Patriot
 

Your primary works in invisible mode. Was it an oversight or intentional that this sock doesn't?

"You're in the asshole of the universe, Captain..."
 

I would prefer to be Lilith.

Patriot
 

I think it is two misspellings, a failure to capitalize, and a failure to hyphenate. The hyphenation problem might be attributable to the fact that there's a red-herring adjective ending in "-ly."

Hey! Check it out:

It turns out Louisiana formally requested emergency Federal aid before Katrina made landfall.

A call for revolution!
 

September 6, 2005
The Larger Shame
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The wretchedness coming across our television screens from Louisiana has illuminated the way children sometimes pay with their lives, even in America, for being born to poor families.

It has also underscored the Bush administration's ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans. The scenes in New Orleans reminded me of the suffering I saw after a similar storm killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991 - except that Bangladesh's government showed more urgency in trying to save its most vulnerable citizens.

But Hurricane Katrina also underscores a much larger problem: the growing number of Americans trapped in a never-ending cyclone of poverty. And while it may be too early to apportion blame definitively for the mishandling of the hurricane, even President Bush's own administration acknowledges that America's poverty is worsening on his watch.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush.

If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.

Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India.

Under Mr. Bush, the national infant mortality rate has risen for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. On immunizations, the U.S. ranks 84th for measles and 89th for polio.

One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.

"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."

The reasons for this are complex and partly cultural, but one reason is that Japan has tried hard to stitch all Japanese together into the nation's social fabric. In contrast, the U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.

It's not just that funds may have gone to Iraq rather than to the levees in New Orleans; it's also that money went to tax cuts for the wealthiest rather than vaccinations for children.

None of this is to suggest that there are easy solutions for American poverty. As Ronald Reagan once said, "We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won." But we don't need to be that pessimistic - in the late 1990's, we made real headway. A ray of hope is beautifully presented in one of the best books ever written on American poverty, "American Dream," by my Times colleague Jason DeParle.

So the best monument to the catastrophe in New Orleans would be a serious national effort to address the poverty that afflicts the entire country. And in our shock and guilt, that may be politically feasible. Rich Lowry of The National Review, in defending Mr. Bush, offered an excellent suggestion: "a grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right's support for more urban spending." That would be the best legacy possible for Katrina.

Otherwise, long after the horrors have left TV screens, about 50 of the 77 babies who die each day, on average, will die needlessly, because of poverty. That's the larger hurricane of poverty that shames our land.

Patriot
 

You are correct, of course. I was taking into account only the last line.

Dumbass?
 

No, no that was done by such geniuses as Fat Sean Hannity and Even fatter fuck fag and dope addict Rush Limbaugh with what, a grand total of one year of cottege between the two?

Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana the day before that letter was dated.

And what was requested? Money for state actions and debris removal.

in other news
 

In fairness, it sounds like the NYT did a number on Ms. Thompson's statement. From the Mercury News (picked at random from about 10 different articles on Google news all putting the statement roughly the same way):

• Margita Thompson, Schwarzenegger's press secretary, would not say whether Schwarzenegger would sign the gay-marriage bill. The governor does support the state's current domestic partnership laws, which grant same sex couples many, but not all, of the rights and obligations of married couples.
  
  ``The governor believes that the people spoke when they voted in Proposition 22,'' which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, Thompson said. ``It's now before the courts, which is where the governor believes it belongs. He will uphold whatever the court decides.''

It's still a punt, and he's still a punk for doing it, but at least it's not quite as outside the Republican anti-judicial activist agenda as the NYT made it sound like.

Sounds like Karen Hughes is thinking hard about how to improve the way the U.S. comes across on Al Jazeera.

So you mean the whole thing about not being able to take any action until Louisiana requested it formally was just bullshit?

(Note, I have drafted letters of this length and formality before, as I am sure has most if not all the people on this board. As we all know, they do not spring out of the keyboard in 15 minutes. I suspect there may have been an oral request proceding it, and this was not the first communication the Bush administration received.)

At any rate, it took FEMA another day to bang out a one pager requesting that DHS consider sending some personnel sometime in the next week.

With some arguement about why DHS should think about caring.

Your federal government working for you.
 

This is growing tiresome.

Your federal government working for you.
 

Yeah, but everyone acknowledges Spank and Penske are tiresome on this topic. Will you admit Baltassoc and Ty have also just gone way too far?

That press release is a wonderful read. Thank you, Chief Justice, for pointing out that our noble President assumed responsibility as this storm approached.

I know many will criticize the man, saying that as Ivan hit the great swing state of Florida Bush was scheduling his visit to the state while he didn't interupt his well-earned vacation until after the levees broke in New Orleans. But you and I know, that this man, Haiglike, announced that he was in command when action was needed, and did his very best. The best he could.

Your federal government working for you.
 

Growing tiresome?

Did you appreciate my homage last night? It needed the capper. The new post with no subject line that asked whether anyone on the board could possibly agree with Spanky's position that the school bus shot was The Most Common Picture Associated With The Hurricane and then took some pot shot at Spanky's politics and or personal debating style. Unfortunately the lead up wore me out. He has stamina, I tell you.