I think they should go for it, even if it gives me another sport to cover.

Go Michael Newdow!

I’m not holding my breath here, but I really hope he rams it up the asses of the Bible-bangers. People talk as if “under God” has existed in the Pledge forever, when we know that this isn’t the case, and may well have been against the wishes of the individual who wrote the damned thing in the first place. I bet that there aren’t many conservatives who realize that the Pledge Of Allegiance was written by a socialist. I just found this out, myself. Interesting…

Update:

From: Jesse Oxfeld
To: Scott Crawford
Subject: Re: Best. Headline. Evar.

ha. great. thx.
-j

Update 2: if you go to the article on the 1010 WINS site now, you’ll see that he’s merely “withdrawing from the race” now, and has decided not to pull out. Ooh, Tony Weiner’s gonna knock someone up, I’m tellin’!

Sucks for the kid (at least until the multi-million dollar lawsuit settlement happens), but I do so love it when crap like this blows up in the faces of the powers that be.

Hi, fuck this shit.

…to the question “How are you?”, currently in effect, and to be used until further notice:

“Stuck.”

It’s so perfect.

Wow. Amazing that this one missed the news, and even more amazing that this happened in the first place. In the time I’ve been riding the ride, I’ve never felt anything but confident on it, and it’s very well-maintained and run typically. I’ve been on it twice this year, actually. Very weird.

New Orleans Police To Katrina Victims: “PUT ‘EM ON THA GLASS!”

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.”-Barbara Bush

Update: Some more commentary on this, via LiveJournal’s “cockfeed”

http://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/katrinarelief.html

…and he wanted me to thank you all profusely for your help. He’s genuinely overwhelmed, I could hear it in his voice. He will be thanking you all personally as soon as he gets a moment to breathe.

The people who say “now isn’t the time to blame people” are foolish in my view. If we don’t blame the ones who aren’t doing their jobs now and ideally replace whoever we can, then the job will be much harder for the people that we replace them with.

So, over the past day, MySpace have added a “donate to the Red Cross” link to every user’s home page. It’s a cute idea, but it’s too bad that the Red Cross are being stonewalled right now, for one (after Bush told everyone to give their money to them) and Fox/MySpace are using this whole thing as a tax write-off, for two.

See this URL? It’s the URL from that homepage link.

https://www.redcross.org/donate/redir.asp?
OID=MySpace%20Inc&DID=09022005

That “redir” with the user ID after it means that MySpace are being credited for at least directing those donations to the Red Cross, and will eventually get a pretty good-sized kickback for it if I’m not mistaken (if someone from MySpace wants to lie…er…clarify this for us all, that’d be great). There’s no other reason for the ID info to be in the URL other than to credit an entity for their “generosity”.

I’m not a big fan of the larger charities for reasons like this, and because in a lot of cases, they’re pretty heavy-handed on the “faith” side of things. You can be on either side of the fence with that last part, but I don’t think you’re required to tie all generosity to a higher power, and you sure as hell don’t need massive amounts of bureaucracy or a receipt to deduct from your income taxes to make a positive difference in someone’s life.

My advice to you all, and perhaps it won’t be the most popular advice or the easiest to follow, is to volunteer your time and your help in person if you’re in or near the affected areas, or make direct contact with people in need (and yes, plenty of them do have net access now that they’re out of the heavily affected areas) and offer to do them any favors you can (even if it’s just something simple like helping them contact people, find crash space, find work, whatever) if you’re not. That second part isn’t as hard as it looks. Even if you don’t know anyone who lives in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida or Alabama, you can go to craigslist and you’ll see that the links to the cities in the affected areas are in red. Follow them, and on each of them, there’s a “Hurricane Katrina” section in the top left of their home pages. Here, I’ll make it easy for the extremely lazy among you:

New Orleans, LA
Baton Rouge, LA
Shreveport, LA
Houston, TX
Jackson, MS
Mobile, AL
Montgomery, AL
Pensacola, FL

Check out the “Hurricane Katrina” links on as many of those pages as you feel inclined to, and either see if there’s someone specific you can help out, or offer help to anyone who asks for it. Use common sense and take care when doing so, because unfortunately, some folks will take advantage of your generosity, but as we’ve witnessed with the stonewalling of relief aid in the South, that can happen just as easily with you’re donating to “trusted” charities as it can when you’re one person looking to help others.

To clarify, here’s nothing wrong with donating money if you have it (I wouldn’t be stumping for my friend Mike if I believed otherwise, and for people whose time is at a premium, it can be the only way to pitch in) and you won’t be damned to hell if you did donate to the Red Cross or a similar charity, but for those of you who have time to spare, I highly recommend that you use it to help out.

As I mentioned earlier, Coffin, a.k.a. Also The Klown has resurfaced after getting out of New Orleans. He’s safe in Baton Rouge now, but he’s out a place to live, a job, and pretty much all his stuff. Here’s a chance for you folks who were unsure about where to donate to make a difference by helping someone that some of us actually know!

The button is up! Feel free to ask questions and such if you have ‘em before or after donating!

Edit: Coffin would like you all to know, in his own words, “that everything I get will go toward me being able to survive long enough to go back and help others rebuild. This isn’t a selfish “I’m gonna take the money and run” kinda thing.”

Edit 2: Astrid says it a hell of a lot better than I ever could.