Why am I not surprised?

Guess which company stands to make a shitload of money from Katrina cleanup.

The traitorous liberal media smears God's Anointed Preznit

How dare they impugn the honor of Fearless Leader?

The Manchester, NH Union Leader (a conservative-leaning paper):

Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.

CNN's Jack Cafferty, normally a Bush Apologist:

You wonder, given the notice that we had, that this thing was out there and it was getting to be just as deadly and nasty as they're capable of being, you wonder if more could have been done, should have been done to prepare, to evacuate, to do some contingency planning... You wonder with almost a week's notice from the time this thing crossed the Florida peninsula if enough was done to protect the people in the path of this storm.

UPDATE: This diary at Kos has a summary of the editorial commentary...and it isn't kind.

If the Bushistas think allowing another terrorist attack to happen will pump up their approval ratings, they'd better guess again. America is waking up to their incompetence and callousness.

Now THIS is politicizing the Katrina disaster

An evangelical Christian group that regularly demonstrates at LGBT events is blaming gays for hurricane Katrina.

Repent America says that God "destroyed" New Orleans because of Southern Decadence, the gay festival that was to have taken place in the city over the Labor Day weekend.

"Southern Decadence" has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars" Repent America director Michael Marcavage said in a statement Wednesday.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city." Marcavage said. "From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence’, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same."

"Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long," Marcavage said.

"May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God," Marcavage concluded.

(Hat tip: Americablog)

Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?

Those of us who live in consensus reality have been monitoring the situation in the Delta since early Sunday morning.

Of course, if you are the King of Planet Delusional, you've been too busy playing golf and showing off a birthday cake and playing your neato keeno guitar with the preznit-shul seal on it, and yukking it up with some hand-picked old folks guaranteed not to give you shit.

So of course if you've been in the hermetically sealed bubble in which you live most of the time, this would be your reaction to the devastation in New Orleans:

"It's totally wiped out," he told aides at one point during the hastily-arranged inspection flight.

[snip]

McClellan said that after viewing one particularly hard hit coastal community, the president noted: "It's totally wiped out."

The spokesman, describing the rare scene aboard the president's plane, said that aides were with Bush, pointing out various sights and that the president was hearing commentary on what he was seeing.

"There wasn't a whole lot of conversation going on," McClellan said. "I think it's very sobering to see from the air. I think that at some point you're just kind of shaking your head in disbelief to see the destruction that has been done by this hurricane."

"This is a major catastrophe," McClellan said earlier. "We are certainly going to do everything from the standpoint of the federal government to make sure the needs are met. This is a time when all Americans need to come together and do all we can to support those in the Gulf state region."

McClellan said the government was declaring the hurricane an "incident of national significance," a designation that triggers a recently developed national emergency plan for the first time and will allow better coordination among government agencies. McClellan said he expects the administration will request a supplemental appropriation to pay for disaster relief and recovery efforts.

Under the national response plan, which was finalized in January, the federal government intervenes only when emergencies exceed what state and local capabilities can handle. Though state and local officials have not formally declared that they can no longer manage the disaster on their own, that is the case, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

The president decided he should be in the nation's capital given the magnitude of destruction and death caused by Katrina, one of the most severe storms to ever hit the United States.

Isn't that insightful? And why the hell is this such a surprise? And why is McClellan trying to spin this as some kind of great gesture of presidential leadership FOUR DAYS INTO THE DISASTER?

A hastily-arranged flyover, eh? I guess someone finally woke up and decided that it might not be a bad idea for the president to take a gander at what's going on with those poor people he likes to pretend don't exist. Good thing he was in the hermetically-sealed atmosphere of Air Force One, too, because there are corpses floating in the standing water, and the danger of cholera and typhoid increases every day. God forbid he should have to trouble his beautiful mind (^TM Barbara Bush) with such things.

The trolls who insist on continuing to visit this site have been on my case all day for "politicizing a tragedy." How is mentioning FACTS politicizing?

FACT: This hurricane was forecast to be a devastating one as early as last Friday -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: This hurricane was a severe Cat 4 storm that hit Sunday morning -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: The levees started to overflow on Monday -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: On Monday, in California, Bush devoted a grand total of 185 out of 3800 words to the hurricane aftermath in his speech -- the worst natural disaster on our soil in our lifetime, and perhaps ever.

FACT: The situation grew dire yesterday -- and Bush was out in Arizona and California spinning his war and his Medicare prescription drug plan -- and playing his gee-tar -- while people waited on their roofs for rescue.

FACT: The Mississippi National Guard has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad. The guard is deployed in Iraq because Bush doesn't have the balls to ask Americans to sacrifice their sons by instituting a draft in order to get the soldiers his war needs. That the Guard is deployed in Iraq means lower manpower to help out the hurricane victims.

FACT: After 2003, funding for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project slowed to a trickle. The reason? Cost pressures due to the war in Iraq:

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

FACT: Bush and the Republicans have cut 71.2 million in funding for hurricane and flood protection projects at the Army Corps of Engineers in their 2006 budget.

No one is saying that Hurricane Katrina is Bush's fault, and we're not even saying that what has happened in New Orleans could have been prevented. What is undeniable, however, is him showing the same kind of callous disdain and flight response in the face of a tragedy that he showed on 9/11, when he sat in a classroom reading "My Pet Goat" while people in New York jumped to their deaths, then flew across the country as fast as his little airplane could carry him -- and then didn't show up in that city until PR reasons forced him to. Just as he didn't fly over New Orleans until PR reasons forced him to.

There are things a President can't do anything about, but what a president can do is at least give the IMPRESSION that he cares. This president has done no such thing. Crawford wasn't far enough away from the Delta, so he flew to California for what was essentially a campaign trip -- except he isn't campaigning for anything. But he wanted to be surrounded by friendly audiences of well-fed, well-clothed dry WHITE people, instead of the kind of people who have been airlifted off their rooftops the past two days -- needy, frustrated people who need federal aid badly -- federal aid which is not likely to be forthcoming.

And then, come October, when they are able to return to their homes to take inventory of what they've lost, they'll be required under Bush's new bankruptcy bill to receive credit counseling when they file for bankruptcy.

Disaster Relief

Here, via Eric Alterman, is a list of organizations collecting for and providing hurricane relief:

• American Red Cross
  1-800-HELP-NOW
  
  


• Salvation Army
  1-800-SAL-ARMY
  
  


• Network for Good
  
  


• Mennonite Disaster Service
  
  


• Catholic Charities
  1-800-919-9338
  
  


• Noah's Wish
  
  


• Episcopal Relief & Development
  1-800-334-7626
  
  


• Union for Reform Judaism Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund
  
  


• United Methodist Committee on Relief
  1-800-554-8583
  
  


• Samaritans Purse
  
  


• American Baptist Churches USA
  
  


• National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
  
  


• Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
  
  


• Also worth reading is FEMA's When Disaster Strikes...Donations Are Needed

And I think it looks like the head of a penis

Eve's Apple shows that the nutballs are always on the job.

In case you're not feeling sad enough today

Go check out the blog of Sgt. Thomas Strickland, who was killed in Iraq earlier this month when his truck overturned.

Two days before he died, he wrote (scroll down in his blog)(emphases mine):

The insurgency is on the rise in our area, with a most impressive coordinated assault on one of my sister FOBs (St. Joe) under their belt. Apparently they have enough folks and sophistication in my back yard where they can simultaneously place accurate mortar rounds on three seperate locations (at least 30k apart) to tie up any ground mounted quick reaction forces, as well as offer up multiple RPG strikes on the guard towers at Joe. These RPG attacks really bring out the QRF who face their own ambush as they come out the gate, at least 12 insurgents occupying buildings with an overwatch position to Joe's only entrance armed with more rpg's and small arms. The only possible responses are tanks or Apaches. Luckily we have both on call. 12 dead insurgents, destroyed buildings, a compromised FOB, sustained, accurate and unaswered indirect fire and lots o unanswered questions later... I'm here.

