Perhaps the clearest indication that stopping the Roberts nomination is now a lost cause:

According to a report from The Canadian Press, Martha Burk, the chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said she intends to write letters of protest to the NHL and NBC over the NHL's new ad campaign, which is set to begin next week.

The first spot, titled "It's Time," shows a player (an actor, not an NHL player) in a locker room, surrounded by candles and accompanied by a woman who ceremoniously helps him don his hockey garb. The ads feature quotes from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" along with dramatic camera work and music reminiscent of the film "Braveheart."

Burk told The Canadian Press that the ad is "offensive on many levels."

"The woman is dressed provocatively and when she asks the player if he's ready, it's a double-entendre in my view," Burk told The CP. "She's in the ad as a groomer, a sex object.

"The commercial is clearly selling sex and violence and the last image in that commercial is a young boy watching this, so he's clearly the customer they're after, or it's a misguided attempt to draw in families."

This is stupid on so many levels I really don't want to get into it. At least with Augusta, NOW was taking on a racist country club which hosted a tournament people cared about.

YBK [Part 19]: Three weeks to go. From the Associated Press:

File bankruptcy now -- before the law changes!

That's the message -- or exhortation -- that attorneys are making across the country, in TV commercials, print ads and mailings, urging Americans to seek bankruptcy court protection before a new law makes it harder for them to walk away from their debts.

Debtors are responding. Counting down toward the Oct. 17 effective date for the biggest reform in U.S. bankruptcy law in a generation, personal bankruptcy filings have jumped this month to the highest on record. Filings averaged more than 9,000 per day, up roughly 50 percent from last year's average daily volume, during the first two weeks of September. (emphasis mine)

It will get worse. One wonders whether the devastation to be wrought by Hurricane Rita will finally spur Congress to act on suspending the law, lest we witness a financial panic not seen since 1929.

The greatest Onion article, ever.

An interesting bookend to the Giambi-Palmeiro-Bonds controversy, where another industry suddenly wakes up one morning and decides that the drug use it was previously willing to condone, even encourage, has suddenly become bad for the bottom line. As with steroids and the like, heroin and cocaine provided career advantages to its users on the catwalk, regardless of the resulting medical damage; one set of drugs puts muscle on, the other allows it to wither away.

I doubt we'll see a panel of defiant supermodels perjuring themselves before Congress in the near-future, though....

Three generations of imbeciles are enough! Wouldn't it be a better question to ask which Bush appointees/nominees are actually qualified to hold their positions, rather than listing the endless supply of his mind-numbingly incompetent picks? Perhaps a more fruitful task would be to compare the current crop of hacks with the people his father had in the same position; I don't think it's necessarily a Republican, or even a conservative trait, to staff the government with morons. It bears repeating that the Presidential Medal of Freedom didn't used to be a symbol of failure.

My guess is that it's a lethal combination of ideology and faith that leads a political leader to surround himself with those who've failed in all other aspects of life before they enter public service, but who nevertheless have the right political connections. Someone who believes that "intelligent design" should be taught to our young'uns is not going to be obsessed with having qualified appointees doing the people's business. If the United States is going to remain a superpower and a beacon of freedom and all that, we need to have a good strong dose of elitism. We need to put grown-ups in charge of things again.

Miscellany:

1. The editors of the Dallas Morning News have a rather entertaining blog, in the tradition of the National Review Online. My post two weeks ago on "Norquist's Bathtub" was referred to one of their editors (thankfully, the prediction that the death toll from the hurricane would "dwarf" that of 9/11 has not been borne out to date), so I'm getting a big hunk o' Lone Star link-love today.

2. My take on Bush's speech Thursday night: not bad. In fact, it was perhaps the best he's sounded since right after 9/11; acknowledging that the buck ultimately stops with him will surely help him politically, as it is a refreshing change from his typical avoidance of responsibility. Focusing in on the racial aspect of the disaster was especially important. The problem, of course, is that his initial proposals indicate that nothing will change. Karl Rove is in charge of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction, the housecleaning he needs to do at FEMA and DHS has not started, and his vow not to raise taxes while cutting spending elsewhere to pay for reconstruction has the tinny sound of a man trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic; if rebuilding New Orleans is to be the trade-off for cutting funds that might prevent a disaster elsewhere, that is not acceptable. Liberals must increase the pressure on this government.

