Okay, usually I’m not one for seeing a lot of humor in blasphemy. But then I don’t see a lot of humor in intolerance from a son, when a famous father is known for… these types of things. CNN.com – Franklin Graham sees?’revival’ for New Orleans – Oct 4, 2005 Graham, the son and designated successor of the Rev. Billy Graham, said he doesn’t believe the devastating storm was a punishment from God for what he sees as the city’s ties to satanic worship and sexual perversion. “I’m not saying that God used this storm as a judgment,” Graham said.…

Either way, I’m PSYCHIC. Okay, the Chicago White Sox are playing the Boston Red Sox today, first game of the AL division championships. Several of my cow-orkers are very excited and nervous just now. Actually, the White Sox were doing alright until just now when I walked into the break room to watch a couple of minutes with a rabid Sox fan. During the time it took to eat 1 (one) candy bar, 2 errors were committed and the Bosox scored 2 runs (with 2 outs and a man on). Gee, it was 6-0 Chisox when I unwrapped the candy…

A tanker truck exploded in flames in the Bronx a short time ago – I was watching live TV via CNN at lunch. They don’t know much about it and were carefully not saying “terrorism” or anything, but it’s totally disrupted traffic and rail in the Hunts Point area, near a bridge. Apparently Amtrak runs some trains near there and the power is out along the line. There may have been a second truck and it was probably just a collision, but still. Smoke over New York? Not happy news at all.

Jill, you were right about the lights in New Orleans being turned on just for the Presidential speech the other night: Daily Nightly: Friday Morning (Power) Line I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out…

Just saw this on the box at lunch: Michael Brown just resigned from FEMA. Well, we saw that coming. UPDATE: “The focus has got to be on FEMA, what the people are trying to do down there,” Brown told The Associated Press. His decision was not a surprise. Brown was abruptly recalled to Washington on Friday, a clear vote of no confidence from his superiors at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. Brown had been roundly criticized for FEMA’s bearish response to the hurricane, which has caused political problem for Bush and fellow Republicans. “I’m turning in…

A young Nicaraguan man named Alvaro R. Morales Villa documented the New Orleans he has grown to love in an amazing, amazing, amazing series of photos at this Kodakgallery.com slide show. If you love good photographs that tell a compelling story, go to the site, change the settings to “5 second delay” (the longest, as there’s some text to read) and click “slideshow.” Because the young man spent so much time going around documenting New Orleans “before” and “after,” he inevitably fell in with journalists. The story he tells in pictures is incredible, but at some point he has to…

CBS News | Brown Plucked From Katrina Duty | September 9, 2005?13:24:54 This was breaking news just a couple of hours ago; Michael Brown has been removed from running FEMA (Correction: from running the Katrina rescue/recovery effort. Expect his final departure soon though). The Google link for all the stories is here. Since then, rather a lot has happened. His replacement: Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, and also in command of Task Force Katrina is General Russell Honore. I saw both in a rather hectic-looking live press conference earlier today – the closed captioning concluded with a slightly…

The former First Lady’s remarks were aired this evening on American Public Media’s “Marketplace” program. She was part of a group in Houston today (Monday) at the Astrodome that included her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who were chosen by her son, the current president, to head fundraising efforts for the recovery. Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were also present. In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: “Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston.” Then she added: “What…

Top FEMA leaders short on experience – Yahoo! News Michael Brown, who heads FEMA as undersecretary of homeland security for emergency preparedness and response, already has endured sharp criticism for comments he made last week that seemed to suggest he did not understand that thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina had taken refuge at the New Orleans convention center. Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management. An official biography of Brown’s top aide, acting deputy director Patrick…

I ran across this article about the one thousand firefighters that FEMA had sequestered for training in Atlanta in the Salt Lake Tribune, and then finally this morning I heard a piece on NPR on how the highly trained firefighters have been deployed in teams of two to affected areas… where they’re handing out FEMA flyers and referring questions about other services as best they can. It still seems like they could have used these guys to do rescue and recovery work, and find another thousand or so faceless bureaucrats to run around shining people on with “information packets.”