Category: Current Affairs

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Goodbye, Bus

First let me say: I’ve never been to London, so I’ve got no nostalgia about the red, double-deck Routemaster buses beyond having seen them in pictures. What’s remarkable is the attachment Londoners seem to have to them. From today’s Associated Press story:

“… Its demise as part of everyday London life has triggered an outpouring of nostalgia. The British Broadcasting Corp. is running an evening of TV programs Saturday celebrating the bus. Composer Tom Smail has created “Requiem for the Routemaster,” an orchestral piece that evokes the throb of an engine, the tinkle of a bell and the zip of a conductor’s ticket machine.

“It’s actually more of an ‘in memoriam,'” Smail told BBC radio. “So you have the sadness, and you have the joy of being on a bus.”

Hard to imagine one of our TV networks devoting an evening of programming to anything related to public transit — unless it was for a drama about a terrorist attack on a subway, maybe.

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Holiday Gift Guide

As “the holidays” approach, nothing is more important than reflecting on the Value of Giving. Well, sure, there are a few things more important. But for once, reflect on the VoG.

Done? Good. Now back to watching Monday Night Football and, during commercial breaks, figuring out what you might give to those deserving few–people who after this year will rather get nothing than whatever it is you might give.

2006 Official RNC Calendar

Caption: “Fellas, let me tell y’all about My Pet Goat.”

Price: $25. Be able to answer, “Yes, sir!” when the Commander-in-Chief asks, “You know what day it is? You got one of them things with the dates and months on it?” Comes complete with graph paper to chart falling presidential approval ratings, rising casualty tolls in Iraq or free-form Oval Office-style doodling. Quantity limited!

W Jersey

Bushjersey

Price: $39.95 (XXL: $42.95). Replete with the mystic neo-Masonic symbolism of the Bush White House — “What in the world do all them symbols stand for?” — The George W. Bush Online Store’s always-appropriate jersey comes in a 50% cotton/50% petroleum blend in a dark color with writing and ciphering in a lighter color. Included: Our exclusive 47-page guide, “Interpreting the Bush Jersey: An Adventure in Letters and Numbers.” And if you act now, we’ll include free our recent Bush-inspired tome, “More Than Just A Twisted, Hard-Baked Piece of Dough: Eleven Pretzels That Changed History.”

Nut Twister

Nuttwister

Price: $24.95-$26.95. This implement from famed implement maker William Bounds is designed to reduce nutmeg to a fine, nog-friendly powder (please ingest responsibly). But, as its name suggests, it could have many other uses, and that’s why a cargo container full of them is headed for Gitmo right now.

Lurid Green Peeps/ Peeps Xmas Tree Ornaments

Peepstree Peepsornaments

Price: Varies. After singlehandedly eating a nine-pack of Lurid Green Peeps — they’re actually very healthful — it struck me what a great gift they’d make. Further investigation shows that the Marshmallow Peeps website, which sells Peeps gewgaws but apparently no Peeps, contains a number of craft projects and recipes designed to fill your home with merriment and holiday fun and urgent demands to know why the *&^% all the ants in the *&%$ county want to get at the Christmas tree.

Serenity: New Bad Girl in Town

Serenity

Price: $7.97. New from Buzz Dixon–screenwriting genius behind cartoon classics like “The Transformers: Carnage in C-Minor” and “G.I. Joe: Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep”–“Serenity” is billed as “America’s Premier Inspirational Manga.” To quote the synopsis: “Meet Serenity, a lonely teen from a broken family who just wants to be accepted–but who tends to lash out at others with anger and obnoxious sarcasm. At her new school, the Christian prayer group takes Serenity on as a ‘project,’ showing her friendship and love. . .but will even that be enough to crack her hard shell?” Our answer: You bet! Just as soon as she’s gotten together with Skip, hunky president of the high school hunting club, and used her sarcastic wiles to to get him to spray the prayer group with a holy hail of Second Amendment-protected rifle fire.

Sand, Stone and Gravel Review

Gravelreview

Price: $48/year for members of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association; $65/year for nonmembers. If a friend or loved one is given to frequent gravel-related reveries, you can consider (for them and/or yourself) Prozac, shock therapy, estrangement or this colorful magazine. Unofficially known by stone, sand and gravel insiders as the Unofficial Stone, Sand and Gravel Bible, this bimonthly journal highlights industry activities, tips, tricks, home remedies, trading cards (collect ’em all), and stone, sand and gravel personals. Order by Xmas and get a free one-year membership in the NSSGA Gravel Club: An 8-ounce sample of one of the world’s finest and rarest gravels, enclosed in a collector-quality resealable bag, shipped every month.

