new condos down the street, which are selling for $600-900K.

Cute Photos Alert

'Qiang Qiang'? 'Butterstick'? Cub Naming Contest Nears End

By Karlyn Barker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page B01

Panda lovers have until tomorrow to vote on whether the National Zoo's giant panda cub will be called Hua Sheng or Tai Shan. Or perhaps Qiang Qiang.

The winning name, among five preapproved by the China Wildlife Conservation Association, will be announced during a naming ceremony Oct. 17. About 180,000 votes have been cast via the zoo's Web site since the Name the Cub contest was announced last month.

The five choices, with pronunciations provided by a zoo consultant: Hua Sheng (hwah SHUNG), which means "China Washington" and "magnificent"; Tai Shan (tie SHON), which means "peaceful mountain"; Qiang Qiang (chee-ONG chee-ONG), which means "strong, powerful"; Sheng Hua (SHUNG hwah), which means "Washington China" and "magnificent"; and Long Shan (Lohng SHON), which means "dragon mountain."

A rogue sixth choice -- Butterstick, referring to the cub's size at birth -- has been vigorously promoted by Web bloggers but has not caught on with zoo officials and is not on the naming list.

The contest marks the first time that the public in this country or abroad has been given the opportunity to name a giant panda, one of the world's most endangered animals, officials said. Friends of the National Zoo, the nonprofit support organization for the zoo, will randomly select one voter in the naming contest to receive a trip for two to Washington for a "private visit" with the giant panda family and other prizes.

The contest officially ends at 11:59 p.m. tomorrow. To vote, go to the zoo/FONZ Web site at http://www.fonz.org/cubname.htm .

The male cub, born July 9, probably will make his public debut in November, although zoo officials have not announced the date. He is the first surviving cub in the zoo's decades-long quest to breed giant pandas. His mother, Mei Xiang, was artificially inseminated in March with sperm from her mate, Tian Tian. The pandas arrived at the zoo in late 2000. The zoo's previous panda pair produced five cubs in the 1980s, but none lived longer than a few days.

The zoo has Mei Xiang and Tian Tian under a 10-year agreement with China. It pays China $1 million a year in privately raised funds for its current panda pair-- plus $600,000 for the cub. The money is earmarked for giant panda conservation efforts. The cub is the property of China and will be returned to that country after his second birthday.

Once tiny and pink, the cub has developed rapidly and now has the distinctive black and white markings of a giant panda. He weighs about 10 pounds and measures nearly two feet from head to tail.

The object of all this attention and affection has yet to start walking. Yesterday, as an experiment, zookeepers moved the cub to a spot on a bed of hay just outside the door to the den.

But Mei Xiang was having none of this.

After checking the den area, she immediately returned to the cub "and dragged him by the scruff of his head and neck" back to the den, according to a report from the Panda House.

"She had a hard time picking up the big boy," the Panda House report said. "She certainly let us know she is not ready to have him relocated!"

For links to webcams of the panda and more information, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/metro.

One Community

Here is the AP photogallery of pictures of the beginning of the recovery from the Gulf. A lot of the pictures are pretty tough, I teared up more than once.

This is one of the places where the Internet is better than print journalism, so much more information can be conveyed. I've found the experience of living through these hurricanes with the immediacy of the response of the people on the ground in the Gulf very, very moving.

NOLA Chaos Continues

New Orleans police chief resigns
Meanwhile, officers find many reports of crimes after Katrina are unfounded

NEW ORLEANS - Police Superintendent Eddie Compass resigned Tuesday after four turbulent weeks in which the police force was wracked by desertions and disorganization in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

“I served this department for 26 years and have taken it through some of the toughest times of its history. Every man in a leadership position must know when it’s time to hand over the reins,” Compass said at a news conference. “I’ll be going on in another direction that God has for me.”

As the city slipped into anarchy during the first few days after Katrina, the 1,700-member police department itself suffered a crisis. Many officers deserted their posts, and some were accused of joining in the looting that broke out. Two officers Compass described as friends committed suicide.

But while New Orleans undoubtedly suffered chaos following the hurricane, new reports have emerged indicating many of the claims of civil unrest were unfounded. The ugliest reports — children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement — that soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans may have been exaggerated, police are saying.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. But now police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

Unfounded rumors of chaos

They have no official reports of rape and no witnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

Nonetheless, Compass and his department were seen as helpless during the weeks following Katrina. Neither Compass nor Mayor Ray Nagin would say whether Compass was pressured to leave.

CNN is now reporting that Ray Nagin demanded Compass's resignation. My take: this is more blame shifting. Compass was in an unprecedented situation and did the best he could with what he had. This is unconsciounable. Sure, his cops deserted when their own houses were underwater and their own families were in need of evacuation. Duh, this is a no-brainer. This is a stupid Michael Brown response.

The Other Shoe

Via DemfromCT at The Next Hurrah

Democracy Corps Survey: Post Katrina

The country has lost confidence in George Bush's leadership, direction and plans for the country and indeed, seems to have closed down on him personally and his conservative project. In this survey - the 2nd after Katrina - 45 percent of American voters say, they are "finished with him." This is about his performance, about him personally, and his priorities. With growing passion, voters are upset about Iraq, the neglect of America, Bush's leadership and Katrina, the economy, deficits and gas prices. The result is a growing bloc of voters intent on change, and a diminishing bloc enthusiastic about Bush or his priorities. That is reflected in a major swing to the Democrats in the congressional contests - with a lot to be done to make that real. .... About 60 percent of the country now wants the country to change course and wants to go in a “significantly different direction than Bush.” Only 38 percent want to continue with Bush’s direction. (Recall that eleven months ago, 51 percent voted for him.) .... This is about George Bush – though voters are taking out their discontent on the Republicans in Congress. That is why this will be difficult to fix.

Bush’s approval continues downward, now at 43 percent. But more important is the total shift in mood around this. A growing group not only disapprove, they feel very strongly about it (43 percent strong disapproval); the thinning number who approve of Bush’s performance, includes ever fewer who are really enthusiastic supporters.

The Repubs are now being seen as endemically corrupt. If Rove is indicted by the Plame prosecutor next month we'll be seeing the perfecta box.

Response to Delay

I just took part in a conference call with leaders of progressive organizations on the political implications of Tom Delay's indictment. I'll post on it when I get the notes printed up.

On Two Continents

It's not just the incompetence, it's the corruption.

Breaking the 1st Commandment of Governing

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2005.

Reagan promised to rid the nation of waste, fraud and abuse. Bush and his cronies have turned waste, fraud and abuse into national policy.

With billions being allocated to clean up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, you can already smell the corruption -- fat contracts awarded without competitive bidding. The New York Times reports, "More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse."

"Provoking concerns," eh? Good old Times, eternally blah -- why doesn't it ever run a screaming headline that says, "You're Getting Ripped Off!" or "They are Stealing Your Money to Pay Off Their Political Pals!" The trouble with journalism in this country is that it's too damn polite.

Look, this is rank, nasty business -- corruption, cronyism and competence (the lack thereof) are the issues here. And as we have so recently and so painfully been reminded, when government is run by corrupt, incompetent cronies, real people pay a real price. There is nothing abstract about swollen bodies floating in flooded streets or dozens of old people dead in nursing homes.

Frankly, it's just a mercy most of Houston didn't drown in a giant traffic jam last week. Already, the corporate vultures are moving in -- contracts are arranged through people like Joe Allbaugh, the former FEMA director who brought in his old buddy Michael ("Heckuva job, Brownie") Brown to run the agency.

This pattern is not just one rotten agency: The arrest last week of David Safavian, the Bushie who oversaw contracts for the Office of Management and Budget, ties into a whole nest of cronyism. Safavian's friend and former lobbying partner is Jack Abramoff, who in turn is big buddies with Texas Rep. Tom DeLay.

The corporate clout in this administration is mirrored everywhere, with the same pattern of crony contracts. Allbaugh didn't just start getting contracts for politically connected firms after Katrina. He's been in Iraq, where he has a flourishing lobbying business precisely to help corporations get government contracts.

Already, Homeland Security is flooding what's left of New Orleans with mercenaries from the same private security contractors flourishing in Iraq. The Nation reports companies like DynCorp, Intercon Security, American Security Group, Blackwater, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International are all in New Orleans.

"Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers."

Baghdad on the Bayou for real.

Bursting Bubble

Peak for Housing Said to Be Near
# Slowing price increases in California may cause a recession by 2007, UCLA economists say.

By Bill Sing, Times Staff Writer

California's housing boom appears to be peaking, and the resultant slowdown is expected to produce "weak growth" in the state's economy during the next two years and a possible recession by the end of 2007.

That's the view of economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, which plans to release its widely watched quarterly outlook this morning.

"There are some signs that the housing party is ending," said Christopher Thornberg, senior economist at the UCLA group and author of its California forecast.

Thornberg points to an almost doubling of homes on the market in the last six months, a flattening of sales activity and the increasing reliance on high-risk mortgages by buyers to acquire today's expensive homes. Property in California, he said, is now overvalued between 40% and 45%.

"The forecast for California is mediocre at best; at worst we are liable to dip into another recession," Thornberg said, putting the odds of a recession by the end of 2007 at "at least 50% if not more."

Thornberg said that a peaking housing market doesn't necessarily mean prices will plunge. Prices could continue to rise, but at a much slower rate. That's already started to happen in previously hot markets such as San Diego and the Bay Area, he said.

The latest UCLA outlook is slightly more downbeat than its previous report in June "because I think we're at the peak" of housing, Thornberg said. UCLA economists have long warned that a decline was coming and could end badly, but this is their strongest suggestion yet that the top may finally be at hand.

Although UCLA forecasters have consistently been more pessimistic about the housing boom and California's economy than many other analysts, their views are notable because they were among the first economists to predict the 2001 recession and to identify the current housing boom as a bubble.

UCLA economists have said signs of housing speculation were emerging as early as 2002 — and since then the median California home price has risen 71%, from $266,000 to $456,000.

Breaking News

Delay indicted and must step aside. Breaking. I'll have analysis when more of the story is in the media.

UPDATE:Sugar Land representative Tom DeLay indicted
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A Texas grand jury today charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into those duties.

Some of the duties may go to the GOP whip, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. The Republican rank and file may meet as early as tonight to act on Hastert's recommendation.

The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program. House Republican Party rules require leaders who are indicted to temporarily step aside from their leadership posts.

However, DeLay retains his seat representing Texas' 22nd Congressional District, suburbs southwest of Houston.

DeLay has denied committing any crime and accused the Democratic district attorney leading the investigation, Ronnie Earle, of pursuing the case for political motives.

This is essentially a money-laundering case.

Getting Attention

Here's a link to National Geographic's free excerpt of their cover story this month on avian flu.

Just a reminder that next week is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week.

Nutjob on the Hill

An editorial in this morning's Seattle Times:

23 Republicans can help endangered species

Twenty-three Republicans have it exactly right. A hasty vote in the House of Representatives on a poorly understood and minimally debated overhaul of the Endangered Species Act is a terrible idea.

In a letter last Friday to Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the Republicans saw HR 3824, the wryly named Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, for what it is. "The bill is complex, highly controversial and aims to make perhaps the most profound changes to environmental law since the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990." GOP lawmakers were appropriately upset the text of the legislation had only been available a few days last week before it sailed through the House Resources Committee chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo, D-Calif., who has wanted to gut the ESA for years.

The landmark 1973 law works to protect and restore threatened and endangered wildlife, plants and fish. The law provides for specific protections as well as efforts to conserve critical habitat linked to survival and recovery. In addition, the act requires consultation and review ahead of activities by the federal government that could make things worse.

Pombo wants to speed up the clock on the review of potential harmful projects so landowners and businesses can proceed if the federal Fish and Wildlife Service does not promptly evaluate their plans.

He would allow the secretary of the interior to give federal agencies the right to police themselves on ESA matters.

In the rush to approve this bill, it is an open question how critical habitat would be treated in the revised act. Vague passages, quirky language and key words get no scrutiny with everything on a fast track.

A prime example of the unknown is the wacky compensation envisioned by Pombo's legislation. Property owners who suffer an adverse ruling would be paid the forgone value of a rejected use. For example, reimbursement would not be based on the fair market value of an unusable vacant lot, but the value of a proposed apartment complex. The full House, with a war and hurricane damage to pay for, might want to mull over the financial implications of that idea.

We noticed nutjob Pombo's move last week. This shouldn't go anywhere.

This piece of legislation proposed things like selling Roosevelt Island and the Mary McLeod Bethune House in the District.

Images of Damage

Beaumont Enterprise managing editor Ron Franscell has "citizen journalist" photographs from the hurricane zone. These images really bring the damage home.

Naming Names

I watched the hearing yesterday. In a town famous for self-absorbtion, this really took the cake.

Ex-FEMA chief blames Louisiana leaders for Katrina failures
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — In a combative hearing pitting an unapologetic Michael Brown against frustrated members of Congress, the former FEMA director defended his handling of Hurricane Katrina and laid the blame for evacuation failures on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

Brown, testifying under oath for the first time since leaving the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said his "biggest mistake was not recognizing" two days before the storm hit Aug. 29 "that Louisiana was dysfunctional." He said it was "not the role of the federal government" to evacuate citizens and accused critics of "Monday morning quarterbacking."

Nagin said singling out Louisiana was "disingenuous." "Obviously, Mr. Brown is under a lot of pressure," Nagin said. "I feel sorry for him."

Brown testified before a special panel of House Republicans looking into the worst natural disaster in the nation's history. Images of thousands stranded in New Orleans without food or water and the sight of decaying bodies horrified people worldwide and prompted calls for congressional action.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, however, called the committee "a sham" and urged members of her party to boycott it. She wants an independent, Sept. 11-style investigation instead. Nevertheless, two House Democrats from hard-hit areas sat in.

A glowering Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., looked on as Brown initially admitted only two mistakes: failing to hold regular media briefings and being unable to persuade Louisiana officials to order a mandatory evacuation. Brown said he found "no one in charge" and "chaos" in Baton Rouge.

"I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you ... laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of" local officials, who are Democrats, Jefferson said. "A very weak explanation."

Blanco noted that 90% of New Orleans was evacuated in time and said that Brown is "either out of touch with the truth or reality."

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose house was destroyed, rejected Brown's notion that it is always up to state and local officials to handle disasters. He said police, firefighting and other emergency services were decimated in southern Mississippi.

"Maybe the president made a very good move when he asked you to leave your job," he said

What I want to know is how many other critical agencies are headed and run by incompetent Bush political cronies.

On the Radio

Diane Rehm Show with Tony Fauci and Sec. Mike Leavitt on avian flu. The archive audio will be available around noon EDT.

The Next Fight

Filibuster Showdown Looms In Senate
Democrats Prepare For Next Court Pick

By Dan Balz and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; Page A04

The upcoming battle over a successor to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor threatens to plunge the Senate into another bitter confrontation over filibusters and the "nuclear option," with Democrats already threatening to use any means possible to thwart President Bush if he nominates someone they regard as too conservative.

The roster of those threatening a filibuster includes liberal and moderate Democrats, supporters and opponents of John G. Roberts Jr., Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and at least one of the seven Democratic senators who were part of the bipartisan "Gang of 14."

Democrats have splintered almost evenly over Roberts's nomination as chief justice, leading to frustration among party activists who think their elected leaders did not put up a serious fight against him. Pollsters have told party leaders that a show of opposition against Bush's next nominee could be crucial to restoring enthusiasm among the rank and file on the left.

In an interview, Dean said Democratic unity is essential in the upcoming battle and that the party "absolutely" should be prepared to filibuster -- holding unlimited debate and preventing an up-or-down vote -- Bush's next high court nominee, if he taps someone they find unacceptably ideological. He cited appellate court judges Priscilla R. Owen and Janice Rogers Brown as two who would be likely to trigger such opposition.

"Those people are clearly not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure they don't," he said. "If we lose, better to go down fighting and standing for what we believe in, because we will not win an election if the public doesn't think we'll stand up for what we believe in."

The possibility of a filibuster comes only a few months after an agreement that supposedly eliminated such threats. The Gang of 14 agreement barred filibusters against judicial nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances." The compromise also blocked Republican threats to change Senate rules to bar the use of filibusters to block judicial nominations, a step considered so drastic it became known as the "nuclear option."

Owen and Brown were cleared for confirmation to the appellate courts as part of that agreement, and Republicans said then that Democratic acquiescence in their confirmation meant the opposition party could not use ideology to bar future Bush nominees. But Democrats rejected that interpretation and said this week that Owen, Brown and several others believed to be under consideration by the president face a likely filibuster if nominated to the high court.

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declined to issue a blanket filibuster threat but joined Dean in saying that a nominee judged more conservative than Roberts will face vigorous opposition because the successor to O'Connor -- the key swing vote on many issues -- could shift the ideological balance of the court.

"A nominee more extreme than Judge Roberts would be unacceptable to the Democratic caucus," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley, who added later: "You could expect a major fight on the Senate floor."

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), a member of the Gang of 14 who plans to vote for Roberts, said a filibuster will be warranted if "the president appoints someone who brings a right-wing ideology and is going to use the court to advance their views."

In an interview yesterday, Salazar said: "From my personal point of view, anyone who is going to be an ideologue, who is going to have right-wing views, falls within that category of extraordinary circumstances." He said that although he would attempt to defeat such a nominee by enlisting opposition among moderate Republicans, "a filibuster has to remain a procedural possibility."

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), also a member of the Gang of 14, said he hopes White House consultation with senators would persuade the president to select a consensus nominee. "If he sends over someone who looks like a conservative ideologue, who's going to be an activist on the court, that could be very problematic," he said.

We may know more by the end of the week.

My Fingers Curdled On the Page

So, you think the SCOTUS isn't a political job.

Justices Take On Spending Limits for Candidates

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: September 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - The Supreme Court opened a new chapter in the long-running debate over the role of money in politics on Tuesday by agreeing to decide whether Vermont's strict limits on campaign spending and contributions are constitutional.

The court's action suggested, although it did not guarantee, that the justices might be ready to revisit their 29-year-old precedent, Buckley v. Valeo, which in equating money with speech has been widely interpreted as ruling out any restrictions on expenditures by candidates.

Vermont is the only state to have placed limits on candidates' spending. Its contribution limits, $400 to candidates for statewide office during a two-year election cycle and lower for other offices, are the tightest in the country.

Whether the court is embarking on a fundamental reappraisal of its campaign precedents, or whether it is intervening to clear up growing confusion in the lower courts, the case will inevitably become a highlight of the Supreme Court's new term, which formally begins on Monday.

The justices, as has been their recent custom, got a jump on the term by adding cases to the new term's calendar from among those that arrived in the summer recess. On Tuesday's list, there were 11 new cases, which will be argued in January and February.

The Vermont case underscored the significance of the transition the court is now facing as it awaits not only the arrival of John G. Roberts Jr., who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as the next chief justice, but also a successor to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Justice O'Connor, who will retire when her successor is confirmed, took part in selecting the new cases on Tuesday. As in many other areas of law, she has been at the center of the court in campaign finance cases, and cast the deciding vote two years ago when the court upheld a major new federal campaign finance law, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold law. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was one of the dissenters. The 5-to-4 decision upheld curbs on the unlimited contributions to political parties known as soft money.

A second new campaign finance case that the justices accepted on Tuesday challenges the application of another section of that law, asking the court to establish as exception for "grass-roots lobbying" to the ban on corporate funding of certain advertisements in the weeks before election day.

The Vermont law was enacted in 1997 as a direct challenge to the Supreme Court's campaign finance precedents, or as Vermont's secretary of state, Deborah L. Markowitz, put it in an official memorandum, with the "express legislative goal of giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to re-evaluate its decision in Buckley v. Valeo."

While the law's strict contribution limits were notable, its main departure was in restricting campaign expenditures. Candidates for governor, for example, are limited to spending $300,000 in a two-year election cycle, regardless of whether the cycle includes a primary election.

Radical Discontinuity

I live in DC, which is in a huricane zone, and this conversation between the WaPo's Gene Robinson and a reader just scared the crap out of me. I pulled this down from a WaPo chat earlier today. The WaPo may be the most blogger friendly major paper out there.

Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hi!

What in the world is going on?

I keep reading in editorials that there is no way to evacuate a large city.

What are we supposed to do in N.Y. or D.C. in case we need to evacuate? Take subways/metro? Hail a taxi? Are we then going to be blamed like the citizens and local leaders of Louisiana for not being prepared?

And, why aren't reporters all over local leaders in their respective areas, grilling them about emergency planning? If they have been, what has been the D.C. mayor's response to the grilling, for example?

I may sound angry, but I'm not. I am scared sheetless that some disaster strikes Manhattan while I am across the river in Jersey City, and due to poor planning I am stuck, separated from my family and without a safe place to go. The response to Katrina and Rita has scared me more than 9/11 ever did.

Eugene Robinson: I'm with you, and so are a lot of people I know. Look, I know it's hard to evacuate a major city. Houston was pretty organized in the way it tried to evacuate, and the city had four days' notice that Rita was on the way, and still there was 12-hour gridlock on the freeways. But there MUST be a better way, and if there isn't, then we have to invent one. Michael Chertoff, please, get to work on this.

My metro area has about 5 million people and really lousy commuting conditions, the third worst in the country according to AAA. We'd need 72 hours to get everyone out of here, I have no idea where we'd stash them. We have hurricanes here, too. Yes, I do think about this, but not as much as I think about pandemic influenza. Hurricanes we will always have with us and I keep a hurricane pantry at all times. Pandemic influenza is a radical discontinuity. And evacuation can't fix this.

Pictures from the Storm

Beaumont (TX) Enterprise managing editor Ron Franscell has posted photographs taken by the paper's photographers in and around that bulls-eye community. They are dramatic. They are having some sort of technical problem uploading them to the paper's website, so Ron put them up on his blog.

Red Herrings

The Politics of Distraction

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; 1:19 PM

President Bush yesterday called for Americans to cope with gasoline shortfalls by cutting down on their driving. And he continued to push for increased military authority in national disasters.

What do these two campaigns have in common? They're both red herrings, to some extent--distractions in the wake of the shockingly botched government response to Hurricane Katrina.

