Brokeback Mountain.

Even the trailer for Brokeback Mountain (based on the short story by E. Annie Proulx) has me in tears.

A lot of suffering and heartache could be prevented in this world if people would just let others live and love the way they want.

And no, I'm not, so don't even wonder.

Cleveland Browns.

...and today's game was almost another example of what's it's like to be a Cleveland fan.

We're leading most of the game, but then Cleveland fucks it up in the 4th quarter, like always. They were a field goal away from losing. But today, miraculously!, they manage to bring it back together and actually win! 26-24. Take that, Green Bay. You guys lost to the Browns. That's pretty pathetic, dudes.

Cleveland sports teams are "well known for agonizing collapses." I got so sick of whiny Boston fans last season (even though I wanted them to win because I never want the Yankees to win, the fuckers), when they were in the World Series and we were all supposed to root for them because they had suffered for so long. Wha wha. Boston fans know nothing about sport's heartache compared to us long-suffering Cleveland fans. Which city has gone the longest without a championship? Certainly not Boston. The Patriots had won the Super Bowl in 2001, 2003, and then again last year (after the Red Sox also won the World Series). So Boston can take their "woe is me" act and shove it up their ass, because the last time Cleveland saw a championship was in 1964. We've gone longer than any other city. ESPN, at least, recognizes us as the most tortured sports city. What an honor.

Even the announcers of today's game, with 4 seconds left and Cleveland about to receive, still thought Green Bay could come back and win. That's how sad our teams are.

So the Browns won today and the Indians are currently winning the Wild Card by half a game, but I'm not holding my breath. The Browns won their first game of the season last year and we all thought it'd be a good year, until the second game came around and we realized the torture will never end! So I will not be setting myself up for heartache again, but I'm certainly going to enjoy this win. If the only other team we beat this year is the Steelers (please, God!), I'll consider it a good year.

!

Grizzly Man.

We all must have things that disturb us. Things that, when we read or hear about them, haunt us.

The Grizzly Man haunts me. Ever since I read an article about him, I can't stop thinking about him. I am so...horrified by it all.

Excerpt from his appearance on Letterman:

Treadwell: It's important that every bear knows who I am and that I fit on their hierarchy if I'm to survive.

Letterman: Is it going to happen that one day we're going to read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?

Treadwell: Uh, No.

How prophetic, Letterman. How can people not have nightmares about him?

So now I have a sick fascination with his life. I want to see the movie, but then again, I don't know if I could handle it. Watching his life knowing he'll die--knowing how he dies...

You get a good sense about his life, "mission," and death from the reviews at the IMDB link above and the others below. The first two have clips from the movie.

http://www.canmag.com/movies.php?moviekey=grizzlyman (trailor and clips)
http://www.grizzlymanmovie.com
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/grizzlyman/about/about.html
http://www.transluxmovies.com/movie.php?mid=72
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/50726001/1023
http://www.moviecitynews.com/arrays/2005/grizzly_man.html
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/0826grizzlyman0826.html
http://www.ericdsnider.com/view.php?mrkey=2545
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050826/ART09/508260308/-1/LEISURE
http://www.providencephoenix.com/movies/trailers/documents/04964298.asp
http://slate.msn.com/id/2124360/?nav=navoa
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/wittig200508240839.asp
http://www.nola.com/movies/t-p/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1125037638213420.xml

Look for more on your own, if you want.

Yada yada yada.

Listening to George W. Bush's speech = 23 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

"Dirty Bomb 54."

americablog.blogspot.com, my favorite political blog, issued an Action Alert on the Dirty Bomb 54, 54 US Senators who "KILLED legislation establishing an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went so horribly wrong with Hurricane Katrina."

I called and e-mailed my senators, DeWine and Voinovich, the shits, last night. I called again this afternoon because I wanted to talk to a real person.

A DeWine staffer sent me to another staffer, the one "who handled that." But that person wasn't in, so I could only leave a message. I said how disappointed I was, how 76% of Americans support it, as well as 64% Republicans, and how the panel the Republicans wanted wasn't bipartisan if Republicans outnumbered Democrats on it.

And then I wished DeWine good luck on finding a new job in November 2006, when we vote him out of office.

I then called Voinovich. The staffer gave me this reason as to why Voinovich voted against it: "it was illegally attached to an appropriations amendment." The staffer called it a "technicality."

I told him I didn't buy that reason. I then asked, if that were the real reason, if V. was going to look into an independent investigation in the future. Staffer said V. hadn't taken a position yet.

