Never Forget

Hullabaloo: 1836 Americans Started To Die While These Assholes Partied

AP: Almost half of Katrina’s dead were over 75

We Love Lists

PerrspectivesBlog: John McCain's Top 10 Out-of-Touch Moments

Go to the post at the link above for a full description of McLame's gaffes and positions.

1. Economic downturn is "psychological."

2. "Great progress economically" during the Bush years.

3. eBay is the answer for poverty and recession.

4. "Tear down" New Orleans?

5. Irresponsible, undeserving homeowners.

6. Work a second job, skip a vacation.

7. "Protect the privacy" of Cindy McCain's tax returns.

8. Opposed to SCHIP expansion, McCain speaks at children's hospital.

9. Baghdad safer than some American neighborhoods.

10. "I'm not running on the Bush presidency."

More DoubleTalk From McCain

John McCain, the man who stood next to George W. Bush as New Orleans was drowning and didn't do anything, now says he'd respond promptly to a massive natural disaster. Watch the video below for his lies and prevarications on this subject.

What the Corporate Media Isn't Telling You About John McCain

HuffPo: President Bush licks frosting off of his thumb after holding up a birthday cake for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, upon his arrival at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Az., Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. McCain turned 69 Monday.
dday at Hullabaloo: McCain's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Week

To summarize dday's excellent and very long post (read the whole thing at the link above):

1. Washington Post writes long story about his bad temper

2. "Forgotten Places" tour takes him

a. to an all-white crowd in civil rights landmark Selma, where he praises a ferry constructed with an earmark (he's against those, except when he's for them), and then

b. to Youngstown, Ohio where he praises free trade in front of a plant that closed earlier during George W. Clusterfuck's presidency, and said he didn't know what to do about the dumping of cheap foreign goods. And then he went to New Orleans.

c. New Orleans, the place McBush ignored on McCain's 69th birthday. While Smirky McAmericanCityDrowner was presenting McCain with a cake, it apparently didn't occur to John McLame to say, President Bush, turn on the TV! New Orleans is drowning! We should do something about that. Emptily, McCain now promises that no such thing will ever happen on his watch. Right.

Then his buddy and endorser the Reverend John Hagee (who can be seen on your local religious channel begging for money to support his lavish lifestyle; he's a Christian like John Gotti is a businessman) says once again that Katrina was God's punishment for a New Orleans gay pride parade. McHypocrite sputters "It's nonsense" like a guilty child eight times when asked about that.

Then McLyingSackofShit, Mr. We'll Never Let This Happen Again, says he didn't know if the Ninth Ward of New Orleans should be rebuilt. Like if one of his mansions got destroyed he wouldn't insist the feds rebuild it.

d. And lastly, the Forgotten Places tour went to Alabama, where the McCain campaign used PRISON LABOR to set up the hall. Prison labor.

Go, read the whole post, there's so much more, his mad dashes to the right on tax policy (he was against Bush's tax cuts for the millionaires, now he, multi-millionaire, embraces them), etc.

And don't forget McCain's position on equal pay for women. He's for it, he says. He just doesn't think there should be any legal remedy to enforce it. He is against the equal pay bill (which Senate Republicans defeated) and incredibly said the real problem is that women don't have enough job skills. We're just not equal enough to get equal pay yet. Fucker.

Kanye West Was Right

Hurricane Katrina hit two years ago today:



Heckuva Job Bushie and his Republican band of heartless cronies kill an American city:



And of course, Bush lied. He was warned about the levees:



Kanye West calls it:

Blogtopia* Roundup, Wednesday, March 14, 2007

U.S. President George W. Bush, left, greets workers during his visit the Labradores Mayas Packing Station in the village of Chirijuyu Tecpan, Guatemala, Monday, March 12, 2007. Labradores Mayas is an agriculture cooperative for indigenous farmers from this region of the Guatemala highlands. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Jurassic Pork at Welcome to Pottersville has a second in his series of FauxNewsChannel screencaps. (I have blog identity and blog title envy. Pottersville! Bedford Falls!)

