Conceived above a saloon, delivered into this world by a masked man identified by his heavily sedated mother as Captain Video, raised by a kindly West Virginian woman, a mild-mannered former reporter with modest delusions of grandeur and no tolerance of idiots and the intellectually dishonest.


network solutions made me a child pornographer!
The sordid details...


Anniversary


Requiem for a fictional Scotsman


Oh my God! They killed Library!! Those bastards!!!


Elegy to a Mostly Maine Coon


It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day


A Pittsburgher in the Really Big City


Da Burg Annat


I Have Issues


Yeah, yeah, I'm inspired


At least the rivers freeze in Pittsburgh


He knows if yinz is a jagoff


Please support KGB Report by making your amazon.com purchases through our affiliate link:
 


dcl dialogue online!

I Love DCL


no. we're not that kgb.

Cool Spinny Thingy!


Ciao.
KGB, CIA linked


The Carbolic Smoke Ball
Superb satire, and based in Pittsburgh!


Americans United for Separation of Church and State

"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Article VI, U.S. Constitution


Geek of the Week, 7/16/2000

Geek of the Week


Cruel Site of the Day, 7/15/2000

Cruel Site of the Day (7/15/2000)


miscellany

Hard to describe.


"a breezy writing style and a cool mix of tidbits"

USA Today Hotsite


Our riveting and morally compelling...

Privacy statement

One of  51,848 random quotes. Please CTRL-F5 to refresh the page.

Google
 
kgbreport.com Web


(July 2000 and earlier)


Saturday, September 17, 2005

The Katrina chronology

From factcheck.org. Note the total disconnect between reality and federal authorities' perception of it.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Friday, September 16, 2005

Plague mice on the loose in New Jersey

I suspect the toxic waste will get them first.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Another Texan's grand dreams

Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" speech, May 22, 1964:

I have come today from the turmoil of your capital to the tranquility of your campus to speak about the future of your country. The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.

For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people. The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination and your initiative and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society- in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans- four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes and highways and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.

Aristotle said: "Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life." It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today. The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all expansion is eroding these precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

And our society will never be great until our cities are great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is inside those cities and not beyond their borders. New experiments are already going on. It will be the task of your generation to make the American city a place where future generations will come, not only to live, but to live the good life. And I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see that Michigan students are really doing their best to live the good life.

This is the place where the Peace Corps was started.

It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.

A second place where we begin to build the Great Society is in our countryside. We have always prided ourselves on being not only America the strong and America the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.

A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the "Ugly American." Today we must act to prevent an ugly America.

For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination. We are still far from that goal. Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of school. Nearly 54 million- more than one quarter of all America- have not even finished high school.

Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it. And if we cannot educate today's youth, what will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enrollment will rise by 5 million. And college enrollment will increase by more than 3 million.

In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.

These are three of the central issues of the Great Society. While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems. But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America.

I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings- on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.

Woodrow Wilson once wrote: "Every man sent out from his university should be a man of his Nation as well as a man of his time."

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?

Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?

Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace- as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?

Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?

There are those timid souls that say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will and your labor and your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country. They sought a new world. So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality. So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.

Thank you. Good-bye.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Thursday, September 15, 2005

The Only Fat Left in the Government is in Tom DeLay's Head

A fascinating post over at Bloggledygook.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


There is hope...

Finally, we've decided that syndicated columnist Ann Coulter has worn out her welcome. Many readers find her shrill, bombastic and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Wednesday, September 14, 2005

He probably survived the looters...

... but I wonder what the ugly woman did to him when she saw the sign.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Bush Joke of the Day

Q: What is George W. Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?

A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

(from Dennis Brumm on the ABC World News Now Discussion List)

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Thought of the Day

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
-Norman Mailer

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Lights, camera...

Tom Hanks and Doctor Evil chat briefly during a break in the filming of "Forrest Gump Visits the Supreme Court."

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Quote of the Day

The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work; then they get elected and prove it.
-P.J. O'Rourke

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Wouldn't it be wonderful...

Wouldn't it be wonderful if, during his press conference this evening, the President of the United States acted like the President of the United States?

Oh, not the most recent bunch of Presidents, the ones whose speeches are preliminarily analyzed by the ParseWeasel 3000® to be certain they are structured in such a way that they sound sincere but- when carefully analyzed- contain an escape hatch on every word.

Yeterday's so-called "mea culpa" speech is a sterling example of the ParseWeasel's handiwork: "And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," the President said.

The cynic in me says that this Rove/Machiavellian-phrased admission was carefully constructed solely to halt his plummeting poll numbers. Note that it contains lots of wiggle room to point the finger at others. It also preys upon the weakness of liberals. You know: kind-hearted idjits who are willing to offer support to someone who will admit to his errors and promise to do better.