Sphincterine

Sphincterine

Price: $6 for a half-dozen minty-fresh towelettes. And while you’re at it, don’t forget the Rearasil ($6.98 a bar; “say goodbye to acne, backne, and crackne”). For more in the same vein, check out the PoopReport Gift Guide 2005.

And added by popular demand:

Does This Gum Make My Ass Look Big?

Assgum

Price: About $1.35. Available online here, here, and from fine retailers nationwide (see the “where to buy” directory at Blue Q, creator of Does This Gum Make My Ass Look Big? and many other fine products, including George Bush’s Dumbass Head on a String air freshener, Boss Lady body wash, Tainted Love soap, and How About a Nice Big Pack of Shut the Hell Up gum).

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And Now, a Word from the Sponsored …

… Or: What $300 Billion Buys

We know that as seen from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, things in Iraq are getting better every day. Fewer maimings, better manners and more democracy, and even a few hours a day of electricity thrown in. Now here’s a view from someone who, while admittedly having an ax to grind, is a little closer to the situation than the lotus eaters in the Oval Office. Britain’s Observer has an interview with Ayad Allawi, the strongman Bush & co. put in charge of Iraq once it was time for our own boss to leave and we had given up on the guy who wanted to run things, Ahmad Chalabi. Here’s how Allawi sees things today:

” ‘People are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse. … It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.’

“In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq’s escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam’s secret police, he said. …

” ‘ …We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,’ he added. ‘A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.’ ”

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George Best

The Chronicle has the obit: George Best: 1946-2005.

The handful of soccer players I heard about growing up — a very small group — included Pele and George Best. I remember reading something about Best in Sports Illustrated once. His exploits for Manchester United were described as little short of incredible. Nice article, but it didn’t mean much because soccer wasn’t a U.S. game and I never got to see him play. But following scraps of career news over the years — I took an interest from afar because he was Irish — I knew that alcoholism had cut short his brilliance.

Two bits from the obit worth noting:

” ‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars,’ he once said. ‘The rest I just squandered.’ ”

And:

“Best had battled alcoholism for decades and was diagnosed with severe liver damage in 2000. He received a liver transplant in 2002 but later resumed drinking.”

The American sports star who comes immediately to mind is another preternaturally gifted athlete and helpless boozer whom the fans never stopped adoring: Mickey Mantle.

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Consultant Warns of Stupidity

From MSNBC, by way of J.P. Brekke:

“DENVER – Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

” ‘If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way,’ Brown told the Rocky Mountain News. …

“Brown said officials need to ‘take inventory’ of what’s going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.’

The guy’s his own straight man.

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Merry Friggin’ Xmas

The other day, my friend Ted posted something about his alarm with the rising tide of militant Christian fundamentalism. No, we don’t have Bible-thumping extremists setting off bombs in our midst; well, hardly ever. The alarm is over the growing insistence among conservative Christians that their religious views should be adopted as central to our public institutions: not only should their god be recognized in public schools and courthouses, for instance, but he ought to become part of the school curriculum and acknowledged explicitly as our guide in lawmaking. If you happen not to be an adherent of everything these folks believe, too damn bad for you. You’re probably going to hell anyway.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a front-page story on the crusaders’ latest effort: Ensuring that Christmas gets the respect it deserves. The effort features Jerry Falwell’s “Friend or Foe” Christmas Campaign and several other groups:

“Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the ‘Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,’ an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.

“The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the nation’s public schools. They’ll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’

“An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: ‘Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it.’

In fact, it’s not only OK to say “Merry Christmas,” you’ll be trampling Christians’ civil rights if you refrain. Ah, the ironies: The poor, abused Christians whose holiday will be spoiled unless the rest of us not only respect it, but let them observe it exactly the way they want to, where they want to — sort of like the people in Berkeley who insist it’s their right to walk the streets naked. Using the courts, a.k.a. Satan’s playground, to give the unbelievers a taste of their own medicine.

The story goes on to report that Target stores are in trouble with another love-Jesus-or-die group, the American Family Association, for allegedly adopting a policy banning the phrase “Merry Christmas” from advertising and in-store displays. Target — which I think does deserve some heat for banning Salvation Army bell ringers from its premises — swears that it has imposed no such ban. No matter — the zealots are boycotting the chain next weekend unless the company gets right with their god and installs prominent “Merry Christmas” signage. Which presents a dilemma: Refuse to shop at Target because of the wrong-headed decision to keep the bell ringers away? Or do all my holiday shopping there next weekend to vote against the Falwell-fundamentalist axis.

