From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Friday Molly Blogging
Happy birthday this Sunday to the late, great Molly Ivins---born August 30, 1944. She left us eight years ago, but her Texas sass has lost none of its bite. With the ten-year anniversary of hurricane Katrina upon us, I thought this year I'd post some of her observations from 2005 as the disaster unfolded:
Happy birthday, Molly.
Sept. 1 Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now. To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.
Sept. 8 Hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, [Michael] Brown wrote his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, to ask permission to send 1,000 FEMA employees to the scene to support rescuers and to "convey a positive image" about the government's response. Brownie said he expected the workers to be there two days later. This apparently inspired Bush's comment, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." Brownie is ably assisted by two top aides, one a former Bush campaign advanceman and the other a former Bush campaign public relations guy.
Nov. 8 After Brownie's appearance with President Bush at a post-Katrina press conference, the press aide spotted an emergency: "Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. ... You just need to look more hardworking. ... ROLL UP THE SLEEVES."
The only FEMA worker in New Orleans in the first days after the hurricane was Marty Bahamonde, who e-mailed Brownie describing the situation as "past critical": people dying, food gone, water going, the homeless and hungry massing in the streets. Brownie replied: "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?"
Thanks for the update? Anything I need to tweak?
And her letter "from" Texas Gov. Rick "Goodhair" Perry to Dubya is un-excerptable because it's
priceless in all its glory.
Highly recommended: Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, a non-sugar-coated account of her amazing yet far-from-charmed life as a journalist and shitkicker. And here's a Texas Observer interview with Janice Engel, director of the upcoming documentary Raise Hell. Thanks to a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign to which many Kossacks donated, post-production is rolling merrily along.
Cheers and happy birthday, Molly, wherever you are.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 28, 2015
Note: There will be no C&J on Monday. In its place will be an image of Mike Huckabee doing something never before attempted by a human being with a pineapple. Parental discretion is advised. Back Tuesday to help pick various jaws up off the floor.
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14 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Pope Francis speaks to a joint session of Congress:
27
Days 'til the
Long Beach Lobster Festival:
14
Weekly unemployment claims, a drop of 6,000 and the 22nd week under 300k, a sign of a growing labor market:
271,000
(Source: Labor Dept.)
Percent chance that gun thefts from vehicles are getting so bad around the country that police departments are starting to use social media to urge people to leave their guns at home:
100%
(Source: AP)
Age of the
world's oldest known message in a bottle:
108
Date on which George W. Bush broke the all-time presidential vacation record, surpassing then-record-holder Ronald Reagan:
8/19/05
Percent of Americans surveyed who say they whipped out their smartphone to text/email or make a call, respectively, while at a social gathering:
61%, 52%
(Source: Pew survey)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Cone of cuddle…
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CHEERS to a decade of hurtin' and helpin'. With Hurricane Erika serving as a long-distance reminder of what plowed through the gulf states ten years ago this weekend, President Obama spoke at a Katrina commemoration event (one of many taking place throughout the week) in New Orleans. Eloquent as always:
He also fired a well-deserved shot across the previous Republican administration's bow: "What started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster---a failure of government to look out for its own citizens." It's good to see all the things that have been rebuilt or otherwise improved, just as it's terrible to see all the things that haven't. But my big unanswered question from Katrina is: has George W. Bush spent any time "sitting on the porch" with Trent Lott at the house the former Senate Majority leader built---in Bush's famous words---"out of the rubbles" of the old house. Because if he hasn't, then I suspect he might've been---gasp---bullshitting us. What a shock.
CHEERS to headlines you don’t see every day. It's almost shocking: Ruling Clears Way For Unions. Do tell…
Unions just became bigger fish.
Contract workers and other temporary employees will be able to more easily unionize following a landmark ruling Thursday by a U.S. federal labor regulator.
The ruling from the National Labor Relations Board will ripple through the fast-food, construction and other industries that rely heavily on contract workers and employees of franchisees. Previously, such companies were considered by law to be a step removed from many of their workers when certain labor disputes arose.
The decision, which came in a 3-2 vote on a single case before the board involving sanitation workers, is the latest to attempt to tackle the core question of who counts as an employee in a modern economy that is increasingly reliant on shift work, contract workers and other temporary employees.
Reaction was mixed. Unions threw their hats in the air. Management threw their golf clubs in the lake.
CHEERS to happy coincidences. Fifty-two years ago today, on August 28, 1963, an intimate crowd of 200,000 people watched as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech (watch it here) from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And seven years ago tonight Barack Obama echoed the words of King (among them: "The fierce urgency of now") when he spoke to a packed stadium in Denver as the first African-American presidential nominee in the history of the universe. This for me is still King's money quote:
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"I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character."
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Or as modern day Republicans call it: a nightmare.
Emmett would be
74 this year.
