pursuing tzedek

new blog address

2008-07-06T07:40:00.003-04:00

i'm not posting on this blog so much anymore, instead, i'm posting at israel-and-beyond as i begin my year of study and adventures in israel. come visit with me over there.

the curse of chief wahoo

2007-10-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

i grew up in cleveland. i suffered through the indians of the 80s, the drive, the fumble, the shot ... and if you don't count the cleveland crunch (indoor soccer...), the city of cleveland hasn't won a professional sports championship since 1964.

while some people blame the drought on the curse of rocky colavita ... or a more general cleveland sports curse, how about blaming things on our cute smiling little red racist friend?

while the cleveland jewish news isn't quite sure, i agree with rabbi jill that chief wahoo may be the real reason why cleveland sports teams thrive on disappointing us year after year.

in any case, i like my new old-school indians hat, without the wahoo logo...

reawakening

2007-08-27T10:55:00.000-04:00

a new school year about to begin - a good time to dust off the old blog and see what happens....

oh happy day!!!

2006-11-08T20:36:00.000-05:00

happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy. happy, happy, joy, joy.

if only every wednesday after the first tuesday after the first monday in november could be so wonderful.

now let's get to work. minimum wage. iraq. global warming. energy policies. health care. student loans. affordable housing. prescription drug benefits. corrupt republicans. corrupt contractors. afghanistan. every child left behind.

time's a'wasting..

obama-rama!

2006-10-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

I just saw Barack Obama speak yesterday at Temple University at the campaign rally for Casey, Rendell, and everyone else in Pennsylvania (on Shabbat, no less).

I began to believe.

I was impressed. It’s not his charisma. It’s not his good looks. It’s not his ethnic diversity. It’s that the man’s got some serious communication skills. He knows how to communicate with people. It’s his three years of working as a community organizer for Gamaliel in south-side Chicago. He knows how to communicate a vision. He knows how to share his public story in a way in which people can relate – in a way that people can understand. He knows how to listen to people. After listening to him talk, you learn something about him -- how he works and how he operates – how he’s come to the decisions that he’s made. Whether or not you ultimately agree or disagree with every political position that he takes, you leave respecting his judgement and his character. I want the opportunity to help elect this man into the white house.

As a rabbinical student, studying about community organizing, and the power that it has to transform congregational life, I’ve been especially drawn to Barack Obama. This makes sense, now that I’ve found out that he was a community organizer, in the Congregation Based Community Organizing model:

For three years Barack Obama was the director of Developing Communities Project, an institutionally based community organization on Chicago's far south side. He has also been a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, an organizing institute working throughout the Midwest.

From his writings on community organizing theory, it’s clear that he understands the need for building broad-based movements, consistent with Crashing the Gate and Howard Dean’s 50-State Strategy:

In theory, community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership — and not one or two charismatic leaders — can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions.

This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and any other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire organizers, conduct research, develop leadership, hold rallies and education campaigns, and begin drawing up plans on a whole range of issues — jobs, education, crime, etc. Once such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and corporations more responsive to community needs. Equally important, it enables people to break their crippling isolation from each other, to reshape their mutual values and expectations and rediscover the possibilities of acting collaboratively — the prerequisites of any successful self-help initiative.

He frames his speeches in the classic language of Ed Chambers and Saul Alinsky – setting up the dichotomy between the "world as it is" and the "world as it could be". He gives us permission to hope, to dream, to imagine that if we join together as partners, the mess that our government is now, the mess that our country has become, is not set in stone. We have the power, and indeed the obligation to change things, to set the ship aright.

His strategy is to first connect himself to others, addressing points of commonalities, and then only afterwards explaining the nuanced differences. Thereby, he leads the audience along with him on their journey to the next destination. For example, paraphrasing from his speech on Saturday:

"You know, I believe in capitalism, but you know, sometimes, the owners want to keep a little bit too much of the money … so that’s why we needed to have a minimum wage."

Obama is not afraid of who he is and who he was – he seems to be very comfortable in his own skin.

Obama does something no one else in politics does: He plumbs his own anxiety and doubt, and ties his life story to political problems that few elected officials dare to discuss so personally, including the disparities of race and class, drug abuse, poverty, and, of course, faith

He’s a human being, an imperfect person who has grown and developed. His adolescence involved periods of flirting with black power, alcohol, and drugs --- trying to come to terms with his own identity as the son of a Kenyan exchange student father and white mother from Kansas, who were divorced when he was young, growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia.

He struggled with the connections of faith and social justice – and the appropriate role of religion in public life:

As a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s, Obama had put together demonstrations and registered voters alongside Christian leaders who honored the civil-rights tradition of social change. His faith-grounded fellow activists, he explained, "saw that I knew their Book, that I shared their values, that I sang their songs." But, he said, they also "sensed that part of me that remained detached and removed, that I was an observer in their midst." He continued, "In time, I came to realize that something was missing for me as well, that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone."

He eventually, though, found his own path to faith, about which he effectively communicates to others, in a way in which others can relate:

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship, the grounding of faith in struggle, that the church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. You need to come to church precisely because you are of this world, not apart from it; you need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in your difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

The path I traveled has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans -- evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at a turning point in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives them.

Exchanges like these, show that he is the candidate that has the power to connect with voters from across the spectrum:

So let me end with another interaction I had during my campaign. A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:

"Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you."

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be "totalizing." His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush's foreign policy.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website that suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." He went on to write:

"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice … and I also sense that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason … Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. … You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others … I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

I checked my website and found the offending words. My staff had written them to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Rereading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in reasonable terms -- those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own -- a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

It is a prayer I still say for America today -- a hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all. It's a prayer worth praying and a conversation worth having in this country in the months and years to come. Thank you.

failure is a good thing...

2006-10-09T16:57:00.000-04:00

from npr, "this i believe," this morning, by jon carroll. it reminded me that the typical hall-of-fame baseball player fails two out of every three times at bat over his career - 67% of the time. if only we remembered that, whenever we start judging ourselves too harshly.

Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the power of failure.

Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematical victory. First-time success is usually a fluke. First-time failure, by contrast, is expected; it is the natural order of things.

Failure is how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase describing a good cook as "she who has broken many pots." If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had a late dinner with a group of chefs, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility their failures gave them.

I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I am aware that one column is going to be the worst column of the week. I don't set out to write it; I try my best every day. Still, every week, one column is inferior to the others, sometimes spectacularly so.

I have learned to cherish that column. A successful column usually means that I am treading on familiar ground, going with the tricks that work, preaching to the choir or dressing up popular sentiments in fancy words. Often in my inferior columns, I am trying to pull off something I've never done before, something I'm not even sure can be done.

My younger daughter is a trapeze artist. She spent three years putting together an act. She did it successfully for years with the Cirque du Soleil. There was no reason for her to change the act -- but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored; and if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting her body to all that stress. So she changed the act. She risked failure and profound public embarrassment in order to feed her soul. And if she can do that 15 feet in the air, we all should be able to do it.

My granddaughter is a perfectionist, probably too much of one. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do whatever it is better next time. I probably won't tell her that failure is a good thing, because that's not a lesson you can learn when you're five. I hope I can tell her, though, that it's not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.

there's a whale on my tail! does forced repentance really count?

2006-10-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

without further ado, here's my my take on the book of Jonah, from yesterday, written before any of our current political scandals came to light:

Why don’t I like Jonah? Every time I read the story, I have a negative gut reaction to his character. He shirks his responsibilities, he hides from God, he endangers the lives of those poor sailors, who were just trying to irk out a living on the high seas – the poor guy just doesn’t have that many redeeming qualities. And when Jonah eventually “changes his ways” and does the right thing, it’s only done at the end of the proverbial loaded gun - which in this case was a big hungry fish.

But, is my criticism of Jonah legitimate? Am I being adequately fair and balanced in my considerations?

Now, in both Jewish law, and in American law, if I forced you to sign a contract with a loaded gun pointed at your head, and you later proved it to the court that you had been under duress, the contract would be nullified. I’m not sure though, if Teshuvah works the same way.

Is it fair for me, to criticize Jonah, for only eventually deciding to do the right thing, because he legitimately feared, that an even bigger fish -- with a less-than-hospitable stomach environment -- might be coming after him next?

When Jonah eventually does decide to go to Ninevah -- and preach the doom and gloom that God had commanded -- he was grumpy, cranky and irritable. Without a doubt, he would have much rather been at home, asleep in his bed, talking on his cell phone, IMing with his friends, watching a South Park rerun on TV, but yet, he did eventually come, and perform his prophetic duty.

If, like Jonah, you do Teshuvah - if you make atonement and change your ways – if you eventually say that you’re sorry - because you have to - because you have no choice - because someone is pointing a gun at your head - because the implications of your not doing Teshuvah, and taking this kind of radical first step, are far worse, and far more horrific than if you didn’t - does your Teshuvah still count?

Is change under duress any less pure, and less worthy, than change done without ulterior motive?

In fact, I’m not even so sure that there even exists such a thing as pure Teshuvah - such as someone who repents just because they feel like repenting. I’m not sure if those people really exist.

Take a look at the Bible. Biblical theology, especially Deuteronomy, relies very heavily on both the carrot and the stick. If you follow God’s commandments – great - blessings, rain, produce – all together good times. If you don’t – you’ve got some problems - boils, inflammation, drought, fire, brimstone – the angry wrath of vengeful deity – definitely not things that you’d want to take lightly.

Surprisingly lacking in the Bible are phrases like, “follow my commandments, because, it’s the right thing to do.” Maybe that’s because we know, based on our own human experience, that a message like that wouldn’t sell very well.

Rabbi Hillel famously said …. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself what am I?” Our challenge remains to balance acting on behalf of our own self interests, versus acting in self sacrifice on behalf of others. Neither one exists in a vacuum; each needs the other.

Self interest is not necessarily the same thing as selfishness. Ed Chambers wrote that “… Self interest is the natural concern of a creature for its survival and well being. It’s the fundamental priority underlying the choices that we make. It’s based on nature’s mandate that we secure the basic needs and necessities of life, and develops further to include more complex desires and requirements. Healthy self interest is one of the marks of integrity or wholeness in a person. It is the source of the initiative, creativity and drive of human beings who are fully alive.”

Now, I still don’t know whether Jonah was selfish or not. But his behavior does become more understandable when looked at from his own particular point of view. He was scared, his prophetic reputation was at risk, God had sent him into the heart of Assyria, one of Israel’s mortal enemies. He may not have understood why his God would be caring about them?

Ultimately, as I struggle with Jonah each year, I contemplate whether what we do, is more important than why we do it.

Our intentionality, our kavanah, is definitely important - doing the right thing for the right reasons gets us an A+. But, if we end up doing the right thing, but for the wrong reasons, or for our own reasons, maybe Judaism gives us a C-, not as good as an A, but we still get to pass the class. And sometimes in life, that can be the most important thing.

lewis black on yom kippur

2006-09-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

from jewschool.com, click on the link, then click on the arrow to play

oy... that poor ram!

2006-09-23T21:16:00.000-04:00

l'shana tova blogosphere!

for your new year's pleasure - my musings on the akedah (the binding of isaac):

A familiar story is a gift, but also a burden. When we have to read the same cautionary tale each year, how do we keep it fresh?

One of my favorite cinematic scenes is from the movie, Dead Poets Society, when the teacher, Robin Williams, instructs each of his students to stand up on top of their desks, in a literal challenge to see the world from a different vantage point, from a new point of view. In a classroom, a few feet up in the air can make all the difference. With that intentionality, I share this poem by the Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai…
The real hero of the binding of Isaac was the ram,
who didn’t know about the collusion between the others.
He was volunteered to die instead of Isaac.
I want to sing a memorial song about him –
about his curly wool and his human eyes,
about the horns that were so silent on his living head,
and how they made those horns into shofars when he was slaughtered
to sound their battle cries
or to blare out their obscene joy.

I want to remember the last frame
like a photo in an elegant fashion magazine:
the young man tanned and pampered in his jazzy suit
and beside him the angel, dressed for a formal reception
in a long silk gown,
both of them looking with empty eyes
at two empty places,

and behind them, like a colored backdrop, the ram,
caught in the thicket before the slaughter,
the thicket his last friend.

The angel went home.
Isaac went home.
Abraham and God had gone long before.

But the real hero of the binding of Isaac
is the ram.
In a sense, this infamous ram is in the center of our Rosh Hashanah experience. Without him, there would be no shofar, and poor Isaac might have indeed fallen victim to a fundamentalist father and a bloodthirsty god. But then, even while we recognize his importance, the Biblical text is most definitely not told from the ram’s point of view.

In fact, almost everything about this ram is a bit of a mystery. In the Hebrew verse:
וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת-עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה-אַיִל אַחַר נֶאֱחַז בַּסְּבַךְ בְּקַרְנָיו

“and Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw and right there was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns”

the word א - ח - ר pointed as either אַחַר or אַחֶר that follows the word for ram, has confounded scholars for generations, and is often just ignored and not translated at all. Some options for the phrase include “a ram behind caught the thicket” “afterwards, a ram, caught in the thicket” “another ram, caught in the thicket” “the ram – the other – caught in the thicket” or, by exchanging the resh for a dalet – forming the word echad - you get “one ram caught in the thicket.” Each potential translation, though, raises up just as many questions as answers.

When I’m in an especially contemplative mood, I like to read the phrase as - אַיִל אַחֶר – “the ram - the other” – the unknown, nameless, faceless other, who through the fate of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, falls victim.

But then, on the other hand, once Abraham saw the ram caught in the thicket, the ram possibly accepting his role and his fate, Abraham was then also able to discern the Divinity around him.

וַיִּקְרָא אַבְרָהָם שֵׁם-הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא, יְהוָה יִרְאֶה, אֲשֶׁר יֵאָמֵר הַיּוֹם, בְּהַר יְהוָה יֵרָאֶה.

“and then Abraham called that place – ‘Adonai will see’ as it is said today, ‘on the mountain, Adonai will be seen’”

When we truly see another person, we see God - the image of God facing us, gazing into our eyes. In so doing, God sees us as well, looking out through the eyes of the other person.

יְהוָה יֵרָאֶה - יְהוָה יִרְאֶה - Adonai will see – Adonai will be seen.

shoftim: who are the prophets in our midst today?

2006-08-29T08:18:00.000-04:00

a dvar torah that i wrote for this past shabbat:

In an era of hurricanes, wars, melting glaciers, explosive bottles of gatorade and slithering snakes on a plane, how do we distinguish fact from fiction – truth from static - the real threats from Hollywood’s imagination and pre-election manipulations? To whose voice do we listen - Samuel L. Jackson, Al Gore, Jon Stewart or Tony Snow? Who are the true prophets in our midst today?

Conveniently enough, in this week’s Torah portion (Chapter 18 of Deuteronomy), God actually explains the way that prophesy is ideally supposed to work. God spoke to Moses, saying …
18 I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like [Moses]: I will put My words in [the prophet’s] mouth and he will speak to [the people] all that I command him; 19 and if anybody fails to heed the words that he speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account…

21And should you ask yourselves, "How would we know if an oracle was not spoken by the Lord?" — 22 if the prophet claims to speak in the name of the Lord but then his oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the Lord; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him.”
So now, basically, then if the prophet’s words do come true, he was a true prophet, and was recanting an oracle directly from God. But, if the prophet’s words don’t come true, he was, therefore, a false prophet, and was apparently speaking presumptuously.