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The War List

Semi-obsessively perusing the death reports on Iraq Coalition Casualties, I thought about where the Iraq war ranks statistically among U.S. wars. Without going into the peculiarities of the numbers I’ve come across, here’s a list of total killed and wounded derived from the current "America’s Wars Fact Sheet" from the Veterans Administration. The VA actually folds the Iraq casualty figures into a total number for the Global War on Terrorism, which apparently combines casualty figures for operations in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters. The one change I’ve made to the list is to use today’s sum of killed and wounded in both theaters from numbers available through Iraq Coalition Casualties.

War  Deaths  Wounded  Total 
Civil War 529,332 420,000* 949,332
World War II 405,399 671,846 1,077,245
World War I 116,516 204,002 320,518
Vietnam War 58,209 153,303 211,512
Korean War 36,574 103,284 139,858
Mexican War 13,283 4,152 17,435
American Rev. 4,435 6,188 10,617
Spanish-Am. War 2,446 1,662 4,108
War on Terrorism 2,330 16,356 18,681
War of 1812 2,260 4,505 6,765
Indian Wars 1,000 (Not reported) 1,000
Gulf War 382 467 849

*Number of Civil War wounded an estimate based on non-VA sources; the VA lists Confederate wounded simply unknown.

One other note about the casualty numbers: The VA lists non-combat deaths for the American Revolutions as unknown, so the total who died in both wars is likely much higher. Also, the VA lists about 87 percent of the U.S. deaths in the Mexican War and 83 percent of those in the Spanish-American War as "other deaths in service" — which includes deaths from wounds that weren’t immediately fatal, disease, accidents, and other non-combat causes. In fact, the VA’s listed "battle deaths" comprise a majority of war dead in only World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the current war.

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Open-Source Intelligence

One of the ways in which the United States was and is woefully unprepared for a war anywhere in the Middle East is its lack of Arabic linguists in the ranks of the intelligence and military services. (What I know about Arabic: You read it from right to left. And by the way, salaam aleikum.)

When we invaded Iraq, we came into possession of what’s technically known as a boatload of government papers. Thirty-five thousand boxes’ worth. Millions of pages. And all classified. There may be some amazing stuff in those papers. But having so few people on our side who both read Arabic and have security clearances, there’s no way we’ll ever find out what’s in all those boxes. So instead of an archive that if nothing else might document how Iraq was run in the Saddam era, we have a mountain of worthless paper warehoused in Qatar.

Now, a congressman from Michigan has had a sort of intelligent idea about how to find out what’s in the papers. Open up the entire collection, declassify everything, and put the whole mess online so that all comers — or at least the Arabic readers — can tell what’s in there.

It has the potential to be untidy, but it’s worth a try.

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Happy Holidays, from FEMA

Wonderful news from FEMA to the tens of thousands of people displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and still living in subsidized motel rooms: The agency will stop paying for most of the 53,000 rooms (all except 12,000 in Louisiana and Mississippi) on December 1. Evacuees, get ready to pay your own motel bill or go find another place to stay.

FEMA delivered the news in a press release on Tuesday that opens with five paragraphs recounting everything the agency has done and all it intends to do for the 150,000 unfortunates still in motels. Not only has it paid out hundreds of millions already just to get roofs over the evacuees’ heads, it wants to do more. R. David Paulison, FEMA’s acting director, is quoted as saying that the agency wants to get people out of hotels and motels and “into longer-term homes before the holidays.”

But FEMA disclosed it has a deeper interest, too: It wants to help people get back in touch with core American values like fending for themselves. “Those affected by these storms should have the opportunity to become self-reliant again and reclaim some normalcy in their lives.”

Only after all that, does the release get to the news: “On December 1, 2005 — the previously announced conclusion for FEMA’s direct payment hotel/motel program — direct federal emergency assistance reimbursements for hotel and motel rooms occupied by evacuees will end. FEMA has an aggressive plan to help place these families in longer-term housing prior to December 1.”

Note that FEMA goes out of its way to say the cutoff shouldn’t be news, because it was “previously announced.” And yes, check the FEMA website and there it is: An October 24 releaseheadlined “FEMA Continues Short-Term Lodging Program for Evacuees.” There, in the third paragraph, is the statement that the motel program would run through December 1. Someone ought to tell these folks what it means to bury the lead.

So, now that it has managed to make its intentions clear, how will the policy work in the real world?

Here’s one sign: In its statement three weeks ago, FEMA said it was paying for about 65,000 motel and hotel rooms. The number is down to 53,000 today, presumably thanks to state and local and volunteer efforts to find longer-term housing for people. That works out to 4,000 rooms cleared a week. Now, the agency wants to clear out 41,000 rooms (the 53,000 total less the 12,000 exempt rooms in Louisiana and Mississippi) in two weeks. Impossible? Perhaps not, despite FEMA’s involvement. Is it likely?

