The bags of money that Bush is throwing at Katrina relief and the overreaching of the Gulf Coast congresscritters appear to have been the last straw for an increasing number of Republicans. The complaining is getting louder and more widespread. Glenn Reynolds pointed out a rant by Republican columnist Frank Cagle predicting disaster for the GOP if they don’t mend their fiscal ways. Cagle made some good points and one bad one:

Bush may still be popular with the branch of the Republican Party that only cares about abortion, stem-cell research and displaying the Ten Commandments, but the fiscal-conservative small-government don’t-tread-on-me wing of the party has had enough.

In 2006, all Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for reelection. They ought to be turned out in droves. Their conduct for the past six years has betrayed every promise they ever made about smaller, less-intrusive government and fiscal responsibility. They passed tax cuts, which in the old days meant less revenue, thus less government. But then they have passed one pork-laden bill after another. They have created new entitlement programs, and they have spent the Treasury dry.

I agree totally with almost all of that. But Cagle gets one thing completely wrong, and in doing so furthers the agenda of the big-government Democrats: tax rate cuts have not "meant less revenue" in the past and they don’t now. Bush cut tax rates in 2003 — and, just like after the Reagan and Kennedy tax rate cuts, people’s behavior changed when the incentives changed, the economy grew faster as a result, and tax revenues increased.

Until we began shoring up levees with bags of legal tender, the deficit was shrinking rapidly due to unanticipated large increases in tax revenues — well, unanticipated by the Congressional Budget Office and all the tax cut critics because they insist on "scoring" tax cuts using static analysis. Static analysis assumes that people don’t behave any differently whether their marginal tax rates are high or low. That is to say, it’s utter nonsense.

[It’s possible, of course, to cut tax rates a lot and have tax revenues remain the same or decline — in fact, as a libertarian, I consider it desirable. I’m just saying it didn’t happen in this case. And I’m saying that if you predict the effect of tax cuts based on the assumption that tax cuts don’t change people’s behavior, you’re being willfully stupid.]

God knows, there’s plenty to criticize — Congress and President — regarding spending, pork, and fiscal responsibility. Comparing these people to drunken sailors is unfair to the sailors. But don’t blame the tax cuts or lump them in with the highway bill or the Medicaid drug benefit as part of the problem.

Aside from that tax cut nonsense, however, I like what Frank Cagle said, I’m glad to see more Republicans saying this kind of thing, and I hope the Republican congresscritters are paying attention to his warning:

If you Republican House members move quickly, maybe some of the people who traditionally vote Republican will stay with you. Otherwise, there will be no reason to keep any of you around. You see, you weren’t elected just because people like Republicans. You were elected because you are supposed to believe in something. …

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Now that the fix is in beta, Microsoft has admitted that Windows has been fundamentally broken for a long time. A long, fascinating article in Australia’s SmartOffice News (based on a Wall Street Journal story) described the revolutionary changes that Microsoft had to make in order to create the next version of Windows:

Allchin is co-head of the Platform Products and Services Division. "It’s not going to work," he told Gates in the chairman’s office mid-2004, the paper reports. "[Longhorn] is so complex its writers will never be able to make it run properly." The reason: Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Thousands of programmers each produced their own piece of computer code, to be stitched together into one sprawling program. But Longhorn/Vista was too complex: Microsoft needed to begin again, Allchin told Gates.

It wasn’t a message Gates wanted to hear. The article describes how Jim Allchin and his associates, Brian Valentine and Amitabh Srivastava, became convinced that Microsoft had to scrap the half-finished Longhorn project and abandon the existing Windows code base, how they then convinced Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and how that decision has changed the architecture of Windows, the way code is written at Microsoft, and even the way the company is organized.

Allchin’s group realized that the Windows code had become increasingly difficult to patch, update, build, and test due to its complexity and interdependencies:

Ideally, engineers make a fresh build every night, fix any bugs and go back to refining their features the next day. But with 4,000 engineers writing code each day, testing the build became a Sisyphean task. When a bug popped up, trouble-shooters would often have to manually search through thousands of lines of code to find the problem.
…
… A newcomer to the Windows group, Mr. Srivastava had his team draw up a map of how Windows’ pieces fit together. It was 8 feet tall and 11 feet wide and looked like a haphazard train map with hundreds of tracks crisscrossing each other.