What the fuck has my chain of command been doing? We were winning somewhat when I left. And now we're being pinned down in our own fucking homes? Insurgents are pushing locals out of their homes and taking over my area at will? What kind of fucktarded plan have we been half-assedly executing? Obviously the kind that neglects sound contact with locals. Obviously the kind that gives further distance to unbridged gaps between soldiers and locals. Obviously the kind that has shown enough weakness when confronted by the insugency that it has been encouraged to grow.

Back home (the USA kind) I have no home, no job, and my commander in chief is on vacation (he's about 20 days behind Ronald Reagan right now in the race to become the most vacationing president ever. Hey W! we all got our fingers crossed! Here's to you and two more years of presidency...er vacationing!). Luckily pretty much everything that is important to me can fit into the back of a truck. Luckily I just paid off one of those.

In their fear to build relationships and get out of their hiding holes the FOBbits above me have fucked my friends and I.

We've just completed the first 1/4 of our tour. we've sent 4 of 24 members of this platoon home with injuries.

Thankfully we're not like another who has sent 8 home in body bags...but we got 9 months to go.

I'm sure Jonah Goldberg is wondering why Sgt. Strickland was such a traitor.

If the footage from the Delta isn't getting me depressed enough, reading this makes me just want to give up.

(Thanks to Shakespeare's Sister for finding this.)

Everything Bush touches turns to shit: Katrina edition

It was one thing when the losses were limited to Poppy's buddies, who had to know what they were getting into when they loaned Dim Son money for his business ventures. Presumably access to the head of the CIA, president, or ex-president, was worth the losses.

But now it's the American people who have to pay for his incompetence.

WaPo on Bush's evisceration of FEMA:

This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.


Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?

The creation of the federal agency encouraged states, counties and cities to convert from their civil defense organizations and also to establish emergency management agencies to do the requisite planning for disasters. Over time, a philosophy of "all-hazards disaster preparedness" was developed that sought to conserve resources by producing single plans that were applicable to many types of events.

But it was Hurricane Andrew, which hit Florida in 1992, that really energized FEMA. The year after that catastrophic storm, President Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to be director of the agency. Witt was the first professional emergency manager to run the agency. Showing a serious regard for the cost of natural disasters in both economic impact and lives lost or disrupted, Witt reoriented FEMA from civil defense preparations to a focus on natural disaster preparedness and disaster mitigation. In an effort to reduce the repeated loss of property and lives every time a disaster struck, he started a disaster mitigation effort called "Project Impact." FEMA was elevated to a Cabinet-level agency, in recognition of its important responsibilities coordinating efforts across departmental and governmental lines.

Witt fought for federal funding to support the new program. At its height, only $20 million was allocated to the national effort, but it worked wonders. One of the best examples of the impact the program had here in the central Puget Sound area and in western Washington state was in protecting people at the time of the Nisqually earthquake on Feb. 28, 2001. Homes had been retrofitted for earthquakes and schools were protected from high-impact structural hazards. Those involved with Project Impact thought it ironic that the day of that quake was also the day that the then-new president chose to announce that Project Impact would be discontinued.

Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism.

An angry dame named Katrina showed us this week that while terrorism is still a threat to our shores (a threat the Administration is doing NOTHING to forestall, I might add), there are other threats just as devastating. And those threats we CAN anticipate.

Why a private health insurance system doesn't work

The health insurance system in this country like the automotive insurance industry in New Jersey was before they instituted the point system: One strike and you're out:

In July 2004, my husband and I applied for personal health insurance from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Virginia. He had left his job to start his own company, and I was self-employed, so we began looking for family coverage while the COBRA clock ticked. Because I was blessed with lifelong health, the "medical information" page of my application was relatively brief. I listed a prescription for Clomid, a fertility drug I'd taken while trying to conceive my daughter, and a single appointment I'd had with a psychiatrist after she was born, regarding the possibility of postpartum depression.

Shortly after we submitted our paperwork to Anthem's headquarters in Roanoke, the letters started arriving in our mailbox. My application was under review. More information was needed. Then another letter arrived. My husband and 9-month-old daughter had been approved for coverage at Level 1, the company's best rating. I had been rejected. The reason: the psychiatrist appointment.

I contacted Anthem. The company could not deny me coverage because, as stated on my application, I met all the criteria of the federal statute that protects health-insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. A week later Anthem approved me at Level 4, its worst rating. My husband and daughter's combined monthly premium was $237. Mine was $730.

During numerous calls to Anthem in the ensuing weeks, I learned that an indication of depression—including temporary postpartum depression—within a year of application sends a candidate down the Level 4 chute if legally she can't be rejected outright. "You were on medication for your condition," a representative noted during one of the calls. "It was a physician's sample," I explained, "and I discarded it after I learned the medication could pass into breast milk." The representative was not swayed. "I can only go on what the doctor's form says, and the form says Zoloft."

Over the next three months I appealed Anthem's decision. I argued that a single visit to a specialist should not be cause for charging an applicant the highest possible premium. Nor should taking a single pill of a medication that takes weeks to become effective be considered tantamount to receiving drug treatment. Trying to understand my low rating, I got a copy of the original form submitted to Anthem by the psychiatrist I'd seen. On the "diagnosis" line, she'd written "depression." I asked her to send a follow-up letter. In it she explained that during our one appointment, I'd had "depressive symptoms" that had subsequently been resolved.

Nonetheless, Anthem twice denied my appeal. The identical rejection letters assured me of the "thorough review" of my case. But it was hard to have faith in that when the underwriters failed even to get my name right on the letters, addressing me by my husband's last name after I'd told them in writing of the error. In the end, I had to opt for an inferior and yet more costly insurance policy, at $450 a month, than the one granted to my husband and daughter. After more calls to Anthem, I learned that the psychiatrist's appointment would bar me from a Level 1 rating for five years. I later filed a complaint with the Virginia Bureau of Insurance, but the state found no wrongdoing on Anthem's part. Insurers are free to establish their "own guidelines without regulatory interference," as long as those guidelines apply to everyone.

That insurers in a country that is trying so mightily to make women captives of their reproductive systems are writing off tens of thousands of women with postpartum depression is truly reprehensible. That any illness or complaint is grounds for refusal is a sign that the existing system doesn't work...no matter HOW much politicians in the pockets of the insurance industry want to pretend it does.

Questions in need of answers

Americablog asks 'em.

The hits just keep on coming

Random thoughts and updates:

I feel completely useless....

Gov. Kathleen Blanco is on the WWL video feed and just used the "R" word (refugees) to describe the people in the Superdome...which just points out how much we tend to think of "refugees" as people in OTHER countries.

WWL is on air again and they just said that the French Quarter is going to be under water. This is like watching the TITANIC sink -- only over a course of days.

I'm keeping my eyes open for media focus on looters. Steve Gilliard notes a disturbing early example of white looting = "finding" and black looting = "stealing" in media-speak, and Amanda wonders if the media will begin focusing on people trying to get what they need in a situation of complete anarchy, so as to make people think that these unfortunates somehow deserve their fate.

But as yet even Fox News isn't focusing on looters, though in its sidebar, it does refer to them as "brazen." I'll tell you a secret, folks: I'm white and middle-class, and if I'd been on my roof for three days and my baby needed diapers or formula or I hadn't had anything to drink since Sunday, I'd damn well loot too. I mean, what the fuck are the shopowners going to do with the stuff after it's been underwater? So I don't want to hear anything about looters from anyone who's safe and dry and NOT in the Delta.

Grab Your Diary, 2 - 16 Sept

FRIDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2005Paper Chef #10 startsBurwood Jazz & Noodle MarketWoodstock Community Centre, Church Street, Burwood5.30pm - 9pmEoMEoTE #10: Dr SeussGuess your Dr Seuss-themed eggs-on-toast entry to Jeanne at CookSister!IMBB launch cook-off (with beer!)Come along to the Is My Blog Burning housewarming for its new website design. Bring food. And beer.SATURDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2005Pure Gelato Open

Grab Your Diary, 2 - 16 Sept

FRIDAY 2 SEPTEMBER 2005Paper Chef #10 startsBurwood Jazz & Noodle MarketWoodstock Community Centre, Church Street, Burwood5.30pm - 9pmEoMEoTE #10: Dr SeussGuess your Dr Seuss-themed eggs-on-toast entry to Jeanne at CookSister!IMBB launch cook-off (with beer!)Come along to the Is My Blog Burning housewarming for its new website design. Bring food. And beer.SATURDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2005Pure Gelato Open

The fan is on and the feces have been launched

Last night while watching the utter mess that is the Mississippi Delta on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I felt a combination of gratitude at my own good fortune at being in a dry house with electricity, air conditioning, and flush toilets; combined with guilt at my own good fortune when the lives of so many have been ruined beyond repair. And they're living in a country in which the sentiment of its leaders are "I got mine and fuck you."