If his words come true, he’s a prophet --- if they don’t, he’s a fraud.

Ok, I can sort of see that… but now then, wait a second, there’s at least one potential flaw in that logic. Can anyone think of it?

Well, if you can, then you’re in good company. Every Yom Kippur afternoon we read the story of Jonah, the prophet who was a little too smart for his own good, the famous thorn in the side of Adonai.

The Book of Jonah asks us to ponder the question of how long we have to wait, to find out if the prophet was indeed channeling the word of God. Because, what happens if the prophet accurately rants and raves, but then the people repent, and the doom and gloom never actually transpires. Aha – the famous prophetic loophole.

"The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go at once to Nineveh, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come before Me.”

Jonah, however, started out to flee to Tarshish from the LORD'S service. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went aboard to sail with the others to Tarshish, away from the service of the LORD

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: “Go at once to Nineveh, and proclaim to it what I tell you.”

Jonah went at once to Nineveh in accordance with the LORD'S command … he made his way into the city … and proclaimed: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

The people of Nineveh then believed God. They proclaimed a fast, and great and small alike put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And then he had the following proclaimed throughout Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles: No man or beast shall taste anything! They shall not graze, and they shall not drink water! They shall be covered with sackcloth – both man and beast - and shall cry mightily to God. Let everyone turn back from his evil ways and from the injustice of which he is guilty. Who knows but that God may turn and relent? He may turn back from His wrath, so that we do not perish.”

God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways. And God renounced the punishment that He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out. This displeased Jonah greatly, and he was grieved. He prayed to the LORD, saying, "O LORD! Isn't this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish …. Please, LORD, take my life, for I would rather die than live.”
This is presumably because Jonah fears that his prophetic reputation is now ruined; he’s like the boy who cried wolf. He’s afraid that no one will ever believe his prophetic wisdom ever again. Such is his prophetic paradox.

Jonah reminds me of Cassandra from Greek mythology:

Cassandra had been the youngest daughter of the last King of Troy. Apollo fell in love with her. To win her affections, he made a proposal: If she agreed to love him, he would give her the gift of prophecy.

Cassandra accepted, and she was given the ability to see the future. But she could not bring herself to love Apollo. Apollo was outraged. He begged her for a single kiss, and she consented. When their lips touched, Apollo breathed into Cassandra’s mouth in such a way that no one would ever believe her prophecies.

Cassandra was thus doomed to a life of despair. She could see the dangers threatening others, but she could not prevent them. Cassandra warned the Trojans that the Greeks were about to attack, and she cried out to warn them that soldiers were hidden inside the Trojan Horse. But her warnings went unheeded. Troy collapsed under the Greek onslaught …
And what about today? What prophetic wisdom have we recently seen? Who are the present-day Jonahs and Cassandras in our society?

We remember that on August 6, 2001, President Bush’s daily brief contained a two-page section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” As we also prepare to remember the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, I want to read a few passages from a series that the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper published in October 2002, entitled “Washing Away,” looking at the potential danger from a Hurricane hitting the Big Easy…

"A catastrophic hurricane represents 10 or 15 atomic bombs in terms of the energy it releases," said Joseph Suhayda, a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area. "Think about it. New York lost two big buildings. Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 in the area impacted and the people lost, and we know what could happen."

Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.

"Evacuation is what’s necessary: evacuation, evacuation, evacuation," Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said. "We anticipate that (even) with refuges of last resort in place, some 5 to 10 percent of the individuals who remain in the face of catastrophic storms are going to lose their lives."

"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," Suhayda said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee."
And that’s exactly what happened…. I got chills reading these eerily prophetic articles online. Was this wisdom carelessly ignored, or am I falling into the trap of typical Monday-morning quarterbacking? History will be our judge.

Christian theologian Walter Brueggemann, writes that one of the prophet’s tasks is
“…to bring to public expression those very fears and terrors that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we do not know they are there. . . The prophet must speak evocatively to bring to the community the fear and the pain that individual persons want so desperately to share and to own, but are not permitted to do so. . . .

The prophet does not scold or reprimand … It is the task of the prophet to invite the king to experience what he must experience, what he most needs to experience and what he most fears to experience, namely, that the end of the royal fantasy is very near. The end of the royal fantasy will permit a glimpse of the True King who is no fantasy. But we cannot see the real king until the fantasy is shown to be a fragile and perishing deception.”
The prophet’s job is to announce that the Emperor has no clothes, regardless if the Emperor preemptively decides to get dressed. Davka, he should get dressed, that’s the whole point.

In an account described in the book of Numbers (chapter 11), Eldad and Meidad, two Israelite elders began to “act the prophet” in the camp, speaking in ecstasy, and doing other things that seemed upsetting to Joshua ben Nun, Moses’ attendant from his youth. Moses, though, instead of restraining them, as was Joshua’s request, exclaimed:
“Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord put His spirit upon them!”
Would that all of us were prophets, that God’s spirit be upon us…. May God’s spirit be upon us, as we continue to develop our individual and communal prophetic voice. May this spirit of Divine wisdom guide us to better discern the true prophets from everything else that fights for our attention, amid all of the clutter of our day to day lives. May this be Your will. Ken Y’hi Ratzon. Shabbat Shalom.

ha ha ... HUD is punk'd over Katrina incompetence

2006-08-28T21:10:00.000-04:00

via daily kos and cnn... this is the best katrina story i've heard all day... if only it were true...

KENNER, Louisiana (CNN) -- A man who pulled a hoax on Louisiana officials and 1,000 contractors by presenting himself as a federal housing official said Monday he intended to focus attention on a lack of affordable housing.

"We basically go around impersonating bad institutes or institutes doing very bad things," said the man, who identified himself as Andy Bichlbaum, a 42-year-old former college teacher of video and media arts who lives in New York and Paris.

"That would be HUD. At this moment, they're doing some really bad things."

Masquerading as Rene Oswin, an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Bichlbaum followed Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the lectern Monday morning at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner.

In a speech to attendees of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit, he laid out grandiose plans for HUD to reverse course.

After the speaker read from a text he said had been prepared by his boss, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a HUD spokeswoman said the department knew nothing about the man.

"Everything is going to change about the way we work, and the change is going to start here today in New Orleans," the man said during his speech.

Jackson, he said, had had to cancel his appearance at the meeting of 1,000 builders and contractors at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner because he had to stay in Washington to meet with President Bush.

William Loiry, president of meeting sponsor Equity International, said he was duped.

"We were contacted about a week ago or so by someone who we believed to be [public relations firm] Hill & Knowlton [saying] that they were representing the HUD secretary and that he wanted to make a major announcement at this summit."

Loiry said he was told a few minutes before he had planned to introduce Jackson that the secretary would be replaced by Oswin.

"We've done 75 national conferences, 25,000 people participated, and we certainly never encountered anything like this before," he said.

The man left a flier bearing a HUD emblem that said attendees could go to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a public housing project. A free lunch and transportation aboard buses were promised.

"They never materialized," Loiry said.

Loiry was not impressed with the stunt. "There are many people still in need," he said in a written statement. "To perpetuate a hoax on them is cruel and disgusting."

Impostor: 'We have failed'

In his speech, Bichlbaum said the department's mission was to ensure affordable housing is available for those who need it.

"This year, in New Orleans, I'm ashamed to say we have failed," he said.

To change that, HUD would reverse its plans to demolish 5,000 units "of perfectly good public housing," with housing in the city in tight supply, he said.

Former occupants have been "begging to move back in," he said. "We're going to help them to do that."

The government's practice had been to tear down public housing where it could, because such projects were thought to cause crime and unemployment, he said.

But crime rates in the city are at a record high and there is no evidence that people in the projects are more likely to be unemployed, he said.

The man added that it also would be essential to create conditions for prosperity.

Toward that end, he said, Wal-Mart would withdraw its stores from near low-income housing and "help nurture local businesses to replace them."

Wal-Mart was unmoved. "As evidenced by the fact that we recently reopened two stores in the New Orleans metropolitan area, there is absolutely no truth to these statements," said spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone.

In a comment that elicited applause from the contractors and builders, Bichlbaum said, "With your help, the prospects of New Orleanians will no longer depend on their birthplace, and the cycle of poverty will come to an end."

Finally, to ensure another hurricane does not inundate the city, Exxon and Shell have promised to spend $8.6 billion "to finance wetlands rebuilding from $60 billion in profits this year," he said.

HUD: 'Who the heck is that?'

Late Monday afternoon, in a telephone call with CNN, Bichlbaum said the gist of his comments about housing was truthful, even if he had to use subterfuge to deliver it.

"The only not-true part is, unfortunately, the part about them changing their minds. They are still going to tear down 5,000 units of affordable housing," he said.

The New Orleans projects are sturdily constructed brick buildings that, nevertheless, are slated for demolition, he said.

"Basically, the real reason, of course, is they want to develop New Orleans into something pleasing to tourists -- even more pleasing."

Bichlbaum said Monday's prank was the latest in a series pulled off by The Yes Men, whose members have recently masqueraded as representatives of McDonald's, Halliburton and Dow Chemical.

"Fortunately, the law protects freedom of speech," he said. "What we're doing is not actually lying. It's actually exposing the lies. There's nothing morally wrong with what we're doing."

Bichlbaum said The Yes Men plan to release a movie about their exploits next year, but that commercial gain is not their goal.

"The real reason we do it is what we're doing right now," he told a reporter. "You're paying attention to this issue of affordable housing and the absurd policies of HUD."

In Washington, HUD spokeswoman Donna White called the hoax "sick."

"This announcement is totally false; it's totally bogus," said Donna White in Washington.

No one named Rene Oswin works for the department, she said. "I'm like, who the heck is that?"

Jackson, White said, had never planned to address the meeting. "I don't even want to refer to it as a joke," White said. "At this point, it's not funny."

Annie Chen, media coordinator for Survivors Village, a tent-city protest for the reopening of public housing in New Orleans, applauded Bichlbaum's theatrics.

"Right now, a lie is better than the truth," she said.

my very easy memory jingle seems useless now

2006-08-25T11:17:00.000-04:00

my very eager mother just sold us nine pickles? nine pizzas? nine presents? or did she just merely serve them? or did my very excellent mother just spank ugly naked people?

i guess it doesn't matter any more. poor pluto, i hardly knew you...

pretty please, what's now going to happen to my dear aunt sally? will she ever again enjoy king henry's cookies? (we all have to admit that, king henry does make a delicious cookie mix...) roy g biv, where are you? Does every good boy still do fine? king phillip, come out for goodness sake!

new orleans: a city without old people..

2006-08-24T08:22:00.000-04:00

from the philadelphia inquirer:

Rescued, now trapped: Thousands of older New Orleanians fled

By Natalie Pompilio, Inquirer Staff Writer

FORT WORTH, Texas - Dot McLeod's post-Katrina world is defined by the bare, white walls of a one-bedroom apartment in a city where she is a stranger.

McLeod, in her late 70s, is confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk since September, when the helicopter rescuing her from the hurricane's floodwaters sputtered and knocked her against a roof. Her New Orleans home destroyed, she was taken to Texas - and left here.

McLeod is lost - sad, lonely and homesick. She has no one to take her out, nor anywhere to go in this foreign place. In the last year, she has felt the sun on her face only about five times. She cannot give visitors directions to her building because she does not know where it is. She assumes the facility caters to senior citizens because she sees so many of them from her window.

"I've never seen anything but this room," McLeod said during a recent interview. "I would like to go home, but everybody says there's nothing to go home to."

McLeod is one of thousands of elderly evacuees whisked away from their southeast Louisiana homes in Katrina's wake and dumped in cities hundreds of miles away. Like so many others, McLeod owned her home but had no flood insurance, meaning she lost everything she knew and owned, and received a pittance in return.

In New Orleans, although she had no husband or children, she had a close-knit network of neighbors, a grocery store she could walk to, a paid-off property with low taxes. Now she has just one friend - a fellow New Orleanian who shares her tiny apartment - and she relies on Meals on Wheels, waiting nervously for the daily knock because the delivery man will take the food and leave if no one answers the door immediately. Her $650 monthly Social Security check, once more than enough to live on, is no longer sufficient.

"I didn't need anything else in New Orleans," she said. "It costs three times as much here."

More than anything, McLeod wants to go home to New Orleans. But she can't.

"How can I go back by myself?" she asked, her voice quaking. "There's no buses, no people. Ferrara's, where I shopped for 50 years, is gone."

Post-Katrina, the New Orleans area has few elderly care facilities or nursing homes. Rents for undamaged or rehabilitated housing are rising, moving out of the reach of those on fixed incomes.

It is unclear exactly how many elderly residents Katrina displaced. But anecdotally, it seems everybody knows somebody who can't get back.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, an octogenarian who is rebuilding his own house pointed to a hole in a neighbor's roof. That's where the neighbor - "my partner," the octogenarian called him - hacked his way to safety as the waters rose. That man, also elderly, is not returning, nor are the older folks who lived across the street or others who lived down the block.

In Lakeview, a sign in front of one house features a photo of a white-haired woman and reads, "Bring Mrs. Mary Home," listing a bank-account number where donations can be sent. That's for Mary Espiau, 88, who now lives with her daughter in Garland, Texas.

Like so many others, Espiau had no flood insurance and she lives on a pension. Many of her neighbors have gone, and she ticks off a list without pausing: "Irene isn't coming back. She's with her daughter in Houston. And Mr. Mintz is in Metairie, waiting to see what the storm season does before redoing his home. Barbara and John across the street have their house for sale."

But Espiau is determined to go back to the city where she raised her children and where her husband is buried. She has poured her entire savings - about $50,000 - into rebuilding her home. Other money and appliances have come from donors.

"There's nothing like your own home, and I'm homesick," Espiau said. "I'm going to try it out, see how I make out. I know it's going to be bad. But I think I'm going to be all right."

McLeod spent time in an Army hospital after being injured during the evacuation. From there, she went to an assisted-living facility. She left a few months later, unable to pay the bills.

The building where she now lives is sterile and strict: No pictures can be hung on the walls. Wet shoes must be removed before entering apartments. No toilets can be flushed after 11 p.m. The downstairs neighbor will bang a broom on the ceiling if she thinks McLeod - who uses her wheelchair on a thick rug - is making too much noise.

McLeod has been unable, physically and financially, to get back to New Orleans. When her beloved cat, Poupon, was found alive five weeks after the storm, she had no way to return to her pet or to bring the animal - who has since died - to Texas. When her brother passed away in December, she could not attend the services.

When she heard that the city was requiring people to gut their homes or face demolition, she asked members of a religious organization if they would do the work for her. They did, and sent her the few treasures that survived: her grandfather's pocket watch, still half-filled with water; the crucifix that adorned her mother's coffin; a set of deer antlers she purchased when she lived in Germany.

"It's all gone," she said. "Sometimes you feel like going to jump off the balcony, you don't even know where you are. There's so much on your mind when you're fighting FEMA, the insurance company, the post office, all at once."