Still, the weak liberal in me saw something in the President's eyes and in his demeanor that appeared totally out of character. No swaggering, knuckle-dragging walk. No condescending tone in his voice. No maddening, inappropriate smirk. The President is not very good at acting and, at least in the clips being run on the news, he actually seemed sincere.

The newsmagazines claim that some White House grunt-level troops collected a sampling of the horrific cable and broadcast news reports from last week, burned them to a DVD, and managed to get them past the insulating layer of his closest advisors and to the President himself. Only then, reports claim, was he made fully aware of the scope of the catastrophe and the staggering incompetence of the federal government's response.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the President acted, oh, like the President acts in Hollywood movies? Like Michael Douglas in The American President? Or Kevin Kline in Dave?

Maybe we can hope that the President has had an epiphany of sorts: a realization that he's been deluded by his aides, whose sole purpose has been to push an agenda that has placed corporate and personal profit, and the dismantling of the protections of the Constitution and the federal government, over the lives and well-being of its citizens.

The President actually has the power to accomplish great things. He can rally the citizenry, unify them to achieve a common goal, and, by sheer force of will- and honesty- overcome any obstacles placed in his way by the legislative branch.

Well, I can hope, can't I?

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Tuesday, September 13, 2005

A true disaster.

To all you friendly folk who sent me monosyllabic e-mails telling me my Bush diasaster photo was something I photoshopped to impugn the integrity of our fearless leader, you can all go to.. uh.. here.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Maybe Halliburton should do body removals...

FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina...

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

[Full story]

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


FEMA: 403 Forbidden. Sigh.

Ah. Well, this explains a lot:

https://www.fema.gov/feedback/

(Update: FEMA fixed the above link on or around September 17. Right on top of things, fellas.)

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Halliburton doesn't do body removal

State hires company to recover bodies
By Ed Anderson
Capital bureau
New Orleans Times-Picayune

BATON ROUGE- An angry Gov. Kathleen Blanco Tuesday said the state has retained the services of the Kenyon Co. to help collect the dead victims from Hurricane Katrina because the federal emergency agency was not moving quickly enough to hire the firm.

"In death, as in life, our people deserve more respect and dignity," Blanco said at a meeting of statewide officials which was opened briefly to reporters.

Aides to Blanco did not say how long the company will be retained by the state or how much it will be paid.

The company and the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to come to terms on a contract to help collect and process the dead, so the state decided to hire the company, said Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher. The company is one of a handful with expertise in body-retrieval and processing and worked the World Trade Center disaster in New York City in the aftemath of terrorist attacks four years ago, and also helped collect and process bodies in the Asian sunami last year.

[Of course, the Bush administration had no problem giving millions of no-bid work to GOP-connected companies, or suspending the law requiring the companied to pay its employees prevailing wages.]

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Who's in charge?

According to this, on the White House website:

"The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures..."

Note the date.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Comcast continues to suck...

The Comcast service in Chicago has always been rather crappy. I have their digital service out there, which features a cable box that takes two seconds to change a channel and abysmal compression that makes watching certain cable networks a streaky mess.

In Pittsburgh, I have Comcast broadband internet service- which is actually very reliable and quite good- but "non-digital" cable service.

For the past month, I've been complaining to Comcast that they're overmodulating the audio on Spike TV by about 6dB or so. The cretinous oafs manning Comcast's customer "service" have said it's a) SpikeTV; b) my television; c) the cable coming into my house, but refuse to acknowledge the possibility that a tech at their head end could correct the problem by simply turning down their freaking volume control.

I think I'll tell SpikeTV about it and see what they say.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Bush locator

Where's the leader of the free world? Try checking here.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Pipeline first, people second...

Power crews diverted
Restoring pipeline came first

By Nikki Davis Maute

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

That order- to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co.- delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.

At the time, gasoline was in short supply across the country because of Katrina. Prices increased dramatically and lines formed at pumps across the South.

"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association- which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.

"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.

"They did it in 16 hours, and I consider the effort unprecedented."

Katrina slammed into South Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana on Aug. 29, causing widespread devastation and plunging most of the area- including regional medical centers and rural hospitals- into darkness.

The storm also knocked out two power substations in Collins, just north of Hattiesburg. The substations were crucial to Atlanta-based Colonial Pipeline, which moves gasoline and diesel fuel from Texas, through Louisiana and Mississippi and up to the Northeast.

"We were led to believe a national emergency was created when the pipelines were shut down," Compton said.

White House call

Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.

Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.

Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department of Energy called him on Aug. 31. Callahan said department officials said opening the fuel line was a national priority.

