What about New Orleans' "Homeland Security"?

The levees weren't maintained because the money was going to Iraq and the DHS. From Editor & Publisher, via KGB Report:

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The [Army] Corps [of Engineers] never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane and flood-control dollars.

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

“The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement,” he said. “The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them.”

Help hurricane victims

Donate to the Red Cross 2005 Hurricane Relief Fund.

KDKA headline

This is great. Originally seen on Jason's site. Who writes these?

"Fetuses Discovered, Some Outraged"

Fedele has sagely counseled me to "steer clear of the outraged fetii." Good advice, kids.

do you vote and are you pissed off? meeting tonight

go to this even if you, like me, hate the word 'leverage' as it's used here:

* The Inaugural Pittsburgh League of Pissed Off Voters Meeting
(Refreshments will be served !!!)
Tuesday August 30th, 2005, 7pm
Shadow Lounge located at 5972 Baum Blvd., East Liberty

WE WILL BE IN THE BLUE ROOM!!!

- Our mission is to build a progressive governing majority. We develop leaders, organize youth driven, multi-issue, multi-constituency voting blocs and leverage political power to craft progressive policy and legislation.
- Our goal is to create a multi-racial, multi-issue progressive movement to eventually to establish a progressive voting majority

Agenda

- Introductions
- Introduction of the The League of Pissed Off Voters and affiliates
- The League of Pissed Off Voters
- The League of Young Voters Education Fund
- The League of Hip-Hop Voters
- The League of Young Voters
- Brainstorming Session (What do you want to see happen in Pittsburgh?)
- SWOT Analysis of the Young Progressive Political Landscape in Pittsburgh
- Strategic Partnerships
- Coalition Building in Pittsburgh
- Inventory of Resources
- People
- Groups
- Institutions
- Information
- The Pittsburgh Strategic Plan
- What is coming down the pike?
- Issues
- Campaigns
- Events
- Other related activities
- PA Hip-Hop Political Convention 10/7/05-10/9/05 in Philadelphia
- Update on National Hip-Hop Political Convention
- NEXT STEPS

Animatronic squirrel

The BBC calls it "ridiculously cute," but as for me, I'm a little freaked out by a squirrel taking my calls...

Biking Toward Nowhere & Vigil Tonight

Maureen Dowd has an excellent column in today's NY Times:

As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W. seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis.

This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.

The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a possibly "barren" outcome.

Speaking of Cindy Sheehan, come support her and the Gold Star Families for Peace in a vigil--one of a thousand around the country--at Frick Park tonight at 7:30. (So far, 439 people have signed up!)

We Rushed to War - Who Pays the Price?
Blue Slide, Frick Park, Squirrel Hill
Beechwood Blvd. and Nicholson
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
Wednesday, 17 Aug 2005, 7:30 PM

To sign up for this event, click here:
http://www.moveonpac.org/event/cindyvigils/3501

If this location is inconvenient, please consider vigils in:

Bellevue http://www.moveonpac.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=3932
Aliquippa http://www.moveonpac.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=3967
Butler http://www.moveonpac.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=3730

Googling books

The Washington Post has a story about Google's project to make the contents of all books searchable online. It's running into opposition from copyright holders, so Google has delayed it so that publishing houses can choose not to have their books included. From Google Print product manager Adam Smith:

We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher program in order to introduce their work to countless readers around the world. But we know that not everyone agrees, and we want to do our best to respect their views too. So now, any and all copyright holders . . . can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library.

Publishing houses shouldn't be skeered: There are ways to make sure people keep buying books. For example, maybe you search for a term and find it within a book, but only an excerpt is displayed; you have to pay to read the whole book.

This is a technology I've been waiting for for a long time. Imagine all the information that we'd have easy access to!

