A roundup of writings that caught my eye yesterday:

Jeneane Sessum: “We didn’t understand the magnitude…. Help is on the way.” ON THE WAY? It’s Past too late.

From Suburban Guerrilla – a NYTimes editorial: “Life in the Bottom 80 Percent”: When President Bush talks about the economy, he invariably boasts about good economic growth. But he doesn’t acknowledge what is apparent from the census figures: as the very rich get even richer, their gains can mask the stagnation and deterioration at less lofty income levels….When Congress returns from its monthlong summer vacation next week, two of the leadership’s top priorities include renewing the push to repeal the estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest of families, and extending the tax cuts for investment income, which flow largely to the richest Americans. At the other end of the spectrum, lawmakers have stubbornly refused to raise the minimum wage: $5.15 an hour since 1997. They will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs that ameliorate income inequality, like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans. They should be ashamed of themselves.

rc3.org: What this really illustrates is the cost of bad government. … Beyond mere partisanship, the most important thing is to elect responsible adults who can and will solve problems. That capability seems to be missing these days.

Anderson Cooper and Jack Cafferty show CNN still has some integrity left. Wow.

Jeff Jarvis: The convention center in New Orleans is a symbol of shame. How can we not figure out how to get water there? Babies are starving. People are dying. There is no authority; police have pulled back to defend their own stations or, according to CNN, deserted their posts. Authorities — from Bush down to cabinet officials down to legislators down to state officials down to the soon-to-be-former-mayor down to those police — have failed these people.

Sidney Blumenthal:In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Trapped in the Superdome:A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered the restroom. Blood stains the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina’s arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in. Within two days, it had degenerated into unspeakable hole.

CNN’s Jim Spellman: The convention center is a place that people were told to go to because it would be safe. In fact, it is a scene of anarchy. There is absolutely nobody in control. There is no National Guard, no police, no information to be had. The convention center is next to the Mississippi River. Many people who are sleeping there feel that a boat is going to come and get them. Or they think a bus is going to come. But no buses have come. No boats have come. They think water is going come. No water has come. And they have no food. As we drove by, people screamed out to us — “Do you have water? Do you have food? Do you have any information for us?” We had none of those. Probably the most disturbing thing is that people at the convention center are starting to pass away and there is simply nothing to do with their bodies.

Boing Boing: Tech pros ask: how can we help with Katrina recovery?

Shelley Powers: The city is destroyed. Well, now, I take exception to that one. You can’t destroy a city unless you kill off every last one of the people who live in and love the city. You would also have to remove every reference to it in history, and all of its culture, and every last bit of influence it has ever had in the past, present, and we presume, future.

This post is inspired by one at Eschaton. What I’m about to share is both private and painful.

I don’t want to politicize Katrina – but there are too many Right wingers already doing that – so it’s time to speak up.

More than likely my family would not have survived, if we were in the same circumstances we were when I was a kid – and been in New Orleans the day Katrina hit.

I don’t talk much about growing up – my childhood – because many would not understand. Some would make incorrect judgments. Others would look down on me. Some would take pity. I’ve never wanted any of that. Never asked for any of that. And I am proud to have made it to where I am pulling up my own bootstraps.

But as a kid – me and my family lived Social Security check to Social Security check. It would get to us on the 1st of the month. Each month the 1st was a happy day. But as the month wore on – there would be less and less of everything – including food.

Katrina hit on the 29th. We would not have had cash to leave town. We would not have had cash for public transportation. We would not have had cash for food. We would not have had cash for water.

Since we moved so often, and knew no neighbors – our choice would be stark: to give up and die – or be among those foraging for food – “lootersâ€? to you hate mongers – and treking our way out of town. I think the later. Because we’re fighters.

My family survived the circumstances of our childhood poverty. But for those poor in Katrina’s wake – who the Right is vilifying with a broad brush – their nightmare goes on.

I hope no one in my family is upset I posted this. When I got reminded about the 29th of the month… I had to share. My heart is heavy for those who have been hit – and those who are fighting to survive.

Albert has a great set of charities for donations. Pick one and donate.

