Neo-Serfdom
“As we debate the immigration issue, we must remember there are hardworking individuals, doing jobs that Americans will not do [for the puny wages we're willing to pay], who are contributing to the economic vitality of our country...”
– Bush weekly radio address

Hmmm... Hard-working individuals contributed to the economic vitality of this country (for no wages) back before the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sidebar: The E.P. was a pretext to begin what Southerners refer to as The War of Northern Aggression. The emancipation was largely symbolic, in the vein of ‘Saddam Hussein has 24 hours to vacate Baghdad...’ Keeping the Union together was Lincoln's number one concern, not humanitarianism... but I digress.

Maybe Bush is just longing to bring back the good ol' days. He must love having something to distract the media's one myopic eye from the Neo-Messopotamian War, even if he looks wrong-headed on this one too.

During the so-called debate and discussion of this issue, I've noticed that Lou Dobbs and others have described the White House as facing a ‘crisis of credibility.’ This phrase is problematic, and may be more than a sly way of suggesting that the White House is lying. Instead, the press may be intentionally or unwittingly implying just the opposite: a con-man can lie to you and have total credibility, but a truthful man who is not believed is more likely to suffer a crisis.

Slippery language [you know — where ‘alleged’ is said in a way that suggests guilt] is all that the press knows how to [or is willing to?] offer on the topic.

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‘CSA’
is short for Confederate States of America. It's a butterflies-in-the-stomach-inducing speculation about what the USA would have become, had the South won the civil war. I've met people who said they laughed a lot at this movie.

I didn't laugh much; my most frequent verbalization was ‘Oh, shit!’ My theory about the laughter, is that the people most likely to find this stuff funny are far-enough removed from the reality of the 60s [as in 20-something or under] to see it in purely abstract terms.

Those of us who are old enough to have a direct memory of JFK's assassination and the Civil Rights Movement are likely to have memories of the entire history of race relations teased up one by one as this skillfully crafted docu-satire unfolds. It's potent, it's in-your-face, and it's clever. To some, it's even funny. Laugh or not, it's good.

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Bye-bye DeLay. Enjoy your pension.

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Glass Houses, Rita and NIMBY
“You've got a thousand locations that are better. I won't be able to take a bath without them seeing me.”
– Edward Markle of New Orleans

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin halted FEMA's construction of a trailer park inside the gated community of Lakewood Estates. The trailer park was supposed to house 34 single women with children left homeless after the hurricane.

Two kinds of politics appear to be in play: An election three weeks away, and an attempt to leverage FEMA into changing its plan. It seems that Nagin wants FEMA to either build more permanent modular housing [fancier stacking trailers?], or to invest in existing apartment buildings. The government [which has done such a bang-up job in the aftermath of all this] is hinting that bankrupt New Orleans might have to pay back 1.6Mil. if they aren't allowed to finish the trailer parks.

In the build-up to this mess, folks in the gated community went so far as to form a blockade to impede the construction of housing for those less fortunate than themselves. Maybe they took better care of ‘their own,’ however that's defined — clearly the phrase doesn't apply to all New Orleanians, from their point of view. It seems that putting up curtains won't cure what ails them.

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They laughed when Cher starred in ‘Silkwood...’
I saw ‘Silkwood.’ Silkwood was a great movie in my estimation. This movie will be no ‘Silkwood.’

What am I jabbering about?

Director T. Rajeevnath wants to cast Paris Hilton in an $11Mil. feature biopic about Mother Theresa. Hah! You think I'm joking. I'm not.

When Rajeevnath meets with Paris, he will show a photo of her that's been doctored to look like Mother Theresa. So, it seems the surface issues are addressed. Who needs to be concerned with substance?

One last question: how much of the budget is slated to actors' fees?