The Buck Stops. Briefly.
President George W. Bush shocked the nation on Tuesday by accepting a spoonful of responsibility for the role the federal government played in the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. It is the first time the president has accepted responsibility for anything negative that has happened anywhere in the past 5 years. Maybe longer.
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said at a White House news conference. “And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong.”
A partial list of what went wrong might include allowing a complete amateur to run FEMA, having a Director of Homeland Security who considered the hurricane and its aftermath unpredictable (despite repeated warnings, even in the popular press), and cutting the budgets of the agencies responsible for maintaining the levees and providing disaster relief.
But I quibble.
I’m sure supporters of the president will take this acceptance of blame as a sign of leadership. For me, it’s too little too late. And I don’t mean Hurricane Katrina too late. I mean 5 years too late.
Some of the Republican Apologists I know – people who admit to being put off by a number of Mr. Bush’s policies and opinions, but who voted for him nonetheless in the last election – have explained that they felt he would do a better job than his opponent of “protecting them.” From what, I don’t know. Terrorists I suppose, though homosexuals or non-Christians could just as easily have been on their minds. Let’s put that fairy tale to bed once and for all, shall we? I don’t know that the government response would have been any better under John Kerry, but it certainly could not have been worse. In any case, a Democratic president might have taken a glimpse at the disaster mitigation plans that were in operation under the Clinton administration, and possibly even resurrected some of them.
George Bush and his government blew it in 2001. That attack was also considered “unpredictable,” despite a bipartisan report that suggested just such an attack was imminent, and which lay untouched on the Vice President’s desk for four months prior to the attack. (The report was delivered to the President, since the previous occupant of his office had commissioned it, but he didn’t consider it worth his time.) He it in 2001, he blew it in 2005. The only thing he’s done successfully is removing from power the leader of the one nation which didn’t have the capacity to attack us. When is he going to start “protecting us”?
Certainly not while he’s on vacation.
There are people out there who dislike (one might say “hate”) George Bush a lot more than I do. To me, he is the Wizard of Oz. Not just in that once you get past the smoke and mirrors, there’s nothing more than a little man behind a curtain. After all, Karl Rove has to have something to do. But when Dorothy discovers his identity, she accuses of him of being a very bad man. The Wizard replies, “Oh no, my dear, I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.” Even if you believe George Bush is a very good man, by now you must admit he’s a very bad president.
*****
I’m writing this before the President makes his prime time address announcing his recovery plan for areas affected by Katrina. I imagine he’ll tie it to the War on Terror. I’ll skip the address. I’ve seen enough advertising in my life to know that “New and Improved” is rarely anything more than old and crappy in a new box.
*****
Meanwhile, the loveable lefties over at MoveOn.org are pushing for an independent Katrina Commission to – in the words of Hillary Clinton, who is sponsoring legislation to support such a commission – “provide a comprehensive and unbiased evaluation of what could and should have been done to avoid the extraordinary damage, the loss of life, the evacuation problems and the inadequate relief efforts that have exacerbated the dislocation and suffering of thousands of Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina.”
I feel about MoveOn the way I imagine a number of my counterparts on the Right feel about the NRA: their enemies are my enemies, and God bless ‘em if they accomplish anything worthwhile, but most of the time they just make people on my side look crazy.
MoveOn has sent out two email blasts in support of this Commission. The first one, sent last Friday, is the one that bugged me. The subject was “We need a Katrina Commission. Tell the media.” The gist was that any investigation led by the White House will be more concerned with making the President look good than uncovering real problems (given), and that the White House fought against the 9/11 Commission until the families of the victims made that a politically untenable position (granted). This email called for supporters to write letters to the editors of their local media outlets, urging the formation of an independent commission to investigate causes and suggest solutions for the problems which led to the bungling of the response to Katrina.