Oh, and as for the President, well I expect his approval ratings to jump back to normal when he lands in New Orleans. It won’t mean *anything* for those in the thick of it however. Won’t mean a damn thing.

See The Tattered Coat’s list. Donate today.

I’ve been trying to tune this out, but can’t since the media isn’t going after this with appropriate gusto. I just have a few things to say to Pat and Fred…

Thank you Pat for making it so easy for me to continue to look like a hypocrite for being a Christian and an American. Thanks. Doesn’t matter if you apologized. Too late to take something like that back with a little “well…I’m sorry”.

Check out GlobalVoices for reactions across the world to your extremism.

And ya know you might have even broken a Federal law. But I doubt charges will be filed.

And Fred, yes you Fred Phelps, thanks for helping Pat in spreading extremism off shore. If you didn’t know my good readers, he’s gone off to Sweden to threaten their God-less king and damn them to an eternity in hell. No really. Click the link.

So we’re we’re making progress. Soon it will be 1589 and all will be well. Either that or we do what Errol Lewis in the New York Daily News suggests:

Robertson isn’t alone in steering political discourse toward violence. In 2003, conservative pundit Ann Coulter told The New York Observer that “my only regret with Timothy McVeigh [the terrorist who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City] is he did not go to The New York Times building.”

We need to reclaim American politics from these extremists, who think it’s okay to call for assassinations and the bombing of newspapers and government agencies. Responsible leaders of both parties must find their tongues and quit looking the other way as the Robertsons of the right wing spread their poison in the land.

Dan Gillmor has been calling conservative bloggers out to comment on this – but he’ll be disappointed. If they do, they will dismiss Robertson’s influence and status in America. They will say he is nothing but an old crock. Oh it looks like the Daily Show has already borne that out with TV’s unbiased punditry.

And speaking of Ann Coulter (this is the first time I’ve mentioned her on this blog – and I hope never to do again), did you know she actually suggested New Yorkers are cowards? I know many New Yorkers. They are the ONLY folks I know that compare to Philadelphians in terms of being tough.

The HuffingtonPost has put out a call for New Yorkers to share their 9/11 story here. The brave firemen, policemen, EMTs of New York have been slandered. More here and here.

She’s one of a growing chorus of opportunists that seek to divide the country for their own gain. She knows her fan base – Southerners – and plays to it very well. Check out the link and watch the video. A sad eye opener.

It looks like true conservatives are growing further and further disheartened by President Bush’s policies. Maybe the negatives are finally overcoming the cognitive dissonance (Tatteredcoat) that has been the only explanation, to me, for their denial of the facts, for so long. We need more folks seeing clearly – and we need it now:

ProfessorBainbridge.com: What might have been:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence with tripe like this:

“Our troops know that they’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. {Ed: Full text here}

“They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war,” he said.

I guess that’s all he has left. After all, if Iraq’s alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren’t we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam’s cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren’t we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush’s justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper.

This is a tough post to write, tough because I am calling into question the actions not only of the media, but of ourselves, in producing a blogswarm to confront the media’s bias in it’s coverage of Latoyia Figueroa versus Natalee Halloway.

Natalee Halloway, white, blond, missing teen in Aruba. A story a major portion of the public can relate to. A story that sends fear in the hearts of parents across the country. Her plight, along with other notable white girls and women who have gone missing, has been all over the news. Developments have been few. But reports have been many. So how much of this reporting offers us “news”? Is there a responsibility for those who portend to bring us journalism while delivering the news? Or is their job to report to us what we want – driven by the voyeuristic instincts that are possibly inside us all – and be rewarded with high ratings?

Anderson Cooper of CNN shockingly almost came out and said as much. A real mind blower considering that CNN is as guilty of this as anyone else. Still a refreshing thing to hear from someone so watched.

