Random musing from a foggy mind...or I'm gonna regret this tomorrow.

Good Wednesday afternoon everyone!

Yes, I still have the flu, yes I still feel like I've trampled by a herd of hyperactive kangaroos and yes my brain isn't working the way it should. But I won't let that stop me, no sir. I'm feeling the need to babble.

You have been warned.

So from my little apartment in Austin, to what is happening overseas, here is my take on the news today.

I'm still waiting to hear if I am an Aunt as my baby brother's wife should be delivering my nephew soon...I'm very happy for them, really, though not too keen on the name they have chosen, but oh well. It's wierd to think I am going to be an aunt, but oh so much fun to think of the ways I can spoil my nephew. It'll drive my brother crazy. Ahhh bliss.

Don't get me wrong, I love my brother dearly. He is one of the most honorable and genuinely caring people I know. He's gonna make a great daddy, but when we were younger...lets just say I have a lot of payback to dish out and I am going to enjoy every moment of it.

He's the first of we three children to have children of his own. Mom is thrilled of course, she can finally bestow the toy she bought years ago in anticipation of her first grandchild on Kee...no I refuse to say the name so we'll just refer to my Nephew as KC. It would seem that my sister and I are a little slow to have children, not that mom has ever complained...much.

In other news here, the job hunt goes slow. I am truly trying to hold out for something I will at least enjoy. I need something to help pad our income until someone buys my damn book. In a perfect world I could write full time and not have to worry about how I am going to pay the electric. As we are all painfully aware we do not live in a perfect world.

The major media outlets have started allowing other news to trickle in that is not Katrina related, reminding us once again that there is still a huge messed up world out there and it is not getting better. Insurgents in Iraq killed 151 people today in a series of attacks. No my friends it is definitely not a good day.

Beware this seemingly random segue. I've been trying to refine the structure of this blog in my head over the last few days. As sick as I have been, that's probably not the best of ideas, but there you are. Basically, this is an opinion blog, you know that and I know that. It's one of the many and not a particularly good one at that. It may not help you, but it does help me. Sometimes just writing things out helps me look at the problem from another angle, having other's insight into the issues also can make a big difference for me as I try to become more a part of the solution on both a personal and global level.

So at times what you see here may be a bit random. Hodge Podge comes to mind.

As I was saying, we're getting back to looking at the world. The devastation of Katrina will never be far from our minds, and many of us will continue to follow the aftermath and accountability issues closely. I will also continually reinforce that it is our responsibility to see that those who have failed us so grievously are held accountable. So I will tell you today and repeat it often: GET OUT AND VOTE.

Your voice counts at all levels of Government get to know what is happening in your city, county and state governments. If you don't like what you see, VOTE! We can no longer allow business as usual at any level of government. Get involved and add your voice to those that are working for change.

*Lisa steps off of her soapbox*

Okay, sorry about that folks, well not really since not nearly enough of you vote, but still the soapbox usually stays stored under my bed.

Back to the big bad messed up world.

Have any of you gone to meet your neighbors yet?

I've met almost everyone in my building now and they are some good people. We have college students, grandparents, young couples, single parents and young people just starting their road in the world outside of school. It has been an enlightening experience for me.

It's remarkable say and have people say to me, "If you need anything, just call or come by," and know that both they and I mean it.

There are some bright spots in the world as long as we take the time to look for them.

That is all for today, I'm going to have another glass of orange juice and crawl back into bed.

Until next time my friends, Be well and safe.

A picture of the truth.

Okay I got this from a friend of mine in Canada today. Thanks Ken! Thought I would put this up for you all to see.


Now, back to fighting the worst flu I think I have ever had. More insight from me when my head empties it's self from the wool that seems to have taken up residence in my brain.

And in other news...

Ooops...we're bad at math.

Yeah I am loving MSNBC today.

"The Pentagon overestimated savings from base closings by $30 billion and some of its plans for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made them less efficient, a federal commission review of the process said Friday."

"President Bush now must decide whether to accept the panel’s plan. Last month, the president, using the commission’s acronym, told reporters: “in order for the process to be nonpolitical, it’s very important to make it clear that the decision of BRAC will stand, as far as I am concerned.”

