Which is worse?

New contest for the new millenium: Which female Times op-ed columnist (permanent or guest) is the biggest joke? Today's entry: Nora "Sleepless in Seattle" Ephron, who is bummed out by Bill "Blow-Job" Clinton. (Because we're still partying like it's 1999.)

I broke up with Bill a long time ago. It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, was I really in love or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love or was I just desperate? But when it came to Bill, I'm pretty sure it was the real deal. I loved the guy.

The only thing that could break up this posh pair was....gays in the military! Or the sexual betrayal that was "don't ask, don't tell." It still hurts, it still pains, even after all these years, but Nora "She's Got Mail" Ephron soldiers...er, carries....on.

Then, later in the week, I was reading about Bill's conference, and I came upon something that made me think, for just a moment, that Bill might even want me back. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me," he said. "I just don't want anyone to die before their time any more." It almost really got to me. But then I came to my senses. And instead I just wanted to pick up the phone and call him and say, if you genuinely believe that, you hypocrite, why don't you stand up and take a position against this war?

But I'm not calling. I haven't called in years and I'm not starting now.

She is so strong!

But don't forget Fatima Abdrabboh. She's still wearing her hijab and dropping her keys, waiting for that hero Algore to save her and humanity.

I have never been more proud to be a woman. And a writer. A woman writer. A woman writer surrounded by stronger, smarter men whom I can love and serve and who will save me and take care of me. I wish I were Nora "I think she did When Harry Met Sally" Ephron.

Abu is back!

The ever-sagacious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, aka "Zarkman," has returned to ply his pen on Iowahawk's site. Some of his nuggets from "This War Sucks" (which does not have the strategically placed asterisks):

So anyway, I'm dealing with this garbage yesterday, in the middle of a meeting with my French ad agency, when Achmed comes in and he's like, "come effendi! Allah be praised! The infidels are marching against the Satan Bush on the C-SPAN2!"

So I'm like, cool, gather up the boys and throw some Pop Secret in the microwave, this ought to be a morale booster. Allah knows we need one. Then everybody gathers around the TV, and they're all like ululating and shooting off the AKs, when C-SPAN2 breaks out of Booknotes for live coverage of the big insurgent offensive.

[snip]

"But... are these what the virgins in paradise will look like, effendi?"

S*. I don't think I'll ever forget the look of horror in that poor Jordanian kid's eyes when the camera panned across that fugly forest of hairy vegan Heathers and uberbutch Andrea Dworkin manatees. And can you blame the poor trembling kid? Holy fargin' Prophet, sometimes I swear the only thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that a restored Caliphate means these hippie bowsers are gonna have their mugs and their bankles safely shielded under a burqqa.

By then the damage was done. I must have spent fifteen minutes trying to calm the boys down, promising them that Paradise is not gonna be a menage-a-72 with a bunch of Unitarian NPR grannies. Luckily, the camera panned to some guy in who was wearing a dynamite belt, which kinda cheered them up momentarily. At that point I didn't have the heart to tell them it was probably fake.

Read the previous posts by Zarkman, too. He has his finger on the pulse of our times.

Not a thing to get bureaucratized

Yeah, I know "bureaucratized" isn't a word, but I don't care. This whole thing about moving primary response to a "large-scale" natural disaster to the US military and some conglomeration of FEMA-like departments is, at best, grotesquely misguided political response to bad Katrina PR.

Why is a breakdown in Louisiana enough to suspend all local responsibility for disaster preparedness from now into eternity? I ask you, was this necessary in Texas? Mississippi? Florida? Georgia? Alabama? North Carolina? South Carloina? Virginia? Was it necessary in California after the 1994 earthquakes? Was it necessary in New York and DC on 9/11? In Oklahoma after the Murrah bombing? In case no one noticed, Rita shifted course. Who was better to prepare and defend a suddenly vulnerable Port Arthur, the Port Arthur city and county officials who were already there, or the military and FEMA relief orgs that would have been mobilized at their bureaucratic snail's pace to the suddenly not-vulnerable Houston and Galveston? For that matter, why should Governor Perry or Governor Barbour or Governor Jeb Bush not have the ability, forget thea ctual responsibility, of leading their respective states because Governor Blanco is an incompetent and self-aggrandizing ass? No other state in history had the breakdown in social fabric the way the Louisiana did. So, perhaps, this isn't an unacknowledged problem for the feds to fix so much as it is a localized problem that federalizing may improve in one locality but would undoubtedly ruin everywhere else. If we start introducing federal management of traditionally local situations, are we going to get more 9/11s or are we going to get more Wacos and Ruby Ridges?