I have two problems with this approach. First, I’m not a big supporter of government commissions, independent or otherwise. I’ve never known them to accomplish much. Consider, if you will, the Whitewater Commission, which wasted millions of dollars and untold hours to eventually decide that, well, the Clintons did nothing wrong in their dealings with the Whitewater Development Corporation after all. Granted, through this investigation, the Independent Counsel discovered that the president had an affair and lied about it on an affidavit, thus leading to an eventual impeachment that – guess what! – wasted millions of dollars and untold hours. Perhaps if you hated Bill Clinton enough, this incredible waste of time and money was worth it to you. To which I can offer only two words: Tax and Spend. Or perhaps, Big Government.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the Valerie Plame outing? Not much happening there. Even the trumpeted 9/11 Commission, which published a best-selling report which nobody really read, hasn’t led to any real reforms in government or homeland security, the establishment of an office by that name notwithstanding. As former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, the moderate Republican who led the Commission, said of Katrina: “The same mistakes made on 9/11 were made over again, in some cases worse. Those are system-wide failures that can be fixed and should have been fixed right away.” Obviously, they have not been fixed. And as I noted earlier, we saw what happened to the 2001 report prepared by a bipartisan commission that determined a terrorist attack on US soil was likely to occur in the near future.
What I do believe in – or used to, before they became shills for corporations and the White House – is the Press. And indeed, if MoveOn was encouraging us to lean on the media to conduct their own investigations into the layer upon layer of problems that led to our governments’ – local, state and federal – inabilities to cope with this disaster, I’d be right there with them. But MoveOn is something of a mad dog, scratching and biting at every new thing that crosses its path. This is the organization that put its effort into a movement to censure Bush, mere months before the election. And for all their sniping, MoveOn believes in the efficacy of government, a policy with which I cannot agree. Depending on a government commission, independent, bipartisan or otherwise, to solve a problem is lazy. The approach says, “Someone’s investigating this; I can ignore it now.” Which, history tells us, is the furthest thing from the truth. It was the Washington Post, after all, which did the legwork for the commission that eventually investigated Watergate, and not vice versa.
*****
Brian Williams, who succeeded Tom Brokaw as the anchor of NBC Nightly News last year, offered a ray of hope when he predicted that the Katrina story might bring “a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it.” We can only hope.
*****
Not that I didn’t sign MoveOn’s damn petition to Congress. You can do so too.
*****
Anything you ever wanted to know about government commissions* was answered this week by the John Roberts hearings. I didn’t watch much of the hearings myself (is 15 minutes much?), but from what I’ve read and heard, they were pretty much content free. One analyst said that by his count, for every 15 words the senators said, Roberts said 5. That sounds about right. There’s nothing a politician likes more than the sound of his or her own voice. The point of most of the questions seemed to be to demonstrate how smart the questioners were, rather than to evoke any meaningful answers from the candidate. Politicians are people who are too ugly or too lazy to get into show business.
Roberts, meanwhile, proved that however he turns out to be as a Justice, he is the ultimate lawyer. Given a choice between straight answers and sophistry, he chose the latter every time. Time and again he invoked the “Ginsburg rule,” which allows a judicial nominee to not answer questions that suggest how he or she would rule on a future case. The rule refers to Canon 5 of the American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct – yes, the Bar Association has a code of conduct: who knew? – which “prohibits a candidate for judicial office from making statements that commit the candidate regarding cases, controversies or issues likely to come before the court. As a corollary, a candidate should emphasize in any public statement the candidate’s duty to uphold the law regardless of his or her personal views.” [This is a disappointment to those of us who wish it referred instead to Alan Ginsberg: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the Washington streets at dawn looking for an angry decaf latté…” Oh, that’s the Bork rule.] The nickname for the Canon refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who chose not to answer 30 questions during her confirmation hearings in 1993. Though Roberts claimed to be “more forthcoming than any of the other [Supreme Court] nominees,” he relied on Canon 5 more that twice as often as Ginsburg. He all but quoted the last line of the Canon directly, asserting time and again that he “not an ideologue.”
In fact, though they may be loath to admit it at this time, John Roberts is exactly the sort of lawyer Americans say they hate. All along he has all but claimed to have no beliefs of his own, but to have spent his career essentially following the money. When Dick Durbin questioned him about a case he argued before the Supreme Court which would allow an HMO to refuse to pay for surgery deemed medically necessary by an independent arbiter – a case he lost – Roberts said he did not take the case based on whether he thought it was right, but because it had legal merits. “In representing clients, in serving as a lawyer, it's not my job to decide whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. The job of the lawyer is to articulate the legal arguments on behalf of the client.” That’s true enough, but there’s something very “path to hell” about it. [On the other hand, there’s also something very old-fashioned conservative – with both a capital and small “c” – about it which I find reassuring.] The irony of all this is that Roberts is the very lawyer who Bush excoriates when he rails against tort reform: someone to whom winning is more important than right or wrong.