I told him about that 76% of Americans supported an independent investigation, including 64% of Republicans.

Staffer: "I'll be sure to pass that information on to him, miss."

I said (sarcastic), "Yeah, I'm sure you will."

He then hung up on me.

FEMA and Etc.

The director of FEMA stepped down. He's one down. We still have a few more to go.

I was thinking about Brown, and I wondered: how does he look at himself in the mirror every day? How can he live with himself, knowing that because of his incompetence people died needlessly? Does he feel remorse? How can we know people's private thoughts? What a thing to have on your conscience. The deaths of thousands. I don't know what I hope for him, that he is feeling guilty about everything or that he doesn't think he did anything wrong. We should hope he feels guilty about everything, but I just can't imagine having to live with that knowledge every day. But that's the kicker, isn't it? He gets to live.

If Bush truly accepted responsibility, he would resign. But his words are merely rhetoric. And, really, all he said was that he accepts responsibility for other people messing up. He didn't admit he did anything wrong. And he never has. He never will. I want to start wearing my "Bush Must Go" button again. It is always appropriate.

---

"When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?
I doubt it
I doubt it"

--Bright Eyes, "When the President Talks to God"

Laura Bush's Flub. / Al Gore?

Crooks and Liars now has the video of Laura Bush calling the hurricane "Corrina."

Al Gore has done more for the hurricane victims than the man who stole the election from him in 2000. He personally helped airlift 270 victims from New Orleans. And he did it because he's a decent, caring man. He didn't do it for any kind of political gain, because he wouldn't even discuss it in an interview. That man should have been our president.

Revised Letter to the Editor.

Apparently I have to send my letter by mail, so I took the opportunity to revise it some. The new version is below.

---

I have lived in [omitted] County my entire life, but I'm currently at Kent State University completing my senior year of college (woo-hoo!). I don't usually write letters to the editor, but I have some thoughts I need to express.

If I had turned off the volume of my television while watching coverage of the disaster in New Orleans, I would have thought I was watching footage of a crisis in a third world country.

George W. Bush and his administration have allowed a humanitarian crisis to happen in the United States. It was a sad day when I realized my county is rich and powerful enough to make war, but not rich and powerful enough to help its own citizens in a crisis.

There will be people who will blindly defend Bush. They will say "no one can control Mother Nature" or "any administration would have had difficulties dealing with this situation" or etc., etc.

No one can control Mother Nature; that's true. It's also true that the government on all levels have known about the problems in New Orleans for years, even before Bush took office (Bush would like us to believe otherwise, though, blatantly lying that he didn't "think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Who does he think he's fooling? FEMA told him back in 2001 that New Orleans and its levees were headed for a disaster, and that wasn't the first time the issue came up).

But how can anyone ignore or explain away the fact that Bush did everything in his power to hinder the correction of the levee problems? And after the hurricane struck, Bush once again demonstrated his callous disregard for ordinary, American citizens--especially the poor. He and his administration abandoned those people. New Orleans has many accessible entrances, even after the flooding, but no one rescued the victims or brought them supplies for days. If journalists could enter New Orleans, why couldn't rescuers?

Sadly, most of the damage and loss of lives in New Orleans could have been prevented if not for Bush's actions, a mere portion of which are listed below.

Bush and his administration:
--diverted funds needed for the critical maintenance of the levees to the Iraq war
--sent parts of Louisiana's and Mississippi's National Guard (people needed in the United States in case of a disaster) to the war in Iraq
--diverted funds earmarked for planning a response to a Category Five hurricane hitting New Orleans to the Iraq war
--filled and developed wetlands that could have alleviated the storm surge
--sharply cut disaster mitigation funding at FEMA
--appointed unqualified, incompetent people to head FEMA
--remained on vacation while thousands died (Bush, Cheney, and Rice--who was buying shoes worth thousands of dollars in New York City!)

The Bush administration's delayed response to the disaster in New Orleans was particularly shameful. Wake up, America. Unless you're part of the elite, George W. Bush and his administration don't care about you. Their handling of the situation in New Orleans just proves this fact even more.

Bush and his administration need to be held accountable for their gross mismanagement of the relief efforts in New Orleans. Every citizen should write their representatives and senators, demanding that an independent group--someone who doesn't have a stake in the outcome--investigate why things went so devastatingly wrong, before and after the hurricane, in New Orleans.