The only reason, the only reason, this is happening is that a bunch of loudmouthed know-nothings were caterwauling about "somebody should do something." Specifically, usurping the authority of the admittedly incompetent Louisiana officials. So the President resolved never to let an incompetent local official make him look bad in an already jaundiced medi again, and a bunch of fairweather conservatives are flocking to it. Smart political posturing, right up until the next disaster hits, and people realize that a federal behemoth doesn't move like locals and doesn't care like locals and can't adapt like locals and then people die. Which will happen.

If there's one thing people should have learned from Katrina, it isn't to respond to anything the media report. The media are not accurate, fair, trustworthy, or dependable, and if there were a million Fox News Channels and blogs and no Democratic Underground and only one CNN, it still wouldn't be sound to listen to a bunch of hysterical people screaming about piles of bodies and wailing that somebody should do something. Ten thousand dead? Not so much; still fewer than a thousand. Stacks of dead bodies in the Superdome and convention center? Maybe it was only ten, and only one of those was apparently a murder. The snipers firing at helicopters? The looting? The rapes? The general mayhem? It happened, but, unlike we were lead to believe, it wasn't widespread. It was widely reported, and that should not be construed as the same thing. Maybe we should doubt the media's pat resolution to this the way we should have doubted Mayor Ray "I know what I'm doing" Nagin's death counts the morning after.

You can't be pacifist enough

Seven Islamic terrorists associated with Islamic Algerian groups (and two others who were just "with them" when the arrests occurred) have been arrested in Paris for planning attacks on the subways, airport, and department of intelligence in Paris.

As John from Powerline said (emphasis mine):

Early reports indicate that the bombers were motivated by France's support for the U.S. war effort in Iraq.

Holy crap. What else is there to say?

Hijab watch

News from JihadWatch! In fact, this is all ripped off of JihadWatch -- but in a fully attributed way. CAIR, the non-violent totally terorist-free Muslim group, had a photo-op. And at least three women did not wear a hijab! Craziness!



No problem.....crappy Photoshopping to the rescue!



Goggle has obligingly purged the crappy Photoshop version from its cache and replaced it with the unadulterated version. Whew. Wouldn't want any embarassment for CAIR. And who knows what would have happened to Fatima Abdrabboh if she'd gotten wind of yet more hijab shame in bigoted, fascist, racist, blah, blah, blah white America.

Meanwhile, CAIR has promised to "closely watch" the brave souls at Jihad Watch, and that it never a good thing.

H/t Powerline.

I am so sick of this

[Ed. - edited this post the 9/16 morning because of rampant typos. Also made some light changes to the content.]

So very, very sick of reading quotes like this, from Theodore Dalrymple (via RealClearPolitics):

The experience of foreign survivors of the tsunami that caused such fatal damage throughout coastal Southeast Asia, and that of those who survived the hurricane in New Orleans, have been very different, or at least very differently reported. I suspect that the difference in reported experience is real rather than a journalistic artifact.

Not that I am in anyway absolving the abominable behavior that is New Orleans. And, just to say, I think he got closer to right what went wrong in NOLA in a metaphysical sense:

Moreover, there is a very uncomfortable question that we have a duty to ask: Is the kind of behavior seen in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina inevitable after a natural disaster of such proportions? If it isn’t, what does this tell us about New Orleans, the United States, and any other place - such as, I believe, Britain - where the same conduct would have made itself evident?
[snip]
If this surmise is right, it is a terrible indictment of all the efforts undertaken in recent years by government welfare programs and institutions that practice affirmative action, such as universities, to ameliorate the condition of underclass blacks. It implies that the nihilistic alienation of the looters and gang members is as great as that to be found in Soweto at the height of the apartheid regime. Far from ameliorating the situation, then, the billions spent on welfare programs, and the intellectual ingenuity expended on justifying the unjustifiable in the form of affirmative action, have resulted in a hatred that is bitter and widespread enough among those condescended to in this manner to result in the scenes for which New Orleans will now long be remembered.

If Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans in 1950, when the black population could justly have complained of severe oppression and injustice, would we have witnessed what we have witnessed there in recent days? I cannot prove it, but I think the answer is no. And if this is the case, then we must ask ourselves what has lit the fire in the minds of men that they are prepared to shoot at their neighbors’ saviors.

But the point isn't that he got his conclusion right. It's that everything preceding it was so wrong: that, somehow, the looting, violence, lack of social order, and reactionary violence against rescue efforts was peculiar to New Orleans (the civilized America!) and absent in the backwater south Asia. Not an original sin issue, not a Lord-of-the-Flies natural reaction. It was special, proven by how it was all reaported. See, these were reported so differently, which couldn't possibly be because the media was just reporting it differently. It must be really, really different. Of course it's not a journalistic artifact. Perish the thought! I can think of, offhand, four solid reasons why there would be wildly divergent ways of reporting looting and general mayhem between the Asian tsunami and American hurricane. But first, let's establish it happened:

Thrissur, India, 4 January (ENI)--The National Christian Council of Sri Lanka on Tuesday decried looting in areas devastated by the tsunami that have led to the death of some 150,000 people in the Indian Ocean rim, a toll still climbing.