Consider this, for instance: There is no gasoline shortfall.

And a broad range of experts agree that putting the military into a position to enforce martial law is not only unnecessary, it's dangerous. The Pentagon itself opposes the idea. And under existing rules, the president has ample discretion to send troops in to help disaster victims already--discretion that he chose not to use for Katrina, but used amply for Rita.

One fair test of how seriously Bush takes his new energy conservation kick will be whether he exercises any self-restraint. But don't expect cardigans or thermostat-lowering in this White House.

Bush's gas-guzzling motorcade was whizzing all over town yesterday--and today he flies off in his fuel-gulping 747 for his seventh trip to the Gulf Coast since Katrina struck a month ago.

MD DPs

Almost 6,000 Doctors Displaced by Katrina, Study Says

Associated Press
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; Page A10

RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 26 -- Nearly 6,000 doctors along the Gulf Coast were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina in the largest displacement of physicians in U.S. history, university researchers reported Monday.

How many of those doctors will set up shop permanently in other cities, or decide to retire instead of reopening their practices, remains as unclear as New Orleans's future.

"We don't know what this is going to mean to health care," said Thomas Ricketts, who led the study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We've never had to deal with something like this before."

Ricketts's study found that 5,944 doctors were displaced in the 10 counties and parishes in Louisiana and Mississippi that were directly affected by Katrina-related flooding. That number covers doctors caring for patients, not those who are administrators or researchers, said Ricketts, a professor of health policy and administration at UNC's School of Public Health.

This is a catastrophe within a disaster.

BIIIG Bump in the Road

New Home Sales Fall Sharply in August

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; 10:27 AM

WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in August by the largest amount in nine months as the nation's housing industry continued to flash mixed signals about whether the boom is starting to fade.

The Commerce Department reported that new home sales declined by 9.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 1.24 million units. Even with the slowdown in sales, the sales price rose by 2.5 percent from July's level to $220,300.

The bigger-than-expected drop in new home sales could be an indication that the nation's red-hot housing market is beginning to slow, but reports so far are mixed. On Monday, the National Association of Realtors said that sales of previously owned homes rose by 2 percent in August to 7.29 million units, the second-highest level on record.

In other economic news, the Conference Board in New York reported that consumer confidence plunged in September to a reading of 86.6, down from the August level of 105.5.

It marked the lowest level for consumer confidence in nearly two years, since October 2003. Various consumer confidence measures have shown sharp drops recently, reflecting the surge in energy prices including gasoline that topped $3 per gallon right after Hurricane Katrina shut down Gulf Coast refineries.

The 9.9 percent decline in new home sales was more than double what analysts had been expecting. The government also revised the July sales pace lower to an annual rate of 1.37 million units, still a 5.3 percent increase from June.

The decline in sales in August was the biggest drop since a 10 percent fall in November 2004.

It begins....

Rapacious Markets

Bush Urges Conservation to Ease Fuel Shortage
By Warren Vieth and Richard Simon, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- President Bush urged Americans today to drive less, use mass transit more and embrace conservation in the wake of two major hurricanes, and said he would work with Congress to enact new incentives for energy production and refinery construction.

The president said he was directing federal agencies to take mandatory steps to reduce energy consumption, and would release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as needed to ease the petroleum shortages and price spikes caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Republican leaders in Congress announced plans to introduce new legislation or amend existing measures to bestow more tax breaks on the industry and provide other incentives left out of the big energy bill Bush signed into law in August.

The developments underscored the extent to which the legislative agendas of both the White House and Congress have been reconfigured by the two hurricanes and their effect on a domestic petroleum market that has become increasingly sensitive to supply disruptions.

"The storms have shown how fragile the balance is between supply and demand in America," Bush said after participating in a post-hurricane briefing at the Department of Energy. "...We've got a chance once again to assess where we are when it comes to energy and do something about it. And I look forward to working with Congress to do just that."

In remarks reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's thermostat-lowering appeal during the energy crisis that marked his White House tenure, Bush said every American had a role to play in responding to the back-to-back storms that shut down offshore oil production, refinery operations and fuel distribution in the Gulf Coast region.

"We can all pitch in ... by being better conservers of energy," Bush said. "I mean, people just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption and that if they're able to maybe not drive...on a trip that's not essential, that would be helpful."

On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders said they were moving swiftly to write legislation aimed at spurring refiner construction and expansion. Some expressed interest in launching a new push to relax a decades-old moratorium on new offshore oil drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.

Congressional leaders said they had not decided whether they would draft another comprehensive energy bill or try to attach provisions aimed at building more refineries to a package of hurricane relief measures.

Even before Hurricane Katrina hit, knocking out a good chunk of the nation's oil refineries and driving pump prices, lawmakers were getting an earful from constituents about high fuel costs. But it appeared the hurricanes may have provided the perfect political storm for industry-backed initiatives that didn't make it into the big energy bill approved earlier this year.

Among measures expected to gain support are tax breaks to spur building or expanding of refineries. In addition, new legislation is expected to include Bush's suggestion that former military bases be made available as sites for new refineries and to streamline the permitting for new or expanded refineries, including establishing deadlines for federal approval.

Who profits the most when gas prices rise

By Justin Blum

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were receiving an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

Companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period.

If motorists are the big losers in the spectacular run-up in gas prices, the companies that produce the oil and turn it into gasoline are the clear winners. By contrast, truckers who transport gasoline, companies that operate pipelines and gas-station owners have profited far less.

The spikes caused by Hurricane Katrina — which heavily damaged oil production and refining in the Gulf region — accentuated gains the refiners and producers already were enjoying over the past year.

Exxon Mobil, the Irving, Texas, behemoth that produces and refines oil, reported in July that its second-quarter profit was up 32 percent, to $7.64 billion. Analysts expect Exxon's profit to soar again this quarter.

UPDATE: Bush makes his fifth photo op to the hurricane zone today at a cost of $6,029 per hour in fuel cost, double what it was a year ago.

Body Parts

Hospital Halts Organ Program
# St. Vincent center in L.A. says a patient, 52nd on liver transplant list, got improper priority and the action was covered up.

By Charles Ornstein, Times Staff Writer

St. Vincent Medical Center, one of the largest organ transplantation centers in the state, has suspended its liver program after discovering that its doctors improperly arranged for a transplant to a Saudi national using an organ that should have gone to a much higher priority patient at another hospital, officials said.

Hospital staff members then falsified documents several times to cover up the alleged maneuver, pretending that the transplant was for a patient who was near the top of the regional waiting list, hospital President and Chief Executive Gus Valdespino confirmed Monday.

The transplant took place in September 2003 and was paid for by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. But Valdespino said the problem was discovered only this month when officials were responding to routine questions from auditors at the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit group that administers the national transplant system.

The patient who received the successful transplant was actually 52nd on the list, which covers much of Southern California and takes into account such factors as who is sickest and who has been waiting longest.

A patient at UCLA Medical Center was entitled to receive the organ and St. Vincent should have declined it, Valdespino said.

Transplant directors and ethicists from across the country say what is alleged to have happened at St. Vincent is a sin in organ transplantation, which is heavily regulated by a procurement network, as well as state and federal officials, to maintain integrity and fairness in the process.

The idea of moving one patient above another for other than medical reasons is "totally unconscionable," said Dr. Douglas Hanto, chief of the transplant division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "It's wrong unequivocally."

The hospital, west of downtown Los Angeles, notified the state Department of Health Services about the line-jumping problem Monday, and agency spokeswoman Lea Brooks said inspectors would immediately investigate.

This is one of the most serious ethical screw-ups you can have in the organ transplant business, and you know that if it happened at St. Vincent, it is happening elsewhere.

Slime and Defend

"Brownie" is testifying before the House Government Affairs Committee and he just blamed Nagin and Blanco for the Katrina disaster. Republicans are not the party of personal responsibility.

Getting Real

Judge Roberts nomination is going to move out of the abstract very quickly.

Abortion test case ready for justices

BY GINA HOLLAND

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate a national ban on a type of late-term abortion, a case that could thrust the president's first court picks into an early tie-breaking role on a divisive and emotional issue.

The appeal follows a two-year, cross-country legal fight over the law and highlights the power that Bush's nominees will have. Just a few months ago, there would have been five votes to strike down the law.

The outcome now is uncertain, with moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retiring and her replacement still unnamed.

"This no longer puts the abortion issue in the abstract with the Supreme Court. This is as live a controversy as you can get," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Monday.

Confirmation hearings

Abortion already was expected to be a major subject in the next round of confirmation hearings, just as it was with the hearings of John Roberts to be chief justice. The Senate began debating Roberts' nomination Monday, with confirmation expected later this week.

President Bush had supported the 2003 law outlawing what he termed an "abhorrent practice." President Clinton twice vetoed similar bills, arguing that they lacked an exception to protect the health of the mother, something the Supreme Court has said is required in abortion laws.

The law Bush signed has been successfully challenged in New York, California and Nebraska. State courts ruled that the law was unconstitutional because of the lack of a health exception.

Not Thinking Ahead

Hurricane Victims Face Tighter Limits on Bankruptcy

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
and RIVA D. ATLAS
Published: September 27, 2005

When Congress agreed this spring to tighten the bankruptcy laws and crack down on consumers who took on debt irresponsibly, no one had the victims of Hurricane Katrina in mind.

But four weeks after New Orleans flooded and tens of thousands of other residents of the Gulf Coast also lost their homes and livelihoods, a stricter new personal bankruptcy law scheduled to take effect on Oct. 17 is likely to deliver another blow to those dislocated by the storm.

The law was intended to keep individuals from taking on debts they had no intention of paying off. But many once-solvent Katrina victims are likely to be caught up in the net intended to catch deadbeats.

Right after Hurricane Katrina struck, several lawmakers - mostly Democrats but including some Senate Republicans - suggested that storm victims along the Gulf Coast should get relief from the new law's stricter provisions, which are intended to screen filers by income and make those with higher incomes repay their debts over several years. Under the old law, which remains in effect until mid-October, many more filers can have their debts canceled quickly in federal bankruptcy courts.

But House Republicans, who fought off a proposed amendment that would have made bankruptcy filings easier for victims of natural disasters, said there was no reason to carve out a broad exemption just because of the storm.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rejected the notion of reopening the legislation, saying it already included provisions that would ensure that people left "down and out" by the storm would still be able to shed most of their debts. Lawmakers who lost the long fight over the law, he said, "ought to get over it," according to The Associated Press.

A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration "doesn't see a lot of merit" in calls to delay the law's effective date but was considering making allowances for hurricane victims.

In the meantime, many victims of Hurricane Katrina - and the much smaller group ruined by Hurricane Rita - will face a kind of Catch-22. Those who try to beat the Oct. 17 deadline in hopes of filing under the less-onerous current law may find it impossible to do so, because residence rules generally require that individuals seek protection against creditors in their hometowns. (Assuming people in New Orleans can find their lawyers and records, they can file for bankruptcy protection in their bankruptcy court, which has reopened and is sharing space with another court in Baton Rouge.)

Moreover, most people displaced by the storm will probably not know for months if they even need to file for bankruptcy. By that time, the tougher new law will be in force.

"Six to nine months from now, FEMA will be gone, the church groups will be gone and creditors will once more be demanding their money," said Bradford W. Botes, a bankruptcy lawyer whose firm represented victims of Hurricane Ivan, which struck Florida a year ago.

The Law of Unintended Consequences hasn't been repealed.

The Truth Hurts

'How can you establish a free media in such fear and anarchy?'

Last week Fakher Haidar al-Tamimi became the 36th Iraqi journalist to be killed since the start of the war. His friend Ghaith Abdul-Ahad explains how, in the postwar carnage, his fellow countrymen have become the softest targets
Monday September 26, 2005

Guardian

I had been dreading this moment for weeks, but I knew it would come inevitably. The night before leaving for Baghdad; preparing for yet another trip to that doomed city to report on yet more violence. For weeks at a time, I had lived in denial. I had told myself, no, it's not happening; no, I am not going back there. I have had enough, I am not going back to Iraq. But then I gave in, I started assuring my worried friends that I would be safe there - after all, it's not that dangerous.

Last Monday night I sat, sheepishly, in my bedroom, packing my bags. I was drowning in depression - a mixture of fear and anxiety smouldering in my guts. I wanted to distract myself, so I started going through my favourite bedtime routine: checking the wires for the latest pictures from Iraq. What atrocity had I missed that day by hiding in London?

I soon came across an out-of-focus image of a policeman lifting a cover to show a dead body lying in a hospital morgue. It was the sort of photograph I had seen a hundred times before. Then I read the caption: "A policeman lifts ... the body of Fakher Haidar al-Tamimi ..."

My heart stopped and my eyes started watering. It can't be Fakher, I told myself, and started to frantically search the web for more details. Seeing his byline on a New York Times story from the day before, I was briefly reassured. But then I read the story of his death on the same website.

"An Iraqi journalist and photographer working for the New York Times in Basra was found dead early Monday after being abducted from his home by a group of armed men wearing masks and claiming to be police officers," read the report.

"The journalist, Fakher Haidar, 38, was found with his hands bound and a bag over his head in a deserted area on the outskirts of Basra, in southern Iraq, hours after being taken from his house in that city. A relative who viewed his body in the city morgue said he had at least one bullet-hole in his head and bruises on his back as if he had been beaten."

I finished the article and started to search again. I soon found another picture of him on the web: Fakher, standing next to a cameraman in Basra with his most distinctive feature - his big smile - on full display. Fakher always smiled and always shook your hand firmly, a small notebook in his other hand. He was the sole authority on anything that happened in Basra. Journalists from all over the world would seek Fakher's help and insider's knowledge on the south of the country. He knew everybody and everything.

Because of his big smile, shadowed by a huge, bushy moustache wildly out of proportion with his gaunt face, Basra always felt safe to me when I was with him. I saw him for the last time two months ago. We were in Baghdad, in a dark street outside the fortified castles of one of the western newspapers. He looked wary, but still forced a thin smile.

One of the things that made him such a good journalist was his near obsession with details. I once called him to ask about some rumours that were circulating of clashes between rival tribes in Basra. He told me the story, the numbers of people fighting, the weapons, the time. I had to remind him, apologetically, that I was interested in writing a few hundred words about the battle, not a book.

Fakher is one of 56 journalists to be killed in Iraq since the war started. He is also the 36th Iraqi journalist to be killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Last Wednesday Ahlam Youssef became number 37. An engineer working for the Iraqi TV network, she was gunned down in Mosul with her husband.

"With the foreign press unable to move around freely for fear of attack, Iraqis have become the eyes and ears of the world in this conflict," reads a statement by CPJ Executive Ann Cooper on their website. "The recent violence is threatening to cut off this critical source of information."

As reporting from Iraq is becoming almost impossible, new ground rules have been set for most of the foreign media. Apart from a handful of journalists, everyone goes out in armed convoys, if they go out at all. If you are six feet tall, fair-haired and stupid enough to come to Baghdad, then you might as well stick to the hotel swimming pool or your agency fortress, and the occasional trip embedded with the US Army. Instead you can count on your Iraqi employees to go out and get you the story.

How do you think you can know anything out of a war zone where God knows what is being done in your name?

Getting the Word Out

This is just a reminder that the week of October 3-9 is Pandemic Flu Awareness Week. All over the blogosphere, left and right, bloggers will be linking to flu resources like Flu Wiki and others (there is a whole flu community out here on the Internets and we are going to have to help each other) who can help you, me and everyone. Flu Wiki is our collaborative, community project of planning, preparation and coping skills. Go and add to the wisdom. This isn't a time for panic, it is a time for planning. We have work to do to take care of our selves and our families and our communities.

You'll need 90 days of food and water for every member of your family; know how to purify your municipal water supply. And make sure you are planning to entertain yourselves and each other for quarantine in place. I'm going to be fine if I never buy another book in my life, but you might want to add some other resources if you aren't a big reader. Don't count on the power staying on the for the whole first wave: do some hurricane prep and make sure you have non-perishable food in the cupboard and candles and batteries if you aren't planning on buying a generator. Being the only person on your block with a generator will also make you conspicuous, but it could be the course of wisdom if avian flu hits us in the cold season where you are. Gas or diesel will probably be problematic, however, so plan for that, too. I've got a fireplace that will keep the pipes from freezing, so I'm buying a cord of wood, but kerosene heaters are the most efficient bang for the buck. Who's going to keep the power on when 30% of the line repair crew is sick.

Have some barterables so that you can trade for the things you forgot to buy or don't discover until later that you are needing. Count on being self-sufficient and that your neighbors and friends won't be unless you've done a very thorough job on them. Ask them to read this for an introduction to the story (and it has links to the flu prep pages.) It's only two pages, you can print it out and copy it to hand out.

If you are reading Flu Wiki, you are one of a small minority of people who knows what is coming. Unless you are planning to head for the hills and adopt the survivalist mode, we are going to be living through and (I hope) surviving pandemic flu in our communities. Be a part of yours by thinking ahead of those who haven't gotten the news.

Top to Bottom Rotten

Aid for Those in Flood Zones Fell Short
Appraisal Finds FEMA Call Center Had Inexperienced Staff, Outdated Maps

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 26, 2005; Page A21

The 18 people staffing the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Map Assistance Center in Tallahassee were the first line of defense to answer people's questions about their risks of flooding and need for insurance.

To handle the complicated, technical aspects of flood hazard maps, FEMA had a policy that these "Tier 1" call center employees were to have majored in relevant fields such as geology or environmental sciences, according to a draft of a confidential assessment of the program obtained by The Washington Post.

But none of them had such a background, the February 2005 assessment found.

Instead, the assessment said, the job was left primarily to college students, many from Florida State University, studying fields such as fashion merchandising and music education. Their previous jobs included work as lifeguards, and as cashiers for Winn Dixie stores and at McDonald's, Tropical Smoothie and Mr. Taco.

As FEMA faces criticism for its performance after Hurricane Katrina, the assessment points to what it says were deficiencies in the agency's ability to provide information to homeowners before disasters, as they tried to protect their properties in the event of flooding.

This is utterly systemic incompetence. In the event of avian influenza, we are completely on our own.

A canary in the coal mine?

A new flu strain for dogs has jumped from a strain usually seen in horses.

This, sadly, may show us what to look forward to if we don't respond rapidly to our own flu dilemna.

Other News

Mike Allen: The Week Ahead in Washington
The President keeps his eyes on hurricane recovery, and Congress begins a Katrina investigation
By MIKE ALLEN/WASHINGTON

The biggest non-Katrina event this week will be the Senate floor vote on the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice. Both sides say the vote will be at least in the high sixties. Unless there is a filibuster, which Democrats say will not occur, he needs only a simple majority. "This was the president's first time at bat for the Supreme Court, and he hit a homer," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice. Republican sources say that if the floor vote occurs Thursday, as scheduled, Bush might announce his nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as soon as Friday or Monday. However briefly, the misery of New Orleans will be upstaged and Bush will be able to go before cameras in a jacket and tie.

By the Basketful

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions

By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON
Published: September 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

Hurricanes: another opportunity for corporate looting.

More of the Same

Katrina Redux? Beaumont Paper Finds Federal Storm Failure in Texas

By E&P; Staff

Published: September 25, 2005 9:50 PM ET

NEW YORK In Beaumont, Texas, claims that federal relief agencies learned their lessons from Hurricane Katrina and are on the ball in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita are apparently ringing hollow. The Beaumont (Tex.) Enterprise reported tonight that disaster response coordinators in the area hard hit by Rita say they are seeing the same foot-dragging federal response this weekend witnessed two weeks ago in New Orleans and Mississippi.

Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith and other local leaders, "haggard after days of almost non-stop work with little sleep, pleaded with the federal government to get itself in a higher gear," the paper said. Griffith said he wanted to return services to residents who remain but that "it seems like they can't figure out how to get it done."

"There's a drastic shortage of generators in Beaumont to provide emergency power," Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said. "There are generators at Ford Park, and FEMA is withholding their release. They want to finish their damage assessment."

Jefferson County officials had a plan to distribute Meals-Ready-to-Eat from local fire stations, the paper said. However, Griffith said the MREs, like the generators, were being withheld by FEMA.

"They won't let us have them," Griffith said. "They said we had to go through the state - which we already did - to get them. I'm going over there (to Ford Park) now to figure this out."

Looters have struck in town, but had to be let go because there is no safe place to jail them right now. Officials have asked FEMA to provide temporary jail quarters.

The Enterprise has not published a print edition this weekend but provided PDFs of a scaled-down version on its still-active Web site. It included a note there Sunday: "We will publish a home edition as soon as we possibly can."

Griffith said he's sending fire officials to local stores to get supplies, including propane to cook with. "We're going into stores and taking food out," Griffith said. "We're going to do what we got to do to get the job done....

"There's just a breakdown in the state and federal government that you saw in Katrina and you've seen in other disasters," Griffith said. He said he hopes to see a change "so at least the next people that have to go through it ... will have some kind of process that makes sense that can immediately deliver what people need."

The .pdf edition of The Enterprise is on the link.

Gas Pains

Oil, Gasoline Drop; U.S. Fuel Output Set to Recover From Storm

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil and gasoline fell as refiners including Exxon Mobil Corp. resumed fuel shipments after plants around the Houston oil hub, which account for 12 percent of U.S. capacity, escaped damage from Hurricane Rita.

Exxon said yesterday that plants were starting and it began delivering gasoline from its Baytown refinery. Valero Energy Corp. said its Houston and Texas City plants may restore processing this week. At least 15 refineries in Texas and Louisiana, accounting for 24 percent of U.S. capacity, closed as Rita approached.

``There's relief that the worst-case scenario has been avoided,'' said Simon Wardell, an oil analyst with Global Insight in London. Output at some refineries near Houston may resume in ``just one or two weeks, because people are going to be able to return to the area earlier than expected. We may just tip into next year without the threat of a shortage.''

Crude oil for November delivery dropped to a two-week low, falling as much as $1.54, or 2.4 percent, to $62.65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where it was down 48 cents at 1:31 p.m. London time. Oil has lost 10 percent from a record $70.85 on Aug. 30, the day after Hurricane Katrina struck.