The group decided that Windows should be built more like UNIX/Linux OSes, with a small, robust "kernel" providing core functions and everything else a Lego-like plugin module. They also insisted that Microsoft’s traditional coding practices had to give way to a more disciplined approach, with more testing, fewer bugs, and less last-minute heroics:

While Windows itself couldn’t be a single module — it had too many functions for that — it could be designed so that Microsoft could easily plug in or pull out new features without disrupting the whole system. That was a cornerstone of a plan Messrs. Srivastava and Valentine proposed to their boss, Mr. Allchin. Microsoft would have to throw out years of computer code in Longhorn and start out with a fresh base. It would set up computers to automatically reject bug-laden code. The new Longhorn would have to be simple. It would leave bells and whistles for later — including Mr. Gates’s WinFS, Messrs. Srivastava and Allchin say.

The new plan was adopted in August 2004, although Gates apparently remained reluctant and skeptical, and dramatic changes were made rapidly:

By late October, Mr. Srivastava’s team was beginning to automate the testing that had historically been done by hand. If a feature had too many bugs, software "gates" rejected it from being used in Longhorn. If engineers had too many outstanding bugs they were tossed in "bug jail" and banned from writing new code. The goal, he says, was to get engineers to "do it right the first time."

To address Gates’ concern that the team was too focused on process and not paying attention to what the engineers thought, Srivastava brought on board the "revered elder statesman" of Windows engineers, Dave Cutler:

On Dec. 1, Mr. Srivastava escorted Mr. Cutler to Microsoft’s auditorium where the software guru told 1,000 engineers that he had used the tools to build Windows code that was nearly bug-free. That Mr. Cutler — famous for never attending meetings — would emerge to back Mr. Allchin’s revolution helped persuade some engineers to drop their objections.
…
As engineers began cooperating and Mr. Srivastava’s team worked overtime to refine the tools, the quality of the code flowing into Longhorn began to improve. The time to create a new "build" fell to just a few days, allowing a faster cycle of writing and testing new code. After the Windows group was able to install a workable version of the system on their PCs four days before Christmas, Mr. Srivastava says the group celebrated by not working over the holidays.

It hasn’t all been rosy since. The beta of Longhorn, now named Windows Vista, wasn’t shipped to 500,000 customers for testing until July 27, over a month late. But the number of reported problems was an order of magnitude smaller than what past experience had predicted. And apparently everyone, including Gates, is now a believer:

It could take years before Windows can be as flexible as Microsoft needs it to be to pump out new features quickly. But the cultural shift is in swing. Hours after showing off Windows Vista to software makers this month, Mr. Gates in an interview noted how Microsoft’s Office group is now using some of Mr. Srivastava’s tools to improve its code. "It’s amazing the invention those guys have brought forward," he said. "I wish we’d done it earlier."

It’s remarkable that Microsoft, given its size, profitability, and market dominance, was able to overcome institutional inertia and undertake such fundamental, revolutionary changes. It speaks well of Gates, the top management, and the corporate culture. 

In January 1998, Virginia Postrel had an article in Reason magazine called "Creative Insecurity" that serves as an excellent bookend to the above story. Postrel, a user and fan of Apple computers, explained why Microsoft became the dominant, standard-setting software company even though many of its products have been less than stellar:

… Great products did not make Microsoft number one. Good-enough products did.

That uncomfortable truth offends moralists on both sides of the Microsoft debate. The company’s fans (and its spin doctors) want to tell a simple tale about virtue triumphant–with virtue defined, Atlas Shrugged-style, not only as astute business decision making and fierce competition but also as engineering excellence. Its critics use the same definition. If the products are less than great, they suggest, the only way to explain the company’s success is through some sort of sleaze. Or, alternatively, through the innate flaws of the market.

So what really happened? How did Microsoft end up ruling PC operating systems and, through them, software in general?

At the risk of simplifying a complex story (if only by reducing it to two players), the bottom line is this: Apple acted–and continues to act–like a smug, self-righteous monopolist. Microsoft acted–and continues to act–like a scrambling, sometimes vicious competitor.
…
… This is not a company that thinks like a monopoly. It is always running scared. There’s always the possibility that something new could come along and destroy its franchise.

