How cool is this?

Here he comes to save the day Mighty Mouse is on his way. My 12 year old is going to be so psyched over this little fellow. Thank heavens they aren't for sale!

God Bless TEXAS

Tom Delay has been indicted on one count! Yes, he was indicted in Travis County, but Travis County is still in Texas! Now where is that cattle whip?

The wisdom of my five year old

I will share a story about my child; my beautiful, brilliant child; comments encouraged! We were watching the interview of President Clinton Saturday morning on CNN, and I asked her to be quiet until it was over because I wanted to hear what he had to say. She then asked me if President Clinton had been a good President, and I responded that yes he had been. My beautiful, brilliant and sleepy (she had just woken up) five year old said "Not like President Bush, He is a bad President." At five she gets it, and can explain the difference in five year old words. He lies. He starts wars. He lies. He doesn’t listen and he doesn’t care.
Bless her, she gives me hope.

Family in Houston

Mom and Grandma in law are just fine, they suffered one night loss of sleep and that is about all. I think that the Mr., Pasquin and my family worried a great deal more than the family in and around Houston did for the most part.

As for adjusting the Christmas card list, the current plan is to as soon as possible move Mom in Law and Grandma out here where we know they will be well taken care of. We are also the only ones sending money each month so they might as well be closer and in a less expensive area. The family members who have really fought this move are the ones who left them in Houston, so as far as I am concerned their voices no longer rise above the level of a dim whisper.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and words and I hope to return to normal blogging in the not too far future; that is if I can ever get past calling the Idiot in Chief names.

Hurricane Rita

Well as disgusted and dismayed as I have been over Hurricane Katrina, to the point of not blogging, Hurricane Rita has drawn me out if for nothing else to rant a bit and to ask for good thoughts for my mother in law and grandmother in law. They live in Houston. The Mr's cousin had promised to evacuate them, they don't have a car and grandma is very ill. They also live on a fixed income. She was to get them yesterday and take them to her house out in the country, where she has three generators and plenty of emergency supplies.
She didn't do it. She decided the drive time was too long. Yep, that is what she said when I asked her why she didn't go get them. Her mom is out. Her sister is out. They both live in the same apartment complex, but they all say the H's mom and their grandmother will be just fine riding out the hurricane there. I started offering to go get them when I saw the Hurricane in the Gulf.
Think good thoughts.
Thanks.

Morality vs. Immorality

Lately when I have been talking with people about Katrina and the failure of the federal government to protect the citizens of New Orleans eventually they will bring up President Bush; I won’t, having lived out here long enough I now know better. The one thing that they universally say about him is that they believe him to be a good, upright, moral man. He may not be the brightest bulb in the pack but he always tries to do the right thing is the point they attempt to get across. As a point of comparison many of these well-meaning people like to point to President Clinton as President Bush’s polar opposite; a brilliant man and president, who has grave moral failings.



Yesterday, I had heard this one too many times, from one too many people. I asked the woman I was talking with “Because of the blowjob?” She responded “Yes, he misused his power over that girl and he was unfaithful to his wife. He is a moral failure” I agreed that yes this was absolutely correct, but by that standard 50 percent of married men and 40 percent of married women are equally flawed, someone who she knows and cares about is probably in that percentage. Are they moral failures? She could not answer. I then suggested that we as a country were forced to watch over a very private matter, when Ken Starr spoon fed us President Clinton’s infidelity, which has very, very little to do with big picture morality. President Clinton’s blowjob did not change foreign or domestic policy. It didn’t cause a war. It did not change my life or yours for the better or worse. It matters not in the big picture.



Yet, when it comes to big picture morality this is where President Bush has grave failings. I asked her how many American soldiers have died in Iraq, over 1800. Why did we go to Iraq? Weapons of Mass Destruction, weapons that have never been found; this is a big picture lie, a lie that has cost over 1800 lives. So what about Saddam’s ties to terrorists? What ties to terrorists? There isn’t a tie to the WTC bombings or Osama, another big picture lie. And now New Orleans, and the death toll there; the vacation that continued and the lies in an attempt to deflect blame. As President he has slashed the levee budget and dismantled FEMA. He has put nothing more than figureheads in charge of FEMA with no thought to the lives it could and would eventually cost. The information was there, but like most unpleasant things in his life, the President decided to ignore it. This is the epitome of immorality, of unadulterated evil. It may put on a kind and caring face and speak kind if mangled words but the blood on its hands is the blood of thousands, both from lies and indifference.

My kind of idiot!

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area," Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, said on CBS's "Early Show." "So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Now those are some pretty high expectations, might I suggest that the President of Jefferson Parish might just be on to something though. An idiot that has the EQ of my 5 year old. You know..."People are dying...we must save them!" "That child is walking around without her Mommy, find her Mommy!".