The grouping of eight major Protestant churches in the island nation expressed "deepest sympathies" to families hit by the 26 December tidal wave surges but it denounced attempts "to loot and plunder" possessions of those caught in one of the world's worst natural disasters.

Referring to the looters, the Sri Lanka church council said: "We appeal to them to kindly desist from such dastardly conduct and join with the several who are helping those in need," as it urged more church volunteers and others to join in the relief work.

One -- The race factor. Indonesians (in particular, I'm refering to the hardest hit Aceh region of Indonesia as an umbrella for Sri Lanka, Sumatra, etc.) are 1) primarily tribal, 2) primarily Muslim, and 3) obviously, Asian. The first two are "minority" positions that are autmatically granted protection from any negative press by a leftist media. Additionally, there simply isn't any American political traction for Asian race relations. However, black-white relations have been an issue in American politics for 150 years and are still one of the sole pillars of Democratic ideology. So, the Asian looting (such as there was) would be ignored simply because it's irrelevant. Black looting in New Orleans was a massive deal because of slavery, white oppression, the South, Marxist redistribution of wealth, etc, etc. It feeds into an already existing political trope.

Two -- There simply is not anything to loot in Indonesia that would look like looting to us. New Orleans -- major city streets with upscale stores and diverse consumer goods. Indonesia -- huts and hotels with fully stocked bars. Which makes better photos and, therefore, a better story?

Three -- Body count. Despite the ghoulish aspirations of CNN to film bloating dead bodies as they rot in the NOLA sun, there is simply no comparison between the few hundred dead on the Gulf and the few hundred thousand dead in southeast Asia. Perhaps, the missing sucked out to sea, the stacks and stacks of unidentified dead, trumped a little petty larceny. There were more important things to talk about.

Four -- It wasn't here. That's probably the biggest reason. It wasn't here. We, Americans, are expected to be the best nation in the world in every sense. Most civilized, wealthiest, most invulnerable even to acts of God. So when things go wrong here, it is unexpected, shocking, appalling, no matter how anybody anywhere else would act. Mayhem not only happens, it is expected everywhere else in the world. No matter how many people died, were raped or kidnapped, no matter how many terrorist agencies set up recruitment tents outside orphanages (to get the kids the UN ripped out of missionary arms).

The survivors of the tsunami reported their terror at the size and destructive force of the wave, of course, but in no instance that I recall did they mention having been robbed by other survivors, let along going in fear of armed gangs.

Well, let me refresh his memory a wee bit. GAM rebels were still killing their own people as soon as the waters receded. Tamil Tigers were recruiting orphans to join their domestic-terrorist group. Muslim-majority Indonesia wanted all relief workers out by March, or they would consider it an act of war. There were reports of orphans being kidnapped from relief areas and sold into the sex trade. The same story I linked to above reported:

"We have received reports of incidents of rape, gang rape, molestation and physical abuse of women and girls in the course of unsupervised rescue operations," the Women and Media Collective group in Sri Lanka was quoted saying by the Reuters news agency.

Or this (from the Heritage Foundation in January):

The Indonesian government takes very seriously its responsibility to put down GAM, and despite the tsunami, fighting has continued to rage. The Tsunami drove GAM fighters from their mountain redoubts and to the ravaged coastal areas where their supporters live, and several gun battles have broken out in recent days.

Some NGOs claim that the Indonesian military, known by its acronym TNI, wants to keep aid workers out while it clamps down on GAM and its supporters. But TNI does have legitimate safety concerns for people working in GAM-controlled areas. First, GAM does kidnap people for ransom and has kidnapped foreigners. For aid workers lucky enough not to be kidnapped, extortion is still quite likely. Like any insurgency, raising money is key, and collecting “taxes” from foreigners traveling through GAM-controlled area is a favorite tactic.

Sound like they were handling things in a darling, Rouseau-ian-noble-savage way? Oh, by the way, the low-caste Dalits in India were virtually ignored by Indian rescue, recovery, and payment efforts after the tsunami (or they claimed they were; there are always race relation issues, but sometimes things really are that discriminatory).

As Mark Steyn (I think) pointed out after the New Orleans brouhaha, only civil societies can possibly descend in to anarchy. The incivil ones are already there. Yet another reason that any sort of chaos after the tsunami wouldn't be reported by the media -- it simply isn't news.

Heh

I like this line in a totally unrelated post by Jim Geraghty:

Boy, we never quite realized how much ballast Bill Clinton gave to the centrists in his party. The Big He retires to private life, and in five years his party has gone from “Lieberman is a serious 2004 frontrunner” to “Daily Kos is declaring war on Hillary for being too centrist.”

