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Poetic justice as fairness. Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Actually, my first thought, on hearing that the UAE company had edged out Singapore’s hometown PSA was, “shit, they should have had Singapore do it!” Say what you like about Singapore’s idosyncratic form of government, they a) run the most kick-ass port in the world and b) can really be counted on to deliver efficient government services, without either the corruption which plagues such services in other SE Asian nations, or the general how-can-I-make-this-person’s-life-worse attitude which often seems to prevail in such places as, oh I don’t know, say the Washington, D.C. DMV? On the question of whether it’s a good idea to allow a UAE state-owned company to control (in whatever attenuated way) our port security, I’m kind of of two minds. On the one hand, if some other foreign company would otherwise be running the show, and if the same US, union-member stevedores will be doing the actual work, then maybe its not that big a deal. On the other hand, it seems that the US actually had to refrain from bombing bin Laden (pre-9/11) at some falconing retreat because a good portion of the “emirs” who make up the Emirate in question were there too. I don’t know why that makes me feel dubious…On the gripping hand, I have a perverse sense of pleasure as I watch Bush twist in the wind of the very anti-Arab, our-oceans-no-longer-protect-us bullshit the rest of us have had to hear for the last 5 years. Enjoy! (Unlike during the cold war, where naiads festooned with the stars and stripes were on constant call to toss back offending ICBM’s from their dophin-pulled-seashell mobile tactical units.) But his latest defense is, “I didn’t know anything about it.” Whaaaa? “The president is a sock-puppet moron” is supposed to be a snide criticism, not an exculpatory point. In general I am confused and await further information. Matthew Yglesias rightly notes that the alert citizen will have learned not to trust the administration to make S’mores without plunging half the nation into a sticky-sweet inferno of death. Death that’s sandwiched between Graham crackers! Food for thought.

I wonder whether it’ll be possible to preempt the spin that this was all because of his silly remarks about women in science, and ergo Summers was forced out by intolerant liberals. Probably not—even though, you know, Summers is in fact a liberal and you may remember him serving in the Clinton administration. There’s a line from Douglas Adams that I think explains the real situation a lot better: “You’re a clever man … but you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.” Not a good management style, especially at Harvard, even if your policy goals are worthwhile.

I don’t, generally, subscribe to the paranoid strain in US politics (my mom does and is irritatingly always right about everything. I well remember when de Menezes was shot in London and the initial story was all about how he had jumped the turnstiles in a heavy coat, etc., and mom instantly said, “this is all bullshit and he was some random innocent.” Chalk another one up for mom.)

Still, something is fishy in this whole Cheney story. My first instinct was just to say, there was an unfortunate hunting accident, and Cheney wasn’t adhering to well-known rules of gun safety, but basically his secretiveness created the impression of some wrong-doing where none existed. But. This whole push-back of blaming the victim? Like he was supposed to give a hearty “halloa!” to his friends who were flushing some other birds? Standing behind the shooter when you are hunting birds in a line is supposed to be a pretty iron-clad way of staying safe. Was Cheney in the middle, so that the barrel swung past one of his fellows on the right or left on its fateful 180 movement? Even if he were at one end or the other, right behind him is not supposed to be a good place to fire, especially since he knew his pal was recovering another brace of quail somewhere. And what’s up with the whole scrubbed beer thing? I don’t think Cheney is a brazen murderer or something, but I have to say that recent coverage has made me much more inclined to think that either he was drunk, or he was standing a lot closer to the victim then we have heard. It’s just weird. This seems like something they could have defused with an early statement and apology. Something is going on.

UPDATE: aah, there we go. “In response to Mr. Hume’s questions about the day, Mr. Cheney said that he had consumed one beer earlier in the day, but that no one in the party was drinking as they hunted.” One beer. I’ve done a lot of stupid things after having “one” beer before, too. Classic drunk denial; you can’t just say you didn’t have anything to drink, so…

Hilzoy and Katherine’s new posts at Obsidian Wings (just keep scrolling) on Lindsey Graham’s despicable move to strip non-citizens of habeas corpus rights are must reads. I warn you, though, they will turn your stomach. The details of the allegedly frivolous malpractice suits brought by Guantanamo detainees are sickening.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds asks “Has the senate suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus?” Yes, it has! Thanks for asking!

Oh, sure, they’ve been thinking about the whole bird flu thing. But what about zombies?

“When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel,” [Pittsburgh Mayor Tom] Murphy said. “Who’s in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who’s going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we’d all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.”

I’m afraid it’s all too likely that zombie-preparedness has been neglected in New Orleans, especially given former FEMA head Brown’s focus on tasty food—other than human brains.

At 11:20 a.m. Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown, “Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical . . . thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water . . . estimates are many will die within hours.”

At 2:27 p.m., however, Brown press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote colleagues to schedule an interview for Brown on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” and to give him more time to eat dinner because Baton Rouge restaurants were getting busy: “He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes.”

I was born in Savannah, GA, and raised just outside the city; I spent many a happy childhood hour playing on the various above-ground crypts which enhance the picturesque nature of the city. You can bet your life we were armed to the teeth against possible zombie intrusions. Wait, maybe that was just the paranoia talking after my parents were in on that big shipment of DMT from out west when I was a kid. When my mom woke up still tripping on the third day, stuttering things like “wheels of fire…wheels within wheels…” I knew things were bad. But by then I could totally make pancakes and stuff, so me and my 3-year-old brother were fine. Wait, what was I saying? Yeah. Zombie preparedeness. Don’t rely on the government. Y’all are going to be on your own. Mmmmm, braaiins. It makes the pain go away. The pain of being dead.