In the long run, the Roberts hearings are nothing but show anyway – “Kabuki,” according to Joe Biden. Roberts will be confirmed under any circumstances. The question facing Democrats is whether to vote for him, in order to not seem partisan, or to vote against him, in order to demonstrate that they have the votes to filibuster the next nominee. Whether to stretch and stretch and stretch their legs, or whether to hold their breath indefinitely.
*But were afraid to ask. It’s lame, but once I wrote that first line I had no choice.
*****
Roberts’ age, which was initially of some concern to me, is becoming a comfort. John and his wife Jane have two small children, Josie and Jack. Yeah, I know. Someone’s been playing with the Play-Doh White Christian America Fun Factory. Anyway, there’s plenty of time for Josie to face that unwanted pregnancy and for Jack to come out of the closet (Did you see him dancing when his dad’s nomination was announced?), and dad’s smart enough to have that idea somewhere in the back of his mind.
*****
News Flash!
Jack Roberts (and doesn’t Mom look swell) is actually Batboy!
*****
Andrew Sullivan is a conservative who hates Bush, and for all the right reasons. From Thursday’s blog: “Fiscal conservatism as we have known it is over. No liberal Democrat would ever have managed to spend as much and as incompetently as this administration. Even in opposition, the GOP would have mounted a defense of the country's fiscal standing against such reckless big government liberalism. But in power, the only difference between the GOP and, say, a Ted Kennedy administration is that the Republican free spending goes to different interest groups, has no restraint or domestic opposition, and rests on borrowing rather than taxing. Yes, Katrina reconstruction is inevitable and important. But $200 billion doesn't grow on trees. Where is it going to come from? Part of the point of fiscal responsibility, after all, is that disasters do happen and the government should have fiscal lee-way to respond to them. But we have no lee-way at all, thanks to this president and his party. Tonight, the president will try and rescue himself politically by spending money he doesn't have. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked, the only thing socialists are good at is spending other people's money. That's the one thing this president has known how to do – whether it was daddy's money or yours.”
*****
On the Docket …
As you may have heard, the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional again.
Michael Newdow, the atheist who brought the suit against the California public schools in 2002, is at it again. Newdow’s suit doesn’t actually claim that the Pledge is unconstitutional, but that the phrase “under God” is. A federal judge has agreed, ruling that the reference to one nation under God violates school children's right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.”
The Supreme Court dismissed Newdow’s case last year, saying he “lacked standing” because he did not have legal custody of the daughter on whose behalf he sued. He got around that problem this time by filing an identical case on behalf of three other children and their parents. The case is likely to find its way to Chief Justice Roberts’ desk in no time.
I’ve written about this case twice before: once when the 9th Circuit Court first found on Newdow’s behalf, and again last year, when the Supreme Court skirted the issue.
I wonder what Arnold’s take is on this. After all, just last week he said the Court, rather than the Legislature, should determine the issue of gay marriage. Is he still such a staunch supporter of the Court?
Personally, I don’t care what Pledge they say, as long as they don’t sing that horrid musical version.
*****
In Entertainment News
I meant to plug the return of “House,” my favorite network TV show (Tuesdays at 8pm Central on Fox) last week, but then I got all swamped with hurricane news and ran out of time and space. Well here we are again. Dag, yo! I’ll try to get to it next week, along with why “Rome” is no “Deadwood” (or “Sopranos”) and the weirdness that is “Ghost Hunters.”
Meanwhile, if you’re free this weekend, you may be able to catch one (or both!) of the final two performances of David Kodeski’s one man show, “And Some Can Remember Something of Some Such Thing,” at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N Clark. Tickets are only 10 bucks, and are available at 773.871.1212. I’ll be there on Saturday. I’d send you to Live Bait’s website for more information, but it sucks.
*****
Bushemantics: The agency of the Department of Agriculture that used to be called Animal Damage Control is now known as Wildlife Services. What services do they offer wildlife? In 2004 the agency killed 2.7 million animals, including bears, coyotes, wolves, and wild turkeys and chickens. Such service!