Why Pennacchio is the only option for women (from a man)

From Rob Kall at OpEdNews, via Pennacchio's blog:

If anti-women’s rights candidate Bob Casey Jr. wins the primary, then he’ll be running against Rick Santorum. Now, Casey will deny he’s against women’s rights. So will his supporters like PA governor Ed Rendell, Hillary Clinton and senate minority leader Harry Reid. They’ll try to split hairs and say that Casey’s opposition to abortion rights—the right of a women to control her own body—is not opposition to women’s rights.

I disagree. Women fought long and hard for the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, and this fight happened while they were fighting for a whole lot of other equal rights to vote, work, own property, and to participate fully in all aspects of society. ...

If Bob Casey Jr. wins in his battle with Rick Santorum, his win will set back the progress that women’s rights advocates have achieved by decades. The DLC will consolidate its influence over the DNC and they will, probably successfully, argue that the way to beat Republicans is to oppose abortion.

Don’t be misled by this. It is not about abortion. It is about taking away women’s rights, about taking away women’s power and all the other rights they have achieved. Once a woman’s right to control her body when she is pregnant is taken away, the next step will be to take away the right to use contraception—both pills and mechanical approaches. ...

There’s another solution. Chuck Pennacchio, http://www.chuck2006.com , a pro women’s rights, pro choice Democrat, has been a declared candidate for longer than any of the others. He has a successful track record helping other underdog US senate candidates win their races. He is decidedly independent, rejecting PAC money and rejecting the influence of the centrists. He’s the solution to this problem. When people see Casey speak, they try to stay awake. When they see Pennacchio speak, they are often moved to tears, because he talks their language and understands their issues, and they move from thinking that Casey is the only choice to seeing that Pennacchio is the best choice—for the state and for the best chance to win. Personally, I feel that Pennacchio could be the Democrat's next Paul Wellstone-- a leader with courage, conscience and an enormous amount of savvy and experience with how the senate works.

Women across the US, not just Pennsylvania, women throughout the world need to recognize that if the dominos fall and the democratic party writes off women’s rights, it will affect women in every nation. It’s a long slope to slide backward towards, but a Casey win in the spring primary is a sure disaster for women the world over. It’s just a matter of time.

Amen to that.

Pennacchio at Drinking Liberally

I was fortunate enough to hear Chuck Pennacchio, who's running against Santorum, speak last night at Drinking Liberally at the Church Brew Works.

I supported his candidacy already, being that Bob Casey Jr. is anti-choice, and I also think it's disgusting that the Democratic leadership (and even MoveOn!) have anointed Casey even before the primary just because they think he can win. Didn't we make that same mistake with John Kerry? And, more to the point, with Ron Klink?:

Ron Klink's experience is Bob Casey's bad dream.

Klink, a onetime TV news anchorman in Pittsburgh and a longtime congressman, lost the 2000 U.S. Senate race against Republican incumbent Rick Santorum after a campaign that failed for various reasons to gain traction. ...

In the general election campaign, Klink said, national party leaders' promises of financial and field support failed to materialize. ...

Klink said he was proud to be a "Casey Democrat" — a reference to Casey's father, the late governor, whose strong views made him a national hero to the anti-abortion movement. He bitterly recalled being portrayed as "Santorum Light" during the 2000 primary because of his abortion stance and blamed his defeat partly on Democrats who refused to vote for him for that reason.

Pennacchio noted that a Quinnipiac University poll found that only 17 percent of people in the state knew that Casey was anti-choice (nine percent actually thought he was pro-choice; the rest said they weren't sure). Meanwhile, 64 percent -- more than two-thirds -- of PA voters support Roe v. Wade.

Before hearing Pennacchio speak, I was concerned that he hasn't been doing enough to get his name out. However, he did say that he's working on reaching out to groups like NARAL and the Pro-Choice Republicans--which is good.

I plan to support Pennacchio any way I can, and there are a lot of pro-choice voters in the state who would feel the same way if they knew about him. Getting the word out is key. http://www.chuck2006.com

More on Pennacchio's DL appearance at Froth Slosh B'Gosh (and I'm not just including the link because I'm in one of the pictures).