Yesterday the President of the United States was a-pickin' and a-grinnin' on a guitar with the presidential seal on it, before flying back to Washington by way of Texas so he could spend one more night on vacation -- when he was planning to return on Friday anyway. While the very National Weather Service satellite was accurately predicting the monster storm to within On Monday, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes, who no doubt makes a tidy living perpetrating the "Fuck the poor" sentiments of the right, boasted that "last year, when there were two hurricanes, and I got a new roof, I paid my part. My private insurance company paid the other part. The federal government and taxpayers paid no part."

Except that insurance in coastal areas is subsidized by the federal government using -- you guessed it -- tax dollars.

But in Fred Barnes' world, federal insurance to rebuild the swimming pools of rich people is money well-spent, but federal relief to people who have lost all of what little they had in the first place is welfare. Just like corporate bailouts are OK, but Social Security isn't. This is how the right thinks.

I've put up a button linking to the Red Cross' donation page in the sidebar. I hope you'll all use it. I have no great love for the Red Cross. I have no great love for MOST large nonprofits, with their high overhead and administrative costs and their tendency to plow entirely too much back into more fundraising. But right now the choice is either the Red Cross or a bunch of religious organizations, and frankly, I don't want to even take the CHANCE that my money might go to a group that might deny a sandwich to someone who was rescued from a roof yesterday if he doesn't say he accepts Jesus.

Right now cold hard cash is what seems to be needed, and it's going to have to come from people like you and me, because you can bet your life that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Fred Barnes and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of their ilk aren't going to be opening THEIR wallets.

Please don't forget that it was this Administration which cut funding for flood control projects in the Delta because of cost pressures stemming from the Iraq war -- cost pressures that didn't result in better equipment for soldiers, but DID result in huge windfalls for Halliburton and KBR -- windfalls the exposure of which are the cause of Bunnatine Greenhouse's demotion at the Army Corps of Engineers.

Over a million people in the United States are devastated today because the Bush Administration wanted to shovel more and more and more of YOUR tax dollars into the pockets of military contractors like Halliburton -- and demanded NO accounting from them.

The Bush Administration didn't cause this hurricane, and there's no guarantee that the levees in New Orleans would have held without the funding cuts. But there's no doubt whatsoever that the cuts in the Army Corps of Engineers budget for flood control in this area directly contributed to the situation reaching the doomsday scenario that early reports had led us to believe had been avoided.

And for those who don't care about a bunch of poor and black people waiting for rescue on their roofs, or died trapped in their homes, there's this to chew on:

Hurricane Katrina kept energy production all but paralyzed yesterday in one of the nation's main oil-and-gas hubs, shuttering refineries, raking offshore oil platforms, closing pipelines and raising fears that oilpricescould reach debilitating heights in the coming weeks.

By midday yesterday, 615 of the 819 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico -- three-quarters of the total -- had been evacuated, according to the Department of the Interior. Oil production dropped by nearly 92 percent, or 1.4 million barrels a day. And natural gas production was down 83 percent. The storm halted barge traffic on the Mississippi River, preventing crude oil from reaching upriver refineries unaffected by the hurricane.

Energy companies warned it will take several days before they can assess the damage to their major facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. But trading of crude oil climbed to a record $69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before settling back to close at $67.20, up $1.07 from Friday. Future contracts on gasoline deliveries jumped as much as 24 cents a gallon, and pump prices could rise as much as 15 cents by week's end, some analysts said. Natural gas prices leaped 15 percent while heating oil jumped more than 4 percent.

"It's a pretty big hit," warned John Felmy, an economist at the American Petroleum Institute. "There's no question there will be some very real market impact."

[snip]

Damage to operations in the Gulf could push oil prices to $80 a barrel by the end of September, a level that would rival the inflation-adjusted prices of the early 1980s, when oil shocks helped send the economy into recession, said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy research specialist at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

[snip]

But the prospect of extensive damage sent economists scrambling to lower their economic growth forecasts for the second half of the year. Global Insight Inc., a Massachusetts economic forecasting firm, outlined a best-case scenario in which Katrina pushes average gasoline prices to $3 a gallon for two months and shaves a half-percent off economic growth in the final three months of the year. But the firm's worst-case scenario has oil nearing $100 a barrel, gasoline at $3.50 a gallon and a recession possible by year's end.

[snip]

"There is a real sense of foreboding about the economy now that Katrina has struck with full force," wrote Bernard Baumohl, executive director of the Economic Outlook Group LLC, a forecasting firm in New Jersey. "This storm will be the most devastating ever for the U.S. oil and refining industries."

It remains to be seen just what the impact will be on the overall economy. A quick scan of various news sites this morning leaves me with the impression that everyone's trying to put the best face on the situation. But with this kind of cutback in refining capability, it seems to me that we could be looking at the gas lines of the 1970's occurring again -- a return to the days when you'd have to get up at 4 AM to be the 20th car in line by 5 AM.

Add the increase in gasoline prices to the increase in both heating oil and natural gas, and throw in the increase in prices for transporting food, the increase in prices from building supplies, soda bottles, other packaging, and just about everything else that uses plastic (which is petroleum-based), and toss in an already-spiralling deficit, and we have the potential for this country to be in a world of shit by the end of the year.

And what were the commercials for during the breaks on Countdown last night?

GMC Yukon SUVs.

Disgusting

The wingnut perspective on the situation in the Superdome, courtesy of the Spawn of Lucianne:

ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg]
I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared.

Meanwhile, on our team, people are trying to coordinate lists of where to donate. I set up my donation to the Red Cross today. If people aren't your cup of tea, Noah's Wish is sending people to help with animal rescue and can use donations.

There but for the grace of Goddess go us. Too bad people like Jonah Goldberg can't remember that.

Good Lord.

Just awful....New Orleans is completely FUBAR. This diary at Kos tells the sad tale: potentially up to 77,000 people still trapped in their homes, water arising around the Super Dome, which was supposed to provide refuge, is possibly turning the place into a death trap...one report has a man intentionally jumping to his death from the second-level balcony -- shades of 9/11.

In other news, President Politician has finally woken up and realized maybe it might not be a bad idea for him to go back to D.C. and look like he's doing something.

The Red Cross isn't my favorite organization, but right now they're the only show in town for helping out. Here's where you can donate.

American Idiots II

BREAKING: Americans still trapped on Planet Delusional:



(captured from Reuters)

Fiddling while Rome burns

Here's the President of the United States, laughing and joking and having a ball on his "prop up my policies" tour, while New Orleans is underwater, people are still waiting for rescue, and hundreds of thousands of people have lost everything.





Wouldn't it be at least a friendly gesture for him to perhaps return to Washington and even make a SHOW of caring? We all know he doesn't give a shit, after all, most of the people affected are poor and/or black, but he could at least pretend for a day or so. It wouldn't kill him.







UPDATE: Will Bunch reveals how the Bush Administration starved out the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project because of spending pressures related to the Iraq war. No one is saying that Bush could have prevented a hurricane of this magnitude (though his insistence that global warming, if it even exists, has no human component ought to be laughed out of town now), but his starving of everything else in order to feed the Iraq misadventure ought to be subject now to the kind of scrutiny it hasn't been before.

And my guess is that he'll plead poverty on relief and reconstruction as well.

Mission Accomplished

Reuters:

The U.S. poverty rate rose in 2004 as an additional 1.1 million people slipped below the poverty line, the government said on Tuesday.

The percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose to 12.7 percent from 12.5 percent in 2003, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report.

