Ok, that made me smile.

go look, and give it a second: [link]

Don't forget to keep your eye open for the message beforehand.

I like it.

oh, yay.

how do you like the size of the font on the CNN website.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who helped shift the U.S. Supreme Court toward a more conservative ideology and strongly supported states' rights during his three decades on the bench, has died.

Yeah, he strongly supported states' rights, except twice during the 2000 election. But never fear; he said those decisions should not be used as precedent.

More than 400 students have applied to Loyola University Chicago, most coming from its sister Jesuit school, Loyola University New Orleans. Half had been admitted as of late afternoon Friday. Spokeswoman Maeve Kiley said the school "will honor their tuition that they already paid.''

Looks like I'm getting some more neighbors.

I'm wondering when Habitat for Humanity will be able to start working in the damaged areas. I may try to get some friends to go down there with me in January if HfH can use us.

Before I try to absorb any more news I may need to get lost in some fiction for a while. Otherwise I might end up wandering the streets muttering something about a handbasket.

Shit. Dammit.

Brown? Head of FEMA? Was asked to resign from his previous position as commissioner of an association's horse show judges. For "a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

[link]

t headdesk headdesk headdesk

Brown? Head of FEMA? Was asked to resign from his previous position as commissioner of an association's horse show judges. For "a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

Yeah, but he's a friend of Bush's, right?

All part of Bush's campaign promise to "Change the Tone" of Washington politics. Or something.

eta: OK, he was a "GOP Activist." I forget where I heard that he was a friend of Bush's - I might have misremembered.

I guess he did. To the sound of one hand clapping. Or something.

Some more BBC perspective:

********

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

By Matt Wells c BBC News, Los Angeles

At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling.

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

Borrowed time

The fitting metaphors relating to the New Orleans debacle are almost too numerous to mention.

First there was an extraordinary complacency, mixed together with what seemed like over-reaction, before the storm. The city's hurricane shelters grew increasingly filthy and crime-ridden

A genuinely heroic mayor orders a total evacuation of the city the day before Katrina arrives, knowing that for decades now, New Orleans has been living on borrowed time.

The National Guard and federal emergency personnel stay tucked up at home.

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and federal level - even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city in advance.

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

Abandoned to the elements

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

Too often in the so-called "New South", they still look positively 19th Century

New Orleans partied-on just hoping for the best, abandoned by anyone in national authority who could have put the money into really protecting the city.

Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove.

The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?

The neglect that meant it took five days to get water, food, and medical care to thousands of mainly orderly African-American citizens desperately sheltering in huge downtown buildings of their native city, has been going on historically, for as long as the inadequate levees have been there.

Divided city

I should make a confession at this point: I have been to New Orleans on assignment three times in as many years, and I was smitten by the Big Easy, with its unique charms and temperament.

But behind the elegant intoxicants of the French Quarter, it was clearly a city grotesquely divided on several levels. It has twice the national average poverty rate.

The government approach to such deprivation looked more like thoughtless containment than anything else. It will be many weeks before the flood waters are cleared

The nightly shootings and drugs-related homicides of recent years pointed to a small but vicious culture of largely black-on-black crime that everyone knew existed, but no-one seemed to have any real answers for.

Again, no-one wanted to pick up the bill or deal with the realities of race relations in the 21st Century. (continued...)