Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush?

From Consortium News via AlterNet:

Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.

But there's a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan's presidency. There's also a grudging reassessment that the "failed" presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country.

Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges of America's oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation – all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten America's future.

And

With his superficially sunny disposition – and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments – Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.

In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

More here.

The essay goes on to offer an ambiguous answer to the question its title asks: Bush was an awful president, but Reagan laid the philosophical groundwork, if such ideas actually rise to the level of "philosophical," for our recent chief executive's most spectacular failures.

But here's my answer. Bush was indeed worse than Reagan. After all, for the most part, Reagan had a Democratic Congress, as well as much more liberal attitudes among voters at the time, to rein him in. That is, Reagan's actions didn't quite match up to his rhetoric in the way that Bush's did--indeed, Reagan, "the great tax cutter," was also the great tax raiser; when it became apparent how much damage his early cuts would do to both the government and the economy, the Gipper flip-flopped, and restored taxes to essentially the same rates they were before he was elected. He also had a more competent administration around him, Republicans who hadn't completely embraced the message that government was to be dismantled, rather than run efficiently. President Bush, on the other hand, seems to have believed the bullshit, and governed accordingly.

When your central philosophy of governance is shit, that's how you're going to govern, and Bush was no exception to such an obvious truism.

But that doesn't get Reagan off the hook. As the essay asserts, it all started with him. Well, to be fair, you see the Conservative Movement's roots going all the way back to Goldwater's presidential run in 1964, or William F. Buckley's founding of The National Review back in the late 50s, or the horror experienced by fundamentalist Christians at the sexual excesses of the 1960s, or by those same religious nuts reacting to Roe versus Wade, or by Milton Friedman's supply side psycho-economics taught at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. But it all came together with Reagan. He was the guy who united free market fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, anti-drug law-and-order Nazis, and anti-communist hawks under one umbrella. He was the one who gave it all a friendly, smiling, movie star handsome face. You can't possibly have George W. Bush if you don't have Reagan first.

But then, I'm also very much of the opinion that pretty much anybody could have done it, if Reagan hadn't. It was simply a matter of time. The conservatives were working their asses off to overthrow the center-left coalition that had ruled the nation since the Great Depression, and they would have found somebody to embody their values. Maybe Charlton Heston, maybe somebody else. Really, it could have been anybody, as long as he talked good.

Because there's one other precedent Reagan set for Bush to follow: actor-as-president. We were lucky during the Reagan era. The whole shit house did not cave in the way it has recently. But as long as the GOP found it a desirable strategy to run what has amounted to a couple of figure heads for the Oval Office, governmental self-destruction has been inevitable. A robot man is quite simply a bad choice for a leadership position.

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Texas poet laureate returns to first love: writing poetry

From the Houston Chronicle:

So Ruffin, a professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and editor of the Texas Review, has returned to the form where he first found success.

And if at first it was simply pragmatic — what writer would say no to the offer of a new book? — he has taken fresh pleasure from a field often criticized as unwelcoming to the casual reader.

“Contemporary poets got so obscure that poetry kind of fell out of favor,” Ruffin said.

No worries about that with these new poems, taken from themes he had written about in a weekly column for the Huntsville Item: A consideration of Amelia Earhart’s final flight, or the fictional saga of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy impregnated by a security guard. Another offers instructions for eating chicken backs.

None of which is to say that Ruffin takes poetry lightly.

“I always want my poems to be understood by a general audience, and then I want there to be more there.”

Ruffin himself is equally multilayered, an educator who belongs to the National Rifle Association and feels at home whether running a literary journal or tangling with balky plumbing.

“It’s a rare thing for a college professor, and especially an English professor, to be a conservative and a member of the NRA, or to be able to change the oil in their own car,” he said. “I’m a Renaissance man.”

More here.

Okay, I have no idea who this guy is. I've never read any of his poetry. For that matter, I'm not much of a fan of poetry, generally. But I really, really, really like his attitude about poetry, which I extend to all the arts.

Throughout the history of Western civilization, artists have always occupied a social space somewhere outside the mainstream, being in essence, as they are, commentators on the societies in which they live. But at some point in the nineteenth century, artists, no doubt spurred on by the Romantics, greatly upped the ante on this sense of social exceptionalism. That is, artists began to believe that they were more enlightened than, more emotionally sensitive than, in many ways simply better than the great mass of regular ordinary people who do not have the scholastic background to fully appreciate their art, which by the early twentieth century was becoming increasingly weird and off-putting to those who are not in the club. In short, serious artistes of all varieties have become elitist snobs who are far more concerned about the reactions of club members, which include other artists, critics, and effete dillitantes, than the reactions of plain folk.

It took decades, but the net result has been to render serious art meaningless to the lives of most human beings in the West, especially in America, where its citizens, by their very nature, tend to distrust and disdain elitist snobs. This both infuriates and saddens me. I'm infuriated that this elitist art culture persists in the face of its own social irrelevancy. I'm saddened because art is one of the most marvelous innovations in the history of humanity, and most of my countrymen couldn't care less about it, and really, I don't blame them, given the negative attitude thrust on them by so many artists.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Serious artists, if they give a shit at all about the relevancy of their work, ought to shun the serious art institutions, serious art social circles, and elitist serious art attitudes that have placed a massive cultural barrier between their work and the people. Indeed, artists would well serve themselves by coming out of their ivory towers, Soho studios, Lincoln Centers, and cocktail party/art openings at expensive galleries to mingle with their "inferiors." They might learn a bit more about what it means to be a human being at the dawn of the twenty first century.

This guy, Texas Poet Laureate Paul Ruffin, appears to have lived his entire life this way, making himself a role model for what relevant art ought to look like. Maybe I should buy his new book.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash and Reine



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Student caps speech with pot smoke

From the News Tribune via the Houston Chronicle:

TACOMA, Wash. — The teachers wanted persuasive.

And they got it.

At the end of his speech Tuesday urging legalization of marijuana, a 17-year-old Peninsula High School student pulled out a joint, lit it and smoked away. Then he ate the remains.

For that he got a quick escort to the school office and then a ride to Remann Hall juvenile jail.