On an additional note, I've noticed that the administration's new favorite term is the "blame game." Catchphrases are typical Karl Rovian strategy. The Bush administration never defends its actions; it just goes on the offensive. Bush and his supporters attempt to trivialize their opponents and their concerns so people don't realize that Bush is the one who's actually done something wrong. To distract the public and media, Rove thinks of a catchy term and has every Bush-supporter continuously spout it on television, planting it in every American's mind until they start saying it themselves with no real thought to it's validity. Remember "flip flop"?

"Blame game" even rhymes, so Rove must be particularly proud of himself! But I don't think his strategy is going to work this time. What they fail to understand is that this situation is no game. Americans, don't let them distract us from the real problems anymore.

Americans in the South have died. Americans have suffered and lost their loved ones, homes, and livelihoods. They don't get a continue. They don't get to hit the reset button.

So, no, I don't blame the Bush administration or FEMA. I accuse them. The rest of America should, too.

Unbelievable.

First of all...is this picture for real? What. is. wrong. with. those. people?

Second, Laura Bush has never disgusted me more. She called the hurricane "Corrina" twice. Really. I'd like to take this moment to say that I never bought into her act; I never liked her. She's one of those women who just follow whatever her husband says...she doesn't have an original thought in her bubbly little head. She was a Democrat before she met Bush, you know.

These people are soul-less.

Nancy Pelosi is one of my new favorite people. She kicks ass.

Excerpt from video at Crooks and Liars (Phillips is a CNN commentator):

Phillips: "Are you changing your mind, at all, about how you feel the Bush administration is handling this crisis up to this very minute?"

Pelosi: "It's not a question of how I feel. It's what I know.... If the FEMA head had reacted appropriately a week ago, there would have been less cost in lives and livelihood and people's homes in the region and a lot less cost in money to the taxpayer.... I call once again on the President to replace the head of FEMA. FEMA was a failure last week. Many, many hardworking FEMA workers were out there in the field. But they didn't get the leadership and the accountability they needed.... As we go forward, we can do better if we have professional, capable leadership in position at FEMA to do the job."

[...]

Phillips: "I think it's unfair that FEMA is singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana."

Pelosi: "That is true and I'm sorry you think that it's unfair. But I don't. I think it's unfair to the people who lost their family members, their lives, their livelihood, their homes, their opportunity. And FEMA did a poor job."

Phillips butts in to say: "What about the Army Corps of Engineers with all those warnings --"

They talk over each other, until Pelosi finally says, "Kyra, if you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll."

And who can forget what Pelosi said earlier in the week?

From Crooks and Liars (see video, too):

"At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had ''absolutely no credentials.''

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown...

''He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.

'''I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'''

''Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,'' she added."

I like her more than Hillary.

Will the Real Reporters Please Stand Up?

From The Raw Story:

Vice President Dick Cheney, in Gulfport, Mississippi on a tour of the Katrina hurricane zone, was told to "go fuck yourself" twice on live television, RAW STORY has learned.

During a discussion on hurricane relief efforts, an off camera protester shouts, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself."

The camera remains on Cheney while we hear scuffling in the background. Cheney continues speaking.

CNN's reporter asks Cheney, "Are you getting a lot of that Mr. Vice President?"

Cheney replies, "First time I've heard it., Must be a friend of John..., er, ah - never mind."

Laughter ensues from the VP and reporters.

Video here

John who? John Kerry? John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? If those reporters had any kind of moxi, they'd ask Cheney what the hell he's talking about instead of laughing! I think Cheney is in some kind of timewarp, man. This situation has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with John Kerry or any other John.

To be serious, they should have been asking him things like, "So did you enjoy your vacation. Was it worth guaranteeing you a spot in hell, because you know while you were having a good 'ole time, thousands or Americans died? What, really, was so fun that you couldn't come and do your job?"

I criticize these reporters, but I must admit to being impressed with a good portion of the media lately. I've seen a lot of mainstream reporters just ripping into the Bush administration and FEMA. Did you see that press conference with White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan? Snap, man. Snap.

Also, it's the first time he's heard it because it's the first time he's left Bowser's Castle in months.

Ohioans: Buck Up.

Reform Ohio Now: "Corrupt politicians. Lost jobs. Ohio awash in scandal. It's time for a change."

Blue 88: "Ohio’s Network for Democratic Reform."

Grow Ohio: "Grow Ohio from the Ground Up."

C-Span.

I was flipping through channels, and I left it on C-Span. Okay, this is kind of sad. It's live footage of the U.S. House, and it must be some kind of memorial for Chief Justice Rehnquist.

