Geez, I wonder if that was the lady (see below).

(And, I wish I could find my stuff. They would probably sicken me now, but it would be really fun just to read them. Maybe, not.)

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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She said, "I can't believe this crazy business! I can't find the train station! Where on earth is it?!?!" She would have used the F word if her gentle soul could tweeze it out of her raspy voice.

I was in midstep to the zebra: "The entrance is down that way," I said, pointing to the station entrance I have used everyday for the past 10 months or so.

She said, "No, it can't be! You're wrong!" I supposed she would have said "idiot" too, but the weather was too nice.

I said, pausing momentarily, thinking about whether I was going to miss the train if I continue to engage her: "I go down that entrance every day!" At this point I was almost halfway across the street. She looks like she was about to cross, but her legs looked like dry reeds waiting to crack.

I looked back at her and I noticed that she was on her way to crossing the street. The orange hand started to blink, as if to say, "You have 15 seconds left until you're run over." I started marching faster, she, well, she knew it would be a long walk.

As soon as the end of the entrance steps, I was wracked with guilt. I could have helped her cross the street and make her way down the stairs -- and surely I would miss my train. But what if she never found the station? What if she had fallen down the steps that *I* told her to take? I couldn't quiet myself for an hour, hoping that she was okay. I had become an uncaring urbanite: live and live, and not give a flying f about anybody.

A street crossing could not have meant so much.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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If you're listening to something else other than Bloc Party, you're wasting your time. And, if you've been listening to Bloc Party already -- that energetic, "unpigeonholeable," intelligent Brit band incorrectly lumped in with The Strokes and (ugh) The Killers -- well, you must know why Bloc Party's Silent Alarm is the best album of 2005.

All the emotions: guilt, remorse, happiness, anger, hatred; and, all the themes: love, hate, boredom, manipulation, are transferred efficiently through louder-than-usual drums and manic bass riffs that are invigorated with Kele Okereke's frantic, pulsating vocals. You can't listen to this stuff below eight.

In "Like Eating Glass," you have:

I can't eat, I can't sleep
I can't sleep, I can't dream
An aversion to light
Got a fear of the ocean

Like drinking poison, like eating glass

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Katrina has done more than rip levees and lives apart, it has exposed the rift between poverty and a government choked with so much bureaucracy that has cut taxes for the well-off and funding that could have prevented the hurricane's wrath from worsening.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 09:24 PM | Permalink
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The long gray line is not about the uniform of West Point. It is about the long history of our flirtation with the lesser evil, with white lies. That is the problem with compromise. It starts so innocently, so quietly. It hardly does anyone any harm, a little half-truth here, a just-this-once exception there. Evil takes on a lesser form, and a lie becomes white.

Curious to note that in these postmodern times, your "gray line" is what Aristotle would describe as the "Golden Mean." Or, is it perhaps your interpretation of white lies and black Filipino hair, which when combined together in a Tupperware bowl reveals the so-called "gray area?" I don't know, but I'm responding to your rambling with some of my own.

Anyway, the state of affairs in the Philippines has triggered a surge for the truth, even from those who hardly know how to spell it.

Way to put down those little unimportant illiterate people they call the "majority voting bloc." And, were you chewing on kakanin when you said "surge" when you actually meant "search?"

Even better is the sudden inclusion of integrity together with the truth as now the demands of the times from politicians towards other politicians.

I don't get this sentence. I hate it, it makes me feel stupid.

But:

In other words, our love of country comes only after our love for our own interests. And if there is a conflict of interest, then personal interests come first. To paraphrase it, a Filipino says to the Philippines, "It is not that I love you less, but I love me more."

...probably makes *you* feel stupid! So, quits lang tayo! You have "In other words," and *then* you have "To paraphrase it." We got it the first time, okay?

The easy manner by which even our moral leaders have been able to live with the lesser evil is indication enough [that] the return of truth and integrity as dominant values in Philippine society will not come without a hard struggle.

Here's something I agree with you on. How can we be the most Christian country in Asia, with a priest-to-parokyano ratio of 1:24 (I made that one up, by the way), and have such questionable scruples? I think it's time that somebody who has a public voice (like you, Jose) to speak up and say that the so-called moral bastion that is the Roman Catholic church is dated. Threatening people with Hell no longer works. We have to punish them in this life.

The long gray line must be cut. It is so much easier to be simply truthful, to know the difference between black and white, and to choose right over wrong.