Latoyia Figueroa, young, beautiful, pregnant, and…. black… went missing for nine days before Richard Cranium and The All Spin Zone kicked up a blogswarm by publicizing his letter to CNN. It was blunt. It was honest. It inspired bloggers all around Philadelphia to spread the word about Latoyia Figueroa and decry the obvious bias our “news” corporations deliver us. Philly Future played a role in urging folks to get involved. Notably, when SpinDentist, of the All Spin Zone appeared on The Situation With Carlson Tucker he pretty much got Tucker to admit that television news seeks to provide its audience with what it wants – over what it should. Read the transcript – Tucker tried to shape the discussion into one of right vs left instead of press vs ratings and SpinDentist cornered him to say the truth.

The national press responded with coverage of Latoyia Figueroa. And with the increased light – so did our police department – moving the case to the homicide unit so that it had increased resources devoted to it.

Jay Rosen in a recent thought provoking piece at Press Think “Things I Used to Teach That I No Longer Believe” said recently that “For many years I taught in my criticism classes that pointing out bias in the news media was an important, interesting, and even subversive activity. At the very least an intellectual challenge. Now it is virtually meaningless. Media bias is a proxy in countless political fights and the culture war. It’s effectiveness as a corrective is virtually zero.”.

I had to challenge that assertion in his comments thread. After all, this case proves otherwise, but Jay said something that, for a moment, struck me hard: The example you gave of a similar crime the news media isn’t looking into because the victim isn’t a white girl may have been effective, and necessary, and even just, but in making your points did you also say that these kinds of stories, when television news gets ahold of them, are overdone and manipulative no matter what the race of the victim (they exploit the suffering of the families, so as to bring the audience in on the drama) and we should have less of them? That’s what I mean by truth-seeking.

In my criticism of the press, nor in the many others have I read, is this point made: These stories – when television gets a hold of them, can be overdone and manipulative – no matter the race of the victim. They exploit – for ratings – the suffering of families – to bring audience to the drama. There’s a lot of undeniable truth to this.

But there is a bug in me I can’t shake – I can’t help but think that it should not discourage us from trying to do the right thing.

The fact is – here we are. The press – was moved to possibly its better instincts. The All Spin Zone shares with us another example with Bob Costas refusing to host a Larry King segment because it was exploitive. Just the other day Jack Cafferty at CNN confronts Wolf Blitzer on the BTK Killer coverage accusing it of the same.

Maybe something is afoot? We can only hope. Maybe John Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire has had a longer tail then most folks realize. Maybe blogs do have a role in helping shed light on journalists who have lost their way by seeking ratings over substance and on topics that have gotten lost in the noise.

Take, for example, the Be A Witness campaign. An empowered, participatory media – meaning *us* – has a responsibility to each other – to our communities – to the world at large – to speak out. It is not a worthless excercise to try.

It never is.

The other thing I know is that there is a role for blogs in spreading public service news. The All Spin Zone exemplified it and we hope to build a system that will empower blog publishers to take some screen real estate and devote it to them – first with our Missing Persons Network. There are many people in need – not just the young and pretty. And who knows what we can do if we try?

My thoughts again go out to Latoyia Figueroa, her family, and to all suffering similar tragedy.

I’m not a typical Harpers reader, but this week, two articles got my attention….

Harpers: The Christian Paradox:

Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans-most American Christians-are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation-and, overwhelmingly, we do-it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox-more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese-illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

This Catholic says AMEN. This article would act as a kick in the head to most Christians I know, if they read it with an open mind.

Harpers: None Dare Call It Stolen:

