the bitter shack of resentment

The Greatest Novel of All Time?

Fifty of one hundred writers worldwide said the greatest novel ever written is "Don Quixote of La Mancha." I say "To Kill a Mockingbird." What's yours?

Know Thy Neighbor If You Dare

Interesting, if slightly spooky, idea to combat people who don't agree with you at the ballot box: publish the names and addresses of everybody who signed a petition to put a measure you don't like on the ballot. That's what gay rights advocates are doing in Massachussetts, where a measure to amend the state constitution to "define marriage" as between a man and a woman has made the ballot thanks to a petition drive.

KnowThyNeighbor.org makes the lesbian in me cheer and the privacy advocate in me cringe. In a way, though, you shouldn't sign your name to something if you don't have the cojones to stand up for what it stands for. On the other hand, what's to stop someone from torching someone's house or harassing their kids simply because they hold a perfectly legal political opinion? It could just as easily be us - targeted for harassment or bashing for signing a petition in favor of gay rights.

There is a precedent of course. Remember when anti-abortion activists published the home addresses of doctors who performed abortions, and how that resulted in one being shot to death through his kitchen window? That practice was found to be illegal. So how is this different?

R.I.P, Racist

Of Rehnquist, David Corn says In recent years, there has been no other Supreme Court justice who had a personal history so loaded with racism.

The Price of Devolution

I see the federal government shifting into blame mode, deciding to deflect the blame they rightly earned to state and local government officials. This is what the movement for state's rights by feds means. The opportunity to divest themselves of responsibility for anything that happens within the nation. It's shameful in the extreme. This should, but of course won't, shift the tide back to a movement for our national government to be the ultimate caregiver to the nation that puts them in power. New Orleans is part of America, not part of the nation of Louisiana. These are thousands of Americans - not African-Americans, not poor Americans, not southern Americans, not red state or blue state Americans, but Americans. Truman, the bastard, even had the class to say The Buck Stops Here. That's the Oval Office. Not the Mississippi Bridge out of New Orleans.

It's states right, not state's responsibilities. If New Haven Connecticut were underwater, or Williamsburg, VA, or Galveston, TX, you better believe this would look different. Is Connecticut or Virginia, or Texas any less a state worthy of rights? Or less responsible for catastrophe? Then explain to me the difference.

I honestly don't believe that the federal government targeted New Orleans for criminal neglect. But I do think it chose to take a calculated risk to underfund emergency planning there, in favor or a war, tax cuts, and comforting the comfortable. This is but a peek at what that really costs.

Ray Nagin for President

Let me be probably the 3,000th to say it.

Disasters Pile On

Rehnquist is dead. You know we're in deep shit when a liberal is SAD that he's dead. Now we get an impeachably incompetent president in a position to fuck up our country for decades, perhaps centuries to come. This, the hurricane ... I am seriously regretting not moving to Canada in 2000.

I'm going to hold a funeral mass for civil rights.

Looting and Race

Brilliant:

"Let me say a few things here. The first is that the city of New Orleans is, according to the last census, 67.3 percent black. Given that looting is predictable under any significant breakdown of social order, who would you expect to find out there smashing windows when the lights go out? Ethnic Hawaiians?"

Where's Dick?

What, no press conferences? Is he dead?

True Dat

Suffer the Children ... and Their Pets

I feel a wave of guilt at tearing up for the fate of so many pets (not to mention the animals in the zoos and aquariums) when so many people are suffering and dying. And yet, being an animal lover, I can't help myself. I smile at the photos of people who left with the clothes on their back, and float their dogs on flotsam to safety instead of their photographs or heirlooms. Perhaps little can comfort people, but the unconditional love of their beloved pets. Like children and the elderly, they are completely dependent and helpless.

But what of those left behind, or trapped in shelters, or swept away? After I made my donation to the Red Cross, I made one to the ASPCA, which is doing some spectacular work in the affected areas. If you have the cash, won't you, too?