*****
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said at a White House news conference. “And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong.”
A partial list of what went wrong might include allowing a complete amateur to run FEMA, having a Director of Homeland Security who considered the hurricane and its aftermath unpredictable (despite repeated warnings, even in the popular press), and cutting the budgets of the agencies responsible for maintaining the levees and providing disaster relief.
But I quibble.
I’m sure supporters of the president will take this acceptance of blame as a sign of leadership. For me, it’s too little too late. And I don’t mean Hurricane Katrina too late. I mean 5 years too late.
Some of the Republican Apologists I know – people who admit to being put off by a number of Mr. Bush’s policies and opinions, but who voted for him nonetheless in the last election – have explained that they felt he would do a better job than his opponent of “protecting them.” From what, I don’t know. Terrorists I suppose, though homosexuals or non-Christians could just as easily have been on their minds. Let’s put that fairy tale to bed once and for all, shall we? I don’t know that the government response would have been any better under John Kerry, but it certainly could not have been worse. In any case, a Democratic president might have taken a glimpse at the disaster mitigation plans that were in operation under the Clinton administration, and possibly even resurrected some of them.
George Bush and his government blew it in 2001. That attack was also considered “unpredictable,” despite a bipartisan report that suggested just such an attack was imminent, and which lay untouched on the Vice President’s desk for four months prior to the attack. (The report was delivered to the President, since the previous occupant of his office had commissioned it, but he didn’t consider it worth his time.) He it in 2001, he blew it in 2005. The only thing he’s done successfully is removing from power the leader of the one nation which didn’t have the capacity to attack us. When is he going to start “protecting us”?
Certainly not while he’s on vacation.
There are people out there who dislike (one might say “hate”) George Bush a lot more than I do. To me, he is the Wizard of Oz. Not just in that once you get past the smoke and mirrors, there’s nothing more than a little man behind a curtain. After all, Karl Rove has to have something to do. But when Dorothy discovers his identity, she accuses of him of being a very bad man. The Wizard replies, “Oh no, my dear, I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.” Even if you believe George Bush is a very good man, by now you must admit he’s a very bad president.
*****
I’m writing this before the President makes his prime time address announcing his recovery plan for areas affected by Katrina. I imagine he’ll tie it to the War on Terror. I’ll skip the address. I’ve seen enough advertising in my life to know that “New and Improved” is rarely anything more than old and crappy in a new box.
*****
Meanwhile, the loveable lefties over at MoveOn.org are pushing for an independent Katrina Commission to – in the words of Hillary Clinton, who is sponsoring legislation to support such a commission – “provide a comprehensive and unbiased evaluation of what could and should have been done to avoid the extraordinary damage, the loss of life, the evacuation problems and the inadequate relief efforts that have exacerbated the dislocation and suffering of thousands of Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina.”
I feel about MoveOn the way I imagine a number of my counterparts on the Right feel about the NRA: their enemies are my enemies, and God bless ‘em if they accomplish anything worthwhile, but most of the time they just make people on my side look crazy.
MoveOn has sent out two email blasts in support of this Commission. The first one, sent last Friday, is the one that bugged me. The subject was “We need a Katrina Commission. Tell the media.” The gist was that any investigation led by the White House will be more concerned with making the President look good than uncovering real problems (given), and that the White House fought against the 9/11 Commission until the families of the victims made that a politically untenable position (granted). This email called for supporters to write letters to the editors of their local media outlets, urging the formation of an independent commission to investigate causes and suggest solutions for the problems which led to the bungling of the response to Katrina.