For those of you new to Bushspeak what he means is:

"It was a very big book with very big words written by people who are much smarter than me and when I tried to read it my brain cell started to hurt. Dick came in, kissed it better and told me to take a nap."

The sound you hear is me banging my head against my keyboard.

Thunk...thunk...thunk...thunk...

Colin Powell speaks the truth...sometimes.

In an interview with Barbra Walters to air tonight, former secretary of state Colin Powell makes the following remarks.

“I don’t think it’s racism, I think it’s economic When you look at those who weren’t able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you can’t expect everybody to evacuate on their own. These are people who don’t have credit cards; only one in 10 families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn’t a racial thing — but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor.”

While I appreciate the frank insight on this matter, I wonder what he would be saying if he were still secretary of state.

In my opinion Powell has hit the nail on the head. Blaming those that COULDN'T get out is obscene. Yes, we're all aware that there were people who could get out but chose to stay, but the vast majority of those people still in the effected areas simply could NOT get out.

It's a damn shame our government chose not to go in and protect those that could not protect themselves.

And please don't get me started on Rick Santorum.

That fucker.

The entire article can be found on MSNBC.

Jesus.

This is one of the most disturbing things I have read in a long time.

"No ma’am. FEMA said no…
It could cause a riot. You don’t understand the type of people that are about to come here….”

Instilling fear of the people they are supposed to be helping in the poorly trained civilian employees...Nice one Brownie! This is scary on so many levels.

This is America. This should not be happening here.

Jesus.

I need a drink.

I can spell, I just choose not to.

I was reading over my comments yesterday and I noticed an unusually large number of typos. I am not going to be fixing them. They will stand forever as a reminder why I should never do this when I am that tired. Inspite of the typos, what I said made sense to me, and hopefully some of you too.

No, todays commentary is not about my refusal to spell properly. It could just as easily bear the title, "We can change, we just choose not to."

I've been doing an inordinate amount of reading lately. I've scoured blogs, the news outlet sites, wire services, political sites, you name it I've been visiting it lately. I like to be informed, but I think I am taking it to an extreme. By intent, I am looking for answers.

I'm not finding much. It's not that my fellow man isn't informative or valid. They are, they most definitely are, but, it's like each voice is singing a different part of the big song. Which is good, but it presents a fundamental problem, if we're each repeating our own stanzas, we're not really getting anywhere are we? We're just singing what we're comfortable with, instead of getting to know the rest of the song.

Please do not misunderstand me, I am not promoting conformity. To me the very term is like nails on a chalk board. But I think that what many people fail to understand is there is a vast difference between conformity and unity.

This is the point where I leave the wallowing of yesterday behind and get to being a part of the solution again. What I am suggesting is that we begin uniting to affect the changes we so desperately need in this country. We will not always agree with one another, but that is fine by me. It should be fine by you too.

We may not all hold the same ideals or opinions, but there is one thing that we can, with very few exceptions, agree on. We are in big trouble.

Hurricane Katrina's aftermath is just the latest brutality in a long line of violations against the American people that began in Florida November 2, 2000. A good many of us have been speaking our minds about this administration since then. A good many of us have been tearing our hair our by the roots since George W. Bush uttered the words "This is my base, the haves and the have mores." at a fundraising dinner last year. Not nearly enough people stopped to think about how telling, and down right frightening that statement was. How this man won re-election still boggles my mind.

Still, that's not the point here. What has taken place in the last nine days has seemingly glavanized the news media and the people of the United States to take a long hard look at the people who have been elected to protect them. We're so not liking what we see.

What I am wanting to see now, is this galvanized society, keep up the pressure. I want us to unite and continue to hold those who should be accountable, accountable. I want to see stories like this one explored and explained. If they are cancelling the hearings on Katrina's response we should have an excellent explanation as to why, we should also demand that the promise of joint hearings is kept and that those hearings take place soon.

How do we do that? Call your representatives and senators, write them and email them and encourage your friends and families to do the same. Write, call and email your local news stations and news papers to encourage them to continue to follow up on stories like this one. Do the same with the national news outlets, INCLUDING Fox News.

And last but certainly not least, get out and vote.

Unite. Work together in the common goal of calling our government to task for screwing its people.