Crescent of Embrace update

Michelle Malkin has links and updates, as well as contact information for Dept. of the Interior Secretary Gail Norton. Best thing to hear:

Mark Steyn weighs in on Flight 93, re-hijacked:

If [architect Paul] Murdoch sincerely believes in a “crescent of embrace”, let him build one – at the headquarters of a “moderate” Islamic lobby group, or in the parking lot of your wackier colleges. To impose it on Flight 93 – to, in effect, hijack those passengers a second time – is an abomination. Flight 93 is about what happens when you understand that some things can’t be embraced.

This is not the way to honor their sacrifice.

Is this really the way to go?

The NYT and WaPo, it turns out, have been showing each other their front pages the day before they run, every day, for over a decade, according to Editor and Publisher. Was this something they really needed to do? Weren't they already "in bed" together? (Heh -- weak newspaper humor. See, it's funny because when a newspaper is finished and laid out, it's put to bed. Ha ha!) Serious note -- they get the same people from the same j-schools in the same region of the country who all vote, eat, think, talk, and write the same way. On the one hand, natural step. Makes it easier for everyone involved; it's so messy reading newsprint. On the other, this was necessary why?

UPDATE 3:06: Because this is so cool! Actually, just didn't mention this before, but it needs to be. See, the reason they're sharing their papers with each other is because they're bitter rivals. It makes more sense the more you think about it.

The Times-Post rivalry is unique in that it is believed to be the only one that involves two newspapers located some 200 miles apart, but with a competition that rivals any two-newspaper city. "This is really a peer group of two," explains [Post Associate Editor Robert] Kaiser.

The MSM isn't dead....

.....it's more partisan than ever! So there!

And I just saved you the effort of reading James Pinkerton's TechCentralStation column from yesterday.

Mainstream Media RIP? Not yet. Indeed, for now, the headline should read, "Mainstream Media Rips Bush in Wake of Katrina Crisis." And in fact, the header atop The Boston Phoenix, "Katrina Rips Bush a New One," was far harsher.

As Mark Twain might have said if he had lived, reports of the death of the MSM are greatly exaggerated. The Old Media Empire is striking back.

That's right, the MSM is fighting dirty against their biggest, baddest enemy, the evil Dark Lord Sith, maybe good Jedi, depending on where this metaphor is going, but it all leads back to the enemy....President Bush!

The whole article is a quick-check list of every time someone in the MSM slammed Bush for being racist, Republicans, former FEMA director Michael Brown for not responding fast enough and ad hominem attacks on his resume, Scott McClellan for "finger pointing" and "blame-gaming" and evasion, and any one else a little bit red for being, well, red. All, naturally enough, at the expense of fact, figures, and logic (something Pinkerton almost sounds like he respects). Pinkerton then uses a bogus ABC/WaPo poll (which found, amazingly, 49% of Americans that take polls are Democrat while only 38% are Republicans, despite a definite Republican majority in reality) to claim that the MSM is striking back.

How much impact? Let's look at the polls, which show that Bush's approval rating has dropped three or four points, to between 38 [this was a question about Iraq -- ed.] and 42 [this was the one about Katrina -- ed.] percent -- here's a graphic look at the same data.

So what happened? To put it plainly, the substantial pro-Bush contingent of the New Media -- that is, cable news, talk radio, and the Net -- was overwhelmed. Yes, the blogosphere could take down Dan Rather, but that was a dry and slow process of threshing out real and counterfeit typewriter fonts, military phraseology, and antique zip codes.

By contrast, Katrina is wetly overwhelming; even Fox News is in high dudgeon. So while a few bloggers are hacking away at the accreting conventional wisdom that Everything is Bush's Fault, that battle is being lost even before Bush's big "I take responsibility" concession on Tuesday.

In other words, the MSM got there firstest with the mostest. [This was Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest -- ironically on the side that lost that Civil War -- ed.]

True enough, there was a decline in his approval ratings on how he's handling Katrina from before, but that is after all, why they took the new poll. Their poll a week earlier got it wrong. But they used their bogus sampling, added another week of farcically lop-sided reporting in major media outlets (was there some argument somewhere about the mainstream medis being more mainstream-ly available?), and, voila. Bush is hated! Bush lied and people died -- as seen on Daily Kos!

Has the MSM paid any price for its liberal-tilting? Has the American public turned off all these nattering nabobs of negativism? Apparently not. A Pew Center survey, widely and gleefully reported, found that 65 percent of surveyed Americans rated the Katrina coverage as "good" or "excellent" -- an 11-point improvement over the public's assessment of the 2004 election. By contrast, only 28 percent felt that President Bush had done all he could have at the onset of the Katrina-crisis.

