"Achieve maximum effect
by exhibiting
Reasoned Audacity."
Need a speaker? Click here to bring Charmaine to your event.
Recent events:
MOPS, Truro Church, Fairfax, Virginia
September 8th
Washington & Lee University, Washington D.C. Program, "Women and Politics"
May 13th.
Trinity Fellows, Charlottesville, VA, "Gay Marriage"
May 26th.
Cedarville College, April 14th.
Sex Trafficking PPT
For Josh, Michael and Will.
Be safe.
We're all General Honore fans now. But, honestly, the "Stuck on Stupid" press conference was an almost brutally aggressive presentation.
So yesterday I asked Jack: "Why did that work so well?"
The answer is really interesting and up over at his site: it's a "Reverse Fisk."
Clinton on "This Week"
Watching Monday night football. (Come ON 'Skins!) For real entertainment value, I should let the Dude live-blog this (What? What? C'mon challenge that call!)
But me, I've gotta go for the political angle.
And I'm really irritated. The ad flashes across the screen: BushClinton Hurricane Relief. . .
What? What?
Did they come up with this one while Karl Rove was in the hospital too? I've got to challenge that call.
Seriously. When will Republicans learn?
Bush gives Clinton serious political real-estate with the BushClinton byline. And what does Clinton do?
He covers the Sunday talk shows yesterday with criticism of the Bush Administration. "Well, in my administration. . . "
Former President Bill Clinton, asked by President Bush to help raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, offered harsh criticism of the administration's disaster-relief effort on Sunday, saying "you can't have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people up."Mr. Clinton's comments in an interview on the ABC News program "This Week" could prove awkward for the White House, given President Bush's eagerness to involve his Democratic predecessor in a high-profile role to raise money for the hurricane's victims.
I'm surprised Bill didn't rip open his dress shirt to display his "Hillary 2008" undershirt.
When will Republicans learn?
UPDATE: No way. Now they are interviewing President Clinton about the hurricane relief effort at halftime.
* * *
Three cheers for Holly Aho guest-blogging at Mudville -- check out Open Post.
Hey Basil's Covered Dish goes well with Monday Night Football!
The Anchoress with an essay on Clinton's "Captive Heart."
Lorie Byrd says he's shameless. . .and a "no-class slime!"
We're having a contest: How much do these heads of two prominent charities make in annual salaries?
Todd Bassett
National Commander
Salvation Army
We've got the honor system in play here -- no fair looking up the answer before you play! Leave a comment with your best estimate of how much money Commander Bassett and Ms. Evans make each year.
Marsha Evans
President and CEO
The Red Cross
The answers -- with the salaries of the leaders of the United Way, Goodwill and Catholic Charities as well -- are over at Jack's blog.
The winner is the one who comes the closest to getting both right. And what's the prize for our winner?? One of Jollyblogger's "I Think, Therefore I Blog" T-shirts!
A salute to Mudville Gazette for Open Post.
And complete your Weekend Assigned Reading for My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
And have a seat at Jo's Cafe and enjoy the specials.
And step out to Basil's Blog for the Saturday Picnic.
Go Beth:
Disaster Mongers
Why don't you click my Amazon Honor System or PayPal tip jar, so I can continue to serve readers in the hurricane-devastated areas with my writing, OK? They're so needy, and I want to be able to continue blogging FOR THEM. Oh yeah, the rest of you, too, but especially for them. I won't give that money to the hurricane victims or buy anything with it for them, but I want you to donate to me BECAUSE there ARE hurricane victims who read me. And I have server/bandwidth charges associated with serving them, y'know.
My headline gives it away: yes, we're talking about Planned Parenthood. They are raising money for hurricane relief. . .but, oh by the way, the money actually goes to their clinics. Beth just skewers them.
So typical of Planned Parenthood. Craven hypocrites.
Beth has the whole story. She got it from Deborah Grilli at Choose Life who says:
I still maintain that they are an anti-child, anti-woman organization. [Yes! Exactly.] And please don't tell me the women in the shelters need birth control because they're being raped . . . I think we all know birth control is not the kind of protection they need.
Well said.
You know sending Beth money for her bandwidth (and Deborah too), not such a bad idea. . .
I say again: logistics. And Teflon at Molten Thought knows from logistics. A former Air Force logistics officer, he gives us a 12-point assessment of underappreciated issues involved in the Katrina relief efforts.
My favorite is #4:
4. We do not yet have teleporter nor replicator technology like you saw on "Star Trek" in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grownups actually engaged in the recovery effort today were studying engineering.
Funny. But most of it is serious. Dead serious. Like #10:
10. No amount of yelling, crying, and mustering of moral indignation will change any of the facts above. Facts are facts. Opinion is cheap.
I found Teflon via John Cole, who caught my attention when he pungently expressed something I've been thinking: "What part of disaster these [deleted] people don't understand. . ."