Gasoline futures on the Nymex today tumbled as much as 7 percent to $1.94 a gallon. They've slid 31 percent from a record $2.92 at the end of August.

The Nymex and London's International Petroleum Exchange offered weekend trading yesterday because of Rita. Both exchanges incorporated yesterday's trades as part of today's session.

Brent crude for November settlement slid as much as $1.44, or 2.3 percent, to $61 on the IPE, where it was down 33 cents. It reached a record $68.89 after Katrina hit last month.

Gasoline Shortages

Katrina struck land before the U.S. Labor Day weekend, the end of the peak season for gasoline demand. Refiners now are preparing to meet heating-fuel requirements while replenishing gasoline supplies. About 5 percent of U.S. refining capacity remains closed because of Katrina. Four plants are scheduled to resume output in November or December.

``There won't be terrific relief at the pump,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. Crude prices ``should move down because it's not being refined.''

Katrina caused gasoline shortages in the U.S., sending the average price at the pump to a record $3.057 a gallon on Sept. 2, the AAA motorists' group said. The price on Sept. 23 rose to $2.80 a gallon from $2.748 a day earlier. It has dropped 8.4 percent from the record.

Gas is still retailing at $2.89-2.91 in my neighborhood. What's the price at the pump where you live?

Darwin Redux

Via Susie:

‘Intelligent design’ faces first big court test

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 6:24 p.m. ET Sept. 23, 2005

A federal judge in Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit that both sides say could set the fundamental ground rules for how American students are taught the origins of life for years to come.

At issue is an alternative to the standard theory of evolution called “intelligent design.” Proponents argue that the structure of life on Earth is too complex to have evolved through natural selection, challenging a core principle of the biological theory launched by Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Instead, contend adherents of intelligent design, life is probably the result of intervention by an intelligent agent.

Intelligent design has been bubbling up since 1987, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion.

Critics deride intelligent design as creationism gussied up for the courts; advocates say it is an explicitly scientific construct that makes no supposition about the identity or nature of the designer.

The disagreement has led to anguished public debates and hearings before local school boards for almost 20 years. While judges have considered smaller questions barnacled to the issue, the trial that opens Monday is believed to be the first time a federal court has been asked to decide the fundamental question: Is intelligent design religion or science?

Since when is court is the place where what science is get settled? And I guess this reporter never heard of the Scopes trial.

The Gulf Coast

Rita Spares Cities, Devastates Rural Areas
Loss of Power, Flooding Keep Many From Returning

By Doug Struck and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 26, 2005; Page A01

BEAUMONT, Tex., Sept. 25 -- Hurricane Rita's floodwaters receded Sunday along the Texas-Louisiana coastline, revealing devastated rural communities but lighter-than-expected damage to major population centers and to vital energy facilities in the area.

After the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina, which since it struck in late August has killed more than 1,000, displaced hundreds of thousands and is forecast to cost the federal government alone about $200 billion, Rita's impact was closer to that of other major hurricanes. Most of the more than 3 million people who evacuated in advance of the storm were preparing to return home. Costs were put in the low billions of dollars and only two deaths were attributed to the storm.

Still, hundreds of thousands of people were told they could not return to their homes in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana because water, power, sewage and emergency services will not be restored for weeks, authorities said. Police blocked exits off interstate highways leading to Beaumont, which once held 110,000 people but is now largely a ghost town.

Rita hit the United States early Saturday with winds of 120 mph, bringing up to a foot of rain and a 15-foot storm surge. It caused the greatest harm in less-populated areas of Louisiana and Texas, near this city and Port Arthur. About 2 million people overall lost power.

In a speech on Sunday, Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Rita's "effects appear to be relatively modest" on economic growth. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said the storm was "not anywhere near as bad as we thought it was going to be." Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," he said oil platforms and refineries in the area are "in relatively good shape."

Perry, on CNN's "Late Edition," put the damage in his state at about $8 billion; that would rank Rita far behind Katrina in impact but still among the most damaging storms to hit the United States.

Yesterday's Beaumont Enterprise reported:

Floodwaters, alligators, water moccasins
By: CHRISTINE RAPPLEYE, The Enterprise 09/26/2005
.

SABINE PASS - Knee-deep water streamed through Sabine Pass streets Sunday as an 11-member crew of the Edmund Task Force 1 rescue team from Oklahoma went house to house looking for anyone who might still be left in the flooded coastal community.

Practically every building had some sort of damage in what was one of the hardest hit areas of the county when Hurricane Rita barreled through Saturday morning.

Water flowed through Gabby's Hardware store. The car wash awning was twisted, and telephone poles were scattered along the side of it. The brick walls on the storage facility next to the car wash were reduced to rubble, baring the studs and ruined belongings inside. Windows were knocked out on the fire station garage door.

At each place, they spray painted "X," "EDTF-1" (the task force's initials), the time they came and how many people were there. However, by late Sunday, only one person was found in a home, an 80-year-old man who was discovered Saturday and taken away by ambulance to a hospital, said Capt. Greg Westermire of the task force. Westermire was on a four-wheeler and working with rescue crews combing the city.

The water in some places here was up to 5 feet on Saturday, task force members said. On Sunday, they saw alligators and water moccasins swimming through the water. And then, high tide would be coming in later in the night.

Texas 87 to Sabine Pass was practically impassable, with debris covering the highway.

Sabine Pass residents shouldn't try to come home now, said Port Arthur Police Officer Mike Hebert, who was patrolling the community.

Entergy officials told him that power might not come back on here for two months, Hebert said.

Sabine Pass is outside the seawall and levee that protected Mid- and South Jefferson counties from catastrophic flood damage, officials said.

In Mid-County and Port Arthur, officials were asking residents to stay away until water, sewer and electricity could be restored and the cities' streets could be cleaned up from tree limbs, dangling and fallen power poles, shingles and other debris, which could take several weeks.

Road crews were out clearing streets, and workers were attempting to restore power. Curfews were in place, generally from dusk until dawn, and troopers from the Department of Public Safety were turning people back on U.S. 69 and Twin City Highway.

Fuel, water, food and other supplies had to be brought in due to businesses still being closed.

In Port Arthur, police and firefighters had equipment for air rescues in case of the predicted flooding with the storm surge, said Maj. John Owens, deputy police chief with the Port Arthur Police Department.

But, they didn't have any requests for rescues, Owens said.
Port Arthur saw some flooding, but most of it had drained off by Sunday afternoon, Owens said.

"The top thing we saw was power poles down," he said.
Police officers and troopers were patrolling the city. All police officers and firefighters had reported for duty, and city workers were also making their way back to help.

Two troopers were posted at the El Rancho Market on Stadium Drive, where three people had been arrested for looting.

Flunked Out of College

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Were Like Night and Day

By Spencer S. Hsu and Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 25, 2005; Page A01

Reinforced armies of federal search teams, medics and National Guard troops began fanning out into wind-whipped and waterlogged southwestern Louisiana and coastal Texas yesterday, racing to prove the government had learned from its disastrous missteps earlier this month on the Gulf Coast.

And while yesterday's early assessments were positive -- with few reports of unanswered calls for help or broad communication breakdowns that crippled the response to Hurricane Katrina -- officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita had not presented the ultimate test for which they had prepared.

Hurricane Katrina "was so much more massive. Most people still don't understand that," said Michael Lowder, deputy director of response operations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington. In New Orleans, the levees failed, "then you had the civil unrest piece of it. That was something that was not planned for, not anticipated. . . . That affects the whole response."

What? These people are professional "disaster planners?" Anytime civic authority breaks down you are going to get opportunists who are going to try to take advantage of that. Any undergrad sociology or anthropology student knows that. But the gubmint of the US of A doesn't. We have idiots and fools on the hands of the controls of the Republic.

Bizarro World

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit
Ryan Donnell for The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 26, 2005

DOVER, Pa., Sept. 23 - Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about "alternatives" to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design.

But 11 other parents in Dover were outraged enough to sue the school board and the district, contending that intelligent design - the idea that living organisms are so inexplicably complex, the best explanation is that a higher being designed them - is a Trojan horse for religion in the public schools.

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.

What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.

Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.

"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."

For Mrs. Hied, a meter reader, and her husband, Michael, an office manager for a local bus and transport company, the Dover school board's argument - that teaching intelligent design is a free-speech issue - has a strong appeal.

"I think we as Americans, regardless of our beliefs, should be able to freely access information, because people fought and died for our freedoms," Mrs. Hied said over a family dinner last week at their home, where the front door is decorated with a small bell and a plaque proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring."

But in a split-level house on the other side of Main Street, at a desk flanked by his university diplomas, Steven Stough was on the Internet late the other night, keeping track of every legal maneuver in the case. Mr. Stough, who teaches life science to seventh graders in a nearby district, is one of the 11 parents suing the Dover district. For him the notion of teaching "alternatives" to evolution is a hoax.

"You can dress up intelligent design and make it look like science, but it just doesn't pass muster," said Mr. Stough, a Republican whose idea of a fun family vacation is visiting fossil beds and natural history museums. "In science class, you don't say to the students, 'Is there gravity, or do you think we have rubber bands on our feet?' "

The only reason that "intelligent design" has become an issue in the national news is because reporters like Laurie Goodstein have refused to do their jobs and become actors in the "he said/she said" which passes for reporting in this country, which is embarrassing and sad. If reporters were actually doing their jobs, which Ms Goodstein isn't, they would notice that ID isn't science. And idiot stories like this one wouldn't be on the front page of the New York Times.

I spend a lot of time with the Canadian and British press. While those countries have their own reactionary element which has to be dealt with, neither would try to put this particular piece of bullshit over on their populace, it just would not fly. American righties really want to repeal the Enlightenment. And reporters like Laurie Goodstein are eager to help.

Sighs and Whispers

The photos are devestating. This LAT photo piece had me clearing tears from my eyes. I've spent a lot of time in the Gulf over the years. This time, none of those picture were of my friends, but as the fury of global climate change muscles up, I can't be sure that will be the case in future years. I have my own ass to take care of, as a resident of an east coast state that is in the path of storms. And the hurricane season this year has two months to run. But these pictures tell a story.

If you are new to Just a Bump in the Beltway, use the "search" feature over on the right sidebar with the keywords "global warming" and see what comes up. I've been covering this story for a while and the Katrina/Rita story isn't new news for those who expect more and more violent storms.

Then there is pandemic flu. Let's introduce that bug into the highly stressed population of people in the Gulf states. Wait. This might be happening already.

Pandemic flu awareness week is October 3-9. It might be time to pay attention to this shit. Most of the blogs are on board to cover this story which the MSM is finding too hard to get thier heads around.

I haven't heard from Ron Franscell in a couple of days. I'm told by third parties that he is okay. I'l feel better when I've heard from him.

Sometimes, it is all too much.

Giving Others A Hard Time

By Staying, They Put Others in a Tough Spot
By Ann M. Simmons and Scott Gold, Times Staff Writers

ABBEVILLE, La. — This is a land awash in water.

From the marshy lowlands of Cajun country to the flat country south of the industrial city of Lake Charles, water covered the roads, stranded people atop their homes and killed cattle by the hundreds.

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So intense was the rescue effort Saturday that even Vermilion Parish Sheriff Michael Couvillon had been unable to check on his property on Cow Island and said he feared he might have lost his 90 head of cattle and four horses.

He said Saturday that he was both angry and frustrated that people had ignored warnings to leave the lowlands and seek higher ground. This for a hurricane that produced widespread flooding and rains that the National Hurricane Center had said could measure as much as 25 inches over the area.

"The people chose not to leave after we advised them three times," he said. "Now they are putting other people's lives in danger."

He also said that throughout the day, boats were unable to navigate the waters because of floating debris that hit propellers.

"If you go fast, you can hit a log or a fence," he said. "You can't direct your boat. If you go slow, the current will take you."

Jimmy Domingues, a retired registrar of voters in the parish, and his son were among several community members who showed up with their boats to look for those stranded by the flood. He said the number of dead animals was staggering.

"Carcasses are scattered all over," he said.

By nightfall, at least 400 people had been rescued by boats from attics and rooftops near Abbeville, a town of 11,600.

But the sheriff said that by Saturday evening, at least 25 residents in the immediate area remained to be rescued. Most of them were on their roofs, where they would have to spend the night, he said. As the day wore on, those who were rescued from their homes were brought to the Knights of Columbus Hall in Abbeville, south of Lafayette. Each had stories to tell about what had happened to them as Hurricane Rita blew ashore in the early-morning hours.

Karen Pommier and her family failed to obey the mandatory evacuation order in the tiny town of Henry, south of Abbeville. Pommier said the water started rising and was a foot deep in their house before a rescue boat arrived. They managed to grab food, medicine and clothes, all of which they stuffed into black garbage bags.

"We're on high ground. We could have stayed. But we didn't want to take the chance," Pommier said.

"We never panicked. That's why people get killed — by panicking," said Pommier's father, Jesse Labit.

Diana Toucket, 52, a mother of three, also was picked up by a boat at a trailer park.

Toucket said she and her husband were staying in her daughter's trailer when water started rising in the early-morning hours. Though the trailer was elevated 4 feet above the ground, they were waist-deep in water when the rescue boat arrived, Toucket said.

Like so many others, the couple had only a few minutes to grab some clothes, a cellphone and food.

Mark Simon, 50, a farmer whose family has been raising rice and crawfish for generations in the area, said he expected to lose almost everything.

"We'll lose it, most definitely," Simon said of his rice crop. "It likes water, but it can't take 3 feet of it."

At this point your cyber editor put down her mouse and just cried, unable to further document the horrible human loss. This could be any of us, in a natural disaster we don't forsee, I could be crying for me.

Spirituality Lite

A short supper for the soul

The ultimate accessory for the man or woman too busy to fit spirituality into their schedule has finally been unveiled: the 100-page Bible. Shorn of the Song of Solomon as well as the never-ending genealogies of the Old Testament (whereby Ram begat Amminadab and Amminadab begat Nahson and ... so forth) this skimpy number is apparently the only version that contemporary readers can cope with. I find this yeast-free, wheat-free, low-carb version of soul food unpalatable, and wonder whether, if it's spiritual sustenance they crave, today's readers wouldn't be better served by those little books with a big message that have survived in their original form, untampered by editorial prunings. Antoine St Exupery's Le Petit Prince or Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's Oscar and the Pink Lady. The latter is an investigation of life, death, love and childhood that has turned its author, whose own battle with childhood leukemia inspired the book, into a huge celebrity in France. There are only 104 palm-sized pages to read - and each one remains as its author intended. Amen.

I concur.

Devoted to the Truth

Officer's Road Led Him Outside Army
# Capt. Ian Fishback repeatedly voiced his concern about prisoner abuse in Iraq to his superiors, but felt he was being brushed off.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — When Army Capt. Ian Fishback told his company and battalion commanders that soldiers were abusing Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention, he says, they told him those rules were easily skirted.

When he wrote a memo saying Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was wrong in telling Congress that the Army follows the Geneva dictates, his lieutenant colonel responded only: "I am aware of Fishback's concerns."

And when Fishback found himself in the same room as Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey at Ft. Benning, Ga., he again complained about prisoner abuse. He said Harvey told him that "corrective action was already taken."

At every turn, it seemed, the decorated young West Point graduate, the son of a Vietnam War veteran from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, whose wife is serving with the Army in Iraq, felt that the military had shut him out.

So he turned to those he knows best. He sought guidance from fellow infantry commanders and his West Point classmates, and learned that they agreed with him that abuse of prisoners was widespread and that officers weren't adequately trained in how to handle them.

Then, in a lengthy chronology obtained Saturday by The Times, recounting what he saw in Iraq and his numerous efforts to get the Army's attention, he wrote that "Harvey is wrong." He wrote that Army guidance was "too vague for officers to enforce American values." He concluded that violations of the Geneva Convention were "systematic, and the Army is misleading America."

This summer, after weighing the possible effects on his career, he stepped outside the Army's chain of command and telephoned the Human Rights Watch advocacy group. He later met with aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Friday, he authorized them to make public his allegations, along with those of two sergeants, of widespread prisoner abuse they had witnessed when they served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

Within hours, the Army announced it had opened a criminal investigation.

The review is the first major investigation by the military of widespread prisoner abuse outside the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the first time such a review has targeted soldiers in the regular Army rather than the National Guardsmen and reservists in the Abu Ghraib case.

But for Fishback, whom friends describe as a deeply religious Christian and patriot who prays before each meal and can quote from the Constitution, the ordeal may be just beginning.

Army officials have temporarily furloughed him from Special Operations training school at Ft. Bragg, N.C., to make him available to the Criminal Investigation Command as it sorts through his allegations.

And sources close to the case said investigators are pressing him to identify the two sergeants who have backed up his accusations — something he does not want to do for the sake of all their careers.

"He's a very decent, fine young man," said Col. Dan Zupan, who teaches the rules of war at West Point and was one of Fishback's mentors. "He doesn't have an ax to grind. He's just in search of the truth."

At Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the group's Washington director, recalled escorting Fishback, his uniform adorned with two bronze stars, to meet with staff aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago.

For an hour they chatted behind closed doors in the committee's hearing room in the Russell building. Malinowski said Fishback answered all their questions unflinchingly.

"He answered them just as you would imagine an officer would — very factual, very unemotional," Malinowski said.

A former soldier close to Fishback, who asked not to be identified out of respect for Fishback's own decision not to talk to the media, said Fishback "really doesn't care what happens to him."

"He wants to stay in the Army. But he also says, 'This is bigger than me. I've got to do the right thing here.' "

Fishback maintains that he witnessed detainees being stripped, deprived of sleep and exposed to the elements at the behest of Army intelligence officers, who wanted the prisoners softened up for interrogation.

To back up his claims, two as-yet-unnamed sergeants came forward, telling Human Rights Watch they saw soldiers break a prisoner's leg, kick and punch others and force others to hold large water jugs for long periods of time or stack themselves into human pyramids.

It's going to take a generation to regain the US's standing in the eyes of the world.

Price Gouging

Gas Profit Guzzlers
Refiners Captured The Biggest Part Of the Price Increase

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 25, 2005; Page F01

When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were getting an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

The companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period.

If motorists are the big losers in the spectacular run-up in gas prices, the companies that produce the oil and turn it into gasoline are the clear winners. By contrast, the truckers who transport gasoline, the companies that operate pipelines and the gas station owners have profited far less.

The spikes caused by Hurricane Katrina -- which heavily damaged oil production and refining in the Gulf region -- accentuated gains the refiners and producers already were enjoying over the past year. Exxon Mobil Corp., the Irving, Tex., behemoththat produces and refines oil, reported in July that its second-quarter profit was up 32 percent, to $7.64 billion. Analysts expect Exxon's profit to soar again this quarter.

The rapid run-up in prices at the pump when Katrina hit -- and their slow decline -- has infuriated drivers, many of whom complain that oil companies used the storm as a pretext for boosting prices and profits. Politicians echoed that sentiment and are calling for investigations of the oil industry.

But interviews with analysts, consumer advocates and participants in the oil markets indicate that typical market forces were at work in the price run-up. Commodities markets that determine prices for gasoline moved dramatically higher after Katrina struck the Gulf region and damaged refineries and oil production. (The effect of Hurricane Rita on refiners' profits remains to be seen.)

Rising pump prices and company profits have caused lawmakers on Capitol Hill to seek legislative changes. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) has introduced a measure that would tax some oil company profits that are not devoted to exploration and development of new production.

"They obviously are experiencing windfall or excess profits," Dorgan said of the big oil companies. "They are . . . profiting in an extraordinary way at the expense of the American consumer."

If we lived in a normal country, it would be time for a windfal profits tax. But we don't live in a normal country.

Fighting the Bug

Fight erupts over flu drug

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO - In the first few years after federal regulators approved the influenza-fighting pill Tamiflu in 1999, the drug suffered from lackluster sales and indifference from U.S. health officials more focused on creating new vaccines.

Now, demand for Tamiflu is outstripping supply.

The drug's sales have skyrocketed in recent months as a major U.S. vaccine supplier failed to meet half the nation's needs and the World Health Organization, worried about the threat of a worldwide bird flu epidemic, urges governments to stockpile anti-viral drugs.

That's touched off a nasty dispute between two drug companies that are fighting for control of the pill's growing profits - even as U.S. health experts fret about inadequate Tamiflu stockpiles and Third World countries threaten to ignore U.S. patents and make generic versions of the drug.

Tamiflu prevents the typical flu strains that occur every year from replicating in humans once a person is infected, shortening the illness' duration by two days while rendering its symptoms less severe.

The drug has never been tested on people infected with the bird flu that has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, killing at least 63 people.

But Tamiflu has showed promise in mice infected with that exotic flu strain, which health officials fear could spread globally, with disastrous results. Officials thus want to stockpile Tamiflu while they work to develop a bird flu vaccine.

"It appears that this is the only effective intervention we have once someone has been infected. It's the one treatment," said Jeffrey Levi, a policy analyst for Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Trust for America's Health. "The problem is that we don't have enough of it."

I'm hearing of spot shortages of Tamiflu around the country, but a friend was able to fill his prescription on Friday.

Outsiders

La Nueva Orleans
# Latino immigrants, many of them here illegally, will rebuild the Gulf Coast -- and stay there.

By Gregory Rodriguez, Gregory Rodriguez is a contributing editor to The Times and Irvine Senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.

President Bush has promised that Washington will pick up the greater part of the cost for "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." To that end, he suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act that would have required government contractors to pay prevailing wages in Louisiana and devastated parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. And the Department of Homeland Security has temporarily suspended sanctioning employers who hire workers who cannot document their citizenship. The idea is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane, but the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants.

Mexican and Central American laborers are already arriving in southeastern Louisiana. One construction firm based in Metairie, La., sent a foreman to Houston to round up 150 workers willing to do cleanup work for $15 an hour, more than twice their wages in Texas. The men — most of whom are undocumented, according to news accounts — live outside New Orleans in mobile homes without running water and electricity. The foreman expects them to stay "until there's no more work" but "there's going to be a lot of construction jobs for a really long time."