The stunt was celebrated among some of the teen’s peers but was frowned on to say the least by law enforcement officers and district administrators.

“We believe in freedom of speech and encourage it, but illegal activities are absolutely not going to be tolerated in our district,” schools Superintendent Terry Bouck said.

Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said, “If people want that law changed, they need to go about it the right way.”

He did acknowledge, though, that the student’s action will prompt discussion.

“It sure will probably bring a lot of attention to the issue,” Troyer said.

More here.

Wow, man, talk about balls.

Gotta hand it to this kid. In addition to performing a very nicely executed high school stunt that his classmates will be reminiscing about for decades to come, Teen Pot Smoker single-handedly managed to get his issue into the national news. I mean okay, legalization has been around the corporate news media's fringes for the last few weeks or so, anyway, but still, this is a good piece of agit-prop, worthy of activists much more experienced.

Here's an interesting regional difference within the authoritarian indoctrination institution known as "public school." If this had taken place at the high school where I used to teach in Baytown, Texas, Teen Pot Smoker's action would have been thoroughly criticized by everybody. There would have been no lip service paid to the notion of freedom of speech, no acknowledgement that his act of civil disobedience would be effective in promoting thought and discussion. No relevance to this student's 3.7 g.p.a., which is mentioned later in the article, although, to be fair, making a 3.7 in high school isn't like rocket science or anything. But I guess that's the difference between far-right conservative Texas and relatively liberal Washington: both states' educational apparatuses are about authority and obedience, but the way this mandate is administered reflects the respective social outlooks of the two regions--Texas is harsh; Washington is kinder and gentler. I mean, the kid gets busted and condemned in either state, but the so-called "Blue State" response is more nuanced and subtler.

At any rate, every now and then, actual learning accidentally takes place in the public schools, in spite of the imposed ignorance mission pursued by all these institutions. It is interesting to note that this particular lesson was taught by a student, rather than by the propagandists/indoctrinators also known as "teachers."

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STAR TREK
DAGGER OF THE MIND

From Wikipedia:

"Dagger of the Mind" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #9, production #11 and was broadcast November 3, 1966. It was written by Shimon Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David"), and directed by Vincent McEveety.

Overview: The Enterprise visits a prison planet where a new treatment for the criminally insane has deadly results.

More here.

Okay, this isn't the greatest one of them all, but it's pretty darned good. Straight-up, straight ahead Trek, nothing weird or out of place. A solid episode. It's particularly good, by and large, because of the fantastic performance of guest star Morgan Woodward who plays the stark raving insane Dr. Simon Van Gelder.

Indeed, and this is definitely worth noting here, the 1960s version of Star Trek was greatly concerned with insanity as a near omnipresent issue. "Dagger of the Mind" was only the eleventh episode overall, but it was the fourth where some sort of intense psychosis is a major theme--"Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Corbomite Maneuver," and "The Naked Time" all feature characters either descending into insanity or going right up to its edge; one might even make an argument that "The Enemy Within" deals with insanity, as well, but you know, Kirk's psychosis in that episode was only because the transporter had divided him into his good and evil selves. Whatever. The point is that, for original Trek, space drives people mad all the time. And I fucking love it! Trust me, in the sixty odd episodes to come, there will be much more insanity.

"Dagger" is also notable for the first appearance of Spock's use of the Vulcan mind meld: I think it entirely appropriate that the producers brought it out for the mental hospital episode.

Check it out:



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Report: Climate Change Causes 300,000 Deaths Yearly Already

From the AP via the Huffington Post news wire:

The report suggests that rising sea levels, desertification and changing rainfall patterns are reducing many people's access to safe drinking water and food. This in turn increases diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.

The report said 99 percent of all people who die due to climate-change related causes live in developing countries, even though those countries generate less than 1 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

The report used existing data on weather-related disasters, population trends and economic forecasts to draw its conclusions.

More here.

I suppose this could have been alternatively titled "Fuck You, Third World."

Indeed, it was long ago predicted that the poorest and most vulnerable populations would be the first to suffer from the catastrophic effects of global warming, which is a no-brainer, I suppose, when you think about it for, like, five seconds. Nonetheless, this comes as a surprise. I've been so caught up in the notion for so many years that global warming is something that's going to happen in the future, that it takes me aback somewhat to realize that global warming is something that's happening right now.

But because its effects are hitting developing nations first, it pretty much continues to feel like global warming is a phenomenon of the future. That is, the third world has always been invisible to us. The US ruling establishment, which includes our elected leaders, bureaucrats, concentrations of vast wealth, and the corporate news media, just don't give a fuck about poor people, especially when they have black or brown skins. And because the ruling establishment provides our window to the world, we tend to see only what they care about. So the third world is, by and large, invisible.

And that's a damned shame, generally speaking. But it might now be rising above "damned shame" to straight-up damnation. Seeing how global warming is already killing hundreds of thousands every year might wake us out of our national stupor on the issue, allowing us to go beyond irresponsible arguments about whether climate change is actually happening and into hardcore planning for what to do about it.

You know, I'm increasingly amazed that we're not all dead yet.

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CAUGHT ON FILM: RAPE AS OFFICIAL U.S. POLICY

From AlterNet:

Why the Pentagon Is Probably Lying About
its Suppressed Sodomy and Rape Photos

The Telegraph of London broke the news -- because the U.S. press is in a drugged stupor - -- that the photos President Barack Obama is refusing to release of detainee abuse depict, among other sexual tortures, an American soldier raping a female detainee and a male translator raping a male prisoner.

The paper claims the photos also show anal rape of prisoners with foreign objects such as wires and lightsticks. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba calls the images "horrific" and "indecent" (but absurdly agrees that Obama should not release them -- proving once again that the definition of hypocrisy is the assertion that the truth is in poor taste).

Predictably, a few hours later, the Pentagon issues a formal denial.

It is very likely that the Pentagon lying. This is probably exactly what the photos show, because it happened. Precisely these exact sex crimes -- these exact images and these very objects - -- are familiar and well-documented to those of us who follow closely rights organizations reports of what has already been confirmed.

