Today did, in all seriousness, feel for the first time like autumn. It didn’t really get much above 60 degrees all day (it’s supposed to dip down to 36 tonight), and there was that unmistakable bite in the air that hasn’t been around for at least five months, or whenever the freak day or two…
Month: September 2005
Overheard Outside the School of Social Work
“It’s just like wintertime out here today!” “I know, isn’t it horrible?” And so the next five or six months of kvetching begins …..
Super! Sonic!
“I wanna go supersonic before I die and time’s a-wastin’!” Finally, « some visionary thinking », which has been in major short supply here in the 21st century: ‘Barely two years since the last Concordes were retired, Airbus, the European aircraft consortium, is looking at plans for a new generation of supersonic passenger jets. The manufacturer, in…
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off Our Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…
New Orleans is Not the Only Thing That Sank to a New Low
« Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl = Despicable Low Lifes »: ‘Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had…
'On Your Watch …'
« Bill Maher has a message for the Failed Boy Emperor »: ‘You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised that you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we’ve lost…
No Comment Needed From Me
‘I’ll send my sons if he sends his daughters. Put those two drunk bitches on a plane and let them go fight. At least I know my sons would be getting some on the way.’ —Comedian Damon Wayans, quoted by the New York Daily News, on the conditions for the Emperor to send Wayans’ sons…
Autumn?
Yesterday actually felt like the first hints of autumn to me — it was very hot, like it’s been for the most part for at least the past three weeks here in Ann Arbor, but it also was somewhat windy, the heat was accompanied by less humidity than it has been, and there was a…
'From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey.'
I think Cornel West « perfectly sums up the state of the Empire »: ‘What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: ‘You are on your own’. Well, they really were on their own for five…
Insanity
In among all of the commentary and images over the past few days about Katrina, I’ve noticed a recurring strain along the following lines: the people who remained in New Orleans during and after the hurricane were too stupid, lazy, or both to leave; and nobody who lived in a place like New Orleans (either…
City Beneath the Sea
I’m melancholy tonight, listening to « Harry Connick Jr.‘s » Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Basin Street Blues and, especially, City Beneath the Sea, his love song to New Orleans, which is one of a handful of my favorite cities on the planet. Tears my heart…
Which Fascist is More Outrageous – Denny Hastert or the Waterbury Fascist-American?
On top of all the shameful and outrageous things we’ve seen this week, comes « this »: ‘House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published…
Update
My friend phoned late last night (Wednesday) — he and his dog got out of New Orleans okay. Here is a list of « FEMA-approved relief organizations » if you are interested in donating to the effort to save the glorious city of New Orleans, which from the looks of things is descending into unimaginable…