NOLA Happenings: Drive down the road to New Iberia and the fais do do at the 68th Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival. For the math challenged, that means it's been happening since at least 1941...Or celebrate Oktoberfest at Deutsche Haus on South Galvez Street.
Friday's Choice: Bill Evans plays "My Foolish Heart." A pianist friend writes:
The epitome of simple elegance!---and I don't at all mean simple to play, but it's pared-down, uncluttered, and absolutely exquisite. The chord voicings are so subtle, but effective, ending is wonderful, I like how this shows that you don't have to be scrambling madly all over the keyboard, being showy and bombastic---The emotion is powerful, but tastefully contained. It's like a perfect short story where not one word is wasted. Beautiful song, too, isn't it?
URGENT: If your senator is on the HELP Committee, call or write them to support a strong public option as part of any health care reform legislation. Details here...
Pity the oppressed conservatives, writes Leonard Pitts. After all, a bad joke about Sarah Palin's daughter is easily the moral equivalent of the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. On the mark as usual, Pitts writes that
...modern conservatism is defined by an Alice-through-the-looking-glass incoherence: small government except when it is growing larger than ever, fiscal restraint except when we are spending like Michael Jackson in a Disney gift shop, foreign policy pragmatism except when we are trying to transform the Middle East.
Indeed, sometimes it feels as if it is no longer defined by principles at all, nor by energy and ideas, but rather, by a limitless ability to feel put upon and slighted. To be a conservative these days is, or so they would have you believe, like being black in Birmingham in 1952. It is to be the victim of media, culture and law that hate you just for being.
If there's anything consistent about modern conservatism, it's hypocrisy. These practitioners of victimology are the first to blame the victims (see: Dr. George Tiller, the people of New Orleans) when it suits them.
Then there's the sheer number of sex scandals, the proportion of which has reached the bizarre. To be sure, it's none of my business whether John Ensign (R-NV) has an affair with a campaign volunteer. But it is the people's business when the practitioners of an ideology that both asserts its moral superiority in everything from so-called "family values" to foreign policy and decries its opposition as treasonous moral lepers put themselves above their own standards. That's rank, sordid hypocrisy and we must continue to call them on it.
Something for which I say "thank God for the blogosphere." If newspapers had been doing their jobs, they wouldn't be whining about about what we "lose" as they shrink and close down. If the blogosphere had been as widespread and effective in 2004 as it is now, John Kerry might well be entering his second term: Liberal bloggers would have made the Swift Boat smear about Republicans instead of the bogus "story" about how Kerry responded to something so unthinkably low....
Yesterday's shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Museum was the third act of violence this year by a right-wing domestic terrorist. It follows the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas and the shooting of three Pittsburgh policemen by a gun-rights lunatic. It's past time for responsible conservatives -- if any remain -- to stop blaming the victims and demand a halt to the hateful rhetoric that has fueled this onslaught.
Two things seem indisputable to me:
The violence is in part a response to the election of the first black president, and
The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage have played a part in this, as has every Republican politician who has kowtowed to them.
These people won't stop their hate speech because liberals want them to. They might under pressure from principled conservatives. If there are any of you left, it's time to make your voices heard.
NOLA Happenings: The Original Pigeon Town Steppers lead a second line for peace tonight at 6 p.m., starting at Leonidas and Willow streets in Riverbend that will strut through the neighborhood...The Cajun Heartland State Fair runs through May 31...Do your part to save Lake Ponchartrain by going to the Back To The Beach Festival...
David Perez writes that Sonia Sotomayor's judicial and life experience makes her a great Supreme Court nominee...
NOLA Happenings: It's a packed Memorial Day weekend! How anyone can compress the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience into a mere four days is beyond, but I'll bet that it's fun trying...
Want to chase that exquisite wine and food with some music and art? Head over to the Bayou Boogaloo...
If your tastes run to the Mediterranean, you won't want to miss Greece on the Bayou...