The ranks of the poor rose to 37.0 million, up from 35.9 million the previous year, the report said.

The real median income in 2004 totaled $44,389, unchanged from 2003.

Why the hell did Bush send amphibious vehicles to a land-based war?

Rob at Americablog asks this very valid question in the aftermath of Katrina. Amphibious vehicles have lighter armor plating than land-only vehicles, so what on earth is their use in Iraq -- other than fighting war on the cheap?

And how many people are going to YET die in Louisiana and Mississippi because there are not enough amphibious vehicles to deploy in rescue efforts there?

[Edited after calming down to correct title so our resident wingnut troll CRB couldn't continue to feel infinitely superior. Of course he will anyway, but isn't it amazing that he still continues to waste his time with us here? Funny too, isn't it, how he has nothing to say about the demotion of Bunny Green house or Bush's 40% approval rating. Why should he, when it's so much more fun correcting a minor mistake of mine?]

The Least Popular President Ever Limbo

With most polls showing George W. Bush's popularity at or near the political Mendoza line, the speculation now is "How low can he go?"

Bruce Reed at Slate handicaps the race:

Can Bush break the record? The experts say it's nearly impossible in a political climate so much more polarized than the one the men he's competing against faced. To increase his disapproval ratings among Republicans, Bush would have to lose a war, explode the national debt, or preside over a period of steep moral decline. Moreover, as his friends have learned, it's a lot harder breaking records when you have to do it without steroids.

Bush v. History: But don't count Bush out—he thrives on being told a goal is beyond his reach. The president is an intense competitor and stacks up well against the historical competition:

• Reagan was old and amiable; Bush is young, vigorous, and has a smirk in reserve.
  
• Both Carter and Bush 41 were one-term, rookie presidents with no clear plan to gain disfavor and who had to rely entirely on external events going south. Bush 43's chances don't depend on luck: He has a proven strategy to fail at home and abroad.
  Nixon had to achieve his disapproval ratings almost entirely through scandal, with little help from the economy or world events.
  
• The Bush White House is much more versatile: They won't let scandal distract them from screwing up foreign and domestic policy. Already, 62 percent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction—the highest level in a decade—even before the Bush scandals have begun to take a toll.
  
• Truman might seem tough to beat, because Bush has no popular generals to fire. But Truman had several historic achievements under his belt that kept his unpopularity down, such as winning World War II and presiding over the postwar boom. Bush's record is free of any such ballast. In a pinch, the Bush camp can also make a good case that polling on Truman was notoriously unreliable, and that Bush deserves a share of the modern-day record if he reaches Nixon's level.
  
• The Worst Is Not, So Long as We Can Say, This Is the Worst: Best of all, Bush has a luxury that unpopular presidents before him did not: time. His father and Jimmy Carter made the mistake of losing favor in their first term, assuring that voters would not give them a second one. Nixon committed high crimes and misdemeanors that helped him win a second term but prevented him from completing it. Truman's numbers didn't tank until his last year in office.
  

George W. Bush still has 41 months to turn the rest of the country against him. In the past 41 months, he has cut his popularity by 40 points—from 80 percent to 40 percent. At that rate, he's on track to set a record for presidential approval that could never be broken: zero.

One thing you can take to the bank, though: Cokie Roberts and Andrea Mitchell will continue to refer to him as "a popular president" -- even when he's at zero.

Bankstown Bites: Tantalising Tea

Two months ago, I headed west for the first ever Bankstown Bites festival. Five different themed food tours were run throughout the day and I wasted no time in signing up for three of them.I had been through Little Lebanon, enjoyed some European Eats, and now I was ready to wash it all down with some Tantalising Tea.First stop: Izvor DeliYup, we were back here although this time Gordica was ready

Bankstown Bites: Tantalising Tea

Two months ago, I headed west for the first ever Bankstown Bites festival. Five different themed food tours were run throughout the day and I wasted no time in signing up for three of them.I had been through Little Lebanon, enjoyed some European Eats, and now I was ready to wash it all down with some Tantalising Tea.First stop: Izvor DeliYup, we were back here although this time Gordica was ready

Your tax dollars at work

It's surprising to me that none of the no-tax wingnuts who want accountability for government spending are speaking out against the demotion of Bunny Greenhouse, simply for doing her job:

Congressional Democrats demanded an investigation today into the demotion of a senior U.S. military contracting official who publicly criticized a controversial no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton Corp. for work in Iraq.

With more than 20 years experience in government procurement, Bunnatine Greenhouse had been the Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting officer until she was demoted to a lower-level staff position Saturday. The military says she was demoted for poor job performance.

Greenhouse had repeatedly challenged the Army Corps' commanding officers on their decision in 2003 to give a contract worth up to $7 billion to repair oil infrastructure to Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.

""They went after her to destroy her," said Michael Kohn, her attorney, who added that the demotion was "absolutely" retaliation for her complaints about the Halliburton contract.

Democrats, who had invited Greenhouse to testify about her concerns at a June hearing, asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a letter today to reinstate her pending an investigation.

At that June hearing, Greenhouse called the Halliburton case "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

The Army secretary approved the Army Corps' decision to demote Greenhouse three weeks later.

This woman is trying to save taxpayers money by shutting off the spigot of money to Bushcheney Administration friends and cronies. This is OUR money she's trying to ensure is used wisely -- wingnut money as well as progressive money. And for doing her job, she's been demoted -- because she dared question the funnelling of billions of taxpayer dollars into Dick Cheney's pocket without any accountability.

One would think that the wingnuts would be singing her praises, but of course since she dares question Jesus H. Bush, she's anathema to them.

American Idiots: Tuesday edition

We are SO doomed:

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

At one time, this kind of ignorance may not have meant much for the nation's public life. Dr. Miller, who has delved into 18th-century records of New England town meetings, said that back then, it was enough "if you knew where the bridge should be built, if you knew where the fence should be built."

"Even if you could not read and write, and most New England residents could not read or write," he went on, "you could still be a pretty effective citizen."

No more. "Acid rain, nuclear power, infectious diseases - the world is a little different," he said.

And this is BEFORE the "throw up your hands, give up, and just say God did it" method of scientific inquiry is widely taught in schools.

On that front, the hand-throwers are upset because The New Creationism isn't being accepted by the University of California system:

Under a policy implemented with little fanfare a year ago, UC admissions authorities have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution, the suit says.

Other courses rejected by UC officials include “Christianity’s Influence in American History,” “Christianity and Morality in American Literature” and “Special Providence: American Government.”

The 10-campus UC system requires applicants to complete a variety of courses, including science, mathematics, history, literature and the arts. But in letters to Calvary Chapel, university officials said some of the school’s Christian-oriented courses were too narrow to be acceptable.

According to the lawsuit, UC’s board of admissions also advised the school that it would not approve biology and science courses that relied primarily on textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books, two Christian publishers.

Instead, the board instructed the schools to “submit for UC approval a secular science curriculum with a text and course outline that addresses course content/knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community.”

“It appears that the UC system is attempting to secularize Christian schools and prevent them from teaching from a world Christian view,” said Patrick H. Tyler, a lawyer with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, which is assisting the plaintiffs.

No, the UC system is trying to teach science, not religion.

This is why the ID idiots have to be stopped. Because they are NOT content with teaching your kids that the world is just too complicated for us to understand, so some giant anthropomorphized white alpha male must have constructed everything out of Play-Doh. Now they want state universities, which USED to be known as "institutions of higher learning" to rubber-stamp their lunacy.

Dispatch from Planet Delusional

Sometimes when I think about the many fine bloggers who toil away day after day without compensation, and the hacks who get paid for spouting stupidity, I just want to scream. If trees have to die to publish newspapers, I'd much rather they die for people like, oh, say, Digby....or Driftglass, or any of about a thousand others, than for the Babbling Idiot Known as John Tierney.

Today he tells us that hybrid cars pose an environmental danger:

As an example of "how perishable the knowledge is," he pointed to politicians in a Massachusetts town who declared that people didn't have to pay at parking meters during the Christmas shopping season. By giving away the spaces at a time of peak demand, the town encouraged some people to hog spaces and left everyone else unable to park.