My heart goes out to all the people suffering in the aftermath of this catastrophe, but my heart also goes out to all the people who have been victimized by this administration from day one.

Haven't we all had enough yet?

Tuesday is id day.

When I was in my late teens my mother once said to me "Lisa, you're focusing too much on the id." I was not having a good day, and frankly had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn't sound much like what I wanted to hear, so I was incensed. I very dramatically ran up to my room, in tears of course and looked up the meaning of id.

I was then justifiably incensed with my mother.

Please bear with me, I've been awake for almost twenty four hours (I am getting much too old for this) and I do have a point here. I think.

I believe Freud was not entirely accurate in his definition of id. I do not believe it is a completely unconscious process, infact I believe that id sometimes screams at you.

Like mine is screaming at me now for immediate satisfaction of my primitive impulse to break my foot off in someone's ass. My problem is, which person I should choose from the rapidly growing list of qualified and deserving candidates.

Yes folks, you guessed it, I am not a shiny happy person today. I, like many of you am frustrated, angry, appalled and so damn sad. I feel for many reasons, both personal and global, more helpless than I have ever felt in my life.

I have a very painful and intimate understanding of the human suffering occouring in our nation today and I am thinking to myself, it is just so big.

Like the people in Mississippi who've returned to their homes to find them gone, staring helplessly at the rubble and not knowing which splintered plank of wood could inspire them to begin again.

Like the people in New Orleans, looking out over the flooded neighborhoods not knowing where to look for the baby whose bottle just floated past them.

It's all just so big.

So many times this week I have seen so many people on the television, in my community which is far away from the devastation and in pictures from the magazines and papers with the same expression on their faces. They don't know where to begin because it is so big.

I see the President on the television for is satellite delayed disaster photo-op and spin session and the man is smiling. Of course I know it is his way of trying to relay that homey folksy compassion that he believes we rely so heavily upon in times of crisis. To me, however, it seems hollow and slightly sinister.

My heart stops and sinks to my toes and I found myself praying. "Please don't let them buy into it this time. Please just let them see the truth now."

Right now, my asking God for any kind of favor meets with the same results as my walking up to a lion and asking it for a gentle back massage. It's generally very painful and very dissappointing. Even as I typed that, I closed my eyes and asked forgiveness. I really should stop tempting him as I have been well and truly smote in recent years. I am, however, irritated with him and my sleep deprived id is getting rather brazen. Yeah, I am having kind of a bad decade.

But I digress. Back to the topic at hand, my faith and other issues are another therapy session entirely. I'm hoping that this time people really see the truth about this administration and it's apathy towards anything that does not involve big business or invading other countries.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Mr. President are you stupid or back on drugs?

All over the news they were reporting that the city of New Orleans had run this same scenario long before Katrina was even a twinkle in Mother Nature's eye. They had run it and the good news was, they could eventually drain the city, the bad news was that 30,000 people would die. I have mentioned the National Geographic special once, but I will mention it again, because it bears repeating.

You knew Mr. President. Every level of government from city to federal knew this would happen and did nothing.

I've already talked about our failures of one another as citizens, and I still very much believe what I said two days ago. But now I am talking about our elected officials, who we expect, fairly or unfairly to live up to a higher code than we do.

Hell, we elected them (and I do use the term we loosely) because they promised us that they weren't 'evil' like the other guys.

Upon close inspection I find little difference between apathy and evil, they both lead down the same path. If you want to give your elected officials the benifit of the doubt, the best you can attribute to them is apathy. If your more like me, remember I'm the one with the primal urge to break my foot off in someone's ass, that attribute is evil. I'm not in the mood to be kind, or reasonable for that matter.

Right or wrong, fair or unfair, this is what I see. What you should know, is that even as contrary as I feel right now, I do not throw the term evil around lightly. I usually reserve it for Karl Rove and recently a manchild named Rick.

All of this makes me angry, frustrated and sad and I think to myself, this is just so damn big. Where do we even begin to fix this government? Because frankly folks the far left unnerves me as much as most republicans do. Their freaking politicians first and formost. We lost our last true public servant a long time ago. Where would we begin? We're in a world of trouble here because there just aren't any places left on earth to colonize and start over now are there?