Yes, yes, because media coverage is exactly like government action. That's why you cna compare them! But teh larger point here is -- did they pay a price for their liberal leaning? Why I have been less than pleased with conservative response to Katrina (including Fox), it hasn't held a candle to the network news and their "little brother" CNN (according to Pinkerton). And, of the top 40 cable programs during the Katrina disaster-week, 34 of those were Fox news. 34 out of 40. It was and is averaging nearly twice as many viewers total as CNN. Does it sound like CNN didn't pay a price? For that matter, the morning show Fox and Friends is battling head to head with CBS's Early show. No effect?

Yeah, there's been a bump in viewership. According to MediaBistro, NBC got a 31% jump in viewers. Although, to be fair, that probably has as much to do that this was a nasty, long-running disaster with awesome pictures, more than the quality of coverage. And at a combined totaly fo 25 million viewers for the Big 3, this is hardly a boon -- that is less than 10% of the country at large. Bully for them. And all the extra news broadcasts watched and newspapers bought is not exactly staunching the flow of people away from them because of their liberal bias. No effect? Maybe that effect is just mitigated by compelling pictures; they don't count how many sets have the volume turned off.

Sigh. At least there is a degree of satisfaction in finally seeing the liberal man behind the curtain. Whatever happened to the theory that liberal media bias was a jealous conservative myth?

Cast your ballot!

From InstaPundit. Popular Mechanics has an online poll asking if New Orleans should be rebuilt. Right now, 75% of the non-representative sample are saying no. (Myself including, blushing with pride.)

Explained!

I just figured out why, though, New Orleans hasn't released any body counts until the last couple of days when Mississippi had preliminary counts out the day after Katrina....

Blanco rides to glory

The estimable governor of Louisiana, Katherine Babineaux Blanco (all three names only, please), is "lash[ing] out at FEMA on Tuesday,"

complaining the agency is moving too slowly in recovering the bodies of those killed by Hurricane Katrina.

The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge."

Of course, on September 1, CNN and the AP were reporting this (boldness mine):

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, The Associated Press quoted Nagin as saying. When asked how many, he reportedly said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

Nagin and other Louisiana officials had refused to give a casualty count in the past, saying emergency workers were focusing on the rescue effort.

Rescue workers continued to push bodies aside Wednesday as they used boats and helicopters to search for survivors. Their efforts have been hampered by lawlessness and damaged infrastructure.

To be fair, we should always expect better behaviosr from the federal government -- and everything from the New York City school district to Major League Baseball and Wal-Mart -- than we have seen in the honorable leaders of Louisiana. But perhaps she should duck and cover a little when Louisianans have spent the last two weeks shoving the bodies out of their way, maybe tying them to a tree or something to keep them from floating away. Certainly, certainly, the dead in Louisiana deserve more respect than they're received.

"Just when you thought Alan Dershowitz couldn't make you angrier"

Via K-Lo in the Corner, in the Harvard Crimson:

In a stab at the 50-year-old Roberts, who, if confirmed, will be the youngest chief justice in 200 years, Dershowitz said, “Today, they’re trying to nominate fetuses in the hope that they will be kept alive like [Terri] Schiavo.”

My thoughts on Palestine

There is an awesome article in Commentary magazine (via Michelle Malkin) about the alleged killing of 12-year-old Muhammed al-Dura, which was the final spark to the new intifada in 2000. In short, a French news agency (people so know for their love of Jews that it was a trope in The Scarlet Pimpernel that the Pimpernel disguised himself as a Jew because no Frenchmen would step close enough to identify him), using a Palestinian photographer, aired a story about a 45-minute gun battle which ended up critically wounding an innocent Palestinian man and killing his son. Riots broke out, and the intifada, which has killed hundreds of Jews, all of them innocent civilians. The honest to goodness photographic evidence is clear!



Only thing: never happened. Never. Oh there were real violent acts caught on film, all of them involving Palestinians throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israelis and Israeli buildings. But the main draw, the violence against Palestinians by bloodthirsty and inhumane Israeli Defense Forces? Reuters, AP, UPI, and other agencies were all there, filming the same thing France-2 was filming -- staged "battle" scenes of amateur Palestinian actors diving to the ground, acting wounded, playing dead, and getting up again like a Stephen Seagal movie. Edit down the hours of footage, cut out the crappy actors, print up placards praising the honored dead, and voila -- a manufactured war.

The official story now is that, while every single frame of recorded material was, in fact, fabricated by Palestinians, Muhammed al-Dura, must have existed, he must have been killed in the crossfire from an unrecorded gun battle between the nearby Israeli forces and Palestinians. But, then again. As Nidra Poller wrote:

[T]hey [two French journalists investigating and criticizing the original France-2 story] were assuring themselves and their audience that the death of Muhammad al-Dura was not staged, that the father’s injuries were authentic, that the Metula News Agency had exaggerated, and that the poor child must have been killed in a crossfire.

This notion of a death by crossfire is the deus ex machina of the al-Dura controversy. I have heard it a hundred times, and once used it myself. It is invoked in order to save reasonable people from even contemplating the possibility of a fabrication. But it is a figment of the imagination.

