Delay-ed gratification

I'm relatively sure about seven thousand bloggers will use that headline at some point today or tomorrow.

Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, a Republican from Texas, was indicted today by the district attorney in Austin, Ronnie Earle. As all the news networks have mentioned eight million times or so, Ronnie Earle happens to be a Democrat. Since he has prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans in a state that trends Republican should dismiss concerns that he's some sort of vengeful partisan. Unless "vengeful" means indicting someone who keeps doing all kinds of illegal shit.

So DeLay has stepped down as Majority Leader, as he is required to do. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is currently in the political fight of his life (he won't win, either) amid an intense SEC investigation into his personal finances. He made anywhere from 2 to 6 million bucks this summer from selling his family hospital stock right before it crashed. And it was in a blind trust. If you're wondering how he managed to sell things in a blind trust, and magically pick the perfect time to cash in before the stock price tumbled, well, it certainly looks fishy. I suppose that's why the SEC is investigating. Martha Stewart's haul from her insider trading conviction (which she served prison time for, remember) was about $50,000. Maybe not even that much.

As good things always happen in threes, perhaps the rumors of an October indictment of Karl Rove by U. S. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will come to pass. There are still tons more of corrupt politicians oozing dirty money out of their pores, but getting rid of these three for a while would help somewhat...

Save it. I'm not in the mood.

(talk to the hand edition)

Since I live in this country and would like to feel as much pride as possible in that fact, it really saddens me to find out that my pessimistic instincts about our military's conduct overseas are correct. It's sad. In fact, my hunches might not have been pessimistic ENOUGH. I'm telling you: it's completely obvious to me that our troops, that we pay for, are being given orders to beat the shit out of detainees, today, and yesterday, and ever since we've been taking captives in Iraq. It's obvious that the orders go all the way up to the top echelons of the military. Shame on them.

This isn't the way our military used to act, seriously. And they don't have to act this way now. It's futile, and it doesn't produce good intelligence. People who are being tortured, ESPECIALLY if they're innocent, will tell you anything you want to hear, in order for the beatings to stop. We don't know who's innocent and who's dangerous because none of our guys speak Arabic, and the social order has disintegrated under our reconstruction efforts to the point where nearly everyone in the country has been forced to take some sort of terrible "side" in the fighting.

Here's the thing: I know the Pentagon is worried about the uproar, in this country and around the world, if the full extent of the abuses was made public. Of course there would be a backlash among those who currently have turned a blind eye. But the abuses are wrong FOR THEIR OWN SAKE. People shouldn't be abused, whether you're trying to talk them into a democracy or whatever, they shouldn't be abused. Not this like. Nine year old kids with brown skin shouldn't be sodomized by American soldiers. Other soldiers shouldn't shoot video of it. This type of behavior shouldn't fit neatly into ANYBODY's moral code, really.

It gets a lot worse, too, what (some of) our people are doing. Some of the stuff I can't bring myself to type about. I hope it's not true, but if history is any guide, God help us...

And if you don't like this story, I'm sorry. I'm not one of the people doing it. You can ignore it if you like, but the victims can't. Victims always know what's happened to them. Victims always know.

Castro-intestinal disorder...

It's really rather embarrassing that Havana can evacuate completely for a huge hurricane with 0 fatalities in leftist, evil Cuba, where Fidel Castro is in charge (more or less by himself, when he's not watching baseball games) of all the evacuation procedures. They had a flawless evacuation last year, for all practical purposes. Havana isn't as big as Houston, but it's bigger than New Orleans, and both American towns have much wider roads.

But that's just it. The roads are the problem, aren't they? For a long time, our status as the world's only truck-powered nation allowed us to prosper and expand, building nice homes with several garages for gas-guzzling cars, in suburbs that weren't close enough to walk to the store, or the pharmacy, or the doctor, or the gym (!), or school, or anything. But we could drive everywhere.

What are the odds of the Bush people calling Fidel Castro for evacuation advice?

Drummerless and bummerless (summerless?)

Tomorrow, Spooncat!s are GO, and at eleven in the morning. Cappy, Bronko, DSSTM and me. We'll do all the hit tunes.

Hopefully it will be nice weather, like in a major motion picture.

The gig is at Nelson Park, opening up something called a Taste of South Dakota. As far as I can tell, South Dakota tastes pretty good, a nice honey consomme, but you have to remember, the winery's only been open for one year's worth of grapes, so...

King of the Hy

To any of you who have seen the guy in Sioux Falls who looks exactly like Hank Hill from King Of The Hill (allowing for the difference between the animated and real-life worlds): I just saw him too, at Hy-Vee.

Hy-Vee Dateline: "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart", the Al Green version. Love that snare drum!

Love that snare drum.

Hey, where you guys goin'?

Remember the "Jump To Conclusions Mat" from "Office Space"?

You don't even need to jump to read some of these conclusions...

The president gave a speech last night, and the lights came on in New Orleans for the speech, and then, after the President and his handlers left... the lights went off.

The president is being ridiculed around the world for a Reuters photograph that shows him scribbling a note to Condoleeza Rice during the U. N. conference, asking if he could take a bathroom break.

54 Republican Senators voted down a Senate amendment that would have created an independent commission to study the Department of Homeland Security's competence and emergency response in the wake of Katrina. The report from around the country, as citizens contact the Senate offices asking why, is that the Senators had "procedural problems" with the amendment. I wonder if that means that they actually DO support a non-Republican dominated commission looking into the Bush Administration, as long as the "procedures" don't offend anyone?