And

But what is far scarier about these images Obama refuses to release and that the Pentagon is likely to be lying about now, is that it is not the evidence of lower-level soldiers being corrupted by power -- it is proof of the fact that the most senior leadership -- Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Rice's collusion -- were running a global sex-crime trafficking ring with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram Air Base as the holding sites.

The sexual nature of the torture also gives the lie to Cheney's and others' defense of torture as somehow functional: The sexual perversity mandated from the top reveals that it was just plain old sick sadism gratified by a very sick form of pleasure.

More here.

From the UK Telegraph courtesy of AlterNet:

Report: Unreleased Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape'

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

More here.

From Rebel Reports courtesy of AlterNet:

Gen. Taguba Alleges Existence of Prisoner Rape Photos;
White House Press Secretary Attacks ... British Media

In a major story today, London’s Daily Telegraph quoted Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba describing photos (that the Obama administration is fighting to keep secret), which allegedly depict U.S. personnel raping prisoners, other sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba said. Put that statement against this one from the president: In defending his decision to fight the ACLU in its efforts to have the photos publicly released, Obama said on May 13, “I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational.”

At the White House press briefing today, Gibbs lashed out -- not at Gen. Taguba, who made the allegation on the record, and not even specifically at the paper that quoted Taguba. Instead, Gibbs went after the entire British media, saying “I think if you do an even moderate Google search (heh) you’re not gonna find many of these newspapers and ‘truth’ within say 25 words of each other.”

More here.

A couple of weeks ago in my post about President Obama deciding not to release some "not particularly sensational" photos of Americans torturing Iraqi POWs and detainees at Abu Ghraib, I speculated whether the real reason for this flip flop was that the pictures in question were actually depictions of rape and sodomy at Saddam Hussein's former national prison mentioned some months earlier by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. I always get a little nervous when I go out on a limb here at Real Art: at the time, as far as I could tell, nobody was asserting this. Just me.

Turns out, I wasn't the only one, which makes me feel a little better about my ability to analyze the news. But that's not really my point. Rather, my point is that this whole torture scandal gets more and more disgusting the more we learn about it. Speculation that the photos the White House was planning to release contained images of rape may be incorrect, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it was, and maybe still is, official US policy to rape helpless prisoners.

As if waterboarding, humiliation, attack dogs, "stress positions," and plain old beating the shit out of shackled detainees wasn't enough.

This is some deeply twisted and sick shit. And the men who designed and ordered these "enhanced interrogations" are some sick fucks, nearing John Wayne Gacy on the spectrum of violent perversion. Absolutely nothing can justify this. Not 9/11, not a million IED attacks against US service personnel. And we continue to do nothing about it. Is this what we have become? Are we now a nation that rapes helpless prisoners?

If that's the case, God damn the United States.

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Kan. abortion doc killed in church; suspect held

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

WICHITA, Kan. — Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher.

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was detained some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said.

Although Stolz refused to release the man's name, Johnson County sheriff's spokesman Tom Erickson identified the detained man as Scott Roeder. He has not been charged in the slaying and was expected to be taken to Wichita for questioning.

Police did not release a motive for the shooting. But the doctor's violent death was the latest in a string of shootings and bombings over two decades directed against abortion clinics, doctors and staff.

And

Anti-abortion groups denounced the shooting and stressed that they support only nonviolent protest. The movement's leaders fear the killing could create a backlash just as they are scrutinizing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose views on abortion rights are not publicly known.

"We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," Troy Newman, Operation Rescue's president, said in a statement. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning."

More here.

So just six weeks ago conservatives were in absolute hysterics over the Homeland Security Department's report on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. They felt they were being singled out by the new "liberal" Obama administration, totally forgetting the warning DHS had issued on left-wing extremism a few weeks earlier. Indeed, conservatives strongly asserted that the whole thing was nothing but cheap-shot politics, forgetting as well that right-wing extremists were responsible for the largest single act of terrorism in this nation's history prior to 9/11, the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.

And now we see this assassination of an abortion provider in Wichita.

Even though "police did not release a motive for the shooting," this McClatchy article got some good dirt on the shooter. Roeder is indeed a right-wing extremist, long an anti-abortion fanatic, who for years vocally advocated murdering abortion providers as justifiable homicide. He was even busted in the mid 90s by the ATF on illegal explosives charges. But what really gets me going are Roeder's connections to far right militia groups in the same decade, the same movement that produced Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

Bottom line: this wasn't simply a murder; it was an act of right-wing terrorism.

You know, it's entirely possible that someday soon the far-left Earth Liberation Front might accidentally blow up some human beings along with the properties they usually target. It's also entirely possible that Al Qaeda might get its shit together and launch another spectacular 9/11 style attack here in the US. But right now, I'm much more afraid of right-wing lunatics with guns and bombs targeting me for my political beliefs. The conservatives can howl if they want, but this is fucking real. I mean, this is the second time in a year they've come after liberals. At church.

Just another reason to stay away from church, I suppose.

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Sarah Palin's Outrageous Hypocrisy on Teen Sex

From AlterNet, Matt Taibbi opines on Sarah Palin's Jerry Springer family and its political ramifications:

What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing ”family values” merchant these days?

It was one thing when we found out that super-religious governor Palin was letting Bristol’s hunkface beef accessory Levi nail her daughter more or less regularly under the family roof. It was another when we found out that the governor’s sister-in-law got popped for a B&E while her little daughter was waiting outside in the car. And it was still another thing when we found out that Levi’s Mom was going to eat a bust for dealing Oxycontin

And

But beyond that, Bristol’s casual statement about deciding not to get married after all, about how it would have been a disaster, I just don’t get how this works, politically. How can a Republican presidential candidate (and let’s not fool ourselves, Sarah Palin is already that) publicly endorse unwed teen mothering? Am I missing something?

More here.

Of course, that last question, "Am I missing something?", is simply rhetorical. Taibbi knows that the whole right-wing "family values" thing has always been an extraordinarily problematic position to take for its champions. I mean, you know, even though I have no doubt that most of the people who push fundamentalist Christian "family values" try as hard as they can to actually believe what they're saying, we all live in the real world, liberal and conservative alike, and we all have to live with real world issues whether we want to or not.

