Feline Warrior

Thanks, Miss Nancy D for sending me the following link!

I had to play this little clip several times, simply because it was my internal humor-law.

What would politics be like if Jesus were here?

Jesus:
Wrong on Social Services
Wrong on Crime
Wrong on Defense
Wrong for America

Is it gonna rain on our parade?
Is your soul as light as a feather?
Or am I flat out going insane?

What’s that you say when the rain won’t go away?
What’s that you do when no one’s looking at you?
Where’s that you go after the show?
What’s that you say?
-OAR (”About Mr. Brown”)

Brown Shifts Blame for Katrina Response
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON - Former FEMA director Michael Brown blamed others for most government failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, especially Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He aggressively defended his own role.

His efforts to shift blame drew sharp criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.

“I’m happy you left,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (bio, voting record), R-Conn. “That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren’t capable of doing that job.”

According to his bio at FEMA, Mr. Brown served as FEMA’s Deputy Director and the agency’s General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President’s Consequence Management Principal’s Committee, which acted as the White House’s policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Then Dubya asked him “to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan.” And In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division.

…Mr. Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration/Political Science from Central State University, Oklahoma. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University’s School of Law.

Okay, so the dude’s a lawyer and his undergrad degree is a combo of Public Admin and PoliSci. Add to that his later experiences working on ethics committees and such, you’d think he would have said, way before Katrina, “Hey, Dubya… I think I’m in over my head. Better get Cheney on this one.” Or something. I mean, did he really think he had what it takes to deal with a major catastrosphic event? Go check out the full bio and tell me if the part about him directing “the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team” doesn’t cause you to pee in your pants.

Did Mr. Brown see Dubya naked at some point? Or maybe he has compromising pictures of Laura Bush? What on earth could have inspired Dubya to put this guy into the job of Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response? Oh, right… we’re talking about Dubya. I’m just sayin’!

First of all, let’s please have more of this

and less of this

Lynndie England guilty of Iraq abuse - Yahoo! News

Favorite quotes: “She was a follower, she was an individual who was smitten with [Charles] Graner,” [Capt. Jonathan] Crisp said. “She just did whatever he wanted her to do.” [Graner has been called the “abuse ringleader” and is the father of England’s 11-month-old child.]

And: “The defense argued that England suffered from depression and that she has an overly compliant personality, making her a heedless participant in the abuse.”

Bah!

Now this business, this Lynndie England being found guilty - who is surprised? Don’t be shy - raise your hands! HEY, you in the back! No, Lynndie, you don’t get to vote on this one. See? Nobody is surprised.

Am I supposed to be a Lynndie supporter because I live in WV and she’s from WV? I don’t think so. I’m a supporter of personal responsibility, though, and that’s my stance on this whole thing.

Further, when this whole scandal broke, a friend with whom I normally agree on most things political said, “Awe, why are they making such a big deal out of this?” I believe I wrote on this months ago, but I’ll say it again: We started this thing (invasion of Iraq) and it’s our baby. We are being watched by the international community. Everyone sees what the US does in Iraq. Our own soldiers are abusing prisoners? It doesn’t matter what the prisoners allegedly did, it only matters what the rest of the world sees us do. (And for the record, it makes me queasy to have to say “us” in this situation - I’d prefer to distance myself, frankly.)

It’s shameful. Lynndie England deserves to go to prison. If she’s depressed, I hope they treat it. If she’s got an “overly compliant personality,” well, maybe therapy will help. Hell, the poor dog will probably become infatuated with another prisoner and participate in more horrible stuff, to impress her. It’s all sad.

And now, to lighten our little chat, I’ve found a great page for your entertainment: Bad Gas. Heck, it’s even got a great name! Now you head on over there for a little good-natured fun! No, really, I mean it… Get outta here, kid, you’re botherin’ me!

EDIT: Okay, wait. I said something that I didn’t entirely mean. I said that “it only matters what the rest of the world sees us do,” and that’s not true. That is important, yes, because others react to what we do and how we do it. American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners gives permission, in a sick way, to insurgents to do violent stuff, too. Retaliation.

It’s important to remember that Iraqi culture is not American culture; values are different - greatly different. While American men, if piled naked one-atop another, would be humiliated and perhaps their “manhood” threatened, there are other implications when that same thing is done to Iraqi men. (Not that doing this stuff to ANYONE is good, mind you.) The abuses to the Iraqi prisoners touch the same issues (humiliation and manhood) but also very deep religious beliefs. That’s at the core of it, I think. This is not a culture that promotes nudity the way American culture does. (And ours, even, posts it all over the place, but of course we punish women who bare “too much” skin by calling them sluts, for example. Ours is a culture of mixed messages in terms of sex and sexuality.)

I digress. What I’m saying here is that the ONLY thing that matters is NOT that the whole world saw what some soldiers did in Abu Ghraib to prisoners. That the whole world saw it is hideous and embarrassing, yes. That it was done is horrific and went beyond pure humiliation, it dug deep into a belief system that has been around longer than America, I’m willing to guess.

