Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

© David Horsey - 09.01.2005

But this is America. In sorrow, in rage, but mainly in incredulity, as the images of the suffering in New Orleans and its region began to rip at the eyes and the minds of the entire country, Americans were heard to say, in one way or another: But this is America. The mass pain that was inflicted by Katrina was not only tragic, it was incoherent. For Americanism is significantly the faith that such evils do not happen here. It is the doctrine of insulation. That is why many people wish to come here: They believe that here they may escape the malevolences of history and nature, that here they will be in some unprecedented way safe, and strangers to tragedy. Americans are always so shocked when they turn out not to be exceptions to the universe. Their president also: "The people we're talking about are not refugees," President Bush insisted. But they are plainly refugees, and these refugees will be a feature of American life in many states for many months and even years to come. When was the last time that the noun "refugee" was modified by the adjective "American"? So the Americanist innocence, too, was drowned in Katrina's waters. Our invulnerability is not perfect. The storm beat us.

But this is America. The words were not a protest only against the flood. They were a protest also against the aftermath of the flood, which was not a natural catastrophe but a human one. Americanism is also the conviction that the wretchedness of large numbers of Americans is unacceptable, an offense to the American idea, a spur to American action. We take care of our own, and our efficiency is a measure of our decency. But when our efficiency fails us, we must conclude that our decency failed us, too. "No insignificant person was ever born," Bush unforgettably declared in his first inaugural address. How significant, exactly, were the persons who waited for days for relief and rescue from the Superdome and the Convention Center and the other makeshift purgatories, while the rest of the country watched their dehumanization on television? We did not take care of our own, not swiftly, not fiercely, not as if nothing in the world was more important to us. The natural fury that caused this misery should have been met with a human fury to alleviate it. It was not.

More, the American belief in American decency is, to a large extent, a belief in American government. For all the suspicion of power upon which this country was founded, the view of government as a force for ill has never really prevailed in America, because it would have defeated the American hunger for justice. American history over the last hundred years is a stirring tale of government in the proud and largely effective service of compassion. Consider also the ironic history of the Bush administration, the many times that human need, real and imagined, at home and abroad, has required it to betray its philosophy of small and limited government. Sometimes "we" cannot take care of our own; only our government can. In times of emergency, the power of the federal government may be a beautiful thing. When Bush finally flew to the devastation, he said: "In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in our hour of need. And the federal government will do its part." Its part? But this is America. Sometimes the federal government's part is the whole, or most of it. This should have been so in the early hours, when the local and state authorities showed their fecklessness. Instead, micro-incompetence was succeeded by macro-incompetence.

And by our own, we mean all of our own. Disasters often reveal how we live. One of the most chilling things in New Orleans last week was the extent to which all of us were not represented in the crisis. The some of us who suffered were overwhelmingly poor and black. If you did not see race and class, you were blind. Barbara Bush saw race and class, and expressed race and class, when she visited the Houston Astrodome: "And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. So this is working very well for them." But the people living in the refugee camp on the Astroturf are not underprivileged, they are destitute. The good news is that most Americans did not respond like the overprivileged former first lady. Near and far, they saw race and class and they rushed to help--thereby shaming their government, which is one of the duties of civil society. Now American government will no doubt demonstrate its capacity for good, but it is not American government, with its briefings and its drop-bys, that will have preserved American solidarity. There were no heroes in office, but there will have been heroes. Perhaps this really is America.

© 09.08.2005 - The Editors of The New Republic

A Manhattan fertility specialist has been sued by two women who say he broke their hearts after meeting them through an online dating site on which he pretended to be single.

We Are Winning In Court: Now Urge Lawmakers to Push for Patriot Reform

Supporters of democracy had a crucial victory last week, when a federal court told the FBI to lift a gag order that limits the Patriot Act debate. If affirmed on appeal, the judge’s ruling would allow our client to speak about the dangerous provisions that allow FBI demands for library and Internet records.

This win in court could not be better timed for our work in Congress. And the momentum is on our side. As a joint “conference committee” prepares to meet on Patriot Act renewal, nearly 100 lawmakers have already joined “Dear Conferee” letters asking their colleagues to support the Senate reforms to the Patriot Act.

While not perfect, the Senate bill is a significant improvement over the proposals in the House version, which would do nothing to fix serious civil liberties threats in the Patriot Act and would actually make the law worse in many respects. You can help right now.

Click here to urge your member of Congress to sign the “Dear Conferee” letters.

Early Warning by William M. Arkin

Michael Brown Was Set Up: It's All in the Numbers

It's so easy to blame Michael Brown, but he got his marching orders from someone else. Weapons of mass destruction, not waves of mass destruction, are the president's priorities. Want to get on the White House Varsity team? Get with the program.

The same obsession that led the Bush administration to see weapons of mass destruction and terrorism in every tea leaf and go to war in Iraq now guides the entire federal government disaster response effort.

How do I prove the point? I've got the goods.

Dave Krieger: Avalanche is playing a game of ice charades

The NHL might be ready to resume, but reality is still on vacation over at the Pepsi Center.

... If the Moore situation is no factor, why was May unwilling to speak his name? In a 10-minute interview session with the wretches, his first since signing with the Avs this summer, May referred to Moore only once, as "the individual."

******

May's quote after the game in which Moore made an unpenalized hit on the Canucks' Markus Naslund:

"There's definitely a bounty on his head. Clean hit or not, that's our best player and you respond. It's going to be fun when we get him."

ISS photos of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina.

NASA's Looking At Earth photos

Check out this dispatch about the Presidents speech from Jackson Square on TomDispatch:

"Don't say they can't. They can -- and they did. Despite every calumny, it turns out that the Bush administration can put together an effective, well-coordinated rescue team and get crucial supplies to militarily occupied, devastated New Orleans on demand, in time, and just where they are most needed. Last Thursday, in a spectacular rescue operation, the administration team delivered just such supplies without a hitch to one of the city's neediest visitors, who had been trapped in hell-hole surroundings for almost three weeks by Hurricane Katrina. I'm speaking, of course, of George W. Bush."

There is some good insight into what New Orleans looks like on Brian Williams blog including this post from the same night:

"The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out."

To bad the rest of the citizens of New Orleans don't rate as high as Bush for services like electricity.

"I think I may need a bathroom break? Is this possible?"

President Bush, in a note while at the United Nations

"To Autumn"

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats
September 1819

© Tom Toles - 09.22.2005

© Ben Sargent - 09.21.2005

© David Horsey - 09.20.2005

© Glenn McCoy - 09.23.2005

When I saw this cartoon this morning I just started laughing.

© David Horsey - 09/23/2005