In recent weeks, McLeod has found something that cheers her: She ends her day by watching the purple martins, thousands of them, as they fly outside her window to settle for the night. She had never seen such a sight in New Orleans, and her face lights up when she describes the birds, the way they flitter and play and tease one another.

She can't exactly explain what she likes about the birds or why they bring her such joy. But the reason seems clear: The martins, unlike McLeod, are free.

but at least they're not FEMA....

2006-08-23T14:16:00.000-04:00

john oliver on the daily show:

"... from what I hear, [Hezbollah] is very keen to take on their next project... the reconstruction of New Orleans. As the residents of this war-torn country point out, Jon, Hezbollah may be a rag-tag group of under-educated Islamic extremist militiamen, but, at least they're not FEMA"

click below on the arrow to play

hezbollah vs fema

2006-08-23T12:35:00.000-04:00

i think hezbollah is pulling ahead in the reconstruction road race... FEMA, it's time to learn from Construction Jihad...

As an example of Hezbollah’s hold on everyday life in southern Lebanon, Ali Bazzi, the mayor of Bint Jbail, outlined his big dreams for his half-demolished town as workmen raced past and tractors rumbled.

“We are going to turn this city into a model city,” Mr. Bazzi said, his arm clutching a trademark Hezbollah two-way radio. “There will be streets organized in grids, parks in every neighborhood and apartment blocks.”

Mr. Bazzi is counting on Construction Jihad. Just a day after the fighting stopped, Construction Jihad enlisted the volunteer services of 1,700 engineers, electricians, plumbers, architects and geologists who have cleared streets, dug ditches and built temporary bridges.

While the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just begun organizing committees to study the reconstruction of the country, Construction Jihad has all but completed surveys of southern Lebanese towns.

“We were victorious over Israel,” said Mr. Bazzi. “Now we have to rise to the occasion that follows.”

Teams of volunteers wearing Construction Jihad baseball caps have crisscrossed Bint Jbail and other southern cities. On Monday, the organization began signing up families for grants of between $10,000 and $15,000 to help cover rent and furnishings until new homes are built, and began helping small businesses reopen. They have worked to help restore electricity in many towns and to get water flowing again.

“We consider this work to be like prayer and fasting,” said Fouad Noureldine, director of projects in southern Lebanon for Construction Jihad.

tisha b'av and new orleans

2006-08-03T13:33:00.000-04:00

for me, the parallels this year with tisha b'av (today) are strongest with thinking of new orleans. the one-year anniversary of katrina is august 29. listening to lamentations last night ... the emotions of exile and loss still ring true today.

there are lot of websites, blogs and news articles that are and will be sharing people's experiences - those who were forced into exile and those who were there for the aftermath and recovery. not to mention the hbo spike lee documentary on katrina that's beginning to get some buzz...

i went to college in new orleans, and was there volunteering for a week in april, gutting houses with acorn.

some websites that i've found recently:

"If I Forget You O New Orleans" - from the Forward

"By the Waters of Babylon" - by Anya Kamenetz - in the village voice - written last year

an article from the washington post, describing the funeral/tahorah-like experience of gutting a moldy new orleans house

the Katrina blog project on Daily Kos

from the blog project - a powerful first-hand account

controversial new orleans landfill to close

2006-07-16T23:06:00.000-04:00

or so it seems... first nagin says that he's going to close it... but then the state wants to keep it open. oh how i'm hoping for some good news out of nola for a change. (a background post on the landfill can be found here).

first the hopeful:

Setting the stage for the closure of a controversial landfill in eastern New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin has signed an affidavit saying he will not renew the executive order he signed in February that gave the facility a legally required zoning waiver.

Nagin signed the affidavit pledging not to renew his executive order in response to a lawsuit filed in Civil District Court by four eastern New Orleans residents who claimed he lacked the authority to exclude the City Council from any land-use decision, even under a state of emergency.

Joel Waltzer, lawyer for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network and Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East, which jointly filed an unsuccessful federal suit to block the landfill, was thrilled to learn of the mayor's position.

"I think it means if Waste Management wants to continue to operate the landfill, they're going to have to go through the ordinary zoning process," Waltzer said. "The groundswell of community opposition and science has been building for months, and we are elated that the mayor has finally reacted. This is a victory for the rebuilding of New Orleans and for the vitality of New Orleans East."

"I can't believe it," gushed Marylee Orr, LEAN's executive director. "God bless everybody!"

If the opponents are right, and the landfill is in its final throes, it will mark the end of a long and often heated debate between Village de l'Est residents and environmentalists on one hand, and city and state regulators on the other.

Critics have complained that the landfill is situated poorly in marshy territory next to Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

And they say they fear that, while construction debris is considered relatively benign compared with other types of waste, the landfill could leak toxins into the area because the state broadened the definition of construction debris post-Katrina. Those fears have been heightened by Waste Management's refusal to allow testing of the material in the landfill.

but then again, this is louisiana. the rules are different there.

here's a topic: the louisiana department of environmental quality most often doesn't actually care about the quality of the environment in louisiana. discuss:

A day after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he will let a controversial eastern New Orleans landfill close next month, the state's Department of Environmental Quality said the landfill is still needed and should remain open.

The agency issued a statement saying the landfill "poses no threat to public health" and "is needed to clean up New Orleans in an environmentally sound and timely manner."

"Closing this landfill would slow down the (post-Katrina) cleanup process significantly," said Chuck Carr Brown, assistant secretary of the environmental agency.

stay tuned, folks, for the outcome. in the meanwhile, brad pitt's in town to rebuild new orleans in all shades of green. never fear, louisiana, brangelina's on the case!

G.I. Yossi vs. the Israeli left

2006-07-16T16:43:00.000-04:00

overall, just to preface, i quote bz in his post over at jewschool, that no matter who ultimately is at fault, and who started it, and who should stop bombing first:

I think we can all agree on one point: THIS SUCKS.

and while i'm trying to figure out where i stand on this big complicated mess, i guess i'm most angry about my powerlessness to do much of anything to affect the situation and quicken the end of the violence, outside of prayer. as well as curiousity about why the israeli left has been largely silent, and whether that means that as a progressive american jew i should be silent as well?

obviously, my first questions is whether i can separate this latest series of unfortunate events from the broader history of the arab-israeli-palestinian conflict? should i even bother to try?

the wall, the economic strangling of gaza via closures, the road blocks, the refugee camps, the terrorist bombings, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the partition plan, the role of arab countries in fomenting the camps, etc... all directly or indirectly play a role in the current crisis. but it doesn't answer my question.

israel is a small country. in jewish-israeli society everyone is connected to everyone else (think 2 degrees of separation). everyone does a stint in the military after high school, before college. when a young israeli soldier is kidnapped, the average israeli instantly either imagines him/herself in the same circumstance or its happening to their son or daughter.

israeli "unilaterally" pulled out of southern lebanon in 2000 (and gaza in 2005). in the israeli mindset, the lebanese pullout was supposed to appease hezbollah and the other millitants who had been firing rockets into israel. so now, with hezbollah firing more rockets into israel, the thinking is "see, we tried to do the right thing and play nice, but obviously, you people only understand violence, so alright, you asked for it, no more mr. nice guy."

also, with the katyusha rockets having a longer range, areas that had seemed "safe" from low-level rocket attacks, are suddenly targets. haifa, which by being 20 miles south of the lebanese border, had been out of range, is now in the same category as kiryat shemona and other towns closer to the border. 10 miles had made the difference here. only 10 miles. israel is very small geographically. about the size of new jersey.

This conflict is not about lines on a map; it’s about intimacy. “Everyone is in everyone’s face here,” said one official. The analogies made for Americans are these: Israel is the size of New Jersey, Gaza is the size of Delaware, and the West Bank is a third of Rhode Island. This is about legitimacy and safety, and until both sides achieve some modicum of well being, or deterrence, there will be no peace.

this feeling of being under siege, fed by echoes of the holocaust (i.e., "we will not be lambs led to the slaughter, damn it!") creates what a friend of mine has dubbed the "g.i. yossi" phenomena. all american jews know it -- the mythic israeli macho soldier wearing sunglasses, cigarette hanging from his lips, black machine gun around his soldiers.

the perfect antithesis to the woody allen nebbish that we all know as the impotent jewish male. (16 year-old billy jacobson from secaucus, new jersey on his nfty trip to israel never had a chance... rachel millerberg always went for 18 year-old uri from the army instead).

white jews may not be able to jump, but if you mess with us, we'll sic the mossad on your ass. ever try messing with an el-al security officer as you're waiting in line to board your plane? bad idea....

i admit it, even as a crazy lefty, that persona has appeal. what jewish boy doesn't grow up idolizing sandy koufax and hank greenberg? or want to become adam goldberg in the "hebrew hammer"?

in any case, i read today in yedidot achranot's website that there was a rally of 1000+ people in Tel Aviv last night:

They keep telling us that there is a consensus in support of the war, and that's not true. They keep telling the citizens that this is the only way, and I think that there is another way," said Abeer Kopty of Mossawa, The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel.

The organizations Ta'ayush, Yesh Gvul, The Women's Coalition for Peace and other left-wing groups have joined forces "to voice a different opinion against the war and in favor of negotiations," she explained.

Eitan Lerner, who took part in the rally, said: "Israel is entering another cycle of fighting and continues the foolishness of exaggerated aggression. I came here to protest because there's a link between starving and oppressing the Palestinians and the bombings in Lebanon."

"It's true that what Hizbullah did was unacceptable, but Israel is overreacting. Since when is the entire population to blame for all this?" he asked.

Rela Mazali from the New Profile organization explained: "This is a stupid, unnecessary and evil war. Our leaders could have prevented it. eventually the hostages will be released through negotiations, but hundreds will be killed along the way in Lebanon, and I don't know how many will die here. I think that we must make our voice heard."

Manal Amuri from Jerusalem called on the Israeli government to hold talks with Hamas and Hizbullah. "The Israeli aggression leads to an overall war no one wants. I think that Israel should negotiate with Hizbullah and Hamas and release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages. This way this story will come to an end."

"What Israel is doing now resulted in the death of civilians, innocent children, and it serves no purpose except for the government's vindictiveness. I think it's good we're showing that there are Arab and Jewish citizens in Israel who oppose the war."

i don't know what the answer is. i doubt that this rally will accomplish anything. i feel for the israelis, the palestinians and the lebanese. i'm eternally optimistic for nations to finally beat their rockets into ploughshares and their uzis into pruninghooks.

we're now "this close" to raising the minimum wage ...

2006-07-02T13:13:00.000-04:00

in pennsylvania, all we need now is renedell's signature. here's the scoop from the coalition that has worked tirelessly for this to happen:

Well, the long struggle is over and Pennsylvania will now join much of the rest of the nation with a long overdue raise in the minimum wage. So many organizations and public officials deserve a tremendous amount of credit for your efforts in keeping this issue before the public and the legislature.

The overwhelming numbers for final passage of SB 1090 (161-37 in the House and 38-12 in the Senate) make it clear how the opposition hid behind thier leader's refusals to allow a vote on a fair minimum wage. The Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition's strategy to target leaders in radio ads, direct organizing and political pressure to demand a vote made a real contribution to the final victory. The many organizations involved should feel proud. The combination of labor, religious, social service, community groups and political leaders that worked so hard on this issue made a difference in many ways. Our rotunda-packing rallies in Harrisburg kept the pressure on and everyone's work on individual members made a real contribution. In the end our opposition could no longer defend holding up a raise for Pennsylvania's poorest workers and families across the state will get a much needed pay raise.

Thanks again to all who stood tall for justice and fair wages.

here's some more details on the bill:

Rendell's signature would make Pennsylvania the 22nd state to approve an increase in its minimum wage since Congress last raised the federal minimum wage to $5.15 in 1997.

"We should not accept the fact that in our great commonwealth, and in our country, someone can work full time and still live well below the poverty level," Rendell said in a statement released Saturday.

The Senate passed the bill, 38-11, in an unusual Saturday morning session that was a prelude to a vote on a spending plan for the just-begun fiscal year. The House endorsed the bill Friday, after making minor changes to legislation the Senate passed June 22.

Democrats voted solidly for the increase, as did Republicans from southeastern Pennsylvania. Many Republicans from rural areas and those who are the Legislature's strongest business advocates opposed the increase.

Increasing the minimum wage is one of Rendell's top election-year priorities and is an issue that polls well with voters. For the past year, Democrats, labor unions and advocates for the poor have pressured the Legislature's Republican leaders to allow a vote on raising wages to $7.15. After many months of holding out, they relented, but won approval of an exemption that would spare the state's smallest businesses from paying the full increase until 2008.

The bill calls for Pennsylvania's minimum wage to rise to $6.25 an hour on Jan. 1, 2007, then to $7.15 an hour on July 1, 2007.

The increase would take effect more slowly for employers with the equivalent of 10 or fewer full-time employees, although franchises of larger chains would not qualify for that exemption. Those employers that do qualify would pay $5.65 an hour beginning Jan. 1, 2007; $6.65 beginning July 1, 2007; and $7.15 on July 1, 2008.

About 423,000 workers in Pennsylvania make between $5.15 and $7.14 an hour, but it is not clear how many of those work for businesses that qualify for the 10-employee exemption, according to the state Department of Labor and Industry.

The 2006 federal poverty level for an individual is $9,800; for a family of two it is $13,200; and for a family of three it is $16,600. Someone who is paid $5.15 an hour, 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year makes $10,700.

ok whose state is next?

first came the walmart, then came the jews...

2006-06-20T19:52:00.000-04:00

a fascinating effect of walmart's ever-expanding tentacles of growth is the integration of formally homogenous bentonville, arkansas:

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Residents of Benton County, in the northwest corner of Arkansas, are proud citizens of the Bible Belt. At last count, they filled 39 Baptist, 27 United Methodist and 20 Assembly of God churches. For decades, a local hospital has begun meetings with a reading from the New Testament and the library has featured an elaborate Christmas display.

Then the Wal-Mart Jews arrived.

Recruited from around the country as workers for Wal-Mart or one of its suppliers, hundreds of which have opened offices near the retailer's headquarters here, a growing number of Jewish families have become increasingly vocal proponents of religious neutrality in the county. They have asked school principals to rename Christmas vacation as winter break (many have) and lobbied the mayor's office to put a menorah on the town square (it did).

Wal-Mart has transformed small towns across America, but perhaps its greatest impact has been on Bentonville, where the migration of executives from cities like New York, Boston and Atlanta has turned this sedate rural community into a teeming mini-metropolis populated by Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

It is the Jews of Benton County, however, who have asserted themselves most. Two years ago, they opened the county's first synagogue and, ever since, its roughly 100 members have become eager spokesmen and women for a religion that remains a mystery to most people here.

When the synagogue celebrated its first bar mitzvah, the boy's father — Scott Winchester, whose company sells propane tanks to Wal-Mart — invited two local radio D.J.'s, who broadcast the event across the county, even though, by their own admission, they had only a vague idea of what a bar mitzvah was.

"Jesus was Jewish," one D.J. noted in a dispatch from the reception at a local hotel. The other remarked, "I love Seinfeld."

especially interesting is that one of my classmates who was just ordained as a rabbi is going to be serving as rabbi at nearby fayetteville. will arkansas become the next brooklyn? only time will tell...

on vacation!!!!!!