Microsoft is still running scared in 2005. In the 1990’s, it was scared of Apple and Netscape. Today, it’s the Linux/open-source community and Google. Worthy competitors with fine products in each case. But as long as Microsoft continues to run scared and not act like a monopolist, I like its chances. And I suspect I’ll like Windows Vista.

UPDATE: For a different perspective, check out Linda Seebach’s column in the Rocky Mountain News. She’s been brainwashed by her UNIX-loving son, Peter, who she quoted as saying Microsoft has "genuinely evil intent" (I can’t tell if that’s tongue in cheek or serious). So she’s not exactly persuaded by my conclusion. 🙂

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I’ve got to start reading the Gates of Vienna more regularly. If it weren’t for Robert Bidinotto, I might have missed Visualize Industrial Collapse, Baron Bodissey’s remarkable post about a group called the Coalition Against Civilization, which he encountered at the Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival.

The group was hawking "Visualize Industrial Collapse" bumper stickers and pamphlets entitled A Primitivist Primer and Species Traitor. Bodissey scanned and OCRed the former, which is something of an "anarcho-primitivist" manifesto, and posted the text here. It begins with an attempt at definition:

Anarcho-primitivism (a.k.a. radical primitivism, anti-authoritarian primitivism, the anti-civilization movement, or just, primitivism) is a shorthand term for a radical current that critiques the totality of civilization from an anarchist perspective, and seeks to initiate a comprehensive transformation of human life. …
…
For anarcho-primitivists, civilization is the overarching context within which the multiplicity of power relations develop. … Anarcho-primitivism incorporates elements from various oppositional currents – ecological consciousness, survivalism, animal liberation, anarchist anti-authoritarianism, feminist critiques, Situationist ideas, zero-work theories, Luddite and technological criticism – but goes beyond opposition to single forms of power to refuse them all and pose a radical alternative.

In a nutshell, the "radical alternative" is this: no division of labor, no industry, no tools beyond what you as an individual can make, and no organizations that last. You might work cooperatively with others on a specific occasion to build a rock wall, for instance, but an ongoing wall-building organization or enterprise would lead to "systems of control and coercion."

Read Bodissey’s dissection of this insanity. He generously estimated that the earth could support a billion people at such a stone-age level of existence (I think that’s a couple of orders of magnitude too high). That means 80% of the population has to disappear:

I don’t think herbal contraceptives and the rhythm method are going to do the job. And I think the leaders of these movements know it, even if they don’t dare say so in their pamphlets. To achieve their ideal society, to create their heaven on earth, four billion people will have to die. Who do you think those people will be? …
…
When the time comes, when the Untelevised Revolution finally seizes the levers of power, it will be the Central Committee of the Anarcho-Green People’s Coalition that makes the decisions. The workers and bureaucrats and truck drivers and school children won’t just lie down in the streets to die. No, it will be Pol Pot all over again, only done righteously this time.
…
They’ll go in single file across the organic soybean fields to the mass graves that have been so thoughtfully prepared for them.

And you can bet that the bulldozer and the pistol will be the last technological artifacts to be given up after the Green Millenium arrives.

Bidinotto noticed the similarity between these eco-freaks and other nihilistic enemies of civilization:

Unbelievable?

Well, a decade or two ago, who would have believed that parents would be celebrating their sons and daughters for strapping on explosives, walking onto buses and into discos, and blowing themselves and scores of others to smithereens?

Who would have believed that an organized gang of fanatics would commandeer airliners and dive them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center?

Who would have believed that thugs would torch scientific and medical labs, or threaten and beat up medical researchers…in the name of the "rights" of mice and rats?

Who would have believed that there could actually exist a group called "The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" — advocating not merely the collapse of civilization, but the total extermination of the human race?

Critics of the late novelist Ayn Rand used to laugh off her fictional villains as crude caricatures. "Preposterous," they would sniff. "Nobody is that bad." But for sheer evil, no character she invented in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged could possibly rival those nihilists who dominate the daily headlines in our newspapers.
…
Like it or not, folks, this is war — an all-out war for the survival of civilization and the human race. And the scariest thing about it?

The fact that even now, only one side in the battle fully grasps that war has even been declared…or knows what the war is really all about.