JEERS to the good dying much too young. Speaking of civil rights, today is the
60th anniversary of the abduction and lynching of 14 year-old Emmett Till---a shocking and disgraceful act that helped spark the civil rights movement in 1955. Till's original glass-topped casket (his remains were exhumed and re-buried in 2005) will be restored and go on display at the Smithsonian's
Museum of African American History and Culture next year. We hope his killers---who confessed after they were acquitted and never showed remorse before they died in 1980 and 1994---are currently in the process of feeling a certain burning sensation for eternity.
CHEERS to the right man for the job. I ran across this story about Jimmy Carter this morning and…holy cow. In 1952 the pre-politics Navy Lieutenant led a team into a contaminated nuclear reactor to shut it down by hand:
Lt. Carter went all Star
Trek II on a reactor's ass.
Lt. Carter and the rest of his team ran through a radioactive flood with hand-tools and stopwatches and carried out an incredibly technical feat of nuclear engineering in 89-second intervals fully expecting that it would mean they’d all soon be dead from some horrible form of radiation sickness. And they did it. They shut down the reactor and saved the day.
Jimmy Carter is a quiet, gentle man who teaches Sunday school. But don’t forget that he’s also a quiet, gentle, Sunday-school teaching badass.
After their success, the crew was tested and tested and tested for months afterward, and they suffered no effects from the radiation. Well, almost: to this day Carter remains the only U.S. president who glows in the dark.
JEERS to National Bow Tie Day. Knowing that they're championed by George Will and Tucker Carlson makes me nauseous, so pardon me if I don't celebrate. On the other hand, this one's kinda purty...
On the other other hand, looking at it makes me realize how small and insignificant I am---a pimple on a gnat's ass's pimple on a gnat's ass after being zapped by a sub-atomic miniaturization ray gun. So, yeah, like i said. Not a fan.
CHEERS to history not repeating itself. On August 28, 1968, police and anti-war demonstrators made a hash of things in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert Humphrey. In the wake of the fracas all the parties came together and instituted a new rule that has served conventions well ever since: Decaf, Decaf, Decaf.
Tonight on "Real Time" Wendy Davis
reminds America that Texas could've
elected a competent governor last year.
CHEERS to home vegetation. I haven't decided what I'm going to do this weekend, solve all the world's problems or sit around on my fat ass watching TV. It all depends on whether or not the TV turns on when I hit the power switch. Tonight on HBO's
Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Rick Santorum, Wendy Davis, Robert Costa, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Michael Weiss. The most notable
new DVD release this week is the Oscar-winning Edward Snowden documentary
Citizenfour. The baseball schedule
is here and you'll find all the info you need about the
U.S. Open Tennis tourney here. (Our tennis-ball-obsessed pooch Haley will be watching from start to finish.) The Video Music Awards are Sunday at 9 on MTV, but I won’t be watching because I've always been bitter that video killed the radio star. No John Oliver this weekend, so you'll have to find something else to do Sunday night at 11. (I'll be hoisting my speakers into the window and blasting my favorite death metal ditties at the neighbors. I think they'll appreciate the lesson in modern culture.)
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
CNN even gives Bernie
his own snazzy graphic.
Meet the Press: Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI); Trymaine Lee, MSNBC national correspondent, revisits the lower Ninth Ward where he covered Hurricane Katrina ten years ago for The Times- Picayune; author Malcolm Gladwell parses the social science numbers on post-Katrina New Orleans; Melissa Harris-Perry.
CNN's State of the Union: Bernie!!!
This Week: Bernie!!! Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA).
Face the Nation: Gov. Bobby Jindal; New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D); Historian Douglas Brinkley and Getty photojournalist Mario Tama on the 10-years anniversary of Katrina; Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics Mark Zandi on the Wall Street blip; Ann Selzer (the "Selzer Score") on the latest Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll. (Spoiler alert: corn dogs lead all the candidates by a stick.)
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) patiently explains that his primary poll numbers are tanking so badly because Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire love him so much they don't want him to leave the race and go back to being governor full-time. This logic renders Chris Wallace mute.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 28, 2005
JEERS to snuffing dissent. Big surprise: a critic of Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar no-bid contracts and blatant war-profiteering has been fired in retaliation by Cheney's goons. Lt. General (that's three stars on the shoulders) Bunnatine H. Greenhouse says, "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to [Halliburton subsidiary] KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed." Three words: tell-all book.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to America's very, very cool places. The National Park Service turned 99 this week, and if you want to end your Friday with some breathtaking (but oil-well-free…sorry Republicans) pics of some of the amazing places that define our geography and historic sites, click here. I like this one from Yosemite National Park. Consider this your moment of zen:
The Park Service, by the way, was created by Woodrow Wilson. The letter after his name: D, of course.
Have a great weekend! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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