3. Matt Welch has converted his blog into a daily diary of the Angels for the final weeks of the season. Those who wish to follow the missteps of L.A.'s pursuit of the AL West title should check it out.

4. A friend of mine from Georgia calls the annual Florida-Tennessee battle, the "Meteor Bowl"; he hates both the Gators and Vols, and for him the optimal result would be for a meteor to crash into the stadium during the game. That's kind of what I thought of the Hitchens-Galloway tussle in New York City this past week.

5. Speaking of college football, I'm off to Over/Under for some Santa Monica fun. See ya Monday.

Read this, and I dare you to tell met that you can drive a nail up this guy's ass with a sledgehammer.

The worst team nickname in the world. [link via Ragged Thots]

After three days of testimony, the one thing I can safely conclude about John Roberts is that he's one hell of a lawyer. Slick, evasive, brilliant, mendacious, smooth as silk; he's Thomas Dewey without the moustache. Trying to get him to answer a question truthfully is like attempting to crack someone's skull open with a pillow, yet I doubt anyone could point to a single false statement he made this week.

I'm skeptical there'll be any public groundswell demanding that Roberts' confirmation sail through the Senate. If he doesn't want to give a straight answer to questions, or if he continues to assert whatever lame-ass privilege he's using to hide his records from his time at the Solicitor General's office, then filibuster him.

That would accomplish several things: it would be a symbolic sign of defiance aimed at our lame duck President, at a time when public contempt for Bush is at a level not seen since the final days of Nixon; it would signal that every nominee will have to face a battle, and a more conservative appointee will be on notice for next time(and Roberts' deceptiveness aside, his public record indicates he's a bit closer to the center than the person he's succeeding; at a time in his career when Rehnquist was trying to intimidate black voters into forgoing their franchise, Roberts was working behind the scenes to overturn anti-gay legislation); and it will allow swing-state and Red State Democrats in the Senate the chance to publicly distance themselves from the progressive wing by voting against the filibuster. It's a no-lose situation.

YBK [Part 18]: Not one, but two of the largest airlines went double-toothpicks within minutes of each other. The new bankruptcy laws are going to be brutal on business reorganizations, so expect to see this story replayed quite a bit in the next four weeks. In the meantime, what does this say about airlines when three of the four biggest airlines in the country (plus U.S. Air) are currently in Chapter 11? Can someone say "Amtrak"?

Because 10,000 would be unforgivable: There's something positively odious about complaining that not enough people died along the Gulf Coast the past two weeks.

Clueless:

You never gave five seconds of thought to the risk of flooding in New Orleans until it became impossible to think about anything else? Me neither. Nor have I given much thought to the risk of a big earthquake along the West Coast — the only one of the top three catastrophes that hasn't happened yet — even though I live and work in the earthquake zone.

Question for Mr. Kinsley: What planet do you live on? I dare you to name anyone who has lived on the West Coast (particularly California), and experienced at least a 6.0+ quake, who does not think about The Big One constantly (ie., 8.0+ on the Richter Scale). I think about it every time I drive under a freeway overpass, or walk next to a brick building, or wake up at 4:00 in the morning. I think about it whenever I see glass or china sitting precariously on a shelf, or turn on a flashlight. Earthquakes are part of the reality of living in LA, and the certainty that a major quake will rattle us again in the near future is something everyone thinks about. And I think its fair for any Angeleno to make the assumption that our government will be accountable in the event some major building or piece of infrastructure isn't seismically capable of withstanding such a shock.

Did I ever think about New Orleans being wiped off the face of the earth because of a flood before August 29, 2005? In all honesty, no; I had never studied the topology of that region. But I assume that many, if not most, Louisianians did, largely because major floods occurred every so often. They had a right to assume their government was looking after them, and that predictable threats, such as the corruption of the levees, were going to be dealt with.

And to simply shrug at a calamity like Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks and say that it's human nature not to focus in on the problem until its too late is rather lame. The state and local governments knew enough to wargame contingency plans, however ineffectual they turned out to be. The Army Corps of Engineers knew that the levees probably wouldn't be able to survive a Category-4 hurricane as far back as 2000, and the local newspaper predicted the devastation that would occur two weeks ago all the way back in 2002, facts which Kinsley acknowledges. Money was budgeted towards doing something to shore up the levees, but not nearly enough. The people who needed to know knew, but they just couldn't get the people who had the power to do something about it to act accordingly. And that's unforgiveable.