Because they are young and lack roots in the United States, many recent migrants are ideal for the explosion of construction jobs to come. Those living in the U.S. will relocate to the Gulf Coast, while others will come from south of the border. Most will not intend to stay where their new jobs are, but the longer the jobs last, the more likely they will settle permanently. One recent poll of New Orleans evacuees living in Houston emergency shelters found that fewer than half intend to return home. In part, their places will be taken by the migrant workers. Former President Clinton recently hinted as much on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he said New Orleans will be resettled with a different population.

It is not the first time that hurricanes and other natural disasters have triggered population movements. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch slammed into Central America, sending waves of migrants northward. The 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador produced similar shifts. The effects of Hurricane Andrew may better foretell New Orleans' future. The 1992 storm displaced 250,000 residents in southeastern Florida. The construction boom that followed attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who rebuilt towns such as Homestead, whose Latino population has increased by 50% since then.

At the same time, U.S. construction firms have become increasingly reliant on Latino immigrant labor. In 1990, only 3.3% of construction workers were Mexican immigrants. Ten years later, the number was 8.5%. In 2004, 17% of Latino immigrants worked in the business, a higher percentage than in any other industry. Nor is this an exclusively Southwest phenomenon. Even before Katrina, more and more Latin American immigrant workers were locating in the South, with North Carolina and Arkansas incurring the greatest percentage gains between 1990 and 2000. This helps explain why 40% of the workers who rebuilt the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack were Latino.

Reliance on immigrant labor to complete huge projects is part of U.S. history. In the early 19th century, mostly Irish immigrant laborers, who worked for as little as 37 1/2 cents an hour, built the Erie Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of its day. Later that century, Italian immigrants, sometimes making just $1.50 a day, were the backbone of the workforce that constructed the New York subway system. In 1890, 90% of New York City's public works employees, and 99% of Chicago's street workers, were Italian.

We've always used immigrants, what's different is that now we don't admit it.

By the Numbers

US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 25 September 2005

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. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.

"The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army's transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force - which was accelerated after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

Estimating how many bullets US forces have expended for every insurgent killed is not a simple or precisely scientific matter. The former head of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, famously claimed that his forces "don't do body counts".

But senior officers have recently claimed "great successes" in Iraq, based on counting the bodies of insurgents killed. Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, said 1,534 insurgents had been seized or killed in a recent operation in the west of Baghdad. Other estimates from military officials suggest that at least 20,000 insurgents have been killed in President George Bush's "war on terror".

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.

"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Pointing out that officials say many of these bullets have been used for training purposes, he said: "What are you training for? To kill insurgents."

Kathy Kelly, a spokeswoman for the peace group Voices in the Wilderness, said Mr Bush believed security for the American people could come only from the use of force. Truer security would be achieved if the US developed fairer relations with other countries and was not involved in the occupation of Iraq. The President, said Ms Kelly, should learn from Israel's experience of "occupying the Palestinians" rather than buying its ammunition.

The GAO report notes that the three government-owned, contractor-operated plants that produce small- and medium-calibre ammunition were built in 1941.

Though millions of dollars have been spent on upgrading the facilities, they remain unable to meet current munitions needs in their current state. "The government-owned plant producing small-calibre ammunition cannot meet the increased requirements, even with modernisation efforts," said the report.

"Also, commercial producers within the national technology and industrial base have not had the capacity to meet these requirements. As a result, the Department of Defense had to rely at least in part on foreign commercial producers to meet its small-calibre ammunition needs."

A report in Manufacturing & Technology News said that the Pentagon eventually found two producers capable of meeting its requirements. One of these was the US firm Olin-Winchester.

The other was Israel Military Industries, an Israeli ammunition manufacturer linked to the Israeli government, which produces the bulk of weapons and ordnance for the Israeli Defence Force.

The Pentagon reportedly bought 313 million rounds of 5.56mm, 7.62mm and 50-calibre ammunition last year and paid $10m (about £5.5m) more than it would have cost for it to produce the ammunition at its own facilities.

Nah. Anti-War Marches Had Nothing To Do With It

Britain to pull troops from Iraq as Blair says 'don't force me out'

· Defence Secretary confident withdrawal will start in May
· Plan follows pressure for exit strategy

Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday September 25, 2005
The Observer

British troops will start a major withdrawal from Iraq next May under detailed plans on military disengagement to be published next month, The Observer can reveal.

The document being drawn up by the British government and the US will be presented to the Iraqi parliament in October and will spark fresh controversy over how long British troops will stay in the country. Tony Blair hopes that, despite continuing and widespread violence in Iraq, the move will show that there is progress following the conflict of 2003.

Article continues
Britain has already privately informed Japan - which also has troops in Iraq - of its plans to begin withdrawing from southern Iraq in May, a move that officials in Tokyo say would make it impossible for their own 550 soldiers to remain.

The increasingly rapid pace of planning for British military disengagement has been revealed on the eve of the Labour Party conference, which will see renewed demands for a deadline for withdrawal. It is hoped that a clearer strategy on Iraq will quieten critics who say that the government will not be able to 'move on' until Blair quits. Yesterday, about 10,000 people demonstrated against the army's continued presence in the country.

Speaking to The Observer this weekend, the Defence Secretary, John Reid, insisted that the agreement being drawn up with Iraqi officials was contingent on the continuing political process, although he said he was still optimistic British troops would begin returning home by early summer.

'The two things I want to insist about the timetable is that it is not an event but a process, and that it will be a process that takes place at different speeds in different parts of the country. I have said before that I believe that it could begin in some parts of the country as early as next July. It is not a deadline, but it is where we might be and I honestly still believe we could have the conditions to begin handover. I don't see any reason to change my view.

'But if circumstances change I have no shame in revising my estimates.'

The disclosures follow rising demands for the government to establish a clearer strategy for bringing troops home following the kidnapping of two British SAS troopers in Basra and the scenes of violence that surrounded their rescue. Last week Blair's own envoy to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that Britain could be forced out if Iraq descends so far into chaos that 'we don't have any reasonable prospect of holding it together'.

Continued tension between the Iraqi police force, the Iraqi administration and British troops was revealed again yesterday when an Iraqi magistrate called for the arrest of the two British special forces soldiers. who were on a surveillance mission when they were taken into custody by Iraqi police and allegedly handed on to a militia.

For Blair, the question of withdrawal is one of the most difficult he is facing. The Prime Minister has abandoned plans, announced last February, to publish his own exit strategy setting out the milestones which would have to be met before quitting: instead, the plans are now being negotiated between a commission representing the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, and senior US and UK diplomats and military commanders in Baghdad.

A Change In The Climate

Rita Swamps Coastal Communities
By Ann Simmons and Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer

ABBEVILLE, La. -- This is a land awash in water.

From the marshy lowlands of Cajun country to the flat country south of the industrial city of Lake Charles, water covered the roads, stranded people atop their homes and killed cattle by the hundreds.

So intense was the rescue effort Saturday that even Vermilion Parish Sheriff Michael Couvillon had been unable to check on his property on Cow Island and said he feared he may have lost his 90 head of cattle and four horses.

He said Saturday that he was both angry and frustrated that people had ignored warnings to leave the lowlands and seek higher ground. This for a hurricane that produced widespread flooding because it caused a major storm surge and rains the National Hurricane Service said could measure as much as 25 inches over the area.

"The people chose not to leave after we advised them three times," he said. "Now they are putting other people's lives in danger."

And he also said that throughout the day, boats were unable to navigate the waters because of floating debris that hit propellers.

"If you go fast, you can hit a log or a fence," he said. "You can't direct your boat. If you go slow, the current will take you."

Jimmy Domingues, a retired registrar of voters in the parish, and his son were among those that showed up with their boats to look for those stranded by the flood. He said the number of dead animals was staggering.

"Carcasses are scattered all over," he said.

By nightfall at least 400 people had been rescued by boats from attics and rooftops near Abbeville, a small town of 11,600.

But the sheriff said that by Saturday evening, at least 25 residents in the immediate area remained to be rescued. Most of them were on their roofs, where they would have to spend the night, he said.

As the day wore on, those who were rescued from their homes were brought to the Knights of Columbus Hall in Abbeville, to the south of Lafayette. Each had stories to tell of what had happened to them as Hurricane Rita blew ashore in the early morning hours.

Karen Pommier and her family failed to obey mandatory evacuation order in the tiny town of Henry, south of Abbeville.

Pommier said the water started rising and was a foot deep in their house before a rescue boat arrived. They managed to grab food, medicine and clothes, all of which they stuffed into black garbage bags.

Get used to it, Gulf coasters and Eastern seaborders. We are entering into a high season of hurricanes and tropical storms, even without global warming. And this isn't going away after this year.

If you refuse to evacuate, you are putting the lives of the first responders at risk.

Make provision for your pets and get the hell out.

There are two months left in hurricane season for those of us on the East Coast. Do you have an evacuation plan? Why the hell not?

Build the Compassion Web

The folks who brought us Project Back Pack have a new relief effort. Project 800.

From the Wiki site:

Goal Focus: We will create a global 800 service for Katrina/Rita Help with 10,000 volunteers in 10 days.

FEMA and ARC phone lines are swamped.

There is a need for a single source of help for 1,000,000+ evacuees (1ME). There will be more people with access to phone than access to internet. There is information on internet and wikis that is valuable for 1ME. There is easily 10,000 people who are compassionate, smart and will volunteer 5-50 hours per week to take calls. FEMA and Red Cross need help. After 20 days they have been unable to scale to answer the unprecedented volume of inbound calls. FEMA and Red Cross will not answer all questions that 1ME will ask. Time is NOT on our side. We need to act first and plan second. Just get it done. We seek to help and supplement FEMA, Red Cross and other GOV and NGO efforts.

Goal Focus
Project 800 will answer all evacuee calls within 5 minutes and provide comfort and answers better than any GOV or NGO effort.

Needs
Get the word out - send links to Project 800 websites to your social network, post on blogs, add comments to blogs.
Volunteer to take calls.
Join a topic of the project and take action to get it done.

Vision
The Power of Us - Join Us.

Do you have some free time? Build the Compassion Web in your spare time.

A Little Light Reading

'NY Times' Sunday Preview: The Stephen Colbert Interview

By E&P; Staff

Published: September 23, 2005 12:15 PM ET

NEW YORK In an interview for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Stephen Colbert, a star/writer at "The Daily Show," says, "We're just trying to ease the pain of people who feel the world is going insane and no one is noticing."

Colbert, who is about to launch his own Comedy Central program, "The Colbert Report," tells the Times that his persona on the new show is merely that of a fake correspondent who has been promoted to the anchor chair but is still "a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot."

Although The Daily Show has gotten an increasingly harder political edge, Colbert claims the show has "no political objective," which is death to a comedian. He compares the show to "Cortaid."

He also reveals that he is a Catholic church goer, lost several members of his family as a child (which he generally doesn't talk about), considers himself "oddly normative," and doesn't let his children watch him on TV because he doesn't want them to think of him as a performer. He says he tells him he makes his living as a chiropodist.

Broadcast News

On the link you can pick up the live webcast of my interview with Ark Radio's Gerri Guidetti from 2-4 Eastern today.

Under the News

Ron Franscell wrote last night from Beaumont, TX, Hurricane Rita Watch: Day Four ... Nightfall"

I walked out on the roof of our parking garage around sunset. It wasn't really a twinkling of reflection, a quiet moment, a last sweet breath before the storm ... I wanted only to call my daughter on a cell phone and, for some reason, I believed the air between us would be clearest at that moment, at that height. It's a thousand miles from here to Utah, but tonight it seems much farther.

The daylight passed without offering much hope that Rita would either dissipate harmlessly or go someplace else. We made plans, re-made plans, made new plans and then threw them out in favor of other plans. The cruelty of a hurricane is not just the havoc it wreaks, but also the time it gives you to think about it ... which is simultaneously too much and not enough. We've committed to a special storm edition of our paper for Friday, and hope to keep publishing paper-newspapers off-site through the weekend. Time will tell. We don't know if The Beaumont Enterprise has ever missed a day's publication in its 125 years, and it leaves a sour taste in a newspaperman's mouth just to consider it.

The Web reassures us that we can publish effectively without a printing press. With a thimbleful of electrons and a creative arrangement of pixels, we can now publish anytime ... just like this blog. But the clicking of the keyboard somehow doesn't arouse the ink in my blood in the same way as hearing the rumble of the presses down below.

We continue to pare our staff down to a minimum, and are considering sending a team off-site to process stories, photos and pages safely away from the storm. I'll feel better when they are safe, and we are modestly more assured of making a paper.

I've been hearing from old friends and colleagues all day. That's comforting to know they're watching and worrying, too.

And the unsettled air between Beaumont and Salt Lake City lets my call through. Ashley is a photojournalist at the Salt Lake Tribune and she's covering a volleyball match when she picks up my call. She might have talked longer, but I know how it is: The story needs her attention at the moment, and we can talk later, when it's quiet and completely dark. I tell her all is well, don't worry, we're fine. It's the connection that mattered.

Today's edition of The Beaumont Enterprise is here.

Ron's friend Mary writes this morning that the roof of The Enterprise building has blown off and the third floor of the building is gone. The skeleton crew is looking to move elsewhere.

Posted by Melanie at 08:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Least of Us

Via Susie:

New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters
Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells

(New York, September 22, 2005)—As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

" Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst. Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling. "
Corinne Carey, researcher, U.S. Program, Human Rights Watch

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”

Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the conduct of the Orleans Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail, and to establish the fate of the prisoners who had been locked in the jail. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which oversaw the evacuation, and the Orleans Sheriff’s Department should account for the 517 inmates who are missing from the list of people evacuated from the jail.

Carey spent five days in Louisiana, conducting dozens of interviews with inmates evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison, correctional officers, state officials, lawyers and their investigators who had interviewed more than 1,000 inmates evacuated from the prison.

The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Marlin N. Gusman, did not call for help in evacuating the prison until midnight on Monday, August 29, a state Department of Corrections and Public Safety spokeswoman told Human Rights Watch. Other parish prisons, she said, had called for help on the previous Saturday and Sunday. The evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison was not completed until Friday, September 2.

According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman 1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside. These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge, and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New Orleans.

But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers at Templeman III had left the building before the evacuation.

According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmates' last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench.

“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility.

“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”

Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells.

Inmates broke jail windows to let air in. They also set fire to blankets and shirts and hung them out of the windows to let people know they were still in the facility. Apparently at least a dozen inmates jumped out of the windows.

”We started to see people in T3 hangin' shirts on fire out the windows,” Brooke Moss, an Orleans Parish Prison officer told Human Rights Watch. “They were wavin' em. Then we saw them jumping out of the windows . . . Later on, we saw a sign, I think somebody wrote `help' on it.”

As of yesterday, signs reading “Help Us,” and “One Man Down,” could still be seen hanging from a window in the third floor of Templeman III.

Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been evacuated during floods in the 1990s.

“It was complete chaos,” said a corrections officer with more than 30 years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said: “Ain't no tellin’ what happened to those people.”

Note that this is from Human Rights Watch's website. It will never make the major papers.

The Missing

Fewer alcoholics are seeking treatment
# Despite new drugs and insights into causes, millions don't get help. Benefit cuts play a role.

By Kevin W. McCullough, Special to The Times

For nearly 20 years, William C. Moyers led two lives. There was the successful journalist, dedicated family man and churchgoer. And there was the alcoholic and cocaine addict. He'd struggled with substance abuse since he was a teenager. He'd walked away from a couple jobs when the drinking got too bad.

He'd seek treatment, stay sober for a while and then, like many alcoholics, falter. In 1994, he suffered a near-fatal relapse, failing to show up for his job as a writer and producer at CNN for four days.

Instead of firing him, his CNN supervisors, who were aware of his past drinking problems, told him: Go get treatment and you can keep your job.

"CNN stood right with me," says Moyers, the son of broadcast journalist Bill Moyers. "They held me accountable by saying, 'Moyers, you better go to treatment; you better stay sober when you get back here.' "

After a nearly four-month stay at a rehabilitation center in suburban Atlanta, Moyers returned to his job. Eleven years later, he has remained sober and now works as a vice president for the Hazelden Foundation, a substance-abuse treatment center in Minnesota. He credits his former employer with saving his life and career.

But success stories like Moyers' are surprisingly uncommon in America today.

Even as scientists have gained a better understanding of the nature of alcoholism and more effective treatments have become available, fewer people are getting help. Fewer than one in 10 of the more than 20 million alcoholics in the United States are diagnosed each year, according to a recent study by researchers at George Washington University Medical Center.

Of those who are diagnosed, fewer than half receive any type of treatment. The number of Americans entering alcoholism treatment programs has been declining steadily, dropping by more than 23% between 1993 and 2003, the latest year for which federal statistics are available.

The costs of underdiagnosis and lack of treatment are staggering. Beyond the incalculable toll on the personal lives of alcoholics and their families, there is the hefty tab for U.S. employers: an estimated $40 billion a year from absenteeism, lower productivity, healthcare and other costs, according to an analysis of federal data by Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems, a research group at George Washington University.

Yet, recent research shows that roughly half of alcoholics who undergo treatment will remain sober one year later — a success rate that compares favorably with treatments for such common chronic conditions as asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure. Based on genetic and neural imaging studies, scientists believe they understand the causes and mechanisms of alcoholism better than ever.

Research has shown alcoholism to be linked to several genes, which interact with the environment in complex ways, according to Dr. Mark Willenbring, director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The disease is thought to be caused by roughly 60% genetic factors and 40% environmental ones. Researchers also have begun to document changes that occur in an alcoholic's brain, especially in parts of the brain that govern motivation and emotion.

With this knowledge, some scientists, including Willenbring, believe that treatment for alcoholism could improve dramatically during the next 10 years.

Promising drugs

For decades, the only drug available to help alcoholics was Antabuse, which produces unpleasant side effects, including headache, vomiting and chest pain, when patients drink alcohol. But two newer drugs are helping many alcoholics. Both act on the mechanisms of addiction, rather than simply deterring people from drinking, as Antabuse does. Naltrexone, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994, reduces the craving for alcohol and the desire to drink more if an alcoholic has a relapse. Acamprosate, approved in 2004, is thought to normalize some of the chemical imbalances in the brain caused by prolonged alcohol abuse.

And researchers are investigating the drug topiramate, an anti-seizure medication, for the treatment of alcoholism. In preliminary research, scientists at the University of Texas in San Antonio have found that topiramate reduced the amount of drinking among recovering alcoholics and increased the number of days of total abstinence from alcohol by 26.2%, as compared with a placebo group. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is also conducting clinical trials on topiramate for alcoholism.

As new drugs are developed and treatment improves, why are fewer people getting help?

The answer to that question is complex. Certainly, the social stigma of alcoholism and patients' unwillingness, or denial, to acknowledge their drinking as a serious problem remain issues. But some more immediate factors are exacerbating the problem, experts said.

According to a 2004 federal report, the average cost of outpatient substance abuse treatment was $1,433 in 2002, while inpatient treatment averaged $3,840. But some private inpatient treatment programs are much more costly. At Hazelden, for example, a 30-day inpatient stay can cost $20,000, notes Moyers.

Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous are free or inexpensive, but behavioral therapy is only one part of treating an alcoholic's addiction, and the groups cannot provide professional therapy, help with the acute effects of withdrawal or prescribe drugs to manage recovery. Many people simply can't get access to treatment programs if they are unable to afford them.

"There is no other health condition in which health insurance puts up more barriers to care," said Eric Goplerud, a professor of health policy at George Washington University.

Private medical insurers steadily reduced payments for alcohol treatment during the 10-year period that ended in 2001 by a total of 11%, according to a report published by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

And many employers are cutting substance-abuse benefits to help contain rapidly rising medical costs. It's easy to cut benefits for substance abuse, Moyers said, because there is a misperception that alcoholics never work. Also, employers pay a smaller "public relations penalty" when they choose not to cover benefits for alcoholism, Willenbring said, because the stigma and moral condemnation associated with it is so common.

Also, some employers are skeptical of paying for treatment because alcoholics often relapse and require multiple treatment attempts before recovering, said Denise Podeschi, a substance-abuse and mental health manager at Mercer Human Resources Consulting.

Employer-sponsored health insurance often has significantly lower benefits and coverage limitations for substance-abuse treatment than for other medical care, according to the Mercer/Marsh Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans for 2004. The limitations include higher co-payments and separate deductibles.

"Health insurance, as a general rule, does not encourage treatment and may discourage treatment," Willenbring said.

Our society pays a huge price for not having universal health care. This is one aspect of it, one that is mostly hidden. The number of cases of untreated diabetes, cardiomyopathy, high blood pressure, asthma and so forth land in the emergency rooms and we all end up paying for those in taxes.

More of the Same

New Reports Surface About Detainee Abuse
Mistreatment Was Routine, Soldiers Say

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 24, 2005; Page A01

Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.

A 30-page report by Human Rights Watch describes an Army captain's 17-month effort to gain clear understanding of how U.S. soldiers were supposed to treat detainees, and depicts his frustration with what he saw as widespread abuse that the military's leadership failed to address. The Army officer made clear that he believes low-ranking soldiers have been held responsible for abuse to cover for officers who condoned it.

The report does not identify the two sergeants and a captain who gave the accounts, although Capt. Ian Fishback has presented some of his allegations in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Their statements included vivid allegations of violence against detainees held at Forward Operating Base Mercury, outside Fallujah, shortly before the notorious abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison began. The soldiers described incidents similar to those reported in other parts of Iraq -- such as putting detainees in stress positions, exercising them to the point of total exhaustion, and sleep deprivation.

They also detailed regular attacks that left detainees with broken bones -- including once when a detainee was hit with a metal bat -- and said that detainees were sometimes piled into pyramids, a tactic seen in photographs taken later at Abu Ghraib.

"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid," an unidentified sergeant who worked at the base from August 2003 to April 2004 told Human Rights Watch. "This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement."

And like soldiers accused at Abu Ghraib, these troops said that military intelligence interrogators encouraged their actions, telling them to make sure the detainees did not sleep or were physically exhausted so as to get them to talk.

"They were directed to get intel from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling," the soldier was quoted as saying. Later he described how he and others beat the detainees. "But you gotta understand, this was the norm. Everyone would just sweep it under the rug."

What else aren't we being told?

LATimes has more.