The pastor who baptized me when I was twelve would preach, from time to time, about how sinful divorce is. Or rather, how sinful remarriage is--divorce is permissible, if absolutely necessary, but marrying again is tantamount to adultery. When I was in my early twenties, his son, who is about a year younger than me, got married; my old preacher performed the ceremony. A few years after that, for whatever reasons, his son's marriage failed, and, like most married Americans at some point in their lives, he got a divorce. I knew this guy well. He was, and I'm sure continues to be, a devout Southern Baptist, and more importantly, he was one of the good ones, who honestly tried to treat people in a loving Christlike way. I'm sure he did everything he could to persevere in his troubled union. But this is the real world, and it didn't work out. But no big deal. Happens all the time. A few years later, he fell in love again, and got married again. Now this is gossip I heard through some of my old church connections, so take it with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that his father presided over the second ceremony, essentially blessing what he had preached was adultery.

I do not condemn this as hypocrisy. Indeed, I laud the turnaround. I have no idea what kind of philosophical shift was needed in order to turn "adultery" into blessed union, but I wholeheartedly approve of this shift. And, knowing this pastor as I once did, I'm certain that there actually was a philosophical transformation: the father, like the son, is one of those good Southern Baptists, earnest and honest, loving and kind. He would never act in a way that is inconsistent with his beliefs. Rather, he was hit in the face by a strong dose of reality, and wisely adjusted his thinking.

But his example is the exception that proves the rule. Most "family values" folk are seemingly incapable of adjusting their attitudes in the face of reality. And when the real world proves them wrong, they wallow in absurdity trying to rationalize away the contradictions. Fallen televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard, right-wing bloviators like drug addict Rush Limbaugh or gambling addict William Bennett, closeted gay Republican politicians like US Representative Mark Foley or Senator Larry Craig, all these people have made utter fools of themselves attempting to adhere to their "family values" positions in the face of their utterly contradictory actions.

The same thing happens every day to ordinary rank-and-file socially conservative Americans.

You know, I spend a lot of time excoriating these "family values" types, for the damage they do to America with their foolish rhetoric, for their hypocrisy, for their self-righteousness. I spend far too little time feeling sorry for them. Because a lot of them are totally miserable.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy and Frankie



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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GUEST BLOG
BAD REGULATION

From the International Association of Lighting Designers:

TEXAS STATE LEGISLATURE PASSES BILL
OUTLAWING LIGHTING DESIGN PROFESSION

The Texas State Legislature passed legislation this morning, 27 May 2009, which will have the unintended consequence of outlawing the practice of lighting design within its borders.

As it is currently written, Texas House Bill 2649 (THB2649) prohibits lighting designers who work in Texas to work on projects without being licensed as either an electrician, architect, engineer, landscape architect or interior designer.

The IALD strongly urges the Texas Senate Business & Commerce Committee remove language restrictive to the profession in THB2649 as a "technical adjustment" when the bill is prepared for Gov. Rick Perry's signature, or the eventual veto of the bill by the Governor should no changes in language be made.

More here.

So I've often railed against the deregulation regime the US has been dealing with since the Reagan era. You know the usual argument, that deregulation tends to help business at the expense of consumers and workers, and this is often true. But I always try to make the point that sometimes regulation is just plain stupid, bad for everybody. This bill in the Texas Ledge is a case in point.

I received this email a little while ago from my old pal Jim, with whom I attended the University of Texas, and with whom I stayed in Atlanta when I evacuated New Orleans for Hurricane Gustav:

Dear all,

Sorry to spam you, but I need a favor. As most of you know, I am an architectural lighting designer by profession. In Texas, the legislature passed a bill yesterday that outlaws my profession in that state as such, requiring all lighting design to be performed by engineers, architects, or interior designers (my background is in theatrical lighting, as is the case with about 70% of architectural lighting designers). These are different trades than lighting design and all of those trades rely on lighting designers for advice on how to best illuminate their projects in an aesthetically pleasing, energy efficient manner. If professional lighting designers are not allowed to practice in Texas, you can be quite sure that Texans will end up with a less attractive world in which to wander around. We are also concerned as Texas is a state which other states watch for legislative initiatives, so has the potential for more far-reaching effects.

Here are but a few of the projects that I'm aware of in Texas that were designed by professional lighting designers without architectural, engineering, or interior design credentials:

The State Capitol
The Alamo
Frost Bank, Austin
Reliant Stadium
San Antonio River Link
Carver Center for the Arts, San Antonio
Exxon
Enron
Austin and Houston airports
Texas Children's Hospital (we are working on that one right now)
Texas Heart Institute
MD Anderson
Baylor College of Medicine
University of Texas Austin and San Antonio, various projects
Rothko Chapel
Menil
Fresco Chapel
Cy Twombly
San Jacinto Monument
etc, etc, etc

Basically put, every major project in Texas and in most parts of the rest of the developed world uses our services or those of our peers in the industry. Remember those groovy lights on the outside of the Beijing Olympics natatorium or on the Bird's Nest? NOT designed by an engineer.

So... I'm writing to ask a favor, in particular from those of you who reside in Texas, but also from the rest of you:

Can you please send an email or make a call or send a fax or scream from the rooftops to express your displeasure with the lighting design amendment tacked on to House Bill 2649? The information for contacts is at the bottom of the forwarded email below (See link above for this--Ron). The bill goes into conference committee tomorrow, and if the lighting design amendment is allowed to stay in the bill, only a veto can stop the state from outlawing the profession, so please at least harass Representative Smith and Governor Perry. Please also forward this to others you know who might help. I'd really like this issue to go viral very quickly.

Thank you very much in advance for your help on this issue.

Jim

For more information on architectural lighting design, see www.gableryoungston.com or www.iald.org.

Any Texas voters out there, go do your thing if you are inclined. Lighting design is an extraordinarily cool field, and it would be insane to simply regulate it into the ether.

UPDATE FROM JIM:

Thank you very much to those who took action on this issue. Your efforts helped to convince the Texas Legislature to remove the offending amendment from the bill.

Jim

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STAR TREK
WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF?