And here’s the real irony: The most effective and dangerous people making war against civilization aren’t the arsonists and suicide bombers. No, it’s the ones who use the institutions and technologies of civilization to undermine the values of civilization. Species Traitor has a website. The worship of Gaia and the denigration of reason, progress, and modernity are taught every day in our schools and universities and promoted in films, music, books, and other modern media. And al Qaeda uses satellite phones and camcorders in its quest to undo the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

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If you’ve clicked Take Back the Memorial in my right sidebar and been outraged by the anti-American multi-culturalists plans for an "International Freedom Center" at Ground Zero, there’s good news tonight. Michelle Malkin has the story and links to more info:

After a valiant, hard-fought battle, 9/11 family member Debra Burlingame and countless other Americans who joined her have won the battle to protect Ground Zero from the Blame America crowd. For now. Kudos to everyone who wrote, called, and blogged their outrage since Burlingame blew the whistle in June and refused to relent. Via Bloomberg News:

Governor George Pataki said today he will direct development officials to drop plans for a museum of freedom at the World Trade Center site, saying it has stirred “too much opposition, too much controversy.”
…

…
What’s more than a bit disturbing to me is that it took Hillary Clinton’s announced opposition to the IFC before Rudy Giuliani and Gov Pataki finally drove the final (we hope) nail into the Ground Zero guilt complex. But better late than never.

Wow, I missed that news about Hillary. I wasn’t surprised by Giuliani’s and Pataki’s gutlessness in this whole affair. Disappointed by Giuliani, but not surprised.

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Tonight, I saw Serenity. No spoilers, no long plot summary, just my strongest possible recommendation: Go see this film. Don’t wait for the DVD. Don’t skip it because you’re not into sci-fi or special effects.

If you’re into engaging, quirky, human characters, go see this film. If you’re into clever, funny, intelligent dialog, go see this film. If you’re into heroism and nobility from the unlikeliest cast of characters, go see this film. If you’re into an intense, action-packed, visually stunning experience, go see this film. If you’re into a powerful libertarian message, go see this film.

If you’re already a Joss Whedon fan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly), I’m sure you don’t need convincing. If you’re not, Serenity will make you one. This film combines a powerful plot, great humor, lots of action and special effects, and a tremendous humanity in a way that should make George Lucas feel ashamed of his recent work.

The film is definitely a continuation of the Firefly series, and it wraps up various plot elements and explains certain mysteries — why the Alliance is after the strange girl, River Tam, and where the savage Reavers came from — in stunning fashion. But you don’t have to have seen the series. The film begins with some "back story" and contextual information that brings "newbies" into the story while keeping Firefly fans interested.

The chief advantage we fans have is that we’re immediately glad to be back in the presence of these very special characters that we already know and love. If they’re new to you, though, they’ll grow on you very quickly.

I went with a friend who doesn’t much care for sci-fi or "action and special effects" films, and she loved it. The audience consisted of a handful of bloggers, some Browncoats (hard-core Firefly fans), and a bunch of people who got passes from somewhere — a radio station, maybe — who knows. Reaction during the film was great. There must have been at least fifty times that everyone laughed. And several other times when you could hear a pin — or a tear — drop. At the end, almost everyone applauded and probably half stayed through the credits. People were still sitting and standing around talking about the film after the screen went dark and the lights came on.

I have only one criticism, and that’s of the way the invited bloggers were handled. Obviously, someone at Universal gets the "new media" and the idea of viral marketing, or we bloggers wouldn’t have been invited to the screening. But they implemented it rather stupidly.

First, they sent us this dumb email "confirming" our invitation, but warning that a confirmation didn’t guarantee we’d get in. Huh? So what does confirmed mean? The confirmation also pushed too hard for a quid pro quo — a blog post that included their synopsis and a link to the movie site. I had no problem with that (I’d already plugged the film earlier without prodding), but I know some bloggers didn’t like the hamhandedness.

Second, they didn’t handle things well at the theater. We were instructed to arrive at least 45 minutes before the show and present our confirmations to the Universal Studios representative. I was the first blogger there. The theater staff said the Universal rep wasn’t there yet, but that she’d just tell us to get in the long line "over there." I refused, insisting that we were told to not get in the line with the people holding passes.

After a bit of a standoff, they relented and set up a second line for us bloggers. The Universal rep finally showed up very close to showtime, and she even had a list of people approved for press credentials — that was us! Yay! So we all got in just fine and got good seats. But if someone (me, in this case) hadn’t challenged the theater staff, we’d have been at the end of the long line and not at all happy.

