9/16/05 -- Fire in their Bellies, Utah Thunder

The Columnists Are Getting Cranky
Nothing like the end of a slow Summer to bring out a bit of interesting punditry. The past few days have been impressively vitriolic. School's almost starting, by the way, so that means that I'll be on a less random posting schedule.

I am less than a month away from being twenty-two. I find the thought strangely unprovocative.

Roberts' Nomination:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/opinion/15brooks.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
David Brooks gets nasty, even on the Republicans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/opinion/13tierney.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
John Tierney mocks the hearings as pointless. Still, one does miss Safire.
http://www.uexpress.com/anncoulter/?uc_full_date=20050914
Ann Coulter doesn't much like the New York Times.

Hurricane Katrina
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/opinion/14dowd.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
Maureen Dowd gets a little graphic about the deaths of the elderly in New Orleans. Coincidentally, I met a person this weekend with whom she regularly corripsonds with. Small world.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502355.html
Donna Britt discusses the "trendy" poor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/opinion/12herbert.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
Bob Herbert looks at personal stories, some of which are pretty heart-wrenching.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091302372.html
Steven Pearlstein examines economics in the wake of Katrina. And insults Barbara Bush.


Turning Utah into More of a Dump (kidding)
I grew up in Utah and it's a beautiful state full of beautiful people (well, some of them, at any rate.) The nuclear waste waiting for Yucca now might be dumped in Utah. The New York Times endorses it, probably everyone else on the East Coast too. "Wow! Dump it in Utah! Sounds like a great idea!"

Here's an idea: you reaped the benefits of nuclear power, dump it on your own land. Int he NYtimes editorial on the subject, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/opinion/16fri2.html the newspaper stresses the temporary nature of the project. I'm not the first to cry BULLSHIT! Once it's placed somewhere, will anyone take it off the hands of Utahns? No way. It's the inebriated elephant that everyone's longing to avoid. The New York Times also stresses how Utah should allow a private citizen's deal, being that they're all Republicans. So, what, now you guys are conservatives? Now you guys think we should allow a bunch of impoverished Native Americans to accept a deadly, dangerous package and place it within 50 miles of the state capital? Environmental racism is what we call it in the debate community. Republican does not, contrary to some people's opinions, mean stupid. It's not our problem if you guys have messed up your own area and want to stick your waste somewhere else. Go bury it in the Hamptons and leave my people the hell out of it.

As you might guess, I'm not even going to pretend to be unbiased. The same people who would decry dumping nuclear waste in Africa are perfectly happy to bury it in Utah's backyard, and the contempt that many Utahns feel for Easterners leaks out in many, many columns. Perhaps they don't understand our sensitivity, after all, they've forgotten the generations of people still dying of leukimia from unneccessary nuclear tests on Nevadan soil. Never again will we let there be another family of downwinders, the inevitable result of a surface storage facility protected by little more than a chain-link fence.

Various Attacks on the Utah Solution. The last one accuses Americans of treating "the Rocky Mountain area is a giant toilet for their lethal trash." As always, some are higher quality than others. The first article is the most in-depth and provides the best overview, I think, both on the politics and the poverty of the region.
http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1223/article12097.asp
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,605155261,00.html
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3016885
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20050914/OPINION/109140062
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3016060
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=63352
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0507/S00346.htm
http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=64058
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600122761,00.html

Other Utah-Nuclear News
Uranium Mining on Navejo land
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,605155073,00.html
Timeline on Nuclear Standoff
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3019264
Transportation Worries.
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com/yucca/st_george.html
Documentary Links on Skull Valley
http://www.kued.org/skullvalley/controversy/
Discussion of Goshute Economic Situation
http://www.swans.com/library/art9/gsmith07.html

Unfortunately, Utah and Nevada are probably going to be in competition with each other over who has to take the waste, instead of joining together and fighting both. Even if they did join together, let's face it: not the most politically powerful state, Utah. Maybe if a bunch of Democrats move in, it'll have a little more sway, but until then the state is just going to have to rely on itself for political salvation. The legislators are quite clever, I'm sure they'll come up with something to keep the ball going for another ten or twenty years.

Meanwhile, if a nuclear train comes into my house, I'll be the first one to lay down on the tracks and try and send it back where it came from.

9/9/05 -- Hurricane Katrina: The race/poverty nexis

Vacation. It can make a girl lazy. I was in the air when Katrina hit, then safely ensconced in the news bubble of my parents’ suburban apartment. Now I feel free to quote one of my younger brothers about the Katrina catastrophe. “Being poor sucks.”

So many university students don’t understand how grateful they should be for the chances they have. Too many people don’t stretch themselves when it comes to the socioeconomic. God knows that I have the tendency, sometimes, to treat the poor like lepers, afraid to touch them for fear of getting some disease (never mind the reluctance spawned from the TWO middle-aged homeless men who have tried to put their arms around my shoulders and asked to be my date. Single, yes. Desperate, never). I try to reform myself, but usually that contents itself to randomly shoving ten dollars into the hands of some teenage, druggie waif once a year. (I gave fifteen to a blonde, scraggly woman who reminded me of my mother. She gave me a hug and cried on my shoulder, and all the ungrateful part of me could think was how much she needed a bath.)

The same, inner revulsion and fear that WE could end up just like THEM if we have a bad turn of luck has been projected onto the macro level in New Orleans. We have tried to find everyone to blame. Honestly, if I knew who to blame for poverty, I’d have won a Nobel prize. It’s a cocktail that no one seems to be able to cure or decipher.

I did find some articles of interest on the issues of race and poverty in the aftermath of Katrina, however.

The Washington Post sums up current feelings about race and poverty (check the Craig’s List personal at the end. You can’t make this stuff up).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/09/BL2005090900567.html?sub=AR

Here's a...um…a frank column blaming black people for black deaths. Includes a complaint that back people talk like Jar-Jar Binks. (An infuriating read to be sure and a reminder about there being crazy people on both sides.) While Dean gets absurb criticism for saying that race could be a factor, idiots like these are spreading messages of overgeneralized hate.
http://www.commonconservative.com/adkins/adkins090105.shtml

To be tangential, I found an ad on one of these websites advertising conservative t-shirts that I hope no reasonable conservative will be found wearing. Don’t take the conservative name in blame, you right-wing extremists. (It took me a moment to find a word that wasn’t obscene.)
http://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff/133383

And now for something completely different...a column about media reactions. My favorite phrase of the day comes from it. "Far from being reassuring, the sinister-looking Homeland Secuity czar Michael Chertoff possessed the mediocre hauteur of a dinner theater Voldemort." Pure column-y goodness.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/42/on-powers.php

.

Nicholas Kristof’s thought-provoking NYT Column About Poverty is below. Note the infant-death rate statistics. Those always frighten me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06kristof.html?incamp=article_popular

Finally, one of the tragic, snapshot fiascos of whoever is managing things down there (and granted, it must be a tough job, and mistakes are bound to happen) Hyatt Hotel guests are given priority to starving Superdome garbage-dwellers. In related news, in another article, I read that the toilets were so choked up these people regularly went to the bathroom in cardboard boxes. Talk about sanitary.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1125721982187540.xml&coll=1

I presume by now the whole world has seen the Kaynes West clip accusing Bush of not caring about black people. If not, you should find it. Just to see the regular newscaster’s horror at someone going off teleprompter. I have faith that y’all can google it yourselves.

Beware of dinner theater Voldemorts!