More info courtesy of Scott:
Best Friends Pet Motel (near 82nd and Bash) is taking a shipment of items down to Louisiana to help with the rescue/recovery/fostering and adoption of pets that were left behind after the hurricane. If you have any items that you’d like to donate, I believe they’re accepting donations through this weekend. Their number is 841-8182.
It’s an old business myth that the Chinese character for “crisis” combines the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” It doesn’t. But I’m not sure anyone’s told the Bush administration, judging from this little tidbit in CongressDaily today: “[White House spokesman Trent] Duffy asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the hurricane’s impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming years.” Ah yes, despite the fact that privatization that would add trillions to the deficit in the short term, at a time when Katrina will already add $100 billion or more to the deficit this year, the time for privatization is now, obviously, in the wake of disaster. Um, no.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said:
“Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.”
I think the White House doesn’t realize it’s at the top of the totem pole — the part we’ll be cutting off.
Wikipedia definition of the Alfred Hitchcock concept of a MacGuffin.
In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The MacGuffin’s importance to the plot is not the object itself, but rather its effect on the characters and their motivations.
The MacGuffin technique is common in films, especially thrillers. Usually, the MacGuffin is revealed in the first act, and thereafter declines in importance. It can reappear at the climax of the story but may actually be forgotten by the end of the story. Multiple MacGuffins are sometimes derisively identified as plot coupons.
Definitive List of Hitchcock McGuffins
Also, Hitchcock Mania has a collection of stills from all of the Hitchcock films, including several MacGuffins.
Rope MacGuffin – The wrong hat
Dial M for Murder MacGuffin – the spare key to the apartment
Strangers on a Train MacGuffin – The lighter implicating Farley Granger
Katrina help Info
Where to get information on missing people, enter data to let people know you’re okay.
Interesting; a custom-turned wood piece to imitate your profile.
Forget about who did or didn’t fix the levees, how long we knew about Katrina coming, people who refused to evacuate, building below sea level; forget all of that — because it’s just noise from the Republican spin machine.
In the event of a nuclear terrorist attack, your President and Republican-run federal government would do what they did this past week. AND YOU WOULD DIE, like the people in New Orleans.
In the event of a viral biological terrorist attack, your President and Republican-run federal government would do what they did this past week. AND YOU WOULD DIE, like the people in New Orleans.
There would be no warning, there would be no evacuation, there would be no preparation, there would be no one to help you when it happened. The total break down that happened in New Orleans, which is apparent when you listen to the accounts from people first hand; where they didn’t know whether the police were there to help them or hurt them, when they didn’t have information or directions, or any idea how to care for themselves or others, or where to go — that would be YOU IN THAT SITUATION.
And the terrorists, the REAL ones, led by Osama bin Laden, not the fake ones in Iraq, are trying to get nuclear capability or a viral biological capability, while your President is playing war games with our national guard as toys in a foreign country, when they should be here, preparing for a disaster so we don’t all get killed.
Apparently, the will of the people won’t prevail after all. Governor Schwarzenegger is promising to veto the equal marriage rights bill that was just passed in the California legislature.
So let me get this straight… we can’t take our civil rights issues to court, because when the courts make a ruling, they’re called “activist judges” and we’re told that we have to refer to the legislatures to make the laws.
When we go through the legislatures to make the laws, we’re vetoed by activist governors who defy the will of the people.
So basically, there’s no civil rights justice for gay people in America, at all.
I was saying last night that I don’t want to live in America anymore. I don’t feel safe here, either from natural or man-made disaster, or anti-gay attack.
From Taking Down Words:
Media Matters examines the facts surrounding each of these bogus Republican claims.
1. Bush: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees”
2. Chertoff strained credulity in defense of Bush, claimed levee breaks and massive flooding came as a surprise — more than 12 hours after local media reported them
3. Brown: “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day”
4. Chertoff: “Apparently, some time on Wednesday, people started to go to the convention center spontaneously”
5. Chertoff pointed fingers: “New Orleans officials and the state officials … called for the Superdome to be the refuge of last resort”
6. Chertoff falsely minimized federal government’s role in Katrina response as subordinate to states
7. Wash. Post, Newsweek, Gingrich falsely claimed that Blanco did not declare a state of emergency
8. Gingrich falsely claimed that Nagin could “have kept water pumped out” of city had he ensured that pumps worked