So, Universal Studios — it’s cool that you’re doing all this alternative marketing, but don’t jerk bloggers around. Good thing for you that it turned out all right. And that you have such a great movie.

UPDATE: Stephen Green, who drove from Colorado Springs to Denver to attend the same screening, agrees with my assessment and makes an apt comparison:

I haven’t seen a character-driven action picture this much fun since the last Indiana Jones movie, or maybe since the first Die Hard.

And over at ResurrectionSong, zombyboy (who was also at the Denver screening) was likewise impressed:

The script is smart and funny and quick-witted, the characters are sharply drawn, and it manages a few emotional tugs along the way (tugs that will be enhanced for fans of the show). From the very beginning, there are surprises and the action moves with impressive intensity. This movie is, almost literally, one that will have the crowd sitting on the edge of the seat, eyes wide, and wondering what’s going to happen next. This is good stuff.

I’m telling you — virtually everyone who sees this thing is an enthusiastic fan. Buy your tickets already!

UPDATE 2: Welcome, Instapundit readers! While you’re here, check out some of my other posts on the left (Firefly, Serenity, and Liberty probably jumped out at you, but take a look at The law west of Canal Street or "Purity" vs. principles or…). I’m glad to see that Glenn liked the film and that this morning, he ordered  the Firefly DVD set. You’ll love it, Glenn!

UPDATE 3: I saw it a second time Friday PM. My thoughts on that got a bit long to just dump here, so I’m putting them in a new post.

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If you’re looking for a roundup of good reading, check out Forward Biased and the Watcher of Weasels.

The former is hosting this week’s Carnival of Liberty, which, judging from Obi-Wan’s descriptions, is chock-full of interesting reads.

The latter, as usual, has some of the best reads on the Web, voted so by the Watcher’s Council. Check out the Council’s list of vote-getters, or take a look at the initial list of nominees — after all, it’s an honor just to be nominated (ahem). To read the best of the best, go straight to the winning council post and winning non-council post.

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Christopher Hitchens is a member of what seems like an endangered species: the anti-totalitarian left. I’ve quoted him before, in a look at what I called "voices of sanity on the left." Today in Slate, Hitchens described the organizing forces behind Saturday’s "anti-war" demonstration in Washington, providing a somewhat more detailed picture than the bland, innocuous description offered by a NY Times reporter:

The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker’s World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that’s the sort of thing you like. …

Hitchens was no more enamored of the other sponsoring group, United for Peace and Justice — which the Times described as having "a more narrow, antiwar focus." He saw it as an Old/New Left alliance:

…some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker’s World Party—Ramsey Clark’s core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account.

So, what kind of anti-war movement has at its core a group that was born out of support for the 1956 Hungary invasion and more recently defended Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and perpetrators of genocide in the Serbia and Rwanda? Hitchens argued that it’s not an anti-war movement at all (emphasis added):

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side.

There’s more, and as they say, read the whole thing.

Honorable and reasonable people opposed the invasion of Iraq, including many libertarians. Some are people I admire, like, and consider friends. But as far back as the earliest pre-invasion demonstrations, I argued that regardless of one’s position on Iraq, no decent person should participate in, lend support to, or join forces with any "anti-war" movement organized and run by the totalitarian scum of International ANSWER and the Worker’s World Party.

It disgusted me when one of the leaders of the Colorado Libertarian Party enthusiastically participated in an ANSWER rally and wrote a gushing description in the state newsletter. It’s one thing to join forces with Republicans to protect gun rights or with Democrats to support medical marijuana. But if you have any decency or principles, you don’t ally yourself with advocates of mass murder and slavery for any purpose.

If you’re opposed to the war against Islamofascism and/or the battle in Iraq, the very fact that such contemptible thugs are the major force that shares your point of view ought to make you think hard.

(HT: Liberty Corner)

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I blogged about Joss Whedon’s first feature film, Serenity, a few weeks ago. I noted that Firefly, the short-lived TV series on which Serenity is based, had a strong libertarian streak and some rabidly loyal fans (myself included):

If you’re a fan of Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel), you know what to expect — intelligent scripts full of clever repartee, interesting and quirky characters, fine acting, and engaging storytelling. …
…
I can’t recommend Firefly strongly enough, and I’m not alone. At Amazon, over 1500 customer reviews give it an average of 5 out of 5 stars. …
…
And of course, go see Serenity when it comes to a theater near you at the end of the month. Talk is that if it does well, there may be two more feature films and/or a new TV series.