That's the same mistake being made with hybrids. In Virginia, where they've been allowed for years in the car pool lanes, the lanes have become so clogged that an advisory committee has repeatedly recommended their banishment. The same problem will occur in California, where some of the car pool lanes were congested even without hybrids.

As traffic slows down, there will be more idling cars burning more gas and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege. So it will be harder than ever to make the one change proven to speed up traffic and help the environment: convert the car pool lanes into what engineers call high-occupancy toll lanes.

These HOT lanes would be free for the truly virtuous commuters - those in car pools, jitneys and buses - and available to anyone else for a toll that would vary with demand. By enticing just enough drivers to maintain a steady flow of high-speed traffic, the HOT lanes could handle many more vehicles per hour than today's car pool lanes, which are usually either too empty or too congested to accommodate the optimum number.

With HOT lanes, everyone would come out ahead, drivers as well as environmentalists. As more drivers paid for a guaranteed speedy commute in the left lane, they would leave the regular lanes less clogged, so there would be fewer cars stuck in traffic jams, wasting gas and spewing fumes.

With HOT lanes, you could still encourage people to buy hybrids by promising them a discount on the tolls, but there's a fairer way to promote environmental virtue. Instead of arbitrarily rewarding a few cars for having a certain kind of engine, set tolls for all vehicles according to their weight. Since S.U.V.'s and other heavy vehicles require more room to brake, they need more empty pavement between them and the next car, and they should pay extra for it.

I realize that many Prius owners would rather have free privileges in the car pool lane than a discount in a HOT lane. But they'd be moving a lot faster, and they would still have one great satisfaction.

I wonder how late he had to stay up last night, and how much weed he had to smoke, to come up with this?

Papal bull

Pope Ratso shows once again how he Just Doesn't Get It:

The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests.
The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.

It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.

The document expresses the church's belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern.

Nor should it be. William Saletan wrote back in 2002:

The Family Research Council, the Traditional Values Coalition, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Roman Catholic Faithful, and numerous priests and bishops suggest that the church should weed out gay priests because a disproportionate share of sexual abuse cases involving priests are male-on-male. Credible reports say 90 percent of the victims are boys. Conservatives don't care that most gay priests don't molest kids. Their view is that it's fair to presume that an individual is dangerous if he's part of a high-risk group.

Unless, of course, we're talking about priests as a whole. In that case, conservatives point out the unfairness of judging the group on the basis of a few bad apples. Consider the FRC's April 5 statement, "Media Hides Homosexuality Connection in Sex Abuse Scandal." According to the FRC, the "connection" is that "most cases" of abuse by priests are male-on-male. The standard for blaming a crime on a group, in other words, is what percentage of the crime is committed by the group. But in the same statement, FRC scolds the media for besmirching the Catholic clergy, when in fact the abusers are "a very small number of priests." Suddenly, FRC's standard for blaming a crime on a group isn't what percentage of the crime is committed by the group—that would be inconvenient, since 100 percent of sex abuse by priests is committed by priests—but what percentage of the group commits the crime.

How do gays measure up to that standard? What percentage of gay priests have sexually abused children? The FRC doesn't say. Why not? Well, according to last Friday's New York Times, there are 46,000 Catholic priests in the United States; 30 percent to 50 percent of Catholic seminarians are gay; and lawyers for victims "claim to have lists of more than 1,000 priests accused of abuse in the United States." If you assume the worst—that only 30 percent of priests are gay, that 2,000 priests will end up accused, and that all the accused priests are guilty, gay, and current rather than former priests—fewer than 15 percent of gay priests have committed sexual abuse. If the 2,000 cases are spread over a period of 80 percent turnover in the priesthood, or if the number of guilty priests is more like 1,100, or if the percentage of priests who are gay is more like 50 percent, then only about 8 percent of gay priests have committed sexual abuse. According to the Catholic League, that's the rate of pedophilia "in the general adult population."

So like the politician and graduate of the George W. Bush School of Completely Empty and Stupid Gestures That Accomplish Nothing that he is, Pope Ratso decides that an edict banning gay priests will "rid him of [these] priest[s]" who have exposed the hypocritical underbelly of his church.

Mentally healthy gay men who are comfortable in their own skin need not apply. The sexually confused, however, who might be disinclined to acknowledge that they are attracted to children, are still welcome.

Coming soon to a YMCA near you: Jerking Off for Jesus

Excuse me while I go drive an icepick into my own forehead:

The yoga teacher sits in a lotus position atop a polished wooden platform. Behind her, verdant woods are visible through panoramic windows. Gentle music tinkles from overhead speakers. Two dozen students in spandex outfits, most of them women, settle onto purple and blue mats to begin the class with ujjayi, a breathing exercise. Their instructor, Cindy Senarighi, recommends today's mantra. "'Yahweh' is a great breath prayer," she says. "The Jesus Prayer also works. Now lift your arms in praise to the Lord."

The platform is an altar, the tinkly tune is praise music, and the practice is Christian yoga. Senarighi's class, called Yogadevotion and taught in the main chapel of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minn., is part of a fast-growing movement that seeks to retool the 5,000-year-old practice of yoga to fit Christ's teachings. From Phoenix, Ariz., to Pittsburgh, Pa., from Grand Rapids, Mich., to New York City, hundreds of Christian yoga classes are in session.

Effing Christians! First they steal the Solstice and Equinox symbols, now they're stealing yoga. Can't they find their own damn symbols?

Maybe it's time to buy a Vespa after all...and knit afghans

The Oil Drum has the straight poop on Katrina's impact on Gulf of Mexico oil production. And it ain't pretty.

Marketwatch reports:

Heating-oil futures for September delivery already tapped a record $1.975 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange as crude reached $70.80 a barrel overnight, September natural gas climbed to an all-time high of $12.07 per million British thermal units overnight. See Futures Movers.

Deliveries of natural gas for August have already been halted for an indeterminate amount of time under a force majeure declaration by the New York Mercantile Exchange Monday.

So far, Katrina has had twice as much of an impact on crude oil as last September's Hurricane Ivan, and it has caused natural-gas prices to gain 40% more than they did with Ivan, Williams said.

"Hurricane Katrina may be one of the worst on record both for the mainland and the oil and gas industry," he said, while adding it "will be several days before the extent of the damage is known."

U.S. natural gas storage is currently at a surplus relative to the five-year average of nearly 200 billion cubic feet, Ameko said.

But with significant facilities closures, that surplus may erode completely ahead of the beginning of winter.

Katrina is "on track" to create a deficit of around 94 billion cubic feet heading into the winter season, he said, adding that Katrina will not only impact the production off shore, but on shore as well.

So if you think you're OK because you have gas heat, forget it.

Business Week has more:

Natural gas futures briefly surged more than 20 percent after the temporary closure of a critical distribution hub and on concerns that power outages and flooding could prevent processors from running their plants for days, if not weeks. Even before Katrina arrived, the Energy Department had warned consumers who rely on natural gas to heat their homes to expect sharply higher bills this winter.

So in short, if you have to heat your home, you're fucked.

There's no way that the additional cash people have to shell out this winter to heat their homes and get to work isn't going to have a ripple effect throughout the economy. Food prices will go up because everything has to be transported. Building materials will go up because they use petroleum. And with worker pay rising at an all-time low, something's got to give. Either Americans will spend less or go into even more debt.

Recession 2006, here we come. I wonder what Bush's answer is going to be. No I don't; it'll be his same answer to everything: More tax cuts for his friends.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe somewhere....

Al Gore was President on 9/11/01, and the Republicans were out for blood:

The Republican controlled House of Representatives approved today, by a vote of 228 to 207, the first article of impeachment against the 43rd president of the United States, Albert Gore Jr., for his failure to prevent the attacks of 9/11, engaging in a false and deceptive rationale for war and for lying to Congress about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

A divided House of Representatives, which voted along straight party lines, recommended that the Senate remove the nation's 43rd President - Albert Gore Jr. - from office.

"The President of the United States has committed serious transgressions," said House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas).