Cheney's office referred calls about the pipeline to the Department of Homeland Security. Calls there were referred to Kirk Whitworth, who would not take a telephone message and required questions in the form of an e-mail.

Susan Castiglione, senior manager of corporate and public affairs with Colonial Pipeline, did not return phone calls.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


The Ten Commandments

Condensed to two, by George Carlin. 4MB mp3 file.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


And now, a local update

From the Park News Police Blotter, South Park, PA: "Power outages were reported along Ridge Road. Allegheny Power employees discovered that a large Great Horned Owl carrying a opossum (sic) made contact with the power lines and got electrocuted causing power outages. The PA Game Commission arrived and removed the owl."

And, we assume, the power crew had some lovely grilled possum. And while the Game Commision won't admit it, we understand great horned owl tastes just like chicken.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Monday, September 12, 2005

Bumper sticker of the day

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Doctors euthanized terminal patients in Katrina aftermath

If this is true, the mind boggles at the spin potential.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Quote of the day

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow-men; and along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and come back to us as effects.
-Herman Melville

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


FEMA: 5 of 8 top execs have no experience

Brain Drain' At Agency Cited
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."

Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.

They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February, and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.

But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of Brown's.

Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media.

David I. Maurstad, who stepped down as Nebraska lieutenant governor in 2001 to join FEMA, has served as acting director for risk reduction and federal insurance administrator since June 2004. Daniel A. Craig, a onetime political fundraiser and campaign adviser, came to FEMA in 2001 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he directed the eastern regional office, after working as a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown has managed more than 160 natural disasters as FEMA general counsel and deputy director since 2001, "hands-on experience [that] cannot be understated. Other leadership at FEMA brings particular skill sets- policy management leadership, for example."

The agency has a deep bench of career professionals, said FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews, including two dozen senior field coordinators and Gil Jamieson, director of the National Incident Management System. "Simply because folks who have left the agency have a disagreement with how it's being run doesn't necessarily indicate that there is a lack of experience leading it," she said.

Andrews said the "acting" designation for regional officials is a designation that signifies that they are FEMA civil servants- not political appointees.

Touring the wrecked Gulf Coast with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff yesterday, Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA leaders, saying, "We're always trying to strike the right balance" between political appointees and "career professionals that fill the jobs underneath them."

But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities.

FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed."

Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking.

"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is, and who understand how emergency management works."

The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of 28 agencies studied in 2003.

In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or good.

An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.

More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the Department of Homeland Security.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Sunday, September 11, 2005

September 11

My birthday's September 11; I turned 51 today. Someone once said that the fifties are the youth of old age. I prefer Mel Brooks' pragmatic yet goofily optimistic take: "If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none."

On my birthday about 35 years or so ago, a group from my high school attended a student production of The Fantasticks at the University of Pittsburgh. The show's signature piece has always been one of my favorites; every year it seems to take on more meaning. Of course, there are the references to my birthday month, aging, and reflection. It was originally performed on stage by Jerry Orbach, in a performance that served as the springboard to a stellar career that ended tragically last year. (Now you know why they played the song in the short tribute at the end of his final appearance on the series Law and Order.)

The Fantasticks was still running on September 11, 2001. There wasn't a dry eye in the house at the next performance:

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.

"Try To Remember"
The Fantasticks
Music: Harvey Schmidt
Lyrics: Tom Jones

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Take a Hint

Bill Maher:

I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army, and now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

Listen to your mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxxed out, and no one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished!

Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest, and walk away.

Like you did with your military service, and the oil company, and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?

Now I know what you're saying, you're saying that there are so many other things that you, as President, could involve yourself in.

Please don't.

I know, I know, there's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church and Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You perform so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country, I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is: take a hint.

 Subscribe in a reader    [Home]     [Commentwear]     [Comment]    

 


Copyright © 1987-2024 by Kevin G. Barkes
All rights reserved.
Violators will be prosecuted.
So there.  
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...

commentwear


Crystal Methodist


Laugh while you can, monkey-boy


I am a professional. Do not try this at home.


I canna change the laws of physics


As a matter of fact, I *am* the boss of you.
(as a matter of fact, i AM the boss of you.)


Truly great madness cannot be achieved without signficant intelligence


I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.


Left wing liberal nut job


Flies spread disease. Keep yours zipped.


Eff the ineffable, scrute the inscrutable.


If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.


If evolution is just a theory, why am I surrounded by monkeys?


Nutrition makes me puke


Feral Geek


eat wisely


Dyslexics have more fnu!


It's here!

Eff and Scrute

440 pages, over 11,000 quotations!

Eff the Ineffable, Scrute the Inscrutable


get kgb krap!

KGB Shirt