Broadcasting Open Thread

Ark Radio's Gerri Guidetti will be interviewing me tomorrow on the Republic Broadcasting Network and the program will be webcast live on that link, 2-4 EDT. The topic: The Flu Wiki and avian influenza. Next Friday night (tentatively) I'll be giving an interview to Janeane Garafolo on Air America's "Majority Report" at 8 PM. Thought you'd want to know.

This is your Friday night open thread.

Changing Habits

Sorry, Mr President, homilies won't stop the hurricanes

We Americans need to get out of our SUVs and learn the harsh lesson of Katrina and Rita: we are all to blame
Jeremy Rifkin
Friday September 23, 2005

Guardian

First there was the deafening roar as Katrina bore down at 145 miles an hour on the Gulf coast of the United States. Then the eerie silence as New Orleans was turned into a giant ghost town. Now, a second deadly hurricane, Rita, is hurtling toward the Texas coast with killer winds, forcing a second mass evacuation of population in less than four weeks. And, as more and more people begin to wonder what's happening to the weather, it seems that all of official Washington is holding its breath, lest the dirty little secret gets out: that Katrina and Rita are the entropy bill for increasing CO2 emissions and global warming. The scientists have been warning us about this for years. They said to keep our eyes on the Caribbean, where the dramatic effects of climate change are first likely to show up in the form of more severe and even catastrophic hurricanes.

A new scientific report out this past week in Science Magazine, a prestigious American journal, gives fresh impetus to the connection between oceans warming as a result of climate change and the increased severity of hurricanes. Scientists report that the number of major - category four and five - hurricanes has nearly doubled in the past 35 years. Tropical storms, say the scientists, draw their energy from warm ocean water. As the global rise in temperature heats the world's oceans, the intensity of hurricanes increases.

Katrina and Rita, then, are not just bad luck, nature's occasional surprises thrust on unsuspecting humanity. Make no mistake about it. We Americans created these monster storms. We've known about the potentially devastating impact of global warming for nearly a generation. Yet we turned up the throttle, as if to say: "We just don't give a damn." What did anyone expect? SUVs make up 52% of all the vehicles owned in America, each a death engine, spewing record amounts of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere.

How do we explain to our children that Americans represent less than 5% of the population of the world but devour more than a quarter of the fossil-fuel energy produced each year? How do we say to the grieving relatives of the victims of the hurricane that we were too selfish to allow even a modest five-cent tax increase on a gallon of petrol in order to encourage energy conservation? And when our neighbours in Europe and around the world ask why the American public was so unwilling to make global warming a priority by signing up to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, what do we tell them?

In the coming weeks and months, millions of Americans will reach out to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina with offerings of food, shelter and financial assistance. Natural calamities tend to bring out the best in the American character. We pride ourselves on being there for our fellow human beings when they cry out for help. Why can't we muster up the same passionate response when the Earth itself is crying out for help?

Shame on the United States of America and the peoples of other countries - we're not alone - who have put their personal, short-term whims, desires and gratifications ahead of the welfare of the rest of the planet.

I drive a small, fuel efficient car, but the news coming out of the Gulf has made me re-evaluate my own behavior. I'm combining trips, using public transit and looking for ways to get rid of plastic in my life.

Environmental Insanity

Pombo proposes selling 15 parks, expanding offshore leases, drilling ANWR
Ben Geman, Dan Berman and Allison A. Freeman E&E; Daily reporters

Draft House Resources Committee legislation would put 15 national parks up for sale, allow offshore oil and gas drilling in now-restricted waters and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum exploration, according to a copy of the measure obtained by E&E; Daily.

A section of the 285-page bill addressing outer continental shelf drilling -- called the "offshore state options act of 2005" -- would allow states to petition for withdrawal from coastal leasing bans and in return receive substantial revenues from royalties. The bill also includes options for natural gas only leasing. The chairman of the Resources panel, California Republican Richard Pombo, is a vocal advocate of increasing domestic energy production.

Under the opt-out idea, waters more than 25 miles off the coast of a neighboring state could be opened for gas-only leasing, while oil and gas leasing would be allowed if the area is more than 50 miles from a neighboring state. Leasing could be closer if the neighboring state concurs.

Oil could be pumped from gas-only leases if state officials agree. Neighboring states would also have to agree if the lease tract is within 50 miles of their coasts.

Existing federal leasing restrictions have prevented states from "being sufficiently involved in decisions regarding the allowance of mineral resource development, and have been harmful to the national interest," the proposal says.

The legislation would open for leasing a swath of the central Gulf of Mexico, the lease sale 181 area, which is coveted by industry. The bill would also allow states to extend the time of the executive leasing withdrawal within 125 miles of its coast. Pombo has negotiated with Florida Republican lawmakers who have considered allowing leasing in the farther-out 181 area in return for increased coastal protections.

The bill would repeal laws that prohibit federal funds from being spent on offshore leasing. Congress renews offshore drilling bans each year through the appropriations process. Congressional moratoria and presidential withdrawals in place through 2012 prevent leasing on both coasts and much of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Brian Kennedy, a Pombo spokesman, said the language was just one option under consideration. "No final decisions have been made," he said today, calling the draft the "biggest, broadest spectrum of options" for the committee's budget reconciliation language. "Call it a brainstorm of all the possible alternatives," he added.

Are these people nuts? I've never heard of anything so ridiculous!

Running Scared

Free speach for me but not for thee. This is insane.

U.S. BARS ROBERT FISK FROM ENTERING COUNTRY

The internationally renowned correspodent for The Independent -- the great British journalist Robert Fisk -- has been banned from entering the United States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed U.S. and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been "hotel journalism" -- a phrase Fisk coined --

The daily New Mexican reports that "U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation ’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order. Davis made last-minute arrangements Wednesday for Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s daily news show, Democracy Now!, to interview Fisk via satellite from a television station in Toronto..." A recording of this satellite interview will soon be available on the Lannan Foundation's website. If Fisk has been barred from entry, it's very hard not to believe it has something to do with dispaches of his like this one from September 15.

I have long admired Fisk's unbeatably first-rate journalism, his intrepid insistence on sticking his nose where the authorities -- of whatever country he's in -- don't want him to go. He constantly shows up the sluggish cowardice and indolent hand-out journalism practiced by so many U.S. foreign correspondents from the safety of their hotel bars. That the U.S. won't allow this great journalist into this country to tell what he has seen and what he knows is a scandal.

If you're not familiar with Fisk's reporting, there is an entire website devoted to it -- read Fisk's latest, and find an archive of his articles (plus audio-visual materials) by clicking here. You can also order Fisk's books, like Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, and The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Letter from the Gulf Coast

Ron Franscell writes from Beaumont, TX, this afternoon:

The sky has darkened. A brisk east wind is cutting through. NOAA reports Rita is starting to show some signs of fatigue, becoming slightly less organized. Such news has a context: It only gives hope that the deepness and severity of the impact could lose a bit of its edge, like a pulled punch. By Mike Tyson. Any tender mercy would be appreciated, but this will be anything but a gentle afternoon rain.

We're enjoying what will likely be the last few hours of electricity. Rather than drinking the cold sodas, I'm drinking the warm bottled water, thinking I might appreciate the remnant coolness of a soda in the dark, un-cooled bowels of the newspaper building tomorrow. In the books behind my desk, I came across a bit of pretty good Hemingway advice: Always describe the weather. I laugh. Small comforts.

We're continuing to gather information throughout the region, before we batten down the hatches. We're also getting calls from other reporters, editors and producers. I'm doing a live TV news show by phone to Moscow, Russia, in a few minutes. CBS called to confirm a report that we had an editor planning to ride out Rita in a bank vault. Not true, although one of our reporters will be among our emergency first-responders aboard a cargo ship in the Port of Beaumont when the storm hits. A wild ride with the people who'll deal first with the aftermath. The bank vault idea sounds a little Geraldo-esque ... maybe he can do it.

We are all girding ourselves for the job ahead. Katrina taught us many lessons. One was to be prepared to see something you never expected to see. Your workplace under water, your supermarket turned to twisted metal and rotting meat, your neighborhood reduced to scrap lumber, six feet of water in your bedroom, your barber's bloated corpse floating down Main Street. If it happens the way it happened three weeks ago, it's all possible and I wonder how we'll deal with it. Not in print, but in our hearts.

That's why we seek small comforts. A tiring storm. The promise of a cool (if not cold) soda in the dark. The possibility that after all the sound and fury, the place and the people will still be mostly whole, and we'll get back to telling stories a little more prosaic, a little more mundane than a Category 4 hurricane's first-degree rape of our place and lives.

It's Not Working

Can You Marginalize a Majority?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 23, 2005; 11:51 AM

In a move to preempt the antiwar protesters converging on Washington this weekend, President Bush yesterday put forth the following equation: Withdrawing from Iraq equals letting the terrorists win equals more 9/11s.

The White House's goal is to cast anybody who supports a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq as sadly delusional, reckless and not to be taken seriously.

But Bush may be in trouble here, because he's trying to marginalize a majority.

A recent Gallup Poll , for instance, found that 63 percent of Americans -- almost two out of three -- support the immediate partial or complete withdrawal of U.S. troops. Fewer than one in three Americans support Bush's handling of the war.

The White House, so aware of the power of staying on message, can take some solace from the fact that the antiwar movement is deeply conflicted, lacks clear leadership, and is being kept at arm's length by many top Democrats.

And yet slowly but surely, at least one consistent theme is emerging from the silent majority. And it is a theme that has the potential to neutralize, if not upend, Bush's central message.

That theme: Staying doesn't make things better, it makes things worse.

We'll be taking that message into the streets of Washington tomorrow.

Somebody Tell CNN

No Way Out: Many Poor Stuck in Houston
No Way Out: Tears, Anger As Some Try to Flee and Many Poor Are Stuck in Houston

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
The Associated Press

Some of those who did have money, and did try to get out, didn't get very far.

Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.

"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," she said. "They say, 'We've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.' Well, you couldn't prove it by me."

On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. "I'd like to go, but nobody come get me," the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. "No se, no se," she said: Spanish for "I don't know."

Her daughter, who appeared to be about 9, whispered in English, "We're from Mexico."

For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.

Eddie McKinney, 64, who had no home, no teeth and a torn shirt, stood outside the EZ Pawn shop, drinking a beer under a sign that said, "No Loitering."

Fucking CNN won't tell you this. This is going to be another race/class disaster.

Bubble Boy's Happy Talk

Saudi Minister Warns U.S. Iraq May Face Disintegration

By JOEL BRINKLEY
Published: September 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war.

"There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together," he said in a meeting with reporters at the Saudi Embassy here. "All the dynamics are pulling the country apart." He said he was so concerned that he was carrying this message "to everyone who will listen" in the Bush administration.
Skip to next paragraph

Prince Saud's statements, some of the most pessimistic public comments on Iraq by a Middle Eastern leader in recent months, were in stark contrast to the generally upbeat assessments that the White House and the Pentagon have been offering.

But in an appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Bush, while once again expressing long-term optimism, warned that the bloodshed in Iraq was likely to increase in the coming weeks.

"Today, our commanders made it clear," he said after a meeting on Iraq with senior military officers, "as Iraqis prepare to vote on their constitution in October and elect a permanent government in December, we must be prepared for more violence."

American commanders have repeatedly warned that insurgents would try to disrupt the voting, as they did before legislative elections in January.

Mr. Bush said that if the United States left Iraq now, it could turn into a haven for terrorists, as Afghanistan was before the fall of the Taliban.

"To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," he said.

Prince Saud, who is in Washington for meetings with administration officials, blamed several American decisions for the slide toward disintegration, though he did not refer to the Bush administration directly.

Primary among them was designating "every Sunni as a Baathist criminal," he said.

Saudi Arabia styles itself as the capital and protector of Sunni Islam, and the prince's remarks - at times harsh and at other moments careful - were emblematic of the conflicted Saudi-American relationship.

Disconnected and dellusional W doesn't want to hear the bad news.

Out. Now

Poll: Fewer than half think U.S. will win in Iraq
More than half say country should speed up withdrawal

Thursday, September 22, 2005; Posted: 8:02 p.m. EDT (00:02 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday indicated fewer than half of Americans believe the United States will win the Iraq war, and 55 percent of those surveyed said it should speed up withdrawal plans.

Only 21 percent said the United States definitely would win the war in Iraq, which began when a U.S.-led coalition invaded in 2003 to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Another 22 percent said they thought the United States probably would win.

Twenty percent of respondents said the United States was capable of winning in Iraq -- but probably would not. And 34 percent said they considered the war unwinnable.

The survey of 818 adults was conducted Friday through Sunday and had a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The results followed others this week that found only 32 percent of those interviewed supported President Bush's handling of the war, 63 percent supported a full or partial withdrawal and and 54 percent favored cutting spending on the conflict to pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. (Full story)

With a large anti-war demonstration planned outside the White House this weekend, Bush said Thursday the United States can lose in Iraq only "if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

"Some Americans want us to withdraw our troops so that we can escape the violence," Bush said. "I recognize their good intentions, but their position is wrong. Withdrawing our troops would make the world more dangerous and make America less safe." (Full story)

More than 1,900 American troops have been killed since March 2003, most of them battling a persistent insurgency that followed the collapse of Saddam's government.

With the number of deaths nearing 2,000, 55 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to see the United States intensify efforts to withdraw from Iraq, while 41 percent said they wanted no change in policy.

I'll be at the march on DC tomorrow. US out of Iraq. Now.

Too Much To Handle

As Many as 24 Elderly Evacuees Killed in Bus Blaze
Traffic Remains Gridlocked as Rita Barrels Toward La.-Texas Border

By Daniela Deane and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 23, 2005; 10:39 AM

The evacuation of the U.S. Gulf Coast took a tragic turn today when a bus carrying elderly people fleeing Hurricane Rita caught fire on a gridlocked Texas highway, killing as many as 24 evacuees, according to television and wire service reports.

The bus exploded into flames on Interstate 45 south of Dallas and closed the highway, a major escape route out of the area already bumper-to-bumper with motorists trying to leave ahead of the monster hurricane. The bus fire caused a huge back-up on the interstate.

The fire came as authorities struggled to cope with one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history as Hurricane Rita, a Category 4 storm, barreled toward the Louisiana-Texas border.

"Deputies were unable to get everyone off the bus," The Associated Press quoted Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz as saying. Peritz said he believed 24 people out of the 45 on board were killed, but that number could change, according to the AP.

Television footage showed the charred shell of the bus surrounded by police cars and ambulances. Emergency personnel tended to the injured on stretchers. Peritz said the bus had been traveling since Thursday. He said the passengers were from a nursing home in Bellaire, an area of Houston.

Early indications, Peritz said, were that the fire started because of mechanical problems, which in turn caused passengers' oxygen tanks to explode. There were a series of explosions, he said.

Tragedy on top of tragedy. This is mindboggling.

A note from Houston...

From my friend Matt, who lives in Southeast Houston and is refusing to leave. His parents and possibly his younger brother (if he's convinced him to get out of his apartment) are at his place...

Thank you so much for your prayers. Please pray for all in La. and Tx., especially south La. as they are still recovering from Katrina.

Verse of the day
“ I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy.
Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.
”- Psalm 116:1-2

Please note two things.

First, if Matt is correct, that means 900,000 people are still in Houston. I can guarantee you that many approximate the poverty level of those who were stuck in New Orleans when Katrina hit. If Rita does the unanticipated and shifts west at the last moment (as Katrina shifted east at the last moment), this could make New Orleans look easy to handle.

Second, if you want a taste of what a pandemic might be like, when it hits the first urban area in this country and the media goes bezerk, this might be an extreme example.

The Beginning of the Indictments

I've left this story to Josh Marshall, but when it hits the front page of the WashPo, I can't ignore it. The scandals creep ever closer to Karl Rove's West Wing door.

Tyco Exec: Abramoff Claimed Ties to Administration

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 23, 2005; Page A06

Letter From The Storm

Ron Franscell sent this this morning. He is a managing editor at the Beaumont, TX, Enterprise, one of the oldest dailies on the Texas Coast. He and the skeleton crew are hunkering down and planning to keep the paper going, just like the newsies did at the NOLA Times-Picayune. These men and women are my heros. And I will continue to worry.

We preside over a ghost town.

After midnight last night, I drove through the city's west side neighborhoods, to sweep through my house one last time, to find a safe spot for a few last, probably inconsequential things. The city-scape is barren. Distant headlights down boulevards and back streets dart like the illuminated eyes of nervous rats, too far away and too fleeting to offer any comfort that we are in this together. Each of us is, truly, on his own.

We know humans have clustered together in small groups and hidden spaces, hunkered down for what's coming. We know a few civilians have postponed their evacuation until today, in hopes traffic congestion will have eased. We know some won't leave. We know some first-responders -- mainly police and firefighters -- will ride out the storm aboard a ship in the Port of Beaumont. We know there are people in some local hotels, many of them reporters from as far away as the Los Angeles Times. We know that later today, after the sun has risen and set, some will seek sanctuary here. But none display themselves casually within the city now.

We see reports of people handing out water and gasoline along the evacuation routes. We also get tiny glimpses from the road: 10 hours to go 20 miles; women holding bedsheets at the roadside so desperate other women can get out of nearly-stalled traffic to relieve themselves semi-privately in front of hundreds of motorists; anxiety crackling over cellphones over how far will be far enough. We also heard stories -- maybe apocryphal -- of people traveling down back roads for hours only to be turned around and sent back.

We sent a handful of editors to Houston late last night. They'll not only provide support from the shelter of the Houston Chronicle, their evacuation reduces the number of our people here who must face the storm eye-to-eye. For me, that's a comfort.

The sun will rise in the next hour or so. Rita's vanguard -- bands of rain and squalls spinning ahead -- haven't begun, but they're coming. A fellow editor went for a pre-dawn jog, maybe the last chance he'll get to stretch his legs for a few days. We've begun stashing some food, bedding and other necessaries deep within our own building, away from windows and above the wildest flood stage, where we'll like spend tonight. Right now, Rita is expected to make landfall around the small coastal town of High Island then rumble north over us. At this time tomorrow morning, we expect to be under fire from Rita. When we can safely venture out to see what she wrought, I don't know, but it will be as soon as we feel we can do it safely.

Before Rita, our Features staff had planned a story for today about what appears to be an unusually busy hummingbird migration across Southeast Texas. Earlier this week, a reporter and photographer went to visit one birdlover's small farm, where literally dozens of hummingbirds had been coming and going all the time. When they arrived, the lady apologized that their numbers had mysteriously dwindled. So the reporter called a Texas expert on hummingbirds, and he wasn't surprised.

Even hummingbirds, he said in so many words, are smart enough to flee ahead of a hurricane.

From the Storm Coast

Ron Franscell writes from Beaumont, TX

I walked out on the roof of our parking garage around sunset. It wasn't really a twinkling of reflection, a quiet moment, a last sweet breath before the storm ... I wanted only to call my daughter on a cell phone and, for some reason, I believed the air between us would be clearest at that moment, at that height. It's a thousand miles from here to Utah, but tonight it seems much farther.

The daylight passed without offering much hope that Rita would either dissipate harmlessly or go someplace else. We made plans, re-made plans, made new plans and then threw them out in favor of other plans. The cruelty of a hurricane is not just the havoc it wreaks, but also the time it gives you to think about it ... which is simultaneously too much and not enough. We've committed to a special storm edition of our paper for Friday, and hope to keep publishing paper-newspapers off-site through the weekend. Time will tell. We don't know if The Beaumont Enterprise has ever missed a day's publication in its 125 years, and it leaves a sour taste in a newspaperman's mouth just to consider it.

The Web reassures us that we can publish effectively without a printing press. With a thimbleful of electrons and a creative arrangement of pixels, we can now publish anytime ... just like this blog. But the clicking of the keyboard somehow doesn't arouse the ink in my blood in the same way as hearing the rumble of the presses down below.

We continue to pare our staff down to a minimum, and are considering sending a team off-site to process stories, photos and pages safely away from the storm. I'll feel better when they are safe, and we are modestly more assured of making a paper.

I've been hearing from old friends and colleagues all day. That's comforting to know they're watching and worrying, too.

And the unsettled air between Beaumont and Salt Lake City lets my call through. Ashley is a photojournalist at the Salt Lake Tribune and she's covering a volleyball match when she picks up my call. She might have talked longer, but I know how it is: The story needs her attention at the moment, and we can talk later, when it's quiet and completely dark. I tell her all is well, don't worry, we're fine. It's the connection that mattered.

United for Peace and Justice

I don't agree with all of the sponsors of Saturday's march/rally, I'm not part of the ANSWR crowd, but I'll be there.

Resistence-wear for Saturday's march/rally. I'll be wearing the "support the arts, kiss a musician" tee over khaki shorts, white anklets and my orthopedic, beat up sneaks. I have to wear an orthotic to deal with a foot ruined in a car accident a dozen years ago, and it fits in this particular pair of sneaks. Make love, not war. My face looks pretty much like this but I have newer glasses. Nothing else has changed much. And I'll still need a haircut, really badly.

I'm looking forward to seeing Comrade Max. You can't tell this from his TV appearances, but he is really, really tall.

Google, Books, and Copyright oh my!

Writers sue Google Print over copyright

James Sturcke
Wednesday September 21 2005

A writers' group representing more than 8,000 authors is suing Google for "massive copyright infringement" over its fledgling programme of digitising library books.

The Authors Guild has issued legal proceedings in a New York court claiming damages and demanding the search engine stops uploading the contents of library books.

Google Print launched last October, enables people to search the contents of books online and, according to Google, makes it easier to find relevant books.

"This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," said the Authors Guild president, Nick Taylor. "It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied."

The lawsuit demanded the court block Google from copying the books so the authors would not "suffer irreparable harm" by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works.

"By reproducing for itself a copy of those works that are not in the public domain, Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement. It has infringed, and continues to infringe, the electronic rights of the copyright holders of those works," the guild said.

Google, based in California, insists it only shows brief snippets of pages containing searched-for phrases unless it has permission from owners or copyright laws allow.

"We regret that this group chose to sue us over a programme that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world, especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program," said the company's product management vice-president, Susan Wojcicki.

