JZ, at this point, I would hang on to them for a week or so. They may get through the backlog and need more by then. Or, I had gotten an address for a charity that needed clothing for hurricane refugees in San Antonio. It's at home, but I can post it in Press late tonight or tomorrow.

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G-D Bureaucratic process.

I'm trying to get together a donation drive for a shelter here in LA that's taking a bunch of evacuees.

www.dreamcenter.org

The people don't have UNDERWEAR. Why on earth do we need everyone and their uncle to approve the damn drive????????????

GRRRRRRRR.

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The kid LF who drove home the winning run against the A's last night?

Positive for 'roids.

I call do-overs!

So I skimmed through Time and Newsweek coverage of the hurricane and aftermath. First of all, Time's coverage is much better. Newsweek can barely stand to critique the administration. ("It was bad luck! Mother natrure!" la la la)

BUT the important thing is now I understand why it took so long to get the federal relief moving.

Bush's legal advisors were having a fight about the implications of Federalizing the military to go in there and do aid work. (Something Bush Pere did during the LA Riots.) Basically there were lots of meetings with lots of mealy mouthed protect-your-ass masters. So nobody could figure out the chain of command or who was authorized to do what.

So nobody was in charge. Nobody was coordinating the resources. The military weren't authorized to go in.

It's that stupid.

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FEMA for Kids Rap.

No, really.

No, I'm not kidding.

Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.

Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.

[link]

I'm too afraid to listen to the RealAudio file....

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I call do-overs!

Fine. I want do-overs for the Giambi years as well.

So nobody was in charge. Nobody was coordinating the resources. The military weren't authorized to go in.

This is very fixable. Why, 13 years after Rodney King, have they still not fixed this?

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Happy Birthday, Lyra!

Also, the 1st and 3rd of the RX7 models (hated the 2nd one - again, too boxy in the wrong way)

So the math is me = Cindy, and Cindy = Frank, so Frank = me... Which given the RX7 rightness of the above statement, holds true.

I had an 80 RX7 and the 93+ (It was '93, right? I'm too lazy to Google and I recall seeing it at the racetrack before an Indy race in '92 which would make the debut a year later the '93... ((Googling might have been easier.))) is still possibly my favorite car. It just makes me sigh and feel all wistful.

Cars being stolen are bad. The RX7 was stolen as was my Del Sol VTEC (indeed a sporty as all hell Civic).

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Let the censorship begin:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When U.S. officials asked the media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free speech watchdogs said on Wednesday.

The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration's ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors said in separate telephone interviews.

"It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story," said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, an authors' group that defends free expression.

[link]

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Then there's this:

While watching the MSNBC program, CONNECTED, COAST TO COAST with Ron Reagan, a man from the Evergreen Foundation was on air spinning the myth that the President had to "beg" the Governor of Louisiana to take action.

Having been on this show several times I called one of the bookers, Susan Durrwatcher, to alert her to the fact that this man was misrepresenting what happened. I offered Susan the following objective, documented facts (see timeline below).

Susan thanked me for my "opinion" and said "we just have a different perspective."

Stunned, I asked her by what standard of journalism that an objective fact was mere opinion? I asked her to simply look at the documents and correct the record. She declined.

Timeline: [link]

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Did they ask or did they tell? Only one is censorship.

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Wolfram, well here's from more of the article:

But on Tuesday, FEMA refused to take reporters and photographers along on boats seeking victims in flooded areas, saying they would take up valuable space need in the recovery effort and asked them not to take pictures of the dead.

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