I have two problems with this approach. First, I’m not a big supporter of government commissions, independent or otherwise. I’ve never known them to accomplish much. Consider, if you will, the Whitewater Commission, which wasted millions of dollars and untold hours to eventually decide that, well, the Clintons did nothing wrong in their dealings with the Whitewater Development Corporation after all. Granted, through this investigation, the Independent Counsel discovered that the president had an affair and lied about it on an affidavit, thus leading to an eventual impeachment that – guess what! – wasted millions of dollars and untold hours. Perhaps if you hated Bill Clinton enough, this incredible waste of time and money was worth it to you. To which I can offer only two words: Tax and Spend. Or perhaps, Big Government.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the Valerie Plame outing? Not much happening there. Even the trumpeted 9/11 Commission, which published a best-selling report which nobody really read, hasn’t led to any real reforms in government or homeland security, the establishment of an office by that name notwithstanding. As former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, the moderate Republican who led the Commission, said of Katrina: “The same mistakes made on 9/11 were made over again, in some cases worse. Those are system-wide failures that can be fixed and should have been fixed right away.” Obviously, they have not been fixed. And as I noted earlier, we saw what happened to the 2001 report prepared by a bipartisan commission that determined a terrorist attack on US soil was likely to occur in the near future.
What I do believe in – or used to, before they became shills for corporations and the White House – is the Press. And indeed, if MoveOn was encouraging us to lean on the media to conduct their own investigations into the layer upon layer of problems that led to our governments’ – local, state and federal – inabilities to cope with this disaster, I’d be right there with them. But MoveOn is something of a mad dog, scratching and biting at every new thing that crosses its path. This is the organization that put its effort into a movement to censure Bush, mere months before the election. And for all their sniping, MoveOn believes in the efficacy of government, a policy with which I cannot agree. Depending on a government commission, independent, bipartisan or otherwise, to solve a problem is lazy. The approach says, “Someone’s investigating this; I can ignore it now.” Which, history tells us, is the furthest thing from the truth. It was the Washington Post, after all, which did the legwork for the commission that eventually investigated Watergate, and not vice versa.
*****
Brian Williams, who succeeded Tom Brokaw as the anchor of NBC Nightly News last year, offered a ray of hope when he predicted that the Katrina story might bring “a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it.” We can only hope.
*****
Not that I didn’t sign MoveOn’s damn petition to Congress. You can do so too.
*****
Anything you ever wanted to know about government commissions* was answered this week by the John Roberts hearings. I didn’t watch much of the hearings myself (is 15 minutes much?), but from what I’ve read and heard, they were pretty much content free. One analyst said that by his count, for every 15 words the senators said, Roberts said 5. That sounds about right. There’s nothing a politician likes more than the sound of his or her own voice. The point of most of the questions seemed to be to demonstrate how smart the questioners were, rather than to evoke any meaningful answers from the candidate. Politicians are people who are too ugly or too lazy to get into show business.
Roberts, meanwhile, proved that however he turns out to be as a Justice, he is the ultimate lawyer. Given a choice between straight answers and sophistry, he chose the latter every time. Time and again he invoked the “Ginsburg rule,” which allows a judicial nominee to not answer questions that suggest how he or she would rule on a future case. The rule refers to Canon 5 of the American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct – yes, the Bar Association has a code of conduct: who knew? – which “prohibits a candidate for judicial office from making statements that commit the candidate regarding cases, controversies or issues likely to come before the court. As a corollary, a candidate should emphasize in any public statement the candidate’s duty to uphold the law regardless of his or her personal views.” [This is a disappointment to those of us who wish it referred instead to Alan Ginsberg: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the Washington streets at dawn looking for an angry decaf latté…” Oh, that’s the Bork rule.] The nickname for the Canon refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who chose not to answer 30 questions during her confirmation hearings in 1993. Though Roberts claimed to be “more forthcoming than any of the other [Supreme Court] nominees,” he relied on Canon 5 more that twice as often as Ginsburg. He all but quoted the last line of the Canon directly, asserting time and again that he “not an ideologue.”
In fact, though they may be loath to admit it at this time, John Roberts is exactly the sort of lawyer Americans say they hate. All along he has all but claimed to have no beliefs of his own, but to have spent his career essentially following the money. When Dick Durbin questioned him about a case he argued before the Supreme Court which would allow an HMO to refuse to pay for surgery deemed medically necessary by an independent arbiter – a case he lost – Roberts said he did not take the case based on whether he thought it was right, but because it had legal merits. “In representing clients, in serving as a lawyer, it's not my job to decide whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. The job of the lawyer is to articulate the legal arguments on behalf of the client.” That’s true enough, but there’s something very “path to hell” about it. [On the other hand, there’s also something very old-fashioned conservative – with both a capital and small “c” – about it which I find reassuring.] The irony of all this is that Roberts is the very lawyer who Bush excoriates when he rails against tort reform: someone to whom winning is more important than right or wrong.