It’s less than a week until the Friday, Sept. 30, opening, and I may not have to wait that long — I have a chance to see it a few days earlier on Tuesday evening. If it happens, look for my review that night or the next morning. Meanwhile, check out Sara Stewart’s story in the NY Post (reg. required; use BugMeNot), which begins with a marvelous quote that tells you why some of us are such fans of Whedon:

September 25, 2005 — I’VE done it," Joss Whedon says gleefully. "I’ve made a movie where there’s a discussion about the human condition during a hovercraft chase!"

And check out the Serenity movie site (Flash version is cool, but click the HTML version if you don’t have broadband), where you can see the trailers and some clips, learn more about the film and cast, download screensavers, etc. — and buy your tickets! Here’s a poster and the synopsis of the film:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® – and Emmy – nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal. 

And here’s a message from Joss that I liked:

Hi I’m Joss Whedon. Before we begin this special screening, I have a little story I want to tell you. It’s about a TV show called Firefly. Firefly went on the air a few years ago and was instantly hailed by critics as one of the most cancelled shows of the year. It was ignored and abandoned, and the story should end there. But it doesn’t, because the people who made the show and the people who saw the show—which is roughly the same number of people—fell in love with it a little bit too much to let it go, too much to lay down arms when the battle looked pretty much lost.

In Hollywood, people like that are called unrealistic, quixotic, obsessive. In my world, they’re called Browncoats. Now whether you watched the show on TV or saw the DVDs—or whether you never set foot in the Firefly universe before tonight—the fact that you’re here means that you’re part of something, something that is a little bit remarkable. This movie should not exist. Failed TV shows don’t get made into major motion pictures—unless the creator, the cast and the fans believe beyond reason. That’s what I have felt, and that’s what I have seen in the DVD sales, the booths at the cons run by fans, the web sites and the fundraisers—all the work the fans have done helped make this movie.

Believe me when I tell you that Firefly was special — and I’m sure Serenity will be special, too. With any luck, I’ll have more to say in a couple or three days. But you don’t have to wait — go ahead and make plans to see it next weekend!

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Last Sunday, I posted in support of Porkbusters and listed a half-dozen examples of Colorado pork touching all of Colorado’s congressional districts. I subsequently sent my pork list to Colorado’s seven Representatives and two Senators, adding appropriate introductory material explaining what I was doing and what the Porkbusters project is. I asked each one of them to respond in a very specific way:

For each item listed, please let me know whether you’re willing to support diversion of that appropriation to Katrina relief. If you’re a Congressman, I’m especially interested in knowing if you’ll put the nation first and agree to forgo an appropriation for your district.

If there are any other pork or "discretionary" appropriations for Colorado that you’d like to propose for diversion to Katrina relief, please identify them. I’ll add them to the Porkbusters (truthlaidbear.com/porkbusters.php) list of Congressional commitments and credit you.

Today, I received my first response. It’s an email from Sen. Ken Salazar — or from his office, actually. It’s a form letter that they haven’t even bothered to update since it was written, as evidenced by (emphasis added):

We also need to evaluate what went wrong in the hours and days after the hurricane hit that may have resulted in a lack of adequate preparation for a storm of this magnitude and in the unnecessary delays that caused untold human suffering and, in some cases, cost people their lives. I have already written to President Bush urging him to seek the resignation of Michael D. Brown, Director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and have joined a coalition of Senators and Congressman in calling for the creation of a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to examine the failures that led to the lack of preparation for Katrina and the inadequacy of the response, and to develop recommendations for how our nation can avoid repeating those failures.

Contemplate also the concept of evaluating what went wrong after the hurricane that may have resulted in a lack of adequate preparation for the hurricane. I can’t wait for him to get to the bottom of that.