Fast on the heels of Henry’s post about Tom DeLay’s ‘I am become county sheriff’s office’ incarnation – another report of another powerful legislator managing a yet more abstract transmogrification [transmogrifaction?]: “According to the Associated Press, Alaska’s senior senator was the forefront today of a clash of generations and political philosophy.” Sounds Hegelian.

Wow, sign me up.

A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design….

Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board member said he found Professor Behe’s testimony reaffirming. “Doesn’t it sound like he knows what he’s talking about?” said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.

Yeah, dude. It totally sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, did I ever tell you about the time I made a gravity bong? I cut off the bottom of a 2-liter bottle, and put it in the pool, and then….

Damn you, liberal elites!!

Wait, did you know that you can use a fish tank compressor and a gas mask to make an electric bong? Seriously dude, you have to listen to this. OMG, and did I ever tell you about this amazing juice fast I went on? You just use Grade B maple syrup and lemon juice… No, you have to promise me you’ll try this juice fast!

Almost three years to the day after the last bomb attack in Bali, suicide bombers have struck again. (This is a good article about the aftermath.) Our family just got back from Bali last week. My heart goes out to the victims and their families, and also to the Balinese people more generally: they are all victims of these cowardly attacks. Bali’s economy, so dependent on tourism, was only now beginning to make a full recovery from the 2002 bombing; everyone I spoke to said that things were better, but not back up to pre-bombing levels. This second blow may cripple Bali for a long time. Hotels and expensive clubs like Ku De Ta have armed guards who check vehicles, but nothing can make a beachfront seafood restaurant, or a cafe on a heavily trafficked street, safe against a suicide bomber. What will happen to these families? [click to continue…]

Here are some people who have to lose their jobs, and maybe also get sued for wrongful death. Or go to jail.

1. Whoever is in charge of Louisiana’s state office of Homeland Security, maybe it’s this Major General Bennett C. Landreneau? Whoever it was who made the decision not to let the Red Cross into New Orleans. This person needs to lose his job, and he’s on my “get sued into the ground and maybe go to jail” list. If my baby had died of dehydration in the Superdome, I would be ready to kill this guy.

2. Whoever it was who gave the Gretna police orders to turn people back at gunpoint and prevent them from walking out via an Interstate to a shelter 2-3 miles away in Jefferson Parish. The Gretna Police Chief (Chief B.H. Miller, UPDATE: Arthur Lawson, guilty as charged.)? The mayor (Ronnie Harris)? Again, fuck these bastards. I’m not even that sympathetic to the policemen on the front lines obeying these orders. Is it even legal for local police to ban citizens from using public roads? I imagine there is leeway for emergency situations, but if no orders came down from above? If they did get an order from higher up, fire that bastard too.

3. Governor Kathleen Blanco. I have seen nothing to convince me that she has been at all competent in dealing with this catastrophe.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

“I need everything you have got,” Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Monday, after the storm hit.

In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. “Nobody told me that I had to request that,” Ms. Blanco said. “I thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone by then.”

Look, I think the feds are hiding behind a fig-leaf of federalism on this one. When she said “we need all the help you can give”, the 82nd Airborne should have been there the next day. Nonetheless, whatever i’s she had to dot or t’s to cross, she could have damn well figured out herself before the hurricaine hit, like, I don’t know, when she first got into office? Likewise, she could have put everyone in the same room and knocked heads together earlier to get some kind of unified effort going. Crying about how you’re dissappointed in looters don’t cut it.

4. Michael Brown, FEMA head. I don’t think I need to say anything here.

5. Michael Chertoff, head of DHS. There was a pop quiz on homeland security last week. He failed.

6. President Bush. There’s no point in suggesting that he resign or be impeached, since I might as well just wish that everyone had a pony. Still, we can try our best to hold him morally responsible for hiring incompetent political apparatchiks to do crucial jobs, and for manifestly failing to mobilize federal resources in a timely way once the scope of the disaster (that includes local failings too) was known. The buck has to stop somewhere, and I think the President’s desk seems a likely place. He will never run again, and the only punishments he can receive will be moral opprobrium, diminished political influence, and a severe hit to the electoral chances of his party. I suggest he receive them all.

UPDATE: I think it should be obvious that I listed these people in bottom-up hierarchical order, not decreasing-level-of-blame order. (Perhaps, in that case, 1 and 2 should be reversed, but you see my general thrust.) Someone who has 1000 gallons of water is more to blame when someone near her dies of thirst than someone with 1 gallon. The locals were overwhelmed and the feds should have stepped up to the plate, not complained about the mysteries of federalism. That doesn’t mean Gov. Blanco magically did a great job, or Jefferson Parish officials weren’t a bunch of racist bastards.

Go read this L.A. Times report about seven children—mostly toddlers, the eldest, six years old—who were lost and found in New Orleans these last few days.

In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

The story of how they got there, and what happened next, is just remarkable. There are a lot of lessons you might draw from it—organizational failures and successes, the appalling choices that people sometimes have to make, courage in unexpected places, and how important it can be be for people to pay attention and make an effort. It’s also a reminder of something else, something I can’t quite articulate properly. Events like Katrina breed chaos, and that leads to long chains of contingencies, to accidents piled upon accidents, sometimes lucky sometimes not. We come across people in the middle of such chains of events. In most cases, their situation will not conform to some tidy morality tale. It might look like it does, but that’s because we like to tell stories about how people got what they deserved. What you are really seeing—as in the case of these seven children—may turn out to be another thing altogether, or the accidental byproduct of many things.

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera resist Sean Hannity’s efforts to spin the scale of the disaster and, in particular, the suffering caused by clear, continuing failures of organization. Smith, especially, was working hard to stay calm and focused on relaying the conditions in front of him—he seemed like he wanted to reach through his camera, throttle Hannity and shout “Can’t you see what’s happening here?”