Am I saying that any of the people who were kidnapped and subsequently killed deserved it? No, I’m not saying that. I’m not an eye-for-an-eye girl. At the same time, when we show no respect for the people of a country, how on earth can we expect any semblance of respect from them? Or anyone?

Oh, this whole thing goes so deep. I’m too sleepy to get my thoughts out right, I think. Hopefully this makes at least a bit of sense. Mostly I just wanted to correct myself, to redirect what I’d said was the most important thing to what I believe is the root issue. And now I release you from this post!

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Dance picture from Here

Suzy, 37, died Sept. 20, 2005.

The last time I saw her, I knew she was in trouble. It wasn’t good. And that terrible sensation of not being able to fix it, hands are tied, none of your business, go away, leave me alone, this is my life - all of it in a single glance. Some call that powerlessness, and it is. It’s also one of the bitter, horrible aspects of being a living creature in a world of other living creatures. Sure, one can go live on a mountaintop, but it gets lonely up there, probably pretty chilly, and nobody is around to say stuff like, “Hey, cute shoes!”

You can’t live alone on a mountaintop and care about cute shoes.

And so we -I- live here, among the living, the dying, and with memories of the dead. And now there’s another one: Suzy. This just in, extra, extra, read all about it.

It may seem to you that I take death personally, and to be honest, I do. I always do, always have, and probably always will. It’s just my way. My husband says that it’s part of why he loves me - and I don’t even know how you’d label it. Just part of my charm, I guess. She can’t leap tall buildings, but boy, she sure can soak up pain and suffering like a top-shelf mop!

I didn’t know Suzy as well as you might think. I don’t have to have - we were close in age, and there was something in Suzy that I recognized. In Suzy, I saw a bit of myself. We had a few core things in common, defects, you might say. Vulnerabilities would be a better descriptive, actually. And I’d found a way to deal with mine, and even though she had walked through some of the same doors I had, Suzy turned away from the very places that offered me comfort, peace, life.

But Suzy… Perhaps this is more of the “rich imagination and strange, intense emotional capacity,” I don’t know. I do know that I felt scared when I heard about her death - scared and sad. Scared, maybe, because of my own nearness to death at various times. Add to that a faded desire to be gone. It’s as though we belonged to a club, and she fulfilled the ultimate requirement. Maybe it’s time to give up membership in that club -I haven’t paid dues in years, and I live life differently than I did when I might have been in Suzy’s shoes. (Shoe references again…) And even though checking out is not an option any longer, at times that darkness whispers into my consciousness. Like long hidden fingers running slowly through my hair, it’s seductive and creepy all at the same time.

Gone is that fabulous smile, that great hair, that seemingly carefree outlook on life. (But below the surface, apparently, she was not so carefree after all.) Gone is the hope that I’d see her around in our one familiar haunt. And again, animals left behind… and friends, family, and stuff. And someone like me -no, not like me, me!- wondering, should I have stopped that last time, said, “To hell with your glance, you’re coming with me!”? or could I have tried that number one more time?

When they want to go, you very often can’t do a thing to stop them. That’s the part that hurts. That’s the part that haunts with fragmented memory flashes, sound bytes, what-if’s, and regret. Oh, and sadness. Deep, blue oceans of sadness.

From the Wynton Marsalis fan club

This is an excellent article by Wynton Marsalis. It appeared in Time Magazine, September 12, 2005 Vol. 166 No. 11
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Favorite quote: “Forget about tolerance. What about embracing. This tragedy implores us to re-examine the soul of America. Our democracy from its very beginnings has been challenged by the shackles of slavery. The parade of black folks across our TV screens asking, as if ghosts, “Have you seen my father, mother, sister, brother?” reconnects us all to the still unfulfilled goals of the Reconstruction era. We always back away from fixing our nation’s racial problems. Not fixing the city’s levees before Katrina struck will now cost us untold billions. Not resolving the nation’s issues of race and class has and will cost us so much more.”

Bush’s political woes stretch beyond Katrina - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush’s mounting political woes extend far beyond Hurricane Katrina’s fallout, with high gas prices, low public confidence and growing opposition to the Iraq war rivaling the storm controversy as long-term threats.
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Oh, it requires great restraint not to say “TOLD YA SO!” to those who thought Dubya was a good idea (again!) and that this whole Iraq situation was ever a good idea.

I remember the night he announced that we’d be invading Iraq… After shouting at the TV, I told my husband, “This is a bad, bad thing. Mark my words.” Consider them marked.

CNN.com - Nazi hunter Wiesenthal dead at 96 - Sep 20, 2005

“His greatest accomplishment was that he showed the world what one person determined to do the right thing can accomplish,” [Rabbi Marvin] Hier said.

Hier is dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Millions of Afghans vote, defy Taliban threats

Let this be a lesson to the *39.05% of eligible US voters who didn’t bother to cast a vote in the 2004 election.