Rhonda Bourne at Blue Mass. Group with a thoughtful post about Governor Patrick's wife Diane's depression diagnosis.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says this whole US Attorney purge was designed to get rid of Carol Lam of California who was prosecuting Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and getting close to Dusty Foggo and Porter Goss and the corruption in the CIA.

Atrios sez the Republican knives are out for Abu Gonzales; he's a dead man walking.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast points out another Bush privatization initiative gone horribly, horribly wrong: The levee repair in New Orleans:

Another "heckuva job" company gets a nice fat government contract in exchange for its contributions to Republicans, and this one is owned by a buddy of would-be Republican savior Jeb Bush.

Republicans love to say that government doesn't work, and of course the wags say that when Republicans are in power, they go about proving it. It's funny, though -- when Democrats are in office, government programs help people through the Great Depression, we win World War II, the Civil Rights Act is enacted, there's the longest economic expansion in American history. Democratic presidents leave little to no deficit, and Americans who are not among the wealthiest are almost always better off under Democrats than they are under Republicans.

So isn't it time we stopped trusting the government to these people?

*yes, skippy coined that phrase!

This Makes Me Sad

Bill Feig/Associated Press

Pokey Chatman resigned over suspected inappropriate conduct with a former player.
Pokey Chatman has resigned as coach of the LSU women's basketball team, reportedly because she had what has been termed an "inappropriate relationship" with a former player.

What all does that mean? Obviously, it means she's gay. In Louisiana, just having a gay relationship is enough to get fired and land in jail. But if the relationship began while the player was still in college, it's just wrong. There are power dynamics involved when a coach begins a relationship with a player. The coach has power, and the player doesn't; therefore, the coach must say no.

Interestingly, most often these player/coach relationships involve women players. Male players are almost never found to have been involved in a relationship with a coach. Why is this? Because jobs coaching men aren't available to women. Once Title IX forced colleges and universities to pay men's and women's coaches on a more equivalent basis, those women's jobs became desirable. But women have never been hired to coach men on more than a token basis. So at this point 75% of all coaching jobs are available to men (100% of jobs coaching men's teams, 50% of jobs coaching women) and 25% are available to women. So it's rare to find a female coach charged with an inappropriate relationship; when the coach is female, it usually involves a lesbian relationship.

We see many women involved with or married to former male coaches. Prominent examples: Jackie Joyner Kersee, married her coach Al Joyner, who she met while he was her track coach at UCLA; Julie Foudy is married to Ian Sawyers, who was a coach in her development league when she was 18; Brandi Chastain is married to her former coach at Santa Clara. Foudy and Chastain's marriages were discussed in the excellent Sports Illustrated article on this issue, "Passion Plays", by Grant Wahl. There's no official copy of the article on the web, but if you go to this link and scroll down to Feb 11th, 2003, 06:49 PM, it's reproduced there.

As an attorney, I look at this from an employment discrimination perspective. A coach should never be in a relationship with a player while they are coaching them, because that is an abuse of the coach's power over the player, and makes all the decisions the coach makes about that player suspect. Why did she get so much playing time, etc.? On the other hand, coaches and players do fall in love, and if they happen to pursue that relationship after graduation, there's no problem. The problem is those years while attraction exists in the midst of the coach/player relationship. The coach, the older, more experienced person, is expected by society to be the bigger person and hold off until the coach/player relationship is no more. If Pokey Chatman was involved with a player while she was on the team, Chatman had to go. But we don't know that yet. If she began a relationship with a player after that player left the team, then she's being discriminated against for being gay.

As a sideline, the LSU AD, Skip Bertman, is a real moron. Here's his quote in the initial round of stories about Chatman's resignation:

"The girl did what she did and LSU had no control over that," Bertman said, referring to Chatman.

The girl? Chatman is 37 years old and has coached for LSU for 15 years. Give me a break.

ESPN: Sources: Chatman quit amid sexual misconduct claims

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Chatman to leave LSU immediately
INAPPROPRIATE ACTIONS MAY HAVE LED TO RESIGNATION

NYTIMES: L.S.U.’s Chatman Won’t Coach in N.C.A.A.