As a result of this story -- more even than Sharon visting the Temple Mount, one of Judaism's high holy places, on September 28 -- the inifada of Palestine against Israel begain in September 2000. From September 28, 2000, to August 30, 2005, 4,122 Palestinians have been killed. Of Israelis, 1,113 have been killed. All this is according to MIFTAH, an pro-Palestinian group spreading the word of martyrs and occupation. According to the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (pro-Israel, or at least anti-people who kill children), 80% of the Israelis killed were non-combatants; meanwhile, 56% of Palestinians were combatants, and another 25% "unknown" whether they were combatants or not (compared with less than a half percent "unknown" combatant status on the Israeli side). All for a 55-second video about a staged gun battle where no one was hurt, and only Palestinians were violent.

David Gerlenter wrote:

More than 500 Israeli civilians have been killed in the intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began five years ago. They were ordinary people chatting on a bus, eating ice cream in a restaurant; suddenly, a bright flash. The next moment the walls are spattered with blood and the bomb's hellish odor fills the air. Some people are blinded, others are cut to pieces. Parents living the worst seconds of their lives cast about wildly for their children in the screaming, smoky chaos.

Now we have pictures like this, from a Palestinian house:



And this, from a bus bombing in Haifa in 2004:



And these, from the celebratory Palestinians after the Gaza pull-out a couple of days ago, torching a synagogue in the very neighborhood where the whole thing started:



All for a lie. But a lie that managed through bloody attrition to get them what they wanted -- a foothold in the land of Israel. As Powerline says:

They partied like it's 1938, more or less as they hope to party in Israel proper. Is there anyone in his right mind who seriously thinks that conferring statehood on the PA will be conducive to the peace and well-being of the area?

Get your funny here!

Heh three times. Takes an Irishman to see Katrina so clearly. Thanks for the laughter-channel, Instapundit!

And follow this link (video) at the Media Blog from Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. "So poor. So black. So funny."

This is what's getting me...

About all the right-wing pundits slamming Bush, Brown, Chertoff, and any other moving target in the administration over the Katrina rcovery. It's not just that they are diverting valuable punditry away from slamming (pummeling! burying! destroying!) Nagin and Blanco. It's that they're suddenly acting as if every little whim of circumstance can and should be answered by the federal government. Presciently. Comprehensively. Even forcefully. Since when? What happened to the theory of self-government, federalism? What has changed since the days when the scariest words in the English language were "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"? (Where is Reagan when you need him?) Prescription drug benefits, the drug war, highway funding, estate taxing, and the Department of Education are apparently the things where federal involvement can be debated. But the basics of survival, the essence of life, like food and water and clothes and housing, the instinct for self-preservation, personal judgment -- well, naturally, these should be supplied by the benevolent hand of FEMA. Calling the National Guard, evacuating a city -- heck, packing one's own belongings and feeding oneself, this is The Government's job. So lay back on your roof as the flood waters rise and wait for someone to save you, then wallow in your own filth until someone comes along to clean you up. It's The Government's job.

I am so ashamed, and I am seriously losing a lot of respect for people whose opinions I previously trusted. I would expect them to have thought this through. Why aren't you thinking this through? What, exactly, in your perfect world would you have done differently? Would you have had the government swoop in to save the people from themselves? And, if so, what ideological aisle have you just put yourself on?

I'll believe a newsmag....

....when I see the Koran swirling in the toilet bowl. Time magazine is reporting that Michael Brown, of Hurricane Ivan renown, padded his resume by calling himself "assistant city manager" of Edmond, Oklahoma, when he was really "assistant to the city manager" which is the same thing as "intern." Based on comments by a current Edmond city employee who didn't work for the city until 17 years after Brown left and is saying her comments were taken out of context.

I'm shocked, shocked to find there's gambling going on here.

Both the Time's story and the correction were originally via The Corner, but here's one little snippet from the Edmond Sun article that the Brown-bashers at teh Corner neglected to mention:

Deakins also said that e-mail and phone calls have been pouring into her office this morning in light of the online report, including one e-mail from a person who serves as an assistant to a city manager on the East Coast and was upset at the characterization of what that job entails. Deakins said this person's e-mail said an assistant to a city manager is often the No. 2 or No. 3 person in a city government organization and has a wide variety of repsonsibilities. [snip]

A press release issued by the White House in 2001 when Brown was nominated to FEMA deputy director states that Brown worked "overseeing the emergency services divisions" at Edmond. While media reports question the veracity of that statement, a former Edmond mayor and City Councilman does recall Brown helping the city in emergency management.

While questions still surround his possible work at a nursing facility and at a local university, the biggest "gotcha" items -- the lack of emergency work and the job titles used now versus then, do not seem to be a slam-dunk case against Brown. In an unfortunately necessary PR move, he's stepped down as the head of FEMA efforts for Katrina. There wasn't any way around it at this point.