In the long run, the Roberts hearings are nothing but show anyway – “Kabuki,” according to Joe Biden. Roberts will be confirmed under any circumstances. The question facing Democrats is whether to vote for him, in order to not seem partisan, or to vote against him, in order to demonstrate that they have the votes to filibuster the next nominee. Whether to stretch and stretch and stretch their legs, or whether to hold their breath indefinitely.
*But were afraid to ask. It’s lame, but once I wrote that first line I had no choice.
*****
Roberts’ age, which was initially of some concern to me, is becoming a comfort. John and his wife Jane have two small children, Josie and Jack. Yeah, I know. Someone’s been playing with the Play-Doh White Christian America Fun Factory. Anyway, there’s plenty of time for Josie to face that unwanted pregnancy and for Jack to come out of the closet (Did you see him dancing when his dad’s nomination was announced?), and dad’s smart enough to have that idea somewhere in the back of his mind.
*****
News Flash!
Jack Roberts (and doesn’t Mom look swell) is actually Batboy!
*****
Andrew Sullivan is a conservative who hates Bush, and for all the right reasons. From Thursday’s blog: “Fiscal conservatism as we have known it is over. No liberal Democrat would ever have managed to spend as much and as incompetently as this administration. Even in opposition, the GOP would have mounted a defense of the country's fiscal standing against such reckless big government liberalism. But in power, the only difference between the GOP and, say, a Ted Kennedy administration is that the Republican free spending goes to different interest groups, has no restraint or domestic opposition, and rests on borrowing rather than taxing. Yes, Katrina reconstruction is inevitable and important. But $200 billion doesn't grow on trees. Where is it going to come from? Part of the point of fiscal responsibility, after all, is that disasters do happen and the government should have fiscal lee-way to respond to them. But we have no lee-way at all, thanks to this president and his party. Tonight, the president will try and rescue himself politically by spending money he doesn't have. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked, the only thing socialists are good at is spending other people's money. That's the one thing this president has known how to do – whether it was daddy's money or yours.”
*****
On the Docket …
As you may have heard, the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional again.
Michael Newdow, the atheist who brought the suit against the California public schools in 2002, is at it again. Newdow’s suit doesn’t actually claim that the Pledge is unconstitutional, but that the phrase “under God” is. A federal judge has agreed, ruling that the reference to one nation under God violates school children's right to be “free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.”
The Supreme Court dismissed Newdow’s case last year, saying he “lacked standing” because he did not have legal custody of the daughter on whose behalf he sued. He got around that problem this time by filing an identical case on behalf of three other children and their parents. The case is likely to find its way to Chief Justice Roberts’ desk in no time.
I’ve written about this case twice before: once when the 9th Circuit Court first found on Newdow’s behalf, and again last year, when the Supreme Court skirted the issue.
I wonder what Arnold’s take is on this. After all, just last week he said the Court, rather than the Legislature, should determine the issue of gay marriage. Is he still such a staunch supporter of the Court?
Personally, I don’t care what Pledge they say, as long as they don’t sing that horrid musical version.
*****
In Entertainment News
I meant to plug the return of “House,” my favorite network TV show (Tuesdays at 8pm Central on Fox) last week, but then I got all swamped with hurricane news and ran out of time and space. Well here we are again. Dag, yo! I’ll try to get to it next week, along with why “Rome” is no “Deadwood” (or “Sopranos”) and the weirdness that is “Ghost Hunters.”
Meanwhile, if you’re free this weekend, you may be able to catch one (or both!) of the final two performances of David Kodeski’s one man show, “And Some Can Remember Something of Some Such Thing,” at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N Clark. Tickets are only 10 bucks, and are available at 773.871.1212. I’ll be there on Saturday. I’d send you to Live Bait’s website for more information, but it sucks.
*****
Bushemantics: The agency of the Department of Agriculture that used to be called Animal Damage Control is now known as Wildlife Services. What services do they offer wildlife? In 2004 the agency killed 2.7 million animals, including bears, coyotes, wolves, and wild turkeys and chickens. Such service!
*****
posted by John Bliss at
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