Something Fischi

What happens if I post more than one entry in the same day? It has been so long since I created the template for this weblog, that I can’t really remember.

I have to say, watching Fitzgerald’s press conference yesterday renewed my faith in my country. I’ve been pretty depressed of late by how corrupt our government has gotten. At how politics has become more important than anything to those running the country. But not so with Fitzgerald. He’s just doing his job. I wish more people in government would just do their jobs.

Brown is being removed from Katrina duty. I don’t think he is actually being fired. He’s just being moved back to Washington. Bush takes loyalty to its illogical extreme. Brown is obviously incompetent, but Bush can’t bring himself to fire him. The irony is that Bush’s image might actually improve if he just came out and said Brown was a mistake and is being fired.

The Bush WH is spending enormous efforts spinning that the slow response to Katrina is the fault of the local governments. Namely, the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana. Instead of spending so much energy on press conferences and photo ops to “get the message out” that it isn’t the fault of the federal government, it seems to me that the resources are better spent saving lives. But clearly I don’t understand how government works.

Some disasters are local. Say, a building on fire. I don’t expect DHS and FEMA to step in when a building burns down. I can imagine state emergencies as well. Perhaps there is flooding that effects several cities. I could imagine a state government asking FEMA and the federal government to declare a federal emergency if a flood got bad enough. But the state government can, I think, reasonably be expected to be the first responder.

Katrina, however, is a national disaster. It will affect all of us. People evacuated from the area need to go to different states. NO is a huge port and a place where a good deal of oil and gas come in for the rest of the country. It will be a huge cleanup and rebuilding effort that is far beyond the resources of one city or one state. Such a national disaster requires the attention and response of the federal government. That’s why we have a federal government in the first place.

Every American should be asking themselves if our federal government can really protect us from disasters, whether they are natural or man-made. Presumably the federal government has spent the last four years, since 9/11, preparing to protect us from any kind of disaster. Is it the case that the only kind of disaster we can expect to be protected from us a terrorist disaster? Can the federal government even protect us from a terrorist disaster for that matter.

I must say, I’m not feeling very safe right about now.

I have finally found something I can believe in. Hallelujah and Ramen.

Every now and then I get to wondering what musicians I like to listen to are up to. For example, I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan, exactly, but I’m rather fond of listening to Pink. But where the heck is she these days? I clicked over to her old site and the last news item is from March 6 of this year. That’s not so long ago, so I’m hoping she’s working on a new album.

I’m much more interested to know what’s been going on with Fiona Apple (be ready to kill the music if you follow the link). I poked around a bit and discovered that she has actually finished a third album and she finished it quite some time ago. The problem, apparently, is that Sony, who owns her rights, won’t release it. They think it will have limited commercial appeal. There’s currently a campaign, of sorts, to free Fiona’s new album. You can find out more about that at http://www.freefiona.com/.

You will also find out, if you poke around on the web a bit more, that every song on the new album is out in the wild.

Well, I can’t say I wasn’t curious to here the songs on this new album. I don’t, as a rule, download music I don’t own. But my curiosity got the better of me and I went ahead and downloaded a few of Fiona’s new songs to check them out. I’m sorry I did. They are, at least to me, completely unlistenable. I deleted them immediately. I think Sony might have a point in this case. I love Fiona Apple, but this music is only going to appeal to a select few.

I think perhaps there should be some way for the music to get out so that people can listen to it if they want to. Sony could, for example, sell it on the iTunes music store. But that will never happen. Sony hates that Apple is doing so well with the iPod and and the iTunes music store. I understand that you won’t find any Sony music at the new iTunes Japan music store. That doesn’t appear to be the case in the US version of the iTunes music store, though, so maybe it is just a rumor. Wouldn’t be the first time a rumor like that got out on the Internet.

It’s not a rumor. Here’s a story on Yahoo that says the same thing.

This is a totally ridiculous LA Times editorial by Niall Ferguson, in which he claims the best way to inoculate ourselves against terrorism is to become Christians. Ferguson further claims that the problem in Europe (that may have helped drive suicide bombers in London) is that Europe is suffering a crisis of faith. Fewer and fewer people are interested in Christianity in Europe, which opens the doors to radical fundamentalist religions. Does he think there aren’t fundamentalist Christians? Isn’t that what we are seeing in the US right now?

I think this passage is the most jaw-dropping in the entire piece:

Chesterton feared that if Christianity declined, “superstition” would “drown all your old rationalism and skepticism.” When educated friends tell me that they have invited a shaman to investigate their new house for bad juju, I see what Chesterton meant. Yet it is not the spread of such mumbo-jumbo that concerns me as much as the moral vacuum that de-Christianization has created. Sure, sermons are sometimes dull and congregations often sing out of tune. But, if nothing else, a weekly dose of Christian doctrine helps to provide an ethical framework for life. And it is not clear where else such a thing is available in modern Europe.

My problem is that, to me, Christianity is as much mumbo-jumbo as Ferguson’s “superstition”. How am I to suddenly have faith in a belief system I cannot except as real. Do I just go through the motions?

And what about people of other faiths. It would seem Ferguson doesn’t think it’s good enough to be a Jew or a Buddhist or a Hindu or, of course, a Muslim. To me, all of those faiths are just as good or bad as Christianity. But, for some reason, Ferguson doesn’t consider them good enough to fight off terrorism.

Actually, the more I think about what Ferguson has to say, the less it makes sense. And what really makes no sense is that the LA Times is going to let him come back every week and write a new editorial.

There’s a post over at TPM Cafe that says, basically, trying to sue gun manufacturers out of business is a bad idea. I hate guns. But I have to agree on this one. I usually cringe when somebody says brings up the “guns don’t kill people…” canard. Well, I suppose, technically, it is true. But I also think that guns are dangerous and there ought to be more careful control of who can buy them and who can carry them. Especially handguns. On the other hand, I hear crime rates are falling, so perhaps the anti-gun control people had a point after all. Anyway, I don’t think suing gun makers out of existence is the answer to this one.

What bothers me a lot more, though, is that the senate tabled a much more important defense spending bill until fall because Republican senators didn’t want to duke it out with Bush over the torture provisions in the bill. This gun bill was just payback to the NRA for supporting Republicans in the last elections. Did it really help anybody but the gun industry?

Actually, has there been any legislation of late that helps regular people? Or is it just all stuff for big industry? I know there’s been other tort reform that’s passed as well. Oh. And there was something about bankruptcy as well, wasn’t there? Something that made it harder for individuals, but easier for credit card companies, or something like. It would be good to get the details right, of course, but I don’t recall it being anything that helps out individual citizens.

I’m playing with the site theme a bit more. Now there are no more titles, which I never really liked anyway. I’m trying to get it as clean as possible, but it is still a bit too cluttered. There’s just too much stuff around each post. I’d like to use a ‘#’ character after each post the way Scripting News does it. But my first attempt to get the ‘#’ character right after the post weren’t successfully. I ended up with vertical blank space between the end of the post and the ‘#’.

I’m way too busy. I need to do something about it. A lot of the busyness is my own fault. I can’t say “no” when people ask me to do something. I’ve now said “yes” to so many things that I’ve kind of got myself into trouble. I think it is likely that I will now have to go back and say “no” to the people I’d previously said “yes” to. Messy.