"What's more, many of Google Print's chief beneficiaries will be authors whose backlist, out of print and lightly marketed new titles will be suggested to countless readers who wouldn't have found them otherwise."

The company doesn't show "even a single page" to users who find copyrighted books through the program, she said, unless the copyright holder gives permission to show more.

"At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries," she said. "Just as Google helps you find sites you might not have found any other way, Google Print indexes book content to help users find, and perhaps buy, books.

Perhaps there are people here who understand copyright law better than I do, but I wonder what the big deal is if Google isn't allowing people to read the entire book? I would think that the authors would enjoy this extra publicity...

Am I just being obtuse or what? How is this any different than my wife going to the library and checking out a romance novel? In that case, she is essentially reading it for free and could recopy sections of it with a high degree of certainty that the author would never know the difference. Aside from her not leaving the house, is this radically different?

Overseas Oil Issues: Nigeria

Oil Tensions Heat Up in Nigeria

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 22, 2005

ABUJA, Nigeria, Sept. 22 -- Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, a separatist leader in Nigeria's oil-producing south, was brought before a federal court on treason charges Thursday -- a crime that carries the death penalty -- and his followers reportedly retaliated by seizing at least one facility that controls oil pipeline flows.

The confrontation between Nigerian authorities and radical activists from the impoverished Niger Delta region could put new pressure on global oil prices at a time when destruction from Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the expectation of new carnage from Hurricane Rita already is pushing prices toward historic highs. Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States.

In southern Nigeria, militants seized a Chevron oil flow station and threatened more disruption, including the kidnapping of foreign workers, news services reported.

"We will blow every oil installation up," Alali Horsefall, the top aide to Dokubo-Asari in the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, told Agence France-Presse before setting off into the delta marshes with a group of men on a protest operation he called "240 hours of rage."

Dokubo-Asari, speaking to reporters after appearing in court in this capital city, accused President Olusegun Obasanjo of becoming a dictator. Obasanjo, who has held office since 1999, is Nigeria's first elected leader after decades of military rule.

"If this is what Obasanjo claims is democracy, it is the highest dictatorship," Dokubo-Asari told reporters outside the courtroom here, according to Reuters news service.

A judge ordered him to remain in police custody at least until the next court hearing, likely to be in about two weeks; formal charges will be brought then. His arrest came Tuesday, days after an article appeared in Nigeria's Daily Independent newspaper in which he was quoted as saying, "Nigeria is an evil entity. It has nothing to stand on, and I will continue to fight and try to see that Nigeria dissolves and disintegrates."

Dokubo-Asari, a heavy-set, flamboyant descendant of slave owners, often has boasted to reporters that he could shut down the entire region's oil flow with a few calls to well-placed supporters working in the industry. He drives an elegant black SUV through the Niger Delta and frequently carries a heavy walking stick, a traditional symbol of authority in Nigeria. Some of his youthful followers live in camps hidden among the delta's web of waterways.

It's a good thing we have a State Department that can anticipate problems like these, especially since this one has been a couple of years in the making. I'm sure they have a well thought out and focus group tested response to this crisis. Maybe they can fly Condi in there a couple of times in between trips to the shoe store.

Of course, if we didn't coddle every nutty leader of an oil rich nation, then we might have some credibility. The amazing thing is that this article actually has the temerity to wonder why the rebels chose now to strike at the oil.... if the leader is driving around in fancy cars, dont you think that he keeps up with the price of oil and international news?

Busy Blogger Open Thread

Rich is working on some more pandemic planning posts to pin up later today. He's on the west coast so he works later than I do. I'm going to be tied up with pandemic planning meetings and emails this evening, so I'll leave the door open for Rich. Plans are being laid for a number of meetings I'll be attending in coming weeks, which means I have a boatload of email to deal with, as well as some presentions to outline (I speak from at least some minimal notes in public speaking situations, I have as much of a propensity to wander as any one else. What I do have is a wealth of experience in knowing how my own process works and what the minimum amount of work is that I need to do to prepare for these events.)

I'm extremely heartened by the way the Citizen's Web has stepped up to do a job the Feds and most local jurisdictions have completely forgotten. I'm watching another disaster in progress in Texas as the local and state officials failed to plan for timely evacuations and there are now millions of people stuck on the highways as Rita bears down on the Gulf coast. Yes, the airport is fucked, too, because employees are evacuating rather than coming to work. Like, this couldn't be forseen? Jeez.

I'm worried about friends in Houston. If those of you in the area could keep me posted on conditions, I'd appreciate it.

Guest posters, this is an all-call. If you see something interesting you want to post about, the door is open for all of you.

Weather Blog

If I seem to have been a little obssessed by the hurricane coverage, there is a reason: I'm a meteorology nut. I've been fascinated by extreme weather since I was a kid growing up on the tornado plagued plains of southern Minnesota. Yes, I watch the Weather Channel all the time during extreme weather events.

So, I was delighted to discover that my fellow weather nuts at the Weather Channel have started a blog and they are blogging Rita on location on the Gulf coast. Fellow weather nuts, click on the link!

Take a Break

WashPo has a story today about the National Zoo's new baby panda. I love these stories because they provide such a nice relief from the darkness of so much of the rest of the news. Between avian flu and back to back hurricanes, I'm pretty stressed.

Animal Planet's panda cam is here to help you relieve your stress. Needs RealPayer.

Economic Hit

Gasoline, Oil Surge as Hurricane Threatens Texas Refineries

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Gasoline and crude oil surged for a second day as Hurricane Rita bore down on the Texas coast, threatening the nation's largest concentration of refineries.

``One of the biggest hurricanes ever is headed for the heart of America's refining capacity,'' said Jason Schenker, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte. ``Prices will hit new records if we get reports of flooding and other destruction once the storm passes.''

Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Valero Energy Corp. are among the companies that shut plants as Rita neared. Rita is Category 5 storm, the most intense level on the Saffir- Simpson scale. Texas is home to 25 of the nation's 144 operating refineries, the most of any state. All but seven of the plants are in coastal cities. Four plants, representing 5 percent of U.S. capacity, remain shut because of Katrina last month.
....
``There are no adjectives that properly describe the threat Rita poses,'' said Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president of energy risk management with Fimat USA in New York. ``This could be much worse than Katrina.''

Rita, with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph (265 kph), is ``potentially catastrophic,'' the National Hurricane Center said today in an advisory at 10 a.m. Houston time. The storm is forecast to hit land near Galveston, Texas, late tomorrow or early Sept. 24. Rita's center was 460 miles southeast of Galveston, and moving west-northwest at close to 9 mph.

Crude oil for November delivery rose 90 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $67.70 a barrel in New York. Futures have declined 4.4 percent since touching a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina made landfall. Prices are 40 percent higher than a year ago.

CNN is talking about $5.00 a gallon gas.

Updating the Flu Prep Stuff...

I'll be updating the Flu Prep entries with new data tonight and tomorrow - I'll have links up here and within each of the sections. Be sure to have a look.

More importantly, have a look at blogger alphageek's excellent efforts on disaster preparedness over at DailyKos. He's looking at things from a broader perspective, but it's quite applicable to our concerns.

(Oh, and don't skip sections - read it from the beginning. It's worth it...trust me.)

Part 1...

Part 2...

Part 3...

Part 4...

Part 5...

Conflation Strategy

Dan Froomkin catches something I noticed again today, too. What a pathetic attempt to revive a failed presidency.

David E. Sanger , writing in the New York Times, calls attention to Bush's somewhat perplexing conflation yesterday of Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Though whether this was part of an orchestrated White House strategy, or just an unfortunate ad lib remains to be seen.

Sanger writes: "President Bush on Wednesday for the first time linked the American response to terrorism and its response to Hurricane Katrina, declaring that the United States is emerging a stronger nation from both challenges, and saying that terrorists look at the storm's devastation 'and wish they had caused it.'

"Mr. Bush's speech, at a luncheon for the Republican Jewish Coalition, appeared to be part of a White House strategy to restore the luster of strong leadership that Mr. Bush enjoyed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that administration officials fear he has lost in the faltering response to the hurricane. . . .

"Until the speech on Wednesday, Mr. Bush had kept the issues of terrorism, Iraq and the hurricane separate. But the public has not: polls show declining approval of Mr. Bush's handling of both Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. By suggesting for the first time that America's enemies were pleased to see the devastation caused by the hurricane, he appeared to be linking the country's natural and human challengers."

What Avian Flu?

And here I was, gettin' all fussy that the Republicans in the House wouldn't do anything about Avian Flu.

Guess I was wrong...

Bad Debt

Choose: Guns or Butter

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A25

Ever since the war in Iraq went from resplendent victory ("Mission Accomplished") to the ugly quagmire it has become (almost 2,000 American dead), commentators have been making comparisons to Vietnam. I myself have done that -- and I think certain commonalities exist and are troublesome. Usually, these comparisons focus on military or political matters, but Robert D. Hormats, a former assistant secretary of state and now a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, has found what may be a more apt comparison. Initially, both wars were financed on the cheap because interest rates were low.

Hormats is finishing a book, "The Price of Liberty," on how America paid for its wars, starting with the Revolution and concluding with Iraq. Most wars forced the government to revise its budgetary and tax priorities. In other words, cut spending and increase taxes. Not so Vietnam -- not for a long while, anyway. LBJ ultimately hit the fiscal wall, and when he did so, Americans had to decide whether Vietnam was worth the bucks. His political position worsened.

Bush has been luckier. He came into office -- as he did life itself -- with a huge surplus. He spent it. He now has a huge deficit. The Federal Reserve is increasingly concerned about inflation and this week raised interest rates for the 11th consecutive time since June 2004. Sooner or later, Americans are going to have to make hard choices -- guns or butter. Not surprisingly, they overwhelmingly tell pollsters they'd choose butter. When asked by a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll how they'd prefer to finance the (at least) $200 billion Hurricane Katrina relief effort, only 6 percent proposed cutting domestic spending and just 15 percent supported increasing the deficit. A majority -- 54 percent -- chose "cut spending for the war in Iraq."

The curse of Texas is once again upon the land -- an elective war, important enough to fight, not important enough to pay for. Up to now, it's been manageable if only because few have been asked to sacrifice anything for the grand cause of . . . well, it's hard to say, isn't it? On a national scale, the casualty rate is bearable and the financial cost has not been felt because the money was first looted from the surplus and then borrowed. But that borrowing will drive up interest rates, including mortgages, and it might, as happened with Vietnam, trigger inflation that lasted longer than the war itself. Everything is going to get more expensive and voters are going to get more grumpy and it's all going to look like it once did to LBJ. That's not someone's nightmare scenario. That's "the hard and inescapable facts."

But of course the gubmint isn't subject to the new bankruptcy law.

Intrepid Reporting

Beaumont (TX) Enterprise managing editor Ron Franscell is doing some excellent reporting/blogging from the Gulf coast. Ron is everything I admire in a writer: clear, concise, thorough and no mannerisms. His blog is here. He says he'll keep posting as long as he has power and a connection. He's blogging from the hunkered down newsroom at The Enterprise with the skeleton crew who are going to keep trying to crank out a daily paper. They have the key to the snack machines and some peanut butter and crackers.

The 11 AM EDT fixing from the National Hurricane Center indicates a slight turn to the north for Rita this morning, not good for Ron and his colleagues.

UPDATE: Here's a link to Ron's paper, which will be Web-only for the next few days. They don't know if they are going to evacuate the rest of the staff or ride it out.

The Monster

Million Told to Flee as Rita Grows
# Hurricane strengthens to a Category 5. Evacuations of coastal areas are ordered, and oil rigs and refineries are shut down.

By Maria L. La Ganga, John-Thor Dahlburg and Stephen Braun, Times Staff Writers

GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Rita expanded into a mammoth Category 5 storm and lumbered slowly Wednesday toward Texas, fortified by fierce 175-mph winds. Coastal highways clogged with cars and buses loaded with evacuees as more than 1 million residents were ordered to leave beach cities and low-lying sections of Houston.

The storm is "now the third most intense hurricane in the Atlantic Basin on record," the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday night. Early today, forecasters said the storm's center was 540 miles east-southeast of Galveston and about 645 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, moving west at 9 mph toward the western Gulf Coast.

Drawing explosive energy from the warm surface water of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm quickly grew during the day from a potent Category 3 storm, with 130-mph gusts, into a maelstrom rarely recorded in modern annals of American weather. The storm was expected to make landfall Saturday, but the first probes of raking winds could be expected as early as Friday, meteorologists said.

Only three recorded Category 5 hurricanes have ever struck the continental U.S., and National Weather Service experts said that under current climate conditions, the storm could gather even more strength over the gulf. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it rampaged through the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, causing extensive flooding that killed at least 1,036 and left hundreds missing.

"At this point, Rita has become a potentially very devastating Category 5 hurricane," said Chris Landsea, a National Hurricane Center meteorologist. "Fortunately it's over the open ocean of the Gulf of Mexico, and will be over the open ocean for the next day. But we expect it to gradually make a turn to the north."

Frightened by Katrina's example and stern warnings from authorities that Rita could land anywhere along the Texas-Louisiana coast, hundreds of thousands of residents streamed north from Galveston and surrounding coastal counties.

As 1.3 million of the region's 5.2 million residents were ordered to uproot, Houston's hospitals and nursing homes emptied and schools closed. Outbound highway traffic was snarled, and long lines formed at gas station pumps. Late Wednesday, the coastal city of Corpus Christi ordered its 277,000 residents to join Galveston's nearly 60,000 residents in a mandatory evacuation.

President Bush declared federal emergencies in Texas and Louisiana as thousands of National Guard troops began moving out of harm's way, preparing to wait in safe staging areas before redeploying to new disaster zones.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we've got to be ready for the worst," Bush said as federal and military emergency officials marshaled resources for the new storm, pressing to improve on their hesitant preparations and sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago.

In Galveston's port and elsewhere along the coast, oil refineries began shutting down in advance of Rita's high winds and waves. In the gulf, operations ceased on oil rigs as crews were flown out by helicopter. At least 16 refineries dot the Texas coastline from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur, composing more than one-quarter of the nation's capacity to make fuel.

This is unlike anything we've ever seen in my lifetime. Those of you in the Gulf have our prayers and thoughts.

Flu News

Here is a link to the webcast (WMP only) of the Wilson Center event last Monday with Canadian Press med/sci reporter Helen Branswell and Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota on the coming flu pandemic. This presentation is extremely informative and extremely upsetting. The medical authorities are "scared shitless," in Helen's words. Mike's language is just as blunt.

Send the link to your friends and family members who don't "get it" yet. This is a real wake up call.

21st Century Church

New Vatican Rule Said to Bar Gays as New Priests

By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 22, 2005

ROME, Sept. 21 - Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church.

The official, said the question was not "if it will be published, but when," referring to the new ruling about homosexuality in Catholic seminaries, a topic that has stirred much recent rumor and worry in the church. The official, who has authoritative knowledge of the new rules, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the church's policy of not commenting on unpublished reports.

He said that while Pope Benedict XVI had not yet signed the document, it would probably be released in the next six weeks.

In addition to the new document, which will apply to the church worldwide, Vatican investigators have been instructed to visit each of the 229 seminaries in the United States.

Although work on the document began years ago under Pope John Paul II, who died in April, its release will be a defining act in the young papacy of Benedict, a conservative who said last spring that there was a need to "purify" the church after the deeply damaging sex scandals of the last several years.

The church official said the ban would pertain only to candidates for the priesthood, not to those already ordained. He also said the document did not represent any theological shift for the church, whose catechism considers homosexuality "objectively disordered."

Although the document has not been released, hints of what it will say are already drawing praise from some Catholics, who contend that such a move is necessary to restore the church's credibility and who note that church teaching bars homosexuals, active or not, from the priesthood.

Other Catholics say, though, that the test should be celibacy, not innate sexuality, and they predict resignations from the priesthood that can worsen the church's deep shortage of clergy.

"I'm hearing that some men will choose to leave, because if they don't, it would be like living a lie," said the Rev. Robert Silva, president of the American National Federation of Priests' Councils, who opposes a ban because it would be "extremely hurtful" to chaste gay priests who are serving the church.

But the church official who discussed the expected new rules said the document called for barring even celibate men who considered themselves homosexual because of what he contended were the specific temptations of seminaries.

If you think the Catholic church has a priest shortage now, you haven't seen anything yet.

I guess Pope Benedict is a fan of that "smaller, purer" church. Cuz that's what he's going to get. At least the "smaller" part.

Telling the Story

For the Poor, Sudden Celebrity

By Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A01

DALLAS -- All of a sudden the poor have emerged from the shadows of invisibility, lifted onto a temporary pedestal by natural disaster. Whether it is because of guilt, pity or the nation's generosity in times of crisis, those who lost everything -- many of whom had little to begin with -- find themselves in a strange wonderland of recognition.

The destitute people sent fleeing by Katrina have been offered free housing, free clothing, free cars, free toys, special admission to universities and preferential job treatment. Athletes come to them , bestowing jerseys and autographs. Entertainers sing for them, and Bennigan's restaurants here and in Houston announced Katrina's kids could eat without paying for a while.

This is what it's like for the celebrity poor, a new subculture created by Hurricane Katrina.

Chris Lawrence, 49, who spent five days on a New Orleans overpass, is not sure what it all means. Mostly, he sits still in a Dallas shelter and reads the Bible. Describing himself as bone-tired after a life of working two jobs in New Orleans, he figures he's blessed just to be alive. The outpouring of kindness by Texans has restored his belief in compassion. "I had lost faith in humanity," he said.

How far this compassion should extend -- and what it should look like over time -- is looming as the next great social policy debate. What began as a response to the most devastating hurricane in the country's history is segueing to a grander discussion about the treatment of those who live on the margins. Will the Chris Lawrences now be able to improve their lives? Or will they return to their previous status as forgotten Americans with little hold on the attention or sympathies of politicians? And what of those already on the edge of poverty -- or worse -- who do not share the celebrityhood of those displaced by the ravaging floods of Katrina?

These questions are now confronting President Bush -- and the rest of political Washington. In the early days of the crisis, Bush was beset by criticism that he had been insensitive to the black and destitute. But lately, he has been speaking to them. During a prayer service for Katrina's victims at the National Cathedral in Washington on Friday, Bush said the nation must grapple with the entrenched problems of poverty.

"Americans of every race and religion were touched by this storm; yet some of the greatest hardship fell upon citizens already facing lives of struggle: the elderly, the vulnerable and the poor," Bush said. "And this poverty has roots in generations of segregation and discrimination that closed many doors of opportunity. As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality."

Some found Bush's words reassuring. Others worried that they would not resonate far into the future. "New Orleans is sort of like South Central [Los Angeles]," said Alan Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, a Washington nonprofit that funds anti-poverty programs. "People ignore the problem of poverty, then every once in a while something catastrophic happens. We talk about it, then we forget about it."

In his plan to rebuild the Gulf Coast, Bush has called for tax breaks to encourage small- and minority-business development and individual accounts of as much as $5,000 to help storm victims with job training, transportation, child care and other needs. He proposed that the federal government give poor victims its unused property, including foreclosed homes and vacant lots on which they could build their houses.

This is pretty much utter crap which tells you a lot more about the insularity of the inside-the-beltway press culture than anything about the poor.

The new bankruptcy bill, Kevin and Mike? Did you manage amnesia over that? You did? Health insurance?

What about the fact that most of the reconstruction has been outsourced to KBR/Halliburton who is trucking in Mexican workers rather than hiring the locals? You managed to miss that, too?

Idiots.

Voodoo, Washington DC Style

Lawmakers Prepare Plans to Finance Storm Relief

New York Times
By CARL HULSE
Published: September 21, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - Conservative House Republicans plan to recommend on Wednesday more than $500 billion in savings over 10 years to compensate for the costs of Hurricane Katrina as lawmakers continue to struggle to develop a consensus on the fiscal approach to the disaster.

At the top of a partial list of the potential cuts being circulated on Tuesday were previously suggested ideas like delaying the start of the new Medicare prescription drug coverage for one year to save $31 billion and eliminating $25 billion in projects from the newly enacted transportation measure.

The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA announced on Monday, for $44 billion in savings; ending support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $4 billion; cutting taxpayer payments for the national political conventions and the presidential election campaign fund, $600 million; and charging federal employees for parking, $1.54 billion.

"What House conservatives will demonstrate through Operation Offset is that there is more than enough room in the federal budget to provide for the needs of the families affected by Katrina without raising taxes," said a House Republican aide who is working with lawmakers on the proposals and who insisted on anonymity because the package would not be made public until Wednesday.

The suggestions are certain to draw serious opposition from other lawmakers who consider those programs essential, illustrating the difficulty faced by the majority Republicans in finding acceptable ways to offset the hurricane costs.

Before the list was made public, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, declared that delaying the Medicare plan was a nonstarter. Mr. DeLay also expressed skepticism that most lawmakers would want to revisit the transportation bill, saying he would be reluctant to sacrifice the projects that he won for his district in the Houston area.

"My earmarks are pretty important to building an economy in that region," Mr. DeLay said of the local projects he backed in the bill. A watchdog group said those items totaled more than $114 million.

Mr. DeLay said Republicans would press ahead this year with their planned tax cuts, though Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told a trade association on Tuesday that some tax measures might have to be delayed, including a repeal of the estate tax and the effort to make permanent some cuts instituted earlier in the Bush administration.

Naturally, since supply side economics has worked SSSOOOO well the last 5 years, we can do it again with the disaster relief funding. After all, it's not like the kids that I teach are going to notice an extra $200 billion or so. I mean, the money is not even going to them.

It would be nice if some of our elected leaders, hint to the Bug Man from Texas, followed the lead of the American people and actually sacrificed some to help the victims of Katrina, especially since it looks like we have another disaster to clean up from. That would take some leadership skills though, something that is truely lacking for the most part. Of course there are some exceptions in the Senate but that won't make it through both houses.

So what are you doing for 2006?

Hands-On Help

Think the Internet doesn't build community? Want to do something more hands-on than send money to charity for the survivors of Katrina (and Rita?) Go here and learn about Project Backpack, which started here in DC earlier this month by a bunch of kids and is now a national program. I'm going to do this. You can do it with your kids, this is a great idea. 100,000 loaded backpacks to school kids by the 30th of September is the goal. Of course, when Rita finishes with Texas the need will be that much greater.