2006-06-15T13:43:00.000-04:00

i just turned in my last final of the year, so i am now officially on vacation (from school at least) and am 1/3 (or 1/5 depending on your math) of the way done towards become a rabbi !!

next week i'm off to dc to teach high school students all about judaism and housing as they build a ramp for the home of someone with a disability.

then i'm off to california to a week-long industrial areas foundation (iaf) sponsored community organizing training. They're one of the groups that brings us the powerful mechanism of faith based community organizing (fbco):

Faith-based community organizing has emerged as one of the most important initiatives to rebuild inner city communities and revitalize democratic life in America. Thousands of congregations across the country have engaged their members in collaborative efforts to improve schools, promote economic development, fight crime and violence, and build affordable housing. Four major networks sponsor affiliates in over one hundred and twenty localities, with each affiliate encompassing from ten to sixty congregations. Affiliates in Texas, California and elsewhere work together on state-wide campaigns to improve public schools and raise the minimum wage. Meanwhile, new faith-based efforts emerge almost daily, including many unaffiliated with the major networks. Faith-based efforts have drawn tens of thousands of community leaders into political action in order to win important improvements in the lives of millions of poor and working people. This rapidly growing movement has brought new energy into our political system and brought new hope to devastated communities.

we are a part of the rhythm nation

2006-06-13T01:02:00.000-04:00

With music by our side
To break the color lines -
Let's work together
To improve our way of life.
Join voices in protest
To social injustice.
A generation full of courage,
Come forth with me.

People of the world today
Are looking for a better way of life.
We are a part of the rhythm nation,
People of the world unite.
Strength in numbers, we can get it right.

Lend a hand to help.
Things are getting worse;
We have to make them better.
It's time to give a damn.
Let's work together.

- Janet Jackson

kerry won ohio !

2006-06-12T16:08:00.000-04:00

via bob herbert in the nytimes...

Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.

No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Bush.

could this mean that the rfk, jr. story in rolling stone is finally getting some legs? will people finally believe that kenneth blackwell is a dirty criminal who needs to be prosecuted for election fraud? that registered voters were actually disenfranchised? one can only hope...

for a relatively concise summary of robert kennedy's points, see this excellent diary from the daily kos archive.

save big bird!

2006-06-08T23:05:00.000-04:00

if the repubs have their way, big bird and mr. snuffleupagus could both become our future "imaginary friends."

the heads-up comes from our good friends at MoveOn.org:

Dear MoveOn member,

Everyone expected House Republicans to give up efforts to kill NPR and PBS after a massive public outcry stopped them last year. But they've just voted to eliminate funding for NPR and PBS—unbelievably, starting with programs like "Sesame Street."

Public broadcasting would lose nearly a quarter of its federal funding this year. Even worse, all funding would be eliminated in two years—threatening one of the last remaining sources of watchdog journalism.

Can you ask 3 friends to sign the petition telling Congress to save NPR and PBS again this year?

Last year, over 1 million of us signed the petition, and Congress listened. We can do it again if you pass this message along to any friends, neighbors, or co-workers who count on NPR and PBS for news or children's programming.

This would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting. The Boston Globe reports the cuts "could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs." NPR's president expects rural public radio stations may be forced to shut down.

The lawmakers who proposed the cuts aren't just trying to save money in the budget—they're trying to decimate any news outlets willing to ask tough questions of those in power. Americans trust public broadcasting more than any corporate news media.3 This is an ideological attack on our free press.

President Bush's budget proposed cuts to NPR and PBS4, but Congress is going even further: slashing 23% of this year's public broadcasting budget—$115 million—and denying NPR and PBS any funding in two years. The cuts immediately terminate support for commercial-free children's shows like "Sesame Street," "Clifford," and "Maya and Miguel."

The House and Senate are deciding if public broadcasting will survive, and they need to hear from viewers like you.

–Noah, Eli, Adam G., Tom, Marika and the MoveOn.org Civic Action Team
Thursday, June 8th, 2006

diet coke + mentos = fountains of fun

2006-06-07T22:30:00.000-04:00

even better than bellagio in las vegas ... as featured on npr. click on the image below to launch the quicktime video in a new page:

$7.15/hr, ready or not, here we come!

2006-06-07T21:48:00.000-04:00

if only i wasn't subsumed in the throngs of finals, i would have been in harrisburg ... check out the coverage, with video.

from the trusty email inbox:

... Nearly 400 people from all over Pennsylvania joined together to demand a "VOTE...NOW" and "$7.15 - nothing in between." Speakers included bishops, labor leaders, community leaders, low wage workers, clergy and members of the senate and the Rendell administration. We heard a commitment from Republican Senator Stewart Greenleaf that a bill would be voted and passed in a bi-partisan manner in the near future. Let's hope that is true. If not we will continue until a fair minimum wage has been enacted in Pennsylvania ...

woo hoo! gotta love those pictures on the rotunda steps...

winning elections, or how i learned to love the googlebomb?

2006-06-05T15:40:00.000-04:00

some supporters of ned lamont, who is challenging senator joe lieberman in the CT democratic primary, have come up with the idea of trying to influence what shows up when people search for either joe lieberman or ned lamont on google. this is me helping them out.

Ned Lamont Links
Ned Lamont - Official Campaign Website
Ned Lamont - Official Ned Lamont Resource Page
Ned Lamont - "Ned Lamont Forces Bush's Boy Into Primary" (Alternet)
Ned Lamont - Unofficial Ned Lamont Resource
Ned Lamont - Unofficial Lamont Blog
Ned Lamont - NOW PAC Endorses Ned Lamont for Senate
Ned Lamont - "Ned Lamont vs. Joe Lieberman" (The Nation)
Ned Lamont - NedHeads YouTube Group
Ned Lamont - "Democrats for Ned Lamont" (Taylor Marsh)
Ned Lamont - "Lamont Fires Up Naples" (New Haven Independent)

Joe Lieberman Links
Joe Lieberman - "Seasonal Memory Lapses" by Paul Bass (Hartford Courant)
Joe Lieberman - "Lieberman Wins Republican Friends, Democratic Enemies... (WaPo)
Joe Lieberman - "Joe Lieberman's Very Bad Year" (The Nation)
Joe Lieberman - "Joe Lieberman Disappoints Democrats" (Talk Left)
Joe Lieberman - "Joe Lieberman is a Big Oil Republican" (LamontBlog)
Joe Lieberman - "Joe Lieberman and the Hostile Takeover of Centrism" (Working Assets)
Joe Lieberman - "Joe Lieberman, an Embarassment to His Party & His Country"
Joe Lieberman - "Joe for President Parody -- A New Kind of Democrat, the Republican Kind"
Joe Lieberman - "Paul Krugman on Talk-Show Joe" (Brad DeLong)
Joe Lieberman - "How Joe Lieberman Tried to Kill Rock 'N Roll (Huffington Post)"

harry shearer and laurie david

2006-06-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

are two actors/comedians/celebrities who i really admire. give 'em hell harry, one third of spinal tap, the voice of half the characters on the simpsons, creator of 'leshow' on npr, is also a resident of new orleans who has been bringing the media to task for the past year on their failure to adequately cover new orleans. recently, he has been all over the story of the army corps of engineers' culpability in design flaws of the levees and flood walls that were breached. see, for example, this exchange with/about brian williams of nbc news, or his recent exasperation that the msm isn't even really covering the corps' latest colossal mea culpa.

laurie david, for those who don't know her, has been a one-woman campaign against global warming. married to larry david of seinfeld fame, her becoming an environmentalist was a gradual affair. her activism has grown from encouraging her friends in hollywood to buy priuses, to now single-handedly convincing al gore to turn his global warming traveling slide show into a documentary, and then producing the film.

just imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show. With charts. About "soil evaporation."

if she can make that sound exciting to the american public, she's got my vote. once i finish my papers, it's definitely on top of the to-do list.

i love it when celebrities use their powers for good and not for evil...

yummy fish

2006-06-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

here's a new eco-kosher, healthy fish list, from the new york times. their analysis takes into account human health factors (including the level of PCB / mercury / pesticide bio-accumulation in the fish, and the state of the fishing stock in the wild. all of these are also kosher in the traditional sense (with the obvious exception of the shelfish and catfish). but please correct me if i missed anything.

without further ado, here's the list:

These fish can be eaten once a week by adults, according to an assessment of contaminant levels by Environmental Defense. Those marked with an asterisk can be eaten more than once a week.

*ANCHOVIES
ARCTIC CHAR, color added
*ATLANTIC BUTTERFISH
*BLACK COD (Sable, Butterfish on West Coast)
*BLACK SEA BASS Younger children no more than four times a month
*HADDOCK
*HAKE (white, silver and red)
HAKE (Chilean, Cape and Argentine)
*HALIBUT (Pacific only) Older children 3 times a month, younger children twice
*HERRING
*MACKEREL (Atlantic or Boston only)
MAHI-MAHI Younger children 3 times a month
*PACIFIC COD
*PACIFIC SAND DAB (yellowtail flounder)
*PACIFIC WHITING
*PLAICE
PORGIES
*SALMON (Pacific)
*SARDINES
*SHAD
SMELT
*SOLE (gray, petrale, rex, yellowfin)
SOLE (Dover; English or lemon, older children 3 times a month, younger children twice)
WHITEFISH

FARMED

CARP
CATFISH (domestic) (not Kosher)
STRIPED BASS (rockfish)
*TILAPIA
*TROUT (rainbow); TROUT (steelhead)

SHELLFISH (not Kosher)

*CLAMS (northern quahogs)
CLAMS (Atlantic surf, butter, Manila, ocean quahog, Pacific geoduck, Pacific littleneck and soft-shell)
*CRAB (Dungeness, snow) Dungeness: younger children once a week
CRAB (Florida stone, Jonah, king)
*CRAYFISH (United States)
*LOBSTER (American) Children 2 to 4 times a month
*MUSSELS (farmed blue; wild blue, children 2 to 3 times a month)
MUSSELS (New Zealand green, Mediterranean)
OYSTERS (farmed Eastern and Pacific)
*SCALLOPS (bay; Northeast, Canadian sea)
*SHRIMP (wild American pink, white, brown)
SHRIMP (spot prawns and northern shrimp)
*SQUID
*SPINY LOBSTER (Caribbean, United States, and Australia)

new orleans public housing residents plan to storm the barricades

2006-06-01T02:03:00.000-04:00

Public housing residents, frustrated after nine months of waiting for a definitive plan to rebuild the complexes, said Wednesday they will take over at least one of the hurricane-shattered developments this weekend.

“I will go in and clean my house,” said Karen Downs, a former St. Bernard complex resident now living in Baton Rouge while her children and mother stay in Houston. “I can repair anything. I’ll put my hands together and work. I am tired. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, I’d probably be gone from stress.”

Enough is enough, she and other residents said Wednesday. They plan to take back their former homes at the 7th Ward complex this weekend, even if it means breaking through the razor-topped chain link fence that the Housing Authority of New Orleans installed post-Katrina.

power to the people!

pennsylvania senator rick santorum doesn't live in pennsylvania

2006-05-31T23:34:00.000-04:00

man, this is classic. i swear i didn't make it up. (with additional background info from a philadelphia inquirer reporter):

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward."

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn't live here anymore ... his home is in Virginia with his wife and children ... the house [in Penn Hills] was vacant, with no curtains or furniture...

yet another of the many reasons to wash away all traces of santorum from the deep dark bowels of dc...

nine months later .... they're still finding bodies in new orleans !!!

2006-05-29T16:12:00.000-04:00

how fucked up is that? from ashley morris' blog:

They're still finding bodies. How unfuckingbelievable is that? They're still finding bodies.
We are not Americans. America has totally, completely and summarily abandoned us. This kind of shit has never happened before. Never. And it happened on Bush's watch; that fuckmook is fucking responsible for putting a dipshit in charge of FEMA, and for making it a subsidiary of the ironically named department of homeland security. His administration is responsible for making us beg for the levees which THEY OWN AND ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR to be repaired. And he goes on vacation.
Nobody in Washington fucking cares.
We are on our own.

a superhero for siberia

2006-05-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

a beautiful day at the shore, but the water was still way too cold for swimming. however, judging by all the kids in the water, i guess comfort must be a subjective kind of thing ... in fact, just see for yourself, as our society's newest role model reveals his secret identity to the world this weekend:

I was standing at the edge of history two weeks ago, ready to plunge into the frozen waters of a lake beneath Nigards Glacier in Norway in a bid to set a new world record for the longest swim in ice water. A long white tongue of ice stretched down a narrow valley and stopped abruptly in front of the half-frozen lake. It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful places on earth.

My team had spent two days cutting a 700-meter-long channel across the lake, just wide enough to get a support boat to a small, turquoise piece of water at the foot of the glacier. I was wearing only a Speedo, a swimming cap and goggles in accordance with English Channel Swimming Association rules.

[damn those british and all their pesky rules...]
And this time, there were no polar bears, leopard seals, crocodiles or great white sharks to worry about. Nevertheless, I was afraid.

[cue dramatic music here]
Hypothermia could just as easily have destroyed my chances of success. A cardiac surgeon and English Channel swimmer once warned me that it was impossible to swim for any length of time in water that is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. "A normal person will be disabled within seconds," he said, "and dead within two or three minutes."

But my view is that nothing is impossible.

[cue patriotic music here]
On my side was the fact that whenever I see cold water, my body instinctively raises its core temperature from 98 degrees to 101 degrees. That may sound insignificant, but in thermo-regulation terms, it is critical. Before I get into icy water, my body is a furnace. It has confounded scientists and earned me the nickname ...

[drumroll, please]
...the Ice Bear...

with that, a super-hero is born ... faster than a penguin ... with a heart colder than dick cheney... able to swim through ice-cubes in a single stroke ... it's a fish, it's a walrus, it's ... the ice bear!

we need more ellen degenereses !

2006-05-26T19:25:00.000-04:00

ellen degeneres has been hanging out back in her old hometown of new orleans. not only did she have a brief cameo at tulane's graduation (along with the "grumpy old ex-presidents" tour), she's been featuring stories on new orleans' horrendously slow pace of recovery. the videos on the site are great. watch them.

now we need to get oprah to go down, too...

good news from sudan?

2006-05-26T14:00:00.000-04:00

we can only hope... maybe the united nations will help stabilize things somewhat.

NAIROBI, 26 May (IRIN) - A joint United Nations-African Union assessment team will head to Sudan's troubled Darfur region to determine how to strengthen the current AU mission in Sudan (AMIS) and to lay the groundwork for a possible transition to a UN peacekeeping force, a UN diplomat said.

"We agreed that in the coming days the United Nations and the African Union will send a joint assessment mission to Sudan," [UN Special Envoy] Brahimi told reporters in Sudan's capital, Khartoum. "It will then proceed to Darfur to assess the additional needs of AMIS, which must be immediately strengthened, since it will have the initial responsibility of facilitating the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement.

but

... despite the peace deliberations, "all parties continued to engage in totally unacceptable levels of violence and despicable attacks against civilians in breach of humanitarian law and earlier ceasefire commitments."

and

Raiders from Sudan have killed more than 100 villagers in Chad, Human Rights Watch reported Thursday, and the group expressed concern that the violence in Darfur was spreading...

od yavo shalom aleinu, v'al kulam.

how oreo cookies can save america..