In a typically careless piece, David Broder writes of how President Obama is "trying on and fitting himself to the role of commander in chief," "predictably" drawing opposition from Democratic party activists. One reason for this, Broder grandly claims, is that "today's Democrats really are isolated from the military." One commenter supplied this helpful if slightly dated list in rejoinder:
DEMOCRATS:
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
Chuck Robb: Vietnam
Howell Heflin: Silver Star
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.
REPUBLICANS:
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Cleland's patriotism.
Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
Vin Weber: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon Kyl: did not serve.
Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
Christopher Cox: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
Phil Gramm: did not serve.
John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
John M. McHugh: did not serve.
JC Watts: did not serve.
Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
John Engler: did not serve.
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
PUNDITOCRACY:
Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Chris Matthews: did not serve.
Paul Gigot: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
John Wayne: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.
Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
Ralph Reed: did not serve.
Michael Medved: did not serve.
Broder has it exactly wrong: It's the party whose members had "other priorties" than military service who pushed us into the debacle of Iraq. Perhaps if their personal experience had been "less isolated" from the military, we wouldn't be there...
I'm reading Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Gulf Coast, which is surely the authoritative account Hurricane Katrina, the events leading up to it, and its immediate aftermath. In no uncertain terms, Brinkley condemns the leadership of NOLA mayor Ray Nagin and, to a lesser extent, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco. Nagin was dilatory in declaring a mandatory evacuation of the city, apparently fearing hotel lawsuits should an unnecessary evacuation cause them financial hardship. As a result, many New Orleanians delayed their departure. Fatally, once Nagin announced a mandatory evacuation, the city failed to provide promised buses for the poor neighborhoods that needed them.
While a few New Orleanians stayed behind of stubbornness or ignorance or a spirit of adventure or even a sense of civic duty, most of those who stayed were poor and/or infirm. They did not own cars. They did not own televisions, the primary source of information about Katrina. They certainly did not have internet access. And in the end, city leaders left them to fend for themselves.
Nagin also ignored the findings of the Hurricane Pam simulation. Conducted by FEMA in 2004 and based on computer models developed at Louisiana State University, the simulation predicted with chilling accuracy the impact of a Category 3 hurricane on the city of New Orleans. In fairness to City Hall, New Orleans was a poor and broken city. It's hard to hold Nagin completely responsible for events that lay in the futures when he faced impossible day-to-day issues. Nonetheless, Hurricane Pam was one of a number of predictors that, Cassandra-like, city, state, and federal politicians ignored to the Gulf Coast's peril and destruction.
Real estate development and the relentless construction of ship canals led to the dredging and erosion of Lousiana's wetlands; the shrinking coastline reduced a vital natural shield against hurricane storm surges. Hurricanes gather strength over water, and the warmer the water the more strength they gather. Thus, the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico serve as an incubator, allowing storms that form in the Atlantic to become even stronger. Hurricane winds circulating in a counterclockwise direction suck water up into the vortex of the storm. When it moves over land, a hurricane loses force and releases the pent up water into what is called a storm surge. The more powerful the hurricane, the more extreme the surge.
Where they exist, wetlands play a vital role in absorbing the impact of a surge. The decline of coastal wetlands allowed Katrina to maintain strength until it moved inland over New Orleans and the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, the flooding caused by the surge overwhelmed the system of levees that the Army Corps of Engineers had guaranteed could withstand a Category 3 hurricane. (Katrina was a Category 3 storm when it hit the mainland.) Eventually, Katrina floods breached New Orleans levees in 53 places, causing the widespread death and destruction familiar to us all. So, while Katrina itself was a force of nature, the combined forces of development, shipping interests, and poor leadership combined to turn it into what was in fact a man-made catastrophe...
NOLA Happenings: For starters, this is the last weekend of Jazz Festival...If the crowds are too much for you, you can always head over to the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival...The civic minded among us won't want to miss the Audubon Zoo-to-Do tomorrow night...And who doesn't love a genuine 3 Ring Circus?...