But I would like to point out to the fair weather friends on the right -- THIS IS NOT BROWN'S FAULT. THIS IS NOT BUSH'S FAULT. At this point, I am willing to ascribe 100% of all blame solely to Louisianan sources -- the incompetent and weepy, indescisive yet power-mad governor; baffled, unprepared, and irresponsible mayor; and the degenerate and unprincipled people of New Orleans. There is nothing that the federal government, National Guard, FEMA, Red Cross, or any other organization could have done differently. There was no way around teh chaos of the people living tehre; there was no way to circumvent the irresponsibility and unresponsiveness of the elected officials there. Without usurping the last vestiges of state authority and personal responsibility adn sending in tens of thousands of troops to hand-hold every person between Texas and Mississippi -- this could not be avoided. I think this will come out in the enxt couple of months, but the hysterical and irrational naysayers, the Monday-morning quarterbacks who are bizarrely spouting off before halftime -- this critics on the left and (shamefully) the right, will probably forget about the whole situation and their own bad judgment by the time that happens, and their myopia now will be accepted truth by then.

Shame on you all.

Embrace the crescent

As Tom Bevan points out, the "Crescent of Embrace" does bear a disarming resemblance to the Islamic crescent. This brings to mind the International Freedom Center's "history of freedom," anti-Americanism throughout history display instead of a true 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, the center for Islamis apologists (among others).



Even the name has an eerie, Orwellian ring to it -- I love Big Bother. I embrace and am embraced by my jihadi conquerors. To quote Kent Brockman: "I, for one, welcome our new insect overloards."

I remember lots of things

Jack Cafferty had a little mental meltdown on the Situation Room last week:

The thing that’s most glaring in all this is that the conditions
continue to deteriorate for the people who are victims in this, and
the efforts to do something about it don’t seem to be anywhere in
sight. [snip]

I’ve got to tell you something, we got 500-600 letters before the show
even went on the air. No one -- no one -- says the federal government
is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and
embarrassing and far-reaching and calamitous things that has come along
in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62, I remember the riots in Watts,
I remember the earthquake in San Francisco. I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled
as this situation in New Orleans.

Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be
dropped to those people who are in that Superdome down there? I mean,
what is going -- this is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It’s a disgrace, and don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the
government the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on
its face, as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.”

Now this interview was on Sept. 1, a scant four days after Katrina, but hope was certainly already in sight at that point; help was already there, though tragicially hampered by the callously incompetent mayor and governor. As always, though, Iowahawk lives....

CNN ANALYST PUSHES FOR SANDWICH DROP

In a blistering critique of the Bush Adminstration's management of the Katrina disaster, CNN analyst Jack Cafferty today repeated his call for emergency sandwiches.

"I tell you, I must have gotten 500-600 letters supporting my plan for Operation Sandwich Drop," he told CNN News Night host Wolf Blitzer. "I’m 62, I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco. And let's face it: they had plenty of sandwiches. I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as completely without sandwiches as this situation in New Orleans. Except maybe the CNN company picnic in '87. I mean, what was going on with that?" [snip]

CNN ANALYST: SANDWICH DROP SHOULD INCLUDE EGG SALAD

In another withering on-air indictment of federal sandwich disaster response, CNN Analyst Jack Cafferty scorched the Bush adminstration for efforts that were "too little, too late, and with too goddammed few sandwiches."

"I am 62 years old," said Cafferty. "Instead of meandering around on his bicycle, why isn't Bush in New Orleans, making sandwiches for the big sandwich drop? I mean, where are the damned sandwiches, Mr. President? These people need sandwiches, not promises. And not just some stupid American cheese and white bread sandwiches, they need quality sandwiches like egg salad, and tuna, and not the kind that's cut down with gobs and gobs of Miracle Whip."

"I am 62 years old," he added.

Heh...so true

From OpinionJournal's Best of the Web:

"What the American people have seen is this incredible disparity in which those people who had cars and money got out and those people who were impoverished died."--Ted Kennedy on Hurricane Katrina

""--Mary Jo Kopechne on Hurricane Katrina

Cause and effect

Today, John Podhoretz called Michael Brown, the director of FEMA, "the astonishingly brainless moron running the Federal Emergency Management Administration." This is becoming a common trope on the left anf right, that Brown is nothing more then the beneficiary of a nepotistic system where Bush et al. appoint and use friends and friends of friends in a tight circle for important government functions.

Of course, during Hurricane Ivan less than twelve months ago, the MSM response to Brown's leadership was more like this:

As Hurricane Ivan took its deadly swipe at this Gulf Coast city last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was mobilizing a team of 31 doctors, nurses and paramedics in Jacksonville, 350 miles away.