2006-05-23T00:14:00.000-04:00

flash animation via ben cohen, formerly of ben and jerrys. click here.

yum. and they're kosher, too.

louisiana politics: why did nagin win?

2006-05-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

man, trying to wade into and figure out new orleans politics gets so damn complicated!

this is where i'm at right now... [and a heads-up that this post is a little long]

so first there was ray nagin, an african-american cable tv executive, who was elected 4 years ago after marc morial, another african-american mayor, was term-limited. marc's father, dutch morial, had previously been mayor. both morials had been accused of corruption. conservative whites especially didn't like them. but the city hadn't had a white mayor since moon landreiu.

now when moon was mayor, he was instrumental in reducing segregation, and including african-americans in city government. many whites didn't like that. and still don't. they refer to moon's tenure as the beginning of the "decline of new orleans" which sounds like code to me:

I submit that the anti-Mitch sentiment stems largely from residual white resentment at Moon's desegregation of city government. It speaks directly to the identity issue for white New Orleanians who, to this day, believe their New Orleans began to crumble the day "those people" took over. Some whites will vote against Mitch because of their racially-based suspicion of the "Landrieu clan". Others will vote for Nagin because they know he will tend to favor developers in the fight over who ultimately is allowed to return. In other words, a significant portion of the white vote will go to the black candidate specifically out of racial animosity towards the black population. Meanwhile Nagin will continue to enjoy an overwhelming share of the black vote. The reason: Black racial anxiety.

ok, back to nagin. when he 1st ran for mayor, he was supported by the white establishment. the black vote was split. his administration is considered to be scandal free, but beyond that i'm not sure. this article from the times picayune, indicates that nagin has just as many connections to corrupt politicians as anyone else in louisiana. in any case, after katrina, with nagin's blaming of bush and chocolate city speech, the white conservatives didn't like him as much. or they liked him even more, because he was there as the piñata for them all to blame. in any case the conservatives hated mitch landreiu.

after the primary left them with the choice of either nagin or landreiu, nagin became preferable once again - the lesser of two evils. because he was a republican in democratic clothing, he was "one of the good ones", or because they thought it would be better for the next governors race to have nagin in office as opposed to mitch:

The "Oyster-Adrastos" theory is that many Louisiana Repubs want to help re-elect Nagin so that they can use him, in Oyster's memorable phrase, as a useful idiot for the GOP to pound on in next year's statewide election. Nagin defeating Mitch would also have the side benefit of damaging Landrieu as a statewide candidate for either re-election or the governorship. The GOP thinks that the combination of Nagin and Gov. Blanco is its ticket to taking control of state government next year.

interesting. and this theory also may explain why republican mayoral candidate rob couhig endorsed nagin after the primary:

Anyway, Couhig was told that if he was a good boy and endorsed Nagin for Mayor that a strong effort, including oodles of money, would be made to clear the Repub field so that Couhig would succeed [Republican rep. Bobby Jindall] in Congress. This makes perfect sense: Couhig ran for the seat when it came open after Bob Livingston left Congress because he couldn't keep his pants zipped up. It's also a safe Republican seat.

that goes for other big republican donors, too.

at the same time, nagin has seemed to make up with bush, enough at least to give him a shout out in his acceptance speech last night. is it as simple as kissing the hand that controls the federal purse strings, their bonding over being "misunderstood" by the media and other "similarities"?

or, maybe it's all just as simple as harry shearer so clearly puts it:

Mitch Landrieu, the challenger to once and future incumbent Ray Nagin, ran like a Democrat.

If there was ever a time to put the courtesy aside, this was it. Landrieu's approach reminded me, sitting here in D.C. for the weekend, of nothing so much as Kerry's in 2004: assuming that voters will fill in the blanks, not daring to express the anger that animated his base lest he offend those at the margins.

ouch. that hurt. he goes on:

If you don't give the voters a passionately lucid reason why the incumbent needs to be unseated, you can't blame them for pausing at the switch. Race will undoutedly get the blame, but Landrieu might well have looked at one of Nagin's other primary opponents, white conservative Rob Couhig, for a primer on how to frame a passionately lucid attack on the incumbent. BTW, Couhig endorsed Nagin in the runoff.

wow, my brain's tired. it's time for bed.

what color is your chocolate?

2006-05-21T14:47:00.000-04:00

maybe new orleans is just like a giant-sized bag of m&ms: brown, yellow, red, green, blue, orange, and just a little bit of green (must be the mold...). sometimes things can be nutty, but that just adds to its flavor. you gotta remember that there's nestle's white chocolate, the same as there's hershey's extra dark. tasty chocolate comes in all varieties.

see, now wouldn't you like to be a chocolate city, too?

mazel tov, ray nagin, you won, here's looking at you. but now it's time to re-build some levees. right now. let's get to it... hold your new buddy bush's feet to the fire.

who knew?

2006-05-21T14:36:00.000-04:00

apparently microsoft likes people having access to cheap gas. how about that? just click and enter your zip code.

organic vs. local; the eco-kosher smackdown

2006-05-18T18:46:00.000-04:00

turns out, it's all good. while i was hoping for a definitive answer from this feel-good article -- by the end of the article, i do actually feel good about myself and my consumer food shopping choices:

So what's my advice? Think about what you're buying. If you want local food, buy local. If you want organic, buy organic. The point is to make a conscious choice, because as we insert our values into the market, businesses respond and things change. There's power in what we do collectively, so is there any reason to limit it unnecessarily?

just as long as you don't buy your organic produce from walmart. chas v' chalila, that you should think of such a thing. pu pu pu!

wwktfd - what would kermit the frog drive?

2006-05-18T18:20:00.000-04:00

what do you think, should kermit be selling suvs? even if ford's hybrid sales have gone up 50%, and they're better than other suvs that people buy, i still think it's a little creepy. some things should be sacred. see for yourself:

president al gore

2006-05-17T01:32:00.000-04:00

via ifilm.com, click below for al gore's snl skit, with the alternate presidential reality, that opened the show on saturday. very bittersweet - funny and sad at the same time.

so what does this mean for 2008?

voting machine problems in pennsylvania

2006-05-16T23:45:00.000-04:00

this doesn't bode well for november...

In Philadelphia, Deputy City Commissioner Edward Schulgen said more than 100 of the city's approximately 3,500 machines were not working when voting began.
"We've been busting our chops from the first opening of the polls," Schulgen said.
He also said the problems were likely due to human error. Either poll workers started the machines wrong in the morning or mechanics tightened screws inside the machines too tightly.
At least one machine was still functioning in most divisions, he said, but about 20 polling places were without machines for a portion of the day. Voters were given provisional ballots.
Bernard Bibbs, judge of elections in Germantown, was monitoring elections at St. Francis of Assisi when both of the polling place's machines sputtered out. He said they were down from about 7 to 11 a.m.
"Some people went home without voting," he said. "It was kind of shocking."

This article from the inquirer mostly talks about philadelphia county, which is not one of the 16 counties who began to use new diebold machines today. philadelphia uses older "push button" machines (danaher 1242), which also seem to have a lousy record from what I can tell. anyone here know if they have a verified paper trail?

these types of incompetence-related problems, combined with whatever diebold-related hijinks may occur in november, make me very nervous.... very nervous indeed.

although, with new blood in harrisburg...

State Sen. Robert Jubelirer, (R., Blair), the state's longest-serving president pro tempore, conceded defeat to Blair County Commissioner John Eichelberger, who led in a three-way primary.
Earlier, Senate Majority Leader David J. Brightbill, (R., Lebanon) who helped pass the legislative pay raise that spurred an anti-incumbency movement, conceded his loss shortly before 10 p.m. He was defeated by Mike Folmer

there may be hope for the long-stalled paper-ballot bill:

There has been voter-verified paper ballot legislation pending in the General Assembly for months (HB 2000, SB 977) and it's blocked in committee somewhere, dooming Pennsylvanians to vote on unverifiable, unsecure machines.

el-al: "america is incompetent, we'd rather do it ourselves"

2006-05-12T17:28:00.000-04:00

Michael Boyd, a former airline security official, said, "The Israelis know darn well that our bomb detecting equipment doesn't work and that the people in charge of airport security don't know what they're doing."

via the new york times . it seems that el-al, the national airline of israel, doesn't trust the bomb scanning wherewithall of the transportation security administration. they'd rather do things themselves.

makes me want to jump in a plane right now. nice to see those tax dollars truly at at work.

update on new orleans landfill

2006-05-10T23:50:00.000-04:00

it's been given a 72 hour reprieve:

Mayor Ray Nagin agreed Wednesday to close a controversial construction and demolition landfill in eastern New Orleans for 72 business hours to give environmental and community groups a chance to test the debris that has been dumped there and determine whether it poses hazards to nearby residents as well as to the adjacent Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

More importantly, in the view of landfill opponents, Nagin promised to close the site if testing shows "harm" to nearby communities and to push the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - which is supervising the removal of Hurricane Katrina debris - to allow nighttime hauling of construction detritus to previously existing landfills outside the city.

"The shutdown will automatically end (after 72 hours), but we're not going to let (the landfill) go forward if we sense that there are any concerns from experts as far as it being harmful to the community," Nagin said. "If reports show that this material is toxic, we will shut it down."

this is a good first step. background info is on my earlier post at dailykos.

there's also a good video story up on the nytimes website.

al gore for president?

2006-05-09T17:45:00.000-04:00

i don't know... but i've been hearing some buzz. he's got a new documentary out on global warming, and people are talking and blogging.

what do you think, gore-feingold, gore-obama, gore-clinton? we need someone in 2008 who won't be afraid to "go to the mattresses" against the bushes...

if you’ll be my bodyguard
i can be your long lost pal
i can call you betty
and betty when you call me
you can call me al

from bad to worse in darfur

2006-05-08T19:23:00.000-04:00

this is what happens when 100,000 people run out of food...

KALMA CAMP, Sudan, May 8 -- An African Union official was hacked to death in this vast, squalid camp today after his post, manned by an unarmed team of eight civilian police officers, was overrun and looted by a mob of angry demonstrators.

The discontent bubbled in a concoction of frustrations. Conditions had gotten worse in the past month, and this month, residents will get half as much food because the World Food Program, short of money, was forced to cut aid.

let me make myself clear, that i'm not defending this horrendous, brutal, unprovoked attack on an african union translator. but if something doesn't happen, this is barely the beginning of what we're going to see.

Conditions have deteriorated in Kalma, one of the oldest and largest camps, since the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group, was evicted by Sudanese authorities. Government officials claim that the organization was allowing the rebels and criminals to flourish in the camp, but crime has increased since the agency left, people here said.

"We have no food, no safety," said Halima Muhammed Abakar, who has lived here for three desperate years. "Yesterday, four women were raped when they went to get firewood. We are so afraid."

"Since we arrived we don't have any access to food, to water, to any health service," said Sheikh Ahmed Khalil Muhammed, who fled to this camp with 160 families from a village nearby in March. They arrived two days before the Norwegian group was kicked out, and since then they have been living outdoors.

"No one has come to check on us," Mr. Muhammed told Mr. Egeland. "We have become desperate."

If conditions do not improve soon, Mr. Egeland said, "Kalma is a powder keg."

so, what can we do?

1. contact your members of congress, urge full funding of sudanese peace-keepers in the supplemental spending bill, and to speed up the conference committee on the darfur peace and accountability act. info on these bills are on AJWS's website.

2. call the white house comment line, 202-456-6111, and urge bush to continue his efforts in promoting a un darfur mission. the u.s. doesn't plan to send its own soldiers and has asked the governments of china, india, pakistan, egypt and algeria to contribute troops to such a peacekeeping force. bush is sending condi to talk to the un tomorrow

---

anyone with ideas, please comment below, or at the cross-post at kos.

new orleans is a mess ... and which landfill should it go to?

2006-05-08T00:07:00.000-04:00

this just sucks - apparently the current solution for moldy debris from new orleans is to put it in a big un-lined landfill, in the middle of a vietnamese-american neighborhood and the largest urban wildlife refuge in the country. from the ny times:

Block after block, neighborhood after neighborhood, tens of thousands of hurricane-ravaged houses here rot in the sun, still waiting to be gutted or bulldozed. Now officials have decided where several million tons of their remains will be dumped: in man-made pits at the swampy eastern edge of town, out by the coffee-roasting plant and the space-shuttle factory and the big wildlife refuge.

But more than a thousand Vietnamese-American families live less than two miles from the edge of the new landfill. And they are far from pleased at having the moldering remains of a national disaster plunked down nearby, alongside the canal that flooded their neighborhood when Hurricane Katrina surged through last year.

the story continues in my diary over at daily kos.

"gone fishing" ... a metaphor for a presidency

2006-05-07T19:32:00.000-04:00

i swear this is from reuters and not from the onion ...

bush: “i would say the best moment of all [my presidency] was when i caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake”

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

"In such a situation it takes a while before one understands what is happening," Bush said. "I would say that this was the hardest moment, once I had the real picture before my eyes."

Because Bild could not immediately furnish English quotes, Bush's comments were translated from the German. The paper said the White House planned to release an authorised English version of the interview on Monday

the lost art of wasting time

2006-05-06T15:30:00.000-04:00

putting everything off

late for work

fresh air

it's the perfect shabbat afternoon poem...

bush is killing hurricane recovery unit of americorps

2006-05-06T12:18:00.000-04:00

cross-posted at dkos.

just in from the times-picayune, Bush and pals are thinking of disbanding part of americorps: the national civilian community corps (nccc):

NCCC members, trained in first aid and team building, were among the first federal relief groups sent to the Gulf Coast, arriving within a day of Katrina's impact, officials said. Numbering as many as 300 at a time in Louisiana, and working in teams of about 10 members, they have tackled a litany of tasks in the New Orleans area, including house gutting, house building, delivering food, setting up a warehouse for donated household items and coordinating other volunteers. The NCCC, with workers ranging in age from 18 to 24, has provided more than 500,000 hours of service to post-Katrina recovery projects, officials said.

AmeriCorps officials don't see a conflict between eliminating the NCCC, which began in 1992, and the president's call for more volunteers during a visit to New Orleans last week. "If you're interested in helping the victims of Katrina, if you want to help them get back on their feet, then come on down to New Orleans," Bush said in the Lower 9th Ward.

Ben Brubaker, a former AmeriCorps volunteer in Georgia who now runs a relief kitchen in St. Bernard Parish with the help of NCCC teams, said the program brings good leadership to myriad volunteer efforts. Other AmeriCorps volunteers sent in from around the country aren't as flexible as the NCCC members, and can't stay as long, because they remain tied to service missions elsewhere, he said.