Only three cat 5 hurricanes have ever struck the US coastline in modern times. Houston greater metro area now has over 4 million people. This will be unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Bad News

2 Studies Question the Effectiveness of Flu Vaccines

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 21, 2005

Rome, Sept. 21 - Just as governments around the world are stockpiling millions of doses of flu vaccine and antiviral drugs in anticipation of a potential influenza pandemic, two new research papers published today have found that such treatments are far less effective than previously thought.

"The studies published today reinforce the shortcomings of our efforts to control influenza," wrote Dr. Guan Yi, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, in an editorial that accompanied the papers. The two studies were published early online by the British medical journal, the Lancet, because of their implications for the upcoming flu season.

In one paper, international researchers analyzed all the data from patient studies on the flu vaccine performed worldwide in the past 37 years and discovered that vaccines showed at best a "modest" ability to prevent influenza or its complications in elderly people.

"The runaway 100 percent effectiveness that's touted by proponents was nowhere to be seen," said Tom Jefferson, a Rome-based researcher with the Cochrane Vaccine Fields project, an international consortium of scientists who perform systematic reviews of research data.

"There is a wild overestimation of the impact of these vaccines in the community," Dr. Jefferson said. "In the case of a pandemic, we are unsure from the data whether these vaccines would work on the elderly."

In the second paper, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control found that influenza viruses, particularly those from the dreaded bird flu strain, had developed high rates of resistance to older and cheaper antiviral drugs - rates that have escalated rapidly since 2003, particularly in Asia.

"We were alarmed to find such a dramatic increase in drug resistance in circulating human influenza viruses in recent years," said Dr. Rick Bright of the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta. "Our report has broad implications for agencies and governments planning to stockpile these drugs for epidemic and pandemic strains of influenza."

Before 2000, almost no virus was resistant to the drug Amantadine. By 2004, 15 percent of influenza A viruses collected in South Korea, 70 percent in Hong Kong and 74 percent in China were impervious. During the first six months of 2005, 15 percent of the influenza A viruses in the United States were resistant, up from 2 percent the year before. All human cases of the bird flu (H5N1) strain - which is still extremely rare in humans - have been resistant, the researchers said.

The immediate implications of these finding are most ominous for the developing world, because wealthier nations have been stockpiling newer and vastly more expensive antiviral medicines, like Tamiflu, which are effective against the disease but still on patent.

Even so, the research is alarming because it demonstrates how quickly and unexpectedly flu viruses can become impervious to medicines once they are put into common use, as they would be in the case of a pandemic. Also, at their best, antiviral medicines do not cure influenza. They cut down on transmission of the disease and reduce somewhat the symptoms and complications in those already infected, including the high rate of associated pneumonias.

Of course, if you've been reading Bump and the Flu Wiki, you already knew all this.

Getting the Word Out

The week of October 2 will be Pandemic Flu Awareness Week. The four of us behind Flu Wiki are recruiting bloggers on the left and right to devote a post a day all week to link to flu resources. If you are a blogger and are willing to participate, let me know your URL, in comments or by email.

Citizen Journalism

This is posted today on the Houston Chron's blog:

Bloggers: Riding the storm out? Tell us what you see

Do you have a blog, live in the Houston-Galveston area and plan to ride the storm out?

If so, we'd like your help with an experiment in citizen journalism.

We're launching a blog this afternoon called Stormwatchers. We'd like volunteers in key parts of the area with experience blogging to tell us what they're seeing as the Hurricane Rita comes closer, makes landfall and moves on.

We're particularly interested in bloggers who live in the I-45 South corridor; in the Freeport/Angleton area; and the southwest area, including Katy.

If you're interested, e-mail me at [email protected] with the subject line "Stormwatchers." Include a link to your blog, detailed information about your location and a landline or cell phone number where you can be reached. If you go by a pseudonym in your blog, we'll need your real name.

Also include a 3-4 paragraph blog entry detailing what you're doing to prepare.

We'll pick our stormwatchers based on geographic location, quality of your blog and writing ability.

Please do not leave your information in the comments. In fact, comments are being turned off for this entry only.

Thanks for your interest!

Rita's Effects

Oil, Gasoline Jump as Refineries in Path of Hurricane Evacuated

``Rita is developing into our worst-case scenario,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. ``This is headed right into our other major refining center just after all the damage done to facilities in Louisiana. From an energy perspective it doesn't get any worse.''

Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips have evacuated staff from platforms in the Gulf, a region that's responsible for 30 percent of U.S. oil output.

``This has the potential to be a real powerful storm, and after the damage caused by Katrina nobody's taking any chances,'' said Justin Fohsz, a broker at Starsupply Petroleum Inc. in Englewood, New Jersey. ``There are a lot of refineries in Texas. Even if it misses the offshore platforms there will be disruptions due to the evacuations.''

Rita today strengthened over the Gulf, matching the strength of Katrina when it made landfall. Katrina shut 95 percent of offshore production in the region, closed eight refineries and slowed operations at about 10 others.

Rita's maximum sustained winds accelerated to 140 mph (225 kph) as of 10 a.m. local time, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. That leaves the storm one level short of the maximum Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity.

Fill your gas tank now. Gas will go through the roof by the weekend.

Sounding Like the Opposition

Democrats On Offense

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; 8:57 AM

John Kerry and John Edwards rip Bush over Katrina. Bill Clinton blasts the tax cuts. Harry Reid says he'll vote against Roberts.

Do you detect something of a pattern here?

A more aggressive Democratic opposition, washed in by the hurricane, appears to be finding its voice.

Whether it's a winning message or not remains to be seen. But liberals who feel the Beltway Dems have been way too timid for the last four years must be pouring the champagne.

In the case of Kerry and Edwards, the '08 positioning by the '04 boys couldn't be more obvious.

With Bush's poll ratings at record lows, the thought crossed my mind: What if Katrina had struck a year ago? Could it have changed the outcome of the election?

In my humble opinion, the Democrats need to do more than just criticize the bungling of the past. They need to lay out a compelling vision for the reconstruction of New Orleans. There's an important debate to be had here, but my sense is that voters don't have much patience for the usual partisan bickering.

It's similar, in a way, to the Democratic dilemma over Iraq: Yes, we know it's a mess, but what would you do differently in the future?

The disparate paths taken by the two Johns speak volumes about their approaches. Kerry, sounding very much in 2004 form, unleashed a litany that attempted to tie the hurricane debacle to other perceived Bush failures:

"Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "

Edwards, one of the few politicians who talks frequently about poverty--as in his signature "Two Americas" speech last year--offered policy prescriptions while hitting the White House for suspending prevailing (read: union) wages on Katrina projects:

"I might have missed something, but I don't think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts. This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn't approve or a millionaire's tax cut he wouldn't promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable."

And Bill Clinton (whose wife, we've heard, may be interested in his old job) jumped into the fray over the weekend with George Stephanopoulos (they had not parted on good terms after George's tell-all book and his harsh criticism on Monica, but must have buried the hatchet). Clinton said that he, as a wealthy guy, should not have gotten so many tax reductions:

"Whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the '80s; that's what they've done in this decade. In the middle, we had a different policy."

What's emerging is a Democratic critique of the Bush years that uses the hurricane as a metaphor for other administration shortcomings. Ordinarily, I'd say, the danger is that the Dems will propose so many expensive programs that they'll be Velcro'd with the old tax-and-spend label. But with the president making clear he'll spend whatever it takes in the Gulf region--make that both Gulf regions--the borrow-and-spend Republicans are giving them plenty of competition.

I t remains to be seen if this will amount to anything. I'm listening to John Kerry speak against Roberts on the floor of the Senate. I wish he'd been this clear during the campaign.

Splintering

Katrina's Cost May Test GOP Harmony
Some Want Bush To Give Details on How U.S. Will Pay

By Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Page A01

Congressional Republicans from across the ideological spectrum yesterday rejected the White House's open-wallet approach to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a sign that the lockstep GOP discipline that George W. Bush has enjoyed for most of his presidency is eroding on Capitol Hill.

Trying to allay mounting concerns, White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten met with Republican senators for an hour after their regular Tuesday lunch. Senators emerged to say they were annoyed by the lack of concrete ideas for paying the Hurricane Katrina bill.

"Very entertaining," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said sarcastically as he left the session. "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration."

"At least give us some idea" of how to cover the cost, said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who is facing reelection in 2006. "We owe that to the American taxpayer."

The pushback on Katrina aid, which the White House is also confronting among House Republicans, represents the loudest and most widespread dissent Bush has faced from his own party since it took full control of Congress in 2002. As polls show the president's approval numbers falling, there is growing concern among lawmakers that GOP margins in Congress could shrink next year, and even rank-and-file Republicans are complaining that Bush is shirking the difficult budget decisions that must accompany the rebuilding bonanza.

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) said he and other fiscal conservatives are feeling "genuine concern [which] could easily turn into frustration and anger."

Congressional Republicans are not arguing with Bush's pledge that the federal government will lead the Louisiana and Mississippi recovery. But they are insisting that the massive cost -- as much as $200 billion -- be paid for. Conservatives are calling for spending cuts to existing programs, a few GOP moderates are entertaining the possibility of a tax increase, and many in the middle want to freeze Bush tax cuts that have yet to take effect.

The resistance suggests that Bush's second term could turn out far rockier and more contentious than his first. One indicator many Republicans are watching to gauge whether Bush is becoming a liability for the party is in Pennsylvania, where Rick Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, is trailing state treasurer Bob Casey Jr. by double digits.

"My caucus would do anything for Senator Santorum," Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) said of his colleague. Chafee, who himself faces a tough reelection battle next year, predicted Republicans will increasingly be faced with the choice of propping up Bush or protecting their own. "I think they're going to collide," Chafee said of the two options.

Asked whether Bush's problems were a factor in his slump, Santorum responded, "That may be."

The Republicans are running away from Bush as fast as they can. This is amusing.

Last Chance

Obama, Supreme Court nominee to meet today

by Roland S. Martin, Chicago Defender
September 21, 2005

U.S. Senator Barack Obama will meet today with John Roberts, hoping the Supreme Court Chief Justice-nominee is able to answer more forthrightly his views on a variety of issues that he deftly sidestepped during his confirmation hearings.

The state’s junior Democratic senator told the Chicago Defender that he has not made up his mind as to whether he will vote in support or against Roberts’ nomination when it comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

“I will be meeting with him (today) at 4 p.m. (EST),” Obama said. “And in that meeting I’m going to see if he can amplify any further on his views because he didn’t really tell us much about how he would think on crucial issues like civil rights and civil liberties, protecting the powerless and not just looking after the powerful.”

With a chart of Supreme Court abortion decisions in the background, Chief Justice nominee John Roberts testifies on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Sept. 13, at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. AP/Charles Dharapak

Obama said that there wasn’t “any doubt” that the 50-year-old Roberts, an attorney during the Reagan administration, has “the intellectual capacity to serve as a Supreme Court justice.”

“The issue is does have the heart and the broad experience that would be required to make sure that all people are served and not just some people,” he said.

“We’ll see whether he’s going to add anything before I make a public announcement.”

Roberts and Obama’s meeting will take place a couple of hours before the Senate’s lone African American delivers the keynote address to the Congressional Black Caucus Weekend Kick-Off at the Washington Convention Center.

The 43-member CBC – which Roberts refused to meet with – announced their opposition to his joining the Supreme Court.

“Judge Roberts’ civil rights record and views remained the most controversial and unexplained part of his record when the Judiciary Committee hearing concluded, just as his civil rights record and views had been the most controversial part of his record when the hearing began,” the CBC said in a statement. “Judge Roberts failed to answer any of our concerns.

Obama is the only member of the Black caucus who is actually eligible to cast a vote on Roberts' confirmation.

Don't let him snow you, Senator!

Pandemic Stage 5

I cancelled the meetings, there is too much to do.

This is a day to think about planning for quarantine in place and making lists. Pandemic Stage 5 means that the time horizon is not infinite. We have weeks to a few months to prepare, that is all.

Open Thread

I've got meetings this morning, so post the news links in comments. I'll be back after noon EDT.

While I'm away, look up "pandemic stage 5." The Bug is moving along, Bumpers.

Discovery!

A new storm on the right
Robert Scheer

APPARENTLY, IT took divine intervention in the form of Hurricane Katrina to make George W. Bush, the compassionate conservative, aware of the existence of poor people in our midst.

"As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality," said a president who has not only overseen a nearly 9% income decline for the poorest fifth of the nation's population but won the job boasting of his record as governor of a state that census figures show has the fifth-highest poverty level and highest percentage of citizens lacking medical insurance.

Unfortunately, the president still seems to believe that the severe poverty of New Orleans is an anomaly exposed by the storm, rather than a disturbing national reality he should have long since confronted. One wishes he would take to heart the words Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas offered before Bush spoke at the National Cathedral on Friday: "Katrina, perhaps she has done something to this nation that we needed to have done. She has made us think, and look, and reach beyond the breach." He also noted: "We can no longer be a nation that overlooks the poor and the suffering and continue past the ghetto on our way to the Mardi Gras, or past Harlem for Manhattan, or past Compton for Rodeo Drive."

Of course, it should not have taken a devastating hurricane to reveal to our president the depth of human misery in a nation that could easily afford to have no poor people. Perhaps Bush simply hasn't fallen far enough from the tree, considering it was famously said of his father that he was a man who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. His even more clueless mother thinks letting devastated African American evacuees sleep in the Astrodome worked out "very well for them" because they "were underprivileged anyway."

One would have hoped that the avowedly "born again" younger Bush would have witnessed the disconnect between the teachings of the son of God, which repeatedly counsel aiding the poor and vulnerable, and his own family's "let them eat cake" approach to governance. After all, 37 million Americans — 13 million of them children — are living in poverty, 4.5 million more than when Bush was first inaugurated. This sad fact is never mentioned when the president trumpets the alleged benefits of his tax cuts for the rich.

"This is a matter of public policy," Bill Clinton said on Sunday, belatedly challenging the government's woeful response to the hurricane. "And whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the '80s; that's what they've done in this decade."

Get Them Out of Here

Evacuees of One Storm Flee Another in Texas

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: September 21, 2005

HOUSTON, Sept. 20 - Hurricane Rita prompted a mandatory evacuation of this city's public shelters on Tuesday, emptying them as quickly as they had filled just three weeks ago and sending still-dazed survivors of Hurricane Katrina packing off to Arkansas, to the bus terminal, to the airport and, for some who considered themselves lucky, to paid and furnished apartments here in the Houston area.

Clustered in the hot sun and with all they had salvaged spilling from black garbage bags, shopping carts and suitcases tied with cords, evacuees set to leave one of the shelters, at Reliant Arena, seemed largely resigned to this new flight, although there were some flashes of temper.Skip to next paragraph

Leading a circle of 10 with hands clasped in prayer as buses and taxicabs filled around them, Johnny Jeremiah, minister of the Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church here, intoned, "God, this day, right now, this place, with this foolishness going on, we need you."

City and county officials, who had moved a vast bureaucracy to house more than 27,000 survivors in four public shelters quickly after the New Orleans disaster, said none of those now leaving the shelters would be put in housing that could be at risk from the approaching storm. But they said they might have to relocate people who had earlier been placed at hotels and motels in low-lying areas.

With the new storm's path uncertain, Galveston, which still bears scars from the great hurricane of September 1900 - the nation's deadliest disaster, with at least 6,000 killed - ordered a mandatory evacuation to begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Mayor Bill White of Houston said that this city of two million would make its own decision Wednesday and that as much as half the population could be called upon to evacuate.

In recent days, the dwindling thousands of storm survivors who had been sheltered in the Astrodome and Reliant Arena, as well as the adjacent Reliant Center exhibition hall and the George R. Brown Convention Center, were concentrated largely in the arena, which was finally emptied Tuesday night.

For the last hundreds in the arena, the day was particularly trying. Families sat on bundles of possessions like war refugees. Pregnant women and the injured waited in wheelchairs. Red Cross volunteers weaved through the throngs, passing out cold water and pastries.

With her month-old daughter asleep in a stroller, Monique Davis scooped up diapers that had spilled over the ground. Nearby lay a trash bag with stuffed animals poking out. A boy rocked solemnly on a wooden hobbyhorse.

About 500 people who had applied for apartments and been promised them lined up for buses and taxicabs to get there. Others boarded tour buses to Ellington Field for flights to new shelter at Fort Chaffee, Ark. - some chose to make the entire trip by bus - or to George Bush Intercontinental Airport, where Continental Airlines was offering free tickets out. Still others got rides to the Greyhound terminal, where free tickets also awaited.

Steve Freeman, an oyster shucker with an injured leg infected from walking through floodwaters, said he planned to take up Continental on the free flight to reach Norfolk, Va., where he heard there were lots of oysters. But he was suspicious of the official motives for the evacuation.

"They've been trying to get us out early," Mr. Freeman said. "We're the working people. They don't want us here."

I'm afraid Mr Freeman is correct and the ethnic cleansing of NOLA has begun.

FORESIGHT, NOT HINDSIGHT

Michael Kinsley came up with a contrarian kind of column in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.

Kinsley basically chided the national populace--with a considerable amount of justification--for not paying attention (along with politicians and journalists) to the kinds of issues that Hurricane Katrina blew wide open. This excerpt is true to the tone, flavor and tenor of the first part of Kinsley's column:

"How about that prescient New Orleans Times-Picayune series in 2002 that laid out the whole likely catastrophe? Everybody read that one. Or at least it sure seems that way now. I was not aware that the Times-Picayune had such a large readership in places such as Washington, D.C., and California."

But then, Kinsley strayed from wisdom in the second part of his column. He went from criticizing our collective national apathy about important matters to defending journalists and power-watchers for not being able to see catastrophes before they happen. This excerpt proves as much:

"My job isn't to predict and prepare for disasters. My job is to recriminate when they occur. It's not easy. These days the recriminations business is overrun with amateurs, who are squatting on all the high ground. The fetid aroma of hindsight is everywhere."

Bumpers, this is what's wrong with journalism in the United States of America.

Logical, sensible, forward-thinking people in a healthy, "with it" society would come to the conclusion that if the ingredients of a potential disaster exist, they should be dealt with to head off said disaster. In other words, if there's dynamite and a box of matchsticks in a room, you separate the two items from each other. Just because they don't ignite doesn't mean you don't have a problem. Smart, caring people know that they're not freed from a responsibility to act--on practical, moral or professional grounds--just because the perfect storm (like Katrina) hasn't yet arrived.

When Katrina finally did arrive, journalism was exposed in this country for the sham it is.

Let's be clear: in the aftermath of the storm, journalists did great things. They got to displaced people before relief agencies did. They chronicled the suffering in and around New Orleans. They asked tough questions of government officials. They took note of how the abandoned in the Big Easy were predominantly African-American and poor. They swung into action with sustained passion and urgency, providing both information and presence to a nation that needed to make sense of a rapidly-unfolding social nightmare, something much worse than a horrific natural disaster. After Katrina, journalists were great.

But what about all the time before Katrina? What, pray tell, was being focused on then? Were there angry questions toward government officials? Were journalists upset at the suffering of Americans in their communities? Were journalists talking about poverty and class segregation and bureaucratic inefficiency and disaster readiness?

Michael Kinsley is flat-out wrong: journalists DO have a job to prepare for disasters: not the natural ones, but the social ones, and Katrina was every bit as much a social disaster as it was a natural disaster. Instead of bodybag/police-blotter journalism, journalists--and this especially applies to local TV news stations--should be grilling public officials on important policy points all the time. They should be documenting social and moral outrages. They should be filling their newscasts with careful, detailed, heavily-examined reports on the things that matter to their citizens... ALL of their citizens. In short, they should choose stories and report on them as the upholders of a public service they've always supposed to be. News is, simply, what people need to know. Not what they want, but what they need. And if people have what they need to know, guess what? When a major disaster or acute social problem manifests itself, people can do what they NEED to do (not what they want to do) to preserve their own lives and the health of the larger society.

Kinsley's view that journalists are only supposed to be reactive is a perfect illustration of the decline of journalism in America. Journalists are great at sweeping into action once an event like Hurricane Katrina takes shape, but where were they beforehand? As Howard Kurtz noted in the Washington Postyesterday, the media--shamed into action by Katrina--only seems to have just discovered the poor, after decades of simply not bothering to report much on American poverty, in New Orleans or anywhere else. The preponderance of stories about poverty now--as though it is some kind of big, huge revelation--only underscores how out-of-touch journalists were with the poorer members of their communities before Katrina. After all, aren't journalists the ones who are supposed to point out these outrages and call society--its leaders and citizens alike--to do something about them?

I majored in journalism in college. I was taught by my professor that "you're fighting for the little guy," battling to pry information out of the realm of officialdom and into the homes and living rooms of ordinary people who have to pay bills and work extensively, and who thereby can't invest their time in politics, law or government. I was taught to view journalism as a sacred public trust. I was taught to be the voice for the voiceless, the conscience and backbone of a society as the person charged with making sure leaders and powerful persons do the right and responsible things in their positions of considerable influence and leverage.

If Kinsley is to be believed, journalists aren't supposed to see social tragedies as they persist in everyday life. They're only supposed to respond--after the fact-- to major events that reshape perspectives. Mr. Kinsley needs to be reminded of an eloquent and ever more appropriate explanation of what real tragedy means, from a man who sadly lost his bid to become presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in 2000 and is now out of the political arena.

On the stump in 2000--and especially at the podium during the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles--Bill Bradley framed the meaning of "tragedy" in terms that, over a year later, would find eerie definition in New York City. He said that our country is used to thinking of a "tragedy" in terms of one big event that destroys or harms one city or area at one point in time. (9/11 proved to be this kind of event in 2001, and Katrina is this year's version.)

However, Bradley insisted that the outrage of child poverty in America--given that its reality is diffuse, scattered, and found in isolated snapshots on city streets, in homeless shelters, and within ramshackle housing units--is hard for the nation to grasp. If we could envision all of America's impoverished children as existing in the city of New York (and the number of poor children in America is about the size of NYC's population, perhaps a bit smaller), Bradley contended that we, as a collective national population, would feel the sense of outrage that has poured out in the wake of Katrina. It's hard to deny the reality or wisdom of the former New Jersey Senator's points: we don't respond to diffuse tragedies, or even conceive of pervasive negative realities as tragedies in the first place; on the other hand, we respond with incredible generosity when a "big event" hits, such as 9/11 or Katrina (or also the Asian tsunami, to cite an event that happened beyond our borders).