Privatizing Walter Reed: Rich Get Richer, Veterans Get Screwed

I've never understood the premise of privatization. Why does adding a profit motive to a third party improve government services? Answer: It doesn't. It just allows private companies to pay workers less and give them poorer benefits to do the same job, then transfers the cost savings into the pockets of the owners of the private company. And some of those companies also cut the numbers of workers doing the work. Like IAP Worldwide, which has replaced 300 federal support services workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with 50 private employees. The result? Dan Quayle, John Snow and Al Neffgen get richer. Who got poorer? The workers who now work for IAP don't make the wages of federal workers, and don't have equivalent benefits. But most horrifying, the maimed and brain-damaged soldiers at Walter Reed are suffering because our government chose to put money into the pockets of their rich friends rather than put money into caring for the veterans injured in their immoral, illegal war. Sickening.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Editorial: Privatizing Walter Reed

As a letter from the House committee investigating Walter Reed stated, "it would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.

The thread of privatization and cronyism runs through this administration's disasters: from Abu Ghraib, where private contractors had a role in intelligence-gathering, to New Orleans, where a major city paid the price after political appointees replaced experienced emergency service professionals at FEMA.

Palm Beach (FL) Post editorial: Failures at Walter Reed expose VA system failure

Incredibly, despite the rising numbers of those who will need care, the White House is proposing a VA budget that is essentially flat from last year. The administration wants to cut money for prosthetic research and provide inadequate financing for the backlog of cases that only will grow. Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Bush called on Congress to "fund our war fighters." Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, whose "qualification" was running the Republican National Committee, has compounded the administration's indifference with insulting rhetoric. Asked about the 200,000-plus who have tried to get care, Mr. Nicholson says, "A lot of them come in for dental problems."

YahooNews: Deborah Burger, HuffPo: We're All at Walter Reed

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as the Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving the VA. Since 2001, as Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times, federal allocations for veterans medical care lag behind overall healthcare spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

There's more. Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. To cut costs, enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses. So much for the guarantee of lifetime healthcare. And, if all the other indignities were not enough, some Walter Reed patients had to buy their own meals.

The final piece of this unholy troika is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel.

Christian Science Monitor: How decay overtook Walter Reed
The problems at the US Army hospital show how strained military resources have become.

Katrina Update

Mud and debris covers the perimeter of St. Rita's nursing home in Chalmette, La., in this 2005 file photo. (AP Photo/Steve Senne, FILE)
The owners of the St. Rita's nursing home, where 35 patients died during Hurricane Katrina, have been indicted on charges of negligent homicide and cruelty to the infirm.

This is just sad. Government failed everyone, yet the private citizens who made poor decisions are prosecuted. Why not charge George W. Bush with murder for the failure of the levees? Mayor Nagin with murder for failing to order mandatory evacuation, or for ignoring New Orleans' disaster plan? Only the little people pay.

AP: New Orleans nursing home owners indicted

First Draft: St. Rita's Nursing Home Owners Indicted

Is The Media Ready to Cover Politics Substantively?

Paul Krugman asks, will America get fooled again? When he says 'we', he means the public and the press. I say, the public voted for Gore in 2000, despite the relentless drubbing he took in the corporate press, including the New York Times. This article really should be aimed squarely for the media. Will the media cover the issues? Or is PR and image everything? Will the media once again cover Karl Rove photo ops as substance, when they are merely showtime?

Paul Krugman, NYTimes: A Test of Our Character (TimesSelect wall)

the concluding grafs:

Why, after all, was Mr. Gore's popular-vote margin in the 2000 election narrow enough that he could be denied the White House? Any account that neglects the determination of some journalists to make him a figure of ridicule misses a key part of the story. Why were those journalists so determined to jeer Mr. Gore? Because of the very qualities that allowed him to realize the importance of global warming, many years before any other major political figure: his earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis.

And so the 2000 campaign ended up being about the candidates' clothing, their mannerisms, anything but the issues, on which Mr. Gore had a clear advantage (and about which his opponent was clearly both ill informed and dishonest).

I won't join the sudden surge of speculation about whether "An Inconvenient Truth" will make Mr. Gore a presidential contender. But the film does make a powerful case that Mr. Gore is the sort of person who ought to be running the country.

Since 2000, we've seen what happens when people who aren't interested in the facts, who believe what they want to believe, sit in the White House. Osama bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a mess, New Orleans is a wreck. And, of course, we've done nothing about global warming.