You thought Michelle Bachmann was bad? North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx claimed on the House floor that Matthew Shepard was murdered during the commission of a robbery and that the argument that he was the victim of a hate crime is a hoax. And she said this with Shepard's mother in attendance. Watch it and weep:
Having said this, you don't want to miss Bachmann's complete mangling of history here:
Republican president Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley (not "Hoot-Smalley") Act into law in 1930, almost three years before Franklin Roosevelt became president. Not only that, the American people "suffering" under Roosevelt's policies re-elected him three times...
Tonight, Premium T. and I are meeting up with my #2 son and his fiancee for dinner followed by Leonard Cohen. I've seen LC once, back when, as he puts it on his new live album, he "was a crazy kid of 60." That show was memorable and this one promises to be. More tomorrow...
Just A Song: Merle Haggard and "Okie From Muskogee": One of the essential songs of the 1960's, "Okie" was widely misunderstood by both fans and detractors. Citizen K. explains why...
Renegade Eye reports on a Cuban conference about socialism and freedom of expression...
Ima Wizer explains how rid oneself of that mortal enemy of decent folk everywhere, and I don't mean Rush Limbaugh. I speak, of course, of the insidious pygmy goat...
House and Senate Democrats have moved to eliminate a budget proposal that would require combat veterans to use third-party health insurance firms to pay for combat-related injuries, calling it "deeply troubling" and "the responsibility of the U.S. government through the Department of Veterans Affairs -- period." For its part, the Obama Administration does not appear committed to this proposal and already has a meeting scheduled with veterans' groups to discuss this and the overall VA budget.
Jon Soltz, executive director of VoteVets, spoke with Huffington Post about the proposal:
We don't know if this is going to be the proposal, or if it is a serious consideration or not. So, it's premature to go to the White House with pitchforks at this point. That having been said, if it is proposed, we would be opposed, and can't imagine any veterans group that would be for it. There's no appetite for it on the Hill, either. There are ways to eliminate waste at every level of government, though, including the VA. I think we'd all like to sit down with the administration and find areas of the VA budget that are redundant or wasteful, to make sure every dollar spent there is necessary.
It's pretty clear that this idea is a non-starter, as it should be. What's interesting is the hysterical response of the right-blogosphere ("Obama screws military!", "Radical Socialism!", "this makes me sick to my stomach"), which you can sample here, here, and here. Also of interest is the official Fox News account.
First of all, Fox buries and no one else mentions that the Obama budget proposes a 10% increase in VA funding, an increase badly needed after eight years of Bush budget cuts and dereliction of duty. Moreover, they're all acting as if this were a done deal on the scale of the neglect at Walter Reed Hospital instead of a trial balloon intended as a means of paying for the overall increase.
But what really surprises me is the emotional extent of the opposition. After all, wouldn't privately insured benefits payments simply allow injured veterans to take advantage of the wonderful world of free choice? It's an article of faith among conservatives that the United States has the world's best health care system, never mind the 50,000,000 uninsured and 60,000,000 underinsured. Why oppose a proposal that will allow veterans to participate in it instead of being subject to government-run health care, which by definition is evil, incompetent, and inefficient?
It seems to me that conservatives can't have it both ways, much as they may want to. If privately insured payment of benefits isn't acceptable for combat veterans, why should it be acceptable to anyone else?
Despite the headlines, no one says that wounded veterans will actually have to pay for their health care. I worked for a company that self-insured its employees but administered provider payments through a private insurer. I rarely paid any money out of pocket and never had a problem with provider payments being withheld. If I did have a problem or question, I dealt with my company's Human Resources department and not the insurer. Problems were rare because the company had a commitment to broad coverage.
Which for wounded veterans I would think is really the issue: What is the government commitment to coverage of treatment of combat wounds and combat-related disabilities? If an individual veteran has problem or question, will the VA resolve it? During the Bush years, the VA earned a poor reputation for providing and paying for the immense psychological damage experienced by Iraq war veterans, wounded or otherwise. (Bush cuts in the VA budget didn't make their job any easier.) It's instructive that veterans' groups would nonetheless still rather go through the VA rather than have anything to do with the private sector. Which raises the questions again: If private health insurance is bad for veterans, why is it good for the rest of the American citizenry? If government-run health care is the gold standard for veterans, why isn't it for everyone else?...
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