NCCC members, who call themselves "long-term volunteers," receive lodging, transportation and small daily stipends as they look forward to AmeriCorps' standard scholarship of $4,725 at the end of 10 months of service. They typically spend weeks at a time on any one assignment in the storm region.

the article says that bush (and potentially the bush-appointed americorps lackeys) are complaining about the high cost of this program:

...the notion, now under debate in Washington, D.C., that the disaster-response program responsible for the gutting team, the National Civilian Community Corps, should be disbanded. President Bush is advancing the idea in his proposed budget for next year, following criticism by the Office of Management and Budget of the program's $27,859 per-participant cost.

fine, when looking at that number out of context, it may seem high, but $27,859 seems like the annual figure, including food, living expenses, tools/supplies, and the scholarship/tuition stipend. if so, it suddenly doesn't sound like very much money after all.

how much does each soldier in iraq cost us? compared to hiring contracters to do the work (a la haliburton) this is pennies to their dollar. fine, maybe there is a more cost effective way to provide relief, but c'mon, does anyone here really trust this administration to come up with that?

the bigger picture here is "what the hell is our plan? remember everyone that hurricane season begins june 1 !!". 3 1/2 weeks until another potential hurricane katrina somewhere in florida or the gulf coast. are we ready?

for the short term until we design a better overall system, we need to rely on the parts of the government that actually work, and that have a solid track record of getting stuff done. the nccc is a good program, with idealistic young adults, who have the time and inclination to want to help. they should be nurtured, not fired.

and does anyone need reminders of all the work that still needs to be done in new orleans -- who wants to head south and gut a home? i've got a tyvek suit with your name on it...

urge the media to cover darfur

2006-05-05T10:01:00.000-04:00

one of the biggest hurdles to solving the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur is to inform the american public what's going on.

nbc has started to cover it, with the today show sending ann curry, as well as a sudan plot-line on er (wasn't that a good episode last night!) the next step is to get the rest of the msm to jump onto the bandwagon.

click here on ajws's website to send a quick email to the producers at abc, cbs, cnn and fox news, urging them to follow nbc's lead and inform the american public about the ongoing dire situation.

another take on the evacuation plan

2006-05-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

or rather, fema's rebuilding guidelines:

the common sense award of the week

2006-05-02T17:58:00.000-04:00

goes to new orleans mayor ray nagin - who says that in the likely event of a future hurricane, new orleans will evacuate its citizens by bus and train:

The new emergency preparedness plan, a work in progress, will not include the opening of the Superdome as a refuge of last resort.

Instead, the city, state and federal government will participate in an effort to move an estimated 10,000 residents without transportation to state shelters outside the area by bus or Amtrak train. The train will be reserved for “special needs” residents with medical conditions and the elderly.

i wonder how many hours of meetings it took to come up with this plan? i guess it must have taken a lot of time to design the big fancy flow charts:

they have multiple colors and everything!

can oprah end genocide?

2006-04-28T18:08:00.001-04:00

i sure hope so. together, with george clooney's help, their secret super strengths combine to make conservatives the world over cower in fear and dread...

where else but an article about oprah's hopefully benevolent influence in the world could you find the unlikely pairing of "genocide" and "sex appeal" together in the same sentence. via jane wells in huffpo:

George Clooney and his father, journalist Nick Clooney, have just returned from a trip to Chad and Sudan, where they met with refugees from the on-going genocide in the Darfur.

Why did they go? George Clooney had heard Colin Powell call this genocide and he had read Nicholas Kristof and Samantha Power on the subject.

There was more: "I'd had a fairly good year," Clooney explained to Oprah on yesterday's show. "I thought I should cash in some of that capital on bringing attention to some of the things that concerned me." He showed exclusive video footage of his trip, including children chanting "Oprah! Hi Oprah!"

Thank God for their efforts! Finally, this genocide has enough sex appeal for mainstream TV. Oprah and 10 million viewers! There isn't time for cynicism here. Genocide trumps just about everything as a crime against humanity. Oprah asked Clooney point blank:

"OK so a genocide is taking place, now 10 million people know about this. What can they do?"

"They could go online to www.savedarfur.org or they could call the White House, that's 800 224 2084 " he replied.

Good for George Clooney. He spoke movingly about what he had witnessed. He was especially poignant about the helplessness of the victims he had met, stranded, homeless, hungry and abandoned. His interest and intentions are admirable. Both he and Oprah stressed the point that we could all get out of our chairs and do something.

The belief that one person can make a difference is what has sustained me, and all the people I have worked with over the last 18 months. In this time I have traveled to Africa four times, to bear witness to genocide. I have written articles and posted numerous blogs. I have raised money for survivors and tried to raise awareness about this crisis. I am currently producing a documentary about this genocide. Everyone I have met and worked with in all these efforts believes one can person can make a difference. Many of those people who are not in Africa right now will be at The Rally to Stop Genocide in Washington, DC, this Sunday, April 30.

Today I just wanted to say "Thank You" to George Clooney and Oprah. One person can make a difference, and if it happens to be one of you two, well that can make a hell of a difference. Perhaps we could even help reach a critical tipping point. Let's hope it's George Bush and Kofi Annan who decide to make a difference next. Fingers crossed!

the cynic in me wants to shout out, while the undying optimistic liberal wants to commend this belated civic engagement, and urge her 10 million viewers to join with the hopefully couple hundred thousand folks rallying with me in dc this weekend, to urge something to be done. the specifics of the "something" though, remain an open question.

neil young rocks

2006-04-28T17:56:00.000-04:00

hey hey, my my, protest songs must never die:

the lyrics to Neil Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President”:

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

it's on the amazon wish list...

photos from new orleans

2006-04-25T21:36:00.000-04:00

my photos from new orleans are posted on flickr here. But click here for the slideshow version. with the slideshow version, if you click on a photo, it gives you a brief description.

(since my disposable cameras didn't always work so well, i "borrowed" some photos from stacy's blog, with attributions and thanks).

i'll post some highlights on the blog itself soon.

house gutting and life at camp algiers

2006-04-22T22:58:00.000-04:00

until my photos are posted... via stacy's blog, a good soul who is still down there with acorn, as i am now blogging from home in rainy philadelphia. bonus points if you can find me in one of the pictures. the blog goes for two weeks, and i was only there for the 2nd week, but you can get the idea of what we were up to.

when you're going to new orleans...

2006-04-22T22:12:00.000-04:00

you gotta go see the mardis gras... or so the song goes, as i heard the welcome sounds of the preservation hall jazz band at the french quarter festival yesterday. it apparently was their first time playing back in new orleans post-katrina. their second line rendition of "the saints" (no extra tip required) was the perfect capstone to the week. once i have my pictures developed, i'll post the one of the big fat white guy dancing with his funky umbrella. it's classic.

but apparently, when howard dean comes to new orleans... he's gotta go see the lower ninth ward. this story and picture, via the nytimes:

In the Lower Ninth Ward, Mr. Dean put on a white hazardous-materials suit and, more than a little winded, helped gut a house. He needed barely a nudge from reporters to declare the federal effort here a disgrace that would cost Republicans control of the government.

"This is a searing, burning issue," Mr. Dean said, "and I think it's going to cost George Bush his legacy, and it's going to cost the Republicans the House and the Senate and, maybe very well, the presidency in the next election. People will never forget this."

Pointing to two abandoned hulks of cars, he added, "I hate to be partisan at a time like this, but this is why the Republicans are going to be out of business."

therefore, on friday morning, instead of working on gutting another house in gentilly or lakeview, neghborhoods that only had about 7 feet of moldy, smelly, bacteria-infested water, all of us acorn volunters instead went to the lower ninth ward. lakeview seems rebuildable, the lower ninth is something else. the two houses we worked on may have been the only two houses in that area still solidly on their foundations.

it was a little bit of a dog and pony show with the dems and the media, and way too much attention was focused on the democratic staffers pushing a wheelbarrow gussied up in their brand new tyvek suits and n100 masks (what n95 isn't good enough?), with not enough mention of acorn and the volunteers who have been coming down and doing this work for months.(abc news does a slightly better job in this regard). but in any case, the media on the event/action seems relatively positive, and the outcome will hopefully be helpful for the residents of new orleans.

and man, those houses in the lower ninth are nasty inside. trust me, you never want to smell a washing machine full of moldy katrina water.

new orleans needs an extreme home makeover

2006-04-18T21:50:00.000-04:00

two houses down, a couple hundred thousand more to go. one of the acorn volunteers who i've gotten to know summed it up best by saying that "everything here is broken." thank goodness that there's a big home depot nearby...

yesterday, after our house gutting adventures, we drove through the lower ninth ward. it's a surreal post-apocalyptic landscape. houses on top of cars, houses on top of houses. who knows what the hell they're going to be able to do with this neighborhood.

with the mayoral elections on saturday (the day i leave), as i see the smiling happy faces on the ubiquitous billboards, i wonder what kind of difference any of them could make. working traffic lights would be great. how about picking up the enormous piles of trash and construction/deconstruction debris on every tree lawn? that would be a good start.

but there is a can-do optimistic spirit in the air. people want to rebuild, they have hope and courage in the face of all that they've endured. riding the bus and the streetcar to the french quarter yesterday, all of the random conversations that i overheard had something or other to do with katrina: commuting from houston, the sky-rocketing price of apartments in the west bank, rehabing mom's house in gentilly... i was instantly taken back to riding the subway in new york in the weeks after september 11th.

the french quarter was eerily quiet, yet open for business, like the deserted boardwalks of coney island on a cold february saturday. just waiting, in suspended animation, holding on, trying desperately to survive...

it felt really good, in a sad, depressing kind of way, to finding some poloroid photographs, and a michael jordan basketball card, as the only salvageable items in the home that we gutted today.

take that you evil moldy drywall !!

2006-04-17T20:17:00.000-04:00

gutting houses is very cathartic.. who knew it felt so good to swing a hammer as hard as you could and destroy some moldy plasterboard? if that whole rabbi thing doesn't work out, i can go into home demolition. plus i look damn sexy in a disposable tyvek suit. the tuxedo won't know what hit him. n95 respirator masks, the new spring accessory that everyone's just gotta have.

new orleans ... is it home?

2006-04-17T20:06:00.000-04:00

have you ever had a love affair that's never quite ended? you've both moved away and moved on - there may have a been a formal break-up but your pilot-light is still on, hiddenly awaiting that slight spark of gas that will enlight and ignite and begin to flame, if only for a moment. you have both seriously dated other people, even seriously, but in the recesses of your heart, there's a special place reserved for that one.

that's how i feel about new orleans, nola to me. brooklyn was cute, philadelphia has a nice personality, and cleveland is the responsible choice for settling down and raising a family... but how i love my rendezvous with the big easy -

oh your succulent sweet beignets, sinful gumbo and jumping jazz. you've got just the right amount of spice to keep things interesting ... now i heard about all that happened with that katrina -- such an evil bitch - remember i told you she was trouble right from the start and that you needed to protect yourself better or things could ened up disasterously...

well that's all over now, just water over the bridge. come, let me help nurse you back to health so that we can both be whole once again.

if i can't volunteer in new orleans... what can i do?

2006-04-14T19:57:00.000-04:00

here's a website suggested by acorn that lists different action ideas.

right now on their site, there's email activism opportunities on:

passover and katrina

2006-04-10T13:38:00.000-04:00

as my upcoming trip gutting houses with acorn in new orleans will coincide with the end of Passover, i'm thinking a lot about how the two are related.

i want to focus on themes of freedom, and equating rebuilding new orleans to helping empower those who have been oppressed. obviously, new orleanians in general, and residents of certain predominately african-american neighborhoods in specific, recieved a major raw deal from all parties involved. i could definitely go in that direction and further, ala kanye west, with more anti-slavery metaphors.

instead though, this year i feel sorry for the egyptians....

they too, were given a major raw deal. just think of the poor, uneducated egyptian soldier, probably just 18 years old, who was drafted in the pharoah's mighty chariot corps. he didn't have a lot of opportunities growing up, and so with the generous egyptian g.i. bill, military service was a good option. he didn't know much about those strange israelites they were sent after, but being a patriotic egyptian, loyal to pharoah -- he was just doing his duty.

but then after the army traveled for a while on what seemed like dry, well-protected land, the levees broke, and water came at them from all sides. they never had a chance.

as we spill a drop of wine during our passover seders this week for each of the 10 plagues, may we continue to hope and work together for a time when our freedom doesn't come at the expense of the oppression of others.

FEMA to keep camps at least until June 1

2006-04-08T11:44:00.000-04:00

from the Times-Picayune:

Debris workers lodging extended;
FEMA to keep camps at least until June 1
Saturday, April 08, 2006
By Paul Purpura, West Bank bureau

Volunteers flocking to the New Orleans area to help clear storm debris and gut flooded houses will have free lodging at least through June 1, FEMA announced Friday, days before the agency had planned to close its four camps for relief workers.

The sites in Algiers, Chalmette, Port Sulphur and Cameron Parish had been slated to close next week, leaving volunteer organizations traveling to the region to help with post-Katrina recovery efforts scrambling for alternate sites. The four camps combined house about 1,500 people, but the number of beds has varied based on need, said Elizabeth Childs, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Under FEMA contracts, firms have operated the tent cities for months, initially to help emergency workers and National Guard troops in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As first responders and troops left, the lodging was opened to volunteers, from faith-based groups to college students on spring break. By one count, as many as 10,000 volunteers were in the area last month.

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," Elenor Soltau, disaster relief coordinator for Canal Street Presbyterian Church, said Friday upon learning of the extension.

The Mid-City church, which has assisted with the influx of volunteers from across the nation, had three teams of 65 workers scheduled to stay in Camp Algiers at Behrman Park through May, and they already paid their return-trip airfare before learning the camp would close Monday, Soltau said. That left her seeking other lodging, she said.

"We're thrilled for the fact that at least it gives us two more months to house teams," Soltau said. "For now we can continue with plans for the teams that are coming in."

Hearing murmurs of the camps' closing in recent weeks, Habitat for Humanity and St. Bernard Parish officials began working on an alternate site for 800 workers in Arabi, as Camp Premier in Chalmette, which has housed 7,500 volunteers so far, was slated to close Wednesday, said Michael Hayes, who has recruited volunteers for the nonprofit group.

The group is still seeking a more permanent site, but the FEMA extension gives them some "breathing space," he said. "We're very thankful this is happening."

The camps include air conditioned tents with wooden floors that have cots, dining facilities serving three meals daily, washers and dryers, restrooms and showers.

FEMA pays about $100 daily per person to operate the camps, not including administrative costs such as salaries for FEMA employees involved with them, said Childs, the FEMA spokeswoman.

FEMA said the extension will help state and parish officials find "more comprehensive solutions" to help the volunteers involved with long term recovery. "Our base camp operations have been a vital support component for workers, many of them volunteers, that have come to help in the recovery," FEMA's deputy director for Gulf Coast operations Gil Jamieson said.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, opposed the camps' closure, saying in a March 29 letter to acting FEMA director David Paulison that more than 400 volunteer groups have helped in recovery efforts.

"It would be impossible to carry out the sheer volume of recovery needs without the assistance of volunteer organizations," he wrote.

BREAKING NEWS - FEMA extends camps for volunteers

2006-04-07T18:25:00.000-04:00

i guess a little activism can make a difference... now let's focus on the long-term. from our friends at wwl-tv:

FEMA extends contracts for 'tent cities'

03:53 PM CDT on Friday, April 7, 2006
WWLTV.com

FEMA announced Friday that it would extend the contracts for the ‘tent cities’ that have been housing hundreds of volunteers and emergency workers in the area providing hurricane relief.