But can the sort of person who would act on global warming get elected? Are we — by which I mean both the public and the press — ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That's a test of national character. I wonder whether we'll pass.

The full article, from Ed Strong.

Global Warming Will Change the Coast

By putting most of it under water:

The pics are from a dailykos diary by devilstower: Hotter Than You Think

Recognize this place? It's the Gulf coast of the United States after a 10' rise in sea level. The basic shape looks fairly familiar, and from this landmark-free version of the map, you can be forgiven for thinking not much has changed. Here, try this version.



Those little dots give an inidication of just how far the coastlines would shift from this rise. All the cities along the coast would be not just inundated, but out to sea. New Orleans and Miami would be over a dozen miles from the nearest dry land. That's what ten feet means. The monetary losses are inestimable.

You saw the devestation caused by Katrina. you saw the panic, the loss of life, the shift of populations, and the tremendous costs. Now look at that map again. Can the US survive that? Add in the great coastal cities -- east and west -- being swamped one by one and battered by intense storms. Add in the interior of the country overrun by drought, a return of the dustbowl, as deserts replace farmlands.

Oh, and remember that those maps above are a ten foot rise. Make it twenty, and half of Florida is gone, along with another large slice of the coast. If those predictions of a > 10 degree increase are correct and the poles completely loose their ice, there's a much, much larger sea level rise in our future. A rise that could erase the whole state of Florida and bring coastline to Arkansas.

'Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies'

You say (d)ebacle, I say (d)isaster; let's call the whole thing off.

Krugman, NYTimes: D for Debacle (Like Bush will tell us tonight about Mexico, NYTimes has National Guard patrolling to keep Krugman behind his wall)

Today is the last day to sign up for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. It appears that millions of Americans, confused by the array of competing plans or simply unaware of the cutoff date, will miss the deadline. This will leave them without drug coverage for the rest of the year, and subject to financial penalties for the rest of their lives.

[]

[P]rescription drug coverage didn't have to be bafflingly complex. Drug coverage could simply have been added to traditional Medicare. If the government had done that, everyone currently covered by Medicare would automatically have been enrolled in the drug benefit.

Adding drug coverage as part of ordinary Medicare would also have saved a lot of money, both by eliminating the cost of employing private insurance companies as middlemen and by allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices. This would have made it possible to offer a better benefit at much less cost to taxpayers.

But while a straightforward addition of drug coverage to Medicare would have been good policy, it would have been bad politics from the point of view of conservatives, who want to privatize traditional social insurance programs, not make them better.

[]

So what we got was a drug program set up to serve the administration's friends and its political agenda, not the alleged beneficiaries. Instead of providing drug coverage directly, Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies. The administration's insistence on running the program through these companies, which provide little if any additional value beyond what Medicare could easily have provided directly, is what makes the whole thing so complicated. And that complication, combined with an obvious lack of interest in making the system work, is what led to the disastrous start-up.

[]

And that's why when it comes to actual policy as opposed to politics, the Bush administration has turned out to have the reverse Midas touch. Everything it gets its hands on, from the reconstruction of Iraq to the rescue of New Orleans, from the drug benefit to the reform of the C.I.A., turns to crud.

Ed Strong has the full article.

Previous posts:

Medicare Part (D)isaster Penalties: Will Rethugs Blink? (May 13, 2006)

Bush To Old People: Drop Dead (May 10, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster, Incompetently Administered, Misleading Poor Seniors (May 7, 2006)

Most Severely Ill Senior Citizens Already in Medicare Part (D)isaster Doughnut Hole (April 27, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Watch Out For That Hole (April 12, 2006)

President Out-of-Touch Moron Meets the Seniors (March 19, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster: Making the Mentally Ill Sicker (February 6, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster Creating Havoc at Social Security Administration (February 4, 2006)

Right Wing Blogs Exhibit Myopia Over Medicare Part D(isaster) (January 24, 2006)

Medicare Part (D)isaster (January 20, 2006)

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0 (January 18, 2006)

'Horrific at Best' (January 9, 2006)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism: Sunday, January 8, 2006 (January 8, 2006)

But It Was A Powerfully Staged Photo Op, Wasn't It

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

--Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents Dinner, 2006



dailykos: Meanwhile.... (in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans, 8.5 months later)



People living outdoors in camping tents, in America, 8 1/2 months after the federally-built levees broke.