You may remember being surprised yourself. The infamously factious Democrats were fiercely unified—Ralph Nader garnered only about 0.38 percent of the national vote while the Republicans were split, with a vocal anti-Bush front that included anti-Clinton warrior Bob Barr of Georgia; Ike’s son John Eisenhower; Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J. Crowe Jr.; former Air Force Chief of Staff and onetime “Veteran for Bushâ€? General Merrill “Tonyâ€? McPeak; founding neocon Francis Fukuyama; Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, and various large alliances of military officers, diplomats, and business professors. The American Conservative, co-founded by Pat Buchanan, endorsed five candidates for president, including both Bush and Kerry, while the Financial Times and The Economist came out for Kerry alone. At least fifty-nine daily newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry (or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling party from the White House. And on Election Day, twenty-six state exit polls incorrectly predicted wins for Kerry, a statistical failure so colossal and unprecedented that the odds against its happening, according to a report last May by the National Election Data Archive Project, were 16.5 million to 1. Yet this ever-less beloved president, this president who had united liberals and conservatives and nearly all the world against himself—this president somehow bested his opponent by 3,000,176 votes. How did he do it? To that most important question the commentariat, briskly prompted by Republicans, supplied an answer. Americans of faith—a silent majority heretofore unmoved by any other politician—had poured forth by the millions to vote “Yes!â€? for Jesus’ buddy in the White House. Bush’s 51 percent, according to this thesis, were roused primarily by “family values.â€? Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called gay marriage “the hood ornament on the family values wagon that carried the president to a second term.â€? The pundits eagerly pronounced their amens—“Moral values,â€? Tucker Carlson said on CNN, “drove President Bush and other Republican candidates to victory this weekâ€?—although it is not clear why. The primary evidence of our Great Awakening was a post-election poll by the Pew Research Center in which 27 percent of the respondents, when asked which issue “mattered mostâ€? to them in the election, selected something called “moral values.â€? This slight plurality of impulse becomes still less impressive when we note that, as the pollsters went to great pains to make clear, “the relative importance of moral values depends greatly on how the question is framed.â€? In fact, when voters were asked to “name in their own words the most important factor in their vote,â€? only 14 percent managed to come up with “moral values.â€? Strangely, this detail went little mentioned in the postelectoral commentary.[1]

The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them.

Sad how the election and ideas of election reform have dropped from the news – especially when now is an opportune time to be active in fixing things.

Lets see, it was WMDs, no it wasn’t. It was a free and secure Iraq. Now it isn’t.

Washington Post: U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq:

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

“What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”

…The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.

But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq’s future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam (emphasis mine).

…”We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic (mine again),” said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity.

…”We didn’t calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude,” said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.

…”We’ve said we won’t leave a day before it’s necessary. But necessary is the key word — necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us,” a U.S. official said.

I can go to Opensecrets.org and tell who gave which politician money. There is no similar service to find the same type of information about us, or members of the media for that matter. Who gave which blogger money? I can’t imagine a service like this would ever be built. It would veer into privacy concerns. However, those who voluntarily agreed to be part of such a service would earn great trust.

The following quotes aren’t directly related to this, but their posts are good for thought. In one, Duncan Black is giving some great advice to local politicians in where to reach out to the netroots. In another Jeff Jarvis is turning down a request to attend and blog about a conference that he doesn’t agree with, and feels unconfortable being paid for:

Eschaton: Bottom Up:

I get far far less of this kind of thing than I imagine Kos does (very little, in fact, which is fine by me), but the best way for candidates to reach out to the netroots now is to begin by reaching out to local bloggers. No matter how much research I do I can’t possibly have any decent sense of the 470 odd federal races that will happen in ’06. More importantly, local races require local press and as we’ve seen local press will pay attention to local blogs in these kinds of things.

The real value of the netroots to campaigns won’t really be, for the most part, their ability to raise money. Sure, campaigns are always trying to get donations from anywhere they can and I can certainly understand that. I’m happy to suggest candidates for the Eschaton community to support. But, an email or phone call from a campaign manager isn’t going to do squat to encourage me to do that.

The buzz about campaigns, and the “infiltrating” into the netroots, is for the most part going to come from the ground up now. Reach out to local bloggers.

Jeff Jarvis: Blogging junket:

I got a most odd invitation to come to Nashville to blog Justice Sunday II Tom DeLay, Zell Miller, Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Phyllis Schlafly. I got email with the offer but there’s also an open invitation here. That’s most odd, since I’ve held these events — and politicians sucking up to them — in disdain. But what’s interesting is that they offered to cover travel expenses. I said no thanks for a few reasons: don’t want to publicize their event, don’t want to take the money. But if any blogger does take their money, I hope it is disclosed.

NYTimes: Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother’s Loss Becomes a Problem for the President:

President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.

Ms. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.

But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush’s 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.

Albert took part in a conference call with Cindy Sheehan that you can read about here.

A lot of discussion about her at Metafilter.