Exactly. When reading some of the criticism coming from the Left, it really does sound as if they think a "disaster" can come in neat packages, tied up prettily with a bow.
It wouldn't be a disaster if everyone were back sipping cappucino and eating beignets already, much though we wish they were. . .
This is an incredible piece of work. Rick Moran of RightWing NutHouse has compiled an exhaustive, detailed, meticulously sourced timeline of the events leading up to the moment Katrina struck New Orleans, and the rescue efforts following.
Essential. Reality doesn't much resemble the invective hurled from the Left that we've seen relayed in the MSM.
(Via Powerline.)
Wow. This is cold-blooded.
KosKids strategizing on how best to capitalize politically on the New Orleans crisis. . . via LGF.
Analysis of threat from infectious disease in wake of Katrina -- could malaria and cholera revisit the United States:
America's commitment to mosquito control has been declining steadily since we eradicated malaria, and even fear of West Nile Virus didn't spawn a massive re-commitment to funding mosquito abatement programs. Worse, to my knowledge nobody has ever had much success in clearing mosquitoes from the sort of massive water-soaked ecology that now is New Orleans, nor the scale of water-pooling debris found along the Gulf tri-state area.
Watch for the rebirth of the DDT debate . . . I hope we don't start hearing about the "mosquito net for every person" mantra that we heard from liberals before the G-8 . . .
Thank you to Basil's Blog for the Covered Lunch.
Stroll over to Willisms.com. . . then tell me again about how blogs are all about argument and short on facts? Great graph, Will!
John Cole on the levee debate.
Katrina, August 29
Winds at 160mph
While I'm sitting through panels at the APSA convention, my Brilliant Brother has some thoughts on New Orleans with which I concur heartily.
* * *
We've all been shocked by the events unfolding this week along the Gulf Coast in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, but the situation in New Orleans has been particularly horrifying. TV crews have repeatedly focused on the messes in the Superdome, convention center, and area hospitals. Images of people screaming for help, many elderly, or holding babies in obvious distress along with stories of no food or water and no sanitary facilities have just boggled our minds.
Could this really be happening right here in the United States?
Along with these news stories has been blame and recriminations pointed particularly at the federal government for a perceived lack of response to the disaster.
The question that hasn't been adequately addressed however, is: "Where was the plan?"
It is clear that this disaster was not unanticipated. The potential for rampant flooding in New Orleans as a result of a major hurricane was apparently well understood. With that knowledge, the City of New Orleans and State of Louisiana should have had a clear plan for trying to cope with the aftermath of this catastrophe. That plan should have anticipated that all the infrastructure including water, phone, electricity, and sewer would be disrupted throughout much of the city including the Superdome and convention center.
Ray Nagin
Mayor, New Orleans
The mayor of New Orleans has repeatedly called (and yelled and whined) for aid, but where was the plan and the leadership implementing the plan that should have been in place? The responsibility for the initial response to this disaster should have been at the local level NOT at the federal level.
A favorite cartoon of mine shows someone at a blackboard deriving a bunch of hairy equations. In the midst of the complex math, right at a critical point in the derivation, there is a blank area with just the text "then a miracle occurs."
A wise professor looking on, points at the "then a miracle occurs" section and says: "I think you need a little more work here."
Apparently, somewhere in the middle of the New Orleans disaster plan there was a blank area where someone just wrote in "then a miracle occurs" -- or the equivalent "then FEMA steps in and bails us out" -- and no one spoke up and said "I think we need a little more work here."
That's not the way to make a plan.
* * *
<
Pundit Guy gives us this picture: 205 New Orleans buses, under the command -- or not, as the case may be -- of one Ray Nagin. Via Ace who asks "Bush's Fault?"
Greyhawk at Mudville has details on New Orleans' actual disaster plan. "Then a miracle occurs" is about right. By the way, the document begins: "Under the direction of the Mayor. . ."
Must. See. Graphic.
Robert Kennedy Jr.
Breathtaking. Robert Kennedy, Jr. writes a post in today's HuffPo entitled "For They That Sow the Wind, Shall Reap the Whirlwind."
Incredible. There are bodies floating in the water in New Orleans and Kennedy rushes to the microphones to blame Katrina on the Bush Administration -- because we didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol:
Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which [Haley] Barbour [then-head of the RNC] and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
I guess he must have missed yesterday's New York Times which reported no link between global warming and hurricanes.
What? If you're a Kennedy you don't have to get your facts right?
* * *
Hat tip to and See Jim Glassman's outstanding Tech Central Station column today for more on the decrease in the number and force of hurricanes. . .
About Charmaine
My writing over the years, and longer pieces: click here for more Reasoned Audacity.
"You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."
~ Margaret Thatcher, 1980
The Occasional Adventures of the Penta-Posse: Diva, Dreamer, Dude, Dancer, and Darlin' Boo . . .
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Charmaine Yoest, 2006
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