What Michael Kinsley needs to remember--and shame on him for (at least it seems this way) thinking journalism is only an "after" profession and not a "before" one--is that journalists are the people in America--or any other thriving society--who view child poverty and other entrenched social problems as tragedies. This is not ideological thinking, but merely professional thinking when the profession is journalism.

Journalists, when they discuss the state of their communities at editorial meetings each day, should always be wondering what's undercutting the communities they're supposed to cover. They should be wondering about the welfare of all of their citizens. They should be getting to the bottom of problems, and telling people--those in need and those wanting to help--how to make a difference. In short, they should be wondering: what news--what items of vital public interest that people need to hear about--shall we print tomorrow (or for the TV stations, what news shall we broadcast tonight)?

People do not need to hear about a car crash, celebrity gossip, police shootouts (unless they endanger people in larger communities, and if the threat still exists), or murders. They need to hear about City Council budgets, development plans, systemic educational health, the nature of homelessness, environmental regulations, and all those other kinds of issues that might be "boring," but which people need to know about for a society to be healthy, vital, protected, stable, and well-situated for the long term. These are not--Mr. Kinsley--things you deal with "after they happen," but things you always try to deal with a little bit better each day. And in trying to confront present problems (tragedies), you're always engaged in a necessary give-and-take between predictions and preparedness: "will problem X occur if action Y is not soon taken on issue Z in the public school system?" Local TV news stations--along with their brethren in newspapers--should be doing nothing other than delving into these kinds of questions every day, along with providing reports on RELEVANT current events. Instead of finding their marks, combing their hair, and mouthing off sound-byte reports with just the right amount of pre-scripted, pre-coached drama their producers and executives want, local TV news reporters should be sticking the microphone in front of public officials after doing their own legwork on issues that are vital to the health of their communities.

There is no problem in America more fundamental or widespread than the tendency to ignore problems until they're blown open. Why can't--shouldn't?--problems be dealt with now, rather than later? Journalists are supposed to lead the way on this front, and it's essential that local TV news in particular starts to learn this fact in a post-Katrina world.

Am I expecting this to happen? No. But did I expect something better from a man such as Mike Kinsley? Foolishly, yes.

The bottom line: journalists have let down our society so enormously, and Katrina demands they rediscover their inner muckraker and remind themselves of the journalism education they once received.

Edward R. Murrow can no longer remain a man who is admired by journalism students, but whose legacy is forgotten as soon as journalists--motivated by personal money, power and security--step into the world of contemporary corporate journalism. Murrow's standards must be lived out and practiced every second of every dying day by a nation of journalists who, as an extension of their profession, should be digging into the issues that they've neglected reporting on for so long. Standing up to public officials--with professional forcefulness but not personal nastiness--must be unearthed from the journalistic grave.

A profession needs to be reborn. Michael Kinsley, too.

News Flash

Democratic Leader Intends to Vote Against Roberts

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: September 20, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, intends to vote against the confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be the nation's 17th chief justice of the United States, a Senate Democratic aide said today.

The aide declined to elaborate, saying Mr. Reid would detail his reasoning in a speech this afternoon on the Senate floor. But with Democrats openly conflicted about the nomination, Mr. Reid's decision could set a tone for the rest of his caucus to follow.

The move comes as a surprise; many Senate observers expected Mr. Reid, who comes from a Republican-leaning state, to support Judge Roberts. But with a second vacancy on the court, Mr. Reid could be using his vote to send a message to the White House, which must replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a critical swing vote on the court.

Democrats have insisted that Mr. Bush replace Justice O'Connor with a moderate, and Mr. Reid has already declared that several candidates the White House is considering would be unacceptable to Democrats.

Mr. Reid and his Republican counterpart, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, have been invited to meet with President Bush Wednesday morning to discuss the second vacancy; the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and the committee's senior Democrat, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, have also been invited.

The rest of the caucus is keeping their lips zipped. Let's see if Reid succeeds in giving the rest a spine transplant.

Out of the Memory Hole

Red-Ink America

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; 8:21 AM

I'm going to crawl out on a limb right now.

We'll hear a lot of rhetoric from the president and Congress about how we need to cut federal spending so we can rebuild New Orleans, and in the end, not much will be cut.

A couple hundred billion will be spent in Louisiana, the tax cuts will remain largely intact, and the deficit will mushroom.

How do I know this? Because I have a pulse and have watched the Hill drown itself in red ink for the last 30 years.

I hope I'm wrong, by the way. I don't think trying to have it all-- a zillion federal programs, tax cuts, war in Iraq, creating a new NOLA-- can possibly be good for our economy, especially if our politicians keep pushing the debt off to future generations.

Read the news stories carefully in the coming months. See who is just calling for reduced spending and who's actually pushing specific and painful cutbacks.

Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress briefly achieved a balanced budget in the late '90s, but that was in part because a booming economy helped stave off more difficult choices. In the post-9/11 world, Bush's budgets have grown so much-- without a single veto-- that even some conservatives now label him a big spender. The pork-encrusted highway bill, with such "earmarked" goodies as an Alaskan bridge to a nearly deserted island, shows that the Hill isn't serious about spending restraint.

A small example: Congress has been on Amtrak for years to rein in its deficits. But when the train service proposed a fare hike, lawmakers went haywire last week and pressured Amtrak into rescinding it.

If your family had an emergency, like losing your home in a flood, you would tighten your belt accordingly. But the White House and Congress can, in effect, just print more money.

The one good thing to come out of the disaster is a renewed debate over the best approach to alleviating poverty. But if you spend $200 billion on New Orleans, as many experts are predicting, and everything else remains more or less status quo, the current budget deficit of more than $300 billion is going to soar.

I will try to track the spending debate in this column so it doesn't get lost amid the political fog.

It will get lost in the political fog and you'll lose interest, Howie.

What Golden Age?

The Heroes Behind the Cameras

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, September 20, 2005; Page A23

You wouldn't think that the longest ovation at the Emmy Awards, an annual celebration of trendiness, would go to three such trend-averse men -- Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, who stood awkwardly on stage, and the late Peter Jennings, whose image appeared behind them on a giant monitor. But the audience rose and clapped in one of the dreary telecast's few moments of genuine electricity, and the tribute made sense coming so soon after the latest reminder of television's power not only to describe the world but to shape it as well.

I'm a print-media guy to the bone, but I have to give props to the way my colleagues in television have covered Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. (Note to Tom and Dan: "Props" is a good thing.) Television rose to become a force for good instead of a force for the evil of happy-faced oversimplification, to which the medium so frequently succumbs.

The gold-star heroes were the men and women who operate the cameras, because they vaulted logistical hurdles that stymied hapless federal, state and local officials and found a way to do what only television can: Show us what's happening as it happens. Anchors and correspondents reported with urgency and emotion, abandoning the safe convention of an "on the other hand" qualifier for every declarative statement. They saw that there was no other hand in this story.

While officials were still issuing reports of minor flooding in New Orleans and patting themselves on the back for dodging a bullet, CNN's Jeanne Meserve made her way to a neighborhood near one of the breached floodwalls and told a completely different story. "This is Armageddon," she reported, struggling to find words for what she was seeing. That was the moment when I realized that this was a major disaster. It wasn't what she said, it was the quaver in her voice as she said it.

There are countless other examples of how television brought home the awful reality of what happened on the Gulf Coast. Even Fox, usually more interested in masticating and spinning the news, went out and did good, original reporting -- and showed passion in recounting how the people of New Orleans and the Gulf were so poorly served by officials at every level.

We tend to look to the past for the golden age of television news -- the reign of Huntley and Brinkley, the heyday of "60 Minutes," the critical coverage of Vietnam, even all the way back to Edward R. Murrow. We rightfully bemoan the fact that the network news divisions are shadows of their former selves, and we note that the audience for the evening news has been withering away.

But considering the dramatic rise of the cable news networks, with their 24-7 resources, and seeing the ability of even the network dinosaurs to mobilize to cover a story such as Katrina, I'm tempted to say that the golden age is now. Or at least that it could be.

The question is where television news goes from here. Will CNN, MSNBC and Fox go back to their incessant breathless reports about MWW? (That's Missing White Women, of course.) Will the legacy networks -- NBC, CBS and ABC -- go back to chasing elusive viewers with evening newscasts that feature soft stories about trends and lifestyles, as opposed to hard news? Or will the Katrina coverage spur television, with its unique power, to use its rediscovered aggressiveness and emotion to cover the other great stories of our time?

I'm not optimistic. The corporate masters stand to gain too much by being credulous stenographers for the administration.

Tech Advise

I've got a question for you IT types. I'm straining the capabilities of my IBM ThinkPad R32 pretty badly. I need to at least double my RAM. Can any of you tell me how hard this is to do and about what it will cost? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Can of Whoosh

Storm Strains Bush's Ties to Black Clergy
# Recovery efforts now give the GOP a chance to rebound from initial political missteps.

By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — For many of the black ministers who have allied themselves with President Bush and a Republican strategy to boost the party's African American support, the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina put a severe strain on new and still-fragile bonds of trust.

But just as some ministers had denounced a government recovery effort that seemed to leave many blacks in the gulf region behind, a number of those African American clergy say an aggressive outreach campaign by Bush and senior White House aides in recent days has begun reversing what might have been lasting political damage.

Moreover, the ministers — as well as a cadre of conservative policy analysts who consult with the White House — contend that the Katrina relief response, though tarnishing the GOP image in the short term, could foster a Republican-led battle against poverty that would give the party a list of new selling points for African American voters who have long viewed Democrats as the best advocates for the downtrodden.

With the federal government spending tens of billions of dollars on the recovery, Republicans have a chance not only to appeal to minorities by creating jobs and other economic opportunities but also to use the rebuilding effort as a real-world test of such long-discussed conservative ideas as school vouchers, enterprise zones and the use of faith-based groups to provide social services.

Um, Peter, are KBR and Halliburton hiring NOLA blacks? They aren't? You might want to pay attention to the actual news.

End of Republic

Overkill in New Orleans

By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo, AlterNet. Posted September 12, 2005.

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world. What are they doing prowling the streets of NOLA?

Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.

"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."

Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as two weeks ago.

What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal government and the state of Louisiana. Blackwater is one of the leading private security firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several U.S. government contracts and has provided security for many senior U.S. diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after four of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive U.S. retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.

Who Sent In the Mercs?

As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that, "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."

Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane relief effort." A statement on the company's website, dated Sept. 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by two Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."

That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety," he said.

But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force.

If this doesn't alarm you, you really are asleep. Private armies answering to the Executive branch operating inside the US? We really have been taken over, and just don't know it yet.

Yet Another Poor Appointment

Immigration Nominee's Credentials Questioned

By Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.

The push to appoint Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, comes in the midst of intense debate over the qualifications of department political appointees involved in the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.

Concerns over Myers, 36, were acute enough at a Senate hearing last week that lawmakers asked the nominee to detail during her testimony her postings and to account for her management experience. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) went so far as to tell Myers that her résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job.

But Voinovich has since met with Myers and is now likely to support her, his spokeswoman said yesterday. Myers, who has attracted strong support from many former colleagues, told senators that she would draw upon the experiences of ICE veterans in running the agency.

"I realize that I'm not 80 years old," Myers testified. "I have a few gray hairs, more coming, but I will seek to work with those who are knowledgeable in this area, who know more than I do."

After working as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., for two years, Myers held a variety of jobs over the past four years at the White House and at the departments of Commerce, Justice and Treasury, though none involved managing a large bureaucracy. Myers worked briefly as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division before he became Homeland Security secretary.

She has no credentials AND she is a chronic short-termer? Exactly what is supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy about that?

Bad Reporting

News Analysis: As coalitions shift, Bush is confounded
By David E. Sanger The New York Times

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2005

WASHINGTON At the opening of the United Nations General Assembly session last week, President George W. Bush said the United States could get much more done building coalitions than acting as the world's Lone Ranger.

Behind the scenes, though, his aides were scrambling to put out a fire: Countries that Bush considers partners - China, Russia and India - were banding together to stymie a U.S. and European effort to bring sanctions against Iran for its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Washington backed down, at least for now. But what may be more important is the unusual configuration of countries that broke with Bush and that may prove troublesome to the United States in the future.

What Bush faced from the well of the United Nations on Wednesday morning was a strange new geopolitical world, in which your allies on one issue are ganging up on you in the next room.

When Bush started coalition-building after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he expected the United States to be the linchpin. But now, post-Iraq, the president is increasingly facing what might be called coalitions of the unwilling, pursuing their own interests or pushing back U.S. goals around the world, issue by issue.

Without question, this push-back was beginning well before Bush was president. Europe sought a common military strategy independent of Washington's in an experiment with mixed results, and Asian and Latin American countries gathered together, mostly to negotiate trade accords.

But the years after Sept. 11, 2001, masked a lot of these tensions.

Countries cast their lot with a president who said that nations had to choose to be "with us or against us."

Four years later, Bush no longer seems as unassailable; the temptations for nations to form ad-hoc partnerships seem irresistible.

A lot of this is bullshit. Countries have always worked in their own self-interest, Bushco's selfish, short-sighted and imperialistic ways have made it easier for them. 9-11 changed nothing. This is one of the most naive and self serving articles I've seen in the Times in a while.

Scary Women

FDA is the next frontier

BOSTON - Now that we have waved "Bye, Bye, Brownie" to Michael Brown, the hapless head of FEMA, could we turn our sights back to another agency on the skids: the Food and Drug Administration?

If FEMA is an example of a government run on cronyism, the FDA has become a portrait of a government run on ideology. After its blunders over Vioxx and defective heart devices, it has now deliberately tanked the homeland emergency contraceptives.

Days before Katrina hit New Orleans and flooded the news, FDA chief Lester Crawford announced that he was indefinitely postponing the sale of Plan B over the counter. As Susan Wood, the respected head of the FDA's Office of Women's Health, said when she resigned in protest, "This time delay is denial."

I will spare you the long, convoluted history of the morning-after pill and the FDA. Plan B was planted firmly in the common ground in the culture wars. Pregnancy prevention is, after all, abortion prevention. It's something we agree on.

Putting Plan B on the drugstore shelf would mean that women who had unprotected sex or contraceptive failures could easily and quickly prevent pregnancy.

But under pressure from the pro-life fringe that insists against all evidence that emergency contraception is abortion in disguise, the FDA caved. Executing a fandango that Karl Rove himself would admire, the FDA first boxed the manufacturer into seeking permission for over-the-counter sales only to those 17 or over. Then it rejected the adults-only plan on the grounds that the pills could still fall into the hands of younger teens.

In the furor that followed, what no one dared suggest is that just maybe teenagers should have the easiest, not the hardest, access to Plan B. Aren't the youngest precisely those who should be most protected from pregnancy? Or do we still think that motherhood should be the punishment for sex?

Take a long look at the last sentence in the excerpt. That's really what the abortion/contraception wars are all about. But you might notice that only women get pregnant.

It's all about trying to control female sexuality, which must scare the shit out of the men in power.

Before We Forget

British Smash Into Iraqi Jail To Free 2 Detained Soldiers

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; A01

BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 -- British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday in the southern city of Basra to free two British commandos detained earlier in the day by Iraqi police, witnesses and Iraqi officials said. The incident climaxed a confrontation between the two nominal allies that had sparked hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra's streets.

An Iraqi official said a half-dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail, the Reuters news agency reported. The provincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."

British officials said three soldiers were hurt in the day's violence, in which at least one armored personnel carrier was destroyed by firebombs. Iraqi officials said at least two civilians were killed.

In London, authorities said the two commandos were released after negotiations. But the BBC quoted British defense officials as saying a wall was demolished when British forces went to "collect" the men.

Monday's violence underscored the increasing volatility of Basra, a Shiite Muslim-majority city that had previously escaped much of the violence of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency. Tension has been growing between British forces in the city and Shiite police and militias that operate there.

On Monday, an Iraqi reporter working for the New York Times was found shot dead on the outskirts of Basra with his hands bound, his family and security sources said. The reporter, Fakher Haider, had been handcuffed and taken away from his home Sunday night by four masked men who said they wanted to interrogate him, his family said.

"This murder of a respected colleague leaves us angry and horrified," Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said in a statement. "Fakher was an invaluable part of our coverage for more than two years. His depth of knowledge, his devotion to the story and his integrity were much admired by the reporters who worked with him."

More pointless violence.

The Bastards of Bentonville

Wal-Mart Accused of Denying Workers Lunch Breaks
From Associated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. — Lawyers representing about 116,000 former and current Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in California told a jury today that the world's largest retailer systematically and illegally denied workers lunch breaks.

The suit in Alameda County Superior Court is among about 40 cases nationwide alleging workplace violations against Wal-Mart, and the first to go to trial. Wal-Mart, which earned $10 billion last year, settled a lawsuit in Colorado for $50 million that contains similar allegations to California's class action. The company also is accused of paying men more than women in a federal lawsuit pending in San Francisco federal court.

The workers in the class-action suit are owed more than $66 million plus interest, attorney Fred Furth told the 12 jurors and four alternates.

"I will prove the reason they did this was for the God Almighty dollar," Furth said in his opening statement.

Nine jurors must side with the plaintiffs to prevail. Millions of dollars also are sought to punish the company for the alleged wrongdoing.

The case concerns a 2001 state law, which is among the nation's most worker friendly. Employees who work at least six hours must have a 30-minute, unpaid lunch break. If they do not get that, the law requires they are paid for an additional hour of pay.

The lawsuit covers former and current employees in California from 2001 to 2005.

Wal-Mart declined to give an opening statement, reserving its right to give one later. Its lawyers also declined comment.

In court documents, the Bentonville, Ark., company claims that workers did not demand penalty wages on a timely basis. Wal-Mart adds that it did pay some employees their penalty pay and, in 2003, most workers agreed to waive their meal periods as the law allows.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based company also says some violations were minor, such as demanding employees punch back in from lunch and work during their meal breaks. In essence, workers were provided a shorter meal period than the law allows.

The case does not claim that employees were forced to work off the clock during their lunch breaks.

Katrina and Avian Flu

Mayor Halts Reopening of New Orleans and Urges Evacuation

By WILLIAM YARDLEY and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: September 19, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 19 - With another hurricane threatening to roar into the Gulf Coast within the next few days, and under pressure from President Bush and other federal officials who cautioned patience, Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans today suspended the reopening of parts of his evacuated city to residents.

Allen Marcelin returned to his home in New Orleans along with others today.

"I would rather err on the side of conservatism so we would make sure we have everyone out," Mr. Nagin said.

And in an eerie echo of the warnings before Hurricane Katrina hit three weeks ago, the mayor asked residents who had begun to trickle back in today - after his decision on Friday to allow re-entry - to prepare to evacuate once again.

"We are suspending all re-entry in the city of New Orleans as of this moment," he said. "I am also asking everyone in Algiers to prepare to evacuate as early as Wednesday. I am also asking anyone on the east bank of Orleans Parish to prepare yourself to evacuate."

This morning residents began trickling back into Algiers, which sits on higher ground across the Mississippi River from downtown and was spared the worst of the flooding and destruction.

Tropical Storm Rita was heading toward the Florida Keys and was expected to become a hurricane by the time it moves into the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said this afternoon. The storm was centered near the Bahamas at about 5 p.m. Eastern time, about 140 miles from Key West.

The mayor's decision came as the hurricane's death toll climbed to nearly 1,000. The Louisiana Health Department said late this afternoon that it was raising the number of confirmed deaths by 90, to 736. That brings the overall death toll in the Gulf Coast region to 973.

On Friday Mr. Nagin jubilantly announced he would let business owners and residents back into the devastated city a few sections at a time over the next week and a half. But almost immediately federal officials began to second guess his decision. Today, President Bush added his voice to those who questioned the wisdom of allowing resident to return before the city has fully restored water and power and other services to the area.

"The mayor has got this dream about having a city up and running," Mr. Bush said. "And we share that dream. But we also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."

The top official in charge of the federal response to the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, has also urged a delay to the plan put in motion by the mayor that is bringing people today back to a city largely without power, clean drinking water or a working 911 system. But Admiral Allen has stopped short of saying that the federal government would try to halt it.

Today, Mr. Bush said in Washington after meeting Homeland Security Department officials that Admiral Allen had reflected the concerns of the administration, which wants to work with the mayor.

Mr. Bush said there were environmental concerns as well as worries that any future rainfall could cause the levees to break.

"And so, therefore, we're cautious about encouraging people to return at this moment of history," he said.

Mr. Nagin's decision late this afternoon came after a day of constant back-and-forth discussion about whether the re-entry should continue.

Admiral Allen, who was among those who met today with Mr. Nagin and other federal and local officials to discuss the plan, has said in televised interviews in the past several days that the city was moving too fast and sketched a set of rudimentary needs, like a 911 system and potable water, that he said had not been met.

I hope you are studying this for avian flu. One of the things I learned at the Wilson Center panel on bird flu this afternoon is that the entire southeast is having problems with groceries. The transportation system has been interrupted with freezer trucks full of ice being sent to the relief efforts in the Gulf and there aren't enough trucks to transport food to the stores. There are also shortages of building materials for the same reason.

Here's a link to the summary of today's event. What I learned: we are in even worse shape than I thought. Read the summary, the news is truly horrifying. Helen Branswell summarized what she's learned from all the epidemiologists she's talked to: they are all shitting bricks and losing sleep at night.

Let Flu Wiki be your partner in getting us all through this. Those of you who have pooh-poohed this need to get religion and fast.

Along with my Flu Wiki partners, DemfromCT, pogge and the reveres, we will soon be sponsoring a blog Avian Influenza Awareness Week for all the bloggers, left and right, to put up posts linking to flu resources. The big Rightie sites have already agreed to participate; this isn't a partisan issue. I'll let you know as soon as we've agreed on dates. This way, you can send your Republican father in law to a site he'll fin