But there are only 3 representatives on the floor (King, Gohmert, and Carter), plus someone who must be monitoring it (another represensentative, I think, but I don't know his name) and a transcriber.

That's shameful. And a bit sad for the people who are there.

ETA: Oh, four people now! A Representative Frank...who is getting on my nerves. He just said that in the years to come we'll see the decisions Rehnquist wrote the dissenting opinion on overturned...

My God, I hope not.

And he just said that we'll see that Rehnquist was ahead of his time! Dude, there is a reason why conservatives are called conservaties and liberals are called progressive. What planet is this guy from?

And they're all so proud that Rehnquist "never recognized the right to privacy." I'm dead serious. That's what they said.

Priorities.

So Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about whether or not he slept with someone, but George W. Bush remains unpunished for being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans? Or at the very least, unpunished for remaining on vacation while thousands died?

Where are your priorities, representatives and senators?

Go media?

Oooh, snap press corps!

From Editor & Publisher:

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan had not had a full-length press briefing in Washington, D.C. for weeks, and after today, may have wished he had postponed this one. With almost unprecedented vigor, the press corps attacked and probe[ed] the federal response to the hurricane disaster, the president's personal responsibility and failure to fire anyone who failed in his or her mission.

Here is a transcript of the relevant portions.

The European Response.

My thoughts about the European response are best summed up by Ralph Peters in this editorial. Make note that I'm only going on record as agreeing with the portion of the article quoted below.

Relevant excerpt:

As for our "friends" in Europe, they've been gloating over the tragedy that struck our country. If you follow the European media, the self-righteousness is disgraceful — and they're just plain mean.

When the last water recedes, we may find that a few thousand Americans died in a great natural catastrophe. But two years ago, during a heat-wave, 25,000 elderly Europeans died unnecessarily in France, Italy and Germany while their political leaders, medical personnel and even their children went on vacation — and stayed on vacation. Katrina wasn't preventable, but those elderly deaths were.

America has suffered terrible natural disasters. There'll be more in the future, and we need to be better prepared. But Europe's disasters — far worse than any of ours — have been made by human beings.

I'll take America. On our worst day.

W. vs. Clinton.

Speaking of Marie Antoinette, check out Keith Olbermann blasting George W. Bush. It's a blistering commentary, complete with the statement that Bush is a "twenty-first century Marie Antoinette."

The Daily Howler compares Daddy and W. Bush's response to hurricanes with Clinton's. I yearn for Clinton.

Excerpts:

As we reviewed USA Today’s coverage, we began to notice differences with the Katrina experience. In July 1996, Steve Marshall described preparations for Hurricane Bertha:

MARSHALL (7/11/96): A s Hurricane Bertha churned toward the Southeast coast Wednesday, a massive exodus of tourist havens began.

Officials urged at least 1 million people to leave as Bertha took aim with 100-mph winds.

An estimated 500,000 people were ordered to evacuate six north Florida counties. About 50,000 were asked to get off Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on North Carolina's Outer Banks. And officials urged the evacuation of parts of two South Carolina counties with 380,000 residents...

Bertha's immediate effects:

—NASA moved the shuttle Atlantis off its Cape Canaveral launch pad to a hangar.
—Olympic officials in Georgia moved yachts inland.
—Navy officials ordered 54 ships out to sea to avoid being battered against the docks.
—President Clinton canceled appearances set for today in Orlando and Tampa.

Witt was upbeat about his agency's plans for the storm. "Everyoneis ready and on alert," he said. "I think as far as our planning efforts, we're in good shape. We have a lot of resources available.”

Hurricane Bertha was no Katrina. But President Clinton “canceled appearances” as Bertha approached the U.S. mainland, and James Lee Witt boasted of FEMA’s preparation. In the aftermath of 1999's Hurricane Floyd, we noticed a similar theme in Lawrence McQuillan’s reporting:

MCQUILLAN (9/20/99): President Clinton, who has picked up the moniker "comforter in chief," visits North Carolina today to meet with victims of Hurricane Floyd and confer with state and local officials to coordinate federal relief efforts.

Clinton will go to Raleigh and then take a helicopter to Tarboro, where torrential rains created massive flooding. "We are on the threshold of a crisis," Edgecombe County Manager Joe Durham said...

In fact, Clinton was unwilling to be away from Washington when the storm struck the East Coast last week. He called off plans to golf in Hawaii after a five-day trip to New Zealand and returned to the nation's capital.