The housing centers will remain open until June 1, the official start of hurricane season.

FEMA had been providing the camps and said the extension would provide extra time for officials to develop more comprehensive solutions for supporting volunteers involved in long term recovery.

Many volunteers had been living in the tent cities, two of which housed 1,200 volunteers at a time at a cost of about $100 a day per occupant. The camps provided shelter, hygiene facilities, laundry, food, and basic first aid.

FEMA had originally planned to close the camps on April 10 and 11.

There's also an official press release up at FEMA's website.

is this the best the Times-Picayune can do?

2006-04-07T17:59:00.000-04:00

emphasis added.

1000th home gutted in St. Bernard Parish

St. Bernard Parish officials gathered this afternoon at a home in Chalmette to mark the 1000th home gutted since Hurricane Katrina swamped the parish.

The 1 p.m. event was held at 2425 Judy Drive. Countless teams of volunteers have converged on the parish since the Aug. 29 storm, to gut houses and help residents get back on their feet.

But parish officials worry that with limited housing available to the volunteers the number of people willing to help with the work will dwindle.

i wonder why, hmmm?

if FEMA likes volunteers, why does it treat them this way?

2006-04-06T22:08:00.000-04:00

from a 2003 press release on FEMA's website:

Volunteers Make The Difference

Release Date: October 20, 2003
Release Number: 1493-31

Washington, DC -- They are at every disaster, usually on the front line helping to meet the immediate and urgent needs of disaster victims. Some bring specialized skills and expertise; others offer an extra pair of hands or needed manpower. While their tasks may be different, they all share a desire to help and make a difference. They are volunteers.

More than 200 - both trained and spontaneous, unaffiliated - volunteers answered the call in the District of Columbia during Hurricane Isabel. The D.C. Commission on National and Community Service's D.C. Citizen Corps, and community partners, mobilized and assigned people to distribute 515 tons of dry and wet ice, 21,000 sandbags and assist in the feeding of more than 8,500 District residents.

"Government can't do it alone and our experience with Hurricane Isabel clearly showed that," said D.C. Emergency Management Agency director Peter La Porte. "Volunteers play a critical role in emergency response and were an invaluable resource during this disaster."

D.C. Citizen Corps, part of a national program administered by Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), started after September 11, 2001, to harness the power of individuals through education, training, and volunteer service, trains volunteers in crime prevention, emergency preparedness, mitigation, and response to all hazards- crime, terrorism, natural, technological and man-made disasters. The D.C. Citizen Corp's Community Response Team (CERT) program, trains people in basic disaster response skills and helps them take a more active role in emergency preparedness.

[snip]

Greater D.C. Cares (GDCC), a Citizen Corps partner, managed and coordinated the people who responded to Mayor Williams' call for volunteers. Working from the city's Emergency Operations Center, GDCC assigned volunteers to the Food Bank, D.C. Central Kitchen and Washington Parks and People.

Voluntary agencies have a vital role in the Federal Response Plan that FEMA activates in disasters. The American Red Cross is the lead organization for administering response activities that meet the urgent needs of disaster victims on a mass care basis.

During Hurricane Isabel, a collaboration of the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Southern Baptists, D.C. employees, and other volunteers worked together to set up a mass-feeding program that provided more than 22,000 meals to District residents.

"You can't overstate the importance of volunteers," said Washington, D.C. federal coordinating officer Scott Wells. "Their giving personalities make them good team members that you can count on at a disaster. You don't always know who they are or where they come from, but you know they will always be there."

i couldn't have made this up any better if i had tried.

momentum on FEMA screwing over volunteers in New Orleans

2006-04-06T21:11:00.000-04:00

we're not quite at the tipping point yet, but a new post is up on truthout.org. and keep your ears tuned to npr in the next few days...

update on FEMA and those pesky volunteers

2006-04-05T22:13:00.000-04:00

a summary of things so far is posted on myleftwing. if you're a member over there, check out and recommend the post, so it will get some play.

response from Rep. Jindal (LA-01)

2006-04-04T18:59:00.000-04:00

see below, from Rep. Bobby Jindal's office, representing the 1st district of Louisiana. He has apparently written a letter to FEMA already:

from "Bendily, Erin" - Erin.Bendily@mail.house.gov

Thank you for your email to Congressman Jindal. FEMA has informed us that these tent camps will be closing. Congressman Jindal is aware of the impact that this will have on the many generous volunteers coming here to help with the rebuilding and recovery process. In addition to expressing his concerns to the local FEMA headquarters office in Baton Rouge, he has also written a letter to the FEMA Acting Director requesting that these camps remain open. We are hopeful that FEMA will re-consider, but unfortunately, they have not notified us of any change yet.

We appreciate your feedback on this and will continue to push this issue with FEMA.

Erin Bendily
Office of Congressman Bobby Jindal
(985) 340-2185

a little about me

2006-04-04T18:35:00.000-04:00

you may be asking, who is this "pursuer of tzedek" person, and why does he care so much about new orleans volunteers?

story in the nation

i have my plane ticket, i'm flying down in less than 2 weeks. stay tuned to see what happens (and where i'll be staying).

life is always an adventure...

FEMA confusion

2006-04-04T18:24:00.000-04:00

i spoke to some people at FEMA today... what a dysfunctual agency!

the local FEMA liason in new orleans thinks that the closing of the base camps is a done deal, since she's been told not to take any more reservations from volunteer groups to stay there after April 10. she said volunteers and the groups "sponsoring" them are basically on their own. while there may have been some activity behind the scenes, since the decision to extend the camps would have to come from FEMA on high, the local groups should resign themselves and create contingency plans.

the people i reached in DC headquarters were clueless, and either claimed to know nothing of the situation, or told me to call other offices.

however, the guy i spoke to in the fema regional office (which covers lousisiana) knew exactly what i was talking about and seemed to say with a verbal equivelent of a "wink, wink" that "he was legally not allowed to talk about future contracts". hmm. maybe something is potentially happening behind the scenes after all. but who to pressure in FEMA to make it happen?

tomorrow i'm calling some senators... come join in the fun...

Senator Vitter (LA)
Phone: (202) 224-4623
Fax: (202) 228-5061

Senator Landreiu (LA)
Voice: (202)224-5824
Fax:(202) 224-9735

and whoever represents you, wherever you live.

New Orleans Habitat for Humanity and FEMA

2006-04-03T22:45:00.000-04:00

the background, from another blog:

3/22/2006, "FEMA refuses to extend contract, despite original written confirmation"

Dear St. Bernard Volunteers:

I address you this afternoon with an extremely heavy situation. Despite FEMA’s approval for the expansion of the Volunteer Base Camps, Camp Premier in St. Bernard and Camp Algiers in New Orleans—an approval which dates back to January—they have reneged two times already and are crippling a necessary vein of support. The physical space and the materials are all accessible to the vendor of Camp Premier—all he needs is a signature of approval to extend the camp past the original termination date of April 11th. Due to the Stafford Act, the contract for expansion cannot be authorized by anyone but the two men at the very top of the ladder, Michael Jackson with the Dept. of Homeland Security and David Paulison, Acting Director of FEMA. FEMA has yet to sign their approval.

They have already announced that they are canceling the transportation for the St. Bernard Project starting this Sunday, March 26. They have not approved an extension of the contract, so we must all try and be self-sustaining as far as that is concerned. Therefore, I ask all of you to try and secure buses for the entire week—should you have already contracted them—to help shuttle your team from the Base Camp to the worksites. I ask that those individuals who are flying in to rent a car, for which there will be secure parking, for this same purpose. This is one more example of FEMA withdrawing critical support from where it is needed most, and it foreshadows a failure on their part to extend the contracts for the Tent Cities.

From the start, our role in St. Bernard’s much-needed recovery has been recruiting volunteers, while St. Bernard’s Department of Recovery coordinated the volunteer teams and FEMA provided food and lodging. As of January 12, FEMA had given us a written commitment to accomodate 2000 volunteers in Camp Premier until June 30th. Both New Orleans Habitat for Humanity and the St. Bernard Parish Government have been engaging generous and willing volunteers ever since. All of you have risen to the occasion, spending large amounts of money on transportation and equipment and making personal and work-related sacrifices.
I am well aware that many of you have been planning for some time. We cannot allow this to happen.

While the St. Bernard Parish Department of Recovery is making arrangements for secondary accommodations, this negligence on the part of FEMA is abhorrent and unacceptable. The region will not recover without the support of thousands of volunteers, all of whom need lodging that was promised by FEMA. The tremendous number of volunteer man-hours provided by the presence of these base camps saves the federal government an incalculable expense. We must compel FEMA to follow through on their commitment.

I urge you to contact your representatives in the House, Congress and the Senate and advise them of the dire situation: FEMA is blocking the road to recovery in St. Bernard and Orleans Parishes! I also invite you to join us in blitzing FEMA with emails and phone calls:

FEMA’s general operator: (202) 566-1600

I thank you for support in this and all matters. Please do not respond to my email account, as I have no capability of addressing all of your concerns on this issue, nor the power to change this decision alone. We must work together!

Michael Hayes
Special Projects Coordinator
New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity

more on FEMA kicking out volunteers

2006-04-03T18:35:00.000-04:00

the post is up on dailykos. check it out, recommend it...

FEMA kicking out volunteers ... part 2

2006-04-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

here's more on this unfolding story -- from WWL tv in New Orleans....

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl033006jbvolunteers.78778329.html
Action Report: FEMA plans to shut down 'tent cities,'
volunteers scramble to find alternative housing

10:09 AM CST on Friday,March 31, 2006
Bill Capo / WWL-TV Action Reporter

Thousands of volunteers from around the city have been playing crucial roles in the re-building of New Orleans, but the non-profit and religious groups that sponsor them are worried because FEMA plans to close the tent cities that have housed many of the volunteers.

“It’s been astounding, we’ve been able to enlist the support of over, almost 3000 volunteers, if not more than that,” said Mike Hayes with Habitat for Humanity.

Many of the volunteers have been living in “tent cities” set up by FEMA. Two of them housed 1,200 volunteers at a time at a cost of about $100 per person per day. The tent cities had places to sleep, a shower, and a cafeteria.

“We’ve been staying in the FEMA tents, and they have fed us, it’s awesome food, I mean it’s awesome housing, they got hot showers every night for us, so it’s been a great experience so far,” said Auburn University volunteer Lindsey Harder.

FEMA said it has scheduled to close the camps on April 10 and 11.

“Why is this facility being closed down? Well FEMA originally had contracts for about the last six months to operate three camps in the New Orleans areas, and the contracts run out mid-April,” said FEMA representative Leo Skinner.

Non-profit and religious agencies that have sponsored the volunteers said losing the free housing could hurt their efforts to help New Orleans recover.

“The tent cities are critical in maintaining that level of volunteerism. If they are shut down or they go away, we’re going to have two alternatives. We’re either going to lose hundreds of hard working, willing volunteers, or we’re going to have to scramble to find other housing for them,” said Jim Pate with Habitat for Humanity.

Leaders of non-profit and church groups have been scrambling to find new housing for the volunteers who want to come down and help rebuild New Orleans, while at the same time hoping that FEMA will find some way to keep the camps open.

“Right now the biggest issue for us, especially coming up this summer when every youth group in the country wants to come down here, is where are we going to house them, where are we going to put them, where are we going to feed them?” questioned Aaron Arledge with the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

“We’re looking at the possibility of maybe some of the schools that maybe we can swap out gutting and clean up in exchange for housing volunteers,” said Pate.

Habitat for Humanity said they are hoping to get help from Louisiana’s congressional delegation, but are still preparing their own tents to house volunteers.

“Is there any chance that something could be done to keep these camps open? I’m not going to say yes or no, but I can tell you that the extension of the camps is being reviewed by headquarters, FEMA headquarters,” said Skinner.

FEMA kicking out volunteers from New Orleans on April 10

2006-04-02T01:22:00.000-05:00

This has gotten very little press so far - someone should run with it. FEMA is closing all of the New Orleans camps/tent cities that volunteers are staying in, as of April 10. These tents have been housing the volunteers gutting houses from organizations ranging from ACORN to Habitat for Humanity. the only stories on this so far on the net have been:

Christian Broadcasting Network
and
Talking Points Memo Cafe

This is ridiculous -- the very least that the federal government should do is house and feed volunteers coming to help.

the lives they lived

2006-01-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

an annual ritual of mine on new years day is to take a look at the new york times magazine's "the lives they lived" section, to give kavod to people who lived interesting lives, who may have slipped by without the proper acknowledgement.

it's always fascinating to see whom they chose to pay homage, passing up the pope, rosa parks, johnny carson, peter jennings, shirley chisholm, arthur miller, simon wiesenthal, johnnie cochran, and richard pryor, and instead honoring others, whose passing may have been unnoticed... (for a longer list, see this article, or many others online)

some of the remembered include the voice of tony the tiger and the singing voice of the grinch; a man who sued the us government for his internment in a japanese internment camp during world war 2, and someone who worked at the same job for 69 of his 97 years.

we also have the the inventor of the bundt pan; a heroic flight attendant; one of educational cinema's great auteurs; and an expert oragamist.

and don't forget the man, unfortunately best remembered for "who am I? why am I here?" during the vp debates, but who struggled to maintain dignity and humanity as a pow during the vietnam war; the namesake for a device that runs on 2.21 gigawatts of electricity; and a new orleans policeman who sadly took his own life, after helping many people, when the despair became too much for him to handle.

may their memories be for a blessing.

Have a Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Kwonderful Kwanza, Festive Festivus, Scintillating Solstice and a Happy New Year

2005-12-25T08:17:00.000-05:00

especially during the winter holiday season i love this quote...

"All the darkness cannot extinguish the light of a single candle,
yet one candle can illuminate all the darkness."

when i was googling it to find out who really wrote it, i discovered that it has moved beyond its original context, has been paraphrased all over the place and has been attributed to hannah senesh, the talmud, a wise man, someone, and unknown ... and occurs in many different variations.

i guess that means it really resonantes with people. if it was written by senseh in her diary, it would have been written originally in hebrew - so any english version is by definition an interpretive translation. and she could have been quoting or alluding to an earlier quotation, even if she didn't realize it. so interesting...

jim wallis is my hero

2005-12-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

well, at least one of them. yesterday in dc, there were also 114 others:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Capitol Police arrested 115 religious activists who were protesting a House Republican budget plan's cuts in social programs when they refused to clear the entrance to a congressional office building Wednesday.

"These are political choices being made that are hurting low-income people," said Jim Wallis, the event's organizer and founder of the Christian ministry group Sojourners. "Don't make them the brunt of your deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility."

Outside in the frigid cold for several hours, more than 200 demonstrators sang religious and holiday songs, prayed aloud and chanted, "Stop the cuts." Those who were peacefully arrested and led away from the steps of the Cannon House Office Building faced booking and a $50 fine, said Sgt. Kimberly O'Brien, a Capitol Police spokeswoman.