From Wikipedia:

"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #7, production #10, and was first broadcast October 20, 1966. It was repeated two months later, on December 22, 1966, and was the first episode of the series to be repeated on NBC. It was written by Robert Bloch and directed by James Goldstone. The title of the episode is taken from the fourth line of the 19th century nursery rhyme "What Are Little Boys Made Of?".

Overview: Nurse Chapel searches for her long lost fiancé, and uncovers his secret plan for galactic conquest.

More here.

Not one of my favorites, but that doesn't mean it's not worth watching. Indeed, I don't return to this one again and again the way I do with episodes like "The Naked Time" or "Where No Man Has Gone Before," but when I do watch it, I have fun. I probably stay away from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" because, like a number of other first season episodes, it feels less like Trek and more like 50s and 60s science fiction in general. On the other hand, sci-fi film and television from that era is pretty damned good stuff--Twilight Zone was great, as was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as was Forbidden Planet. This episode's got some really cool themes placing it right smack dab in the middle of the genre at the time, evil robots, friends and lovers as secret enemies, subversive galactic conquest, and on and on.

And, in spite of its non-Trek feel, it's got some good Star Trek motifs. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we see the classic "death of red shirts" scene, that is, Enterprise security guards who show up only to die quickly and violently. It features Nurse Chapel prominently, and fleshes out her character a bit. Dr. Korby is a classic and well played mad scientist. Ruk, the alien android played by the same actor who played Lurch on the old Addams Family TV show, Ted Cassidy, is a well executed evil robot.

Okay, now that I've gone through all this I'm thinking I ought to go ahead and watch it again. You should too.



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Obama Hails Sotomayor as ‘Inspiring’

From the New York Times:

President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.

And

Judge Sotomayor has said her ethnicity and gender are important factors in serving on the bench, a point that could generate debate. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said in a 2002 lecture.

She also once said at a conference that a “court of appeals is where policy is made,” a statement that has drawn criticism from conservatives who saw it as a sign of judicial activism. Judge Sotomayor seemed to understand at the time that she was making a controversial statement, adding that, “I know this is on tape, and I should never say that, because we don’t make law.”

Conservatives quickly pointed to such statements after word of her selection on Tuesday.

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, an activist group. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

More here.

Well, of course, I'm disappointed. I mean, Obama could have done a whole lot worse, I suppose, but Sotomayor is clearly no "liberal activist." Looking over some of her major past decisions on her Wikipedia page, she does indeed appear to be something of a "centrist" whatever that means these days. That is, she's not always in lockstep with judges who always rule in favor of big business, but she appears to side with the corporations a bit more often than not. She upheld the conservative "gag rule" on abortion aid abroad. She appears to be good on civil rights and gun control. A mixed bag, really, which is why I'm okay with calling her a centrist. Indeed, the same Wikipedia article cites ten sources describing her as a centrist.

Like I said, we could do a whole lot worse.

On the other hand, the right wing is trying to whip itself into a frenzy--just check out some of these posts over at Media Matters. Limbaugh calls her a "reverse racist." Televangelist Pat Robertson calls her the "worst" choice possible. Then there's the question about her remarks on gender and ethnicity informing decisions from the bench. That's got the conservatives squealing like pigs.

But really. Gender and ethnicity inform everybody's opinions on everything. People are simply fooling themselves when they call only for judges who do nothing but "interpret the law." It is impossible to do nothing but "interpret the law." I mean, okay, if you're worried about some weirdo coming along and deciding cases based solely on such issues, or even using them as major standards for decision making, I'm with you. Judges need to interpret the law. The point is that the law, and the courts, do not exist in some sort of social or historical vacuum: pretending to ignore how legal decisions function in the real world, pretending that justices do not carry bias with them onto the bench, is not only intellectually arrogant, but often downright dangerous.

When Sotomayor says that legal decisions are affected by the personal background of the judges making them, she's not asserting a radical judicial philosophy; rather, she's simply describing the way things are, and is most likely a better judge for her awareness of that reality.

On the whole, I'd personally prefer a real liberal judicial activist, keeping in mind that, as far as I can tell, all Supreme Court Justices practice "judicial activism" whether they're conservative or not. But given today's mainstream political climate, center right, my kind of nominee is simply impossible, even if the President were inclined to lean in that direction, which I don't believe. I guess I'll have to settle for someone who's simply not a far-right reactionary freakazoid.

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WTFWJD?

From Balloon Juice courtesy of Eschaton:

Your Sunday Morning Sermon

Courtesy of a Red State diary:

It’s likely even Jesus would have OK’d water boarding if it would have saved his Mom. He would’ve done the same to save his Dad, or any one of His disciples. For that matter, He even died to save all humans.

More here, including a link to the original post at the super right-wing RedState site.

So, of course, the point that liberal Balloon Juice is making by excerpting this passage is something along the lines of "those far right torture supporters are so depraved that they're willing to twist the ostensibly pacifist views of 'the prince of peace' to mean their exact opposite."

Well, okay.

I agree that torture supporters are depraved. I also agree that many, many Christians oppose torture because of their religious convictions, and that one can argue convincingly that Jesus might have opposed torture himself. But I can't say that most Christians oppose torture because a recent study found that a majority of church goers do not oppose torture. And, as I observed a few weeks back in my post about this study, the existence of pro-torture Christians is not really such a strange phenomenon: Christians believe that Hell, the ultimate and most horrific torture chamber in all the universe, is a good thing, extremely important in the cosmic moral order.

We must never forget that "love your neighbor" Jesus spoke fondly, on numerous occasions, about Hell, and the crucial role it plays in his Father's plans and schemes. That is, Jesus supported torture.

You can take that as allegory if you want, and like I said, many Christians do, but it's all right there in the Bible. Don't take my word for it; look it up yourself if you don't believe me: torture is literally embedded in Christian belief.

So, what the fuck would Jesus do? Well, he'd probably be very happy about your eternal torment if you haven't accepted him into your heart. Or very sad that you have to face his father's wrath, and are too proud to use his get-out-of-jail-free-card otherwise known as "salvation." Whatever. Same difference.