Katrina Aftermath, Still a Struggle Against Incompetence and Corruption

Dead bodies are still being recovered in New Orleans, seven months later:

NYTimes: In Attics and Rubble, More Bodies and Questions

The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. Many of them, like Ms. Blanchard, were overlooked in initial searches.

A landlord in the Lakeview section put a "for sale" sign outside a house, unaware that his tenant's body was in the attic. Two weeks ago, searchers in the Lower Ninth Ward found a girl, believed to be about 6, wearing a blue backpack. Nearby, they found part of a man who the authorities believe might have been trying to save her.

[On Friday, contractors found a body in the attic of a home in the Gentilly neighborhood that had been searched twice before, officials said.]

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, there were grotesque images of bodies left in plain sight. Officials in Louisiana recovered more than 1,200 bodies, but the process, hamstrung by money shortages and red tape, never really ended.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where unstable houses make searching dangerous, a plan to use cadaver dogs alongside demolition crews was delayed by lawsuits and community protests against the bulldozing. In the rest of the city, the absence of neighbors and social networks meant that some residents languished and died unnoticed. Many of the families of the missing were far from home, rendered helpless by distance and preoccupied with their own survival.

[]

In October and November, the special operations team of the New Orleans Fire Department searched the Lower Ninth Ward for remains until they ran out of overtime money.

Half a dozen officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebuffed requests to pay the bill, said Chief Steve Glynn, the team commander. When reporters inquired, FEMA officials said the required paperwork had not been filed.

While FEMA couldn't find the money to find and bury the dead, they made sure to pad the coffers of rich contractors:

Times-Picayune: Senators grill corps, FEMA
Hearing details waste in relief spending

Testimony at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing Monday in New Orleans showed that in the matter of the Katrina cleanup, taxpayers got taken to the cleaners.

[]

[T]he hearing also revealed in stark terms how the poor level of federal preparation and response carried more than an economic punch. As the questions from the elected officials gained momentum, it became clear that two themes especially bothered the Louisiana contingent. One was that, for all of the state's storied corruption and the defense its officials had to mount that relief money would not be squandered in Louisiana, the lion's share of waste occurred under the federal watch.

The second theme is that tens of millions of dollars were frittered away in layers of subcontractors. What Washington and the nation need to realize, the Louisiana contingent argued, is the totals bandied about as earmarked for relief are, in fact, grotesquely inflated by misspending.

Insurance companies are also preying on the weak and defenseless. Tort reform advocate Trent Lott is using the tort system he so hates to prove insurance companies are cheating homeowners in the hurricane zone:

AP: Lott Lawyer: State Farm Destroying Papers

Zach Scruggs, one of Lott's attorneys, says his client has a "good faith belief" that several State Farm employees in Biloxi are destroying engineering reports that gave conflicting conclusions about whether wind or water was responsible for storm damage.

Like thousands of Gulf Coast homeowners, Lott's claim was denied because State Farm concluded that Katrina's flood water demolished his beach-front Pascagoula home. State Farm says its policies do not cover damage from rising water, including wind-driven water.

But lawyers for the Mississippi Republican claim Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm has routinely pressured its engineers to alter "favorable" reports that initially blamed damage on hurricane's wind, which the company's policies cover.

A State Farm spokesman said Monday he couldn't immediately comment on Scruggs' allegations.

Lott's allegations come on the heels of a lawsuit filed by Kiln, Miss., couple who claimed they had obtained copies of conflicting reports prepared by State Farm's engineers on what damaged their home. They said one report traced the destruction to Katrina's winds while a later report said flooding was the culprit.

In response, State Farm spokesman Phil Supple had said the second report was the only one the engineering firm sent to State Farm's claims office.

In an interview Monday, Scruggs said corporate "whistleblowers" who are cooperating with Lott's attorneys have provided evidence that State Farm employees are destroying or moving those "initial favorable" engineering reports.