Needless to say, Salazar’s office completely ignored everything in my message beyond the word "Katrina," which triggered the sending of response 137B or something like that. Not only did he not support any spending cuts, he closed by alluding to how willing he is to throw more money:

In the coming days and weeks, I will be supporting a number of measures in the Senate designed to further address each of these urgent needs, including funding for critical health care needs. I am a proud co-sponsor of the Katrina Emergency Relief Act of 2005 (S. 1637). I believe this proposal offers the most effective and efficient way to ensure that Katrina survivors have access to health care. Toward that end, I welcome your thoughts. In particular, I will keep your suggestions on funding nutrition, employment and education initiatives for Katrina survivors.

Yeah, I can tell how much you welcome my thoughts, you arrogant windbag.

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Thanks to The Agitator for pointing out this UK Mirror story about another bizarre development on the Katrina relief front:

HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.

US red tape is stopping it from reaching hungry evacuees.

Instead tons of the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, has been condemned as unfit for human consumption.

The 400,000 "operational ration packs" — the British military’s equivalent of our MREs (meals ready to eat) — were impounded and trucked to Little Rock to be destroyed at an FDA incinerator. An unnamed British aid worker called it senseless and said colleagues were "spitting blood":

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq.

"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."

The Brits aren’t the only ones to have their generous donations rejected by officious FDA and USDA bureaucrats:

Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption.

And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.

The FDA is one of my least favorite regulatory agencies (and that’s saying a lot!). At least since the years when David Kessler was Clinton’s FDA commissioner, it’s been the home of some of the most arrogant, self-righteous, messianic, and paternalistic bureaucrats in the federal government. Their officious insistence on protecting the residents of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana from food that’s eaten by Israelis, Spaniards, Italians, and both British and American soldiers is beyond outrageous. It makes me long for the days when tar, feathers, and rails were sometimes combined to good purpose.

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Did you see any of the news footage from Texas last night or this morning, showing the highways jammed with people evacuating from Galveston? Did you notice the long lines of yellow school buses? The Houston Chronicle has multiple stories and pictures (emphasis added, except in picture captions).

Tim Johnson / Reuters

School buses leave the Galveston Community Center to evacuate citizens of the city in preparation for Hurricane Rita.

The sobering images from Katrina seemed to focus the minds of Texans watching Rita approach:

"The real lesson that I think the citizens learned is that the people in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi did not leave in time. There was great loss of life and property and misery,” said Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "We just don’t want that to happen here. We’ve always asked people to leave earlier, but because of Katrina, they are now listening to us and they’re leaving as we say.”

Mandatory evacuations in Galveston County weren’t to begin, zone by zone, until 6 p.m. today, but by daybreak dozens of people destined for shelters in Huntsville had lined up for bus rides at the Galveston Island Community Center, carrying pillows, bags and coolers.

By midday, 1,500 people — plus their pets — had left in the mile-long caravan of yellow school buses. Many, including Edward Herron, 61, had ridden out earlier storms, but not Hurricane Rita.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing any pictures of hundreds of flooded buses this time:

Although Galveston police don’t plan to drag reluctant residents off the island, city officials reassured residents no one who wants to leave would be left behind. Sharon Strain, head of the Galveston Housing Authority, said anyone who can’t make it to the buses would be picked up.

"We’ve got more bus space than people and I’m not going to send them off empty,” said City Manager Steve LeBlanc. "We are going to hold empty buses until the bitter end."

Apparently, they remembered to evacuate the nursing homes, too.

Tim Johnson / Reuters

Residents from the Edgewater Retirement Community in Galveston get ready to board a bus to evacuate the city in advance of Hurricane Rita.

Evacuating the frail has become a top priority. Clear Lake Regional Hospital and Mainland Medical Center began evacuating patients today, along with the Isle’s only hospital, the University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston. 

This morning UTMB Galveston was evacuating 450 patients by helicopter and ambulance. Plans call for adult patients to go to the Univeristy of Texas Health Center at Tyler and children to go to Children’s Hospital of Austin.  

For a handful of remaining patients, estimated to be "less than 15," evacuation would be "a death sentence," said spokeswoman Chris Comer.  

The Galveston hospital will remain open for those patients as well as a few women already in labor. The emergency room will also remain open during the storm, although Comer warned that people riding out the storm won’t be allowed to use it as a shelter.

And they don’t just open the jail doors in Texas:

In addition, the county is emptying the inmates from the county jail. Some were released on bond, while 40 others are being transported by school bus to a jail in Angelina County.
…

Plans were also under way today to evacuate nearly 5,000 inmates from five state prisons that authorities believe are in harm’s way.