Yes, that is it, he wants someone who functions as well as my 5 year old. That is an awfully high expectation for the idiot in chief though.

How to change the political landscape in Texas

Take 250,000 displaced peoples from New Orleans (you know the ones that the Bush Government ignored for 5 days) and send them to our metropolitian areas. Yes, I know it is tacky, but might I suggest in a few months we give these folk voter registration cards? They have to vote somewhere you know.

Tough Words

Steve Gilliard

Questions being asked

Texas is said to be taking in 75,000 refugees. Texans are waking up this morning glad to help, but wanting answers; answers to the same questions I am sure are being asked everywhere today: What is taking so long? It is 2005 don't we have the capabilities to get our citizens out of New Orleans? Why couldn't we get food and water to them? If we could spend billions and get aid over to the Tsunami victims in two days, why are the people of New Orleans dying?

In answer to those questions, I want to just scream because you voted for it! Instead, I try to calmly explain the cost of war, FEMA budget cuts, turned down aid from Canada and Russia, and then watch the shock roll over their faces. They realize this is what they voted for, that their government has left those people to die and it could and should have been avoided. The long term consequences of leaving people to die and rot in New Orleans are sinking in as well: death and decay equal disease. We are going to be facing a long term crisis in this country and people are waking up this morning going to work knowing it.

There has been some talk about how the left is turning this disaster into politics, it seems to me that normal everyday Americans are waking up to the policies that were "politics as usual" for this administration and finding out that there were no policies at all. This isn't playing politics it is stating facts. The cure is going to cost so much more that the prevention would have, isn’t that always the case though.

Atrios

Read him and weep, just shut the door and cry a bit. Where are we? What are we doing? What is taking us so long, and why on God's Green Earth is the Idiot in Chief waiting another day to go to the Gulf of Mexico.

I haven't written about the horror that is New Orleans, it is too much to take in, to comprehend. I spoke with Pasquin at lunch briefly and we agreed that everyone has a New Orleans story; if you've been there you have a story to tell about it, New Orleans is that kind of place. It makes the tragedy seem more tangible to us or so it appears.

What is happening there right now could be alleviated, somewhat at least. If we can save others from themselves certainly we can help the poorest among us. The people stranded are the sick, the old, the poor and the very young; the most helpless and the neediest. They are living in conditions that we cannot comprehend.

My Sissy survived the Hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900; she was tied to a pole on the top of a bakery having been handed off to strangers at the tender age of 2. Women are handing their 2 year olds off to strangers now. My Sissy, though, was able to leave Galveston before the death and decay hit, these poor souls are sitting in it, beside it and watching it rise up around them. Sissy made us tapes; telling us the stories of her life, the Hurricane of 1900 is the one I have heard replayed in my mind in this last week: Men walking along the beach looking at rows of dead bodies trying to find lost wives and children, massive bonfires to prevent disease and women and children being evacuated from the ravaged city, not much has changed in 100 years I keep thinking, not much at all really.

Muscular Dystrophy Association

Everyone has a pet charity, MDA is mine. I have been donating to the MDA since I was 5 years old. As a child it was going door to door and collecting change in my neighboorhood and then taking it down to the local fishbowl, as I got older I just donated. At one point I had a job where I could donate a percentage of each paycheck to particular charities. I picked MDA. I still donate each year, though it isn't as easy because there isn't a box to check for a paycheck donation, our television station out here doesn't even carry the entire telethon. We just remember each Labor Day to donate.

As a kid, I remember seeing the tapes of the other kids who unlike me couldn't run and play. I felt so very lucky, as a mother of two healthy daughters I feel the same way each year. Every child should run, play, and laugh; children stricken with Muscular Dystrophy aren't so lucky.

I also have always held Jerry Lewis in great affection, it was as though a little piece of my 5 year old heart decided he was this selfless, amazing man. That 5 year old idealism was proud today when I read:

Jerry Lewis’ annual Labor Day fundraiser will join in as well.

Lewis said Wednesday his telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association would include celebrity appeals for hurricane relief. MDA also will donate $1 million to help victims in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, he said.

“While the needs of ‘my kids’ are with us all year-round, Hurricane Katrina is a national disaster on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend,” the actor-comedian said in a statement. “We simply couldn’t ignore the need to help.”

Celebrities will appeal for donations for hurricane victims during the first four hours of the telethon and its concluding four hours. The broadcast begins at 9 p.m. EDT Sunday and ends at 5:30 p.m. ET Monday (check local listings for stations).


A special 800 phone number will be used for the Katrina donations, with proceeds going to the Salvation Army in the hard-hit states.

Hurricane relief efforts will be seen across a number of TV channels, which have been filled with images of tragedy and destruction caused by Katrina.

It nice to have your childhood idols live up what that little kid inside expects of them.