Rene is a Weenie

Rene Portland, the head coach of Penn State's women's basketball team, has been openly discriminating against lesbian players for years. Coach Mom & Dad & I were at the Women's Final Four in New Orleans in 1991 when she was given the National Division I Coach of the Year Award. We sat on our hands when the award was announced. We were too polite to boo, but Coach Mom did mutter "Discriminator!" loudly when she stepped to the podium.

Massachusetts has big billboards on the highways as you enter the state warning about our gun laws (at least we used to -- has our series of Rethug governors had them taken down?) I wish we had big billboards warning people like Rene Weenie Portland that Massachusetts doesn't tolerate discriminators and haters. Get out of town, and take your medieval attitudes with you, Rene Weenie.

Boston Globe: When the fouls get very personal
Player's suit claims Penn State coach was biased against lesbians

By Bob Hohler, Globe Staff | March 26, 2006

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- They echo through the years, voices from a generation of female basketball players who say their lives were marred by a powerful college coach's campaign against homosexuality.

Their legacy of pain began in 1982, when, Cindy Davies says, Penn State coach Maureen T. ''Rene" Portland threatened to expose her as a lesbian. The legacy endured as Portland in 1986 publicly espoused her opposition to coaching homosexuals and reaffirmed her stance in 1991, all the while allegedly engaging in a pattern of bias based on sexual orientation. And the legacy grows as Jennifer Harris pursues a federal discrimination claim that Portland cut her from the Penn State team last year in part because the coach considered her a lesbian.

As the women's basketball community converges on Boston this week for the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament, the Portland case looms as a watershed chapter in a decades-long struggle to eradicate prejudice that has long festered in the sport against homosexual players and coaches. Numerous athletes and coaches said in interviews that nearly every facet of women's college basketball, from recruiting to hiring practices, has been affected by discrimination based on sexual orientation.

''This lawsuit is the most significant thing that has happened in trying to address homophobia in the sport to date," said Pat Griffin, a professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts whose educational program aimed at curbing bias against homosexuals has been distributed by the NCAA to every member school. ''It's a cautionary tale for coaches and athletic directors that they cannot discriminate with impunity anymore."

While the NCAA prepares a survey on the impact of homophobia in the sport and the Women's Basketball Coaches Association plans at its national convention in Boston this week to adopt a code of ethics that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, Harris, 21, is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a number of institutional reforms in her 20-count civil rights suit against Portland, Penn State athletic director Timothy Curley, and the school. The list of proposed reforms includes annual mandatory anti-discrimination training for Penn State's athletic staff.

[]

Confrontational coach
In Portland's case, the timeline of her campaign against homosexuality dates to 1982, her second full year at Penn State (she was hired by the school's legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, who then doubled as athletic director). Suspicious that Davies, one of her prized players, was romantically involved with the team's female student manager, Portland dismissed the manager and confronted Davies, the former player said in a telephone interview.

''It's seared in my mind to this day," Davies, 43, said of the confrontation. ''[Portland] said, 'I don't know if it's true, but if I find out it's true, there's nothing that will stop me from going to your parents, the university, and the media.' "

Davies said she ''felt like I was being blackmailed" but lacked the support she would have needed as a 19-year-old to challenge Portland.

''I was scared to death," she said. ''I felt like I was cornered. I ended up saying I would leave the program to concentrate on my academics."

After leaving Penn State, Davies said, she entered a lengthy period of depression in which she contemplated suicide.

Know Your "Charities"

WaPo: Red Cross, Humane Society Under Investigation

The Louisiana attorney general has launched inquiries into two of the country's best-known charities -- the American Red Cross and the Humane Society of the United States -- after receiving complaints that they misused some of the millions of dollars they raised in the fall to help the human and non-human victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. plans to announce tomorrow that he is looking into allegations that Red Cross volunteers diverted money and supplies meant for hurricane victims in New Orleans, spokeswoman Kris Wartelle said. And the attorney general's office has begun an inquiry into whether the Humane Society spent the money it raised after Hurricane Katrina appropriately.