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SAME OLD DONKEY BUTTS

From the New York Times, columnist Frank Rich on gay rights and the majority party:

La Cage aux Democrats

But when Congressional Republicans try to block gay civil rights — last week one cadre introduced a bill to void the recognition of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia — they just don’t have the votes to get their way. The Democrats do have the votes to advance the gay civil rights legislation Obama has promised to sign. And they have a serious responsibility to do so. Let’s not forget that “don’t ask” and DOMA both happened on Bill Clinton’s watch and with his approval. Indeed, in the 2008 campaign, Obama’s promise to repeal DOMA outright was a position meant to outflank Hillary Clinton, who favored only a partial revision.

So what’s stopping the Democrats from rectifying that legacy now? As Wolfson said to me last week, they lack “a towering national figure to make the moral case” for full gay civil rights. There’s no one of that stature in Congress now that Ted Kennedy has been sidelined by illness, and the president shows no signs so far of following the example of L.B.J., who championed black civil rights even though he knew it would cost his own party the South. When Obama invoked same-sex marriage in an innocuous joke at the White House correspondents’ dinner two weeks ago — he and his political partner, David Axelrod, went to Iowa to “make it official” — it seemed all the odder that he hasn’t engaged the issue substantively.

“This is a civil rights moment,” Wolfson said, “and Obama has not yet risen to it.” Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.

Click here for the rest.

Right. Rich's theory is that the Democrats simply need to be prodded by a persuasive and well regarded individual in order to do the right thing, and he may very well be right about that, but this point of view begs the question: why the hell does the "liberal" party need to be pushed toward taking a liberal policy position?

If you've read Real Art for any time at all, you can probably guess my answer. Yeah, that's right. The Democrats aren't the liberal party. I mean, there are certainly liberals in the Democratic Party, but in no way do the progressive coalitions in the House and Senate wield the same kind of influence that their counterparts in the Republican Party have over their comrades. That is, the Republicans are definitely a conservative party; the Democrats, however, are not the Republicans' opposite: the Democrats are the party of non-Republican conservatives and everybody else along the political spectrum who don't self-identify as conservative. For that matter, a lot of Democrats who wouldn't ever call themselves "conservative" consistently take conservative positions on multiple issues.

There isn't any one reason that the so-called "liberal" party chronically defies its ideological reputation in deed, but retains it in mythology--much of it has to do with the successful right-wing pulling of the political center ever towards itself over the last thirty years or so, making today's "liberal" equal yesterday's "conservative" in national discourse. But whatever the reasons, the Democrats' "liberal" fiction continues as a reality today in spite of the Republican implosion.

How long will it take for the donkey butts to realize that their enemies have destroyed themselves, that it is now safe to begin considering ideas that would have gotten them tarred and feathered a decade ago? Have the Democrats crossed a threshold of no return? Do we have to wait a generation until the wild right-wing politics of the Reagan revolution are forgotten?

I hope I live long enough to see.

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MATT TAIBBI INTERVIEW

From C-SPAN2:

From Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington D.C., Matt Taibbi, contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, explores the political landscape of post-9/11 America in "The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire." Mr. Taibbi presents his thoughts on the war in Iraq, the machinations of Congress, the 9/11 truth movement and his time as a churchgoer. Matt Taibbi discusses his book with David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine. Following the taping of After Words, Matt Taibbi and David Corn took questions from the audience at Politics and Prose bookstore.

Click here to watch the interview.

So I've been grooving a lot on Taibbi lately. He's something of a Frank Rich for people born after the baby boom. That is, Taibbi's political analysis is solid, but it's peppered liberally with the kind of stuff that I like to write about here, cultural contextualization, what it all means for ordinary people, and in terms of movies and music. It only makes sense that he writes for Rolling Stone, but really he transcends the venerable baby boomer magazine, or at least what the magazine has become. He's the true heir to Hunter S. Thompson, only without the guns and peyote.

Anyway, this is a fun interview, particularly the stuff about his time infiltrating Cornerstone Baptist Church in San Antonio, headed by Pastor John Hagee, one of the looniest fundamentalists in the country. And David Corn, formerly of the Nation magazine, now with Mother Jones, conducts the interview--Corn is the guy who first figured out that federal laws may have been broken when Robert Novak blabbed in a column that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent. So you've got a pretty brilliant guy on the other side of the table.

It's about an hour long. Go check it out.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Dash and Reine...



...and Becky's leg!

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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REAL SCIENCE
Rules for Time Travelers

From Discover Magazine courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Not that we expect these rules to be obeyed; the dramatic demands of a work of fiction will always trump the desire to get things scientifically accurate, and Star Trek all by itself has foisted half a dozen mutually-inconsistent theories of time travel on us. But time travel isn’t magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don’t know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed. And sometimes it’s more interesting to play by the rules. So if you wanted to create a fictional world involving travel through time, here are 10+1 rules by which you should try to play.

More here.

No real commentary on this. I mean, you know, I'm not a physicist. But this shit is damned fascinating. Even though Star Trek's soft sci-fi approach to time travel is rightfully dismissed by actual scientists as silly poppycock, one has to admit that the show has made millions, myself included, want to know more about the concept in the real world. And knowing more about real prospects for time travel makes hard science fiction, that is, sci-fi strongly grounded in contemporary science, all the more enjoyable. Like with David Gerrold's landmark time travel tale from the early 70s, The Man Who Folded Himself. Damned fine book.

Anyway, go read the rules. Wild stuff.

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STAR TREK
BALANCE OF TERROR

From Wikipedia:

"Balance of Terror", written by Paul Schneider and directed by Vincent McEveety, is a first-season episode of the original Star Trek series that first aired on December 15, 1966. The episode is a science-fiction version of a submarine film; writer Paul Schneider drew on the films Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below, casting the Enterprise as a surface vessel and the Romulan vessel as a submarine.

This episode introduces the Romulans. Additionally, Mark Lenard, playing the Romulan commander, makes his first Star Trek appearance. Lenard later played Spock's Vulcan father, Sarek, in several episodes and movies, and appears as the Klingon commander in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These roles made Lenard the first actor to play characters of three prominent Star Trek races.

More here.

This one is great. It's probably not in my top five, if only because of a few weird inconsistencies, like Lt. Stiles' xenophobia toward Spock, or the Vulcan science officer's dunderheaded accidental breaking of radio silence. But it's definitely in my top ten.