Bush accepted Mike Brown's resignation from FEMA, although he seemed unaware of it when questioned by reporters the day it happened. The real kickers, though, also were revealed that day: the real massive screw-ups belonged to Bush and Michael Chertoff. These guys really screwed up, and bad. And a nonpartisan Congressional group issued their findings that New Orleans governor Kathleen Blanco did everything she was supposed to do (and more) in order to secure the swiftest possible federal response to Katrina. Chertoff is the guy controlling those strings, and the guy above him is the president. The president was touring the West Coast doing fundraisers for a full day and a half while Blanco tried to get Bush on the phone, and Chertoff actually said on Thursday, Sept. 1 (the fourth day of the disaster) that it was ONLY THAT DAY that the federal government became aware of the humanitarian nightmare at the Convention Center in New Orleans. During the president's visit to New Orleans on September 2, all air traffic (which was basically the entire relief effort at that point) stopped during the entirety of the president's time in the city, due to security concerns. It was Saturday before anybody found the time to get people out of the Convention Center.

So, the head of FEMA has quit (thankfully), and Bush and Chertoff are under the gun for their efforts thus far, so what does Bush do? In his last real chance to appoint someone competent to oversee the relief effort, who does he pick? KARL ROVE. Seriously...

And, on a more trivial note, I didn't watch the speech, both because I had to work AND because I'm fond of the English language, with words being pronounced correctly and being used in the right order. I think it's clever and worth learning. But still, I've seen photographs from the speech, and it looks like Bush's shirt is buttoned wrong, like it's one button off. I've looked at it a couple of different ways, and either it's a very weird shirt, or it's trick photography, or he buttoned it wrong.

Dogpile!

There's a surprise show coming up!

September 26, Monday. We'll be playing some songs. By "we" I mean the three brothers, Xopher, Mark Romanowski, and guest drummer Jeff Peterson, along with the trusted Brian Smith helping out on vocals.

By "Monday" I mean "Monday."

The locale will be the Mad Rock Pub, the site of many names over the past years, including "Brewery" or "Brewpub," sometimes "Brickhouse," or "upstairs from Suite E."

What time will we start? Shoot, I'm making it up as I go along. Let's say nine. It's a Monday, so we'll start earlier than a weekend night. We'll play two long sets, sort of split evenly between Spooncat! originals and covers by bands we like.

By "bands we like" I mean bands like Radiohead and The Beatles, David Bowie and Rufus Wainwright, you know...

A snide comment

Perhaps New Orleans could have gotten the Administration's attention by performing gay marriages at City Hall the day the floodwaters hit. The response might well have been much swifter and more effective (gay marriage being something the Administration actually cares about).

Unbelievable...

The head of FEMA said that Thursday was the first that the Feds had heard that thousands of refugees were trapped in squalor at the New Orleans Convention Center.

I knew about it Tuesday noon, and I haven't been watching television. The world's media have been reporting on it non-stop for over 36 hours now. Thursday FEMA found out (or so the head of FEMA claims). It's either astonishing incompetence or the most craven buck-passing lie a public figure can tell, I suppose. Could be both, with these nitwits.

The president said "Help is on the way" 78 hours after the massive flooding started. 78 hours. He finally returned to his office in Washington more than 48 hours after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast shore, and more than 60 hours after the National Weather Service warned that the most intense relief mobilizations possible were going to be needed to help New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm.

A Canadian relief team, stocked with supplies, was denied at the U. S. border. Homeland Security didn't even let them in the country. Too blond? I have no idea why. It's stunning.

The National Guard suspended evacuation efforts (!) after some bozo shot a couple shells at one of the helicopters leaving the Superdome. Seriously, the same National Guard that is taking mortar fire everyday in Baghdad (with barely adequate armor at best) can't continue evacuating DYING PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY OR STATE because one bozo with a shotgun is gettin' thirsty. Seriously.

The government appears to have frittered away nearly 100 precious hours of response time. The storm was bad enough, lots of rain, some real floods and some awful devastation in Mississippi and Alabama. This man-made aftermath in New Orleans is unconscionable. We could really use some grown-ups in charge.

My solemn advice, friends: if something terrible happens to you or your family, don't wait 78 hours to respond. Or 60. Or 48. Do something right away. Let others help you if they are willing. And don't quit if some detail goes wrong...

G'nite.

I guess that means he never listens to NPR, for one thing...

George W. Bush said this morning, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

First of all, they weren't technically breeched, they broke. There are holes in them the size of several football fields. The amount of water that went OVER the levees was insignificant, certainly not enough to bring everyday life in New Orleans to a halt. It's the water that started rushing THROUGH the Lake Pontchartrain levee that is hurting things most, and that levee was supposed to have been plugged by sandbags (by direct emergency orders of the mayor) on Tuesday afternoon. The helicopters were diverted (no one can explain why) once they got on military radio, which for some reason was not connected to the mayor's base of operations, and the levee gave way later that day, setting New Orleans back a month (or whatever ten more feet of water is...)

But seriously, who is he fucking kidding? There are dozens of articles from last year's NO-area newspapers and magazines berating the administration for cutting funding to fortify the levees. The money was slashed so much that the project leaders had to use most of 2005's money just to pay four contractors who got shorted by the federal government in 2004. There was no debate on either end of the argument that the money was being slashed from FEMA's budget and switched over to Iraq.

I heard a lengthy NPR program (I believe it was part of All Things Considered) that had several scientists describing EXACTLY what's happening now. They were complaining that there were obvious steps that could be taken beforehand to minimize the problems of evacuation and sustenance. Those steps were largely ignored. I've been able to finish broadcasters' sentences the last few days because of the accuracy of that NPR story. It's EXACTLY what the engineers feared most.

I would feel better if the president just shut up. He clearly is unable to grasp the enormity of the crisis or the nuances of the life-and-death problems on the ground. Aargh...