Just hours after Ivan struck on Thursday, the medical team set out in a convoy across the Florida Panhandle, escorted by the state highway patrol. The team set up a fully equipped emergency room in tents in a hospital parking lot. By Sunday, the medical workers had treated nearly 300 people for emergencies from punctures wounds to kidney failure.

The team works with military precision, down to the tan fatigues.

Notice how back then Brown was fast and uber prepared? He had more than enough detracters even then (a basic search will turn up plenty of vitriol from Atrios, DailyKos and other left-wing sites). But some of his biggest rightwing critics today -- Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds (to a lesser extent), John Podhoretz, and basically everbody on the Corner -- these people were completely silent on Michael Brown's handling of four major hurricane disasters last year. Not a whiff of disapproval in any of their arvchives. And the people at Captain's Quarters and Little Green Footballs and RedState don't seem to care at all.

Does it mean anything to these people (the critics, not those who don't care) that when they talk to military, national guard, first responders (i.e., the real people, firefighters, law enforcement, etc.), that they aren't slamming Michael Brown or FEMA's response? Or does the approval of CNN and MSNBC and the NYT mean more than, y'know, people who know facts? Does the opinion of Mary Landrieu carry more weight with them? (Note: she's an idiot.) Are the temper tantrums of thugs in New Orleans and the limp-wristed response of the people supposed to maintain order (Nagin, Blanco) completely without effect on the response of other people? The Red Cross took a couple of days to get in there, for crying out loud -- because of the looting and mayhem. Were the bean counters and managers and Red-Cross-esque support personnel at FEMA suddenly supposed to act differently?

I hate to break it to all of mankind -- the nature of centralized federal bureaucracy is inherent incompetence. Can't be avoided or even planned for.

That said -- what, exactly, has been the FEMA'S problem getting help to Mississippi? Or Alabama? Or Florida? Or the lesser-hit-but-still-with-dead-people Georgia and Virginia? What the hell is the matter with FEMA in these places?

Wait, there's nothing wrong. FEMA's organization efforts have been working as normal without the chaos of Louisiana/New Orleans. People in those five states are getting help, and FEMA --- and Michael Brown -- are operating as expected, the nifty skillfulness that delivered Florida for Bush last year after the climatic coup d'etat of Ivan.

Yeah, there was a serious breakdown in Louisiana, and, yes, FEMA does not have the resources, leadership, or mandate to deal with this kind of siutation. The situation in the fecal hellhole of Louisiana (to paraphrase Mark Steyn). Everywhere else, though, amazingly, despite Brown's nonplussing incompetence, is functioning normally. Perhaps, perhaps, amidst all the blame being heaped on Michael Brown right now -- perhaps people are looking at the wrong thing as the cause and the wrong thing as the effect.

Guarded optimism

There is a chance that, for once, Oklahoma Democrats are going to act in the best interests of the state and the Oklahoma GOP won't be completely hiding in the sand. Last week, lawmakers proposed a three-month moratorium on the gas tax here. Of course, nothing has happened yet, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. They're having the right idea; let's see if that act on it.

We had this idea first!

My brother and I were talking on Wednesday about gas prices, and Thomas (the brother) pointed out what an awesome show of confidience it would be if the President lifted the federal gas tax for a while, even more than releasing the oil reserves. Supply will straighten out quickly enough that we can give you a break without feeling the pinch.

Well, Georgia's prescient governor beat him to the punch.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said he will sign an executive order Friday that will exempt consumers from state motor fuel taxes through the end of September to "relieve some of the financial burden" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The order will remove the 7.5-cents-a-gallon tax and a 4 percent sales tax on gas, the governor said, and was set to begin at midnight.

Hope Congress and Oklahoma governor Brad Henry are all listening. Are you listening?

(Whoopsie, the AP forgot to mention that Sonny Perdue is a Republican. Don't know how it slipped their minds! Must be the same thing that made the WaPo list the two very minor GOPers in favor of a federal gas tax hike while forgetting to list a single Democrat supporting it -- while admitting that the hike had major Democratic support and little from Republicans.)

This is good to see...

Sometimes corporate America gets it right.

[T]he airline industry has launched “Operation Air Care” to provide emergency airlift to more than 25,000 New Orleans residents stranded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

---

The plan, which was crafted late in the evening Thursday, allowed the first flight to New Orleans at 8 a.m. today. Participating airlines will provide aircrafts and service to airlift evacuees. Flights will depart from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport to sites designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, such as Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Passenger carriers participating in this effort include Alaska, America West, American, ATA, Continental, Delta, Jet Blue, Northwest, Southwest, United, US Airways, and Air Canada. Cargo carriers also are providing support, including ASTAR Air Cargo, Federal Express and UPS Airlines.

This all-volunteer effort is being coordinated by the Air Transport Association and its member carriers, who are providing aircraft and crews who have volunteered their time to this incredible effort.