"Balance of Terror" is a straight up Federation war story, something we see far too little of in the original series. Like the Wikipedia article says, it's a submarine tale, and quite well done, at that. There's also some great Trek mythology established. We get to see a Star Fleet wedding. We get some Vulcan history; we get some Earth history. The cloaking device is introduced. We get to meet the Romulans, who are almost as compelling of an alien foe as the Klingons.

Quick digression. Of all the different varieties of Star Trek out there, I feel like the only time they ever got the Romulans right was the first series. Part of that is the above mentioned portrayal of the Romulan Commander by Mark Lenard, which is fantastic--no actor of his caliber ever played a Romulan again, excepting maybe the guy who played that defecting admiral in a mid-series episode of Next Generation, but the only other original series Romulan episode, "The Enterprise Incident," took Lenard's lead in how the actors approached the race. But the biggest reason for the later failure of Romulans in Star Trek is that writers just didn't seem to understand them: Kirk's Romulans are clearly modeled after the Romans--they're bloodthirsty warriors, yes, but they also have culture and sophistication; they enjoy battle, but they also appreciate art and beauty. Later versions make them out to be not much more than Machiavellian assholes. And who the fuck can dig a Machiavellian asshole?

Anyway, check it out. It's great.



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GQ report blames Rumsfeld for military delay after Katrina

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The Washington Monthly highlights more of Robert Draper's article in GQ:

"[T]hree years later, when I asked a top White House official how he would characterize Rumsfeld's assistance in the response to Hurricane Katrina, I found out why. "It was commonly known in the West Wing that there was a battle with Rumsfeld regarding this," said the official. "I can't imagine another defense secretary throwing up the kinds of obstacles he did."

Though various military bases had been mobilized into a state of alert well before the advance team's tour, Rumsfeld's aversion to using active-duty troops was evident: "There's no doubt in my mind," says one of Bush's close advisers today, "that Rumsfeld didn't like the concept."

The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that morning and said, "You're going to need several thousand troops."

"Well, I disagree," said the SecDef. "And I'm going to tell the president we don't need any more than the National Guard."

More here, including links to both the GQ article, and the Washington Post article about it.

At the time, everybody on the left was strongly asserting that the federal response would have been much better if resources hadn't already been tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that continues to be a reasonable point of view. I may have mentioned that argument during my furious daily Katrina blogging back in September of '05, but I think lack of evidence kept me from really jumping on the bandwagon with it. That is, we didn't really know that the Bush administration's mythic impotence in New Orleans was because he'd already shot his wad in the Middle East--my understanding then was, and continues to be, that because Republicans believe government can do nothing but make things worse, they are supremely unqualified to actually run government; indeed, what Republicans want to do is run government into the ground.

But this news about Rumsfeld gives some credence to that initial left-wing take on Bush's Katrina failure. I mean, the GQ article doesn't assert that the tardiness of federal troops' arrival in NOLA was literally because they were all overseas when the storm hit, but it does show that war policy played a significant role in delaying the military's arrival. Sometimes when something seems to be true, even though you can't possibly be certain, there's a good chance it's the truth.

We already knew that Rumsfeld's a scumbag. Now we know that he needlessly and singlehandedly perpetuated the suffering of thousands for what apparently amount to vainglorious reasons. If that's not a crime, it ought to be.

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FROM THE REAL ART "SPORTS" DESK
PROFESSIONAL BEACH VOLLEYBALL COMES TO H-TOWN

From the Houston Chronicle:

Ross, Kessy upset top seeds to claim Open

April Ross and Jennifer Kessy sprayed champagne on a crowd of well-wishers after their finals match at Westside Tennis and Fitness. Then Ross savored what was left in her bottle.

It tasted too good too waste.

“It’s really, really sweet,” she said, smiling.

Almost as sweet as her team’s first AVP Tour win in 10 finals trips. Ross and Kessy upended top seeds Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs 21-17, 18-21, 15-12 on Sunday for the Houston Open title

More here.

Well, first off, congratulations to Ross and Kessy for their stunning win at the Houston Open. They worked long and hard to finally top their rivals, and I'm sure they will continue to bask in the glory of their triumph.

On the other hand, I continue to have great difficulty taking beach volleyball seriously. Sure, it's definitely a sport. I mean, they keep score and hand out trophies and all. And it's definitely volleyball, which has a century-long history as a legitimate sport. But I just can't get past the bathing suits and sand. What's it all about? Okay okay, it is "beach" volleyball, after all. I get that.

But I feel like we're all supposed to pretend that the exposed skin and party atmosphere don't have anything to do with why beach volleyball appears to be, like, a billion times more popular than regular old volleyball played in a gym. I mean, c'mon. The whole thing, culturally speaking, is about bringing MTV style spring break coverage to people who wouldn't be caught dead watching the real thing.

"No no, It's not sleazy at all! It's a sporting event."

Well okay, I wouldn't particularly call it "sleazy" myself, but it's definitely about T&A and beer. I imagine that women and gay men get something out of the half naked male players, too, but I suspect the whole XY side of the game only exists as cover for the XX matches--you know, it's not about sex; they show both men and women.

Whatever.

Anyway, don't get me wrong on this. I'm not saying beach volleyball shouldn't exist, or that people who enjoy it are stupid. I'm just saying there seems to be a sort of "Emperor's New Clothes" aspect to it that bothers me. Frankly, I prefer watching spring break idiots dancing around in next to nothing on MTV every March through May. It's more honest.

For similar reasons, I prefer trashy topless bars over Hooter's.


Elaine Youngs is blocked at the net by April Ross.
Photo by Bob Levey courtesy of the Houston Chronicle


MTV Spring Break Panama City Beach, 2009
Photo by Steven Brahms courtesy of MTV

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SO...WHY CAN'T YOU CROSS-DRESS IN PUBLIC SCHOOL?

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Principal asked to apologize for comments on kilt

The principal of a Utah middle school has been asked to apologize for forcing a kilt-wearing Scottish-American student to change his clothes.

And

Jessop told the boy that the outfit could be misconstrued as cross-dressing.