The Red Cross said yesterday that it has dismissed three of its volunteers who had been involved in food and shelter operations in the stricken city after the storm. The volunteers "have been relieved of their duties" after it was determined that "allegations involving waste and abuse were substantial enough to warrant their immediate removal," said a senior Red Cross official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

[]

Yesterday, Red Cross volunteer Jerome Nickerson Jr., a Baltimore lawyer who was asked by the Red Cross in the fall to team with another volunteer to investigate complaints of misuse of supplies and cash, said he found numerous problems in the disaster-relief operation.

He said they found "rogue warehouses" filled with Red Cross supplies that they believed were being sold. Also, some disaster staffers were ordering suspiciously large volumes of such supplies as cooking oil, coffee and canned food from Red Cross warehouses for areas in which they weren't needed. Large numbers of prepared meals were also being ordered and, in at least once instance, were delivered to local restaurants, Nickerson said. Red Cross volunteers were also using multiple debit cards loaded with thousands of dollars in Red Cross funds. "It was completely out of control," he said.

Nickerson said other Red Cross disaster volunteers and staffers interfered with their investigation, corrupting computer files and refusing to give them documents.

But in December, after Nickerson and his partner, Michael Wolters, a Wisconsin security guard, presented their findings to Red Cross officials in Louisiana, and told them they wanted to investigate further, they were sent home.

"It was very disappointing," Nickerson said.

Of course, the Red Cross isn't really an independent charity. It's a quasi-governmental organization, and in this era of corrupt Republicans, it's run by corrupt Republicans.

From the socialistworker.org:

The right-wing, scandal-ridden “charity” that isn’t really a charity
The truth about the Red Cross

People who think of the Red Cross as a “private charity” would be shocked to discover its actual legal status.

Congress incorporated the Red Cross to act under “government supervision.” Eight of the 50 members of its board of governors are appointed by the president of the United States, who also serves as honorary chairperson. Currently, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security are members of the board of governors.

This unique, quasi-governmental status allows the Red Cross to purchase supplies from the military and use government facilities--military personnel can actually be assigned to duty with the Red Cross. Last year, the organization received $60 million in grants from federal and state governments. However, as one federal court noted, “A perception that the organization is independent and neutral is equally vital.”

The leading administrators and officials of the Red Cross are almost always drawn from the corporate boardroom or the military high command. Among the past chairs and presidents of the Red Cross are seven former generals or admirals and one ex-president.

The current president Marty Evans is a retired rear admiral and a director of the investment firm Lehman Brothers Holdings. Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the chair of the Red Cross, is also CEO of Pace Communications, whose clients include United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and AT&T--a group of companies known for their vicious treatment of workers.

The Red Cross has become particularly tied up with the Republican Party in recent decades. Both McElveen-Hunter and Evans are Bush appointees--for her part, McElveen-Hunter has donated over $130,000 to the Republican Party since 2000.

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THOUGH IT is technically a nonprofit, the Red Cross is run more like profit-hungry corporation than what most people think a “charity” would act like. The most deadly example of this was the Red Cross’ criminally negligent response to the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

The Red Cross has been for many decades, and remains today, the largest blood bank in the country. In 1982 and especially 1983, when it would have possible to contain the outbreak--or at least stop the spread of the disease through infusions of infected blood--major blood banks, led by the Red Cross, opposed national testing of blood for HIV.

The Red Cross’ opposition was based on the financial cost. As investigative journalist Judith Reitman wrote in her book Bad Blood: “It appeared it would be cheaper to pay off infected blood recipients, should they pursue legal action, than to up the Red Cross blood supply.”

Previous post: Please, Give to Charity. Just Not the Red Cross (Sept. 25, 2005)

Canary in the Republican Mine

George W. Bush and the Republican party's reluctance to recognize global warming will be breached first by the people who will have to pay for it: The insurance industry.

From Inter Press Service, via Commondreams: States Calculate Global Warming Pricetag

WASHINGTON - The decision, taken by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, came during the same week that the world's biggest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan, briefed its corporate clients, which include roughly 75 percent of the "Fortune 500" biggest companies, on the potential impact of global warming on their businesses.

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These latest studies, as well another one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that found that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached levels that have not been seen on Earth for more than a million years, have lent credence to the notion that the Earth's climate is, as NASA's director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, James Hansen, said last December, "nearing... a tipping point beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far-reaching undesirable consequences."