As entertaining as it would be to see the poloticians tarred, feathered and run out of town, anarchy really isn't the answer either.

My id really doesn't like it when I can't figure something out.

Someone said to me last year before the elections that it must be really hard being a humanist in this day and age. I replied, that is wasn't just caring for my fellow man, but it was also a fundamental if not niave belief that the mass of humanity would come together and conquer any hardship. Today my reply is, you have no idea how hard.

Maybe when I've had the chance to sleep I'll have a better perspective and become a part of the solution again because right now, I am just a very tired, very sad part of the problem.

Keith Olbermann is my hero.

It's not often that a member of the media so consisely calls to task a President and his administration over their response to a national crisis, usually, that's Jon Stewart's area. Keith Olbermann broke protocol to a certain extent and made an excellent commentary on the air today, the text of which you can find here. Our friends at onegoodmove have a video link to what aired during his segment.

Thank you Keith for not bowing to the "leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer." and just speaking you mind.

September 5, 2005

It is 2:02am on September 5, 2005.

Thousands of our neighbors are dead.

Thousands of our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers are fighting and dying a world away from us.

The chief justice of our Supreme Court died night before last.

Our fragile economy is teetering ever closer on the edge.

Over a million people have lost their jobs, homes and worldly possessions over the last seven days.

An entire American city is under water.

Three states along the Gulf Coast are devastated.

Entire neighborhoods have disappeared.

And this my friends is the short list.

Right now, most of us are staring slack-jawed in shock at what has taken place in the last week. Many of you are joining those of us who have been staring slack-jawed in shock at what has taken place in the last four years. Still we’re no closer together than we were then.

We want to blame someone; someone should be responsible for all those people who have lost their lives needlessly in this catastrophe. It’s FEMA’s fault, it’s the state’s fault, it’s the president’s fault, how about the people who chose to stay behind, it’s their fault too. In the big picture, each of those statements may be true, but, we placed all those people who have let us down so grievously this week where they are today.

The fact of the matter is my friends, we have let each other down. It’s our fault.

It is my fault and it is your fault.

No, we didn’t create the hurricane, though we did contribute to the conditions that allowed it to become the killer it turned out to be.

No, we didn’t cause the levy’s to give way, but we stood by and did noting while the money that could have been used to reinforce them was squandered.

I hear and see so many people ask, how could this have happened? And I think to myself, we should know, we allowed it to happen.

At our best, we as a people are apathetic about anything that is happening outside our own sphere. As a whole we don’t really care about anything that does not directly effect us. We’re more concerned with the divorce of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston than the welfare of our neighbors.

How many of you even know your neighbors? How many of you have been over to their homes? How many of you have invited them into your homes?

We are a fearful, isolationist and selfish society and it has to stop. If it doesn’t, then more of us will die needlessly.

It is true, that there were some with the means to leave New Orleans and the other areas devastated by Katrina that chose to stay. However, many just did not have the means to get out. They had no car, or no money for gas or they simply had no place else to go.

How many who could get out, offered help to those who couldn’t. How many took one less suitcase so a friend or neighbor could ride out with them. How many of you would have even considered it?

Of course, who could have foreseen it would have been this bad, after all, there have been many hurricanes come and go over the years, who could have known? National Geographic did a special last year about this very same scenario. It was not if this would happen, it’s always been a matter of when. We knew, and still, we did nothing. We allowed this to happen to our friends and neighbors.

Well, what’s done is done you say, we should focus on getting the rest of the people out and rebuilding. We’ve learned this lesson.

No we haven’t.

The lesson won’t be learned until we start reconnecting with one another on a human level. We will have learned nothing until we know our neighbors personally, until we start lending a hand to one another, not because we have to, but because we want to.

Should it matter what color our neighbors are? Should it matter what religion they are? Should it matter if they find companionship and love with a member of the same sex? Should it matter where they work? Should it matter how much money they have?

No.

The only thing that should matter to us is that our neighbors are human beings. The only thing that should matter is that they are just. Like. Us.

So I am going to turn off my television, step away from my computer and open my door to my neighbors. I am going to get to know them and invite them into my home. I’m going to offer them my hand in friendship.

I hope at least some of you will do the same.