Taggart says the district recognizes the kilt as an expression of the boy's Scottish heritage and that the kilt was not inappropriate.

A wee bit more here.

So this is in Mormon-intense Utah and everything, but you might be surprised at how often such dress code battles take place in the public school system nationwide. And this isn't really about some kind of institutional ethnic insensitivity, either. It's about cross-dressing.

Okay, it's about school dress codes in general, too, which exist for the purpose of maintaining institutional order, greatly necessary for executing the schools' primary function of indoctrinating children into a culture of obedience and authority, rather than any sense of what kind of clothing is "inappropriate." That is, many school rules exist only to be followed, an extraordinarily important lesson in the obedience curriculum taught k-12--arbitrary dress codes and school uniform mandates are among the most popular manifestations of this lesson. Student dress code defiance receives an "F" in the obedience curriculum, which usually translates into detention hall or even suspension if the defiance is egregious enough.

But there are sins and there are mortal sins. Boys dressing like girls, in this indoctrination system we call "school," is a mortal sin. Probably because teachers are among the most conventional, boring, and sexually unadventurous individuals in the nation. Cross-dressing freaks them out. So a boy wearing a skirt to school performs the double whammy of dress code defiance coupled with gender-bending. I mean, wearing your shirt untucked might get you a demerit or something, but wearing a skirt makes teachers nervous and weird--generally, boys in dresses get special attention.

Such a reaction essentially supports my assertion that, in our educational system, learning takes a backseat to discipline: coming down hard on student cross-dressers and other clothing individualists literally wastes a marvelous educational opportunity. That is, why can't you cross-dress in public school? That's the discussion every class ought to have in the face this kind of controversy. And I mean a real discussion. One that takes on gender and sexual issues, one that takes on the concept of social norms versus freedom and individualism, one that spawns more questions than it answers. You know, a discussion that fosters critical thinking, the ostensible goal of public education in America.

After all, kids are much more willing to work their brains about issues that have meaning in their own lives, rather than about, say, nineteenth century literature written to be read by college educated middle aged aristocrats instead of teenagers. Indeed, kids want to talk about sex, drugs, rock and roll, religion, money, school rules they hate, stuff that directly affects them right now, stuff that one definitely needs a critical mind in order to have any handle on. By and large, however, such topics are off limits in the public school system. Allowing legitimacy to teenage opinions that counter those of the educational authorities would disrupt institutional order, rendering the authority and obedience mandate severely problematic.

You see, we don't really want to teach kids to think. We say we do. But we don't really try. Actually, given the way we tell kids in school exactly what to do, all day long, every day, for thirteen years of their lives, it's more like trying to beat the thinking out of their brains rather than the reverse. That is, schools teach children to not think.

And sadly, the schools are fairly successful at this task.

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QUIET SATURDAY NIGHT AT HOME

From WGNO TV in New Orleans:

Weather Wreaks Havoc Around New Orleans Area

METAIRIE - As heavy rain moved through the area Saturday night, Jerussa and Les Levy recorded what appeared to be a tornado or waterspout. The couple used a Flipcam and sent the video to ABC26 News.

The funnel was associated with a heavy storm that moved southwest through the Metairie area. Earlier in the evening, people reported seeing a waterspout on Lake Pontchartrain.

There were also reports of minor street flooding and some building damage, especially around Lakeside Shopping Center. Streets with water included 17th and 18th Streets, West Esplanade Avenue, and parts of Causeway Boulevard.

The storm may also have caused a power outage for around 500 homes.

Actually, that's the whole story, so no "more here" link. But if you want to see that I'm not making it up, because I'm a well known liar, click here to see the story in it's original format.

Sadly, the video referenced in the story is not online yet.

From WVUE TV in New Orleans:

Water spout touches down in Lake Pontchartrain

Metairie - A water spout touched down in Lake Pontchartrain near Metairie around 9:00 Saturday night. Severe weather caused minor damage and minor street flooding. No injuries were reported. FOX 8 viewers captured these images.

Same as above. Really small, tiny stories. But there are some pics associated with this one here.

The only reason I find this blogworthy is that I got to see it happen. Okay, that, and how interesting it is to note the discrepancy between what I saw and what was reported.

Here's what happened.

Around nine o'clock or so I was watching television and heard a massive "boom" sound from outside. It had been raining, and heavy thunderstorms were forecast, so I figured it was a transformer going down. Then my power went off. I looked out the sliding glass door of my balcony and saw a mass of sparks flying through the air a couple of blocks away. Another transformer going down.

Then I saw a bunch of debris circling around, headed in my direction. "Whoa, man, this is fucked," I thought. Cars on the street had pulled into parking lots and beside curbs--people were scared. I still wasn't quite grasping what was going on, but started trying to remember what you're supposed to do when a tornado is headed in your direction. A third transformer blew, and by now the first transformer to go down had set fire to the pole it was perched on, which burned despite the rain.

Then the circling debris headed off to the right of my apartment building. "Okay, cool, I'm safe for the moment," I thought. In the darkness, I found my phone and called my ex to compare notes. Apparently, even though she's only a twenty minute drive from where I live, nothing was happening there in the way of severe weather, but she did tell me about some hardcore radar images she had just seen on television right over me in Metairie. As the rain here intensified, I told her I wasn't surprised.

What did surprise me was how the power was restored about forty five minutes later. From what I had seen, I was expecting to be in the dark all night. So I turned on the TV news to see what the local suit and makeup gang had to say about it all. Apparently, there was some confusion as to whether the so-called "waterspout" had touched down on land, which would make it a tornado. It took another half hour before one of the local FOX guys, who was on his day off, called in on his cell phone to confirm the tornado--to the best of my knowledge, they scooped the hell out of their competitors; at the moment, nobody else is reporting this as an actual tornado.

According to this FOX guy, it tore up the roof of a snow cone place just two blocks from me. Fuckin' A. I was less than a football field away from a fucking tornado. And I just stood there and watched like an idiot. Apparently, I'm useless during an emergency.

Anyway, that's my nice quiet Saturday night at home. Just me and a tornado. And my blog. Talk about being long-winded.


Photo courtesy of WWL TV Eyewitness News viewer "j.j.avitia."

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy and Frankie



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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