Favorite quote: “I’m so happy, I couldn’t sleep last night and was watching the clock to come out to vote,” said Qari Salahuddin, 21, in the eastern city of Jalalabad soon after voting began.

President Bush Delivers Remarks on Hurricane Katrina Recovery

Favorite quote: “As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.

That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.

So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.”

And I have to wonder: Did it really take a disaster of this magnitude for Dubya to notice the poverty in New Orleans? Did it really take media provoked international embarrassment for Dubya to decide that something’s got to be done about this poverty?

Why now? Why not at the beginning of his first term? And will he just take care of New Orleans, because of its historical value, its value as a greatly loved American tourist attraction?

What about the places that don’t pull in the tourists? What about Southeast Washington, DC, or East LA or Watts? What about all the inner cities? What about any place in America that houses the poor, under-served, under-educated, under-funded, and under-represented?

It’s all well and good that Dubya wants to address the poverty that the entire world saw as a result of the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Good, good, take care of it - let’s have more homeowners, let’s have more minority-owned businesses, let’s get some decent schools in there, let’s move beyond substandard housing.

If this disaster had not happened, Dubya would still not give a flying poop about the poverty in New Orleans. If bringing national -and international- attention to the poverty that exists in America, then that will be the good that can come out of this disaster.

Do we need more disasters around the country to bring attention to the rest of the poverty? Or is the fact that there is poverty in Americait enough of a disaster? Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. Poverty in America is a man-made disaster. Let’s demand that the President address all of the poverty in the United States, not just the poverty that gets hung out for the world to see.

Hilton hacker sentenced to juvenile hall

I wonder if two years away from the ‘net will stop this kid’s stOOpid behavior?

“Obtain the Diploma or Degree you deserve, based on your current knowledge and life experience”

Why make it up when you don’t have to? That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

I received a great little morsel of spam today - chewy, and with just the proper amount of gristle. MmHmm. Here’s some of what this great spamologist’s web page has to say, with my comments added, of course:

This is the opening paragaph:

“We’ve been helping people since 1957 obtain the recognition they deserve for their life experience. Through established relationships with distinguished non-accredited Universities and Colleges, we can help you too”

Note that it does not end with a period - already I’m turned off. How can I get a real fake degree from people who turn away from punctuation? Next, universities and colleges should not be capitalized. Strike two! And I am giggling at the bit about the “distinguished non-accredited” part. I’m sure that somewhere there’s a distinguished college or university that’s also non-accredited, but I’m not so sure I want a degree from it.

Further down, it says:

“If you’re too busy to sit in a classroom, the fast track provides a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctorate that displays to all what you really can do!”

I’d think they’d want Fast Track to be capitalized, since that is, presumably, this outfit’s name. One assumes that these fast track people will provide a piece of paper (albeit a fancy piece of paper) that falsely proclaims the purchaser (aka “student”) has earned a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctorate. They’re not actually awarding degrees, are they?! Since I’ve put thousands of hours into my education, I feel a hint of resentment towards anyone who thinks that he or she deserves a degree without putting anything more than some cash into the deal. Pooey on ‘em!

In the signature area (an electronic signature is required to begin processing), it states:

“I understand Fast Track University Degree Program admits students of any race, religion, age, sex, colour handicap, sexual orientation and national or ethnic origin to all the rights and privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the university. it does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, colour handicap, sexual orientation and national or ethnic origin in administrating it’s educational policies, admissions policies, or other university administered programs.”

I’m wondering, of course, what a “colour handicap” might be. “I can’t deal with purple!” “I get all dizzy around blues!” Colour handicap??! And I wonder why these guys are pretending that there’s an actual university, that there are programs, or educational-anythings. And you know how the improper use of the apostrophe irritates me. (”It’s” should be “its.”) Maybe they capitalized unnecessarily in the beginning of the page because they knew they’d be skipping stuff later on, stuff like “It (does not discriminate…).”

The whole page is poorly written. The testimonials appear to be written by one person - one person who cannot write well. There’s no reference to who is behind this thing, no contact information, and no pricing information. Unlike some of the diploma mills, as they’re sometimes called, this one doesn’t even offer class rings! The bastids! I feel cheated, and I’m not even filling out the damn form. (If anyone is up for it, though, please do let me know what happens. You’d have to visit the Fast Track University Diploma page, and I can’t take any responsibility for participants being hounded by evil telephoning idiots. Still, it would be interesting to see how much they charge for a fake degree from a “prestigious non-accredited” university!)

For the record: Just in case this little chat has planted the educational seed in your mind, please check out the following link for information. I think that distance learning is great, and non-traditional education is also grand. Just be careful out there. Here’s a page that offers guidelines when selecting non-traditional education venues.

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Diploma image from here

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Viewpoint: New Orleans crisis shames US

Here, the BBC sums up the mess we’re in here in the States. MmHmm. Good job, Matt Wells!