~ by the way, the fact that bush informs us this morning that we need to occupy iraq because terrorists are scary and the fact that mayor bloomberg rolls out a few hours later and tells us that scary terrorists are threatening the nyc subway is an amazing coincidence!

~ speaking of rolling out, cafe tableaux is online!

~

BATON ROUGE, Sept 12 (Reuters) – U.S. federal authorities may have to take care of some evacuees from Hurricane Katrina for as long as five years, an official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Monday.

“We’re planning to have to take care of a significant number of people for three to five years, until somebody can give us some better information,” said Brad Gair, the head of FEMA’s housing relief effort in the U.S. Gulf Coast region.

He said information on how much housing would be needed and for how long was still uncertain, but the agency estimated it would have to provide what he called “direct housing”, like trailers or motor homes, for 200,000 households.

they are already anticipating housing people for five years, and the only thing on their minds is lining up a bunch of trailers? with 200,000 households in the area, they should be able to set up a crew with a stack of s.i.p. and churn out long term housing. if one knows in advance the term for which they will need the habitats, can foresee the decline in quality of a trailer park after this amount of time, and knows that there are already groups at work on developing large scale refugee/disaster housing, why would one plan on doing a shitty job at the outset of the project?

“It may not be quite on the scale of building the pyramids, but it’s pretty close,” Gair told a news briefing.

dumbass.

~ prick, defined:

Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, many of whom could not flee the storm because they had no transportation or were too frail to evacuate on their own, [FEMA director]Brown said he was not blaming anyone.

“Now is not the time to be blaming,” Brown said. “Now is the time to recognize that whether they chose to evacuate or chose not to evacuate, we have to help them.

people who can’t move from their beds or huffy owners who can not make it to houston should be held responsible for their predicament? what is this crybaby going to say when islamic fundamentalists assassinate musharraf and set off some of those pakastani nukes in dallas or oklahoma city? will we hear more statements that people should have known better than to live in those cities? this post could also be titled ‘definition of a cunt’

~ google talk [w] looks nice, but provides no new features for the user, such as the ability to chat with members of various services simultaneously. it is just an instant messaging program for people who already have gmail accounts. use the miranda [w] client, instead.

~ we appreciate when people like pat robertson both call for the killing of elected leaders and call themselves christians because it makes it easy for us to keep track of who the lunatics are. speaking of lunatics, can someone explain our president’s phrase ‘democracy is unfolding’ and/or how it relates to our republican administration’s use of our military to establish an islamic state next to iran?

~ ‘our’ potluck series is becoming more disastrous at every stage; next week we foresee ourselves showing up to find that not even we are attending.

~ to the bitches who ripped the hasp from the gate to the cage in which we stow our huffy, thanks for keeping us on our toes! we have grown fat and complacent due to the pleasant weather and apple pies; we sometimes need to be reminded that hospitality has deserted philadelphia.

~ there are unexpected results with frank o gehry’s latest museum, in herford, germany. who would have thought one could say such a thing:

“With its wavy steel roof and curved walls of local brick, [Gehry’s] museum resembles Gehry’s Guggenheim temple of modern art in Bilbao…”

~ back in georgia we find the same salads and soy nuts as are found in philadelphia; even our affiliates are consuming homogeneity in the form of over-roasted coffee. anyhow, here is a primer from the upcoming report on the picaresque journey of stereo m.archs. warning, contains spoilers! [jpg].

ps. jwuss, if you find this: word about th’espace has it that your choice of music is trite!

~ looks like 125 people were killed in one attack baghdad. we have mentioned repeatedly that someone voted for something there, like, sometime in the past. this means that the aforementioned 125 people did not really die, at least, not according to popular opinion ’round here, in washington, and on those tv things in your living room.

~ speaking of bombings, ‘that fat guy’ sharon says he is going to pull out of this month’s peace agreement like it is something uncommon for him.

~ thanks to republican senators like joe lieberman, the job has been taken by that fucking asshole gonzales who ‘validated’ the bush administration’s argument that beating and torturing prisoners is acceptable for the united states, but maybe this sick fuck will make attorney general when santorum is president in 2009:

“Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the comments …

‘Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot,’ Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. ‘It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.'”

at this point, no american in military uniform deserves respect.

~ there ain’t too much grand about leaving behind the quiet of georgia for the wilds of philadelphia, but at least it seems that our fellow pennsylvanians are trying to make us feel at home by demonstrating that they are no less ignorant than our cousins in cobb county:

“A Pennsylvania school district on Wednesday rejected charges that plans to include references to an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution in high school biology classes would be illegal.

The Dover Area School District near Harrisburg is the first in the United States to introduce “Intelligent Design,” a theory that the natural world is so complex it must have been made by an intelligent being, rather than occurring by chance, as held by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution…-reuters

readers should note the framing technique of referring to plain creationism as ‘intelligent design’ – a rebranding of old school religion with a nomenclature that hopes to make it seem more credible by sounding vaguely scientific; the truth is the name hides just as much bullshit as orwellian named ‘defense of marriage act’ or ‘blue skies initiative’.

~ to whom was it that we were ranting that digital cameras should operate on the same level as cellphones or wireless laptops – you take a picture and it is saved to your desktop across town or across the country, instead of on a tiny flash or smart media card? billy in nyc or beth in wdc? regardless, one of you must have sold the idea, because slashdot [w] is now reporting its fruition without me.

~ colin powell is still a tool. everyone in the world knows that he was lying when he told the united nations that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, so why does he think that he has any credibility when now telling us that iran is about to break off some nuclear weapons? he could have quit without making himself look like a whore, but they made him throw in one more trick. even if he thinks it is really true this time, the sad fact is all the morons in this country who get their news from brit hume and toby keith will commence freaking out that the iranians are coming to cut off their heads and burn some bibles with nuclear bombs if we don’t put a boot up their asses with all expediency. colin powell is a dick.

~ to the clueless freaks who think that the fact that the bushes are hanging out at clinton’s library opening is proof that this country isn’t divided because ‘red’ and ‘blue’ can come together at a photo op in little rock, need to be clued in on something; they can ‘come together’ for this event because it doesn’t mean shit. we aren’t talking about reforming health care or killing people in iraq; we are talking about posing for cameras and watching bush sr checking out chelsea in a leather skirt. when they come together on enacting policy that does anything but serve to strengthen the relative positions of their political machines, then you can sing their praises. grinning together like idiots in little rock is hollow, self-serving bullshit; if clinton had any testicular fortitude he would not have invited them and would have invited wrk.grp [w] to frame his work.

~ iyad allawi claims that no civilians have been killed in falljuah! more on the iraqification of vietnam:

“anyone who runs is a VC. anyone who stands still is a well disciplined VC”