Some of those consequences are of particular concern to the insurance industry, which has been forced to pay out billions of dollars in recent years as a result of damages caused by the growing intensity in recent decades of hurricanes that are fueled by the warming waters of the Caribbean and elsewhere.

Indeed, last week's action by the state insurance commissioners came in the wake of devastating back-to-back hurricane seasons that caused a record 30 billion dollars in U.S. insured losses in 2004 and as much as 60 billion dollars in insured losses from Hurricane Katrina alone in 2005, which was also by far the costliest year in weather-related natural disasters on record, according to a recent study by the Munich Re Foundation.

Indeed, according to a December 2005 Ceres study, U.S. insurers have seen a 15-fold increase in insured losses from catastrophic weather events in the past three decades, increases that have far outstripped the growth in premiums, population and inflation over the same time period.

"It's becoming clearer that we are experiencing more frequent and more powerful weather events that pose huge challenges for the insurance industry," according to Tim Wager, director of Nebraska's Department of Insurance and co-chairman of the new task force set up by NAIC, which originally scheduled the initiative for approval at a meeting in New Orleans that was then cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina.

"The impacts are being felt on our coasts and in the interior U.S.," he added. "We're seeing all kinds of extreme weather in the Great Plains states, including drought, tornadoes, brushfires and severe hailstorms."

The cheerful weatherbots on the news won't say global warming, but it's why all this unusual weather is happening.

Bushco Fiddled While New Orleans Drowned

August 30, 2005, Day After Katrina Struck, Levee Broke
Bush Fiddling and Diddling
Think Progress: White House Investigates Itself, Concludes It Wasn’t At Fault For Katrina Response

WhiteHouse.gov: The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned

Terrorist Funders Would Control US Military Equipment Shipments As Well As US Ports

The corporate media has jumped into the UAE company's takeover of US ports story. Here's a new wrinkle: That company, Dubai Ports World, also has a contract to transfer US military equipment.

UAE Would Also Control Shipments of Military Equipment For The U.S. Army

There is bipartisan concern about the Bush administration’s decision to outsource the operation of six of the nation’s largest ports to a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because of that nation’s troubling ties to international terrorism. The sale of P&O to Dubai World Ports would give the state-owned company control of “the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.”

A major part of the story, however, has been mostly overlooked. The company, Dubai Ports World, would also control the movement of military equipment on behalf of the U.S. Army through two other ports. From today’s edition of the British paper Lloyd’s List:

[P&O] has just renewed a contract with the United States Surface Deployment and Distribution Command to provide stevedoring [loading and unloading] of military equipment at the Texan ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi through 2010.

According to the journal Army Logistician “Almost 40 percent of the Army cargo deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom flows through these two ports.”

Thus, the sale would give a country that has been “a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia” direct control over substantial quantities U.S. military equipment.

Previous posts:
If Terrorist Funders Run Our Ports, Terrorists Win

Privatization Gone Wild - Bushco Puts Terrorist Funders in Charge

If Terrorist Funders Run Our Ports, Terrorists Win

Everyone in Congress should object to this:

WaPo: Some in Congress Object to Arab Port Operator
Company Based in United Arab Emirates Set to Manage 6 East Coast Facilities After Takeover

Fortunately, two US Senators -- Democrats, natch -- are filing legislation to stop this insanity:

Reuters: Democrats plan bill to block Dubai port deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic senators said on Friday they would introduce legislation aimed at blocking Dubai Ports World from buying a company that operates several U.S. shipping ports because of security concerns.

Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Hillary Clinton of New York said they would offer a measure to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.

"We wouldn't turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either," Menendez said in a statement. The Senate Banking Committee also plans to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.

P&O, the company Dubai Ports World plans to buy for $6.8 billion, is already foreign-owned, by the British, but the concern is that the purchaser is backed by the United Arab Emirates government.

The UAE company would gain control over the management of major U.S. ports in New York and New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami and that has sparked national security concerns among lawmakers.

Previous post: Privatization Gone Wild - Bushco Puts Terrorist Funders in Charge