"Among other things, he took an oath to God to protect and defend the people of the United States, and then he failed to do so. He repeatedly lied, violating his sacred oath of office. To ignore this is dereliction of duty, and this seriously undermines the rule of law," Delay said.

The consequences of overextending the National Guard are now clear

Patricia Taylore at Kos has dug out this tidbit from the August 1 St. Louis Post Dispatch:

America's citizen soldiers of the National Guard and the Army, Navy and Marine Reserves increasingly are casualties in the war in Iraq. And the nation's reliance on the Guard and Reserves is changing them.

Currently, members of the Guard and Reserves make up four of every 10 military personnel in Iraq. It's the largest long-term deployment of the nation's reserves in 50 years. And their casualties reflect that.

Men and women who just months ago held jobs such as truck driver, accountant and teacher now make up nearly one of every four servicemen and women being killed in the war.

In no state have those deaths registered more than in Louisiana. Louisiana, along with New York, has lost more guardsmen and reservists - 23 as of July 24 - than any state in the nation, and all but one of those deaths have come in the last eight months.

And like so many fighting in Iraq, the soldiers are from small, tightly knit towns - Olla, Batchelor, Opelousa, Pineville, Natchitoches, Ruston, Crowley and Houma.

Every one of those soldiers killed, as well as those still deployed, is one less soldier to do what the National Guard is SUPPOSED to do -- help with disaster recovery here at home.

What is a chickenhawk?

James Wolcott explains:

John Podhoretz--now there's a chickenhawk. Back in 2002, he urged Bush to adopt a Wag the Dog policy and spring an "October Surprise" on the Democrats by--well, let's hear it in his own words (via Unqualified Offerings):

"There’s a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP’s standing in November.

"If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you’ve gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.

"Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true - the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.

"But that won’t matter. It won’t matter to the American people, and it won’t matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world."

Any grownup who could describe the scenario of getting a jump on your political enemies by going to war as "luscious"--who could treat the carnage and misery caused by massive bombing and overwhelming American firepower as a neato trick to pull on those crybaby Democrats--is a wanton clown. Suppose Bush had taken Podhoretz's tip and launched the Iraq war even earlier than he did, and the war went even worse than the one we're waging now because of haste and cynical expedience, what would history have said then? Podhoretz doesn't know, and he doesn't care. Like Richard Perle, he thinks he's got it all figured.

American Idiot(s)

Congratulations to Green Day, the best bad band* in America, for a big win at the preposterously unimportant MTV Video Music Awards.

And to celebrate, Kevin K. shows us some exclusive photos of some REAL LIVE American idiots.

* A great bad band is a band of lousy musicians who still manage to come up with some really complelling music. This is as opposed to a bad great band, which has proficient musicians, and still sucks. Green Day and their granddaddies, the Ramones, are great bad bands. Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell is a great bad rock album, perhaps the greatest bad rock album of all time. Steely Dan, however, is a bad great band. I'd rather listen to a great bad band any day.

Just something to think about when Bush starts mouthing platitudes about cleanup

Captain Chickenshit may be traveling as far away from hurricane-stricken New Orleans as far as far as his widdle cycling weggies can cawwy him, but we all know thaty when it's all over, Unka Karl will find him someplace appropriately devastated, and a couple of appropriately white, fertile, Republican candidates for Extreme Makeover: White House Largesse Edition with whom to pose as he boasts about the couple million he's making available for storm cleanup.

But let's not forget how he and his Republican lackeys in the House slipped New Orleans the shiv last June:

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.

It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.

I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.

There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

[snip]

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district's budget is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes. SELA's budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.

Has anyone told Bush about the hurricane?

Katrina may have been downgraded to a Category 4 storm, but 150 mph sustained winds can still pack a hell of a wallop to a city that's 20 feet below sea level.

You'd think that the president would at least make a show of returning to Washington to coordinate relief efforts for the millions of people in this red state who are going to have their lives ruined by this storm.

But no, Bush has snake oil to sell -- for the Medicare prescription drug plan THAT'S ALREADY BEEN PASSED BY CONGRESS!

After a weekend in which the countryside near his ranch was dominated by demonstrations both in favor of the Iraq war and against it, President Bush travels to Arizona and California today on domestic business: promoting the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit for seniors.

WTF? Since when does the Kirby vacuum cleaner guy come to your house AFTER he's sold you the appliance?

This guy either takes cluelessness to an entirely new level, or he's the most callous, heartless human being on the face of the earth.

Of course there's nothing saying we have to choose one or the other...

Gawd.

(WWL TV has a good internet feed, for those wanting ongoing updates on Katrina.)

Meanwhile, NOAA, which Rick Santorum doesn't want to be able to give you weather information when Accu-Weather, which is headquartered in his state, can charge you for it, doesn't mince words:

THE FLOOD WATCH INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS...

IN SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA...
ASCENSION...ASSUMPTION...EAST BATON ROUGE...IBERVILLE...JEFFERSON...
LAFOURCHE...LIVINGSTON...ORLEANS...PLAQUEMINES...ST. BERNARD...ST.
CHARLES...ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST...ST. HELENA...ST. JAMES...ST.
TAMMANY...TANGIPAHOA...TERREBONNE...WASHINGTON...WEST BATON ROUGE

IN SOUTH MISSISSIPPI...
HANCOCK...HARRISON...JACKSON...PEARL RIVER...PIKE AND WALTHALL.

HURRICANE KATRINA...A LARGE AND MAJOR HURRICANE...IS EXPECTED TO MOVE
ACROSS SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA AND SOUTH MISSISSIPPI TONIGHT AND MONDAY.
IN ADDITION TO EXTREMELY DAMAGING WINDS AND STORM SURGE FLOODING...
BANDS OF VERY HEAVY RAIN WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE ONSHORE THIS EVENING
AND SPREAD NORTH ACROSS MOST OF THE AREA LATE TONIGHT AND MONDAY.
RAINFALL TOTALS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF
15 INCHES...ARE POSSIBLE ALONG THE PATH OF KATRINA...MAINLY SOUTHEAST
OF A LINE FROM MCCOMB TO THE BATON ROUGE METROPOLITAN AREA.

INTENSE RAINFALL WILL LIKELY CAUSE FLOODING OF LOW LYING AREAS.
FLOODING WILL BE AGGREGATED IN AREAS OF HIGH TIDES...STORM SURGE...
AND EVENTUALLY RIVERS NEAR BANK-FULL.

A FLASH FLOOD WATCH MEANS RAPIDLY RISING WATER OR FLOODING IS
POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA. IF YOU ARE IN THE WATCH AREA...CHECK
PREPAREDNESS REQUIREMENTS...KEEP INFORMED...AND BE READY FOR QUICK
ACTION IF FLASH FLOODING IS OBSERVED OR IF A WARNING IS ISSUED.

And here's what can be expected:

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD
FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE
BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A
FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW
CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE
KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WATCH IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR
HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE
POSSIBLE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 TO 36 HOURS.

LAZ038-040-050-056>070-MSZ080>082-290300-
ASSUMPTION-HANCOCK-HARRISON-JACKSON-LIVINGSTON-LOWER JEFFERSON-
LOWER LAFOURCHE-LOWER PLAQUEMINES-LOWER ST. BERNARD-LOWER TERREBONNE-
ORLEANS-ST. CHARLES-ST. JAMES-ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST-ST. TAMMANY-
TANGIPAHOA-UPPER JEFFERSON-UPPER LAFOURCHE-UPPER PLAQUEMINES-
UPPER ST. BERNARD-UPPER TERREBONNE-
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

We're quite possibly looking at the end of New Orleans...and we won't be able to blame either Al Qaeda OR Clinton's penis.

We may, however, want to think about global warming and then look at the SUVs on your street...perhaps in your own driveway.

The oil profiteers are bidding the stuff up already

Just heard on WWL TV (which is streaming over the web)that oil futures are up over four dollars a barrel, bringing the price up over $70 for the first time.

And from the "Now here's something to look forward to" file, we have this dire prediction from the AP:

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.

Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm.

[snip]

The center's latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district's iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.

Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city's houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.