The evacuations included:

– 1,098 inmates from the Scott Unit in Angleton were moving to the Ellis Unit in Huntsville and the Ferguson Unit in Midway.

– 1,132 inmates in Clemens Unit in Brazoria were moving to the Hightower Unit in Dayton, Wynne Unit in Huntsville and Estelle Unit in Huntsville.

– 1,572 inmates from the Terrell Unit in Rosharon were moving to the Lewis Unit in Woodville, Polunsky Unit in Livingston and the Eastham Unit in Lovelady.

– 1,082 inmates in Jester III Unit in Richmond were moving to the Jester IV Unit in Richmond, Jester I Unit in Richmond and the Central Unit in Sugar Land.

– Approximately 400 in the Young Unit in Texas City were moving to Plane State Jail in Dayton, Gatesville Unit in Gatesville and the Estelle Unit in Huntsville.

Despite all the plans, procedures, and lines of buses, however, officials made it clear to citizens that they had a responsibility to themselves and their neighbors, and that government help was a last resort, not the first choice:

White said people who have no way to leave town and people who have any spare seats in their cars should try to hook up.

"We need citizens who need assistance to evacuate to seek out friends and neighbors . . . There will not be enough government vehicles to evacuate everyone," he said. "Citizens are the first line of defense."

Those who have no other options should dial the city at 311 to make transportation arrangements with the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Outside the service area, residents can call 713-837-0311.

Wow. Call the Transit Authority to get a ride out if you have to. I guess in Texas, their emergency evacuation plans include somehow having bus drivers available for their school and municipal buses and actually evacuating everyone. Maybe they should share their secret with Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin.

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About Scotland’s oil wealth and who should benefit:

http://freedomandwhisky.blogspot.com/2005/09/scotlands-oil.html 

(scroll donw if you don’t see anything)

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Thanks to D.C. Thornton and Baldilocks for linking to this petition to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a four-year college scholarship to Jabbar Gibbons. Go read it and sign it. If you’re a blogger, post a link to it. I don’t know how long it’s been up, but Baldilocks posted her link on the 14th (sorry I didn’t see it sooner, Juliette), and it currently has fewer than 600 signatures. Let’s get that to 6,000! And then 60,000 (Glenn, could you lend a hand?)!

If you don’t know about Jabbar Gibbons, see my Sept. 2 post "A hero from New Orleans" for the whole story. Short version: This remarkable young man (who’d never driven a bus and didn’t have a driver’s license) commandeered one of the school buses that the mayor couldn’t be bothered to put to use. He loaded it up with friends and neighbors, added others they encountered on the way out of town (up to 100 in some news accounts), and drove them all to Houston — a 13 hour trip (not 7 as stated in the petition). Whereupon some fascis… I mean, government officials suggested he might be charged with stealing the bus.

Here’s the photo by Carlos Antonio Rios of the Houston Chronicle of the jam-packed bus, with Jabbar at the wheel, arriving at the Astrodome:

In my original post, I said:

Jabbar Gibson took matters into his own hands. He stepped forward and took responsibility for his and his neighbors’ safety and well-being. Bravo! Someone in Houston should hire this young man, and fast!

Someone should give him a medal, too. This is the kind of person who ought to become a role model for black inner-city youths, not some whiny mayor or snarling rap artist.

Go sign the petition already!

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Lt. Gen. Honore has coined the catch-phrase of the year, and it’s spreading like wildfire:

"Don’t get stuck on stupid"

Radio Blogger has the whole transcript. The general basically seized control of a press conference from a floundering Mayor Nagin. And the general is a pistol — here’s an earlier snippet:

… There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on…

Honore: That’s not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn’t work the first time…

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn’t work the first time. This ain’t the first time. Okay? … You got good public servants working through it. Let’s get a little trust here, because you’re starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay?

Wow, now that’s putting the reporters in their place!

Will Collier says the audio (also at Radio Blogger) is even better than the transcript, but I’ll take his word at this hour. One of Will’s commenters wants the phrase on a bumper sticker. I suspect that will happen shortly.

Honore has a way with words. I liked this phrase, too: "But let’s not confuse the questions with the answers."  

Stuck on stupid. You’re going to hear that a lot, I suspect.

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