the Secretary of State going shoe-shopping and taking in Spamalot

Well, it's not like there's much for her to do, other than to receive condolence calls from the 3 world leaders still speaking to us.

Halliburton

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

This has become ludicrous. Well, I guess that means we're rebuilding, right?

Over in Press, I've put up the link and address for the St. Vincent De Paul store in Houston, if anyone else would like to mail items there. I'm going through my clothes, and unfortunately, it looks like the majority of the donatable ones are more appropriate for fall/winter in the upper Midwest, not late summer in the South. I do have lots of jeans in good shape that are going, as well as a few children's items and some pretty-smelling soap and lotion. I'll probably also send down my rather large collection of unused makeup samples that my sister and I have accumulated from various freebie gifts at the Clinique counter.

Kathy, thanks so much for the link. I'm going to print up the list of needed items and hit the bookstore, gift shop and ICU/ICN at work on Tuesday to see if they're willing to donate, and I've already talked to my mom, who'll meet me at church tomorrow with some children's books from her store.

A woman in my yoga practice this morning insisted that before the hurricane there were busses all around the city ready to take people to safer ground, but people wouldn't leave the city. They should have done what they were told to do, she insisted, and left when ordered to evacuate because they all could have.

My pacifist, liberal-Berkeley yoga instructor took her aside and verbally smacked her upside the head, telling her that those awful uncharitable thoughts of her has no place in a yoga practice.

namaste, dammit!

Raq, I've been meaning to ask you this because at one point in my life I was flirting with the idea of taking the foreign exam and now I'm flirting with the idea of possibly at some point maybe considering applying for a DODD school position.

Do you find pressure to not badmouth an administration you disagree with when your job or the job of your spouse is to be a representative of the US abroad? I guess what I'm trying to ask is if I were a DODD teacher or in USFS, would I be able to espouse my anti-administration views freely or would there be pressures to not do so openly or even repercussions for doing so?

there were busses all around the city ready to take people to safer ground, but people wouldn't leave the city.

NOLA reports have reached such saturation levels that I can't remember where I read it. But I thought I read that the NOLA busses stopped running Saturday.

I'm not convinced that Bush cares about white people more than black people.

I agree in part with Strega. I don't know about claims of racism, but I'd argue that Bush doesn't care about poor people, black or white.

FWIW, I don't think it's that Bush doesn't care about them because they are black, or because they are poor. They are simply other people, and it doesn't occur to him to care about other people.

Okay, yes. He doesn't actually care about anyone. But when people are rich, he, at least, pretends to care.

"I'm afraid I would have assaulted him."

I heart Clinton.

Halliburton

BWAH. In hearing news reports about Bush's appproval rating dropping, I keep remembering the Vanity Fair article about how second-term presidencys are always the ones with the Big Scandal that shakes the administration.

I keep waiting for Bush's. Maybe it's on the horizon.

The prosecutor is supposed to be wrapping the Plame investigation this fall.

I hope that we'll see something come of that investigation Tom. It seems like most people don't care about it though.

I wish it were more satisfying to see the popularity ratings tanking. The only thing that will satisfy is for them to be gone. The loss of life that could have been prevented if there had been competent leadership watching the weather channel.

And of course Halliburton stock went way the hell up. [link] What % of the windfall do you suppose they will contribute?

I'll watch TDS during the week and perhaps laugh, but it is getting harder to find any humor in this farce of a government. So many lives lost under his leadership.

I can't tell you how many times I type and delete. My level of horror and anger is making it impossible to articulate.