"We're talking about in essence having _ in the continental United States _ having a refugee camp of a million people," van Heerden said.

I know we're all strapped for cash these days, but I hope that once agencies post dedicated sites for donations, we all chip in to help these people. Let's show that "I've got mine and fuck you" isn't the American way.

I'll post anything I find.

UPDATE: Here's a map of the oil facilities right in the storm's path. If all are put offline, watch for $4.00 gasoline. And prepared to buy some sweaters this winter, especially if, like me, you have oil heat (though I think my budget payment is locked in already).

Yikes.

Found in a comment at Americablog...this is positively prescient:

Oil Storm

Oil Storm examines what happens when a Category 6 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico slams into Louisiana, crushing the city of New Orleans and crippling the vital pipeline for refined oil that is Port Fouchon. It examines the ripple effect of that event and the ensuing cascade of disasters associated with it, through the eyes of public officials, a family in Texas who owns a gas station, an EMS worker in Boston who has to deal with a brutal winter, and a ranching family in South Dakota who have their subsidies completely taken away and question whether we need oil or food to survive.

The rest of the synopsis of this fX documentary is here. It paints a pretty optimistic picture of Americans rising to the occasion, but given how Americans are perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of young Americans in order to keep driving Ford Excursions and Hummers, somehow I don't think that would reflect in real life.

Safia Taleb al-Souhai to Bush: I take it back

Another Iraqi woman has decided Bush is full of shit after all:

She was the Iraqi activist who became a symbol of the possibility of a brighter future for Iraq.

Back in February, with blue ink on her finger symbolising the recent Iraqi election in which she had just voted, Safia Taleb al-Souhail was invited to sit with the first lady, Laura Bush, and listen to the President claim in his state of the union address that success was being achieved in Iraq. Her picture went round the world after she turned to hug Janet Norwood, a Texas woman whose son had been killed in Iraq.

But now it appears Ms Souhail, an anti-Saddam activist who became Iraq's ambassador to Egypt, may be having second thoughts about the "success" she celebrated with a two-fingered victory sign.

Having seen the negotiations for the country's constitution fall into disarray and the prospect of a secular constitution severely undermined, she expressed her concerns last week.

"When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened: we have lost all the gains we made over the past 30 years. It's a big disappointment. Human rights should not be linked to Islamic sharia law at all. They should be listed separately in the constitution."

Looks like Bush's attempt to sell out women in order to save face here in the U.S. isn't going over well among those most affected.

American women, take note: He'll sell you out too.

(via Hoffmania)

Katrina and the waves

OK, it's a horrible joke, but someone had to do it, might as well be me.

Seriously, folks, there's one nasty bitch named Katrina headed for New Orleans. 175 mph winds with 215 mph gusts. This is a Hurricane Andrew-caliber storm -- only worse. Andrew had maximum sustained winds of 165 mph with a few gusts up to 177. Think of the damage that one caused, now think about a storm that's already sustained at a level Andrew was at its worst -- and it's still over water.

I'm not a prayin' woman, because I'm unsure to what or whom I should pray, but my thoughts are with you folks in the delta today.

On a national note, you'd better fill up your cars today:

U.S. energy companies said U.S. Gulf of Mexico crude oil output was cut by more than one-third on Saturday as Hurricane Katrina appeared poised to charge through central production areas toward New Orleans.

The Gulf of Mexico is home to roughly a quarter of U.S. domestic oil and gas output, with a capacity to produce about 1.5 million barrels per day of crude and 12.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas.

As of Saturday, 563,000 barrels daily crude output had been shut in due to the threatening storm.

Shell Oil Co., which was evacuating all 1,019 of its offshore workers in the central and eastern Gulf on Saturday, had the bulk of closed Gulf daily oil production, with 420,000 barrels turned off.

Shell also said 1.345 billion cubic feet per day, or Bfd, of natural gas had been shut by Saturday.

Total daily Gulf natural gas output shut on Saturday was 1.9 billion cubic feet.

Chalmette Refining LLC, which operates a New Orleans-area refinery, was shutting down production in preparation for the approach of the hurricane, which is predicted to produce winds near 131 mph (210 kph) when it charges ashore on Monday.

Chalmette is a joint venture between Exxon Mobil Corp. and Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA and operates a 190,000-bpd refinery 9 miles east of downtown New Orleans.

The shutdown was to be completed by Katrina's predicted landfall on Monday afternoon, said Chalmette spokeswoman Nora Scheller.

Other southeast Louisiana refineries were operating on Saturday but were reducing staff and preparing for possible shutdowns, the companies said.

If the oil infrastructure in the Gulf is destroyed or heavily damaged, you'll be paying three bucks a gallon before Labor Day. And even if it isn't, if the oil companies can find a way to use this to justify making a few more bucks, they will.

By the way, the kind of evacuation and emergency procedures that are necessary for a storm like this are often the province of the National Guard. Alas, however, most of the Louisiana National Guard is in Baghdad.

Stay safe, everyone.

Sunday Movie Fun Diversion

Since I'm going to be painting again today instead of going to the movies to catch up on some of the crap I've missed, here's a fun movie question of the day, taken from an early topic at the late and oft-lamented (though not by me) Cinemarati Roundtable:

Which actor(s)/actress(es) would make you change teams?

For me, the first name that comes to mind (and I suspect there'd be a line a few blocks long in front of me) is Kate Winslet. This young woman is worshipped by women of all ages, sizes, and sexual orientations in a way that transcends gender lines.

La Divine Kate has the kind of cred now that allows her to shill for American Express, in an ad that's admittedly quite clever. But as she's giving the litany of her movie characters' experiences, I'm disappointed that she overlooked thumbing her nose at society and having her illegitimate kids killed by her stepson in JUDE, her most unfairly overlooked film. If you ever want to see a good movie to slit your wrists by, Michael Winterbottom's bleak 1996 Hardy adaptation is the one to pick.

(Hat tip: Nathaniel R.)

The pleasures of Sunday morning

Like most of the millions of viewers who saw the futures of Six Feet Under's Fisher and Chenowith families telescoped into seven minutes last week, I've grown introspective since then about my own mortality. One of the mental exercises in considering one's own mortality is thinking about what you'd miss (if indeed we actually "miss" anything) about being alive. Oh, there are the usual things, like sex and chocolate and driving really fast on a nearly empty highway with something like early Elvis Costello or The Allman Bros. Live at the Fillmore East or even American Idiot playing at top volume, and halvah, and the insane blind hope one gets in a good year that the Mets just might still be playing meaningful baseball well into December.

But one of the chief pleasures of this level of reality for blogger geeks like Yours Truly is sitting leisurely on a Sunday morning drinking coffee and reading the op-ed pages of the New York Times.

This morning's pages are a special treat, because in addition with yet another terrific piece by Frank Rich, we have Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University explaining patiently why while "intelligent design" may be many things, it sure as hell ain't science:

Intelligent design advocates, however, exploit the ambiguity between process and product that is built into the word "design." For them, the presence of a finished product (a fully evolved eye, for instance) is evidence of an intelligent design process. But this tempting conclusion is just what evolutionary biology has shown to be mistaken.

Yes, eyes are for seeing, but these and all the other purposes in the natural world can be generated by processes that are themselves without purposes and without intelligence. This is hard to understand, but so is the idea that colored objects in the world are composed of atoms that are not themselves colored, and that heat is not made of tiny hot things.

The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. "Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat," you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: "See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms." And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

[snip]

It's worth pointing out that there are plenty of substantive scientific controversies in biology that are not yet in the textbooks or the classrooms. The scientific participants in these arguments vie for acceptance among the relevant expert communities in peer-reviewed journals, and the writers and editors of textbooks grapple with judgments about which findings have risen to the level of acceptance - not yet truth - to make them worth serious consideration by undergraduates and high school students.

SO get in line, intelligent designers. Get in line behind the hypothesis that life started on Mars and was blown here by a cosmic impact. Get in line behind the aquatic ape hypothesis, the gestural origin of language hypothesis and the theory that singing came before language, to mention just a few of the enticing hypotheses that are actively defended but still insufficiently supported by hard facts.