Wallis refused to consider the vigil a partisan affair, saying the religious and political spectrum was widely represented. "The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues," Wallis said. "Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue."

clang clang clang goes the trolley

2005-12-14T19:01:00.000-05:00

woo hoo! the streetcars are rolling again in new orleans. but right now, just on the tourist riverfront line. apparently they're trying things out there first, followed by the newer canal street line, with the st. charles line further down the road. it was so exciting hearing the clang on npr this evening - makes me almost forget that a third of the city is still without electricity. gotta take the silver linings where you can find them.

the great mr softee compromise of 2005

2005-12-14T18:51:00.000-05:00

thank goodness that bloomberg and the mr softee people have found common ground:

"The Bloomberg administration will allow the ice cream trucks to continue playing the sprightly ditty while trolling for young customers. But under a compromise with the City Council, the jingle must be halted when the trucks are not moving"

now, if only similar solomonic wisdom can be applied to the mta, before i arrive in the big apple on friday...

bar mitzvah ... on speed ...

2005-12-12T23:43:00.000-05:00

i don't know whether to be impressed by the creativity, appalled from the materialism run amok... or just upset that i never had oompa loompas at my bar mitzvah.

from the washington post:

"We had a kid who was really into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," James recalls, "so we had a purple suit made for him, and we hired these people to be Oompa Loompas and they came out and danced. We had these trees with candy all over them, with signs that said 'Do not eat.' It was fantastic."

"We had this one kid who was really into the Yankees and we sent him to Tampa, where the Yankees were in spring training," he says. "And we filmed him in a Yankees uniform, around the park, pretending to play with the team. We even had a couple Yankees say, 'Happy bar mitzvah,' I think. Then you saw him waking up in his bed, realizing it was all a dream. And he looks at his clock and sees that he's late for his bar mitzvah party."

and last, but certainly not least,

A couple Saturday nights ago, James orchestrates the bar mitzvah of Stephen Serota, an affair held in ornate Garden City Hotel on Long Island. He describes the event as one of the glitzier of his recent confections. Sure enough, at 8:30 p.m. the place is buzzing.

Stephen is a fan of spy flicks, so the theme here is espionage. An Austin Powers impersonator works the room. Two performers stand frozen atop a table in the cocktail room, covered in gold paint, like victims in the Bond movie Goldfinger. There are round magnifying glasses at each place setting -- vaguely spy-like -- and a few tables have Tiffany-style jewel cases in the middle, filled with fake diamonds.

Spies, jewel thieves, whatever. Stephen makes his entrance, which happens in the hotel's huge rococo-style grand dining room. An MC who looks a bit like Kid Rock, only much taller and far raspier, introduces the Serotas, while a 13-piece band vamps to the theme from The Pink Panther.

"This is the coolest family ever," the MC shouts into a microphone. Stephen's parents are introduced. A round dining table, covered by a white cloth, is then wheeled into the middle of the dance floor. "Did somebody order room service?" yells the MC. An actor playing a cat burglar suddenly runs into the room and pretends to snatch someone's purse. "That man is a thief!" howls the MC. "Don't let him get away! Somebody stop him!"

That somebody is "Special Agent Stephen," who emerges from under the table and, after pantomiming some act of derring-do, collars the villain. The MC promptly hoists him on top of his shoulders, as if he had just won some flyweight boxing title. Everyone claps, the band turns up the volume. Strobe lights flicker. Stephen is later seen walking around during the dinner course, pretend-puffing on the wrong end of a candy cigarette.

and here's the kicker....

2005-12-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

he never even said the word "bomb". from time.com:

At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. "You can't get on the ground with a fanny pack," he says. "You have to move it to the side."

By the time Alpizar made it to the front of the airplane, the crew had ordered the rest of the passengers to get down between the seats. "I didn't see him get shot," he says. "They kept telling me to get down. I heard about five shots."

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

McAlhany said he saw Alpizar before the flight and is absolutely stunned by what unfolded on the airplane. He says he saw Alpizar eating a sandwich in the boarding area before getting on the plane. He looked normal at that time, McAlhany says. He thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."

is singing off-key that big of a crime?

2005-12-08T20:16:00.000-05:00

it would almost be comic if it wasn't true:

MIAMI - The passenger shot to death by air marshals in Miami had been agitated before boarding the plane and was singing "Go Down Moses" as his wife tried to calm him, a fellow passenger said Thursday.

"The wife was telling him, 'Calm down. Let other people get on the plane. It will be all right,'" said Alan Tirpak.

"I thought maybe he's afraid of flying," Tirpak said

shoot first, ask questions never?

2005-12-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

this is awful. at the same time that the congress has announced an agreement to renew the patriot act, thereby expanding the unchecked power of law enforcement, more and more details are emerging from the shooting in cold blood at the miami airport, of a man suffering from bi-polar disorder.

no matter what the white house says (c'mon it's the white house, what do you expect them to say), this does not look justified at all.

One passenger on the flight, Mary Gardner, told a local television station that Mr. Alpizar's wife had said he was bipolar and had not taken his medication. Ms. Gardner told WTVJ-TV in Miami that Mr. Alpizar had suddenly run down the aisle from the back of the plane toward first class and that his wife had followed. "She ran after him, and all of a sudden there were four or five shots," Ms. Gardner said

this reminds me so much of the gidone busch incident in Brooklyn a few years ago. not to mention amadou diallo. what is this country coming to? at least we still have russ feingold willing to fight the good fight...

how do you count 80,000 lives?

2005-11-27T20:59:00.000-05:00

in addition to my high school reunion, i also saw the movie adaptation of rent this past weekend, which musically ponders the question of how we measure each year of our lives.

a year contains "525,600 minutes," each one full of unlimited potential and opportunity. 5 million minutes since high school. what a disconcerting way to think about about things. i wonder how many of those minutes have been memorable? how do we make each moment count without having to count every minute?

and then i hear on the radio that the death toll from the earthquake in pakistan is expected to rise past 80,000 people ... another number that at first seems too utterly immense to comprehend, but that quickly becomes painfully real once we stop to pay attention.

should you ever go home again?

2005-11-26T15:06:00.000-05:00

while i'm sure that there are many, many hollywood films that capture "the high school reunion" in all of its angst and glory, as i'm now sated with turkey and cranberries, and back home for my 10-year, i keep having visions of grosse pointe blank running through my head.

a few people i've stayed in touch with, some people i was very happy to see, and others just a bit curious about what's become of them. but of course, it's only the well-adjusted, happy-with-their-life people who show up (or the never-having-left-cleveland folks out of inertia) and not the john cusack all-black-wearing mafia hitmen, unless they're trying to reconnect with a minnie driver. i'm left with so many "whatever happened to..." questions that only friendster can solve...

alas, i have no 'minnie driver stories' of my own of which to speak, and no unrequited high school flames for whom i've pined over the last 10 years of my life. i came relatively well-adjusted, happy with my life, and leave the same. with no unrealistic expectations that i'm necessarily going to stay in close contact with the people i saw last night, or that i'm going to magically re-create less-than-ideal high school years.

there's only so many times that you can do the "remind-me-your-name, where-do-you-live, what-are-you-up-to-these-days" speed-date-like dance before laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, and yearning for deeper connections.

the challenge remains to enjoy things for what they are, continue to be present as best as i can for each unique moment, and continue to walk on my path, smiling with head held high.

federal budget call-in!

2005-11-15T18:28:00.000-05:00

from the chevra out in cyberspace... let's show those republicans that we're watching...

TELL CONGRESS:
We're Still Watching You and it's Still Wrong to Cut Vital Services and Give Tax Cuts to the Wealthiest

Knocked off balance last week by your calls and emails in support of human needs, budget cutters to try again this week to cut Health Care, Student Loans, Food Stamps and More!

Call your Representative toll-free at 800-426-8073 Wednesday and Thursday,
November 16-17.

Using this toll-free number (generously provided by the American Friends Service Committee) you can call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be connected to your member of the U.S. House of Representatives (and if you're not sure who your member is, tell them, and they will identify your Representative and connect you). Once you're connected to someone at your Representative's office, tell them:

"My name is _______________ and I live in (your town/city). I would like Representative [name] to vote NO on the reconciliation bill to cut billions in services to vulnerable people, including Medicaid, student loans, food stamps, and other vital service. These cuts are the wrong priorities.

Vote against cuts that hurt the poor and sick and vote against more unfair, unwise, and unaffordable tax breaks for the well-heeled."

vote for santos!

2005-11-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

tomorrow, on election day, cast your pretend ballots for matt santos. he obviously clobbered arnie vinick in the debate last night... wouldn't it be great to have him in the white house instead of you-know-who?

bill clinton: "democrats need to kick some ass or just go home"

2005-10-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

via dailykos:

"You can't say, 'Please don't be mean to me. Please let me win sometimes.' Give me a break here," Clinton said. "If you don't want to fight for the future and you can't figure out how to beat these people then find something else to do."

can't you already hear the rocky theme playing in the background? it's time to start jogging up those art museum steps...

how it all went down

2005-10-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

via firedoglake, here is the washington post's guess at the chain of events leading to the indictment, including conversations on airforce two between scooter and cheney about wilson and plame, held on july 12, 2003. it makes for some good reading... better than tom clancy. too bad it's real life.

scooter, you've changed!

2005-10-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

so sad, his devious path from a lovable muppet show backstage personality to a lying lier who leaks national security secrets...

oh wait, my bad, wrong scooter.

bush to reinstate davis-bacon wage protections

2005-10-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

woo hoo, the democrats are finally coming up to bat. they must smell the blood in the water...

for background info on bush's original repeal of prevailing wage protection in the gulf coast, see the articles by rep. george miller or andy stern in the huffington post.

impeach cheney!

2005-10-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

oh, the anticipation...

nbc is planning comedy about rabbinical students

2005-10-23T22:41:00.000-04:00

from the forward:

The Seinfeld coffee shop has long reigned as the symbol of New York Jews on television. But soon a classroom at The Jewish Theological Seminary may replace it. The NBC television network is developing a new half-hour situation comedy about seminarians in New York, written by the husband of a Los Angeles rabbi.

The show is titled "Morningside Heights," after the New York neighborhood where The Jewish Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary have their campuses across the street from each other.

i'm cautiously intrigued...

today i am a man?

2005-10-23T22:00:00.000-04:00

ah, the bar/bat mitzvah. stumbling through torah portions, the electric slide, polyester 3 piece suits, limbo contests, candlelighting ceremonies, "today i am a man" speeches, multiplication dances, lyp synch, big hair ... the list just goes on an on. for those of you who have banished your 80s/early 90s experience from the inner recesses of your subconscious, the new york times and a new website/book called bar mitzvah disco are here to preserve your awkward adolescence for all the world to behold:

Now it is a book. A collection of more than 300 photographs culled from bar and bat mitzvahs from the 70's to the early 90's with essays by friends of the authors like Jonathan Safran Foer and Sarah Silverman, "Bar Mitzvah Disco," which will appear in bookstores on Nov. 2. It is at first glance a nostalgia tour through an era of unprecedented bourgeois tackiness. But, the authors say, it is also a cultural history, albeit one with a Duran Duran backbeat. The MTV-era bar mitzvah marked not only a transitional moment in their own lives, they say, but also one for American Jews as a whole. It was a time when an insular Old World ritual blew up into an all-American affair: inclusive, often suburban and, thanks to new Hollywood production values, unforgettably garish.

"There is this natural awkwardness that children experience on the cusp of adulthood," he said. "But it's also this kind of rite of passage for the community, which is, for lack of a better expression, becoming white. They are going from outsiders to insiders. What could be more awkward than that?"

Parents are featured in the book as well, always lavishly dressed and often posing proudly in front of banquet tables overflowing with food. Many Jews of that era, said Jeffrey Shandler, an associate professor of Jewish studies at Rutgers University, saw their son's bar mitzvah as a way to telegraph their social standing and ambitions.

"Part of the move to the suburbs is seen as a step to being more integrated with your non-Jewish neighbors," Dr. Shandler said. "It's not just a family celebration. It becomes a kind of mega birthday party. Parents are using this as a social occasion, so their business associates and neighbors get invited to the celebration."

For them, he said, their child's party was as much about networking and conspicuous consumption as about watching their child give a commentary on the Torah. Bar mitzvahs built around a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or a Disney theme became common. Thanks in part to the introduction of the videographer, he added, the parties started to take on the look of movie sets"

this just takes me back to november 11, 1989 ... the portion was lech lecha, the theme was football, milli vanilli was all the rage, and i could do a mean "running man," but never did quite manage the "roger rabbit".

feel free to share your memories below - just think of it as an electronic sign-in board...

indict bush!

2005-10-19T17:30:00.000-04:00

via americablog, it isn't merely wishful thinking any more... if bush told fitzgerald in 2004 that he had no idea who the leaker was, even though it just came out that rove told bush in 2003 that he was a leaker, that sounds like perjury to me.

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak....

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

but, at this point i'd be satisfied with cheney's head on a silver platter. (even though the rumours that have cheney resigning have bush appointing condi as vp).

As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

when or when will the merry days of fitzmas finally arrive? i want to play indictment bingo!

cafe du monde is open

2005-10-19T17:24:00.001-04:00

i just heard it on npr. beignets for everyone!

lulav prices drop after cartel bust

2005-10-17T20:25:00.000-04:00

i was going to title this post, "lulav shortage shakes jewish world," which would have explained the $40 i was charged by the local jewish bookstore for my lulav and etrog on sunday. i was all ready to excuse the wilting willows, as well as the myrtle leaves that are already beginning to fall off their branches, because of the "situation," but now, according to the jerusalem post, one israeli importer has been able to smuggle out 100,000 palm fronds from under the noses of the egyptians, who had been holding out on us.

Lulav prices this year are about the same as last year after a meticulously planned lulav cartel was broken at the last minute by a lone exporter from Bnei Brak who managed to import about 100,000 lulavs from El Arish, Egypt on Yom Kippur eve.

According to sources close to the lulav market, the cartel used aggressive methods to corner the local market. Attempts to bring lulavs from Jordan were blocked. The shipment of 100,000 lulavs that eventually broke the cartel was delayed repeatedly. Initially, the shipment was held up by Egyptian officials who insisted on checking every single carton. "This was surprising because the Egyptians never do that," said an Agriculture Ministry official.

The guy was at the border crossing doing everything in his power to stop the shipment," said an Agriculture Ministry source. "But then he disappeared." In a related story, the Chief Rabbinate issued a kashrut warning on myrtle branches [hadasim] purportedly under the halachic supervision of Rabbi Eliezer Simha Weiss of Kfar Haroeh and Emek Chefer. The rabbinate said that only myrtle branches in wrapping that has Weiss's full name clearly printed without abbreviations are under Weiss's supervision.

this was predicted to be such a big problem that the u.s. congress, who apparently don't have that much going on this year, and are not taking the jewish vote for granted, tried to get involved:

“We’ve got everybody on the case, and I told them to shake a leg,” Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) told JTA, pun intended.

Ackerman has raised the issue in meetings with the Egyptian ambassador to the United States and America’s ambassador to Egypt, and says he also has put a call in to Osama el Baz, a top political adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

In addition, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has sent a letter to the Egyptian ambassador urging Egypt to “consider the needs of Jewish communities around the world and allow for a sufficient number of these palm fronds to be exported this year.”

what's next? will the good folks in idaho start hoarding potatoes a month before hanukkah?

and just for the record, someday, i hope that i too can become a "source close to the lulav market" ... that's what rabb school is all about ...