Well, there you go, contradicting your thesis again. First, you give the impression that this "long gray line" (LGL) was born like the bastard son of Satan. Then, LGL is "long, indeed." Then it's agonizingly personal. Then, you say LGL "will not be easy to break." Now, you go and say it is "so much easier to be simply truthful." Like how it's so much more simple to go and fire an arrow that hits you right in the eye! You offer no solution, no hope, just a soft, twisted, choppy, ditty (with an anonymous anecdote) where you continue to show that you have no business writing (but you're good blog fodder!).

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 08:21 AM | Permalink
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White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House did not seek Brown's resignation.

"This was Mike Brown's decision and we respect his decision," McClellan said.

McClellan praised Brown's work but conspicuously left out any reference to his contribution to the Katrina efforts.

"The president appreciates Mike Brown's service," he said. "Mike has done a lot of great work on a number of hurricanes."

Meanwhile, Bush "ducked questions" on Brown's resignation:

The president ducked questions about Brown's resignation. "Maybe you know something I don't know. I've been working," the president said to reporters on an inspection tour of damage in Gulfport, Miss. Bush said he planned to talk with Brown's boss, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, from Air Force One on the flight back to Washington.

Bush's job ratings are lowest ever:

In Katrina’s wake, the president’s popularity and job-approval ratings have dropped across the board. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a record-low for this president in the NEWSWEEK poll.

A majority of Americans (57 percent) say “government’s slow response to what happened in New Orleans” has made them lose confidence in government’s ability to deal with another major natural disaster.

It hasn't been this low since Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, Karl Rove's high-gear girl (aka Ann Coulter) had these twisted statements in defense of Bush:

When co-host Alan Colmes cited President Bush's claim, made during a September 1 interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, that he "didn't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Coulter interjected: "That's manifestly true." But after Colmes objected to her assertion, Coulter admitted she actually did not know "what the details are about this."

Video here.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 06:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Frankly, I'm shocked. I'd much rather have Chris Nolan do it.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
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U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to the Reliant Park this offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour of a shelter with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

He learned his crassness from the best.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Sure, you can play politics at a time like this. Bush's ratings are at its lowest ever; and, if you're Trent Lott from Mississippi:

One Republican welcomed Brown's ouster with unusually sharp language. "Something needed to happen. Michael Brown has been acting like a private instead of a general," said Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, whose state was hard-hit by the storm.

Brown, who is a moron, had this to say when he left:

"I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and, maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims."

And, this time, the White House (not Bush directly) refuses to acknowledge Brown's performance as a helluva job:

Less than an hour before Brown's removal came to light, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Brown had not resigned and the president had not asked for his resignation. McClellan did not directly answer a question about whether the president had full confidence in Brown. "We appreciate all those who are working round the clock, and that's the way I would answer it," he said.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 06:29 AM | Permalink
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Other discrepancies include whether he was a professor or a student at, er, Central State University.

Regardless, it seems that Brownie has no business running FEMA, what with paper thin emergency response experience. Heckofa job!

Read here.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 06:37 AM | Permalink
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George W. seemed like he didn't give a rat's ass about New Orleans, and we find out why:

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.

It's amusing to know that rich people can care.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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But that's not all there is. Michael Brown, FEMA director, was an idiot horseshow floor manager before getting a FEMA job, a product of cronyism. And, FEMA was chopped up and absorbed by, you guessed it, the DHS.

Hence, FEMA, needing all the help it could get, denied Amtrak's help in evacuation, turned away experienced firefighters, bars morticians from entering NO, and, god forbid, stops Wal-Mart's supply trucks.

This is what happens when the President takes too many vacations.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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The young Rehnquist began his legal career as a Republican functionary by obstructing African-American and Hispanic voting at Phoenix polling locations (“Operation Eagle Eye”). As Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote, “[H]e helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons -- and who made his selection on the basis of race or ethnicity.” In a word, he started out his political career as a Republican thug.

Rehnquist later bought a home in Vermont with a restrictive covenant that barred sale of the property to ''any member of the Hebrew race.”

Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist, and authoritarian. He sometimes moderated his views for prudential or pragmatic reasons, but his vote could almost always be predicted based on who the parties were, not what the legal issues happened to be. He generally opposed the rights of gays, women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, religious fundamentalists, homophobes, and other bigots.

Read here.

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:02 AM | Permalink
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The Manila Hotel management, which has done an excellent job at making a pisscan out of one of the most beautiful hotels in Asia, now has new gem to screw up: they've just bought the new airport.

These people knew nothing about hotel management when they took over the Manila Hotel (he's a publisher!) and it shows: The last time I was at the hotel the toilets at the Shell at SLEX were cleaner.

Nothing like good old-fashioned cronyism with a dollop of national patrimony to ge things done!

Posted by Bulletproofvest at 07:01 AM | Permalink
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