Here’s another sign. FEMA acknowledged a couple days ago that it would be a challenge to even get the word out. The agency had people going around slipping notices under evacuees’ motel-room doors, and it has produced radio public-service announcements to let people know what’s about to happen. If people weren’t even aware of what’s happening in the motel program two days, what’s the chance that FEMA is going to get everyone into the “readily available” longer-term housing (Paulison’s phrase) in the next two weeks?

Here’s one last sign: Look at what’s happening in Texas, where 19,000 motel rooms are occupied by hurricane refugees in Houston alone. The mayor there, Bill White, said given the city’s experience with the issue, FEMA should be seeking its advice: “We have moved more evacuees out of hotels than any other city has ever had in hotels. So we encourage those new to it to ask us, not tell us, how to do it.” Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas, said, “My great concern is that there is still no long-term housing plan for the hundreds of thousands of Katrina victims who lost everything.”

What’s going to happen? If FEMA follows through, the problem will be dumped on the states and cities across the country where evacuees wound up. Tens of thousands of people will wind up in shelters again or be put out on the street. More likely, FEMA will take such a horrendous PR pummeling over every aspect of its decision that it will be forced to back off until someone — likely someone outside FEMA — actually figures out a workable plan for getting people into real housing.

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Candidate on a Hill

Ron Dellums, who used to represent Berkeley and parts of Oakland and other East Bay locales in Congress, announced last month he’s coming out of political retirement to run for mayor of Oakland. Dellums says the decision surprised even him: He arrived at the event where he declared his candidacy uncertain whether he would run. He said he made up his mind when he took the podium and saw the yearning in the audience’s eyes. “If Ron Dellums running for mayor gives you hope, then let’s get on with it,” he said. The Chronicle quoted a supporter as saying that Oakland was “finally getting the progressive leadership it deserves.”

The campaign issues Dellums talked about in his announcement sermon were universal health care, ending poverty, and inspiring young people. About more mundane problems — the kind a mayor might actually be expected to do something about — he told reporters later: “Potholes are important, but that’s not why people asked Ron Dellums to run.”

Leaving aside the question of why he referred to himself in the third person — maybe it’s just important to keep repeating the brand name — I don’t fault him for reaching above the gritty concerns of urban life to project a lofty vision for his followers. But at some point, governing a city comes back to potholes, or at least what’s happening on the streets.

Yesterday, Dellums gave another talk, to Oakland’s African American Chamber of Commerce. He spent some time ridiculing suggestions that his experience in Congress has not prepared him to lead a city. He talked some more about universal health care, but mentioned that as mayor he’d also be concerned with education, public safety and economic matters. “We can become a model city and grapple with every problem,” Dellums said. And: “I come not to tinker at the margins, but to ask you to join me in an effort to do big things — great things.”

From the stories and TV pictures, the crowd loved what they were hearing (with the possible exception of Ignacio De La Fuente, a City Council member who was the front-runner in the mayor’s race until Dellums’ experienced his podium impulse). And what’s not to like. He’s an extraordiinary speaker. Still, the specifics?

One of the local TV stations, KTVU, ran a clip in which one of its reporters asked Dellums what distinguishes him from the other candidates in the race. Dellums called the question “grossly premature.”

OK, maybe a guy just needs time to think. But five weeks after he declared his candidacy, and just seven months before the election, it’s fair to wonder what Dellums has in mind for the city he wants to lead. Oakland’s a real place with real needs and problems, not a city on a hill. It’s wonderful to expound on ideals and possibilities, but no amount of impassioned oratory will fix them without a plan that grapples with the city as it is.

I’ve never been a big fan of Jerry Brown during his tenure in Oakland. I’ve always felt that his approach to governing the city was a little imperious and arrogant. He took office as a major leaguer who came to show the bushers a thing or two about how to get things done; he was a big thinker who was going to broaden the horizons of poor, petty Oakland; and if the locals didn’t understand how smart and wise his vision was, he’d just run over them until they got it.

But if you listen to Brown now, he at least suggests he’s learned something about the real nature of leading a city. Last month, he described being mayor as a “much more in-your-face, concrete, down-to-earth reality than what you’re faced with at the level of governor or congressman, where you’re dealing with the great issues of the day, but dealing with them at a high level of abstraction. … Instead of an omnibus crime bill, you have to deal with shootings in Ghosttown in West Oakland and sideshows in East Oakland.”

So maybe Dellums can start out by learning something from his fellow superstar and talk about what he’d actually try to do, aside from being a symbol of uplifting ideals, if he becomes mayor. In fact, the most inspirational thing he could do for the city would be to lay out a pragmatic plan for turning his progressive faith into on-the-street reality.