Or for that matter, get in line behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as part of the "pull it out of your ass" theory of scientific inquiry.

It's an excellent article, so good that I'm going to link it again here just to make sure you go read it. (If you're not registered at the Times, go to Bug Me Not and get a user ID and password to use.)

If you're a parent who isn't a fundie nutball, the idea that "It's too complex for me to understand...it must be MAGIC" (^TM Marc Maron) is what's going to pas for science in your kid's school should fill you with outrage. As someone without kids, but who's paying school taxes, it fills ME with outrage.

And the thought that someone like John McCain would put his political ambitions ahead of the national interest, putting the final nail in the coffin of his reputation by advocating that what is nothing more than religious guesswork should be taught as science means that unless we speak up now, America is going to be the 13th century backward nation of the future, albeit one with big nasty weapons developed in the days before science was frowned upon because it might conflict with highly allegorical stuff writen thousands of years ago.

John Roberts: unindicted Iran/Contra criminal?

It looks like Mr. Squeaky-Clean may have advocated in violation of the very Constitution he'd be sworn to uphold as a Supreme Court Justice. This was buried deep within a WaPo article on Democrats seeking to have some of Roberts' files released to them -- files the Bush Administration doesn't want them to see...quite possibly for good reason:

One file withheld, regarding the Iran- contra affair, was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading "re: establishment of NHAO" -- referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.

The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things.

That's the kind of guy the Bush Administration wants on the Supreme Court -- one who can always find a way around the Constitution so that his boss, the (presumably Republican) president can do whatever he goddamn pleases.

Constitution? We don' need no es-teenking Constitution.

Hat tip: All-Spin Zone.

IMBB #18: Vietnamese banh xeo crispy pancakes

This month's IMBB theme is fried. Ahhh fried. How many crunchy promises lie in that introductory hiss and sizzle?Unfortunately Murphy's Law dictates that the tastier each mouthful is, the more likely it will be carcinogenic, cholesterol-clogging or a diabetic's nightmare.Banh xeo, however, is the perfect compromise for the fried food fanatic on a health kick. Crunchy crisp crepe, embedded with

IMBB #18: Vietnamese banh xeo crispy pancakes

This month's IMBB theme is fried. Ahhh fried. How many crunchy promises lie in that introductory hiss and sizzle?Unfortunately Murphy's Law dictates that the tastier each mouthful is, the more likely it will be carcinogenic, cholesterol-clogging or a diabetic's nightmare.Banh xeo, however, is the perfect compromise for the fried food fanatic on a health kick. Crunchy crisp crepe, embedded with

The party's going to be over soon, and we're going to have one nasty hangover

Mr. Brilliant and I live fairly modestly by American standards. Yes, we have a house that's more room than two people really need, but it's a 1400 square foot house, which is tiny by the McMansion standards of today. We have two cars, but one's a Civic and one's a Corolla. One's paid for, the other will be next year. We don't carry credit card debt (and when we do, we pay it off as quickly as possible), and we put off home improvements until they can be paid for with cash.

We also bought our house nine years ago, so if the real estate market crashes, we have a pretty good ways to go before we owed more than it's worth.

Most of my clothes are bought online from clearance, I grocery shop with coupons. Yes, we go to Jamaica almost every year, but we pay for it with current funds, and the place we like to stay these days doesn't cost much more than a week at the Jersey shore would. One of our TVs is 15 years old, the other is a big ProScan behemoth we inherited from Mr. Brilliant's father. That one is probably about eight years old. I may love movies, but I haven't rushed out to buy a plasma wide-screen HDTV for four grand. We both work in IT, and just bought our first new PC in six years.

We're baby-boomers. And we live frugally.

So one would think we have little to fear from the coming crash. The problem is that all those people tapping their illusory home equity to buy ever-larger SUVs and big-screen TVs and turn their 1960's ranch houses into 4000 square foot McMansions because God forbid we shouldn't look richer than the neighbors, are going to drag us all down with them.

But it isn't just them. This orgy of "What, me worry?" about spending is being led the Party Formerly Known as the Party of Fiscal Responsibility. Yes, we're talking about the Republicans. When else in this country's history has a war been fought with NO sacrifice asked from ANYONE -- and with the wealthiest getting big tax cuts on top of it? This goes back to Reagan, with supply side economics and the idea that you can have everything you want, and it's all free, because the magic of trickle-down will make debt and deficits magically disappear. Except it won't:

You owe $145,000. And the bill is rising every day. That's how much it would cost every American man, woman and child to pay the tab for the long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor.

And it's not even taking into account credit card bills, mortgages — all the debt we've racked up personally. Savings? The average American puts away barely $1 of every $100 earned.

Our profligate ways at home are mirrored in Washington and in the global marketplace, where as a society America spends $1.9 billion more a day on imported clothes and cars and gadgets than the entire rest of the world spends on its goods and services.

A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll finds that barely a third of Americans would cut spending to reduce the federal deficit and even fewer would raise taxes.

If those figures seem out of whack to you, if they seem to cut against the way you learned to handle money, if they seem like a recipe for a national economic nightmare — well, then, at least you're not alone.

A chorus of economists, government officials and elected leaders both conservative and liberal is warning that America's nonstop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster — one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforcement.

David Walker, who audits the federal government's books as the U.S. comptroller general, put it starkly in an interview with the AP:

"I believe the country faces a critical crossroad and that the decisions that are made — or not made — within the next 10 years or so will have a profound effect on the future of our country, our children and our grandchildren. The problem gets bigger every day, and the tidal wave gets closer every day."

The numbers are truly mind-boggling:

In the charge-everything start of the new millennium, savings have plummeted: to just 1.8 percent last year, below 1 percent since January and at zero in the latest estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The lack of savings is mirrored by a rise in debt. In 2000, household debt broke 18 percent of disposable income for the first time in 20 years, meaning debt eats almost $1 in every $5 American families have to spend after they get past the bills that keep them fed and housed. (That figure hasn't dropped. Credit card debt alone averages $7,200 per household.)

The only thing that's kept the U.S. economy looking as "good" (sic) as it has is debt spending. Americans have been relying on double-digit increases in home values to finance their lifestyles. Even now, people are buying overpriced homes with interest-only mortgages, or tapping their equity up to the house's current value -- gambling that values will continue to rise. And when the fall comes -- and it will, even if it's only a drop of 10-20%, these people are going to be waist deep in the big muddy.

So it's hardly surprising that these are the people who continue to vote for the politicians of the Reagan legacy, who spend like mad and insist that "market forces" will take care of it.

Leaders are elected by the people they serve, of course, and the American people seem to want the best of both worlds — tax cuts and government services — while they hope the dollars sort themselves out. They worry about the nation's problems, but not enough to agree on a course of action to fix them.

The AP/Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults taken July 5-7 found that a sweeping majority — 70 percent — worried about the size of the federal deficit either "some" or "a lot."

But only 35 percent were willing to cut government spending and experience a drop in services to balance the budget. Even fewer — 18 percent — were willing to raise taxes to keep current services. Just 1 percent wanted to both raise taxes and cut spending. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

And why should they be? Reagan told them it's all free and it'll magically disappear if you only give rich people enough tax cuts. Well, C-Plus Caligula has given more tax cuts to the wealthy than anyone else, and now we're drowning in debt. Of course, the Americans polled know that if taxes are raised, they'll be raised on THEM, not on Bush's friends, who were the recipients of most of the federal largesse during this Administration...and yet, they supported tax cuts for them at the time. Perhaps they thought they'd be invited into the club.

You know, I don't have kids, so I really shouldn't care. I should just hope that it hangs on long enough for me to live out my days and then check out as I thumb my nose at posterity and say, in true Republican fashion, "I got mine, so fuck you." But for some strange reason, this heathen pagan with no personal investment in the future feels a responsibility to not leave the world I live in a complete mess. I only wonder why the people out there on Route 17 every Saturday, with their kids strapped into the back seat of a vehicle larger and more fortified than soldiers in Iraq have, embarking on an orgy of shopping before going home to their 6000 square foot home in which entire days can go by without one family member crossing another's path, don't care.