Aides say Clinton's 12 years as governor of Arkansas made him particularly sensitive to the need for swift federal action to help communities cope with natural disasters, and to the political benefits derived from meeting the needs of victims.

Clinton took the highly unusual step of issuing disaster declarations for North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida even before the hurricane's high winds and rains hit the states.

No, Hurricane Floyd was no Katrina. But like Bush 43 in the case of Katrina, Clinton made disaster declarations even before the hurricane hit. And oh yes, he did something else: He cancelled pleasing vacation plans so he could be at his desk when the hurricane hit. Last week, of course, Bush 43 still lounged in Crawford as Katrina bore down on the U.S. coast; on Day 2, he flew off to make a speech in San Diego even after New Orleans’ levees had breached. (The levees gave way on Monday; Bush flew to San Diego on Tuesday.)

Barbara Bush=Marie Antoinette?

From Editor & Publisher:

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to wants to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed with the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)--this is working very well for them."

You don't get the full effect unless you listen to it on audio.

W. clearly inherited has crazy-ass shit from her, including that damn smirk.

"Let them eat cake."

Indeed.

Links.

Okay, I was getting some obviously spammy comments, so I had to turn on the "word verification for comments" thing. I apologize if it's annoying.

Like-Minded People

"Dipping His Toe Into Disaster: Slow, awkward and at times tone-deaf, Bush mishandled the storm's first days. Now he has his own recovery problem." By MATTHEW COOPER. Seen in Time Magazine. Teaser: "It isn't easy picking George Bush's worst moment last week. Was it his first go at addressing the crisis Wednesday, when he came across as cool to the point of uncaring? Was it when he said that he didn't "think anybody expected" the New Orleans levees to give way, though that very possibility had been forecast for years?..."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/

Doing My Civic Duty: Writing a Letter to My Local Newspaper's Editor.

If I had turned off the volume of my television while watching coverage of the disaster in New Orleans, I would have thought I was watching footage of a crisis in a third world country.

George W. Bush and his administration have allowed a humanitarian crisis to happen in the United States. It was a sad day when I realized my county is rich and powerful enough to make war, but not rich and powerful enough to help its own citizens in a crisis.

There will be people who will blindly defend Bush. They will say "no one can control Mother Nature" or "any administration would have had difficulties dealing with this situation."

No one can control Mother Nature, it's true. It's also true that the government has known about the problems in New Orleans for years, even before Bush took office (Bush would like us to believe otherwise, though, blatantly lying that he didn't "think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Who does he think he's fooling? FEMA told him back in 2001 that New Orleans and its levees were headed for a disaster, and that wasn't the first time the issue came up).

But how can anyone ignore or explain away the fact that Bush did everything in his power to hinder the correction of the levee problems?

And after the hurricane struck, Bush once again demonstrated his callous disregard for ordinary, American citizens--especially the poor. He and his administration abandoned those people. New Orleans has many accessible entrances, even after the flooding, but no one rescued the victims or brought them supplies for days.

Sadly, most of the damage and loss of lives in New Orleans could have been prevented if not for Bush's actions, a mere portion of which are listed below.

Bush and his administration:
--diverted funds needed for the critical maintenance of the levees to the Iraq war
--sent parts of Louisiana's and Mississippi's National Guard (people needed in the United States in case of a disaster) to the war in Iraq
--diverted funds earmarked for planning a response to a Category Five hurricane hitting New Orleans to the Iraq war
--filled and developed wetlands that could have alleviated the storm surge
--sharply cut disaster mitigation funding at FEMA
--remained on vacation while thousands died

The Bush administration's delayed response to the disaster in New Orleans was particularly shameful. Wake up, America. Unless you're part of the elite, George W. Bush and his administration don't care about you. Their handling of the situation in New Orleans just proves this fact even more.

Bush and his administration need to be held accountable for their gross mismanagement of the relief efforts in New Orleans. Every citizen should write their representatives and senators, demanding that Congress investigate why things went so devastatingly wrong, before and after the hurricane, in New Orleans.

New Orleans.

Links relating to New Orleans that I'd like to share:

Act for Change: Write to Congress; "Hold Bush Accountable on Failed Katrina Response"

Perceval Press: Thought-provoking articles on the crisis in New Orleans and the government's response.

Now is the time: If you weren't holding Bush and his cronies accountable for New Orleans before, you will after reading blogger mmmchelle's post on Bush's mistakes and failures. (Note: That's the only post I've even looked at by this blogger. So don't take this link as a link to anything else by her.)