We don't expect government to guarantee that all disasters be averted. But it's not unfair to demand that avoidable, predictable mistakes not be made. And treating FEMA like a patronage cow, the federal version of state boxing or parole boards on which to stack cronies and hacks, is inexcusable.

UPDATE: Reader MK informs me that Michael Kinsley actually was in town for the '94 Northridge quake. I guess the collapse of the 10 Freeway didn't leave much an impression....

Gone fishin'....

A blackout has wiped out electrical service to most of Los Angeles (that is, the city; the greater metropolitan area, including Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and Santa Monica, gets its power from another source, and all systems are normal in those cities). Sherman Oaks, where I live, is dark, but Woodland Hills, where I work, has been unaffected. If that changes, I won't let you know, because, well, I won't have power to blog anything.

Quote of the Day:

I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. I'd seen it in the theater, but I'd brought Apple, and she was tiny, so I left like 70 times because I was trying to calm her down and I missed the end and stuff. And now, since the film has finished, what's going on in Iraq and what's going on every day? And you see that footage of Bush landing and saying 'Mission accomplished' and he just looks like the biggest moron of all time.

--Gwyneth Paltrow

Earlier this week, as most of you already know, Bob Denver passed away. Most famous today for playing the title character in the TV crapfest "Gilligan's Island", his obits also contained fleeting references to an earlier TV role, as Maynard G. Krebs in the series, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". This LA Times column recounts the uniqueness of that character, a goateed, jazz-loving, bongo-playing hipster.

What is truly odd about this is the fact that Denver would have become so well-known for one character, but almost forgotten for the other. "Gilligan's Island" has been a staple on TV for generations, even though it was astonishingly bad and unfunny, and lasted for only four seasons. Very few people younger than 50, on the other hand, have any memory of "Dobie Gillis". In fact, that show lasted longer than "Gilligan", is said to have been a much better comedy (I have to rely on the opinions of others for this, since I have never seen a single episode of the show in the nearly forty-two years I've been on the planet), and had a much more famous cast. Besides Denver, the show also included a young Warren Beatty, who is only one of the most famous actors in the world, Tuesday Weld (as Dobie's infatuation), who came pretty close to becoming a star, and who was nominated for an Oscar for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Michael J. Pollard, who was also Oscar-nominated, for Bonnie and Clyde, and Sheila Kuhle, who might not be a name many of you have heard of, but in California she is a pretty well-known political figure. And yet, other than a few odd episodes that might have been shown on Nickelodeon once upon a time, I don't know if its ever been syndicated. Strange.

The Buck Stops Nowhere: Now that the hapless FEMA Director has been "reassigned" to other duties in the capital, when is the incompetent moron who nominated him in the first place going to take the hint?

TalkLeft reports that displaced lawyers from the Gulf Coast will be permitted to practice law in Arkansas for the next two months. Don't be surprised if other state bars provide the same exemption, as the judicial system in that area has collapsed.

Seems like I might have to retract my earlier post about how Michael Brown had "disaster management" experience with the city of Edmund, OK in the late-70's. TIME is reporting that it was more like a college internship; Brown also padded his resume in other areas as well. The obvious question, after reading the transcript of his Senate confirmation hearing, below, is didn't the FBI do a background check on this guy? Did anyone perform due diligence?

Something for liberals to ponder: Mike Brown, the clearly-unqualified show horse official and unaccredited law school graduate, who went from being a non-practicing lawyer in Colorado to running FEMA, had to undergo one confirmation hearing before the Senate. In 2002, as the President's nominee to be Deputy Director of FEMA, he went before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman (yes, the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time), and the hearing lasted forty-two minutes.

From there, his nomination went to the floor of the Senate, where he was confirmed without opposition by voice vote. Rather than blaming the local elected officials, such as Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin, who may have made mistakes but were clearly overwhelmed by the scope of the catastrophe, I think any conservative with a smidgen of intellectual integrity should hang his hat on this example, of how "vigorously" Senate Democrats exercised their Constitutional responsibility to advise and consent when the Brown nomination came before them. [link via TPM Cafe]